31 Questions and Statements about the Future of Literary Publishing, Bookstores, Writers, Readers, and Other Matters by John O'Brien
2. Or you want to read on-screen. Welcome to it. What is the screen? A small, book-shaped screen (double-sided), with contrast and definition that, well, resembles a book (I have Evelin Sullivan to thank for this). Or maybe you want to read from a big screen. Your choice. The consumer is in control at last. Or say you got the disk from the store in #1. As the middlemen drop by the wayside, the cost of all of this also drops. Why must we now pay $25 for a book? Not because of the cost of producing the book; we pay $25 so that everyone along the way can get his cut, as inadequate as that cut may be. No one wants to consider what the actual costs are; no one, especially the publisher, wants to consider this because it raises the question of what need there is, or isn't, for all the middlemen, including--as presently constituted--the publisher.
3. What will cause #1 & 2 to happen? As always in America, especially in America, they will be caused by money. The $25 book will no longer cost the consumer $25, and yet someone will still find a way of becoming a billionaire by reducing the cost to the consumer (e.g., the guy who makes those imitation- leather covers). What else creates this change' The other half of saving money: the technology is there, though the book industry is the slowest "business" in America to respond to new technology. (After all these years, why are books still not sold or widely promoted on television? We now have specialty cable stations for almost everything, except . . . let's not get into it.
4. Cultural effects? Enormous. All books, all information, all whatever will be available to everyone at all times. You live in some awful town in Arkansas? Well, you still have all books available in your living room bookstore, or library (imagine a library very much like the bookstore I described) Even in Arkansas. Suffer from isolation? Not if you are hooked up to reading groups on the Internet, one of which may even exist for Gilbert Sorrentino. Gilbert Sorrentino himself might be part of the group. Or maybe not. In any event, you are now hooked up to everything and everyone. Even in Arkansas.
5. Most people will say that this can't happen. Why? Because they want to read books only in the form that they've always enjoyed. But won't having the books bound (if this is what they want) be enough, No, they say, they want to get them in the ways they have always gotten them. We can put these people m the category of those who said in the late forties and early fifties (I remember well) that they would never get a television because nothing could replace the radio. Even within my Irish- Catholic ghettoized neighborhood of Chicago (a two- square- mile neighborhood that some residents had not stepped out of all of their lives: born there, baptized there, confirmed there, married there, and would be buried there--if they were males, they had stepped out for military service and, perhaps, their daily jobs), all households had televisions by the midfifties. Radio got changed, as we know. Most people said the same thing about color television. Then VCRs. Then cable. Books have been the most resistant to change (was the first book written, then published, then read by Republicans?). In any event, such responses are not worth listening to. Ten dollars for a book at the Kinko/Blockbuster bookstore or $50 at the local old- fashioned store that is about to go out of business? End of argument--especially in America.
6. Will our age be the end of reading and the end of "stories"? No. We will change the forms, but the need for stories remains. But will the need for reading remain? Yes, until some other human activity can fulfill the same need for quiet meditation with language and the imagination that is the act of reading. But what new form? The old form, the first form of the Word, was the oral storyteller. Mass reading occurred only when (again, of course, because of technology) books could be mass produced, and when that fact coincided with the rise of the middle class (again, of course, money) and the possibility of leisure, and therefore education, etc. I don't know what reading's future form will be. Quite likely not a return to bards wandering from town to town (though in fact we might be seeing a return to the oral tradition via books- on- tape), and perhaps the transformation could be as slight as from book to portable computer that looks like a book. Humans can, despite our experience of them, be quite adaptable.
7. What of experimental fiction? It will go on, as it always has, beneath the surface, behind the scenes, completely removed from the interests of the masses as well as the interests of most intellectuals and academics. The demand for it will neither greatly expand nor much decrease. Like the poor, it is always with us. Some experimental fiction will be good and will last and will finally, as always, be integrated into the mainstream; some will be bad and will die, as it always has. Will most people--especially those at the hippest cutting edge of the culture--continue to hate it and dismiss it? Yes, of course. The body culture will always attack it as a foreign invader.
8. What will the fiction of the future be like? This is not the domain of critics. Writers will decide this, just as they always have.
9. Will John Updike be remembered a hundred years from now? John who? Even so, his books will be electronically available.
10. What is the relationship between commercial publishers and nonprofit literary presses? The question really is: What will commercial publishing be doing with literary books in, let's say, fifteen years? Let's look at what it has done with poetry, as well as drama, in the last twenty-five years and then project this onto fiction. Today, except in unusual cases, highly literary fiction does not sell well enough to justify the expenses of commercial publishing; just how badly it sells is a trade secret, but the range (except for unusual circumstances, the Pulitzer, for example) is between 2,000 and 7,500 copies of a given book. The old, now dying system was that a commercial publisher would "invest" in a young writer because one day he/she would write a breakthrough novel that would catapult him/her onto the best-seller list, win awards, and become a prestigious part of the publisher's corporate image. The old system continues, or staggers on, to the present‹day, but with steadily fewer risks taken, less investment, less interest in that kind of corporate image.
