As an older, voracious reader, I want to READ novels about older people. I like young or middle-aged characters just fine, but I want to read about people who are retired, and aging, and what-have-you. Like the Netflix show “A Man on the Inside,” only for books
I *wish* Anne Tyler were writing good stuff about older readers. I haven’t enjoyed anything she’s written for years and have stopped reading her because life is too short.
Thanks, Stephanie. I want to read those books, too. And in my experience, there are many of them in a variety of genres—fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—that are doing well, whether you measure success by bestsellerdom, awards, or something else. I’ve written about them over at Medium and no doubt eventually will get to them here, too.
All good ideas here and I'll add another possibility. Literary stardom itself is waning; I think Sally Rooney is one of the last and probably the only one in her cohort in the anglo-world. From Gen X to older, each generation had this phenomenon of literary stardom that carried huge amount of clout with traditional media. Which novelists are getting on magazine covers today, and covers of weekend supplements? So this over-coverage of certain former stars could be happening because some of the book people at the Times really really miss the literary stardom era? I like Elizabeth Strout and could read anything she writes, but I think she's also one of the people who will get the attention no matter what, though I think the presence of her work in the movies and on TV adds to this enormously (Tyler has no cinematic footprint, as far as I can see). Another author that I like, Zadie Smith, gets a lot of smart media whenever she publishes something, though Fraud was the first book of hers for which I thought, this didn't warrant all those interviews and in fact she's so much more interesting in interviews than the book itself.
I love this comment! It's so perceptive, and it seems to fit in with what's happening in other arts: Stardom is waning across the board. In a Substack post called "Can Taylor Swift Sing?" I just wrote about how Swift may be only "monocultural" star today (the only one whose name all generations know, as they did that of Elvis). And I've written over on Medium about how the concept of the "Great American Novelist" (and Novel) has died because of the fracturing of audiences into groups. I've also seen movie critics argue that Julie Roberts was the last big movie star when "Pretty Woman" came out decades ago.
Your observations make perfect sense to me given all of that, as does the idea that a nostalgia factor may have influenced the Tyler coverage at the Times. Perhaps part of the explanation for our star-less world is that the half-life of stardom is getting shorter and shorter, so stars can't get the traction they once did. Just a couple of years ago, Colleen Hoover had 15 or so books on the USA Today bestseller list at once, and now she's been completely upstaged by Rebecca Yarros and Sara J. Maas.
You've made me want to write (or hope someone else will write) a "Where Have All the Stars Gone?" piece (and I may do it). Thank you!
Same in the opera world, which I used to cover more in the past. I think the last opera stars were Renee Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Netrebko, Jonas Kaufman, and there aren't really any international star conductors that get flown across the globe and get Mercedes sponsorships or what have you. Fleming retired; Netrebko, well, we know what happened there. Kaufman turned out not to have been the next Domingo. You're right that the careers tend to be smaller, or shrink faster due to the media (and audience?) being smaller or nonexistent. For that kind of stardom, media need to exist! Traditional media with critics, and scores and scores of arts and culture coverage. The Three Tenors and Lenny Bernstein were regularly on TV, fcs. The 'democratization' and TikTok-ization has brought about a lot of interesting developments but it's eaten up art criticism and longform. Podcasts and Substack are showing some signs of life on this score, tho only for some disciplines (history, interestingly, has exploded in the pod-sphere; not so much classical music or theatre, anywhere).
I was thinking of opera, too, when I wrote this. If we had the Three Tenors today, would they still get TV specials? And I agree that the demise of arts critics plays a role.
In the past, influential critics could be star-makers, or at least boost careers substantially by championing their favorites. But there are so few critics left with regular high-profile positions that almost none still have the clout to that, at least in the U.S. I’ve heard that James Wood of The New Yorker said, “Prizes are the new reviews,” and while I’ve never been able to track down the quote, in my experience it’s true. Winning a Pulitzer for fiction today will help you much more than an up-front review in the NYTBR.
As an unknown fiction writer, I find this post disheartening, but also lenitive. It’s like the doctor explaining that you had the stroke because of high blood pressure. It doesn’t make the stroke any better, but at least you know why it happened.
Thank you! I’ve written elsewhere about how the arts are commentaries on politics and the economy, and that seems true here, too: The dominance of the 1% that you see elsewhere in America has been trickling down to the literary markeplace. We have a 1% books, too (led by James Patterson). Like you, I wish it weren’t true but I’ve seen so much evidence that it is.
You are so right. Age is the great unmentionable—or one of them—when it comes to diversity.
I’d love to write about that, but it’s so hard to prove. A typical response from publishers on questions like that tends to be: We’d LOVE to publish more books by older authors, but we aren’t getting them. And they aren’t getting them because they don’t get published.
I entered a contest last year for writers in underrepresented groups. I submitted as a 72-year-old writer who has felt the sting of ageism.
In her rejection letter, the editor stressed her commitment to recognizing gay writers while ignoring the main thrust of my submission as an older writer.
In my experience, money doesn’t change hands, but there are a lot of implicit or unspoken hopes or expectations.
For example, Anne Tyler does few interviews and no social media. So the Times editors or others might hope that favorable coverage would pave the way for their getting an interview at some point or for Tyler’s being willing to respond to one of those surveys of authors that the Times does on big topics like, “What classic do you see as most underrated?”
As an older, voracious reader, I want to READ novels about older people. I like young or middle-aged characters just fine, but I want to read about people who are retired, and aging, and what-have-you. Like the Netflix show “A Man on the Inside,” only for books
I *wish* Anne Tyler were writing good stuff about older readers. I haven’t enjoyed anything she’s written for years and have stopped reading her because life is too short.
