The last thing Jonathan Saffron Foer needs is for The New Yorker to stroke his ego.
Many of you (I’m addressing all two of you who follow my blog) know that The New Yorker is coming out with a list of the top 20 fiction writers under 40. Here are the golden boys and girls:
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Chris Adrian
- Daniel Alarcón
- David Bezmozgis
- Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
- Joshua Ferris
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Nell Freudenberger
- Rivka Galchen
- Nicole Krauss
- Yiyun Li
- Dinaw Mengestu
- Philipp Meyer
- C. E. Morgan
- Téa Obreht
- Z Z Packer
- Karen Russell
- Salvatore Scibona
- Gary Shteyngart
- Wells Tower
In accordance with Gawker’s stringent guidelines for complaining about the list, I’ll keep this pithy and brief.
For what it’s worth, I admire and enjoy the works of many writers on this list. Kudos to all the literary superstars, especially my potential soul mate, Gary. But the fact that something as calibrated and crafted as a “best of” list seems oddly incongruous with the spirit of the writers chosen. This is literature, not Letterman.
When I saw the list, it felt like rushing to see my name on the cast list in high school only to realize I didn’t make the cut. Of course, I wasn’t in the running, but lists draw lines in the sand between the good and the not up to snuff, the winners, and ostensibly, the losers. That would be me. (cue the violins and self-deprecating inner monologue).
Oh well. I still have another 11 years tighten my prose. It’s not like that novella and the countless short stories growing stale on many misplaced USB drives really mean anything to me anymore. Every other young journalism school grad seems to have a half-baked novel hidden in his or her back pocket.
Maybe I should write about how I immigrated from a communist/fascist/third world country and write a scathing, sardonic critique of Americans. Oh wait, that never happened.