The state of modern literature is so weak. The current period (1990s - now) will be looked back on as an absolute artistic slump for the artform. Comparing post-1990s literature to any other decade is just embarrassing

It really is hard to think of another artform that dropped off so significantly and so abruptly. Decade-by decade from the end of the 1800s to 1970s there was this amazing cultural progression that tailed off in the 80s and dropped dead by the 90s and that was so deeply entrenched and reflected in literature. There are multiple culture threads that you can follow and see genius after genius develop and push the genre.

Just for some examples: the Sci-Fi boom with HG Wells at the end of the 1800s then progression through George Orwell to Huxley and Asimov etc. Dead end in the 90s. No notable or impactful sci fi since.

All of the counter-culture literature right through to the beat generation & hippy culture. Completely done by the 90s except some really mid-to-bad spiritual successors like Chuck Palahniuk.

The spy/true crime genres that have disintegrated from Truman Capote and John le Carré to the absolute SLOP they became. The novels you see advertised on trains. The government has a problem, and only Secret agent John Ryan has the skills to…

And it’s not just a Western thing. Post War Japanese writing, Mishima and Kawabata then onto Murakami who is the last notable writer. Japanese literature is now just as much slop as Western.

High Fantasy has a slower death than other genres but mainly because the series usually take decades to publish, and regardless it peaked with LOTR 70 years ago. No new particularly relevant and impactful High Fantasy series since the 90s.

There are just no iconic, defining writers capable of impacting culture or standing up in any way artistically to the absolute giants form pre-1990. And it’s not a weird recency bias. The early 1990s are really not that recent, and many of the heroes of modern literature were recognized within their time or soon after. Sure there are technically talented writers, but they’re operating in an artform-wide slump. So there are actually VIRTUALLY ZERO modern authors that can seriously put forward as being even comparable to giants of the artform that were publishing 35 -120 years ago (which actually isn’t that long ago). I’m confident there will be a cultural wave that involves literature in the next 20 or so years and they will look back on this period as embarrassing. Sociologists will intellectually dissect us for decades.