David Brooks would like us to think it is. Plus: Is Gary Shteyngart really the last novelist making "real" money? And is the straight white man's novel dead, too?
Hating David Brooks is one of my hobbies, so I was so pleased to see you dismantle this. (Also loved the Mailer fact-check - and BTW Joyce Carol Oates got ratioed on Twitter a few years ago for bypassing his little spousal stabbing.) I should pity Brooks for missing out on so many great books, but it’s obviously a choice. One book that has stuck with me is Luster by Raven Leilani. I don’t typically like a story where the most of the characters are unlikeable (for reference see Fleischman is in Trouble, which I hated), but Leilani is a masterful writer. I loved the book because of her prose. (And yes on Ocean Vuong. What talent!) Brooks has apparently missed James by Percival Everett and Heaven and Earth Bookstore by James McBride and (one of my longtime faves) White Teeth by Zadie Smith (to name just a few). Anyone can read his own paper’s weekly book review to get some ideas of books to read that aren’t by white guys; I guess he just can’t find the time while he churns out this stuff. Speaking of which…this BS about white male novelists. Egad. The two worst books I’ve read in the last few years (great reviews in the Times, of course) were by guys with TV credits, which I’m sure got them the Big Five contract. What’s worse is the marketing dollars put behind them. I’ll call out Noah Hawley. (I’m sure he can handle it.) In his novel about a house painter who saves a kid after the private plane he’s riding in crashes (I have forgotten the name and refuse to look it up - something with “thin air,” maybe), the 3 female characters are so cartoonishly stereotyped. It’s like a bad first draft in a college creative writing class. (Of course the painter is a big working class hero who also has artistic talent.🙄) A few years after I read it, I was sitting at a gate at Newark and there was an ad for his latest book *on the tablets that are bolted into the tables there for passenger entertainment.* How much did that cost? You point out all the time, Kathleen, that publishing is a business. But when you pay attention to whose books get promoted, it’s another reason to hate Brooks for writing this drivel. Apologies for the length of this rant but the news this week is horrendous (and it’s only Tuesday) and it’s people like Brooks who write this garbage while Rome burns and I resent helping to pay for it with my subscription, which I won’t give up mostly because of the arts and book coverage and for the good (outnumbered) opinion writers. But here’s related point - on Sunday, there was an A1 puff piece on the family that owned the camp where the kids and counselors died. There was a lot of emphasis on how they were revered, how it was an old-school kind of camp where they wore white on Sundays. Well, the owners of the camp lobbied FEMA to exempt the camp from the flood map, which saved them from having to get flood insurance and cut the cost of renovations. An article published a day later said “the camp lobbied” FEMA, but camps aren’t sentient beings. *The owners did.* Those rich white genteel folks endangered campers to save money. The Times’s choices are indefensible, and they have played a role in where we are today. Letting Brooks write this stuff, publishing a paean to these camp owners - this is all of a piece. And publishing a paper is a zero sum game - space given to these writers and topics means they choose not to give column space to better writers and ideas. (Okay, time to drag my clearly crabby butt to the gym to work out my rage. If you made it this far, thank you for indulging my rant. But the SC’s decision to let him continue dismantle the Dept. of Education has me seething today. Let’s see if Brooks has anything to say about THAT. Of course, if he does, it will be wrongheaded.)
It might not have cost as much as you think for the ad to show up. It depends on who owns them, as with advertisements in Times Square, they are part of a broader promotion (probably).
I've worked with far more male authors than female, so this whole "straight white guy can't get a book deal" thing is like: NO.
The novel is certainly not dead, and I believe it's a misinterpretation of Brooks essay to say that he believes it is. A close read of the essay shows that he's lamenting the declining influence of novels and prominent writers on the social and political conversation.
Sally Rooney and Colleen Hoover sell a lot of books, but no one is talking about how what they portray in their novels is relevant to what's going on socially or politically (yes, I've their books). As Brooks mentions in his article, what Tom Wolfe portrayed in Bonfire of the Vanities was widely debated in it's time. Brooks is asking, 'where are the socially and politically important novels of today?'
Sadly, the answer is not from the big five.
Agents, acquiring editors, and yes publicists, of big five novels are highly risk averse and generally unwilling to get behind novels that say difficult or controversial things about the social and political environment - which is a primary purpose of literary fiction.
Today, literary novels dealing the difficulties of the social and political environment are mostly published by independent presses outside of New York - presses like Coffee House and Graywolf. Unfortunately, these presses don't have the influence/platform, distribution, and marketing muscle of the big five to get their books onto the best sellers lists or picked up by social media algorithms.
