One of my biggest plaints is directed at the tendency to enlarge everything, especially restaurant portions and publishers. Does anyone among the latter have anything they will admit is a "mid-list" today? They can't afford one any more. An editor no longer can browse the slush pile for something that might be to his or her individual taste and take a flier on it. As for fiction: the formulas for success (read enormous sales) have multiplied. Does the story have a thriller pace? Check. Plenty of sex, preferably explicit and at least somewhat unconventional? Check. Violence? Check. Shocking characters, scenes, plots? Check. Or, perhaps to fit into another category, it may need to be gently bland, without a suggestion of the unpleasant realities of life and certainly no more than a hint of sex, and make every character call regularly and verbally on the Almighty. Even the category romances of my day have become less rather than more convincing.
What has happened to verisimilitude? I can only be grateful for the authors who, having managed to get into print, are the exceptions to prove those rules cited above. My feeling, though, is that they are too few, and if one can find their work at all, it doesn't get the recognition it deserves.
Is it time to organize, to shout while waving a banner inscribed with the names of literary artists, to rebel? Should there be a convention for the preservation of real literature? If only we had Mark Twain or Voltaire to make the campaign speeches, Aristotle or Kant to force us to entertain enough thought to allow some expansion of minds. Even Edward Lear and W. S. Gilbert might be fun to listen to so we could figure out how to enjoy jokes. There isn't enough poetry around in spite of the legions of willing small independent publishers, largely because it's hard to convince a customer that the price of a chapbook is worth it.
The trouble is, we don't have the millions of dollars it would take to make us heard. Maybe we should try to start an online fundraising effort dedicated to the proposition that independent publishers of books and periodicals should have the same proportion of public support that goes to Public Radio and Television, both of which have already had to succumb to at least "institutional" advertising.
Farewell Harold Ross, and all your ilk. You're missed.
© Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com
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