For an insightful view of the state of American literary culture today, read Sven Bikerts essay in the latest issue of Book Forum (http://www.bookforum.com/birkerts.html) It is sure to stir debate. “By the mid-’90s, it was obvious to many people that the rules of the literary game had been rewritten,” writes Bikerts. “Corporate conglomeration in the publishing world (addressed by Andre Schiffrin in The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took over Publishing and Shaped the Way We Read) ushered in the era of the blockbuster. Editors began to pay out succulent advances for “sexy” books like Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, while midlist writers went begging, many then shifting to small presses … And this is more or less where we find ourselves now. Psychologically it is a landscape subtly demoralized by the slash-and-burn of bottom-line economics; the modernist/humanist assumption of art and social criticism marching forward, leading the way, has not recovered from the wholesale flight of academia into theory; the publishing world remains tyrannized in acquisition, marketing, and sales by the mentality of the blockbuster; the confident authority of print journalism has been challenged by the proliferation of online alternatives.”
