Interesting piece. I worked at Waldenbooks in 1986 during high school. I managed the sci fi section and the back room…loved that job. One day I asked a college student who came in what “literature” I should read. He answered, without missing a beat, Gravity’s Rainbow. I did buy that book and attempt to read it at the time. But it wasn’t until years later when I bought a trade paperback copy of V. (mention in TFA) that I fell in love with Thomas Pynchon’s writing. Now I can’t get through it too easily but perhaps that is my declining attention span. It may not have aged well for me.
But over the years, as I go into a bookstore, I find myself wondering where to go for something like a copy of Cat’s Cradle, vs. the newest murder mystery. They are the same now. Nice to learn some of the underlying factors. Also, isn’t the Literary Fiction label just another marketing device, albeit now less useful, used to sell books.
Anyhow, I cribbed this from the article. Will go and read the authors here I haven’t seen before.
Grove Atlantic and New Directions, revivified in the 1990s under new editors, enjoy profitable backlists and the cushion of private capital. Archipelago, Arte Público, Deep Vellum, Graywolf, Hub City, Milkweed, Sarabande, and Transit sustain themselves as nonprofits with funding from foundations, governments, and individual donors. These houses publish such notable writers as Jeffery Renard Allen, Jesse Ball, Helen DeWitt, Peter Dimock, Daša Drndić, Percival Everett, Jon Fosse, Lucy Ives, Sergio Pitol, Carter Sickels, Yoko Tawada, and Can Xue, whose books keep alive wilder visions of what literature can be. They’re not commercial. They’re aesthetically ambitious. Just don’t call them “literary fiction.”
I want to do a long piece on what I have been reading (because it’s fun stuff) but until then here’s one I will be reading soon. Sing unburied sing is a quite extraordinarily great book.
Reading a Terry Pratchett book is literally just:
Here’s a funny little joke
Here’s something that you can tell is a joke but don’t get and will only figure out five years later
Here’s a surprisingly cool fantasy concept
Here’s a unique and well written simile
Here’s a lil guy
Here’s something that has aged depressingly well into the modern day
Here’s something that has aged remarkably queer into the modern day
Here’s a character that you can barely understand what he’s saying
Here is the most terrifying and deeply disturbing concept you have ever heard, casually mentioned
Here is the dumbest fucking pun you’ve ever heard but in the best way
Here is a quote so profound that it makes you view morality and the world in a different way
Here is a plot twist that you can’t tell if it’s genius or stupid
Congratulations! You’ve finished the book! It has fundamentally changed you as a person and you will never be the same!
There’s a new book out, Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, arguing that what it means to be an author has changed over the last several decades due to the conglomeration of publishers. Essentially, due to his publishers view the risk versus reward of stories they select as well as the number of hands works need to pass through before publication, there’s a homogenization that’s been occurring. And by that alone I say there’s a strong likelihood of that happening – as well as the fact that most people at the companies as well as those selected to sell books tend to be white males.
There’s apparently a very odd suggestion in the book that Toni Morrison took advantage of trends in the market with Beloved. She incorporated horror at a time when that was popular. I don’t know how I feel about that. It adds a cynical tinge to her work on the book that is so far not supported.
Despite that, I still want to check the book out. The New Yorker’s review has me interested.
I don’t either. She wasn’t one to jump onto marketing trends, not to mention that the novel really wouldn’t resonate with most horror fans. OTOH, that book did make me wonder for at least a bit about its echoes of the “magical realism” that was popular back then.
The Mushroom at the End of the World is a great book. It is, in an optimistic vein, about so much more than a highly prized mushroom, including how we might live amidst the ruins of neoliberal capitalism.
I really like how Scalzi kept Jamie’s gender ambiguous.
I also really enjoyed Starter Villain. Though I’m honestly not sure how much the cats involved may have influenced how much I like it. I’m a sucker for cats
To reconnect to the first post in this thread, I’m now reading the last October Daye novel - the same events of the previous one, narrated from the perspective of another character. Lovely, as usual. I read more or less anything she writes, still not tired.
At the same time* I’m reading the new, third, book of a friend of mine - he’s a keen observer of human nature, politic (in its pure sense, not party squabbling) and social issues, and always worth discussing with.
I loved his first two books, and I’m sure I’ll love this one too.
Only Italian, but here it is anyway, if anyone is interested:
“The voices of demons”, probably also on Amazon.
*I often happen to read more than one book, usually one lighter and one more thought provoking or informative.
