What made the fiction literary was it spoke the language of memory, where the reader inhabited the experience of the characters, and this changed how readers experienced the world after. It was an intimate experience. Writing on the internet is participatory, impersonal, performative, and anti-intimate. It's a homegenous voice. We used to laugh about the engineering students who would say without irony, "why would I want to read something someone just made up?" Now, engaging with books comes at the opportunity cost of missing internet points and time spent not promoting your brand, so I don't see it coming back among younger people.
I spent a lot of years practicing to become a writer like many of the men I looked up to growing up, and when I look at writers today, there is no there there anymore. You're only ever as good as your last tweet, and part of the promise of literary culture was that the esteem of the people who were a part of it was valuable and enriching. For a while it was. It's not now. Books were a great thing to have in common and a way to find people who were really just interesting. They were a social glue. Now, authors remind me of those old soviet olympians propped up as representatives of their ideological system to be proof their system could produce peers to western athletes whose talent was the effect of freedom and desire.
I think the literary novel had its moment. It was a couple of centuries, but I think it will become what victorian cameos and shadow drawings are to photos. Art assumes a level of mystery that I don't think can exist in a homogenized culture like we have online, as without an apprehension of something greater than the concrete and material, it's just another picture or inpspirational quote on a wrapper for something cheap.
Imagine a large table in a big hall. There are hundreds of people in the room.
In the far left side of the table, there's a plate with fine pieces of sushi. Masterly prepared. Freshest of fish. Rice cooked to perfection. It took a long time for the chef to learn to make it, having studied with older cooks for decades as an apprentice.
On the rest of the table, taking most of its over a hundred feet of length, there are microwaved Hot Pockets. They have been left out, and reheated a second time. Some have flies on them. Some drunk guy has puked all over many of the others.
The sushi is left on the plate. Nobody touches it. Perhaps 3-4 persons savour a few pieces.
The Hot Pockets, meanwhile, get eaten like there's no tomorrow. Hundreds of people wait in huge queues to stuff their plates with as many as they can. Some even fight for one.
Now, few will even entertain the idea that they're missing anything by not going for the sushi. Many would even go philosophical, about taste being a personal matter, and how "they like what they like".
I don't really like things like hot pockets. I love sushi though. I don't think it's a good analogy, just because some, maybe even a majority, don't enjoy sushi and literary fiction that doesn't mean there isn't a market for those things.
I feel overwhelmed by book choice these days. I like M. John Harrison and his novels could be considered themed with a literary fiction style, so I wonder if there's was just an evolution and nobody is writing pure LF but the style of it has merged into all other genres.
That's some pretentious bullshit. Sneering at others because their cultural tastes don't match yours does nothing but help you feel superior to others for a few moments. And I say this as someone who reads a lot of fiction, subscribes to a literary review, and treasures my library of printed books.
>Sneering at others because their cultural tastes don't match yours does nothing but help you feel superior to others for a few moments.
Taste is something one develops, not something one is born with. Taste on its own, is like an asshole: everybody has one. Just like "personal opinion".
>And I say this as someone who reads a lot of fiction, subscribes to a literary review, and treasures my library of printed books.
But who also treasures the unintellectual idea of every cultural taste being just as good as any other, and anything to the contrary being "pretentious".
Trading insults back and forth isn't going to be very conducive to a productive discussion. Why don't you tell me a little about your theory of moral values in cultural expression and consumption and I'll tell you a little about mine?
My instinctual position is that one's character (moral, aesthetic, civil, political, emotional, etec) is strongly influenced by the cultural media one encounters. I think encountering the wide range of human emotions and contexts available in fictional literature makes one more resilient when faced with adversity, and better able to make an informed decision that will lead constructively towards one's desired outcome. I also don't think literature is the only way to be exposed to that range of emotions and contexts.
I think the shift from interacting with a predominantly printed media to an interactive/hypertextual media has been a net negative for society, although I'd struggle to define the exact metric on which it's a net negative. I think the impact on attention span would be one of those negative impacts, but I'm aware of no hard evidence of such an impact, and would ask citations if someone made such a claim in debate. I've witnessed friends and loved ones, through their habits of interaction with online media, end up in a worse place than they would were it not for online media.
