The forever dying, and always dead, literary novel

My sister is an avid reader and we often share what we’re reading, what we like and don’t like. Recently, we were both complaining that there hasn’t been anything great published lately and that everything we’re picking up is just ho-hum. Are writers not writing, she asked? Of course they are, I assured her. But then I wondered… where are all the great writers and where are their great books?

Ever since I’ve been reading literary novels, they’ve been on their last legs. Literary fiction is perpetually in decline. The novel? Dead so many times its death has been a cliche for a hundred years. And yet everyone knows the solution to electroshock the literary novel back to life: “just publish good books that people want to read.”

What does that mean? Well, that’s trickier. Maybe “writing books for the guy on the back of the bus”—as one novelist said was his goal. You know, the “straight-forward tales with something to say, like Hemingway or Chekhov.” (Never mind that the guy on the bus seems pretty happy playing Candy Crush. In his soul, he surely yearns for realist short stories.) Or maybe it is “engaging novels written for the masses not just snobby elites, like Jane Austen!” (Never mind that Jane Austen’s readership in her lifetime was small and consisted largely of literal aristocrats.) 

Mostly, “good books that people want to read” mean “the kind of books I personally like.” And yet the sheer number of books published each year—covering every style and genre possible—not to mention the even larger number of aspiring writers means some other dark force is at work. Maybe it’s snobby critics praising obscure novels that don’t resonate with regular readers? Or is it the pandering populists who heap praise on middlebrow slop that lowers everyone’s expectations? Perhaps it’s that high school English teacher who annoyed you? Or MFA programs or “woke” editors or conservative anti-intellectualism or TV or social media or the general spiritual decay of America caused by [insert another dozen things]?

Another claim is that the money in streaming TV / Hollywood has led some aspiring literary novelists to switch mediums. Put it this way: are there really not enough aspiring literary novelists in the age of proliferating online writing courses, expanding undergrad creative writing classes, and multiplying MFA programs? The supply has, if anything, increased. 

It is obvious that the cultural status of literary fiction—and literature of all genres—has declined over the past 50+ years. Long gone are the days that either a Franzen or a King could become culturally ubiquitous. The same is sadly true of artists in almost all art forms outside of a few pop and movie stars.

Literary Fiction includes authors that many readers (myself included) would think of as, uh, let’s say “middlebrow.” The list of Literary Fiction bestsellers includes award-winning greats like Toni Morrison and George Saunders…but also Paulo Coelho and Delia Owens. The same for all genres. The bestselling Science Fiction isn’t by authors like Gene Wolfe and Samuel Delany. It is franchise novels like Star Wars or movie tie-in releases for books like Ready Player One. Anyway, the fact remains that writers like Morrison, McCarthy, Whitehead, Franzen, Rooney, and so on do indeed sell a lot of books. 

So, there is no evidence of decline of literary fiction in this data. Instead, there is evidence of the complete takeover of fiction by commercial fiction more or less starting in 1980. What happened? Maybe you want to blame in on culture instead of capitalism. Certainly, culture shifts for many reasons. However you want to parcel out the blame, I think it is useful to use a wider lens. 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. 

Just look at the shifts from 60s-70s to the 80s-90 and then to 00s-today at the top of the charts. The genre fiction bestsellers went from the likes of John le Carré, Agatha Christie, and Kurt Vonnegut to Clancy, King, and Steel and then to Patterson, Yarros, and Hoover. Surely as steep a decline as the literary bestsellers. The top box office films went from a variety of interesting movies in various genres like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Blazing Saddles, and The French Connection (to pick but a handful of top box office films) to a box office dominated by big action blockbusters and children’s movies and then to our current franchise era where a handful of action and/or children’s IPs are given endless sequels, reboot, and “reimaginings.

