thought #1: actually it seems like TikTok influencers are among the best-promoted and most-read "literary" novelists. The socmedization of poetry has left it a shriveled sugared apricot of inspo-posts with gratuitous line breaks, and I can't *wait* to see what fiction will look like after five years of the same treatment.
thought #2: if it doesn't touch upon the preoccupations and nod to the values of affluent people from Los Angeles or New York (and hasn't been written by someone who either blogs/influences from a coastal metropolis or has been appropriately shaped up and vouched for by an MFA program), the arbiters of literary publishing aren't interested. there's been a perverse feedback loop at play in American publishing for a long time now, and it's not going to be broken anytime soon.
I think the main issue is that "society novels" as I call them are mixed into the 'literature' section when they're every bit as much a genre, with dependable tropes, conventions, forms, characters, and guard-rails, as any other fiction genre such as sci fi, horror, action adventure, romance, mystery, etc. It's an understandable genre with an understandable audience. Just like genre it can be about real world events and issues but mostly as springboard for the expected, the familiar, the comfortable. A way of binding the chaotic world into a safe drama sandpit that can be resolved in familiar ways; in short: escapism. Totally fine, but not for me. I don't expect the writers of this genre to be particularly attentive to things I find important, so it's fine if they tune out.
thought #1: actually it seems like TikTok influencers are among the best-promoted and most-read "literary" novelists. The socmedization of poetry has left it a shriveled sugared apricot of inspo-posts with gratuitous line breaks, and I can't *wait* to see what fiction will look like after five years of the same treatment.
thought #2: if it doesn't touch upon the preoccupations and nod to the values of affluent people from Los Angeles or New York (and hasn't been written by someone who either blogs/influences from a coastal metropolis or has been appropriately shaped up and vouched for by an MFA program), the arbiters of literary publishing aren't interested. there's been a perverse feedback loop at play in American publishing for a long time now, and it's not going to be broken anytime soon.
I think the main issue is that "society novels" as I call them are mixed into the 'literature' section when they're every bit as much a genre, with dependable tropes, conventions, forms, characters, and guard-rails, as any other fiction genre such as sci fi, horror, action adventure, romance, mystery, etc. It's an understandable genre with an understandable audience. Just like genre it can be about real world events and issues but mostly as springboard for the expected, the familiar, the comfortable. A way of binding the chaotic world into a safe drama sandpit that can be resolved in familiar ways; in short: escapism. Totally fine, but not for me. I don't expect the writers of this genre to be particularly attentive to things I find important, so it's fine if they tune out.
Tiptoe, tiptoe, https://a.co/d/4VTIUmx, tiptoe, tiptoe...