Last year I wrote a series of posts about my dissatisfaction with contemporary literary fiction: I wrote about the literary hype-machine, about literary short stories, about Garth Greenwell’s Small Rain and Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake, about the lack of moral vision in contemporary novels
I hear what you’re saying about readership, but I can’t say I’d want to give up the close, quiet, detailed “literary” approach in my own fiction. I don’t want a reader to just scroll through in seconds because they can get it at a glance. I want readers to spend time with my writing, to be alone with the text for a few minutes of their day. This is how I read literary fiction (and I do read it, even from the little magazines). It depresses me that the internet has us all so obsessed with the numbers. I’d rather have a few, or even one reader who’s really engaged than a ton who don’t get it.
The best way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large fortune. Contemporary short story writers start with a large fortune, in terms of institutional support from grad programs, English departments, publishing companies, and mainstream journals like the New Yorker. And they turn that into a small fortune of several thousand readers. I started with none of that support and also have several thousand readership. I don't know if it's fair to describe what I do as pandering
I haven't read any of your fiction, but I don't think your literary criticism is pandering at all (and most is). Criticism has largely devolved to industry cheer-leading so there's this unmet need for independent critics who are not cheerleaders. I don't think it's pandering to meet that need.
The trick is to remain independent, able to criticize, but not overly reactive and cranky. I think you're threading that needle. So many end up reactive, but if you focus on what books are really about (the pleasure of reading, the emotional experience) you can avoid that.
fwiw I read this “pandering” as referencing anything that wouldn’t feel natural to each of us as writers! I find NK’s strategy fascinating, but it wouldn’t feel natural for me to arbitrarily adopt a similar approach. I don’t think NK is pandering if she finds Substack format and its constrains to be creatively stimulating
I think it’s rather presumptuous to imply that a style inspired by, say, premodern epic poetry is somehow less responsive to careful reading and attention than one inspired by—well, I don’t really know what the modern literary short story is inspired by, honestly, other than the previous decade’s literary short story. As for readership, even Christ was protesting a bit too much when he talked of just two or three gathering together in his name…If the one style that gets published in little journals happens to be your style, then good for you! But I don’t think that’s at all how most such writers are produced.
Very much enjoyed this piece. While I read and write fiction, I do think a lot about how a decent chunk of it is an exercise in supreme narcissism, especially in non-genre writing: "I won't give you a gripping plot, compelling characters, or an exciting setting, but you're going to read it because I'm such a great writer." Or "My demographic is just so inherently interesting that our mundane problems deserve the spotlight, unlike yours."
It seems like your sentiment is that fiction ultimately has to give back to its readers somehow, which I agree with. Some interpret this to mean that fiction has to improve the morality of its intended readers, which I disagree with. But that doesn't have to be the only giving-back that fiction does.
I agree. The implicit promise of literary fiction is that the only reason to read it is that it's great, because it doesn't offer other overt pleasures. But...a lot of it really doesn't fulfill that promise, which makes it harder to trust any of it and give any of it the attention you'd need to really find out if it was great or not!
I agree with everything you say in this post, Naomi. I've mostly avoided reading literary fiction on substack. As it is, I don't read a lot of short fiction (other than favourite trusted writers - Mavis Gallant is one) and it feels like the stiff conventions of the form are particularly ill-served by the ephemeral atmosphere of the online world. Literary short fiction is (often, to my mind) boring. It's self-important and heavy on meaning but light on moral vision. So I've been really enjoying seeing where you take the short story form - you've really innovated! I like reading characters giving an account of their lives and the meaning they ascribe to its key features and where they find themselves. I like stories that explore ideas. Keep going - I'm here for it.
The story of yours I've re-read the most, and spontaneously think about most often, is the one with the suicidal student vs. myopic University bureaucracy that plays out three different ways. It's inside one of your critical essays.
Initially, I admit I probably liked it for the very self-centered internet-reader reason of, "It me! #relatable". But then...all the ways it obviously *isn't* me, it can't be--it isn't even quite the same person in each of the small variant cycles.
That draws me back in.
The story comes to my mind a lot. What changed for the character? Mostly internal! Nothing epic, no event. The external changes are just....a conversation. Just, one conversation, or none, or different internal movement: replayed, thrice, but moving and growing and reconsidering each time.
Weirdly, very therapeutic. +unsettling / provoking.
And, despite sparse detail, there's depth to grab hold of in the three characters (even the one just mentioned), than there are in most literary stories out last year.
So, hey! Another point in the "pro" column for having written all those critiques last year. 👍
Currently sleepy, so, sorry if this comment doesn't make great sense.
