The Death of Fiction?
Lit mags were once launching pads for great writers and big ideas. Is it time to write them off?
IT'S INEVITABLE. At a dinner party or on the sidelines of my son's soccer game, someone well-meaning will ask what I do. "I edit the Virginia Quarterly Review," I tell them. "It's the literary magazine at the University of Virginia." They nod politely, sometimes with the vaguest hint of recognition. Yes, they remember seeing in the local paper that we've won some big awards, right? It's well respected, isn't it? But the idea of editing a literary magazine seems, to them, only slightly more utilitarian than making buggy whips or telegraph relays. It's the sort of arcane craft they assumed was kept alive only by a lost order of nuns in a remote mountain convent or by the Amish in some print shop in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
And, soon enough, that may be where it winds up. After more than a century of founding and subsidizing literary magazines as a vital part of their educational missions, colleges and universities have begun off-loading their publications, citing overburdened budgets and dwindling readership. Despite the potentially disastrous consequences to the landscape of literature and ideas, it's increasingly hard to argue against. Once strongholds of literature and learned discussion in our country, university-based quarterlies have seen steadily declining subscriber bases since their heyday a half-century ago—and an even greater dent in their cultural relevance.
Consider this: When Wilbur Cross was elected governor of Connecticut in 1930, an unlikely Democratic victor in an overwhelmingly Republican state, his principal qualification was his nearly 20 years as editor of Yale Review. Indeed, Cross essentially invented the modern quarterly when he reshaped the sleepy review to more closely mirror The Atlantic in its discussion of current events alongside literature and criticism. While preparing to take office, he was in correspondence with Aldous Huxley, Sherwood Anderson, and Maxim Gorky about their contributions to the next issue. In fact, through four successive terms, Cross never left the helm of Yale Review—publishing John Maynard Keynes on microeconomics and Thomas Mann on the threat of Nazism—at the same time he was pushing back against legislated morality (such as Prohibition) and enacting tougher child-labor restrictions. When the New York Times asked how he found time to read manuscripts and review proofs while performing his responsibilities as governor, Cross deadpanned, "By getting up early in the morning."
Easy for him to say. Back in the 1930s, magazines like the Yale Review or VQR saw maybe 500 submissions in a year; today, we receive more like 15,000. This is due partly to a shift in our culture from a society that believed in hierarchy to one that believes in a level playing field. This is good—to a point. The reality is that not everyone can be a doctor, not everyone can be a professional athlete, and not everyone can be a writer. You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can't express your individuality in sterling prose, I don't want to read about it.
But in academia, supply is decoupled from demand. Beginning in Cross' time and accelerating after World War II and the GI Bill, universities broadened their curricula to include what they called "creative writing." Harvard, Yale, and Princeton began offering undergraduate writing courses. The University of Iowa proffered a Master of Fine Arts program, and its graduates went on to teach the next generation at Iowa or, more often, started other MFA programs—often founding a companion literary magazine at which students could work, learning the art of editing.
By the 1950s, young writers could apply to a dozen creative writing programs; the Beats could publish in Chicago Review, experimental writers in Black Mountain Review, internationalist writers in TriQuarterly, young Southern writers in Georgia Review and Shenandoah. All on the university dime. By the early '70s—and with the development of inexpensive offset printing—every school seemed to have its own quarterly. Before long, the combined forces of identity politics and cheap desktop publishing gave rise to African American journals, Asian American journals, gay and lesbian journals. Graduates of creative writing programs were multiplying like tribbles. Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this for a moment: If those programs admit even 5 to 10 new students per year, then they will cumulatively produce some 60,000 new writers in the coming decade. Yet the average literary magazine now prints fewer than 1,500 copies. In short, no one is reading all this newly produced literature—not even the writers themselves. And with that in mind, writers have become less and less interested in reaching out to readers—and less and less encouraged by their teachers to try.
Little wonder then that the last decade has seen ever-dwindling commercial venues for literary writers. Just 17 years ago, you could find fiction in the pages of national magazines like The Atlantic, Elle, Esquire, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, GQ, McCall's, Mother Jones, Ms., Playboy, Redbook, and Seventeen, and in city magazines and Sunday editions like the Boston Globe Magazine, Chicago, and the Voice Literary Supplement. Not one of these venues (those that still exist) still publishes fiction on a regular basis. Oh, sure, The Atlantic still has an annual fiction issue (sold on newsstands but not sent to subscribers), and Esquire runs fiction online if it's less than 4,000 words. But only Harper's and The New Yorker have remained committed to the short story.
One would think that the rapid eviction of literature from the pages of commercial magazines would have come as a tremendous boon to lit mags, especially at the schools that have become safe harbors for (and de facto patrons of) writers whose works don't sell enough to generate an income. You would expect that the loyal readers of established writers would have provided a boost in circulation to these little magazines and that universities would have seen themselves in a new light—not just promoting the enjoyment of literature but promulgating a new era of socially conscious writing in the postcommercial age. But the less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion. Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism.
In the midst of a war on two fronts, there has been hardly a ripple in American fiction. With the exception of a few execrable screeds—like Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint (which revealed just how completely postmodernism has painted itself into a corner)—novelists and story writers alike have largely ignored the wars. Even our poets, the supposed deliverers of "news that stays news," have been comparatively mum; Brian Turner is the only major poet to yet emerge from Iraq. In this vacuum, nonfiction has experienced a renaissance, and the publishing industry—already geared toward marketing tell-all memoirs and sweeping histories—has seized upon the eyewitness remembrances of combatants and the epic military accounts of journalists. That, combined with the blockbuster mentality of book publishing in the age of corporate conglomeration (to the point of nearly exterminating the midlist), has conspired to squash the market for new fiction.
All of which has left too many university presidents, already in search of cuts for short-term gain, eyeing their presses and literary magazines and wondering who will miss them if they're gone. Unfortunately, some of the journals to feel the earliest and severest impact are also some of the best. Louisiana State University cut more than 20 percent of Southern Review's budget. Middlebury College has given New England Review two years to break even or face elimination. Most catastrophic thus far, Northwestern University is moving TriQuarterly online and terminating the current editors—including poet Susan Hahn, who has been with the magazine for 30 of its 45 years. The TriQuarterly has consistently published seminal writers in almost every genre, yet that track record was not enough to save it from the ax.
