Joyce Carol Oates: Young White Men have been banned from publishing debut novels

And yet they do get published, somehow.

One of those young unpublishable writers could have been the next Gore Vidal!

Fuck off Joyce.

I use the public library for my reading material,and for the last decade most of the new releases are pure shit. Ive found myself looking for older books I read in my youth. Ive never thought much about sex or race of an author,if its a good book its a good book. I dont doubt her assertion in the least. As an aside I cant stand Joyce Carol Oates !

Race is more important.

I can see that. I think white male screenwriters will also have a harder time. Gay white males, especially.

We've lost all those accounts of losing virginity to an older woman and the angst of the hero writing his first novel amid pressure to go to law school.

She may be overstating a little, but she’s not wrong. Any honest person in publishing would tell you the same.

The replies are telling her she's all wrong. Young white men haven't been banned from anything but they should be (!), they tell her sternly.

I’ve seen film and screenwriting contests requiring race and gender. Nothing for sexual orientation though.

There have been some publishing houses who have specifically called for unagented manuscripts from POC. There are agents who state they give specific preference to POC (and sometimes LGBTQIA+). It is indeed a thing.

I think they go by names, if your name sounds white or seems white, forget it.

Too bad they weren’t thinking this way when David Baldacci and Nicholas Evans came along.

Who the fuck reads novels today anyway? WOMEN.

A friend who is a literary agent told me that the government has secret super fast cars they haven’t let the public have because if you drive fast enough in a car you can get a heart attack or see the future, Joyce this is very urgent

Stop buying books. Stop going to the theater (stage and screen), and stop watching TV shows. Eventually, someone will get the message.

Agreed^.

Joyce knows she's a winner,

Joyce couldn't be thinner,

Now Joyce goes to the bathroom

And Joyce vomits up dinner.

Just How White Is the Book Industry?

Want your book published? It helps to be white.

Note: Among a sample of more than 7,000 books published by Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Doubleday, HarperCollins and Macmillan.·Source: “Redlining Culture” by Richard Jean So

This broad imbalance is likely linked to the people who work in publishing. The heads of the “big five” publishing houses (soon, perhaps, to become the “big four”) are white. So are 85 percent of the people who acquire and edit books, according to a 2019 survey.

“There’s a correlation between the number of people of color who work in publishing and the number of books that are published by authors of color,” said Tracy Sherrod, the editorial director of Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins that is focused on Black literature.

That correlation is visible in our data, exemplified by Toni Morrison’s career as an editor at Random House from 1967 to 1983. Random House’s first female Black editor, Ms. Morrison championed writers such as Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas and Gayl Jones. During her tenure, 3.3 percent of the 806 books published by Random House in our data were written by Black authors.

The number of Black authors dropped sharply at Random House after Ms. Morrison left. Of the 512 books published by Random House between 1984 and 1990 in our data, just two were written by Black authors: Ms. Morrison’s “Beloved” (through Knopf, which was owned by Random House) and “Sarah Phillips,” by Andrea Lee.

Could be it just wasn’t very good too, which I guarantee was the case^.

Facts don't matter.

Just how I feel about it matters.

AND ITS NOT FAIR.

Paging Conner Habib!

I appreciate her honesty, especially with the “it doesn’t matter how good they are”. We are going to have years and years of crap.

It's funny, I often see progressives cheering developments such as these (or demographic change, or teaching kids based on CRT values, or transing little kids, take your pick) to the rooftops on twitter etc, but then somebody calls it out as perhaps a less than good thing, and all those same people make a full-on volte face to screech about THIS ISN'T HAPPENEING HOW DARE YOU.

Same people. It's fascinating to watch.

White gay males, (progressives mostly), will have to seek publishing outside the US, most likely.

Just say you're gay and change all the pronouns.

R19, that’s old data. What’s happening now will affect the books we get two, four, ten years from now. It’s an overcorrection that will absolutely shutout and turnoff aspiring white writers.

She's right, sadly.

Oh please. Book publishers just care about what will sell, not the color of the author’s skin

In this day and age with advanced technology, the internet, digital downloads, a very good writer can Self Publish, promote it, and everything else. Other new nd established authors do it, why do writers feel a publisher owes them any publishing courtesy? Self publish, Self promote, be Self made. :-)

Gay will be the kiss of death in this monkeypox era.

2020= old.

And Im finished with this.

This. Is. Real. Anyone who mocks it is actually a true racist. Because it is so clearly about race. Not actual business numbers.

R3 fuck off and die

R32, it’s not that 2020 is old. It’s that the data in the NYT piece, which is from 2020, is analyzing data from before the shift that Oates is noting. The big realignment happened during COVID and the BLM protests when publishing people, who are among the wokest of the woke, decided to make corrections. Oates, like many others who are afraid to speak out, see it as unfair overcorrection.

