Your Favorite Young British Novelist (1983 edition)

From Granta's '83 issue.

the one on the left

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/10_02/p22amis_468x386.jpg

Philip Norman was young in 1983?

my "favorite" definitely = Barnes

would be slightly meeker about making the claim that "best" = Barnes

If only for his 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters'.

I want that woman's cardigan. Looks like it keeps out both contemptible young dandys and lecherous old codgers.

Oh Kate, I was about to compliment the woman on her cardigan as well. So writerly. I also like her hairdo. A bit like my friend. Loves it.

God they're all terrible. I'm gonna go for Graham Swift though, because it's a vote against Ian McEwan and Martin Amis.

A vote for Priest. Loved Amis when younger; found him repellent as I got older, most recently enjoyed Experience. Think I might still find Money pretty great. Would be tempted to vote for him still, but Priest the only one who's interested me over the last while.

Elizabeth Jane Howard in the middle there? Erstwhile fox.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01085/education-graphics_1085850a.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

shiva naipaul is hella underrated. if you can find a copy of "fireflies" or "the chip-chip gatherers" snap it up/his travel books are good too.

martin amis is the best all-around writer on the list but at this point ian mac is probably the "better" novelist.

voting mart (since he's my favorite) but I'm also a stan for julian barnes. those three -- amis/barnes/mcewan -- have been my gurus since the 80s.

Priest's The Affirmation is very good. Either him or Ishiguro.

Swift.

Ishiguro's aged the best. The only one on the list where I've read every book. He didn't seem juvenile when he started and he doesn't seem middle aged now, whereas Amis and McEwan suffer from both qualities and only really hit the mark mid-career. And, surrounded by all of his perfectly crafted short novels, The Unconsoled reminds me of some mad, impenetrable, but curiously addictive double album. I like the way that even the book jacket admits that lots of people hated it.

otm. My favourite of his is "An Artist of the Floating World". Incredibly atmospheric.

Also, I like William Boyd a fair bit and some of Amis, but Ishiguro gets my vote.

it comes down to
barnes vs. rushdie vs. ishiguro

or maybe:
flaubet's parrot vs. midnight children vs. remains of the day

I've read the most William Boyd of anyone here. Others are better stylists or what have you, but he certainly is the paciest storyteller out of the ones I've read. Personally I like Rushdie, but that doesn't seem to be a fashionable opinion at the moment. Can't stand Amis.

Ishiguro, Ishiguro, so good I voted twice. Unconsoled is so epic.

Didn't get on with Unconsoled at all.

Kazuo Ishiguro

The Unconsoled is definitely a marmite book.

Amis is the best writer here, but at some point I just felt like reading his books made me feel bad about being a human being and I stopped reading them. So not Amis. Priest wrote magnificently weird and discomfiting SF in the 70s but I don't actually think he's that good a writer. So I guess it's Rushdie/Ishiguro/McEwan for me. McEwan might be the right choice, based on _Atonement_, but I haven't read enough else to know. Rushdie has faded but _Midnight's Children_ is the best I've read by any of these three and so on strength of that I'm giving it to Sal.

When We Were Orphans is my favourite Ishiguro I think, but then I haven't yet read Never Let Me Go. The premise of The Unconsoled was really fascinating but I never finished it because I kept wanting to hurl it across the room every time one of the characters went into one of their three-page rambling speeches.

McEwan got appreciably better in the last ten years. Otherwise Naipaul.

Really? I think McEwan's on the way down, going by Saturday, On Chesil Beach and the second half of Atonement. He's perhaps got better on the level of the sentence but as a storyteller I reckon he peaked with Enduring Love.

Orphans is probably the most pleasurable Ishiguro - his usual preoccupations have such a beguilingly strange effect when applied to the detective genre - there's a wonderful sense of unravelling as it goes along. Unconsoled kept me sane on a strange and lonely work trip once so I think my head was in the right place for it. Never Let Me Go I found a little dry to be honest, although that's not the consensus view.

I liked OCB a lot even when his addiction to plot contrivances (which has been slowly ebbing in recent years) hurt my eyes.

Yeah, Saturday's the real dud. A genuinely risible denouement. There was a good Slate book club podcast on it which pretty much nailed his strengths and weaknesses.

Sad to reread some Amis a while ago and realise that the only really great novel was Money - the rest all seriously flawed. I don't think his reputation will endure once he's stopped being a mouthy, column-inch-generating cultural figure. Experience is probably the best thing he's ever written - that, and his takedown of Thomas Harris's Hannibal.

I can't think of any flaws in the Information--except the weirdo outer space universe stuff which is pretty memorable

unmemorable i should say

Experience still the only Amis book (besides his essay collections) that I've thoroughly enjoyed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Good going Kaz. Must get round to Remains of the Day.

The premise of The Unconsoled was really fascinating but I never finished it because I kept wanting to hurl it across the room every time one of the characters went into one of their three-page rambling speeches.

Totally agree with this. It's like he thought to himself "you know, the economy and things left unsaid that were the hallmarks of my previous novels are really getting to be a pain, lets chuck everything in there!". Could have done with a harsher editor.

Glad he won though!

Could have done with a harsher editor.

no way. i mean i can see how the rambling would piss people off but for me it fitted perfectly. would be a completely different book without it.

Yep, the best man won. It's an amazingly un-diverse list of writers, though. How many didn't go to public school/Oxbridge? Not sure you could get away with it these days.

I don't think it's totally old boys literary club and I imagine they'd have felt pretty pleased with the diversity for 83 - 6 women (about the same as 93 and 03), 4 commonwealth - but yes maybe... half the list? are white male Oxbridge.

Taking another look, it seems to be slightly less than that - so def. McEwan, Amis, Barnes, Boyd, Swift, Wilson, Mars Jones (does being an explicitly gay author shift him into diversity?), don't know about Sinclair, Judd, some others - but they showed very strongly in the results. There's a bit more diversity in the 0 votes crew.

Has anyone read a book by Alan Judd? He appears to be the motoring correspondent of the Spectator.

Gratz to Ishiguro. I find him a bit dull, mostly, but I look forward to finishing The Unconsoled one of these days.

Well, if this list was supposed to embrace the best of the entire English-speaking Commonwealth, and around half are Oxbridge men, I'd say that was pretty un-diverse!

Oh yeah, absolutely agreed, just saying it could be worse, and given the old school broadsheets-publishing literary world I half-expected it to be.