Modern Literature Quote of the Week

Quote #2 for today looks at the provocative world of the modern novel and the bold men who make it!

"This is the prose equivalent of the Lifetime channel -- trashy ("mocha hair"), with a smear of pretension ("searchingly beautiful"). It gets prizes, or gets nominated for prizes (The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award), precisely because it is hiding in plain sight: it sounds like every other middlebrow realist novelist, and so probably something like the Novel itself.
- James Woods anatomized the appeal of Richard Powers in Brain Drain from the 10/5/09 New Yorker