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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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What's up with fiction?

I haven't read any since high school English class, but my fiancée does. She often buys the trendy stuff that has won some awards and is (I assume) prominently displayed at Indigo. Hanya Yanagihara and and Sally Rooney are two recent examples.

After asking her about her current book over the last couple years, I have come to realize that all of them are mostly based around the following things:

  1. Sexual abuse, especially molestation

  2. Homosexuality or transsexuality

  3. Main character is black or similar, everyone is racist towards them except the good guy(s)

  4. Main character is disabled somehow

While these plot points are basically mandatory to win a book award now, a lot of "classic literature" is just old books that happened to contain these themes. For example, Truman Capote would not be a big deal had he not been a homo who wrote about homo stuff.

None of this is that interesting, but it is weird how well the title of "literature" and book awards launder what is essentially gratuitous descriptions of homosexual molestation into something tasteful and classy. Is this widely known? I get the sense that this is something most right-wing men just have no idea about.

While I agree with a lot of the below comments about how fiction is a lot bigger than that, and I mostly read classics, I will say that I basically skip any new acclaimed novel that has any of the following characteristics: protagonist is a Jew/WASP/Ivy leaguer/New Yorker; setting is an elite university/post-apocalyptic anything/anywhere in WWII but especially anything to do with the holocaust/anything poor-but-proud like a farm in Appalachia or a Black ghetto; there are any hints of themes like ennui/traumatic childhood abuse/exploring sexuality but nobody enjoys it/"the social media age." Been there, done that.

If you go by awards, start with NK Jemisin; I can’t speak for the content, but the style is an unhappy marriage of a spellchecked Eye of Argon and concatenated Bulwer-Lytton contest entries.

That said, there is plenty of good fiction out there. It’s just not pulling awards anymore.

I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for purple prose, but Jemisin didn’t even set off my detectors. The narration was far more modern than anything pulp or pulp-inspired. First person probably has something to do with this.

Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was, IMO, pretty enjoyable. The first novel’s romance felt like a weak link, giving me an impression of “teen paranormal romance” despite its self-seriousness. I guess I’m just not gay for vampires. Anyway, the overall styling was fine, I enjoyed the background of the setting, and the second and third books were much more compelling.

Eh, I liked Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, her debut novel, but found the second book a tedious slog, and the fact that she is insufferably up her own ass made her an easy pass from then on.

I haven't read any since high school English class

Well, there's your problem. You literally don't know what you're talking about.

I read a lot. I read fiction and non-fiction, but mostly fiction. I read genre fiction, I read litfic, I read classics, I read small press and indie-published stuff and I read stuff from the big publishers. In other words, I think I am qualified to say that while you may have accurately described most of the books your fiancée reads, you have not accurately described most of what's published.

Publishing is pretty woke so the wokest titles get prominently featured at your local bookstore, so sure, you'll find plenty of misery-porn with characters like you describe. (I have not read anything by Hanya Yanagihara or Sally Rooney - I am not into misery-porn.)

However, if you bother to browse past the highlighted displays and actually look at the shelves (or, you know, browse Amazon), there remain hundreds of books published every year to suit every taste. Even conservative tastes, even the tastes of conservative men, in whatever genre you like.

As for awards, the big literary awards (the Man Booker, the Pulitzer, the National Book Award) rarely resemble your bullet list. Can you tell me which award-winning books you think fit that description? (As far as I can tell, Yanagihara has been nominated but not won any of them, and Rooney has won some smaller awards for Irish writers and the Goodreads Choice Awards which is... probably not as prestigious as you think given that it's literally just a Goodreads popularity contest.)

I've definitely discovered books nominated for the goodreads choice awards where they had more votes than they had actual goodreads readers (just the kinds of signaling books you would expect). So they are being pushed externally somehow, whether that is by publishers or authors or social media, I don't know.

I also find those awards problematic because Amazon pushes them the same year they are published, but many popular fiction titles that aren't by a major author take 2-3 years to peak, by which time they no longer show up on that list.

Total ratings is a good gauge of actual popularity of books though.

Publishing is pretty woke so the wokest titles get prominently featured at your local bookstore, so sure, you'll find plenty of misery-porn with characters like you describe.

