/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21861800]

What is the point of novelists anymore? Novels are only getting less and less popular as a medium compared to film, television, and video games, and the audience contemporary fiction is very small and only interesting in a very specific type of contemporary literature. The only subgenre of fiction with an audience comparable to other mediums (or even to the audience fiction had in previous decades) is genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, crime, and romance specifically. If you want to reach an audience of any considerable size, and you have to write genre fiction.
>self publish
Self-publishing literary fiction is a guaranteed straight ticket to obscurity. You'd genuinely be better off just not publishing at all.

[Anonymous No.21861815]

>>21861800
Thanks for telling me. I'll give you some advice. Replace the filter in your dryer after every use. This will make your dryer more efficient and add life to the motor

[Anonymous No.21861821]

Romeification

[Anonymous No.21861828]

The novel was the form of art natural to the bourgeois epoch, this is the managerial epoch in which midwit manager drones merely artificially maintain bourgeois cultural norms like consuming novels for prestige reasons, and the lumpen at the bottom eat cockroach paste from toothpaste tubes

The novel as an organic form became inertial in the late 19th century, but was sustained by the residual haute bourgeoisie with residual aristocratic educations that spent 2-3 more generations mourning its own death and swan songing out, which is why all novels written between 1890 and 1965 are secretly about how the plebs ruined everything and the world is a meaningless turd factory now. After 1965 there isn't even enough juice left in the system to produce this kind of melancholy masturbatory self-mourning anymore, but there is still a lot of inertia in these built up and stabilized and recognizable cultural forms, so lumpenplebs keep making and consuming novels anyway, basically by copying what came before, which causes them to dilute bit by bit and then exponentially

Read DFW bitching about how late '80s and early '90s pomo was saying nothing new since Pynchon, he's 100% right, and even Pynchon was just saying shit already said in European avant garde circles 60+ years earlier but with an American accent, which was mere pseudo-novelty. Everything that came after Pynchon imitated Pynchon. "Literature departments" exploded around this time so instead of having 0.1% of the population writing novels and 20% reading them, you can have 99% of the population eating poop from a trough while 1% gets "Literature Degrees" and deludes itself that this is some perennial activity despite the fact that this sort of fossilized saints' relic collecting sort of study has never been necessary before, and despite the fact that meaningful criticism like Eliot's or Frye's declines proportionally as the "students" of Frye's "students" multiply

Read Use and Abuse of History by Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.21861835]

>>21861800
because we love the craft you narrow minded cretin. you must be an anglo-saxon or germanic with this obsession with what generates the most value and what is efficient

[Anonymous No.21861848]

I'll read a novel if it appeals to my fetish.

[Anonymous No.21862157]

>>21861800
> If you want to reach an audience of any considerable size
If you want people to see your art you should use graffiti or tiktok. Therefore it’s pointless to pursue figurative art. In fact all art is pointless because more people watch twitch streamers. So you should be a twitch streamer. This is very logical.

[Anonymous No.21862225]

>>21861800
Genera fiction is a retarded made up term that doesn't mean anything due to being redundant.

Also novels do fine and sell fine.
Honestly the main issue with the industry is almost all of the mainstream publishers have been ideologically captured by politics that aren't compatible with maximizing profitablity nor artistic expression. So it stifles books as both a popular art form and as a business.
That said it's never been easier to go independent yet still reach a big audience.

As far as other industries, when you look at how high the production cost and the absurdly high overall failure rate to reach profitablity of most projects you will see you are just falling prey to the apex fallacy.
Just because overall industry figures are bigger doesn't mean it's a better bet for a new solo independent artist to get a audience or make money.

Plus a novel can be later adapted to other media forms. So it doesn't even have to be a ether or thing.

[Anonymous No.21862406]

>>21861800
What's wrong with writing shit that sells?

At least genre fiction is not garbage that is about reading the mental farts of some mitwit.

[Anonymous No.21862434]

>>21861828
So what's the modern equivalent of being a novelist? I feel like I have a lot to say (fiction) but don't know how.

[Anonymous No.21862448]

>>21861828
>Pynchon was just saying shit already said in European avant garde circles
Like?

[Anonymous No.21862560]

Just write for yourself you absolute faggot
Who cares about what the plebs are doing?

[Anonymous No.21862634]

>the novel is dying
>prose is degrading in general

Poetrybros it's our time. Maybe the epic will make a comeback as a genre.

[Omar Hill No.21862655]

Why aren't short stories more popular? People's attention spans are very short these days so you'd think they'd do well.<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21862666]

Books still have the longest time horizon of any medium. Write for future generations OP.

[Anonymous No.21862672]

>>21861800
Most novelists in the history of the medium have not been motivated by fame, fortune, or success. They simply enjoyed writing and sharing their art. Very few novelists have ever found commercial success. That said, despite your assertion, there are more commercially successful novelists today than ever before. It is easier today than ever before to make a living writing novels.