Podcast Summary: Fiction’s Lost Ambition with Writer Sam Khan

Podcast: New Books Network – America and Beyond
Host: Paul Starabin
Guest: Sam Khan (Writer, Publisher of the Castalia Substack, Editor at Persuasion, Founder of Republic of Letters)
Date: April 8, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Paul Starabin engages in a wide-ranging conversation with writer and editor Sam Khan about the diminished status and ambition of contemporary fiction; the forces shaping literary culture today; the effects of publishing, technology, and MFA programs; and avenues for renewal via projects like Substack and Khan’s own Republic of Letters. The discussion oscillates between lament for fiction’s lost centrality and optimism about new models fostering creative freedom and diverse voices.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introducing Sam Khan & His Literary Projects

[01:19–04:49]

• Sam's Background:
  • Former documentary filmmaker; became a “compulsive Substack addict” around 2022 and began Castalia, a personal Substack focused on literary criticism but also politics, book reviews, and fiction.
• The Name "Castalia":
  • Reference to Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game—an idealized scholarly society.
• Editorial Work:
  • Editor for Persuasion (Yascha Mounk’s large-subscription Substack, "often a bit against the grain" [03:13]).
• Republic of Letters:
  • Khan’s distinct initiative: “crowdsourced literary magazine” curating submissions with a “writer first” philosophy.
  • Notable for including working-class voices seldom heard in mainstream publishing.
  • Example: “I think our top contributor lives in, like, adult foster care... these things about, you know, living in adult foster care, some of the abuse she’s had, and they’re just really good.” [04:23]

The Decline of Fiction’s Cultural Centrality

[07:41–11:59]

• Fiction’s Marginalization:
  • “Fiction is not in a healthy place... it’s not at the center of the discourse.” [08:17]
  • Comparison to TV and movies: pop culture touchstones are now mostly visual media, with few universally recognized literary characters since perhaps Harry Potter.
  • “Fiction... it’s basically lost its market share. It’s lost its centrality within the public.” [09:53]
• Ambition & Lament:
  • Starabin: “This is a lament.”
  • Khan: “It’s a fact. Yeah, it’s also a... I mean, I’m a partisan of fiction. I love it. I think it’s more interesting than anything else.” [10:40]
  • Phones and digital media blamed for cultural shift towards "post-literacy”—“We are kind of moving into like a post-literacy era... you lose certain complexities of your mind with that.” [11:25]
• Effects on the Reader and Imagination:
  • The loss of interiority and continuity with the past.

Lost Ambition: What Has Changed, and When?

[11:59–14:27]

• When Fiction Was Ambitious:
  • Starabin reminisces about the grand ambitions of 19th-century novels (e.g., Bleak House, Sons and Lovers): books that “define the era” and offer immersive portraits of time, place, and culture.
  • Asks for recent counterexamples; highlights Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead as a possibly ambitious, bestselling exception, capturing the opioid epidemic in Appalachia.

Structural Forces & Publishing Realities

[14:27–18:20]

• Not a Talent Issue:
  • Khan: “What I’m not saying is that writers have gone away. There are lots and lots of ambitious writers... I’m trying to keep the discourse... to the structural stuff.”
• Impact of Technology and Market Forces:
  • Technological determinism: the rise of TV, then social media, changed conditions—"forms sort of hit their maturity... then there is a certain technological determinism.”
  • Publishing trends: books “getting smaller and smaller because attention spans are getting shorter.” Industry incentives push writers toward commercial, less ambitious works.
  • “What they write just gets schlockier and more dishonest and worse and worse.” [17:08]
  • Desire to build independent review ecosystems that celebrate under-recognized but excellent writers.

