Anxiety of Influence

From a book review for a couple of new novels I'm not all that interested in:

It's especially difficult not to think of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when reading these novels, because both depict young men of burgeoning literary sensibilities. With Stephen Dedalus, Joyce set the agenda for any writer who sought to style his own coming of age as a journey both personal and literary, a sexual awakening that mirrors growing political consciousness. Striving to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race," Stephen is neither sentimental nor calculatedly ambitious as he becomes the colossus against whom a writer may rebel, but can never escape. It's hard to think of an American novel other than Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man that attains the same level of personal integrity and national import. Today's young guns have set their sights considerably lower than Ellison and his mid-century peers.

The Joyce stuff is great. And well, if writers have had to set their sights lower, what else is there to do?

Become David Foster Wallace?

No thanks.