Jon Evans -- novelist, journalist

Jon Evans -- novelist (INVISIBLE ARMIES, BLOOD PRICE, etc.), journalist ("Apocalypse Soon")

Note: In order to put this interview in context, reading Evans' article "Apocalypse Soon" is recommended.

1. In a piece you wrote entitled "Apocalypse Soon" that recently appeared in The Walrus, you argue that print culture -- the publishing industry as it has traditionally been aligned -- is about the be hit by a meteor. And that meteor is digital culture. But these arguments have been floating around for several years. How soon is soon? And what factors can you identify that would bring about these changes in a way conducive to good writing and expanded opportunities for serious authors?

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Well - that's actually not quite my argument. Culture is important, but secondary. The actual meteor will be a good, reasonably priced, widely available e-book reader that eliminates paper's most important advantage. The Sony Reader I mention in the article is a step in the right direction, but certainly not the answer. It's hard to predict hardware developments (other than Moore's Law) but there is a whole lot of research into various forms of electronic ink going on, so I'll stick my neck out and say we'll see something like that in less than five years.

Culture - well, there are already a whole lot of free books available online, and I think it's reasonable to assume they'll come pre-installed on these readers; we already have the culture of online file-sharing; we increasingly have the culture of people using their Palm Pilots, iPhones, Nokia E90s, etc., as major information intake devices. Once the hardware is available, I think a small but significant portion of the reading population will take to it immediately, and then their numbers will steadily grow.

Note, though, that the "iTome" won't conquer as fast as the iPod. I suspect hardly anyone over forty will adopt it. Paper will remain a significant, albeit shrinking, segment of the book market for a long time.

As for "conducive to good writing and expanded opportunities for serious authors" - I'm not at all sure these changes will be conducive to those things. Basically this is a question of economics: will there be more money in literature? And if so, will it be spread among more authors? (Allowing more to write full-time, which would presumably be conducive to good writing, and would also draw more talent into the field, thus expanding opportunities.)

This will only happen if a) more people read, and/or b) more money goes to authors, while c) we don't wind up with everyone reading the same fifty or hundred big-name authors, while everyone else scrabbles for scraps. I think c) is actually very unlikely, but I have no idea about a) or b).

2. In the same article, you argue the file sharing that is already changing the way music companies must model their business will have a revolutionary impact on publishing as well, once text-readers like the Sony Reader became common.

The resulting change, you continue, will lead to online distribution (including, as in the music industry, pirate distribution) of e-books. This will be likely to lead to two possible scenarios: one in which authors are not paid any more, and will have to rely on the generosity of patrons and other outside sources of income in order to survive financially, or one in which they are paid directly for their work.

It is probably safe to say that for many emerging writers, frustrated by the endless carousel of not having one's work read without an agent, and not getting an agent without an impressive publishing history, the prospect of "e-publishing" holds a certain appeal. But there are a lot of impediments to doing even this -- or at least, doing it well. For example one needs a bit of capital to build a really attractive website, manage the e-business, and generally avoid stumbling into too many of the pitfalls of DIY culture.

Do you also foresee a model in which businesses to help set up e-publishers also evolve? (I"m thinking of something more publishing-specific than the Yahoo start-yer-own-biz site). Or will we end up with an e-publishing culture in which corporate behemoths still dominate simply because they can pour more money into slick homepages, PR staff to focus on "viral" publicity, etc.?

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The Internet already makes self-publishing a theoretically viable concern: go to lulu.com, sign up for free, upload a PDF of your latest opus, and sell print-on-demand hardcovers for $25, of which about $10 is pure author profit. It's every writer's dream!

Except of course it isn't. Because nobody has ever heard of the vast majority of lulu.com authors. Because most people still shop for books in bookstores. And most importantly, because everyone knows that Real Writers - ie those worth reading - are published by Real Publishers. And for the most part, this is entirely true.

It's less true in the online world, thanks to the increasing number of Real Writers publishing online - but still, even if/when distribution is no longer an issue, books that are professionally edited, copy-edited, and marketed, and receive the imprimatur of quality from an established arbiter, will retain an enormous advantage over amateur work, and rightfully so.

The thing is, there's no longer necessarily any reason for these things to be done by a single corporate behemoth. A large part of the barrier to entry to publishing has always been printing and distribution. If/when those are no longer necessary/relevant, an author could quite easily hire his/her own editor, copyeditor, and publicist, and bypass publishers entirely. (Many authors - not me - already hire their own publicists.)

Now, traditional publishers will still have major advantages. They have a stranglehold on bookstores, and even if paper shrinks to, say, 40% of the market, that's 40% authors won't want to ignore, which is an incentive to sign with a publisher. And publishers provide that imprimatur of basic quality. (Yes, there are a lot of bad books out there, but there are far, far more unspeakably awful unpublished ones.)

On the other hand, authors can make enormously more money self-publishing. (Because they don't pay for a publisher's overhead and failures). So I can envision a future in which occasional amateur digital hits come out of left field with no publisher; big-name authors maintain their own digital rights and sell their own digital copies (and/or hope pirate readers are willing to donate a buck or two); and traditional publishers get squeezed at both ends.

3. Stanislaw Lem once wrote a novel set in the distant future after a bacteriological epidemic has destroyed a substance hazily remembered as "papyr". As a result, this future society has lost virtually all records, all history, all knowledge. Compared to "papyr", "dijital" seems even more susceptible to massive losses of data because of some unforeseen catastrophe. Isn't one argument in favour of print culture over digital the former's relative permanence?

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Well, technically yes, but first of all, nowhere do I argue that paper is going to entirely vanish, and second, even if this becomes a problem, it's a solvable one. Books could be archived in the same way that seeds for all the world's plants are being stored in vaults in Norway and other places. I suppose you get long-term durability for free with paper, and you have to put a little effort into it in a purely digital world, but it's only a little effort.

4. In many respects, the computer screen is not so much a "page"; it is a "flat-screen TV". In other words, computer technology allows a creative individual to use video and audio as well as text when creating narrative.

Continuing with the dinosaurs-and-evolution metaphor, do you see the e-book as being the final form of the online book? Or will it morph into something more multi-media?.

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I think you want to ask a cognitive scientist, not me, but:

I suspect there will exist many, many multi-media works a la Griffin & Sabine, or graphic novels/comic books/manga - but text & video? Eh. I think in general, people respond to text in a fundamentally different way than they do to video (see also McLuhan) and context switching between the two will just be too annoying to be successful. Digital comic books, absolutely; digital movies, obviously; and video games will continue to grow and evolve (and that's a whole separate fascinating subject); but digital video intermingled with long sequences of text? My gut feeling is that will never be much more than a curiosity.

5. In "Apocalypse Soon" you also argue that in order to avoid an avalanche of self-published dreck, this new digital publishing paradigm must emphasize quality. But of all the qualitative adjectives that can be applied to literary creation, "quality" must be one of the most open to wildly different interpretation; after all, there is some very good work online that is "self-published", and some of the allegedly literary work being printed by major publishers these days is not conspicuously ground-breaking or even, on occasion, well-written.

