FYI: Publishing is Dying Again Because Garrison Keillor Says So
Another day, another obituary for the publishing industry which, despite countless instances of garment rending for its death, somehow manages to continue… not dying. Garrison Keillor begins his lament by naming all the fancy writers he ran into at a fancy New York party, the implication being that he doesn’t quite belong in the fancy writing world and yet, there he is. Of course, because this is Garrison Keillor, he has to make an aw shucks reference to the Midwest and continues to offer his bona fides as a man of the people because he drives a car with 150,000 miles on it. That’s such a quaint practice when it’s a choice, driving a car into the ground. For people who cannot afford a new car, 150,000 miles probably holds considerably less charm. Keillor does this, of course, to remind us, yet again, that he is not one of the publishing glitterati. He is a stranger in a strange land, or at least, that’s what he wants us to think so he can continue hawking his down home Midwestern charm and wisdom, or what some might call, schlock.
The gist of Keillor’s (not very well written) editorial is that publishing is dying because writers now have more options available to them to publish. He paints self-publishing with a scarlet “S” while clutching his antique pearls. Things have changed, you see. Writers no longer have to march to New York barefoot with their thirty pound typewriters strapped to their backs to beg publishers and agents to take notice of their work from dirty New York street corners. They can use the Internet and Lulu.com and put their writing out into the world all by themselves. There are fewer gatekeepers and clearly, the rise of self-publishing is the canary in the mine that is the death of publishing. Soon, there’ll be no more editors and when that happens, alas, the literary apocalypse will be upon us. I’m sure, as he wrote this, Keillor thought he was standing up for the endangered editor but his stance in this editorial is one that actually demeans the work of the editor. How little he must think of an editor’s work if he thinks they could so easily vanish from the publishing industry. Every writer I know, myself included, believes in and is intimately aware of the importance of a good editor.
Keillor tries to offer a few pithy words about the liberation of self-publishing but makes it quite clear that anything self-published cannot possibly hold any literary merit because, “You can write whatever you wish and everyone in the world can exercise their right to read the first three sentences and delete the rest.” Keillor also gives us a math lesson when he says, “And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.” His screed reminds me of the Genoways article in Mother Jones where he panics about the 60,000 new writers MFA programs will produce in the coming decade. The horror of it, so many people having the nerve to want to be writers. Life was just so much better in the past when only four people were allowed to write. Those were the days. Keillor waxes nostalgic for us:
Children, I am an author who used to type a book manuscript on a manual typewriter. Yes, I did. And mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it. And kept a carbon copy for myself. I waited for a month or so and then got an acceptance letter in the mail. It was typed on paper. They offered to pay me a large sum of money. I read it over and over and ran up and down the rows of corn whooping. It was beautiful, the Old Era. I’m sorry you missed it.
I shall translate:
People who are younger than me, listen up! Back in the day, I wrote books on a typewriter. I am the only writer who ever managed this. I made my own paper out of the trees on my farm. I called up the Pony Express and had them deliver my precious words to that fancy New York City and my words were so brilliant I got a book deal and I gloated about it and guess what? I’M RICH! I’m sad other people might now get rich too.
This editorial is not so much infuriating as it is sad. It is sad to see a man who feels threatened because the landscape of publishing is changing, modernizing, and, perhaps, becoming more democratic. In other obituaries for publishing, many culprits have been identified but I must say self-publishing as the evil enemy of traditional publishing is a new one for me. It is also sad to see a random grouping of incoherent ramblings instead of an actual argument that is somehow grounded in reality or rational thought.
The highlight of Keillor’s editorial is when he refers to his entire audience as, “Children,” the condescension of which is just, aw shucks, rank and to which my initial reaction was, “Motherfucker, please.”
Excuse my language.
Salvatore Pane also has some really interesting things to say about Keillor’s op-ed.
Tags: garrison keillor, New York City, publishing biz
If garrison keillor says it, I know that it is true.
But seriously: for a long time I thought that the crazy-old-man style of “News from Lake Woebegone” was a conscious choice, that Keillor rambled on like that in his show because it was funny (and it is), until I started reading his columns (Salon carries them) & I realized that no, it wasn’t a stylistic choice, Garrison Keillor actually is just kind of insane, he’s holding onto things well enough to keep a public radio show together, but don’t get him started about kids these days…
A lot of this anxiety really seems to be about the end of professional writing — at least professional writing of fiction and poetry. But who gives a damn? I can write a novel in a couple hours a day. I don’t need to make a living on it.
