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the
current
Monday
Report
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This week's report by G.D. McFetridge
THE BIGG FIXX
“The New York Times bestseller list is the most prestigious
and important banner in publishing. However, it includes only a
small fraction of total book sales nationwide.”
This is a quote gleaned from a writers’ magazine—but what
exactly does it suggest, and what do we read between the lines?
It suggests, among other things, that the system of literary
ascendancy in our great empire is open to manipulation. For
example: Some years back I read a book about the Kennedys. It
was an exposé of the Machiavellian antics for which the Kennedy
clan was notorious, and among the anecdotes brought to light
was one that included interesting tidbits concerning the book JFK
wrote during his Harvard years, entitled, While England Slept.
This nonfiction work, based on an expanded version of
Kennedy’s thesis (with the help of a veteran editor), made the
bestseller list; although according to legend, the remarkable feat
had a lot to do with the fact that old Joe Kennedy had ordered his
operatives to buy up a sufficient quantity of books to assure
success. Not all of us can afford enough copies of our own opus
major to cinch its position on the bestseller list, but what this
story makes clear is that if you have power and money, you can
manipulate the system. Look at politics, for chrissake.
In the publishing business there’s a specific piece of jargon
known as “growing legs.” When publishers usher in a new
release, they hope the book will take off by word of mouth,
gather momentum through a spontaneous snowballing effect;
and, as the phrase suggests, grow legs and run on its own.
Other than that, there are five fundamental ways to promote
sales: High-profile reviews, endorsements, advertising and book
signings, television and radio talk shows, and making the
bestseller list.
The industry can directly control all these categories with the
exception of word of mouth. Popular opinion, however, can be
strongly influenced through advertising and various forms of
promotion. How do they do it? By getting the public to believe
that a particular book or its author is a cultural/social
phenomenon, and by convincing the public that a novel or
nonfiction work has taken off not because of behind the scenes
manipulations, but because it’s the people’s choice, because
there’s some sort of mystique and extraordinary aura
surrounding the author or the work itself.
“America has made this novel a bestseller, a runaway smash
hit! A real page-turner! So-and-so is a true American hero, an
idol. A literary genius … the next Hemingway!”—along with all
the other hype and palaver they bombard us with; but ask
yourself this, how often is it true? Or is it a matter of treatment
and slick promotion? When is the last time you read a bestseller
or so-called award-winning book that struck you as overrated?
This isn’t to say that cultural icons don’t spontaneously arise
from within the ranks of the masses. Of course they do—it’s
what I affectionately call the “Elvis Syndrome.” The tricky part is
that promoters in all fields of entertainment, and even politics for
that matter, have learned how to synthesize or generate the
appearance of this societal ground swelling. For instance, The
Beatles were a true cultural phenomenon, whereas The Monkeys
were a synthetically generated imitation.
Some of my friends say that I’m conspiratorially paranoid, a
frustrated class warrior, and that I see the machinations of
power, greed, and malevolence where none exists. But before
you dismiss my hypothesis, let me tender an example for your
consideration:
Several years ago a friend handed me a book of short stories
entitled, Flying Leap, written by a twenty-four-year-old darling
of the East Coast literati named Judy Budnitz. Before this
neophyte’s collection appeared, she had enjoyed publication in
The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Story, and 25 and Under/
Fiction. Shortly thereafter she had also published in McSweeney’
s, and the anthologies Reading and Writing and The O. Henry
Prize Stories. Pretty amazing, wouldn’t you say? I can assure
you, it’s more amazing than you realize. Let me crunch the
numbers and show you just how miraculous this achievement
is.
Major literary magazines such as The Paris Review, Glimmer
Train, or Story receive something like 500 to a 1,000 short story
submissions a month, and they publish an average of ten to
twenty of these stories in any given year. If we allow for an
average number of submissions at 9,000 short stories a year
(which in some cases would be a low estimate) and do our math
under an average total of fifteen accepted manuscripts, it means
that a single submission has about a 1/600 chance of getting
accepted, based on straight odds, with all things being equal.
Reaching a statistical probability of 1 would require 600
submissions. Although this only means that according to odds
the probability should have occurred, but is by no means
guaranteed to have occurred. Taking this a little further we see
that in order to have any chance of being published in magazines
such as McSweeney’s or The Paris Review, a writer—unless of
course they are a karma-endowed genius for whom the red
carpet unrolls before their very feet—has to make mass
submissions, hundreds and hundreds of them.
Do you have any idea what the mathematical probability was
for Ms. Budnitz to score all these major publications in the space
of a several years, assuming the feat were performed on a level
playing field?
Off the top of my head, it’s beyond astronomical. I’m not a
statistical expert, but plug in the odds of hitting a 1/600 shot
five or ten times in a row and see for yourself, not to mention the
less likely odds of being chosen for publication in prestigious
anthologies.