How will "quality" be judged in a digital literary culture? Do you think newspapers will begin reviewing online writing? Do you think other lit-bloggers will do this review work? Who will assess "quality"?

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Eh. That "quality" bit was more of an aside than a central part of the argument, to be honest, and it's only there 'cause the editor talked me out of removing it, a decision I now kind of regret.

Newspapers as we know them will probably not begin reviewing online writing regularly, mostly because they will be too busy dying. (They're already cutting down significantly on pages devoted to books.)

What is "quality"? Er. That's a deep philosophical question. I'm just this writer, you know?

I suppose it can be approximated by some mix of a) widespread readership; b) being approved and championed by The Authorities, whoever they are (English profs? professional literary critics? The big-name bloggerati?); c) influence on other writers (and other mediums); and d) whether or not the work lasts and is read by future generations. No one of those is good enough, and probably no two, but three or four serve a pretty good marker of Quality.

Online publishing/distribution isn't much likely to change that.

6. You also emphasize that one reason you want to take advantage of digital culture now is because very few authors (outside the SF examples you mention, such as Cory Doctorow) are currently doing it, and you would like to gain a little publicity by being one of the first in. However, you are currently stymied by your publisher's insistence that you not give your writing away for free online.

Are you planning to re-negotiate any publishing contracts you have? Will you insist that future publishing contracts you sign allow you to post digital manuscripts? And what is your agent's feelings about this issue?

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I tried to renegotiate those contracts (by getting permission to publish online.) I failed.

My agent backed me 100% through all this.

I'll probably try to maintain digital rights in future contracts - but honestly, I don't think it much matters. I think this year was the right time, and DARK PLACES the right book, to publish online. Some other book a year or two from now will be the wrong book at the wrong time, which is one reason I'm annoyed at my publishers for failing to share my vision.

I'm actually serializing a weird but good little book called Beasts of New York online right now, in its stead, which I can do because I didn't sell it.

7. Canadian culture does not have a particularly high (or even visible) profile on the world stage. And the reason typically given for this is we are a country with a small population. Yet Canadian culture also tends to be subsumed within English-speaking Canada; certain cultural industries are constantly struggling to gain/retain an audience. (Example, when was the last time you saw a Canadian movie -- not one shot in Canada, but set in Canada?) This predicament is well-recognized by cultural commentators in English Canada, and, again, there is a ready explanation: the massive, ongoing influence of American culture.

But isn't this explanation now part of the problem? Doesn't it instill a sense of fatalism, and prevent Canadians from developing workable strategies that might strengthen our culture? In short, doesn't the "America usually wins" mantra become a self-fulfilling prophecy? After all, small population size and proximity to more powerful cultures do not spell cultural marginalization for other countries: South Korea, where I now live, has a population and economy approximately the same size as Canada's (49 million to our 35 million, and 11th largest economy compared to our 8th). Yet it has a tremendously vibrant and successful culture.

What is your own take on this issue? Any examples from your own experience? Or do you see the Canadian cultural status quo as just fine?

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Well, there was BON COP BAD COP. But in general your point is well taken.

I think the biggest difference is that very little of South Korea's talent goes to Hollywood. I can easily rattle off dozens of Canadians who have been very successful in America's entertainment industry, and I'm sure you can too. There are still a lot of very talented people in Canada; but America is where the money is, and ergo it's where all the big hits are produced. South Korea is sheltered by its language barrier.

America's indirect influence might be even more important. It's such a huge pool of wealth that almost anything made in Canada is also made to be attractive to Americans as well - and such is the perception of America in Canada that this often means dumbing it down, making it more broad and more bland. The British make sharp, dry, well-written films and television (as well as a whole lot of crap) for a British audience, and American success is merely a potential bonus; in Canada, artists and entertainers (and I absolutely include myself in this indictment) almost always have one eye on the pot of gold across the border, and this subtly influences what we create.

8. In this interview series, R. M. Vaughan has commented about Canadian letters:

"A while back a writer friend of mine signed with a new agent. Out of curiousity, I went to the agency's website - every single one of the dozen or so agents had warnings underneath their interest lists: no science fiction, no mysteries, no horror, no thrillers, no fantasy books. In other words, nothing that might actually sell. We need to get over the tired prejudice against popular fiction in this country." [Feb. 20, 2007]

While Judy Stoffman has commented:

"All kinds of genre lit have been tried and none of it sold as well in Canada as, say, Margaret Atwood. It could be that Canadian readers are more serious than U.S. book buyers." [Feb. 13, 2007]

Who do you agree with more?

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I take incredulous issue with Ms. Stoffman's statement that genre lit doesn't sell well in Canada - just look at the bestseller lists! - but I think R.M. Vaughan statement is more interesting. Major Canadian publishers certainly do publish genre fiction (I'm living proof) but it wouldn't surprise me if it's true that few to no Canadian agents represent such fiction. I think it's more socially acceptable to be passionate about genre fiction in America, and to some extent the UK, than it is in Canada; and that there is such a thing as a "literary establishment" subculture that is often dismissive of such fiction.

But who cares? Genre fiction sells very well, and if no Canadian agents represent it, then Canadian writers of such fiction should simply seek representation in America and/or the UK. They'll be better off anyway. Canada is a sufficiently small market that writers who actually want to make a living off their work almost invariably have to succeed in foreign markets as well. A major-market agent makes that success a lot more likely.

9. Should Canadian movie makers/TV producers work in much closer concert with novelists? Would all forms of fictional narrative benefit if there were this kind of integration between media?

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My short answer is "no."

I write (thus far unproduced) screenplays as well as novels, so I can tell you with at least a little authority, they're very different animals. Some novels do lend themselves to being filmed, but the majority do not.

Like the abovementioned William Gibson, I too get "annoyed by people who seem to assume that feature films are the ultimate stage of novelistic creation, thereby relegating the book to the status of dull gray chrysalis."

10. A lot of American literary magazines have a forceful online presence: they offer complete short stories to be read, they allow for online submissions. Canadian lit magazines (with a few exceptions, such as The Danforth Review) don't. A survey of the online presence of Canadian lit mags shows that they do not have much (or any) of their content online, and do not allow email submissions. They seem, to put it bluntly, behind the times. Should Canadian literary magazines be more proactive in taking advantage of the internet? And given that a strong internet presence requires more labour, should they get Canada Council funding specifically for this? Or is this possible solution overly reliant on arts body funding?

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Yes, they're behind the times and should catch up (although I suspect their forbiddance of email submissions is for fear of being swamped, which is probably a reasonable fear.)

As to whether the government should pay for it - this is a political issue I'm disinclined to get into.

11. When discussing the hegemony of American culture over Canadian, Canadians repeatedly declare that beyond a certain point this is inevitable, and it is so for economic reasons. And while allowing that economic power is a massive factor in all aspects of life, is there not something else at work in the Canadian psyche? Is there not an argument for saying that Canadians just don't try as hard as they could?

