Posted by JimH on July 13, 2010 at 13:11:22:
In Reply to: Is the Novel Dead? What do you say book lovers? posted by CrandalSwitch on July 09, 2010 at 17:20:45:
The issue was also discussed in a recent New York Times, essay "Truth Is Stronger Than Fiction" at
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B03E6D8103CF934A3575BC0A9639C8B63
The author seems to be taking the position that in today's troubled world, we need to be reading current events books rather than fiction.
Nonsense. The world has always been troubled, and fiction has always provided not only escape but unique ways to look at our world. While it is true people are currently spending most of their book-buying dollars on nonfiction and celebrity- authors books, if the novel really is dying, it is the megapublishers who are killing it. They are buying out all the small, literature-oriented publishers and turning them into profitable, bottom-line oriented businesses. Everybody knows serious literature doesn't sell well (how many people have even heard of Booker winners like Aravind Adiga?), so the megapublishers say to hell with them, and who needs them anyhow?
The answer is that we all need them, even if we don't read them; they are as important to our society as Picasso and Philip Glass and Yves Klein and Frank Lloyd Wright.
: Is the Novel Dead? They're still asking the question and debating the answer at Slate.com:
: http://www.slate.com/id/2128405/
: If it is dead, who killed it?