August 02, 2006

We Aren

Many of you know about the current wave of admissions by the LitBloggers about what they look for in a novel. (Start here at Scott Esposito’s recent Friday Column.)

When I first learned of the discussion, I recalled that Greg and I don’t often speak in public about what it is we look for in a manuscript, beyond saying that we want to publish “unfamiliar stories well told” or using some other such phrase that we’re truly sincere about but that keeps agents from pigeonholing us — either together or separately.

I’m not going to say anything more revealing about that here, either. (The editorial side of a fellow can be more reticent than the publishing side is outgoing.) But I do find the LitBloggers’ efforts to define their critical predilections both admirable and provocative — even important.

Last week I had a conversation over ginless tonic with one of the people in publishing I most admire. I don’t have permission to name that person here — or to go too far into our conversation. Still, the question we shared across that little table was whether we could still be sanguine about the future of fiction. We didn’t need to acknowledge that it’s harder now to bring attention to a novel of quality than it was even five years ago. I’ve said elsewhere that I think this is in part a result of the use of sales data as though they were predictive. That wasn’t what we were discussing, my friend and I. We were pondering, instead, what kind of fiction, if any, people are willing to read these days — and why.

For a great long time it has been easy to divide the fiction-reading world between those who read to immerse themselves in the lives of people they otherwise would not know and those who read to escape from the people they do know. Okay, I’m simplifying, but you understand what I mean. And those who would escape into a novel have always far outnumbered those who want to live within one for awhile.

And it appears to me that nothing much has changed in that regard. Except that now most of the readers who want to escape into fiction are, at any given moment, all reading the same novel. Insofar as BookScan’s numbers can be taken as meaningful, it appears that Phantom, the 11th volume in Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” fantasy series, sold almost as much in its debut week on the NYTimes best-seller list as the most critically lauded novels on that list have sold over their entire runs.

Wait, “ ‘Sword of Truth’ fantasy ”?

Hmm. Where was I?

Of course, I believe that story is hard-wired into the human brain. That is, I believe that fiction is more than seductive; it’s irresistible — unavoidable. But more to the point here, I believe that the stories we tell and the stories we choose to hear are part of who we believe ourselves to be. I’m convinced, for instance, that the commercial success of the beautiful work that is Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead resulted, not from the awards it won, but from readers’ desire to turn to a beautifully told story, a comprehensible, articulate work of fiction, to learn about what it means — or what it once meant — to be American. The success of Philip Roth’s The Plot against America, comes, I believe, from the same emotional source.

And if that’s right, we might be able to trace that desire back to our complex emotions over the huge conflicts in this world. Perhaps we can draw an oblique line from the problem with fiction sales overall to the endless trauma of September 11th. And it may well be accurate to identify the desire for fiction that is true with the desire to be free of spin.

But the decline in sales figures per title seems to me instead a result of (first) there being too much published and (second) there being too little displayed, recommended, showcased, hand-sold, or reviewed. Factor out the franchise authors and the celebrities, and what’s left that anyone is talking about? There has always been a greater market for escape novels than for other forms of fiction. I don’t think those in search of meaningful literature are fewer, these days. It’s just harder than it used to be for publishers to get novels a reader can live in through the narrowing gates.

I do wonder whether I belong to the last generation of publishers, which is a subject I’m hoping to write about extensively. But that is not a question about the future of fiction.

The LitBloggers’ desire to explain what they value is the same desire that authors have. Indeed, I think it’s the desire the world has now — especially in the face of people who don’t seem to value anything but power. The desire to define values is a desire that motivates a goodly number of readers . . . because it’s important.

Much has been written about the circumscribing of the word “values” — perhaps the concept of literary values has been artificially limited, too. But didn’t I already spout off about that?

What I want to say here is that fiction can break wide open the question of what we value. The novels and stories that are most provocative in that process may not top the best-seller list, but they can reach it from time to time. And if they find a sufficient readership, sufficient to get them there, then they will be the works with the greatest effect.

Fred Ramey

Posted in: Publishers Blog, | Keywords: publishers blog

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