Thanks so much for posting what so many reader have noticed: a lot of the glowing reviews are
either fake or the people writing them have poor taste. This sorry situation has created such cynicism in people who love books that many of us now get some of the new fiction from the library. This hurts the book trade, but at the prices of the new books lately, one must make choices. I find that I read fiction from the past more and more.
Mary, I agree that many reviews aren’t trustworthy. Even the fact a book has won an award doesn’t carry much weight either me in liking the book. I read a lot of books, but can’t say I finish them all. I take each on the strength of the story, not the gloss around it.
Naomi, agree that Creation Lake is dull, weighed by too much Neanderthalic content. The story doesn’t go anywhere.
Would you ever considering publishing short stories here from other authors writing stuff that isn't right for journals but might be right for your readers?
I wonder if the “tale” structure works on the Internet because of an inherent didacticism (in the definitional, non-pejorative sense). If it’s true that our online brains are primed to respond to “takes” - or in less charged terms, systematic elaborations of moral/social conundrums (with particularity, description, setting being a sort of dead weight) - then we might imagine this type of story as uniquely suited to both pre- and post-literate societies.
It's possible! I don't know if it necessarily needs an explanation though. The tale is the natural form for the story; the literary short story was a particular form, rooted in a given time and place and social milieu.
It's like asking why people don't like opera anymore, even though they still like Disney musicals. The opera just carries a lot of cultural baggage that imposes a high barrier to entry.
I think it’s also underrated that Substack gives you a chance to be read by people who aren’t writers. I’ve never met anyone who regularly reads Lightspeed etc regularly and isn’t an SF writer themselves, or trying to be one. Even a lot of prominent SF critics admit to only reading the best-of anthologies!
So I don’t really see the point of journals at the moment. Their main purpose seems to be farming in group status in the hopes of getting a book deal that normal people might read.
I also don’t get putting your work out there without trying to have a conversation with readers. Marketing to your audience is in a weird place where some people are vastly better at it than others and it’s totally uncorrelated to writing skill.
So people don’t want to just write for themselves, but they submit good stuff to journals where it languishes, meanwhile the current generation of world-class engineers is reading Stephenson, Weir, and, pardon my French, libertarian dreck like Theft of Fire because it actually bothers to market to them.
I agree! It's impressive the number of engineering and tech people who don't read sci-fi, because literary sci-fi itself is a genre that has a high barrier to entry. Meanwhile futurists often post online about rationalism and AI and often invent parables and tales to describe it to each other, creating a written science fiction world that's completely separate from the one in lightspeed
The whole LessWrong thing is a great point. I'm not sure what the best strategy is to bridge the gap between, say, Richard Ngo and Ada Palmer. I feel like these people have so much to say to each other but they exist in parallel universes.
I appreciate the sentiment expressed here and can relate to the predicament. My Substack is smearing dogshit in terms of actual numbers but l've made more nickels and dimes and found more readers here than I ever have publishing in top literary journals. The gatekeepers and their narrow aesthetics and anemic moral vision do not serve art in the broadest most expansive sense. Neither does Substack, hardly. But for now it is a cool alternative, an excellent way to sharpen the stick as you prepare to stab down hard on the next book.. at least for me.
I love your parables or tales, for many reasons. One reason is that I enjoy the commentary around them. It’s like a story plus an interview. It makes the experience almost like being in conversation with you as a thinker and artist. Another reason is that your intellectual transparency feels honest. You’re telling me what you think and then playing with it in a narrative. And that’s another reason, the stories feel like play. Litfic can often feel so freighted and self-serious that it gets boring. I’m tired of work that demands I take it so seriously without giving me a read to. There are old fashioned reasons for reading: fun, delight, beauty. These are more interesting to me than an authorial demand for seriousness. You manage to tackle serious ideas, but without the usual pretension.
Thank you! Yes I put the afterword part in so there's something for everyone :) It's also nice to have the ability to frame my story and control how's it is read. Which is not how you're supposed to do it with literary fiction, but the whole point is to do things differently, no?
Yes I agree about being tired of having to take things seriously when they haven't proven themselves. Traditional literary stories demand that you pay close attention from the first moment, throwing you into a situation, making you decide what's happening. And when you put in the effort you often realize...there's just not much here. It makes you wary of putting in that effort in the future
This reminds me of Brett Eastin Ellis, around the time of American Psycho's release, saying that we'd never get another mass media phenomenon like the literary Brat Pack. He was a little wrong because there was DFW, Franzen and Egan but the author is no longer considered either a cultural figure or a public intellectual so you just don't get that big event like "Hey everybody, Kurt Vonnegut is trying to tell us something, let's buy his book and find out what!" anymore. This power is also waning for filmmakers, where we've gone from Coen Brothers to Russo Brothers.