Would like to, sure, but don’t need to. Letters will survive.
“60,000 new writers MFA programs will produce in the coming decade.”
That alone should be enough to “save” publishing.
If each of those writers reads a book every other week (26 books a year, which I can pretty safely say most writers do) that would be 1,560,000 books read in a year by those 60,000 MFA graduates alone. Let’s be conservative and say they all read paperbacks, say they pay $10 a book, that’s a 15 and half billion dollar revenue stream from those 60,000 MFA graduates alone. Even if those 60,000 graduates get half their books from the library, that’s still an eight billion dollar a year industry. This doesn’t take into account any and all of the non-MFA writers that read (at least another 60,000). Plus every single other reader on the planet. I just don’t get what’s going on. How is publishing dying? Is it that writers don’t read books anymore? Oh bullshit! Every writer I know reads books, lots of books. Most of which they pay for. Something funny is going on in big publishing, I think, but I don’t know what it is. Greed, maybe? Anyway, I’m sure the folks at the top won’t admit that and they’ll blame the internet, as the internet is always a safe and easy scapegoat.
I digress.
Apologies for the kinda off-topic rant, folks.
Back to topic: Yes, Keillor is an insane fucknut.
Great post, Roxanne!
PS It’d be great to see someone who actually knows numbers to run the numbers and tell us how publishing is dying.
I just bought a used car with 168,000 miles on it. Was that a mistake?
“the internet is always a safe and easy scapegoat” <– i want to put this on a t-shirt
i really go in for this cornfield aweshucks stuff. i myself was raised in a cow pasture.
but anyone who thinks self publishing is the end of literature knows nothing about the history of literature.
and i’ve had enough of these “old timers” who act like typewriters are the height of authenticity. real writers write in longhand. not that i ever thought garrison keillor was what i call a real writer.
Everything is always dying. Movies killed Vaudeville; radio killed movies; television killed radio; Internet killed television. Excepting Vaudeville (which I really think should make a comeback), all of those things still exist. Some look different than what they used to (I also wouldn’t be sad about radio sitcoms making a comeback), but there they are — and we’ve done some pretty cool shit with them. Publishing isn’t dying; old writers are.
Garrison Keillor makes Norman Rockwell look like Monte Hellman.
Garrison Keillor makes Bruce Springsteen look like G. Gordon Liddy.
Garrison Keillor makes Thomas Kinkade look like Robert Frank
Garrison Keillor makes Steven Spielberg look like Hubert Selby.
It will be when it costs too much to repair it.
The upside of self-publishing is that you can write whatever you wish, utter freedom, and that also is the downside. You can write whatever you wish and everyone in the world can exercise their right to read the first three sentences and delete the rest.
that’s odd. i keep trying to highlight and delete his column, but it won’t work. is my keyboard broken?
Garrison Keillor is someone holding you down while someone else farts in your face. He’s a doctor who’s not really a doctor. He’s creamed corn and watermelon rind. He’s the Mayor of Topeka in A Boy and his Dog. And if the Topeka of A Boy and his Dog isn’t what America has become then nothing is.
If garrison keillor says it, I know that it is true.
He old.
But seriously: for a long time I thought that the crazy-old-man style of “News from Lake Woebegone” was a conscious choice, that Keillor rambled on like that in his show because it was funny (and it is), until I started reading his columns (Salon carries them) & I realized that no, it wasn’t a stylistic choice, Garrison Keillor actually is just kind of insane, he’s holding onto things well enough to keep a public radio show together, but don’t get him started about kids these days…
“Publishing isn’t dying; old writers are.”
win.
But Keillor studied with Berryman!
Oh my god. Do other people hate Prairie Home Companion? I hate hate hate hate hate it so very, very much but I get clobbered whenever I say so because I’m from Minnesota and if you’re from Minnesota you’re supposed to love Keillor.
I feel so much better about the universe now.
Lol.
A lot of this anxiety really seems to be about the end of professional writing — at least professional writing of fiction and poetry. But who gives a damn? I can write a novel in a couple hours a day. I don’t need to make a living on it.
Would like to, sure, but don’t need to. Letters will survive.
“60,000 new writers MFA programs will produce in the coming decade.”
That alone should be enough to “save” publishing.