LOL. Literary-novel publishing is a smaller business than Home Depot — not Home Depot nationwide, but the one Home Depot in your town. One big-box store. One. It’s that tiny … and that irrelevant.

try telling woke people racial bias works both ways. they will discuss you white fragility.

This YouTuber doesn’t buy it.

I think she's right. I'm a gay white male of a certain age and couldn't get my last novel (my seventh) published in the US. Fortunately the situation is different in Europe and I'm still published (and sell books) there.

Go fuck yourself, r33, you bossy woke cunt.

Guess what. You're not entitled to get your book published because you're white.

Actually, it won’t be published BECAUSE you’re white.

JCO really caping for men? Sad....

True talent will rise. You don't have to look THAT hard to find novels being published by young white men.

Depends on what you write about. True, I am a woman, but I am a very privileged white woman and I got a hit my first time.

[quote]True talent will rise.

No, it won’t. Who are these people who think they know better than a person in the industry??

What a crock.

The Woke movement has instantly become nothing but a series of boxes to be checked off to avoid looking "racist" and is the very worst type of "affirmative action".

WHY ARE NON-BINARY AUTHORX OF COLOR IGNORED???

Yep, we're there!

This will have a ripple effect. When these non-white male books get bought for movie and tv, then white men will be shut out of acting roles.

DL's Tucker Carlson contingent is out in force on this thread.

Perhaps you could go read one of the approximately 10 million novels written by young white men in the last couple centuries?

Publishing is a world of gatekeepers. You can just get on a stage and prove your talent or walk into a modeling agency and get signed based on your looks, but with books, you need an agent (or usually their assistant) to read your work, then am acquiring editor to do the same, then a whole team at the publishing house to get behind your work before you ever get a chance to show your talent. If all of those gatekeepers are short circuiting the process, then the cream doesn’t really get the chance to rise. The chance is what is being denied.

Did this happen?

__ No

__ Fuck No

So telling of the times that Oates hastily adds that the shut-out brilliant young white male writers may also be "critical of their own privilege." As if that is required to make someone a good writer. When is the consumer backlash of this obsession with identity going to make itself felt in the industry? The new book offerings I will without exception pass up on the display table are the endless soapy wah-wahs about somebody's identity-based experience as an oppressed person , or somebody's identity-based sackcloth-and-ashes about reckoning with their shameful "privilege." It's so dreary and boring. Don't the writers themselves get sick of being in that box?

Be talented, be lucky, work your ass off and you'll be published.

Welcome to the free enterprise system, available to ALL.

It's the same with book prizes. Look at the short lists of literary awards and you'll see so many BIPOC writers.

Now it is certainly the case that racism had resulted in white writers getting all the prizes. It is also racism to go predominantly give prizes to writers because they are not white.

It is possible that BIPOC authors reate new markets for they speak to a different lived experience not published before. But it is unlikely that BIPOC writers are better.

Everybody comes into the world naked, we're all in the same boat, and everybody dies. NOBODY corners the market on suffering.

[quote]we're all in the same boat

No.

Is Joy Car a lady lover?

[quote]a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good

All you have to do is read Publishers Weekly or Lit Hub to see this is false; plenty of debut novels by young white male writers.

No one but no one knows what another person has to endure, sacrifice and suffer to make their way through life, no matter how purportedly "privileged" they are.

A 41-year-old white male writer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year.

JCO loves cats and men: IN THAT ORDER.

Joyce is known for championing white males. It's her thing.

Huh. Really?

Because the University course I took in Playwriting & Scriptwriting several years ago was predominantly comprised of straight white boys as students (who all wanted to be Tarantino😪). On a campus with a higher ratio of women than men, and full of Asian students there for the STEM.

Maybe 2016-present changed something. Or maybe Joyce is a Pick-Me.

[quote]The big realignment happened during COVID and the BLM protests when publishing people, who are among the wokest of the woke, decided to make corrections.

"Don't believe actual stats from a year and a half ago, believe me and my tales of The Big Realignment instead" is quite a take!

It’s not so much a race or gender thing, but a class thing.

If you’re a young and white male, and you have the right social background and attended the right schools, it’s just a minor issue. The arts in general have been taken over by rich kids. This includes people who work at publishers and museums.

It’s happening in Europe as well, where most of the new novelists are young, upper-middle-class and attractive females. If you’re a man with zero connections, and you’re from the wrong social class, forget it.

I wouldn’t advise any working-class person to major in the Humanities or attend art school.

Take your skills outside the US. Their loss!!

I hate to break it to people, but non-whites are simply not good when it comes to actual storytelling. Singing, yes, non-songwriting, no.

R65, it’s race as it’s cultural. It’s not whitey’s fault.

"and may be critical of their own privilege" is neither an indication of talent nor an appropriate criterion for getting published.

This uses to be Stalinism: imposing sociopolotical restrictions on art

Artists in general are being coerced to convey “socially desirable” messages. Someone like Céline would never get published nowadays, at least not in the US.

