Five Great Living American Authors

There are those who believe literature is a dying art. Great novels and poetry don't get produced anymore, some say. No great authors are alive. While it may be true that fewer people read great literature than in the past, there are many great living authors here is America. If you're looking for great modern American lit, here are five of the best.

Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy's novels are exceptionally dark and use intensely violent. Often considered his masterpiece, "Blood Meridian" is the story of a young boy during America's western expansion who gets mixed in with a group that scalps Native Americans. The gruesome imagery is unrelenting and often sickening, but it is McCarthy's passionate, superhuman voice that makes his work so powerful. His manner of storytelling is a neo-Biblical epic, and it is a voice he used in many of his other great successes, including "All the Pretty Horses" and "No Country for Old Men." His most recent success, "The Road," is an emotional story that casts a boy and his father against a post-apocalyptic landscape. It tears your heart out.

Philip Roth

Roth may be the most gripping storyteller of the last 50 years. His books are tense and exciting, most notably, "The Plot Against America," an alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh is elected President and forms an alliance with Hitler. His work often has political themes, and almost always themes about Judaism. Many of Roth's novels are thinly veiled autobiography, but Roth is often playful with the idea of connecting himself to his characters, always juggling narrative distance. One of his characters, Nathan Zuckerman, is clearly meant to be Roth. Zuckerman appears in some of Roth's best novels, including "Zuckerman Unbound," "American Pastoral" and "The Human Stain."

Don DeLillo

DeLillo is a critic of the modern world. He satirizes academia, consumerism, intellectualism, the nature of the modern family and more. As one of the key figures in the post-modern movement, DeLillo is fascinated by the source of reality in the world we live in. Where is reality in the mass media? In politics? DeLillo explores these in his two most famous novels, "Underworld" and "White Noise." He also explores the nature of terrorism and the power of new forms of violence in our world. Most notably, he does this in "Falling Man," which takes place in New York City shortly after the attacks of 9/11/01.

Toni Morrison

Morrison's prose is like a tidal wave - flowing and smooth yet overpowering. Her characters are known for their descriptive depth, which makes them so compelling. One cannot help but be drawn in by characters so realistic, such as the African slave in "Beloved" who murders her own daughter to save her from a life of slavery. "Beloved" was voted by prominent authors and critics as the greatest work of American fiction of the past 25 years. Her themes are not specific to any time, but epic and universal, such as love and loss, but she also writes extensively of the African-American experience. Though most of her major characters are women, she has resisted the label of "feminist."

Michael Cunningham

Cunningham is often hard to define. While he is openly gay and writes novels that often focus on homosexual characters, he objects to being called a "gay author." At the same time, he has sometimes been accused of portraying straight men as brutish and cruel. Nonetheless, his ability to tap into human pain is astounding. In just a few sentences, Cunningham takes you inside the soul of a psychologically tortured character and portrays the anguish masterfully. He shows this skill in his most successful book, "The Hours," which tells the story of three different women whose lives center around Virginia Woolf's novel, "Mrs. Dalloway." He has also been involved in film, and co-wrote and produced the 2007 film "Evening."