The Invasion of the Realists!!

Via Matt Bell, I came across this article from Context that claims neorealism has a stranglehold on major American literary journals and that experimentation, while often given lip-service, is fundamentally discouraged.

The author, Daniel Green, does note that things might be better on the web, so I won’t call him to task for missing such places of invention like Diagram or 5_trope or many of the other online journals publishing stories with voices a good deal outside traditional realism. I’ll even give him a pass for overlooking Unsaid and Monkeybicycle et. al. because his focus is so specifically on journals like Ploughshares and Gettysburg Review and others known for having stories regularly selected in the prominent yearly anthologies.

Given Green’s narrow focus, the question isn’t whether or not he’s right (he is right that those journals prefer realism and anthologies/awards like Pushcart fill their pages with predominantly traditional stories – although not always). The real question is: does it matter? While journals such as Paris Review may help a writer land an agent, how influential and representative are they really? Most successful writers I know don’t pick their style based on what’s winning awards. They come to their style based on their own peculiarities. And that style is often hard to categorize with easy labels like realism or experimentalism.

If realist-leaning prose is popular with many journal editors, I suppose that’s because realist writers have something vital to say about our current world. And if less realist writing is bubbling up from the Internet and newer journals, maybe that’s because, in our incredibly confusing world, those styles have something vital to say too.

I know I’m being all accepting here. But, generally, I reject the assumption that literature is stagnant if it’s not being wildly inventive. A good story is a good story. Maybe I’m missing the point. But despite the fact that none of us can make a living writing short fiction, it seems to me there are more venues available for publication than ever before. That should mean more opportunity for all kinds of fiction to find its audience.