Hah. Yes, of course I wasn’t saying that quality isn’t applicable to the books they choose, but the quality is measured by genre expectations (and artful deviat

Hah. Yes, of course I wasn’t saying that quality isn’t applicable to the books they choose, but the quality is measured by genre expectations (and artful deviations therefrom) just like for all genres. Inside the community of contemporary authors, editors, and MFA programs, there’e no real controversy to the idea that the writing suitable for NYRB, The New Yorker, etc is just a genre with specific, evolving expectations. There are countless amazing works that those same authors and editors hold in extremely high regard, but that would not suit those publications on account of being too “something else”. Really, it’s mostly the lay public that still carries a special sense of deference and esteem for this genre, thinking of that work as the inheritor of the Western Canon, itself being something that they were taught to see as the epitome of “Good Writing” rather than “Powerful Examples of a Certain Style”