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The Rise and Fall of the American Bestseller

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By Phillip Routh Aug 22, 2008, 14:22 GMT


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LewAug 25th, 2008 - 16:50:22

You're crying out in the wilderness.
Tom Wolfe criticized modern novels, too, along lines similar to yours.
Literary fiction has, for the most part, retreated to the ivied halls of Academe. There you will find its authors and its meager audience.

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GeorgeFeb 4th, 2009 - 18:36:54

I think there's a flaw in your reasoning.
The pool of readers in, say, the 30's was smaller than it is now (partly due to limited education back then), and a greater proportion of those who read - maybe 70% - were intellectuals (a bad word, but you get my idea). They wanted to read literature, so we see literary works appear on the lists.
Today the pool of readers is large, and many are not intellectuals; they buy the stuff that make up the bulk of present-day bestsellers.
Intellectuals still buy books; their purchases may constitute 30% of the books sold - which is not enough to get their choices on the lists. But good fiction is still being read. Maybe, overall, more now than in the 30's.
Of course, I'm making assumptions. But is my line of reasoning logical?
I came here from your link at the Fahrenheit 451 article.

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prFeb 5th, 2009 - 13:02:39

You make a logical argument.
I see a decline beginning with the 1980's. There was an expanded bestseller list (to 15 novels) put into effect in 1978. I did not include these extra five books per year because I thought that was unfair to the past, when only 10 books were allowed.
But I looked in Korda's 'Making the List,' and, for the years from 1980 to 1999, I could only find 13 literary novels included in those 100 'extras.'
Also, it would be interesting to know the sales figures of the books that won the Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards beginning with 1980. Did they bring in substantial profits to the publishers? Not modest but substantial? I wonder.
Lew thinks not - that today's literary novels are not written for the general public but for academics. In my Fahrenheit 451 article I touch on this oft-repeated complaint.

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