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| Hearsay: |
Wait, don’t swear and go off to another site in a huff. This article’s actually interesting. When commercial mags dropped fiction, the lit mag was there to carry it (presumably like Jesus did for that guy who’s forever walking on the beach). But even as fiction has become a common pastime pursuit for the vocationally undecided idly rich (re MFA prgs), its viability as a commercial venture has fallen further than ever. Is it time to just give up on fiction in magazines?
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.
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January 27th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
The comments discussion is good too.
January 27th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
I read the comments section attached to the original article and, to be honest, I’d rather comment here. For some reason I feel that my grammar may be judged on that other board.
Are we supposed to believe that we’re facing the death of Western culture – or even the death of fiction – just because literary magazines are going under? Realistically, what were the actual circulation numbers to begin with? How much of an impact did they really have? With or without those magazines, catching a break in the literary world will always be a crap shoot. And despite the preponderance of garbage that’s being published and marketed wildly – there’s also a lot of good writing on bookstore shelves that’s receiving buzz (though perhaps not at the decibel level of Dan Brown’s latest.
For the last few years all kinds of magazines have been folding – not just literary ones. People are now getting the information they provided digitally. The world is changing. My advice for critics is to stop gazing up at the sky (in hopes of being the first to see it start to fall) and try to keep up.
January 27th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Tolmsted, you’re reversing the cause and effect of his argument.
He’s arguing that the demise of literary magazines is a symptom of the death of fiction, not its cause.
January 27th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
I did understand that. The author of the article is arguing that fiction is dying, and that the “demise” of literary magazines somehow supports his argument. My point is that I don’t believe there is a “death of fiction”, and that the demise of literary magazines isn’t a symptom of anything other than the fact that print magazines in general are folding. What does the closing of Gourmet magazine signify about cooking? Does the fact Vibe closed have some kind of bearing on whether or not people are listening to music? Here’s a list from advertising age of what closed in 2009 (and I don’t believe it is complete).
[see link above]
I’ve been hearing about the death of literature for decades now. I don’t buy into it. There are still a lot of good authors writing good books. When you step back to consider, really only a handful of the hundreds of authors published in any given generation have longevity. In my opinion we currently have as good of a representation now as we ever have. And if the U.S. is suddenly a smaller fish in the literary pond (making “making hardly a ripple”) – well there are more fish in the pond thanks to the availability of good translations.
So… no need to panic. We can all go back to arguing about how digital reading devices are going to destroy books. :-)
January 28th, 2010 at 8:11 am
People get paid to edit fiction journals? Cheque please.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:08 am
I agree with the sentiments expressed by a few in that comments section: the world of literary journals values a particular kind of writing (not coincidentally the kind often produced by MFA students) that is very disengaged from the world and instead focussed on ‘literariness’. That’s a horrible word but it’s a horrible thing so I think they deserve each other.
A fairly new literary journal in the UK advertises for non-fiction writing on political/leftie subjects. Their specification for fiction, on the other hand, is that it be an inventive prose style or that it undermine the conventions of the form.
Says it all really. While short fiction lives in that realm it will just ghetto-ise itself further.