Do you read a lot of contemporary novels? No, I don’t either. In the current issue of The Weekly Standard, I offer a few thoughts about why not. I argue that the place of the novel in our culture today, circa 2012, is very different from the place it occupied in the 19th-century or even up through the middle of the last century.
It was before my time, but not I think much before my time, that a cultivated person would await the publication of an important new novel with an anticipation whose motivation was as much existential as diversionary. This, I believe, is mostly not the case now, and the reasons have only partly to do with the character and quality of the novels on offer. At least as important is the character and quality of our culture. . . .
It has often been observed that the novel is the bourgeois art form par excellence: that in its primary focus on domestic manners and morals, its anatomy of private vices and exercise of private virtues, it answered the spiritual needs of a specific historical epoch.
AdvertisementWith the passing or maturation of that epoch, perhaps the novel, too, has matured or even graduated to the second infancy of senility. That theory would account for a good deal of what gets published and praised today, but I don’t think it tells the real story. It does seem as if there have been important alterations in the relation between life and literature—between life and the world of culture generally—and this is as much due to changes in the character of life as to changes in the character of culture.
My point is that even if a new Melville or Twain, Faulkner or Fitzgerald were to appear in our midst, his work would fail to achieve the critical traction and existential weight of those earlier masters. We lack the requisite community of readers, and the ambient shared cultural assumptions, to provide what we might call the responsorial friction that underwrites the traction of publicly acknowledged significance. The novel in its highest forms requires a certain level of cultural definiteness and identity against which it can perform its magic. The diffusion or dispersion of culture brings with it a diffusion of manners and erosion of shared moral assumptions. Whatever we think of that process—love it as a sign of social liberation or loathe it as a token of cultural breakdown—it has robbed the novel, and the novel’s audience, of a primary resource: an authoritative tradition to react against. Affirm it; subvert it; praise it; criticize it: The chief virtue of a well-defined cultural tradition for a novelist (for any artist) is not that it be beneficent but that it be widely acknowledged and authoritative.
Read the whole thing here.
For pleasure, I read mostly novels by Rex Stout and P. G. Wodehouse. Occasionally I pick up books by other authors who published before 1950.
Recently, on the recommendation of a friend, I broke my self-imposed rule and bought a novel by Nora Roberts. I managed to read all of three pages; she can’t write; her style and language are disgusting. I burned the book in the fireplace. I also picked up a copy of The Da Vinci Code in the book store: the author is an ignoramus with a pedestrian style at best.
Your essay is wonderful. I especially like your insight into today’s culture of celebrity: “It is worth pausing to consider how much of our cultural life—even in its most august precincts—is caught up in the voracious logic of celebrity.” We used to explore our identities through the characters of the novel. After all, when you read a novel, you don’t see words on a page. Rather, a voice invades the reader’s own mind, and the reader exists as that new person speaking. The reader temporarily becomes that person and explores that new self. I think that’s how the bourgeois class developed its conscience–the middle class entrepreneurs and industrialists of 19th century English read Dickens and humanized the law and the factories.
But today’s celebrity culture–comprised of phony personalities passing quickly on the screen–has us identifying with Super Strangers who merely alienate us more from ourselves, rather than demonstrating to us how to understand ourselves. Unlike science, which merely explains how to live, novels demonstrate how to live. Explaining life cannot capture our hearts; seeing a demonstration of life lived, as in a novel, enchants not only our minds, but our hearts. This is what we are losing with what you call our “culture of celebrity.”
By the way, I got the concept of “Super Strangers” from a fine novel by a Canadian: Linden MacIntyre, “The Bishop’s Man,” Vintage Canada, 2009.
There are, I submit, three contenders for last century’s Great American Novel:
1) USA, by John Dos Passos. This novel—actually, three novels; 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—traces the interlocking lives of a number of characters from the beginning of the 20th century to the stock market crash of 1929. Dos Passos began as a vague lefty, ended his life as a hard conservative—which is one reason why he is almost unknown today; the leftwing literary establishment pretty much turned its back on him. USA was written while he was still in his anarcho-syndicalist sympathy stage, but it has enough sardonic humor to avoid anything doctrinaire, and it is a superb way of getting the feel of what pre-FDR America was like. Find a copy with the great illustrations by Reginald Marsh.