What we're left with is the literary equivalent of Marvel movies dominating the book business - books with explosions, chases, and rich people in fantasy settings. I guess that's good for the book business, but perhaps not so good for the social and political conversation.
David Brooks should talk to my husband, who reads on average, a novel per every three days. Sci-fi, fantasy, literary and other genre novels, he'll wolf it down. Including novels authored by women, such as the great Octavia Butler. He much prefers novel-reading to watching Netflix or films! Most of my friends are, like me, avid readers (and writers) also working on our novels. Where is this Brooks guy getting his stats?
Loved this whole newsletter and yet my only commentary has to be this: I'm seeing Oasis on 8/31 too! They were my first concert as a young teen and I'm going with the same friend I saw them with back then. Fun times.
So tired of people like Brooks dismissing female authors (and in essence, readers.) They are a huge segment of readers and book BUYERS and this is just beyond me. Interesting that’s it’s escaped his attention that men read romance and romantasy, too! P.S. Excited for your Oasis tickets! I’m going to the 9/1 show and I cannot wait.
OMG. I know EVERY WORD of those first three albums and I’m probably going to humiliate my husband and sister (she used to steal my copy of Definitely Maybe so…maybe not her. 😂)
Evidently Mr. Brooks has not been on TikTok. The thriving reading community encompasses everything from literary fiction to fantasy. They share their reading lists and post clever and engaging reviews.
Nice essay, and you are right, women put much more energy and time into social media promotion than do men. Podcasts, video trailers, lots of peripheral products, etc. They also re-promote (retweets, restacks, shares, etc) each other more than they do male authors. Men do not, nearly as often, re-promote one another. I don't know how much difference it would make if they did. My impression is that women today read far more novels, perhaps other than sci-fi but maybe even that, than men.
When I read the Brooks article about Shteyengart and his sartorial choices and antique watch collection, I reminded myself that he paid for that lifestyle with some funny books and one not-so-funny book about his dick. I wondered where the paean to the painful peen fell in the NYT definition of literature’s demise? Down… or up?
Yes, the days when authors like John Iriving were feted and held outsize cultural sway (and I still love early John Irving) might be over, but that means the (literary) novel is dead? Hello Ann Patchett, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Tommy Orange, Elizabeth Strout...
How refreshing it was to read this—an opinion much like my own. I read both NYT articles and thought, “hmmm … Brooks lives in an alternate universe and/or is pining for a time of old.” Get with the program, buddy. Folks are reading; they just aren’t reading his narrow definition of a novel or ascribing to his notion of “literary success.”
The novel is very much alive. Literature has just become more expansive and inclusive … folks are just no longer clinging to a straight, white male literary canon like Brooks, or Mr. Shteyngart, for that matter, but rather, folks are daring to write on their terms and outside the prescribed lines of what Brooks deems worthy.
Also, absolutely no one cares as deeply about Shteyngart’s overpriced walking stick, necktie, loafers, afternoon cocktail, or watches! No shade, but … next.
I used to think this way, too, but I'm not sure. I do think it matters what people read. It doesn't have to be mind-numbingly challenging, but some heft wouldn't hurt, right?
I don't even have to look up what that novel of big-money litfic was in 2001 -- has to be Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. And even that was largely because of Oprah and I'm guessing the ensuing brouhaha by way of Franzen dissing her didn't hurt sales! Foot, meet mouth...
I can't believe that Sally Rooney's Normal People wasn't Publishers Weekly yearly top 10 the year it was published? Or is she not considered "literary"? That would be super weird if that were so.
The statistics Brooks is looking at is probably this one:
"Meanwhile, in 2022, just 37.6 percent reported reading a novel or short story, compared with 41.8 percent in 2017 and 45.2 percent in 2012. As we said at the time, the fiction-reading rate was the lowest in the history of the SPPA, a survey that goes back more than three decades."
I'd be the first to admit my numbers have been on a decline. But I still do read novels! Though I kinda have to, since it's kinda my job. ;)
I read David Brooks' essay and thought it was really silly. It's like he decided to have this thesis and then fit his thoughts around it. He mentions Mary McCarthy — The Group (from the year he cites, 1963), a big bestseller because of its then-controversial subject matter, but it's practically unreadable today (and the movie is dreadful, too). There's a reason why book groups are so popular — there are lots of contemporary novels to read and discuss by writers of all different backgrounds.