To pull out of this tailspin, writers and their patrons both will have to make some necessary changes—and quick. With so many newspapers and magazines closing, with so many commercial publishers looking to nonprofit models, a few bold university presidents could save American literature, reshape journalism, and maybe even rescue public discourse from the cable shout shows and the blogosphere. At the same time, young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers. I'm not calling for more pundits—God knows we've got plenty. I'm saying that writers need to venture out from under the protective wing of academia, to put themselves and their work on the line. Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read.
Comments
The Death of Fiction
It's true. The Lit Mags with a track record are going and umpteen little new ones are springing up. Meanwhile MFA's in creative writing are being churned out by the thousands. One view would hold that the venerable mags deserve this because so many have been publishing naught but (often well-written, but ultimately, so what?)
extreme and morbid navel gazing for some time now. So it should be exciting that all these new little presses are popping up. In a few cases, it IS exciting but in most, it's pretty much wtf? On this last, the problem seems to be the thousands of newly-minted MFA's. Most of these folks, and I say this with love and a lot of worry, have indebted themselves for $50,000 or more and emerged with only the shakiest grasp of the English language. I keep wondering how this is possible. Nor is the writing they produce any more interesting than what they are replacing. Most of it is emotionally and socially juvenile and desperate for attention...any kind of attention. It is also conformist in the sense that the bulk of it strikes much the same smart aleck childish tone, is endlessly self-referential and self congratulatory and speaks from a politics of fashion with no real analysis. But first and foremost, it is very badly written: Bad grammar, shaky syntax, poor usage, no ear for anything and loaded with misheard and misspelled stock phrases. This is especially concerning
as these folks will never earn dime one writing and so are living from teaching a whole new generation how to get it all wrong. *sigh*
I was moved to a mix of
I was moved to a mix of laughter and cringes when I read the moving appeal for literature by the editor of a literary magazine who advocates "sterling prose." Mr. Genoways's prose splits infinitives as if this was not an abomination against the English language; a descent toward the lowest common denominator.
"... reshaped the sleepy review to more closely mirror ..." is BAD. But the following is one of the worst I have ever read: "... the only major poet to yet emerge from Iraq." This sends a cold chill down my spine.
Maybe these literary journals will not be as badly missed by people who appreciate good English as Mr. Genoways would like to in the end have us believe. (See, I can split them, too. Now I must wash my hands with lots of soap.)
I think you have missed the
I think you have missed the point of the article, which pointed up the fact that instead of paying attention to compelling subject matter writers think they're terribly clever if they can point out split infinitives, passive voice (usually incorrectly labelled), or some other carefully crafted description of nothing at all.
Please do begin by washing your hands with soap, and continue from there.
Can we just end this pedantic little canard once and for all?
Use of the split infinitive in English is in no way an "abomination against the language." Find me a single current accepted style guide that disagrees, other than to note that writers may wish to avoid the practice in order to avoid having to deal with objections from pedants, that last note exemplified in the Columbia Guide to Standard American English.
Objections to split infinitives in English are useful in that they inform the reader that the objector can safely be disregarded on matters literary and grammatical, but they otherwise serve no public good.
Further to the previous
Further to the previous denunciations of the pretentious point about split infinitives, I'd like to point out that there is no rule in English which forbids, or even describes the 'splitting of the infinitive". Indeed, whether the 'to' is part of the infinitive at all is a controversy amongst grammarians. The objection to the practice is a purely stylistic one and those who rail against the split infinitive as a grammatical error cannot even be said to be pedants, they are simply ignorant of English grammar.
Not everyone gets a trophy...
"The reality is that not everyone can be a doctor, not everyone can be a professional athlete, and not everyone can be a writer. You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can't express your individuality in sterling prose, I don't want to read about it."
This sums up why I rarely read blogs and I'm somewhat fed-up with a wanna-be writer friend of mine. His mantra is: "I live an interesting life... the journey is the important thing." Yet he's over 30 and still lives at home with his parents. His "journey" is a journey to nowhere, yet that's what he wants to write about. I read it only because he's my friend. I can't imagine why anyone else would...
I think literature has long
I think literature has long been about "navel gazing," as you put it. One only needs to read Henry James or Thomas Mann to see how deep the gaze has historically traveled. The fundamental difference between today's writers and writers from fifty or sixty years ago, then, seems not to be a focus on the internal life, but a terrible lack of talent. One reason could be that people don't read nearly as often as they used to, and when they do read, as any attentive personal study of the big chain bookstores would likely show, they tend to gravitate towards either crap or the classics. And, we wonder, why? Well, crap seems to dominate what is published today. Those with literary inclinations (at least outside of the collegiate literary scenes, where a few cultish middle-aged writers dominate) are forced, essentially, to read the books of the more distant past because the books of the present -- I say this only from my personal experience -- are mostly predictable, often hackneyed, garbage. Undoubtedly, many smart, creative people -- people who would have, in the past, been Mark Twains or Dawn Powells -- see no future in literature. They see only the bloated corpse of a failed tradition. So, they naturally and smartly move on, becoming stand-up comedians, musicians, or going into film. And can we blame them? Literature is just one of many American traditions that has been impoverished by this last "great" generation of Americans. We can hope, and I certainly hope, that the younger generations repair -- if they even can; if the damage is not already too great -- our culture. Otherwise, it seems we may be entering a sort of secular dark age, with the masses of new writers becoming like monks, funneling their energies in futility into books only other monks, and only a few of those other monks, will read. It should be a personal shame that we have failed our ancestors such, and we have no where to hide from it; we have no excuses. Other nations have navigated modernity and maintained their culture -- look at the French, who still obsess as much as always over their novelists, or look at Eastern Europe and the explosion of literature that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Anglophone world, and America specifically, has become one fundamentally bankrupted by our own excesses and artistic illiteracy. We have abandoned the book and replaced it with the twin sins of stupidity and commercialism; we have metamorphosed from the bookish Israelites into crude Philistines. There, that is my rant; I'm finished.
Quickly written thoughts on literary publishing,etc.
Have you read Boris Sidis's Philistine and Genius? Though it's not on literary magazines or the like, it's an interesting read. Though it was originally published in 1911, there are ideas still applicable to education in the 21st century. It (the book) came to mind because you commented on a kind of "cultural declension" (my words) in America.
