The age of anxiety: what does Granta’s best young authors list say about America?
The US is in crisis - what about its literature? Michelle Dean reports on the list of American writers to watch this decade, which is as diverse as the country itself
It is a strange time to be making declarations about the nature of American writing. The country’s not exactly feeling well. And even before the events of last autumn, it used to be easier to know what people meant when they spoke of Great American Novels. They meant, chiefly, fat realist ones, usually authored by men. Philip Roth was the avatar of success in that model. He’d put America in the title, construct his characters around some kind of American archetype, and he was off and running.
Related: Granta’s list of the best young American novelists
There are those writers who will insist that their art will be untouched by the general chaos in America
