What Publishers Won't Admit About the Great American Novel

[Hannah Bell]

Want to read a contemporary American novel written in the tradition of For Whom the Bell Tolls or Absalom, Absalom! or The Adventures of Augie March or Manhattan Transfer? Good luck. By the 1980s, fiction that was meaningfully engaged with America had all but disappeared.

Yes, there are a few writers in their seventies and eighties today still committed to storytelling with its finger on the pulse of society—think of Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth. However, with the recent death of Norman Mailer, they have become a rarity.

This should come as no surprise since publishers do no embrace fiction these days committed to telling the American story. But is this because readers interested in understanding our society through their reading of great literature have perished or have publishers simply decided that audience is not worth pursuing? Or to pose the question differently, do publishers really have a sense of our national marketplace or have their global predilections for "literary tofu" dramatically altered story selections, thereby ignoring the desires of readers hungry for truth or excellence to be found in American exceptionalism? And, most important of all, have these misguided selections contributed to the demise of the great American novel?


http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/html/2142/3625/WhatPublishersWillNotAdmit.htm

[pnwmom]

1. Oh please. Ever heard of Joan Didian, Jane Smiley, Jonathan Franzen?

There are plenty of great novelists "meaningfully engaged with America."

[Hannah Bell]

6. heard of (& read) joan didiOn & jane smiley. didion's over 70,

smiley's 60. neither particularly representative of the current state of literature.

franzen's 50. i heard the corrections was good, but i stay away from the oprah club on principle.

"the great american novel" used to have a specific meaning - i don't think either didion or smiley's work fits it.

btw, i didn't write the article, i put it up to see what people thought.

[pnwmom]

18. Jonathan Franzen is 49, hardly over the hill, and when The Corrections

was published he was only 41. You're missing a lot by staying "away from the Oprah Club" on principle. The Corrections, for example, won the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

And most people do not become a "great American Novelist" overnight. It is only in retrospect that we will know which of the writers now in their twenties or thirties we may think of in this category.

Edit to add:

The conventional use of the term "great American novel" has always excluded many great women writers.

[liberalhistorian]

19. The Corrections

was a pseudo-intellectual, superficial, overly-pretentious, piece of shit that lacked any depth and substance, especially the characters.

Now, if you want REALLY great modern American novels by fantastic "literary" writers, Louise Erdrich and Margaret Atwood would be right up there. Erdrich, especially. I just met her at the South Dakota Festival of Books and got a couple of books signed, she was wonderful. As is all of her work.

[pnwmom]

27. I love Louise Erdrich but I completely disagree with your description of

The Corrections. It was FULL of characters I knew. It was the kind of book I wanted to reread the minute I'd finished with it.

Margaret Atwood, alas, is Canadian. I doubt that the magazine article writer would consider her to be a writer of a "great American novel" (or young enough, either.)

[HamdenRice]

12. Franzen's Corrections is very much the kind of great American novel she's describing

It is engaged with the issues of corporate greed, the fall of communism in eastern Europe, the irrelevance of academia and family dysfunction.

Moreover, Franzen is a master stylist. I read certain passages over and over to understand the technique of his voice and point of view -- and it's "free indirect discourse" of the kind that was pioneered by Virginia Wolf, James Joyce and Toni Morrison. He's also young.

Dave Eggers is also younger writer with the kind of ambition the OP asks for.

But overall, I think she's on to something. There's a lot of post modern cuteness in literary fiction with no real subject matter.

[Odin2005]

53. "The Corrections" sounds like an interesting book. I'll have to get it the next time I'm...

at the library!

[pnwmom]

63. It's definitely worth reading. The family dynamics and the characters

were so on target -- at least to this midwestern born reader.

[mitchum]

70. Don't bother; it's just the "Fear Of Flying" of the 90s...

a pretentious, poorly written, over hyped piece of trash that allegedly captured the zeitgeist.
It's a "weighty novel" for dumb people who have never read much literature.

