https://oyyy.substack.com/p/the-cultural-decline-of-literary
I read very little contemporary literary fiction.
From time to time that worries me because I fear I am not engaging with an important current of contemporary culture, but then I try soothe my anxiety by reminding myself that literary fiction no longer does the cultural work that it did up until the sixties and seventies of the last century .
The author of this piece argues that the decline of literary fiction can be explained in part by the internet driven destruction of magazines publishing short stories and the collapse of the academic job market in English. The key question, however, is why the numbers of those buying and reading literary fiction have fallen so drastically, which the author answers thus:
>>The principal reason self-conscious contemporary literary fiction sells no books is because it’s all insider-baseball so to speak. There’s nothing in most of these books for the general reader. The books are written for the critics. <<
Is this true? If it is, why did critical esteem and the taste of the reading public part ways in the seventies?
In addition, has literary fiction also declined beyond the English speaking world?
