new novels and why they suck and whatever

shut the fuck up thom p, I will have my tenured job yet

I could totally see NYU offering that.

my name is not actually 'thom p' :/

yes it is

whatever mr aero smith

was there ever any money in publishing kathy acker?

Prob not a huge amount - I more meant money from big sellers that could be spent on buying odder prestige stuff for the list (like Bloomsbury can still afford this kind of thing, maybe, because of Rowling?). But it's speculation - not sure publishing was ever awash with £££/$$$ (net book agreement must have helped in the UK tho').

Thinking about it, Serpent's Tail might be part of the answer in the uk - a house founded in 86 pretty much dedicated to 'extravagant, outlaw voices neglected by the mainstream' could mean the mainstream can worry less about those voices.

that makes me think there could be an indie rock MFA programme, which would be the worst idea ever

not to derail thread but I consider this a certainty for the near future

not to derail thread but that sentence doesn't even make any sense

This stuff is a bit vague now, but back when I was closer to the publishing world than I am now, it was definitely the case that Harry Potter more or less saved Bloomsbury (bearing in mind that although it was successful after the first three, more or less, it wasn't until the fifth, and the films started coming out that it became an uncontrollable wealth generator - this was when they really started going all out on it - secrecy pacts, night-time last minute deliveries, huge queues, pyramids in all the bookstores etc).

The general impression I got from publishing houses like Bloomsbury and Faber was of a considerable dedication to the concept of modern literature, that would publish and push something they thought was good, regardless of the fact they might make a loss on it, but that this was becoming something less and less easy to do. I can't believe the situation is any better now. Certainly houses like Bloodaxe (not fiction obv) were dedicated to bringing out things they liked.

I think a couple of things are worth noting here, in terms of what woof was saying - 1) Fewer and fewer publishing houses (mid-size ones - not the giant conglomerates, nor the small presses) are able to take these risks. Both Faber (even though fairly conservative) and Bloomsbury are/were exceptional, and to a certain extent were still playing the 'book prize' lottery, we'll publish a load of stuff we think is good, and if we get it 'right' we'll get a couple of Booker Prize nominees out of it.

So then you come down to the question of what wins book prizes, and generally it's the sort of

So I don't think it's quite as simple as 'who reads this?'. I think it goes something like - serious literary fiction wins book prizes, book prizes bring in coverage, therefore readers, therefore money (people will buy booker and whitbread shortlist stuff), therefore if you're going to take a gamble, take a conservative gamble.

Problem is, and it can't be repeated enough, there is no money in publishing, and so in a way, it's to publishers' credit (some of them anyway) that they take the risks they do, they make a loss on most stuff. Readers like reading good stuff, editors like publishing it, and it's surprisingly easy to tell the good from the bad when you're dealing with submissions. The main question now is not just 'Do we want to publish this?', it's, 'Is this worth making a loss for?', a different kind of question. It becomes not 'is this good enough to publish?' but 'is it good enough to make it necessary to publish?' In fact readers tend, iirc, to be looking for an angle that is new, in order to give something a selling point, but it has to be a sort of conservative 'new', because you also need to say it's like something else, in order to give people a feeling they might enjoy it.

Non literary genre fiction is more self-sustaining I'd imagine, it tends to have a knowledgeable fan base, who don't necessarily need awards to know what they want, they'll buy it anyway.

Rambly rambly. At work, not really thinking things through, just maundering.

Yeah, that all makes perfect sense to me, and tallies with what I see - when I'm working for (ahem) the customer magazine of Britain's largest bookchain, it's clear that most people in the system believe in a lot of what they're trying to sell, esp with debut fiction, and will lobby hard for authors they feel are brilliant & a bit neglected here. A bit of the gritted-teeth 'well, we have to try and sell it' or 'it's... interesting' comes in with shaky or idiosyncratic follow-ups to fluke breakout books (Shriver, new Yann Martel, Lewycka, last Niffenegger to an extent).

Kid's lit is the only place where I look at the titles and feel someone, somewhere has a black and cynical heart - bk 17 in the Fashion Fairies series, seven hundred kinds of sexy vampire (eg the 'blue blood' series - Twilight x Gossip Girl), endless series of magic puppies, magic kittens, magic ponies. I guess it's where the nearly reliable money is.

& book prizes, of course - forgot that. But maybe their importance faded a bit in the Richard and Judy era? Being a book-group book will get you further now than being a traditional prize-winner.