If each of those writers reads a book every other week (26 books a year, which I can pretty safely say most writers do) that would be 1,560,000 books read in a year by those 60,000 MFA graduates alone. Let’s be conservative and say they all read paperbacks, say they pay $10 a book, that’s a 15 and half billion dollar revenue stream from those 60,000 MFA graduates alone. Even if those 60,000 graduates get half their books from the library, that’s still an eight billion dollar a year industry. This doesn’t take into account any and all of the non-MFA writers that read (at least another 60,000). Plus every single other reader on the planet. I just don’t get what’s going on. How is publishing dying? Is it that writers don’t read books anymore? Oh bullshit! Every writer I know reads books, lots of books. Most of which they pay for. Something funny is going on in big publishing, I think, but I don’t know what it is. Greed, maybe? Anyway, I’m sure the folks at the top won’t admit that and they’ll blame the internet, as the internet is always a safe and easy scapegoat.
I digress.
Apologies for the kinda off-topic rant, folks.
Back to topic: Yes, Keillor is an insane fucknut.
Great post, Roxanne!
PS It’d be great to see someone who actually knows numbers to run the numbers and tell us how publishing is dying.
I just bought a used car with 168,000 miles on it. Was that a mistake?
I cringe whenever I read a response to an article that includes “not very well written” because it’s rare that the response, itself, is any better. But damn, Roxane, this is great. You filleted that man.
Rock it, Roxane. Love this.
i swear that torturers and military interrogators would do well to employ recordings of Keilor reading personally selected verses poetry in that haughtily throaty, bowel-loosening-ly soporific and disconnected voice of his.
his existentially lewd reading of some poem on NPR about putting on lipstick “like all the pretty girls should” near caused me to crash at my car on a freeway barely past 6am one newly sun-soaked day.
Guys. This dude was the voice behind Odin on Disney’s “Hercules”. Let’s show some respect.
i really go in for this cornfield aweshucks stuff. i myself was raised in a cow pasture.
but anyone who thinks self publishing is the end of literature knows nothing about the history of literature.
and i’ve had enough of these “old timers” who act like typewriters are the height of authenticity. real writers write in longhand. not that i ever thought garrison keillor was what i call a real writer.
in tebordo’s newest, he has a bit saying something near: what’s more redundant, the thing that is redundant or calling that thing redundant? can we just ignore people who say the publishing industry is out the door? i’m sure – as a community of writers – most here would agree that things are fine, changing, but fine.
Right now, Madore looks even more stupid than he already did.
Everything is always dying. Movies killed Vaudeville; radio killed movies; television killed radio; Internet killed television. Excepting Vaudeville (which I really think should make a comeback), all of those things still exist. Some look different than what they used to (I also wouldn’t be sad about radio sitcoms making a comeback), but there they are — and we’ve done some pretty cool shit with them. Publishing isn’t dying; old writers are.
Garrison Keillor makes Norman Rockwell look like Monte Hellman.
Garrison Keillor makes Bruce Springsteen look like G. Gordon Liddy.
Garrison Keillor makes Thomas Kinkade look like Robert Frank
Garrison Keillor makes Steven Spielberg look like Hubert Selby.
It will be when it costs too much to repair it.
Roxane:
Much as I admire your work and your thinking, I have to (sort of) disagree with you here. Sort of. You’re entirely right that it’s sad. But, also for me, it’s sad not because it represents some minority opinion but precisely the opposite. Bright smart young people like you are and have been getting what Publishing still hasn’t got. The sad thing here (for me; I am so selfish) is that Garrison, like a lot of people who don’t really have to worry about the future of publishing (much of NY publishing, it seems to me) don’t. There are a lot of Don’ts. Don’t pay attention to the web. Don’t pay attention to small presses. Don’t have a clue how to promote a book or establish an audience (GK had a platform long before anyone talked about platforms, and he may not even know what a platform is because he don’t (sorry) need to).
Long ago and far away I used to work for the literary agent who represented GK for all of those years before suddenly he broke out. It really was sudden. Yes, he was well published and edited in the New Yorker, but his first novel happened to correspond with a moment in publishing in the 80s that was sort of the paperbacking of the trade book–suddenly people were buying hard cover books the way they had once bought paperbacks. He had gained sufficient audience through his platform that Lake Wobegon Days took off like a rocket. It was like network TV just before cable.
