Sticking pins in the balloons of established literary reputations seems to have become de rigueur in recent weeks. First there was Gabriel Josipivici complaining that stalwarts of English literature “ including Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Ian McEwan “ write like “prep school boys showing off.” This was followed last week by Anis Shivani in the Huffington Post identifying what he feels to be America’s 15 most overrated authors. Now, Australian author Christos Tsiolkas, whose novel The Slap has just been tapped for the Man Booker Prize longlist, has stepped forward to excoriate not just a handful of authors, but an entire continental literature.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Fair, Tsiolkas said that contemporary European literature is “dry and academic” in a “cheap, shitey way.” Tsiolkas went on to say that European authors don’t “talk about the real. I want something more rigorous, more challenging than I am finding at the moment.” As an example of the kind of “rigorous,” “challenging” fiction he is looking for, Tsiolkas singled out John Updike’s 1968 novel Couples, which has a “fearlessness that I am hungry for.”

It is passing strange to dismiss an entire continent’s literature by comparing it to a book that was published 42 years ago, especially when authors that get caught in Tsiolkas’ net include Michel Houellebecq and Jonathan Littell, neither of whom (love ’em or hate ’em) could reasonably be accused of fearfulness in their fiction. Still, it is (as always) refreshing to hear a writer take a firm stand against literary complacency “ something we could afford to do more of here in Canada.