Amitava Kumar Quotes

Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly.

I have no doubt that 'On the Road' is a Great American Novel. But I'm also certain my students will do fine without it.

The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender.

Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278 pages that approached perfection. Its tightness of construction and assuredness of style reminded me of 'The Great Gatsby.'

I used to be more of a purist about literature. I thought, 'If it's a really propulsive story, then maybe there's something unliterary about it.'

I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.

John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student.

The whole book experience was a look into another world, the world of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer.

I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.

I think stupid people are surprised that I'm Australian. It's a small-minded; we live in a global community, but I suppose some people still are small-minded.

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter.

I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.

My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.

I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.

I've never managed to get very far with Henry James.

I'm an enormous fan of American literature, and especially the great novels of Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove,' Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard.

My two goals are to read everything Edith Wharton has ever written and to have an art collection.

I will read anything at all by Kate Atkinson, Daniel Woodrell, and William Kennedy, who are all fearless.

I like Philip Roth, John Updike, and Richard Yates.

I did modern English and American literature at Kent University, with no Chaucer and no Middle English: a perfect course.

Take Jonathan Franzen's work: it's just old wine in new bottles. They say he's the Tolstoy of the digital age, but there can only be a Tolstoy of the Tolstoyan age.

I'm using my degree. You know, I studied English and American literature in college, and now I'm an American poet.

The same authorities who insist upon beginnings, middles, and ends, declare that Great Literature (by which they mean the stories they have been taught to admire) is about love and death, while mere popular fiction like this is about sex and violence. One reader's sex, alas, is another's love; and one's violence, another's death.