While nosing around for short fiction markets recently, I came across an Australian literary journal called The Canary Press. I liked the vibe of this small operation in Victoria; it seemed to care about story as well as use of language. On its website I found a blog post from the editor, Robert Skinner, called ‘A Response to Robyn Annear (on Australian literary magazines)’.
I can’t remember the last time an article gave me such a profound sense of delight. Using humour that was actually humorous and some marvellous turns of phrase, Skinner outlined everything that was wrong with the Australian literary establishment.
I had often felt the same way, but the closest I ever came to expressing those feelings was in the introduction to this review of The Best American Short Stories (2007). Skinner’s article helped dilate and crystallise those thoughts, which brings us to this blog post.
Below are some highlights from Skinner’s letter (or essay… or whatever it is), which I’ve used as prompts for my own opinions on the state of literature in general and Australian literature in particular.
And for a country that prides itself on humour, it’s pretty hard to find it in our fiction.
Oh God, yes. Trawl through the last 30 years of Australian literature and you could be excused for thinking our country is a wasteland where downtrodden souls try to eke out a subsistence in the face of physical and emotional isolation and financial hardship. This simply isn’t the Australia I know and love; even those who do face hard times typically approach them with good humour or defiance. Few ‘noted’ Australian writers care to mention this trait any more (yet back in the 1950s and 1960s, D’Arcy Niland pretty much made a writing career out of it). Perhaps they don’t consider it ‘literary’ subject matter – how could it be when there is no existential anguish to dwell upon? Literature isn’t supposed to be funny dammit! Entertaining? Perish the thought!
I don’t think the world needs more writers. But it could sure as hell do with more readers.
Online publishing has only exacerbated a problem that was already developing. The publishing industry had two distinct responses to competition from TV, video games, DVDs, and the internet. On one hand it tried to make its popular fiction more like those other media, with short chapters, thin characters and relentless pacing; welcome to the ‘literature’ of Matthew Reilly. On the other hand, the richer and more intellectual fiction disappeared up its fundamental orifice and became the preserve of the ‘literati’. Readers who wanted both a good story and some thematic weight were left out in the cold.
We have not applied for any funding… If we don’t reach a big enough readership to sustain ourselves then we will gracefully (or disgracefully) fold.
I am not totally averse to government funding for the arts, but as it stands too much money is directed at dull literature with the “right” political and social themes that is of no interest to the greater reading public. I see no reason why grant money shouldn’t also go to good quality popular fiction to help with marketing and other expenses. The return on investment would certainly be better.
I don’t think what we’re doing is particularly noble in and of itself. It will only feel worthwhile, to me, if we can reach a bunch of people that would never normally read short stories, and survive on the money they’re willing to pay to read them.
I disagree. I think trying to reignite interest in intelligent mainstream fiction is both noble and a much-needed breath of fresh air.
At the end of a radio interview the other day, the interviewer suggested that people should buy our magazine because it was important to have a home like ours for people to publish their work. I said, Christ, don’t buy it because of that. Buy it because you want to read the bloody thing. Otherwise what’s the point? We could just sit around in a circle licking each other’s faces.
Which is pretty much what the Australian literary establishment has been doing for the last 30 years.#
I have no interest in running a magazine just to provide opportunities for writers. I want us to be a magazine for readers.
I can’t think of a single Australian literary journal (except those that publish genre fiction) that has this attitude. Usually the opposite is true.
Our second issue has, in amongst the longer fiction, short short stories about famous animals. Not because we thought the 200 word story about Caligula’s horse would be in contention for the Pulitzer, but because we thought it was fun, and because all of those little stories spoke in some way to a greater human truth[.]
This is exactly what the narcissistic intellectuals and academics that make up the greater part of the Australian literary establishment cannot seem to comprehend: a story doesn’t have to be impenetrable or experimental or existentialist or (as is most often the case) deathly boring to have literary merit.
I don’t know anyone under the age of 30 that reads our literary journals (the big ones) unless they happen to be published in one.
All too true, I’m afraid. But then why would anyone bother reading a copy of Southerly or Meanjin when the reward is not worth the effort?
