TRUTH.

[substitute]

The decline of fiction starring Jonathan Safran Froer

Last week the Atlantic announced that from here on in, it would be publishing fiction only once a year, in a special issue. Once upon a time, Playboy supported a whole generation of worthwhile authors, from Shel Silverstein to Isaac Bashevis Singer and a host of talented goys, too. Before that, Sports Illustrated published Faulkner. Now, there's The New Yorker and the Paris Review and little else, and the consolidation of publishing houses has nearly wiped out the mid-list author, leaving young authors with just one chance to write that great book before they get dropped, and just a handful of editors deciding who gets that one shot at the brass ring. With the decreasing number of outlets for quality fiction, each season's "young stars" find themselves praised regardless of the quality of their work—there's a common readership for Lahiri and Eggers, even though she's brilliant and he's anything but.

Comments

[do-not-lick.livejournal.com]

While I find this kind of thing regrettable, I think it's inevitable. More and more, distribution channels for media like this have to narrow so they can capture their audience better. If Playboy's readership had gone down after they stopped printing literature then they would have put it back in, but it's clear that it was to their economic advantage not to do so.

I think what's cool is that there are other channels for distributing literature now -- that is, the Internet. Once people stop thinking that being published in a magazine or as a book is the pinnacle of the art of writing, then more "mid-list" writing will be available for people in a more open forum. All getting a book deal means is that some guy at a publishing house thought your book was good -- not that it actually *is* any good. Like I said, I think it is regrettable that those of us in the literate minority are losing the help of others to find writing that is honestly good, but nature abhors a vacuum, so as this trend continues, counterpressure will eventually move that kind of writing to freer market.

A good example of this already happening is in music, where the RIAA's psychotic market pressure has caused a huge upsurge in internet distribution of music. this isn't all the way there either, but it's coming, I am sure. For a more compelling example, look at cartoons: the nationally syndicated newspaper cartoon is a wholly dead landscape, but webcomics have more than taken up the slack. I don't know if there's a causal relationship there or if it's just a happy coincidence, but I see it as a trend that all kinds of media are going to eventually follow.

Also, I like pie.

As we move into hyperspace

[torgo-x.livejournal.com]

I hope that what you say will be true, and I worry that won't be.