Forum / Novelists read this and weep..

Susan Tepper
Mar 29, 04:56pm

Posted by Gay Degani on facebook.
Sobering account of today's world of Non-Reading.

http://www.everydayfiction.com/flashfictionblog/a-possible-literary-savior-flash-fiction/

Susan Gibb
Mar 29, 05:29pm

Wow. So flash fiction is no longer practice for a novel I guess.

James Lloyd Davis
Mar 29, 05:38pm

Not to be contrary, but to take the alternate view ... I'm a novelist, but I'm not going to weep. Here's why.

To quote the linked article, which was written by Virgie Townsend:

"A 2007 Associated Press-Ipsos poll revealed that 27 percent of Americans said they hadn’t read a single book in the past year."

In 2007, the population of the US was a tad over 300 million (300,000,000). If 27 percent of Americans (81,000,000) had not read a book, then by logical interpolation of the numbers as given by the poll, 219,000,000 Americans HAD read a book.

Of course, both analyses are somewhat simplistic, hers and mine. There are as many diverse methods of interpreting statistical data as there are opinions. It should also be noted that the author of the article, "...an attorney, public relations specialist, and fiction devotee..." is really only making the case for flash fiction as the new, viable alternative to novels. You hear this a lot these days and it's a good thing.

The message for novelists in this would be, not to weep, but to get in there, work harder, work better. It's a competitive world. Always has been. But good, well written novels will always have a place in our literature.

Susan Tepper
Mar 29, 05:49pm

27 percent is huge, no matter how you wish to view the pie chart.
I really wish you'd get that book done, Jim, and get it out in the marketplace and prove me wrong. That would give me a well needed lift.
Lit-sense went belly up for precisely the reasons stated in this article, and then some.
People aren't reading books. Well 27 percent aren't.

James Lloyd Davis
Mar 29, 10:49pm

Pity the 27 percent. We know what they're missing.

Matthew A. Hamilton
Mar 30, 06:09pm

Sad.

Marcus Speh
Mar 30, 07:12pm

wow, gloomy. i'm with james here - nobody knows what's coming and writers of the past haven't worried half as much as we tend to, with our oversupply of information, half-baked and half-understood (i second jim's doubt of statistics and double it) - and these writers of the past have still done "their job", most of them unnoticed and without applause not to mention royalties, money. it's been like this from the start.

what's different today is that the number of people speaking and, at varying levels of proficiency, no doubt, reading or being able to read english, has probably doubled in the past 20 years. i don't have the exact numbers but i do know about globalisation and english bears the burden of globalisation as the true carrier of communication (same is true for french, spanish and german, interestingly though not at the same rate).

what's different today is that, while the numbers of the poor and starving are still staggering (as always), literacy overall is <a href="http://huebler.blogspot.com/2010/09/lit.html">rising sharply</a>. as is population overall. these people aren't just nintendo addicts and they're not only going to read manuals and billboards. what's different is also that a lot more people will in the future have access to our writing - and when i say "a lot", i mean billions, not millions. that's a totally different playing field - and market.

writing is a basic need. a bookshop around the corner from where i live is called "bücher sind lebensmittel" ("books are food"). reading habits are changing (fast), even brains are changing (slowly), but the essential need for

story
plot
character
...

is not changing because we live and grow and our brains are hardwired to create, demand and play stories back to ourselves again and again - that's a quintessential way in which our unconscious works - you can't even say 'fortunately' because we don't have a choice.

flash or novel? flash is great for entertainment as outlined in the article, and for other things that the article doesn't mention - susan alluded to one which i am fond of: using flash for practice. like a warm-up run or many, many shorter runs before the marathon. flash is fun and it's done-probably not unlike the epidemic run on poetry at certain times in europe in the 17th-19th centuries where, to feel alive, you had to write a poem. or to be loved. it is certainly an art form albeit a rather young one.

but by the same token it's not going to topple the novel in any genre or in the literary realm because story, plot, character need time to evolve, to be believed. (notwithstanding experimental writing and hybrid forms which escape this classification altogether, of course). a novel, john gardner recognized perhaps first, is like a dream.

if books are food, which i believe (e-book or not only 1/2 matters) then the novel is a substantial meal, flash isn't. a group of 50 flash pieces makes a novel only by volume (50k words or thereabouts), it does not allow you to sink into gardner's dream, go into trance.

