Morris Dickstein of The Los Angeles Times wonders if some kind of literary generation has passed away along with the death of Norman Mailer, Grace Paley and Kurt Vonnegut this year. He wrote that, "Critics love the idea of literary generations, but it would be a challenge to find themes or ideas to link the disparate work of Norman Mailer, Grace Paley and Kurt Vonnegut ... [Yet n]o one would mistake a paragraph of theirs for the prose of another writer."  read more »