Georges Perec
The December-January edition of Bookforum is hot off the press, and its free online content includes an overview of Georges Perec and his work by James Gibbon: "The Letter Vanishes: Puzzlemaker and Polymath Georges Perec Wrote His Novels as if Literature Were a Game." Gibbon describes Perec as "that inimitable amalgam of Kafka and the daily crossword, whose sensibility spans opposing poles of profundity and artifice."
http://bookforum.com/gibbons.html

Also worth reading is Hazel Rowley's article on the way in which black writer Richard Wright was destroyed by the "50s culture wars".
http://bookforum.com/rowley.html