Editorial

Work / Time / Value. We started this publication and podcast series because we felt there wasn’t a space for writers to articulate and reflect on the complex relations between these subjects, despite their profound effects on our everyday lives. We considered the many circulating claims for literary value in the face of increasing attacks on the arts and humanities to be too simplistic and unreflective of the lived experiences of writers, readers and publishers.

The title of Too Little / Too Hard is taken from cultural theorist Sianne Ngai’s Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgement and Capitalist Form. For Ngai, the gimmick unsettles our systems of valuation:

The gimmick “works too hard” / “works too little”; is “technologically outdated” / too advanced”; “cheap” / “overpriced”. These measurements of excess and deficiency seem economic as opposed to aesthetic. But are we so sure?

We see relations between Ngai’s gimmicks, writing and evaluations of writing – in particular poetry and fiction – including the impact of marketised ideas of ‘value’ on literature. We wanted to ask: what can creative writing practices and literature itself tell us about work, time and value?

We are grateful to our wonderful contributors who have responded to some of these questions so generously in this first issue. In ‘Poetry, A Late Economy’ Anthony Anaxagorou explores poetry in relation to different types of value – or non-value – to ask how poetry as ‘art’s last remaining non-asset’ works and survives as a commodity in late capitalism. Emily Berry wonders what it means when people claim that ‘poetry has saved their life’ in ‘Further Injury: Surviving Poetry’. Examining her poetic practice and experiences, Berry’s answers to this question are complex and moving. Turning away from poetry specifically, in ‘The Reading Kind’ Sophie Corser asks what it means if we consider reading as labour in relation to both academic work and leisure. Who has the means and time to read? Turning to issues of production and circulation in ‘The Romance of The Book Deal’, Yara Rodrigues Fowler reflects on the power of a profit-driven literary market that too often privileges homogeneity and reliable sales over diversity and formal risk taking. How might the publishing industry be reformed to better support its workers? Amber Husain’s satirical illness narrative ‘A Disingenuous Prescription’ also addresses the pressures of the literary market, exploring the ‘value’ of illness in publishing and the weight of mainstream narrative expectations placed upon writers who engage with this subject from the standpoint of their own experience. How can writing about illness move away from propping up these agendas?  In Will Harris’ ‘Art Doesn’t Own It’, a group of writers discuss the ways in which storytelling evades ownership and singular interpretations – unfolding with a poetic logic that cannot be quantified, that gives us a sense of possibilities.

We hope that you enjoy reading this issue and are very much looking forward to releasing the TL/TH podcast later this summer where we will be in conversation with our contributors discussing these essays, stories and ideas.