my daughter listened to me reading 7 of my flash pieces last week (they were streamed live on the internet). she loved it, she says. she could recount what they were about (they're not simple pieces) & she had feelings about it. she is 10.

tonight, for another reading, i read her a few consecutive chapters of my novella. it's simpler, each bit of it, not nearly as dense as the flash, more accessible perhaps, but - without having read this article, only because i was curious, knowing people's reaction to my flash being read but not my novella since it's brand new - i observed her. how she slowly sank into the story (i was pleased). at the end, she couldn't quite recall every detail (too much content, and she is only 10) but she had understood what it was about and she had begun to enter a dream (i could see it from her body language, her eyes and from the fact that it took her a moment to come back from it).

simple human fact: when we don't dream, we die.

Christopher Allen
Mar 30, 08:12pm

I love that you read your work to your daughter, Marcus. I want you as a daddy.

The US has several strikes against it when it comes to reading.

Our transportation system evolved to favor the car instead of the train. In Europe, people read on the train; in the US, people get fined for reading while driving. I know I did.

Many of our television shows favor silly, one-liner humor. This is subtle, pervasively formative conditioning in the way we communicate and also in the way we create narratives, dialogues and characters.

Enough has been said about the fashion of stupidity.

Yet even with these strikes against us, 63% of American have indeed read a book in the last year. Yay.

stephen hastings-king
Mar 30, 08:46pm

I suppose if you approach flash as practice for a novel then that's what it is. I don't see approach it that way. So for me it isn't that way. That settles that then.

I know people who read and I know people who have never read much and there's not a lot of movement from one group into the other. But that's anecdotal. So's the fact that most of the people I know who were inclined to read books still read them even if they spent way too much time looking at digital things that do not necessarily include books.

Everybody who makes a map of the zetigeist wants to be the person who retroactively appears to get it right in order to then enter into retroactive lists of people who make maps about the zeitgeist and have been known to get it right so that they can continue making maps of the zeitgeist and once in a while get it right as opposed to getting a different gig that relies upon different abilities to wet one's finger stick it up in the air and tell what's happening. Same goes for people who make sentences about people who make maps of the zeitgeist I suppose.

Flash seems to me more theatrical than novels. It's hard to have characters who act out of the weight of the past. Unless they say something that indicates that they are acting out of the weight of the past or unless the narrator does. But with flash it's easier to set up a piece that requires assembly from the reader in the course of which assembly the reader comes to feel that the character is acting as a function of the weight of the past.

The trance thing is more difficult. In my humble experience, trance is a process thing. I like working with longer sound forms because trance has a kind of rhythm and it opens across stages and you simply can't get to some spaces in 4 minutes and even less through verse chorus bridge verse blah blah blah as much as I like verse chorus bridge verse blah blah blah as a form. Writing seems very different from that, but the difference may be particularly obvious for me because when I write there is not a grand piano in front of me and I am drinking coffee more often than not whereas with a piano there's little point in drinking coffee because it just gets cold sitting there. But I digress. Anyway, I am not sure that the same holds for a reader. Now that I think about it, I trance out to pieces of different lengths, but it has much more to do with space, interval used and manipulations of timbre than it does with length. There's probably a parallel with listening to a reading or reading. I just don't know what it is.

I like the idea of little kids trancing out to a story. That much is sure.

Marcus Speh
Mar 30, 09:40pm

hey, chris, she did ask me to do that. and i did improvise certain passages (just in case you ever come across that text). interesting what you say about US vs europe - reading habits are certainly different though if i'm over there or here, book shops are full and people if anything, seem to cherish the written word. dystopian fears may say otherwise but when i say "i write" i get "where can i read it", and not "ok. and how do you survive". nice.

i agree about the trance, stephen. i did not mean 'length' as the key parameter even though i left that impression. but your process example is accurate, i think. plus, process is highly personal. dreaming is, too, though trance/dreaming rhythms aren't. it seems to be less a matter of length overall than density perhaps. the truth is, i haven't really pinned down what it is that, at the level of consciousness, separates flash from novelistic writing. also, i don't just use it as practice but in a pointillistic way as i have said elsewhere - my novella e.g. uses a lot of flash stories, ideas and characters - the totality of my flash stories looks to me right now like a fundus, like an equipment store for parts - not always in a linear fashion but in a way that is probably more like musical composition than not.

going into some real trance now. i mean sleep. been fun.

