I think for me I’m just going to accept that I won’t be reading any modern fiction, likely ever. It isn’t like there isn’t more than I could read in multiple lifetimes already out there that is pre, say, 2010. But the other side is that fiction has never been worse, because the commercial impetus to become a published fiction writer has never been lower (literally since before the 1600s, given functional literacy levels and the amount of fiction reading the average person does). The Steinbecks of the world aren’t writing novels in 2025.
> reading any modern fiction, likely ever. It isn’t like there isn’t more than I could read in multiple lifetimes already out there
Well said. It’s also true for movies these days which are predictable and algorithm tailored minus a couple of directors.
Both your perspectives are supremely short-sighted. There are enough good films coming out to literally watch 1 or 2 every week. Of course if you limit yourself to superhero slop or Hollywood slop then yes, you're gonna have that impression.
It's entertainment; what's lost if someone decides to only consume stuff from before a cutoff point? As long as they're finding stuff they enjoy, they've already "won."
There's a level of involvement that most people have when it comes to entertainment. The more difficult that finding something you'll enjoy gets, the less interested people will be. Discovery is not a fun part of consuming media for most, I'd imagine
what's lost when culture becomes homogenized and commoditized? quite a lot actually
Unfortunately it is an "Eff you, I got mine" thing. If someone's already resigned to sticking with things 20+ years old, they're not affected by media being bad. It's on culture to get people to buy in, not on individuals to contribute to voting on what new media is good or bad.
To be honest, I think the main reason why films get predictable as we get older is that we've seen enough of them and it's just hard to be surprised.
I catch myself thinking that even about films / books / games that try real hard to be original. You can't surprise me with a nonlinear time loop. Oh, the protagonist is also a villain but doesn't know it? Pfft, been there, done that.
Sad but true, and I'm in the same boat. I'm sure you and I will miss a few gems of contemporary fiction, but wading through so much garbage and over hyped mediocrity just isn't worth it. The dreck of the past is mostly filtered out for us already, simply by the passage of time and the survival of quality.
I mean this is why things like the LRB and the Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer, and Hugo awards exist. Denying yourself the likes of Hilary Mantel or Zadie Smith or Colson Whitehead on the basis of chronology is the antithesis of what being a lover of literature is about.
Not that I like Goodreads — I don’t even have an account — but I always check the rating. Anything above 4 out of 5 with thousands of reviews is usually worth reading.
It’s very easy to filter out the weeds: read the classics and any book that breaks through the noise with consistently high reviews. We don’t need to waste time on low-quality literature or AI-generated slop.
If you're giving up on art and cultural movement, even if things are bad, it still reflects on you.
I don't think that it's necessarily true, but the big problem is that discoverability is almost impossible, and that the investment to know how good a book might be is much higher than other forms of media. It's also why you might get more out of books, you have to make some efforts to ingest them, but this means it's a problem if you have no idea how good it might be.
> if you have no idea how good it might be.
for games, steam offers a trial of the game which can be refunded in full if you do it within two hours. It's a great feature for consumer protection imho.
I'd like to try a chapter or two of a book first, and if it doesn't grab, get a full refund. This is how you can prevent sinking time (and money, presumably) into a bad book.
I don't know where the divide comes from (cultural, generational, social class, or something else) but the idea of thinking "I want to get my money back" for something like a book, music, or a video game is strange to me.
Sometimes I make bad purchases, and that's just too bad.
The more that media becomes a product, the harder it is to feel like you're conning an artist by getting a refund on a purchase.
It's gotten incredibly easy to put media out there, and it's great that people are able to tell the stories they want through the medium they want. At the risk of sounding like I'm just bootlicking, traditional outlets used to be able to filter out some of the more low-effort content and it was easier to expect that you were at least getting mediocre stuff. At this point, a lot of really low effort and low quality junk is in the ecosystem and it's harder to just buy something that looks cool.
I agree on the state of things but I still think that's just my problem.
Sometimes I read reviews for a restaurant, go, and come out thinking the other reviewers and I have a totally different take on things. It happens.
Same goes for movies, books, games, etc. I "do my research" and sometimes I'm wrong.
And sure, I absolutely sometimes feel "scammed" but to me that's just something that happens.
I'm not too bothered by the idea of demos (eg 2 free chapters), but I am a bit bothered by the idea of "I want a refund if I'm not satisfied enough".
I guess everyone would have a different threshold on what "satisfied enough" is.
In all reality, I've eaten larger purchases as losses than some dumb $20 steam game or ebook or whatever. I just don't think that people are terribly unreasonable if they feel burnt badly enough to press for a refund. It's never been easier to do the old "if I can get x number of people to give me $5 each..." bit
Yeah. I guess it's just a question of where you draw the line between a scam and a customer just making a bad choice.
please, don't forget about your local library! you can probably read the entire book (digitally, too! or listen to it!) at no cost to yourself.
This is often (far from always) available on kindle. A one or two chapter sample for free.
This is literally the whole value proposition of brick and mortar book stores...
compounded by the fact that reviews, awards, and any institution which formerly served to find good and worthy books or movies seem to have become completely detached from genuine popular interest and quality.
So I see someone has taken Naomi Kanakia’s essay, “Contemporary Literary Novels Are Haunted by the Absence of Money”, to heart.
In fact, far from the contention that "Steinbecks" of the world no longer exist - they are prolific, and commercially successful, in a wide variety of Genres. Indeed, given Saul Bellow only published his last novel in the last 25 years, it seems somewhat callous to bifurcate the great from the good so chronologically.
Percival Everett immediately comes to mind - with Pulitzer Prize-winning James, a nuanced and insightful retelling of Huckleberry Finn, or 'I Am Not Sydney Poitier' which works almost as an homage to Steinbeck.
'The Nickel Boys' by Colson Whitehead I'd argue surpasses most of Steinbeck's more popular canon (Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row etc...). A magnificent novel in the very best of the american tradition.
'A Visit from the Goon Squad' by Jennifer Egan is probably tied for the best 21st Century Pulitzer winner with Jayne Anne Phillips' 'Night Watch' -both Steinbeck-esque in their charting of social mores in the face of an ever-changing culture rendered as the symbol and signifier drenched shadows of capitalism against the cave wall of society.
Looking at the Booker Prize since Paul Beatty, I'd also highlight 'Shuggie Bain' - Douglas Stuart's opus about growing up with an alcoholic mother in the working class Glasgow of the 1980s, or 'Prophet Song' - the requiem for a mother of four trying to preserve her family as a far-right totalitarian regime takes control of Ireland and suspends the Irish constitution.
Let’s not resort to such exaggeration. There’s a fuck of a lot more humans on earth today than in the 1600, something like 16x globally with some regions growing more than others. Literacy was also generally low in 1600 as in sub 20%.
Further, up until recently the first few rungs of surviving as an author looked a lot like abject poverty today.
Are the Steinbecks/Austen's/Joyces of the world even being created?
yes
cool