Because he picked on literary luminaries such as John Ashbery and Amy Tan instead of hacks like Dan Brown (whose exclusion from the list presumably had something to do with shooting fish in a barrel), Mr. Shivani stirred up quite a shitstorm on the ol' Internet (which was, no doubt, his plan; and it worked, since the article is currently one of the most popular pages on the Huffington Post).
Anna North over at Jezebel takes Shivani to task for indulging in the same species of "bad" writing of which Sharon Olds, Junot Diaz, et al., are supposedly guilty (in the aptly, and hilariously, titled article "Literary Critic Hates Vaginas, 'Ghetto Volume'"). As she ironically points out at the beginning of her article, "People are obviously reading too much these days. That must be why one critic felt the need to list the 15 writers (9 of them women) we should all stop reading right now." Though I enjoyed Shivani's spiteful putdowns (particularly of William T. Vollmann, who seems to have had it coming) in the same way I shamefully enjoy visiting What Would Tyler Durden Do? every once in a while to see what crazy antics Lindsay Lohan is up to, I have to agree with North that, in this era of the screen (be it television or computer) prevailing over the page (be it book or magazine), there's not really that much to be gained from dismissing writers with any amount of literary worth, or perhaps even from discouraging reading of any kind. Despite knowing with certainty that The Da Vinci Code is the worst-written book I've ever read (yes, I read it, and yes, it's written in a style even worse than most young adult novels of the silly Gossip Girl, Twilight variety), I can't in good conscience begrudge people who would just as soon read it as watch an equivalent amount of TV. On the contrary, more power to them!
Alison Flood, a blogger at the Guardian, provided one of the more measured reactions to Shivani's diatribe with "Who Are the Most Overrated Contemporary Writers in the World?" But what I really appreciated was her more constructive follow-up posting: "Who Are Your Favourite Underrated Writers?"
Since she asked, I'd make a case for Tibor Fischer (particularly because of his hilarious novel The Thought Gang) and at the top of my list is Gene Wolfe, whose Book of the New Sun tetralogy is possibly the best book(s) I've ever read. Beautifully written, with a vocabulary that requires a conscientious reader to have the OED on-hand (since Merriam-Webster's won't cut it in this case), The Book of the New Sun rivals any book in which language is a centerpiece, without being too flashy (a no-no in Shivani's eyes, who derides "showboating" as a sign of bad writing). The primary reason it's underrated is that it's been undeservedly relegated to the sci-fi ghetto. This is a shame, because a writer like Margaret Atwood (another favorite writer of mine, who's fortunately not underrated) often uses science-fiction elements in her novels (such as The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood) to address larger issues--as the best sci-fi novels often do--yet still manages to get her books onto the best sellers lists. As Alison Flood (her again?) points out, the series does have its champions (including, perhaps most notably, Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin), but hardly the widespread adoration it deserves. I don't know, maybe it's the misrepresentative heavy metal album art on the covers that's to blame:
In any case, covers aside, The Book of the New Sun is better than C. S. Lewis's Narnia series and just as good as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, each of which have their places of honor in the larger arena of literary fiction.
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