5 ms·

It's a cute thought, and a good point. But the author is exclusively relying on "English major novels" for making this point (even though they ignore things lik

It's a cute thought, and a good point. But the author is exclusively relying on "English major novels" for making this point (even though they ignore things like the very cool long chapters in Hunchback of Notre Dame that are about the Paris sewer system). For many of us on this website, we'd probably think of Neal Stephenson, who might have long digressions about cryptographic schemes, or Lagrange points, or whatever other "cool science fact" might be tangentially related to the plot. But the novel, as an art form, is effectively dead. At the high end of the market, it is at the mercy of the industry gatekeepers, and at the bottom end it has been given over to influencers; bring a guaranteed audience, and you get to publish your fanfic (names of characters having been modified to avoid legal action). There's no room anymore for genuine experimentation, and "good writing" is no longer the measure of a potential best-seller. Was that ever the case, anyway? Probably not. I'd love to see an article like this, but focusing on how to bring the cool parts of novels into some new type of writing, rather than pretend that writing advice might actually affect the success of a novel.

nine_k 3y ago
I'd argue otherwise. With electronic self-publishing, you are completely free to experiment, and have an audience potentially all over the (English-speaking) world. But it's not going to make you world-famous, save for unique exceptional cases. It will likely will not directly bring you wealth from sales, or actually any considerable money. Ah, and the printed book is a gimmick that only a part of your audience would still appreciate; literature and paper are much like music and vinyl. You can still become truly world-famous and well-off if your book becomes a basis of a movie, or ideally several; see e.g. Harry Potter or The Song of Fire and Ice. Granted, they not a completely realistic, but neither is Moby-Dick, or Hundred Years of Solitude, or, say, Don Quixote, which basically started the whole "novel" thing.
justworkout 3y ago
Your third paragraph is no different from how it was when Moby Dick was published. And really, there's plenty of experimentation in modern literature. While it's a bit old now, House of Leaves was very different from anything else on the market, but it got published and sold very well.
- zogrodea 3y ago
  It was almost a century (1938) after Moby Dick was first published, but a historical case lamenting the same money-driven attitude is in The Principles of Art. "The fact is becoming notorious; publishers are ceasing to be interested in the reviews their books get, and beginning to decide that they make no difference to the sales."
idontwantthis 3y ago
> For many of us on this website, we'd probably think of Neal Stephenson, who might have long digressions about cryptographic schemes, or Lagrange points, or whatever other "cool science fact" might be tangentially related to the plot. Or about wisdom teeth, or furniture fetishes. I think about those two digressions about once a week and I’m still not sure what was going on.
- r2_pilot 3y ago
  I just had my wisdom teeth taken out (being relatively elderly for the procedure). I had headaches I thought might be related, and I seem to be lucky in that regard as I was cured instantly(my oral surgeon didn't think it would help). My tongue and mouth are still kinda numb and it's been almost 2 weeks. I think I'll eventually get sensation back.
aidenn0 3y ago
> For many of us on this website, we'd probably think of Neal Stephenson, who might have long digressions about cryptographic schemes, or Lagrange points, or whatever other "cool science fact" might be tangentially related to the plot. I don't know why I never put two-and-two together for this. I find both Melville and later Stephenson to be equally tedious. The similarity is how many words they spend just showing off how good they are at writing.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  You'll definitely want skip past the military strategy sections of War and Peace.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    Eh, I tend to avoid abridged versions (or self-abridging); there are enough good books out there that I am willing to encounter on the author's terms that I don't feel the need to do otherwise.
JoelMcCracken 3y ago
Did you mean les mis? It had a lot of sewer system exposition (such praise for night soil!), but I don’t remember any such discussion in hunchback. Of course, it’s very possible I’m forgetting something.
- billfruit 3y ago
  I think he ment Hunchback of Notredame only, it has long long chapters describing how the architecture of the Cathedral evolved over centuries, and many other highly entertaining digressive chapters from the main plot.
- hcrisp 3y ago
  I think he did mean Hugo's Les Miserables. I remember that chapter where he described the city's "cloaca", referring to it as the "third level substage". Goes on for quite a while and was indeed memorable. So was the long chapter about Waterloo which was seemingly unrelated to the book's plot until the final paragraph or so. The description of Fantine's life before she fell goes on with florid language, but it captures the "golden hour" of life when youth is at its peak. And lastly I'll mention the chapter where Marius' grandfather (I think) goes on a terribly long rant about the Jacobins. Those brigands...!
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    Interestingly I think that is the original meaning of cloaca, and the anatomical use is a euphemism based on it.
  - eszed 3y ago
    My favourite interegnatory chapter is the one advancing the argument that the cobblestones of Paris are the guarantor of democracy: if le regime too much offends les miserables, they dig them up for barricades and missiles! The notable fact in that regard is that following the 1968 student riots, the authorities paved over the cobbles of the left bank. (Or so I'm told.)
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> the novel, as an art form, is effectively dead How many novels have you ever read that were published in the last decade? > high end of the market, it is at the mercy of the industry gatekeepers, and at the bottom end it has been given over to influencers It took history’s greatest writers at least a lifetime to find acclaim.
klooney 3y ago
The rectangle of Perl that allegedly does encryption in Cryptonomicon haunts me to this day.
rz2k 3y ago
Before its 1919 "Melville revival", very few people would have been able to read Moby Dick, because gatekeepers would not have subsidized its availability. Moby Dick was a failure due to many chance events, such as reviews based on an unfinished version that did not include among other things the epilogue that explained Ishmael. What would make the novel as an art form dead or alive? Do you believe that the novels of the late-nineteenth century that enjoyed the most late-nineteenth readers are the same novels that influenced later writers the most, or the novels that had the most impact on people's thoughts 170 years later? Since it sounds like you are maybe not a regular book reader, my point may make more sense in the context of film. Go back 50 years, compare which movies earned the most, which were mentioned the most in the press of the time, and which ones won Academy Awards. Then if you think that says anything, compare that to which movies are considered important now, and you'll find that in fact none of those three metrics is more reliable than the others.

