Sunday Edition #4 - The Discourse of Literary Fiction
Also: Querying, AI vs GeoGuessr, and Kevin Can F**K Himself
Welcome to the Sunday Edition where I share interesting articles and links alongside what I’ve been up to!
Decline of Literary Fiction
tries to understand the decline of literary fiction and checks out various theories. They eventually settle on there being two sides to it. On the supply side, it’s gotten harder for writers to make *average* money.Writers can no longer make a good living writing freelance for magazines, and they’re unlikely to find solace in the academic job market either. Worse — even if they do get credentials and manage to find a publisher, most likely their book will have meager sales of a couple thousand copies. If they want to write and make a decent amount of money, where can they go?
Literary novelists might have moved onto TV or film instead (to add my suspicion: I think literary storytellers might also prefer video essays).
On the demand side:
rebuts some of these claims, but ultimately also settles on a reason: distribution. And the reality is, it’s not just literary fiction. It’s all mass market media (as we still see today with the mass fracking of IP).The principal reason self-conscious contemporary literary fiction sells no books is because it’s all insider-baseball so to speak. There’s nothing in most of these books for the general reader. The books are written for the critics.
The entire culture shifted around ‘74—as good a year as any to pick—to the era of mega pop stars, mega blockbusters, and mega airport novels. Mass market culture dominates almost every field.
The middle creator has disappeared in most creative domains.
Writers decry the decline of the midlist just like filmmakers complain about the decline of the mid-budget film. The way that big tech companies have monopolized attention and flooded us with cheap or free “content” on attention-sucking apps affects every art form. Concentration of wealth in the top 1% of successful artists/franchises, the disappearance of livable income streams for “mid level” artists, the difficulties of discoverability in a fractured media environment… these issues cut across the culture.
Even if one makes an economic argument to return to making more smaller bets (which isn’t necessarily a bad idea), I think the deeper reality is not just around how distribution has affected media creation and consumption, but also how modern distribution (especially post-web) has shifted the distribution of status games. Big things *are* just bigger these days because status games also compete against each other. People consume popular things in order to have conversations. And popular things are more popular precisely because we’ve made it easier for it to happen.
If you want to revive the midlist, you have to change how people consume. And to change how people consume, you have to change their why. That means foregoing global algorithms for local ones again.
Interestingly, I think we might be seeing this happen organically. We’re entering the era where people want to stop smoking the algorithms and return to physical primacy. And once the physical takes precedence over the digital again, people will consume less what’s popular overall, and more just what the conversation is in their local neighbourhood. We’re ultimately not going to lose digital algorithms and their appeal, but the swing back will provide a new blend of consumption.
Platform Reality
Speaking of platforms. Robin Sloan makes the case for how Substack is inevitability platformizing (with the eventual enshittification to come).
Expect enclosure; expect a few big winners; expect advertising, with all the attention-hacking that will demand. Expect, also, that writers will continue to mold their work to fit Substack’s particular ecology, rather than “merely” use the tools to pursue their independent visions and ambitions. We learned this about platforms a long time ago: following the old newspaper schematic, they aren’t the printing presses, but rather the assignment editors.
It’s inevitable. For now, I enjoy Substack as a platform. But long-term, I’ll likely move off again.
AI and GeoGuessr
I enjoyed
testing the boundaries of AI to figure out where places are from an image.A Tribute to Meher Roy
I heard the sad news of the passing of Meher Roy. In crypto’s earlier years, I frequently spoke to him and I even appeared on epicenter talking about curation markets. What I want to share is a gift he gave me. He was kind and very curious, but the thing I will remember the most is how much he listened. In those earlier years, not a lot of people cared to listen or they were just downright dismissive. But Meher listened, sincerely, when few people did. And it stuck with me ever since. To try and listen to people, even when they come across as a bit weird, awkward, and shy. You never know what you can mean to someone by sometimes just stopping and listening to them. RIP Meher.
What I’ve Been Up To
✍️ Writing - Querying with Novel #2
While I’m still collecting feedback from beta readers, I’ve started querying for my second novel. Scary, but also, exciting! If you’re in the publishing industry and want to take a look at my query letter, please do get in touch.
📺 Watching - Kevin Can F**K Himself, Trainspotting
I’ve been meaning to watch KCFH for a while since it’s often touted as a prime example of metamodern media. It’s goofball sitcom on the one hand, and dark drama on the other, explicitly shifting tones. Starts slow, but definitely picks up. Curious where it ends.
Also. I finally watched Trainspotting. Always been meaning to. I understand why it’s a classic. Was very entertaining.
🏃 Running - Heatwave Edition
Mega heatwave this week on the east coast. Made running unbearable. But, I did go out in it and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The key is to just take it slow. There is a few metrics to give you ballpark figures on heat stress. Like in Fahrenheit, adding temperature + dew point together and adjusting pace accordingly by a few percent points. If you’re running in this heat, how do you adjust?
🎶 Listening - Joy Orbison - flight fm
A proper dance track this week (ht Gigamesh).
That’s it for this week folks! Hope you enjoy a lovely sunset.
Simon