Young novelists just got younger
The U.K. literary journal Granta has compiled a new list of 20 “best young American novelists,” whose work will be featured in the next issue. Granta’s done this with British writers multiple times, and once before with U.S. ones, back in 1996. That list featured Jonathan Franzen, Edwidge Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Lorrie Moore.
The new one includes Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Nell Freudenberger, and ZZ Packer, among others. But there’s one notable difference in the methodology: back in 1996, “young” was taken to mean 40 and under, while this time out, 35 was the cutoff age. Granta editor Ian Jack tells The Guardian: “People seem to be writing (and publishing) fiction sooner … they have, at least in theory, a head start on their predecessors and should be getting better, quicker.” No pressure, now.