I think the entire fiction writing community needs to hear this because we like to complain about how hard it is to get attention for fiction. I write About prose techniques, and I would very much like to see my fiction fet the same response that the essays do. Your experience shows its possible
It's funny because many writers online do lyric or first person essays and get a great response. They're similar to short stories in most ways, but they're recognizably not stories, and that makes the difference. The moment people think they're reading a story they're turned off
Yes I think you’re right. I thought I was starting this Substack for my fiction mainly but soon it became more about photography and then for some reason or the other do not ask me why, I started writing poetry and that seems to be quite popular. But I have posted maybe no more than two or three short stories. And none of them have really taken off with new subscribers although they’ve been popular with my old subscribers that is my pre-Substack subscriber from know me for my fiction.
Maybe it’s your attention spending because why is poetry so popular on Substack and not fiction?
I’m doing this funny experiment where I’m actually putting out my historical romance that I wrote 20 years ago – that I was lured into writing rather. I never told anyone about it and I still don’t yesterday.
I’ll be very amused to see how it does
No one, I know personally has known that I’ve done this.
All that being said, I’m actually writing this because I haven’t seen any of your fiction online except for the Novella that you posted recently. Can you send me a couple of them? I’d love to read them.
Contemporary American fiction often assumes too much shared context. It leans on a cultural shorthand that’s legible but not rich. The emotional terrain might be finely rendered, but the world-building is often thin because it’s so familiar — the brands, the relationships, the subtext — all designed to be recognized rather than discovered.
But when you read something in translation or from another era, the ambient knowledge required to fully get it forces a kind of heightened attention. It’s richer per page — linguistically, historically, philosophically. You’re working harder, so you’re more engaged. And the voice, the metaphors, the moral frameworks — they don’t echo your own in obvious ways, which makes them more stimulating.
I hear what you’re saying about readership, but I can’t say I’d want to give up the close, quiet, detailed “literary” approach in my own fiction. I don’t want a reader to just scroll through in seconds because they can get it at a glance. I want readers to spend time with my writing, to be alone with the text for a few minutes of their day. This is how I read literary fiction (and I do read it, even from the little magazines). It depresses me that the internet has us all so obsessed with the numbers. I’d rather have a few, or even one reader who’s really engaged than a ton who don’t get it.
Better to get a small audience by writing your way than a big audience by pandering.
The best way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large fortune. Contemporary short story writers start with a large fortune, in terms of institutional support from grad programs, English departments, publishing companies, and mainstream journals like the New Yorker. And they turn that into a small fortune of several thousand readers. I started with none of that support and also have several thousand readership. I don't know if it's fair to describe what I do as pandering
I haven't read any of your fiction, but I don't think your literary criticism is pandering at all (and most is). Criticism has largely devolved to industry cheer-leading so there's this unmet need for independent critics who are not cheerleaders. I don't think it's pandering to meet that need.
The trick is to remain independent, able to criticize, but not overly reactive and cranky. I think you're threading that needle. So many end up reactive, but if you focus on what books are really about (the pleasure of reading, the emotional experience) you can avoid that.
fwiw I read this “pandering” as referencing anything that wouldn’t feel natural to each of us as writers! I find NK’s strategy fascinating, but it wouldn’t feel natural for me to arbitrarily adopt a similar approach. I don’t think NK is pandering if she finds Substack format and its constrains to be creatively stimulating
I think it’s rather presumptuous to imply that a style inspired by, say, premodern epic poetry is somehow less responsive to careful reading and attention than one inspired by—well, I don’t really know what the modern literary short story is inspired by, honestly, other than the previous decade’s literary short story. As for readership, even Christ was protesting a bit too much when he talked of just two or three gathering together in his name…If the one style that gets published in little journals happens to be your style, then good for you! But I don’t think that’s at all how most such writers are produced.
Very much enjoyed this piece. While I read and write fiction, I do think a lot about how a decent chunk of it is an exercise in supreme narcissism, especially in non-genre writing: "I won't give you a gripping plot, compelling characters, or an exciting setting, but you're going to read it because I'm such a great writer." Or "My demographic is just so inherently interesting that our mundane problems deserve the spotlight, unlike yours."
It seems like your sentiment is that fiction ultimately has to give back to its readers somehow, which I agree with. Some interpret this to mean that fiction has to improve the morality of its intended readers, which I disagree with. But that doesn't have to be the only giving-back that fiction does.
