Novelists right now are kind of like French painters in the 19th century. Back then you had your ultra-smooth academic perfectionists--your Ingres, your David--on one side, painting pictures so slick, they look as if they have been freshly buffed and polyurethaned. Then along came the Impressionists, with their rough-textured, gnarly, worked-looking canvases. Among contemporary fiction writers we have purveyors of lapidary, polished, M.F.A.-perfect prose--John Updike, Alice Munro--and on the other side, a grab bag of avant-gardists (like David Foster Wallace), witty pyrotechnicians (Jonathan Franzen) and operatic monologists (Toni Morrison) who fling words upon the page in heavy, meaningful daubs. Now, just...
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