NP journo trashes contemporary authors

[Jerky]

Could it be, as scores of academics and social critics have been saying for 
decades, that the novel is simply irrelevant, now?

That, as a society, we are beyond literature? Not post-literate, but 
actually, evolutionarily, beyond being affected by fiction?

And could it be that even authors of fiction are beginning to realize that 
there's nothing less interesting than navel-gazing about navel-gazing?

When was the last time a work of fiction changed anything, anyway?  Grapes 
of Wrath?


Cheers,
yer old pal Jerky





At 11:59 AM 7/13/01 -0700, you wrote:

> >PW Daily for Booksellers from Publishers Weekly
> >http://www.publishersweekly.com
> >
> >-----------------------------------------------------------
> >Contents for the issue sent Thursday, July 12, 2001:
> >
>[...]
> >Atlantic Debunking Evocative of Not Much
> >
> >What if they trashed the literary establishment and nobody cared? The
> >Atlantic magazine's other contrarian article this month--the one more
> >interesting than the chestnut about whether superstores are good for
> >America (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/allen.htm) accuses a
> >number of showhorse writers of mediocrity and blasts the editors and
> >critics who encourage them.
> >
> >The essay's emperors-new-clothes argument (reminiscent in some ways of Tom
> >Wolfe's screed of a few years back) is too vast to be summarized. But if
> >you haven't read it, it comes down to this: 1) Prize juries reward a good
> >sentence over a dazzling passage, story or character,  2) Those sentences
> >are often overblown, overwritten and overrated, 3) Don DeLillo sucks.
> >
> >The author of the piece--one unknown B.R. Myers--also exegisizes
> >contemporary stars like Cormac McCarthy, Rick Moody, Annie Proulx, David
> >Guterson and Paul Auster, putting them down for convoluted writing that he
> >says lacks the clarity of Bellow or the story-telling chops of Stephen
> >King.
> >
> >Whatever the argument's merits, bookstores might say that it doesn't
> >matter. Prize stickers, they claim, help sell books; Myers thinks that
> >juries dish them out reflexively, to the wrong authors. Booksellers say
> >blurbs catch a shopper's eye; Myers counters that critics have gotten lazy
> >with their adjectives. "It is easier to call writing like Proulx's
> >lyrically evocative or poetically compelling than to figure out what it
> >evokes," he writes.
> >
> >His is, um, an entertaining and thoughtful essay, with points astute,
> >specious and provocative all rolled into one grape leaf of an argument. But
> >perhaps most provocative is how little its, well, provoked. "It will start
> >a firestorm among the literati. I can't wait," wrote one book editor
> >outside New York last week. Industry reaction, however, has been closer to
> >a mild drizzle. Some people haven't read it, or they've read it and not
> >noticed, or, as Myers might argue, they've read it but are too busy
> >sleepwaking through pretentious prose to care. Last weekend Myers appeared
> >on NPR, but that didn't do much to goose interest. It's a shame, because
> >like it or not, the piece is a rarity: long (16 pages crammed with text),
> >passionate, at once, um, serious and highly readable.
> >
> >Unfortunately, readable does not always with equate with read. "I've heard
> >zero," says Little, Brown editor Geoff Shandler, as good a touchstone among
> >young editors as any, adding he didn't really get why Myers was so in a
> >lather. "A lot of the books in stores today have a very strong sense of
> >storytelling. It seems a little like a rich person complaining about the
> >capital-gains tax."
> >
> >Even the piece's editor, Ben Schwarz, himself a member of the NBCC board,
> >was a little taken aback. "I've been surprised. I was expecting a much more
> >hostile response." Schwarz says he's heard from many readers but none of
> >the authors--or their editors. Ditto for us; at press time, calls to
> >editors of Guterson and Moody had gone unreturned.
> >
> >The exception to the silence is critics themselves. Theirs is a split
> >opinion. New York Times Book Review editor Chip McGrath is writing a letter
> >to the Atlantic agreeing with most, but not all, of the critique. Jonathan
> >Yardley mostly supported Myers in his Washington Post column. But two other
> >super-critics--Nation literary editor Art Winslow and L.A. Times Book
> >Review chief Steve Wasserman--were reportedly less tickled.
> >
> >Sitting at the eye of this swirl of heavy hitters is Myers (first name:
> >Brian). With a generic-sounding name and an Atlantic bio that lists him
> >only as "liv[ing] and writ[ing] in New Mexico," it's tempting to think of
> >him as a deliciously pseudonymous figure, the Joe Klein of literary
> >criticism. Alas, the media has not pulled out its Sherlock Holmes costume,
> >Jim Romenesko has not been bombarded with e-mails and the truth,
> >regrettably, is more prosaic. Myers has a PhD in Korean literature (book
> >credit: Han Sorya and North Korean Literature from Cornell UP) and is not,
> >according to Schwarz, actively seeking publicity.
> >
> >"He wants the argument to speak for itself," Schwarz says. "He's a serious
> >reader, and he's writing for people like himself--serious readers who are
> >not necessarily part of the cognoscenti. This piece confirms what they've
> >always felt: reviewers tell them to like a book and then they can't read
> >it. That's why so many of our readers have read the piece and loved it."
> >The same can't be said for the industry, but Myers shouldn't be
> >discouraged: most people, after all, don't read Proulx either.--Steven
> >Zeitchik
>