We
have had no shortage of "death of the book" articles by journalists,
critics, and publishing insiders. Storytellers, however, have been slower to
weigh in. The Late American Novel:
Writers on the Future of Books, edited by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee,
helps redress this deficit.
The focus of the volume is
a bit confused, however, as contributors conflate books with novels (a thousand
histories, textbooks, and guidebooks sigh) and writers with novelists (cue
sighs from poets, journalists, screenwriters). The strongest essays focus on
the history of the book, the function of storytelling, and the process of
writing with wi-fi.
John Brandon's essay is a
sharp and funny request to continue neglecting the novella, and Reif Larson's "The
Crying of Page 45" combines well-informed histories of the book with wit
and experimentation (his is the only entry that includes images). Others wax
romantic on the smell and heft of physical books, while Victor LaValle's
charming homage to hardcovers ends with a warning against such nostalgia: "The
greatest gift the electronic age could bestow upon the novel is to keep it
sacred, not sacrosanct."
Rudolph Delson, Nancy Jo
Sales, Garth Risk Hallberg, Ander Monson, and Benjamin Kunkel smartly thread
the books/novels/writing needle, ruminating on the reduced distance between
authors and readers, the emphatic function of fiction, and the participatory
promise of ebooks. By the end of the slim volume, readers may be ready to side
with Monson, who writes: "Time to shut up and get to the making, get back
to that sense of play where everything interesting, including the future,
finally fast and soon to be here, starts."
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