Literary Trends in 2005

A Literary Article

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The biggest new change in literature since POD and e-books became a reality is pornography. All of the great names in publishing are now competing wildly to garner the flesh (smut) market, offering extensive contracts and exorbitantly lavish dollars to any writers who can supply relevant text to images of young girls willing to place themselves in sexually suggestive or explicit positions. This is happening concurrently with the U. S. Government's alleged war against pornography. The change, as far as definition applies, is that the major publishers now consider pornography as legitimate mainstream literature because they are unable to achieve what they used to accomplish.

Witness publishing titan, Judith Regan, who has pushed How To Make Love Like A Porn Star via Harper Collins onto the New York Times Bestseller List, saying "Pornography is big business." The book is an autobiography of Jenna Jameson who describes for readers the best ways to handle gang-bangs and achieve erections with her text that accompanies numerous nude photos of herself. They feel no shame in producing this trash, not do they have any compunction about the young reading it. Like all the other publishers getting on the filth bandwagon, only money matters.

They cannot deal with a reading public that no longer comprehends what is written because of the great decline in education. They are unable to find enough great writers to publish, mostly because the best have abandoned books for screenplays. For years the publishers have been saying it is impossible to market books anymore because it is too costly unless the author is either notorious or wealthy. Track records no longer count because the rules have changed. Also, they have reshaped the market such that writers are expected to be young, physically attractive and capable of marketing their own books all around the world. With pornography, however, they have found a venue in which to sink major capital, billions of dollars, in order to change the face of literature. It is not just a matter of exploiting women's bodies. It has a great deal to do with matching the influence of the modern screenplay, which tends to focus on sex and violence.

Print-on-Demand publishers continue to suffer from their inability to offer editing as a viable choice to authors. Those that do so offer only limited technical editing, not content. The reason for this is that upwards of 10,000 books are being submitted each week, most of which contain hundreds to thousands of errors. No house is capable of handling such crisis proportions of errant writing, so editing is usually eliminated. It is also the reason why brick and mortar bookstores tend not to carry POD books on their shelves.

Online booksellers have no such standards of quality. Most POD publishers have increased their prices dramatically.

E-books, once a promising venue, has never really caught on to compete with the others. They have less than a 3% market share of what is written. Like POD, they do not usually offer editing as a choice for authors. Between these two types of houses, there are literally hundreds of scams currently advertised everywhere designed to get people to spend their dollars in order to see their name in print, regardless of quality. In my opinion, all four institutions, screenplays, traditional publishing, POD and e-books, are in drastic need of a literary enema.

The novel has been virtually replaced by the screenplay. Since reading

comprehension is so poor compared to the standards of the last generation, publishers are quite willing to sacrifice narrative skill for facial expressions and scenery. Since 1975, very few novels have been written of real Pulitzer or Nobel capability. Little has been inked to compare to the great novels of yesteryear.

Short stories are as popular as ever, in zines, collections and anthologies. Authors with screenplay agents tend to steer their stories in that direction. Poetry is on the upsurge in terms of quantity, but there are few organizing forces regulating how it impacts the world. Beauty and brilliance, for the most part, have been replaced by the harsh influences of modern reality, widespread theft, murders, wars, the decline of marriage as an institution

and the dissolution of religion.

Journalism is laboring under new constraints of political correctness. Nowadays, a wrong attribution or a blatant error is no longer excused as a mistake, but more often than not results in the loss of employment. The on-line blog has become popular in replacing the private diary or memoir. Due to the interactive nature of the web, the blog assumes much more importance than the content of its material warrants.

All of these trends combine to appear as very negative effects for all writers. Many time-honored givens, such as: knowing about that which one writes; acquiring exceptional literary competency; developing methods of research; developing style; the availability of reliable literary agents; experimenting in multiple genres and fields; knowing whom to consult for correct advice, have all fallen to a primordial level, resulting in a continuation

of the great author fallout. This is not to say that many people are not writing, rather that their products are generally irrevocably poor. Little or nothing of what is currently being written will be remembered a few years from now, except perhaps the most atrocious examples.

Can these trends be reversed? Yes, of course, but it will take a major effort akin to WWII. Speaking for America, the schools must be totally dismantled, rethought and restarted, along with all the teacher's colleges. English must be made the national language and no citizenship given to anyone who is not fluent. Professional and school sports must be revised to eliminate the control of gambling. Only the exceptional athletes should be encouraged.

It is probably not possible to eradicate pornography, since it has been popular since 7000 B. C. E. The Government can, however, in conjunction with the Library of Congress and the FCC, establish what publishers should and should not print, or at least devise filters for books the way they have done for email systems and movies. As for increasing the quality of literature, that will be unlikely until the quality of the screenplay is regulated. So long as children are exposed daily to sexual deviation on a massive scale and a

minimum of a thousand murders a week on their favorite shows, change is not in the offing.

