/lit/ - Literature

>>5958779
>True, and also a culture which idolizes youth.

I think it has a lot to do with what that young age implies. It implies that you are reading someone who will one day be a great genius, and that you are now privy to the development and the work of a great writer.

I have not read Eleanor Catton, but I will bet my ass the cover and the general talk about her is a lot of stuff about her being "one of the greatest talents of writing today." I don't know if that's true of her, but it's hardly true of everyone that they write that stuff about.

Because literature is so pressured for both sales and, let's face it, to justify its cultural relevancy in the face of people who don't read at all, these are the kind of writers who generate buzz.

It's the same with Ivy League universities: Why do they always print that the author graduated from Harvard on the back? Because people need to feel that they are spending their precious time reading the best of the best, that they are not being cheated into simply reading just any old novel. This includes reviewers, who obviously create a lot of money and attention in the world of books, especially in modern fiction.

These MFA programs are a serious part of this. Literature has basically been departmentalized into tiers of MFA programs. With the Iowa-tier graduates at the top of course, who won't ever have to worry about getting published in the New Yorker.

It's a sad state, and for regular mortals, all you have to hope for is that you can defy you non-Ivy League upbringing (and therefore, of course, your perceived level of relevance to this system).

>>5958775
Man, that sounds nice. I realize it sounds condescending - that is not how I mean it - but I wish I didn't want to write. I wish I could just chill and read.