Also, I wonder if "decentralization" or "devolve" are more apt words than "globalization." These and other words certainly have applicability in the literary and publishing world(s). While I don't imagine there will be a dissolution or full subversion (I'm being mostly humorous) of particular business hierarchies in the foreseeable future, the business world has and will change. I have quite a bit to say on this and related topics, but a) I'm typing on a BB and b) I don't have pretensions to prodigious knowledge... But with the rise or increase of *mass* self-publishing, literary quality and standards shall suffer - perhaps it's formative or transitional "growing pains."
Oh, and the Gutenberg printing press could be considered the 15th century internet. Just a reminder to the naysayers, luddites and dinosaurs. Of course, with that typed, I realize people fall prey to the defending, rationalizing, romanticizing, and idealizing of music, technology, toys and ideas from "our" time, era, country, etc.
Your comment has belched me
Your comment has belched me out of bed - into my slippers and back to my typewriter. Back to work on my book. Thank you.
Your comment has belched me
Your comment has belched me out of bed - into my slippers, and back to my typewriter. Back to work on my book. Thank you.
Sorry, but I cannot dwell on
Sorry, but I cannot dwell on the bitterness this comment is drenched in.
It is true that the demise of literature review types of publications is dealing a death blow of sorts to literature. But the death’s blow is not to all of literature, only to cutting edge stuff. The avant-garde work that drives literature into new realms and introduces new styles and methods into the main stream of literary thought is what is really suffering here. It’s sad that this is the path literature is taking now. It isn’t killing it; it is only serving to restrict one major avenue of introducing change. New thought is still finding its way into literature. That is what is happening with rap music. It is following new poetic methodology. So innovation is not really being eliminated. It is merely being restricted by eliminating one avenue that used to be open to new, budding writers and poets.
It is…profound!
Don’t you think?
I think literature has long
Sorry, but I cannot dwell on the bitterness this comment is drenched in.
It is true that the demise of literature review types of publications is dealing a death blow of sorts to literature. But the death’s blow is not to all of literature, only to cutting edge stuff. The Avant Guard work that drives literature into new realms and introduces new styles and methods into the main stream of literary thought is what is really suffering here. It’s sad that this is the path literature is taking now. It isn’t killing it; it is only serving to restrict one major avenue of introducing change. New thought is still finding its way into literature. That is what is happening with rap music. It is following new poetic methodology. So innovation is not really being eliminated. It is being restricted by eliminating one avenue that used to be open to new, budding writers and poets.
It is…profound!
Don’t you think?
Electronics
I've wondered for a while if the new electronic readers could offer a new source for publication of short stories. A lot of reading now takes place on airplanes, subways, whatever, where the time is relatively short, but can be quite boring.
If Amazon or whomever could "unpack" short story collections or just publish from individual writers a single short story and sell it for their electronic readers at a price much less than for their book-length offerings. You've got a five hour flight, download a couple of short stories for $2.99 each, whatever, and you can enjoy this empty time, and not have to wonder where you'll find the time to finish the novel.
I think this could rejuvenate the short story and would coincide with our shorter attention spans developed from TV and the Internet.
An Unpublished Fiction Writer
The Atlantic on Kindle
After I wrote this article (but before it appeared), The Atlantic announced that they were going to begin selling short stories for the Kindle for $3.99 per story. VQR's esteemed book blogger Jacob Silverman took a careful look at that new model here:
http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/12/11/kindle-short-stories/
Ultimately, he comes to the conclusion that such new ideas are important as experiments, but thus far they represent a far less efficient and effective means of delivering stories to readers.
I mean, if you want a story per month delivered to you, you could just subscribe to One Story:
It's thin, paper format is inexpensive, light-weight, and you can jam it into your briefcase without worrying about breaking it.
Serializations
What about literary/ story "serializations" for e-readers?
Remember that Charles Dickens, et al., were "serial authors."
Short Stories in a PDF Literary Quarterly
Richard, I welcome you to read online / download the two complimentary issues of Cantaraville, a PDF-exclusive literary quarterly: Winter http://snurl.com/canwi and Summer http://snurl.com. In our complimentary issues: Cory Doctorow; Emmy Award-winning comedian-author Buzz Belmondo; actor-author Stephen Tobolowsky; director-author Stephen Gyllenhaal; and underground comix legend Trina Robbins, among others. And that's just in our two special free issues. In our regular issues you can find, among others, Hugo Award-winner John Grant; Randy Nelson; Yelena Dubrovin; Clifford Irving; and Tessa Dick, whose memoir of life with her late husband, Philip K. Dick, is in Cantaraville Seven. For more information, go to http://cantaraville.com.
Would you like fries with
Would you like fries with that?
Whoever Anonymous Is, I'm in love with you.....
The whining is profound. The sound and the lightning, all the fiercest clamoring of the dying breed confounds all sense. I am left to kiss their plastic hands, and bow to their wax statues.
The academic literary magazines are dying! Is this news? Most of them have been dead for at least two decades, but who is counting? Perhaps the much more interesting question is: How can you tell that an academic literary magazine is dead?
First, check for a pulse.
Is the writing truly alive, or is it just a politicized mockery of real life and feeling? (Most college and university lit mags fail this one.)
Second, is it breathing?
Does the writing result in a give and take between writer and reader? (I cannot recall the last time I read anything in an academic lit mag that touched my heart or inspired my intellect. I have, however, often felt cheated by promising titles and subjects that induced me to read --or at least begin reading---drivel.)
Third, absent the first two, is there brain activity?
Does the writing---even if it is stilted and self-absorbed---nonetheless deliver something that the reader needs to consider? (Even if a story truly sucks, it is sometimes possible for it to deliver a worthwhile poke in the ribs to the reader.)
Fourth, even if it fails all three of the above tests, is it funny?
True, too many academic lit magazines would not allow this final saving grace, but if they did, it might breathe life back into them.
Why don't you suggest that to your literary mag friends? Humor might save them.
Cultivation of audience
The problem, as Ted identifies above, is that we have become balkanized by the audience we hope to sell to.
People read what they feel confirms their view of the world.
They don't care if it's truthful.
With our society so amazingly divided, we know we need to find an audience that supports our ideas -- and in anything sponsored by academia, the Marxist left and "uplifting" dogmas hold sway over everything else.
