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Mediocrity and marketing
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From: Maia <maia>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:53:01 -0400
I'm uncomfortable with the underlying implication that books by native Americans would be mediocre. Do we really hold with the ideology that
'cream rises to the crop'? Should writers be able to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' - and is their ability to do so a measure of their writing talent? Do folks think that there isn't much published/kept in print by native Americans because there aren't many skilled native writers?
I'm sure that the writers, editors and publishers on this list will agree that publishing is a much more complex business than one might think (or like) - a business that involves marketing, politics, money and all of the other things it's not polite to talk about. If you've ever tried to publish a book, you know that even getting a read for your novel can be difficult - just figuring out who is currently accepting new manuscripts is a headache. Making an effort to get that door open wider for folks that aren't already well represented on the inside isn't suggesting that we publish mediocre work -- it is suggesting that we manipulate some of the other variables besides quality that control the publishing dynamic.
And if an editor/publisher isn't from a particular culture/gender/class, then he or she is going to have to put some real effort into making discriminating choices about what is good material about said culture/g/c. (Witness what happened with MHIOTG.) And 'good' here has many meanings - authentic, powerful, lyrical, captivating, etc. I do think that there is enough good work out there to be able to make choices that capture all of the above. I can easily think of a half a dozen recent trash biographies that we could toss out in exchange for Bowman's Store. There is drivel published all the time -- I'm sure we all can think of a list of titles. There are tons of toss-away books with nothing to say, except dollars in the pocket. To suggest that an effort to find authentic, powerful voices from any group would be an exercise in mediocrity is pretty insulting... to suggest that we'd need to make the market for those books, just like we do for all kinds of book-trash, would be a more honest statement.
Maia
Sharon Lawrence wrote:
Received on Thu 28 Oct 1999 01:53:01 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:53:01 -0400
I'm uncomfortable with the underlying implication that books by native Americans would be mediocre. Do we really hold with the ideology that
'cream rises to the crop'? Should writers be able to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' - and is their ability to do so a measure of their writing talent? Do folks think that there isn't much published/kept in print by native Americans because there aren't many skilled native writers?
I'm sure that the writers, editors and publishers on this list will agree that publishing is a much more complex business than one might think (or like) - a business that involves marketing, politics, money and all of the other things it's not polite to talk about. If you've ever tried to publish a book, you know that even getting a read for your novel can be difficult - just figuring out who is currently accepting new manuscripts is a headache. Making an effort to get that door open wider for folks that aren't already well represented on the inside isn't suggesting that we publish mediocre work -- it is suggesting that we manipulate some of the other variables besides quality that control the publishing dynamic.
And if an editor/publisher isn't from a particular culture/gender/class, then he or she is going to have to put some real effort into making discriminating choices about what is good material about said culture/g/c. (Witness what happened with MHIOTG.) And 'good' here has many meanings - authentic, powerful, lyrical, captivating, etc. I do think that there is enough good work out there to be able to make choices that capture all of the above. I can easily think of a half a dozen recent trash biographies that we could toss out in exchange for Bowman's Store. There is drivel published all the time -- I'm sure we all can think of a list of titles. There are tons of toss-away books with nothing to say, except dollars in the pocket. To suggest that an effort to find authentic, powerful voices from any group would be an exercise in mediocrity is pretty insulting... to suggest that we'd need to make the market for those books, just like we do for all kinds of book-trash, would be a more honest statement.
Maia
Sharon Lawrence wrote:
Received on Thu 28 Oct 1999 01:53:01 PM CDT
