Topic 4: The Apocalypse is Upon Us

Michael: No, I don't think so. Not yet. Instead, it's the usual slow decline into mediocrity. But I don't think it's been a worse year than most and with signs of success from small presses (which dominated the Booker shortlist, among other impressive feats) and a definite slowing of the trend of shrinking of book review sections some of the most depressing signs of decline in the book world in recent years seem to have, at least briefly, come close to being stemmed.

Even the more disturbing things - great success for terrible books (The Devil Wears Prada), cutbacks and limited profitability at houses with some of the most "successful" books of the year (such as Harry Potter publisher Scholastic, and Hillary Clinton publisher Simon and Schuster) - don't seem worse than usual.

So my disappointments are smaller but (to me) still signs of decay and decline - perhaps influenced by my being an NYC resident:

- Janet Maslin becomes a regular reviewer at The New York Times. Not so much because of the quality of her reviews, but because of the books she reviews, as she appears to be the designated popular culture reviewer at the Times. 1 December: it's yet another James Patterson novel (The Big Bad Wolf); she acknowledges it's trash - but why is the Times wasting precious review space on trash? (The occasional review of a trashy book I understand, but now it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be one a week). Given the good, important titles not getting coverage, the fact that one-fifth of the daily coverage of The New York Times is now given over to pretty bad books is troubling.

- The Village Voice's shrinking book reviews and coverage. Perhaps they were just late in hopping on the shrinking book review section trend, but their Voice Literary Supplement used to be a stand-alone section, in some years with ten issues; now it appears quarterly, at best, and isn't separate from the rest of the Voice (and there are fewer reviews). As bad: the weekly reviews in the Voice seem to have become compacted - mini-reviews.

Alex: I'd have to give the prize to poet laureate Andrew Motion's rap poem on Prince William's 21st birthday ("Better stand back/ Here's an age attack,/ But the second in line/ Is dealing with it fine").

I used to think the position of poet laureate was worth keeping. But this sure isn't helping the cause.

Jessa: Can we just nominate everything that Andrew Motion did this year? The football chant ("but no swearing!"), the "rap," etc. I'm sure even some of his breakfast choices were embarrassing. Every time he shows up in the news, it's like watching my grandfather breakdance in public.

Robert: Happily, Jews (did you all know I was Jewish?) don't subscribe to visions of Hell and as far as I know, except for some medieval deviationists, don't include Apocalypse myths. My sense of the big A has always been of a New Yorker cartoon with a shaggy sign-bearing person proclaiming the end is near. Also, Signs of Declining Civilization was an undergraduate sport that went on far too long (in my life).

If I were of that mind set, though, I would agree about the crappy books, and the shrinking book pages and Andrew Motion and Steve King's pronouncements on literature as signals of the Ultimate End. I was expecting to get cranky as I, uh, matured but strangely (to me) I have not. And now that I think of it, regularly looking into the eyes of my six year old son Cuba, has a lot to do with saving me from an end game of embitterment and cynicism. And flashes of paranoia.

And that is the key (for me), really. History marches forward and its various culture/sub-cultures gallop, limp, mambo, crab walk along with it. Now maybe my son will not be an agent of cultural memory (though if my own childhood is a measure, he will be) but there will be others who are. And that has something to do with The Literary Culture not shrinking and not disappearing. I have this feeling that its size (however we quantify it) is relatively constant. It's only that pop/mainstream culture is so noisy and intrusive such a juggernaut that one might be righteously fearful of literature's extinction.

On the other hand, Patriot Acts, celebrity war criminals prancing around with impunity and a triumphalist clique in power seem to conjure up the nightmare landscape of jack boots, brown shirts and Kristallnacht, book burning and concentration camps (what is Guantanamo)?

So, no "It can't happen here" daydreams, friends. And if it all falls apart and the big A happens I'll be reading a (good) book. Poteet, poteet.

Maud: I think I'm going to have to be terribly one-note, here, and invoke again the anti-terrorism and USA Patriot Act legislation I mentioned in response to the "underreported story" question. Robert's mention of dancing celebrity war criminals is going to send me off in search of a nice bottle of Jameson's.