Agents who love the House of Scribner & classic, traditional lit?

I'm told that it's not enough to query agents whose listed genres include the one you're writing in -- it's too broad and means too many things, you need to find an agent who loves the very same kind of literature you're writing. Ie, line up a dozen mystery agents and each of them will have their own ten favorites, their own preferences and peeves -- and maybe only one of them will be a bingo for your work.

Well I know what I like and it's not Dan Brown. I'm all for the old and classic, tradition with a T, leafy-autumn all-American literary -- and in particular where I seem to feel at ease & in kindred with are the best works of the House of Scribner ... Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolfe and all those American authors of the 'modern' age up to the postwar Beats. That's the kind of thing I've always been after, and now after many years of work that's what I've got.

So what I'm looking for, and what I need help with from all you Absolute Writers, is any leads on agents whose taste for mainstream literary fiction might happily coincide with mine. Has anyone ever heard of agents who love these authors? Agents who love traditional, big novels? Any agent who would love to see a Bildungsroman like Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, something with the iron ring of The Sun Also Rises or a huge novel of lush, rich prose like Wolfe's?

I'm all alone, totally unknown, and very much appreciate your help.

victoriastrauss said:

One last question. You've described what kind of literature you like--but what kind of book have you written? From Hemingway to Wolfe is quite a range of style.

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Victoria, thanks for the good advice.

In response to your question above, I submit that these three authors were actually similar in their aesthetic and what they were trying to do -- a similarity Fitzgerald once put as (this is wrong but I can't think of the precise quote right now, anyway he was reading Conrad & that had a lot to do with it) attempting to describe the inner emotions of one who was apart from the sensual world, but it was more than that. The big Hemingway cliche is that his sentences are short and plain and to the point but you just have to look at the first paragraph of A FAREWELL TO ARMS to see that this really isn't so. He had a style, but these three writers had a lot in common in their reach and themes and tone. I want to read more books like that so I attempted writing one.