I don't think the OP was claiming that every book is like this, just that "trendy stuff that has won some awards" is like this, so you're basically agreeing while saying you aren't.

I don't think the OP was claiming that every book is like this

You're right! He did not literally claim that 100% of all published books are like that! You sure got me there!

Except my response was not based on a misunderstanding (such as the one you are pretending to suffer from in your usual manner, that someone said something they did not) that the OP had made such a claim.

My response was based on the following statements:

I have come to realize that all of them are mostly based around the following things:

"Them" here referring to "the trendy stuff my fiancée reads" but since he began with "What's up with fiction?" he is clearly attempting a general inference from the specific books his fiancée reads, which was - goodness, if you cast your eyes upwards, you can see it right there - the point I made. He thinks "trendy stuff that wins awards" all matches his description.

See also:

While these plot points are basically mandatory to win a book award now

a lot of "classic literature" is just old books that happened to contain these themes

Those are much broader claims (and wholly inaccurate) than:

just that "trendy stuff that has won some awards" is like this

If you walk that back a bit and add a qualifier like "some" you could possibly reconstruct a statement that is somewhere in the neighborhood of being accurate, but that's not the statement I was disputing.

so you're basically agreeing while saying you aren't.

No, I am disagreeing with almost everything he said. The statement you are pretending to believe he made was something like "Gosh, there is a lot of wokeness with all these misery-themed protagonists in fiction nowadays," which is... maybe kind of accurate if we just go with what appears on the display tables at Barnes & Noble for the two weeks after they're published before they go to the remainder piles. (Well, and also ignore the majority of bestsellers and award-winners which don't resemble that at all.) But what he actually said was that basically anything trendy and award-winning resembles the books his fiancée reads and has all these bullet-pointed woke CW attributes, and while his fiancée may indeed be a fan of Hanya Yanagihara and misery porn, a cursory glance at actual bestseller lists and award winners would demonstrate the inaccuracy of this generalization.

This comment received reports of being antagonistic. Amadan is a moderator and so they asked another moderator to review this comment.

The Review: There is clearly some frustration leaking through from Amadan, and sarcasm is almost always used in an antagonistic way. However Amadan is also defending themself from a slightly antagonistic comment "so you're basically agreeing while saying you aren't" (I consider it a bit antagonistic to put words in someone else's mouth. We all speak and write for ourselves on this website.)

If this was two regular users I'd approve the comment and ignore the reports. Since a moderator is involved I will be a little harsher and give these warnings:

To @amadan: please avoid using sarcasm as much as possible because it tends to hurt honest discussions.

To @Jiro: please be more careful when paraphrasing others. A bad paraphrasing can easily be an insult.

The Meta: I do not like situations where you see something like "The Police have investigated themselves, and found themselves innocent of all wrongdoing". But I'm also not gonna suggest some punishment for a minor incident I would have ignored just to prove that we are willing to handout punishments to fellow moderators.

Publishing is pretty woke so the wokest titles get prominently featured at your local bookstore, so sure, you'll find plenty of misery-porn with characters like you describe.

Also, for what it's worth - bookstores (even pretty liberal ones) will still sometimes recommend books that aren't woke. I was floored to find out that at my local (very liberal) bookstore, the book Woke Racism was displayed as one of the staff recommendations. Now, the fact that I was surprised indicates that it's uncommon, true enough - but it's not unheard of either.

"Woke Racism" is the most respectable, mainstream anti-woke book around. It's by John McWhorter, who's a long-time bobo favorite with his linguistics podcasts, and just about the whitest black dude around. He's a very good writer, knowledgeable, and even a good podcaster (he has a bi-weekly-ish series with Glen Loury, the economist) but he's definitely coming at the anti-wokism from an idiosyncratic, very NYT-reader-compatible lens.

I am confused by this post but because you have said you don't read fiction I suppose some of your assumptions about it (that Capote was famous only because he was a "homo who wrote about homo stuff," that all classic literature contains the themes you listed) can be dismissed with that in mind.

Out of curiosity do you read the books your wife fiancee is reading or just the blurbs or someone else's commentary on them? I ask this not because I have (I haven't read or heard of either of the authors you listed) but because a book's content is no way of judging its literary value, any more than the topic of a poem determines its relative poetry.

