Making our lists: The New Yorker’s Top 20 writers under 40

I love lists. If someone writes a list of their favorite styles of pickle, I’ll check it out, test their conclusions, and develop my own theories of pickle. A colossal waste of time, but I don’t care, nor do I think I’m alone. So, when the New Yorker came out with their list of 20 American writers under 40 that will become, or already are the key writers of their generation, I was intrigued.

Let me start by saying that I like their list. It’s at times thoughtful, predictably varied, reverential, and almost bold. My favorite young writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made the cut, and Tea Obreht, who is all of 24 years old, made the list without ever publishing a book—her first novel will hit the sales floor in March of 2011, Gary Shteyngart is funny, and ZZ Packer is perfect, Chris Adrian is a pediatric hematologist who writes about the blood and guts of life, while Jonathan Safron Foer is a Brooklyn hipster who writes about other Brooklyn hipsters. It’s a good list and I wouldn’t change a thing… except…

I’d change many things. I won’t go into who shouldn’t have made the list, or the fact that Adichie (buy her books, buy her books) doesn’t even, from what I’ve read, signify as American. Here at BookPeople, we’re a positive bunch, so my criticism will focus on two writers who should have been included. If you want the whole story, come by I’ll get a cup of coffee, and we can talk about contemporary American fiction. Feel free, anytime.

Salvador Plascencia wrote a wonderful little love story called The People of Paper. It’s experimental style, with pages being broken in half, marking different story lines, lends itself well to a novel that contains multitudes. Plascencia’s funny, self-deprecating, and heartbreaking story is unlike anything you’ve read before. Taking place in Mexico and California, characters include origami surgeons, lime addicts, writers, readers, gangs who pick flowers, and women who are paper thin. If you unabashedly and openly love Post-Modern novels, but silently and discreetly love romantic comedies, you’ll love Plascencia. If he doesn’t write another book, he’s given this generation something to be proud of.

Adam Haslett’s first two books talked about some of the things politeness keeps us from mentioning: mental illness and money. In You Are Not a Stranger Here, Haslett tries to show us some of the complex relationships between the sick and those who’ve shown up to help. His newest book Union Atlantic, lays out a series of events that could cause the global economy to crumble. Although these topics seem to be as different as blueberries and green beans, they share a lot of common ground. I understand money because sometimes I have some, but most times I have none. I know how to get money, I know how spend money, I even know I should save some, but when a single man can move trillions of dollars from his laptop, and by moving that internet based monopoly money, create billions of dollars in fake funds, which he then uses to manipulate the world markets… I’m lost. Haslett tries to help me find footing. Similarly, sometimes I’m sad, but I can’t imagine what mental illness feels like. If someone’s broken, but I don’t know where to put the cast, I don’t even know where to look, how can I help? Haslett doesn’t have the answers, but his characters help bring out those natural empathies we sometimes forget. In the end, Haslett’s books are about the best characters being written in contemporary American fiction.

Subjectivity is what’s wonderful about lists. The New Yorker made their list with some pretty vague criteria, so I made my corrections with equal vagueness. There are people missing, and writers who’ll hit our radar tomorrow, but as of this minute, I think Haslett and Plascencia deserve to be on anyone’s list of young writers. But what about Myla Goldberg, Samantha Hunt, Adam Levin, Joe Meno, Maile Meloy…

–Brian Contine