Other bloggers and online community generally: please note this post.
Many readers of this blog will be familiar with the Everyone Who's Anyone web site, which is owned and operated by Gerard Jones. That site is now being threatened with closure.
Everyone Who's Anyone is a list of the names, addresses, and other details, of virtually all the literary agents and publishers of any note in the UK, USA, and Canada. Gerard originally assembled this list to facilitate his own efforts to sell his book Ginny Good -- efforts which were eventually successful. Having collected all this information, Gerard made it available to writers everywhere; and in the last year or so he has added a vast amount of further data about film companies.
Not surprisingly, many writers have taken advantage of this vast resource, which represents hundreds of hours of work, and have used it to send enquiry letters to said agents, publishers, and film producers. And, of course, as the more seasoned of us well know, not everyone in the book or movie world is always pleased to hear from as-yet-unpublished writers, whom they regard as deadbeat losers, unwashed, smelly, and otherwise undesirable.
Recently, Universal Studios, which is one of the bigger companies listed on Everyone Who's Anyone, has decided that it can no longer put up with the gross inconvenience of having its executives' email addresses and other data listed on the site, and has lodged a formal complaint with Dotster, the company with which Gerard registered the domain name: the aim of the complaint being to get Gerard's site closed down.
Now, I don't know how you feel about this, but I for one am not happy about it. If big companies -- not to mention politicians -- are able to have web sites closed down simply because they don't happen to like the content of those web sites, then I believe we are in serious trouble.
I therefore draw your attention to this state of affairs and invite you to have a think about it. To assist you in thinking, I am going to set out below the following documents. 1, a copy of the email from Carolyn Hampton to Dotster; 2, a copy of Gerard's email to Carolyn Hampton; 3, a copy of my email to Carolyn Hampton; and 4, some concluding comments.
1. Text of email from Carolyn Hampton
Dear Sir or Madam:
This web site, which is hosted by your servers, lists the names, addresses, phone numbers, titles, and private e-mail addresses of nearly every single one of Universal Studios senior executives (see:
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/tt/tgpc1.html
The site encourages would-be screenwriters to inundate our executives with unsolicited submissions, spam, phone calls, etc. Indeed, since this material was posted by your customer (Gerard Jones), the amount of spam e-mail our executives have received has sky rocketed, with scores of people sending us ideas for screenplays.
Universal has a longstanding company policy of not accepting any ideas or materials which were not solicited by us. For legal and insurance reasons, we seek to avoid future misunderstandings if we independently develop a project which may be similar to someone else's script or idea.
We believe that paragraphs 10 (a, g, j, o) and 11 of your Registration Agreement prohibit Mr. Jones activity on his site as he encourages the public at large to harass our executives, engage in spamming, disrupt our servers, etc. We also believe that the site invades the privacy of our senior executives as their personal information (titles and e-mail addresses) is not available to the public.
We would appreciate it if you could respond at your earliest convenience because we would like to put a stop to the harassment as soon as possible. Thank you, in advance, for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Carolyn A. Hampton
Vice President - Litigation Counsel
Universal Studios
100 Universal City Plaza, LRW-6
Universal City, CA 91608
tel. 818-777-6287
fax 818-866-2166
2. Text of Gerard Jones's email to Carolyn Hampton
Dear Carolyn:
1) They're not "private" email addresses. Carolyn Hampton has a job as a litigation counsel for Universal Pictures; her email address is therefore:
carolyn.hampton@nbcuni.com.
2) I use the list for my own private, personal, legal purposes and don't "encourage would-be screenwriters to inundate (our) executives with unsolicited submissions, spam, phone calls, etc."
3) I got all the information on my site from Google and other search engines. Shut them down.
4) I do not "encourage(s) the public at large to harass (our) executives, engage in spamming, disrupt (our) servers, etc." I have no control over what people do with the information on my site.
5) The site does not invade the privacy of anyone. All the information on it is freely available to anyone with the ability to extrapolate.
http://nbcuni.com/About_NBC_Universal/Executive_Bios
I've simply put the results of my independent research on my website for my convenience.
6) "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." --Bill of Rights, Amendment One
I hope this clears things up. To mitigate any trouble you may feel I've caused you or NBC Universal, I'm including a link to a free audio book of the only truly original, worthwhile work of art published or produced anywhere in the world thus far in the 21st Century:
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/
Thanks.
Gerard Jones
3. Text of my email to Carolyn Hampton
I have seen a copy of your complaint in respect of the Everyone Who's Anyone web site which is operated by Gerard Jones.
My sincere advice to you is to withdraw your complaint. If you insist on pursuing this matter, I think you will find that you have achieved an effect precisely opposite to that which you hope to achieve.
I understand that, like most of us, you would like to minimise the number of unwelcome emails and other communications being sent to your senior executives. You are trying to achieve that by persuading Mr Jones's ISP [actually Dotster] to close down his site.
I suspect that, by taking this step, you have ensured that Universal Studios in general, and yourself in particular, will be the subject of a great deal of (well deserved) criticism from the online community. People who, only a few days ago, had never heard of you or your company will suddenly begin to take an interest, and in my opinion the majority of them will not support your position. You will alienate, in short, the very people who could do most to assist the interests of your company.
I for one intend to describe the action that you have taken, on my blog, and to seek support for Mr Jones. I think you will find that other bloggers will do the same.
We all receive unwelcome emails. We either find a way to deal with them or we get off the web.
Michael Allen
4. Concluding comments
Readers of this blog are, by definition, sophisticated and worldly-wise individuals who know full well that major film studios do not read unsolicited screenplays. They don't read them because, decades ago, they grew tired of people complaining that the studio's latest hit was a rip-off of a script sent to them five years earlier. These days, all major producers carry insurance against such eventualities, and their insurance forbids them from even sniffing an envelope which contains an unsolicited script.
That, however, is not the point. I don't like it when big boys beat up little boys. I wouldn't like it if someone tried to close me down, for no good reason, and I don't lke it when it happens to Gerard Jones.
I have sent copies of my email to Carolyn Hampton to some of the top executives at Universal, in the (faint) hope that someone in that organisation might have a smidgen of common sense. You can find the names of the executives here, and some of the email addresses on Gerard Jones's site, here.
I would advise you that, not so long ago, no less an institution than the University of Glasgow caved in at the first hint of a letter from a lawyer -- or, in that case, alleged lawyer.
If you agree with my position on this matter, you may care to write to Carolyn Hampton (carolyn.hampton@nbcuni.com) and say so. On the other hand, if you think she is dead right, you might also care to write to her. She will probably be very pleased to hear from you, because I don't think she'll get many like that.
By the way, since he cannot afford a lawyer, Gerard is hoping to interest the Electronic Frontier Foundation in his case; and this is an organisation which all blog readers should at least know about.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Friday, October 28, 2005
Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality
I have argued on this blog, more than once, that emotion is the novelist's stock in trade: in other words, emotion, as created in the reader, is what the novelist is selling. But, even if you don't accept that argument, you can hardly deny that the whole business of writing and publishing is awash with emotion of every sort and kind: ranging from euphoria at success (rare) to frustration, bitterness and anger (common). For examples of the latter, see some of the comments on this blog: try here, for example; and then again, here.
That being the case, I have further argued that it is wise for writers, and publishers too for that matter, to find out as much about emotion as is humanly possibly. And to that end I have also recommended that you should read Emotion, by Dylan Evans: this is a book which neatly summarises every key finding of modern research into emotion. And, since scientists don't actually know very much about emotion, the book is pleasingly short.
During one of my own periodic surveys of publications on the subject of emotion, I came across a book called Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality; this is edited by the same Dylan Evans, together with Pierre Cruse, and it is published by Oxford University Press.
As you would expect with that sort of publisher, Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality is an academic book, written for an academic audience consisting mainly of university lecturers and perhaps the occasional postgrad. Specifically, the book evolved from a conference organised in April 2002 by two Professors of King's College, London, as part of their research project into the function of the emotions. Should you wish to know more about this project, the information is available online.
Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality consists of 13 papers on various aspects of the overall topic. Since these papers/essays are all written by experts in the field, and are intended for an academic audience, they are pretty hard going for the general reader, and I would certainly not claim to have read all of the text myself. However, it is possible to get the drift of most of them. Whether you will think it worth the time and effort is very much a matter of temperament and background. In my own case, I spent many years working in the university sector, I ran an academic publishing company for part of that time, and I have a lifelong interest in the subject of emotion, so for me it was just about worthwhile. But I put it this way: borrow this book from a library first, before you buy a copy; that's what libraries are for.
Fortunately, there is an introduction which provides a handy overview.
It seems that, in the 1990s, research into emotion underwent something of a revival, after about a century of neglect; for scientists, emotions have long been a difficult and unrewarding area of study. Emerging from this renewed interest has been the view that the role which emotions play in 'rational' thinking and decision-making is a significant one; and, from the limited point of view of the writer/publisher, I certainly agree with that basic contention. Another idea is that emotions have played a part in evolution in that they somehow helped us to survive.
It is the connection between emotion and rationality which is of most interest to me. For thousands of years, the overwhelming weight of opinion among philosophers has been that emotion gets in the way of intelligent action. However, one of the central ideas to emerge from the recent renaissance of interest in the emotions is that this 'negative' view of emotion may not be correct. Much of Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality is therefore devoted to debating the age-old question of whether emotions are helpful or detrimental to rational thought and decision-making. And if that does not arouse your interest, you can stop reading this post right now.
I suggest to you, since you are a person interested in fiction and publishing generally, that emotion is a powerful factor -- possibly the vital factor -- in almost any decision which has to do with writing or publishing. A writer, for instance, is going to be powerfully influenced by emotion in deciding whether to write a novel at all; a publisher is going to be equally powerfully influenced by emotion in deciding whether to publish it, how many copies to print, and so forth. I cannot see how it could be otherwise. And it is therefore of highly practical interest -- not just theoretical -- as to whether or not the presence and influence of all that emotion is an aid to sound decision-making.
This is a topic which I will return to in the course of time, when I shall use the evidence presented in this book to discuss one key decision that writers have to make. For the moment, I will finish by noting two points.
First, all the distinguished scientists and thinkers whose ideas are displayed in this book have not actually come to any firm conclusion about the value, or otherwise, of emotion as a component of decision making. Second, even if they had reached a firm conclusion, there would remain a problem of applying those findings in real life.
It was ever thus. We are not the first to note the difficulty of applying even the most penetrating insights to the problems of real life. The English comedian Ken Dodd, for example, is known to have studied Freud's writings on the subject of humour. He apparently found the great man's views to be interesting, but not all that relevant. The problem being, Ken said, that Freud had never played the second house at the Glasgow Empire.
That being the case, I have further argued that it is wise for writers, and publishers too for that matter, to find out as much about emotion as is humanly possibly. And to that end I have also recommended that you should read Emotion, by Dylan Evans: this is a book which neatly summarises every key finding of modern research into emotion. And, since scientists don't actually know very much about emotion, the book is pleasingly short.
During one of my own periodic surveys of publications on the subject of emotion, I came across a book called Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality; this is edited by the same Dylan Evans, together with Pierre Cruse, and it is published by Oxford University Press.
As you would expect with that sort of publisher, Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality is an academic book, written for an academic audience consisting mainly of university lecturers and perhaps the occasional postgrad. Specifically, the book evolved from a conference organised in April 2002 by two Professors of King's College, London, as part of their research project into the function of the emotions. Should you wish to know more about this project, the information is available online.
Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality consists of 13 papers on various aspects of the overall topic. Since these papers/essays are all written by experts in the field, and are intended for an academic audience, they are pretty hard going for the general reader, and I would certainly not claim to have read all of the text myself. However, it is possible to get the drift of most of them. Whether you will think it worth the time and effort is very much a matter of temperament and background. In my own case, I spent many years working in the university sector, I ran an academic publishing company for part of that time, and I have a lifelong interest in the subject of emotion, so for me it was just about worthwhile. But I put it this way: borrow this book from a library first, before you buy a copy; that's what libraries are for.
Fortunately, there is an introduction which provides a handy overview.
It seems that, in the 1990s, research into emotion underwent something of a revival, after about a century of neglect; for scientists, emotions have long been a difficult and unrewarding area of study. Emerging from this renewed interest has been the view that the role which emotions play in 'rational' thinking and decision-making is a significant one; and, from the limited point of view of the writer/publisher, I certainly agree with that basic contention. Another idea is that emotions have played a part in evolution in that they somehow helped us to survive.
It is the connection between emotion and rationality which is of most interest to me. For thousands of years, the overwhelming weight of opinion among philosophers has been that emotion gets in the way of intelligent action. However, one of the central ideas to emerge from the recent renaissance of interest in the emotions is that this 'negative' view of emotion may not be correct. Much of Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality is therefore devoted to debating the age-old question of whether emotions are helpful or detrimental to rational thought and decision-making. And if that does not arouse your interest, you can stop reading this post right now.
I suggest to you, since you are a person interested in fiction and publishing generally, that emotion is a powerful factor -- possibly the vital factor -- in almost any decision which has to do with writing or publishing. A writer, for instance, is going to be powerfully influenced by emotion in deciding whether to write a novel at all; a publisher is going to be equally powerfully influenced by emotion in deciding whether to publish it, how many copies to print, and so forth. I cannot see how it could be otherwise. And it is therefore of highly practical interest -- not just theoretical -- as to whether or not the presence and influence of all that emotion is an aid to sound decision-making.
This is a topic which I will return to in the course of time, when I shall use the evidence presented in this book to discuss one key decision that writers have to make. For the moment, I will finish by noting two points.
First, all the distinguished scientists and thinkers whose ideas are displayed in this book have not actually come to any firm conclusion about the value, or otherwise, of emotion as a component of decision making. Second, even if they had reached a firm conclusion, there would remain a problem of applying those findings in real life.
It was ever thus. We are not the first to note the difficulty of applying even the most penetrating insights to the problems of real life. The English comedian Ken Dodd, for example, is known to have studied Freud's writings on the subject of humour. He apparently found the great man's views to be interesting, but not all that relevant. The problem being, Ken said, that Freud had never played the second house at the Glasgow Empire.
Measures of achievement
The Bookslut had a one-line link to a piece about the rising number of literary prizes. This turns out to be a Q and A session with Professor James F. English, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Prof has written a book about literary prizes, and it's published by Harvard UP, no less. It's a study of the role that prizes play in 'transactions that involve symbolic capital'. Whatever that means. And it almost certainly isn't worth the trouble trying to find out.
The last Q and A exchange goes as follows:
Of course there are prizes and prizes. Jenny Haddon, Chairman of the UK Romantic Novelists' Association, describes a good way of awarding one in her comment on my post of 6 September about the so-called National Short Story award. There is also a science-fiction prize which is awarded by one of the fan groups (could it be the BFSA?) on the basis of members' votes; and, most importantly, there is an opportunity to vote 'no award' if you think the year has not been a good one. I know I've read about this somewhere, but despite determined googling this morning I can't find the details.
The Prof has written a book about literary prizes, and it's published by Harvard UP, no less. It's a study of the role that prizes play in 'transactions that involve symbolic capital'. Whatever that means. And it almost certainly isn't worth the trouble trying to find out.
The last Q and A exchange goes as follows:
Q. Should we distrust prizes as measures of cultural worth?Erm... Yes. Actually. It is. Certainly a lot better than the opinions of professors of Eng. Lit.
A. What I would say is, What's more reliable? What's better than prizes? Sheer popularity?
Of course there are prizes and prizes. Jenny Haddon, Chairman of the UK Romantic Novelists' Association, describes a good way of awarding one in her comment on my post of 6 September about the so-called National Short Story award. There is also a science-fiction prize which is awarded by one of the fan groups (could it be the BFSA?) on the basis of members' votes; and, most importantly, there is an opportunity to vote 'no award' if you think the year has not been a good one. I know I've read about this somewhere, but despite determined googling this morning I can't find the details.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Interview with Francis Ellen
Francis Ellen has been mentioned on this blog a few times, not least in his appearances as a commenter: e.g. in relation to my post of 25 October. He is certainly a successful author in my estimation, and in that of many others. And, although there are those who think I should not be encouraging anyone to write novels (they really don't need any encouragement and it will only end in tears), I think we can reasonably regard Francis as an example to us all.
In his most recent comment, Francis mentioned an interview with him on the Screenbiz web site, so I went to investigate. I wasn't expecting all that much, frankly, but in the event I was highly impressed.
I don't agree with all of Francis's ideas but his interview is absolutely crammed with valuable observations about the writer's lot. He clearly has a very low opinion of front-line publishers -- even lower than mine -- and he is quite sure that things are going to change. So am I. I would say that Francis's interview is essential reading for anyone who is contemplating getting involved in the book world; and even more essential for anyone who is struggling with the first, or twenty-first, novel.
The bit which caught my eye is Francis's suggestion that self-published writers should not think of themselves as self-published but as independent; as in, independent film-maker, or independent record company. This is the smartest piece of thinking I've come across in a long time.
If you never click on any other link from this blog, click on the one to the interview with Francis Ellen. And, while we're about it, here's a link to his novel The Samplist on Amazon.co.uk. Or, if you prefer, you can go to Francis's publishing site and read more about the book first.
In his most recent comment, Francis mentioned an interview with him on the Screenbiz web site, so I went to investigate. I wasn't expecting all that much, frankly, but in the event I was highly impressed.
I don't agree with all of Francis's ideas but his interview is absolutely crammed with valuable observations about the writer's lot. He clearly has a very low opinion of front-line publishers -- even lower than mine -- and he is quite sure that things are going to change. So am I. I would say that Francis's interview is essential reading for anyone who is contemplating getting involved in the book world; and even more essential for anyone who is struggling with the first, or twenty-first, novel.
The bit which caught my eye is Francis's suggestion that self-published writers should not think of themselves as self-published but as independent; as in, independent film-maker, or independent record company. This is the smartest piece of thinking I've come across in a long time.
If you never click on any other link from this blog, click on the one to the interview with Francis Ellen. And, while we're about it, here's a link to his novel The Samplist on Amazon.co.uk. Or, if you prefer, you can go to Francis's publishing site and read more about the book first.
Copyright again
Is it just me, or is the debate about copyright warming up?
A day or two ago I mentioned the new blog set up by Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash. And from time to time I have mentioned the rumbling row between Google, on the one hand, and various gangs of publishers and authors on the other. (Google, if you're new to this, want to make every book ever written available online so that people can find information when they need it; the publishers and authors are afraid that this will deplete their bank balances and want to make sure that they get paid every time someone checks a fact or a quotation.)
Now Richard Nash has weighed in to the debate (link via Galleycat). He ain't too impressed with the official US publishers' line on all this, and it's well worth taking a look at what he says.
Also worth noting is the existence of the INDICARE site, which deals with digital-rights management and related copyright issues. This was pointed out to me by Nicholas Bentley, who has made his own contribution there. INDICARE offers far too much to be absorbed quickly, and at first glance it seems to have an academic slant to it which may not appeal to everyone, but there are clearly some very important issues being debated there.
For the record, I am basically on the side of Google here. Sure I would love to make money out of the stuff I write, and to a modest extent I do. But I also believe that it's no good writing something and then hiding it behind several locked doors. If what you have produced is any good, then online readers who sample it for free may well buy a copy, or recommend it to their friends, or both. And even if they don't, then passing on the benefit of your experience and knowledge is surely worth doing without payment.
It's my belief that Google will win in the end, because that's what common sense suggests. But then, of course, I have to ask myself a question: Since when did common sense have anything much to do with what goes on in the book world?
A day or two ago I mentioned the new blog set up by Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash. And from time to time I have mentioned the rumbling row between Google, on the one hand, and various gangs of publishers and authors on the other. (Google, if you're new to this, want to make every book ever written available online so that people can find information when they need it; the publishers and authors are afraid that this will deplete their bank balances and want to make sure that they get paid every time someone checks a fact or a quotation.)
Now Richard Nash has weighed in to the debate (link via Galleycat). He ain't too impressed with the official US publishers' line on all this, and it's well worth taking a look at what he says.
Also worth noting is the existence of the INDICARE site, which deals with digital-rights management and related copyright issues. This was pointed out to me by Nicholas Bentley, who has made his own contribution there. INDICARE offers far too much to be absorbed quickly, and at first glance it seems to have an academic slant to it which may not appeal to everyone, but there are clearly some very important issues being debated there.
For the record, I am basically on the side of Google here. Sure I would love to make money out of the stuff I write, and to a modest extent I do. But I also believe that it's no good writing something and then hiding it behind several locked doors. If what you have produced is any good, then online readers who sample it for free may well buy a copy, or recommend it to their friends, or both. And even if they don't, then passing on the benefit of your experience and knowledge is surely worth doing without payment.
It's my belief that Google will win in the end, because that's what common sense suggests. But then, of course, I have to ask myself a question: Since when did common sense have anything much to do with what goes on in the book world?
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
The Great Hat Race
Here, as promised yesterday, is Chapter 5 of my novel The Suppression of Vice (written under the pen-name Patrick Read).
They were on their way, of course, to Mrs Pearson’s house in Meard Street. And whether they ever got there it is hard to say; afterwards, neither man could remember. What is certain is that by 11 p.m. they were both very drunk indeed, and one or other of them must have suggested rounding the evening off at the Arts Club. Perhaps they ran out of cash and decided that they would continue taking refreshment at an establishment which would allow them credit. In any event, it is known that they arrived at the Arts Club at approximately 11.05.
There were three eye-witnesses to what followed. One, a fourteen-year-old boy called Jimmy, was present throughout the entire incident. Another, a club servant named Jackson, saw the arrival of the two men. And the club secretary, Mr Marsden, was brought down to bear witness to the consequences of the two men’s folly.
Jackson and the boy Jimmy were on duty in the entrance hall of the Arts Club late on that June evening.
Jackson was a ex-soldier who had been in the service of the club for over twenty years. He was well known to most members, and he prided himself on knowing all their names in return, even those country members who seldom set foot in the place.
At 11.05 p.m., Jackson was behind the reception desk. Through the open front door (it was still quite warm outside), he caught sight of a cab drawing up in the street. From within the darkened cab there came a maniacal laugh, a sound with which Jackson was eminently familiar.