The industry is bending over backwards to help young bipoc who really haven’t had it that bad. We’re not talking about pre-civil rights era bipoc. These kids have grown up on the internet, starbucks, etc. we are not a third world country.

Joyce will write an 800-page novel with a protagonist who is a brilliant writer unable to get published because of his male whiteness.

The ones chastising her are progressive white gay males, the ones who wouldn’t get published because they are white, male, (and gay).

Thank you r27 for calling that out. Saved me the time.

Why not consider it a preference ? As a poster upthread pointed out, white males are still winning awards. There is a reason that is happening. The publishing industry might trip over itself trying to be (and it pains me to use this term) the most woke.

This is nothing new. Publishing houses have always been dominated by those who can not do, but teach. Thankfully, their shelf life continues to shrink and is actually responsible for the pandering.

Good riddance

Even if it's true it's an overcorrection from years of straight white men getting all the laurels. Jonathan Franzen is the most overrated writer since David Foster Wallace. And the problem isn't just white men being banned, it's not enough people being banned across the board. Too many writers, not enough readers.

I say this as someone who has tried reading the new, acclaimed debut novels of women and most of them are self-indulgent solipsistic shit. I guess from years of being ignored women authors are so infatuated with their feelings and reactions and the clever ripostes to white men they wished they'd said they forgot to put in a story. Or a point.

"Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication".

Fran Leibowitz

Whether she’s talking about ten years ago, three years ago, or today, JCO is full of shit. If it’s tougher for young white men to get published, it’s because publishing is encouraging submissions from a broader swath of people but still publishing (roughly) the same number of books each year.

Ahh. So, untalented men can now claim racism. Cool.

Jonathan Franzen is overrated. David Foster Wallace is not. Well . . . on reflection I guess you can be great and still qualify as overrated if your fans are way out of proportion. And DFW's fanbois are pathetic.

R77 They have been doing that for decades. It's either that or "Age Discrimination," or perhaps reverse-sexism.

Affirmative Action barely exists in 2022, but if you listen to the Fox News crowd over 50, it basically rules the universe and is responsible for every misfortune they've ever experienced.

Joyce Carol!

JOYCE CAROL! You specifically said you’d help me reline the cabinet shelves today, Joyce Carol! Find the new packet of sponges and bring them upstairs, Joyce Carol - hustle!

I don't understand R80's post but I enjoy it immensely.

Like 80% of published authors are white. Why is this bitch lying? She must be getting dumber as she gets older. You have to have a low IQ to spew white victimhood talking points from Faux News

𝐑𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐢𝐫 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬

LONDON (TND) — Multiple British defense sources reportedly told Australia's Sky News that the head of the Royal Air Force's (RAF) recruitment office resigned over concerns an effective pause on hiring white males, in favor of people of color and women, will undermine the RAF's readiness.

Defense sources allegedly insisted the RAF placed a pause on hiring white males in pursuit of diversity and inclusion goals.

"You look at the head of the RAF and he's prepared to break the operational requirement of the air force just to meet diversity [targets]," one of the sources reportedly told Sky News. "I think he needs to be hauled up by the Ministry of Defence and told: This is the defense agenda, get on it."

However, an RAF spokesperson disputed the allegations.

"There is no pause in Royal Air Force recruitment and no new policy with regards to meeting in-year recruitment requirements," the spokesperson said, according to Sky News. "Royal Air Force commanders will not shy away from the challenges we face building a service that attracts and recruits talent from every part of the UK workforce. As with the Royal Navy and British Army, we are doing everything we can to encourage recruiting from under-represented groups and ensure we have a diverse workforce. The Royal Air Force has a well-earned reputation for operational excellence that is founded on the quality of all our people. We will always seek to recruit the best talent available to us."

Neither the RAF spokesperson, nor a spokesperson from Britain's Ministry of Defence, addressed the resignation of the head of RAF recruitment, Sky News noted. But, according to the outlet, the RAF does not typically comment on individual personnel matters.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒈𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑹𝑨𝑭 𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒔 “𝒖𝒏𝒂𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒅” 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒔 𝒄𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒎 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒏 𝒘𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒏𝒊𝒄 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒎𝒆𝒏.

𝑨𝒊𝒓 𝑽𝒊𝒄𝒆-𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒂 𝑩𝒚𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒅 “𝒔𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒅” 𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒊𝒈𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑹𝑨𝑭 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒔.

Her comments followed the resignation of an unnamed female group captain, who ran the recruitment department at RAF Cranwell, apparently over concerns the fighting strength of the RAF could be undermined by “impossible” targets, Sky News reported.

Take a look at Penguin Random House’s Instagram account.

She’s right.

Yes, she’s right. But, who cares. Let people have their NOPE.

Imagine reading “literature” “written” in 2022.