Did you see Ann Patchett's response to Brooks? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMQRIcjskKf/
Hating David Brooks is one of my hobbies, so I was so pleased to see you dismantle this. (Also loved the Mailer fact-check - and BTW Joyce Carol Oates got ratioed on Twitter a few years ago for bypassing his little spousal stabbing.) I should pity Brooks for missing out on so many great books, but it’s obviously a choice. One book that has stuck with me is Luster by Raven Leilani. I don’t typically like a story where the most of the characters are unlikeable (for reference see Fleischman is in Trouble, which I hated), but Leilani is a masterful writer. I loved the book because of her prose. (And yes on Ocean Vuong. What talent!) Brooks has apparently missed James by Percival Everett and Heaven and Earth Bookstore by James McBride and (one of my longtime faves) White Teeth by Zadie Smith (to name just a few). Anyone can read his own paper’s weekly book review to get some ideas of books to read that aren’t by white guys; I guess he just can’t find the time while he churns out this stuff. Speaking of which…this BS about white male novelists. Egad. The two worst books I’ve read in the last few years (great reviews in the Times, of course) were by guys with TV credits, which I’m sure got them the Big Five contract. What’s worse is the marketing dollars put behind them. I’ll call out Noah Hawley. (I’m sure he can handle it.) In his novel about a house painter who saves a kid after the private plane he’s riding in crashes (I have forgotten the name and refuse to look it up - something with “thin air,” maybe), the 3 female characters are so cartoonishly stereotyped. It’s like a bad first draft in a college creative writing class. (Of course the painter is a big working class hero who also has artistic talent.🙄) A few years after I read it, I was sitting at a gate at Newark and there was an ad for his latest book *on the tablets that are bolted into the tables there for passenger entertainment.* How much did that cost? You point out all the time, Kathleen, that publishing is a business. But when you pay attention to whose books get promoted, it’s another reason to hate Brooks for writing this drivel. Apologies for the length of this rant but the news this week is horrendous (and it’s only Tuesday) and it’s people like Brooks who write this garbage while Rome burns and I resent helping to pay for it with my subscription, which I won’t give up mostly because of the arts and book coverage and for the good (outnumbered) opinion writers. But here’s related point - on Sunday, there was an A1 puff piece on the family that owned the camp where the kids and counselors died. There was a lot of emphasis on how they were revered, how it was an old-school kind of camp where they wore white on Sundays. Well, the owners of the camp lobbied FEMA to exempt the camp from the flood map, which saved them from having to get flood insurance and cut the cost of renovations. An article published a day later said “the camp lobbied” FEMA, but camps aren’t sentient beings. *The owners did.* Those rich white genteel folks endangered campers to save money. The Times’s choices are indefensible, and they have played a role in where we are today. Letting Brooks write this stuff, publishing a paean to these camp owners - this is all of a piece. And publishing a paper is a zero sum game - space given to these writers and topics means they choose not to give column space to better writers and ideas. (Okay, time to drag my clearly crabby butt to the gym to work out my rage. If you made it this far, thank you for indulging my rant. But the SC’s decision to let him continue dismantle the Dept. of Education has me seething today. Let’s see if Brooks has anything to say about THAT. Of course, if he does, it will be wrongheaded.)
It might not have cost as much as you think for the ad to show up. It depends on who owns them, as with advertisements in Times Square, they are part of a broader promotion (probably).
I've worked with far more male authors than female, so this whole "straight white guy can't get a book deal" thing is like: NO.
Interesting!
The novel is certainly not dead, and I believe it's a misinterpretation of Brooks essay to say that he believes it is. A close read of the essay shows that he's lamenting the declining influence of novels and prominent writers on the social and political conversation.
Sally Rooney and Colleen Hoover sell a lot of books, but no one is talking about how what they portray in their novels is relevant to what's going on socially or politically (yes, I've their books). As Brooks mentions in his article, what Tom Wolfe portrayed in Bonfire of the Vanities was widely debated in it's time. Brooks is asking, 'where are the socially and politically important novels of today?'
Sadly, the answer is not from the big five.
Agents, acquiring editors, and yes publicists, of big five novels are highly risk averse and generally unwilling to get behind novels that say difficult or controversial things about the social and political environment - which is a primary purpose of literary fiction.
Today, literary novels dealing the difficulties of the social and political environment are mostly published by independent presses outside of New York - presses like Coffee House and Graywolf. Unfortunately, these presses don't have the influence/platform, distribution, and marketing muscle of the big five to get their books onto the best sellers lists or picked up by social media algorithms.
What we're left with is the literary equivalent of Marvel movies dominating the book business - books with explosions, chases, and rich people in fantasy settings. I guess that's good for the book business, but perhaps not so good for the social and political conversation.
David Brooks should talk to my husband, who reads on average, a novel per every three days. Sci-fi, fantasy, literary and other genre novels, he'll wolf it down. Including novels authored by women, such as the great Octavia Butler. He much prefers novel-reading to watching Netflix or films! Most of my friends are, like me, avid readers (and writers) also working on our novels. Where is this Brooks guy getting his stats?
