While Vikram Seth's contract is on the verge of being cancelled as Random House and Penguin merge business, once again the issue around commercial fiction is doing rounds in the writing corridors. True, finance has given tough times to biggies like Random House whose revenues are sliding as a result of commercial fiction onslaught. But what does commercial fiction really mean? Does it mean that a work which entertains mindlessly in the TV-style through its baseless plot and frivolous storyline? Many have begun to presume this way and rightly so because bookshelves in stores are stacked with works of below standard fiction. But none of them can be classified as commercial fiction. Commercial fiction needs be revisited. It's not new. It's as old as literature in general.
There never was a fiction that had no commercial angle. Even in the past and in the Victorian or Renaissance days, all the authors in Britain or France wrote things which were in vogue and had popular acceptance. Jane Austin was the biggest commercial author who chose romantic fiction. So was the case in the Victorian age when Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and others wrote stories that garnered mass appeal. None of them really experimented beyond their strengths. Similarly in the olden times Kalidas, our Sanskrit master, chose topics that had entertainment quotient stuffed full-on.
It's in the modern times that we started distinguishing commercial and literary fiction. There never was a line. Commercial fiction eventually became literary fiction. If the publishers or authors are saying this today, it is just to create hype and divert attention from the real issues created by the onset of the Internet. Digital age has stolen the thunder of traditional publishing. It is a transitional phase for all of us.
There never was a fiction that had no commercial angle. Even in the past and in the Victorian or Renaissance days, all the authors in Britain or France wrote things which were in vogue and had popular acceptance. Jane Austin was the biggest commercial author who chose romantic fiction. So was the case in the Victorian age when Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and others wrote stories that garnered mass appeal. None of them really experimented beyond their strengths. Similarly in the olden times Kalidas, our Sanskrit master, chose topics that had entertainment quotient stuffed full-on.
It's in the modern times that we started distinguishing commercial and literary fiction. There never was a line. Commercial fiction eventually became literary fiction. If the publishers or authors are saying this today, it is just to create hype and divert attention from the real issues created by the onset of the Internet. Digital age has stolen the thunder of traditional publishing. It is a transitional phase for all of us.
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