‘I knew at once it was Mr Swinburne,’ Jackson later told the club’s management committee. ‘I’d know that laugh anywhere. Very loud it is, full of fun. Sounds like a naughty schoolboy. Likes a good laugh, does Mr Swinburne. And whatever anyone may say about him – er, about his drinking and that – I would have to say that Mr Swinburne has always behaved like a perfect gent to me.’
Those present say that the committee was not over-impressed by this character reference.
According to Jackson’s account, the door of the cab was then opened from within, and Algernon, who was seated nearest the pavement, moved to step out.
Unfortunately, Algernon’s condition was such that, when he put out his foot to place it on the metal step below the door of the cab, he missed completely and fell headlong into the gutter.
‘He went down with quite a whack,’ said Jackson. ‘I saw him go. Arse over tip, he went. Whop! Right into the gutter. I would have run out and picked him up, but I didn’t like to desert my station. And besides, I heard him laughing again. There he was, crawling about under the cab, roaring his head off. Thought it was very funny, you see, missing his step like that. Found it a big joke. And what with him being, erm, well, comfortably lubricated so to speak, he managed to fall all loose and floppy, and didn’t hurt himself. You and me, if we’d done it, we’d have broken our leg or our neck. But Mr Swinburne, see, he was all kind of relaxed like, and he didn’t come to no harm at all.’
The committee members translated the double negative and drew their own conclusions.
Eventually (according to Jackson), Algernon managed to make his way between the horse’s hooves and out on to the pavement. Then, while he was cackling ‘Hee hee hee hee hee!’, he crawled on his hands and knees to the foot of the steps leading up to the club door. There he managed to pull himself upright on the balustrade.
In answer to a question, Jackson reported that no, Mr Swinburne was not wearing a hat at the time. He was in evening dress, very much dishevelled, his collar well askew, but his hat had been left elsewhere.
‘And then,’ said Jackson, ‘I saw Mr Simpson step down from the cab too. I realised pretty quick that he was drunk an’ all. But he was careful, sober drunk, if you know what I mean. Mr Simpson is one of them gentleman what knows when they’ve had too much, and instead of becoming very silly, like Mr Swinburne, they becomes very careful indeed and moves rather slow. And that was what Mr Simpson did, see. He stepped down from the cab, making quite sure that he had his foot on the step before he let go of the door. And then he held on to the cab with one hand while he felt in his pocket for a coin to pay the cabby. And he waited for the change, and then he made for the steps as well. Weaved I bit, I recall, but he managed to reach ’em without falling over.’
At this point, Jackson reported, he called out to attract young Jimmy’s attention. The boy Jimmy had been in the employment of the club for only a few days and was being taught the ropes.
‘I knew it was important to make sure that young Jimmy got to know the members,’ said Jackson, ‘and I knew he was in the cloakroom, cleaning the basins, so I went across, opened the door, and called him out.
‘By that time Mr Swinburne was climbing the steps. Going very slow, mind you, because he had to hang on to the side, but he was very nearly at the front door. I pointed him out to Jimmy. There you are my lad, I said. That’s Mr Swinburne. Mr Swinburne is one of the most famous poets in the land. And he’s one of our most distinguished members. Young Jimmy took a look at him, and he said, But he’s drunk, Mr Jackson. Ah yes, I said. He often is.’
Jimmy confessed later that he had been surprised by how small Mr Swinburne was. ‘His hair is the biggest part of him,’ he commented.
‘Once Mr Swinburne got inside the club,’ said Jackson, ‘I could see he was bent upon mischief. He had that glint in his eye – looked like a naughty schoolboy – and he was peering around, looking for something to make mischief with. I decided to go upstairs and alert Mr Marsden.’ (Mr Marsden, a retired army officer who had served in India, was the club secretary.)
Leaving young Jimmy in the reception hall, Jackson made his way upstairs. He went into the library, which was where he had last seen the secretary. But unfortunately Marsden was no longer there. If he had been – who knows – The Great Hat Race might never have taken place.
Downstairs, Jimmy was the sole witness to what transpired.
Jimmy was an observant lad. He had a weak constitution – inclined to be chesty, his Mum said – and he had spent a lot of time indoors, looking out of the window and watching the world go by. He now took careful note of what the strange gentleman with the red hair was up to.
According to the boy’s account, Mr Swinburne and the other gentleman – whom he now knew to be Mr Simpson – went into the cloakroom. Both men were staggering and weaving, having difficulty in remaining upright. Jimmy was familiar with the problem. Even at the age of fourteen he had seen enough drunk men to recognise the condition.
The cloakroom was long and narrow. On either side of it there were rows of pegs for the members’ hats and coats. (Lavatory facilities were in an ante-room.) That particular night, there were only about sixteen members present, but this meant, naturally, since they were all gentlemen, that there were sixteen hats hanging on the various pegs. Plus one or two which had been left there by forgetful members in the past.
Algernon and Simpson wandered like lost souls up and down the cloakroom for a moment or two, until eventually Algernon pointed at Simpson’s top hat, which he was still wearing, and said solemnly, ‘Take hats off indoors.’
Simpson at once acknowledged this important point of etiquette. He reached up, removed his hat, and hung it on a peg. Not without difficulty, it must be stated. Three attempts were necessary before hat connected to peg.
Then Algernon proceeded to take his own hat off. Which was impossible, because he wasn’t wearing one. Nevertheless, the task was attempted several times, resulting only in making his long red hair look even wilder and longer than ever.
When, eventually, Algernon realised that he had lost his hat, the discovery became a source of great amusement.
‘Lost me hat!’ he declared, slapping Simpson on the back with great good humour. ‘Hee hee hee hee hee! Lost me hat!’
Simpson, however, was still in that unamused and unamusable state of a very drunk man who is wondering whether he can avoid being sick, and he did not respond. Algernon laughed sufficiently for the two of them, wheezing and hee-hee-heeing fit to bust, having to support himself on Simpson’s shoulder.
Young Jimmy watched all this, totally bemused.
And then, Mr Swinburne – it was definitely Mr Swinburne, Jimmy said – Mr Swinburne said to Mr Simpson, ‘I know! Let’s have a hat race!’
Algernon looked eagerly around at all the hats, nearly twenty in all, including Simpson’s, and saw in their presence the resources for a most hilarious way to end the evening.
He proceeded to rush up and down the line of pegs, throwing the members’ hats on to the floor. There were top hats, silk hats, bowler hats, stovepipe hats, chimney-pot hats – oh, and a couple of servants’ caps. All were thrown on to the floor. Then – and it was surprising really that the little fellow didn’t fall over while doing it – he kicked the hats into position until they were in two lines in the centre of the room, running from the door at one end to the wall at the other.
Algernon next positioned his silent friend Simpson at the end of one of the lines of hats, and himself at the end of the other.
‘Now!’ said Algernon triumphantly. ‘What you do is – ’ And he proceeded to demonstrate.
It emerged that, to conduct a hat race, one gentleman had to stand at the end of each line, and then both gentlemen proceeded to bend their left leg, hold their left foot in the left hand, and then hop down the line of hats.
It was essential, of course, that with each hop the gentleman’s foot should land on the very top of a hat, thus pancaking said head-wear it into a state of oblivion.
Young Jimmy watched, fascinated. Hat-racing was a pastime previously unknown to him.
Upstairs, meanwhile, the club’s longest-serving servant had at last succeeded in locating Mr Marsden in his private room on the third floor. Jackson had not appreciated having to climb so many stairs as it made his old war-wound ache: he had once broken his leg when he fell downstairs at the barracks in Shaftesbury. Tripped on a loose step, he said.
Jackson knocked quietly on the door of Mr Marsden’s quarters, and, when the secretary appeared, he coughed discreetly and said: ‘Ahem – Mr Swinburne’s downstairs, sir.’
Marsden, who was evidently about to retire to bed, sighed heavily. ‘Drunk, is he?’
‘I’m afraid so, sir.’
Marsden sighed again. It was a sigh redolent of impatience, regret, and irritation. ‘Very well. I’ll come down.’
Marsden later told the management committee that as he and Jackson descended the stairs, they heard from below a hideous screaming sound which at first alarmed them greatly.
‘It sounded like an animal in pain,’ said Marsden. ‘But then, as we approached the cloakroom, we both realised that it was just the sound of Mr Swinburne, screeching with laughter.’
During Jackson’s search for the club’s chief executive, Algernon and Simpson had completed the first heat of The Great Hat Race. They had each hopped, unsteadily but successfully, from one end of the lines of hats to the other. As they went, each had counted aloud to record a foot hitting the target: ‘One, two, three, four!’ Et cetera. A good deal of uproar had been generated. At the far end of the room they had collapsed in a noisy heap, Algernon bellowing and shrieking with laughter, Simpson rather less loud but still noisy by the staid standards of a gentleman’s club.
Once they had pulled themselves to their feet, however, there had been an argument about who had come first.
‘I won, I won, I won!’ Algernon had vigorously asserted.
‘No, no,’ Simpson had insisted, quietly but firmly. ‘I won.’
Algernon had flapped away at his friend’s chest with both hands, like a very small boy objecting to being told that he had not got his sums right.
‘No, I won, I won, I won!’ he had shrieked.
The dispute had led to a re-run of the race, this time from the far end of the room to the door. And it was the uproar which occurred both during and after this second heat which Marsden and Jackson heard on their way down the stairs.
Heat two concluded with both Algernon and Simpson lying in a helpless heap by the door. Behind them lay the wreckage of sixteen members’ hats and a couple of caps, plus Simpson’s own hat; all of these were damaged past all hope of repair. It was a scene of carnage which would have shocked even the most battle-hardened old soldier, and Mr Marsden could scarcely believe his eyes.
Algernon continued to howl with hysterical laughter, while Simpson loudly protested that he had been the victim of foul play.
‘Cheat, cheat, cheat!’ cried Simpson. ‘You pushed me over, you damned cheating bastard!’
‘Lies, lies, lies!’ yelled Algernon. ‘I won, won, I won, ha ha ha ha ha!’
It was, Mr Marsden told the committee, a sight which left him deeply dismayed.
After a few moments, Algernon rolled over on to his stomach and found himself gazing at the black boots of authority. He looked up, and saw the stern, fierce face of the club secretary staring down at him. But not even this sight could sober Algernon Swinburne.
‘Hee hee hee hee hee!’ he howled.
Ready to buy? I'm sure you are. Copies are available at bargain prices from either Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com; or, theoretically, from any other decent bookshop.
The principal character in the novel is the real-life nineteenth-century poet, Algernon Charles Swinburne. He was, again as mentioned yesterday, a member of the Arts Club, though his drinking and other habits severely tested the patience of the members. In Chapter 5 of The Suppression of Vice I have dramatised once such incident which very nearly resulted in Algernon's expulsion: the Great Hat Race of 1867.
If, after reading this taster, you decide that you would like to read the whole novel, you may be able to find a copy in your local library (though this is most unlikely outside the UK). If all else fails you may have to buy one. Links are provided at the end.
Chapter 5
Reginald Arthur Simpson and Algernon Charles Swinburne had both taken full advantage of the generosity of Lord Bannerdown’s sister. Champagne on arrival at the house in South Audley Street had been followed by a splendid selection of white and red wines with the buffet meal. Subsequently, large brandies had been taken as a very natural way of settling one’s stomach. Now they began to drink without accompanying food.They were on their way, of course, to Mrs Pearson’s house in Meard Street. And whether they ever got there it is hard to say; afterwards, neither man could remember. What is certain is that by 11 p.m. they were both very drunk indeed, and one or other of them must have suggested rounding the evening off at the Arts Club. Perhaps they ran out of cash and decided that they would continue taking refreshment at an establishment which would allow them credit. In any event, it is known that they arrived at the Arts Club at approximately 11.05.
There were three eye-witnesses to what followed. One, a fourteen-year-old boy called Jimmy, was present throughout the entire incident. Another, a club servant named Jackson, saw the arrival of the two men. And the club secretary, Mr Marsden, was brought down to bear witness to the consequences of the two men’s folly.
Jackson and the boy Jimmy were on duty in the entrance hall of the Arts Club late on that June evening.
Jackson was a ex-soldier who had been in the service of the club for over twenty years. He was well known to most members, and he prided himself on knowing all their names in return, even those country members who seldom set foot in the place.
At 11.05 p.m., Jackson was behind the reception desk. Through the open front door (it was still quite warm outside), he caught sight of a cab drawing up in the street. From within the darkened cab there came a maniacal laugh, a sound with which Jackson was eminently familiar.
‘I knew at once it was Mr Swinburne,’ Jackson later told the club’s management committee. ‘I’d know that laugh anywhere. Very loud it is, full of fun. Sounds like a naughty schoolboy. Likes a good laugh, does Mr Swinburne. And whatever anyone may say about him – er, about his drinking and that – I would have to say that Mr Swinburne has always behaved like a perfect gent to me.’
Those present say that the committee was not over-impressed by this character reference.
According to Jackson’s account, the door of the cab was then opened from within, and Algernon, who was seated nearest the pavement, moved to step out.
Unfortunately, Algernon’s condition was such that, when he put out his foot to place it on the metal step below the door of the cab, he missed completely and fell headlong into the gutter.
‘He went down with quite a whack,’ said Jackson. ‘I saw him go. Arse over tip, he went. Whop! Right into the gutter. I would have run out and picked him up, but I didn’t like to desert my station. And besides, I heard him laughing again. There he was, crawling about under the cab, roaring his head off. Thought it was very funny, you see, missing his step like that. Found it a big joke. And what with him being, erm, well, comfortably lubricated so to speak, he managed to fall all loose and floppy, and didn’t hurt himself. You and me, if we’d done it, we’d have broken our leg or our neck. But Mr Swinburne, see, he was all kind of relaxed like, and he didn’t come to no harm at all.’
The committee members translated the double negative and drew their own conclusions.
Eventually (according to Jackson), Algernon managed to make his way between the horse’s hooves and out on to the pavement. Then, while he was cackling ‘Hee hee hee hee hee!’, he crawled on his hands and knees to the foot of the steps leading up to the club door. There he managed to pull himself upright on the balustrade.
In answer to a question, Jackson reported that no, Mr Swinburne was not wearing a hat at the time. He was in evening dress, very much dishevelled, his collar well askew, but his hat had been left elsewhere.
‘And then,’ said Jackson, ‘I saw Mr Simpson step down from the cab too. I realised pretty quick that he was drunk an’ all. But he was careful, sober drunk, if you know what I mean. Mr Simpson is one of them gentleman what knows when they’ve had too much, and instead of becoming very silly, like Mr Swinburne, they becomes very careful indeed and moves rather slow. And that was what Mr Simpson did, see. He stepped down from the cab, making quite sure that he had his foot on the step before he let go of the door. And then he held on to the cab with one hand while he felt in his pocket for a coin to pay the cabby. And he waited for the change, and then he made for the steps as well. Weaved I bit, I recall, but he managed to reach ’em without falling over.’
At this point, Jackson reported, he called out to attract young Jimmy’s attention. The boy Jimmy had been in the employment of the club for only a few days and was being taught the ropes.
‘I knew it was important to make sure that young Jimmy got to know the members,’ said Jackson, ‘and I knew he was in the cloakroom, cleaning the basins, so I went across, opened the door, and called him out.
‘By that time Mr Swinburne was climbing the steps. Going very slow, mind you, because he had to hang on to the side, but he was very nearly at the front door. I pointed him out to Jimmy. There you are my lad, I said. That’s Mr Swinburne. Mr Swinburne is one of the most famous poets in the land. And he’s one of our most distinguished members. Young Jimmy took a look at him, and he said, But he’s drunk, Mr Jackson. Ah yes, I said. He often is.’
Jimmy confessed later that he had been surprised by how small Mr Swinburne was. ‘His hair is the biggest part of him,’ he commented.
‘Once Mr Swinburne got inside the club,’ said Jackson, ‘I could see he was bent upon mischief. He had that glint in his eye – looked like a naughty schoolboy – and he was peering around, looking for something to make mischief with. I decided to go upstairs and alert Mr Marsden.’ (Mr Marsden, a retired army officer who had served in India, was the club secretary.)
Leaving young Jimmy in the reception hall, Jackson made his way upstairs. He went into the library, which was where he had last seen the secretary. But unfortunately Marsden was no longer there. If he had been – who knows – The Great Hat Race might never have taken place.
Downstairs, Jimmy was the sole witness to what transpired.
Jimmy was an observant lad. He had a weak constitution – inclined to be chesty, his Mum said – and he had spent a lot of time indoors, looking out of the window and watching the world go by. He now took careful note of what the strange gentleman with the red hair was up to.
According to the boy’s account, Mr Swinburne and the other gentleman – whom he now knew to be Mr Simpson – went into the cloakroom. Both men were staggering and weaving, having difficulty in remaining upright. Jimmy was familiar with the problem. Even at the age of fourteen he had seen enough drunk men to recognise the condition.
The cloakroom was long and narrow. On either side of it there were rows of pegs for the members’ hats and coats. (Lavatory facilities were in an ante-room.) That particular night, there were only about sixteen members present, but this meant, naturally, since they were all gentlemen, that there were sixteen hats hanging on the various pegs. Plus one or two which had been left there by forgetful members in the past.
Algernon and Simpson wandered like lost souls up and down the cloakroom for a moment or two, until eventually Algernon pointed at Simpson’s top hat, which he was still wearing, and said solemnly, ‘Take hats off indoors.’
Simpson at once acknowledged this important point of etiquette. He reached up, removed his hat, and hung it on a peg. Not without difficulty, it must be stated. Three attempts were necessary before hat connected to peg.
Then Algernon proceeded to take his own hat off. Which was impossible, because he wasn’t wearing one. Nevertheless, the task was attempted several times, resulting only in making his long red hair look even wilder and longer than ever.
When, eventually, Algernon realised that he had lost his hat, the discovery became a source of great amusement.
‘Lost me hat!’ he declared, slapping Simpson on the back with great good humour. ‘Hee hee hee hee hee! Lost me hat!’
Simpson, however, was still in that unamused and unamusable state of a very drunk man who is wondering whether he can avoid being sick, and he did not respond. Algernon laughed sufficiently for the two of them, wheezing and hee-hee-heeing fit to bust, having to support himself on Simpson’s shoulder.
Young Jimmy watched all this, totally bemused.
And then, Mr Swinburne – it was definitely Mr Swinburne, Jimmy said – Mr Swinburne said to Mr Simpson, ‘I know! Let’s have a hat race!’
Algernon looked eagerly around at all the hats, nearly twenty in all, including Simpson’s, and saw in their presence the resources for a most hilarious way to end the evening.
He proceeded to rush up and down the line of pegs, throwing the members’ hats on to the floor. There were top hats, silk hats, bowler hats, stovepipe hats, chimney-pot hats – oh, and a couple of servants’ caps. All were thrown on to the floor. Then – and it was surprising really that the little fellow didn’t fall over while doing it – he kicked the hats into position until they were in two lines in the centre of the room, running from the door at one end to the wall at the other.
Algernon next positioned his silent friend Simpson at the end of one of the lines of hats, and himself at the end of the other.
‘Now!’ said Algernon triumphantly. ‘What you do is – ’ And he proceeded to demonstrate.
It emerged that, to conduct a hat race, one gentleman had to stand at the end of each line, and then both gentlemen proceeded to bend their left leg, hold their left foot in the left hand, and then hop down the line of hats.
It was essential, of course, that with each hop the gentleman’s foot should land on the very top of a hat, thus pancaking said head-wear it into a state of oblivion.
Young Jimmy watched, fascinated. Hat-racing was a pastime previously unknown to him.
Upstairs, meanwhile, the club’s longest-serving servant had at last succeeded in locating Mr Marsden in his private room on the third floor. Jackson had not appreciated having to climb so many stairs as it made his old war-wound ache: he had once broken his leg when he fell downstairs at the barracks in Shaftesbury. Tripped on a loose step, he said.
Jackson knocked quietly on the door of Mr Marsden’s quarters, and, when the secretary appeared, he coughed discreetly and said: ‘Ahem – Mr Swinburne’s downstairs, sir.’
Marsden, who was evidently about to retire to bed, sighed heavily. ‘Drunk, is he?’
‘I’m afraid so, sir.’
Marsden sighed again. It was a sigh redolent of impatience, regret, and irritation. ‘Very well. I’ll come down.’
Marsden later told the management committee that as he and Jackson descended the stairs, they heard from below a hideous screaming sound which at first alarmed them greatly.
‘It sounded like an animal in pain,’ said Marsden. ‘But then, as we approached the cloakroom, we both realised that it was just the sound of Mr Swinburne, screeching with laughter.’
During Jackson’s search for the club’s chief executive, Algernon and Simpson had completed the first heat of The Great Hat Race. They had each hopped, unsteadily but successfully, from one end of the lines of hats to the other. As they went, each had counted aloud to record a foot hitting the target: ‘One, two, three, four!’ Et cetera. A good deal of uproar had been generated. At the far end of the room they had collapsed in a noisy heap, Algernon bellowing and shrieking with laughter, Simpson rather less loud but still noisy by the staid standards of a gentleman’s club.
Once they had pulled themselves to their feet, however, there had been an argument about who had come first.
‘I won, I won, I won!’ Algernon had vigorously asserted.
‘No, no,’ Simpson had insisted, quietly but firmly. ‘I won.’
Algernon had flapped away at his friend’s chest with both hands, like a very small boy objecting to being told that he had not got his sums right.
‘No, I won, I won, I won!’ he had shrieked.
The dispute had led to a re-run of the race, this time from the far end of the room to the door. And it was the uproar which occurred both during and after this second heat which Marsden and Jackson heard on their way down the stairs.
Heat two concluded with both Algernon and Simpson lying in a helpless heap by the door. Behind them lay the wreckage of sixteen members’ hats and a couple of caps, plus Simpson’s own hat; all of these were damaged past all hope of repair. It was a scene of carnage which would have shocked even the most battle-hardened old soldier, and Mr Marsden could scarcely believe his eyes.
Algernon continued to howl with hysterical laughter, while Simpson loudly protested that he had been the victim of foul play.
‘Cheat, cheat, cheat!’ cried Simpson. ‘You pushed me over, you damned cheating bastard!’
