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BOOKS: THE GENERATION GAME
Independent, The (London), Apr 22, 2001 by John Walsh
But flouting the rules and making new ones is what the new generation is all about. Many of the new generation have already presented themselves as a movement. Matt Thorne, Daren King, Scarlett Thomas and Rebbecca Ray were part of the soi-disant "New Puritans" who published a manifesto last year, in open defiance of the Amis- Swift generation, laying down new laws for fiction writing - no genre stuff, no flashbacks, present tense, simple punctuation. Luckily, most of the participating Puritans have since shaken off these self- applied shackles, but the air of a brotherhood, collectively striving to sound new, remains intact.
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Fiction has become more issue-centric in modern twentysomething hands. Themes of racism, alcoholism and feminist anti-stereotyping protrude from the pages of Courttia Newland, Luke Sutherland and Ms Ray. Rock music references stud these narratives: a constant hum of band names, song lyrics, record labels, clubs and bpms contributing an urgent obbligato, the soundtrack of modern lives.The prose of the new generation tends more towards the demotic than the ornate and the high-octane. Whether the new generation is setting out to confront or ignore the looming influence of Amis & Co, or simply to turn its attention to a whole array of new "projects", fictional and otherwise, invigorating them all by the power of language, your first sighting of the army was here. n
Douglas
Murray
AGE 22
Biographical stalker
Story so far Murray, student of Magdalen College, Oxford, and lover of Oscar Wilde (well, the writing), writes Bosie, a sympathetic biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, student of Magdalen College, Oxford, and lover of Oscar Wilde.
Sub-plot While other 15-year-olds were squeezing their spots, Murray was pestering the Home Secretary to release embargoed files.
Sample line "He [Bosie] always knew he was writing for posterity but could hardly have imagined that much of what seemed most important to him would become footnotes in history."
The critics "Narrative flair" (Sunday Times); "remarkable literary promise" (IoS) - but, please, don't tell us Bosie was anything but vain and vindictive or that his verse was more than doggerel.
Prospects A precocious talent - but can he recapture the heat of adolescent passion with someone else?
Justin Hill
AGE 29
Chinese Aga saga-ist
Story so far Turned a few eyes green last year when Weidenfeld & Nicolson paid pounds 150,000 for his then unfinished The Drink and Dream Teahouse, an old-fashioned love-story, teeming with characters struggling with the complexities of modern China. Wild Swans meets Captain Corelli.
Sub-plot Born in Grand Bahama, Hill learnt about China while working for VSO abroad, before studying Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
Sample line "`Enough handfuls of earth and you have built a mountain!' Old Zhu exclaimed from the past."
The critics "It is a small pleasure just to open this book - the inside leaves are decorated with expansive Chinese calligraphy. And Hill writes with enough lyrical abandon to justify the lavish presentation" (IoS).
