Monday, October 31, 2011

Hmm ...

... The Decline of the Public Novel - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


Why can’t the explanation for the novel’s decline be both/and? Because they were socialized by a common training in writing workshops to adopt a common set of tastes and attitudes, and because these included a taste for liberal attitudinizing, American novelists lost all interest in morality and manners. Or because they inherited a metaphysical view of the universe as bereft of morality and manners, they were quick to adopt the substitute offered in graduate writing programs.


I think the worst thing for any artist is to belong to a fashionable coterie. It's the sure way to create period pieces.

7 comments:

  1. I love it when a literary critic uses "liberal" as a pejorative, overlooking the entire history and value of what used to be called a "liberal education." LOL Perhaps the decline of the public novel is reflective of the decline of literary criticism into its own ghetto of coteries. Just a thought. After all, most writers just write. What happens afterwards to what they write isn't entirely up to them.

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  2. Not all writers have lost interest in morality.

    That word need not be seen as synonymous with smug.

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  3. American novelists have lost all interest in morality and manners? D.G. Myers doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Who knew that you had to be an out-of-touch reactionary jerkoff to have an interest in morality?

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  5. D.G. Myers doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

    He rarely does. But how does Edward Champion know?

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  6. Well, for a start, just about every literary person in New York who has brought you up in conversation (a handful, I assure you; most consider you a joke because of your constant and undignified trolling) tells me this.

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  7. It can't really work, I suppose like this.

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