I think his generation is pretty close to this current one. Infinite Jest was the 90s, right? (I've never read it, sadly.)
I feel like the novel is winding down, actually. There's no great proliferation of ideas any more. The last great author I can think of was Beckett; after him, everybody I've read really seems to be struggling to do something new. Even Murakami (who, not counting Wallace, I think is the greatest of the generation) is less innovative than the authors who preceded him.
Is it possible that a novel as a pure-prose medium can be exhausted in terms of ideas? Because I think (and I've written rather extensively about this) that for the novel to go on, it'll have to evolve to match current technology, in the way that Coupland and Danielewski do it. But that means a departure from pure literature, in a way.
I feel like the novel is winding down, actually. There's no great proliferation of ideas any more. The last great author I can think of was Beckett; after him, everybody I've read really seems to be struggling to do something new. Even Murakami (who, not counting Wallace, I think is the greatest of the generation) is less innovative than the authors who preceded him.
Is it possible that a novel as a pure-prose medium can be exhausted in terms of ideas? Because I think (and I've written rather extensively about this) that for the novel to go on, it'll have to evolve to match current technology, in the way that Coupland and Danielewski do it. But that means a departure from pure literature, in a way.