Susan Tepper
Mar 30, 11:45pm

I wish I could feel optimistic. I don't. Bookstore chains in the U.S. are closing stores at alarming rates. One of the biggest Barnes & Noble in NYC, at Lincoln Center, always jammed, has closed. More will follow in that chain. Borders is closing many of their stores too.
While in London last summer, I was astonished to see the vast number of independent bookstores (bookshops) still thriving.
But here in the US the Indy's that remain open are struggling, and the biggies are closing.
None of this bodes well for books in the US.
Perhaps other European cities are still "literate" as in London, but here it's all about phones and malls.
As for literacy, statistics in the US show an increasing number of illiterate students graduating from high schools across the nation.

James Lloyd Davis
Mar 31, 02:00am

Big bookstore chains are closing, true, and that's a good thing. It's time for a new marketplace, one that does not control the lists and the output of publishers or greatly discount books that don't move as fast as the bottom line demands. What's needed is a marketplace that has a love for its product and the people who produce it.

Marketing in the publishing industry is a joke, but the market is out there, still healthy and hungry for books.

I live in a small midwestern town, a 'suburb' of Akron, a modest little town surrounded by factories. There are farms around us as well, and rivers, lakes and deer. This town, though, is as blue collar as it gets, home to people who work in the industries that still survive in Cleveland and Akron. But our Borders isn't closing and our library is consistently funded by voter initiatives. What's more, it's packed from morning until closing seven days a week. Media other than books? Yes. Film DVDs? Yes, but they also move books, books, and more books in and out the door. Both Cleveland and Akron have a large number of little bookstores, some that specialize, some that are as general as Barnes & Noble.

I hear so much anecdotal evidence about the dumbing down of America, the idea that Americans are schlepping their lives away in front of flat screen televisions, chomping on chips and watching the Housewives of Whatever or inane sitcoms.

It's a myth.

I gave you anecdotal evidence in my little description of my town in Ohio. Here is statistical evidence. According to The Association of American Publishers, in 2010, Americans spent $11,670,000,000 on books, BOOKS. That's up 3.6 percent from 2009.

Confidence about the future of American literature is founded in fact. The industry is changing, not disappearing. Just look around you on Fictionaut. The future of American literature is there. Talent abounds in the art of creative writing. Publishing is another matter altogether. That's where the revolution needs to occur.

And it will.

Marcus, I think you need to do a treatise on the novel. You must. I was truly moved by your post above.

Bill Yarrow
Mar 31, 02:28am

"Americans spent $11,670,000,000 on books"

What KINDS of books?

James Lloyd Davis
Mar 31, 03:44am

Why do I bother?

Never mind.

Mark Reep
Mar 31, 04:58am

Great thread. Marcus you remain the Man. Steven you too. James, I don't think it's a myth. But it's not the end of the world either, and I do admire and respect your faith.

Marcus Speh
Mar 31, 05:01am

@jim – why bother: complaining about the current state of affairs has always been an important part of paradigm change. it's brought about or accompanied the most important movements everywhere in all times. the fabians: social complainers (complaining is an art form in britain). gruppe 47: literary complainers (complaining is a big sport in germany)...and so on. americans have a lot in the game, a lot to lose, given the world a lot - it's only naturally that they should do a fair amount of whining and complaining as their world changes (or: as they change their world, because ultimately, our collective is responsible for the changes). i'm not a great complainer, never found i had the time, but my daughter is, probably she's channeling something for me, too...

salut to change!

Marcus Speh
Mar 31, 05:19am

ps. i meant complaining is an art form in france. in britain, it is an excuse to show off your beautiful accent. in japan, complaining is, as you could and can all see every day in the news, not really known. a most effective people.

stephen hastings-king
Mar 31, 11:34am

when i read an article like the one at the start of the thread and after i've said certain things about placing one's thumb on the pulse of the zeitgeist, usually the next morning over coffee i start to wonder what kind of data could be accumulated that would speak to the status of the novel, really.