[Wetzelbill]

2. I would seriously disagree with this

[Demeter]

3. The Best Writing Is In Genre

SF, mysteries, historical fiction.

[pnwmom]

28. Part of that is because we've developed the category of genre.

These days Edgar Allen Poe would be considered genre -- in his day, he was merely a writer.

[DavidDvorkin]

33. Yes, indeed!

That's been true for a long time.

[Zhade]

64. Damn straight.

NT!

[WCGreen]

4. Dennis Lehane, Richard Ford, Michael Chabon,

Richard Russo, Jonathan Lethem to name but a few more.

Step out of the Best Sellers and usual suspects and take a look around.

[Hannah Bell]

7. you talking to me? i didn't write the article.

"the great american novel" used to mean "of a type that deals with large, important, sweeping themes, wonderfully written, yet also accessible to the masses & popular"

[ixion]

5. Publishers aren't really interested in literature anymore

it's all genre fiction, non-fiction and crap like that.

Very sad, and very telling, IMO.

I saw some people mention some names of contemporary authors, and I have to tell you: contemporary literature both sucks and blows.

The last Great American authors were Kurt Vonnegut, Ken Kesey and Joseph Heller, and they've all moved on.

[KharmaTrain]

8. Hollywood And Video Killed The Writing Star

I've never been much of a non-fiction reader...give me a good history book, the best stories always have a touch of truth and reality to them. That said, one big change in the past 30 years is the rise of television...it replaced the book for many in our society, sucking into the boob tube rather than the pages of a novel. And with it, went some of the best writers of the day...today's story tellers are creating for movies and television; using the cadre of special effects that can turn the fantasies into vision. Also writing a top-selling screen play is worth far more money than putting a book on the NYT best seller's list.

[Sequoia]

23. I've always thought so too.

Then one day I discovered South American writers and my mind was overjoyed. It seems USA writers today write novels as if they were writing for TV.

[Berry Cool]

9. I have to say, I don't really agree with this author's premise.

Take a look at some of this:

...The conglomerates are calculating with their spreadsheets the global cost/return/ratio anticipated for every book they will represent. Profit is paramount, American exceptionalism of little consequence.

"American exceptionalism?" That's what she thinks is the key virtue missing from literature?

And the outcome? As with the other genres, literary fiction, these days, must be formulaic. Innovation has been replaced almost entirely with feminized "virtue" or sanctimonious multiculturalism devoid of truth or excellence.

She doesn't like "virtue" because it's too "feminine." She thinks multiculturalism is "sanctimonious"?

As a consequence, literary fiction has become entirely derivative and resistant to telling our story.

And "our" story is masculine and of only one culture, I gather.

...Take, for example, The New York Times. Its Sunday magazine now publishes weekly excerpts from commercial novels and comic books—the latter of which the literati today insist on referring to as graphic novels. Are these based on high-minded principles? Certainly not. The selections are determined by what will sell with the overwhelming emphasis on authors whose fiction has been primed for the global market.

She wants literature based on "high-minded principles." Sounds like a conservative book-burner to me.

...Why are the Sunday Style Section and the Sunday Magazine devoting weekly columns, respectively, to "Modern Love" and "Lives," confessional tales of personal woe featuring authors who are the casualties of maligned relationships and, frequently, the instigators of their own troubled lives in order to promote their disreputable memoirs and formulaic novels?

"Disreputable"? Who wrote this? Some society matron?

...Aesthetic or ethical values no longer have currency. What matters is emotional desire—that "buy" impulse—coupled with strategic brand placement designed to incite sales.

And nasty, dirty sex too, no doubt--some of it being engaged in by people WHO AREN'T LIKE US!!!! :scared:

With the triumph of postmodernism that is our moment, no one considers it an outrage that these weekly columns are appearing in what was once the finest newspaper in the country. As a society, we no longer consider what is worthy. Consequently, there are no experts adjudicating literature who are informed by lofty standards of truth and excellence.

