Talents and technicians

John W. Aldridge

In Talents and Technicians: Literary Chic and the New Assembly-Line Fiction, John Aldridge offers an irreverent antidote to the pieties of the tastemakers--an incisive, provocative, and always compelling study of American writing in our time. Focusing on the current crop of young writers, many of whose reputations were made in a whirl of 1980s media hype, he determines who will likely survive the test of future critical scrutiny and what they have to say about our world. The expansion of graduate writing programs and their impact on the style and sensibilities of those they train are grist for Aldridge's mill; nor does he hide his feelings about the practices of reviewers and the critical establishment in general. Taking a hard look at the art of writing, he wonders at careers made and missed through adherence to fashion. However, fashion and hype are not all. In an assessment of the...

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