Maybe as George Saunders suggests, we need to leave our ideological ghetto and start tolerating a wider range of well-expressed ideas.
"to yet emerge"? For shame.
"to yet emerge"?
For shame. What was that about "sterling prose"?
Literary Magazine Renaissance
Mother Jones & Ted Genoways:
Though I very much respect Mr. Genoways for what he has done with VQR---it's a great magazine that publishes some great writing---and also thank him for writing the above, for looking closely at what is going on in literary publishing, I think there are some things missing in his overall argument I would like to mention. For one, as more writers are writing now and more people are publishing now than ever before (thanks to Apple, Adode, the Internet, etc), we can assume then that there would be more bad writing. And there probably is. But there is also much more good, quality writing and publishing going on.
Also, I think that the "golden age" argument is a bit untrue--for instance, the idea alluded to above that writers and editors were better before, writing about and publishing more things we cared about. Sure, the writers we remember are, the ones we still read. But go look through those old lit mags of the early 20th century, the ones in the back rows of the library that are unread and a bit musty. There is a lot of crap there, too. I doubt that the ratio is much different today.
But, as I mentioned--and as Genoways does as well--there is a lot more publishing going on now thanks to access to publishing technologies being easier to obtain, but also thanks to the many schools in creative writing. The Louis Menand article Genoways references above is about Mark McGurl's book "The Program Era" that looks into the changing landscape of American publishing because of these CW programs. And--unless I totally misread the book--he seems to end it by saying that, thanks to such programs, American writing is only getting better.
Still, on the subject of literary magazines: what about all the great and (I guess) usually non-navel gazing literary magazines that Genoways ignores? Such as Ecotone, Habitus, Triple Canopy, McSweeney's, Black Clock, The Paris Review, Lapham's Quarterly, A Public Space, n+1, Oxford American, Parnassus, PEN America, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, Subtropics---and I could go on. But then: what's wrong with a bit of navel gazing? That's how Philip Roth, John Updike, Proust, and Jean Rhys got and kept my attention all these years. (Now that I think about it, perhaps Genoways's overall point Tom Wolfe's argument, just repackaged for a new millenium. Who knows.)
The thing is, the contemporary moment is not the death of the literary magazine. Quite the contrary. This is an age of abundance for both literary magazines and their readers, of which there are many. There are of course not enough readers for every magazine, not enough to keep each magazine alive. But there never have been. (On average, the life span of lit mags has always been about three years. Some of my favorite Modernist lit mags only lasted an issue or two, if I remember correctly.)
Anyhow, I am glad that someone is writing about literary magazines; I hope Genoways writes more in this line and that Mother Jones published more. Thanks to both. Now: how about the 1,200 or so other literary magazines out there?
All the best,
Travis
Editor, Luna Park
My favorite writers were...
...people like Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, sci-fi guys like Niven, Pournelle, even Jules Verne. People who could dissect a subject like a frog on the table in biology class, detail the inner workings, bring him back to life, and set him loose in a local pond, free to pursue a life of tasty flying insects and basking in the soft spring mud. People that took pains to really work on the descriptive detail, illustrate a scenario or problem, and take the reader on a journey of the mind, instead of for a ride like some mass-production pulp writers.
Another traditional favorite I have is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose work recently became somewhat famous, featuring in the screenplay, "Sherlock Holmes", starring Jude Law, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes, the master detective, whose exploits are the core and substance of the film.
What is it about one story, or another, that captures the imagination, holds it hostage, and releases it only on condition of continued enthrallment in the next exciting chapter? What special magical devices are employed by writers that develop what could even be described as cult followings, such as Mr. Stephen King, whose stories sell, sell, and sell again, several of which have migrated onto the silver screen(scream?) Who are these special storytellers, that can hold a literary audience spellbound, right up until the last page of the last chapter?
Who will be the Next Big Name? Who will pen the blockbusting best-seller of tomorrow, if anyone, or, horror of horrors, have books and stories themselves lost their lustre, their appeal, their previously magnetic allure, giving way to torrents of electronic entertainment, such as 1-chapter feel-good movies, some little more than showcases for the latest in digital special effects, video games, 4,000 channels of junk television, gossip radio, and other light thinking material? Who has the patience to dig into a 1,300 page volume, the free time to follow the plot to its' conclusion, the curiosity and tenacity to stay with a book through highs and lows, twists and turns, until finally, the last page is turned?
Personally, I think the imminent demise of literature, fiction or non, is grossly exaggerated. People grow tired of action movies, video games, game shows, and other forms of instant gratification entertainment. A good book is a great way to pass a slow winter's day, or a long trip, or an evening or a weekend when you'd just rather stay home. Reading broadens the mind, enlivens the imagination, builds vocabulary, and good literature frankly helps to build a better society, by encouraging people to study and share ideas, discover different views, philosophies, perspectives, and promote better general understanding between people(s).
Finally, a slogan, borrowed from a chain e-mail, the other, other, OTHER method of publication: If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you're reading it in English, thank a soldier.
The Death of Actual Fiction ?
On the other hand, fiction is everywhere : storytelling replaced the news, everyone is hiding behind a social networking smokescreen, people have found alternate modes of coping with reality, read without reading.
The death of actual fiction means the death of intelligence. And if universities give up as well, we're doomed.
I read literary magazines,
I read literary magazines, subscribe to them (on and off), browse them in libraries and bookstores (when I find them, which is rare), submit to them, and sometimes (rarely) get published in them.
Here’s a modest theory I’ve held for a number of years about literary magazines:
Imagine that civilization as we know it has finally crumbled, and all that is left for future archeologists and scholars to reassemble the history of the past ten or twenty years in North America is a complete collection of the literary magazines that are currently active. Would those researchers ever discover that the US had engaged in two needless wars that drained its resources and led to its economic demise, that consumption and personal amusement had replaced personal responsibility and citizenship, that willful ignorance had become the norm in political discourse (if that’s even the right word for today’s punditry), that indifference and ignorance and greed and aggressive denial had undermined every effort to address climate change, which was the reason civilization as we know it finally did crumble?
Clearly there’s much political writing on these issues, and I’ve contributed to that too, but isn’t it one role of literature – one of the reasons it is vital – to offer readers the kinds of truth about our existence that op-eds and investigative writing can never approach? Isolated exceptions do appear, but rarely, and for the most part they tend to be the provenance of foreign magazines.
