Who Will Pay For the Literature of the Future?

I learned about this program, happening at the University of Chicago next month, from people criticizing it. Their concerns are valid, but they are not what I want to weigh in on here. My topic is the question posed in the title to #3: “Who Will Pay For the Literature of the Future?”

Who indeed? First, I wonder why the object of the question switches from criticism to literature in this question. So I’m wondering what the intention is: is to ask who will pay (or fund or publish) the novels and poetry that might later be deemed ‘literature’?¹ Or does it mean literature more broadly, including, say, the criticism that is the object of the first two panels, and the program itself? Either answer, it appears to me, seems to depart from the other key topic of this program, the university.

To tease this out, I first asked myself, “who published the literature, as in Great Works Of Literary Merit, of the past? Tough question! Hard to answer! But no matter what you include (Thomas Wyatt’s coterie poems, never published per se? Jane Austen's novels, for which her family had to pay the publisher to print? James Fennimore Cooper’s self-published novels? Edith Wharton’s Scribner novels? Little, Brown’s Infinite Jest? Graywolf’s Percival Everett?), the university is rarely involved, as it was not with all of the parenthetical answers here.

Perhaps the question refers to criticism, but even there I think it’s important to realize who published the most influential critics and theorists of the past half century: Pantheon was the American publisher of Foucault; Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House issued Harold Bloom. Doubleday published the most recent book by panelist Merve Emre. None of these are university presses, nor are any nonprofit presses.

Obviously I’m cherry picking here, but to make this point: much the literature of the past, at least, has been published by for-profit presses, not the university. ²

But of course”the university”—if we define that as university presses—has published the bulk of the criticism of the past, if defined by scholarship by English professors and the like. And many university presses have published the best literary works as well (cf Erasure. Or should I say: Erasure!)

This line of thinking led me to google the panelists and if I did so correctly, none of them work with university presses, which seems unfortunate.

But back to the question: who will publish the literature of the future? This question is, I think, very interesting when posed against the recent changes and proposed changes in funding to universities, which, while not new (they have been systematically defunded by state governments for decades now), are now more pressing. And I will add into this bucket books by other non-profit presses, usually distinguished from university presses by the adjective “small,” of which there are so many in America.

University press workers at public institutions are currently stressed about the same issues stressing their institutions at large: additional losses of funding and restrictions of what they can or should publish. Nonprofit small presses are in the same boat: a huge number of them rely on NEA and/or NEH funding, which is now threatened, curtailed, and increasingly restricted. Because granting agencies like the NEA and other state arts councils and the like prefer to fund literary works like fiction and poetry, an enormous percentage of the small presses in the United States rely on that funding, and have catalogs of which an enormous percentage consists of fiction and poetry (SHuSH has an interesting post about this re: Canada). Now, the university comes in here when one considers that a large percentage of MFA professors and students publish with those same non-profit small presses, and were they to dwindle so would those publishing paths.³

Future funding of university presses and non-profit small presses is likely something most of those working in those places are also thinking about! In fact, I think it would be brilliant to have some panel conversations (or zooms or newsletters or what have you) about the future of non-profit publishing around now. It’s a scary and tenuous time, and it would be prudent and wise to take a holistic, big picture view of this landscape, and, why not, throw in the question of historic funding for publishing into the mix.⁴

But where does that leave the answer to who will fund (publish)⁵the literature of the future? For-profit presses will do a lot of it! Just as they have in the past. And let’s add in here university presses at private institutions that may not be facing the same possible or actual axes as those at state universities or the non-profit small presses most known to publish “quality” fiction and poetry. Like, say, the University of Chicago, whose press is one of if not the foremost university press in the United States, and whose publications have produced enormous amounts of literature, both critical and literary, for decades now, and continues to do so, and on whose premises this panel on the end of the university (presses) will take place.

At least in the short term, while there is increased uncertainty about which funds might come through or not, those of us who work at for-profit presses, including me, including the Big Five, including my friends at Chicago, have a relative freedom that we could exploit, on behalf of the commonweal, “literature,” and those feeling constrained.

And if nothing in my argument holds water or turns out to be true, it is certainly interesting to the answer to the question of who funded the literature of the past, and inventory those who took the financial risk to sell to the public the writing that fuels critics, be they inside or outside the university. Meanwhile, I’m going to be reading about these books, published a few buildings down from where this program will be held.

1. Someone thought the answer was “readers and book lovers,” as in those who pay for the books themselves. But readers aren’t taking the financial risk—publishers do that. So I interpret “pay” as “fund” as “publish”. And that’s what the rest of this post assumes.

2. which is not to say university presses and journals have not also produced an enormous amount of both, but worthy pointing out, given the title of the program.

3. Plus some small presses and many literary magazines are housed within and funded by universities.

4. [zoom hand raise emoji]

5. Of course, it could be that “funded” is not synonymous with “published” in the title question, which would mean the jumping off point for this newsletter is slightly off from top to bottom, but then again the intentionality of the panel title writers needn’t be determinative! I choose to define “fund” as “who takes the financial risk” aka publishers.