Absolutely nothing on that link appealed to me R84. I read anything and everything (except romances!) but rare is the black author I could really get in to. Push is one of the last ones I can recall really enjoying. Ive often wondered why that is but I think its just the fact we are two vastly different cultures. Im open to other cultures,I love foreign authors,but american black authors and I just dont seem to gel.Im not racist either,before you start slinging dirt.

[quote] I'm not racist either,before you start slinging dirt.

That 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 you are racist. We convict you either way.

Sheeet! Used to be a public library user, but I haven’t been able a good novel written by a man or a woman in about ten years….

Not able to find a good novel….

This is probably generically true. Meaning; I can believe the publishing industry is banking on woke. They're probably all-in on an ms. from a trans POC from the South than like upper middle-class white guy who hates his parents. I get it, and I think after a few years of that model having diminished returns, they may "open the field" a bit more.

I'm a television writer. It's 100 percent true in my neck of the writing world. And it's not even up for debate. (My agent has (jokingly) asked me to go trans. Since gay doesn't matter anymore.)

Personally, I get it. White guys have had the run of the TV writing landscape since it began. A correction was surely needed. However, I feel what's happening is a gross over correction.

One thing I don't think is needed is a strange torrent of mean spiritedness. Like the POC now gaining power almost seem to be rubbing it in our faces. Which is weird since almost every white writer I know is super liberal and totally okay with the shift. Even as we lose jobs we once might have had a shot at getting.

Again we get it. But we're also not the enemy.

“totally ok with the shift!”

What a fucking bootlicker. You need to find your balls. Check your replacement’s purse.

Is R50 joking? Acting and modeling are meritocracies?

R92 That's the ironic part. It's the progressive young white men who are being marginalized.

I'm all for other voices being heard and different people having a seat at the proverbial table. But it's going to get a little contrived if all that means is a fixation on race, gender dysmorphia, and sexual orientation and not well-written fleshed out stories.

Because they may not want to hear from young white men, but they definitely will use them to play the spoiler (the anti-trans student, the homophobic dad who might be gay himself, the racist cop, etc.)

Of the National Book Award fiction winners from the past 10 years, only two have been white men (Adam Johnson and Phil Klay).

They've done better with the Pulitzers: five of the last 10 novel winners have been white men.

But I wouldn't say they're dominating the industry or that minorities are struggling to get published - that's clearly not the case. My own impression is that fiction by women (of all races) gets far more attention now than fiction by men.

Well, perhaps she should ask herself why someone like Jared Kushner gets a book deal.

There are, what, two television writers who are trans? Why would you be jokingly asked to "go trans" to get a job writing for television?

[quote]the POC now gaining power almost seem to be rubbing it in our faces

Jesus fucking christ, man.

Since this nations inception, white men have spent 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a yr shutting nonwhites out of opportunities. In 2022 they still spend 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a yr shutting nonwhites out. While simultaneously wining about how they are being replaced.

R87 you are indeed a racist. However, you're either too delusional or too stupid to know it.

[quote] Since this nations inception

Oh, dear. You’re too dumb to live.

[quote] Well, perhaps she should ask herself why someone like Jared Kushner gets a book deal.

He’s a Jew. Jews are not white.

[quote] Personally, I get it. White guys have had the run of the TV writing landscape since it began. A correction was surely needed.

They tried this with Sanford and Son. They got through only a couple of weeks before Redd Foxx fired them all and screamed at producers to get Jews in here! Sorry, but certain cultures are just better at certain things and in certain industries. Non-whites have historically not been good writing for television and film. The majority of the public is white. If you cannot write white characters, you have a problem. Groups that stay insulated have trouble writing for cultures outside of their own, thus the reason blacks have never been good at writing for the screen. It’s not some big conspiracy. It’s been tried and failed. It works for black shows and film but that’s not the material that brings in the big $$$. It’s a niche audience. Hollywood is not a charity, it’s a business, and woke executives are being reminded of this the hard way.

"Because the University course I took in Playwriting & Scriptwriting several years ago was predominantly comprised of straight white boys as students...:

Were there any Martian students? There weren't? Heavens! Why, do you think? Maybe...just maybe because....THEY DIDN'T COME?

"White guys have had the run of the TV writing landscape since it began. A correction was surely needed."

I don't know a write of any color in any field who didn't work his ass off to make any advances in a very narrow range of opportunity. No one knows what sacrifices they had to make or rejections they faced or deprivations they had to endure to make their way in the world---just like everyone else. To say they shut out someone else by just trying to survive is delusional and ignorant.

[quote] One thing I don't think is needed is a strange torrent of mean spiritedness. Like the POC now gaining power almost seem to be rubbing it in our faces. Which is weird since almost every white writer I know is super liberal and totally okay with the shift. Even as we lose jobs we once might have had a shot at getting. Again we get it. But we're also not the enemy.

You, like most white liberals, are very, very naive. The black community historically has always hated whites, gays and Jews. You can go to bat for them all you want but it’s never going to change.

