The Unrelenting Hoofbeats of the New Literature

What is the state of American literature today? This loaded question never has an easy answer, and invariably the debate grows tedious, ideological and sociological combatants racing to their predictable corners, fists wearily raised. In my years as a novelist and columnist and now editor-in-chief of this publication, I’ve come to believe that large, conglomerate publishers care less about disgorging excellent literature than they once did — that this pursuit, for a variety of reasons, is less interesting to them. But this critique, on its own, can only matter so much. There are all kinds of caterwauling about a decline in value yet few attempts, from this literary pundit class, to imagine a different future. If the libs get blamed, often enough, for mangling literary fiction over the last decade, it’s not as if MAGA has offered any sort of serious riposte. The high-ranking members of their bunch are borderline illiterate.