Lev Grossman Says Smart Things

He does. I remember the first time I heard him interviewed, promoting The Magicians. I thought, "I like this guy." And then I met him... and I still liked him!

He wrote a response to the New Yorker's list of "Twenty Best Writers Under Forty". As I'm sure you'd imagine there are no declared genre writers on the list (unless you consider literary fiction to be its own genre, in which case it's a list limited to that genre). Lev finds this frustrating, and a bit silly. Among other things, he wrote this:

"I have a thing about popular/genre fiction and literary fiction. I think and write about the difference/non-difference between them, and the history of that difference, a lot. For reasons I’ve explained way better elsewhere (see those links above) I happen to think the collapse/confusion/obsolescence of that difference is the most interesting thing going on in contemporary fiction. It’s how we’re finally metabolizing/moving on from Modernism, which had a lot to do with inventing that difference in the first place, toward a kind of writing that is new and exciting and uniquely of its time. Which is the job of every culture ever. This is our avant-garde."

You can read the whole thing HERE.

And yes, I do get a mention. I guess that makes me avant-garde...