[a website for the Editor and Narrator of the Circo del Herrero series]
Whenever we, as members of a literary community, pat ourselves on the back for letting Toni Morrison and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ta-Nehisi Coates write and sell books, we’re eliding the huge obstacles we still fling in front of writers from marginalized groups at every turn. How many potential Morrisons and Adichies never published a single book because their queries were met with a particularly skeptical eye and brushed off with a cold dismissal?
Unlike Kevin Morris, such writers are unlikely to be rescued by a chance encounter with a powerful publisher at a book party thrown by a famous friend. Unlike “George,” they’re unlikely to be given a generous, engaged reading and the opportunity to prove they have the chops to finish a great novel.
It turns out that, just as everyone but Michael Wolff sort of suspected, white men still hold all the cards in the literary world. Kevin Morris’ White Man’s Problems, for its part, will soon have an audio book voiced by stars such as Matthew McConaughey. Of course, there’s no more pleasant position than keeping all the advantages while claiming martyrdom and marginalization. But this time, white men of literature, we definitely see what you’re up to.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
Time and time again, the literary establishment seizes on the story of a writer who meets inordinate obstacles, including financial struggles, crippling self-doubt, and rejection across the board, only to finally achieve the recognition and success they deserve. The halls of the literary establishment echo with tales of now-revered writers who initially faced failure, from Stephen King (whose early novel Carrie was rejected 30 times before being published), to Alex Haley (whose epic Roots was rejected 200 times in eight years). This arc is the literary equivalent of the American Dream, but like the Dream itself, the romantic narrative hides a more sinister one. Focusing on how individual artists should persist in the face of rejection obscures how the system is set up to reward only a chosen few, often in a fundamentally unmeritocratic way.
What are we meant to make of the fact that James’s manuscript was rejected 80 times? Sadly, this phenomenon isn’t that uncommon. In fact, there’s a website dedicated to bestsellers that were initially rejected. Was it lack of imagination on the part of those publishers? Was it unconscious bias against a new and unfamiliar narrative—one that they didn’t regard as “mainstream?” Or was it a complex business decision based on multiple factors? As an emerging writer of color, I’m no longer inspired by this narrative. I don’t see much cause to celebrate when writers of James’s profound talent are roundly rejected in the course of normal business.
…
Three years later, I remain perplexed by a system that creates the conditions by which manuscripts that will go on to be lauded are first broadly rejected. While other sectors have certainly overlooked brilliant new ideas and missed opportunities for innovation, this fact isn’t usually romanticized or celebrated. In other sectors this level of oversight would be called “a system failure,” or “inefficiency,” or “failure to innovate.” And policies and practices would be put into place to try to prevent this from happening in the future.
But I don’t see those kinds of self-critiquing evaluative discussions or major efforts to dismantle such systems in the literary world. Just last month, Publishers Weekly’s annual field survey confirmed that 89 percent of the publishing sector workforce is white–exactly the same as the year before. Instead, the focus continues to be on individual persistence against myriad, intangible barriers, rather than on the role of the system in creating and perpetuating many of those barriers, thereby putting the full burden on writers.…
One of the most curious aspects of this mode of operation is that it gives rise to a secondary narrative: that of discovery. Instead of dismantling these barriers, literary power players emphasize how they “discovered” an author, even though that author was knocking at the door of the literary establishment the whole time, just waiting to be seen and let in.
Read the rest at The Atlantic.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
How do you pick books to read? What are the features that attract you?
Good characters matter much more to me than good plotting or good prose. Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read hinges on characters about whom it’s very difficult to give a flying walnut. It’s hard to plough on with that sort of thing for fun, for all it is linguistically improving. If I want improving, I read nonfiction. In fiction, what I want is somebody whom I care about terribly.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
So, B.L.A.’s predictions weren’t entirely accurate (see: https://circodelherreroseries.com/2015…), but there’s still one more book to go, so I’m not throwing out the prophesies just yet!
I was a bit (rather, a LOT) disappointed with this sequel because it took a step back from the intellectual momentum it built up in the first. It suffers from “second novel syndrome” in that it trudges through the plot just so it can finally arrive were it really wanted to go all along: Book 3.
Another qualm I have with the book is that it has a lady in a refrigerator–a woman dies for the sake of male character development. Right off the bat.
Beyond these, though, the weird “superpowers” given to the too-many-to-remember children of Apollo can be forgiven; the rickety deus ex machina of Zeus can be forgiven; the jarring sci-fi twist can be forgiven… Why? Because the philosophical topics the story continues to explore are its main saving grace.
But can it be this series’ continued salvation?
