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peripheral literary observations
Sep. 19th, 2007 07:59 pmMore podcasts. Listened to an interview with William Gibson, Sherman Alexie, Connie Willis, Guy Gavriel Kay, Mohsin Hamid, and sundry others. Studiously avoided listening to the Zen lectures I downloaded.
Notes:
1. One-word (evocative-abstract-noun) titles for novels seem to have returned to fashion, after an epoch of phrasal titles.
2. In recent interviews (first at the writers' festival, now in online interviews), I have heard at least five writers say "I actually think of myself as a poet," or "I really prefer writing short stories," and then go on to say that they don't really do that kind of writing any more because they are writing novels: their publishers told them to.
My subjective observation from the sample consisting of readings at the writers' festival is that although every novel was competently written, most or all were not as good as the work the authors had done (sometimes years before) in their preferred medium. Sometimes they read the work before they mentioned the genre switch, so I hope this is not entirely my anti-authoritarian bias.
The novels often had a common (also currently fashionable) genesis: the author found an interesting historical anecdote and said, "I could expand that into a novel." And they did. And there the novels are. Little piles of dissatisfied paper. Can it really work, having writers produce a lesser product in a more marketable format?
I mean, well, yes. It seems to. I don't know why I'm convinced that it Can't Go On This Way.
I can't help thinking that it seems like a failure of imagination in an imaginative industry -- marketing, I mean. Not writing.
{rf}
Notes:
1. One-word (evocative-abstract-noun) titles for novels seem to have returned to fashion, after an epoch of phrasal titles.
2. In recent interviews (first at the writers' festival, now in online interviews), I have heard at least five writers say "I actually think of myself as a poet," or "I really prefer writing short stories," and then go on to say that they don't really do that kind of writing any more because they are writing novels: their publishers told them to.
My subjective observation from the sample consisting of readings at the writers' festival is that although every novel was competently written, most or all were not as good as the work the authors had done (sometimes years before) in their preferred medium. Sometimes they read the work before they mentioned the genre switch, so I hope this is not entirely my anti-authoritarian bias.
The novels often had a common (also currently fashionable) genesis: the author found an interesting historical anecdote and said, "I could expand that into a novel." And they did. And there the novels are. Little piles of dissatisfied paper. Can it really work, having writers produce a lesser product in a more marketable format?
I mean, well, yes. It seems to. I don't know why I'm convinced that it Can't Go On This Way.
I can't help thinking that it seems like a failure of imagination in an imaginative industry -- marketing, I mean. Not writing.
{rf}
