08 January 2009

Bail out the publishing industry!

Most of the attention in the past week re extending the financial bailouts has gone to Larry Flynt's request for $5 billion to support the porn industry, but the NYT has a nice satirical piece suggesting a rescue of this country's publishers:
As we all know, lax writing practices earlier this decade led to irresponsible writing and irresponsible reading. This simply put too many families into books they could not finish. We are seeing the impact on readers and neighborhoods, with five million Americans now behind on their reading. Some are just walking away from novels they should never have been reading in the first place...

The role of the ratings agencies cannot be overlooked in creating this crisis. The Pulitzer, Booker and National Book Foundation committees continued to award top ratings to these novels, even as unread copies piled up all over America.

These unreadable novels are clogging up our literary system, and undermining the strength of our otherwise sound literary institutions...

1 comment:

  1. I want to go on record that I am not among those who don't finish books. I usually read three a week.

    ReplyDelete

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