The Word Cloud

8 Comments

• 

  by mike 1 year ago

  Presumably this list of books is for a 'Guardian' readership and the 'Daily Mail' would provide a different list? i do suspect the critics of the 'Guardian; have emerged from the same background as the writers the paper promotes?
  
  P.S 'If on a Winter's night a Traveller' was an influence on the Greek novel i wrote. Does that make my novel a literary novel? i suspect not.
• 

  by John Taylor 1 year ago

  Interesting, Debi. The readers are there and the writers are there. Could the missing link be the commercial instincts of acqisitions panels?
• 

  by EmmaD 1 year ago

  John, the publishers did acquire those, after all, so the system doesn't fail altogether - and the two writers I know about of that lot are writing reasonably edgy stuff. There is a market for literary fiction, and they do sell into it, they're just increasingly risk-averse, so there's less published than there was, which is really hard on writers who would have got published 1o years ago.
  
  But don't forget that anyone who buys in-print books second hand, or buys hugely discounted books on Amazon or in the supermarkets, is contributing DIRECTLY to the problems that the publishers have, in supporting good, small-selling books.
  
  Mike, I don't see that that anyone's background is is the point of this kind of piece (any more than it is when the Daily Mail likes my work): they've defined their terms, in as much as you can define literary fiction, and decided these are SOME of the best of the current crop of new writers of that kind of fiction. They're not even insisting that they're THE best, which makes a nice change: just The Guardian's pick of some of the best, which seems a perfectly reasonable proposition to me.
• 

  by Debi 1 year ago

  Actually, the list is not the Guardian's, but The Culture Show's. That's made clear in the comments, which make interesting reading too - for the opinions expressed on this list and for the other suggestions made.
  
  And Emma is (as always) right in that these books HAVE been published. I think that should encourage other people who write novels that play with structure, form, voice etc and assume that they have no hope of being published because they don't comply with the demands placed on commercial fiction.
• 

  by John Taylor 1 year ago

  Emma, I agree very much with the point about HOW we buy books. But getting that message across to the public at large could be difficult. Overall, I do feel encouraged by the article.
  I'm in another little niche: I do play with form, but I'm nearer to commercial fiction than literary fiction. I wouldn't have the tools to create a work of literature, but I can tell a damn good story. But what does encourage me is the reassurance that readers ARE daring.
• 

  by mike 1 year ago

  The 'Guardian' did seem to suggest an academic basis for their selection and, also, pointed out the influence of university writing courses 'The University of East Anglia, for example.
  The broadsheets are aimed at a particular and rather selective advertising group. Is is C+++? These groups are chosen, I believe, according a postcode. Location! Location; Location! It is quite conceivable that the books promoted by the papers are targeted at the same group. Someone seated at a posh Kensington eatery might well read Julian Barnes, while those at a pie and eel shop might will be thumbing Martina Cole. - though their might be the occasional reader of David Mitchell. The only artists who buck this trend are pop-singers.
  i
• 

  by mike 1 year ago

  P.S When does 'cutting edge' become conventional? It may well be that 'cutting edge' had been in crime fiction? I rather enjoy a 'conventional' novel - even though, i must admit, the novel is always evolving. I intend to read the second volume of Stieg Larsson this evening and i consider his books to be conventional novels.
  Certainly Wilkie Collins had been 'cutting edge' when he wrote detective fiction for the periodicals. I think I mentioned him before, in that he seems to have invented all variants of the genre. 'Cutting edge' now seems to be on American TV and not in books.
• 

  by Debi 1 year ago

  We can tie ourselves in knots thinking about definitions and where genre boundaries lie and where our own writing fits. And it does matter in that both agents and publishers are concerned about which shelf to place a book on.
  
  What I took from this was the heartening news that it's possible to be published - and acclaimed - when writing non-formulaic books that do push those boundaries.