Let's compare all of this to changes in the business of baseball. Even after clubs were moving into the new age of agents, multimillion dollar player contracts, nine- figure broadcast deals with networks, etc. (keeping in mind that it wasn't too many years ago that no games except the All- Star Game and the World Series were nationally televised, and that, even on a local level, the decision to televise home games was the choice of the owners and whether they thought this would interfere with gate- paying customers), and clubs began to operate as true businesses rather than being the expensive hobbies of chewing gum magnates, you can be sure that a tradition such as "Ladies Day" (whereby women, in order to woo them to an interest m baseball, or at least to get them to tolerate their husbands' interest, were offered free admission) continued. Only after some years did someone realize that most women were now coming to games because of the entertainment, the hipness of--let's say--Cubbies baseball, the fireworks, the clowns, the hoopla; in short, because of the game's status as social- entertainment event. No need to let them in free, especially since corporations were now buying the box seats and the skyboxes and whatever else, no reason to have to worry about the women (i.e., housewives) who had nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon and who, if they couldn't come along might interfere with their husbands' and kids' attendance. This is essentially the same relation that literary fiction has to commercial publishing. Why do it? The tradition staggers on (as did Ladies Day) in order to satisfy editors who are bringing in money from other books, staggers on to satisfy the needs of conscience, and staggers on so that there can be awards and prizes and puffery. (How do you have awards for O. J. books, the Pope's book, or Tom Clancy? You can't, unless you consent to become entirely like the rest of the entertainment industry, namely, television and Hollywood and pop music.) The end of literary books in commercial publishing is a historical inevitability, slow to occur only because publishing has always been a nineteenth- century contraption that, even today, depends upon having sales reps going door- to- door to stores where they build relationships and try to be well- liked.
Twenty-five years ago, every respectable New York (or Boston) publishing house published poetry and translations, and most of them published plays. Is there any commercial house that does plays any longer? Fewer and fewer do translations, and fewer and fewer do poetry, and those that continue to do poetry books do fewer of them and now tend to favor poets who collect Social Security checks and who, God knows, won't sell very well but will get respectable reviews (that is, in the three or four reviews that the New York Times does each year in its roundup of poetry books). Poetry has almost entirely fallen to university and nonprofit presses; plays don't get published, unless by Theatre Communications Group (a nonprofit publisher); and literary fiction is, well . . . continuing, sort of. Serious books and interesting new authors are published in New York--Gaddis, Millhauser, David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann, Richard Powers, William Burroughs, John Barth, Joyce Carol Oates, Saul Bellow, John Updike (God help us--you can see, I am casting the net wide and am willing to count Updike among "serious writers," if not very good ones), and so on. It's Ladies Day, folks. Do not think that QVC- Paramount- AT&T- FoxMurdoch, Inc. will have this go on much longer. Why would they? And if you think they will, then you believe that they are just about to start supporting ballet and opera, which is the cultural and financial equivalent to some of the writers I've named above.
And so? Literary fiction will eventually become the domain of nonprofit publishers and university publishers (though the latter is a strange category: some still do not even put the price of the book on the jacket!). And so? And so either these publishers will be able to take on this cultural responsibility or they won't. And they will be able to take it on only if they have the dollars (these are not the best of economic days for university presses to be expanding lists, especially in the area of literary fiction).
11. It's best not to get married. This has nothing to do with the above but is worthwhile advice to the youth.
12. Why didn't North Point Press survive? Because it was, almost from the start and despite attempts to change in the end, trying both to be a literary publisher and to make money. The two are not compatible, as everyone knows. (In fact, publishing itself does not make money, but not everyone knows this. How many fortunes have been lost in commercial New York publishing? Let's not get into this one. Ask Jim Sitter. Publishing will one day make money but only as part of a much larger entertainment network. Believe it.) At any rate, North Point could not sell enough copies of people like Gilbert Sorrentino and Juan Goytisolo. It should have been a nonprofit press. Since foundations were not, and largely still are not funding literary publishing, this probably would not have made a difference, but at least North Point would have known what they were up against. What of North Point's two best- sellers? Such things create more problems than they solve (that is, they don't solve any problems). In brief, best- sellers cost a lot of money, and you had better have the staff to handle them, and then you had better not make the mistake of thinking that you can keep duplicating the process.
13. Does it make any difference whether literature survives? Maybe not, but only in the sense that to people alive right now, it may not make any difference whether the environment survives; they won't be around to choke on the water or to breathe in pure CO. Both literature and the environment have to do with the quality of life, as do music, ballet, museums. We can, of course, survive without ballet, but survive to do what?
14. Is literature relevant to anything? A number of novels by African- Americans (dear God, this term is back in use: will politics in America ever make up its mind?), culminating in Native Son and Invisible Man, ‹ caused the civil rights movement in this country. No one will agree with this and I don't want to spend the time arguing it. Or: Hemingway's fiction created the American male. Again, I don't have the time. Emerson created a number of things, most of them either bad or badly misapplied (that toad of a man Newt Gingrich would not be possible without Emerson, nor would Dr. Strangelove [aka Bob Dole] have been possible).
