A Reader's Manifesto

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A Reader's Manifesto is an article, written by Brian Reynolds Myers, from the July/August 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. The article, which saw no end of responses from admirers and critics, is, as Myers had described it, "a light-hearted polemic" about modern literature.

Myers is particularly concerned with what he sees as the growing pretentiousness of American literary fiction. He is skeptical about the value of elaborate, allusive prose, and argues that what is praised as good writing is often in fact the epitome of bad writing. His attack concentrates on E. Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster, David Guterson, Don DeLillo, and (in the conclusion) Rick Moody, all of whom have enjoyed a great deal of acclaim from what critic Judith Shulevitz characterizes as the "literary establishment." [1] Myers levels many of his harshest charges at literary critics for prestigious publications such as the New York Times Book Review, whom he accuses of lavishing praise upon bad writing because they do not understand it, which (according to Myers) makes them assume it must have great artistic merit.

Myers uses a number of oft-quoted passages from the above authors to make his argument. Where critics refer to Annie Proulx's writing as lyrical, Myers states that her sentences "call to mind a bad photographer hurrying through a slide-show...." He accuses Guterson of producing "concatenation[s] of uninspired phrases set to an elegiac cadence." The strength of Myers' analysis is his examination of quotations that had previously been held up for praise by other critics.

For many critics, Myers is simply continuing the popular attack on postmodernism, of which John Gardner (On Moral Fiction) was the most recent proponent, though Myers offers a more light-hearted, textural analysis. It so happens that Myers's favorite "modern" authors (Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow) are, to Gardner, the albatross of art's modern failures.

Critics also found Myers's choice of targets odd given the implication that he was attacking a new or current trend. Authors like Cormac McCarthy and Don Delillo have been publishing since the late 60s or early 70s, with their major works falling 15 years or more before Myers' "Manifesto." If these older authors were going to be analyzed, the critics found it odd that other older yet still publishing authors like Saul Bellow and Philip Roth were not discussed, Roth and Bellow easily being more towering figures in modern American literature than Guterson or Auster. In short, many critics felt Myers was being highly selective in his choice of targets; and that the five chosen were in no way representative of the entire spectrum of literary fiction (even well-selling and award-winning literary fiction) being published then[2].

Myers' article attracted heated criticism from aficionados of American literary fiction, especially of the authors Myers mentioned by name. Some critics charged Myers with being selective in his choice of targets, and of cherry picking particularly unreadable passages from the authors' works to make his point.

Melville House published an expanded edition of the article in a book titled A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose. (ISBN 0-9718659-0-6) The book includes a section in response to the large amount of criticism directed at the original essay.