God love the literary hoi-polloi:

God love the literary hoi-polloi:

Who says people don't care about books? For the second year
in a row, controversy has swirled around the National Book Awards. Last
year literary lions were scandalized when horror novelist Stephen King
received the medal for outstanding contribution to American letters.
This year eyebrows rose among some critics, authors, and publishers
over the five finalists in fiction.
The main beef seemed to be that the finalists, all New Yorkers, are not
well known, and that their books are obscure or esoteric or both, as
well as poor sellers -- this in a year when several literary
heavyweights published books.
"I realize that I'm the heathen at the gate here," Laurence J.
Kirshbaum, chairman of Time Warner Book Group, said in an interview
yesterday, "but I believe that books which resonate in our society and
-- yes, to use that awful word -- that sell should be recognized in
awarding these honors." For a committee of five writers to make the
choice, Kirshbaum said, "is much too limited to reflect the book
business and the role of books in our culture."
The winner, announced Wednesday night, was Lily Tuck for her historical
novel "The News From Paraguay." The other finalists were Sarah
Shun-lien Bynum for her first novel, "Madeleine Is Sleeping;" Christine
Schutt for "Florida"; Joan Silber for "Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of
Stories"; and Kate Walbert for "Our Kind: A Novel in Stories."
Rick Moody was chairman of the fiction panel, which also included
Randall Kenan, Stewart O'Nan, Linda Hogan, and Susan Straight.
After the finalists were announced last month, novelist Tom McGuane was
quoted in The New Yorker as saying the award was "apparently tanking."
Last week, in The New York Times Book Review, critic Laura Miller wrote
that none of the finalists "could be reasonably expected to please more
than a small audience." Citing Nielsen BookScan, a rating agency,
Miller noted that four of the five books had sold fewer than 2,000
copies. She also suggested the panelists had deliberately thumbed their
noses at the "literary establishment" by tilting toward previously
unnoticed books.

So, lemme see if I've got this whole brouhaha straight: authors of
literary fiction, whose books don't sell nearly as well as say, John
Grisham, have their knickers in a twist because none of the books
nominated for this year's National Book Award have sold well. The
authors and their works are "obscure," they say.
Yet, amazingly enough, these bozos are the same idiots who can't sell
enough of their own work to finance the production of said work. They
willingly rely upon the sales of popular fiction to pay their advances,
while simultaneously never failing to bite the burgeois hand that feeds
them by bemoaning the Decline of Western Civilization popular fiction
represents to them.
It's the height of lunacy.
{Insert premature evil cackle of triumph here}
I forsee a time in the future, when my manuscript is published and the
royalty checks have started to roll in. I will be lazing about on the
beach of my newly purchased Caribbean shack whilst pondering on my
cabana boy's beautiful, thonged butt. Tearing my mind away from his
glorious gluteus maximus for a brief moment, I will raise my up glass
full of frothy pina colada and will toast the reading public's absolute
boredom with literary fiction and the pretentiousness found therein.
Because their boredom will have made me stinking rich, and, I
will know that somewhere in Manhattan, some young, earnest Princeton
grad will be setting down the words he believes will become The Great
American Novel(TM). I know he will truly believe this will be the
novel that becomes not only a National Book Award winner, but that it
could take the Pulitzer for fiction as well. It could even make some
money, too, he believes. Why, he's the next Steinbeck! He's sure of it.
Toward that end, he will work industriously at producing beautiful
prose and will fret over the placement of every single comma. He will
worry about getting the inevitable heartbreak just right.

While I know that he will probably get published, that his work will be well-reviewed by the New York Times Book Review, I also know he will never have what I have, simply because his work will bore the shit
out of his audience and no one will ever buy it to read it. They will
buy it because the critics have said they should buy it, not because
they actually want to read it. Yet, when they actually settle down to
read it...well, they'll keep falling asleep and the book will
ultimately end up gathering dust on a bookshelf. Our earnest Princeton
grad, ultimately, will have to take that teaching job to make ends meet
because his royalty checks won't pay the rent.
And I will still be gazing at my cabana boy's glorious ass.

Posted by: Kathy at 03:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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