Literary culture

Following the announcement from Arts Council England that sales of literary fiction are plummeting, it is suggested that arts subsidies be deployed to help writers survive. I have another idea. They should write better books.
Literary fiction is in crisis. A new chapter of funding authors must begin  Read more

A half-century ago, Gabriel García Márquez, after yet another visit to the pawnshop, sent his now signature novel to his publisher. As Solitude turns 50, Paul Elie interviews Gabo's longtime agent-just weeks before her death, at 85-and discovers the events that led to a literary revelation.

When Doubleday editor Gerald Howard acquired Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, a 736-page novel about a New Yorker with a hellish past, he told her they'd have to cut it down by a third. She countered that Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, both longer than her book, were poised to do pretty well that year.  Read more

Can we declare a moratorium on essays about the death of writing?

In an essay in the Guardian, novelist Tom McCarthy argues that literature is challenged by the digital matrix
Would James Joyce have worked at Google if he were alive today?  Read more

A passionate New York debate interrogates Amazon's dominance in the book market-is it delivering well-priced books efficiently, or a greedy, rapacious behemoth?

What is the true nature of Amazon.com-the online retailing colossus that, like a massive corporate python, has swallowed up the book industry virtually whole?