Literary Fiction: A Disappearing Genre?

It's no secret that literary fiction has taken a backseat to genre fiction. Thrillers, crime, romance, and chick lit are riding high in the literary marketplace. There's nothing wrong with that. I grew up reading Nancy Drew, and later I devoured the novels and short stories of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. A good story is a good story.

But great literary fiction needs to be published as well. Can anyone who still values books and literature imagine a world without Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and many other great writers. In the latter part of the twentieth century, authors like Bellow, Heller, Updike, and Vonnegut told us who we were. They were surgeons who dissected popular culture and showed us where in society the malignancies could be found. Perhaps more than any other writer, Kurt Vonnegut showed the folly of humanity with dark satire in the same vein as Mark Twain. In the mean-spirited year of 2009, when shouts of socialism disrupt town hall meetings, we need writers who can diagnose the illnesses of the age.

The literary marketplace has been downsizing since the year 2000. Fewer books are being published, and when literary fiction begins to be excised from fall lists, the literary landscape becomes downright Orwellian. Thus far, small presses aren't picking up the slack because of tighter budgets. Most small presses and indies are always dancing perilously close to the edge of solvency. New York conglomerates and their subsidiary houses need to publish literary fiction, even if it sinks to the midlist. They need to make a profit, but they're still interested in ideas, aren't they?

We need literary surgeons. You heard it from Cat.