Macmillan New Writing (MNW) is an imprint which was announced last year, and launched in April this year.
The whole purpose of MNW is to publish first novels, in any genre, and to do so as economically as possible. Theoretically, at least, this should, in the long run, benefit all interested parties: publisher, writer, and reader.
The MNW initiative was one that I welcomed when it was announced, but many observers of the book scene were much less enthusiastic. See my posts of 3 May 2005 and 25 May 2005 for details.
In due course the imprint was launched, and a fair amount of publicity resulted. The first few books probably did rather better, in terms of sales, than the typical first novel.
Now, however, the monthly novel issued by MNW is just another book. It has to fight for attention in competition with the 30 other novels a day (or thereabouts) which are published in the UK. Given that each MNW novel that appears is likely to be in a completely different genre from the previous month's, this is no easy task.
Bear all that in mind, then, when I come to tell about the latest batch of three MNW books which have come my way. And remember, too, that each MNW novel has had to compete against several hundred, if not thousand, other books which have been submitted to the MNW editors by hopeful would-be novelists.
Samantha Grosser: Another Time and Place
This, one can safely say, is a love story, set in the second world war. American pilot Tom Blake is having tea (what else) in an English cafe when he sees a young woman. And so on...
It is worth noting (particularly by all those keen and eager young writers out there) that Samantha relates that she spent two years reading nothing except books which would give her a feeling for what life was like in World War II. There's dedication for you. Also worth noting is that she wrote 17 drafts of this book.
Samantha has a blog in which she tells us how she is getting on with marketing this novel (just out) and working on the next.
Jonathan Drapes: Never Admit to Beige
Due for publication on 1 December, Never Admit to Beige is a... Hmmm. Bit hard to classify. Humorous fantasy possibly. Anyway, the story involves a very English chap called Trigg Harvey, who has lost his luck and wanders around Australia in search of it. Along the way he has to deal with the head of the Japanese Mafia on the Gold Coast.
I must confess that I don't like the title or the cover image very much, but probably that's just me. And goodness knows the world could do with more humorous writers.
Jonathan also has a web site, on which we learn that he has had some success as a short-story writer. But he doesn't make his stories available online. Which is a mistake, I feel. Showing people what you can do is always a good thing. You do get some samples of his cartoons, though.
M.F.W. Curran: The Secret War
The year is 1815, when angels and daemons walked our streets.... So that's straightforward enough. Fantasy. To be precise, historical fantasy, beginning at the battle of Waterloo. And this book will be published on 5 January 2007.
Captain William Saxon and Lieutenant Kieran Harte, survivors of Waterloo, become involved in a secret war between Heaven and Hell. Daemons and angels, vampyres and knights, clash for the future of mankind. And the Vatican, needless to say, has clandestine ambitions. The Vatican always has clandestine ambitions. There must be a book somewhere in which it doesn't, but I've never come across it yet.
Oh, and by the way, this one was fifteen years in the writing. I just thought I'd tell you that to encourage you.
More info on M.F.W. Curran's web site, which also has a blog in which he discusses 'the highs and lows of being published.' Lows? How can there be any lows?
Last thoughts
With the possible exception of the middle one, these three books fall into well defined genres, and therefore, in principle, the publisher should be well aware of where to send review copies and so forth.
But there is still a bit of a problem. If MNW was doing one crime novel a month, say, then everyone would get used to the idea. But when MNW does a crime novel in January, two more in October and November, and then no more until the following July, it all gets a bit iffy. Somehow it lacks momentum.
And what of the retailers? They were supportive initially, one hears, but as each new issue comes out they don't know immediately where to put it. They have to take a look at it and, perhaps scratch their heads.
Still, it's all a good idea in principle. And if you can fight your way through the competition, to the point where you actually get offered an MNW contract, I maintain that this is still a better than average way to launch what might turn out to be a career.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Haruki Murakami and the workings of fate
I have been reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I can't say that I recommend it, but I think it is at least worth mentioning.
I went out of my way to find a copy of Kafka on the Shore because I read somewhere that it had won the 2006 World Fantasy Award for best novel. Which isn't an infallible guide to something that I might like, but I live in hope.
As it turns out I wasn't enthralled by the book. In fact I wouldn't have read beyond the first twenty pages had I not known that somebody, somewhere, must have seen something in it. So I persevered. Right, with some skipping, to the end, 500 pages later.