there's lots of stuff in "material culture" studies around "the history of the book" at this point.....most of it that i know of dodges the question of what a contemporary dataset might include or look like that would address their research questions by focusing on the necessity of reading-off from fragmentary 17th-early 19th century data. but the project is basically that of mcluhan's gutenberg galaxy (a cool book btw)---to talk about rearrangements of collective sensorium as a function of changes in the dominant medium/media.

that's the underlying issue here as well. and the main problem is that unless there's a different sort of information gathered, the arguments are not going to move past placing one's thumb on the zeitgeist and gathering some infotainment therefrom which is then combined with dispositions or projections or mood or anecdotal information into a sense but no more than that of what's happening out there.

there has to be another way to figure this stuff out, yes? i just can't quite work out over coffee in the morning what it would consist in. sales figures? what do they tell you about dispositions? interviews? sociologies of reading practices? vaporous stuff. important, but vaporous. things like passeron & grignon's le savant et le populaire? reception theory?

James Lloyd Davis
Mar 31, 01:41pm

Thank you, Marcus and Stephen. Your eloquence is direct, positive, and sensible as alway.

As for the prophets of gloom, proponents of the 'inevitable' failure of the novel in America, this is all I'm going to say on the subject ... Concerning weeping novelists, the decline of American literature, the publishing industry, the state of the art and the welfare of artists engaged in creative writing:

If you're happy with the way things are, then remain happy. If you're unhappy with the way things are, but are comforted by the romantic notion that your unhappiness somehow makes you special, then remain comforted.

However, if you're unhappy with the way things are and want to try to do something about it, then visit:

http://wag.mixxt.org/

Questions about the problems are always welcome, but only if they are balanced with suggestions for solutions.

David Ackley
Mar 31, 02:04pm

The first occurring and last word on some of the subjects discussed in this thread, I should modestly say, was compiled in the following works from my projected 12 volume history of publishing to which I cordially invite all your attention. "It is impossible to understand the present without knowledge of the past." (anon. 1642)

[Actually, I just made that up.]

See: http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/david-ackley/tales-of-the-golden-age and Tales of the Golden Age II.

Susan Tepper
Apr 02, 08:19pm

REALITY ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess I must be one of those prophets of gloom that my pal Jim Davis mentions.

Because I prefer dealing in reality over pie in the sky optimism.
At least with reality, you can then decide how to approach a problem.

I'm happy to hear that Jim Davis' Borders will remain open. But not happy to hear that he thinks it's a good thing the chain bookstores are shutting down!!!

Heavenly Horrors!

We need EVERY BOOKSTORE IN AMERICA to remain open if we are to continue to sell books at all here.

Re Bill Yarrow's comment: What Kinds of Books. Well that is straight on target, Bill.
Lit fiction and poetry are down at the bottom.

I suggest a study of kinds of books and percentages, if you really want to see the reality of what is going on in the book world.

Chris Allen also hit some salient points about American culture changing the course of reading.

Basically it boils down to this: You gotta buy books to keep the book market going. Like you gotta buy carrots to keep the carrot industry alive.

If you make excuses as to why you don't buy books, then you are putting YOUR NAIL into the book coffin.

Bill Yarrow
Apr 03, 12:25am

"Like you gotta buy carrots to keep the carrot industry alive"
I buy carrots because I like to eat carrots.

James Lloyd Davis
Apr 03, 02:38am

Reality is what you make of it. You can sit down on the couch and complain, "I'll never get out of this backwater town."

Tomorrow?

You'll still be there.

Or, you can get up off the couch and take a bus for the coast. (Left, right, doesn't matter. What matters is the getting off the couch and doing something about it.)

I've been buying books for more years than many people on this site have been alive. Now, I'm writing them. I'm not about to apologize for not being able to buy books right now.

Can't afford to buy them ... what with the price of carrots being so high and all.

By the way. Farmers who grow carrots don't have to buy them to keep the carrot industry alive. Not a reasonable analogy, that one.

Mike Lynch
Apr 03, 01:49pm

My favorite part of this thread is the carrot part. :)

Susan Tepper
Apr 03, 09:11pm

Wake up and smell the carrots!

Susan Tepper
Apr 03, 09:15pm

Is that a better analogy?

James Lloyd Davis
Apr 04, 02:15am

Uhmmm .. no. But it's funnier

Susan Tepper
Apr 04, 04:30pm

Good! Because you're a pal and even if we don't ever agree, you'll still be a pal
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