Obscure books can have a future

Readers are almost alway particular to some obscure author or another, and so, as long as a book is available in Earth's big bookstore (which I construe as every bookstore and every used book store and every library in the world), it has a chance of finding a new audience.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Jane Smiley

There's a lot to like about the long Jane Smiley sentence printed above. Let's take it apart.

"Readers are almost always particular to some obscure author or another ..."

Many readers stick with the best-sellers, reading the same books as everybody else. But Smiley is talking about those more serious readers who discover particular authors and then wonder why everybody else isn't reading their books.

In my younger days, as I've written about previously, I was fond of Edward Lewis Wallant and D. Keith Mano. Why, I wondered, weren't their novels best-sellers? Today few people have even heard of them. More recently I have become enamored with Dexter Palmer and Olaf Olafsson. Why aren't other people reading them, too?

You probably feel the same way about "some obscure author or another."

"... Earth's big bookstore (which I construe as every bookstore and every used book store and every library in the world) ..."

Sadly, neither bookstores nor public libraries keep books around for very long. They need to make room for newer books. Meanwhile used book stores keep disappearing. Yet, as I wrote about a few days ago, people hate to throw out books after they have finished with them. Thus older books by some of those obscure authors can still be found in thrift shops, garage sales, estate sales and other places.

"... it has a chance of finding a new audience."

Some obscure books don't find their audience when first published. Yet books can actually last a long time, and only partly because people hate to destroy them. Sooner or later, as in the case of Moby-Dick and many other classics, they can find their readers. Obscurity doesn't always last forever.