The Millions

Not the Marriage Plot: On Men Reading Novels in the 21st Century

Marriages or running from them are both creative acts.
~ davidbiddle ~ 5 Comments

I originally posted a version of this in 2013. Seems useful still, now, these days of lost men and boys (not all of us, but maybe too many). Apologies for length. What’s a novelist to do?

Here’s what I think about at some point of every day:

What is going on in this world that would lead so many men far, far away from reading modern literary novels?

I’ve written here at this blog and in other places around the Internet about my overall concern for literary fiction. A helluva lot of intelligent people want nothing to do with it anymore. Before the Internet took hold (about 30 years ago), I thought that somehow it was just my little world here in Philadelphia. Over the past three decades or so, however, it’s become quite obvious as I travel around the Internet (and parts of the country where they play minor league baseball) that most people in America at least don’t give a shit about serious fiction.

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“Magical Thinking” Without Defining Writing Talent

~ davidbiddle ~ 1 Comment

JohnGardner Art of Ficion Cover
Not the cover you usually see for this great book.

Over at The Millions Michael Bourne (the writer, not the center fielder) has an essay this week called “Magical Thinking: Talent and the Cult of Craft.” Lots of great comments and thinking come after his pretty thoughtful exploration of the question of success in the writing world: Talent? or Craft?

Bourne makes a good case against this statement in John Gardner’s book The Art of Fiction:

“[T]he truth is that though the ability to write well is partly a gift — like the ability to play basketball well or outguess the stock market — writing ability is mainly a product of good teaching supported by a deep-down love of writing.”

Maybe Bourne lays it on a little thick about the problem of writers leaning a bit too heavily on the idea of studying the mechanics of good writing and storytelling (especially in MFA and college creative writing programs). I didn’t really pay much attention to that side of the equation. The idea of “talent” just really struck me. There’s no question Continue reading →