Foreign borrowings  

As a student of foreign literature in particular, I find this phenomenon pretty disturbing. This part especially:

"A lot of foreign literature doesn't work in the American context because it's less action-oriented than what we're used to, more philosophical and reflective," said Laurie Brown, senior vice president for marketing and sales at Harcourt Trade Publishers. "As with foreign films, literature in translation often has a different pace, a different style, and it can take some getting used to. The reader needs to see subtleties and get into the mood or frame of mind to step into a different place. Americans tend to want more immediate gratification. We're into accessible information. We often look for the story, rather than the story within the story. We'd rather read lines than read between the lines."

Obviously there's the whole "Americans are contemptuous of other cultures" angle, but the idea here is just that the philosophical, the reflective, the subtle, the cerebral are absent from our literature. Anecdotally at least, this seems to be true. I spent a good bit of my wknd trying to unearth some good Latin American fiction (if anyone can recommend even a moderately esteemed Bolivian author, I'd be forever in your debt), and what I ended up with was a lot of wonderfully challenging experimental writing that for the reasons above would never pass muster at a major American publishing house - stuff influenced by Borges in the same way American authors are influenced by... Raymond Chandler?

Anyway, I'm not meaning to sound like a comp lit snob, I've read and loved my share of neurotic Chandler knockoffs. But I think the enterprise of world literature is broader, more challenging, and frankly a bit more human than anything American culture has to offer. It's too bad about Northwestern University Press... I suppose now I'll have to start a foreign lit blitz of my own. Well, you can always start here.