Plumbed?

Attended a dinner party a few weeks ago that turned out to be a gathering of writers and aspiring writers. The hostess, Anna Del Rosario, has made a fine art out of staging these sorts of salon-style groups around a table lavish with continental fare and the eclat of her renown hospitality. I sat next to Bruce Henderson, prolific author of non-fiction, admiring his gracious generosity in answering, at the expense of his melting desert, the flurry of questions about publishing. Earlier in the evening, I had cornered Bruce in the kitchen to ask him about his report from the trenches that fiction is dead. "They're stacking up on agents' shelves. Nobody's reading them."

The next day, guest columnist Timothy Egan wrote in the New York Times

"The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet? I didn’t think so. And I don’t want you writing books. Not when too many good novelists remain unpublished. Not when too many extraordinary histories remain unread. Not when too many riveting memoirs are kicked back at authors after 10 years of toil. Not when voices in Iran, North Korea or China struggle to get past a censor’s gate."

You must Read the rest to grasp what's going through the minds of the unpublished.