I have a handful of friends with whom I exchange books and book recommendations, and I've noticed and been saddened by noticing that most of what I get recommended is somewhat pulpy sci-fi and fantasy, and while I recommend my share of that I also recommend a lot of books with, for lack of a better phrase, more "aesthetic value". Some of the books I've been pushing on people in the past few years, with varying success, include: A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, The Great Gatsby, Mind and Nature by Gregory Bateson, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, (v.) by Anastacia-Renee, and Winter Mythologies and Abbots by Pierre Michon. They're all excellent books!
But you're right, I am somewhat of a moral relativist. I think it's very hard to objectively compare different cultural values or cultural habits of media interaction. I think it's easy to fool oneself that one's personal preferences are morally superior to one's personal dislikes, and I'm fairly hesitant to listen to someone propound on that topic without seeing evidence of some fairly rigorous introspection and attempts to overcome those inherent, inevitable biases.
Sometimes I go for a while without reading any books and I can feel the difference in myself. Yet, I spend almost all my waking life reading text. I think the difference is that this is all just information.
There is profound loneliness in only reading information, I compare it to the flattening of human interaction to zoom calls in the pandemic. Practical, but qualitatively worse.
The culture that produced the novel as its primary information artifact is gone forever, tragic that our cultures artifacts do reach its heights.
>For one thing, it praises the enslaved for turning their cheeks, as it were, to be slapped again—or killed—rather than fighting back, a notion of Christian virtue and acceptance that results in brutal suffering and death on an unjust earth that will finally send Uncle Tom out of America to a less violent place known as Heaven. In Baldwin’s words, Stowe “was not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer; her book was not intended to do anything more than prove that slavery was wrong… This makes material for a pamphlet but it is hardly enough for a novel, and the only question left to ask is why we are bound still with the same constriction.”
So, is the problem that the slaves don't fight back? Or that the author is injecting their pesky morality into "apolitical" literature? The latter is usually a veiled condemnation of something the reader doesn't like. The former is just arguing for a different moral framing[0].
I don't see morals in literature being a bad thing. The example used here, Uncle Tom's Cabin, did what a lot of books only dream they could do - grabbing their readers by the throat and dragging them to the conclusion.
I've never worked with a sensitivity reader and I have no intention of working in traditional publishing[1]. I'm sure there are plenty of situations there where books have been neutered by people who misread them. However, that problem is not that readers want morally sanitized books or even that the acceptable morals have shifted. The problem is that the idiots running the business believe that to be the case.
[0] Specifically, one of oppressed peoples fighting back and liberating themselves
[1] Amazon sucked the life out of that business. In fact, I'm appalled that the Esquire writer wastes so many words on how technology is killing novels and doesn't even mention the kinds of shit Kindle and Audible do.
> is the problem that the slaves don't fight back?
no, the problem is, as Baldwin said, that it's a very bad novel. And he was black, if you weren't aware.
You're completely wrong about what serious writers (like Baldwin) want: it isn't to "grab their readers by the throat and drag them to the conclusion." That's what a pamphlet or editorial does. If you can state it in one sentence, you don't need a whole novel.
>If you can state it in one sentence, you don't need a whole novel.
Anybody can write it in one sentence, and it would have little to no weight, except to those already convinced for the cause. It's the taking the audiences to the point ("by the throat") that the novel can do best - and which Stowe's did.
Baldwin's critique is presented as a literally one, but he actually disagrees with the politics of the book, which is something different. It's this that drives his dismissal, as opposed to the effectiveness of the book as a novel (to which making a point is not incompatible, as if literature is above it. Some of the best novels still attempt to make a very specific point).
The "uncle Tom"-ing "pamphlet" story probably made more headway for the cause than many violent protests did.
>Anyway, novels are not "effective." A pamphlet is effective. Propaganda is effective. Editorials are effective.