‘Lies, lies, lies!’ yelled Algernon. ‘I won, won, I won, ha ha ha ha ha!’
It was, Mr Marsden told the committee, a sight which left him deeply dismayed.
After a few moments, Algernon rolled over on to his stomach and found himself gazing at the black boots of authority. He looked up, and saw the stern, fierce face of the club secretary staring down at him. But not even this sight could sober Algernon Swinburne.
‘Hee hee hee hee hee!’ he howled.
Ready to buy? I'm sure you are. Copies are available at bargain prices from either Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com; or, theoretically, from any other decent bookshop.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
The Arts Club competition for first novels
Publishing News carries a tiny paragraph about a competition for first novels. It seems that submissions can only be made by publishers, a limitation which will certainly reduce the field, and is probably intended to eliminate self-publishers. But who knows? Further details are to be had from Stella@theartsclub.co.uk. Prize: £1,000 plus a posh dinner.
The Arts Club is a once-famous institution but I don't think I realised that it was still in existence. Founded in 1863, it was once the haunt of Millais, Swinburne, Kipling, and others. The web site is coy about membership rates but I doubt that it is cheap.
The Arts Club was, of course, the scene of that wonderful episode in Swinburne's life when he arrived drunk, with a friend. He and the friend found that the cloakroom was full of gentlemen's hats (everyone wore one in those days), and so they proceeded to throw them all on the floor and stamp on them. This reduced both men to hysteria, but the Club committee was not amused at all. I wrote about this incident in my novel The Suppression of Vice. And if I get a moment I might even reproduce that chapter here tomorrow. Come back and see.
The Arts Club is a once-famous institution but I don't think I realised that it was still in existence. Founded in 1863, it was once the haunt of Millais, Swinburne, Kipling, and others. The web site is coy about membership rates but I doubt that it is cheap.
The Arts Club was, of course, the scene of that wonderful episode in Swinburne's life when he arrived drunk, with a friend. He and the friend found that the cloakroom was full of gentlemen's hats (everyone wore one in those days), and so they proceeded to throw them all on the floor and stamp on them. This reduced both men to hysteria, but the Club committee was not amused at all. I wrote about this incident in my novel The Suppression of Vice. And if I get a moment I might even reproduce that chapter here tomorrow. Come back and see.
I say, you chaps...
... some blighter has gone and written a book about Anthony Blair, our head boy. And at first sight it looks to be jolly good. But one can't help feeling that there's a bit of a jape involved here somewhere.
John Morrison, the old boy who is the author of Anthony Blair -- Captain of School, is a former foreign correspondent and biographer of Boris Yeltsin, so he knows how to string words together. And his latest 'biography' is just out.
Published by Black Pig Books, A. Blair et cetera has garnered some positive plugs from the likes of Matthew Parris, Matthew Tempest, and Kevin Maguire. OK, so some of these are former colleagues, but they wouldn't embarrass themselves if they weren't genuinely enthusiastic.
Black Pig is the author's own company, and, like every other sensible person these days, he is publishing his own book and plugging it online. Extracts can be found on the Guardian web site.
Prime Ministers have always been ready targets for satire, as Private Eye has regularly shown, and this particular satire looks like a lot of fun. It's probably more fun for those who actually went to a school like the one described, and for those who are familiar with school stories from an era even earlier than that of Molesworth. But since bits of it are free in the Guardian you can find out for yourself whether it appeals.
John Morrison, the old boy who is the author of Anthony Blair -- Captain of School, is a former foreign correspondent and biographer of Boris Yeltsin, so he knows how to string words together. And his latest 'biography' is just out.
Published by Black Pig Books, A. Blair et cetera has garnered some positive plugs from the likes of Matthew Parris, Matthew Tempest, and Kevin Maguire. OK, so some of these are former colleagues, but they wouldn't embarrass themselves if they weren't genuinely enthusiastic.
Black Pig is the author's own company, and, like every other sensible person these days, he is publishing his own book and plugging it online. Extracts can be found on the Guardian web site.
Prime Ministers have always been ready targets for satire, as Private Eye has regularly shown, and this particular satire looks like a lot of fun. It's probably more fun for those who actually went to a school like the one described, and for those who are familiar with school stories from an era even earlier than that of Molesworth. But since bits of it are free in the Guardian you can find out for yourself whether it appeals.
International Thriller Writers
M.J. Rose is a lady of formidable energy, and it turns out that she is involved in yet another enterprise. On her blog Buzz, Balls & Hype, M.J. has a piece about the International Thriller Writers organisation. This is an outfit set up by some of the world's top thriller writers, and its web site contains a mass of information which is of interest and value to anyone who reads thrillers, and particularly, I suspect, to anyone who is trying to write one.
There are, for example, articles about the art of writing, by some top names; a suggested reading list of classic material; a news page; information about a ThrillerFest to be held in Arizona in 2006; and a whole lot more. Oh, and there is also a free thriller-readers newsletter.
M.J. Rose is on the Board of Directors and also chairs the marketing committee. No, I have no idea how she does it either. Must be some sort of crossroads-at-midnight deal if you ask me.
There are, for example, articles about the art of writing, by some top names; a suggested reading list of classic material; a news page; information about a ThrillerFest to be held in Arizona in 2006; and a whole lot more. Oh, and there is also a free thriller-readers newsletter.
M.J. Rose is on the Board of Directors and also chairs the marketing committee. No, I have no idea how she does it either. Must be some sort of crossroads-at-midnight deal if you ask me.
Further down with copyright
My brief mention of the copyright article in the International Herald Tribune prompted m'learned friend C.E. Petit, Esq., to point out that he has trashed the article pretty thoroughly on his blog.
If you haven't already made the acquaintance of the Scrivener's Error blog, you should do so forthwith. Lots of good stuff there, particularly on the continuing Google saga and other related copyright matters.
If you haven't already made the acquaintance of the Scrivener's Error blog, you should do so forthwith. Lots of good stuff there, particularly on the continuing Google saga and other related copyright matters.
More digital developments
Over the past few weeks, I have drawn attention to just a few of the many writers who are doing their own thing. By that I mean that they are publishing their own books and publicising them online -- a process which might reasonably be described as participating in the digital revolution.
(See, for example, my mentions of Tom Evslin, Ken Ratcliffe, and Sheldon Goldfarb. I have also, by the way, mentioned the impact of digital developments in the movie business.)
Yesterday's Times carried an interesting article about a British rock band called Arctic Monkeys. What has happened, in short, is that these four lads have promoted their music on the web, on a strictly DIY basis. So successful have they been at this that they now have a number-one hit, having knocked the Sugarbabes off the top spot. The Sugarbabes, it seems, are a 'traditional' pop group whose record company have spent the traditional small fortune on publicity.
It seems that the Arctic Monkeys are worrying the established companies in the music business. Could they be the start of a new trend, in which pop stars are no longer puppets created by the in-house publicity machine, but are instead smart kids who make themselves into stars and then, if they feel like it, dictate terms to the record companies who are queuing up for their business?
This isn't the way the world is supposed to be, surely? So hadn't we better pay a bit more attention to this new-fangled internet thingy?
My point, I hope, is obvious. But before you start dreaming about winning the Booker with your self-published masterpiece, just remember that the Arctic Monkeys have managed to provide one essential element. If this DIY digital strategy is going to work, you have to create something that absolutely knocks the socks off people, to the extent that they tell all their friends about it and start acting as your unpaid but highly motivated p.r. persons. How many writers are there who can do that?
(See, for example, my mentions of Tom Evslin, Ken Ratcliffe, and Sheldon Goldfarb. I have also, by the way, mentioned the impact of digital developments in the movie business.)
Yesterday's Times carried an interesting article about a British rock band called Arctic Monkeys. What has happened, in short, is that these four lads have promoted their music on the web, on a strictly DIY basis. So successful have they been at this that they now have a number-one hit, having knocked the Sugarbabes off the top spot. The Sugarbabes, it seems, are a 'traditional' pop group whose record company have spent the traditional small fortune on publicity.
It seems that the Arctic Monkeys are worrying the established companies in the music business. Could they be the start of a new trend, in which pop stars are no longer puppets created by the in-house publicity machine, but are instead smart kids who make themselves into stars and then, if they feel like it, dictate terms to the record companies who are queuing up for their business?
This isn't the way the world is supposed to be, surely? So hadn't we better pay a bit more attention to this new-fangled internet thingy?
My point, I hope, is obvious. But before you start dreaming about winning the Booker with your self-published masterpiece, just remember that the Arctic Monkeys have managed to provide one essential element. If this DIY digital strategy is going to work, you have to create something that absolutely knocks the socks off people, to the extent that they tell all their friends about it and start acting as your unpaid but highly motivated p.r. persons. How many writers are there who can do that?
Monday, October 24, 2005
Tab Hunter Confidential
Do you remember Tab Hunter? If you do, you might care to know that he has a book out: Tab Hunter Confidential. What is more, the Book Standard has an interview with him from which he emerges, in my estimation, with considerable credit. Now aged 74, Hunter seems quite relaxed about the ups and downs of his career and reminds us that he has a chapter in the book called 'Happy to be forgotten'.
Today in photography, tomorrow in...
Anyone with any serious interest in photography will know the name of Agfa. A German company, founded well over a hundred years ago, Agfa began experimenting with colour film as early as 1916.
Last week, however, this once great company declared itself insolvent. Most commentators, such as the Times and Forbes.com, tell us that it was the digital revolution which finally killed off this famous name.
Now, let's just have a little think. Surely there are some publishing firms which have been around since the nineteenth century, aren't there? Even if they're no longer independent companies, they still exist as imprints.
Let's see now. There's Hutchinson, Chatto and Windus, Macmillan, Heinemann, Cassell, Hodder and Stoughton, and John Murray -- just to mention some of the bigger and better known ones. Could it be that the digital revolution will before long...
No, no. Couldn't possibly. Not in publishing.
Last week, however, this once great company declared itself insolvent. Most commentators, such as the Times and Forbes.com, tell us that it was the digital revolution which finally killed off this famous name.
Now, let's just have a little think. Surely there are some publishing firms which have been around since the nineteenth century, aren't there? Even if they're no longer independent companies, they still exist as imprints.
Let's see now. There's Hutchinson, Chatto and Windus, Macmillan, Heinemann, Cassell, Hodder and Stoughton, and John Murray -- just to mention some of the bigger and better known ones. Could it be that the digital revolution will before long...
No, no. Couldn't possibly. Not in publishing.
Soft Skull blog
The Literary Saloon says that everyone has commented on the appearance of a new blog from publishers Soft Skull Press. Can't say I'd noticed myself, but I've now had a look at it and it seems as if it might be fun.
The blog doesn't actually contain a link to the main Soft Skull site, but you can get there by deleting the word 'news' from the blog URL, or by clicking here. Soft Skull have an assorted list, including politics, poetry, and erotica, among others. And they seem to have an attractive dislike of authority. Worth a look, certainly.
The blog doesn't actually contain a link to the main Soft Skull site, but you can get there by deleting the word 'news' from the blog URL, or by clicking here. Soft Skull have an assorted list, including politics, poetry, and erotica, among others. And they seem to have an attractive dislike of authority. Worth a look, certainly.
Down with copyright
The Bookslut had a one-line link to an article on copyright which proves to be quite interesting. The article appeared in the International Herald Tribune, and it contains some pretty outrageous proposals (even for my taste).
It ain't gonna happen, but you might like to see how some people, at least, are thinking.
It ain't gonna happen, but you might like to see how some people, at least, are thinking.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Pause in posts
There will be no further posts on the GOB until Monday 24 October, as I shall be travelling.
Seth Godin: Who's There?
Seth Godin is a business guru; marketing appears to be his thing. And a while back Publishers Lunch had a link to one of his free ebooks. Its title is Who's There? Subtitled 'Seth Godin's incomplete guide to blogs and the new web'.
Who's There? will not apparently be free for ever, but for the moment it still is, and it's worth having a look at if you are a blogger or are interested in the blogging phenomenon from the point of view of marketing something. Thus it is, potentially at any rate, of interest to writers, who are for ever selling something or having it sold on their behalf.
As you will quickly discover, the ebook is aimed at business readers. For them, Godin argues that the mainstream media (MSM) are (he says is) dying, and hence a whole new approach is needed. The change, he suggests, is very inexpensive and very quick. The trick is to find the will to do it right. If you work in an industry which is very stuck in its ways (publishing, anyone?) it may be an uphill struggle.
One point which Godin makes early on is a point that I have been making over and over, particularly in the last couple of weeks, namely that the digitised world is changing fast. By way of illustration, he quotes the fact that, a year ago, a Google search for the word 'podcast' produced 24 matches. Do the same search today and you get 17,000,000 (more by now, probably).
But the internet does not solve all your problems. Naturally you want people to come to your blog/web site. But so do millions of other bloggers and site owners. And the danger, Godin says, is this. You (the businessman/marketeer) probably think that you live in a world where people care about you. But in reality nobody does. Hence it isn't much use going on marketing stuff as if we're still in 1969.
Now that really is what happens in publishing. Recently I have been sent a number of publishers' catalogues, by publicists who invite me to pick something to review. And you know what? Those catalogues are really 1969.
As far as blogs are concerned, Godin has lots of good advice, most of which, I now realise, I am continuing to ignore (e.g. 'make your entries shorter; use images'; and the like). But never mind. That's my privilege.
Anyway, Godin comes up with a few laws of the blogosphere. First, he says that it doesn't matter who you are; it's what you say. Which is true, up to a point. Next, he qualifies that by admitting that some bloggers are more equal than others, because they have an established name, either in the blogosphere or in some other field of activity. But then he also points out that some unknown bloggers do develop huge audiences pretty quickly. He quotes Gapingvoid.com as an example. Hugh McLeod, says Godin, had no business base to support him: no magazine column, no books, no help from the MSM; he just wrote and agitated enough to make people notice what he had to say.
(Godin's right, by the way -- McLeod's blog is well worth exploring: see for instance his advice on how to be creative. This is seriously good stuff, and nearly all of it is relevant to writers.)
The best blogs, says Godin, walk a fine line between civility and anarchy, between passion and privacy. Some bloggers let their hair down too much. We don't really want to know about your cat's operation.
At this point in the book, I scribbled down a comment which is not directly Godin-related but I will repeat it anyway. One commenter on one of my posts, who disagreed with it fairly profoundly, noted with an audible sneer that my work was not published by the mainstream press, so it was hardly surprising... et cetera. In other words, he took the view that a record of writing for the press is some sort of indicator of quality and value.
Well, leave aside the fact that I have written for the press -- lots of times actually, and the first time in 1955 -- but the idea that in order to have a valid point or to provide valuable insights you need to have first written a column for the Guardian or whatever, is surely mistaken. And the point that I want to make here -- with knobs on -- is that writing a blog or an ebook is actually better than writing for the press.
Better in the sense that I do not have an editor leaning over my shoulder and sucking his teeth. I can write 3 words on a topic, or 33,000; no one will stop me. I don't have to remember that I might meet Mr A. Famous-Writer at a publishing party later this week, and therefore had better temper my criticism. And I can provide hyperlinks which lead the reader in all kinds of directions that he would never go from a printed page. And so on.
Towards the end of his book, Godin reproduces his most popular blog post. It concerns size. Business size, that is. Once, he says, big used to matter. Big meant economies of scale and other benefits. But today, he claims (and he would know) small companies often make money faster than big companies. Small is the new big, but only when the person running the small thinks big.
Now, is that a message for publishers or not?
Who's There? will not apparently be free for ever, but for the moment it still is, and it's worth having a look at if you are a blogger or are interested in the blogging phenomenon from the point of view of marketing something. Thus it is, potentially at any rate, of interest to writers, who are for ever selling something or having it sold on their behalf.
As you will quickly discover, the ebook is aimed at business readers. For them, Godin argues that the mainstream media (MSM) are (he says is) dying, and hence a whole new approach is needed. The change, he suggests, is very inexpensive and very quick. The trick is to find the will to do it right. If you work in an industry which is very stuck in its ways (publishing, anyone?) it may be an uphill struggle.
One point which Godin makes early on is a point that I have been making over and over, particularly in the last couple of weeks, namely that the digitised world is changing fast. By way of illustration, he quotes the fact that, a year ago, a Google search for the word 'podcast' produced 24 matches. Do the same search today and you get 17,000,000 (more by now, probably).
But the internet does not solve all your problems. Naturally you want people to come to your blog/web site. But so do millions of other bloggers and site owners. And the danger, Godin says, is this. You (the businessman/marketeer) probably think that you live in a world where people care about you. But in reality nobody does. Hence it isn't much use going on marketing stuff as if we're still in 1969.
Now that really is what happens in publishing. Recently I have been sent a number of publishers' catalogues, by publicists who invite me to pick something to review. And you know what? Those catalogues are really 1969.
As far as blogs are concerned, Godin has lots of good advice, most of which, I now realise, I am continuing to ignore (e.g. 'make your entries shorter; use images'; and the like). But never mind. That's my privilege.
Anyway, Godin comes up with a few laws of the blogosphere. First, he says that it doesn't matter who you are; it's what you say. Which is true, up to a point. Next, he qualifies that by admitting that some bloggers are more equal than others, because they have an established name, either in the blogosphere or in some other field of activity. But then he also points out that some unknown bloggers do develop huge audiences pretty quickly. He quotes Gapingvoid.com as an example. Hugh McLeod, says Godin, had no business base to support him: no magazine column, no books, no help from the MSM; he just wrote and agitated enough to make people notice what he had to say.
(Godin's right, by the way -- McLeod's blog is well worth exploring: see for instance his advice on how to be creative. This is seriously good stuff, and nearly all of it is relevant to writers.)
The best blogs, says Godin, walk a fine line between civility and anarchy, between passion and privacy. Some bloggers let their hair down too much. We don't really want to know about your cat's operation.
At this point in the book, I scribbled down a comment which is not directly Godin-related but I will repeat it anyway. One commenter on one of my posts, who disagreed with it fairly profoundly, noted with an audible sneer that my work was not published by the mainstream press, so it was hardly surprising... et cetera. In other words, he took the view that a record of writing for the press is some sort of indicator of quality and value.
Well, leave aside the fact that I have written for the press -- lots of times actually, and the first time in 1955 -- but the idea that in order to have a valid point or to provide valuable insights you need to have first written a column for the Guardian or whatever, is surely mistaken. And the point that I want to make here -- with knobs on -- is that writing a blog or an ebook is actually better than writing for the press.
Better in the sense that I do not have an editor leaning over my shoulder and sucking his teeth. I can write 3 words on a topic, or 33,000; no one will stop me. I don't have to remember that I might meet Mr A. Famous-Writer at a publishing party later this week, and therefore had better temper my criticism. And I can provide hyperlinks which lead the reader in all kinds of directions that he would never go from a printed page. And so on.
Towards the end of his book, Godin reproduces his most popular blog post. It concerns size. Business size, that is. Once, he says, big used to matter. Big meant economies of scale and other benefits. But today, he claims (and he would know) small companies often make money faster than big companies. Small is the new big, but only when the person running the small thinks big.
Now, is that a message for publishers or not?
The Times on libel
The Times has run a number of interesting articles about libel recently, and yesterday's seems to incorporate most of the main points which have been raised earlier.
The article refers, of course, to the situation under English law. However, given the phenomenon of libel tourism, English law is now relevant to all sorts of people. And the principle of free speech, plus the need for the press to expose villainy, remains the same wherever you are.
Click here to go to the article, but the Times may ask you to register first.
The article refers, of course, to the situation under English law. However, given the phenomenon of libel tourism, English law is now relevant to all sorts of people. And the principle of free speech, plus the need for the press to expose villainy, remains the same wherever you are.
Click here to go to the article, but the Times may ask you to register first.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Brighten your day
I don't usually draw attention to particular comments on pieces what I have wrote, because it's invidious. However, if it's dark and gloomy outside, and your cat has just been sick on the only copy of your ms, click over and read Francis Ellen's comment on my recommendation of Agent Kate. That may improve things.
Joshua Davis: The Underdog
Joshua Davis's book The Underdog is subtitled 'How I survived the world's most outlandish competitions'. It is a funny and surprisingly interesting account of how young Joshua -- a nine-stone weakling if ever there was one -- went in for a number of dangerous and physically demanding events cum sports, such as sumo wrestling and bullfighting, and survived to tell the tell.
Joshua is a bit shy of telling us exactly how old he is, but I would guess that he is now in his early thirties. He likes to present himself as a lifelong failure: e.g, in grade school he electrocuted himself when building a model; he started a rock band and at the first performance forgot the lyrics; and so forth. But in fact he is clearly a pretty sharp knife. For one thing, he went to Iraq to cover the war for Wired magazine, and was subsequently made a contributing editor, and they don't do that to fools and failures.
There are five principal chapters in this book. The first tells how Josh got involved in the armwrestling business: this, as you've probably noticed if you watch TV or movies, usually involves really tough truck drivers and the like making the veins on their foreheads stand out as they struggle to prove who is the stronger. A man who weighs less than 130 pounds is at something of a disadvantage.
However, it turns out that armwrestling, like boxing, has weight divisions, and in the lighter divisions there aren't many entries. So, one way and another, and despite getting thrashed, Josh suddenly became the fourth-highest-ranked lightweight armwrestler in the United States. He was also, it seems, the only vegetarian armwrestler in the history of the sport.
This fourth place got him on to the US team for the world championships. His experience in the sport was almost nil, and his achievements definitely nil. But they guys who were placed first, second, and third, all couldn't go to Poland, so Josh went.
He got thrashed there too, needless to say. For one thing he was up against guys who had had a leg blown off by a landmine or something, and so became lightweights instead of middleweights, but he probably would have lost anyway. Nevertheless, credit where credit is due: Josh Davis became the number 17 lightweight armwrester in the entire universe. (The guy who might have been placed 18th didn't turn up.)
All of this, you will have gathered by now, is an amusing account of (I suppose) a real-life experience, embroidered a little (or maybe a lot) in the telling. Either way, it's a lot of fun.
Despite his international success, Josh was at this point unemployed, and both his wife and his Mom were muttering darkly at him. Undeterred, Josh decided to travel to Spain and take up bullfighting. At this he was not much more successful than at armwrestling, but at least he emerged with his testicles still attached to his body, which is, apparently, more than can be said for some who fight bulls. What is more, despite the humorous tone of the text, it is quite clear that anyone who does what Josh did requires an exceptional amount of courage.
