Literature: Fiction Trends

American Decades

Literature: Fiction Trends

The Decline of Minimalism

Among the most important literary trends of the 1980s was minimalism, which can in fact be traced back to the spare prose of Ernest Hemingway. Among the best minimalist works are startlingly original, insightful, well-crafted, and moving works such as Ann Beattie's novel Chilly Scenes in Winter (1976) and Raymond Carver's short-story collection Cathedral (1981). By the 1990s, however, minimalism seemed to have exhausted its creative possibilities. Minimalist writers of the 1990s wrote fiction that seemed too restricted, not only in time, place, and plot, but also in the emotional range of the characters—who all too predictably were members of the lower class. Critics began to complain about novels featuring inarticulate truck drivers, unskilled laborers, waitresses, hairdressers, convenience store clerks, and mechanics, all of whom seemed to live in trailer parks. Not only were they listless, passionless, and intellectually, morally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted, but such characters seemed totally unaware of what they thought about any aspect of their lives. Strictly speaking, critics charged, the average piece of 1990s minimalist fiction was not really a story at all. There was often no plot to speak of and change, if it occurred at all, was random and, therefore, insignificant. Novelist Madison Smartt Bell charged that minimalism offered an "anorexic aesthetic" in which less really was less, and in a 1999 interview novelist Tom Wolfe echoed Bell's assessment: "The novel in this country is being starved to death by the novelists.… It now suffers from advanced anorexia nervosa." Wolfe blamed the decline on the vogue during the second half of the century for novels as "psychological studies rather than big social studies" and complained, "When the novelists said we can't embrace life any more, … the novel began to die." Earlier in the decade, editor David Jauss had already come to the conclusion that "what we need, and deserve is an approach to fiction that is less homogeneous.… But even more than a more heterogenous approach to fiction, we need more writers … who will rediscover fiction's primary subject—the effect of time and experience on people—and its primary hope—the possibility of change."

The New Regionalism

One hopeful sign that the novel might still be revived was the favorable reception of works by writers who might be grouped as new regionalists. Like other trends of the 1990s, the so-called new regionalists had been achieving recognition since at least the 1980s, when, for example, Carolyn Chute's novel The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985) and John Casey's Spartina (1988), set in coastal Rhode Island, were surprise best-sellers. The new regionalists drew on the lessons of the great modernist and a variety of other sources, including in some cases the Latin American magical realists, to create technically polished works that depict rural life without the sentimentality and condescension that marred so much regionalist fiction of the nineteenth century. While such fiction might have appealed to Americans' end-of-the-century urge to rediscover their roots, it often included harsh messages about alarming discrepancies between the American dream and the American reality, past and present. One novelist who had been writing since the mid 1960s, Cormac McCarthy, achieved public recognition in the 1990s when his All the Pretty Horses (1992), the first volume of his Border Trilogy, won both a National Book Award and a National Book Critics' Award, and he went on to attract readers with the next two volumes, The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998). Often criticized for the violence of his fiction and praised for its lyricism, McCarthy set his trilogy on both sides of the Mexican border early in the twentieth century, focusing on characters caught between the traditional lifestyle of the nineteenth century and the inexorable "progress" of modernization. A similar theme is apparent in the novels of Carolyn Chute, whose Merry Men (1994) and Snow Man (1999) are set among the rural poor of New England. Unlike most of these writers, Annie Proulx (pronounced Pru), has never restricted herself to one region. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Postcards (1992) is. set in rural New England, while her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), which earned her a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, is set in Newfoundland, and her third, Accordion Crimes (1996) is set in various regions of the United States over a period of about a century. Close Range (1999), a collection of short stories, is set in Wyoming. Often praised for her lyrical prose style, Proulx has been unafraid to tackle the big social themes that the minimalists eschew, taking on Americans' most treasured myths about the nation's history. Two other writers who have never limited themselves to particular regions or themes also contributed to regional fiction in the 1990s. Peter Matthiessen's trilogy Killing Mr. Watson (1990), Lost Man's River (1997), and Bone by Bone (1999) depicts life in Florida as it was before the arrival of resort hotels and Disney World, while Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1991) follows the decline of a farm family in Iowa. Other notable regional novels of the decade were David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars (1993), set in the Pacific Northwest, and Kent Haruf's Plainsong (1999), which immersed readers in the life of a small community in Colorado. One indication of the growing popularity and importance of regional literature was the founding of Storylines America in October 1997. A cooperative venture between public libraries and public radio stations, Storylines America is a series of broadcast book discussions designed to promote the reading and discussion of regional literature.