nine_k 3y ago

I'd argue otherwise. With electronic self-publishing, you are completely free to experiment, and have an audience potentially all over the (English-speaking) world. But it's not going to make you world-famous, save for unique exceptional cases. It will likely will not directly bring you wealth from sales, or actually any considerable money. Ah, and the printed book is a gimmick that only a part of your audience would still appreciate; literature and paper are much like music and vinyl. You can still become truly world-famous and well-off if your book becomes a basis of a movie, or ideally several; see e.g. Harry Potter or The Song of Fire and Ice. Granted, they not a completely realistic, but neither is Moby-Dick, or Hundred Years of Solitude, or, say, Don Quixote, which basically started the whole "novel" thing.

justworkout 3y ago

Your third paragraph is no different from how it was when Moby Dick was published. And really, there's plenty of experimentation in modern literature. While it's a bit old now, House of Leaves was very different from anything else on the market, but it got published and sold very well.

zogrodea 3y ago
It was almost a century (1938) after Moby Dick was first published, but a historical case lamenting the same money-driven attitude is in The Principles of Art. "The fact is becoming notorious; publishers are ceasing to be interested in the reviews their books get, and beginning to decide that they make no difference to the sales."

idontwantthis 3y ago

> For many of us on this website, we'd probably think of Neal Stephenson, who might have long digressions about cryptographic schemes, or Lagrange points, or whatever other "cool science fact" might be tangentially related to the plot. Or about wisdom teeth, or furniture fetishes. I think about those two digressions about once a week and I’m still not sure what was going on.

r2_pilot 3y ago
I just had my wisdom teeth taken out (being relatively elderly for the procedure). I had headaches I thought might be related, and I seem to be lucky in that regard as I was cured instantly(my oral surgeon didn't think it would help). My tongue and mouth are still kinda numb and it's been almost 2 weeks. I think I'll eventually get sensation back.

aidenn0 3y ago

> For many of us on this website, we'd probably think of Neal Stephenson, who might have long digressions about cryptographic schemes, or Lagrange points, or whatever other "cool science fact" might be tangentially related to the plot. I don't know why I never put two-and-two together for this. I find both Melville and later Stephenson to be equally tedious. The similarity is how many words they spend just showing off how good they are at writing.

everybodyknows 3y ago
You'll definitely want skip past the military strategy sections of War and Peace.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  Eh, I tend to avoid abridged versions (or self-abridging); there are enough good books out there that I am willing to encounter on the author's terms that I don't feel the need to do otherwise.

JoelMcCracken 3y ago

Did you mean les mis? It had a lot of sewer system exposition (such praise for night soil!), but I don’t remember any such discussion in hunchback. Of course, it’s very possible I’m forgetting something.

billfruit 3y ago
I think he ment Hunchback of Notredame only, it has long long chapters describing how the architecture of the Cathedral evolved over centuries, and many other highly entertaining digressive chapters from the main plot.
hcrisp 3y ago
I think he did mean Hugo's Les Miserables. I remember that chapter where he described the city's "cloaca", referring to it as the "third level substage". Goes on for quite a while and was indeed memorable. So was the long chapter about Waterloo which was seemingly unrelated to the book's plot until the final paragraph or so. The description of Fantine's life before she fell goes on with florid language, but it captures the "golden hour" of life when youth is at its peak. And lastly I'll mention the chapter where Marius' grandfather (I think) goes on a terribly long rant about the Jacobins. Those brigands...!
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Interestingly I think that is the original meaning of cloaca, and the anatomical use is a euphemism based on it.
- eszed 3y ago
  My favourite interegnatory chapter is the one advancing the argument that the cobblestones of Paris are the guarantor of democracy: if le regime too much offends les miserables, they dig them up for barricades and missiles! The notable fact in that regard is that following the 1968 student riots, the authorities paved over the cobbles of the left bank. (Or so I'm told.)

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> the novel, as an art form, is effectively dead How many novels have you ever read that were published in the last decade? > high end of the market, it is at the mercy of the industry gatekeepers, and at the bottom end it has been given over to influencers It took history’s greatest writers at least a lifetime to find acclaim.

klooney 3y ago

The rectangle of Perl that allegedly does encryption in Cryptonomicon haunts me to this day.

rz2k 3y ago

Before its 1919 "Melville revival", very few people would have been able to read Moby Dick, because gatekeepers would not have subsidized its availability. Moby Dick was a failure due to many chance events, such as reviews based on an unfinished version that did not include among other things the epilogue that explained Ishmael. What would make the novel as an art form dead or alive? Do you believe that the novels of the late-nineteenth century that enjoyed the most late-nineteenth readers are the same novels that influenced later writers the most, or the novels that had the most impact on people's thoughts 170 years later? Since it sounds like you are maybe not a regular book reader, my point may make more sense in the context of film. Go back 50 years, compare which movies earned the most, which were mentioned the most in the press of the time, and which ones won Academy Awards. Then if you think that says anything, compare that to which movies are considered important now, and you'll find that in fact none of those three metrics is more reliable than the others.