At this point, in a paragraph or two, Josh tells us about going to cover the war in Iraq and being made a contributing editor of Wired. Enough success, one might feel, for most of us. But Josh was still attracted by entirely unsuitable physical activities: unsuitable, that is, if you're five foot eight and 128 pounds. So he went in for sumo wrestling. A sport in which he found himself fighting a man who weighed 460 pounds.
Again, not surprisingly, Josh lost seven straight sumo matches. But he found that people still wanted his autograph because they admired his guts. 'You should have given up,' said one man. 'But you didn't.'
Josh, it turns out, is quite a good runner. And so for his next endeavour he took up running -- but backwards. Chiefly in India, but also in Italy. In both places, apparently, running backwards is a competitive sport. However, despite his ability to run forwards quite well, Josh still didn't win at the backwards bit. He came twentieth.
And finally the sauna competition. John has a complicated family, but (if I've got it right) his mother, stepfather, stepbrother, and sister, all decided to go to Finland and enter a sauna competition. And, if you're wondering how you can have a competition in a sauna, the answer is that the one who can sit there while they turn the heat up, and go on sitting there until his skin burns off, is the winner.
Joshua's Mom is a very good Mom, and while in Finland she did her best to get dates for her unmarried children. Josh is married, but the other two are a Lutheran pastor and a militant lesbian, so the dating business posed certain problems.
The account of the actual sauna competition is one of the more entertaining sections of the book. Preparation for entering a sauna which is allegedly running at a temperature of 220 degrees (Fahrenheit, presumably) seems to involve emptying several buckets of iced water over your head. Not a procedure which would appeal to everyone, I feel.
Josh didn't win this one either, despite suffering first-degree burns over most of his torso. The winner managed nearly 12 minutes in a temperature of 240 degrees. All in all, however, the family trip was a success in that Josh and his kin got to know each other better.
At the end of the book, Josh suggests to all of us that we should look around for something we might be great at. Perhaps we might be good ostrich jockeys; or a success at bar-stool racing. The coming years, says Josh, will be the era of outlandish sports. And, reality TV being what it is, he may be right.
All in all this is a thoroughly entertaining book, put together by a highly skilled writer with a pronounced sense of humour. It would make an excellent present.
For more on Josh, visit his personal web site. And, to find your own personal arena for success, go take a look at the UnderdogNation site; because everyone deserves a little time in the spotlight. Any spotlight. There is plenty to choose from: naked bug-eating, for instance; or ax shaving. You can't complain about lack of opportunity.
Joshua is a bit shy of telling us exactly how old he is, but I would guess that he is now in his early thirties. He likes to present himself as a lifelong failure: e.g, in grade school he electrocuted himself when building a model; he started a rock band and at the first performance forgot the lyrics; and so forth. But in fact he is clearly a pretty sharp knife. For one thing, he went to Iraq to cover the war for Wired magazine, and was subsequently made a contributing editor, and they don't do that to fools and failures.
There are five principal chapters in this book. The first tells how Josh got involved in the armwrestling business: this, as you've probably noticed if you watch TV or movies, usually involves really tough truck drivers and the like making the veins on their foreheads stand out as they struggle to prove who is the stronger. A man who weighs less than 130 pounds is at something of a disadvantage.
However, it turns out that armwrestling, like boxing, has weight divisions, and in the lighter divisions there aren't many entries. So, one way and another, and despite getting thrashed, Josh suddenly became the fourth-highest-ranked lightweight armwrestler in the United States. He was also, it seems, the only vegetarian armwrestler in the history of the sport.
This fourth place got him on to the US team for the world championships. His experience in the sport was almost nil, and his achievements definitely nil. But they guys who were placed first, second, and third, all couldn't go to Poland, so Josh went.
He got thrashed there too, needless to say. For one thing he was up against guys who had had a leg blown off by a landmine or something, and so became lightweights instead of middleweights, but he probably would have lost anyway. Nevertheless, credit where credit is due: Josh Davis became the number 17 lightweight armwrester in the entire universe. (The guy who might have been placed 18th didn't turn up.)
All of this, you will have gathered by now, is an amusing account of (I suppose) a real-life experience, embroidered a little (or maybe a lot) in the telling. Either way, it's a lot of fun.
Despite his international success, Josh was at this point unemployed, and both his wife and his Mom were muttering darkly at him. Undeterred, Josh decided to travel to Spain and take up bullfighting. At this he was not much more successful than at armwrestling, but at least he emerged with his testicles still attached to his body, which is, apparently, more than can be said for some who fight bulls. What is more, despite the humorous tone of the text, it is quite clear that anyone who does what Josh did requires an exceptional amount of courage.
At this point, in a paragraph or two, Josh tells us about going to cover the war in Iraq and being made a contributing editor of Wired. Enough success, one might feel, for most of us. But Josh was still attracted by entirely unsuitable physical activities: unsuitable, that is, if you're five foot eight and 128 pounds. So he went in for sumo wrestling. A sport in which he found himself fighting a man who weighed 460 pounds.
Again, not surprisingly, Josh lost seven straight sumo matches. But he found that people still wanted his autograph because they admired his guts. 'You should have given up,' said one man. 'But you didn't.'
Josh, it turns out, is quite a good runner. And so for his next endeavour he took up running -- but backwards. Chiefly in India, but also in Italy. In both places, apparently, running backwards is a competitive sport. However, despite his ability to run forwards quite well, Josh still didn't win at the backwards bit. He came twentieth.
And finally the sauna competition. John has a complicated family, but (if I've got it right) his mother, stepfather, stepbrother, and sister, all decided to go to Finland and enter a sauna competition. And, if you're wondering how you can have a competition in a sauna, the answer is that the one who can sit there while they turn the heat up, and go on sitting there until his skin burns off, is the winner.
Joshua's Mom is a very good Mom, and while in Finland she did her best to get dates for her unmarried children. Josh is married, but the other two are a Lutheran pastor and a militant lesbian, so the dating business posed certain problems.
The account of the actual sauna competition is one of the more entertaining sections of the book. Preparation for entering a sauna which is allegedly running at a temperature of 220 degrees (Fahrenheit, presumably) seems to involve emptying several buckets of iced water over your head. Not a procedure which would appeal to everyone, I feel.
Josh didn't win this one either, despite suffering first-degree burns over most of his torso. The winner managed nearly 12 minutes in a temperature of 240 degrees. All in all, however, the family trip was a success in that Josh and his kin got to know each other better.
At the end of the book, Josh suggests to all of us that we should look around for something we might be great at. Perhaps we might be good ostrich jockeys; or a success at bar-stool racing. The coming years, says Josh, will be the era of outlandish sports. And, reality TV being what it is, he may be right.
All in all this is a thoroughly entertaining book, put together by a highly skilled writer with a pronounced sense of humour. It would make an excellent present.
For more on Josh, visit his personal web site. And, to find your own personal arena for success, go take a look at the UnderdogNation site; because everyone deserves a little time in the spotlight. Any spotlight. There is plenty to choose from: naked bug-eating, for instance; or ax shaving. You can't complain about lack of opportunity.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Quickies
Here are a few odds and ends which cropped up over the weekend.
Book output
Bowker, big name in bibliographic data, have released some latest figures for book production in the English-speaking world.
Altogether, publishers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, issued 375,000 new titles and new editions in 2004. Add in a few books imported from elsewhere, and you get about 450,000 books in English published in one year.
Broken down by country, Publishers Lunch reckons that the US issued 195,000 books, of which 25,000 were novels. The UK (with a population about one fifth that of the US) put out 180,000 titles.
Anyone worried about competition?
Agents' blogs
Publishers Lunch also mentioned a couple of agents' blogs that I hadn't come across before. First, Agent Kate. This one is full of lots and lots of good advice. Read, learn, and inwardly digest. Here, for instance, is a list of things Kate does not want you to write to her about:
Book output
Bowker, big name in bibliographic data, have released some latest figures for book production in the English-speaking world.
Altogether, publishers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, issued 375,000 new titles and new editions in 2004. Add in a few books imported from elsewhere, and you get about 450,000 books in English published in one year.
Broken down by country, Publishers Lunch reckons that the US issued 195,000 books, of which 25,000 were novels. The UK (with a population about one fifth that of the US) put out 180,000 titles.
Anyone worried about competition?
Agents' blogs
Publishers Lunch also mentioned a couple of agents' blogs that I hadn't come across before. First, Agent Kate. This one is full of lots and lots of good advice. Read, learn, and inwardly digest. Here, for instance, is a list of things Kate does not want you to write to her about:
1. Hurricane Katrina. Sorry Folks. Not Yet. The only good 9/11 books didn't come out until this year. Give it time.
2. Grieving spouses. Yes, I am a heartless bitch.
3. Paranormal Romance. You won't BELIEVE how many queries I get containing these two words a week.
4. Religious Conspiracy. The Da Vinci Code is so over.
5. Any detective formerly or currently working for the FBI, CIA, local, regional, or federal police, or in private practice. Why can't normal people solve murders? Butchers. More butchers should solve murders. Just think of the suspense.
6. Any work of fiction or non-fiction primarily written in letter form.
7. Fiction with a billion different narrators. Pick one and commit, people.
Another agent with a blog, this time not anony/pseudonymous, is Andrew Zack. Among other things, Andrew issues some monthly data about the number of submissions received by his company, and the number of people who are taken on as clients. Posts are by no means daily but appear to be useful.
Dark Fire wins
C.J. Sansom's historical mystery novel, Dark Fire, was reviewed here favourably on 22 March 2005. And now we hear from Publishing News that the author has won this year's Ellis Peter Historical Dagger award. This 'Dagger' is handed out annually for the year's best historical crime novel; judges are appointed by the Crime Writers' Association of the UK.
Thought for the day (which has probably been debated ad nauseam by the CWA, but you may care to consider it as an intellectual exercise): Should the phrase 'Crime Writers' Association' have an apostrophe at all? And whether you answer yes or no, should there be a hyphen in there somewhere?
Personally I think there is a case for omitting the apostrophe when the word which might be apostrophised describes, either on its own or as part of a compound adjective, what sort of noun it is, rather than who it belongs to.
I have support in this (I think) from no less an authority than Bill Welsh, author of Lapsing into a Comma, and the man who runs a web site called The Slot, where such arcane issues are debated.
In his book, Walsh takes the view that some usages are merely labels, not possessives. Dodgers' pitcher Don Drysdale..., he says, does not need an apostrophe. On the other hand, The award went to the Dodgers' pitcher Don Drysdale... is correct.
Search me
You may have noticed that this blog is driven by Blogger machinery, and that, right at the top of the page, there is a search facility, using Google. This search facility purportedly searches the GOB, and it has recently been 'improved'. And now it doesn't work.
Suppose, for instance, you want to know whether I have previously written about the novel "dark fire" and you type the title, in inverted commas, into the search box. You get a nil return. Or at any rate I do. But I know damn well that I've written about it before.
To find the reference, I had to go to the main Google search facility. There you type in "grumpy old bookman" plus "dark fire", and you get the answer you are looking for.
Sorry about that but it ain't my fault.
Digital developments
Saturday's Financial Times included an article by Nicola Christie about the 'digital revolution' in filmmaking. It's not directly relevant to the world of books, but it is a useful reminder that digitisation is changing everything; and fast. I keep banging on about this in relation to books, and it's all true, believe me.
I think one of the reasons why I am so conscious of the pace of change here is that I am comfortably old enough to remember what the world was like before we had any of this. Not only that, but I realise that even the experts were slow to catch on to the pace of change.
About twelve years ago I had a boss who was an American professor of electrical engineering. He was keenly interested in all things computational, and he had on his desk a state-of-the-art machine on which he had loaded every piece of software then known to man.
'You know,' he said to me one day, his voice filled with awe, 'pretty soon we shall have hard drives which will hold one gigabyte of data. I think that will be enough,' he added. 'Even for me.'
Today, folks, my one-year-old, pretty much bog-standard machine has a hard drive with 80Gb capacity.
Genre debate
Booktrade.info today has a link to an article in the Guardian. It seems that some senior figures in the crime-writing world have been saying what I've been saying ever since this blog began, namely that there is no reason whatever for supposing that genres such as crime and science fiction are in any way 'inferior' to literary fiction; rather the reverse, if anything. In particular, they suggest, the Booker Prize thing gets everything out of perspective. Guardian columnist Peter Preston seems to agree with them.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Noah Cicero: Burning Babies
I didn't expect to enjoy Noah Cicero's novel Burning Babies, because the title is not exactly entrancing; but I did like it; quite a lot. So that's a relief; because, contrary to what you might expect, it is much pleasanter to write a positive review than a negative one.
On the whole, I think it is probably going to be more interesting for a reader to absorb Burning Babies without knowing anything about the author, which is what I did, than to read it in the knowledge of what kind of person he is (or is said to be); so I will delay telling you anything about Noah Cicero's life, background, and intentions until after I've talked about the book.
The first thing to be said about Burning Babies is that it's short. By my count the whole book runs to only about 20,000 words. Which is fine by me; I have argued elsewhere that most novels are far too long.
The layout of the text is a little unorthodox. Noah goes in for hanging indents, big-time. Well, that's all right too. I can live with that. And the sentences are short. Ditto. Ed Murrow. Famous journalist. Secret of success of.
The setting is mostly Youngstown, Ohio, and the book is perhaps not so much a novel as a collection of sketches. Each chapter portrays events in the life of what the author himself describes as white trash. There is no plot, in the generally accepted sense of the term.
The characters are usually inarticulate, poor, often unemployed and/or homeless, frequently drunk or doped to the eyeballs, and all like that. They are, to use the Marxist term, deeply alienated. They live in, and come close to dying in, an industrialised society, and it ain't done them no good nohow.
From time to time the narrative, such as it is, is interrupted by the author's contemplations upon life. There is, for example, a longish list of aphorisms, many of which are both amusing and true. E.g.: sluts are people who know how to have a good time. Well, all right, so I'm easily amused.
The subject matter is dark and might be depressing but for the author's sense of humour. Which is dry, droll, and succeeded in making me laugh. A lot more than many books do.
You will have gathered by now, I hope, that this is very different from the kind of book that is usually reviewed here. It is not, I think we can safely say, commercial fiction. It does not fit readily into any genre. If it is anything, I suppose it is literary, but it certainly didn't make my lip curl, as does much of that stuff.
This novel is Noah's second. The first, The Human War, was published in 2003, and is described on Amazon.com, by a reader and fan, as an innovative piece of work consisting of 'sentegraphs'; i.e., apparently, 'prose so clipped that each line becomes poetry'. The reader describes the book as 'white trash existentialism'.
This gives you, I think, some idea of the kind of reader that Noah has so far attracted: people who understand what the word 'existentialism' means. Or claim they do. Personally I have never understood what it means. I first came across the word in a feature in Picture Post (you're too young to remember) in 1951, when it seemed to involve idle layabouts on the left bank in Paris who dyed their hair green, and, I imagine, did unspeakable things to each other in bed, though Picture Post didn't go into details. Dammit.
But I digress. Should you want to get a taste of Noah, before clicking over to Amazon.com to buy his book, you can find an excerpt from Burning Babies online at the Literary Vision Magazine. It's called 'How to handle a crackhead'. The online version varies a little from the final book version, and in particular it uses orthodox page layout.
Well now, I had pretty much got as far as this before I tried to find out anything about the author. What I had decided was that here was a youngish, ambitious writer, writing about the place he knows best, and doing so in a kind of realistic way, telling it like it is, but mercifully throwing some light on the dark scene by giving us a laugh now and then.
I did not particularly get the impression that here was a writer motivated by a desire to change society -- well, not any more than the rest of us, anyway. Or that out of a thousand and one voices in which he could have written, he had chosen to write in this one. I got the feeling that this was his natural voice; his speaking voice; and that he was very largely writing down, pretty much as they happened, events that he had witnessed or lived through. In fact I was beginning to hope that the inhabitants of Youngstown are as illiterate as he portrays them to be, because if any of them can read they might take exception to what he has said and come looking for him with a sawn-off shotgun.
And at that point I looked up his publisher (a v. small outfit called the Undie Press) and had a look at what they say about him.
Turns out that Noah is 25 (or so), lives in Youngstown, and is a 'novelist, essayist, playwright, short-story writer, and poet.' He was a founder member of the Underground Literary Alliance, but has now parted from them. He has been extensively published on the net, and he 'addresses with brutal Absurdist humor the day-to-day lives of urban-wasteland characters... The work, while highly accessible [I agree], is imbued with political critique and an existential examination of reality [huh?]. He has cited Sartre, Karl Marx and Beckett as central influences.'
Well yes. I suppose that is what Noah has told them. But I am slightly disappointed if it's true. I had hoped that Noah would turn out to be a kind of Douanier Rousseau or Grandma Moses of the book world -- someone who just does his thing and lets others read significance into it. But it seems (unless the publisher made it all up) that Noah is actually a deeply thoughtful man who wishes to bring about the revolution or whatever. Actually I liked my version better, but I still like the book.
The interesting thing is where Noah Cicero will go from here. If anywhere. He might decide to give up all this writing nonsense and just have some kids. Or he might go on doing more of the same, in which case, if he can find something which loosely resembles a plot, he might interest a bigger publisher. Or -- and this would be really interesting, to me at least -- he might put all this stuff to work in a more commercial medium. I can't help feeling there's a dark TV sit-com in there somewhere.
There are all kinds of possibilities. Erskine Caldwell, a name you never seem to hear of these days, had quite a lot of commercial success with his books about characters who were not exactly Harvard material. And Nelson Algren ditto. (Nelson, by the way, was a lover of Simone de Beauvoir, and was much better in bed than Jean Paul Sartre; which isn't saying very much, apparently. I hope ole Noah isn't going to be too influenced by Jean Paul.)
We shall see.
I can't say that I wholeheartedly urge you to go out and buy Burning Babies. But it is certainly different, and if you are bored with Bridget Jones or Harry P you could give it a whirl. It is just published, according to Amazon on 8 October, but according to the publisher on this very day.
On the whole, I think it is probably going to be more interesting for a reader to absorb Burning Babies without knowing anything about the author, which is what I did, than to read it in the knowledge of what kind of person he is (or is said to be); so I will delay telling you anything about Noah Cicero's life, background, and intentions until after I've talked about the book.
The first thing to be said about Burning Babies is that it's short. By my count the whole book runs to only about 20,000 words. Which is fine by me; I have argued elsewhere that most novels are far too long.
The layout of the text is a little unorthodox. Noah goes in for hanging indents, big-time. Well, that's all right too. I can live with that. And the sentences are short. Ditto. Ed Murrow. Famous journalist. Secret of success of.
The setting is mostly Youngstown, Ohio, and the book is perhaps not so much a novel as a collection of sketches. Each chapter portrays events in the life of what the author himself describes as white trash. There is no plot, in the generally accepted sense of the term.
The characters are usually inarticulate, poor, often unemployed and/or homeless, frequently drunk or doped to the eyeballs, and all like that. They are, to use the Marxist term, deeply alienated. They live in, and come close to dying in, an industrialised society, and it ain't done them no good nohow.
From time to time the narrative, such as it is, is interrupted by the author's contemplations upon life. There is, for example, a longish list of aphorisms, many of which are both amusing and true. E.g.: sluts are people who know how to have a good time. Well, all right, so I'm easily amused.
The subject matter is dark and might be depressing but for the author's sense of humour. Which is dry, droll, and succeeded in making me laugh. A lot more than many books do.
You will have gathered by now, I hope, that this is very different from the kind of book that is usually reviewed here. It is not, I think we can safely say, commercial fiction. It does not fit readily into any genre. If it is anything, I suppose it is literary, but it certainly didn't make my lip curl, as does much of that stuff.
This novel is Noah's second. The first, The Human War, was published in 2003, and is described on Amazon.com, by a reader and fan, as an innovative piece of work consisting of 'sentegraphs'; i.e., apparently, 'prose so clipped that each line becomes poetry'. The reader describes the book as 'white trash existentialism'.
This gives you, I think, some idea of the kind of reader that Noah has so far attracted: people who understand what the word 'existentialism' means. Or claim they do. Personally I have never understood what it means. I first came across the word in a feature in Picture Post (you're too young to remember) in 1951, when it seemed to involve idle layabouts on the left bank in Paris who dyed their hair green, and, I imagine, did unspeakable things to each other in bed, though Picture Post didn't go into details. Dammit.
But I digress. Should you want to get a taste of Noah, before clicking over to Amazon.com to buy his book, you can find an excerpt from Burning Babies online at the Literary Vision Magazine. It's called 'How to handle a crackhead'. The online version varies a little from the final book version, and in particular it uses orthodox page layout.
Well now, I had pretty much got as far as this before I tried to find out anything about the author. What I had decided was that here was a youngish, ambitious writer, writing about the place he knows best, and doing so in a kind of realistic way, telling it like it is, but mercifully throwing some light on the dark scene by giving us a laugh now and then.
I did not particularly get the impression that here was a writer motivated by a desire to change society -- well, not any more than the rest of us, anyway. Or that out of a thousand and one voices in which he could have written, he had chosen to write in this one. I got the feeling that this was his natural voice; his speaking voice; and that he was very largely writing down, pretty much as they happened, events that he had witnessed or lived through. In fact I was beginning to hope that the inhabitants of Youngstown are as illiterate as he portrays them to be, because if any of them can read they might take exception to what he has said and come looking for him with a sawn-off shotgun.
And at that point I looked up his publisher (a v. small outfit called the Undie Press) and had a look at what they say about him.
Turns out that Noah is 25 (or so), lives in Youngstown, and is a 'novelist, essayist, playwright, short-story writer, and poet.' He was a founder member of the Underground Literary Alliance, but has now parted from them. He has been extensively published on the net, and he 'addresses with brutal Absurdist humor the day-to-day lives of urban-wasteland characters... The work, while highly accessible [I agree], is imbued with political critique and an existential examination of reality [huh?]. He has cited Sartre, Karl Marx and Beckett as central influences.'
