Munro and Co.

Huffington Post has a good feature up in which a few major contemporary writers are asked to name “the most important contemporary fiction writer” according to them. There are some interesting choices there, and I’m not surprised that the only one picked twice is Alice Munro. As I’ve blogged before, she’s my favourite living writer by a long way, even though reading anything by her makes me feel my own inadequacies as a writer so much more acutely. As Joni Mitchell once said, “Whereas Carver makes me think I can write short stories, Munro makes me think I can’t.”

Anyway, go check out the whole list: hopefully you’ll add a few items to your must-read list, as I did. Time to go buy me some Stanley Elkin…

(Link via Nilanjana Roy.)