Blog #11; Compassionate Contemporary American Fiction Writers

 Continuing in the theme of writers with heart, let's look at some Modern and Contemporary Fiction Writers who follow in the tradition of the Russians.  Hemingway's early stories are compassionate, tender, but he fails to live up to his early promise in this regard throughout his career.  He becomes a more hard-edged writer as he experiences more death and combat, until he is chasing death through the hills of Spain and in WW II, the forests of Germany.   Steinbeck may be seen as compassionate and tender; however, there is a certain emotional heavy-handedness driven by his political motivations to incite real-world change that leaves the compassionate aspect not fully realized.

By the time we get to the contemporaries, the pure vein of tenderness is refreshed.  The trio of Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford are most noteworthy in their profound renditions of their generations' deep emotional life. In fact, I would venture to say Carver's "A Small, Good Thing" is possibly the closest thing American letters has to a perfect short story.

So this is what I aim for in my own work: a view toward that divine attribute of tenderness, with my narrators and characters.  Also, especially in A Contrite Spirit, is the attempt to immerse the reader more deeply not only in felt-life, but also deeper into the characters' interior emotional and spiritual geography.

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