Best writers or most obscure authors? Who are the writers' writers?

Who are the writers' writers? The names that have been suggested range from Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor to Salvatore Scibona to John Keene to others more well-known, such as Colson Whitehead, Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis, Zadie Smith (above) and George Saunders. (Photo by David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons 3.0)

In a recent podcast episode on the great Trinidadian-British author Sam Selvon, Guy Gunaratne referred to him as being “a writer’s writer”. When asked to explain, Gunaratne went on to say that Selvon’s writing was layered and thick with references. That’s one way to look at it, but the term “writer’s writer” has been used to mean many different things over the years. Some have joked that it’s what they call a writer whom no-one reads.

When book publisher Lisa Lucas once asked the Twitterverse about those who could be considered writer’s writers, there was a diverse set of responses. The names ranged from Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor to Salvatore Scibona to John Keene to others more well-known, such as Colson Whitehead, Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis, Zadie Smith and George Saunders. The variety of writing styles across the spectrum of answers again showed that there doesn’t seem to be a specific yardstick.

Henry Green wasn’t among those mentioned in the Twitter thread, which is surprising, or simply reflective of changing tastes. Green has often been mentioned as a writer’s writer par excellence. As David Lodge has pointed out, he has been described at various times by W. H. Auden, Eudora Welty, V. S. Pritchett, Rebecca West, and John Updike as the finest novelist of his generation, “yet he never enjoyed either the commercial success or the literary fame of contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Christopher Isherwood”.

This element of obscurity has often been used as a characteristic of a writer’s writer.  Referring to Gina Berriault and Andre Dubus, Cynthia Ozick wrote that the “fearful possessive” of a writer’s writer hints at “a modicum of professional admiration accompanied — or subverted — by dim public recognition and even dimmer sales.” They write not in hope of fame but with “purity and passion”. She concludes on a happier note by saying that in the end, “fame seized both Berriault and Dubus — bringing the greater prize of a full phalanx of readers”. Purity and passion: come to think of it, those aren’t bad descriptors of Ozick’s own work.

The New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman kicked off a panel discussion some years ago by referring to such obscurity and adding that she’d heard another, possibly better, description of a writer’s writer: “Someone who lives at or below the poverty line.” Jeffrey Eugenides wasn’t convinced. “I think you can be a writer’s writer and be the toast of the town,” he said, but also someone who “doesn’t like to go out and do things like the New Yorker Festival.” Perhaps that was a reference to Thomas Pynchon or Don DeLillo, both known for their aura of privacy.

Jhumpa Lahiri, on the same panel, suggested that a writer’s writer is most likely American, and often focuses on short stories. “Everybody writes their first book with a certain innocence, a purity of vision,” she went on. “The writer’s writer writes every book that way.” For Nicole Krauss, such a writer regularly breaks the rules and offers “a kind of freedom from the reader’s expectations”.  Eugenides had another practical observation: “If you mention a story, someone will quote a line from it.”

Eugenides’s comment can provide a lens through which to view the concept of a writer’s writer. It’s often been said that writers are readers first and foremost — and an author whose work leaves a profound impact, one that has been read so many times that lines can be readily quoted, is quite likely to be elevated to the status of a writer's writer. This also implies that there is no single standard; in fact, there could be almost as many writer’s writers as there are writers themselves.

Given the way the literary world works, those thought of as writer’s writers are more likely to be white and male, as Emily Temple pointed out in a piece for LitHub. As though to counterbalance this, she presented a list of 40 of the species that have been written about over the years. Among the names: Paula Fox, James Salter, Sergio Pitol, Maggie Nelson, Lydia Davis, Eimear McBride, and W.G. Sebald. Again, all very different in style and choice of subject.

If that isn’t confusing enough, John Ashberry muddied the waters further when he doubled down to call fellow-poet Elizabeth Bishop “the writer’s-writer’s writer”. Perhaps it’s time to retire the expression: it can ride into the sunset with that other mythical creature, the Great American Novel.