2) All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren. Reading this is like watching a film of a Tennessee Williams play directed by Preston Sturges. Orotund language, discursive asides, corrosive cynicism, symbolism, loss, and redemption. If you’ve just seen the Broderick Crawford film, forget that and read the book.
3) Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. The great picaresque race novel. It is impossible to read the “Brotherhood” chapters and not think of Bill Ayers and Barack Obama. A good knowledge of classic jazz lyrics is helpful in getting the full depth of feeling and humor in this book.
These are offered for those who would like something that has been written for adults.
The observation about a new Twain or Faulkner perhaps being steamrollered unnoticed under a flood of “great American novels” struck home for me. I noticed the other day that in only one suburb of Boston, there was a group of some 250 people who identified themselves as science fiction writers. I wondered if there were 250 people in that same area who identified themselves as science fiction readers.
Epub and those writer’s disdain for traditional publishers has created a great trailer park of genre trash in fantastic literature alone. The non-stop spamming of Amazon’s forums with synopsis of the next 7 volume fantasy series smacks of desperation.
Traditional means of publishing has in fact done a great job of introducing great work to America in this particular field of science fiction. They are almost literally no “great” writers who have gone unnoticed. The old means meant that at least some professional editors screened work through magazines and publishing houses and the whole thing wasn’t simply a popularity contest although that has certainly played its part.
The point is that people were directed what to read by what was presented and now that is being lost. It is hard to find a consensus on who really good SF writers are nowadays and in fact the most ludicrous novels find themselves on top of “Top 100″ all-time lists such as “Ender’s Game,” a silly novel compared to “Dune,” “The Mote In God’s Eye” or “The Stars My Destination” to name only a few of probably at least 100 novels that are actually better than “Ender’s Game.”
Discrimination filters are set low, perhaps because each succeeding generation thinks their contemporaries are the year zero as was recently seen with the debauched notion that Whitney Houston was some kind of ground-breaking artist when so many others much more worthy had rather conspicuously preceded her; the fact one doesn’t know about the evolution of a genre’s history and what fits where and who deserves credit is meaningless and we often confuse what we like with what is good and generational.
As novels pile up and techniques reflect a certain superficial modernity, if one reads George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy series and then Tolkein or Bradbury one might ask what’s the big deal about the latter. In fact the definition of seminal becomes lost under that steamroller that will then hide the next Twain or Faulkner as literature simply becomes a free-for-all disconnected from worth and more connected with an barber’s dreams of having their novel adapted for the big screen rather than existing on its own as art. Some genre novels in fantastic literature today virtually read like streamlined screen treatments rather than fully fleshed out novels.
When fantastic literature was an obscure, laughed at and small club people wished the mainstream public would hop on board and now we rather wish they’d hop right back off.
Wow! Gotta hand it to Fail Burton. It would be hard to forge a snottier comment about the state of contemporary science fiction while also being utterly clueless about the examples he gives. But I guess lots of folks get the vapors when the slaves wander off the publishing plantation and start striking out on their own. Who will tell us what to read now?
But I especially had to laugh when he complained about “succeeding generations” not knowing about the “evolution of the genre” while also citing Alfred Bester’s “The Stars My Destination” as an example of superior science fiction (and it is). “The Stars My Destination,” so often cited as one of the best sci-fi novels ever written, was itself a futuristic re-telling of “The Count of Monte Cristo.” And as for that “trailer park of genre trash” that Fail Burton looks down upon? Bester moved up through the ranks by writing Green Lantern comic books. But whew! At least he didn’t soil himself by self-publishing e-books.
But I nearly did a spit take onto my computer screen when I read his crack about it being so hard to find “consensus on who really good SF writers are nowadays.” Honestly? Did you stop reading in 1975, Mr. Burton? Not familiar with Dan Simmons, Iain M. Banks, Gene Wolfe, William Gibson, Peter F. Hamilton, Neal Stephenson or Vernor Vinge? I know it’s difficult to have to leave ones lofty perch, mingle with the masses, and discover new things, but Fail Burton really ought to get out more often.
It really is sad reading all these comments by people who have given up on anything written after the 1940s. I guess it’s just so dashedly hard to have to discover new things on ones own, what with all the “reading” and “researching” and “browsing” the bookstore. How tiring. Best to have officially recognized voices determine what is high-quality, and what is not.