Loved this whole newsletter and yet my only commentary has to be this: I'm seeing Oasis on 8/31 too! They were my first concert as a young teen and I'm going with the same friend I saw them with back then. Fun times.
That's so fun! I'm really excited.
“ Also, it is not a crime to read Colleen Hoover, romantasy, or genre fiction. People are reading. That’s what matters.” - exactly!!!
So tired of people like Brooks dismissing female authors (and in essence, readers.) They are a huge segment of readers and book BUYERS and this is just beyond me. Interesting that’s it’s escaped his attention that men read romance and romantasy, too! P.S. Excited for your Oasis tickets! I’m going to the 9/1 show and I cannot wait.
I CANNOT WAIT FOR OASIS.
OMG. I know EVERY WORD of those first three albums and I’m probably going to humiliate my husband and sister (she used to steal my copy of Definitely Maybe so…maybe not her. 😂)
Evidently Mr. Brooks has not been on TikTok. The thriving reading community encompasses everything from literary fiction to fantasy. They share their reading lists and post clever and engaging reviews.
Not to speak of some of the incredible stuff happening in multiple fiction genres—the voices, the use of language, ideas….
Nice essay, and you are right, women put much more energy and time into social media promotion than do men. Podcasts, video trailers, lots of peripheral products, etc. They also re-promote (retweets, restacks, shares, etc) each other more than they do male authors. Men do not, nearly as often, re-promote one another. I don't know how much difference it would make if they did. My impression is that women today read far more novels, perhaps other than sci-fi but maybe even that, than men.
All true.
When I read the Brooks article about Shteyengart and his sartorial choices and antique watch collection, I reminded myself that he paid for that lifestyle with some funny books and one not-so-funny book about his dick. I wondered where the paean to the painful peen fell in the NYT definition of literature’s demise? Down… or up?
Yes, the days when authors like John Iriving were feted and held outsize cultural sway (and I still love early John Irving) might be over, but that means the (literary) novel is dead? Hello Ann Patchett, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Tommy Orange, Elizabeth Strout...
How refreshing it was to read this—an opinion much like my own. I read both NYT articles and thought, “hmmm … Brooks lives in an alternate universe and/or is pining for a time of old.” Get with the program, buddy. Folks are reading; they just aren’t reading his narrow definition of a novel or ascribing to his notion of “literary success.”
The novel is very much alive. Literature has just become more expansive and inclusive … folks are just no longer clinging to a straight, white male literary canon like Brooks, or Mr. Shteyngart, for that matter, but rather, folks are daring to write on their terms and outside the prescribed lines of what Brooks deems worthy.
Also, absolutely no one cares as deeply about Shteyngart’s overpriced walking stick, necktie, loafers, afternoon cocktail, or watches! No shade, but … next.
THANK YOU for articulating what I was SCREAMING in my head while reading these pieces.
David Brooks never fails to fail.
Brooks is the proverbial broken clock, but instead of being right twice a day, it’s more like twice a year.
"People are reading. That’s what matters."
I used to think this way, too, but I'm not sure. I do think it matters what people read. It doesn't have to be mind-numbingly challenging, but some heft wouldn't hurt, right?
I don't even have to look up what that novel of big-money litfic was in 2001 -- has to be Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. And even that was largely because of Oprah and I'm guessing the ensuing brouhaha by way of Franzen dissing her didn't hurt sales! Foot, meet mouth...
I can't believe that Sally Rooney's Normal People wasn't Publishers Weekly yearly top 10 the year it was published? Or is she not considered "literary"? That would be super weird if that were so.
The statistics Brooks is looking at is probably this one:
https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-pleasure-all-signs-show-slump
"Meanwhile, in 2022, just 37.6 percent reported reading a novel or short story, compared with 41.8 percent in 2017 and 45.2 percent in 2012. As we said at the time, the fiction-reading rate was the lowest in the history of the SPPA, a survey that goes back more than three decades."
I'd be the first to admit my numbers have been on a decline. But I still do read novels! Though I kinda have to, since it's kinda my job. ;)
I think people should read whatever they want.
I read David Brooks' essay and thought it was really silly. It's like he decided to have this thesis and then fit his thoughts around it. He mentions Mary McCarthy — The Group (from the year he cites, 1963), a big bestseller because of its then-controversial subject matter, but it's practically unreadable today (and the movie is dreadful, too). There's a reason why book groups are so popular — there are lots of contemporary novels to read and discuss by writers of all different backgrounds.