Southern Fiction

Regionalism never died in the South, and Southern writers contributed to the national resurgence of its popularity during the 1990s. Authors with established reputations continued to publish critically acclaimed novels. Novels by women writers with established followings included Anne Tyler's Saint Maybe (1991), Ladder of Years (1995), and A Patchwork Planet (1998); Lee Smith's The Devils Dream (1992) and Saving Grace (1995); Doris Betts's Souls Raised From the Dead (1994) and The Sharp Teeth of Love (1997); Mary Lee Settle's Choices (1995); Bobbie Ann Mason's Feather Crowns (1993); and Jill McCorkle's Carolina Moon (1992). Among the elder statesmen of Southern fiction were Reynolds Price with The Tongues of Angels (1990), Blue Calhoun (1992), and The Promise of Rest (1995); Peter Taylor with In the Tennessee Country (1994), and Texan Larry McMurtry with The Evening Star (1992), Streets of Laredo (1993), Pretty Boy Floyd (1994); Comanche Moon (1997), and Duanes Depressed (1999). Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina (1992) and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain (1997) were among the critically acclaimed first novels of the decade. Writing of the "blithely and gracefully eclectic" nature of Southern fiction in the 1990s novelist George Garrett singled out a long list of novels as proof that there is "much more to living Southern literature than meets the eye." His list included Madison Smartt Bell's Barking Man (1990), Doctor Sleep (1992), and All Souls' Rising (1996); Kelly Cherry's The Society of Friends (1999); R. H. W. Dillard's Omniphobia (1995); Judith Hawkes's Julians House (1991), My Soul to Keep (1996), and The Heart of a Witch (1999); and Dale Phillips's My Peoples Waltz (1999).

African American Fiction

Several important African American novels appeared during the 1990s, including Ralph Ellison's long-awaited Juneteenth (1999). Unfinished at the time of his death in 1994, the published version of the novel is only part of a long work-in-progress, assembled and edited by Ellison's friend and literary executor John F. Callahan. Toni Morrison, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, produced Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1998). New books by other African American novelists with established reputations were also published during the decade, including Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying (1993), Gloria Naylor's Baileys Cafe (1992) and The Men of Brewster Place (1998), Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring (1993), Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), and John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire (1990), The Cattle Killing (1996), and Two Cities (1998). At the same time a new generation of African American novelists began to make its presence felt. These writers included Dori Sanders with Clover (1990) and Her Own Place (1993), Fred D'Aguiar with Dear Future (1996) and Feeding the Ghosts (1999), John Keene with Annotations (1995), Danzy Senna with Caucasia (1998), Margaret Cezair Thompson with The True History of Paradise (1999), and Colson Whitehead with The Intuitionist (1998). Terry McMillan had two popular successes with Waiting to Exhale (1992) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1996), both adapted as motion pictures, and Tina McElroy Ansa's Ugly Ways, Bebe Moore Campbell's Brothers and Sisters, and Connie Briscoe's Sisters and Lovers all sold well in 1995.

Mystery and Crime Fiction

A perennial favorite among readers, mystery and crime novel soared in popularity during the 1990s. In each year of the decade more than 1,500 new mysteries appeared. Following the success of Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent (1987), lawyer-turned-novelist John Grisham transformed the legal thriller into a best-selling genre. In many ways Robert B. Parker remained the dean of detective writers, at least among those in the hard-boiled tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Parker's Spenser, the protagonist of novels such as Double Deuce (1992) and Paper Doll (1993), is a proto-typical hard-boiled hero patterned after Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Robert Crais's Elvis Cole is a sort of Philip Marlowe for the 1990s. While Spencer is a veteran of the Korean War, Cole fought in the Vietnam War and occasionally talks to his cat. During the nineties two female writers, Sue Grafton and Sara Peretsky, continued the sagas of their hard-boiled women detectives: Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Peretsky's V. I. Warshawski. Walter Mosley and James Lee Burke may be the most literary detective writers of the decade. Moseley's Ezekiel "Easy" Rollins and Burke's Dave Robicheaux are two of the most complex and intriguing characters to grace the mystery fiction of the 1990s. James Ellroy transcended the genre of mystery fiction with his crime novels rooted in social history. L.A. Confidential (1990), the third novel in his L.A. Quartet, was filmed and won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay in 1997, Ellroy's place as a leading crime writer of the decade was reinforced. Tony Hillerman continued his excellent detective series set in the midst of Native American life in the Southwest. There were also mysteries for animal lovers, such as Rita Mae Brown's Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries. High-tech thrillers involving the Internet began to appear at the end of the decade, as well as science-fiction mysteries such as Philip Finch's f2f (1997) and Philip Kerr's Grid (1997). Historical mysteries, including Margaret Frazer's Novice's Taie (1992), Candace Robb's Apothecary Rose (1994), and Margaret Lawrence's Hearts and Bones (1996) were increasingly in demand. The most popular mystery novels of the 1990s were realistic and believable. Mystery and detective fiction reflects the condition of society at the time in which its is written. If the majority of such fiction written during the 1990s was any indication, gang leaders, drug lords, crime bosses, corrupt police officers, and venal public officials dominated the world, seeping into and destroying the lives of ordinary men and women. Detectives took it upon themselves to grapple with this evil and to restore, at least temporarily, a sense of rationality and virtue.