Consider again the example of the lit-blogosphere. Here the argument that American culture reigns supreme because of economic advantage breaks down: blogging is free. Yet the Canadian lit-blogging scene is a pale shadow of its American counterpart. Moreover, speaking anecdotally, on average I tend to find the U.S. bloggers somewhat friendlier and more open to exchanging links, and so on. Canadian bloggers (and please keep in mind that there are always exceptions) seem more prone to passivity. Evidence of this is the degree to which Canadian lit-blogs do not link to each other as much as they might in their blog-rolls or posts.

As suggested above, do we, as a national culture, need to do more to create our own literary and/or political culture on the internet?

I think part of our natural culture is that we're slightly more aloof than Americans, and I'm fine with that.

I think another part is obsessive navel-gazing about what it means to be Canadian and whether we should be trying harder to be less American, and, to be honest - sorry - this just seems like collective insecurity to me, and tends to make me roll my eyes and change the subject.

I actually think Canada is doing just fine, and Canada's online culture equally so.

Bio: Jon Evans is a novelist, journalist and techie who has lived a conspicuously peripatetic life, even by contemporary standards. Born in Canada and currently living in Montreal, he is in fact, as they say, "Montreal-based".

Apart from his books, his work has appeared in Wired, The Globe and Mail, and The Walrus. And he is serializing online his "children's book for adults" BEASTS OF NEW YORK.

STILLS WITHOUT SCRIPTS

Rolf Maurer -- publisher, New Star Books

Rolf Maurer of New Star Books:


1. Literature is in trouble -- that is, more trouble than usual. Why do you think this is? The increasing prevalence of TV? The distractions of narcotic subcultures such as video games? Sept. 11? Or is talk of the "death of literature" simple exaggeration?

The people who tell us that literature is in trouble are probably the same people telling us that there are too many books. These are the same people who, whatever era they happen to live in, long for the "death of literature".

I've noticed a funny thing. For the last five-plus years now, we've been hearing about how the trade book industry is in the doldrums, negligible growth, mediocre-to-poor profitability, "death of literature", people have stopped reading, blah blah blah. Then I have lunch with my printer. To hear him talk, things have never been better: new bindery lines, new plants, best year ever, etc. Where are all these books going? Probably where they've always gone, except not through traditional trade channels, which is what the doom-and-gloomsters are going by. What's in trouble is the traditional book trade way of doing things. As near as I can tell, people are eating up books as much as they ever have.


2. And what is literature, anyway? Should the traditional novel be considered the prime example of it?

The definition seems to be: anything that you read in a book or a fat magazine, that is meant to entertain/pass the time, scare, annoy, puzzle, thrill, or have practically any not-strictly-for-educational-purposes application, and which will probably end up being read by only by a tiny fraction of the population. The novel has been the prime example of it, absolutely: the novel form was invented to meet the needs of mass commercial literature. Contrary to what the blow-hards tell us, it does not correspond to any essential human quality, and narrative is not a naturally occurring substance.


3. Prizes and awards are playing an increasing role in determining an author's career-trajectory. In short, winning a major literary prize can win a writer a large audience overnight (not to mention, considerable fame and financial remuneration). But, as British critic Jason Cowley has observed, what is lost is the ability for readers to think in a critically complex fashion.

Are literary prizes dangerous in this regard? Do they convey to the public the message that "this book is worth reading and all these others aren't"?

For the most part bowling trophies for writing have always been marketing moves, made by people who are troubled that literature isn't compulsory in society and needs to be promoted, like milk, or sexual abstinence. It's nice to win one, but it doesn't mean every citizen is suddenly going to rush out and buy the book --- the obligatory congratulatory ads, &c., easily overwhelms the profit margin from the sales burst --- and looking at any old lists of prize winners and runners-up can be embarrassing. The cheque the writer gets is the best part. If we really cared this much about writers and what they do, surely there would be better ways of helping them pay their bills than the literary prize lottery.


4. Literary publishing has always been a marriage of art and commerce. But in recent years, the Cult of the Deal has become more influential, with agents demanding larger advances and marketing people paying especially close attention to sales figures. Is the "art" side of the business being pushed out?

Nothing's changed there. Publishing has always been run as a business, and this has been especially true since some time after the beginning of the 20th century, when the real costs of publishing declined to a point where gentleman-millionaires could run a small literary press out of their trust allowance. A money-losing business often, but a business.

People make the mistake of thinking that, because publishing in general is unprofitable, the people who are running the companies must be monkeys. It's likely that as print became cheaper and the cost of publishing came down, that is to say entry barriers to the publishing business were lowered, at the same time that considerable social prestige continued to be attached to books, meant a crowded and highly competitive industry. That's the reason publishing profits have declined.

The changes we're seeing in book publishing today are part of the same phenomenon we first saw in the 1960s, when companies that normally made fighter-jet guidance systems starting buying venerable publishing houses. Big business isn't monolithic. Until the present era the book trade was dominated by manufacturers: people whose business it was to make book-shaped widgets. And their interest in finance was more or less limited to the question of how much of it they needed to get their hands on paper, ink, presses, and talent.

Along came the finance sector: the only things these guys ever make is money. Baby formula, land mines: it's all the same to them. They were attracted to book publishing because of the *low* profit margins: they made the sector vulnerable. Whatever meagre profits the industry generated, it would flow to the banks, in the form of interest. And so we saw the consolidation of the big end of publishing in the 1970s and 1980s --- without there being any decrease in the number of new publishers --- and the rise of the bookstore chains, and the Ingram stranglehold.

And still, there's no letup in the number of new presses, and new writers, and new forms of literature.


5. Many major publishers now refuse to accept "unsolicited" work; that is, they will not even consider work unless it is agented. Is this a sound policy from point of view of finding the best new literary voices? Isn't there a chance good writing will be squeezed out?

The best writers often, but not reliably or predictably, end up --- or pass mid-career --- with the biggest publishers, but they almost never come from there.


6. Alternatively, for small presses that do accept unsolicited work, is the problem that the majors are squeezing the small houses at the distribution/retail marketing end? In other words, even when good writers get published by small houses, do they have a fair chance of winning an audience? Or are the major houses introducing an overly corporate, overly aggressive mentality to the book trade?

The distribution/retail marketing squeeze is part of the manufacturing--finance shift within the book industry that I was talking about just now. I presume that for the big boys, the centralization of book production, distribution and retail is bringing about some sort of "efficiencies", which probably means nothing more than the ability to externalize costs and squeeze out a little more profit. For the rest of us --- smaller publishers, smaller booksellers --- everything is mysteriously *less* efficient, particularly when you measure it in terms of $$. That's because the system isn't organized around the needs of publishers, writers, booksellers: it's organized around the needs of the finance sector. And it sure ain't working for the Happy Few who wander into bookstores --- to get back to something else I was just going on about, the book trade's statistical droop. Bookselling, the way it's set up at the moment, isn't doing a very good job of letting readers know what's really being written and published these days. It's making literature seem duller and dumber than it is.


