Charles
Baxter,
author of The Feast of Love
"More people should be reading
the fiction and poetry of Lars Gustafsson, which
is extravagantly smart and beautiful. They should
be reading the work of Javier Marais, of Sylvia
Townsend Warner—especially her letters—and
certainly they should be reading the work of William
Maxwell, whose work in its quality and range of
feeling would be a model for any writer."
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Charles Baxter.
Madison
Smartt Bell,
author of Master of the Crossroads
"Probably the most underappreciated
novelists are the ones who just can't get their
books published at all. As a teaching writer, I
know about lots of these! So I'll just pick (from
lots of choices) one great book that (maddeningly)
has never found a publisher: The Beating
by Craig Bernardini."
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Madison Smartt Bell.
Michael
Dibdin,
author of Thanksgiving
Dibdin:
Almost anyone who's dead and doesn't
have an agent, to quote Polanski on why Shakespeare
didn't get a credit in his film of Macbeth.
Writers who can't be interviewed and put on tour
are invisible in our culture. Some names? All right,
Penelope Fitzgerald, Flann O'Brien, Patricia Highsmith,
Lawrence Durrell, Georges Simenon...I could go on.
WAG:
Who do you think is the best under-appreciated writer
working today?
Dibdin:
Apart from me, you mean? Actually, I
don't think under-appreciation is what writers working
today suffer from. Rather the reverse.
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Michael Dibdin.
Robert
Drewe,
author of The Shark Net
Drewe:
I admire the work of Barry Hannah, the Mississippi
writer. I think he's hilarious, very clever and
edgy and blackly comic. I've used his stories in
two international short story collections I've edited,
The Picador Book of the Beach and The
Penguin Book of the City.
WAG:
And who do you think is the best under-appreciated
writer working today?
Drewe:
Apart from myself, do you mean?
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Robert Drewe.
J.D.
Dolan,
author of Phoenix
Dolan:
The late Andre Dubus.
WAG:
And who do you think is the best under-appreciated
writer working today?
Dolan:
Mark Richard.
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with J.D. Dolan.
Rhian
Ellis,
author of After Life
"Most writers are neglected,
I think—it's rare that I can go to a party
and talk about books; it's easier to talk about
movies, if for no other reason than two random people
are more likely to have watched the same movies
than to have read the same books. I haven't read
so many things my friends tell me to; and, for example,
Philip Roth's The Human Stain was brilliant,
but I can't get anyone else to read it. Maybe you
can tell I don't get on the Internet much...
"Diane Johnson's novels are
terrific—funny and tightly plotted and full
of good characters ("The Shadow Knows,"
for example). I tell everyone to read "The
World as I Found It" by Bruce Duffy. As far
as who is the most under-appreciated writers working
today, I'd suggest Lydia Davis (the woman's totally
brilliant and no one pays any attention) and Stephen
Dixon (a lot people find him unreadable, but much
of his work is brilliant)."
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Rhian Ellis.
Penelope
Evans,
author of First Fruits
"Favorite writers? Can anyone
answer that? At the moment I'm obsessed with Haruki
Murakami. I mentioned him at a crime writers conference
once and the panel hissed, 'He's mainstream.' Now
I would say he was the quintessential thriller writer,
but obviously people don't agree. Other writers?
Carl Hiaasen, Patricia Highsmith, Tom Savage."
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Penelope Evans.
Thomas
Mallon,
author of Two Moons
"Louis MacNeice is one of
my favorite poets of the twentieth century, and
I wish he were at least as well known to today's
readers as his contemporaries (Auden, Spender) usually
are. Among current novelists, Charles Baxter, whose
new book The Feast of Love will soon be published,
strikes me as a writer who deserves a bigger audience
than the appreciative one he already has."
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Thomas Mallon.
Iain
Pears,
author of An Instance of the Fingerpost
"My obscure authors keep
on being discovered. I began reading the Patrick
O'Brian naval stories years ago as well as Robertson
Davies, but neither of these can be called unrecognised
any more. I even gave a Harry Potter to a Godchild
before he made Madonna seem like an unknown. Delightful
for the authors, and well-deserved, of course—but
I always feel ever so slightly betrayed when one
of my private joys becomes public property like
that..."
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with Iain Pears.
George
Saunders,
author of Pastoralia
"I'm
not sure that these guys are really underappreciated,
but I love Isaac Babel and Henry Green—two
of the great writers of the century and probably
not always acknowledged as such.
"I consider almost all of
my favorite younger contemporary writers to be underappreciated,
since I think they should all be given mansions
and free computers and full refrigerators and told
to go go go. So that list would include, among many
others, and in no particular order: Ben Marcus,
David Foster Wallace, Paul Griner, Dave Eggers,
Mary Caponegro, Rick Moody, Arthur Flowers, Lee
Durkee, Mark Sundeen, Junot Diaz, Chris Offut, Julia
Slavin, Paula Saunders (my wife), Brooks Haxton,
Michael Burkard, Kevin Canty, Edwidge Danticat,
Larry Brown, Nicholson Baker....I could go on and
on..."
Click here
to read the complete WAG
interview with George Saunders. |