First of all, r63, it’s “composed of.”

Carry on.

What equivalency are you attempting to draw with your uselessly broad statement, r97?

You’re correct, R105. Throw Arabs (Catholic and Muslim) in that mix.

R108 is caping for Coptic television writerz!

Whites are still the majority in this country

Non-trans people are 99% of this country.

But yes, let's make the majoritiy of writers and actors and award winners "BIPOC" and Trans.

[quote]But yes, let's make the majoritiy of writers and actors and award winners "BIPOC" and Trans.

Funny how you didn't mention gay people. There are more non-whites than there are gay people, so WTF is your issue with POC? I see tons of commercials and TV/Films with gays. Why do you feel that's fine, yet POC offends you, you fucking hypocrite?

BTW, you're mad because within the last five fucking minutes, you've seen more diversity in awards shows? Just ignore the very long history of so many people being ignored and so many being portrayed as in shit roles as servants or criminals.

Gays have a long history of being the villain and/or foil. Plus, there aren’t that many gay writers in Hollywood.

"This is probably generically true."

No, it isn't

"But yes, let's make the majoritiy of writers and actors and award winners "BIPOC" and Trans."

Like .05 of actors are trans, you fucking liar. Love how right-wingers have to resort to making shit up to try to make a point

[quote]This is probably generically true.

No, it isn't

[quote]But yes, let's make the majoritiy of writers and actors and award winners "BIPOC" and Trans.

Like .05 of actors are trans, you fucking liar. Love how right-wingers have to resort to making shit up to try to make a point

Love the lying asshole who claimed to be a tv writer and said it's hard for whites to make it. What a fucking liar

Hardly any writers and actors are trans. Sounds like the Milo brigade is resorting to making stuff to try to make a point. So sad.

White people in Hollywood have it easier

"I read anything and everything (except romances!) but rare is the black author I could really get in to."

I think black writers suck but all whites are victims!

"No one but no one knows what another person has to endure, sacrifice and suffer to make their way through life, no matter how purportedly "privileged" they are."

Some people have it a lot easier, and you know it. You wouldn't trade places with a black person and no straight man would trade places with a gay man or trans person

Who the fuck can’t quote properly??

I esp., love when the idiotic RW posts with zero basis in actual fact and simply based on their "fee-fees," immediately get "likes" from trash who really couldn't give a shit that reality doesn't mesh with their sense of entitlement.

How do you quote on this effeminate website?

You people all need medication. OMFG

Joyce Carol Oates is a flat out liar. You know the stereotype of the so called blue haired social justice warrior? The type who spends all day whining about how some stupid 20 year old sitcom should be cancelled or whatever. Oates is the equally obnoxious and stupid polar opposite of that type. She essentially believes that any social mores or changes in society that occured after 1963 are silly and pointless. She is an annoying and repulsive asshole. It's reached the point where the reflexively anti woke are just as irksome as their enemies.

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN THUGGIN.

R111 spends a lot of time looking out his blinds.

R126 nailed it

[quote]Just 5% of fiction published since 1950 was written by people of color

I believe Joyce Carol Oates was referring to now, not the 1950s. The New York Times can get back to me when we learn the percentage of fiction published since 2010 by people of color.

Hear hear r30!

[quote[people of color.

Just call them coloreds.

R65- The FAUX-hemians took over by the late 1990’s.

"You wouldn't trade places with a black person and no straight man would trade places with a gay man or trans person"

You don't have the first idea of what you're talking about. Absolutely nothing. Looking back, after all the crap and setbacks and humiliations and disappointments and rejections and stone walls I've experienced my entire writing life (and I'm a senior gay white male), I wouldn't trade places with me.

[quote]You wouldn't trade places with a black person and no straight man would trade places with a gay man or trans person

You don't have the first idea of what you're talking about. Absolutely nothing. Looking back, after all the crap and setbacks and humiliations and disappointments and rejections and stone walls I've experienced my entire writing life (and I'm a senior gay white male), I wouldn't trade places with me.

She's got the wrong end of the stick. Another way to frame it is, the reading public wants something different, and publishers provide.

It's easier to criticize publishers than to say, "Oh shit, culture shifted and current taste doesn't match my own."

Someone reminded us in another thread: BRAVO used to show operas. Taste changes! No point in lamenting that brands capitalize on the changes.

Currently, our taste goes an inch deep, mile wide. Everything but just the tip. That's lamentable to me, but I don't get to dictate other people's taste.

There are more independent presses than ever. There are 3,000 poetry (poetry!) titles published annually among the established presses (small all the way up to the big ones). It's half men, half women. Every niche has its press and audience. You have a better shot now than ever before at getting published.