W. A. Rieser



Literary Trends in 2005 A Literary Article
		back




	The biggest new change in literature since POD and e-books became a reality is pornography. All of the great names in publishing are now competing wildly to garner the flesh (smut) market, offering extensive contracts and exorbitantly lavish dollars to any writers who can supply relevant text to images of young girls willing to place themselves in sexually suggestive or explicit positions. This is happening concurrently with the U. S. Government's alleged war against pornography. The change, as far as definition applies, is that the major publishers now consider pornography as legitimate mainstream literature because they are unable to achieve what they used to accomplish. Witness publishing titan, Judith Regan, who has pushed How To Make Love Like A Porn Star via Harper Collins onto the New York Times Bestseller List, saying "Pornography is big business." The book is an autobiography of Jenna Jameson who describes for readers the best ways to handle gang-bangs and achieve erections with her text that accompanies numerous nude photos of herself. They feel no shame in producing this trash, not do they have any compunction about the young reading it. Like all the other publishers getting on the filth bandwagon, only money matters. They cannot deal with a reading public that no longer comprehends what is written because of the great decline in education. They are unable to find enough great writers to publish, mostly because the best have abandoned books for screenplays. For years the publishers have been saying it is impossible to market books anymore because it is too costly unless the author is either notorious or wealthy. Track records no longer count because the rules have changed. Also, they have reshaped the market such that writers are expected to be young, physically attractive and capable of marketing their own books all around the world. With pornography, however, they have found a venue in which to sink major capital, billions of dollars, in order to change the face of literature. It is not just a matter of exploiting women's bodies. It has a great deal to do with matching the influence of the modern screenplay, which tends to focus on sex and violence. Print-on-Demand publishers continue to suffer from their inability to offer editing as a viable choice to authors. Those that do so offer only limited technical editing, not content. The reason for this is that upwards of 10,000 books are being submitted each week, most of which contain hundreds to thousands of errors. No house is capable of handling such crisis proportions of errant writing, so editing is usually eliminated. It is also the reason why brick and mortar bookstores tend not to carry POD books on their shelves. Online booksellers have no such standards of quality. Most POD publishers have increased their prices dramatically. E-books, once a promising venue, has never really caught on to compete with the others. They have less than a 3% market share of what is written. Like POD, they do not usually offer editing as a choice for authors. Between these two types of houses, there are literally hundreds of scams currently advertised everywhere designed to get people to spend their dollars in order to see their name in print, regardless of quality. In my opinion, all four institutions, screenplays, traditional publishing, POD and e-books, are in drastic need of a literary enema. The novel has been virtually replaced by the screenplay. Since reading comprehension is so poor compared to the standards of the last generation, publishers are quite willing to sacrifice narrative skill for facial expressions and scenery. Since 1975, very few novels have been written of real Pulitzer or Nobel capability. Little has been inked to compare to the great novels of yesteryear. Short stories are as popular as ever, in zines, collections and anthologies. Authors with screenplay agents tend to steer their stories in that direction. Poetry is on the upsurge in terms of quantity, but there are few organizing forces regulating how it impacts the world. Beauty and brilliance, for the most part, have been replaced by the harsh influences of modern reality, widespread theft, murders, wars, the decline of marriage as an institution and the dissolution of religion. Journalism is laboring under new constraints of political correctness. Nowadays, a wrong attribution or a blatant error is no longer excused as a mistake, but more often than not results in the loss of employment. The on-line blog has become popular in replacing the private diary or memoir. Due to the interactive nature of the web, the blog assumes much more importance than the content of its material warrants. All of these trends combine to appear as very negative effects for all writers. Many time-honored givens, such as: knowing about that which one writes; acquiring exceptional literary competency; developing methods of research; developing style; the availability of reliable literary agents; experimenting in multiple genres and fields; knowing whom to consult for correct advice, have all fallen to a primordial level, resulting in a continuation of the great author fallout. This is not to say that many people are not writing, rather that their products are generally irrevocably poor. Little or nothing of what is currently being written will be remembered a few years from now, except perhaps the most atrocious examples. Can these trends be reversed? Yes, of course, but it will take a major effort akin to WWII. Speaking for America, the schools must be totally dismantled, rethought and restarted, along with all the teacher's colleges. English must be made the national language and no citizenship given to anyone who is not fluent. Professional and school sports must be revised to eliminate the control of gambling. Only the exceptional athletes should be encouraged. It is probably not possible to eradicate pornography, since it has been popular since 7000 B. C. E. The Government can, however, in conjunction with the Library of Congress and the FCC, establish what publishers should and should not print, or at least devise filters for books the way they have done for email systems and movies. As for increasing the quality of literature, that will be unlikely until the quality of the screenplay is regulated. So long as children are exposed daily to sexual deviation on a massive scale and a minimum of a thousand murders a week on their favorite shows, change is not in the offing. W. A. Rieser