Is Gothic literature dead?

[Penfeather]

From Morris Berman's book, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire:

Thus, it should not surprise us that the market for foreign books in English translation, which did a brisk trade in this country from the 1940s to the end of the 1970s, has now dried up. Laurie Brown, senior vice president for marketing and sales at Harcourt publishers, comments that Americans are not interested in foreign literature because it tends to be philosophical and reflective. Americans, she says, "want more immediate gratification." They have little understanding of nuance, and not much ability, or patience, to read between the lines.

And yet there still seems to be a flourishing American market for serious fiction, and "lit" authors like Thomas Pynchon et al. don't seem hard-hit by this cultural malaise. It appears that the slowly creeping fungus of mass dullardliness affects mainly the genre fiction markets. (I won't even attempt to comment on what's happened to movies.)

I still say there's hope. There are intelligent, imaginative people born all the time. Who knows, perhaps Gothic suspense novels will see a comeback.