7. Returning to the question of agents -- are they too powerful? If so, in what ways? Or are they a largely beneficial and necessary element of contemporary publishing?

Once you look at publishing primarily as a way of extracting the maximum amount of profit out of a capital investment, agents are as inevitable and necessary as lawyers, accountants, MBAs, and writers.


8. Does Canada have too many publishers? Or too few?

To state your question another way: Is it a good thing that almost any smallish group in society can fire up a publishing company, or is this a bad thing?


9. In your opinion, how will new technologies such as the e-book or audio books affect the "form" of the book?

Depends on what you mean by "book". It's possible that another form will supersede the codex, the way that the codex superseded scrolls and tablets. I'm not convinced that a few ounces of plastic wrapped around a board coated with micro-thin, biodegradable circuitry, running a software program written by some American video gamer who thinks 7-Up is a vegetable because it comes in green cans, is a good bet to render the book form obsolete, no matter how good the screen displays ever get. Nevertheless, those folks will keep on trying to get rid of books.


10. Putting aside the hype, does the Internet provide a real opportunity to publishers? If so, how?

Like everybody else, we're all trying to figure this thing out --- what it means to us as humans, as publishers, as readers. So far it's had less direct impact on what I do as a publisher than I was lead to believe. We still do the same thing here, albeit we do a lot of things, all in-between-the-writing-and-the-reading, differently and sometimes more cumbersomely.


11. And what role can traditional, venerable institutions such as libraries and English Departments play in reversing the decline in sales of literary fiction?

I don't accept that there's a decline in sales of literary fiction. Maybe the problem is with the definition of "literary fiction". Could it be that the readers' definition of this is different from that of the libraries and English Departments? They are after all institutions, and as such it's their job to lag behind on these things. Publishers aren't always much quicker on the uptake.


12. What projects are you working on now that you are excited about?

A few things. Our book on Wreck Beach is about to come out; I'm excited about that, not just because it's got some nudity and is therefore likely to sell, but because I get to put a little bit of the world that I care about out there. Also, an amazing book of concrete poems by Donato Mancini, a mad scientist. And a big book, a mega-project by our standards, that's coming out next year, about Frank Zappa's music.


bio: Failed journalist Rolf Maurer is now a ridiculous publisher. He has worked at New Star Books since 1981, and been the proprietor since 1990.

STILLS WITHOUT SCRIPTS

Matthew Firth -- Black Bile Press

Matthew Firth, author (Suburban Pornography, etc), publisher (Black Bile Press), and editor (Front and Centre):

1. Literature is in trouble -- that is, more trouble than usual. Why do you think this is? The increasing prevalence of TV? The distractions of narcotic subcultures such as video games? Sept. 11? Or is talk of the "death of literature" simple exaggeration?

I think it’s an exaggeration. Too much dithering by those who don’t have enough to do in their daily lives, so they create anxiety over the state of literature. But, then, seriously, who cares if literature is in trouble when the planet is in trouble, when millions worldwide are in trouble, when kids everywhere are in trouble, etc. Relatively speaking, whether literature is in trouble or not is a sickeningly bourgeois notion.


2. And what is literature, anyway? Should the traditional novel be considered the prime example of it?

I’m not sure. Anything that’s written down might be literature. Travel brochures are often called travel literature. Someone hands you a pamphlet on the street and says, “You wanna to read some literature?” So maybe it is just about anything, including the novel.


3. Prizes and awards are playing an increasing role in determining an author's career-trajectory. In short, winning a major literary prize can win a writer a large audience overnight (not to mention, considerable fame and financial remuneration). But, as British critic Jason Cowley has observed, what is lost is the ability for readers to think in a critically complex fashion.

Are literary prizes dangerous in this regard? Do they convey to the public the message that "this book is worth reading and all these others aren't"?

Yes, literary prizes of all sorts – big and small – size doesn’t matter, the small ones are just as insidious as the big ones – should be resisted, both by readers and writers. They are bullshit through and through. Writers competing for prizes and awards is ridiculous and pathetic. Readers who covet only prize-winning books are lazy and are following the crowd without bothering to think about how they’re spending their $20 or whatever. Yes, prizes bad.


4. Literary publishing has always been a marriage of art and commerce. But in recent years, the Cult of the Deal has become more influential, with agents demanding larger advances and marketing people paying especially close attention to sales figures. Is the "art" side of the business being pushed out?

Not sure. I'm uncomfortable with the notion this is a recent thing. Art has always had a whorish aspect to it. Our hyper-commercial world just makes this more obvious. But artists and writers have been selling themselves for centuries, so, in that sense, why stop now?


5. Many major publishers now refuse to accept "unsolicited" work; that is, they will not even consider work unless it is agented. Is this a sound policy from point of view of finding the best new literary voices? Isn't there a chance good writing will be squeezed out?

No, it’s not a good policy. It’s counterintuitive – how do you find new voices if you only read agented fiction when to be agented means you’ve been at it a while and are no longer new and likely have published a book or two already? Makes no sense. Yes, good writing will be squeezed out. But that’ll happen anyway. Writers should stop crying over such things and just work a little harder at what they’re doing, rather than blaming the fucking system or some such.


6. Alternatively, for small presses that do accept unsolicited work, is the problem that the majors are squeezing the small houses at the distribution/retail marketing end? In other words, even when good writers get published by small houses, do they have a fair chance of winning an audience? Or are the major houses introducing an overly corporate, overly aggressive mentality to the book trade?

It’s not this simple. This makes it all sound so controlled and manipulated and evil. Leave that to governments.


7. Returning to the question of agents -- are they too powerful? If so, in what ways? Or are they a largely beneficial and necessary element of contemporary publishing?

Don't know. I don't have an agent. I've had three books published by three different presses.


8. Does Canada have too many publishers? Or too few?

Too many of a certain kind, how about that? Too many that publish really boring, mewling middle class books. Not enough with any balls to what they're doing.


9. In your opinion, how will new technologies such as the e-book or audio books affect the "form" of the book?

Again, over-rated. The book in its current form is a beautifully effective high technology. I mean a real, paper and glue book – it's very high technology. It's high tech because it works so well. You can read it on the shitter, in bed, on the bus, in the coffee shop on your lunch hour and it takes no energy apart from what your mind churns. It's very difficult to improve upon. I don’t think it can be improved upon. E-books and the like are a ploy to sell more shit to people who have too much shit to begin with and too much money to spend on useless shit.


10. Putting aside the hype, does the Internet provide a real opportunity to publishers? If so, how?

Yeah, it makes the world smaller, more accessible. So folks in other parts of the earth can find you in a few seconds. You can make quicker connections. But the competition to maintain those connections is fiercer. You have to have some savvy to stay visible online.


11. And what role can traditional, venerable institutions such as libraries and English Departments play in reversing the decline in sales of literary fiction?

If so-called venerable institutions are going to save literature, start planning the funeral procession now. I have next to no use for English Departments. Libraries are of more value, are more egalitarian, smell more like how people really smell. That sort of thing.


