So Much Noise

Roxanne Gay recently agonized over the profusion of literary magazines available to too few readers:

One of the primary challenges with getting people to buy magazines is that there are too many. It’s not that magazines aren’t doing great work or that editors aren’t marketing their product well or that they haven’t found the right price point or whatever magical solution we’re all desperately searching for. People want to read the exciting work in Magazines A, B, C, D, E, F, and G through Z but it’s not financially feasible to subscribe to all those magazines and there’s so much noise that it’s hard to find a way of saying that Magazine P is worth buying over Magazine V. . . .

The same problem exists with books, something that the closing of Borders only reinforces:

People milled about the store like buzzards feasting on a carrion and hey, I was there too, looking for bargains. . .As I looked around the store, even in it’s diminished capacity,  I thought, “This is too much.” How could anyone possibly know what to read in that store swollen with books, too many of them mediocre? How could any reading experience be meaningful amidst so many choices?

I certainly agree that "too many" of the books available in most bookstores--even the beloved "independent" stores-- are "mediocre," but I have to say I also think too many, probably even a majority, of the fiction published in literary magazines (A-Z) is mediocre as well. If there is a source of the feeling there are too many magazines publishing more fiction than anyone could possibly read, it is here, in the stuffing of literary magazines with stories few will read because they aren't really worth reading, are most likely being published because the authors need the credits to keep their creative writing teaching jobs, just as most of the magazines exist in the first place to bestow such credits.

I realize this is a harsh assessment, but it seems to me that anyone truly interested in addressing the oversupply problem Roxanne Gay has honestly described needs first of all to acknowledge my assessment isn't completely inaccurate. There is sometimes "exciting work" to be found in many literary magazines--and not just the most well-known--but the real problem is being able to keep track of that exciting work in the midst of so much that is just perfunctory. Literary magazines have historically played an important role in maintaining the vitality of American fiction and poetry, and they need to continue playing that role. However, for that to happen their mission must first of all be to provide a place for the publication of potentially significant additions to literature, not of routine, indifferent work by instructors wanting tenure or aspiring "authors" whose fondest wish is to "be published" rather than to write interesting poetry and fiction.

Gay wonders whether the underlying problem is that "everyone wants to be an editor." Starting up a new magazine and publishing worthy writers seems a noble calling, never mind the difficulties of actually getting your magazine into the hands (or on the screens) of actual readers, and so there is a lot of starting-up and not enough following-through.

Another magazine where the editors don’t know how they’re going to fund each print issue? Are these magazines, multiplying exponentially, really going to offer something we’ve never seen before? Is becoming an editor really that important?

I would suggest instead that editors and would-be editors are making a mistake by not including more literary criticism among the contents of their journals. A few magazines run a few book reviews in a given issue, but these reviews tend to be relatively brief, short on analysis and long on boosterism. It is understandable that reviewers in such a context would want to reinforce a sense of literary community, but finally that is precisely the biggest problem: Literary magazines may be the only remaining site of what could be called a common literary culture, and one wants to encourage and cultivate that culture, but not at the expense of a frank estimation of practices and achievements. The current situation, in which academics no longer engage in "mere" evaluation and appraisal, and in which newspaper and magazine reviewing is becoming more and more cursory when it isn't simply disappearing, in my opinion no longer makes it acceptable for literary magazines to blunt a necessary critical edge.

It seems to me that literary culture is just as likely to wither away through the neglect of impartial, substantive criticism as it is through the oversupply (or undersupply) of literary magazines per se. Without it, literary works just get folded into the "entertainment culture," and since poetry and serious fiction cannot hope to compete with most of the other choices offered by this culture, it is permanently marginalized, without even the lingering respect conferred by tradition. Without conscientious criticism, which goes beyond making superficial judgments of value and attempts to explain, describe, interpret, works of literature disappear into the undifferentiated mass at which Roxanne Gay despairs.

Why couldn't literary magazines include such criticism as part of their effort to maintain a literary culture? Surely one or two substantial book reviews and/or an essay on a contemporary writer or work wouldn't deprive many deserving stories or poems of their space. Such criticism might even make that space seem more valuable. Perhaps an especially intrepid editor might invite a critical examination of one or more of the "creative" contributions in the present, or a past, issue. Beyond helping readers make specific decisions about what to read and appropriate discriminations in what they have read, critical contributions like this might help readers understand why what they read is important, why continuing to publish and read literary magazines is important. They might help to reduce the noise.

