Book 'em, Danno

Anyone looking over my curriculum vitae will see that, while there are a fair number of items listed in the "Publications" section (currently around 140 or so), all but one of them are essays, articles, or reviews, leaving only Beyond the Blurb: On Critics and Criticism (published by Cow Eye Press) as the sole entry declaring itself a book--and even it is a collection of shorter pieces originally published elsewhere, including here on the blog. To anyone asking me if I am a frustrated writer of books who has settled for writing in the shorter forms, I would have to say no. Although shortly after graduate school I did send around a book proposal (not my dissertation) to various university presses, and was offered from one of them a contract of sorts for the exclusive rights, should I actually finish writing the thing, this project never really got off the ground and I eventually just dropped it. Otherwise, I have never actually begun a writing day thinking, "Today I will work on my book."

Occasionally what seems a pretty good idea for a book comes to me, but quickly enough I'm no longer enamored by the idea and nothing further comes of it. I don't believe this inaction is caused by some kind of a block or a lack of initiative (I'm always writing, just not books). Instead, I think my abilities as a critic--such as they are--are most fruitfully applied to the shorter form, a more circumscribed but also more concentrated space for close reading and succinct analysis. I have always believed that too many full-length works of literary criticism--especially academic books--are padded out with superfluous information and ritualized citations of authorities, although this may just be a reflection of my bias toward text-based explication and analysis rather than theory, biography, or historical critique. Good critics are able to avoid these problems in the best critical books--although many such books are also comprised of previously published essays and articles--but I'm not sure I could be one of those critics, at least while also writing something familiar enough in its form or with a wide enough appeal that it could get published.

Most of what I want to say about literature (and I do like to think that even in a 1500 word review I am reaching beyond the work at hand to connect it to a literary "issue" or to literary history), I have found I can say in the shorter forms. This does not mean that any such issue can be exhaustively examined or the history fully surveyed in 1500 (or 3,000, or 5,000) words). I have often in fact, addressed the same or similar concerns across multiple reviews or essays, hoping to sound out the topic as fully as possible from different angles. Here the advantages of a book become more apparent. However, I have ventured to collect many of the pieces on common themes in a series of free e-books available through the blog--after concluding no actual publisher would give my collected ruminations on current experimental fiction, for example, even a cursory glimpse--but I'm certain they all gained more readers in their original incarnation as individual items than they have managed to attract through these facsimiles of books. If I'd ventured to write a book about experimental fiction from scratch, it likely would have turned out to be structured much like the e-book, anyway, and surely no publisher would touch this pristine tome, either.

A propensity for the shorter form was part of my motivation for creating The Reading Experience back in 2004, although I believe this blog actually garnered a reputation for posts a little longer than those on most other blogs, at least back in the antediluvian days of literary blogging. If I had stayed strictly an academic critic, I no doubt would have inaugurated whatever book projects might have been necessary for promotion or to get a better job, or just to stay in the game, but without a game to play, I now envision writing a critical book mostly as something that might happen only when an essay suddenly gets out of hand. Then it would seem a work whose length was an organic development of an idea or analysis that simply required greater amplification.

Yet an idea for a book has been rattling around in my head for a while, nevertheless, one that would justify its length first by taking the form of an historical narrative--indeed, a history of all of American fiction, from colonial times to the present. But it would also center more narrowly on a progression of works that illustrate the book's argument that American fiction, at least as exemplified by its most accomplished writers, has always been essentially a subversive force, both culturally and formally: American writers have always subjected the country's putative democratic ideals to often harsh scrutiny, and, even more vigorously, have always transgressed against the formal conventions of fiction as those were established by the rise of the European novel (a disposition additionally manifested in the American development of the short story). It would unite my focus on experimental fiction and my longstanding interest in American literary history.

I would go ahead and write this book if I thought it could be published, but unfortunately.

Comments

[Rohan]

I puzzle so much over the relationship (real or imagined or potential) between the kind of criticism I like to read and want to write and what might actually be a book-sized project. There are so many opportunity costs to books: you really have to dive deep and not come up for a long time, so it has to feel worth it and seem likely to pay off, whereas essays are easier to take chances on.

That said, your book idea there at the end of this post sounds brilliant.

[Daniel Green]

Yes, I think you're right that it's easier to take chances in an essay. (Especially if you're going to publish it on a blog!)

[Danao]

Zerogram Press, perhaps? Biblioasis and Dalkey have also been known to publish LitCrit works on experimental literature. And hasn't Verso Books published David Winters, Jeff Bursey, and Steven Mitchelmore- critics with similar temperaments/interests to you? Or Dzanc Books? They put out Domini's Sea-Herb collection. Maybe you could work something out with Tough Poets Press since it's powered by Kickstarter.