The MFA-Industrial Complex & Its Discontents

[18:20–24:38]

• Debate on Writing Programs:
  • MFA programs often blamed for sameness and political orthodoxy ("super woke" since ~2015). Yet, Khan considers them more as symptoms than sole causes.
  • “They just needed to buy hook or by crook. They needed to make a living for themselves... actually the only way that anybody ever gets basically paid to write or to do anything with writing...” [19:40]
  • Youth and lack of lived experience among MFA students; programs reward “people who are students” rather than those with real-world freedom or edge.
  • "From everything I can tell, the atmosphere in the MFAs is just not great... you have to toe some lines." [21:35]

Gatekeeping: Agents, Publishers, and the Market

[21:02–24:38]

• The Role of Agents:

  • Agents now powerful gatekeepers, primarily focused on moving product and protecting their “15%,” not necessarily prioritizing craft.
  • “...they become the gatekeepers. But they're entirely concerned with getting their, you know, 15%.” [21:35]

• Industry Structure’s Effects:

  • The “arts bureaucratic chains” that stifle independence.
  • Substack and other online platforms as new avenues: “...I would love to get rid of some of these... chains that don't really have to do with making good writing.” [24:26]

TV as the New Ambitious Fiction?

[24:38–30:07]

• Pop Culture’s Shifting Role:

  • “In terms of the culture... shows like on HBO... those are in a way, you know, kind of like the big ambitious novels that were once written.” [24:38]
  • Khan: “That probably is the great American novel... Mad Men.” [26:42]
  • “The psychological complexity is much greater in The Wire than it is in Dickens or Dreiser.” [27:14]
  • Limitations acknowledged—TV is expensive and exclusive; most writers never see their own work realized in this way.

• Advantages of Literary Fiction:

  • “Whatever else you say about it, you have creative control... it’s very pure art. It needs to exist.” [29:19]
  • TV’s rise has “swallowed up” much of literary fiction’s market role.

The “Genre” Debate & Writerly Freedom

[30:07–35:46]

• Genre’s Marketplace Role:

  • Starabin: "Do you have to have an answer to the question of what genre you're writing for... is that just a logical outcome of a consumer capitalist marketplace?"
  • Khan: “It’s all just ways of moving product... this literary fiction term showed up at some point and... that’s getting kind of squeezed further and further.” [31:38]

• Writerly Ethics and Psychological Depth:

  • “A good writer should be able to write anything... what writing is really about is a kind of psychological maturity.” [32:44]
  • On confronting the self and the uncomfortable: “Fiction is... an incredible tool for... allowing you in the safe but uncomfortable way to go and just explore everything. You know, touch all demons...” [33:33]

• Blurring Genre Boundaries:

  • Many writers successfully merge literary and genre fiction; “Game of Thrones is technically genre, but it’s bigger than anything else.”

Literary Journals and Their Narrowing Influence

[35:46–39:24]

• The Limits of Lit Mags:

  • Journals have narrow interests, often tightly circumscribed by funding and politics; “they get more narrow and narrower. You never want to read what they're doing.” [38:08]
  • The problem: “It can seem very narrow. It's like, okay, here's a literary journal and here is very specifically kind of exactly what they're interested in...” [35:46]
  • Substack and web projects can bypass this with lower overhead and greater freedom.

• The Turn from Realism:

  • Younger audiences favor fantasy and genre over social realism; question raised as to why realism lost its cachet.

The Age of Upheaval: Where Are Fiction’s Big Books?

[40:15–45:25]

• Literature as Cultural Diagnosis:

  • Starabin: “Where is the big book in fiction that’s going to speak to the times in which we’re living?” [41:51]
  • Khan: “Where’s the intensity? That’s kind of the big thing.” [41:51]
  • He recalls the example of Eastern European and Soviet writers who wrote with intensity despite (even because of) adversity—“They wrote really interesting stuff. A lot of it’s very political, not necessarily didactic...” [43:16]
  • The desire for American writers to embrace that same passion and pride.

• Literary Response to War and Turmoil:

  • “We saw The Naked and the Dead... Catch-22... I don’t know that we’ve seen the great novel that’s embedded in the 2003 Iraq war...” [45:25]
  • Hesitancy or market intransigence toward war novels and political engagement in fiction.