That's not a set in stone aesthetic rule, just the preference of some writers, from whom art has be "untainted" by any desire to be didactic or influencial.
Other artists explicitly set out to make politically and socially effective art, and struggled with the potency and effectiveness of their output. Some examples, out of the top of my head, Swift, Shaw, Steinbeck, Sinclair, London, Brecht, C.S Lewis, Orwell, and so on. Some of those were of course, more and others less blatant about it.
I guess it comes down to whether you can appreciate it without being a partisan of the political point. The Grapes of Wrath obviously had a political motivation, but one can be indifferent about that and still see it as art. Henry Fonda could find depth in the character enough to motivate him.
Same with Swift. Same with Lewis. Brecht, not so much. And Uncle Tom's Cabin has virtually no appeal anymore.
>And Uncle Tom's Cabin has virtually no appeal anymore.
It might have no appeal for the trend following people in the current US climate (for political reasons), but it remains a popular book around the globe. You can find it on most bookstores in this (much remote) place just fine. And in amazon.com it's in the top 200 of the African-American literature category by sales.
Short fiction has never been a lucrative business. The 'slick' magazines that paid top-dollar for fiction were able to do so because people bought the magazines for the other content. The 'pulp' magazines typically paid very low rates for fiction.
It's depressing because short fiction has the ability to evoke strong emotions in such few words. I remember finding Flowers for Algernon much more impactful as a short story, than I did as a novel. Perhaps it was because I read the short story first.
I'm reading _Divine Invasions: A Life Of Philip K. Dick_ and just got to the point where he sold his first short story. He was paid $75 for it, at a time when the mortgage on his (old, small, but still) two-story Berkeley house was $27.50. This was 1950.
For a time, you could make a living writing short stories for genre rags. A matter of a few decades, but still. Without needing to be a household name, even.
They're still the only places that pay non-famous and non-trendy people any money for short fiction. Most literary fiction publications below the tippy-top don't pay a dime, and lit-fic fosters a culture of accepting that state of things, even shaming people for asking about pay. Can't make a living in genre short fiction and the odd hastily-written pulp novel anymore—hasn't been enough demand for decades—but getting a check feels good, at least, even if it's two figures, and you won't get that in lit-fic.
This model is coming back in a few small ways. Established writers I like Brandon Sanderson have shown that you can crowdsource funding for full length novels. They're also a large number of less established authors that produce chapters and are funded by patreons are equivalent as they go, similar to the magazine model.
Lasting probably at least there is a cool ecosystem of essentially book club podcasts. Some of the more successful have patreons of Their Own and kick back a percentage of donations to the original authors.
I think it's very cool to see some more diversity in literature funding models
True—it usually wasn't an amazing living. But it was a not-totally-implausible direction to go, if perhaps not the best move. Isn't even that, now.
IDK what the equivalent poorly-paid-but-is-a-career-in-fiction-writing move is now. Probably video game writing, though you won't be getting to come up with your own stories at the bottom rungs.
> Short fiction has never been a lucrative business.
A perfect example being Edgar Allan Poe. One of the greatest writers in history could barely support himself and his wife with his short stories and poems. Tragic.
One striking thing about pointing the finger at high tech for the death of literary fiction is that literary fiction has survived so many other technological advances. Why is this the one that topples it?
While I'm sure Blythe would sneer at manga in Japan, that country has adopted high tech just as much as this country has, and yet reading paper-based stories remains as popular as ever. He would probably sniff that manga is not "literary"—and that's probably closer to the heart of the matter.
Could it be that literary fiction today is not producing the stories Blythe claims it's producing—stories of memory, stories of "average" people working through the contradictions of life? Like NPR and PBS, so much literary fiction today is geared toward a rather narrow slice of American culture, a culture that implicitly agrees on a particular set of politics and cultural mores as beyond debate. If you don't agree with those mores, contemporary literary fiction reads like entering a slightly "off" world.
I'm not sure Updike's short stories in the 1950s really were for "everyone" in America, but I am certain that the stories being published today in Best American Short Stories are not.