You do seem to have informed yourself enough to form opinions about fiction (in that you list what you suggest are popular themes) and I'm wondering if you're imagining this from reading book blurbs, from asking around your friends who read (or who don't read) or some other source.

Your question "Is this widely known?" takes as fact your assumptions (which I would suggest are unwarranted) about the degeneracy of book awards, and because I generally disagree with that assumption I don't think the question is answerable.

None of the recently-written fiction I've read has been based on any of that. One of them won a big award in 2015. Another involves elements of 1, 2, and 4, but they're mostly there for background/world building and involve secondary characters.

IMO, ignore awards unless you personally have good experience with them before. Find a local book store and see if they have staff recommendations (that's how I found out about Children of Time) or ask people you know.

Fiction as a fundamental medium? I think it's a fine genre and works like the foundation series by Asimov ask and answer some interesting questions. Fiction as a market? Much like food as a market, good stuff is being produced but the most common product is unhealthy and scientifically designed to maximize sales volume over any other possible value. Victim porn sells better than interesting and timeless questions that one needs to actually digest.

That stuff is very low status though. I used to read a ton, but got shamed pretty hard, so I stopped.

People who shame you for reading have only a very limited means to attack your status. There are heights of status they cannot reach.

Eh, it's easier for me to just not read books than it is to either justify my low status choices or read higher status stuff I just don't like.

Or you could read the low-status stuff and not tell anyone about it.

For the most part, screw status. Unless it's something that feeds negative habits, enjoy the stuff you enjoy. There's plenty of high status stuff that is either trash or not useful to you.

One series that I love is trashy paranormal romance, and it's hard to get lower status than that for a guy. There are legit reasons that I love the series, but "no, seriously, this is quality trashy paranormal romance!" is not a status-enhancing line when said sincerely.

Unless it's something that feeds negative habits, enjoy the stuff you enjoy. There's plenty of high status stuff that is either trash or not useful to you.

Admittedly, I do sometimes read things in secret, because it's much easier to deny reading any books at all than to explain choosing not to read the important books. However,

For the most part, screw status

This is one of those lies we tell unpopular teenagers and lonely young men. It actually really does matter how other people perceive you. It's a very large factor in a person's success in almost every endeavor in their life. Getting the things that you want out of life is probably going to require not engaging in low-status behavior such as smelling bad, hating sports, or choosing to read Tom Clancy novels instead of White Fragility.

Well, I meant it more in terms of recreational reading, not a fully-general "other people's opinions don't matter." They do. And not all low-status things are created equal--some things are low status for justifiable reasons. Even in terms of recreational reading, I'm not going so far as to say anything goes. But "the important books" is not a good limiter.

I'm not saying it is a limiter, but it is a threshold. Reading a lot of books and failing to read the important books is like spending a bunch of money and failing to leave a tip. It's not about what you spent your money on, but what you didn't.

I’m with hydro. You’re mistaking a (vocal, well-heeled) corner of the fiction market for the broader category.

Grab a random NYT bestsellers list from recent years. Here’s Dec 2021. It’s got Where the Crawdads Sing, but also John Grisham and David Baldacci. My God, Nicholas Sparks is still alive and publishing. Thrillers and romances aren’t winning those awards, but they are making a lot more money.

a lot of classic literature

There’re interesting philosophical arguments to be had here about art-as-transgression and about how structures of oppression are natural inspiration for a compelling plot. I think having that conversation would, again, kind of miss the point. I don’t believe those themes are really all so common; you’re getting a selection effect.

People collectively have rather vanilla tastes. That’s why it’s called “vanilla.”

I dunno, if we're talking about Truman Capote's actually the most famous novel, ie. the one I've actually read, In Cold Blood, is it based around those themes? Sexual abuse comes up - suggestion of possible rape of the family's daughter - but it's not based around that theme, the murders are still the most important part. The gay subtext is there, but it's at the level of subtext, and one has to know about the context of Capote's own homosexuality / relationwhip with Perry Smith to really get at that subtext. Perry is half Indian, but racism is not a major theme, either. I don't think that disability comes up.

Other Voices, Other Rooms was the book in question. Wikipedia's plot summary is pretty gay.

Taste for grimdark entertainment full of graphic rape, torture, gore and hopeless despair is sign that good times are still here.