I’ve met him a few times, witnessed the signing of one of his (very large) contracts, seen his show several times when he was doing it in NY. I answered the phone when the Democratic National Committee called to ask if he would speak at the 88 convention.
Couple of things worth noting about him: He really is shy. You can stand next to him on an elevator and he will stare at his shoes even if you’ve just been introduced. Or at least was, then.
Despite the shtick of Midwest Lutheranism, he is a fine humorist. I would urge anyone who doubts this to go to the NYer archives and read some the stuff he contributed before Tina Brown fired him.
Look up his testimony before the House when the whole NEA kerfuffle blew up after the Andres Serrano Piss Christ controversy. Incredibly pithy and funny.
No, he doesn’t get publishing, and misses the old days, and so forth. Same can be said for far too much of publishing itself. It is not a fine column. He was filling space. But I did detect some irony. Not enough, though.
Keep up your good work.
Steve
Garrison Keillor is someone holding you down while someone else farts in your face. He’s a doctor who’s not really a doctor. He’s creamed corn and watermelon rind. He’s the Mayor of Topeka in A Boy and his Dog. And if the Topeka of A Boy and his Dog isn’t what America has become then nothing is.
Love your handle, NPR tote bag.
No pun intended.
” his existentially lewd reading of some poem on NPR about putting on lipstick “like all the pretty girls should” ”
now that’s something i might actually like to hear
not when you’re driving a car at 80 mph on zero hours of sleep.
i dont get the point there. i mean i know he’s human, he’s not at fault for that. he’s at fault for being an old human. he’s trying to order a cup of tea in a dance club.
Everyone I’ve known from Minnesota hates Garrison Keillor, but like in a way that I don’t totally understand. I think PHC is too long by about an hour and forty-five minutes, but I guess I don’t absolutely hate it. Minnesotans I’ve known hate hate hate it. In the way that makes me think that twenty or thirty years back Keillor went around the state punching kids in the face, and now that they’ve grown up all those suppressed memories of being punched in the face are starting to resurface.
Maybe Garrison Keillor takes a month off once every five years to go around punching kids in Minnesota. Maybe he gets some kind of grant for this.
On the other hand, I do like the Poet’s Almanac.
Safety first!
The movie Fargo does much greater justice to Minnesotans.
i wouldn’t say his oldness is what’s at issue, it’s statements like this he salted throughout his column: “Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea.”
dude just doesn’t seem to understand how market forces tend to dictate necessary industry changes to remain relevant.
i bet GK’s granddad told him the same thing about the advent of the typewriter, whose granddad told him the same thing about the way he planted corn, ad infinitum.
He old.
I have never owned a car with less than 150k miles on it. maybe garrison k. will publish me.
No one is attacking his age or his humanity.
I think it was in a Salon column that he complained about Christmas songs that were “written by Jewish guys.”
NPR in general is nails-on-a-chalkboard for me.
But Keillor studied with Berryman!
Oh my god. Do other people hate Prairie Home Companion? I hate hate hate hate hate it so very, very much but I get clobbered whenever I say so because I’m from Minnesota and if you’re from Minnesota you’re supposed to love Keillor.
I feel so much better about the universe now.
Lol.
I cringe whenever I read a response to an article that includes “not very well written” because it’s rare that the response, itself, is any better. But damn, Roxane, this is great. You filleted that man.
Rock it, Roxane. Love this.
i dont get too angry at keilors rant. kind of a sentimental old guy wishing for good oles is how i read it. i’ll be him in fifty.
i’d say one reactionary for another is a fair swap.
the truth lies…well, somewhere. not here.
Guys. This dude was the voice behind Odin on Disney’s “Hercules”. Let’s show some respect.
in tebordo’s newest, he has a bit saying something near: what’s more redundant, the thing that is redundant or calling that thing redundant? can we just ignore people who say the publishing industry is out the door? i’m sure – as a community of writers – most here would agree that things are fine, changing, but fine.
Right now, Madore looks even more stupid than he already did.
Roxane:
Much as I admire your work and your thinking, I have to (sort of) disagree with you here. Sort of. You’re entirely right that it’s sad. But, also for me, it’s sad not because it represents some minority opinion but precisely the opposite. Bright smart young people like you are and have been getting what Publishing still hasn’t got. The sad thing here (for me; I am so selfish) is that Garrison, like a lot of people who don’t really have to worry about the future of publishing (much of NY publishing, it seems to me) don’t. There are a lot of Don’ts. Don’t pay attention to the web. Don’t pay attention to small presses. Don’t have a clue how to promote a book or establish an audience (GK had a platform long before anyone talked about platforms, and he may not even know what a platform is because he don’t (sorry) need to).
