tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post1304207116828759681..comments2024-03-28T14:22:37.153-07:00Comments on mole: The Death of the AuthorDalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14523194846272870013noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-60896221901901623622012-02-10T18:27:01.153-08:002012-02-10T18:27:01.153-08:00"Having to work twenty hours a week at some c..."Having to work twenty hours a week at some crummy job never kept anyone from writing a great book or painting great paintings. But having to work fifty or sixty hours a week, or being unable to find any work, certainly will. That's the real disaster for the arts, and for all of us."<br /><br />Yep!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-1397067230661998032012-02-07T12:42:38.198-08:002012-02-07T12:42:38.198-08:00[breaks out pompoms and leaps up and down enthusia...[breaks out pompoms and leaps up and down enthusiastically]<br /><br />YES to saner lives. I've been saying versions of this for years. Up with having time to stand and stare!Amandahttp://limetreebower.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-2818241909877996122012-02-05T03:15:45.287-08:002012-02-05T03:15:45.287-08:00Yes, yes and yes. This is refreshing and affirmat...Yes, yes and yes. This is refreshing and affirmative. You make me less inclined to be apologetic about the way I find I'm reading now.<br /><br />I've found more and more I rather resent the time I've spent reading a novel, even when I've been quite caught up with it at the time. Time was I would feel obliged to chew on down to the bitter end but less so now. <br /><br />There are things I like to read being published in the mainstream though, but fewer of them seem to be novels; there's a lot of very inviting, satisfying non-fiction, which doesn't quite fit into the traditional pigeon-holes, neither biography nor history nor philosophy, which it seems to me owes quite a lot to the way we read on-line; it's intelligent and well-informed and serious but also colourful and rather Protean and playful and inclined to go off at tangents. And with e-books the whole of out-of-copyright classic lit is there free and instant, without anyone being short-changed. And if I spend time reading things by my friends which are less that masterpieces of literary perfection (present company excluded!), so what? The exchange as act of friendship is more enriching than passively ingesting what arbiter of good taste tells me is good for me. <br /><br />Good times on the whole, I reckon.Lucyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09764296105901909328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-85444923396041547252012-02-04T15:07:45.225-08:002012-02-04T15:07:45.225-08:00Oh, and ANOTHER cheer for YOU!!!
HURRAH!Oh, and ANOTHER cheer for YOU!!!<br /><br />HURRAH!Joyce Ellen Davishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-36987493080401901982012-02-04T15:06:49.110-08:002012-02-04T15:06:49.110-08:00I love Lulu! I love Pindrop! Three cheers for the...I love Lulu! I love Pindrop! Three cheers for them both!<br /><br />Hurrah! Hurah! Hurrah!Joyce Ellen Davishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-83617943024153023502012-02-04T13:45:06.938-08:002012-02-04T13:45:06.938-08:00What I find interesting is that the old system was...What I find interesting is that the old system was so heavily dependent on promoting one particular form of writing, The Novel.<br /><br />I have to say, with one or two exceptions, I've never found Novels (by which I mean the sort of often-pretentious literary fiction that gets the praise and reviews in the NYT) to be all that compelling. I find far more interesting characters and stories in oft-derided "genre fiction" like science fiction and fantasy and in young adult books, and more graceful, moving writing in creative non-fiction. <br /><br />If the scope of "good writing" could be widened out to acknowledge those sorts of work as well as The Novel, I think the reading public would be far better served.