Well yes. I suppose that is what Noah has told them. But I am slightly disappointed if it's true. I had hoped that Noah would turn out to be a kind of Douanier Rousseau or Grandma Moses of the book world -- someone who just does his thing and lets others read significance into it. But it seems (unless the publisher made it all up) that Noah is actually a deeply thoughtful man who wishes to bring about the revolution or whatever. Actually I liked my version better, but I still like the book.
The interesting thing is where Noah Cicero will go from here. If anywhere. He might decide to give up all this writing nonsense and just have some kids. Or he might go on doing more of the same, in which case, if he can find something which loosely resembles a plot, he might interest a bigger publisher. Or -- and this would be really interesting, to me at least -- he might put all this stuff to work in a more commercial medium. I can't help feeling there's a dark TV sit-com in there somewhere.
There are all kinds of possibilities. Erskine Caldwell, a name you never seem to hear of these days, had quite a lot of commercial success with his books about characters who were not exactly Harvard material. And Nelson Algren ditto. (Nelson, by the way, was a lover of Simone de Beauvoir, and was much better in bed than Jean Paul Sartre; which isn't saying very much, apparently. I hope ole Noah isn't going to be too influenced by Jean Paul.)
We shall see.
I can't say that I wholeheartedly urge you to go out and buy Burning Babies. But it is certainly different, and if you are bored with Bridget Jones or Harry P you could give it a whirl. It is just published, according to Amazon on 8 October, but according to the publisher on this very day.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Thomas Friedman: The World is Flat
If you are in your twenties, or younger, then I suggest that Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat is a book that you should read very carefully indeed: because it's nothing less than your entire future life that the man is writing about.
Thomas Friedman is a New York Times journalist who has won the Pulitzer Prize no less than three times; which means that he is about as distinguished as you can get. He is not, in my view, the world's most polished writer, and The World is Flat struck me as being a bit flabby in places; but at least you can understand what he means, which is more than can be said for some.
And what is he talking about? Well, the subtitle of the book is 'A brief history [not that brief: 475 pages] of the globalized world of the 21st century'. By saying that the world is flat, what Friedman means is that the playing field has been levelled, so to speak, by the growth of new technology. In particular, the new world is literally wired in a way which permits Indian accountants, for example, to complete tax forms for US citizens; and to do so at much less cost than an American accountant. Business, in short, is being taken away from the old world and being placed with the new.
Do you know anyone who has lost their job because the company's IT function, for example, has been transferred to Bombay? I certainly do. And you will surely have had the experience of ringing your local bank, only to be answered by a person with an Indian accent who introduces herself as 'Jennifer'. And of course it's not only India that's taking business: there's China, Malaysia, and a dozen others.
Friedman's claim that 'the world is flat' is a kind of extension, it seems to me, of Marshall McLuhan's idea of 'the global village' (though McLuhan is not in Friedman's index). Friedman's realisation that the world is flat came, he says, when he was playing golf in Bangalore, southern India, and someone advised him to aim a shot at either the Microsoft or IBM buildings. This minor incident made Friedman realise that the internet, mobile phones, broadband, and all the rest of it is undermining the power and superiority of the developed western world and is putting power into the hands of a whole new generation who are based in what are, to us, far-off and underdeveloped nations.
Well, I haven't quite had a 'world is flat moment' myself. But I've certainly had a 'global village' moment. About ten years ago I found myself in the city of Haarlem, in Holland. The central square is surrounded by mediaeval buildings -- old Europe, in fact. I was there one Saturday night in summer, and in the middle of this square an American rock band, with black musicians, was playing to a large and very cosmopolitan crowd.
After we had listened to the music for a while, my family and I went in search of a restaurant. And since the Dutch once colonised Indonesia, it isn't surprising that we found an Indonesian restaurant. There we were served, equally unsurprisingly, by an Indonesian waitress. She didn't speak English, but she spoke French; and so we ordered our meal in French.
As for the 'world is flat' stuff: well, as you may have noticed (see links to your right), I run a microscopically small publishing company called Kingsfield Publications. It isn't really a company at all; it's just me; I do everything. But the 'company' is listed in various online directories, and three times within the last few weeks I have had phone calls from bright, keen, eager young people with Asian accents asking me if I am interested in having them do my pre-press work, or whether I am interested in software which will keep track of my royalties.
Friedman gives plenty of examples of this kind of thing. If you have a CAT scan in an American hospital, at four o'clock in the afternoon, it is likely that the scan will be read overnight (US time) by someone in India or Australia. The results are then ready to be dealt with the next morning. And, as already mentioned, Friedman met a man in Bangalore, India, whose company had pioneered a work-flow software program which enabled his employees to handle the tax returns of US citizens. The firm is handling several thousand such returns already.
The World is Flat is written, as you would expect, mainly from the perspective of an American; a thoughtful American, who recognises that things are not going to stay the same, and that they may work out very much to his nation's disadvantage unless someone gets his arse (sorry, ass) into gear pretty damn soon. Nevertheless, the book is equally relevant to Europeans, if not more so.
But what relevance does this have, you may be wondering, to the book trade? Well, Friedman's index contains no entries for publishing or books. However, you don't have to get very far into Friedman -- in my case it was page 72 -- before you begin to realise that the book publishing business is somewhere back in the stone age. At least as far as my experience goes. It may be that someone, somewhere in book publishing, has wised up to all this, is on top of it, and is exploiting it to the full. If so, they are not known to me.
From where I sit the book business looks very sleepy indeed. Not complacent -- the uproar about the Waterstone's/Ottakar's merger shows that -- but sleepy. Because it seems to me that, faced with the impact of new technology and globalisation, the merger of a couple of UK high-street book chains is well-nigh irrelevant. There are, of course, experienced judges who disagree -- see the comment on my piece of 29 September -- but that's the way it looks to me.
As far as writers are concerned, there is some good news. With snags.
Friedman holds the view that the new globalised world of the twenty-first century will offer plenty of good jobs and opportunities for people who have the knowledge and ideas to seize them. So the message is: constantly update your skills.
Friedman also points out that there are two kinds of work: fungible and non-fungible. Fungible work can easily be digitised and transferred to lower-wage locations. Work that is non-fungible cannot be treated in that way. Television assembly-line workers' jobs are fungible; a brain surgeon's skills are not; and ditto, one assumes, about the writing of fiction.
Having said that, one really cannot be too damn sure. We already have the example of several big names in commercial fiction off-loading the actual writing of their novels on to bright young people with talent. And there are some very bright people indeed in Asia; quite bright enough, I feel, to be able to fake an American (or British) accent. And they work cheap, too.
However, there is another good piece of news for writers and publishers. There are already many examples of European and American companies having business taken away from them by small-time operators working from a back room either in the developed world or in far-off places. It follows, therefore, as I remarked only the other day, that people with enough smarts can take advantage of this situation.
The internet makes it possible for an online operation to have global suppliers, global customers, and global competitors. The opportunity is therefore there, in principle, for a small publisher based anywhere in the world, to have a worldwide success. Which is yet another reason why yesterday's impassioned defence of small bookshops, by Alan Bennett, seems to me to be worthy, and kind, but entirely beside the point. Much as we all love such places, economics suggest that they are pretty much doomed, and all the smart thinking has already moved somewhere else.
Well, there's a whole lot more in Friedman. Stuff about global warming, the danger of nuclear proliferation, terrorism (which also benefits from a flat world), and much else. But I think you've got the idea by now.
Thomas Friedman is a New York Times journalist who has won the Pulitzer Prize no less than three times; which means that he is about as distinguished as you can get. He is not, in my view, the world's most polished writer, and The World is Flat struck me as being a bit flabby in places; but at least you can understand what he means, which is more than can be said for some.
And what is he talking about? Well, the subtitle of the book is 'A brief history [not that brief: 475 pages] of the globalized world of the 21st century'. By saying that the world is flat, what Friedman means is that the playing field has been levelled, so to speak, by the growth of new technology. In particular, the new world is literally wired in a way which permits Indian accountants, for example, to complete tax forms for US citizens; and to do so at much less cost than an American accountant. Business, in short, is being taken away from the old world and being placed with the new.
Do you know anyone who has lost their job because the company's IT function, for example, has been transferred to Bombay? I certainly do. And you will surely have had the experience of ringing your local bank, only to be answered by a person with an Indian accent who introduces herself as 'Jennifer'. And of course it's not only India that's taking business: there's China, Malaysia, and a dozen others.
Friedman's claim that 'the world is flat' is a kind of extension, it seems to me, of Marshall McLuhan's idea of 'the global village' (though McLuhan is not in Friedman's index). Friedman's realisation that the world is flat came, he says, when he was playing golf in Bangalore, southern India, and someone advised him to aim a shot at either the Microsoft or IBM buildings. This minor incident made Friedman realise that the internet, mobile phones, broadband, and all the rest of it is undermining the power and superiority of the developed western world and is putting power into the hands of a whole new generation who are based in what are, to us, far-off and underdeveloped nations.
Well, I haven't quite had a 'world is flat moment' myself. But I've certainly had a 'global village' moment. About ten years ago I found myself in the city of Haarlem, in Holland. The central square is surrounded by mediaeval buildings -- old Europe, in fact. I was there one Saturday night in summer, and in the middle of this square an American rock band, with black musicians, was playing to a large and very cosmopolitan crowd.
After we had listened to the music for a while, my family and I went in search of a restaurant. And since the Dutch once colonised Indonesia, it isn't surprising that we found an Indonesian restaurant. There we were served, equally unsurprisingly, by an Indonesian waitress. She didn't speak English, but she spoke French; and so we ordered our meal in French.
As for the 'world is flat' stuff: well, as you may have noticed (see links to your right), I run a microscopically small publishing company called Kingsfield Publications. It isn't really a company at all; it's just me; I do everything. But the 'company' is listed in various online directories, and three times within the last few weeks I have had phone calls from bright, keen, eager young people with Asian accents asking me if I am interested in having them do my pre-press work, or whether I am interested in software which will keep track of my royalties.
Friedman gives plenty of examples of this kind of thing. If you have a CAT scan in an American hospital, at four o'clock in the afternoon, it is likely that the scan will be read overnight (US time) by someone in India or Australia. The results are then ready to be dealt with the next morning. And, as already mentioned, Friedman met a man in Bangalore, India, whose company had pioneered a work-flow software program which enabled his employees to handle the tax returns of US citizens. The firm is handling several thousand such returns already.
The World is Flat is written, as you would expect, mainly from the perspective of an American; a thoughtful American, who recognises that things are not going to stay the same, and that they may work out very much to his nation's disadvantage unless someone gets his arse (sorry, ass) into gear pretty damn soon. Nevertheless, the book is equally relevant to Europeans, if not more so.
But what relevance does this have, you may be wondering, to the book trade? Well, Friedman's index contains no entries for publishing or books. However, you don't have to get very far into Friedman -- in my case it was page 72 -- before you begin to realise that the book publishing business is somewhere back in the stone age. At least as far as my experience goes. It may be that someone, somewhere in book publishing, has wised up to all this, is on top of it, and is exploiting it to the full. If so, they are not known to me.
From where I sit the book business looks very sleepy indeed. Not complacent -- the uproar about the Waterstone's/Ottakar's merger shows that -- but sleepy. Because it seems to me that, faced with the impact of new technology and globalisation, the merger of a couple of UK high-street book chains is well-nigh irrelevant. There are, of course, experienced judges who disagree -- see the comment on my piece of 29 September -- but that's the way it looks to me.
As far as writers are concerned, there is some good news. With snags.
Friedman holds the view that the new globalised world of the twenty-first century will offer plenty of good jobs and opportunities for people who have the knowledge and ideas to seize them. So the message is: constantly update your skills.
Friedman also points out that there are two kinds of work: fungible and non-fungible. Fungible work can easily be digitised and transferred to lower-wage locations. Work that is non-fungible cannot be treated in that way. Television assembly-line workers' jobs are fungible; a brain surgeon's skills are not; and ditto, one assumes, about the writing of fiction.
Having said that, one really cannot be too damn sure. We already have the example of several big names in commercial fiction off-loading the actual writing of their novels on to bright young people with talent. And there are some very bright people indeed in Asia; quite bright enough, I feel, to be able to fake an American (or British) accent. And they work cheap, too.
However, there is another good piece of news for writers and publishers. There are already many examples of European and American companies having business taken away from them by small-time operators working from a back room either in the developed world or in far-off places. It follows, therefore, as I remarked only the other day, that people with enough smarts can take advantage of this situation.
The internet makes it possible for an online operation to have global suppliers, global customers, and global competitors. The opportunity is therefore there, in principle, for a small publisher based anywhere in the world, to have a worldwide success. Which is yet another reason why yesterday's impassioned defence of small bookshops, by Alan Bennett, seems to me to be worthy, and kind, but entirely beside the point. Much as we all love such places, economics suggest that they are pretty much doomed, and all the smart thinking has already moved somewhere else.
Well, there's a whole lot more in Friedman. Stuff about global warming, the danger of nuclear proliferation, terrorism (which also benefits from a flat world), and much else. But I think you've got the idea by now.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Lulu.com
There are now several reasons for paying attention to what goes on at Lulu.com.
Lulu.com first came to my notice perhaps a couple of years ago. It appeared at that time to be just another place where self-publishers could go to get their book into print. And at that point it did not seem to me to be very different from the (recently) much criticised PublishAmerica, or the firm which is now known as AuthorHouse (originally 1st Books). Or any one of a number of others.
Lulu is still a place where you can get a novel or a memoir published. But it is also rather more.
One of my other interests, besides books, is photography, and a month or so ago there was a flurry of discussion, on one of the groups that I subscribe to, about the possibility of publishing photographic books through Lulu.
Now that really made my ears prick up. Because I know quite a lot about printing illustrated books, and believe me, it ain't easy.
I had heard, distantly, that it had become possible to publish full-colour illustrations through print-on-demand presses, but I had got the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that the facility was confined to children's books which were printed on a fairly stiff card. As far as I knew, most POD printing facilities could only offer to print black and white line illustrations, or low-quality black and white images.
So I went over to Lulu and had a look. What I found there surprised me. I discovered that some reasonably well-known names are using Lulu to print and publish collections of their photographs, either in black and white or full colour. And, so far, I have not picked up any gossip to the effect that the quality is unsatisfactory.
People who take photographs on a professional basis, or a serious-amateur basis, are notoriously fussy about the reproduction of their images. So here we have a situation which at least merits further enquiry.
To see an example of what I mean, go take a look at these Lulu links. First, a book about California by Noah Grey. This runs to 147 pages and costs $49.99. (With all these examples, you can click on a preview button and see a PDF file with some sample illustrations.) Next, Visions, by Wanda Sanders-Young; 96 pages at $34.96. And third, Woofers, by Paul Treacy. A particularly nice one, this, I think; 56 pages at $17.93.
Now -- I have by no means fully explored the Lulu.com site, and I haven't quite figured out how they do the printing. But it is probably some form of inkjet. And if you know anything about the printing of fine-art photographs by inkjet printers you will know that there have been problems of longevity. In short, the pictures tend to fade with age and exposure to light.
There are also, of course, endless problems about printing in colour, even when you're talking big-time printers with million-copy print-runs of a high-quality fashion magazine. If a professional printer manages to get within 5% of his target colours, he probably feels he's doing a good job.
Whether these technical problems, of fading and colour control, have been fully dealt with by Lulu.com I don't know. But in the meantime it looks as if the results are good enough to satisfy most people.
Now this, I have to say, constitutes a hugely dramatic change in circumstances. Only a couple of years ago, if you had asked me how to go about self-publishing a book of photographs I would have told you to forget it. You would have had to order a minimum print-run of 2,000 copies, to bring the cost per copy down to anything like a reasonable level; and you would have been left with a huge bill and a garage full of unsold books.
But now, with Lulu, you can do the job for absolutely minimum cost; and you don't need to keep stock; you can have copies run off as and when they're needed. True, you will have to master the technique of preparing a PDF file; and true, the full Adobe Acrobat program for creating PDFs costs a lot of money. But there are cheap alternatives to Adobe Acrobat: Serif Page Plus, for instance. And if I can manage to produce PDFs, anybody can.
Ah yes, I hear you saying. But even if you print copies of a book at an amazingly cheap cost, you are still faced with the problem of selling the books. And indeed you are. But you may not actually want to "sell" any, in the traditional sense.
You might wish, for instance, to produce a set of wedding photographs which, instead of being pasted in the traditional album, are printed in the form of a book, which could be distributed free to key members of the family; or even to every guest; or to every guest who wanted to buy one.
And if you're a professional portrait painter, for example, you could publish a book showing many of your recent portraits and use it as a sales tool.
And so on. The possibilities are enormous, and to my mind quite astonishing. It is only about ten years since a colleague first showed me what was then called a bubble-jet printer; and look how far and how fast we have come since.
Another reason to take a long look at Lulu is that it offers the facility to produce and market other things, beside books: CDs and DVDs, for example. Or ebooks. And you can make your own calendars from art work or photographs. Take a look at the corporate profile.
And, finally, another interesting thing about Lulu.com is that the company is sponsoring the Blooker Prize. Yes, that L is meant to be there.
The Blooker Prize is the world's first prize devoted to books which originated from, or are based on the content of, a blog. Which is a good excuse to remind you that, if you are looking for a modestly priced present for a bookish friend, you could do no better than give said friend a copy of the book version of the Grumpy Old Bookman. This is available from either Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com, and in either case at a generous discount.
And, yes, thank you for offering, but there is no need for you to nominate the GOB print version for the Blooker Prize. The rules allow me to do it myself. And I will, I will.
Oh, and by the way. I nearly forgot (typical). I have Maud Newton to thank for this one. Yet another reason for visiting Lulu.com is that they offer a way to use that enormous pile of rejection letters. Some people paper a room with them, but Lulu has a better idea: you can have them printed out on toilet paper.
Admittedly, this service is a little expensive. (And perhaps they don't intend it to be taken very seriously.) But think how much better you will feel as a result.
Lulu.com first came to my notice perhaps a couple of years ago. It appeared at that time to be just another place where self-publishers could go to get their book into print. And at that point it did not seem to me to be very different from the (recently) much criticised PublishAmerica, or the firm which is now known as AuthorHouse (originally 1st Books). Or any one of a number of others.
Lulu is still a place where you can get a novel or a memoir published. But it is also rather more.
One of my other interests, besides books, is photography, and a month or so ago there was a flurry of discussion, on one of the groups that I subscribe to, about the possibility of publishing photographic books through Lulu.
Now that really made my ears prick up. Because I know quite a lot about printing illustrated books, and believe me, it ain't easy.
I had heard, distantly, that it had become possible to publish full-colour illustrations through print-on-demand presses, but I had got the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that the facility was confined to children's books which were printed on a fairly stiff card. As far as I knew, most POD printing facilities could only offer to print black and white line illustrations, or low-quality black and white images.
So I went over to Lulu and had a look. What I found there surprised me. I discovered that some reasonably well-known names are using Lulu to print and publish collections of their photographs, either in black and white or full colour. And, so far, I have not picked up any gossip to the effect that the quality is unsatisfactory.
People who take photographs on a professional basis, or a serious-amateur basis, are notoriously fussy about the reproduction of their images. So here we have a situation which at least merits further enquiry.
To see an example of what I mean, go take a look at these Lulu links. First, a book about California by Noah Grey. This runs to 147 pages and costs $49.99. (With all these examples, you can click on a preview button and see a PDF file with some sample illustrations.) Next, Visions, by Wanda Sanders-Young; 96 pages at $34.96. And third, Woofers, by Paul Treacy. A particularly nice one, this, I think; 56 pages at $17.93.
Now -- I have by no means fully explored the Lulu.com site, and I haven't quite figured out how they do the printing. But it is probably some form of inkjet. And if you know anything about the printing of fine-art photographs by inkjet printers you will know that there have been problems of longevity. In short, the pictures tend to fade with age and exposure to light.
There are also, of course, endless problems about printing in colour, even when you're talking big-time printers with million-copy print-runs of a high-quality fashion magazine. If a professional printer manages to get within 5% of his target colours, he probably feels he's doing a good job.
Whether these technical problems, of fading and colour control, have been fully dealt with by Lulu.com I don't know. But in the meantime it looks as if the results are good enough to satisfy most people.
Now this, I have to say, constitutes a hugely dramatic change in circumstances. Only a couple of years ago, if you had asked me how to go about self-publishing a book of photographs I would have told you to forget it. You would have had to order a minimum print-run of 2,000 copies, to bring the cost per copy down to anything like a reasonable level; and you would have been left with a huge bill and a garage full of unsold books.
But now, with Lulu, you can do the job for absolutely minimum cost; and you don't need to keep stock; you can have copies run off as and when they're needed. True, you will have to master the technique of preparing a PDF file; and true, the full Adobe Acrobat program for creating PDFs costs a lot of money. But there are cheap alternatives to Adobe Acrobat: Serif Page Plus, for instance. And if I can manage to produce PDFs, anybody can.
Ah yes, I hear you saying. But even if you print copies of a book at an amazingly cheap cost, you are still faced with the problem of selling the books. And indeed you are. But you may not actually want to "sell" any, in the traditional sense.
You might wish, for instance, to produce a set of wedding photographs which, instead of being pasted in the traditional album, are printed in the form of a book, which could be distributed free to key members of the family; or even to every guest; or to every guest who wanted to buy one.
And if you're a professional portrait painter, for example, you could publish a book showing many of your recent portraits and use it as a sales tool.
And so on. The possibilities are enormous, and to my mind quite astonishing. It is only about ten years since a colleague first showed me what was then called a bubble-jet printer; and look how far and how fast we have come since.
Another reason to take a long look at Lulu is that it offers the facility to produce and market other things, beside books: CDs and DVDs, for example. Or ebooks. And you can make your own calendars from art work or photographs. Take a look at the corporate profile.
And, finally, another interesting thing about Lulu.com is that the company is sponsoring the Blooker Prize. Yes, that L is meant to be there.
The Blooker Prize is the world's first prize devoted to books which originated from, or are based on the content of, a blog. Which is a good excuse to remind you that, if you are looking for a modestly priced present for a bookish friend, you could do no better than give said friend a copy of the book version of the Grumpy Old Bookman. This is available from either Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com, and in either case at a generous discount.