When S really HTF, people want light and escapist fun full of singing and dancing - look at movies popular during Great Depression and WW2.

I get the sense that this is something most right-wing men just have no idea about.

Boys and men tend to read less. In addition, a lot of institutions involved in publishing and reviewing/rewarding books subscribe to socially progressive ideas, meaning that they're more receptive if a book flatters ideas like "written by a non-white person" or "writing about modern social issues".

The more interesting question is what effect dominates more: a greater population demanding more books of the type they like to read, or a small but powerful group of literary influencers/authorities trying to promote/support social progressivism? Because for all the fire and rage about "woke" novels winning awards for their politics, you'd be hard-pressed to argue that there's something wrong with people democratically wanting more books that fit their tastes.

To be clear, John Ringo and Orson Scott Card and the monster hunters international guy are all publishing lots while being pretty clearly on the right, and James Patterson #998 or similar apolitical suspense/thriller/romance novels from high volume authors are probably the most popular novels in general.

My priors are that most of these awards are intended for whatever’s in vogue among the elite and what actually sells has nothing to do with it, whether that’s books about middle aged English professors contemplating adultery for 500 pages or books about transgenders being oppressed for 500 pages. In days past it would have been the former, but nowadays it’s more fashionable to talk about intersectional crap.

This has been happening for a while...

It's difficult to find an unbiased account but look up the sad puppies hugo awards controversy.

And before bad faith accusations come in; there is nothing wrong with those themes. But anyone who abuses art to push activism doesn't help the cause, they just destroy the art form.

And before bad faith accusations come in; there is nothing wrong with those themes. But anyone who abuses art to push activism doesn't help the cause, they just destroy the art form.

What counts as an "abuse of art"? It sounds like you're trying to say "If the message slots in neatly into a side of a salient culture war, then it's abusive".

Tell whatever story you (as the author, artist, etc) want. If you're trying to artistically express yourself, great!

If you see art as something you can use to push you cause, you're abusing art to push your activism.

This line can get blurry, but there are also pretty obvious examples (i.e. Rap videos about Jesus put about by youth church groups).

When I think of examples, my go-to isn't an award-winner. It's niche genre fiction. But the "abuse of art" is just so outlandish it's hilarious. In book 3 of a terrible series, take three characters. A living weapon from a past age of a foreign continent. A dragon who has never met a person aside from her father before last week. And a failed hero from another dimension. The author takes incredible, awkward pains to make sure you, reader, cannot possibly miss that all three of them coincidentally have the same views on gender, sexuality and consent as an uninspired 2018 Tumblr post.

This is still a step-up from the author's effort to Tackle Neurodivergence and inelegant Less Wrong fanfic.

I feel like I should be able to guess this from my time on /r/rational, but there are too many stories which sort of fit. Yudkowsky didn’t actually write this one, did he?

But the "abuse of art" is just so outlandish it's hilarious

Are you saying that no one abuses art to push activism? Because that's actually what I said...

No, he's talking about a specific book he found outlandish. It's a little confusing because he didn't name the book.

Edit: how did minimise a comment I hadn't read before? Sorry about that. Anyway @iconochasm can you tell us what book it was?

Ah, I'm still figuring out how to read this site. lol

Thanks

@netstack, too. Either Diamantine or Soulbrand by Andrew Rowe, it's the same plot spread over two books. I feel a little bad naming names because the guy posts on /fantasy and /rational.

Ah shit man, I should have picked up on your reluctance, sorry for making things awkward.

No, I'm saying this one example is so awkward and ham-fisted that it verges on self-parody.

I don't understand... OP didn't mention a book. And why reply to my comment, talking about something else?

I think I'm just reading this wrong. lol

What counts as an "abuse of art"?

Propaganda, perhaps.

Sure. So what makes a piece of fiction propaganda? That's what I'm trying to understand your position on. You clearly have some definition for propaganda or abuse of art.

Precise definitions are hard and are never going to capture every edge case. But I'd suggest a central-cluster definition of "art where the effort and skill put into crafting and communication of an ideological message is obviously greater than the effort and skill put into creating the portions of the artwork which are orthogonal to, or irrelevant to, the ideological message, or where the communication of the ideological message openly takes precedence over non-ideological artistic considerations."

It's the approach and if someone is good, it can be hard to see.