Criminy. I would expect that commenters on a conservative website would have more respect for entrepreneurial writers breaking away from a creaky and obsolete publishing model, and making smarter, forward-looking business moves. I’ve been published the traditional way, and I’ve also self-published using the new tools. And frankly, no matter what a writer’s skill level, you’d have to be an idiot to sign a traditional publishing contract right now unless they are offering a life-changing advance. There’s never been a better time for both writers and readers. Get up, you lazy slugs, and find those good books!
I guess you saw my comment like voters saw Obama and simply put whatever was on your mind into it without understanding it.
Since I grew up loving and reading comic books including Green Lantern (Gil Kane) and do not consider them genre trash I knew right away I’d hooked a big epub guy who probably writes about dragons and “mercs” a lot; because that’s what genre trash is isn’t it – repetition; it’s not the genre that makes the trash but what level that trash resides at which is the bottom.
I in fact did not stop reading SF in ’75 and have read and enjoyed a lot by the authors you mention but hardly consider Dan Simmons, Iain M. Banks, Gene Wolfe, William Gibson, Peter F. Hamilton, Neal Stephenson or Vernor Vinge as a consensus all-American list when it comes to SF which I believe was my point. I think Hamilton is probably the best writer of the list and the best new talent of any when he came along but many people, including the Hugo and Nebula folks have mostly chosen to ignore him. And where’s Jack McDevitt, the author of one of the greatest SF mysteries ever, “Infinity Beach,” nominated for a Nebula but ignored by the fans of the Hugo who didn’t however miss Harry frickin’ Potter – how’s that for consensus?
I’m not sure what it could be about the books I mention that makes me clueless unless you are yet another who can’t tell the difference between “Dune” and that odious novel famous for being famous, “Ender’s Game.” Let me guess: “Dune” is Lawrence of Arabia re-cycled?
What is it that is “creaky and obsolete” about a publishing model that has given SF and fantasy the best of the best? What has epub done for anyone other than the fantastically over-blown egos of hacks who make the back of Startling Stories look like a wonder land of innovation? No doubt a person who publishes crap wouldn’t think much if an analogue like The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction didn’t recognize their “genius” and so resort to the level, and by level I mean sub-basement, of epub.
Face facts: people who resort to epub can’t make the grade and the results prove it. Actually there has been a better time for writers and readers and that was when an editor who rejected crap wasn’t thought of as “snotty” or a plantation owner. Have fun flogging your genius on Amazon’s forums with deleted comments and let us have a taste of your novels so we can do our own “spit take” and say “really?” Lord knows you can never have too many clever takes on dragons and “mercs.”
Sorry, not sure your comments are valid since they haven’t been vetted by a New York publishing house. That’s the standard, isn’t it? But I’ll give it a go anyway…
You really aren’t making your point when you complain about it being hard to find a consensus on who are the really good contemporary SF authors. I challenged that assertion with a list of seven authors held in almost universal high regard by SF fans. You dismissed my suggestions as being hardly your idea of an all-American list. Fine. We all have our favorites. But since you’re the type that requires outside reinforcement to judge the quality of something, those seven writers have a cumulative 17 best novel Hugo nominations between them, and 4 wins. They have a combined 12 best novel Nebula nominations between them. And that’s not even counting the short story nominations. Sounds like a decent consensus to me. Quality SF didn’t die with Heinlein.
And as for the “creaky and obsolete” aspects of the old publishing model, there’s not enough room in this forum to educate you, but I’ll try and hit some highlights from a writer’s perspective: Instead of waiting months for contract approval, and years for actual publication, a writer can have a completed e-book or POD trade paper up at most major outlets in weeks, with full control over cover and pricing. Instead of a twice-a-year royalty statement, a writer who e-pubs can check his sales at anytime of day or night. Instead of getting paid twice a year, an e-pubbed author gets paid monthly. With the traditional publishing model, your book has mere months to find an audience or it will go out of print. E-books never have to go out of print, which is why some of your favorite authors are probably furiously working as we speak to get their backlists up in e-pub form. And the creakiest and most obsolete part of the old publishing model, unlimited returns, is not a factor. That’s why many established authors are going this route in a rapidly changing industry. I’m one of them. Had 12 non-fiction books vetted and published and sold in brick-and-mortar stores. Even have a couple of shiny writing awards to show. But for my new endeavors (no dragons, honest), I went self-pub because of the overwhelmingly better business case.
