I did not write this. Credit belongs to The Rejecter at http://rejecter.blogspot.com/
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Literary vs. Commercial Fiction Round 247
So at this point in the life of the blog I am seriously tempted to just write "go away" to people who send in the usual "why is there so much trash in the marketplace while my literary opus isn't published?" email. I decided to make an exception for this one.Hello Ms. Rejecter,
The dynamic for agents is to find that compelling work that is salable, not an easy task I'm sure. For me some books that are considered page turners are often so empty and the characters so thin I don't care what they do and the plot so mundanely crime-ridden or romance-ridden or horror-ridden that I don't care what happens. I could give many examples of such profitable books with their suspense page turners in different genres that the only reasonable thing is for the characters to self-destruct. Good luck to those writers. I do not envy or begrudge them anything, for life is too short for that. Maybe these books are a kind of therapy in their escapism for readers and agents are part of the therapy business. However, maybe there is kind of writing that tries to sustain us by illuminating the real world.
Now, the dilemma is, do the vagaries of the the marketplace where escapism literature is easily identified and dominate reduce the marketplace need for compelling stories that deal more authentically with the real world?
First, a confession. I had to look "vagaries" up. I don't know everything. It turns out it means "an extravagant or erratic notion or action" or something like that, which I feel really further obscures the meaning of the sentence than if I hadn't looked it up, but fine. Learn something new every day.
Now, there's the standard argument as to why the market is what it is:
(1) People buy books they want to read.
(2) Publishing companies watch sales and take stock of what was bought.
(3) Editors are encouraged to buy new and exciting things in genres that people are actually buying and reading, plus a little "more of the same" to be on the safe side. The company doesn't want to go under or anything.
In other words, if the public for some reason completely stopped buying books about vampires (in a wildly unlikely alternate universe), editors would be less interested in publishing books about vampires, knowing they wouldn't sell. Eventually there would be no new books about vampires aside from a couple companies hoping to buck the trend, because people don't like to publish books that they know won't sell. Publishing is a business, people. A slightly more altruistic business than, say, investment banking, but nonetheless a business.
From browsing the shelves by yourself, using whatever definition of "literary fiction" you want to use, you will probably come to the conclusion that most people don't buy literary fiction, as most things on the shelves aren't literary fiction. And, by the way, it has always been this way. There has been no time in history where people have only read "great literature."
Now, the dilemma is, do the vagaries of the the marketplace where escapism literature is easily identified and dominate reduce the marketplace need for compelling stories that deal more authentically with the real world?
I want to spend a moment for the good of mankind taking apart this sentence.
I'm going to assume that "escapism literature" means "genre fiction" so we don't spend all day discussing. Normally I would just assume that the latter half of the sentence refers to "literary fiction" and just direct you to the explanation above, which is that the buyers dictate the market, not the other way around, but hold on a second. What are "compelling stories that deal more authentically with the real world?" Because generally in publishing, stories that take place in the "real world" are stories that could possibly happen somewhere at sometime, even if they didn't, and if they actually did it's called "non-fiction." So, that eliminates alternate histories, stories that contain ghosts, stories that contain whimsical creatures who are just metaphors for things, and actually most things that are on the shelves, except maybe romance fiction, because people do occasionally have sex with improbably hot guys. Also thrillers happen in real life, but they usually end up with the protagonist dying in a ditch somewhere or never finding out who was chasing him because that's what happens to most spies.
Your given definition of the literature you want to see more of, if interpreted strictly, would knock out most "great literature." You know, like:
All of Greek literature
All of Arthurian literature
Most Shakespeare
1984
Beloved (though I don't know how "great" it is, in my opinion)
The Old Man and the Sea
And a ton of others I'm thinking of right now because I have to get to work
So, you might want to rethink that.