It’s astounding that so many who consider themselves writers and editors can look past all of the drama and conflict and imagery that surrounds them in search of some vague “literariness,” as if what makes something “literary” is purposely to exclude all that is social and political and economic. What would Dickens have left to write about? Or Shakepeare, or Wordsworth, or Homer, or … you get the idea.
But then, maybe these products of so many writing workshops and MFA programs have dramatized in their own way the very faultines upon which we live.
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the art of obscurity
The small literary press has long sought out its smallness. It emerged to publish that work that wouldn’t be published elsewhere, literature without the popular appeal that would warrant substantial publisher investment—in other words, it is by its very design obscure, challenging, and enigmatic. Therefore, a literary journal often relies upon patrons, universities, endowments, grant funding, and other pursuits to fulfill its mission, rather than setting commercial goals and seeking wide readership.
If cultural significance were a factor in the lit journal's survival, it would have been dead on arrival. Ultimately, the journals provide a suggestion of an aesthetic that doesn’t exist in the otherwise noisy and unsightly culture, the printed page a link to a legacy we respect. Fiction and poetry requires a different level of attention than news and biography; major publications eliminating short fiction from their pages seems less a sign that the end is near than an acknowledgment that the weekly/monthly magazine is better suited to conveying information and opinion than it is at engaging the reader in an artful endeavor. The market for new fiction may be declining, but I’m still overwhelmed by the amount of new work available in books and journals (and often new books contain material that originated in journals). The threats to university literary journals may have less to do with a recognition of a sudden irrelevance than a short-sightedness on the part of artless bureaucrats faced with the beautifully slim budgets of “publishing” online. Journalism and art have long relied upon a partnership that may not necessarily be beneficial to either; calling for fiction writers to write more like journalists may not be the solution. The mysterious appeal of poetry and fiction, the romantic nature of the writing and reading of it, the desire to publish your work and the work of others, drives a commitment to the literary journal’s longevity and its quiet role in giving voice to the imagination. -- Timothy Schaffert, online editor, Prairie Schooner.
"literature"
Those with literary inclinations (at least outside of the collegiate literary scenes, where a few cultish middle-aged writers dominate) are forced, essentially, to read the books of the more distant past because the books of the present -- I say this only from my personal experience -- are mostly predictable, often hackneyed, garbage.
______________________________________________________
I agree that much American fiction at the present is way too predictable and trendy. I get sick of reading the same narratives out of the same frames of reference. Even the "outsiders" follow some lame predictable "outsider" path.
It's not that basic human experience differs from age to age. If you read the classics it's clear why they are "classic". It's refreshing to read these timeless stories written with a keen perception of a particular time and place.
I have been reading stories written by authors from any other culture than ours. Even if it's true that what gets translated is what most easily fits in with what's currently being published here, it's a break from the usual.
It's just nice to not deal with the clichéd settings and sentences of American fiction.
I used to read more literary magazines, but I found them becoming just as predictable as the mainstream stuff. ( Must be all those MFA's writing.)
Maybe people no longer believed in the hierarchy - except for just this one literary magazine they were writing for which actually WAS superior. Why else would it cost so much? ( I know, but this is a consumer culture where people equate price with value.)
I can't say I'm too upset that so many people are trying their hand at writing, but I agree that much of this writing would improve if the authors spent more time reading.
When I read classics I recognize that I'm reading what is beyond my ability to write. Thank goodness for that.
I think that new quality fiction will have to eventually show up at a website somewhere and news of it will spread.
Genoways made $134,000 last
Genoways made $134,000 last year editing VQR (according to publicly available data, since he's a public university employee), so excuse me for being a little furious at this article, especially the ending: "I'm saying that writers need to venture out from under the protective wing of academia, to put themselves and their work on the line. Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood."
If Genoways really believed this, he'd leave the "protective wing of academia" himself, and fund and run a magazine by himself. Somehow, I don't really see that happening.
Fiction isn't dead or dying, and neither is the literary magazine. Maybe the academic model for supporting it is, but that's a wholly different thing. Instead of pining for the glory days, maybe we should instead turn our attention to the great independent literary magazines, whose futures are dependent on readers, not university decisions: Try Unsaid or Hobart or Barrelhouse or New York Tyrant or Keyhole or Annalemma or any of the other great online and print magazines out there. The people editing these magazines and publishing them without drawing a salary or having institutional funding have already shown the importance they personally put on the publishing of new fiction, and their contribution to the literary community is consistently ignored by academics writing articles like this one.
The university magazines are still great--I'm a reader and subscriber and contributor to a number of them--but they are not the only option going forward, or even the most important one. It's sad to see an editor I'd formerly admired as much as Genoways be completely unable to see that, and to fail in such a condescending and pretentious way. I'd expected so much more when I sat down to read this article.
I'm Glad
you are interested in literary magazines instead of money.
Both things are true
Well, I guess the fact that I'm writing this means my head didn't explode from reading what Ted makes editing VQR. I should state for the record that I don't think Ted's income--unbelievable though it may be to many of us in the indie publishing trenches who consider 25K a really, REALLY good year, and mostly earned from outside odd-jobs that are not related to our actual role as editors--means he's not entitled to his opinion, and I think the advice that writers should stop being so "dainty and polite," in particular, is some very good advice. I also think it's sad and alarming that the reading "establishment," from corporate NYC to academic institutions, have abandoned the short story like a sinking ship, and think there has indeed been some kind of paradigm change since the days when writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald actually wrote short fiction to pay the bills while working on novels--now, if you get a few hundred bucks for a short story it's like you've won the lottery, and the vast majority of writers in this country are writing both short fiction AND online essays/nonfiction for free or very nearly free. I've been intimately involved with the transition over at TriQuarterly, too, and am glad somebody actually cares about that issue--a lot of people seem to, actually, and that's encouraging.
