"The Naked and the Conflicted"

An alert from a blogfriend tuned me into this essay on the American Novel of the recent past.

I have not read the entire thing, but it does note some of my major areas of discomfort with some of our foremost writers.  The plain facts of the matter are that I really don't need to know that much about what others do behind closed doors, and unless there is something here germane--some critique, some analysis, some deep understanding being exposed--it is largely a waste of effort on the part of the writer.  If it is mere engagement that is required, there are other means.

And it is for this reason that I always feel that I must be missing something--perhaps something exceedingly important, when I engage Roth and Updike (among others).  So, now I'll go back to the essay and see if I can discover what it may be that I am not experiencing.

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