theres so much slipperiness to the idea of a 'good' novel that it feels uninteresting to really pursue this line but i think theres lots of worthwhile stuff being written and read today.
i definitely agree with this. good and great book are this very second being read and written. my (possibly wrongheaded) point is only to answer the question why it feels like "new novels suck" without going through a list of actual new novels and evaluating them.
― ryan, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:10 (nine years ago) link
There is lots of writing (not just novels) that are of interest (and end up doing similar things that novels, so we shouldn't restrict to that form) today and always, full stop.
That EmilyGould piece and Silby seem to be saying the same thing: they are not getting any joy out of the publishing industry, whether as consumers or producers, which is an entirely different thing. For Silby it leads to fatigue and throwing your hands in the air thread revival. I wouldn't spend anytime on it, and certainly wouldn't go on about ideal readers.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:19 (nine years ago) link
the rather empirically obvious fact that the reader of good novels isn't around anymore, even as an ideal
It seems to me that the phenomenon you are seeing is that, in a mass media culture, novels are no longer a mass medium, as they were prior to circa 1970. But there are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of potential readers for 'good novels' in North America alone. I agree that the base of potential readers has shrunk in the internet age, but it is premature to pronounce their extinction as a species. The novel will bump along as an increasingly marginalized art form for quite some time to come.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:42 (nine years ago) link
it's like ib singer's line about yiddish: It was dying two hundred years ago, and will continue to die for another thousand years
― Mordy, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:45 (nine years ago) link
I see a lot of parallels between publishing and record labels in this regard. The financing just isn't what it used to be, the sales aren't what they used to be, so there's not as much money for advances. There isn't the apparatus to sustain as many novelists. I harp on this a lot because I feel like too many people overlook it or ignore it, as though art gets made in a vacuum regardless of financial support. If a novelist's first novel isn't a hit today, no one's gonna keep taking chances on them. But it's harder to have a hit when the readership of a particular kind of novel has shrunk. So more "promising" novelists are just never going to write the second or third novel that might have been their breakthrough.
― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:49 (nine years ago) link
i like this. you could even apply it to the "bourgeois subject" which is the corollary for the "ideal reader" im trying to talk about (poorly). forgive the lapse into crit-speak.
― ryan, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:53 (nine years ago) link
would harry potter be considered a weak hit in the novel's heyday, the same way 30 rock's finale's numbers are miniscule compared to mash's?
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:56 (nine years ago) link
xp Same can be said for madrigals, or tapestries, right? No artform ever dies. Every artform has been equally popular throughout history, and it's only chicken littles who say otherwise. The novel was thriving in the 14th century and will continue to do so for eternity.
― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:57 (nine years ago) link
Many good epic poems are still being composed every year.
― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 2 July 2014 19:59 (nine years ago) link
I harp on this a lot because I feel like too many people overlook it or ignore it, as though art gets made in a vacuum regardless of financial support.
this is a good point, but i think it's only applicable to a small time frame? how many novelists of previous centuries wrote because they didn't have to work? there's a kind of bourdieu-ian social outbidding that was going on that's as important as economics as far "initial conditions" go for creating good literature--though neither are necessary/sufficient, perhaps.
― ryan, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:01 (nine years ago) link
I think a lot of novelists of previous centuries wrote because they didn't have to work, which would exactly be my point. An advance means you don't have to work. Not sure if that's what you meant or not.
― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:04 (nine years ago) link
I just sort of take the cliche that 'no novel can be judged in its own time' to be true, let's wait 20 more years until we read Emily Gould
― 龜, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:04 (nine years ago) link
lol, I am in no hurry to read Emily Gould's novel, I just enjoyed her description of what a $200,000 advance actually means to a normal, flawed, not particularly frugal but not absurdly excessive young person.
― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:06 (nine years ago) link
that's what i meant, Hurting. i suppose you could designate an era of the "publishing industry" which made it possible to make a living by laboring as a writer of novels.
and yeah 龜 otm of course about historical perspective.
― ryan, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:08 (nine years ago) link
the amount of time it takes to write a novel kind of sets a novel back in a previous era once it comes out though, no?
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:12 (nine years ago) link
Takes like a few days, maybe a week at most ime
― 龜, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:14 (nine years ago) link
my buddy has been working on a novel forever, and i just envision him now hastily revising it to account for america's new middling interest in soccer and what that exactly means.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 2 July 2014 20:18 (nine years ago) link
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ZfjOWxE0--/1320199782204730216.jpg
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 2 July 2015 21:48 (eight years ago) link
http://review.gawker.com/25-unedited-excerpts-from-joshua-cohen-s-the-book-of-nu-1714663755
im coincidentally reading it rn, maybe 100 pages in -it's ok to good, too much and show-offy def, i feel like i skip like one of every 8th word and maybe im supposed to glaze thru it & its abt how we read ~online~ deep thots
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 2 July 2015 21:55 (eight years ago) link
this one 1 just read & is gold btw for "Words are garb." even tho he means it differently lol
Language itself is a burqa, an abaya—so many new words!...The garments that blacken even the tarmac, that blacken the lobby (irreligiously lavish). Words are garb. They’re cloaks. They conceal the body beneath. Lift up the hems of verbiage, peek below its frillies—what’s exposed? The hairy truth?
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 2 July 2015 21:59 (eight years ago) link
the excerpts i read seemed fucked up but not that bad. didn't notice all the nerdcore punchlines about beating his dick like it's leukemia i guess and the parts about arab women??
― dylannn, Thursday, 2 July 2015 22:04 (eight years ago) link
Naming your lead character after yourself and making it a thinly veiled slightly more despicable version of yourself is so basic. Literary fiction hack move.
― Immediate Follower (NA), Thursday, 2 July 2015 22:05 (eight years ago) link
It's supposed to be edgy but just signifies being too lazy to name your characters.
― Immediate Follower (NA), Thursday, 2 July 2015 22:09 (eight years ago) link
lol this thread
xxp
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 2 July 2015 22:40 (eight years ago) link