<br /><br />I also agree with butuki's point about the decline of the editor.Ranahttp://palimpsest.typepad.com/frogsandravensnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-81066166108871461412012-02-04T04:17:34.168-08:002012-02-04T04:17:34.168-08:00Ach, I won't be bothered with all th bad spell...Ach, I won't be bothered with all th bad spelling and silly autocorrects. Hope what I wrote makes sense.butukihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12473964455146342069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-68044688482897868282012-02-04T04:16:00.202-08:002012-02-04T04:16:00.202-08:00that is, "in times of long-distance communica...that is, "in times of long-distance communication". Autocorrect gets me in more trouble than I think it's worth sometimes...butukihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12473964455146342069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-71280692132466548852012-02-04T04:14:26.599-08:002012-02-04T04:14:26.599-08:00Ach, kwatsch for the credit, Dale. I didn't st...Ach, kwatsch for the credit, Dale. I didn't start the discussion! Just relayed a link someone else posted and commented on it. Do people give credit during conversations standing about the burning oil can warming their hands? :^)<br /><br />Which sort of latches onto the question of storytelling, something much, much older than the novel. I'm wondering if that is what the Internet is reviving, with its instantaneous reactions and audio-visual stimulation. The novel arose in atoms of long distance communication and travel, when it was impossible to convey anything other than text on a page over those distances. The Internet has bridged that gap and allowed us to >talk< again as is most natural for us. There's a reason why so any people dragged themselves through reading and writing books... a problem that speaking and listening and moving never had.<br /><br />I'm it sure that people in the past, like the Norsemen, thought much at all in categories of "history" or "art". Since so much of it was oral it must have carried all sorts of connotations, art, history, comedy, religion, entertainment, philosophy, science all rolled into one. Sitting together in a long house regaling your guests with those tales probably didn't get divided up into the specialities of today.butukihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12473964455146342069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-44226621604049173342012-02-04T01:14:50.156-08:002012-02-04T01:14:50.156-08:00Hooray! Someone else who doesn't care that the...Hooray! Someone else who doesn't care that these people will soon be much less important than they think they are. My dad wrote about eight novels, some of them on the back of paper grocery bags. His life was blighted by his attempts to get published. They are the same people who tell us what is good literature. There's a great book called The Intellectuals and the Masses (lovingly parodied by an ex bf as the Intellectuals and the Masseuse) that shows them up for what they really are - a coterie that has had it all sewn up for far too long. Shall we let anyone tell us what is good and what is not good? I ditched a creative writing course (soul murder) last year and put all my poems in a book on Lulu.Luisetta Mudiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09282419289670295862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-91224661147338477692012-02-03T21:28:57.791-08:002012-02-03T21:28:57.791-08:00I was hoping you'd say a bit more! :-)I was hoping you'd say a bit more! :-)Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14523194846272870013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-67454566466218038762012-02-03T21:24:14.210-08:002012-02-03T21:24:14.210-08:00P. S. I have written about that business of peopl...P. S. I have written about that business of people feeling that they failed in life because they didn't get the book of poems or the novel published. It is distressing, and it has broken a number of people I know--as has the common event of publishing a book and having it be met with silence.<br /><br />If you weren't a lead book, the big houses just didn't do all that much to let the world know you had a new book. If you were at a fancy house, you were likely to be the elegant wallpaper against which the lead books (the ones that had three full-time bodies of marketers rather than the hangnail of one) were displayed.marly youmanshttp://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-20327875666550758142012-02-03T21:16:39.945-08:002012-02-03T21:16:39.945-08:00Very interesting and rather genial rant!