...And The New York Times is not alone. Let us consider two "memoirs" published recently that present our "American" story. Perhaps readers recall when Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, the imprint owned by Random House, successfully pitched James Frey's A Million Little Pieces (2003) as a selection for Oprah's Book Club. The plot was ideal. Writer loses his way, becomes an alcohol and crack addict, and is redeemed. It includes drugs, degradation, dead bodies, a mafia boss, and a love story gone awry. Smut and titillation with the whiff of post-hoc "virtue." What could be better?

Amazing. Frey's book isn't bad just because it was fake, made up, a lie. It's bad because it is SMUT AND TITILLATION!!

...According to The Smoking Gun, the book's sequel, My Friend Leonard earned Frey millions, enabling him to buy a luxury Manhattan apartment and a summer house in Amagansett. Frey has written a screenplay for "A Million Little Pieces," which is to be co-produced by Brad Pitt and directed by Mark Romanek. Celebrity actors have lined the block to audition for the role of James Frey. Who says crime doesn't pay?

I agree, Frey is a ripoff artist and doesn't deserve to profit off his lies, and neither does anyone else. But that doesn't mean good stuff doesn't get published, too.

She goes on to imply somehow a connection between the eventual publication of OJ Simpson's If I Did It and his latest criminal problems. Huh?!? Or did she just mention them to prove, once a crook, always a crook?

Are these the only American stories available to publishers today? If books were judged based on ethical standards of quality and content, could publishers be implicated for fraud? Celebrity autobiographies, lying memoirs, and trashy publications of all stripes have, for more than a generation now, been sold to the buyer as bona fide literature. If these books had been cars, they would have been recalled. But because there are no acceptable standards in publishing, the industry has not been made accountable. If faced with lawsuits, retractions are made and legal funds are established to be dispersed as needed. All the while, the presses keep running and the profits continue. This violation of ethical principles has occurred on so many occasions that readers no longer have expectations of truth or excellence. Trashy tales, celebrity biographies, and lying memoirs are the norm. What other industry could so brazenly engage in fraud? Publishers have defamed books in their greed to meet the exigencies of the bottom line. Fifty years ago, who would have believed they could sink so low. And we have the audacity to wonder why readership has declined?

So...what she's saying is, the Great American Novel cannot find a publisher because all the corporate-conglomerate publishers want is trashy celebrity biographies full of smut and lies, sold as fact?

I don't follow. What the hell do celebrity "bios" and nonfiction-that-isn't-nonfiction have to do with the likelihood of getting a decent novel published?

And I can't help but feel that her idea of the Great American Novel is something that is clean, wholesome and uplifting in her eyes--you know, like Pilgrim's Progress or something. I hardly see her looking for the next Hemingway, Fitzgerald or Faulkner.

[Hannah Bell]

10. ooh, i missed that in my skim. non-literary agenda there, it seems.

[pnwmom]

20. Great analysis. Yes, this writer has an agenda. Among other things,

the writer is discounting all young authors who are trying to write the "great American novel" from a multicultural perspective. No wonder she thinks there are so few.

[EFerrari]

32. The writing is uneven and she doesn't seem to be very in control

of her own signifying, lol.

Her larger point seems to be that media consolidation homogenizes literary product and then she gets into trouble trying to describe how that works. She sounds like a grad student who has large amounts of undigested criticism under her, um, belt. For example, she isn't trying to say American exceptionalism but quintessential American work. But, somewhere she read about "essentializing" and tried to get around that with the term "exceptionalism".

Similarly, she doesn't really mean that virtue is feminine or that multiculturalism is sanctimonious but her descriptors run away with her sentences.

[pnwmom]

38. How do we know she means anything other than what she says?

I take her words at face value -- she probably does believe in American exceptionalism, doesn't believe in multiculturalism, and doesn't consider most women writers to be capable of the "great American novel."

[EFerrari]

39. Because words don't have face value, they are part of a system of meaning.

For example, where does she say she doesn't believe in multiculturalism? Look at the sentence and see if you can really pin down that's what she means.

