Albert Mobilio "...But in 1999 it's still difficult not to see literature at some kind of crossroads. All the usual suspects; the triumph of visual culture, technology, big business, shrinking attention spans, literacy rates. These things all conspire to make us feel like the art of story telling is about to change. I believe or not. ...I'd like to hear what each of you [panelists] imagine this audience [ serious fiction audience] to be. Is it enough as far as size, and as far as social range to guarantee a future for good writing? Is there a sense that this readership is growing or shrinking? And finally, who are these people reading serious fiction?

Gerald Howard "...You can sell an embarrassingly few number of books of serious works of fiction. Or, if the gods are with you, you can sell an amazing number of books. Two examples of the amazing side---two exceptionally fine books Cold Mountain and Memoirs Of A Geisha ... Both, I don't know their total sales are but, I know their markets, half a million copies each. Hardcover....There is an audience and it can be tapped into... My perspective; the enterprise of publishing serious fiction is a lot easier. And a lot more hopeful today then it was when I first started trying to do it in the early 1980's. The reasons for that I think are structural. In the sense that, although I suppose we are all supposed to hate Barnes & Nobles, Borders and the chains, the superstores and all that---I don't really hate them. Because, they have brought books to places where they have not been before. Fact is that Barnes & Noble is the book of the month club of our time. ...there are so many things that can be done to bring the writer in touch with the audience that were not there before. In the early 80's what you basically did was to send your review copies out, waited to see what The Times book review said and if they were complimentary you call up the Today Show, and see if you could get your author there. Now there's a whole structure of readings all through the country . Some of them through bookstores, some of them through art lectures. Where an author who has a taste for going out on the road, can go out and meet the audience and the pre-sale audience. That was really not there before. The amazing growth of book clubs. Ten years ago, the idea was nobody was going to read because they were too engaged with their exercise machines. Now all over the country people read regularly, read good books, and talk about books. And you know, who'd a thought it? So, I think it's pretty obvious, the mood on the whole thing looked at from the publishing point of view. I think some other points of view---there are darker tones..."

Saffire "I think as a reader and a writer, I am very optimistic. I think in terms of some Juno Diaz in Drown, Edwidge Danitcott, not only is there a whole to crop of fiction writers there's a whole new audience. I can't see something like Drown having the massive audience it has today, twenty years ago. So there's a whole new group of Americans who are here and wanting literature. And there's a whole new writers who are providing it. I mean, it may not be Stephen King type book sales but, people are buying these books and people are reading them. So, I'm happy..."

Lynn Tillman "But then the question to me is---it's not that I'm a pessimist---I mean, I'm a depressive but, about that I share some of these concerns. I mean, I'm not a hater I think the questions are; what do we mean by serious fiction, that's one thing. And I think different people have different meanings for that. And the other question is; what kind of impact does that kind fiction, that we do call serious, have on the culture? It's may one thing for people to buy books and maybe, perhaps read them. Sometimes we are just happy they buy them...I sometimes wonder what kind of impact books have. In terms of how people are bring it and absorbing it into their lives and into the culture with all the other competing media. Books are doing slowly here. The 20th Century is about speed. The Futurists were right it started out about speed and it's ending about speed. And books are slow. They're slow to write, slow to read relatively compared to other things. No matter how fast a reader you are. And that very particular kind of quality that reading and writing have. Are these going to be kind of cherished, wonderful qualities,? Or, are they going to be something that makes the book as an object something that people don't want to have in their lives?

Saffire ...One of the things I was noticing, just in teaching, is that the writing I'm seeing is different from writing I saw from students ten years ago. This writing, it's written faster, it incorporates a lot of the visual media that we're talking about. So,it's almost like, even though it's print feels like multimedia. Young writers, even though they're college students, they have incorporated comic books. I think literature as we know it is going to change. And we have to deal with that.This is not the olden days. I mean, people go home and they listen to CDs, and they watch TV, and then they sit down and read a book or a magazine. That's gonna effect the writing that's being written.

I sort of see a more of a multiplicity of serious fiction.

Heidi Julavits "...The function of reading or, just the act of reading is changing. In a couple of ways that I notice, It seems like it's becoming more passive. Or, it's being encouraged as a more passive activity. I think back to what I read when I was a kid. ...For many people, I think it of my era, it was the chronicles of Narna. Was one of the sort of, seminal text. I had an interesting experience where, I decided to give it to my mother for Christmas, because she had never read it. And i brought her the box set. Which was much like my box set that I had when I was eight. As I was wrapping it up, I noticed that the books were in a different order then they were when I had received my box set some twenty some odd years ago. When I got my box set---they[the books] were ---I imagine they must of been in the order that C.S. Lewis had written them. Which was very much out of chronological order, in terms of how the story unfolded, and the history of Narna. I sort of trace that back for myself as sort of, my first experience with non-linear narrative. In a way. What was interesting about this box set [for her mother] is that, it was in order. it was in chronological. So the story was the first one. So the magicians nephew was the first book, which originally that was the fifth book. I was also sort of disturbed in a way to see something in The New Yorker it was The Harriet Potter series, how that has been edited for Americans. The language has been Americanized. That was what part of what was the thrill for me in reading the Narna series. It was English but it was foreign. And, it just seems to me, that every effort is being made to make reading as sort of smooth, and unchallenging, and passive an activity. My question is; how is reading changing? The function of reading changing? What does that mean, not only for the sort of audience we expect to have in the future of book fiction, but what that means for writers. And also for editors, frankly.