The amusing description of what would happen to Lolita if it went through today's workshopping and editing is worth reading, but the rest of this essay? Not so sure.
FTA:
"Writing with aspirations of publication must conform to revealed truths of rules of aesthetics and political dictum, to the exclusion of writers and readers who are not part of the industry’s monostyle, monopolitics, and monoconceptions of novels."
and:
"The modern male reader who picks up a modern sociological text masquerading as a piece of art can only expect to be patronized by going through an arbitrary and tedious process of discovering through a novel that he kind of sucks and was born that way."
This is true of mainstream publishing now, of course, but I can't quite see why the author uses "Infinite Jest" as the prime example. Apparently Cormac McCarthy hated Infinite Jest. But it's not clear at all that IJ caused McCarthy to stop reading "modern" novels (which apparently included most mid-20th century authors) as the title suggests.
But I generally agree modern publishing has lost its way, for the reasons quoted above. Even, so, there are some authors (e.g. George Saunders) who seem to still manage to slip through the gatekeepers, which gives me hope that all is not completely lost.
