Rachel Johnson

Publish and be damned

Publishers are so scared of the Twitter mob that Nabokov’s classic would probably end up on the slush pile

issue 09 March 2019

The other day Will Self unburdened himself on the state of fiction with crushing hauteur. ‘What’s now regarded as serious literature would, ten or 20 years ago, have been regarded as young adult fiction… in terms of literary history, it does seem a bit of a regression. If you consider that Nabokov’s Lolita was on the New York Times bestseller list for nine months, it’s a different order of literature…’

Stop right there! Will Self’s top pick was Lolita.

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