Robert McCrum asserts that our contemporary market-driven culture has no room for the dissident writer, and that ' "the habit of art" has become the "addiction of charm" '. His heart's in the right place, and in my view he's absolutely right about the general trend, but the thrust of his argument is to blame writers themselves - he accuses them of 'want[ing] to join the system, not keep it at arm's length', and refers to 'artistic vanity' and 'complacency and an appetite for entertaining' which leads to a 'sapping [of] the instinct to ask awkward questions of the status quo.'
But this overlooks the power of a system within which it is just not possible for the dissident or avant-garde author to operate. If authors are 'fearful of risk', as he says they are, it is only because in this day and age your agent or editor will simply turn you down if you're 'not commercial enough'. McCrum says authors nowadays just wanna belong, but maybe it's more a case of not belonging meaning not being published at all.
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Isnt it more a question of degree? The nubers of true originals are less - maybe because so many writers capitulate (be published at all costs?) and those who just do what they do are relatively few in the current climate?
(moderation word: unlibe. Seems appropriate!
Yes, that's kind of what I'm saying...
I think you have to look at readers too in this. I read for pleasure and entertainment. I do not like harrowing books (or films). I quite enjoy thought provoking books but they require a greater level attention that I cannot possibly offer to every book I read. The market may act to sell large quantities of fairly light entertainment, but if the majority of readers prefer to buy it then what choice is there for writers? The risk of being too different isn't only not being published, it's not being read.
Yes, I think that's the reason publishers would give for not publishing non-mainstream stuff, Hagelrat: they just wouldn't sell the books.
But there have been situations in which avant-garde and dissident works have been published. The problem arises when all publishers are forced into a market economy.
Considering that some of the most harrowing books of recent years have included the misery memoirs - I'm not sure its just readers wanting happy tales. Instead I feel there's a conformity of expectation that, eventually, writer ends up being as complicit in as publisher, at least when they have an audience, a publisher etc. Although I wasn't as big a fan of it as you were, Elizabeth, Anne Enright's The Gathering seemed a rare occasion where an uncomfortable novel was able to not only be published but become successful. That "uncomfortableness" seems rare in literature, whether in subject matter, treatment, or literary style, these days. Where I'd probably agree with McCrum is where he talks about the "addiction of charm" - writers need some compensations, and, in an age where literature is so often absent, prizes and a certain peer acceptance may be the necessary fuel. The contemporary avant garde is a potentially lonely place.
Personally, I'm not sure that misery memoirs are that harrowing, as I've written fairly frequently. We have to separate the experience recounted in the book from the experience of reading. It seems to me that misery memoirs turn uncomfortable experiences into a comfortable read by making them 'other' for the reader, and they do this by making clear they are someone else's experience. However close they may be to your own experience as a reader , there's a process of distancing and displacement going on. Fiction, on the other hand, requires a greater act of identification or - if it's avant-garde - work on the part of the reader, and can thus create an 'uncomfortable read.
I'll take your word on the misery memoirs (having judiciously avoided them!) A short piece that could easily become a long conversation, this one.
yes i agree...commercialism is spanning and uprooting the entire literary stature. As a writer in earlier days, one looked out for issues that could be penned down to spread the word and not the book instead..Now with the publishers commanding over the system, the authors tend to have focus on issues that at first place will reach the printing press... the issue comes secondary....I am an avid reader and tend to pick the book that i believe would leave me with a wholesome experience..I find very few...genres have been decided and writers stick to their own diameter not trying to cross the limits..When i recently went through the best seller listing @ an online bookstore (A1books to name it), i noticed a strange trend turning up in each list....its all commercial at the top and as you narrow down, you get to pick the most beautiful pieces of writings...!!!
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