And, yes, thank you for offering, but there is no need for you to nominate the GOB print version for the Blooker Prize. The rules allow me to do it myself. And I will, I will.
Oh, and by the way. I nearly forgot (typical). I have Maud Newton to thank for this one. Yet another reason for visiting Lulu.com is that they offer a way to use that enormous pile of rejection letters. Some people paper a room with them, but Lulu has a better idea: you can have them printed out on toilet paper.
Admittedly, this service is a little expensive. (And perhaps they don't intend it to be taken very seriously.) But think how much better you will feel as a result.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
The Booker Prize
The Booker Prize for 2005 was awarded last night. It went to John Banville, for what the Times calls his 'melancholy novel about a childhood reminiscence.' Sounds like a lot of fun.
Frankly, the Booker Prize is of no great interest to me, because many decades of reading have demonstrated that the books which get shortlisted for it are the kind of books which, year in and year out, fail to entertain me in any way shape or form. So I'm not going to say anything more about this year's candidates. If you wish to investigate the matter, you can start with the Times report and move on from there. Acre and acres of comment will appear in every major newspaper and virtually all of the literary blogs: see blogroll to your right.
What I am going to do this morning is reprint an essay on the Booker which I wrote last January; and I'm going to do that for two reasons.
First, the essay provides many reasons as to why we should not, perhaps, take the Booker Prize quite so seriously as many do. And second, the essay has been chosen for inclusion in a kind of 'best of the bloggers' anthology which will be published next month.
The title of the anthology is 2005 Blogged: Dispatches from the Blogosphere, and the editor is Tim Worstall. Publisher is that new outfit, The Friday Project Ltd. The books is already listed on Amazon.co.uk, so you can nip over and pre-order your copy now. It will be essential reading, no doubt.
Incidentally, I see that from Amazon that those who ordered this book also ordered The Big Book of Masturbation and The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust; so tastes are clearly eclectic here.
Meanwhile here is my essay from January last. Its title was:
The Booker Prize and absolute nonsense
Companies that sponsor prizes do so chiefly, I suspect, to obtain cheap publicity. And in that regard the Man Booker company, sponsors of the (Man) Booker Prize for fiction, do better than most.
Last week, for instance, there were masses of stories (e.g. Telegraph and Guardian) just about the choice of a chairman for the judges, and whether the judges will actually read the whole of each book or not.
But that is not what I want to witter on about today. No, what I thought I would do is draw your attention to the merciless winner-take-all mechanism which accompanies this annual jamboree.
When you and I are faced with a book, and asked to say whether it is a masterpiece or an overblown piece of self-indulgent nonsense, there is no universally recognised scale against which we can measure the book and come to a clear conclusion. Judging a book is a matter of taste and sensibility, and you are likely to maintain that your taste and sensibility are superior to mine. (You are probably right, since my taste is notoriously vulgar.)
As far as the Booker Prize is concerned, it is safe to say that the choice of the ‘best’ book of the year is inevitably a matter of opinion rather than fact. And not even unanimous opinion. In almost every year there are press reports of disagreements among the judges, and in some years we hear of ‘compromise choices’ or the chairman’s casting vote. We also know that, in one particular case, the eventual winner was unusually ‘fortunate’.
In 2002 the winner of the Booker Prize was Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Many newspaper reports at the time told us that this book had been rejected by Faber, the firm which had published Martel’s earlier work; the book had also been turned down by at least five other major publishers. So if Canongate had not taken the book, it is likely that the manuscript would have remained in the author’s filing cabinet. Furthermore, if the book had been accepted by one of the bigger firms, it would not even have been entered for the Booker Prize in the first place, because the big firms (only allowed two nominations) have to enter their most famous authors; if they don’t, the famous authors are likely to go elsewhere.
The Life of Pi saga provides a beautifully clear demonstration of the random nature of decision-making in publishing. Here we have a book which was turned down for publication by numerous ‘good judges’. It was entered for the Booker Prize by a small firm which had no stronger candidates. And it so happened that the particular set of judges who were reading in 2002 happened to like it best. Or a majority of them did.
All rational observers will agree that Life of Pi, or any other Booker winner, cannot sensibly be described as the best book of the year in any absolute sense. The Life of Pi episode shows us, undeniably, that there might have been other books that year which were either not published at all or were published by big firms which were not able to submit them -- books which could, quite possibly, have found favour with the judges if they had been submitted. The most that can be said of the book which wins the Booker Prize is that it is the one which (of those presented for consideration) the judges liked the best.
But observe, please, what happens when the winner of the Booker Prize is announced (in any year). What happens is that the media, the critics, and the public, all behave as if there is some absolute sense in which the winner is the best book of the year. They act as if the book has been held up against a ruler, a universally agreed scale, and has been found, indisputably, and scientifically, to be ‘better’ than any other.
A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I was given a copy of the New York Review of Books, in which there was a lengthy review of the most recent Booker winner; the article runs to 108 column inches. Similar things no doubt happen every year. And this ‘star treatment’ will be repeated in newspapers and magazines throughout the English-speaking world.
It is the winning novel, please note, which is treated in this way – not the runners-up; and certainly not the good books which were not submitted by their publishers; and definitely not the books which didn’t even make it into print. It is the winning author who will be interviewed on television, invited to writers’ conferences, and made the subject, in due course, of earnest PhD theses by bespectacled young people who can think of nothing better to do with their time than waste it by deconstructing a novelist’s prose. This is the winner-take-all mechanism in its most unforgiving form.
The runners-up, the non-shortlisted books, and the unpublished books, all those are losers who disappear from our sight, never to be heard of again. And yet we know, beyond doubt, that but for the workings of randomness, which favoured the winner and disfavoured the others, there might be one, ten, or a hundred other books which could, in different circumstances, have proved to be more enticing to the judges than did the eventual winner.
The winner-take-all mechanism in the book world is thus shown to be brutal, vicious, and deadly.
There is no point in complaining about it: it is just the way things happen; the world in general, and the book trade in particular, is unfair, unjust, and patently absurd in its workings. But all those who work in the book trade, in particular those who write and sell novels, need to be aware of this situation. And they need to ask themselves whether a business in which randomness is so powerful a factor in the distribution of rewards is a business which sensible people should allow themselves to be involved in.
Frankly, the Booker Prize is of no great interest to me, because many decades of reading have demonstrated that the books which get shortlisted for it are the kind of books which, year in and year out, fail to entertain me in any way shape or form. So I'm not going to say anything more about this year's candidates. If you wish to investigate the matter, you can start with the Times report and move on from there. Acre and acres of comment will appear in every major newspaper and virtually all of the literary blogs: see blogroll to your right.
What I am going to do this morning is reprint an essay on the Booker which I wrote last January; and I'm going to do that for two reasons.
First, the essay provides many reasons as to why we should not, perhaps, take the Booker Prize quite so seriously as many do. And second, the essay has been chosen for inclusion in a kind of 'best of the bloggers' anthology which will be published next month.
The title of the anthology is 2005 Blogged: Dispatches from the Blogosphere, and the editor is Tim Worstall. Publisher is that new outfit, The Friday Project Ltd. The books is already listed on Amazon.co.uk, so you can nip over and pre-order your copy now. It will be essential reading, no doubt.
Incidentally, I see that from Amazon that those who ordered this book also ordered The Big Book of Masturbation and The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust; so tastes are clearly eclectic here.
Meanwhile here is my essay from January last. Its title was:
The Booker Prize and absolute nonsense
Companies that sponsor prizes do so chiefly, I suspect, to obtain cheap publicity. And in that regard the Man Booker company, sponsors of the (Man) Booker Prize for fiction, do better than most.
Last week, for instance, there were masses of stories (e.g. Telegraph and Guardian) just about the choice of a chairman for the judges, and whether the judges will actually read the whole of each book or not.
But that is not what I want to witter on about today. No, what I thought I would do is draw your attention to the merciless winner-take-all mechanism which accompanies this annual jamboree.
When you and I are faced with a book, and asked to say whether it is a masterpiece or an overblown piece of self-indulgent nonsense, there is no universally recognised scale against which we can measure the book and come to a clear conclusion. Judging a book is a matter of taste and sensibility, and you are likely to maintain that your taste and sensibility are superior to mine. (You are probably right, since my taste is notoriously vulgar.)
As far as the Booker Prize is concerned, it is safe to say that the choice of the ‘best’ book of the year is inevitably a matter of opinion rather than fact. And not even unanimous opinion. In almost every year there are press reports of disagreements among the judges, and in some years we hear of ‘compromise choices’ or the chairman’s casting vote. We also know that, in one particular case, the eventual winner was unusually ‘fortunate’.
In 2002 the winner of the Booker Prize was Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Many newspaper reports at the time told us that this book had been rejected by Faber, the firm which had published Martel’s earlier work; the book had also been turned down by at least five other major publishers. So if Canongate had not taken the book, it is likely that the manuscript would have remained in the author’s filing cabinet. Furthermore, if the book had been accepted by one of the bigger firms, it would not even have been entered for the Booker Prize in the first place, because the big firms (only allowed two nominations) have to enter their most famous authors; if they don’t, the famous authors are likely to go elsewhere.
The Life of Pi saga provides a beautifully clear demonstration of the random nature of decision-making in publishing. Here we have a book which was turned down for publication by numerous ‘good judges’. It was entered for the Booker Prize by a small firm which had no stronger candidates. And it so happened that the particular set of judges who were reading in 2002 happened to like it best. Or a majority of them did.
All rational observers will agree that Life of Pi, or any other Booker winner, cannot sensibly be described as the best book of the year in any absolute sense. The Life of Pi episode shows us, undeniably, that there might have been other books that year which were either not published at all or were published by big firms which were not able to submit them -- books which could, quite possibly, have found favour with the judges if they had been submitted. The most that can be said of the book which wins the Booker Prize is that it is the one which (of those presented for consideration) the judges liked the best.
But observe, please, what happens when the winner of the Booker Prize is announced (in any year). What happens is that the media, the critics, and the public, all behave as if there is some absolute sense in which the winner is the best book of the year. They act as if the book has been held up against a ruler, a universally agreed scale, and has been found, indisputably, and scientifically, to be ‘better’ than any other.
A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I was given a copy of the New York Review of Books, in which there was a lengthy review of the most recent Booker winner; the article runs to 108 column inches. Similar things no doubt happen every year. And this ‘star treatment’ will be repeated in newspapers and magazines throughout the English-speaking world.
It is the winning novel, please note, which is treated in this way – not the runners-up; and certainly not the good books which were not submitted by their publishers; and definitely not the books which didn’t even make it into print. It is the winning author who will be interviewed on television, invited to writers’ conferences, and made the subject, in due course, of earnest PhD theses by bespectacled young people who can think of nothing better to do with their time than waste it by deconstructing a novelist’s prose. This is the winner-take-all mechanism in its most unforgiving form.
The runners-up, the non-shortlisted books, and the unpublished books, all those are losers who disappear from our sight, never to be heard of again. And yet we know, beyond doubt, that but for the workings of randomness, which favoured the winner and disfavoured the others, there might be one, ten, or a hundred other books which could, in different circumstances, have proved to be more enticing to the judges than did the eventual winner.
The winner-take-all mechanism in the book world is thus shown to be brutal, vicious, and deadly.
There is no point in complaining about it: it is just the way things happen; the world in general, and the book trade in particular, is unfair, unjust, and patently absurd in its workings. But all those who work in the book trade, in particular those who write and sell novels, need to be aware of this situation. And they need to ask themselves whether a business in which randomness is so powerful a factor in the distribution of rewards is a business which sensible people should allow themselves to be involved in.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Tom Evslin: Hackoff.com
Well, my dears, there are days when I am just forced to recognise that I am not equipped to keep up and compete in today's fast-moving world. It requires, I fear, far more energy and smarts than I possess at this time -- more, I suspect, than I have ever possessed. So I think I will just sit here a while and watch while everyone else does their stuff.
These thoughts are prompted by reading a post on M.J. Rose's blog, Buzz, Balls, and Hype. M.J. is taking a short break, and various guests are providing columns in the meantime. One such came from Tom Evslin. And Tom -- I am really doing my best here to make this sound like a compliment, which I intend it to be -- Tom seems to be one of those fiendishly intelligent and concentrated persons that one occasionally comes across and who are, frankly, so smart that it makes one a little nervous. Not only smart but capable, it seems, of doing huge amounts of work. He ain't young, by the way. Retired, I believe.
Go over to Buzz et cetera and read Tom's column, entitled Self Publish or Perish. It gives a short biography of him, and explains his reasons for going into self-publishing. There you will see that he is a former CEO of a dot.com company and so understands a lot of the technical stuff that I don't.
The story is basically this. Tom had a ringside view of the dot.com boom and bust. He has written about that time in the form of a novel, entitled Hack0ff.com. And he is serialising the novel on a blog, in a form of writing/communication which he calls a blook. (Mixture of blog and book. Yes, I dare say you were there before me. Told you I was slow.) The term blook is not, apparently, an invention of Tom's. That honour belongs to others (whom he lists), but we may never know whose head it entered first.
Tom Evslin's novel (or blook) is decidedly innovative not only in the way he is marketing it -- online serialisation now, hardcover version early next year -- but in terms of its narrative technique. Few novels include graphs of stock-market performance and the like. So far, the first three chapters are online (the PDF versions may be the most convenient to read), with more to come on a daily basis.
Tom and I share one thing, even if we don't have equal smarts and energy. We are both convinced that blogging and the internet have changed publishing in ways which go much further than anyone in publishing seems to understand. And it is all happening fast.
If, as is clearly the case, many of the most talented and clear-thinking modern writers are publishing their own stuff for free, on the internet, as well as making it available in printed book form (which is, of course, still much the most convenient way to read a book-length text), then who needs publishers?
Do any professional publishers understand, one wonders, how precarious their position is? Is there anyone out there in Random House and HarperCollins and all the rest who is doing any thinking and planning? If so, they are keeping mousy quiet about it.
Tom Evslin is not an experienced novelist, and so those parts of his book which employ traditional narrative techniques are not as well constructed or as gripping as would be the equivalent from a writer with twenty novels behind him. So I don't actually think that this book is going to sweep to the top of the bestsellers.
On the other hand, the day will come when somebody does do the job. Sooner or later, someone will write a novel which, either by virtue of great talent plus experience, or through the grace of God, really hits the button with lots of online readers. Readers who will then rush out and buy a hardback or paperback copy; or, more likely, will simply do a few clicks over to Amazon and buy it. And they will buy said book in enough quantities, whether online or off, to make it appear in the Bookscan bestseller lists.
Once the trick has been shown to be possible, why should anyone crack their heads open on agents and big-time publishers any longer?
These thoughts are prompted by reading a post on M.J. Rose's blog, Buzz, Balls, and Hype. M.J. is taking a short break, and various guests are providing columns in the meantime. One such came from Tom Evslin. And Tom -- I am really doing my best here to make this sound like a compliment, which I intend it to be -- Tom seems to be one of those fiendishly intelligent and concentrated persons that one occasionally comes across and who are, frankly, so smart that it makes one a little nervous. Not only smart but capable, it seems, of doing huge amounts of work. He ain't young, by the way. Retired, I believe.
Go over to Buzz et cetera and read Tom's column, entitled Self Publish or Perish. It gives a short biography of him, and explains his reasons for going into self-publishing. There you will see that he is a former CEO of a dot.com company and so understands a lot of the technical stuff that I don't.
The story is basically this. Tom had a ringside view of the dot.com boom and bust. He has written about that time in the form of a novel, entitled Hack0ff.com. And he is serialising the novel on a blog, in a form of writing/communication which he calls a blook. (Mixture of blog and book. Yes, I dare say you were there before me. Told you I was slow.) The term blook is not, apparently, an invention of Tom's. That honour belongs to others (whom he lists), but we may never know whose head it entered first.
Tom Evslin's novel (or blook) is decidedly innovative not only in the way he is marketing it -- online serialisation now, hardcover version early next year -- but in terms of its narrative technique. Few novels include graphs of stock-market performance and the like. So far, the first three chapters are online (the PDF versions may be the most convenient to read), with more to come on a daily basis.
Tom and I share one thing, even if we don't have equal smarts and energy. We are both convinced that blogging and the internet have changed publishing in ways which go much further than anyone in publishing seems to understand. And it is all happening fast.
If, as is clearly the case, many of the most talented and clear-thinking modern writers are publishing their own stuff for free, on the internet, as well as making it available in printed book form (which is, of course, still much the most convenient way to read a book-length text), then who needs publishers?
Do any professional publishers understand, one wonders, how precarious their position is? Is there anyone out there in Random House and HarperCollins and all the rest who is doing any thinking and planning? If so, they are keeping mousy quiet about it.
Tom Evslin is not an experienced novelist, and so those parts of his book which employ traditional narrative techniques are not as well constructed or as gripping as would be the equivalent from a writer with twenty novels behind him. So I don't actually think that this book is going to sweep to the top of the bestsellers.
On the other hand, the day will come when somebody does do the job. Sooner or later, someone will write a novel which, either by virtue of great talent plus experience, or through the grace of God, really hits the button with lots of online readers. Readers who will then rush out and buy a hardback or paperback copy; or, more likely, will simply do a few clicks over to Amazon and buy it. And they will buy said book in enough quantities, whether online or off, to make it appear in the Bookscan bestseller lists.
Once the trick has been shown to be possible, why should anyone crack their heads open on agents and big-time publishers any longer?
Glasgow University fails test
Glasgow University faced a test of its resolve recently. And failed. Miserably. The story is told as the lead item ('Censored') in the latest edition of the Ansible newsletter.
Well, some British universities can still, just about, claim to be among the world leaders in various disciplines; and in this instance Glasgow seem to be leading the world in terms of the width of their yellow streak.
Caution is one thing, cowardice quite another. In respect of the Ansible archives, Glasgow have failed to display any degree of common sense, and, more important, have ignored any consideration of the principle of freedom of speech -- a matter in which universities have traditionally taken an interest.
Grow up, Glasgow. Please.
Well, some British universities can still, just about, claim to be among the world leaders in various disciplines; and in this instance Glasgow seem to be leading the world in terms of the width of their yellow streak.
Caution is one thing, cowardice quite another. In respect of the Ansible archives, Glasgow have failed to display any degree of common sense, and, more important, have ignored any consideration of the principle of freedom of speech -- a matter in which universities have traditionally taken an interest.
Grow up, Glasgow. Please.
Friday, October 07, 2005
No rules. Just write.
Brenda Coulter posted a comment about writers' blogs, saying that she personally had found blogging beneficial, though the jury was still out on whether it actually did any good as a promotional aid.
Brenda was much too modest to include a link to her own blog, so I went and found it. It's called 'No rules. Just write.' And lo, it proves to be great fun.
It turns out that Brenda has two essential attributes if you intend to mess about in the book world. One, a sense of humour; and two, a sense of proportion. Both of these are needed if you are to write, or attempt to write, and yet remain even halfway sane.
Brenda also turns out to be one of those people who know how to find out where their readers come from, i.e. whether they came via Google or Technorati and stuff like that. Me, I have enough trouble finding my own blog some days. And only today someone wrote and told me that I couldn't even put up a link to Amazon which worked. (I hope it does now but I wouldn't swear to it.)
In addition to her blog, Brenda also runs a web site. Its primary purpose, I guess, is to plug her books, but it contains quite a lot of other stuff. In the print-published world, Brenda writes inspirational romance -- a genre which she defines very neatly on one of her pages. Such novels are not for me, on two counts, but don't be put off because there is much else on this web site: including a recommendation to read P.G. Wodehouse and a learned discussion on the difference between afternoon tea and high tea.
All in all, Brenda's blog and web site are (a) fun and (b) useful to would-be (romance) writers. Not only that but you get to see a very nice portrait of her, taken by a professional. She says it's nothing like her, but I don't believe a word of it.
Brenda was much too modest to include a link to her own blog, so I went and found it. It's called 'No rules. Just write.' And lo, it proves to be great fun.
It turns out that Brenda has two essential attributes if you intend to mess about in the book world. One, a sense of humour; and two, a sense of proportion. Both of these are needed if you are to write, or attempt to write, and yet remain even halfway sane.
Brenda also turns out to be one of those people who know how to find out where their readers come from, i.e. whether they came via Google or Technorati and stuff like that. Me, I have enough trouble finding my own blog some days. And only today someone wrote and told me that I couldn't even put up a link to Amazon which worked. (I hope it does now but I wouldn't swear to it.)
In addition to her blog, Brenda also runs a web site. Its primary purpose, I guess, is to plug her books, but it contains quite a lot of other stuff. In the print-published world, Brenda writes inspirational romance -- a genre which she defines very neatly on one of her pages. Such novels are not for me, on two counts, but don't be put off because there is much else on this web site: including a recommendation to read P.G. Wodehouse and a learned discussion on the difference between afternoon tea and high tea.
All in all, Brenda's blog and web site are (a) fun and (b) useful to would-be (romance) writers. Not only that but you get to see a very nice portrait of her, taken by a professional. She says it's nothing like her, but I don't believe a word of it.
Talking books
Some time ago I had an email from a lady at the National Library Service of the (American) Library of Congress. She asked me to publicise the Talking Books program, and this, albeit belatedly, I am pleased to do.
Basically, the Talking Books program makes available, free of charge, recordings of books so that they can be enjoyed by anyone who is blind, or so physically handicapped that they cannot read books in the ordinary way. This service is much appreciated by those who use it, to the extent that they 'read' some 35 books a year, compared with the average sighted person's 5 a year.
Surprisingly (to me) there are 150,000 former US servicemen and women who are blind, and providing books for these veterans is one of the NLS's core tasks. And some of the most avid participants in the scheme are over 100 years old.
Talking Books is run largely by volunteer power, so there are plenty of opportunities for seniors and others who wish to make a difference. And not the least benefit of this service, of course, is that it takes some of the burden off those who care for blind and disabled people. Moral: if you know anyone who might benefit from this service, please draw it to their attention. Full details can be found on the NLS web site.
A similar sort of organisation exists in the UK, though it is not, so far as I am aware, government-sponsored. It is called Calibre, and again it distributes recordings of books to blind people without charge. They too have a web site for those wishing to know more.
