Voices for a generation?

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Rachel Cusk: her debut was the Whitbread award-winning Saving Agnes

Twenty British authors aged under 40 are getting to grips with the idea that they are the defining authors of their generation. By the same token, a host of others will be reconciling themselves to the fact they are not.

The determining factor is the Granta List of Young British Novelists, published every decade since 1983 and announced again at the weekend. Zadie Smith is on it. Whitbread award winner Patrick Neate isn't. So does it matter? And if it does - for whom?

Not only are more people reading books these days, more people are writing them. And if the Granta List says anything about modern British literature, it's that more people think they can be part of it.

Ian Jack - editor of Granta magazine and chairman of the judging panel - believes that, as writing a novel becomes an increasingly accessible career option, so young writers are taking this freedom and running with it; for him, the list suggests that modern authors will write about anything.

'Far more writers are writing about sex and drugs than ever before,' he says. 'Understandably, since such things are around a lot more. But more authors on the list have published books set in the past - Sarah Waters set hers in Victorian England, Philip Hensher set his in 19th-century Afghanistan. What would once have been specifically called a historical novel is increasingly seen as simply a novel.'

The Granta List has a good precedent in recognising significant authors: 1983 featured Martin Amis and Ian McEwan; 1993 had the then-unknown Louis de Bernieres, Helen Simpson and Hanif Kureishi. But Jack readily agrees there's been a radical shift in the way the public now receives literature.

'In 1983, the notion of a writer being promoted rather than a book was considered rather vulgar,' he says. 'But today, big marketing campaigns are an integral component of publishing and in many ways the writer is becoming almost more important than the book.' Our millennial obsession, then, with who's hot and who's not means that hype can frequently distort an author's true worth. The Granta List, therefore, has to tread carefully between inadvertently whipping up a precarious frenzy over a new author and creating a genuine sense of excitement about new talent.

Jack admits that hype can create its own problems, but the list also works against the hype machine: two authors, Adam Thirlwell and Monica Ali, have yet to publish their first novels. However, the list has already sparked controversy for, quite simply, not being good enough. Sure, more people may be writing novels; what matters is whether these new writers are any good. Jack brushes aside criticisms that the list is not as strong as the class of 1983: 'That was a particularly special generation and, anyway, the Granta List is, by definition, not something that reveals its worth immediately.'

Press him on whether he thinks British fiction is in good health, though, and he laughs. 'You have to take the rough with the smooth.'

Certainly, there's no denying that few authors on the list are particularly formally inventive - with, perhaps arguably, the exception of Ben Rice, Dan Rhodes and Toby Litt.

Jack's response is that novelists have a right to want to get published and that most publishers would balk these days at a novel that had qualities like a non-linear structure. 'Such novels are not necessarily a pleasure to read and, anyway, formal invention was quite a postmodern, not necessarily a 21st-century, thing,' he says.

Trait of the nation

Nor is there any denying that - for all our supposed obsession with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll - very few novelists on the list have written a contemporary 'state of the nation' novel. Again, Jack reasons this with the argument of history: 'Maybe the "state of the nation" novel's time is over, and anyway, that artistic imperative has always felt more pertinent to America. Zadie Smith is perhaps the closest at reflecting modern Britain.'

Of course, whether the class of 2003 will prove the defining voice of its generation remains to be seen.

Jack's own tip is Monica Ali, whose debut novel Brick Lane is published later this year. But there remains the implication that, despite the list's existence in a culture of promotion, it remains something best received in a context resistant to that culture.

'Really, the most important thing about these authors is that they are all a pleasure to read,' he says. 'I'm not suggesting we are a consumer association, a Which? guide to novelists, but - I know this sounds like a humdrum mission statement - I do hope the list is, in essence, an honest guide to good fiction.'

 

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