Long ago and far away I used to work for the literary agent who represented GK for all of those years before suddenly he broke out. It really was sudden. Yes, he was well published and edited in the New Yorker, but his first novel happened to correspond with a moment in publishing in the 80s that was sort of the paperbacking of the trade book–suddenly people were buying hard cover books the way they had once bought paperbacks. He had gained sufficient audience through his platform that Lake Wobegon Days took off like a rocket. It was like network TV just before cable.
I’ve met him a few times, witnessed the signing of one of his (very large) contracts, seen his show several times when he was doing it in NY. I answered the phone when the Democratic National Committee called to ask if he would speak at the 88 convention.
Couple of things worth noting about him: He really is shy. You can stand next to him on an elevator and he will stare at his shoes even if you’ve just been introduced. Or at least was, then.
Despite the shtick of Midwest Lutheranism, he is a fine humorist. I would urge anyone who doubts this to go to the NYer archives and read some the stuff he contributed before Tina Brown fired him.
Look up his testimony before the House when the whole NEA kerfuffle blew up after the Andres Serrano Piss Christ controversy. Incredibly pithy and funny.
No, he doesn’t get publishing, and misses the old days, and so forth. Same can be said for far too much of publishing itself. It is not a fine column. He was filling space. But I did detect some irony. Not enough, though.
Keep up your good work.
Steve
Love your handle, NPR tote bag.
No pun intended.
” his existentially lewd reading of some poem on NPR about putting on lipstick “like all the pretty girls should” ”
now that’s something i might actually like to hear
i dont get the point there. i mean i know he’s human, he’s not at fault for that. he’s at fault for being an old human. he’s trying to order a cup of tea in a dance club.
Everyone I’ve known from Minnesota hates Garrison Keillor, but like in a way that I don’t totally understand. I think PHC is too long by about an hour and forty-five minutes, but I guess I don’t absolutely hate it. Minnesotans I’ve known hate hate hate it. In the way that makes me think that twenty or thirty years back Keillor went around the state punching kids in the face, and now that they’ve grown up all those suppressed memories of being punched in the face are starting to resurface.
Maybe Garrison Keillor takes a month off once every five years to go around punching kids in Minnesota. Maybe he gets some kind of grant for this.
On the other hand, I do like the Poet’s Almanac.
Safety first!
The movie Fargo does much greater justice to Minnesotans.
I have never owned a car with less than 150k miles on it. maybe garrison k. will publish me.
No one is attacking his age or his humanity.
I think it was in a Salon column that he complained about Christmas songs that were “written by Jewish guys.”
NPR in general is nails-on-a-chalkboard for me.
i dont get too angry at keilors rant. kind of a sentimental old guy wishing for good oles is how i read it. i’ll be him in fifty.
i’d say one reactionary for another is a fair swap.
the truth lies…well, somewhere. not here.
It’d sure be neat to be able to put together a book of my favorite poems and call them Good Poems and make a lot of money.
I’m not sure I totally disagree wtih Keillor. Not to say that publishing is dead or will die, but that the quickness of things these days and the ease of seeing words printed (on a website for example) do sort of take a lot of the meditative quality out of writing.
This idea that guys like Joyce would be publishing in the hip webzines of today doesn’t really hold water. That kind of writing cannot be done while zipping around the web, blogging, etc. Which is not to say good writing cannot be done, but the age of Major Writers, just might be over.
Very good point, Ridge. Roxane, I second your, “motherfucker, please.” The biggest danger I see in this article is that in its nostalgia it de-emphasises emerging editors of small presses who are more canny, better thinkers, better editors all round and the low-budget world they’re a part of. He implies in his fear about the future of publishing that the multitude of new avenues do not stand up intellectually or literarily. I lament the traditionalism of government funding bodies and their general ignorance of emerging presses and journals, but to lament the availability of multimedia curatorship, e-chapbooks, alternate pressing techniques, small print runs, press-to-consumer selling etc etc is just stupid. There is nothing to fear. In allowing a far greater amount of people to submit and attempt to publish we are raising the bar, even if it means wading through more. The expected careerism of the past (if you publish one book with a publishing house, the expectation is that you’ll continue an output, that there at least be a second, otherwise what are you doing it for) contrasts with the possibilities of living in the literary present as a writer of poetry/prose/long prose/prose poetry/novels with the greatest breadth of distribution and of the richest multiplicity. Could more translation come of this? Could virtual literary communities of national difference be better accommodated now? Are these things already happening? Have these things happened? I say: yes to all.
