My friend Alan Behr once lamented that ours is the first generation that has failed to produce a novelist who is a household name. In years past, he argued, even people who didn't read knew of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Updike and Mailer.
So I've been encouraged by all the attention being lavished on Jonathan Franzen.
There's the man, still modestly famous for snubbing Oprah after she endorsed his last novel, most recently seen gracing the cover of Time magazine. On NPR he has been interviewed not only on Fresh Air but on Marketplace.
There's the novel, which was given to President Obama by a bookstore on Martha's Vineyard and has since been reviewed, glowingly if somewhat unintelligibly, on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.
And there's the controversy, as two popular female writers have complained of the, in their view, undue publicity that is given to serious novels, especially those that are written by males.
So it's been fairly difficult recently not to have heard or seen the name Franzen.
And yet, in the last week I've had conversations with four people who pleaded ignorance. Two were editors at a magazine (though one based in South Florida), one was a writer (though mostly in Spanish) and one was a member of a book club (though only nonfiction). Still. It struck me that we have moved from a time when people who didn't read knew the names of novelists to a time when people who do read, don't.
It is worth mentioning that all four people were under the age of 35. For the novelists of their generation I have two words: Good luck.