But I'm also with Matt Bell that Ted's point of view seems to overlook the fact that academia hasn't had its finger on the pulse of small publishing for more than a decade now, and the indie/DIY innovators, from the collaboration of presses like Dzanc Books and their (expanding mini-empire of) imprint mags/presses to innovators like Richard Nash and Johnny Temple, who did things with Soft Skull and Akashic that far surpassed what most academic publishers seemed able to accomplish and breathed new life--and hope--into the indie trenches. The truth is, most people outside academia aren't making any real money, so writers and editors who can find shelter there often WILL, to pay their rent and put food on their tables. That's not a crime, and championing literature anywhere you can do it is valuable. But some of the most cutting-edge figures in publishing, like the boys of Featherproof Books for example, probably aren't making a cent on their press and are working other full-time, extremely time consuming jobs, yet are exuding more energy and zeal while doing so than can be found in the academy shops. And many writers who have never bought in to the "dainty and polite" model, like Stephen Elliott or Jonathan Evison, end up living on the road touring and self-marketing because the "establishment" doesn't really support work that's raw and honest (like Elliott's) or end up making 16K a year (as Evison recently indicated he made in an interview with The Nervous Breakdown.) So this stuff is complex. Ted's arguments about certain problems in publishing and academia have validity, but to some extent the "real fight" has already moved elsewhere, and is happening in people's apartments and online and at readings in bars and record stores, among those who will probably never, ever see the kind of income Ted (or the former editors of TriQuarterly) have earned.
I wish we all would. There's no shame in being able to pay your bills while doing something valuable. But few editors or writers in this country are able to accomplish both of these things at the same time. It's been widely known for years that most people who go into corporate publishing have trust funds, and couldn't survive in New York City on junior editor salaries without them, so the only way to rise to the "top" of that industry is to have outside money. What's surprising is how much seems to be being accomplished right now in this country in independent publishing, and with such vibrancy, with almost no money at all.
The real point here: are writers somehow worse, less talented, writing more narcissistic material with less relevance than in previous eras? Of course not. Yes, there are more writers in general, and as a result perhaps there are more hacks. But if anything the leveling playing fields of education and technology have probably meant there is also more cream rising to the top. Even including those still affiliated with the academy in some way, fiction writers from Mary Gaitskill to Dan Chaon to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Laura van den Berg, spanning several age groups and traditions but all writing actively today, have nothing to apologize for to their luminous predecessors, and continue carrying a torch of fiction that burns as brightly as ever.
The death of fiction has been being heralded from the rooftops for the last 100 years, hasn't it? I'm not convinced yet. The pulse just keeps moving, and the old guard never likes that and always seems to prefer a premature announcement of Death rather than running to keep up.
I think every word of Gina's
I think every word of Gina's comment is right-on. I agree there's some fair systemic criticisms of mainstream and academic publishing in Genoways' argument, but I think the speed w/ which he jumps from this systemic part of his arguments to making gross, over-generalizing (and as I think Gina and Matt Bell pretty effectively demonstrate, ultimately myopic) claims abt an entire generation of writers and the state of our art concerns me. Like Matt, I think it would be really great to see some of the academic folks bemoaning the "death of fiction" at least acknowledge the existence of a vibrant indie & small press publishing scene -- I think even to be told we're irrelevant would be an improvement over total invisibility.
Thanks, Gina...
...for the much calmer and more well-thought out version of much of what I wanted to get at. Seriously great job.
I don't want to keep coming back and amending my statements, but I should say that I don't begrudge Genoways his salary--Obviously, most of us would like to get paid for the work we do at that level, and he's lucky to do so. And he has done great things with VQR. The main issue to me was that I felt he was telling writers they shouldn't be academics, while being one himself. That seemed kind of ridiculous, at best.
Obviously, there's nothing wrong with working for a university, as a teacher or an editor or in any other capacity. I hope to have the chance to teach full-time at some point as well, and even if there wasn't self-interest involved I'd still argue that the great growth of MFA programs has provided many, many writers with livings to replace the ones that, in an idea world, writing alone would have been able to provide for them, while also allowing some of our best writers to help develop the next generation. That seems like a great thing to me, especially because it seems to give access to writing to a greater number of people than ever before.
My bigger point is the one you made so much more eloquently: That articles like this continue to point out that some parts of academia seem to have no idea about the vibrancy of literature outside their walls, and that this blindness is a problem that should be addressed.
Matt: I prefer your first
Matt: I prefer your first comment, which was less "dainty and polite." I do think the salary should be something to be angry about--now--because of the things he says in this article. Your point was obviously not out of jealousy or some weird idealism that those in the arts should forever go unpaid.
And Gina: Ted may have written a fragment of a sentence or two containing decent (but really, just barely OK) "advice" in this article, but that doesn't mean that he is well-meaning. If his goal was to share that snippet of advice, he failed. The article is 99% irrelevant and (obviously) grossly uninformed and not at all thought out. No one is going to read this article and walk away with anything worth thinking about.
Travis: bravo.
And Ted: Maybe try rereading and editing your own bad writing (this is horrible writing, and it's boring as hell), or maybe try writing a couple of adjacent sentences that don't contradict themselves (try developing your ideas and I think you'll have better results). Or Jesus, for Christ sake, just shut the fuck up.
No more whining?
The death of literature, the death of fiction, and most especially the death of poetry, are predicted on a regular basis, just as regular as the crying out against the increasing disappearance of precise language and good grammar. Most of the time, the people offering these predictions and declarations are folks who have somehow been less than scintillating in their own writing or who have failed to "make it" in some fashion or another, as if gaining notoriety or a chunk of change were at all the same thing as writing something worth reading, something beautiful. The claim that there are "too many writers" reminds me of the moment in Amadeus when the Emperor tells Mozart that there are "too many notes" in his compositions. In all of this, there's very little that is new under the sun--change is inevitable, and there never was a "Golden Age" of reading and of writers. If anything, we live in a Golden Age this very moment.
Ted Genoways edits the venerable Virginia Quarterly Review which he has updated and made much more hip--and well-designed, winning awards for his work. At the same time, despite its many awards and successes, the journal has earned, it seems, a disappointingly low increase in the numbers of subscribers. Naturally, he is alarmed at the current "virus" of well-established lit mags being either threatened or killed outright by the latest rounds of budget cuts. There is no justice or sense in that situation, it's true, and writers themselves do need to be mindful of supporting the journals that publish excellent writing.