ETA: The literal meaning of a word is only a fragment of the meaning of the whole -- that would be a better way to say it.

[pnwmom]

40. I don't think this sentence is so hard to understand.

"Innovation has been replaced almost entirely with feminized "virtue" or sanctimonious multiculturalism devoid of truth or excellence."

Clearly, she doesn't think the trend toward "multiculturalism" is a good thing.

[EFerrari]

42. Well, she implies "sanctimonious multiculturalism" isn't a good thing.

Did she mean all multiculturalism? Did she mean some that is sanctimonious? We don't really know and part of the reason we don't know is because she's not a very good writer. A good writer would never just drop a term like that without clarifying the ambiguity UNLESS that ambiguity was intentional and purposeful.

If you check out the rest of the essay, many of her sentences do the same thing. It's grad writing on skates.

Eta: Lol! She got me right into Geek mode. :)

[Zhade]

66. Which makes her an uninformed idiot.

NT!

[hfojvt]

48. I wondered myself why she thought "For Whom the Bells Tolls"

was anything but a pile of dreck. The world needs another Hemingway about as much as it needs another nuclear waste dump.

[pnwmom]

61. Hah! I'm not a big Hemingway fan either.

Ever since I had to read "The Old Man and the Sea" in 6th grade.

:)

[taterguy]

11. You obviously haven't read John Hodgman's latest book

:eyes:

[Joe Fields]

13. I want to say that you are absolutely correct.

I am a fiction writer and have written two novels, neither of which generated the slightest bit of interest in the publishing world. Unless you are a celebrity, or a politician who is willing to give the inside skinny on Washington, you have very little chance to be published. Oh, I left one other possibility out. If you happen to know someone of influence in the publishing world, you might get your fiction published.

I was not going to be denied, and so I went the way of self-publishing. I have a book being published through a subsidiary of Amazon.com, which will be on the shelves before Christmas.

[Terran]

43. Book publishing has always been like that.

It's like trying to sell paintings or any other art: somewhere your work has to catch someone's attention, and in publishing at the big companies they spend very little time reading submissions. If you don't grab them immediately or have a 'product' that they know for sure will sell, you're basically working with a crap shoot.

I don't know what you've written, but you might have beter luck working in a genre if you're not already.

[saltpoint]

14. I'm yet to hear criteria for what would constitute a Great American Novel.

You could make a case for a lot of American fiction as great.

A work that rises to the level of reflecting comprehensive cultural themes usually does so through inadvertence. Mailer set out to write that work and IMO failed.

Jimmy Webb's "Galveston" is one of the most powerful anti-war songs ever and "Vietnam" is not mentioned once except through indirection and indirect context.

Melville's MOBY-DICK is a giant of a novel but in it a ship sails as far away from America as possible.

We've only been around for a couple hundred years or so. Our culture hasn't really grown up. We still are electing morons to the White House (witness Reagan/Bush/Bush) and we like gas-sucking cars and gadgetry. We are spiritually prepubescent.

Faulkner's THE REIVERS is an under-rated novel as much about the America of its time as one could ask. Whorehouses are referenced. Bigotry is exposed.

I don't count Joan Didion's birthdays so much as I count the sentences she's written that I love. BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER is a contender for one of the best novels ever but it is a far larger 'America' involved than just the 50 states. It's a hemispheric American work.

Larry McMurtry is invaluable in a discussion of great fiction because his novels take quotidian detail and convert it to (secular) spiritual athem. In THE LAST PICTURE SHOW I felt the author rattling the walls of every town library.

And Twain gave us Huck Finn, a 14-year old when the novel begins. Mailer called the novel "a circus of fictional virtuosities," but it is even better than that. Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN contends for our best book because it lays bare the things we are doing wrong and sides with the exile. It's powerful because the exiles --Jim because of his socio-political status and Huck because he is a vagabond and heathen -- stand against the unexamined life of the town. When Huck lies to the slavers to save Jim on the river, there's no question that a law is broken and that a lie has been told, and there's no question either that the law was abominably cruel and therefore the lie was sacred and good.

