Too Many....

[poliphilo]

Richard and Judy's novel-writing competition (which I didn't win) drew 46,000 entries.

46,000 novels. Think of it. You'd need a lifetime to read them all.

46,000 novels. And one has been selected for publication.

According to the Economist something like 10,000 novels are published in the UK each year.

Of that 10,000, how many will be remembered?

In a good year- one, two, three? In many years none at all.

And how many classic novels are there altogether? Count up the novels that really matter- the novels that form the Western canon, from Don Quixote to Catcher in the Rye- and I doubt if they number more than 1,000.

The novels that matter are a tiny proportion of the novels that have been published and the novels that have been published are a tiny proportion of the novels that have been written.

It makes me feel sick and giddy.

And small....

Comments

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

But then, as you pointed out, it would take a lifetime to read them all. Of the 46,000 entered and the 10,000 published yearly, how many great narratives will go unnoticed simply because there are so many?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That is a scary thought.

All the great art that has been lost....

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

Well, misplaced anyway. It could make for a lifetime of literary archaeology.

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

Tolkine's little story leaf by niggle
about the fellow who always wanted to paint
a tree but could never really do more than
a leaf perhaps stands for the most of
writing doesnt it--one can fear a lost
masterpiece here and there (and many more
things which given another read at another
time by someone else might have made their
way for a time without becoming classics,
but might have pleased a few people and I
am sure yours is at least one of these)
but what also stands out is the mountain of
partial achievment isn't it? I would not be
the one to reject Tolkien's happy ending,
that there is a tree of Niggle's imagining
which he may come to, but I am thinking that
the imagined and partly realized is already
there as image or dream and the mountain of
partial acheivment over all the centuries
somehow more happily reminds us of the
great number of dreams and images so many
people formed out of the stuff at hand...
gosh this sentence belongs in the cosmic
slush pile but perhaps somewhere in here
is a little thought worth being a comment...
+Seraphim

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I wish you had won, but I loved what you offered me to read, and I have faith in your wonderful talent.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

Those 10,000 novels matter to the people that read them. OK, *some of them* matter to the people who read them.

The processes of canon formation are so long, complex and arduous, and so intertwined with the narratives of politics and history, that I think it is kind of impossible to think about what will be canonised from today's world. It takes a lot of distance to be able to say 'Wow, we think that this is part of the canon now.' And in some ways canon formation is kind of arbitrary. So yeah, of those 10,000 novels, I think we can only really talk effectively about how important any of them are to us right now.

Plus I might cheekily suggest that first year undergraduate students of the year 2205 who study the art of today might not be given any novels to read at all. ;) Just kidding.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I guess I ought to get my act together and start sending that novel out to agents.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No effort of the imagination is entirely wasted. I think I agree.

All those unpublished and unread novels and poems and plays are the underwater foundation on which the coral atoll rests.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"To invoke posterity is to weep on your own grave."

Yes, we shouldn't bother ourselves too much about what happens next. Keats died thinking he was a failure. Emily Dickinson and Gerald Manley Hopkins had nothing (or next to nothing) published in their own lifetimes.

Oddly enough I can't think of any novelists who were only published and/or famous after death, but there must be some.

You could be right about the year 2205. By then the novel itself might be utterly obsolete.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

Well, it is said that we all have a novel inside ourselves ... but it's a bit scary when they all get let out at once. :)