{"id":166,"date":"2008-07-04T11:31:45","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T15:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=166"},"modified":"2008-07-04T11:32:42","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T15:32:42","slug":"talent-will-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"Talent will out"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Stephen King’s essay<\/a> from earlier this year: <\/p>\n

We could argue all day about the reasons for fiction\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out-migration from the eye-level shelves \u00e2\u20ac\u201d people have. We could marvel over the fact that Britney Spears is available at every checkout, while an American talent like William Gay or Randy DeVita or Eileen Pollack or Aryn Kyle (all of whom were among my final picks) labors in relative obscurity. We could, but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost beside the point, and besides \u00e2\u20ac\u201d it hurts.<\/p>\n

Instead, let us consider what the bottom shelf does to writers who still care, sometimes passionately, about the short story. What happens when he or she realizes that his or her audience is shrinking almost daily? Well, if the writer is worth his or her salt, he or she continues on nevertheless, because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what God or genetics (possibly they are the same) has decreed, or out of sheer stubbornness, or maybe because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a kick to spin tales. Possibly a combination. And all that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good.<\/p>\n

What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so good is that writers write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and The New Yorker, of course, the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there. And this kind of reading isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t real reading, the kind where you just can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait to find out what happens next (think \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Youth,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Joseph Conrad, or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Big Blonde,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Dorothy Parker). It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more like copping-a-feel reading. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something yucky about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Stephen King’s essay from earlier this year: We could argue all day about the reasons for fiction\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out-migration from the eye-level shelves \u00e2\u20ac\u201d people have. We could marvel over the fact that Britney Spears is available at every checkout, while an American talent like William Gay or Randy DeVita or Eileen Pollack or Aryn … Continue reading Talent will out<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-2G","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}