Work: Surviving the Arts

~By Scott Pinkmountain

March 4th was National Grammar Day and has been since 2008. I know this because I was listening to NPR, not because I’m particularly concerned with grammar. Except that of course, as writers and readers, we’re all deeply concerned with grammar (consciously or not), so every day is national grammar day within the boundaries of our own personal sovereign (despotic, financially ruinous) nations. What was interesting about the discussion I heard on the radio was that the conversation focused almost exclusively on the degradation of language as written in text messages and emails, but even more importantly, on the time limitations faced by the authors of those degraded documents.

The whole conversation rapidly devolved to a kvetch-fest about how little time we all have, which seems to be less related to grammar in specific and more related to much larger, arguably far more important things. Like novels.

I am busy in a way that someone who lives in a remote location with an unobstructed view of nothing but miles of spiky plants and scraggly rocks should not be. Every single day I wonder, with throat-tightening panic, about why I’m so busy and what I can do to be less so. I budget my hours, I wake (against my will) in the pre-pre-dawn, I race through meals and double-task whenever conceivably (and hygienically) possible, and still there’s not enough time to cross out half my to-do list.

I write this not to elicit sympathy, but to establish our common ground, because I know it is the same for all of us. We’re all too busy. Every single person I know is maxed to the max. No time to return emails (fucking forget phone calls), no time to read each other’s manuscripts, no time to exercise, no time to doodle, canoodle, fritter or malinger. If we can squeeze in an hour or two of creative work on top of our day jobs without ruining our personal relationships and our own bodies, we are way ahead of the curve. But then, what about novels?

The novel has historically occupied the glorious realm of slow. Even a short novel is hailed for being consumable in a single “sitting.” Who sits anymore? When? In what mythical patch of mote-speckled sun dapple? The kind of time required to both write and read a novel is rapidly becoming a quaint anachronism. And even if that’s not the case for every single person reading this, we’re the minority. We’re not the ones who “drive the market.” This time crunch is happening in conjunction with a financial squeeze on book publishers and sellers. There’s a bar graph printed on card stock in a Midtown office showing People’s Free Time in decline alongside Revenue From Literary Fiction in total freefall. So yeah, even if you and I are going to somehow miraculously carve out the hours to read and write novels, that doesn’t mean there will be any measurable demand for them in the future if things continue the way they’re going.

If you think I’m being alarmist about the situation, give it the Gravity’s Rainbow test. Can we imagine Gravity’s Rainbow being published today by a company as well-established, prestigious and visible as Viking was in 1973? Whatever you think of the book, it requires the kind of time, energy and attention that publishers seem less and less inclined to ask of readers. And the publishers are probably right in their assessment.

Add to that graph a sharply rising Distraction Index, and it seems nearly inconceivable that anyone could make it through 350 pages of pure pleasure reading, let alone something moderately heady, dense or in any way deviating from expectations. The sheer tonnage of text now instantly available, much of it free, delivered on devices that simultaneously push email, texts, music, videos, and human nudity may culminate in an essentially unwinnable battle for readers’ attention.

The question is, how will this affect (or how is it already affecting) creative literary forms? I focus on the novel not just because that’s my personal area of interest, but because poetry, short stories and creative nonfiction have already long been marginalized. Plus they’re shorter than novels. They could theoretically still fit into the info-snack diet model. Visual art gets viewed in a blink, music is played in the background. Art film, innovative theater and contemporary dance have been getting their asses kicked on their own for decades now.

In a recent New York Times article about the re-sale of used digital items (“Imagine a Swap-Meet for E-Books and Music,” March 7), author Scott Turow made a comment about how authors will disappear if their financial incentive is removed. Many of us are in fact hopeful that authors like Scott Turow will disappear when their financial incentive is removed, leaving the playing field slightly more open for the rest of us who are already unpaid, working instead for incentives like connection and communication with readers, participation in the ongoing dialogue of ideas, critical recognition.

What then happens when those other incentives are removed? Serious literary criticism and reviews are disappearing from prominent publications as they race for the financial bottom line by either cutting their literary sections or only giving attention to the most popular releases. Not-yet-popular writers struggle to connect with new readers as their work is lost among the vast ocean of tiny presses with no marketing budgets or built-in audiences. Participating in a dialogue of ideas loses its meaning if we’re all just broadcasting out to the world on our own tiny channels. Maybe Turow is onto something?

While we can step back and observe that throughout history, artists have always persevered to make amazing work in absolute isolation and obscurity, it’s worth at least considering that things may be different now. The (potentially false) promise of overcoming alienation offered by the Internet, might actually be too irresistible for us as a species. I buy the idea that we’re biologically hardwired to want to connect. We needed social connection in order to survive as a species. Beautiful aberrations aside, artists need that connection to survive as well.

So what might happen to the novel makers if the ability to make that connection is all but obliterated (ironically, by the very medium that promises that connection)? Do they leave the “creative sector” in search of other jobs? Given that artists are generally educated, skilled laborers, does this create a squeeze in the professions they pursue? (College level teaching? Yes.) If we’ve effectively killed a certain sector of the economy, does the economy just shrink? Or does another sector, like entertainment for example, expand?

I recently joked to some friends that the only medium I hear people getting really excited about anymore is TV so let’s all just work on making awesome TV. I’m less and less sure I meant this as a joke. TV and lists. Lists are great. Especially if they are funny. Captions too. And comics.

Would we collectively be better off if artists put their energy into the things we all seem to want and love – sexy, smart TV and Louis CK’s stand-up? What do our brains need? Is that different from what they want? When we follow our caveman instinct to stock up on fat and sugar whenever possible as though we still lived on the draught-stricken veldt, we’re fucked because we now live within scooting distance of the Circle K. Do snappy lists and whip-smart television written by broke-ass poets and given-up novelists feed the caveman part of our brain that is in constant anxious preparation for a stimulation-famine that might have happened at any moment of our many thousand year pre-industrial existence, but has a pretty slim likelihood of happening nowadays? If there’s any inherent value in long from writing, is it equivalent to that of the newly heralded Mediterranean diet; pacing our imaginations, memories and emotions for longevity? Who the hell wants to be the health police nannies of the brain?

I genuinely don’t know the answers to these questions, but I’m constantly concerned with the end game. How does this all play out? And how do we survive this transition period in the meantime?