12. What projects are you working on now that you are excited about?

Writing new short stories. But I work slowly. I have to fit it in. I have a regular Joe day job, two kids, wife, commitments, etc. Writing is my vice and my indulgence. Suburban Pornography has been out for a year now. I’m still pushing it when I can. But a new book is a ways off yet. I’m still doing Front&Centre and all my Black Bile Press stuff, which always excites me. Working on the micro press scale is a lot of fun, very gratifying. The writers are more down to earth, and appreciative and giving and don't have that snotty sense of entitlement that so many bigger time writers have.


Bio: Matthew Firth lives in Ottawa. His latest publication is Suburban Pornography.

links.

"Like a chain of hyper-haikus from the sinisterly dumb future": new fictions from Steve Augustine.

Conversational Reading's Reading the World.

The Big Ugly does the big body.

Dan Green -- The Reading Experience.

Dan Green -- lit-blogger, critical essayist at The Reading Experience:


1. Literature is in trouble -- that is, more trouble than usual. Why do you think this is? The increasing prevalence of TV? The distractions of narcotic subcultures such as video games? Sept. 11? Or is talk of the "death of literature" simple exaggeration?

It’s not just exaggeration, it’s wrong. More good poetry and fiction are being published—or at least being written—than ever before. What is in trouble is the notion of Literature as the acme of culture, as the cultural repository where all good things lie. No one believes this anymore, and they shouldn’t. It’s an abstraction that self-designated cultural gatekeepers believe in because it gives them something to do: urge the great unwashed to expose themselves to it and become cleansed in the way the gatekeeper in question prefers. Those who peddle the “death of literature” line find works of literature praiseworthy if they seem accessible to the masses, contemptible if they seem directed at “merely literary” people. That serious literature is going to be “accessible” to the masses in any form is an illusion.



2. And what is literature, anyway? Should the traditional novel be considered the prime example of it?

No. If I were to pick any form as the “prime example” it would be poetry, since it is concerned in the most concentrated way with making verbal art out of the common language. I guess that’s how I would define literature—verbal art. However, I don’t really work with any abstract notion of “Literature.” I use the word frequently enough, but mostly as a convenience. Otherwise, I’m looking for individual poems, novels, or stories that aspire to a degree of seriousness of purpose.



3. Prizes and awards are playing an increasing role in determining an author's career-trajectory. In short, winning a major literary prize can win a writer a large audience overnight (not to mention, considerable fame and financial remuneration). But, as British critic Jason Cowley has observed, what is lost is the ability for readers to think in a critically complex fashion.

Are literary prizes dangerous in this regard? Do they convey to the public the message that "this book is worth reading and all these others aren't"?


It’s not that they convey the message you cite but that they turn writing into a competition. It seems to me a quintessentially American stupidity, but unfortunately the rest of the world seems to have picked it up from us. Generally, I pay no attention to awards and prizes at all, although the Book Critics Circle award and the National Book Award do provide us with some blog fodder.

The “prizes” awarded by literary journals—those that ask for an “entry fee”--do seem to me an active menace. They take advantage of aspiring writers in all the obvious ways, they trivialize literature, and the prize itself is meaningless. It’s a way for some literary journals to stay afloat. If you want to help out these journals, subscribe or make a contribution. Don’t play the prize game.



4. You've posted several times on the importance of avoiding "print sniffing" -- that is, valorizing what is in print over what is online simply *because* the former is in printed form. Agreeing that good writing is good writing no matter what medium it appears in, isn't it nevertheless the case that what appears in print has a greater potential for longevity and receiving widespread critical attention? In other words, isn't the de facto reality of canon formation that it is the *book* that must come into existence before the text contained in the book can be immortalized? Or is this attitude simply passe, and even dangerous, in a time when book publishing is on the ropes?


I don’t think it has a greater potential for longevity, if only because print, words on paper, doesn’t have a long life ahead of it. (I’m referring specifically to what gets printed in newspapers and magazines. Books are going to continue in their current form because there doesn’t seem to be an acceptable electronic alternative on the horizon.) I don’t know about the “widespread critical attention” part. Most short fiction is published in literary journals with tiny circulations. Most of it doesn’t get and “critical attention” at all. Book publishing is on the ropes not because publishers are hesitant to move to electronic publishing but because most of what they publish is really bad.



5. The lit-blogosphere is chock full of commentary. But, proportionately, it doesn't contain much creative work -- that is, it's extremely difficult to find blog sites (as opposed to online magazines) primarily devoted to original fiction. What's up with that? Is the internet doomed to be a venue of commentary rather than art?


Well, but there are quite a few online magazines. I have a relatively long list of them on a “literary journal” blogroll, and I’m sure there are many more I haven’t run across yet. For the moment, the blog probably is more well-suited to commentary. I would guess that if more bloggers were to turn to “creative” works, these would be included on some sort of side-site. (I have one of those myself.)




6. In a recent post entitled "Notated" (May 8. 07), you comment on an article in the LA Times about Granta's newest best young novelist list. You remark:

The view of fiction implicit in this article's discussion of the newest and the latest is that it is a forum for "expression." Writers "express" themselves, and through them their ethnic or class heritage gets expressed. Taken as whole, the writers included in the Granta anthology express the concerns and preoccupations of their generational cohort. Why exactly such writers would choose the indirect and rhetorically impure mode of fiction--which unavoidably is going to disperse and obscure your "themes" unless you run them diligently roughshod--in order to give "expression" to such things is never made clear.


This is an interesting passage which sums up the argument you've made in several posts. But are you really being fair to the writers in question? Are they themselves aiming to "express" "themes" that are largely sociological (by which I take you to mean tendentious) in nature?


My criticism was directed at the way these writers were being discussed. I haven’t read many of the writers included in that volume. For all I know, I might find that many don’t view writing as “expression” and are plenty concerned with what I generally call “aesthetics.” If this is so, you wouldn’t know it by the kind of talk typified in that article. It seems the only way some people have to discuss literature at all.




7. In the same LA Times piece, Ian Jack states: "To go through this process of creative writing schools, now, to become a budding novelist, more and more means you need a certain amount of ancestral wealth. I hate to sound like a Marxist, but economics does govern a lot of life, especially cultural life." Whether this is accurate or not (and please comment on whether you think it is), the implication is that what is happening in literature is what has happened in contemporary visual art: one need not be rich to make it, but one needs the attention and beneficence of the rich ... who might in this case be defined as powerful publishers and agents.

Is there not some truth to what Jack is saying? Given mass culture's usual tendency to paper over the economic difficulties of life, isn't there an argument for showing this aspect of existence a little more frequently than it has been of late in contemporary literary art? In short, if writers don't show what it's like to struggle to make a living, who in our celebrity-and-rich-folk-obsessed culture will?

How many people really need to know “what it’s like to struggle to make a living”? Other rich people? Don’t the people doing the struggling already know it’s a struggle? Frankly, this notion could be called the “documentary” view of literature. Fiction exists to “document” the lives of these people or those people. I don’t have much use for that, either.