Hold on a moment, you insist, it’s because she’s so talented,
the odds are in her favor. Maybe so. Personally, I think she’s
precocious, very bright, well bred and properly educated
(Harvard, Class of 1995), but her work didn’t move me any more
or less than scores of other stories I’ve read in smaller and less
prestigious publications. And were I to play the part of literary
critic, I could go as far as saying that her writing seemed
somewhat shallow, jejune (that’s a Harvard word I borrowed),
and lacking real-life experience outside the green pastures of Ivy
League education and the privileged-class existence.
And here’s another curious thing. In the O. Henry’s Awards
contributors’ notes, Budnitz said the following: “I almost never
revise stories. If a story doesn’t work I usually throw it away, I
don’t try to fix it. This one is an exception, and I’m indebted to
the editors of McSweeney’s for their patience in helping me beat
it into shape.”
Exactly how long did these editors help this brave little
trouper, and when was the last time a group of major magazine
editors lent a hand to an unknown writer to “beat” a work into
shape? The message I usually get regarding my submissions
goes something like this: Hey, pal, we don’t waste our time
editing, either your story’s good to go or you can hit the road.
But I guess it’s different when you’re one of the literary pretty
people.
So why did she have this monumental publishing luck? Who
was pulling for her, putting the fix in, as it were? (Please see my
previous essay, Show Us, Mr. Faulkner).
The esthetic value of art or literature is subjective; it exists
only in the eye of the observer, or a group of observers. Some
observers, suffice to say, have more power than others—because
I assure you, Judy Budnitz would not have appeared in The Paris
Review if it were me instead of George Plimpton (rest his soul)
editing the magazine. But then, didn’t Plimpton go to Harvard, or
was it Cambridge?
The good ol’ U.S. of A. is rapidly devolving into a two-class
society: the privileged and the non-privileged. For clarity, I like
to break this down into a more precise definition that goes
something like this: First we have the Ruling Class. These are
the big people, the lofty one percent who controls the politicians
and owns sixty percent of the wealth. Underneath these chosen
few we have the “Lords and Nobles,” i.e., the class of people who
get all the really good jobs. They have rewarding careers,
enjoyable work, prestige, opportunity for advancement, make all
the big money, and get to brag about themselves on television
talk shows and give each other awards.
Next we have the remnants of the middleclass—a vanishing
breed. Finally we have the working/slave class, the common
people who do all the tedious hard work and create most of the
wealth on which the Ruling Class and the Lords and Nobles live.
Ultimately, this structuring creates or directly reflects upon
the arena of American Literature. You have a tiny minority who
enjoys most of the sales and accolades at the expense of
everyone else. Philosophically and practically, an important
aspect of all this comes down to the question of whose voice gets
to be heard in our society, and what processes, what system of
checks and balances does our culture exercise to determine the
eligibility of a given voice. What are the rights of passage? And,
more importantly, is it possible that a this minority of powerful
people, an economically privileged elite, exercises disproport-
ionate control in determining whose literary voice we hear?
Judy Budnitz is just an example pulled out of a hat, and in
her case maybe she deserved everything she got. I picked her
because the materials and references were at hand—it could
have been any of a gaggle of other so-called distinguished
writers. Are some people more talented and noteworthy than
others? Of course, but the real question concerns how such
delineations are arrived at, and is there an altruistic foundation
anywhere to be found.
In something like a hundred-meter race or a marathon, we
line up twenty men or women and fire the starting pistol.
Someone is going to win, but based solely on how fast they can
run. Literature, or politics for that matter, are not so clean, not
so objective.
Pointing out problems is easy. Finding solutions is more
difficult, and I admit that I don’t have any brilliant suggestions
as to how an egalitarian state in either literature or our country
at large could be achieved. Although I do know this: Revolutions
occur when certain conditions become intolerable for the
majority of people in a given society, and when there exists
tyranny by a minority. Does American need a revolution?
Politically or otherwise?
When too few people have too much money and control, so-
called democracy and social equality goes right down the drain.
And if literature, or any other art form—as a societal function and
as an extension of cultural values and aspirations—is a
democracy of sorts in its own right, then the same rules apply.
The only question left is how do we go about starting a
revolution?
We haven’t had one in almost two hundred and thirty years,
and my concern is this: Not enough citizens remember how or
why revolutions are necessary or even realize that the possibility
still exists. I like to hearken back to an old saying; it’s
uncomplicated yet speaks volumes. It simply says: “Once
begun, half done.”
And I’ll leave you with that, as a revolutionary banner, a
mantra as it were …
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*An earlier, less developed version of this essay appeared in the Lummox Journal
and in Bathtub Gin.
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