What about writing about the good books that have appeared
and disappeared, and continue to do so, because, as Jourde suggests, the press
is busy talking about always the same few hits? What about the victims of the
selection process? Where do they go?
But huge methodological problem: how to find them, or find
the good ones among the many appearing and disappearing? Even the
infrastructure doesn’t make it easy to find them – selection in independent
bookshops perhaps? Or looking at catalogs of smaller publishers? – vicious
circle: since they are more or less invisible, they’ll never get a chance to
become visible; one needs a minimum of visibility – and when that happens, if
there’s a spark that induces the interest of others (doesn’t it all depend on
the press in the end? It’s like the mechanics of the stock market a bit, we
think there must be some criteria for judgement if we trust critics, but they
don’t get to read everything either, and are likely to focus on joining the
camps pro or contra an already talked-about author or book, in the interest of
being read... who can bother digging out the marginal stuff that might be
good? At best marginal radio talk shows (like Nikola and his colleagues do, should listen regularly and let them guide me..), shows that
themselves remain marginal…
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