Eggers, et al under the microscope...

Generally, I'm allergic to the whole McSweeney's scene, because I think there's such a high ratio of noise to signal, publicity to substance. But the pleasantly cranky literary website Moby Lives is running an enlightening exchange in its Letters section which I thought was worth pointing to. The writers, pro and con, discuss just how "indie" the whole venture is, what proportion it is a personality cult (selling books just like the biggies, on the celebrity of an author), etc, etc. My opinion, since you're reading my blog, is that whatever McSweeney's does can't hurt, and some of it is quite witty. But I'm very skeptical that it will have any impact in the long or even medium term on capital-P Publishing in the US. Its business model works because Dave Eggers has been anointed by the mainstream media, and if you've got that, you can do anything you like--success on those terms augurs little for Literature. And judging by the contributors, at this point it's old wine in new bottles--They Might Be Giants and David Byrne--as interesting and talented as these are, they aren't outsiders. Publishing books by established authors may be risky, or even laudable, depending on the book--but it's not widening who or what gets published, not in any meaningful way. But all that being said, God bless 'em, they do good, careful work.