“Fiction is dead”, proclaims Lee Siegel in the New York Observer.  Fiction is now a profession – not a vocation – and that simple fact means that fiction is now culturally irrelevant.  In what Siegel calls the Golden Age of fiction – the period immediately after WWII – books such as From Here To Eternity, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Naked and the Dead were not only commercial fiction: they were also massive best sellers that spoke to people’s everyday experience of life.  Such books do not exist today.  On tonight’s show, Cath Murphy asks whether Siegel is right – and if so – how do we breathe life into the corpse of fiction writing?

YA author Amanda Lees is back to pose a highly relevant question to many who work in today’s publishing industry – what future is there for agents?  Dave Bartram is wondering how far can the truth be bent for the sake of structure (shades of historiography and revisionism) and Eve Harvey is not only looking after the chatroom, she’s also stepping in for Philipa Ballantyne who has been struck down by the lurgie – but will be with us again soon.

Why don’t you join us live in the chatroom next week – we kick off at 8pm UK / 3pm EST every Friday here!

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Other topics on tonight’s show include:

• Duke of Devonshire’s lofty booty sale
• It’s La Strada Dorata, baby
• UK government to impose windfall tax on people called Steve?

This week’s titles for the Commissioning Meeting are:

EVE
“Am I Still There?”
James R. Hall

AMANDA
“Ladies Must Live”
Alice Duer Miller, 1874-1942

CATH
“The Bath Tatting Book”
Anonymous

DAVE
“French Reader on the Cumulative Method: The story of Rodolphe and Coco the Chimpanzee”
Adolphe Dreyspring, 1835-

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