Not especially relevant, but I always wonder how Alma-Oneworld-Hesperus make any money.

Just checked to see if I'd made up the fashion fairy series, must have been thinking of these books. Netball and sea-turtle specific fairies! Rum old world.

Christ, Kremlinology-sized and complexity knowledge sets there.

Also: Must remember to not jump around when I'm writing posts, thinking that I'll finish a thought later.

Anyway, just wanted to say - yes, never really factored in book clubs because, well, I never really remember it as a world (it really doesn't appeal, personally, but I can see how it's a good thing in the abstract), but yes, I can see how that would work.

The ages of literature - Romanticism, Victorian, Edwardian/Modernism, pomo, richard and judy.

reading Toby Olson's "The Woman Who Escaped From Shame" (which, lol, is from the 80s?)

can't say I'm enjoying it.

endless descriptions of horses

The Woman Who Escaped From Shane

i don't know if i would call it "enjoyable". it's fucking weird though. that much i know. and stubbornly anti-commercial. i dunno, i just think he's one of those strange american cranks who writes whatever he wants to write without any thought of the outside world. or what's going on elsewhere. hermetic in some way. which is why i mentioned him as an alternative to the fashionable.

not even gonna say what college toby olson went to

Let's just say he and Max shared a bunk bed in '56

btw, am I right in feeling like "endless descriptions of horses" is a recurring parody/joke about literary fiction? I feel like there are at least three or four examples in my head where that's a parody line, the constant description of horses. should we be blaming DH Lawrence for this?

haha it's true i was thinking of the scene in kicking and screaming where they're obviously discussing all the pretty horses

I found the descriptions of the horse to be, frankly astonishingly beautiful, and yet disturbingly arousing.

And when Grady, uh-He saw all those- those horses, I think you were saying, um...and it was... arousing. It was violently arousing.

wonder boys has a horses joke too

from the movie:

Hannah Green: Grady, you know how in class you're always telling us that writers make choices?

Grady Tripp: Yeah.

Hannah Green: And even though you're book is really beautiful, I mean, amazingly beautiful, it's... it's at times... it's... very detailed. You know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses, and the dental records, and so on. And... I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all. And I was just wondering if it might not be different if... if when you wrote you weren't always... under the influence.

Grady Tripp: Well... thank you for the thought, but shocking as it may sound, I am not the first writer to sip a little weed. Furthermore, it might surprise you to know that one book I wrote, as you say, "under the influence," just happened to win a little something called the Pen Award. Which, by the way, I accepted under the influence.

i die laughing at the "you know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses"

i think of that "you didn't make any choices. at all." line all the time, both when reading and writing

"sip a little weed"

i really love that movie

the book is pretty funny too

ha, I was about to xpost with the Wonder Boys one. (It also had a more broadly funny title than Chabon for the guy's big book -- "The Arsonist's Daughter.")

that movie also gets my personal award for Most Verging-on-Realistic Writing-Workshop Scene in a Motion Picture, although I can't remember any other nominees apart from Kicking and Screaming and Storytelling

"I mean, Jesus, what is it with you Catholics?"

also only movie in which michael douglas has ever been charming and lovable

Wall Street 2 looks pretty good

Audience members actually walked out OUTRAGED when we saw Tobey Maguire and RDJ in bed.

why hasn't anyone made a tv show about a writing workshop
make it like scrubs or something

or glee or whatever people watch

make it like mad men

mad pen

with Frances McDormand as the professor.

you shouldn't be giving this idea away on the internet imo

"the night was sultry"

I have other ideas tho

and when people read a story out loud to the workshop or whatever have a guest director come in and direct a short film or something

my other idea is a war movie w/ big stars where people actually die

those are my ideas for hollywood

haha. would watch mad pen fwiw

"I mean, Jesus, what is it with you Catholics?"

i once THOUGHT something like this in a poetry workshop, although it was a little more like "OMG, do you want to get laid or don't you? how many poems will it take to decide? just pick one" after a long run of conflicted poems about, I dunno, the temptation and taboo of totally normal heterosexual desire

i apologize for not having been more empathetic/imaginative in terms of different cultural/religious backgrounds but geez, hop on the dude or don't

i love that line because the girl answers her own question before she even asks it!

my other idea is a war movie w/ big stars where people actually die

lol