When I read a lot of submissions I think: Have these people never read a story before? Have they never experienced the pleasure of reading? Because it seems like many of these people are trying to become writers before they become readers.
Never were truer words written. I think it speaks to the increasing narcissism of the Twitter/Facebook age, where poorly spelled inanities can garner instant – albeit fleeting – fame. Why bother reading books and learning how to write when it’s so easy to get ‘published’?
Harriet and Chloe (who both work on the magazine) are studying creative writing at RMIT and had never heard of Flannery O’Connor or Tim O’Brien or Alice Munro.
I encountered a similar situation around the turn of the century while working as a journalist. The Big Brother TV show had just debuted and our twenty-one-year-old editorial assistant was astonished to learn that Big Brother happened to be a character in a book called 1984. Sometimes I think the post-internet generations wear literary ignorance like a badge of honour. And why wouldn’t they, when there is no one to disabuse them of the notion?
Other days I wish Hemingway had never written ‘Hills Like White Elephants’, because now we’re so goddamn inundated with stories about people sitting around looking at things.
Most of the ‘celebrated’ Australian authors I was invited to read at university made an entire career out of ‘crafting’ such tedium.
I want people to read literature on trams.
They’re sure as hell not going to do this unless the stories have storylines and relatable characters to go with the ‘important themes’ and ‘inventive use of language’.
I get frustrated that I do so much flapping and so little flying.
I can think of no better analogy to describe publishing in 2014 A.D.
There is no doubt publishing, in whatever form, is an increasingly tough gig. The printed word is trying to compete for attention with media that are brighter and shinier and faster and easier to consume. But the publishing industry has also made a rod for its own back.
The question that cuts to the heart of all this is simple. Why can’t stories, long or short, be entertaining and have literary merit? Once upon a time, the schism between these two things didn’t exist. Don’t believe me? Here are ten great books that sold well and are, in my estimation, gripping to read while adding to our understanding of the human condition:
Moll Flanders (1722) by Daniel Dafoe
Emma (1815) by Jane Austen
David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway
I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
Different Seasons (1982) by Stephen King
I refuse to believe there are no Australian authors producing books like The Shiralee (1955) or They’re a Weird Mob (1957), which had something to say and said it in an accessible and entertaining fashion rather than through what amounts to literary posturing*. If they are out there, such books aren’t getting much attention from the literati.
Even an Australian author like Tim Winton, who has enjoyed some popular success, has a whiff of pretention about him. I’ve written more than once about his pompous refusal to punctuate dialogue, while his ‘masterpiece’ Cloudstreet (1992) polarises readers, many making the acute criticism that it is incoherent and self-important.
That brings us back to short stories, which should be thriving in the modern world since they don’t require the investment of time that novels do. As I see it, they aren’t for two reasons:
The big publishers have got it into their heads that short story collections don’t sell. To which I would say, “When was the last time you really tried to sell a short story collection instead of the latest book from a ‘name’ novelist who can’t write to save his life?”
Too many short stories that are published in the small press are little more than intellectual navel gazing or the output of writers writing to impress other writers (and editors).
Before I get off my soapbox, let me touch on the subject of marketing. Whether it is a novel or a short story collection, a book’s best promotional tool is its cover, which costs nothing. Yet modern book design is, in my opinion, bland beyond words. Take a look at the two cover images below. Both are for Stephen King’s collection of short fiction, Skeleton Crew (1985). If you were a fan of horror stories, which book would you take off the shelf?
I suspect it will only take a smart publisher with the necessary financial backing to make Australian short stories cool again. Any takers?
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# Australian literature isn't alone in this. The Road (2009) by Cormac McCarthy is a fine example of a book that instigated an awful lot of face-licking among critics and those who nod along with them for fear of appearing stupid. Experimental The Road may be, but on every other measure it is an awful novel. (This review on Goodreads offers a brutal litany of its failures.) But to finish my point: because the American market is larger, it seems to be able to accommodate something like The Road without inhibiting good quality fiction.
* This phenomenon isn’t unique to publishing. Several years ago, after watching Michael Bay’s excruciating Transformers movie, I wrote an essay called ‘Do popcorn movies have to be dumb?’ which has some relevance to this discussion.