The problem in publishing is one of integrity: Celebrities and politicians do not write their own books, not at all, but publishing doesn't seem to mind, and they call it ghost writing. THAT undervalued and debased writing. These copywriting side hustles are often to write for corporate dickweeds who cannot write a fucking PowerPoint slide themselves. They're mostly men, so it's mostly men who buy their way to authorship. We could have preserved writing, and if you aint' got it, fuck off; but it's hard to turn down $ to write a thought leadership blog post for a few hundred bucks, never mind what they pay to write books for them.

Who wants to go back to when the NY Times sneered and would not review a book if it was a paperback original instead of hardback first? This was the case as recently as 1994.

Oates is Oatesing. Remember when she posted on Twitter a photo of her grody foot? She knows how to provoke. She ain't stupid, she's just an asshole.

"Won't someone think of the white males??!?!?!?"

I love the “progressive” white gay males like R137. You’re the ones most affected. HAHA!

R9 That's called The Law of Impossible Merit- not only is the thing you're describing not happening, the people it's not happening to deserve it!

R65 This is what killed theater and poetry in the U.S.

All people like her prove is that they equate equality with oppression if you're white..

If we don’t get any more Douglas Coupland novels like Shampoo Planet then we’ll be lucky.

…endless moaning about why French chicks are evil because they won’t fuck a rich slacker like him …(sorry, the “antagonist”)

R142. You do know Coupland is gay? I’m not a huge fan, but he’s hardly writing about himself.

What’s the black literacy rate?

She is a vile and nasty writer who has written things I won't even discuss. Sick woman, needs a therapist.

MARY!

The last I heard of Oates tweeting she was expressing puzzlement that anyone would refer to Mailer as a bad husband. Because, after all, he eventually settled down for good with his lovely third wife. That anyone would give Adele more than a passing thought was quite silly! Hate to say it but a lot of elitist/ highbrow intellectual types tend to think like her. That certain types of people are simply to be discarded as if their pain doesn't matter.

R143 Couldn’t bear to read another “why can’t I get my own way” book of his after 1992 and now the seething misogyny and unconvincing straight sex makes sense.

Still a prick tho’!

I am just relieved that all the crappy white writers have a new excuse for failure.

“When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

R150 That's a Thomas Sowell quote referring to recipients of affirmative action.

[quote] Young White Men have been banned from publishing debut novels

GOOD. Add “straight” to that sentence and we’re golden.

See R6, R152.

Does anyone else ever wonder if this targeting of straight men ends up hitting young gay men the hardest?

Looking for more POC authors means adding a few more people to already small numbers. The white authors who might "lose" will be few in number and probably forgettable. Most new novelists write coming of age stores and how many of us need to read about sad boys who went to Bennington. Way too much gay fiction is like this, too.

[quote]Looking for more POC authors means adding a few more people to already small numbers. The white authors who might "lose" will be few in number and probably forgettable.

And not the POC?

Sorry, “POC”.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the level of craziness in US. And then you will be surprised when DeSantis will became the next president.

Maybe, white men should publish Samizdat, the clandestine self published and distributed literature, like in Stalinist Russia.

POC coming of age stories are much more likely to be novel and interesting then sad white boy who goes to Bennington.

I'm a middle-aged white male novelist. But I have had recent success getting my ms. read by young female publishing interns using my female Nigerian "nom de plume" Chiagozie Akinyeme.

This is where the queers come from.

The level of anti-white racism here is astounding, and it’s all coming from white gay males, because this site is 99% white gay male.

Yeah, who would want to read Shakespeare, Dante, Proust, Kafka, Tolstoy, Chekov, Joyce, R159.

R162 They don't see themselves as being affected by this because they have the armor of gay identity.

They couldn’t be more mistaken.

In fact, people, with all due respect, 99% of relevant literature in the history of literature has been written by white males.

The solution

I thought that this craziness with reverse racism is getting out of fashion, but seems I was wrong.

Is there anybody normal in US, among the batshit self chauvinist white liberals with guilt and right wing crusaders? I ask seriously, I really want to know.

R158/R162 I agree.

White, male authors getting published for the first time drops from 90% of the industry to 85% of the industry and the whining begins. It's funny how a fair distribution of anything that used to be completely overrun with white males is seen as discriminatory. What next? Fewer than 90% white male CEOs? Fewer than 90% of Senators?

Off the top of your heads, what percentage of the US population is white males? Think about how much you wee and hear from white males every day from positions of power and influence. So, what number did you come up with?

Was it 30%? Because that's the number. White males deserve to be less represented EVERYWHERE.

Are you going to ban Asian students from technology and science studies R170, too? Blacks from music and sports? Gays from fashion and design? Women from childcare? Slavs from tennis?

R171 = whiny white male who can't even come up with relevant analogies to express his pain

No one will be banned from anything they qualify for, R171, you dip. It's just that white males are no longer being prioritized to an absolutely absurd degree and they can't fucking stand it. White males are so fucking dense that they can't even understand that their little 30% shouldn't get 90% of everything. It's like kids whining about their being a Mother's day and a Father's day but no Kid's day because just like every day being kids' day, every fucking day in the entire history of the world has been White Male Day. Well, your days are done. Welcome to egalitarianism, you're gonna suck at it.