Kafka on the Shore is fantasy all right. Not much about it makes sense, in terms of the real world. Very little is explained. And nothing in it is what you might call normal.
There are two principal characters: Kafka himself, a 15-year-old boy who has run away from home; and Mr Nakata, aged 60-something, who has been left with a very low IQ as the result of a mysterious childhood experience, but who can talk to cats.
Kafka and Mr Nakata wander their separate ways through various mildly interesting adventures and experiences, in alternate chapters, until in the end their stories intertwine. Sort of. Kafka is a vaguely Oedipus-related figure, and Mr Nakata is some sort of savant, possessed by a spirit perhaps. Certainly something emerges from him when he dies.
So this novel is all very slow, very odd, and definitely an acquired taste. I imagine it works better if you're Japanese.
In fact, round about page 382, it occurred to me that the Japanese may find it hilarious; or at least certain parts of it. In chapter 38, Mr Hoshino hires a car. He tells the car-hire firm that he wants a car which will not be noticed.
'Maybe I shouldn't say this,' the rental assistant says, 'but since we only rent Mazdas, we don't have a single car that stands out. So rest assured.'
Now I'm not sure, but I suspect that, at this point, Japanese readers will be rolling all over the carpet. And, just in case we haven't got it, the author tells us that the white Mazda was 'totally unobstrusive. Turn away from it for a moment and every memory of what it looked like had vanished. A notable achievement in the field of anonymity.'
It occurred to me, when I read that, that Japan is (as I understand it) such a highly structured, highly regimented and highly formalised country that the adventures of Kafka and Nakata may be fascinating to Japanese readers.
There are masses of references to European culture, covering everything from Beethoven to jazz. We learn, for example, that reciting passages of Hegel can prevent premature ejaculation; we are told (quite an interesting insight) that until Edison invented electric light, most of the world was covered in darkness: the physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two.
There are ghosts, mysterious visitations in the night, embodiments of Johnnie Walker (the whisky fellow) and Colonel Sanders (chicken), occasional flashes of graphic sex and nastiness -- and a lot more. For a fuller description, see Wikipedia.
Overall, however, the novel was not, for me, a success. It is more rewarding to think about in retrospect than it was to read. I found it far too long, too slow, and more than a little self-indulgent.
What really interests me about the book, however, is its reception in the critical world.
An average reader, picking up Kafka on the Shore, and just starting to read it without any knowledge of its author and his standing, would, as I suggested earlier, abandon it pretty quickly.
We may reasonably assume, I think, that any western publisher's reader, faced with this book in the form of a pile of manuscript from a totally unknown author, would quickly decide that it wasn't for him.
Haruki Murakami, however, has a track record. Details can be found on his official web site. And gradually, over the years, he has attracted attention all over the world. And I am struck, once again, by the question of how and why it should come about that Murakami should have made some sort of name for himself while a thousand others, writing the same sort of books, would have got nowhere.
My conclusion, not for the first time, is that the line between success and failure in the book world is an arbitrary one. The side of it on which you fall is determined, in my view, by a factor which is variously named as luck, chance, fate, happenstance, circumstance, karma... and by the term which, influenced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I prefer, namely randomness.
For a fuller discussion of the role of randomness, see my lengthy (free) essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. Or, for a shorter sniff of the same theory, see my essay on the Booker Prize.
All of which reminded me of something that I might have mentioned yesterday, except that there is no online link.
Last Saturday's Times told the story of Alison Penton Harper. The article is not, as I say, online, so you'll have to make do with a similar piece provided by her publisher. Alison entered the Richard & Judy competition for new novelists, and was one of 26 shortlisted finalists out of 46,000 applicants. She was eventually placed in the last four.
Side by side with this interview, the Times ran a piece on luck. This maintained that there is 'scientific evidence' that you can improve your luck by 'engaging with it positively'. If you want to know the details of this astounding technique, fear not. It is all set out for you in a book called The Luck Factor, by Dr Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire.
Personally, whenever I hear the term 'scientific evidence', I reach for my pistol, and I haven't read The Luck Factor either. On the whole, however, I would not hold out too much hope that reading it will enable you to write books like Kafka on the Shore and, as a result, become rich, famous, and successful.
I went out of my way to find a copy of Kafka on the Shore because I read somewhere that it had won the 2006 World Fantasy Award for best novel. Which isn't an infallible guide to something that I might like, but I live in hope.
