The Late American Novel
Writers on the Future of Books
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Scholars, journalists, and publishers have turned their brains inside out in the effort to predict what lies ahead, but who better to comment on the future of the book than those who are driven to write them?
The way we absorb information has changed dramatically. Edison’s phonograph has been reincarnated as the iPod. Celluloid went digital. But books, for the most part, have remained the same--until now. And while music and movies have undergone an almost Darwinian evolution, the literary world now faces a revolution, a sudden change in the way we buy, produce, and read books.
In The Late American Novel, Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee gather some of today’s finest writers to consider the sea change that is upon them. Lauren Groff imagines an array of fantastical futures for writers, from poets with groupies to novelists as vending machines. Rivka Galchen writes about the figurative and literal death of paper. Joe Meno expounds upon the idea of a book as a place set permanently aside for the imagination, regardless of format. These and other original essays by Reif Larsen, Benjamin Kunkel, Victoria Patterson, and many more provide a timely and much-needed commentary on this compelling cultural crossroad.
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The order of this anthology feels particularly poignant. While many of the initial essays are repetitive, self-consciously "quirky," or simply obvious, subsequent pieces become meatier, less sentimental, and generally more insightful. Many writers in the early pages reflect, not surprisingly, on the "experience" of a "real" book that anyone wondering about the future of print (and therefore reading this very book) will identify with, but luckily these predictable musings ultimately serve as a point of departure. In a solicitous email exchange, Jonathan Lethem and David Gates swap thoughts on how the characters in their own fiction handle technology, a question that feels more pertinent, somehow, to our reading culture than the means through which we engage with stories. Ander Monson pragmatically reminds us that "we all desire narrative," the persistence of which does feel hopeful here but is also, simply, true. Deb Olin Unferth brings necessary perspective as she widens the lens: books aren't the only things that are dying and to mourn them alone would be myopic.
