Publishing Capitalism

I think the state of the publishing business should be a concern for all of us. Books set the culture - sorry Facebook and Tik-Tok. It is also the business I am trying to break into.

The Cleveland Review of Books (a really cool review) published The Artist’s Self-Interest: On Capitalist Fiction by J. Arthur Boyle which reviews Dan Sinykin's Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature.

The essay tempted in me a return to nihilism. I felt it tickling the back of my brain, to remind you gave up writing once when faced with the prospect of having nothing to say that would sell. 

Some points sticking out for me are:

Dan Sinykin’s Big Fiction feels like a major contribution: to our understanding of contemporary literature and literary publishing as an industry, definitely; to literary criticism as a whole, probably; and maybe to our conception of how culture, in general, is made. It is a thoroughly researched, engagingly written, and clear-sighted cultural materialist analysis of the sort that feels almost verboten within the formal and professional fields of artistic production.¹ To suggest that something so crass as conglomerate logic—i.e., the whims of twelve perverts in a room looking to round out their defense contracting corporation with synergistic asterisks like Random House²—could predetermine the majority of all literature the reading public receives, feels impolitic; it offends our sensibilities about the indomitability of genius, the unbounded potential of imagination, or your friend whose book just came out. Tricky waters indeed.

But this should offend our collective spirit, and we should endeavor to understand that offense as closely, and cleanly, as possible. Because of course when I mention the twelve perverts I am speaking less of any specific individuals than the underlying material forces they follow and embody, and which Sinykin expertly demonstrates to have a massive effect on what gets published and what we (“we”) are invited to read in the US. 

 ***

The central arguments of Big Fiction are not only accurate, but the forces that drive them are intensifying. This is sure to continue, perhaps until a period of economic collapse and a subsequent social democratic reset, where the slow cycle of capital in crisis will play out again. In the meantime, small presses will continue to chart alternatives to capitalist fiction because the only goal of the small press is to make literature, period. That is the whole fucking point. I actually do not know why anyone would bother with any of this shit without the linguistic heat and madness of Wilson Bueno’s Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat Books, 1992) or the color tones of Christian Hawkey’s Ventrakl (Ugly Ducking Presse, 2010) or the weirdness—the reality—leaking in from Jackie Ess’ Darryl (Clash Books, 2021), and the countless other small press novels from the “conglomerate era” for which there is no economic explanation, no logic of utility, no justification at all in the so-called rationality of capital, and so only appeared thanks to their publishers, each of which must relentlessly insist on art’s value just to ensure that some of humanity’s most redemptive elements continue to exist. 

***

Art is the best language humanity has for understanding where, and what, humanity is. That is why art is beautiful to us—it creates and affirms the many meanings we have for ourselves. Capital, as a societally organizing force, does not have a way to value this function, because the value exists outside of utility. Because capital cannot assign a value, it treats this function as irrelevant, thereby rendering it irrelevant. In this case, no one could claim to love art and simultaneously tolerate the dominance of capital, as they inherently contradict each other. And if you don’t love art, how could I be particularly interested in yours?

My thinking now goes back to Roland Barthes explaining the difference between a will to right and a will to publish. Keep writing. I never expected to get published, being a moral leper and all that. 

At the same time, this came along in the queue for downloading:

Oh, one other thing about the review essay - Mr. Boyle takes Cormac McCarthy to task in a few paragraphs for conforming to conglomerate lit. He explains McCarthy's career more effectively than longer essays I have read. Of course, I am biased by Mr. Boyle and me sharing the same opinion of Blood Meridian.

I need to do some cleaning, and a little more reading, and the rest of the day I will spend on "Love Stinks." I know nothing else to do to keep the despondency away from me - to write as well as I can and screw the universe.

sch 2/3