Teen Sleuth Haunted Library

Oh the banality of it all. In today’s double issue of the venerable New Yorker, the snoots and James Bottomtooths pay homage to 20 young (under 40) whippersnappers, whom they deem to be the most talented and most important writers of their generation. It will be the first such unnecessary pronouncement from the magazine since 1999 when the list included future literary stars Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander and Junot Díaz as well as already established young authors Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, and David Foster Wallace. I subscribe to the New Yorker. I, like all New Yorker subscribers, amass stacks of back issues which I eventually get around to reading and usually enjoy. But come on. “20 under 40?” A celebration of  “book writer’s” youth and nubility? Why? First of all, The New Yorker’s bromidic attempt to assert itself as a uniquely powerful and influential force in the unfolding history of contemporary literature is so tedious and fatuous I’m moving Harpers to the top of the “to read” periodicals stack. Ahem, New Yorker, while you are a well curated, meaningful, entertaining magazine, your moment of cultural authority has passed. Like long past, as evidenced by the magazine’s increasing coverage of current events and hot topics like celebrities and business tycoons and the “Goings on” often focused on Manhattan nightlife. Recently I’ve read “The Roundup: VH1 Diva, Elton John, Wax Fang”, “The Tea Party Book List”,  “Supermodel Sticker Shock”  and “Heidi Montag Talks To God”. And let’s not even get into the escalating over focus on those  – I’m going to say it – kind of annoying cartoons.

Anyone see the episode of Family Guy where Brian visits the New Yorker?

Not to be self promoting, but it’s pretty funny.

I have no problem sifting through any of those things, if it means the New Yorker can stay afloat for me to read the “Arrest of Madame Agathe” by Phillip Gourevitch, or anything by him at all or by Adam Gopnik or Cynthia Zarin (not related to Jill and Bobbie. I think. I hope.)  But no one, and certainly no one under 40 (the average of a New Yorker reader is 48), is running to their mailboxes waiting for culturally-legitimating pronouncements from (fictional) taste purveyour and mincing capon Eustace Tilley. Despite the obvious fact that the lion’s share of youthful culture’s energy has migrated to the web,  these young authors who have been selected  by the New Yorker, are guaranteed to grip the attention of readers today and into the future, and their work will be read and taught and scrutinized and taken very seriously and remembered by future generations the way other early bloomers, like Martin Amis or Patricia Highsmith were/are.

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