Joyce, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Woolf — the most famous authors of the modernist period, respected both in their time and by today’s readers. Yet these writers of the early 20th century have all been dead for decades, and their literary heirs, the Beat authors and the Kurt Vonneguts of the world, have passed on as well. Ninety years after the publishing of Ulysses, today’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners like Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy and younger writers like Michael Chabon are known to a comparatively modest few fans of the literature that does not fit into mass-market fiction genres such as suspense or fantasy. Today’s literary giants are largely financial successes and respected in their fields but curiously absent from the mainstream cultural mind. McCarthy is one of the most well-known because two of his major works, All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men were made into Hollywood films. But this rather recent development in the wide-spread recognition of contemporary fiction authors (or lack thereof) has even crept into the University’s course offerings, a place where one would expect to find courses devoted to the study of today’s literary greats, but where, in actuality, the recognition of the masters of the contemporary novel is strikingly absent.
The English department divides its course offerings into several subsections (eg. ENRN — Renaissance Literature), one of which is specifically denoted as Modern and Contemporary Literature. With a name like that, the courses offered in this discipline would ostensibly include some of those well-respected authors of the last twenty years in addition to its focus on the Joyces and Faulkners of the last century. Unfortunately, the course offerings of the 2009 spring and fall semesters do not include classes that suggest much of a focus on these authors. Looking at the COD over the span of the last few years gives mixed results regarding the issue. On and off over the last several semesters, the annals of the COD turns up a class called “The Current American Novel.” Additionally, there are, to be fair, several classes that give comprehensive takes on certain areas of literature, with curricula often starting seventy years ago and ending with something more recent.
A select few classes suggest introductions to more contemporary areas of literature, such as “African-American Drama”, but none of them is explicitly that of contemporary fiction. Jessica Feldman, Director of Undergraduate Studies for the English department, said in an e-mail interview, “Because there are so many people writing contemporary literature in English, across so many countries, cultures and ethnicities, an ‘overview’ of contemporary literature in just one course tends to be reformulated as several courses looking at focused aspects of contemporary literature, sometimes in tandem with earlier ‘modern’ literature.” This is certainly a good point — lumping a vast array of authors and literary styles (the diversity of which is an important result of ground-breaking innovations by those modernist authors who we are showing such respect) would be less than academic, to say the least. It is also important to note that there are classes that study contemporary works even if the word contemporary isn’t in the title, and some of these classes focus on what Feldman called a “tandem” of the modern and the contemporary, such as “Hard Science Fiction” and “Modern Irish Literature,” which bring in more recent works.
However, in this important and well-intentioned fight to broaden the horizons of the study of literature beyond the confines of books written by Caucasian males – a designation that tags all three of Roth, McCarthy and Chabon – the prize-winning and acclaimed authors of today who do fit into those categories are apparently brushed aside. Again, the contemporary field of literature pays respects to an incredibly broad collection of different mediums, styles, and ethnic background, but does that mean that we shouldn’t study Cormac McCarthy to make room for a course in science fiction? Perhaps there are simply too few courses in contemporary literature, with some of today’s most respected authors out of the classroom offered in the select few explicitly available. The most important question here is whether or not this is simply a coincidence of the courses offered over the recent and upcoming semesters. Again, only a few semesters ago, the contemporary American field of literature did have one class of its own. Of course, Chaucer alone has two this semester, so it is debatable whether one class for the entire span of contemporary American fiction is enough. Hopefully, the authors of today who will be the literary legends of tomorrow will again see at least a class or two bearing their names or illuminating their works soon. Unfortunately, the idea of today’s literary authors being household names may be in danger, and it is increasingly up to the academic world to provide recognition for these names among the younger generations. With literary fiction occupying less of a role in the cultural canon and giving way to other forms of entertainment, the University has a responsibility to expose students not only to the great works of a century ago, but also to the great works of today.
Dane Cash’s column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at d.cash@cavalierdaily.com.
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