Cyberpunk

Another trend that surfaced during the mid 1980s and continued into the 1990s became known as "cyberpunk." Particularly attractive to young science-fiction fans, cyperpunk is situated in a futuristic world ruled by technology. Typically a host of lowlifes operating on the fringes of society try to overcome, or escape, domination by powerful computers and sinister multinational corporations. Examples of the genre in the 1990s were Mark Leyner's hallucinatory My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990) and Richard Power's complex The Gold Bug Variations (1991). By the early 1990s cyberpunk had splintered into subgenres, most notably steam punk and splatterpunk. Steam-punk fiction presents alternate versions of history. For example, Difference Engine (1991), by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, offers a picture of what might have happened if Charles Babbage had built the computer he imagined in the 1830s, ushering in the Information Age some 160 years before the fact. Splatterpunk presents an often gruesome vision of the present as populated by the morally bankrupt and the outright psychotic. Perhaps the best-known splatterpunk novel is Bret Easton Ellis's controversial American Psycho (1991).

Graphic Fiction

Described as contemporary analogue to medieval illuminated manuscripts, graphic fiction combines skillful comic-book art with elements of the novel. The best example of graphic fiction to appear during the 1990s was the second volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus, published in 1992. (The first volume came out in 1986.) Together these somber books tell the story of Spiegelman's father, a Holocaust survivor, in the form of black-and-white cartoon drawings that depict the Poles as pigs, the Jews as mice, and the Nazis as cats.

THE WRITER'S SHRINKING MARKET

Despite a booming economy during the second half of the 1990s, many American publishers cut their fiction lists and tended to be unwilling to take chances on new authors, relying instead on novels by authors whose earlier books had sold successfully. The prospect of high volume sales rather than literary merit often determined which books got published and which did not. "As the marketable chances of 'serious' and 'literary' fiction continue to dwindled and diminish," complained novelist George Garrett in 1992, "it is the publishers alone who arc empowered to turn their particular picture of reality, no matter how distorted or illusory, into a self-fulfilling prophecy.… Did you seriously imagine that readers have anything to do with the process?" Another novelist, Lance Olsen, complained that publishing in the 1990s produced "the literary equivalent of all those seemingly mass-produced abstract paintings, themselves the artistic equivalent of wallpaper for the wealthy, … that litter lots of galleries these days: decorative arts, art as space-filler or time-passer. Sitcom art. CNN art. Waldenbooks, it turns out, is the literary analog for K-Mart and Pizza Hut." Olsen and others also objected to the proliferation of creative-writing programs, of which there were more than 330 in the United States and Canada by the end of the decade. Since the 1960s, these programs have gradually become "word factories" destined to produce prose that Olsen calls "glossy," "emotionless," "unremarkable," and "tame," and writers who are "mildly talented in a technical sort of way."

Sources:

George Garrett, "Soil of Hope: New and Other Voices in Southern Fiction for the Nineties," ANG, 5 (October 1992): 193-195.

Lance Olsen, "The Michael Jacksonization of American ANQ, 5 (October 1992): 171-179.

Sources:

Frederick Barthelmc, "On Being Wrong: Convicted Minimalist Spills Bean," New York Times Book Review, 3 April 1988), pp. 1, 25-27.

Madison Smartt Bell, "Less is Less: The Dwindling American Short Story," Harpers, 272 (April 1986): 64-69.

George Garrett, "Soil of Hope: New and Other Voices in Southern Fiction for the Nineties," ANQ, 5 (October 1992): 193-195.

Rick Henderson, "Looking for Clues," Reason, 26 (December 1994): 52- 58.

David Jauss, "Literature at the End of the Century: An Editorial Perspective," Literary Review, 33 (Winter 1990): 164-171.

Georgia Lomax and Susan Brandehoff, "Storylines America Joins Libraries and Public Radio in Smash Kick-Off" American Libraries, 29 (January 1998): 88-90.

Lance Olsen, "The Michael Jacksonization of American Fiction," ANQ, 5 (October 1992): 171-179.

Michele Ross, "Mystery Book Trends," Christian Science Monitor, 30 September 1996, p. 10.

Pete Vilbig, "E. Annie Proulx," Literary Cavalcade, 52 (November/December 1999): 11.

Paul West, Sheer Fiction (New Paltz, N.Y.: McPherson, 1987).

Ed Williams, "Is The Novel Still Withering on the Vine? Tom Wolfe Thinks So," Charlotte Observer, 24 November 1999.

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