Where Are Today's Literary Nomads?

Writers such as George Orwell and Henry Miller explored deprivation and exigency. Where are their modern counterparts?

From a brief piece in the Guardian...

Whatever happened to the garret and the gutter? The great literary boom of 1980 to 2010 is over. Prices are collapsing, and the winds of austerity whistle around the world. But writers show no sign of exploring deprivation or exigency.

It used not to be this way. I've been reading a new book about Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Frederick Turner's Renegade identifies the obsessive way in which Miller, like several writers of his generation, sought artistic authenticity in deprivation, poverty and insufficiency.