"How can the novel, that tortoise of literary forms, keep pace with the current events hare?"
Mark Swartz of The Village Voice writes about the resurgence of serial novels appearing in popular news outlets such as The New York Times, The London Observer, and Slate. Certainly this format has been alive and well online for some time (notably in fan-fiction venues,) but still the refreshing presence of serialized fiction in major media outlets is hopeful. It speaks well for our powers of concentration! Swartz seems to be implying that the thriller genre is more amenable to this type of publication, but I'm not sure I'd agree with that. A romance can have just as much unresolved tension and anxiety as a murder mystery.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I have to agree with you that the romance genre would fit well into this type of publication. Of course, any writer good at spinning an involving yarn regardless of whether it is genre fiction could do this well.
I don't think I agree with the author that serialization is too splitting of interest too lagging and drawn out to capture interest. Fan fiction has been doing this online for years with some great success. Some fan authors have taken literally years to finish installments but will continually get readers and reviews.
"This is not a vibrant time for short literary fiction," asserts Marzorati. I completely disagreed with this statement. I wonder where Marzorati reads his short fiction. That's all I've been digging into recently from Sudden Fiction anthologies, to short story collections from genre authors such as Sonya Taaffe, Jeffrey Ford. I wonder where he takes his sampling from?
Post a Comment