Wellington Leg: I’m wondering how the financial crisis will effect book publishing. Most of the articles I read talk about the technical aspects of economic upheaval, frozen credit, the LIBOR rate, the new authority of the US Treasury to create what amounts the United States Sovereign Wealth Fund. I’m not so much concerned about book sales as whether or not this watershed moment will influence what we choose to read. Crime fiction is my lens through which to view the world we make around us so that is what I’ll focus on.
Literature reflects not only a mood but a sense of belief. Boom times instill a broad trust in the greater mechanism of government and a distilled sense that with enough education, grooming, and preparation a good job will stablilize a future morphing from the anarchy of being young. Things we read are lighter as we bask in the glow of this progression from cold water flats and barfing roommates to urban suburban exurban islands of relative success. I think in prosperous times crime fiction in particular struggles to find an audience because the essence of crime fiction is not about crime at all; the best of noir follows a path that examines crime and its consequences through the labrynth of a dysfunctional world, class warfare in a bottle.
Maybe this hard jolt of broken expectations will shape what we want to read for the next decade or so. I think the demand for books will increase but not for all books, not in equal measure. There will be casualties as publishers calibrate their lists through trial and error. A new mood will emerge from the carnage of global mismanagement. I wonder what that mood will be and how far the busted flush of financial parlays will carry us toward a new sensibility.