15. How could America produce such a pure product as Jesse Helms? Or Dan Quayle?
16. Why are children the least protected group in America? They have no money and no votes. Why are the elderly next? They don't have enough money and may not be able to vote. And the poor? Enough said. And we ask why literary fiction will cease to be published by commercial houses?
17. Why are small presses almost always begun by people who are difficult to get along with? Why do they always impress other people as cranks?
18. If nonprofit literary publishers are to assume the responsibility of making literature a viable cultural force in America, they need money. They need money to become stable and institutionalized; they need money for marketing so that the books will reach readers; they need money to pay writers; and they need money to pay the printing bills. Philanthropists, are you listening?
19. Who is Tim Robbins? Who is Jim Sitter?
20. Will more fiction be reviewed in the New York Times now that Chip McGrath is the editor? Yes.
21. Is it true that the Atlantic Monthly has become a totally irrelevant magazine? The answer to this is yes.
22. When the idea for Vanity Fair was first floated almost a year before the first issue appeared, was it to have a heavy emphasis upon things literary? Yes. But by the date of publication, the accountants had figured out that this was not the way to go.
23. Do you remember the days when the Chicago Sun- Times had a real Sunday book section? You must be well above forty if you remember such days. Is this part of a conspiracy to keep Chicago forever the Second City?
24. Are young editors required to know the work of Edward Dahlberg, Douglas Woolf, Jack Spicer, Carl Van Vechten, Dorothy Richardson, John Dos Passos, and Chandler Brossard? You must be kidding. Must they even know the names so as to be able to answer whether these people are plumbers or writers? You must be kidding. Can one be a good editor without knowing the complete work of Edward Dahlberg? No. Can one be an influential editor without ever having heard of Edward Dahlberg? Emphatically, yes.
25. With what kind of reason do publishers hate writers? A good one. Do publishers want to be thought of as people who hate writers? Never.
26. Do people want to think of publishing as a noble profession? A gentleman's profession? Yes, they do. Are a lot of people deluded about many things? Yes, they are.
27. Should our federal government, as do many other governments, pay for the publication of the country's literary heritage? Yes, it should. Especially when Newt Gingrich is a novelist in his own right. Should America be embarrassed because it does not pay for such a thing? Yes.
28. America needs a review source for books that is completely independent of commercial interests. Such a publication (or perhaps it should be on television or radio) must gather the best critical minds in the country. It must notbe supported by advertising from publishers. It must be widely distributed, perhaps given away rather than sold. Such a review source could change the face of publishing in America. Philanthropists, are you listening?
29. Would the word smug adequately describe the demeanor and attitude of John Updike? Yes.
30. The purest form of American censorship is reducing books to their marketplace value. Most affected are literary books, but of course any books that, at the moment, have limited sales potential are so censored. It is the most effective form of censorship ever known because it makes so much common (i.e., economic) sense to Americans. If Newt Gingrich thought that the fiction of Edward Dahlberg was unavailable because it was being censored, then he would be at the front of massive protests in Washington (well, I know this isn't true, but you see what I mean). Literature thrived m Eastern Europe during state- imposed censorship, but stopped thriving as soon as the marketplace began to take over. Should it matter to anyone how many books are not available to them? If they weren't available because of state censorship, it would matter. But what is the difference? The countervoices are silenced all the same. College students have available to them only what commercial publishers make available and what will sell well enough to justify being kept in print. The Republic is not in good shape nor is it protected when language is equated with commodity. Someone's interests are protected (and of course someone is making money), but the interests of the Republic are not protected. Literature would thrive in America if only the government would begin to have book burnings and imprison writers! A new Golden Age! Gilbert Sorrentino would be the most read writer in America. Instead, the Republic yawns. "If the damn book were any good, then people would buy it!"
31. I had intended that there be only 27 questions and statements. But, along the way, I had wanted to make a comment about marriage, and once I had made one comment about John Updike, I could not resist another. There may also be other extraneous remarks here.
1. This is now almost old hat, at least in some circles. The future bookstore will consist of as many as 200,000 sample books (all strategically chained to a rack so that no one walks off with them), not representing every book ever published (maybe not even representing every book currently "in print") but still a very healthy sampling of almost anything you might want to browse through. At the center of this store will be something resembling a Kinko's. If you want a hard copy of the book you browsed through, an hour later you will pick it up; at the very worst, it will look like what bound book galleys currently look like (paperbound on plain white paper, with little more than the title of the book and author on the cover). Or you may still yearn for the nineteenth century and want your book bound in leather (well, imitation leather) because your library at home is all in burgundy leather (imitation, that is), and you want your personal library to color- coordinate with your couch (books have many uses). The book you have just purchased would have been unavailable to you ten years before; it was out of print, and even your public library did not have a copy. Now you find it under "French Fiction" in your convenient Blockbuster- like bookstore. As you walk out of this store, you wonder why it is not possible for you to download at home, print on your high-speed, 600 dpi printer, and bind the book with your personalized covers that you keep in a box next to your computer. Well, wait another few years, and you will be able to do this. The Library of Congress will be in your living room.
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