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March 28, 2024, 11:07:07 AM

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Remember reading/lit-fic being a bigger deal in the 90s-00s

Started by willbo, May 13, 2021, 07:50:38 AM

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willbo

I remember going into uni/work in the early 00s and I'd see a lot of people reading, like Zadie Smith, Nick Hornby, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk, Franzen, cool classics on On The Road, or current hits/hyped up books like Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, We Need to Talk about Kevin etc.

I feel like "cool authors" like Zadie Smith and Chuck Palahniuk were a bigger deal then. But I also feel like message boards and blogs kind of took away a lot of the necessity for fiction for me. Like I read Smith, Hornby and Welsh back then because it was the only way for me to meet another person's inner life, their personal experiences, their emotions/relationships etc, and feel like I wasn't alone, close contact with someone else's stories and emotions.

But message boards and blogs (where people are raw and honest about their lives) kind of scratched that itch for me, once I got into the internet. Not that I thought literature/fiction was useless after that, I just didn't need it.

buttgammon

Fiction seems to have become more niche, even among avid readers; I could blame changes in technology and how they have altered how we communicate, our attention spans and what we do with our time, but as someone who reads a lot, the thing I've noticed more than anything is that non-fiction is a bigger deal than fiction now. That's not to say I don't read non-fiction, and some writers do brilliantly creative things with it (Svetlana Alexievich, W.G. Sebald, Mark O'Connell to name three of my favourites), but I wonder if something is being lost.

willbo

Is S.A. the one who wrote about Russian women in war? I had that from the library and thought it really interesting

buttgammon

Quote from: willbo on May 13, 2021, 10:48:38 AM
Is S.A. the one who wrote about Russian women in war? I had that from the library and thought it really interesting

Yes, she's the one. I'd really recommend her book about Chernobyl too.

bgmnts

   When was there a time where almost everyone was literate and even the most plebeian of proles had free, or at least easy access to, high quality (subjective I know, the classics at least?) fiction?
   As previously said, the past decade has seen an enormous shift in how we consume art and media (content for anyone under 25) and we probably have greatly reduced attention spans as a result, making long form fiction much less likely to be popular.

holyzombiejesus

Aren't people just more likely to read non-fiction as they get older? I wouldn't have dreamt of reading anything factual when I was younger (apart from cultural biogs) but it's becoming about 50% of my reading nowadays.

For a teenager in the nineties, there was a lot of information about new fiction in the music press/media. I remember articles about Irvine Welsh, Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, Alan Warner and Stewart Home all appearing in NME/Melody Maker/Select. There was also a tendency for Beat Generation writers to be mentioned in articles about older music, and for bands to make references to literature e.g. all the authors the Manics used to namecheck, the name of the Boo Radleys. Will Self also used to have a regular slot on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 1 show talking about people like JG Ballard.
All of that was enough to get you down the library where you'd find other things you were into, mostly better books than the writers I've mentioned above- but it was that clear and obvious link to youth culture that would get you there.

Jerzy Bondov

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on May 13, 2021, 11:35:13 AM
Aren't people just more likely to read non-fiction as they get older? I wouldn't have dreamt of reading anything factual when I was younger (apart from cultural biogs) but it's becoming about 50% of my reading nowadays.
I've gone the other way if anything. I'm not really interested in learning about stuff, I just want my stories

willbo

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on May 13, 2021, 11:35:13 AM
Aren't people just more likely to read non-fiction as they get older? I wouldn't have dreamt of reading anything factual when I was younger (apart from cultural biogs) but it's becoming about 50% of my reading nowadays.

I think maybe dramatic, intense fiction about real relationships, like Sally Rooney type stuff, is gonna be more of a 20-something's world in general. Like most of us are gonna have less personal drama in older age so more likely to relax with non fiction or escapist sci fi or whatever.