the news from lake wobegon monologues are genius. The sentimental cornball stuff is balanced in a way i find crazy and fascinating with loneliness, biiter sadness and death. i really can’t think of very many people this side of david lynch who can swing so quickly from broad comedy to deepest pathos.
that said, i listen to these on free podcasts, which also any poor schmuck can make. so: ?
the thing with keillor’s editorials and columns is that the shtick he does that works so beautifully on his show falls flat in print — dude’s got a genius voice that does all kind of complicated and often ironic things with the words he’s saying. on the page, the same stuff just seem stale and bitter and lame. for instance: in the editorial he gets a big eye-roll here when he says it took a “well-connected pal” to get him into a publishing party (“no mr. keillor, i’m sorry, i’m not seeing you’re name on the list, you’ll have to leave”) but on the show, that would have been a gimme, and might have been worked up into something pretty good.
beyond that, the focus on self-publishing here misses the point. i think keillor’s just using the publishing industry as a proxy for an attack on web 2.0 shit in general. i mean, sure, most self-published books DO have an audience of fourteen. who fucking cares? yeah, and lots of blogs suck, and comments sections suck, and oh my heavens…. but the real point: where are the independent publishers in his editorial? the big change in the publishing world, as others have said elsewhere, is that fewer authors are able these days to make their living entirely or primarily through writing books. but even if there’s not as many people getting big fat advances, keillor is totally blinkered (and out of touch with all the writers-not-scott-turow of the world whose side he imagines himself to be on) if he thinks that authors don’t still run up and down rows of corn whooping when they get that call from an editor saying, hello, yes, we want your novel.
It’d sure be neat to be able to put together a book of my favorite poems and call them Good Poems and make a lot of money.
I’m not sure I totally disagree wtih Keillor. Not to say that publishing is dead or will die, but that the quickness of things these days and the ease of seeing words printed (on a website for example) do sort of take a lot of the meditative quality out of writing.
This idea that guys like Joyce would be publishing in the hip webzines of today doesn’t really hold water. That kind of writing cannot be done while zipping around the web, blogging, etc. Which is not to say good writing cannot be done, but the age of Major Writers, just might be over.
Very good point, Ridge. Roxane, I second your, “motherfucker, please.” The biggest danger I see in this article is that in its nostalgia it de-emphasises emerging editors of small presses who are more canny, better thinkers, better editors all round and the low-budget world they’re a part of. He implies in his fear about the future of publishing that the multitude of new avenues do not stand up intellectually or literarily. I lament the traditionalism of government funding bodies and their general ignorance of emerging presses and journals, but to lament the availability of multimedia curatorship, e-chapbooks, alternate pressing techniques, small print runs, press-to-consumer selling etc etc is just stupid. There is nothing to fear. In allowing a far greater amount of people to submit and attempt to publish we are raising the bar, even if it means wading through more. The expected careerism of the past (if you publish one book with a publishing house, the expectation is that you’ll continue an output, that there at least be a second, otherwise what are you doing it for) contrasts with the possibilities of living in the literary present as a writer of poetry/prose/long prose/prose poetry/novels with the greatest breadth of distribution and of the richest multiplicity. Could more translation come of this? Could virtual literary communities of national difference be better accommodated now? Are these things already happening? Have these things happened? I say: yes to all.
the news from lake wobegon monologues are genius. The sentimental cornball stuff is balanced in a way i find crazy and fascinating with loneliness, biiter sadness and death. i really can’t think of very many people this side of david lynch who can swing so quickly from broad comedy to deepest pathos.
that said, i listen to these on free podcasts, which also any poor schmuck can make. so: ?
the thing with keillor’s editorials and columns is that the shtick he does that works so beautifully on his show falls flat in print — dude’s got a genius voice that does all kind of complicated and often ironic things with the words he’s saying. on the page, the same stuff just seem stale and bitter and lame. for instance: in the editorial he gets a big eye-roll here when he says it took a “well-connected pal” to get him into a publishing party (“no mr. keillor, i’m sorry, i’m not seeing you’re name on the list, you’ll have to leave”) but on the show, that would have been a gimme, and might have been worked up into something pretty good.