"Qualify"? Determining merit has never been simple, esp. in a field like publishing where the tastes of the gatekeeper are pretty subjective. It's doubtful that the next Shakespeare is gonna suffer if white males make up a few percentage points less of the new novels. "Anti-white racism" is just an incendiary term for covering up the generations of nepotism for bad writers from liberal arts backgrounds who are well networked.

R172 You are too stupid to understand the analogy. Egalitarianism is not forcefully pushing less talented ones.

[quote]White, male authors getting published for the first time drops from 90% of the industry to 85% of the industry

Are these stats from the article?

Tweet rather.

Publishing is fundamentally different today than it was 20 years ago.

Most major publishers have abdicated their role in gatekeeping what gets published in most situations. Agents now fill the role of both gatekeeping and editing that was once done by publishers, except in rare situations like high profile autobiographies. Agent relationships with publishers determines what gets marketed to publishers and ultimately published.

Finally, where self-publishing used to be the domain of vanity presses, it's a viable avenue now. Books like Andy Weir's The Martian started out as self-published, but caught the attention of publishers when it sold a few thousand copies. This has happened numerous times with other authors, such as Hugh Howley, so it's possible to land a book deal even without getting an agent first.

R177 It seems like it's increasingly going to become a necessity. I foresee agents rendering themselves obsolete by pushing work no one wants to read.

[quote] Yeah, who would want to read Dante,

So, Dante is cancelled together with Shia LaBeouf and Armie Hammer.

[quote][R172]You are too stupid to understand the analogy. Egalitarianism is not forcefully pushing less talented ones.

I can't believe how fucking dense you are. Why don't you consider for one second that just because they aren't white males doesn't mean they are the "less talented ones". The entire point is that less talented white males have been forcefully pushed to the front of everything for-fucking-ever. Now that that's changing, white males can't stand it and are whining about it. They were never more talented, they were just lucky to have been born white with a dick. Pretty slim qualifications, I'd say, but it let them have the entire world handed to them for centuries. Now, they have to actually compete on a quickly leveling playing field and they are fucking pissed at their loss of undeserved privilege.

[quote]Young White Men have been banned from publishing debut novels.

I don’t see a problem, Joyce

R181 You are the dense one and not even aware of it. How do you call it competition when the editors refuse to read your work because of your race and sex.

Btw. no matter the positive discrimination the only more talented author that emerged lately was Franzen and the world has not seen POC or female Shakespeare, Kafka or Dostoevsky yet.

A good (but not only, of course) way to tell if a book or play is good is to see if has or will be made into a movie. Not a short or 'indie' movie that few people will see but a movie that caused a bidding war between studios and streaming services. Then you know, at least, it might be something special. Past example: Tennessee Williams: Many. Any highly lauded playwright today: None!

R174, it is hard to figure out if you are dense or deliberately trolling. We are getting to the point where authors are better able to rise through merit, and you are advocating going back to exclusion because that will allow lesser writers to be pushed ahead....why? ...because they are white?

I work in publishing and have seen successive crops of young white writers with nothing to say getting their work put out there. They follow up with one or two other books that no one cares about before settling in to a tenured job as a small liberal arts college.

By the way, no one here has looked at the fall lists. I do. White writers are doing just fine. The still dominate the fall lists....and the spring 2023 lists for that matter.

[quote]We are getting to the point where authors are better able to rise through merit, and you are advocating going back to exclusion because that will allow lesser writers to be pushed ahead....why? ...because they are white?

This isn't exactly true, either.

Given the pressure on the publishing industry over the past 20 years, there is a much greater emphasis on the commercial side of publishing. "Merit" is less important than having a story you can sell to the buying public. If you have a "story" or your story itself features salable characters, it's less important for the story to have true "literary merit" than commercial merit.

Funny how with all the diversity the literature has gone down to the shitter. Seems like white males were doing it better.

R183 is showing us the density of the white male in real time. He simply cannot figure out how white males would not be the top of any group. If people other than white males are getting things, it must be because they are disriminating against the white males, not because the other people are doing things better than the white males. He literally cannot understand this.

White writers who were used to getting their way 99 percent of the time are shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED that their number has slipped to 89 percent of the time.

Never mind that the overwhelming majority is still white and/or male. WHERE DID THE OTHER TEN PERCENT GO?

[quote]White writers who were used to getting their way 99 percent of the time are shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED that their number has slipped to 89 percent of the time.

Those “white writers” are probably “progressive”, white gay men - at least many of them. I, personally think it’s funny.

Well, right now racial themes are on fashion on the american market (it doesn't happen the same in Europe), so you get a lot of debut novels from black authors, some are great, some are crap (the fact that something so bad as Such fun age had great reviews make me thing that some reviewers fear to be critic of a novel with a racial theme).

