“What We Need Is Less Published Novels And More Great Novels.”

I have no idea who the ‘Three Guys’ are, and know nothing about them, except for the fact that there appears to be four of them, but they do seem to have a sensible thing or five to say about the current state of the publishing industry. Here’s a few excerpts from their recent post-BEA ‘State of the Union’ address:

“Literary novels, as least the ones I read, don’t ever engage the common reader, the man or woman interested in getting emotionally involved in a book between LAX and JFK. There is a certain percentage of readers out there who do like literary novels, but it’s less than you’d think. I believe printed books would be dead and buried if it weren’t for the big splashy thrillers and kids in peril books that crowd the superstores and airport racks, books as entertainment, books as identifiable substances within your own life. With this in mind it’s the gate keepers who are hurting the industry. The agents, the editors, the money men who down size five good employees two days before Christmas when the company fell short of it’s 15% profit goal. I look at every catalog of every US publisher and I see 90% commercial tripe. Whether its fiction, genre, or non fiction, it’s all based on the lowest common denominator …”
  “Maybe what we need is less published novels and more great novels? Enough with the sentence, already. How about engaging readers with a great story? How about allowing readers to get inside the story, instead of holding them at arms length in the name of literary pretension? Most of the new fiction I read just doesn’t feel lived. Period. And it’s not compelling because it feels like artifice. It feels crafted, or overworked, or counterfeit. I’m usually all too aware that somebody is writing the damn story. Hell, I’d rather watch Deadwood or Madmen any day of the week than read most new novels. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Some of the best writing is going on in cable television, because television has finally learned the benefit of creating a good working environment for writers where film has mostly failed, and publishing has—/ahem/—also come up short in recent decades. Maybe we’re losing some of our greatest novelists to the greener pastures of TV? We’re certainly losing our readers. Fuck that. I still believe in the novel! …”
  “However many ways there are to write a great novel, they all have one thing in common while you’re reading them, at least while I’m reading them: the experience feels credible, or in some way lived. It doesn’t feel written, so much as alive. Too much literary fiction I read feels written to me …”
  “I think the problem is that most literary novelists don’t create and manage enough tension in their work, something genre writers, and good television writers can’t afford to overlook. You’ve got to have something driving the story besides words and insights and observations and narrative tropes and voice. In order to keep an audience riveted to a story, you must have some form of tension at work constantly. I’m not suggesting that every scene needs to be a confrontation. Most of the tension can involve internal conflict that need never be stated, rather suggested or dictated by a character’s situation. Also, I think that among literary novelists there is often a concerted effort to frustrate traditional (Aristotelian) story arcs, which is admirable. The problem is, that after tens of thousands of years, folks process stories a certain way. We respond to rising action, we expect climax and denouement …”

  For more – much, much more – clickety-click here …