Nearly thirty years ago I gave permission for one of my own books to be recorded for a similar service (though I don't think it was Calibre), and I did once meet an old man who had 'read' it in that way. He left me in no doubt that the facility to listen to books meant a great deal to him.
Calibre, being a charity, depends on writers and publishers allowing them to make recordings without expecting any remuneration. They tend (I think) to go for popular fiction rather than highbrow stuff, and five years ago they asked permission to record another of my books, a family saga. Recordings are made by professional actors, who get no fee, doing the job in their own homes rather than a studio.
This too deserves your support.
Basically, the Talking Books program makes available, free of charge, recordings of books so that they can be enjoyed by anyone who is blind, or so physically handicapped that they cannot read books in the ordinary way. This service is much appreciated by those who use it, to the extent that they 'read' some 35 books a year, compared with the average sighted person's 5 a year.
Surprisingly (to me) there are 150,000 former US servicemen and women who are blind, and providing books for these veterans is one of the NLS's core tasks. And some of the most avid participants in the scheme are over 100 years old.
Talking Books is run largely by volunteer power, so there are plenty of opportunities for seniors and others who wish to make a difference. And not the least benefit of this service, of course, is that it takes some of the burden off those who care for blind and disabled people. Moral: if you know anyone who might benefit from this service, please draw it to their attention. Full details can be found on the NLS web site.
A similar sort of organisation exists in the UK, though it is not, so far as I am aware, government-sponsored. It is called Calibre, and again it distributes recordings of books to blind people without charge. They too have a web site for those wishing to know more.
Nearly thirty years ago I gave permission for one of my own books to be recorded for a similar service (though I don't think it was Calibre), and I did once meet an old man who had 'read' it in that way. He left me in no doubt that the facility to listen to books meant a great deal to him.
Calibre, being a charity, depends on writers and publishers allowing them to make recordings without expecting any remuneration. They tend (I think) to go for popular fiction rather than highbrow stuff, and five years ago they asked permission to record another of my books, a family saga. Recordings are made by professional actors, who get no fee, doing the job in their own homes rather than a studio.
This too deserves your support.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Molesworth for President
I had forgotten how very funny Nigel Molesworth was. Well, not forgotten exactly, but it's a long time since I opened any of the books. However, booktrade.info put me on to a long article in The Independent, by Nicholas Lezard, and that brought it all home to me.
Molesworth was a character invented some fifty years ago by Geoffrey Willans (the writer) and Ronald Searle (the illustrator). He was a schoolboy, aged perhaps 10 or 12, who attended an English prep school called St Custard's. Molesworth appeared first in Down with Skool! in 1953, and subsequently in three other books.
Each book was written, supposedly, by Molesworth himself, in a style which was at one and the same time illiterate and surprisingly erudite. And the books described mainly the horrors of school: the dreadful food, the incompetent teachers, the compulsory games, the snobbery, and the schoolboy violence.
At least one of Molesworth's illiterate and dismissive comments has passed into the language. You quite often come across writers saying that so and so is the case, 'as any fule kno'. (Google the phrase and see.) And that is pure Molesworth.
If you are English, male, and old enough to have been a schoolboy in the 1950s, in a school like St Custard's (and there were quite a lot of them), you will almost certainly remember Molesworth with affection. But if you are 25, American, female, and otherwise remote from those times and places, you can forget I ever mentioned the matter. The humour simply won't travel (I suspect). Though you could always dip into Nicholas Lezard's article and see.
Molesworth was a character invented some fifty years ago by Geoffrey Willans (the writer) and Ronald Searle (the illustrator). He was a schoolboy, aged perhaps 10 or 12, who attended an English prep school called St Custard's. Molesworth appeared first in Down with Skool! in 1953, and subsequently in three other books.
Each book was written, supposedly, by Molesworth himself, in a style which was at one and the same time illiterate and surprisingly erudite. And the books described mainly the horrors of school: the dreadful food, the incompetent teachers, the compulsory games, the snobbery, and the schoolboy violence.
At least one of Molesworth's illiterate and dismissive comments has passed into the language. You quite often come across writers saying that so and so is the case, 'as any fule kno'. (Google the phrase and see.) And that is pure Molesworth.
If you are English, male, and old enough to have been a schoolboy in the 1950s, in a school like St Custard's (and there were quite a lot of them), you will almost certainly remember Molesworth with affection. But if you are 25, American, female, and otherwise remote from those times and places, you can forget I ever mentioned the matter. The humour simply won't travel (I suspect). Though you could always dip into Nicholas Lezard's article and see.
Old Earth Books
Michael Walsh, of Old Earth Books, writes to tell me that his small press will publish the American edition of Christopher Priest's The Separation, a book which was favourably mentioned here on 11 November 2004, and which was the winner in 2003 of both the BSFA Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The web site for OEB has no details of this publication as yet, but they will appear in due course.
Meanwhile OEB has much more to offer, including a collection of essays on Terry Pratchett and Michael Swanwick's book Being Gardner Dozois.
Michael Walsh, by the way, is not a full-time publisher. By day he is a sales rep for Johns Hopkins University Press. This just goes to show what can be achieved in this day and age by an enthusiast who is capable of functioning without sleep.
The OEB site, by the way, contains a piece of news passed on by Susanna Clarke: 'There is a rule now, that no British train may leave the station until there's someone on board reading Terry Pratchett.' And quite right too.
Meanwhile OEB has much more to offer, including a collection of essays on Terry Pratchett and Michael Swanwick's book Being Gardner Dozois.
Michael Walsh, by the way, is not a full-time publisher. By day he is a sales rep for Johns Hopkins University Press. This just goes to show what can be achieved in this day and age by an enthusiast who is capable of functioning without sleep.
The OEB site, by the way, contains a piece of news passed on by Susanna Clarke: 'There is a rule now, that no British train may leave the station until there's someone on board reading Terry Pratchett.' And quite right too.
Writers' blogs
NancyKay Shapiro writes to say that her first novel, What Love Means to You People, is being published by St Martin's Press next year. And, as you do, she has started a blog.
Well, you don't get to be published by the Thomas Dunne imprint of St Martin's without impressing some tough judges.
NancyKay's blog provides various links so you can get the flavour of her book very easily. One of the main themes is a love affair between two gay men, and the setting is very definitely New York -- and so, as usual, the book is not going to appeal to everyone. But, once again, we see how the savvy author these days is driving much of the publicity herself.
Another writer who hasn't sold her book but is still working on it is Nienke Hinton. She has a blog called The Writing Life, in which she describes her progress on a novel and the various problems that she encounters.
Well, it is certainly possible to maintain a blog and work on a novel at one and the same time, and it may prove to be beneficial in building up interest. But you certainly need a good deal of time and energy to do it and the blog may prove a distraction. I guess the only way to find out is to try it and see.
Well, you don't get to be published by the Thomas Dunne imprint of St Martin's without impressing some tough judges.
NancyKay's blog provides various links so you can get the flavour of her book very easily. One of the main themes is a love affair between two gay men, and the setting is very definitely New York -- and so, as usual, the book is not going to appeal to everyone. But, once again, we see how the savvy author these days is driving much of the publicity herself.
Another writer who hasn't sold her book but is still working on it is Nienke Hinton. She has a blog called The Writing Life, in which she describes her progress on a novel and the various problems that she encounters.
Well, it is certainly possible to maintain a blog and work on a novel at one and the same time, and it may prove to be beneficial in building up interest. But you certainly need a good deal of time and energy to do it and the blog may prove a distraction. I guess the only way to find out is to try it and see.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Westlake on Pratchett
You really shouldn't need anyone to persuade you to read the new Terry Pratchett novel, Thud! But if you do, Donald Westlake is your man, in the Washington Post. Hats off to the books editor of the Post, by the way; this is an inspired piece of review commissioning. (Link from Locus.)
Westlake, for you youngsters, is a crime novelist of long standing and great eminence. Among other memorable things, he wrote (under the name Richard Stark -- now start to concentrate here, please) the series of (short) novels featuring a professional criminal called Parker, and managed to make Parker into a sympathetic character, which is quite an achievement.
One of those Richard Stark books, The Hunter, was made into Point Blank, one of the more memorable and watchable movies of the past thirty years. And so The Hunter was then renamed Point Blank, because of the movie; and it was later re-renamed Payback because of the other movie, also based on The Hunter and scripted by Westlake (with others) from the Richard Stark book, with Parker renamed as Porter. Look, I warned you to concentrate.
Westlake has written an enormous amount of stuff over the years, under at least four different names. Go to his web site and check 'em out. Whatever the pseudonym, track 'em all down; they're all bloody good.
Westlake, for you youngsters, is a crime novelist of long standing and great eminence. Among other memorable things, he wrote (under the name Richard Stark -- now start to concentrate here, please) the series of (short) novels featuring a professional criminal called Parker, and managed to make Parker into a sympathetic character, which is quite an achievement.
One of those Richard Stark books, The Hunter, was made into Point Blank, one of the more memorable and watchable movies of the past thirty years. And so The Hunter was then renamed Point Blank, because of the movie; and it was later re-renamed Payback because of the other movie, also based on The Hunter and scripted by Westlake (with others) from the Richard Stark book, with Parker renamed as Porter. Look, I warned you to concentrate.
Westlake has written an enormous amount of stuff over the years, under at least four different names. Go to his web site and check 'em out. Whatever the pseudonym, track 'em all down; they're all bloody good.
Bob Monkhouse: Over the Limit
A book by a stand-up comedian and television game-show host is not, perhaps, the first place where you would think of looking for insights into the art of writing. But oddly enough, Bob Monkhouse's book Over the Limit has quite a lot to say on the subject -- both directly and indirectly.
Bob Monkhouse is a name which will be known to virtually all British readers but to almost no one outside the UK. Unlike some British performers (Bruce Forsyth, for example), Monkhouse made no real attempt to establish himself anywhere but in his native land.
Born in 1928, Monkhouse died in 2003 at the age of 75. He was well known from his twenties onwards, and hence had a successful career in show business for over fifty years.
This success was not, it has to be said, achieved through a loveable personality. If asked to describe Bob Monkhouse, I would have come up with the word 'smarmy'. This is a very English word, meaning oily, unctuous, a bit too smooth and eager to please.
Monkhouse himself was well aware of his problems in this regard. He quotes a number of criticisms of his appearance and mannerisms. One 400-word piece in the Daily Mirror used the word 'smarmy' eight times. The hard-bitten journalist Jean Rook said that she had to wipe the slime off her TV screen after he had been on. And when Monkhouse challenged her about this she told him not to be so bloody sensitive. 'It's only copy,' she said. In other words, it's only there to fill up the space between the adverts.
In 1993 Monkhouse wrote his autobiography, Crying with Laughter. He followed this up five years later with Over the Limit, subtitled My Secret Diaries. Well, of course they aren't secret. And they aren't really diaries. What the book is, in fact, is the printed version of a blog, before blogs were invented. What a pity Bob didn't live into the blog era; he would have loved it.
Over the Limit does deal, to some extent, with Monkhouse's day-to-day activities, but more generally he simply uses the date as an excuse to embark on a discussion of the life of a great comedian, or an analysis of some ancient B-movie.
I have argued on this blog, a good many times, that the whole point of a novel, a play, a film, or any other work of art cum piece of entertainment, is that it creates emotion in the reader/audience. That is its whole raison d'etre. Now the one place where this truth is demonstrated in classic form is in the live performance, whether in theatre, nightclub, pub or concert hall. And while actors (mostly) have to stick to the script, and musicians follow the score, the stand-up comedian can adjust and adapt, varying his routine and his timing according to the nature of the audience.
I was once on a committee which organised a talk by John Lahr, the son of Bert Lahr, who is chiefly remembered for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. But in addition to being an actor, Bert Lahr also had a career as a stand-up comic in burlesque and vaudeville. His son John related how he once stood in the wings and heard his father get a laugh out of one word. I can't remember now, unfortunately, what the word was; but it was something which, in itself, was completely unfunny.
When Bert Lahr came off stage, his son asked him how he had managed to make people laugh with that one word. 'Oh,' said Bert, 'I just listened to the audience and they told me where the joke was.'
Bob Monkhouse would have loved that story, because his whole life was devoted to figuring out how to get the audience to respond to his jokes. And it has to be said that he was remarkably successful at it, despite some of the handicaps which we have already mentioned. He was, above all else, the complete professional.
It is made perfectly plain in Over the Limit that Monkhouse made a point of talking to virtually all his fellow comedians, about their art, at some length. And he gives us accounts of these interviews in his book. Let's see what we can dig out which might be relevant to the business of writing novels.
Well, for a start, if you're English you might care to bear in mind Monkhouse's surprisingly learned observations about the English attitude towards intelligence. In Monkhouse's view, we don't like it.
'Smart alec' is an English insult; 'too clever by half' is a criticism, full of disapproval. Shakepeare's brainiest characters are cunning, heartless or doomed: Richard III, Iago, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth. In Shakespeare, probity is the possession of stout-hearted simpletons, such as Florizel, Bassanio, and Duke Orsino. (The analysis, I repeat, is Monkhouse's, not mine. I am not all that well up on Shakespeare.)
Monkhouse, by the way, was definitely clever. Very clever. This is another reason why he was well known but never loved. And the bias against clever folk, Monkhouse is convinced, affects our attitude to comedy as well as drama.
He knew he wasn't all that popular. On one occasion he and his wife entered an art cinema, which was due to show a very obscure film, and the audience applauded. During the film he sat there with a warm feeling in his heart. But afterwards he discovered that the cinema manager had just announced that unless two more people turned up he was not going to bother showing the film.
Humour, of course, is bound to offend someone. Charlie Chester once remarked that he told a story about a policeman on night duty, only to get a letter from a real policeman a few days later: 'If you'd ever been walking the streets on a winter's night at three in the morning you wouldn't think it was bloody funny...' And so forth. Jokes about the Welsh, about Jewish friends, about Scotsmen, all generate outrage in some and laughs in others. There is no such thing, in other words, as a stimulus which produces the same emotional response in everyone. This is why your beloved novel keeps on getting rejected: the slush-pile readers just don't have the right frame of reference.
In 1995 Monkhouse met Benny Hill for the last time; he uses this meeting to discuss Hill's life and success. Monkhouse remarks that no script writer ever admired Benny Hill's writing. They found it irritatingly unoriginal and repetitive; they found it hard to understand how a man could take smutty old jokes, corny puns, riddles, rhymes, and silent film comedy routines, and build them in to a worldwide success.
But Benny knew how he did it. At their last meeting, he and Monkhouse discussed how, during their lifetime, taboos had been removed, only to be replaced by an entirely new set! And at the doorway, as he left, Benny turned around and grinned. 'New is easy,' he called out. 'Funny is hard.'
At the risk of labouring the point: It is fairly easy to create something 'original' -- originality being a grotesquely over-praised quality in the arts. But it is very difficult to write something which produces the intended emotional reponse in the intended audience.
A stand-up comedian depends upon words -- and the timing with which they are delivered -- for his livelihood; so it is not surprising that Monkhouse has thought about the English language more carefully than most. He gets very angry about the misuse of the apostrophe. And here are some of his comments on frequently used phrases:
'Now then!' This is used, in England, as a warning. But which is it, he asks -- now, or then? It can't be both.
'Needless to say...' If it is needless to say, don't say it.
'It goes without saying...' Ditto.
Other phrases that Monkhouse regards as well-nigh meaningless are: 'In one fell swoop'; 'I'll go to the foot of our stairs'; 'Neither here nor there' (where is it then?); and 'Who knows?'
Although Monkhouse took the art of comedy intensely seriously, and regarded it as important, he did not overrate it. As he points out, no one on their death bed says, 'The end is near. Send for a comedian.' Lawyers, scientists, airline pilots, all of these, he suggests, are of more value to society than comedians.
Monkhouse's views on the motivation of comedians are also, it seems to me, relevant to writers. One of these days I may write a piece on what generates ambition in writers, but as far as comedians are concerned Monkhouse has firm opinions.
Comedians, he points out, almost invariably come from the working class; as do boxers. He himself was an exception: his parents were definitely a bit posh and he went to a private, fee-paying school. Indeed he was roundly abused for his origins by Leon Cortez, a cockney comic. 'Young feller like you,' said Cortez, 'good schooling, money in the family and that, you shouldn't be pushin' yerself in where you've got no business, taking jobs away from them as needs the work. It's all wrong... Do yerself a favour and fuck off out of it.'
It is the need for affection, Monkhouse argues, which motivates comedians. 'The need to hear laughter, and know that you are the cause of it... the desire to repeat that experience ad infinitum is the driving force behind the comedian's ambition.'
Monkhouse's own conclusion is shared by a number of other observers. He quotes Jeremy Beadle on what drives a comedian to risk all the uncertainties of a performance in front of a live audience: 'What movitates a comedian to risk all? ...Quite simply, it is to achieve that sublime feeling that you are responsible for happy laughter. And what finer profession can there be than to allow people some fleeting freedom from the pressures and pain of normal life into a brief world of pleasure and release?'
Whether these anlyses are right or wrong, all writers would , I believe, do well to examine what lies behind their own efforts to achieve fame, money, or literary reputation (and usually all three).
I myself only ever saw Bob Monkhouse perform live on one occasion. It was in the late 1960s, in a provincial nightclub. The manager of the club was a friend of mine, so I was backstage at the time.
M0nkhouse was due on at midnight, and at about a quarter to twelve he came out of his dressing room. He was immaculately dressed in a white dinner jacket. He asked for one drink, which he sipped over the next ten minutes. Then he wandered around the room, warming himself up by persuading people to talk to him, and using his wits to think of outrageous (and funny) replies to their questions and comments. He rather bemused the drummer, I remember, by telling him that he always expected the drummer to carry the melody during the songs in his act. Then he went onstage and did over an hour without missing a trick. I was impressed.
That performance was, I suspect, entirely typical of him. Utterly professional, and very effective.
Having reached the end of this discussion of Bob Monkhouse's book Over the Limit, I am conscious that I have not succeeded in making it sound as interesting, thoughtful and valuable as I found it to be. Taken out of context, the bits and pieces that I have quoted seem slight and inconsequential.
However, the fact is that, in the context of entertainment, Monkhouse was an erudite man. He met everyone, saw every film, and seems to have read widely too. He spent a lifetime researching into the problem of how to make people laugh; and, like all good scholars, he published the results of his research. If young, would-be writers can't find something in there to help them improve their craft, then I really don't know what to suggest.
Bob Monkhouse is a name which will be known to virtually all British readers but to almost no one outside the UK. Unlike some British performers (Bruce Forsyth, for example), Monkhouse made no real attempt to establish himself anywhere but in his native land.
Born in 1928, Monkhouse died in 2003 at the age of 75. He was well known from his twenties onwards, and hence had a successful career in show business for over fifty years.
This success was not, it has to be said, achieved through a loveable personality. If asked to describe Bob Monkhouse, I would have come up with the word 'smarmy'. This is a very English word, meaning oily, unctuous, a bit too smooth and eager to please.
Monkhouse himself was well aware of his problems in this regard. He quotes a number of criticisms of his appearance and mannerisms. One 400-word piece in the Daily Mirror used the word 'smarmy' eight times. The hard-bitten journalist Jean Rook said that she had to wipe the slime off her TV screen after he had been on. And when Monkhouse challenged her about this she told him not to be so bloody sensitive. 'It's only copy,' she said. In other words, it's only there to fill up the space between the adverts.
In 1993 Monkhouse wrote his autobiography, Crying with Laughter. He followed this up five years later with Over the Limit, subtitled My Secret Diaries. Well, of course they aren't secret. And they aren't really diaries. What the book is, in fact, is the printed version of a blog, before blogs were invented. What a pity Bob didn't live into the blog era; he would have loved it.
Over the Limit does deal, to some extent, with Monkhouse's day-to-day activities, but more generally he simply uses the date as an excuse to embark on a discussion of the life of a great comedian, or an analysis of some ancient B-movie.
I have argued on this blog, a good many times, that the whole point of a novel, a play, a film, or any other work of art cum piece of entertainment, is that it creates emotion in the reader/audience. That is its whole raison d'etre. Now the one place where this truth is demonstrated in classic form is in the live performance, whether in theatre, nightclub, pub or concert hall. And while actors (mostly) have to stick to the script, and musicians follow the score, the stand-up comedian can adjust and adapt, varying his routine and his timing according to the nature of the audience.
I was once on a committee which organised a talk by John Lahr, the son of Bert Lahr, who is chiefly remembered for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. But in addition to being an actor, Bert Lahr also had a career as a stand-up comic in burlesque and vaudeville. His son John related how he once stood in the wings and heard his father get a laugh out of one word. I can't remember now, unfortunately, what the word was; but it was something which, in itself, was completely unfunny.
When Bert Lahr came off stage, his son asked him how he had managed to make people laugh with that one word. 'Oh,' said Bert, 'I just listened to the audience and they told me where the joke was.'
Bob Monkhouse would have loved that story, because his whole life was devoted to figuring out how to get the audience to respond to his jokes. And it has to be said that he was remarkably successful at it, despite some of the handicaps which we have already mentioned. He was, above all else, the complete professional.
It is made perfectly plain in Over the Limit that Monkhouse made a point of talking to virtually all his fellow comedians, about their art, at some length. And he gives us accounts of these interviews in his book. Let's see what we can dig out which might be relevant to the business of writing novels.
Well, for a start, if you're English you might care to bear in mind Monkhouse's surprisingly learned observations about the English attitude towards intelligence. In Monkhouse's view, we don't like it.
'Smart alec' is an English insult; 'too clever by half' is a criticism, full of disapproval. Shakepeare's brainiest characters are cunning, heartless or doomed: Richard III, Iago, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth. In Shakespeare, probity is the possession of stout-hearted simpletons, such as Florizel, Bassanio, and Duke Orsino. (The analysis, I repeat, is Monkhouse's, not mine. I am not all that well up on Shakespeare.)
Monkhouse, by the way, was definitely clever. Very clever. This is another reason why he was well known but never loved. And the bias against clever folk, Monkhouse is convinced, affects our attitude to comedy as well as drama.
He knew he wasn't all that popular. On one occasion he and his wife entered an art cinema, which was due to show a very obscure film, and the audience applauded. During the film he sat there with a warm feeling in his heart. But afterwards he discovered that the cinema manager had just announced that unless two more people turned up he was not going to bother showing the film.
