In today’s LA Times, author Dani Shapiro laments the failure of the midlist.
The emphasis is on publishing, not on creating. On being a writer, not on writing itself. The publishing industry — always the nerdy distant cousin of the rest of media — has the same blockbuster-or-bust mentality of television networks and movie studios. There now exist only two possibilities: immediate and large-scale success, or none at all. There is no time to write in the cold, much less for 10 years.
It reminds me of something Don Delillo said in his recent Wall Street Journal interview, “I don’t think my first novel would have been published as I submitted it today. I don’t think an editor would have read 50 pages of it,” he says. What gives? Similar thoughts have led me to believe that the publishing industry is letting down many good writers–and in doing so, serves neither the writer nor the reader. While its selectivity has made generations of writers toughen up and write better, the arbiter of a book’s quality really ought to be the readers for whom it is written.
(Emiliano Ponzi, for The Times, 1.27.2010)
Again, this is why I see a future in which the big publishing houses become secondary publishers and mass marketers; and professional writers adopt self-publishing and local marketing as a way to sell their work, have an audience, and use their talent to participate in their communities. As a writer, editor and writing teacher, I have also seen how much of a young or new writer’s time and talent can be wasted writing to the industry or literary canon instead of to readers. The practice of again remembering and writing to our audiences might also recalibrate what the next generation expects from their work; and more important, foster the future Don Delillos, Dani Shapiros, Ann Beatties, et al., so that literature is still considered one of the arts, and not merely entertainment.
Tags: publishing, Writing
