Cynthia Ozick on Next American Great Novel or Novelist

"..can we see any inkling of a presumptive heir 

to Bellow or Updike orNabokov, or to so many others of 

the previous generation (the list would be long and 

impressive) who have left a formative mark on American 

experience?


One sign, or omen, would be the presence of a writer of formidable language power, willing to use all the sources and resources of American prose; instead, we swim in a welter of the slipshod easy vernacular. Also absent, so far, is some overriding feeling or idea, or, at the least, something larger than pipsqueak cynicism. Finally, given that the country is roiling and boiling toward some unknown new dispensation grounded in narrow competing triumphalist claims, where is the bold and necessary ironist who will write our Death of Ivan Ilyich? "