Yes. This is the closest real life example:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

Yes, lots of books get cancelled when editors leave publishers. It happened to me. One of my novels was bought by an editor at Harcourt but when it merged with Houghton Miflin she was laid off. The book did technically get published, it was reviewed in Publishers Weekly and some copies made it to book stores but with no editor in house at the publisher it got zero marketing and publicity and didn’t sell many copies.

It is similar to what happens to movies in production when new studio execs are brought in.

Speaking of science fiction, always keep in mind Sturgeon’s Law, "ninety percent of everything is crap.” Or really, ninety percent of everything isn’t for you.

I think people have always been quite shocked when their real history is available to them. But it’s only been recently (historically speaking) that full, real histories have been widely available. The 20th century had a lot of blind patriotism.

Joyland is a kind of gentle nostalgia, quite different for him.

She was a friendly witness in the HUAC trials and claimed “It’s a Wonderful Life” was communist propaganda. She also wrote a guide for screenwriters to follow that has things like, “Don’t smear wealth,” and “Don’t deify the common man.” No middle ground, no nuance. Like a teenager.

https://www.openculture.com/2016/05/ayn-rands-13-commandments-for-making-good-capitalist-movies-1947.html

That’s a good question, if you can learn it or not. I used to think it was too bad that learning to write couldn’t be more like learning a musical instrument, before you write your own songs you learn to play someone else’s. Then I read an interview with Elmore Leonard (one of my favourite writers) who said to learn to write he would start by typing the beginning of Hemingway story, maybe half a page, and then then continue in his own direction trying to see if he could capture Hemingway’s voice. This was long before fanfic which I now think is a good way to learn, much like playing other people’s music is for learning an instrument. I have worked in two writers’ rooms on TV shows and in some ways it’s kind of like writing fanfic, you need to be able to capture the voice of the show runner.

Anyway, I think you can learn to write the way you want to but you do have to trust the readers a lot. And you have to write a lot.

As for Carver, there is a lot of discussion about how much he was edited by Gordon Lish. That’s the other thing, every book we read was also edited by someone other than the author.

https://blog.pshares.org/raymond-carver-gordon-lish-and-the-editor-as-enabler/

There’s just enough information to trigger your own imagination. Carver really understood that writing is a dialogue between writer and reader, not a monologue from the writer. Everyone brings their own experiences to reading and Carver allows you to be a big part of the process as you fill in the blanks, so to speak.

I have been an author for about 15 years. In that time I have published 8 novels, edited three short story anthologies, and won one award. It still doesn’t pay enough to be a full-time job. But I think it is very rare for writing to pay enough to be full-time job. I attend one or two literary festivals per year (pre-Covid) and at least 90% of the authors attending have another job as well. The joke in the community is that the difference between literary writers and genre writers is that the second job for literary writers is teacher/college professor and genre writers have all kinds of different second jobs.

But, having said that, being an author is still a lot of fun. If you’re at all a social person the festivals can be great.