I agree. The implicit promise of literary fiction is that the only reason to read it is that it's great, because it doesn't offer other overt pleasures. But...a lot of it really doesn't fulfill that promise, which makes it harder to trust any of it and give any of it the attention you'd need to really find out if it was great or not!
I agree with everything you say in this post, Naomi. I've mostly avoided reading literary fiction on substack. As it is, I don't read a lot of short fiction (other than favourite trusted writers - Mavis Gallant is one) and it feels like the stiff conventions of the form are particularly ill-served by the ephemeral atmosphere of the online world. Literary short fiction is (often, to my mind) boring. It's self-important and heavy on meaning but light on moral vision. So I've been really enjoying seeing where you take the short story form - you've really innovated! I like reading characters giving an account of their lives and the meaning they ascribe to its key features and where they find themselves. I like stories that explore ideas. Keep going - I'm here for it.
Thank you! I really appreciate that
I think you're really onto something.
The story of yours I've re-read the most, and spontaneously think about most often, is the one with the suicidal student vs. myopic University bureaucracy that plays out three different ways. It's inside one of your critical essays.
Initially, I admit I probably liked it for the very self-centered internet-reader reason of, "It me! #relatable". But then...all the ways it obviously *isn't* me, it can't be--it isn't even quite the same person in each of the small variant cycles.
That draws me back in.
The story comes to my mind a lot. What changed for the character? Mostly internal! Nothing epic, no event. The external changes are just....a conversation. Just, one conversation, or none, or different internal movement: replayed, thrice, but moving and growing and reconsidering each time.
Weirdly, very therapeutic. +unsettling / provoking.
And, despite sparse detail, there's depth to grab hold of in the three characters (even the one just mentioned), than there are in most literary stories out last year.
So, hey! Another point in the "pro" column for having written all those critiques last year. 👍
Currently sleepy, so, sorry if this comment doesn't make great sense.
Thank you!!! That was definitely one of my best ones. I really liked that one as well
Now I want to read this one
It is this one! https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/too-many-novels-are-lacking-in-moral?triedRedirect=true
"Suicidal" isn't exactly right (fault my memory earlier) but the gist of my description is accurate.
Thank you!!
Thanks so much for posting what so many reader have noticed: a lot of the glowing reviews are
either fake or the people writing them have poor taste. This sorry situation has created such cynicism in people who love books that many of us now get some of the new fiction from the library. This hurts the book trade, but at the prices of the new books lately, one must make choices. I find that I read fiction from the past more and more.
Me too. And it's not that new books aren't good, it's just that many times you really have to trust the book to invest in it, and the trust is fine
Mary, I agree that many reviews aren’t trustworthy. Even the fact a book has won an award doesn’t carry much weight either me in liking the book. I read a lot of books, but can’t say I finish them all. I take each on the strength of the story, not the gloss around it.
Naomi, agree that Creation Lake is dull, weighed by too much Neanderthalic content. The story doesn’t go anywhere.
That book definitely radicalized me
Would you ever considering publishing short stories here from other authors writing stuff that isn't right for journals but might be right for your readers?
I don't know. Maybe if I got big enough. It's something to consider, as a way of giving back to other writers. But I don't know if I'm there yet
On my Substack, only 3 of my top 40 posts are fiction. My four most popular posts are essays. My poems do very well, though.
I wonder if the “tale” structure works on the Internet because of an inherent didacticism (in the definitional, non-pejorative sense). If it’s true that our online brains are primed to respond to “takes” - or in less charged terms, systematic elaborations of moral/social conundrums (with particularity, description, setting being a sort of dead weight) - then we might imagine this type of story as uniquely suited to both pre- and post-literate societies.
It's possible! I don't know if it necessarily needs an explanation though. The tale is the natural form for the story; the literary short story was a particular form, rooted in a given time and place and social milieu.
It's like asking why people don't like opera anymore, even though they still like Disney musicals. The opera just carries a lot of cultural baggage that imposes a high barrier to entry.
I think it’s also underrated that Substack gives you a chance to be read by people who aren’t writers. I’ve never met anyone who regularly reads Lightspeed etc regularly and isn’t an SF writer themselves, or trying to be one. Even a lot of prominent SF critics admit to only reading the best-of anthologies!
So I don’t really see the point of journals at the moment. Their main purpose seems to be farming in group status in the hopes of getting a book deal that normal people might read.
I also don’t get putting your work out there without trying to have a conversation with readers. Marketing to your audience is in a weird place where some people are vastly better at it than others and it’s totally uncorrelated to writing skill.
So people don’t want to just write for themselves, but they submit good stuff to journals where it languishes, meanwhile the current generation of world-class engineers is reading Stephenson, Weir, and, pardon my French, libertarian dreck like Theft of Fire because it actually bothers to market to them.
