Netherland..

Rather than there being a 'new voice' in American letters, I'd rather say that we've re-discovered an old one. Joseph O'Neill's magisterial novel Netherland (ostensibly about cricket in New York) is an echo of The Great Gatsby. Here is a short passage from the early pages of the book, where our Dutch narrator, Hans, stares out at a Manhattan street scene in the early hours from his hotel balcony:

"The pallor of the so-called hours of darkness was remarkable. Directly to the north of the hotel, a succession of cross streets glowed as if each held a dawn. The tail-lights, the coarse blaze of deserted office buildings, the lit storefronts, the orange fuzz of the street lanterns: all this garbage of light had been refined into a radiant atmosphere that rested in a low silver heap over Midtown and introduced to my mind the mad thought that the final twilight was upon New York..."

I'm re-reading F. Scott Fitzgerald immediately after this...