[bunkerbuster1]

35. Philip Roth's, um, The Great American Novel is a good place to look

Ok, it's not THE Great American Novel but it's pretty damn funny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_American_Novel_(Roth)

[saltpoint]

68. Agree -- Roth is a marvel. The short stories and the novels both.

[bunkerbuster1]

69. He is a marvel. I really need to catch up...

it's been ages since I read his stuff, and the reviews (particularly of The Plot Against America) have whetted my appetite time and again. It's always about the time to curl up with a nonfiction book, for me.

[saltpoint]

72. THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA is mighty fine stuff.

It got kicked around here on DU's boards but several folks rose to defend it.

IMO, it is worth every turn of the page.

[saltpoint]

15. I have a soft spot for Don DeLillo's LIBRA.

And for Gore Vidal's LINCOLN.

And for John Irving's A PRAYER FOR OWNE MEANY.

[HamdenRice]

16. Probably an even more important reason: High rents in NY, LA and Chicago

To write a really good novel, the kind the masters wrote, a novelist needs time to be marginally employed or unemployed, to focus obsessively on the writing.

When you could flop in Greenwich Village in Manhattan for $15 per month, that was possible.

Now most writers with "ambitious" subject matter have to support themselves as college professors, where they tend to be influenced by academic trends, which means they make themselves irrelevant to the average reader.

[pnwmom]

22. You don't need to live in a major city to write a novel.

There are basement apartments and patient parents everywhere.

[jane_pippin]

17. From a bookseller's perspective, literary fiction can be a hard sell.

(I'm a bookseller)

We see a lot of great literary fiction come in--and a lot of utterly awful attempts at literary fiction too. When we come across a really great work, we do try to make a big deal of it and sell it to our customers, but it's really tough. A lot of people aren't willing to take a chance on something new. Case in point, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

When it first came out we had displays up, bookseller recs, featured it in newsletters, etc. But it just didn't sell much. Then it won the Pulitzer. Now it's doing much better but it's still not selling like hotcakes either.

I'm not sure why it's so tough, but I think part of it is that as I said, people are nervous about making that time investment in someone they've never heard of so they stick to what they know for the most part, or what has won awards or chosen by Oprah as it has been declared Good! by people in the know.

Publishing/bookselling is a tough business all around.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

[pnwmom]

26. It must be especially hard to sell a book that, according to the OP,

is both literary and popular -- and yet also exclude every author promoted by the Oprah book club!

[jane_pippin]

31. Eh, it's hard to sell any book these days. And I don't think Oprah is a stamp of shame.

She does pick some good books--The Road, and Beloved for instance.

I work for an indie bookshop so it's probably a little easier in some respects for us to sell "unknown" authors since our customers do trust our recommendations and come to us for new finds. But even our most loyal customers aren't always the most adventurous readers.

I must admit, I was rushing to get to work so didn't read the OP extremely carefully and I haven't followed the link yet, so if I'm misunderstanding you I apologize. :) But if it's popular, it wouldn't be hard to sell it. The trick is, how do you make it popular in the first place? Actually one good example is from a few years ago, the book Water for Elephants. It really got huge because booksellers got advance copies and loved it, so when it came out they talked it up, got book clubs to read it and it just took off. Now, I don't know that I consider that book insanely literary, but it's not like it's a Danielle Steel book either.

I'm trying to think of a recent popular literary book, non oprah-fied...so far all that comes to mind is The TIme Traveler's Wife, Unaccustomed Earth, and maybe Bel Canto counts as literary.

Anyway, I'm rambling and need to get back to work...selling copies of YOU: BEING BEAUTIFUL and Clive Cussler and so forth. :)

[pnwmom]

37. I was responding to someone else's discounting "The Corrections"

simply because Oprah selected it. For the OP to say that a "great American novel" must be popular and THEN to say she wouldn't read a book if Oprah recommended it, makes no sense to me.