To your point about only traditional publishing bringing us all the SF greats, of course they did. For a couple centuries they were the only game in town. Now they aren’t.
If I were wrong about epub and you were right, there’d today be a flood of new Lovecrafts, Vances and Hamiltons freed from the constraints of a plantation but in fact no such thing has occurred or anything like it. New tech doesn’t always mean better.
4 wins from 7 careers doesn’t reinforce your argument but mine. As for today’s erstwhile fantasy and SF writers in epub, they come from a completely different artistic space than did old school writers. Old school writers willingly lived in a literary ghetto that paid poorly and yielded no fame because they loved it and they were not respected artistically at the same time it was producing the best art in SF’s “Golden Age”. We are a long, long way from a Golden Age today.
Today’s epub writers come from a space that has more to do with trailer trash/15 min. of fame and more resembles the lines wrapped around a block that audition for American Idol than a literary movement but without even the saving grace of having Simon what’s-his-name vett out the worst of the crop in order to present us with the best which in the case of AI is a pure stereotype factory.
Fantastic literature in epub is an equivalent of over-souling wannabes without a clue how to subvert themselves and serve the genre and instead clamour for attention in a way that almost makes the art of it itself irrelevant, something to be got out of the way as soon as possible, albeit 1,100 pages long and in 7 volumes because that is what they see. Even Robert Jordan, actually married to an editor, somehow wrote a dozen novelettes expanded out to hideously overblown novels; what chance does that leave authors with no editors whatsoever?
Not so ironic then that the new epub authors consider the “obsolete” establishment irrelevant as they have little use for anything that would act as a filter to weed out the unwashed to whom the word “unique” is a nagging anchor rather than something to aspire to. What can you say about “artists” who can’t even display the creativity to make cover art for their work that doesn’t look like something glued together by a 6 yr. old. I am not arguing a business model but something that filters art, something that acts as a gatekeeper. Being able to dash off novels and have them instantly online isn’t something that benefits art – it benefits expediency.
In fact those “traditional” authors working to get up to speed are doing so because their successful work is being stolen and the unwashed are giving their work away for pennies since no one wants it and it isn’t popular enough to be put up in sharing sites to be stolen. The result is the very wage slavery and plantation you claim everyone will emerge from – so the reality is quite different.
And to further your own education, it wasn’t traditional book publishers that brought us the best of the best in fantastic literature but pulp magazines and that is the tradition I am talking about. Those magazines were retro-raided during the paperback SF boom of the early 60s. Even “Dune” was hyper-rejected, eventually taken by an obscure firm like Chilton. True genre writers like Bradbury, Heinlein and Clarke had some crossover mainstream success in the 50s.
Ironically, since you mention 1975, it wasn’t until 1976 that an SF novel, Herbert’s “Children of Dune,” became a New York Times best-seller in both hardcover and paperback, the first time ever – surprise, it’s been all downhill since then. So, it wasn’t big publishing houses that brought us good work but an informed fandom and when fantastic literature went mainstream it created a monster of uninformed fans with little sense of or concern for the history of the genre. Living up to “Dune” isn’t easy nor should it be.
A Tisket, A Tasket
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The last modern “novel” I read was an abomination called “No Country For Old Men” because it had been recommended to me by I forget who. Plus all the rave reviews. I forced myself to finish it. It didn’t leave a distaste in my mouth….it left no taste at all. I actually thought it was some kind of joke, but people aplenty were serious about it and called it the best contemporary writing.
In recent years, I’ve been reduced to reading the likes of Brad Thor and Lee Child. At least they make no pretense of what they are offering. Like a cheap thrill, you get a quick “hit” and then forget about it. I’ve just recently purchased something called “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”. We’ll see. It’s on all the best-seller lists so I don’t know if that’s a signal to junk it before I open the first page or not.
In a similar vein, the playing of musical instruments, particularly the piano, has fallen out of favor. There was a time in the not too distant past, where every kindergarten teacher could play the national anthem with her eyes closed and any well-educated young lady could whip out if not a Prelude, certainly a Nocturne. Every neighborhood, even the poorest, would ring out with the Hannon scale exercises.