For one thing, it praises the enslaved for turning their cheeks, as it were, to be slapped again—or killed—rather than fighting back, a notion of Christian virtue and acceptance
Why would you expect a work of literature by a Christian to not agree with Christian values? If I read a book by a Muslim author I'm not shocked if a female character expressing modesty is cast as a good thing.
> it praises the enslaved for turning their cheeks
What most people don't get about the idea of "turning your cheek" is that it's actually very pragmatic when living under a brutal dictatorship, or slavery. If you're going to resist and fight back, you have to do so with forethought and planning, and not direct confrontation. This was true back in the day under Caesar, as it was for slaves of the South, as it is today for black people under threat by police officers. Don't make sudden moves. Don't fight back at the wrong time. Or you're risking your life. Swallow your pride. Turn the other cheek. Wait for the right opportunity
By that logic, the only criticism we can ever make is an accusation of hypocrisy. "Sure, the book says some heinous things, but what did you expect? It's just a heinous author expressing their beliefs." Not to say that it's heinous to advocate turning the other cheek, but worthy of critique? Sure.
By that logic, people should really value my review of the Bible where I excoriate it for encouraging a belief in invisible beings.
Critique works of communication or argument for failing to communicate or argue what they wish to communicate or argue. Don't critique them for not communicating or arguing for your values. Engaging with the argument is fine, but don't mistake it for engaging with the work itself.
The work has succeeded when it gives you an argument to engage with. If you have an argument against turning the other cheek, or religion in general, take it up with one of the other billion people who agree with the author, and choose the one who has presented their arguments with the most ability.
Tbh, I'm not confident in the ability of the average American to make a coherent antislavery argument. Because it's a lot harder than pointing at someone who says something nice about a slaver, or makes an observation about the reality actual slavery that isn't a vapid re-condemnation, and saying "slavery is bad folx, glad I could help."
> By that logic, people should really value my review of the Bible where I excoriate it for encouraging a belief in invisible beings.
Many celebrated works of philosophy has been written critiquing religion. Take Nietzsche, for example, or Camus. Your review would be unoriginal, but hardly wrong-headed.
> The work has succeeded when it gives you an argument to engage with.
No, being incorrect is a failure worth criticizing. I wouldn't celebrate (e.g.) a creationist text for being internally consistent and well-argued. No matter how good the writing is, it's still wrong. In fact, well-argued but incorrect arguments are the most important to critique, because (unlike incompetent arguments) they can deceive readers.
He's saying it's a bad novel because of their inclusion, which is simply nonsensical. If heaven was real and Christianity was correct a complete refusal to do violence would be the right thing to do because your earthly existence would be a rounding error compared to an existence in heaven and any action that could jeopardize your salvation would be stupid. Uncle Tom might be a bad novel for various reasons but holding pacifism as a virtue isn't one of them.
Agreed that I wouldn't be shocked if an author wrote approvingly of something they agreed with. On the other hand, I would not be shocked if they wrote characters who exhibited behaviors they personally disagreed with either.
Ballmer peak I guess. Only half joking. There’s definitely been times where I’m at home, have a few beers and the disinhibition gets to me to work on something I probably wouldn’t bother with otherwise. Never during work though, it would be too obvious.
I spent a lot of years practicing to become a writer like many of the men I looked up to growing up, and when I look at writers today, there is no there there anymore. You're only ever as good as your last tweet, and part of the promise of literary culture was that the esteem of the people who were a part of it was valuable and enriching. For a while it was. It's not now. Books were a great thing to have in common and a way to find people who were really just interesting. They were a social glue. Now, authors remind me of those old soviet olympians propped up as representatives of their ideological system to be proof their system could produce peers to western athletes whose talent was the effect of freedom and desire.
I think the literary novel had its moment. It was a couple of centuries, but I think it will become what victorian cameos and shadow drawings are to photos. Art assumes a level of mystery that I don't think can exist in a homogenized culture like we have online, as without an apprehension of something greater than the concrete and material, it's just another picture or inpspirational quote on a wrapper for something cheap.