However, many journals have turned to increasing their readership and availability by going online--and I believe that VQR has done that, to some extent, as well. Such moves to the internet as a distribution system may help to provide some part of the "answer" to the problems of distribution and shrinking subscription lists by potentially reaching out to a much larger and more diverse audience, not only nationally but internationally. Going online is probably going to be the new paradigm for the fine arts publishing of truly artful, challenging, well-made fiction and poetry, and it makes fiscal, practical, and aesthetic sense, since most of these journals are not profit-making enterprises anyway. None of us who publish in online journals or who work for them are in any way "against" print--we all truly love books and magazines. But the real thing is to love the word itself, whether it's being delivered on the slick page of a beautifully designed print journal, or delivered to a computer screen or a kindle or an i-phone--or the rumored forthcoming i-Slate.
Technology changes things, and smart people adapt, and that's that. No way around it, no matter how much we hate the death and dearth of great newspapers and wonderful print journals. I don't think the book will ever completely disappear, but the Kindle, which allows you to carry an entire library of thousands of books around in one hand, does have its merits, and so will the new i-Slate. People do watch too much television, and they are suckered by 3-D animation into watching simplistic cartoons, and they fritter away there time playing video games, but that wasting of time is actually nothing new. There really aren't any super-great "Good Old Days" to look back on nostalgically. Painters hated the development of photography, until everyone realized that they could be complementary rather than one killing off the other.
An online journal lives there 24 hours a day and the well-designed ones offer searchable archives, easily available for reading and researching, even for people who are sitting reading in their underwear in the middle of the night when they should be sleeping, or if they're in Turkey or Japan and can't find good English publications of fine arts writing in English anywhere, or if they're right here in good old Corporate America, sneaking a break from their horrible work in a cubicle. That's one way to catch and to inspire new readers.
It's also true that MFA programs have indeed proliferated, and that situation has multiplied the numbers of writers on the planet, and has created more of them who are merely competent rather than being actual geniuses, but has also opened up opportunities to publish for black folks and Asian folks and women and gay people and lots of others who live in more uncertain or unknown minorities, and that is just fine with me. In fact, all of us who teach creative writing, as well as all of us who publish and edit it, like those who write it, should know that we are responsible for building and expanding our own audiences. SONY won't do it, and neither will ABC, and FOX would like all people to be kept ignorant and fascistic. Art has always been for the awakened few, and it has always given them a chance to live more intensely. Nothing new there, really. But here in America we are indeed attempting to invite more people into the discussion. And opening up more ways of having that discussion, including the video essay and other new "hybrid" forms of literary endeavor, some of which work well, and some of which are over-hyped BS. The art lives on.
I agree with a great deal of
I agree with a great deal of this, yes. Especially that none of us who work in publishing are "against" print and that we all came to this arena because of a deep love of books. I don't own a Kindle and to be honest, it doesn't appeal to me much personally--I don't read stories on my cell phone and as an editor, when I receive a submission online I always print it out before reading it, which maybe means I'm guilty of not saving many trees. But I am 41, and while I am excited about the new directions of publishing and feel fortunate to be taking part in some of them, I also grew up in a different time before all this, and came of age just plain loving the feel of paper or a book in my hands. Most of us did. That's why we're here, instead of making more money in some other profession. I mean, let's face it, even Ted's salary would be pretty paltry if he were an attorney or an options trader. There's not a single person in publishing, except maybe some literary agents, who are in this because it's lucrative. We all love words.
Yet after some long years of a general feeling in the publishing world that "nobody" was reading anymore, that literary dialogue was dying, and so on, these new technological forums and opportunities have breathed new life into this community and into the discussions over the past 5 years or so. From Bookslut to The Nervous Breakdown to Narrative, to the way VQR or Kenyon Review are reaching out to people online simultaneously with print, to of course Kindle and iPhone apps, this subject seems to have moved from being "elite" or "stagnant" to electric and controversial among a wider array of people, and all of that can only mean good things for the written word, drawing more readers--some of whom may have given up on, or had poor access to, print forms as the exclusive gatekeepers of literary culture--into a living, breathing conversation.
Sorry, Ted, but the death of
Sorry, Ted, but the death of the literary magazine hardly means the death of good writing. It's just moving elsewhere.
twitter comments
thought this might be interesting, a list of tweets that link to this article:
"Another short fiction is dead blah blah article but this time it's GOOD. Read it."
"It's not dead, it's just limped out of the halls of acedemia.... "
"The pulse just keeps moving and the old guard...seems to prefer a premature announcement of Death"
"In the midst of a war on two fronts, there has been hardly a ripple in American fiction."
" The impending death of the American lit mag is largely the fault of naval-gazing writers?"
(source: http://bit.ly/info/86STSl)
Though this article
Though this article accurately reflects certain aspects the current crisis of the literary magazine, I find the tone of the piece (as well as many of the comments posted about it) to be unbearably haughty and smug.
First of all, Mr. Genoways calls TriQuarterly's move to the online forum "catastrophic." Certainly the dismissal of the review's staff is disheartening, but if this writer is truly looking for the lit. mag's salvation, the long-term solution to a dwindling readership and subsequent budget cuts IS a move to online-only publication. (Let's also admit that this saves a huge amount of paper, as well). As a writer, and yes, one of those "navel gazers" who received an MFA, I find the snobbery of print-only lit. mags towards the online variety insufferable. Just because anyone can post his or her drivel on the internet does not mean that online literary reviews are worthless as they, too have editors, many of whom have a far more modern and realistic vision of the future of literary reviews (like Matt Bell) than do those who are desperately clinging to "paper only" and outright reject anything not published this way. Also, it's odd that the author would praise The New Yorker and Harper's for their continued dedication to fiction when they reserve only a small share of each issue for short stories and publication there is only an option for well-known, agent-supported writers.
Secondly, I'd like to address the MFA issue. The article estimates that 60,000 new writers emerge each year from these programs and that these people are somehow self-centered, apathetic "non-artists." My own experience has shown me that students enter these programs for a variety of reasons. Very few expect to graduate with a book deal and fewer still are serious enough about writing to actually try to make a career of it. Regardless, instead of being contemptuous of these graduates, the Genoways should be grateful to them. Sales of literary magazines may be dwindling, but if it weren't for writers trying to get their foot in the door of publishing, the sales would probably be at zero. We all know that these reviews, including VQR, are read mostly by those who wish to publish in them. It's the sad state of things that the average American doesn't read lit. mags, let alone novels or short story collections. But this is not the fault of those who choose (at their own peril) to receive an MFA. They may not all be incredible writers, but you can bet that every one of them loves literature, something that cannot be said for the population at large.
