Lately my inbox has been on high-alert with warnings and speculations about the Globe Book section's two-week "hiatus." Also I've been getting the bad news about all the federal arts cuts in panicked listserv posts. Apparently the money's been reallocated to the torch relay. The Harper government thinks that culture should stand on its own twiggy legs. If the art is bad and everybody ignores it, then perhaps it should die a natural death, rather than being shot up with transfusions. And the Globe Books section--if readers are more interested in pavlova recipes and how wallpaper is hip again, then shouldn't the people get what they want instead of obscure first-fiction reviews of books attractive to some obscure fraction of the reading population? Pavlova is food, and food is a useful thing to have around.

I came across a comment on the Globe vacation posted at Quill & Quire by someone called, aptly I thought, Reader X:

Here, in the safety of the Quillblog, let me float this notion: do newspaper book review sections deserve to survive? Sure, authors and publishers (usually) want them. Reviewers need them. But what about the general readers that they purportedly serve? Dragging themselves through indulgent blocks of bland text, and twee illustrations, how often do people truly make a discovery, and find a title that they might not have initially been attracted to? The format of book review sections seems staid and static, too often featuring the usual suspects. So should books be integrated into the arts and entertainment sections? Are there more dynamic, less self-serving ways to bring deserving work to attention? Is anyone else secretly bored?

Staid. Static. So, so old.

This idea of "old" writing was also taken up by Alex Good, whose scathing critique of the Giller shortlist is sadly no longer freely available online. It was a bracing read, especially if you're a writer yourself. Anyhow, elsewhere:

What is remarkable is that, for all intents and purposes, the number of people interested in new literary fiction has now sunk below the level of statistical significance. Not to put too fine a point on it: No one is reading these books. And I don't suppose anything is different in this country with regard to the Giller effect or our reading habits in general. Which has a trickle-down effect when it comes to the quality of critical debate.

For example, I think M. G. Vassanji is a terrible writer. No, scratch that. I don't think M. G. Vassanji can write at all. And yet this two-time Giller winner is in the running again this year for The Assassin's Song. Which is unreadable. And yes, I tried. But why bother debating the point? Nobody reads Vassanji. I remember when his last book, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall came out. Nobody in the office would touch it. Our editor at the time, considering it to be one of those books that really should be reviewed, tried desperately to find someone who would take it on. All in vain. Then it won the Giller Prize. And still nobody wanted to read it! I've no idea what happened to the copy we had, but it was never reviewed. Or, I am sure, read.

Why are books limping along on crutches? Why are plain old paper pages so stodgy, so old-school, so decidedly uncool? If marketing can make Clay Aiken sell, can make Cheetos nutritious, why can't it make books sexy--even bad ones?

There are other kinds of heated debates going on in publishing these days. The Salon des Refuses vs. the Penguin Book of Short Stories, wherein some guys refute the "short story" choices of one Jane Urquhart.

Jane U.'s reaction to this criticism: "It's quite upsetting when one does the best one can do under a certain mandate, and is then attacked for something outside that mandate."

That, to me anyway, sounds like the reaction of someone long sheltered from "attack," who felt sucker-punched for being taken to task. But it's hard to argue with the questions. What the hell was up with the mandate, anyway? Was it to include the big brand names, even when they don't write short stories?

It's true that books are business, or else no one would obsess over sales numbers and nobody would size up their friends' advances and there wouldn't be any need for Schadenfreude. An athletic shoe manufacturer, say Nike, do they explain the erosion of their market share by calling their consumers couch potatoes? All that fitness stuff, too much work! People just want to trance out in front of Family Guy, eating popcorn out of microwave pouches.

What if, as Reader X puts it, we really are boring? We write books without plot. We have no interest in creating tension or suspense, and we don't care if our readers laugh or cry or even if they finish turning the pages. I hear this complaint about Canadian fiction all the time: Nothing happens. Porcelain cheeks are kissed and tears tremble and fall, but, meh? Who cares?

Who cares? When you hear it about your own work, it sucks. But better the news sucks than the work itself. Maybe that's the first step in a long adaptation--entertaining the bad news.