APS TOGETHER
Day 3
New Grub Street by George GissingChapter 3
November 8, 2023 by Yiyun Li
Jasper and Marian watching the train coming and going: a rare bright moment so far. It has poetic resonance to the game of Poohsticks in Winnie the Pooh, though this moment does not take place in a childhood paradise. Rather, it is clouded by a candid conversation about the lack of money.
“But you’d have to cultivate a particular kind of vulgarity.”
Cultivate! Vulgarity! Jasper is the worst kind of prophet. Much of what he observed in 1882 is a reality to us.
Full of literary gossips, literary feuds, and clear-eyed words such as “marketable,” this chapter makes a good snapshot of the contemporary publishing world.
