Thanks for joining this discussion. Sometimes I feel I’m in strange position, teaching people to go into this world that is changing/dying by the minute. But at least they are a part of a world of people who love books and writing. And if they ask about things like Bookscan, I tell them, honestly, that they are in a better position than I am. At least they have not yet been tagged and tracked and so the marketers can imagine away (if they can imagine at all.) Dave

I have an MFA from Iowa (81), and since the early 80s have published 8 novels, to widely varying degrees of commercial success. Every novel I’ve published had the contract’s “next book” option exercised, including the most recent. I’ve been published by small, medium, and massive houses — from Coward,McCann (before it was absorbed into Putnam’s) to Bantam (3 books), and eventually to a fine home with a classy small press.

The classy small press published my last two novels. They had an option for the next one, and picked it up, paying the advance and starting the process.

Then, because they didn’t have enough money to compete in the big time marketing and distribution chain, they cut a deal with Random House — becoming, I suppose, number 35 or 40 of Random House’s imprints, or is it Bertelsmans imprints? One day my agent calls me to say that Random House wants my classy small price to cancel the contract — I can keep the money … how nice of them. Reason, my Book Scan numbers for the last novel were not up to par in the Random House scheme of things. The marketing and sales departments (noting that editorial loved it) advised against publishing it based on such low Book Scan numbers.

So they broke the contract, I kept the money, and we’re starting from scratch.

Point being, if a person with a successful publishing track record has this happen, is there hope for any writer that Hollywood wouldn’t drool over?

The answer is … how many of your guessed correctly? None, is the right answer.

I blog now. At least a few people read what I write there.

I saw this thread cited in the Times’s “Paper Cuts” blog last night, and felt compelled to toss in my two cents once more, though, given the length of the entry, maybe it should be “my twenty cents.”

As pleased as I am to be cited even second-hand in “Paper Cuts,” I have to amplify my remarks to David Gessner. Yes, it’s depressing to be reminded of your irrelevance as an artist, even more depressing to be confronted with the irrelevance of your art. But, really, I don’t see how writers can expect people to read our novels or short stories or literary memoirs when they’re not even reading newspapers. The latter have, for two centuries, served as America’s conduit of fundamental and essential narratives, presented in language that was at least theoretically accessible to any educated citizen. Not even fully educated: one of the first lessons I remember learning in my public grade school on the Upper West Side was how to fold the New York Times.

I’d argue that writers have been marginalized for the same reason that news reporters are being marginalized—not because our work is too recondite or dessicated but because a sizable number of Americans can no longer follow even the simplest story—say, the story of the weapons of mass destruction that justified the invasion of Iraq or the one about the wounded combat vets warehoused in a derelict, mold-infested ward of Walter Reed or the story of how hedge funds and investment banks, abetted by members of the political class, gutted the global economy the way junkies might gut a mattress they suspect has a whole lot of money stuffed inside.

Putting aside why Americans can’t follow those stories, the relevant question is how we—journalists, writers, and, yes, poets, too—can restore narrative to its old primacy. Human beings have been telling stories for a long time, and our species’ need for narrative strikes me as falling only slightly behind our needs for food, shelter, and sex. So I don’t think the need is going to go away. Nor do I think it can be indefinitely satisfied by the bellowing incitements of cable news shows and AM talk radio or by tweets and Facebook posts or America’s Top Idol. So we have to keep telling stories, telling them more eloquently and inventively and humorously. And, of course, more truthfully (with the understanding that truth isn’t the same thing as fact, and that it is as likely to be found in David Foster Wallace as Hampton Sides; you can find it in Eileen Myles, too).

As a teacher of creative writing, I often ask myself how my work will serve the young people in my classes. I tell them that if their studies teach them anything, it should be how to tell a true story from a false one. And since for the rest of their lives they are likely to be exposed to false stories, battered with them, bombarded with them, stuffed and basted with the meretricious, being able to recognize a true story will not be without value.

And you go, Dave! Fuck ‘em. And forgive ‘em, too, for most of them know not even what they’re looking for much less what they’re missing.

I wrote for film for seven years – or really I should say I wrote, ostensibly, for film because nothing ever actually got made, despite dozens of meetings, some in Bel Air over breakfast with guys eating egg white omelets, wheat-free toast and chicory coffee (I mean…why bother?) while explaining that they now want the bedroom drama to be a romantic thriller, or the romantic thriller now to target the young adult audience (who’ll pay to see a movie again and again and again with or without vampires, apparently)… Anyway, I learned something about balancing one’s convictions, voice and process with the whims of the proverbial ‘They’ who strut (naked?) back and forth wielding light swords. But, alas, I’ve had to learn it again (along with other worthy lessons) since I’ve been drawn to write fiction. It’s hard. You have to be porous, let in the world. And the point is to connect, isn’t it? With someone, anyone, out there. I think that I know now, though, that I’m in it (the fiction writing, that is) for the journey, which is a good thing since half the time I don’t know where I’m headed! And I have to figure out how to protect that part that’s just now (though I’m not exactly a spring chicken) finding its wobbly legs.

Meanwhile, you’re skiing on beaches! So great. Can’t wait to read Learning to Surf.