Production

Chapters 1 and 2 discuss some of the academic strategies for approaching contemporary literature systematically. These are strategies that prompt the teaching and learning, research and scholarship of such literature – usually in an institutional setting such as a school or university. Nowadays, academic institutions and academics play a considerable role in how we think about literature and what we read, even if we sometimes don’t realise it. Especially when we consider the literature of a well-defined period or territory – not as open-ended as the contemporary period – our attitudes and received notions are usually mediated by what literary teachers and scholars have done. However, when it comes to reading and thinking about the literature of the present, of our time, academic mediation is comparatively less influential. Other institutions and professions have a more immediate role in this regard. It is naturally necessary for us to take those into account for our systematic understanding. And, though conventionally neglected, those are increasingly given greater attention within academic circles. I have in mind here the kinds of issues that were raised briefly in chapter 1 as related to the ‘literary industry’. If the word ‘industry’ conjures images of factories and corporations

and workers and managers, that doesn’t quite apply here. Here, by

‘industry’ I mean something a bit more abstract: a system that enables the production of literature in material forms (print, electronic, etc.) and encourages readers to consume (buy or invest in) literature so that the system can be sustained and expanded. The literary industry obviously includes such processes as publishing novels or staging theatre, but alongside these are a number of other processes and factors which may not be as obvious. The various aspects of this system can be broken down into two

main sides: production and reception (or consumption). Production has to do with making literary texts and performances available to those who are interested; reception has to do with the ways in which these are obtained or accessed, read or watched, etc. This division is, in fact, a somewhat problematic one. Literary production and reception are very closely interlinked, as we shall see. However, in this chapter I focus primarily on the productive side; in chapter 4 I examine the receptive side of the contemporary literature industry. There are various kinds of producers involved in this industry, of

whom the most significant has to be the literary author – the novelist, playwright, poet, etc. The first section below discusses:

the role that authors of contemporary literature play in the literary industry.