This is the plea of The Atlantic.
From the story...
William Faulkner's first novel, Soldier's Pay barely sold when it was released in 1926. Neither did Saul Bellow's in 1944, Kurt Vonnegut's in 1952, Cormac McCarthy's in 1965, or David Foster Wallace's in 1987. All of these books garnered tepid reviews and bare-minimum sales. Ever since Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1828 debut sold so poorly that the author burned the remaining copies out of embarrassment, flopped first novels have been an American tradition.
Publishers have typically taken the long view, expending great effort and bushels of money to keep struggling authors writing away for years, banking on the hope of eventual literary success. It is to this dedication that we owe America's status as one of the great literary pillars of the world. Now, that dedication is faltering, and with it, the future of the great American novel. But it's not too late to save the novel.
1 comment:
I am doing my best to contribute to floundering American novels, as are you, I understand. Good job trying to make yourself feel better: your abject failure is part of a long and noble literary tradition, not the fruitless and mediocre scribblings of some hack with a thesaurus and 8th-grade sense of humor. Oh no. You're actually a hidden genius.
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