beyond that, the focus on self-publishing here misses the point. i think keillor’s just using the publishing industry as a proxy for an attack on web 2.0 shit in general. i mean, sure, most self-published books DO have an audience of fourteen. who fucking cares? yeah, and lots of blogs suck, and comments sections suck, and oh my heavens…. but the real point: where are the independent publishers in his editorial? the big change in the publishing world, as others have said elsewhere, is that fewer authors are able these days to make their living entirely or primarily through writing books. but even if there’s not as many people getting big fat advances, keillor is totally blinkered (and out of touch with all the writers-not-scott-turow of the world whose side he imagines himself to be on) if he thinks that authors don’t still run up and down rows of corn whooping when they get that call from an editor saying, hello, yes, we want your novel.
1.) The decentralization of literature away from New York City is a good thing. If the Big Five media monopoly does break up, that would be a good thing.
2.) If anyone can publish and be a writer, why are 60,000 people going heavily into debt to obtain a worthless piece of paper? Do we have an admission that they’re being trained not as writers, but as readers? (The only folks who can read “literary” writing.)
3.) If keillor is an insufferable elitist for scorning the blogging community, haven’t litbloggers been rather, er, elitist for scorning a few years ago the existence of the ULA? How much training/screening is required?
4.) If the Empire falls, as Keillor fears– if the current publishing industry slides into the sea– then this leaves the opportunity to recreate the art and the industry, to just possibly make literature more democratic and more relevant to the mass of the American people.
Food for thought. I am not your enemy.
I think it’s very difficult–impossible, probably–for any of us to calculate, editorialize, or blog about the upheaval happening in the arts right now as if it were an event like any other, as if we could track the expansion or explosion of the center of the arts happening at this moment. I don’t think the arts are necessarily suffering decentralization, democratization, or whatever. The ‘bourgeois’ element of writing in particular is a hellishly fortified stronghold which won’t fold overnight, isn’t it? We have to be very careful in how we handle this shift in reading/writing technologies–we could easily, because it’s so easy to insulate ourselves, reproduce the same “centralization” techniques that the current publishing industry is known for, and to a certain extent, I think we are doing just that. Perhaps we need to undermine ourselves _more_, critique ourselves more readily in regard to how we are concretely handling this situation, which, in the end, might never “blow over,” and which will remain indefinitely a risk.
1.) The decentralization of literature away from New York City is a good thing. If the Big Five media monopoly does break up, that would be a good thing.
2.) If anyone can publish and be a writer, why are 60,000 people going heavily into debt to obtain a worthless piece of paper? Do we have an admission that they’re being trained not as writers, but as readers? (The only folks who can read “literary” writing.)
3.) If keillor is an insufferable elitist for scorning the blogging community, haven’t litbloggers been rather, er, elitist for scorning a few years ago the existence of the ULA? How much training/screening is required?
4.) If the Empire falls, as Keillor fears– if the current publishing industry slides into the sea– then this leaves the opportunity to recreate the art and the industry, to just possibly make literature more democratic and more relevant to the mass of the American people.
Food for thought. I am not your enemy.
I think it’s very difficult–impossible, probably–for any of us to calculate, editorialize, or blog about the upheaval happening in the arts right now as if it were an event like any other, as if we could track the expansion or explosion of the center of the arts happening at this moment. I don’t think the arts are necessarily suffering decentralization, democratization, or whatever. The ‘bourgeois’ element of writing in particular is a hellishly fortified stronghold which won’t fold overnight, isn’t it? We have to be very careful in how we handle this shift in reading/writing technologies–we could easily, because it’s so easy to insulate ourselves, reproduce the same “centralization” techniques that the current publishing industry is known for, and to a certain extent, I think we are doing just that. Perhaps we need to undermine ourselves _more_, critique ourselves more readily in regard to how we are concretely handling this situation, which, in the end, might never “blow over,” and which will remain indefinitely a risk.
For me this sums up the attitude perfectly: “The horror of it, so many people having the nerve to want to be writers. Life was just so much better in the past when only four people were allowed to write.”
Ha! Great post, Roxane.
For me this sums up the attitude perfectly: “The horror of it, so many people having the nerve to want to be writers. Life was just so much better in the past when only four people were allowed to write.”
Ha! Great post, Roxane.