What Good is Great Literature?
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What Good is Great Literature?
On Literature Nobel Eve, AO Scott’s column on what is so great about greatness anyway uses as its only example….a movie. Scott’s long-tenture as a movie critic makes this a little less surprising but no less strange. Because if there were a Nobel for movies, then there is a very, very good chance that Francis Ford Coppola, director of Megalopolis, would have one. Still, there is a piece here that got me thinking:
“In our more cynical, more quantified time, money and celebrity are part of the substance of greatness. We prefer the indisputable, measurable achievements of pop stars and athletes to more nebulous judgments of cultural importance. Surely no one can argue — though I guess people will — that Simone Biles or Serena Williams is overrated, or that Taylor Swift doesn’t dominate the landscape.”
I think I might actually argue the opposite: that an increasing focus on the quantifiable (TikTok followers, career Grand Slams, tour grosses) makes the qualitative award bestowed by a pretigious grantor has even greater value. Because it cannot be readily managed for (post more often, raise ticket prices, etc), winning a MacArthur or Fields medal or Academy Award or Pulitzer is the final stage of cultural acclaim. In the deluge of cultural that we get every year, any trophy or prize that might let a work or artist have a slightly better chance of enduring beyond the moment as outsized importance. Jesmyn Ward, for example, is not one of the 100 best-selling novelists working in the U.S. I wouldn’t think, but if you asked me to pick an author most likely to be read in 50 years, she would be in my top ten. Her two National Book Awards matter here, alongside the quality of the work itself. Sales, in. this accounting, almost don’t matter at all.
The Center for Fiction 2024 First Novel Prize Shortlist
Not unrelatedly, The Center for Fiction announced the finalists for its First Novel Prize. The purse here ($15,000) is meaningful for a new author, but I think the real value is the prestige. The winner, and even the shortlisted authors that don’t win, have a much better chance of getting a second book deal at a better advance. They also are more likely to get a teaching job–or secure a better one or negotiate a better package where they already are. This is also a very good list for your readers out there who are interested generally in trying new voices and books out. Headshot I think has gotten the most mention of these. Also good on Tin House for having multiple authors here.
Revealing Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
The Mountain and the Sea has been a tremendous success, and there is every reason to believe that Nayler’s on-going readership grew substantially because of it. The premise and synopsis of his next novel, Where the Axe is Buried, sounds a little more familiar for readers of science fiction:
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
The deep-sea/octopus civilization setting of The Mountain and the Sea felt exciting and fresh (even the cover felt different), and I have wondered how Nayler might follow it up. There is every chance this one will be terrific, but I don’t think it will benefit from the same curiosity factor of the first.
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