Why read A Reader's Manifesto?

Book cover of A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose

Book description

"A welcome contrarian take on the state of contemporary American prose."-The Wall Street Journal

The funny and devastating debunking of high "literary" prose stylists, including Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy, that caused a literary furor.

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Reader's Manifesto as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tom Kratman

Author

I loved this book mainly because I detest modern literary fiction. Why? It strikes me as being pointless exercises in self-indulgent style over substance, largely nihilistic, and simply rotten storytelling. There are exceptions, and, of course, they are exceptional. Few of those exceptions are modern.

Myers wrote this earlier, as a lengthy article in The Atlantic. It was the attacks from literary critics in love with the latest pointless exercises in style that prompted him to expand on the article to really twist the knife.

From Tom's 3 favorite reads in 2023.