I’m not really sure I understand Jack’s point. Only “privileged” people are now becoming writers? Only kiss-asses? Maybe such kinds of students are now going through certain creative writing schools, but “writer” and “MFA-recipient” aren’t the same thing.

8. As a critic, you place a lot of emphasis on close readings of texts for their aesthetic qualities. However, the impression I often get from your posts is that you see the aesthetic as somewhat removed from the emotional qualities of a work of fiction; that is, you seem more interested in the formal qualities of a work's aesthetic rather than its emotive ones (which as I'm imagining them here also arise from the aesthetic).

Is the above a fair characterization of your temperament as a critic? Or do you define the aesthetic differently?


That is a fair enough characterization. I don’t deny the “emotive” qualites of art. I just thank the aesthetic comes first. Too many people—too many critics—leap ahead immediately to the emotive without first considering how the emotive is mediated by the aesthetic.



9. You taught within academe. Now, so to speak, you teach outside it (that is, your blog posts are often carefully written enough to be considered mini-essays). What is your ultimate hope as a critic: to develop (or re-invigorate) a school of criticism? To be a gadfly of academic pretension? Or is the very idea of an overarching critical "goal" one reason you left academe?

I do sort of see some of my posts as having a kind of teaching function. It’s the part of academe I haven’t left. If I could “reinvigorate” a school of criticism, the school of close reading for aesthetic purposes, I would be very happy. I’m not deluded enough to think I can do that.

I’m not so much against “academic pretension” (lots of people would no doubt say I have pretensions of my own). I’m against the direction academe has taken away from studying “literature itself” and toward treating literature as a cultural specimen or symptom.



10. You have also posted against art that has a political message. But is art that has a political aspect necessarily art that has a message? (Again, isn't your real beef against tendentiousness?)

It seems to me this question can be viewed from two angles.

First: the economic mentioned above. Why should a political novel necessarily be explicitly political? In a comment of your own following a post of Dec. 7, 2004, you hint at this: "'Unpoliticized' as in without reference to its ultimate political utility or implications. Such a thing is perfectly possible. All of the dogmatic assertions that everything is political are just malarkey."

To my mind, an example of how this can work is Dreiser's SISTER CARRIE (I hope this example works for you as well). It is a work with a "message". And it has a few explicitly political passages. Yet it works aesthetically: Dreiser, to my mind, is a superb writer, who is technically adept in a way that you allege another "message writer", Dostoevsky, isn't. At the same, time, SISTER CARRIE works emotionally: Hurstwood's obsessive love for Carrie is palpable, and their affair is deeply involving for the reader. However, despite the novel's focus on romantic desire, it also works as a social novel. The different classes Hurstwood and Carrie come from make their relationship illustrative of social relations.

If one views clear, honest depictions of poverty/class relationships as having at least the potential for being "political" without having an explicit (i.e., tendentious) message, is it not possible to successfully combine the political with the artistic? (Other examples: much mid-20th C. Korean fiction; and, to a certain extent, recent American novels such as THE CORRECTIONS and PREP.) Do you agree that economic "dramas" do not need to be politicized in order for them to have political significance? In other words, is it not true a novel can be "political" without attempting any message?

I agree with you about Sister Carrie. It’s one of the primary challenges to my general view of what fiction should do. Dreiser writes badly, but nevertheless I find myself absorbed by his plots. The bad writing seems suited to the prosaic but inexorable working-out of the fates of his characters. His novels don’t so much seem to be designed to advance a political idea as to truly uncover how American life unfolds. This has an undeniable secondary effect that is “political,” but to me it seems dwarfed by the aesthetic power his novels contain.

If a novel can be political without attempting a message, Sister Carrie would be a good model.



11. Second: Is there not a place in literary fiction for novels set in the world of policy making/intelligence gathering? It seems to me these modes of life, especially the second, have pretty much been left to the genre writers. And so there now exists a deep-seated prejudice against a literary novel that, say, would show the workings of an intelligence agency or state department.

But why should that be? Particularly these days, our mass culture is fixated on dramas of Law and Order, which include dramas of the world of intelligence. But literature seems to feel this is inherently low. Yet literature is where genre fiction's failings -- turgid prose, cardboard characterizations, reactionary presuppositions -- could be avoided. Don't we NEED a literature that tackles these themes, too?

I guess there could be a place for that kind of fiction. I wouldn’t want to read it, myself. Although if you’re referring to “spy fiction,” I’ve read some spy novels I liked. Anyone can write any kind of novel for any reason he/she wants. If you take “policy making” as your ostensible subject but otherwise write an aesthetically interesting book, I’m not going to complain. However, if you take that as your subject because primarily you want to explore matters of policy or you want to profile those who make it and how they do it, you should just admit up front that you’re more interested in policy (or history or politics) than you are in fiction.



12. Finally, like many serious lit-bloggers you work very hard, and work alone on THE READING EXPERIENCE. Is this best for the long run? Have you thought of starting an online magazine?

I have thought about it. I’m still pondering whether I want to review works of experimental fiction as I’m now doing it—serially, by myself—or start up some kind of broader forum for the discussion of such fiction, a forum that would include reviews by others as well. I’m not very good at the logisitics of such things, however.

Scott Esposito -- lit-blogger, essayist (Conversational Reading, The Quarterly Conversation)

Scott Esposito -- lit-blogger at Conversational Reading, critical essayist at The Quarterly Conversation, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Enquirer, and elsewhere:

1. Literature is in trouble -- that is, more trouble than usual. Why do you think this is? The increasing prevalence of TV? The distractions of narcotic subcultures such as video games? Sept. 11? Or is talk of the "death of literature" simple exaggeration?

I think that on this question perspective is very important. The NEA report tells us that reading is down in America. This is probably true, but I think it's too early to tell if this is a fluctuation of a trend.

Just the other day I read in a newspaper that, statistically speaking, the average Mexican reads one book per year. In Argentina and Chile the number is three. And these are countries with some of the most esteemed literary traditions in Latin America.

Comparatively, Americans still read a fair amount. The NEA report doesn't say exactly how many books per year, but looking at the report it's clear that it's much more than in these countries. I think we've got a very firm, institutionalized culture of reading, and that's going to be tough to shake.

Also, you might couch the American reading trends in comparison to other trends in America. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam charts 50 years of declining involvement in politics and social activities. His data show that generation-by-generation less and less people are doing things like going to the theater or the symphony. (Incidentally, among a number of other factors, he blames TV mostly.) So if people are reading less, I think this should be considered in combination with the many other cultural activities that appear to be on the decline in America. These are difficult times for the arts in general, not just literature. In a way, it would be more worrisome if other indicators were doing good and reading was the only one to be dropping.