 

Comments

[Steven Augustine]

Roxane Gay's critical framework, for determining some Lit "good" and other Lit "mediocre", is mysterious, when the material in question is published by well-known authors, at least... she has a soft spot for James Frey ("I loved Bright Shiny Morning...") and all kinds of other verbacidal hacks. Her critical framework is less mysterious when it comes to unpublished material she has any actual contact with: quite a lot of the stuff she deems good (or even "great") must come from friends or friends of these friends or friends of people she'd like to know, possibly. I can only shudder to think how horrible the stuff she was offered, and wouldn't "publish", is.

Roxane, the "editor", is bemoaning the befuddling surfeit of pulp out there? Are we supposed to greet that news with straight faces?

What I mean is this. Roxanne says that, eg, "Timothy Willis Sanders [...] is a great writer":

***You Have A Crush On Kells [EXCERPT)
by Timothy Willis Sanders

R. Kelly did the Tootsee Roll. Adina Howard watched R.Kelly. R. Kelly dipped and looked at Adina Howard. Adina Howard walked to R. Kelly.

"I like watching you Tootsee Roll," said Adina Howard, "Take me to that Kevin Bacon movie." She handed R. Kelly a folded napkin.

Later, R. Kelly got on the highway with Michael Bivins. R. Kelly unfolded the napkin on the steering wheel.

"Digits. Kevin Bacon movie," said R. Kelly.

"Big ass chi-chis. Go for it," said Michael Bivins.

"Hate Kevin Bacon though,” said R. Kelly. "Don’t know…she was with DMX. I think he’s in jail."

"Why?"

"I don’t know. Maybe you have to watch out for girls who make those kinds of choices."

"No. Why is he in jail?"

"They found a gun in his car or something."

"When does he get out?" said Michael Bivins.

"I don’t know. I don’t really know him," said R. Kelly.***

etc.

http://japanesebaseball.us/post/444112936
***

Well, now we know what happens when aspiring writers honor the vocation by watching lots of TV. Effortless Success is the American dream.

An excerpt from one of Roxane's own (recently posted) stories:

"The couple hunkered in the booth next to us are having a very serious argument, the kind so serious that neither party can bear to raise their voices. Instead, they speak in loud, ugly whispers, each word out of their mouths accompanied by a healthy serving of spittle that hangs from their lips for several excruciating moments before falling onto the dark linen tablecloths and spreading into Rorschach blots of moisture. My husband and I cannot stop watching this couple. We live for such episodes. Later, when we are alone in bed, our stomachs rumbling as they try to digest the rich meal we ingested so gleefully hours earlier, we will dissect the other couple’s argument. He will take her side and I will take his and we will recreate the complex history of the other couple’s relationship. We will advocate our positions so passionately that the entire affair will devolve into an argument about our own relationship."

If she keeps at it and is very hard on herself by being honest with herself, and is humble in the face of what writing is and does when done well... there's hope. But, as it stands, this is the work of a precocious eleventh-grader.

Ah, but, no: Roxane is "...an assistant professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. I received my Ph.D. in September 2010 from Michigan Technological University".

It's a crushingly familiar, 21st-century sensation, watching the professional dancer who can't dance, the professional singer who can't sing, and so on. We can tell what Americans *really* value by wherever it is the standards are still held high; just try getting any attention as a crappy basketball player or a frumpy porn star.

The practice of Literature, as a fundamental cultural resource, is losing the battle. To take Roxane Gay, or any of her talent-free cohorts, seriously, is to admit defeat. Are we really going to go down without a fight?

[Dan Green]

I don't really think Roxanne Gay's literary taste is the issue here. I also think that in this context to bring in her own work for criticism is essentially an ad hominem attack. Her basic point about the proliferation of books and literary magazines is both coherent and correct. I have a different solution to the problem than she does.

[Steven Augustine]

"Her basic point about the proliferation of books and literary magazines is both coherent and correct."

And terribly ironic. Here again, the social dynamic of online literary "discourse" subverts any hope of critical frankness.

Also, I'd quibble with your use of "ad hominem", as my target is the quality (lack thereof) of her work... not her personality, the way she dresses, etc. (none of which is of any importance to me). I'd be singing her praises if the material (or her "critical framework) deserved it.

[Dan Green]

It's ad hominem in that you attack the messenger rather than the message. The message is entirely accurate and, I would say, quite frankly stated, RG's own work as a fiction writer notwithstanding.

[Steven Augustine]

Dan, unlike with fiction, such a "message" is not detachable from the messenger; the fact that the messenger is even quoted on the matter implies some sort of authority, no?

And if she's complaining about the market being flooded with mediocre work while helping to flood the market with mediocre work ...

etc.