I agree! It's impressive the number of engineering and tech people who don't read sci-fi, because literary sci-fi itself is a genre that has a high barrier to entry. Meanwhile futurists often post online about rationalism and AI and often invent parables and tales to describe it to each other, creating a written science fiction world that's completely separate from the one in lightspeed
The whole LessWrong thing is a great point. I'm not sure what the best strategy is to bridge the gap between, say, Richard Ngo and Ada Palmer. I feel like these people have so much to say to each other but they exist in parallel universes.
I appreciate the sentiment expressed here and can relate to the predicament. My Substack is smearing dogshit in terms of actual numbers but l've made more nickels and dimes and found more readers here than I ever have publishing in top literary journals. The gatekeepers and their narrow aesthetics and anemic moral vision do not serve art in the broadest most expansive sense. Neither does Substack, hardly. But for now it is a cool alternative, an excellent way to sharpen the stick as you prepare to stab down hard on the next book.. at least for me.
I love your parables or tales, for many reasons. One reason is that I enjoy the commentary around them. It’s like a story plus an interview. It makes the experience almost like being in conversation with you as a thinker and artist. Another reason is that your intellectual transparency feels honest. You’re telling me what you think and then playing with it in a narrative. And that’s another reason, the stories feel like play. Litfic can often feel so freighted and self-serious that it gets boring. I’m tired of work that demands I take it so seriously without giving me a read to. There are old fashioned reasons for reading: fun, delight, beauty. These are more interesting to me than an authorial demand for seriousness. You manage to tackle serious ideas, but without the usual pretension.
And your approach is different. I like that too.
Thank you! Yes I put the afterword part in so there's something for everyone :) It's also nice to have the ability to frame my story and control how's it is read. Which is not how you're supposed to do it with literary fiction, but the whole point is to do things differently, no?
Yes I agree about being tired of having to take things seriously when they haven't proven themselves. Traditional literary stories demand that you pay close attention from the first moment, throwing you into a situation, making you decide what's happening. And when you put in the effort you often realize...there's just not much here. It makes you wary of putting in that effort in the future
This reminds me of Brett Eastin Ellis, around the time of American Psycho's release, saying that we'd never get another mass media phenomenon like the literary Brat Pack. He was a little wrong because there was DFW, Franzen and Egan but the author is no longer considered either a cultural figure or a public intellectual so you just don't get that big event like "Hey everybody, Kurt Vonnegut is trying to tell us something, let's buy his book and find out what!" anymore. This power is also waning for filmmakers, where we've gone from Coen Brothers to Russo Brothers.
I agree. Publishers keep trying to push that button, but it just doesn't happen anymore
I really like the approach you’ve taken with your stories—both the way the stories are told and written and the way you present them
Thank you!
I think the entire fiction writing community needs to hear this because we like to complain about how hard it is to get attention for fiction. I write About prose techniques, and I would very much like to see my fiction fet the same response that the essays do. Your experience shows its possible
It's funny because many writers online do lyric or first person essays and get a great response. They're similar to short stories in most ways, but they're recognizably not stories, and that makes the difference. The moment people think they're reading a story they're turned off
Yes I think you’re right. I thought I was starting this Substack for my fiction mainly but soon it became more about photography and then for some reason or the other do not ask me why, I started writing poetry and that seems to be quite popular. But I have posted maybe no more than two or three short stories. And none of them have really taken off with new subscribers although they’ve been popular with my old subscribers that is my pre-Substack subscriber from know me for my fiction.
Maybe it’s your attention spending because why is poetry so popular on Substack and not fiction?
I’m doing this funny experiment where I’m actually putting out my historical romance that I wrote 20 years ago – that I was lured into writing rather. I never told anyone about it and I still don’t yesterday.
I’ll be very amused to see how it does
No one, I know personally has known that I’ve done this.
All that being said, I’m actually writing this because I haven’t seen any of your fiction online except for the Novella that you posted recently. Can you send me a couple of them? I’d love to read them.
Sure, here's one https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/too-many-novels-are-lacking-in-moral
Contemporary American fiction often assumes too much shared context. It leans on a cultural shorthand that’s legible but not rich. The emotional terrain might be finely rendered, but the world-building is often thin because it’s so familiar — the brands, the relationships, the subtext — all designed to be recognized rather than discovered.
But when you read something in translation or from another era, the ambient knowledge required to fully get it forces a kind of heightened attention. It’s richer per page — linguistically, historically, philosophically. You’re working harder, so you’re more engaged. And the voice, the metaphors, the moral frameworks — they don’t echo your own in obvious ways, which makes them more stimulating.