I need a class in economics and maybe another one in marketing. I got an email today from Amazon touting their best books of the year. They are generally in agreement with me on good books, so I took a look. It was then that my lack of understanding of economics clicked in. The book In the Garden of Beasts of Eric Larson sells for $13.89 as a hardcover. (If you buy $25 worth of books on Amazon, you get free shipping, so the possibility of getting this book for $13.89 is real) The Kindle edition is $12.99. In other words it costs the publisher 90 cents to print, ship, warehouse, and take this book back if not sold. If cars worked the same way I’d drive a Lexus. Amazon puts a little note in their book lists stating that the Kindle price is demanded by the publisher. There are only two marketing explanations to the Kindle pricing: 1) the book is not selling well and the publisher has overstocked and wants to unload them. The fact that the book is on the best seller list diminishes this idea, and 2) the publisher wants to dissuade people from buying the kindle edition. What the publishers have not figured out is that they can made a ton of money with very little effort selling eBooks. But then again, I suppose the buggy whip makers did everything they could to discourage the Model T.
On another note, I had a long discussion with my son, Steve, last night about the state of the American novel. The discussion started when we both commented that the most interesting novels these days are written by Indians. (He just read the White Tiger - great book). His comment was that the American novel is dead. And I think I have to agree with him. American novels I’ve read recently have been awful. I’m talking about well received, highly praised works like A Visit From The Good Squad. Others I could mention are Tinkers, Await Your Reply, Cloud Atlas, West of Here. What’s wrong with them? Well, they are praised for being well written, and they are. But they are also very boring, confusing, pointless, or lacking in characters that seem valid. Why is this?
Well, Steve thinks the point is that it’s not writing that’s changed. It’s America that’s changed. The basic story lines that have maintained English and American novels for a couple hundred years have changed. And I think he’s right. In my view they have centered on Marriage (boy meets girl, struggles, overcomes opposition, and marries to live happily ever after), class struggles (think of The Jungle, etc), the quest (think of Huck Finn and On The Road), and the struggle to overcome obstacles to succeed (Horatio Alger and any of the pioneer novels). Ok, I will admit that my list can be torn apart any number of ways and probably leaves out many more valid themes, but I am after all just a reader and not an expert in any of this.
But the point I’m trying to make here is that each of these themes for the American novel are no longer valid. Happily ever after is laughable with a divorce rate of almost one in two and premarital sex very much the norm. Almost every American novel I’ve read in the last five years treats relationships as a mine field. Love seems to have lost its way. How many times can you read about unhappy couples without wanting to scream? It’s like listening to a friend who never talks of anything but the slug she’s married to. The pioneer novel is dead because the west had been won and pretty much destroyed by the victory. The quest has lost its way as well because the only interesting searches today are in science and a novel about finding a use for nano tubes would hardly be a page turner. The struggle to succeed has failed because of scale. The boy who struggles to open his own shop pales beside the hedge fund manager who gets multi-million dollar bonuses. And how many times can we read about sleazy traders without thinking we have no chance against the manipulators of the world. Class struggle still exists and may be more relevant today with the huge disparity between the super rich and the middle class, but it will take a genius to give us a great novel on this.
I still think there is great talent out there and maybe the great American novel can still be written. But we need new themes to capture who we are. And mostly were have to stop sounding like that whining friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment