Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

What I'm looking forward to most next year.

pic.twitter.com/99g0nAoVHX

— Adrian Nathan West (@a_nathanwest) December 24, 2021

Don't care for LK much but this synopsis...everything up to 'meditation'.

Can I have this synopsis of the new Krasznahorkai injected straight into my veins please? (@caringerel ) pic.twitter.com/XbiBb1OsXI

— Mark Haber (@markhaber713) April 3, 2022

Understandable review of a book by a Ukrainian writer in the New Yorker.

Enormous congratulations to @AKurkov and @BorisDralyuk and @DeepVellum on this incredibly wonderful review of the brilliant Ukrainian novel GREY BEES by @keithgessen in @NewYorker today! https://t.co/Z7THNAUexW

— Jenny Croft 🇺🇦 (@jenniferlcroft) April 18, 2022

Really sharp review of Fernanda Melchor’s Paradais by @HollyMConnolly. https://t.co/8vMunzYYpg

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) May 10, 2022

This sounds like a must:

https://dalkeyarchive.store/products/the-garden-of-seven-twilights

Wow.

I didn't know that Sergio Pitol's Carnival Trilogy has its first vol issued (The Love Parade, on order). Natasha Winner (translator of Bolano) writes about him in the latest NYRB.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/08/18/at-the-center-of-the-fringe-sergio-pitol/

I have waited for this translation for years.

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/chevengur?variant=43223528734888

Just running through the final few queries for The End of August by Yu Miri. Such a pleasure to look at it with fresh eyes now and I can't wait for everyone else to read her masterpiece in English now. Out June 29th in the UK, August 1st in the US. 🏃🏻‍♀️

— Morgan Giles モーガン・ジャイルズ (@wrongsreversed) April 8, 2023

Ha, wasn't expecting to open this to such a familiar face. I'm very excited for this one, I loved Tokyo Ueno Station and this is supposed to be even better.

Oh cool you are friends? Nice.

This is the glorious cover design for my forthcoming Iliad translation, featuring Victory. Everybody wants to be a winner.

(https://t.co/keRHpWbjgi, https://t.co/Z4dnZtSbwO) pic.twitter.com/OBer7pHhED

— Dr Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) April 19, 2023

Stoked as shit!!!

Some valid points here, though I'm sure other factors are involved:

Every decade Granta Magazine releases its list of the 20 best young British novelists. This year only four on the list are men. In 2013 there were eight men, in 2003 it was 13.

There is myriad evidence that the artistic work produced by men – particularly when the subject matter contains masculinity, women, sex – can be used against them, taken as proof of their worst tendencies, evidence that the writer is a bad person and their work ought to be discounted because of that.

We have found ourselves in a world where we cannot understand that the creator and the creation – though closely intertwined – are not the same thing; that a work of art does not require a good message to be worthwhile.

And what a shame. For the sake of art, it is usually good that we produce more not less of it. Obliterating the ambitions of an entire gender is a good way to ensure we end up doing the opposite.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2023/04/20/where-has-the-rock-star-male-novelist-gone/

does feel grimly funny that literally at the point when i'm trying to get published is the point when being on the classically-advantaged side of each identity spectrum (save for autism innit! please publish the aspie!) has after several hundred, maybe thousand years of horrible supremacy palpably switched to being a disadvantage, at least in terms of getting published

still, i could probably stand to try harder. or at least get an agent. not turning MRA just yet lol

that said, the 'rock star male novelist' = eww. most of those types are bastards and bad writers cmon lol

Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro and Julian Barnes

urrrrrgh. aaaand there's Hemingway. okay yes keep the men away from the publishing contracts. i nobly submit to my fate

"Some valid points here"

What valid points were made?

The factor that wasn't mentioned is that writing doesn't pay that much at all. Hence white middle-class men not being all over it like before.

I don't think it's accurate to say being a white male is "a disadvantage" in getting published in the UK or US, and would be very wary of framing the long-overdue shift it representation that way.

in other news the Neumann book that occasioned the Bolaño quote that's all all Neumann's other books ("the literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers") has finally been translated into English and is forthcoming from Open Letter, I got my subscriber's copy in the mail and I'm stoked

"I don't think it's accurate to say being a white male is "a disadvantage" in getting published in the UK or US, and would be very wary of framing the long-overdue shift it representation that way."

