As soul-crushing lists go, Publishers Weekly's listing of American bestselling novels from 1996 to 2006 does an exceedly fine job of making you weep for the future of literature: I don't have a reflexive distaste for genre fiction, but this is an absurdly large stack of rapture novels, horror stories, romances, Da Vinci codes, and Albom-my emotional balms. (Hunting for anything remotely resembling literary fiction, I could scare up only a few examples: Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen, Charles Frazier. I'm not whining about Oprah's Book Club ever again.)

But there are a few good reasons to feel heartened: Excellent literary journals remain abundant, even if their circulations are small--and perhaps their circulations will improve now that many of their riches are being offered online. In just the past week, two of the better journals have put their latest issues online. The latest issue of Bookforum, a serious competitor with the the New York Review of Books for the best review journal in the U.S. (though the recent departure of its editor, Eric Banks, puts its future somewhat in doubt), is thick with fine writing on contemporary literature: James Gibbons on Richard Price's excellent new novel, Lush Life, Nana Asfour on Iranian-American women novelists, an interview with Jhumpa Lahiri, and more.

Granta has long been a standard-bearer for literature around the globe, and if it's true we're living in the age of Browns and Kings and Pattersons, than...

Late winter and early spring is literary awards season, so it's time yet again to complain about the Orange Prize. The award--the Orange Broadband Prize is the full name--is given annually to women who write fiction in English. Its longlist was announced this week, and the litblog the Literary Saloon has an excellent roundup of the biggest issue this year's prize calls up. To wit: Does the prize honor women or segregate them?

Writing in the Guardian, Tim Lott acknowledges the rationale behind the creation of the prize in 1996--women authors were shut out of the Booker Prize too often--but still deems the Orange a "sexist con-trick." Acclaimed author A.S. Byatt agrees, calling it sexist and unnecessary. Ruth Wishart, searching for a third way in the Herald, deems the Orange Prize "a very modest and relatively harmless piece of discrimination," pointing out that the folks who tend to think such things unnecessary are the same folks (men, successful female authors) who aren't buffetted by the wounds that provoke the continuing fight.

If the Orange Prize believes it's righting a wrong, that's fine by me. My sole concern is that being a prize for "women's fiction" somehow diminishes it in the minds of those watching the debate. Many of the authors on the longlist need not prove themselves as part of a vibrant literary culture, period, let alone a "women's literary culture," whatever that might be. Anne Enright, Jennifer Egan, Dalia Sofer, and more have...

Does giving a book away for free help sales? Late last month Random House decided to conduct an experiment to find out: For 72 hours it made Beautiful Children, the debut novel by Charles Bock, available as a free PDF download. Both the author and the book have been much-buzzed-about--earning lengthy features and largely rave reviews. Decent sales, too: According to a USA Today story earlier this month, Beautiful Children had sold about 12,000 copies in hardback--great numbers for a first novel by an unknown writer.

In theory Bock has now doubled his audience: According to litblog the Millions, about 15,000 people downloaded the PDF from Random House's dedicated site for the novel. Bock was relaxed about the idea of his labor circulating around for anybody who wants it, DRM-free. "If someone wants to try to read all 432 pages online, I'd say 'Good job,' but I figure they'd want a copy of the book at some point," he told the paper.

It's impossible to say how many of the people who downloaded the book eventually plunked down $25 to buy a hard copy, let alone read enough of the download to make a decision about whether to buy a copy or not. Random House's experiment undoubtedly helps Bock's buzz. But it'd be a mistake to think that all free experiments are created equal, and the proof is in a novel you can find in pretty much every used bookstore in the U.S., pages pristine, spine uncracked: Rich...