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A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I'M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT.

Jun 28, 2010

» When anyone can be a published author

Great article. Bottom line: there will always be gatekeepers, and the more and more books that get published, the more readers will look to gatekeepers to tell them what to read.

we’ll still wind up with a literary marketplace in which a handful of blockbuster names capture most of the sales and attention, personal connections are milked for professional success, and relatively few authoritative voices have the power to lift some artists into the spotlight while others languish in obscurity. Writers who are charming in person and happy to promote themselves and interact with fans will prosper, while antisocial geniuses may fail. (It’s unsettling to wonder how the Salingers, Pynchons, Naipauls and David Foster Wallaces of tomorrow will fare in a world where social networking and glad-handing are de rigueur. Why should extroversion be required of a great novelist?) The result: not a whole lot better than the system we already have, but also (hopefully) not much worse.