As it turns out I wasn't enthralled by the book. In fact I wouldn't have read beyond the first twenty pages had I not known that somebody, somewhere, must have seen something in it. So I persevered. Right, with some skipping, to the end, 500 pages later.
Kafka on the Shore is fantasy all right. Not much about it makes sense, in terms of the real world. Very little is explained. And nothing in it is what you might call normal.
There are two principal characters: Kafka himself, a 15-year-old boy who has run away from home; and Mr Nakata, aged 60-something, who has been left with a very low IQ as the result of a mysterious childhood experience, but who can talk to cats.
Kafka and Mr Nakata wander their separate ways through various mildly interesting adventures and experiences, in alternate chapters, until in the end their stories intertwine. Sort of. Kafka is a vaguely Oedipus-related figure, and Mr Nakata is some sort of savant, possessed by a spirit perhaps. Certainly something emerges from him when he dies.
So this novel is all very slow, very odd, and definitely an acquired taste. I imagine it works better if you're Japanese.
In fact, round about page 382, it occurred to me that the Japanese may find it hilarious; or at least certain parts of it. In chapter 38, Mr Hoshino hires a car. He tells the car-hire firm that he wants a car which will not be noticed.
'Maybe I shouldn't say this,' the rental assistant says, 'but since we only rent Mazdas, we don't have a single car that stands out. So rest assured.'
Now I'm not sure, but I suspect that, at this point, Japanese readers will be rolling all over the carpet. And, just in case we haven't got it, the author tells us that the white Mazda was 'totally unobstrusive. Turn away from it for a moment and every memory of what it looked like had vanished. A notable achievement in the field of anonymity.'
It occurred to me, when I read that, that Japan is (as I understand it) such a highly structured, highly regimented and highly formalised country that the adventures of Kafka and Nakata may be fascinating to Japanese readers.
There are masses of references to European culture, covering everything from Beethoven to jazz. We learn, for example, that reciting passages of Hegel can prevent premature ejaculation; we are told (quite an interesting insight) that until Edison invented electric light, most of the world was covered in darkness: the physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two.
There are ghosts, mysterious visitations in the night, embodiments of Johnnie Walker (the whisky fellow) and Colonel Sanders (chicken), occasional flashes of graphic sex and nastiness -- and a lot more. For a fuller description, see Wikipedia.
Overall, however, the novel was not, for me, a success. It is more rewarding to think about in retrospect than it was to read. I found it far too long, too slow, and more than a little self-indulgent.
What really interests me about the book, however, is its reception in the critical world.
An average reader, picking up Kafka on the Shore, and just starting to read it without any knowledge of its author and his standing, would, as I suggested earlier, abandon it pretty quickly.
We may reasonably assume, I think, that any western publisher's reader, faced with this book in the form of a pile of manuscript from a totally unknown author, would quickly decide that it wasn't for him.
Haruki Murakami, however, has a track record. Details can be found on his official web site. And gradually, over the years, he has attracted attention all over the world. And I am struck, once again, by the question of how and why it should come about that Murakami should have made some sort of name for himself while a thousand others, writing the same sort of books, would have got nowhere.
My conclusion, not for the first time, is that the line between success and failure in the book world is an arbitrary one. The side of it on which you fall is determined, in my view, by a factor which is variously named as luck, chance, fate, happenstance, circumstance, karma... and by the term which, influenced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I prefer, namely randomness.
For a fuller discussion of the role of randomness, see my lengthy (free) essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. Or, for a shorter sniff of the same theory, see my essay on the Booker Prize.
All of which reminded me of something that I might have mentioned yesterday, except that there is no online link.
Last Saturday's Times told the story of Alison Penton Harper. The article is not, as I say, online, so you'll have to make do with a similar piece provided by her publisher. Alison entered the Richard & Judy competition for new novelists, and was one of 26 shortlisted finalists out of 46,000 applicants. She was eventually placed in the last four.
Side by side with this interview, the Times ran a piece on luck. This maintained that there is 'scientific evidence' that you can improve your luck by 'engaging with it positively'. If you want to know the details of this astounding technique, fear not. It is all set out for you in a book called The Luck Factor, by Dr Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire.