As someb...Very interesting and rather genial rant!<br /><br />As somebody who is considered "all over the map" by publishers because she publishes novels (and doesn't like to do the same thing twice), a few fantasies for older kids, and a lot of poetry, I probably have entirely too many opinions to leave a comment! I have been through the New York wringer, become jaded, gotten over it and returned to joyfulness, and now publish more happily with smaller houses and university press--I don't even have an agent any more, and don't miss having one either.<br /><br />What I found disappointing is that nobody left at the big houses wanted to do that old-fashioned thing of building a readership for an author and standing behind their work, no matter how oddball the next book might be... But that was already long gone.<br /><br />That's okay. I'm still going to run wild with my beautiful muse...marly youmanshttp://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-57065169642589468452012-02-03T20:48:04.934-08:002012-02-03T20:48:04.934-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14523194846272870013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-66251230568748952822012-02-03T20:41:43.708-08:002012-02-03T20:41:43.708-08:00Oops. That was me.Oops. That was me.Davehttp://www.vianegativa.usnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-67190799985239256922012-02-03T20:41:06.160-08:002012-02-03T20:41:06.160-08:00Hear hear! I agree with all of this, nobody will b...Hear hear! I agree with all of this, nobody will be surprised to hear -- including the part about the novels.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-10320129950811695572012-02-03T20:27:22.096-08:002012-02-03T20:27:22.096-08:00--...iph..., welcome, and thank you! We'll mak...--...iph..., welcome, and thank you! We'll make a sane world yet, maybe.<br /><br />--Murr, when do I get to read one of these books?<br /><br />--Zhoen & Rachel, thanks!<br /><br />--Oh, well, as I reckon you probably know, Beth, I don't really believe that the novel isn't a major form either. But it's a very annoying one. It takes huge amounts of time to read even a bad novel, let alone to write one. And it dominates our literary landscape the way the sonnet dominated Elizabethan England: everyone writes them, whether the form really suits them or not. I worry about some of our friends who *have* beaten the odds, and made the big time: The pressure on them to write more novels -- and to write only novels -- is going to be intense.<br /><br />I partly disparage novels as a bit of a historical corrective: the bit of literary history during which the long prose narrative has been thought of as potentially serious art has only lasted a hundred years or so. (An exception might be the Norse sagas, but I'm not sure they thought of those as art -- more likely they thought of them as history. We think of them as art, but that's another matter.)<br /><br />--Miguel, I should have credited you for putting me on to that Guardian article, and for starting the conversation! Thank you. --And yes, editors. We're going to have to learn to roll our own, for sure :-)Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14523194846272870013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-24645511635762516502012-02-03T19:44:45.562-08:002012-02-03T19:44:45.562-08:00Good to see an expansion of what we were talking a...Good to see an expansion of what we were talking about the other day. And we still agree on all the points.<br /><br />I do have to agree with Beth about novelists being just as great artists as in any other field. It most certainly has been a problem that until now there just hasn't been an outlet for the vast majority who were never published.<br /><br />Because of the Internet I've come in direct contact with and had more chance to read the great writing of the average writers who never get noticed otherwise. I read them (like you and Beth) regularly and more often than I did my favorite writers of the past. I would never have discovered either of you if it hadn't been for the Internet.<br /><br />My one regret is the disappearance of editors. A good editor is usually the reason a story or poem or whatever literary piece became great. I'm even thinking of putting together a communal editor's initiative so that writers on the Net can have their work evaluated and tweaked.butukihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12473964455146342069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-16391724983865616662012-02-03T18:50:15.206-08:002012-02-03T18:50:15.206-08:00Dale, I don't agree that novelists aren't ...Dale, I don't agree that novelists aren't major artists, but that's just about the only thing I didn't like in your essay. The devastating link between economic necessity, time, and creativity so seldom gets talked about, but I think you're got it exactly right.Bethhttp://www.cassandrapages.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-29554142086811687092012-02-03T18:39:18.984-08:002012-02-03T18:39:18.984-08:00(o)(o)rbarenblathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10882606147795083729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-65675839544332999462012-02-03T15:30:35.463-08:002012-02-03T15:30:35.463-08:00(standing and clapping)(standing and clapping)Zhoenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03515663141425057088noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-78823455538015521422012-02-03T11:17:26.808-08:002012-02-03T11:17:26.808-08:00At first I thought the internet age was bad for cr...At first I thought the internet age was bad for creative people; that, as Gillian Welch mourned, "everything is free now." I've come around. I've now written four books that are so dissimilar that one might never suspect they're written by the same person--and that's not something the publishing giants prefer. None of them is published, but that's within my grasp. I believe my novel will not be accepted by the traditional presses until I insert a vampire in chapter 3.Murr Brewsterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349472.post-55218446668607965392012-02-03T10:41:30.612-08:002012-02-03T10:41:30.612-08:00Well said, Dale! True to my own heart. I imagine s...Well said, Dale! True to my own heart. I imagine some better world around the corner where we move toward more local systems and divide our time across wage-work, family, and creative and community work in a much more sane and balanced way....iph...http://thefrabjousversipel.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com