I agree with you -- Oprah has chosen a number of books that I've enjoyed. I remember hearing about her club and thinking she should pick "Stones from the River" -- and the next thing I knew, she did!

[jane_pippin]

44. Ah, gotcha. nt

[mitchum]

71. But that over hyped twit Franzen also tried to distance himself from the "Oprah book club"...

I assume that he thought it smacked too much of the middlebrow.
Johnny, you ARE middlebrow.

[EFerrari]

29. I just saw the documentary "Paperback Dreams" and it was depressing.

About Cody's and Kepler's, two institutions I grew up with, going under.

I don't see how any independents stay open at all. :(

[jane_pippin]

34. It's sad, isn't it? It's really, really hard.

Especially with Amazon, big box places, and people not having any money anymore in general. I can't blame people for wanting to save money, and small places often have a hard time competing on price, but then when indies do go out of business it seems like people can't get why it happened and all of a sudden everyone laments the loss of their precious bookshop. In fact, an indie in my neighborhood is closing at the end of the year, and the community is so sad about it, but I'd walk past it all the time and never see anybody in there.

I'll check out that movie--it sounds interesting. Horribly depressing, but interesting.

[EFerrari]

36. There are some lovely and inspiring parts, too.

The history of these stores -- which pretty much begins with the birth of the paperback. The way one store inspired the other, the way both are connected to the Free Speech Movement. Mario Savio worked at Cody's for a while, it turns out. Lots of great footage.

I'm always going to be mad that the business changed so dramatically just when I wanted to develop a store myself. As far as I can tell, I would have done fine and then gone broke about ten years ago. Sheesh!

[Terran]

41. Cody's?? In Berkeley? That Cody's???

is going under?? Nooooooo!

[EFerrari]

45. The Telegraph store has been gone a long time. The SF store, ditto.

:(

[Terran]

46. Oh my god, how horrible.

I moved away from the Bay Area in '94 and haven't visited since. Cody's was a block away from where I lived for years in Berkeley. Oh damn damn damn.

[EFerrari]

47. I moved the same year, Albany to SF.

I'm now afraid to find out if Black Oak is still there. Good grief -- Berkeley without book stores? :wtf:

[Terran]

56. I wonder about the other two big stores on Telegraph

near the campus--Moe's and Shakespeare's? Or maybe they disappeared long since. I was there 1977-1983, so it's been a long time.

[PufPuf23]

60. OMG Codys and Keplers So sad. ;o(

I have not been to Berkeley since 1999 (the longest stint in my life) but lived nearby (Danville)for elementary and part of HS and visited frequently, worked there for the feds, and have two degrees from Cal in 3 stints over two decades.

I have been a bookstore junky since the first time such a temple was entered as a child. The libraries and many bookstores of Berkeley were places to chill out from grade school to a young adult professional 65-87.

[liberalhistorian]

21. Oh, please. Every single generation goes through

its version of "OMG, we no longer have any great writers or novels, it's all crap unlike the purity of what went before, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, what to do, what to do!!!" :eyes:

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Dos Passos all had to hear that shit when they first began submitting their own work. I'm sure Shakespeare even heard a version of it.

I'm the daughter of two English teachers who was also surrounded by English professors and teachers growing up. I'm well aware that there's a lot of shit out there masquerading as good writing, and that publishers push the fluff at the expense of the worthy material in the name of making big bucks. But guess what? It's ALWAYS been that way! But there's also still a lot of great stuff that will become as timeless in future generations as those that are now classics in ours. Louise Erdrich and Margaret Atwood being just two of many.

[pnwmom]

25. I agree. And since a timeless novel is one that has withstood the test of time

a young novelist by definition cannot have produced such a work.

[EFerrari]

30. This article is about media consolidation, not purity. ETA:

Actually, the writing is so out of control in this essay, it's difficult to pin down what this author is really getting to. But I don't believe it's purity as much as it is anti-consolidation, and necessarily, anti-formula.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. I think that a lot of fine writers have turned to genre fiction as a way

of getting their work published.