Personally, whenever I hear the term 'scientific evidence', I reach for my pistol, and I haven't read The Luck Factor either. On the whole, however, I would not hold out too much hope that reading it will enable you to write books like Kafka on the Shore and, as a result, become rich, famous, and successful.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Tuesday assembly
OK, you may be sick of it, but you can always skip the first bit.
O.J.'s ghost
The Los Angeles Times has a piece on O.J.'s ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves. In it, Fenjves is quoted as holding an opinion which has been voiced here from time to time.
When interviewed on KABC-AM radio show, Fenjves said that ghostwriting was the best of all worlds for a writer. It provided steady, lucrative pay and uncomplicated work. Another perk of the job, he said, was anonymity. (Normally, that is.)
For If I Did It, Fenjves was reputedly paid $100,000 for two to three months of work. (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
Meanwhile, Galleycat points out that Fenjves is interviewed in the latest New Yorker. So now he's gonna famous for fifteen minutes (again; he was a witness in the trial).
Galleycat also reports that Steven Zeitchik, in Variety, has news about the ownership of various O.J. project rights, which certainly interests me. The TV stuff, Zeitchik thinks, is owned by Fox, which will bury it three miles underground. (Shame.) But the book rights have reverted 'to the O.J. camp'. Which means O.J. can sell it on. And why not, from his point of view. He was, reportedly, due to earn no royalties from the Regan publication, but now it's a whole new world of opportunity.
He could do it on Lulu, if all else fails. Now that would be really interesting. I wonder if the Lulu guys have enough smarts to be on the phone to him.
Fenjves is in no doubt about the commercial success of If I Did It, when it appears. “It’s going to be bigger than ever,” he said. “It’s like ‘Ulysses,’ except without the talent.”
There is much speculation about the fate of Judith Regan. Am I alone in finding that woman very stimulating? In so far as a 67-year-old man can be stimulated.
Scarlett Thomas
There's an essay by Scarlett Thomas which is worth reading. (Link from M.J. Rose, who picked it up from Sarah Weinman.) The only problem with the damn thing is that it's white text on dark grey, which makes my head spin.
Scarlett wonders aloud about the differences between men and women in the publishing world. And also wonders whether an author can write in several genres and survive.
My answer to the latter question is a definite No. Not, that is, if you want to be published by mainstream firms. Maybe, just maybe, you can do it with a change of name (John Banville/Benjamin Black et cetera), but usually you can't do it at all.
One of my own problems as a writer was that I got bored doing the same book over again. But that is what publishers want. If you want to write different kinds of stuff, just accept from the beginning that Lulu is going to be your outlet.
The quote of Scarlett's that I like best is this: 'Like any other industry, publishing is pretty murky behind the scenes.'
If the Scarlett Johnson essay doesn't bring you to your senses about publishing, then nothing that I can say will make any difference. From now on, it's not my fault, OK?
Plagiarism x 2?
Yesterday's Times, and a lot of other papers, carried a comment or two about the suggestion that Ian McEwan's Atonement (shortlisted for the Booker and currently being filmed) had plagiarised the wartime memoirs of romantic novelist Lucilla Andrews, who died recently.
Well, I haven't read Atonement or the memoirs, let alone compared them side by side, so I'm not in a position to make a specific judgement. In general, however, I would say that any novelist who writes about the past (or even the present) needs to do quite a lot of research into the nature of those times.
At the end of The Night Watch, for example, Sarah Waters listed a large number of books that she had consulted. I did the same with my novel Beautiful Lady. If you acknowledge your sources from the start, and make sensible use of them rather than lifting passages wholesale, then there should not normally be a problem.
Meanwhile, Madame Arcati reports a much more serious and obvious case of plagiarism. Last May, John Blake published a ghosted autobiography of April Ashley. The ghost was Douglas Thompson. Now all the unsold copies have had to be pulped because Duncan Fallowell, author of the 1982 April Ashley's Odyssey, read the new book, did a few calculations, and concluded that two thirds of it were a straight reprint of his own book.
Bloody hell eh? Two thirds. Not just the odd sentence, or anecdote, but (reportedly) a paste and scissors job. As the whole book is available online, this probably wasn't too arduous. Not even any retyping involved.
In a later note, Madame relates that April herself knew nothing of all this until she read it in Madame's blog. Crumbs.
Mind you, this rather proves what I said the other day, namely that them as has their autobiographies ghosted often don't bother to read the book.