2. And what is literature, anyway? Should the traditional novel be considered the prime example of it?

Not to get all Wittgenstein on you, but what's the prime example of a bird? Of a rock? I would say that at this point most people would equate novels with literature, but novels take on a variety of forms. If I look back at the books I've just read in the last year, there's Michael Martone, a book composed entirely of contributor's guidelines, The Rings of Saturn, an extended meditation during the course of a walk through England, Hopscotch, The Children's Hospital, Mulligan Stew, Wizard of the Crow, Witch Grass. Undoubtedly, this represents only a small sample of the books I could be reading.

But you could look at this from the other direction too. How would a structuralist define a novel? A critic adhering to new criticism? New Historicism? Maybe they could all agree that the novel best represents literature, but could they ever agree on what a novel is?

If you wanted, you could bring the definition of a novel back to something basic like "a collection of words that tells a story" but there's so much that fits into that that I'm temped to say that the definition depends more on the viewer than the viewed. I've read recently that Bakhtin called the novel the form that devours all other forms. Maybe that's the best definition of literature.



3. Prizes and awards are playing an increasing role in determining an author's career-trajectory. In short, winning a major literary prize can win a writer a large audience overnight (not to mention, considerable fame and financial remuneration). But, as British critic Jason Cowley has observed, what is lost is the ability for readers to think in a critically complex fashion.

Are literary prizes dangerous in this regard? Do they convey to the public the message that "this book is worth reading and all these others aren't"?

I think literary prizes are good in the sense that a friend who gives you recommendations on what to read is good. Maybe their best function is to bring attention to lesser-known authors.

But the problem is that the amount of emphasis people now put on prizes is completely out of proportion. There's lots of ways to bring attention to authors—there's my friend, there's a publisher like NYRB (which brings out-of-print classics back into print), there are critics (who can champion authors), there are blogs, there's the LBC, there are bestseller lists, there are book clubs (but TV-based clubs like Oprah's and The Today Show's now seem more like prizes), there are clerks setting up displays at book stores, there's advertising.

All these are legitimate methods to inform you about good books, but book prizes have become, by far, the most prominent. So, I think they're dangerous when they make readers lose sight of the fact that there's lots of other ways to discover books. For one thing, maybe your friend's advice is going to be better than the Booker's this year, and for another, art and culture benefit when there's a multiplicity of voices discussing and championing art. To the extent that we let prizes define what's "good," we're subjecting our literature to unilateral judgment. In other words, it's giving these prizes way too much power, and, as you say, letting these prizes substitute for an individual's responsibility to seek out quality art and make her own judgments.



4. Regarding lit-blogging: first, a simple question -- how do you do it? How do you find the time to read the books necessary to write longer posts, cover the arts journalism and criticism necessary for many of the shorter posts, and also have a life?

Quite simply you make the time, just like anyone else. Not to compare blogging to writing a novel, but how does a novelist (those not fortunate enough to live off their writing, and there's plenty of those) find the time to hold down a job, have a life, and write?

Or let me put it like this—literature is my passion. If I didn't blog, I'd still be reading the same books, journalism, criticism, etc. The actual blogging is kind of like the icing on the cake, or rather, a way that I can share and continue to think about things that I'm naturally interested in. If it felt like an obligation or like a job, I don't think I would have lasted this long.



5. Recently, considerable attention has been paid to the cuts to book review space in newspapers (a trend that started quite a while ago). You have written both reviews for papers and reviews as posts for your lit-blog. Is there any real difference between the two media? When writing for a newspaper and getting feedback from the book page's editor, does this help bring to the fore thoughts you might not otherwise have included in a review? Alternatively, does blogging, with its greater freedom to write about what one wants as long as one wants, lend a critic much-needed room to breathe?

Well, I think there's a lot of difference between a newspaper and a lit-blog, but in both mediums there's a big range in the quality of coverage, so it's hard to generalize. Some reviews I've read on lit-blogs seem exactly like the reviews I read in newspapers, but other times the two are very different. But I think there is usually going to be a difference in the final product when you're writing for yourself, are your own editor, and are writing in a medium that feels ephemeral and (for the moment at least) fringe.

I may be a bad example, but I've gotten very little by way of suggestions from editors I've written for. Most of the time they do a light edit, I approve it, and that's it. This includes newspapers, literary journals, and other blogs.

I do like the idea that blogs give you as much space as you want, but what I like even more is the opportunity to come back to a work again and again. When I review a book I go through it a second and third time so that I have a good understanding of it, but even then there's a lot of stuff that occurs to me after the fact. With my blog, I can come back to a work as often as I like. And if, say, tomorrow, I read a book that really benefits from a comparison to a book that I reviewed, say, six months ago, then I can talk about that on my blog.

I tend to view newspaper reviews as a good first line of criticism, but people make the mistake of thinking that's all there is to be said. No, that's just the first sentence of a long conversation. Blogs are one way to continue the conversation.



6. Despite the decline in readership for literary fiction, publishers keep producing a large number of titles each season. You have written that it would be better if publishers produced fewer books. (If my memory serves correctly, you wrote a post entitled "Less Please" that criticized publishers for producing an excessive number of books in the hope that a few of them would stick.)

But isn't there another way of thinking about the avalanche of work that gets published each season by the total number of large and small publishing houses? Isn't the corollary of "too many books" that books themselves tend to be too long? Especially given the trend over the last decade of new authors carving out reputations by writing 500, 600, and even 700 or more page tomes, is there not an argument for writers producing shorter works? Broadly speaking, shouldn't we have "less please" in terms of novel length?

I don't think you can look at pages in the same way you look at the number of books, and this is why. The thing I said about publishers publishing too many books is this mentality that you have to spread your risk. If you bank on two books, you're exposing yourself to a lot of risk, because both of them could easily flop and then you're screwed. But if you have ten, it's much less likely that all ten will tank, and you're likely to survive to publish another day. It's very good business sense ("diversify your portfolio" is exactly what any investment broker will advise you), but what's good from a business standpoint is rarely good from an art standpoint. Or put another way—this is the mentality that has taken over Hollywood, and if you think Hollywood is at a high point . . .

Actually, New York Magazine just did an article where they mentioned exactly this. They showed how out of every eight books published by Random House, six break even, one's a big success, and one's a big failure. So, overall, if you publish a lot of books, these things even out and you stay in business. Good business sense, but not necessarily what's going to get you the best literature.

And besides, I think that many of the long novels we have now are perfectly legit. There's an argument that prodigious fiction—like that of David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann—is a response to a world of prodigious information. I think I buy that, and if an author feels she needs a lot of room to render our world as it is, I'll grant her that. Of course, if you want to write a long book you run the risk of boring the reader. I always reserve the right to critique a book for being too long and wasting my time, and with all there is that I want to read, my tolerance is going to be pretty low.

Also, some books that are unduly long could be due to the lack of good editing, which is a symptom of publishing too many books per season. From what I've seen, it’s common for authors (especially young ones) to keep piling on the information. There may be a good book in there, but it’s overwritten, and this is where a good editor will come in. But now major presses do less and less editing, often because they're spread out over too many projects. So it's possible that this is a reason for ballooning books—and another reason to publish less books, so that the ones that are published can have more attention paid to them.



