Leave that to romance novels, Broadway and hospital shows on television. Let's rediscover Flaubert, Stendhal, Celine, just to mention a few detectors of fraudulence. She notes that today emotionally cold works of fiction receive more critical attention than those that are emotionally warm. Perhaps the discussion ought to focus on the causes of the shift she analyzes, on why authors and their characters seem to feel so little, appearing detached and cold. Call it postmodernity.
Recent fiction presents characters baffled by the multiplicities of life, events and people.
These characters are emotionally confused by the complexity and copiousness of the world around them. There are, of course, books that mix the warm with the cool, and characters who are distant postmoderns with abundant feelings. Saul Bellow's Herzog and Chick, the narrator of ''Ravelstein,'' are puzzled by the world around them. Their intellects make them and the books they inhabit cold, but their large hearts and inflated feelings make them warm, sad, human.