Short notes
If you live in the Tampa Bay area, or are visiting, the Tampa Book Buzz is a useful source of info.
Giles Ward's novel 100 Ways to Improve the World is about a disillusioned carpet salesman; it's described as a tale of murder and lust with tufted cut pile twist. It's published by Impress Books.
Charles J Shields, author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, is now working on the authorised biography of Kurt Vonnegut. He would like to hear from any readers about their experiences with Vonnegut, either personally or with his novels. Contact: Cjs1994@earthlink.net
Alex Scarrow's new thriller, A Thousand Suns, has a fancypants book trailer on YouTube. Scared the pants off me. Publisher is Orion.
Jane Fletcher lives near Avebury and has some beautiful pics of the stones. She also writes dark fantasy and is a bit of a pagan. Dismissive critics get turned into frogs, so watch it.
Scott Pack provides some interesting insights into how publishers persuade retailers to stock their books -- and then complain if the retailers sell the advance copies which are more or less forced upon them. As with the case of TV copyright owners complaining about YouTube, this is a case of the suits not being smart enough. My view: if a publisher complains that you gave away or sold his precious ARC, that's what your first two fingers are for. (Link from Clive Keeble.)
Marti Lawrence, who wrote the freebie ebook about using Squidoo, has also written a novel. You can read it free online or even buy one.
Kourosh Ziabari is a 16-year-old Persian lad who blogs in English and is said to be the 'world's youngest journalist'. For someone who lives in a country which he describes (14 November) as 'the greatest prison for journalists' he is a bit on the outspoken side. And let's face it, you and I couldn't blog in Persian even now, let alone when we were sixteen, so I think this chap will go far.
Have you ever complained when the paper boy was a bit late in delivering your morning Times? If so, just consider the situation of novelist Carolyne Aarsen, who lives, I think we could say, a bit off the beaten track.
Tonto Press have announced the winner of their New Novelist project. Out of 400 entries, Pete Tanton came first.
O.J.'s ghost
The Los Angeles Times has a piece on O.J.'s ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves. In it, Fenjves is quoted as holding an opinion which has been voiced here from time to time.
When interviewed on KABC-AM radio show, Fenjves said that ghostwriting was the best of all worlds for a writer. It provided steady, lucrative pay and uncomplicated work. Another perk of the job, he said, was anonymity. (Normally, that is.)
For If I Did It, Fenjves was reputedly paid $100,000 for two to three months of work. (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
Meanwhile, Galleycat points out that Fenjves is interviewed in the latest New Yorker. So now he's gonna famous for fifteen minutes (again; he was a witness in the trial).
Galleycat also reports that Steven Zeitchik, in Variety, has news about the ownership of various O.J. project rights, which certainly interests me. The TV stuff, Zeitchik thinks, is owned by Fox, which will bury it three miles underground. (Shame.) But the book rights have reverted 'to the O.J. camp'. Which means O.J. can sell it on. And why not, from his point of view. He was, reportedly, due to earn no royalties from the Regan publication, but now it's a whole new world of opportunity.
He could do it on Lulu, if all else fails. Now that would be really interesting. I wonder if the Lulu guys have enough smarts to be on the phone to him.
Fenjves is in no doubt about the commercial success of If I Did It, when it appears. “It’s going to be bigger than ever,” he said. “It’s like ‘Ulysses,’ except without the talent.”
There is much speculation about the fate of Judith Regan. Am I alone in finding that woman very stimulating? In so far as a 67-year-old man can be stimulated.
Scarlett Thomas
There's an essay by Scarlett Thomas which is worth reading. (Link from M.J. Rose, who picked it up from Sarah Weinman.) The only problem with the damn thing is that it's white text on dark grey, which makes my head spin.
Scarlett wonders aloud about the differences between men and women in the publishing world. And also wonders whether an author can write in several genres and survive.
My answer to the latter question is a definite No. Not, that is, if you want to be published by mainstream firms. Maybe, just maybe, you can do it with a change of name (John Banville/Benjamin Black et cetera), but usually you can't do it at all.
One of my own problems as a writer was that I got bored doing the same book over again. But that is what publishers want. If you want to write different kinds of stuff, just accept from the beginning that Lulu is going to be your outlet.
The quote of Scarlett's that I like best is this: 'Like any other industry, publishing is pretty murky behind the scenes.'