7. The lit-blogosphere is chock full of commentary. But, proportionately, it doesn't contain much creative work -- that is, it's extremely difficult to find blog sites (as opposed to online magazines) primarily devoted to original fiction. What's up with that? Is the internet doomed to be a venue of commentary rather than art?

I think the Internet will one day be a great venue for art, once we've discovered the correct kind of art to do in it. Fiction, though, is not it. Maybe it works to publish stories online as an adjunct to a journal or magazine, but I just don't think blogs are the correct place for fiction. The best stories are made to last, to be complete objects that you take in on their own. Does this sound like a blog to you? Not to me—I see blogs as very transitory, as connected to other stuff by a million tiny tethers; kinda the opposite as how I view a short story. I think that in time people will figure out how to make art via blogs, but it's not going to happen by taking this other, older artform and sticking it in just because both happen to be text-based.

Commentary, by contrast lends itself to the blog form. It's very much dependant on context (hence all the links), and to have good commentary you need to be constantly keeping up to date with what's going on. From this viewpoint, blogs are nearly ideal.



8. During the 1980s and 1990s, it was popular in literary circles to say women read fiction, men don't. Yet since the advent of the lit-blogosphere, a great deal of blogs run by men have emerged -- and, unsurprisingly, they have tended in a general sense to champion the work of male writers.

Do bloggers of one sex have an unspoken obligation to go out of their way to pay attention to the work of the other sex? Is there a bit of a "guys' room vs. girls' room" dynamic currently at work in the lit-blogosphere?

I think bloggers should go out of their way to find fiction by women, but I don't think there's the same obligation to search out fiction by men. Here's why: I read based on what books strike my interest, and somehow that leads to me reading far more men than women. Does that mean there are far more good male authors than female? Of course not. What it means is that via my normal habits I'm not being exposed to fiction by women, so I should go out of my way to find it. I don't think there's a similar obligation to find fiction by men because male fiction is already dominating discourse.

I don't think there's a divide like that in the lit-blogosphere. In terms of audience, there's Maud Newton, who's one of the most popular lit-bloggers around. Bookslut is also blogged (mainly) by a woman. GalleyCat (the only paying lit-blog gig I know of, and also a site with considerable traffic) is 50-50, gender-wise. And in general it seems to me like lots of female bloggers get links and are in the discussion.



9. Online, you both blog at Coversational Reading and write for/edit The Quarterly Conversation. Two questions: First, would you briefly describe the differences between blogging and writing essays for/editing an online journal?

Well, I hate to say it, but for The Quarterly Conversation I'm much more concerned about doing a thorough job. I love blogs, but I'm just going to automatically take writing for a journal (even a tiny online one) much more seriously.

For instance, my Friday Columns—I'll write the whole thing in a draft and then go back over it once or twice more. But, for a review for TQC, maybe I'll go over it a number of times, have someone else look it over and give me suggestions, come back to it, really work it over. And then there's copy-editing and proofreading. And if I do an essay, that could take a while.



10. Second: taking for granted that good writing is good writing, and what appears online is just as capable of being excellent as what is published, is there nevertheless (at least these days) still a strong argument for publishing a literary journal like The Quarterly Conversation in print? That is, would it not raise the magazine's profile even more if you could do this? Or is this asking too much? Given the obligations lit-bloggers already have, is it unrealistic to ask someone who reviews and lit-blogs to also print his or her journal -- particularly given the price of printing costs and headaches involved with distribution?

I think there's an argument for The Quarterly Conversation being in print. Besides the idea of getting the word out, there's the fact that lit journals are often very nicely designed with quality interior art—just something very pleasing to hold in your hand—and you just can't do that on the web. Another reason—the Internet being great as it is, I think it still feels much better to be in print. I certainly prefer to be published in print than online, and I think most of my contributors do as well.

However, that's not to say that we should do TQC in print immediately. If this is going to be in print, it should be worth printing—worth the expense and effort of making a nice piece of work, worth the $10 or so that we're going to ask someone to pay for it. I mean, look back at Issue 1 of TQC—I'm proud of it for what I was capable of at that point, but I would say that Issue 1 was far from being anything someone would want to print, bind, and purchase. Now I'm on Issue 8, and the end product is undeniably much better. You could say that publishing on the web has been a good way to try out things and make mistakes—to learn how to be a journal editor—without having the burden of 1,000 copies of a journal sitting in my basement.

And I don't think it's an unreasonable request. Sure, I'm busy—everyone I know is busy, by the way—but, you know, there's something to be said for responsibility and not hiding behind "I've got a lot to do." But I should also point out that I'm not the only one putting major time on TQC. Over the past year I've brought on a couple of contributing editors without whom I just couldn't put out TQC in its current form, and if we ever did do a print issue, I'm sure I'd have to find more people to be indebted to.



11.Finally, major media such as The New York Times occasionally mention lit-blogs, but they tend to do this in a very selective -- some might say, arbitrary -- way. This leads to a kind of hierarchy: i.e., you're either one of the lucky ones who gets a Motoko Rich link or you're not.

Given the power that major media still have to "make" someone, what is the lesson for serious lit-bloggers? Should they be trying to max out the number of hits they get? Should they be networking with arts journalists at major media? Or should they form their own media networks, and not worry about whom the Times will bless with its magic wand?

Well, first off, it is arbitrary, and moreover, bloggers keep saying how little newspapers understand about blogs, so I really don't think bloggers should care that much if they happen to be mentioned. I mean, yes, it's a nice little surprise when it happens to you, but I think that's about as far as it should go—if this is giving you a lasting ego boost, then you should probably examine your life.

I'm not so sure about the Times's king-making power, though. I've been linked by them and other major media—you get increased traffic for a day or two, but then everyone forgets and it goes back to normal.

About whose ass to kiss: The Times has discussed and linked to litblogs maybe once or twice in the past two years, so I don't think networking with its journalists is going to do anyone much good until they start discussing us on a regular basis, which I doubt will happen. The most click-throughs I've ever gotten by far was when Andrew Sullivan linked to me (when the Times linked to me I didn't get nearly as many). I think the lesson is clear—when people who are primarily newspaper readers read an article about blogs, a very small percentage of them will click over to you because most of the people reading the article don't know or care about reading a blog. But, when you're mentioned on a major blog, the click-through rate is going to be much, much higher, because the people reading that are ones that are the most familiar with blogs; they're used to clicking-through. So, I guess if you cared about maximizing your hits, go kiss the asses of major bloggers. Alternately, I think if you show a genuine interest in authors' work, participate in the community, and are putting up worthwhile information that people can't get anywhere else, then you will generate traffic.


But, who really cares? Say you get 2,000 hits per day. That's not bad. I mean, it's minuscule when you think of the millions of people online, but it's still a packed auditorium coming to hear you every day. That's cool. Most lit journals do what, 1,000-2,000 copies per issue, and people die to be in them. And also, think about who is reading your blog—I've been very surprised to find out who reads my blog. Hits aren't everything.