Wokeness, Market Trends, & The Shrinking Big Book

[46:46–49:14]

• ‘Woke’ as a Symptom, Not the Cause:
  • Wave of “wokeness” downstream from economic fears in publishing: “They started to get scared at one level when woke was coming... and then at another level, I think they recognized that it was sort of good for business...” [46:52]
• Shorter, Less Ambitious Books:
  • Popular books shrinking in length—attention spans diminished, so “writers don’t really bother” attempting grand novels; publishers unlikely to select them.
  • The mid-century’s wars and crises forced literary ambition; today’s relative insulation creates smallness and a retreat into “twenty-somethings wandering around New York City... complaining about being that.” [48:46]

The New Yorker & Literary Establishment

[49:14–55:31]

• Critique of The New Yorker:

  • Starabin: “A lot of New Yorker stories just feel really small.” [50:48]
  • Inertia and insiderism; stories chosen from a narrow pool via agents; editors admit, “it’s kind of like ten other stories that are exactly like it...” [51:09]
  • Documentary footage reveals the magazine’s distance from broader society, especially class divides.
  • “To me, it’s just symptomatic of a certain rot that’s gone with kind of the professional class.” [54:29]

• Need for Artistic Renewal:

  • “Fresh blood doesn’t necessarily just mean new people. It also means just rejuvenating yourself.” [55:06]

Optimism: Independent Publishing & Creative Democracy

[55:31–End]

• The Promise of Substack & Alternatives:
  • Starabin: “I think you’re showing that there are certainly a lot of alternatives out there... it’s just like taking down the whole casemaker, gatekeeper type function.” [55:31]
  • Khan sees his own journey as proof of what’s possible outside legacy systems: pursuing “pride,” “honor” and the deeper, riskier artistic impulse.

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Fiction’s Place in Culture:
  • Sam Khan: “Fiction is not in a healthy place in this society, and it’s not at the center of the discourse.” [08:17]
• On the Post-Literacy Era:
  • “We are kind of moving into like a post-literacy era... you lose the ability to develop interiority, to really have continuity with the past...” [11:25]
• On What’s Missing:
  • Paul Starabin: “Where is the big book in fiction that’s going to speak to the times in which we’re living?” [41:51]
• On Literary Artistry and Independence:
  • “Whatever else you say about it, you have creative control. Like, that’s you writing. And so to me, it’s just a very pure form. It’s very pure art. It needs to exist.” [29:19]
• On Writerly Courage:
  • “I want people to live in a way that they can be proud of. I want ideas like honor to come back... if you’re... following the path of creativity and writing, that’s what you should be choosing for.” [43:42]
• On the Literary Industrial Complex:
  • “There’s basically nobody at any point in the system who’s just thinking about like, what are we really trying to do with the art here? How can we be as kind of bold and interesting and risk taking with our art?” [21:35]

Timestamps for Notable Segments

• Introduction to Sam Khan and Projects: [01:19–04:49]
• Fiction’s Cultural Decline: [07:41–11:59]
• Debate on ‘Ambitious Fiction’: [11:59–14:27]
• Industry Structure & Publishing Practices: [14:27–18:20]
• MFAs & Gatekeeping: [18:20–24:38]
• TV as the New ‘Novel’: [24:38–30:07]
• Genre, Literary Journalism, and Realism: [30:07–39:24]
• Literature in an Age of Upheaval: [40:15–45:25]
• The New Yorker and Literary Elitism: [49:14–55:31]
• Closing Optimism on Indie Publishing: [55:31–End]

Closing Thoughts

Paul Starabin and Sam Khan’s conversation is a passionate, sometimes mournful, often hopeful exploration of fiction’s evolving role and obstacles in 21st-century culture. Khan insists on the unique power and necessity of ambitious literary fiction—even as he turns to new platforms and philosophies to foster its future. Listeners are left with both a nuanced diagnosis of the current malaise and a tenacious belief in renewal through creative risk, independence, and a return to literary pride.