Whatever happened to the avant garde?

Robert McCrum:

In books, the global marketplace seems to have crushed the spirit of innovation, and squeezed the life blood out of literary experimentation. Who are the avant-garde writers today who have retained their integrity as artists to shun the mainstream, but continue to produce new work? It must be a pretty short list, and, with the exception of a few poets, its constituents are almost totally invisible.

Nominations, please!

This is pretty much the entire clumsy article, more a stub than anything, but it's the comments thread that's worth a read, like this one and this one and this one and this one and this one.

Comments

[Sean Bonney]

I didn't think the article was as bad as all that. I wonder if there ever was a time when mass-market publishing wasn't run by market forces. Perhaps it didn't have as much influence on what gets reviewed.

What he doesn't mention, tho, is that the Guardian did start reviewing 'avant-garde (sic) poets a few years back, and then stopped, for some reason.

And then there was the Potts and Herd debacle at the Poetry Review, probably just as significant as the 1970s poetry wars. That is, when 'avant' writing starts becoming visible, there's always some fuckhead starts crying somewhere.

I don't think the term 'avant-garde' is appropriate anyway. The poets who get called it are really the mainstream . . . . .

[Whatever happened to the avant]

[...] Link [...]

[Paul]

Wasn't there a post-avant and then a neo-post-classicist and then a post-post-writers-calling themselves-avant-to-be-cool. The whole thing is ridiculous. Every piece of writing is an experiment, and every one who calls themselves avant-guarde, or worse, post-avant, is being very silly.