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McCann responds to suggestions that 'Australian fiction is struggling, sales are woeful' and the attendant 'demoralisation' of writers. McCann claims that writers are unwilling to alienate readers and therefore produce a homogenous national literature 'incapable of questioning its institutional or ideological functions.' Given this scenario, McCann says that an 'avant-garde' style seems impossible. 'In the meantime, complaints about the mediocre state of Australian literature are like hungry rumblings from the belly of the beast - the structures constantly calling out for innovative Australian writing are the very structures that impede its development.'