Humour, of course, is bound to offend someone. Charlie Chester once remarked that he told a story about a policeman on night duty, only to get a letter from a real policeman a few days later: 'If you'd ever been walking the streets on a winter's night at three in the morning you wouldn't think it was bloody funny...' And so forth. Jokes about the Welsh, about Jewish friends, about Scotsmen, all generate outrage in some and laughs in others. There is no such thing, in other words, as a stimulus which produces the same emotional response in everyone. This is why your beloved novel keeps on getting rejected: the slush-pile readers just don't have the right frame of reference.
In 1995 Monkhouse met Benny Hill for the last time; he uses this meeting to discuss Hill's life and success. Monkhouse remarks that no script writer ever admired Benny Hill's writing. They found it irritatingly unoriginal and repetitive; they found it hard to understand how a man could take smutty old jokes, corny puns, riddles, rhymes, and silent film comedy routines, and build them in to a worldwide success.
But Benny knew how he did it. At their last meeting, he and Monkhouse discussed how, during their lifetime, taboos had been removed, only to be replaced by an entirely new set! And at the doorway, as he left, Benny turned around and grinned. 'New is easy,' he called out. 'Funny is hard.'
At the risk of labouring the point: It is fairly easy to create something 'original' -- originality being a grotesquely over-praised quality in the arts. But it is very difficult to write something which produces the intended emotional reponse in the intended audience.
A stand-up comedian depends upon words -- and the timing with which they are delivered -- for his livelihood; so it is not surprising that Monkhouse has thought about the English language more carefully than most. He gets very angry about the misuse of the apostrophe. And here are some of his comments on frequently used phrases:
'Now then!' This is used, in England, as a warning. But which is it, he asks -- now, or then? It can't be both.
'Needless to say...' If it is needless to say, don't say it.
'It goes without saying...' Ditto.
Other phrases that Monkhouse regards as well-nigh meaningless are: 'In one fell swoop'; 'I'll go to the foot of our stairs'; 'Neither here nor there' (where is it then?); and 'Who knows?'
Although Monkhouse took the art of comedy intensely seriously, and regarded it as important, he did not overrate it. As he points out, no one on their death bed says, 'The end is near. Send for a comedian.' Lawyers, scientists, airline pilots, all of these, he suggests, are of more value to society than comedians.
Monkhouse's views on the motivation of comedians are also, it seems to me, relevant to writers. One of these days I may write a piece on what generates ambition in writers, but as far as comedians are concerned Monkhouse has firm opinions.
Comedians, he points out, almost invariably come from the working class; as do boxers. He himself was an exception: his parents were definitely a bit posh and he went to a private, fee-paying school. Indeed he was roundly abused for his origins by Leon Cortez, a cockney comic. 'Young feller like you,' said Cortez, 'good schooling, money in the family and that, you shouldn't be pushin' yerself in where you've got no business, taking jobs away from them as needs the work. It's all wrong... Do yerself a favour and fuck off out of it.'
It is the need for affection, Monkhouse argues, which motivates comedians. 'The need to hear laughter, and know that you are the cause of it... the desire to repeat that experience ad infinitum is the driving force behind the comedian's ambition.'
Monkhouse's own conclusion is shared by a number of other observers. He quotes Jeremy Beadle on what drives a comedian to risk all the uncertainties of a performance in front of a live audience: 'What movitates a comedian to risk all? ...Quite simply, it is to achieve that sublime feeling that you are responsible for happy laughter. And what finer profession can there be than to allow people some fleeting freedom from the pressures and pain of normal life into a brief world of pleasure and release?'
Whether these anlyses are right or wrong, all writers would , I believe, do well to examine what lies behind their own efforts to achieve fame, money, or literary reputation (and usually all three).
I myself only ever saw Bob Monkhouse perform live on one occasion. It was in the late 1960s, in a provincial nightclub. The manager of the club was a friend of mine, so I was backstage at the time.
M0nkhouse was due on at midnight, and at about a quarter to twelve he came out of his dressing room. He was immaculately dressed in a white dinner jacket. He asked for one drink, which he sipped over the next ten minutes. Then he wandered around the room, warming himself up by persuading people to talk to him, and using his wits to think of outrageous (and funny) replies to their questions and comments. He rather bemused the drummer, I remember, by telling him that he always expected the drummer to carry the melody during the songs in his act. Then he went onstage and did over an hour without missing a trick. I was impressed.
That performance was, I suspect, entirely typical of him. Utterly professional, and very effective.
Having reached the end of this discussion of Bob Monkhouse's book Over the Limit, I am conscious that I have not succeeded in making it sound as interesting, thoughtful and valuable as I found it to be. Taken out of context, the bits and pieces that I have quoted seem slight and inconsequential.
However, the fact is that, in the context of entertainment, Monkhouse was an erudite man. He met everyone, saw every film, and seems to have read widely too. He spent a lifetime researching into the problem of how to make people laugh; and, like all good scholars, he published the results of his research. If young, would-be writers can't find something in there to help them improve their craft, then I really don't know what to suggest.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Newspaper bollocks
Back in February I complained that even the London Times had taken to publishing articles about the book world which were ill-informed, credulous, and generally reflected no credit on modern journalism. Now it seems that the New York Times has fallen prey to the same problem.
In his latest Publishers Lunch newsletter, Michael Cader refers to an article on business books in the business section of the New York Times. In just seven short paragraphs Cader takes it apart and shoves it down the toilet, which is clearly where it belongs.
You can read the NYT article for yourself (link above), but here is what Cader has to say (quoted without permission and therefore a clear breach of copyright; or something):
In his latest Publishers Lunch newsletter, Michael Cader refers to an article on business books in the business section of the New York Times. In just seven short paragraphs Cader takes it apart and shoves it down the toilet, which is clearly where it belongs.
You can read the NYT article for yourself (link above), but here is what Cader has to say (quoted without permission and therefore a clear breach of copyright; or something):
It's quite clear that I am simply not cut out to be a star columnist for the likes of the NY Times business page.
It would simply never occur to me to declare that a book like Jack Welch's WINNING "has sold an estimated 440,000 copies" in my third paragraph without saying who is providing the estimate, and then circle back fifteen paragraphs later (after the jump) to add: "But even the 440,000 figure is somewhat speculative. The book has actually sold 321,000 copies at cash registers, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks the industry data."
And if I were trying to analyze that book's P&L, I would have been way too tempted to subtract the supposed sales from the reported first printing (650,000) to calculate a rough cost for unsold inventory, rather than saying "publishers traditionally print more copies than they sell, so they have to write off at least a portion of those costs."
I'm not nearly clever enough to write (let alone read and understand) a column whose thesis is that business book buyers want advice rather than memoirs, and then offer as evidence only one business memoir -- Welch's JACK: Straight from the Gut, which reportedly has outsold Welch's advice book by a two-to-one margin.
It wasn't until just today that I learned that we live "in an era where business has gotten even more complicated," and that's why "business books can clearly add value."
And I still haven't figured out what it means to say that Welch's new "book had advantages; For one thing, it was published by a company owned by the News Corporation." Is this an advantage over being published by a company owned by Time Warner, or a point of distinction among the 24,000 titles published annually by the 12 largest companies?
How could I have spent so much time in and writing about the book business and still understand so little?
Susan Hill finds needle
The Literary Saloon drew my attention to an article in the Guardian by Susan Hill. Title: The ultimate needle in a haystack.
If you were here on 19 July you may remember that I wrote a piece about Susan and her small publishing company, Long Barn Books. Susan is a distinguished and successful writer of long standing, and has her feet firmly on the ground, not least because she has discovered, through running her own firm, that it is damn difficult to break even as a publisher, let alone make a decent profit.
For some years, Long Barn Books has dealt exclusively with non-fiction. But a while ago, Susan decided that she would put a foot, carefully, into the fiction pool. She would begin by publishing one novel a year.
To that end, she put out the word that she was prepared to consider submissions from writers and agents. She wrote to every creative-writing course she could find, but only one bothered to reply. Only two agents bothered to submit their clients' work.
However, individual writers were not shy about coming forward. By 19 July she had had 569 submissions. By Saturday last, 1 October, the total was 3,741.
Now remember, before we go any further into Susan Hill's comments on these 3,741 submissions, that Susan is a novelist herself. She began, as we all do, in someone's slush pile. Someone, as she says, took a punt on her first novel. And she was prepared to take a punt on someone else's. If she could find a halfway decent book.
What Susan has to say about searching for a halfway decent book should give pause to us all. And remember, I repeat, that this is a person full of goodwill, with a built-in sympathy for writers and their problems; but she also has a bank account to think of.
Here are some extracts from her article:
Well, the first-person narrator is not the only one who feels despair when faced with something like that. What we have in such cases is fiction focused totally on self, the self being the author; and, as like as not, we have fiction viewed not as story-telling but fiction seen as therapy for the author. Which is all very well, but no reasonable person can be surprised if the result is unreadable. Chief problems: lack of any story; absence of memorable characters.
Susan had requested that she be sent the first four chapters only, and given such a mountain of submissions she must surely have exercised some fairly drastic form of triage. Who can blame her. Which just goes to show that the first page is important.
Out of all the submissions, Susan felt that only seven were worth reading in full. The one she chose to publish is called The Extra Large Medium or Unfinished Business, and it's by Helen Slavin. Publication date next May.
Susan Hill will also be looking, in due course, for a novel to publish in 2007. But please, if you're going to enter, provide her with a story and 'characters who walk straight off the page and grab your attention'.
If you were here on 19 July you may remember that I wrote a piece about Susan and her small publishing company, Long Barn Books. Susan is a distinguished and successful writer of long standing, and has her feet firmly on the ground, not least because she has discovered, through running her own firm, that it is damn difficult to break even as a publisher, let alone make a decent profit.
For some years, Long Barn Books has dealt exclusively with non-fiction. But a while ago, Susan decided that she would put a foot, carefully, into the fiction pool. She would begin by publishing one novel a year.
To that end, she put out the word that she was prepared to consider submissions from writers and agents. She wrote to every creative-writing course she could find, but only one bothered to reply. Only two agents bothered to submit their clients' work.
However, individual writers were not shy about coming forward. By 19 July she had had 569 submissions. By Saturday last, 1 October, the total was 3,741.
Now remember, before we go any further into Susan Hill's comments on these 3,741 submissions, that Susan is a novelist herself. She began, as we all do, in someone's slush pile. Someone, as she says, took a punt on her first novel. And she was prepared to take a punt on someone else's. If she could find a halfway decent book.
What Susan has to say about searching for a halfway decent book should give pause to us all. And remember, I repeat, that this is a person full of goodwill, with a built-in sympathy for writers and their problems; but she also has a bank account to think of.
Here are some extracts from her article:
Most of the hopefuls ought to be doing anything but try to write. Most seemed to have written the same (bad) novel.Typically, she says, the worst novels were written in the first person and the present tense. E.g.: 'I open one eye. My eyeball hurts. I look around a dim room strewn with unwashed plates, dirty cups, stained underwear. I feel despair filter through me.'
A longing to write is not enough. Ability/talent and some sense of what makes a novel appeal to readers are essential too.
Why would any publisher produce an unsaleable novel? What use would a few thousand copies of it be stacked in my warehouse? If you despise commerce in general or believe literature should be outside and above it, the only thing to do is put up your books to be read free on the internet.
Well, the first-person narrator is not the only one who feels despair when faced with something like that. What we have in such cases is fiction focused totally on self, the self being the author; and, as like as not, we have fiction viewed not as story-telling but fiction seen as therapy for the author. Which is all very well, but no reasonable person can be surprised if the result is unreadable. Chief problems: lack of any story; absence of memorable characters.
Susan had requested that she be sent the first four chapters only, and given such a mountain of submissions she must surely have exercised some fairly drastic form of triage. Who can blame her. Which just goes to show that the first page is important.
Out of all the submissions, Susan felt that only seven were worth reading in full. The one she chose to publish is called The Extra Large Medium or Unfinished Business, and it's by Helen Slavin. Publication date next May.
Susan Hill will also be looking, in due course, for a novel to publish in 2007. But please, if you're going to enter, provide her with a story and 'characters who walk straight off the page and grab your attention'.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Comment spam
You will probably have noticed that this blog offers the chance to make a comment on what the blogger has written. Some people read these comments, some don't. And some of you, of course, go to the trouble of writing a comment.
Well, it seems to be an unfortunate fact of life that any blog which attracts even a modest number of readers will also attract the attention of people who put out what is known as 'comment spam'. That is to say, the spammers make a comment (of sorts) and then add a link to some other site which they are being paid to plug.
Much of this comment spam is done by machine, and until yesterday it wasn't a problem. There was only the occasional fake comment, which I deleted by hand. However, yesterday there were 37 fake comments, and this morning there are 384.
Not very amusing.
Of course you are all perfectly capable of recognising a heap of crap when you see one, and are not likely to be misled. On other other hand, the presence of reams of rubbish on the blog is a nuisance for those who actually want to read what others have said.
In order to prevent most of these fake comments from appearing, I have enabled the Blogger facility which introduces one further step for bona fide commenters. This is called word verification. When you wish to make a comment, you will be asked to recognise a word, or a sequence of letters, written in a peculiar typeface, and then type it in manually. The point being that most of this spam is done by machine, and the machines' software can't cope with word verification.
This additional step is a nuisance for anyone who wants to make a comment, but it will not, I believe, take more than a moment and will help to keep the blog clean and tidy.
I don't think I am going to go through various past posts and delete all 400+ fake comments, but I am in the process of removing them from the front page (i.e. the five post recent posts).
Thank you for your patience.
Well, it seems to be an unfortunate fact of life that any blog which attracts even a modest number of readers will also attract the attention of people who put out what is known as 'comment spam'. That is to say, the spammers make a comment (of sorts) and then add a link to some other site which they are being paid to plug.
Much of this comment spam is done by machine, and until yesterday it wasn't a problem. There was only the occasional fake comment, which I deleted by hand. However, yesterday there were 37 fake comments, and this morning there are 384.
Not very amusing.
Of course you are all perfectly capable of recognising a heap of crap when you see one, and are not likely to be misled. On other other hand, the presence of reams of rubbish on the blog is a nuisance for those who actually want to read what others have said.
In order to prevent most of these fake comments from appearing, I have enabled the Blogger facility which introduces one further step for bona fide commenters. This is called word verification. When you wish to make a comment, you will be asked to recognise a word, or a sequence of letters, written in a peculiar typeface, and then type it in manually. The point being that most of this spam is done by machine, and the machines' software can't cope with word verification.
This additional step is a nuisance for anyone who wants to make a comment, but it will not, I believe, take more than a moment and will help to keep the blog clean and tidy.
I don't think I am going to go through various past posts and delete all 400+ fake comments, but I am in the process of removing them from the front page (i.e. the five post recent posts).
Thank you for your patience.
Blogging for love or money
Publishers Lunch pointed me to an article in Wired about blogging for money.
It seems that there are people in this world who see blogging as a commercial opportunity. Well, good luck to them. No problems there. I don't actually read any obviously commercial blogs myself, but that's just me.
More to the point, perhaps, the article discusses how much you might get paid if you blog for one of these blog-entrepreneurs. And the answer, it seems, is not much.
I suppose blogging for money, even for small amounts of money, might appeal to some. But to my mind it negates the whole point of the thing.
The whole point being that I can sit here and say what I damn well please. Subject to the laws of libel, of course, which are formidable. And subject, I suppose (reluctantly) to normal good manners. And to the bizarrely English desire to be fair. Which I don't seem to be able to shake off.
Which reminds me. I did write a post, a while back now, in which I seem to have been more than usually affected by the 'be fair and reasonable' virus. I really don't know what got into me, and sometimes I lie awake at night and worry about it. Because when push comes to shove, I don't think it is any part of my business to be fair and reasonable. My business is to tell you what I think. If I don't do that, then I am wasting my time by sitting here tapping on the keyboard; and you would certainly be wasting your time in reading the result.
The post in question was the one about the UK National Short Story Prize. A miserable bloody enterprise about which I was far too generous and kind. By half. Ever since writing my original piece I have been convinced that I pulled my punches in that post. I really didn't make it clear how much I dislike the entire dreadful enterprise.
What don't I like about it?
I don't like anything about it. And I like it less every time I think about it. Which, with a bit of luck, will be never again after today.
I don't like the fact that it is backed by the Arts Council, which is in my view an organisation which should be closed down tomorrow morning. Or, better yet, at 5 p.m. this evening. The Arts Council spends (some of) my taxpayer money, and I don't want it spent on the arts, thank you very much.
I don't like the fact that this short-story competition gives itself the grandiose title of 'National', implying that it is official, and superior, and somehow deserves to be taken seriously.
I don't like the fact that it is not to be judged anonymously.
I don't like its emphasis on all matters literary, to the apparent exclusion of many other kinds of writing, which are equally valuable, if not more so.
I don't like the essay on the short story by Raymond Carver, who was a wearisome drunk.
I don't like the outcome of this competition which I consider to be all too probable. The most likely result is that the £15,000 will be handed to someone who has written one of those stories about an epiphany. You know, one of those where a woman stands at her kitchen window, watches the birds pulling up worms from the lawn, and comes to understand the Meaning of Life. One of those. The kind of story which ought to be left out on a cold hillside soon after birth.
I don't like the suspicion in the back of my mind that this prize will go to an established name (since we're not talking anonymity here). It is all too likely, in my judgement, to go to someone like Martin Amis. Poor old Marty, of course, has had a lifelong struggle for recognition, and has never won the Booker. So somewhere out there is a group of people who are saying to themselves Shouldn't We Be Doing Something for Marty? And I don't like it.
I don't like the fact that the official web site connected with this competition takes it upon itself to 'celebrate the short story'. The short story doesn't need celebrating, and certainly not with the taxpayers' money. The short story is alive and well. It flourishes on any one of a thousand web sites, small magazines, self-published and officially published books, in schools, colleges, kitchens, aeroplanes, and doubtless the odd pub.
I don't like the fact that the BBC is involved. True, Auntie Beeb does occasionally take her knickers off. (See, for instance, the current series of Bodies, on Saturday night. If you dare.) But not often. Usually Auntie is standing there saying Naughty, naughty. Mustn't do that.
I don't like the fact that, in order to enter this competition, you have to give the BBC the right to mess around with your story.
And there is, doubtless, a great deal more that I dislike about it, only I dislike having to think about it.
There. You see? I feel so much better for having said all that. And if I was being paid for blogging then I wouldn't be allowed to go on like that. Might upset someone.
It seems that there are people in this world who see blogging as a commercial opportunity. Well, good luck to them. No problems there. I don't actually read any obviously commercial blogs myself, but that's just me.
More to the point, perhaps, the article discusses how much you might get paid if you blog for one of these blog-entrepreneurs. And the answer, it seems, is not much.
I suppose blogging for money, even for small amounts of money, might appeal to some. But to my mind it negates the whole point of the thing.
The whole point being that I can sit here and say what I damn well please. Subject to the laws of libel, of course, which are formidable. And subject, I suppose (reluctantly) to normal good manners. And to the bizarrely English desire to be fair. Which I don't seem to be able to shake off.
Which reminds me. I did write a post, a while back now, in which I seem to have been more than usually affected by the 'be fair and reasonable' virus. I really don't know what got into me, and sometimes I lie awake at night and worry about it. Because when push comes to shove, I don't think it is any part of my business to be fair and reasonable. My business is to tell you what I think. If I don't do that, then I am wasting my time by sitting here tapping on the keyboard; and you would certainly be wasting your time in reading the result.
The post in question was the one about the UK National Short Story Prize. A miserable bloody enterprise about which I was far too generous and kind. By half. Ever since writing my original piece I have been convinced that I pulled my punches in that post. I really didn't make it clear how much I dislike the entire dreadful enterprise.
What don't I like about it?
I don't like anything about it. And I like it less every time I think about it. Which, with a bit of luck, will be never again after today.
I don't like the fact that it is backed by the Arts Council, which is in my view an organisation which should be closed down tomorrow morning. Or, better yet, at 5 p.m. this evening. The Arts Council spends (some of) my taxpayer money, and I don't want it spent on the arts, thank you very much.
I don't like the fact that this short-story competition gives itself the grandiose title of 'National', implying that it is official, and superior, and somehow deserves to be taken seriously.
I don't like the fact that it is not to be judged anonymously.
I don't like its emphasis on all matters literary, to the apparent exclusion of many other kinds of writing, which are equally valuable, if not more so.
I don't like the essay on the short story by Raymond Carver, who was a wearisome drunk.
I don't like the outcome of this competition which I consider to be all too probable. The most likely result is that the £15,000 will be handed to someone who has written one of those stories about an epiphany. You know, one of those where a woman stands at her kitchen window, watches the birds pulling up worms from the lawn, and comes to understand the Meaning of Life. One of those. The kind of story which ought to be left out on a cold hillside soon after birth.
I don't like the suspicion in the back of my mind that this prize will go to an established name (since we're not talking anonymity here). It is all too likely, in my judgement, to go to someone like Martin Amis. Poor old Marty, of course, has had a lifelong struggle for recognition, and has never won the Booker. So somewhere out there is a group of people who are saying to themselves Shouldn't We Be Doing Something for Marty? And I don't like it.
I don't like the fact that the official web site connected with this competition takes it upon itself to 'celebrate the short story'. The short story doesn't need celebrating, and certainly not with the taxpayers' money. The short story is alive and well. It flourishes on any one of a thousand web sites, small magazines, self-published and officially published books, in schools, colleges, kitchens, aeroplanes, and doubtless the odd pub.
I don't like the fact that the BBC is involved. True, Auntie Beeb does occasionally take her knickers off. (See, for instance, the current series of Bodies, on Saturday night. If you dare.) But not often. Usually Auntie is standing there saying Naughty, naughty. Mustn't do that.
I don't like the fact that, in order to enter this competition, you have to give the BBC the right to mess around with your story.
And there is, doubtless, a great deal more that I dislike about it, only I dislike having to think about it.
There. You see? I feel so much better for having said all that. And if I was being paid for blogging then I wouldn't be allowed to go on like that. Might upset someone.
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