I’m not saying that mass commercial art is all bad. Stephen King and Steven Spielberg, to pick two icons of the blockbuster era, are masters of their forms and have produced excellent work. And I’m certainly not saying that serious, innovative, and interesting art disappeared after 1980 by any means. But the great stuff flourished in the margins, in counter cultures, in independent scenes, and in the middle of mid-lists and mid-budget films. By 1980, mass market commercial art had taken over the top.

What about more recent decades? A scroll through the last 20 years of Pulitzer Prize winners shows many breakout literary fiction bestsellers: The Road, The Goldfinch, All the Light We Cannot See, The Underground Railroad, James. Also note that these authors didn’t win such awards until they were popular. The National Book Award winners are a bit more aesthetically diverse, but they also include many bestsellers and have even more as finalists like Station Eleven and A Little Life. Most, though not all, of the books that appear are very readable books with sales potential even if they didn’t become bestsellers. Many have had TV/film adaptations.

Put it this way, from 1974 to today, if you wanted to win a major literary award you have been far less likely to do so writing A) a dense tome of lyrical prose than B) the bestselling novel of the year that could plausibly be labeled “literary.”

Obviously, some authors in every era write challenging, innovative, and artistic—or if you prefer “boring, snobby, and pretentious”—books. There are always writers who prefer the tastes of critics to the masses, who don’t mind writing for a small audience, and who care about art more than sales. Thank god, I say. But, no matter your taste, let’s be real. Today, those writers—with only rare exceptions—get small advances without marketing support and/or publish on small non-profit presses. They sell their books to a limited audience who seeks out those types of books. Their books are unlikely to even be encountered by your average buyer or reader.

Has there ever been a time in human history when people didn’t think the glory days were gone? That art was better, purer, and more popular in the olden days? 

No one knows what will be popular in the future, and we always rewrite the story of the past. It’s quite possible—nearly certain, even—than in a decade or two people will be lamenting the lost glory days when books like James and The Underground Railroad could top both awards and bestseller lists. Or when Eileen and Normal People could appeal to both literary readers and the general public.

While it is enjoyable to blame the decline of art on the kinds of art you don’t like—whether it’s “woke writers,” “obscure postmodernists,” or “pretentious stylists” or anything else that annoys us—the less satisfying reality is that most of this comes down to much larger issues that have no easy fix and are hardly limited to publishing. In publishing we lament the ability to break out debuts, and they also complain about this in the music industry. Writers decry the decline of the mid-list 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. 

In my view, most of the issues revolve around an overfocus on bestsellers. Publishers have become so reliant on a blockbuster or bust model, where one or two megasellers supports an entire imprint, that they throw stupid money at new trends. You can see this most clearly in the more commercial spaces where—these days—publishers are chasing the likely fleeting Romantasy craze in the same way they chased the fleeting dystopian YA craze of the 2010s: by throwing 7-figure deals at half-baked ideas. But even in literary fiction, publishers IMHO throw too much money at big bets instead of making smaller and smarter bets and then supporting those bets across a career. That’s most important to me, as a reader, because I want those books. In a world where academia and journalism are collapsing, authors need more support than ever if they are going to be able to keep writing books. 

Publishers, and the literary world in general—from professional critics to literary Substackers—could do more to promote good books in the backlist. The literary world tends to drop books after publication, but if the current social media-driven era has taught us anything, it’s that readers don’t care about when a book was published. You can’t engineer viral success, but there are other ways publishers, critics, and so on could keep supporting books they believe in and promote backlists when front lists titles come out. And the reason those books went viral is that people who loved them passionately recommended them. 

What sells has little to do with what’s moves you. More great authors have died in obscurity than topped bestseller lists and the next great book that shakes you, expands you, and makes you see the world in a new way is unlikely to be found by checking BookScan stats. Good literature keeps being written regardless of trends, declarations of the novel's death, or the preferences of guys on their phones in the back of buses. Leave the sales worries to the big publishers’ accountants. It is far more important to write the unique, weird books that only you can write. And as readers, just seek out great books, read them, and share them with others who might love them too.

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And in the meantime, happy reading!
Joni