Similarly with foreign languages. Knowing French was de rigueur and German was expected in the scholar. It wasn’t an “obligation” or a requirement. It was simply expected. From what I understand, Presidents Washington, Adams and so on could practically speak fluent Greek and Latin. I now know Professors of “area studies” who are mystified when I mention the “conjugation” of verbs or the niceties of the “ablative” case or the “subjunctive” mood.
All these things have one thing in common which was not mentioned or at least not emphasized in Mr. Kimball’s article, I believe. And that is that all these things are difficult to achieve. They take time – usually years to achieve proficiency – and people just don’t want to find the time. They might miss their moment of celebrity on Twitter. Pathetic.
My timing was perfect. I got to read real writers, my English teachers taught English. I add 2 and 2 and get 4 every time. Perfect.
Balderdash!
Well, there is one new novelist who is generally considered to be (and deservedly so) a great author: French writer Michel Houllebecq. Best writer I’ve discovered in 20 years. He has something new to SAY about our world.
More generally, I think the decline of the novel is a function of technology as much as anything. Specifically, the perfection of the movie as an art form, which seems to have occurred in the early 70s. Today, the best novelistic talent goes into movies. That’s where the debate about manners and mores and so forth takes place. My personal view is that the next art form will be virtual reality, which will replace movies.
Art forms do die. Classical music is dead. Poetry is dead. Sculpture is dead. Painting is dead. I would argue that rock music is, for all intents and purposes, dead. When everything that can be done is done, a form dies. Perhaps we’re there with the novel and almost there with the movie. But when virtual reality gets going, man … that will be a tidal wave of new art!
Count me as another Houellebecq fan. I especially like, “Platform” and “The Elementary Particles” which I think are the most engaging and accessible of the novels. As I was reading Roger Kimball’s essay, I thought of those two books and Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain” and Jeffrey Eugenides’ “The Marriage Plot.” Those four books are concerned about the way we live now, and I think they will stay in print for a long time. Actually, with eBooks and print on demand, that prediction seems inevitable for many works regardless of quality.
Whether they will taught as part in classes remains to be seen if academia still persists in looking at reading lists as an equal opportunity programs for B-level women and minority authors.
Also, is it just my observation or are 90% of the serious readers out there writers or aspiring writers?
When everyone is a writer or an artist seeking their 15 minutes of fame, no one is a writer nor an artist. We drown in data, not useful information. There is no
desire for greatness, just recognition and instant fame. In literature, as in other fields those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach,
teach creative writing.
Frankly, if you’re looking for the Great American Novel, you should probably start with Heinlein. The man has more novels and short stories in print today, 60 years after his main writing period and 24 years after his death, than virtually all of the notable American authors of the first half of the 20th century combined. Louis L’Amour’s probably his only notable competition for staying in print and L’Amour’s stuff mostly came later than Heinlein’s work (L’Amour flourished in the 60′s and 70′s, Heinlein in the 50′s and 60′s). In both cases virtually their entire catalogue remains in print, something that extremely few authors can say, let alone ones as prolific as Heinlein (32 Novels, 59 short stories) or L’Amour (89 novels).
Ironically the two were born a year apart and died a month apart.
Great books still get written. Whether these great books will actually be recognized as “great” will only be decided with the passage of time.
I recently read “The Night Circus” (fantasy – bestseller) by Erin Morgenstern and thought it was wonderful. Also “Blindsight” by Peter Watts (s.f. – obscure).
Publishers were the old intermediaries. The cost of publishing is now zero, so new kinds of intermediaries will be required, with new business models.
Apple’s success is that they serve up a bland “greatest hits of legacy media” buffet and make it seem hip and trendy, and let their audience escape the complexity of finding what’s really good today.
Finding the right intermediaries is truly complex these days. But if your “friends” aren’t recommending good stuff, find new “friends”.
If the novel has suffered any categorical deterioration these past few decades, it would be because of a decline of writerly respect for theme. And, as is always the case, the critical word in the preceding sentence is if.
A theme must arise from human fundamentals: the basic concepts, allegiances, and affinities that motivate us, such as freedom, justice, love of country, or moral obligation. A novel without such a unifying concept is a bit like a street fight: the reader might derive some knowledge from watching the participants’ moves and tactics, but he’ll get nothing deeper from it.