Do you (the author) see the art from as an expressive art form or do you see it as a way to push you ideology.

Granted there is gray area here and we can disagree on where that line falls but there is a difference that becomes obvious on the extremes.

I’m with you, but you’re responding to a different guy than @crushedoranges

Perhaps start by sharing your own definition of propaganda so that your own position can be better understood.

I don't see why it matters, but I'd say that propaganda is any material intended to persuade people of a position without regard to its truth. It may be true, or it may not, but the primary goal is convince people of something.

Good art is propaganda. As Moldbug says:

Man invented art for one reason: to mog. The only reliable way to change a regime is to impress it into surrendering of its own free will. Persuasion is beta; only the uncertain persuade. The strong perform.

Under this framework, abuse of art would be when political pressure is applied in favour of obviously bad art. Or, inversion of hierarchy.

To go by Orwell's formula: "All art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art."

So when a person attempts to create something they simply find beautiful, or evocative, that's not art? I guess I fucking hate art then.

Beauty is not value neutral.

yes

How well do books that win awards overlap with books that people read? ‘Yeah, lit fic is woke now’ isn’t something that most people specifically think about, but it’s also a surprise to exactly no one.

On the other hand, books about transgender disabled black latinxes being victims topping the charts would legit be a surprise to me.

I don't know, actually. Amazon's best seller list seems to be a mix of woke stuff and chick stuff. Hanya sells pretty well.

deleted

Primarily, lit fic isn't published to make money. At best, it's a prestige project, funded my the James Pattersons and J. K. Rowlings. At worst, it's a backscrstching payronage network: I give that lit professor a juicy advance on a novel that won't earn out, and they pull some strings to get my good-for-nothing nephew into their Ivy League university. I give you a fancy literature award, and you come to my cocktail party to impress the members of some board I'm angling to get on, etc.

Hard to find reliable sales figures (and with ebooks manipulating sales is ever easier), but you can look at online fiction sites for most popular stories.

(yes, I trust AO3 numbers over Amazon numbers)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/search?work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Btitle%5D=&work_search%5Bcreators%5D=&work_search%5Brevised_at%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bsingle_chapter%5D=0&work_search%5Bword_count%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=en&work_search%5Bfandom_names%5D=&work_search%5Brating_ids%5D=&work_search%5Bcharacter_names%5D=&work_search%5Brelationship_names%5D=&work_search%5Bfreeform_names%5D=&work_search%5Bhits%5D=&work_search%5Bkudos_count%5D=&work_search%5Bcomments_count%5D=&work_search%5Bbookmarks_count%5D=&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=hits&work_search%5Bsort_direction%5D=desc&commit=Search

This will give you some feel what reading public actually wants (and why it is Harry Potter, only without transphobia)

Access costs a fair bit, unfortunately, but the data source you are looking for is NPD Bookscan. The top 10 or so for different genres may be visible from PW though (drawing from the Bookscan data).

Echoing what @netstack was saying, you shouldn't use AO3 as your example. AO3 was explicitly founded to allow writers to write NSFW stuff, and they have a keen interest in LGBTQ+ and all manner of kinks.

easy to filter for "general audience" rating only, this gives impressive 2512179 works as of today

I'm not sure how to replicate your filter, since you posted a link with the filtered results, meaning that if I click "edit search", I can't retain the existing filter and add on top of it. What options are you giving when searching?

How many people actually use Ao3 compared to markets? I get why you don’t trust amazon; I also wouldn’t expect a fiction archive to be remotely representative.

How many people actually use Ao3 compared to markets?

"more than 53,510 fandoms | 5,138,000 users | 10,140,000 works"

looks significant, I do not expect there to be massive bot activity inflating the results

I also wouldn’t expect a fiction archive to be remotely representative.

I would expect it to be representative of people who want to read books, not of people who want to buy them and display them, arranged by colors, in their bookcases to show how cultured persons they are.

This

https://i.imgur.com/sHzUZje.jpg

instead of this

https://i.imgur.com/OgSI9Ew.jpg

But we’re talking about specific kinds of writing. Fanfiction authorship skews female, queer, young in a way that mainstream fiction does not. I’d be willing to bet the same holds for Ao3 in general.

Hell, I read a lot on that and other sites, yet I don’t have an account.

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