Things changed and awards are not dominated by white straight men. That diversity came with great new voices and some pretty bad writers which only merit is being a minority, but that happened before too, because not all those white straight writers who won everything in the past were amazing.

Everything goes in circles, some years domestic noir was everywhere. Racial themes don't sell that well in europe, because the interest in race is not remotely the same that in america.

Anyway, for gays things changed for the better, since The hours and The line of beauty gay fiction become mainstream for people who read literary fiction. In the last 7 years, there were three openly gay authors winning the Booker

R190, you think a lot of the popular white male writers are gay? Name them.

White gay males trying to get published. Not gonna happen.

I would also guess that straight white men don’t tend to buy hardcover literary fiction—women and gay men of all races probably are the major people willing to pay $30.00 for a new novel or short story collection. The percentage of all people who never volitionally read a book after or high school is staggering and so is the stat for those who do not read a book after college.

[quote]Affirmative Action barely exists in 2022

Oh, my sides!

[quote]Funny how with all the diversity the literature has gone down to the shitter. Seems like white males were doing it better.

LOL - the greats among women could easily go toe-to-toe with the men.

The reason there are fewer women historically is a function of women and minorities being held back in things as simple as education and more complex as social acceptance of works produced by non-white men.

That said, we are all the better for the great works produced by white men and will be even better when great works written by women and minorities emerge.

We’re waiting, r196….

To name a few:

George Eliot, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters.

Octavia Butler and Ursual LeGuin.

Emily Dickinson and Virginia Wolff.

Alice Munro

But, you knew all that, r197.

Margaret Atwood and Annie Proulx

If you want to leave the west...

The Tale of Genji is a classic work of Japanese literature written in the early 11th century by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu.

Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary!

Self-publishers aren't likely able to arrange publicity tours on Today, The View and Good Morning America.

R190 I’m not sure if the following are mad that non-whites are getting published, R193 not sure you’re being ironic and R192 amongst the many gay authors are/already have been published and fairly mainstream are:

Douglas Coupland, Alan Hollinghurst, Vikram Seth, Chuck Palahniuk, Jeannette Winterson, Clive Barker, Tony Kushner, Edmund White, Armistead Maupin and so on

Most of them with TV adaptations or big budget films (erm….Fight Club, Candyman, Hellraiser, Tales of The City).

They’re popular - and “happened already”. (Vikram Seth isn’t white…)

But obviously the patriarchy should die…Not you though, Jeanette ….

[quote]Self-publishers aren't likely able to arrange publicity tours on Today, The View and Good Morning America.

Neither are most publishing house authors.

What self-publishing is able to do is bypass agents and gatekeepers at publishing houses. If the work has "merit," it ought to be able to sell the nominal number of copies it takes to get the attention of a publishing house or agent - figures vary, but a few thousand is often enough.

But "Young White Men" doesn't include Gay Young White Men, right? Right??

Doesn’t it? A straight white man would go before a white gay man. White gay men are dead last on the social ladder.

I dunno about that ... wokey white women buy a lot of books.

I don't know, I've read white, male authors for a lot of decades and there are still many awaiting my time and attention. It may be difficult for them to get a publisher right now, these things go in phases.

There were a lot of decades, even centuries, when women and POC couldn't get published. Seems like we could safely take a rest from white, male authors for a little while.

[quote]There were a lot of decades, even centuries, when women and POC couldn't get published. Seems like we could safely take a rest from white, male authors for a little while.

That’s such a modern way of thinking. We’ve come so far as a society. Equality!

[quote]Affirmative Action barely exists in 2022 -- Oh, my sides!

You think it's funny that people who think like you, allow very stupid, unqualified white people to ascend to power? Dubya, Palin, Trump, Boebert, MTG, Cawthorn?

You really believe it's black people getting all the breaks, eh? Get back to me when someone who is black, stupid, scummy, corrupt and criminal, gets to become president the way Trump was allowed to.

I’m just heartbroken I won’t get to read yet ANOTHER coming of age story by some white man.

[quote]I’m just heartbroken I won’t get to read yet ANOTHER coming of age story by some white man.

Says a white gay man.

R209 I can name one black US president that destroyed the Middle east, left millions of people homeless and dead. Am I the only one who thinks it is worse than anything that stupid Trump has done? The world has such strange values.

Women are best avoided. Men can create their own ecosystem if they can pull themselves together and see what's really happening. Put down the porn and the video games and the pot and make something new for yourselves, boys.

R202 Not only that, a good bunch of hyped new novels are from gay authors (The prophets is a good example) and sometimes they are not hyped but end being awarded and bestsellers (Shuggie Bain)

I love Joyce! She always has a smile on her face and a song in her heart.

Other Joyces: Brothers, Bulifant, DeWitt, Jillson, Randolph