Despite its conveniences, the 21st century does have weak points, at least to many. One of these is the drift of all life toward corporatization. Many people object to a world in which what ought to be made with passion is increasingly made with passion for nothing but a product's profitability. An exception to faceless corporate publishing, independent book publishers reflect the tradition of boutique houses each trying to find their own voice.
When it comes right down to it, the distinction between independent and conglomerate owned publishers is clear. The first has as its ultimate authority a person who entered the industry out of a passion, or at least interest, in books and reading. This offers just a little hope that final decisions about books will reflect that genuine interest, bringing to light the best manuscripts submitted to the marketplace and not just the likely fastest sellers.
It is not at all unusual to find small publishing houses owned and largely staffed by graduates of Master's of Fine Arts programs. Many of these might have entered their program hoping to produce work so exceptional so soon that they would end up teaching their art on the college or elite high school level. This fortune befalls few today, leaving graduates seeking employment that will keep them fed while writing their poetry or crafting their sculpture.
As the number of MFA graduates has grown, the limited number of teaching positions has come to many to spell the end of the old dream of a cushy teaching career. Meanwhile, outside academe but just barely, the size of audience for nearly all the fine arts is in a generational free fall. It grows clearer to each graduating class that the very infrastructure of fine arts needs support.
More and more graduates are looking at the economics of the arts squarely and concluding that the real front lines of the arts lie in the means of their production. If only poets read poetry, it is an open question whether poetry truly exists. Increasingly, MFA programs themselves offer their students training in how to publish a magazine or run a book publishing house.
Technology, especially consumer electronics, is assigned much of the blame. Doubtless it has given billions of people worldwide easy access to the arts. However, on the whole it has made it more difficult, not less, to make a living as any sort of artist.
Some have warned of a possibly enduring result of modern electronically enhanced, big budget art, a result that should warn of a possibly grim future. There is evidence of a general fraying of the attention span, a decrease in the patience to focus. The grand, slow pacing of 1960s and 1970s films, those remembered for their cinematography, is lost on many young people. A three movement symphony simply has no chance to win someone with such over-stimulated nerves.
The new millenium at least manages to open a door for every one it seems to close. Those heroically staffing then small publishing houses might romanticize the modernist 1920s, when the work seemed to matter even to many who could not read it. But the future could just belong to the lone self-publisher working on a laptop, even the one lacking an MFA.
When it comes right down to it, the distinction between independent and conglomerate owned publishers is clear. The first has as its ultimate authority a person who entered the industry out of a passion, or at least interest, in books and reading. This offers just a little hope that final decisions about books will reflect that genuine interest, bringing to light the best manuscripts submitted to the marketplace and not just the likely fastest sellers.
It is not at all unusual to find small publishing houses owned and largely staffed by graduates of Master's of Fine Arts programs. Many of these might have entered their program hoping to produce work so exceptional so soon that they would end up teaching their art on the college or elite high school level. This fortune befalls few today, leaving graduates seeking employment that will keep them fed while writing their poetry or crafting their sculpture.
As the number of MFA graduates has grown, the limited number of teaching positions has come to many to spell the end of the old dream of a cushy teaching career. Meanwhile, outside academe but just barely, the size of audience for nearly all the fine arts is in a generational free fall. It grows clearer to each graduating class that the very infrastructure of fine arts needs support.
More and more graduates are looking at the economics of the arts squarely and concluding that the real front lines of the arts lie in the means of their production. If only poets read poetry, it is an open question whether poetry truly exists. Increasingly, MFA programs themselves offer their students training in how to publish a magazine or run a book publishing house.
Technology, especially consumer electronics, is assigned much of the blame. Doubtless it has given billions of people worldwide easy access to the arts. However, on the whole it has made it more difficult, not less, to make a living as any sort of artist.
Some have warned of a possibly enduring result of modern electronically enhanced, big budget art, a result that should warn of a possibly grim future. There is evidence of a general fraying of the attention span, a decrease in the patience to focus. The grand, slow pacing of 1960s and 1970s films, those remembered for their cinematography, is lost on many young people. A three movement symphony simply has no chance to win someone with such over-stimulated nerves.
The new millenium at least manages to open a door for every one it seems to close. Those heroically staffing then small publishing houses might romanticize the modernist 1920s, when the work seemed to matter even to many who could not read it. But the future could just belong to the lone self-publisher working on a laptop, even the one lacking an MFA.
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