There are writers who continue to respect the importance and power of theme. I’d like to think I’m one. But the fragmentation of readers into preferred genres has segmented those groups who wait eagerly for a well-respected writer’s next offering. Thus, the overall sense of excited anticipation for “the great American novel” is no longer a uniform effect that a detached observer standing above it all would note as a cultural phenomenon.
I’d say much of Mr. Kimball’s dissatisfaction arises from the decline of “mainstream” fiction. The pretentiousness, hokum, and stylistic masturbation that afflicts that pseudo-genre is less pronounced in the other, more firmly defined genres. Perhaps he should broaden his sights.
Perhaps the feeling that there was not a requisite community of readers is why Stendhal dedicated books to “the Happy Few.”
I notice no one cares who the greatest 20th century poet may have been. Novels in the 21′st century are going to suffer the same fate that poems did in the 20′th.
There ares till good novels being written. I’m sure there was lots of dreck written in the 19th century, it is just forgotten much like our current dreck will be forgotten in 100 years. The good novels will remain with us.
Here’s a few I think will stand the test of time:
1. Vasily Grossman – Life and Fate
2. Marilynne Robinson – Gilead
3. Larry Woiwode – What I’m Going to Do, I Think also Beyond the Bedroom Wall
4. Ivan Doig – This House of Sky
5. J. L. Carr – A Month in the Country
After a career of teaching English literature, I have retired into history and primary source materials, but that’s just me. My wife, a former math teacher has been recruited into the ranks of fiction, reads many novels each year, (whereas for years she read none) and is in a reading group. I gather there are many thousands of such reading groups in the country, probably predominantly female, but an indication that a lot of reading is still happening. Used books sell well at yard sales (albeit at near give-away prices, and readers are continually turning in books they have read for ones they have not. Many of these readers, and certainly my wife, feel that those of us who spend a lot of time responding on and to political blogs are wasting our time. Go figure.
To tackle the rise and fall of the novel as a cultural indicator, one starts, supposedly, with Defoe and Richardson and ends… in today’s best-seller lists? I suspect that many of today’s popular novels read in book clubs are modern versions of Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Richardson’s Pamela. Female protagonists and female issues appear to dominate as in Oprah-land. Oprah’s rise, one could argue was triggered by the role she played in the movie version of Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Is the novel more feminized than it used to be? Tough call.
I suppose that every generation would like to have its own literature and its own music, but then who decides what endures? Educators who have to make choices about what to teach? The topic and the possibilities are way beyond one essay, or one reader’s response to an essay, so I will go back to brooding about my stack of historical books waiting to be read, and primary sources to be edited and possibly published. Maybe some day I will come back to fiction, but for now I settle for a few tv series such as Downton Abbey and Justified, sometimes via DVD from previous seasons and maybe a movie or two in the theater each month.
As for larger cultural indicators, what can you expect from any culture when as far back as the children of Israel in the desert, they were a stiff-necked and sadly human crew?
I happen to be one of those “trailer-park” writers the author so derisively identifies. I write whatever I want to, but mostly science fiction (not “science fantasy”, which is what much of what’s labeled as “science fiction” these days). I publish my books on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, for Kindle and Nook respectively. I really don’t like the way my novels appear in print, but they’re out there for anyone that wants them.
I write for ME, because I like to write. I find great pleasure in it. It also helps me push my chronic pain problem back to the background, instead of being front-and-center in my life. If I never made a penny on my books, Amazon and B&N would be disappointed, but it wouldn’t bother me. Still, I make about $50 a year from what I’ve written.
I read a LOT — anywhere from 200 to 300 books a year. I’ve read most of the classical science fiction on the market, more biographies than I care to think about, many of my wife’s mystery books, and many novels in dozens of genres. I also read a lot of non-fiction, ranging from history (my college major) to hard sciences to anything I happen to pick up. I also read fantasy – I don’t find it boring if it’s well written, I just don’t appreciate it when it’s improperly labeled.
Anyone who thinks no one reads “contemporary fiction” hasn’t looked at the sales of such authors as Diane Mott Davidson, Dorothy Gilman, Maggie Sefton, Piers Anthony, David Brin, and literally dozens and dozens of other writers.
Electronic publishing has made it possible for everyone to be a writer. Individual tastes and personal prejudices will dictate how many get read.