11.2 Taking Apart a Metaphor: Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette on the Literary Ecosystem (AV)

Posted byekhydePosted inAarthi Vadde, Dan Sinykin, Podcast, Sarah BrouilletteTags:, , , , , , , ,

Our second episode on “The Literary Ecosystem” features scholars of contemporary literary culture Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette in conversation with host Aarthi Vadde. Like the good close readers we all are, we begin by thinking about how the metaphor of the “literary ecosystem” works. Sarah values the way it brings relationships between cultural institutions to the foreground but prefers the base-superstructure model of Marxian critique. Dan, too, moves away from “naturalizing” metaphors, although he sees the ecosystem’s potential for pithily naming the interplay of literary production, circulation, and reception.
From here the conversation ranges widely as we consider the economic and social forces shaping contemporary literature – be they the conglomeration of publishing houses (see Dan’s Big Fiction) or the impact of platform capitalism upon authorial labor (see Sarah’s Content Machines and Aarthi’s We the Platform). We acknowledge the hollowing out of institutions meant to cultivate appreciation for literature and ponder the viability of platforms like Substack for reconstituting a literary sphere. Finally, what would a discussion of the literary ecosystem be without addressing the elephant in the room: AI. We bracket the author scandals to address the supporting players under threat: the translators, the audiobook narrators, the humans who bring books to readers across languages and formats. Come for the literary sociology; stay for the inside scoop on “prompting” a dark romance novel.

Mentioned in this episode:

Marx – base-superstructure model
Bruno Latour – actor-network theory
Sophie Bishop – Influencer Creep
Andrew deWaard –  Derivative Media
Pierre Bourdieu – The Rules of Art (edited)

Listen and Read:

Audio: 11.2 Taking Apart a Metaphor: Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette on the Literary Ecosystem (AV)

Transcript: 11.2 Taking Apart a Metaphor: Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette on the Literary Ecosystem (AV)

11.3 “Thank god for editors”: Imbolo Mbue and Sarah Dimick (RB) – Novel Dialogue

In this episode, novelist Imbolo Mbue and critic Sarah Dimick dive into the literary ecosystem from an author’s perspective. Imbolo recalls her formative experiences in public libraries when she first emigrated from Cameroon to the United States, and how her encounters with American literature, especially Oprah’s Book Club picks, shaped her sense of literary possibility. Imbolo’s first novel, Behold the Dreamers, was itself an Oprah’s Book Club selection. In a conversation that moves across Imbolo’s career, from Behold the Dreamers to How Beautiful We Were to the newly released Every Story Is a Love Story, Imbolo and Sarah probe multiple dimensions of the literary ecosystem. They take up networks of literary production: how Imbolo writes both with and against readers’ expectations and desires; how her reading shapes her writing, particularly the memoirs of forgiveness (or the lack thereof) that informed Every Story Is a Love Story; the editorial pressures against which she has been glad to stand her ground, and the ones that have shaped her work for (in her assessment) the better, including a critical intervention from Random House’s Andy Ward that moved Every Story is a Love Story away from punishment and toward the urgent if unsexy problem of forgiveness. They also address what Sarah suggests is another unity across Imbolo’s fiction, in addition to a formal and thematic interest in aftermath: namely, the energy infrastructures—oil, transit, cars—that allow characters to move forward through the world even as they enact extractive harm. Mentions:Oprah's Book ClubNgũgĩ wa Thiong'oChinua AchebeToni MorrisonJonathan FranzenJunot DíazSalman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted MurderMichelle Obama's BecomingYiyun Li's Things in Nature Merely GrowRoxane Gay, "Why I Can’t Forgive Dylann Roof"Random House's Andy WardVerdi’s AidaArundhati Roy's Mother Mary Comes to Me Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
  1. 11.3 “Thank god for editors”: Imbolo Mbue and Sarah Dimick (RB)
  2. 11.2 Taking Apart a Metaphor: Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette on the Literary Ecosystem
  3. 11.1 Indie Presses and the Literary Ecosystem: Meg Reid and Will Evans
  4. 10.5 The Novel as Instrument: Sinan Antoon and Michael Allan (MAT)
  5. 10.4 Place Presents Itself To You in Fragments: Ivan Vladislavić and Jeanne-Marie Jackson (MAT)
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Image: Dietmar Rabich/ Wikimedia Commons/ “Norderney, Bücherschrank am Onnen-Visser-Platz — 2016 — 5436-42”/ CCBY-SA4.0