There are some really fine writers working in mystery/crime fiction, and even graphic novels, at least as they have developed in Japan, often deal with serious issues, although in a new way. The best mysteries and graphic novels say things about American society--political corruption, economic exploitation, discrimination, family issues--that non-fiction popular media rarely mention.

In both these genres, it's hard to get bogged down in pretentious pseudo-sophistication. You have to keep the plot moving and the characters interesting, or else the book will flop.

Now some genre writers jump the shark and get stuck in a rut. But there are always new writers coming along.

I suspect that much the same is true of science fiction, but I haven't followed that genre since I was in graduate school and knew a couple of people who later became fairly successful sci-fi writers.

[Boojatta]

49. Why did you omit the copyright notice "Copyright © 2008 by Diana E. Sheets"?

[Hannah Bell]

50. Uhh, for the same reason I don't put "copyright, etc." when i quote the 1st paragraph & then link

from any other source, & few other people do either.

Fair use, & the link identifies the source.

Better question: why do you ask?

[Boojatta]

51. Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's recommended.

The original article has a copyright notice near the beginning. Presumably the author prefers it that way, so it would be appropriate to copy it along with what you are cutting and pasting.

Also, your thread will be preserved in the DU archives, but the link may become useless. It's not unusual for the address of a webpage to change.

[Hannah Bell]

55. oh, thank you.

tell everyone else, would you?

[Odin2005]

52. IMO traditional literary forms have become sclerotic, hide-bound, and snob-dominated.

A lot of the good stuff now days is in what literary snobs denigrate as "Genre Fiction," such as Science Fiction. a notable example of a current sci-fi author with a profound social message is Kim Stanley Robinson, one of my favorite authors, mixing hard science and libertarian-socialist political thought.

[Rebubula]

54. Meh

I do not know from art, but I knows what I like.

Not sure where I heard that, but it describes me. I love to read and so as much as I can (spending lot of time getting a startup off the ground) but I am not interested in deep stories and windy prose.

I spend too much time dealing with life's little speed bumps and the normal trials and tribulations of day to day existence to pick up a 1000 page tome about someone else dealing with the same.

Just because Tom Clancy does not rate as high as Truman Capote (on some snobby meter) does not mean that he is a lesser author in my opinion. Why is it that difficult books like Atlas Shrugged or Life of Pi are lauded but wonderful tales like Lovely Bones or works by James Rollins (archeological mysteries) are smirked at?

Sorry...many of us progressives are part of the Jim Beam and NASCAR crowd and that does not make us less intelligent or less educated.

Anyway...off to finish up the latest Clive Cussler and swig some bourbon.

[EFerrari]

57. Why? Because if you lost 9 of 10 of Clancy's novels you wouldn't lose anything

but if you lost 1 of 2 of Capote's, you would lose something.

[pnwmom]

65. I thought The Lovely Bones was very well reviewed.

And it deserved it.

[Book Lover]

58. I will read all of this in more details later, but for now, these 2 quick things:

After the proliferation of the printing press, making books in the West has ALWAYS been about turning a profit. Caxton and de Worde worried about it.

And why is the Great American Novel a genre more worthy than any other of "saving"? If no one is writing or reading it, why pour money and people resources into it over, say, Americana poetry?

More later.

[BlueIris]

59. Yep. I first started noticing this in college, when I got passed the last of the good "modern"

writers. After 1975 or so...nothing, really. With a few exceptions (Cormac McCarthy comes to mind).

[Zhade]

62. "excellence to be found in American exceptionalism?" WHAT excellence?

Has this person not opened their eyes in the past few decades?

[GoneOffShore]

67. Thank goodness she didn't mention Toni Morrison

Who, although winning a Nobel, is possibly the most opaque and boring writer I've ever had the displeasure of trying to read.

Though I would be glad to know if anyone has a method to understanding or getting through one of Ms Morrison's works.