This year, we were obliged to say goodbye to a number of literary luminaries, from the wonderful poet C.D. Wright to Leonard Cohen to Katherine Dunn, the woman who has saved the lives of an uncountable number of teenagers. The only real comfort is that these poets, novelists, and masters of the short story have produced work that will stay with us for many years to come, and so instead of grief, we can feel thankful for the lives they lived and the literature they left us. Here, we say a final goodbye to some of the great writers we lost in this terrible year.
Links of the week December 26 2016 (52)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
2 January 2017
Harper Lee February 19
The famously reclusive author of high school staple and Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird died in February-on the same day as Eco-at age 89, just a few months after the publication of the book's much argued-over "sequel," Go Set a Watchman. "In light of this past year's developments," wrote Kate Jenkins, "it remains to be seen how we will remember Harper Lee. There's no doubt that her legacy has been dramatically altered. But now that we lack the opportunity to ask her exactly what was on her mind, we can never know if she was, in fact, laughing at us the whole time. Regardless of Lee's personal views, one thing is clear: with Go Set a Watchman, she forced a sustained national discussion on race."
David Galef & Len Kuntz break down the newest developments, achievements and emerging classics in the world of chiseled prose.
A man missing an arm and part of his jaw knocks on the door. He smells like a brewery and claims he's a family relation. That's how the story "Related" begins. It's under 500 words. Or consider "Oriole," which opens, "My father's hands fit around my throat" and lays bare what's going on at home in under 1,000 words. These stories feature hookups and breakups, substance abuse, and violence so casual it's as natural as jagged breathing.
This is the work of Len Kuntz, sui generis even in the gonzo world of flash fiction, and he's published a lot of stories to prove it. When David Galef, a fiction writer and critic, set out to write Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook (Columbia University Press), this was the kind of material he was searching for: visceral as a gut-punch but with a real narrative to pursue, a turn in someone's life encapsulated in a couple of pages. Flash fiction is ubiquitous these days, but it can still turn up something new, like a small miracle. We recently asked Kuntz and Galef to chat about the world and the art of flash fiction: where the form stands, where it's headed, whether brevity can be pushed further, and which were their favorite one-line stories of the year.
Cutting-edge British literary fiction risks being undermined by its growing reliance on a handful of powerful book prizes, a leading literary agent has warned. But the associated costs of entering the biggest awards mean independent publishers willing to take risks on "difficult" works without obvious marketing potential are being shut out of contention.
The warnings, from Jonny Geller of Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing, come as the Costa book of the year judges prepare to announce the shortlist for the £30,000 award. He said: "Literary fiction is under threat in this country due to a combination of factors - reluctance by major houses to take risks; a bottleneck in the distribution chain [and] diverse voices being ignored by a predominantly white, middle-class industry."
The Sellout, Paul Beatty's Man Booker-winning novel, had sold only a few thousand copies before the prize, but sales topped 23,000 in the week before Christmas, according to his publisher Oneworld. Beatty's publisher Juliet Mabey said prizes were now essential in order for independent publishers of literary fiction to be heard above the noise of books by well-known names backed by conglomerates.
Last December I wrote a blog post setting out my predictions for the publishing industry in 2016, and I promised to revisit them after 12 months. I always stress the importance of accepting accountability in business, and therefore I must also live-or fall-by the same rules.
I have placed a score by each prediction. Please feel free to leave your comments if you agree or disagree, or if you want to add your own predictions for 2017.
1. Continued regrowth of print sales. A decent start: the steady growth of print book sales, after years of falling, has continued - words that should please and enthuse all in the publishing industry. According to the U.S. Census Bureau), the first half of last year saw sales grow nearly 2 percent, and through the first six months of 2016, bookstore sales have jumped more than 6 percent. Score: 9/10.
This wide-ranging exploration of the impulses, movements, and unique voices in twentieth century science fiction originally appeared as the introduction to this year's The Big Book of Science Fiction from Vintage Books. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's next project will be The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, also from Vintage.
Since the days of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells, science fiction has not just helped define and shape the course of literature but reached well beyond fictional realms to influence our perspectives on culture, science, and technology. Ideas like electric cars, space travel, and forms of advanced communication comparable to today's cell phone all first found their way into the public's awareness through science fiction. In stories like Alicia Yáñez Cossío's "The IWM 100" from the 1970s you can even find a clear prediction of Information Age giants like Google - and when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the event was a very real culmination of a yearning already expressed through science fiction for many decades.
Advice to aspiring authors generally includes the exhortation to develop a thick skin, to serve as a shield at numerous points during the writer's career: finding an agent, finding a publisher, dealing with multiple editors' notes and queries, absorbing churlish reviews, parrying readers' complaints and deflecting the idiocies of prize juries. It is good advice. But is there a skin that could possibly have protected the nascent novelist from this note?
"I honestly don't think it is a publishable proposition ... [it] doesn't really begin to be a novel ... I think publishers would also object to there being no chapter divisions, the multitude of mis-spellings, and the fact that a great many words can only exist in your own imagination. Thinking about it dispassionately, and forgetting that we are friends, I cannot help feeling that the book doesn't have much to say at all. My greatest quarrel, however, is with the quality of the writing, which lacks the imagery and force necessary to lift it out of the rut."
The female writers whose work has most recently come in for enthusiastic appraisal are by no means a homogeneous group; their influences, preoccupations and style vary wildly. Their careers often encompass more than one movement: contrast Bainbridge's semi-autobiographical early work - all unhappy marriages, escapes from oppressive homes and love affairs with rogues - with her later audacious co-option of historical figures such as Samuel Johnson and Scott's Antarctic explorers. A trademark oddness - the strange mixture of lightness and menace, the glancing tone that convinced Froud that Bainbridge had nothing to say, the obsession with brittle cruelty - can be seen in both kinds of novel, but also speaks to something unnervingly fugitive in her work.
Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine, published a book this year titled The Inevitable. In it he describes a number of ways that future mortals might experience their best-loved products and services. I recommend it. Especially if you're struggling to align your digital karma with concepts like ‘filtering,' ‘becoming,' and ‘cognifying,' (and if you're reading this on an iPhone whilst listening to Spotify on the 7.45 to London Bridge, then I'd wager you are).
Reading a book is best done in solitude without a zillion bits and bytes of digital distraction nibbling in from the sidelines - be it from friends, advertisers, or other forms of 'native' content. Therefore it's far more productive for publishers to focus their digital innovation efforts on activities that support the core act of reading.