In the end, if Genoways wants to save the literary review in the US, he's going to have to do it with more realism and a lot more humility.
The combination of Ted's piece and the comment string...
...has it about right.
Which is to say that there is a crisis in commercial publishing, and there is a threat to the revenue-sources of traditional print literary journals. The causes are related: the difference in how we consume our daily dose of print, the difficulty in monetizing the internet, the recession exacerbating every trend. There is upheaval to the old structures, and this means that people are affected. But the end of reading, or of decent fiction, is not on us. A new model will emerge that will offer more choices, perhaps even decrease the distance between consumer and artist, and the old industry(s) will face restructuring and upheaval if they cannot find a way to change. Look at music, mp3s and i-tunes, and what's emerged-- effective monetization, and increasingly, mechanisms that can help us find what's good. There may be some cultural movement toward new forms-- yes, yes, we watch television and youtube and like everything fast and free and louder than ever before-- but it's also ridiculous to believe that this means our culture is dying, man's IQ is diminishing, and soon nobody will trouble themselves with something as complex as fiction. The form will persist because it has unique merit, and because narrative is how people understand the world-- it's not going anywhere, even if there's an attendant trend toward nonfiction or film or new hybrid forms.
It's also clear that some journals are finding ways to embrace these changes. I would argue that doing so has little to do with the nature of the writers whose work appears in these journals, or the particular aesthetic of the journal. Narrative magazine is publishing old guard writers (with a model that does elevate the established on the backs of the young and aspiring, what with their 20 buck submission fee), and there are other magazines doing more experimental things well that otherwise wouldn't be able to (I too am thinking of Unsaid, Matt, and the Collagist-- and Travis, what Luna Park does in examining the world of literary journals is necessary and unique). Perhaps there are online magazines publishing the mediocre material of the (alleged) legion of meek, unworldly, navel-gazing MFAs with their terrible, mediocrity and unseriousness. Perhaps there are also traditional print journals that have lost their way, become insular and stuffy and irrelevant.
The question is not whether print literary journals that are affiliated with universities are threatened today, their audiences dwindling and their funding threatened. That's the situation that exists. The question is how literary journals can respond, who can innovate and demonstrate relevance and find ways to make money, who can help us sift through so much content to find the best content. That will take new ways of thinking-- and I'm afraid that what this string shows me, as much of a fan as I am of how VQR is edited (I don't much care that he makes money-- except for the hypocrisy angle that Matt Bell points out), is that it's unlikely to come from the old guard
Yes. But how?
This comment summarizes this wonderful thread. Whether or not Genoveys is right or wrong, an ass or not, old guard or new--his article has hit a vein. There is something ripe and critical about this moment in US literature, maybe world literature (though maybe not, a lot happens outside the US that we don't hear or think about, which is something that might be given its due criticism here as well).
As an admirer of the old and new, a constant submitter to and reader of small and large literary magazines, as a lover of words and truth, and as an individual overwhelmed with the literary world right now, I'm wondering: what can we do to "sift through the content and find the best content"? This, I think, will be part of the resolution of the tensions we're feeling now.
Whenever someone proclaims the death of something, we know that it's really a moment of crisis--when things are changing. But, like the change of feudal kings, there will always be something after the crisis. A king to replace the king. My question is: What can this be in literature? How I can I help bring it about?
Fiction is dead, long live fiction.
First came . . .
First came the opposable thumb, then Microsoft Word.The home printer! Then, once electronically enabled, the writer glut. The word processor clogged slushpiles and gave birth to a booming business in Creative Writing, Low-Res MFA progams.
Like others here I believe that MS Word has brought the end
of the written word. I think that the manual typewriter, along with carbon copies and white-out was what really separated the real writers from the poseurs. Why, back in my day, a Remington and a pack of Camels was what made you a writer. Want some international flair? Switch to Olivetti and Galloises...
MS Word, and of course, the co-incidental "send" button have devolved discourse into drivel. Now, anyone with a PC and a MFA can call themselves a writer. With these new spell checking gadgets, you dont even knead to no how to spell. Why pretty soon, we will have a plot checking gizmo flashing us warnings of "conflicting attitudes" or dischronology.
the MFA
So now you need an MFA to call yourself a writer? Why, I can remember a time when all you needed to do to call yourself a writer was to sit your ass down and write, and you didn't have to shell out 50,000 clams for the privilege, either.
Fiction isn't dead so long as
Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Donna Tartt are alive! Just wish Donna Tartt would write some more.
Is it becoming more difficult to make a living in literature? Is that the problem?
Maybe it's time for a new WPA style writer's project. I'm not a socialist but I would support that. I am reading "Women's Tales from the New Mexico WPA." It is awesome that these voices were saved.
Anyhoo, ask Uncle Obama, he might have some spare cash in his stash for writers.
Just be careful, when his people were talking to artists a while back they were arranging to fund some propaganda. Guess that didn't work out.
Postmodernism is dead.
Postmodernism is dead. Digimodernism succeeded it.
What's Wrong With
writing that no one reads? If a short story's unread, was it short enough?
How about not thinking of
How about not thinking of lit-mags as only "launching pads" and maybe just think of them as ends rather than means?
Why should we heed this bit
Why should we heed this bit of special pleading and self-promotion - such things constitute the real endangerment of literature and culture. Genoways is gazing into his own navel, only to find that he prefers it to anyone else's.
Genoways hits the nail on the head
I started reading this article thinking that it was going to be just one more of the billions of articles on the "death of fiction" that totally miss the point. I owe Mr. Genoways an apology for making that assumption. Unlike almost every other writer who has confronted this subject, Jenoways has gone to the real heart of the problem. Although he blames writers for it, I think that many editors share the responsibility as well. After all, they're publish the work that Mr. Jenoways characterizes as "navel-gazing." Genoway's is right on target when he suggests that there seems to be a kind of allergy among emerging writers (and lit mag editors) to serious topics such as war, belief, or the lack of it, identity and society, and social concerns of any sort, (to name a few); an allergy to point-of-view examinations of the human condition; to anything that isn't an obtuse word-game "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The problem, ultimately, is not the "death of fiction" but the "trivialization of fiction."
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