Thanks, Stephanie. I want to read those books, too. And in my experience, there are many of them in a variety of genres—fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—that are doing well, whether you measure success by bestsellerdom, awards, or something else. I’ve written about them over at Medium and no doubt eventually will get to them here, too.
All good ideas here and I'll add another possibility. Literary stardom itself is waning; I think Sally Rooney is one of the last and probably the only one in her cohort in the anglo-world. From Gen X to older, each generation had this phenomenon of literary stardom that carried huge amount of clout with traditional media. Which novelists are getting on magazine covers today, and covers of weekend supplements? So this over-coverage of certain former stars could be happening because some of the book people at the Times really really miss the literary stardom era? I like Elizabeth Strout and could read anything she writes, but I think she's also one of the people who will get the attention no matter what, though I think the presence of her work in the movies and on TV adds to this enormously (Tyler has no cinematic footprint, as far as I can see). Another author that I like, Zadie Smith, gets a lot of smart media whenever she publishes something, though Fraud was the first book of hers for which I thought, this didn't warrant all those interviews and in fact she's so much more interesting in interviews than the book itself.
I love this comment! It's so perceptive, and it seems to fit in with what's happening in other arts: Stardom is waning across the board. In a Substack post called "Can Taylor Swift Sing?" I just wrote about how Swift may be only "monocultural" star today (the only one whose name all generations know, as they did that of Elvis). And I've written over on Medium about how the concept of the "Great American Novelist" (and Novel) has died because of the fracturing of audiences into groups. I've also seen movie critics argue that Julie Roberts was the last big movie star when "Pretty Woman" came out decades ago.
Your observations make perfect sense to me given all of that, as does the idea that a nostalgia factor may have influenced the Tyler coverage at the Times. Perhaps part of the explanation for our star-less world is that the half-life of stardom is getting shorter and shorter, so stars can't get the traction they once did. Just a couple of years ago, Colleen Hoover had 15 or so books on the USA Today bestseller list at once, and now she's been completely upstaged by Rebecca Yarros and Sara J. Maas.
You've made me want to write (or hope someone else will write) a "Where Have All the Stars Gone?" piece (and I may do it). Thank you!
Same in the opera world, which I used to cover more in the past. I think the last opera stars were Renee Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Netrebko, Jonas Kaufman, and there aren't really any international star conductors that get flown across the globe and get Mercedes sponsorships or what have you. Fleming retired; Netrebko, well, we know what happened there. Kaufman turned out not to have been the next Domingo. You're right that the careers tend to be smaller, or shrink faster due to the media (and audience?) being smaller or nonexistent. For that kind of stardom, media need to exist! Traditional media with critics, and scores and scores of arts and culture coverage. The Three Tenors and Lenny Bernstein were regularly on TV, fcs. The 'democratization' and TikTok-ization has brought about a lot of interesting developments but it's eaten up art criticism and longform. Podcasts and Substack are showing some signs of life on this score, tho only for some disciplines (history, interestingly, has exploded in the pod-sphere; not so much classical music or theatre, anywhere).
I was thinking of opera, too, when I wrote this. If we had the Three Tenors today, would they still get TV specials? And I agree that the demise of arts critics plays a role.
In the past, influential critics could be star-makers, or at least boost careers substantially by championing their favorites. But there are so few critics left with regular high-profile positions that almost none still have the clout to that, at least in the U.S. I’ve heard that James Wood of The New Yorker said, “Prizes are the new reviews,” and while I’ve never been able to track down the quote, in my experience it’s true. Winning a Pulitzer for fiction today will help you much more than an up-front review in the NYTBR.
As an unknown fiction writer, I find this post disheartening, but also lenitive. It’s like the doctor explaining that you had the stroke because of high blood pressure. It doesn’t make the stroke any better, but at least you know why it happened.
Thank you! I’ve written elsewhere about how the arts are commentaries on politics and the economy, and that seems true here, too: The dominance of the 1% that you see elsewhere in America has been trickling down to the literary markeplace. We have a 1% books, too (led by James Patterson). Like you, I wish it weren’t true but I’ve seen so much evidence that it is.
She used to be a better writer than she is now. Or else she used to have better editors.
The flip side of your argument is ageism in publishing.
I see lots of contests for writers under 30, not so many for those over 60.
Agree. I can’t recall ever having seen a contest for authors over 60.
Literary types carry on incessantly about the need for a diverse range of voices.
Except when it comes to writers “of a certain age.”
Then, nothing. That's because age is the great unmentionable, the thing that can't be said. And so it isn't.
You are so right. Age is the great unmentionable—or one of them—when it comes to diversity.
I’d love to write about that, but it’s so hard to prove. A typical response from publishers on questions like that tends to be: We’d LOVE to publish more books by older authors, but we aren’t getting them. And they aren’t getting them because they don’t get published.
I entered a contest last year for writers in underrepresented groups. I submitted as a 72-year-old writer who has felt the sting of ageism.
In her rejection letter, the editor stressed her commitment to recognizing gay writers while ignoring the main thrust of my submission as an older writer.
The great unmentionable.
perhaps they have some sort of backroom deal with the publisher?
In my experience, money doesn’t change hands, but there are a lot of implicit or unspoken hopes or expectations.
For example, Anne Tyler does few interviews and no social media. So the Times editors or others might hope that favorable coverage would pave the way for their getting an interview at some point or for Tyler’s being willing to respond to one of those surveys of authors that the Times does on big topics like, “What classic do you see as most underrated?”