In the UK, it's mostly right-wing publications huffing (with the odd liberally indignant sounding voice) and shouting about it without any evidence. I'd like to see numbers of novel submissions by gender and how many are getting through the process to publication, and how that might compare to the 1980s.

cannot believe yerman there hasn't taken the open goal 'has poster imago not considered that his writing simply might be not very good'

smallish sample size granted but in my recent sweep of all the UK indie publishers I could find, pretty much all of them had a clear (and yes, long-overdue) lean away from male writers, and when male a clear favouring of voices that would have been obviously restricted 40 years ago. this is not a cause for protest really - as I say, grimly funny it's happened NOW just when it's ME but it clearly did have to happen, I will simply have to keep writing until I produce something good enough. not sure how the situation is with major publishers, hence getting an agent would provide more of a sense of it

(a disadvantage unless you're already an acclaimed songwriter amirite lol sorry I will get around to Devil House soon)

Lol I don't care about putting in a banal open goal, LJ. I would never consider reading your writing to find out either way, full stop.

From a male writer I know a bit he has done writing courses, pitched and published the odd short story in a collection, got himself an agent etc. Put in a lot of work and built himself networks. And it still sounds like a slow, steady struggle to putting out a book on its own.

Coming up with a tale of (as published by right-wing newspapers) "women have taken my place" is really weak sauce.

Isn’t knausgaard a contemporary example of the “rock star male novelist”

At least in the US, anyone spouting off this sort of reactionary claptrap could be immediately shut up by these stats

https://blog.leeandlow.com/2020/01/28/2019diversitybaselinesurvey/

Coincidentally enough this piece by four writers from non-privileged backgrounds got published today. People are fighting for survival. That anything gets published by them is a minor miracle.

No time to pull a tantrum about their lives, or crying about living at the wrong time.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/23/uk-rental-market-housing-crisis-writers-authors

I'm sure many, many people have totally given up on writing. How many amazing writers have we missed out on? It's a type of murder.

At least in the US, anyone spouting off this sort of reactionary claptrap could be immediately shut up by these stats

https://blog.leeandlow.com/2020/01/28/2019diversitybaselinesurvey/

― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Sunday, 23 April 2023 7:47 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

the first figure (pie charts) shows 74% of people who worked in publishing in 2019 are cis women

The survey reveals that publishing is about 74 percent cis women and 23 percent cis men. “The 2015 survey reported that overall, 78 percent of people who work in publishing self-report as cis women. The current survey has 74 percent of the respondents self-reporting as cis women. Given the sample size difference, this 4 percent change in cis women does meet the bar for statistically significant change.“

how many of these women are agents, who are low paid?

more here, US-centric but a good view nonetheless

and this is about writers, rather than those working in publishing.

I have some experience in publishing (UK not US) and I'd say in terms of people working in it, it skews young, white, upper middle class, female. One reason for that is that although working in publishing is relatively high status, the pay is pretty crap for a job that requires a university degree and probably also requires you to live in London. So it attracts people who can somehow afford the shitty pay and London prices, i.e people who have family money or who have husbands who work in finance or something.

But I don't think publishing being predominantly female explains the increase in the number of female novelists being published, that's more accounted for by the fact that in the past few decades, the readership for fiction has become a lot more female, and women are more likely to read female authors (just as men are more likely to read male authors). So the publishers are just following the money.

how many of these women are agents, who are low paid?

― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Sunday, 23 April 2023 7:37 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don’t know, i was just reading what was in the link you posted

I think the author of the Irish Times article correctly put her finger on a trend that has slowly unfolded over the previous couple of decades: the decline in celebrated male authors who write about sex and relationships in a literary way (I'm thinking primarily of authors writing about heterosexual relationships, I'm not sure if the same trend has happened with gay male writers or not). Knausgaard, as pointed out, is a good counter-example, but it's hard to think of many others. To compare to, say, the state of literature in the '80s or even well into the '90s, the contrast would be stark.

Who wants to read about some straight guy wanting to have sex tho

I have some experience in publishing (UK not US) and I'd say in terms of people working in it, it skews young, white, upper middle class, female. One reason for that is that although working in publishing is relatively high status, the pay is pretty crap for a job that requires a university degree and probably also requires you to live in London. So it attracts people who can somehow afford the shitty pay and London prices, i.e people who have family money or who have husbands who work in finance or something.

Yeah I was going to mention class as an er identity spectrum where the classically-advantaged are very much not in a different position than before. In any case I’d have to think the economics play much more of a role than the idea that these days you get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying you’re a man

& maybe the fact that men don’t read as much as they used to is because there aren’t as many blockbuster middlebrow authors writing bad sex scenes but that’s a pretty large assumption, could be all sorts of reasons

joe rogan podcast and memories of amis will suffice

the government should subsidize horny male writers to increase male literacy rates

philip roth, henry miller etc were psyops created by the cia to get american boys to read

Yeah I was going to mention class as an er identity spectrum where the classically-advantaged are very much not in a different position than before. In any case I’d have to think the economics play much more of a role than the idea that these days you get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying you’re a man

― michel goindry (wins), Monday, 24 April 2023 06:36 (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this seems fair. the fact i am able to have 5h working days means i have time for writing, although the catch is that i treat it like an amateur pursuit, a side-gig, when i'm able to wrench free from internet obsession. then again, having writing as a side-gig probably means you're not able to accumulate the volume of work or the intensity of purpose to really get stuff published. idk. anyone trying to be a full-time writer, especially living in the uk let alone london rn has my...wonderment

re: flopson's prating, i find it notable that my first attempt at getting published was full of (very weird) sex, but my recent second, having read a bunch of books by women in the meantime, expressly had none. bowdlerised by maturity the spirit of the age eh! i feel it's for the best - if it works for Magnus Mills etc

whatever happened to the ILX writing exchanges btw

the government should subsidize horny male writers to increase male literacy rates

― flopson, Monday, 24 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Please no but also this points to another reason (mentioned in the piece I linked) that funding for the arts has been gutted so writers aren't able to get a space free from distractions, such as rent increases.

---

that in the past few decades, the readership for fiction has become a lot more female, and women are more likely to read female authors (just as men are more likely to read male authors). So the publishers are just following the money.

― Zelda Zonk, Monday, 24 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Is that really true? I'd like to see some research that backs that up.

women were always reading more fiction than men, weren't they? seem to recall novels were seen as dangerous in the 19th century because women spent so much time on them...

this is a Danish survey showing that the last book male readers read was in 80% of the cases written by a male author (19% female, 1% non-binary) whereas last book read by female readers was in 54% of the cases written by a female author, 44% male, 3% non-binary
https://kum.dk/fileadmin/_kum/1_Nyheder_og_presse/2023/Rapport_Laesning-i-forandring_FEB_TG.pdf

I don't think we need rockstar male authors, but I think it's true that public literary reception has become increasingly moralistic and that sometimes that makes for less interesting work, I don't think Knausgaard would have published those books in the current atmosphere

but that goes for authors of any gender/ethnicity/sexuality, this article makes some good points imo:

Many authors write with just enough racial awareness to flatter their readers into thinking they’ve read something bold and insightful, all the while avoiding any exploration of truths that would make both author and reader uncomfortable. It’s literature as lifestyle affirmation art.

this is a Danish survey showing that the last book male readers read was in 80% of the cases written by a male author (19% female, 1% non-binary) whereas last book read by female readers was in 54% of the cases written by a female author, 44% male, 3% non-binary
https://kum.dk/fileadmin/_kum/1_Nyheder_og_presse/2023/Rapport_Laesning-i-forandring_FEB_TG.pdf

― corrs unplugged, Monday, 24 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

This is what I suspect as the case.

Just now through twitter and seeing a couple of tweets I have been reminded of four men who: talked about a short story published recently, a book they published in the past, a book they are to publish in future and one person who is getting a book published but are way overdue because reasons. None are names, all randoms.

Obviously this is all through book twitter but publishing your own writing is a bit of a niche activity anyway(?), so wonder if it's an actual issue.

Most women I know who read a lot do say they tend to prefer female writers but hegemony being what it is they prob still end up reading more men than most men read women.

There certainly are already a lot of books

Perhaps still more books than shows, as unlikely as that sounds.

I don't mean to view the days of literary rock stars through rose-tinted glasses. In lots of ways that world sucked. That world of big-time book critics, literary publishers and authors seemed very clubby. Lots of mediocre work was championed and there was more than a hint of sexism in some of the attitudes. But on the other hand, maybe having that clubby world controlling book review sections in major periodicals and newspapers at least allowed some critical mass to coalesce around certain authors and books, enough to cross them over to a wider mainstream audience and get people interested in literature who otherwise might not have given it the time of day. Those hyper-masculine literary lions were caricatures in some respects, but at least they had an appeal that extended beyond ivory-tower eggheads and hoity-toity rich folks. We can indulge some nostalgia for those dinosaurs even while admitting their kind will probably not walk the earth again.

So…it was like the recording industry?