?Denver?

I love that Spanish has the upside-down question mark at the beginning of interrogative sentences. Why don't we have that?

The Denver Post isn't really regular reading material for a temporary New England resident such as myself, but through various channels I managed to find out about this article about the next generation of great writers.

Great writers. Just for a minute, think about what that means to you.

Got it. Good. Now onto the post.

"Perhaps the favorite in the clubhouse is Chabon. Young, handsome, articulate and both a literary and a popular success with several of his books on various best-seller lists, Chabon might well go on to be read 50 or 60 years from now."

What makes Chabon a great writer, likely to be read 50 or 60 years from now? He's young (50 or 60 years from now, he'll be dead, but whatev) and handsome (ibid -- unless you find corpses hot). What do looks have to do with great writing? Sure, I think he's cute, too, but that's not why I read his books. And I certainly don't read Dickens or Dos Passos or Hoeg or any of the tons of writers whose books grace the back of my bed because I think, oh my God, he was such a hottie.

That's why we have movies, Denver.

Anyhow, I don't get this "next generation" stuff. Next to what generation? Are we talking by age, because we have people born in the 50s, 60s, and 70s on the list? By next generation, do we mean people who had big hits in the 90s or big hits now, or big hits all along, or people I've never heard of (have you read Mona Simpson)? Also, William Vollman, Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace are young, apolitical writers? Huh?

I'm not even bitching about who's on the list and whether I like their work because it seems so meaningless. Anyone else get it?

http://www.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_5982422