If today’s Telegraph interview with The Passage
But, beyond the tale of how he constructed his best-selling novel during bike rides with his daughter, Cronin offered up some excellent insights into the literary-genre divide.
Category Archives: My Two Cents
The literary world is abuzz with news that author Anne Rice has abandoned Christianity. In the name of Christ. Or something like that.
I’m not going to take a position for or against the religion or the political and moral issues Rice cites as her reasons. However, I would like to take a stab at the logic of her controversial revelation to see if another, more professional motive might explain it better than the stated one.
When I first read the headline of the latest salivation for Tom McCarthy’s eagerly awaited novel, C
God help us, another pretentious twit comparing the absence of whatever he or she deems as true literary fiction with the downfall of rational civilization. If the “avant garde” is identified with Darwin, could the comparison of genre fiction with Creation Science be far behind?
But, ever curious about the state of literary theory, I gave the article a go. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found there, much more nuanced and fair that the above Guardian headline would lead you to think.
There’s a whole lotta “self” going on in publishing, from the web-driven growth of self-publishing to the expectation of author self-promotion in traditional publishing.
Many publishing professionals — writers, agents, editors, critics, etc. — are trying to ride this wave with a sewn-on happy face, afraid that expressing skepticism equates to missing the boat or swimming against the tide.
Take a lesson from the real-world referents of these watery metaphors: some waves you ride, but some waves you build walls against. Author self-publishing and self-promotion together constitute a destructive wave that merits a levee, not a longboard.
The other day, having read one book described as “one of the best-selling books of the 20th Century” and another as “one of the best-selling books of all time,” my brain starting spinning in amateur research mode.
My first question was: what does “one of” mean? Does it mean the 3rd best-selling book of all time? The 22nd? Among the top 1000?
As one might expect, Wikipedia has a list of the best-selling books of all time, with various estimates of total sales. But, with books from the 19th and 20th Centuries on the list alongside ancient works, Analytic Me started to wonder about rates of sale.
After all a train that travels 100 miles in 10 hours is nowhere near as fast as a train that travels only 1 mile in 1 minute. Likewise a book that sells a million copies over a thousand years is not being chosen at the same rate as a book that sells two thousand copies in a single year.
And, to answer the objection that a book like the Bible wasn’t selling at a steady ready over time (particularly before the invention of moveable type), I would point out that it still had centuries during which to drum up support and publicity.
So let’s take a look at how the numbers crunch.
Patrick Kiger at the Second Act blog published a list of seven literary one-hit wonders in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Since these are seven broadly praised books which also share the distinction of being their authors’ only work, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at them to see if I could find any other similarities. What I discovered was that none of these books followed the “way things work” process from an unpublished writer’s hand to the bookstore shelf.
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Tin House publishing has kicked off a mini-controversy with their plan to accept manuscript submissions from writers who can prove they’ve recently bought a book.
As Anne Trubek of Good puts it: “What we have is a glut of people who want to be writers, who do not buy the consumer products of the industry they are seeking to join.” Continue reading
In a recent Huff Post blog, author Melanie Benjamin joins the chorus of publishing-related people who are starting to speak some sense in the maelstrom of “everyone can be a writer” cheerleading.
While her main point is that aspiring writers should also be avid readers (her raison d’écrire was Tin House publishing’s decision to require a bookstore receipt for unsolicited manuscript submissions) she touches on the core of my argument that publishing is in danger of becoming a pyramid scheme.
I think that’s the problem today; too many authors, not enough readers. So many people dream of seeing their book on a front table in a bookstore; so few people actually buy books that are on front tables–or back shelves–of bookstores. So few people even know where their closest bookstore is located.
As someone who can think of three chain bookstores, two independent bookstores, and three used bookstores within walking distance of where I live (not to mention the bookstores in the National Mall’s various museums) I could not agree more.
But more importantly, “too many authors – not enough readers” is the Formula of Ultimate Doom for the publishing industry’s current toxic combination of DIY marketing and cross-consumerization of readers into wannabe writers. It’s the reason all pyramid schemes fail: not enough new recruits funneling resources to the top cats who are reaping all the rewards.
Benjamin goes on:
I have no problem with a publisher requiring an aspiring author to show proof that he’s read at least one book lately. Wouldn’t it be great if every writers’ conference required the same thing for all applicants? Wouldn’t it be wonderful–if not strictly ethical–if every literary agent did this, too?
I’ll be honest: considering some of the quirky pet peeves for which agents reject queries, I can’t see the ethical problem in asking for some proof that a writer is involved in the literary process beyond clicking send on an email, so long as the agent doesn’t require that the book be one she or her firm represented.
I have a stack of books knee-high already from 2010 alone. Bring it on!
Heck, if every aspiring author read ten books a year, this industry would not be having the problems it’s having today.
I will see that bet and raise you, Melanie. If half of the aspiring authors (specifically those for whom getting published is more for dazzle than devotion) would shift their enthusiasm for literature entirely from writing to reading, publishing would be both financially and artistically richer.
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For a similar piece by Joseph Bednarik, read “The Law of Diminishing Readership” at Poets & Writers.
Pyramid scheme? Is that an unsigned writer standing by a publishing bridge with a lighter in one hand and a can of kerosene in the other?
Believe me, what follows is not intended as an accusation of any sort. I have the greatest respect for literary agents, editors, and publishers, who slog through piles of manuscripts that would make me cry like only a grown man can cry: masked in anger and empty threats. I have suffered through enough truly awful writers’ group submissions to know that I could never do what these ladies and gentlemen do on a daily basis.
So, this isn’t about questioning anyone’s integrity. And, it’s not about protecting or promoting my own interests as a writer, which the last few paragraphs will make clear. It’s about trying to help the literary community as a whole by connecting dots that are as yet unconnected, showing how several recent trends in publishing are converging in a very, very bad way through a natural and largely unintentional process of business evolution.
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The other day, I pointed you to Carolyn Kellogg‘s masterful debunking of Lee Siegel‘s snide and absurd assertion in the New York Observer that fiction is dead and culturally “irrelevant.”
Now, Jason Pinter has added insult to well-deserved injury with his attack on Siegel, with a piece in the Huffington Post arguing that it’s not fiction, but the snooty “literati” class that is dead and culturally irrelevant for dismissing the importance of genre fiction.
Pinter states:
The more the literary establishment simply ignores anything other than the moldy old status quo, the quicker they will join Lee Siegel in his musty ivory tower, missing out on all the wonderful books, blogs and writers who revel in writing outside the archaic rules of the literary establishment.
This observation brings to mind a quote from the greatest work of genre fiction of the 1900’s, and perhaps the most influential fiction of any sort in that century, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I can still remember when being a fan of Tolkien was an occasion for ridicule, but the themes of addiction, the strength of the “little guy,” and overcoming despair in the face of violent evil were addressed nowhere as vividly as in Tolkien’s fantasy story about furry-footed hobbits.
Put into the mouth of Gandalf in the film adaptation, the quote brought to mind by Pinter’s observation above is from Faramir in the book:
The Númenorians … hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted the names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars.
Do I have my misgivings about certain trends in today’s literary world? Absolutely! I could use fewer sparkly pedophilic vampires, and I am less than sanguine about the recent trend toward sampled mash-ups.
But, unless the literary elite want to end up throne-less and irrelevant, they will move with the flow of culture’s river, appreciate the best writers driving today‘s literature, and leave aside their foolish dreams of a perpetual Golden Age based on dry honors and impotent nostalgia.