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‘You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can't express your individuality in sterling prose, I don't want to read about it’: The ‘death of fiction’ in the US?

There was a fascinating post on Mother Jones website last week about the state of literary magazine culture in the United States. Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, wrote on what he views as the demise of the publication – and appreciation – of short fiction in American magazines. The title of this blog comes from a quote from Genoways, whose magazine receives 15,000 submissions of fiction per year. He began his article on Mother Jones aptly, describing (to our amusement) people’s perceptions of his role at the VQR:

It’s inevitable. At a dinner party or on the sidelines of my son’s soccer game, someone well-meaning will ask what I do. ‘I edit the Virginia Quarterly Review, I tell them. ‘It’s the literary magazine at the University of Virginia.’ They nod politely, sometimes with the vaguest hint of recognition. Yes, they remember seeing in the local paper that we’ve won some big awards, right? It’s well respected, isn’t it? But the idea of editing a literary magazine seems, to them, only slightly more utilitarian than making buggy whips or telegraph relays. It’s the sort of arcane craft they assumed was kept alive only by a lost order of nuns in a remote mountain convent or by the Amish in some print shop in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

Sound familiar?

The article is a curious one – but well worth reading. Genoways laments the shrinking of space for short fiction in viable, commercial magazines like Elle, GQ and Seventeen, while taking a pot-shot at the burgeoning enterprise of creative writing schools at universities. Genoways, it seems, want a piece each way.

One would think that the rapid eviction of literature from the pages of commercial magazines would have come as a tremendous boon to lit mags, especially at the schools that have become safe harbors for (and de facto patrons of) writers whose works don’t sell enough to generate an income. You would expect that the loyal readers of established writers would have provided a boost in circulation to these little magazines and that universities would have seen themselves in a new light—not just promoting the enjoyment of literature but promulgating a new era of socially conscious writing in the postcommercial age. But the less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion. Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism.

Genoways does make one point that resonated particularly with me. It is a call to arms, in a sense – a demand that writers put themselves and their work on the line. ‘Stop being so damned dainty and polite,’ he insists. ‘Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood.  And for Christ’s sake, write something we might want to read.’

You can’t really argue with that.

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   Estelle Tang
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2 Responses to ‘You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can't express your individuality in sterling prose, I don't want to read about it’: The ‘death of fiction’ in the US?

1. genevieve
   8:23 am, February 2, 2010 Reply

   Oooh, perhaps I’m just in the mood to argue! but I think he might be taking the easy way out, bashing the writers. Just a tad.
   There are such astounding true stories around, that it may well be the time that creative nonfic comes into its own, and fiction will flail for a bit. Then of course it will do a Gloria G. Of course..!!
   I’m not that impressed with Genoway’s piece, but perhaps I’ve read too many blog posts by disenchanted litmag editors recently, the kind where they expect to be congratulated for sharing their half-developed thoughts. I would like to see Genoways expand on his ideas a little more and provide more hard evidence for his rather sweeping statements about writing schools and writers. No doubt he’s on the ball about the funding of established US litjournals, but he doesn’t really take that anywhere else, does he.

2. Prithvi
   2:20 pm, February 10, 2010 Reply

   Ah, I missed this. I think it’s a pretty good article for a few reasons. What he says about a massive increase in writing submitted, in contrast to a dwindling readership, is worrying. He also says fiction has been tossed out of the pages of commercial magazines – but that universities are cutting funding to their literary mags, too. Made me wonder what the corresponding situation is here in Australia. Commercially-funded lit mags seem to be a bit more robust here.

   I’m going out on a limb, but it feels like readers’ interest in fiction (in Aus) has been dwindling, which matches what Genoways is saying about the U.S. I don’t really understand the current market obsession with the memoir – but I sort-of get it as part of the shift away from telling stories to recounting and reporting (with the seductive notion of “objectivity” colouring the whole enterprise – e.g. biographies, history books, even historical fiction – which I think lays claim to objectivity for effect, even as it subverts it – but that’s another issue).

   I actually think he writes well, which makes me more inclined to trust his judgment of other writers — that editing a lit mag in the U.S. now is like panning for gold in a muddy, gushing creek.