If the Scarlett Johnson essay doesn't bring you to your senses about publishing, then nothing that I can say will make any difference. From now on, it's not my fault, OK?
Plagiarism x 2?
Yesterday's Times, and a lot of other papers, carried a comment or two about the suggestion that Ian McEwan's Atonement (shortlisted for the Booker and currently being filmed) had plagiarised the wartime memoirs of romantic novelist Lucilla Andrews, who died recently.
Well, I haven't read Atonement or the memoirs, let alone compared them side by side, so I'm not in a position to make a specific judgement. In general, however, I would say that any novelist who writes about the past (or even the present) needs to do quite a lot of research into the nature of those times.
At the end of The Night Watch, for example, Sarah Waters listed a large number of books that she had consulted. I did the same with my novel Beautiful Lady. If you acknowledge your sources from the start, and make sensible use of them rather than lifting passages wholesale, then there should not normally be a problem.
Meanwhile, Madame Arcati reports a much more serious and obvious case of plagiarism. Last May, John Blake published a ghosted autobiography of April Ashley. The ghost was Douglas Thompson. Now all the unsold copies have had to be pulped because Duncan Fallowell, author of the 1982 April Ashley's Odyssey, read the new book, did a few calculations, and concluded that two thirds of it were a straight reprint of his own book.
Bloody hell eh? Two thirds. Not just the odd sentence, or anecdote, but (reportedly) a paste and scissors job. As the whole book is available online, this probably wasn't too arduous. Not even any retyping involved.
In a later note, Madame relates that April herself knew nothing of all this until she read it in Madame's blog. Crumbs.
Mind you, this rather proves what I said the other day, namely that them as has their autobiographies ghosted often don't bother to read the book.
Short notes
If you live in the Tampa Bay area, or are visiting, the Tampa Book Buzz is a useful source of info.
Giles Ward's novel 100 Ways to Improve the World is about a disillusioned carpet salesman; it's described as a tale of murder and lust with tufted cut pile twist. It's published by Impress Books.
Charles J Shields, author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, is now working on the authorised biography of Kurt Vonnegut. He would like to hear from any readers about their experiences with Vonnegut, either personally or with his novels. Contact: Cjs1994@earthlink.net
Alex Scarrow's new thriller, A Thousand Suns, has a fancypants book trailer on YouTube. Scared the pants off me. Publisher is Orion.
Jane Fletcher lives near Avebury and has some beautiful pics of the stones. She also writes dark fantasy and is a bit of a pagan. Dismissive critics get turned into frogs, so watch it.
Scott Pack provides some interesting insights into how publishers persuade retailers to stock their books -- and then complain if the retailers sell the advance copies which are more or less forced upon them. As with the case of TV copyright owners complaining about YouTube, this is a case of the suits not being smart enough. My view: if a publisher complains that you gave away or sold his precious ARC, that's what your first two fingers are for. (Link from Clive Keeble.)
Marti Lawrence, who wrote the freebie ebook about using Squidoo, has also written a novel. You can read it free online or even buy one.
Kourosh Ziabari is a 16-year-old Persian lad who blogs in English and is said to be the 'world's youngest journalist'. For someone who lives in a country which he describes (14 November) as 'the greatest prison for journalists' he is a bit on the outspoken side. And let's face it, you and I couldn't blog in Persian even now, let alone when we were sixteen, so I think this chap will go far.
Have you ever complained when the paper boy was a bit late in delivering your morning Times? If so, just consider the situation of novelist Carolyne Aarsen, who lives, I think we could say, a bit off the beaten track.
Tonto Press have announced the winner of their New Novelist project. Out of 400 entries, Pete Tanton came first.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Benjamin Black: Christine Falls
The publishers (Picador) make no secret of the fact that Benjamin Black is the pseudonym of last year's Booker prize winner, the Irish writer John Banville. Banville, it seems, has decided to write crime fiction from time to time, and for that purpose has chosen a new brand-name, to distinguish the crime novels from the literary.
All of which is sensible enough.
Christine Falls is described by the publisher as a 'crime thriller', and as such it scores about 7 out of 10, in my judgement. Not bad, then, for a beginner.
The novel is set in 1950s Dublin -- or so the back cover of the book says. But we are never given the precise date, and we don't even get any hints, from the names of Prime Ministers or Presidents, as to the decade. The casual reader, who knows nothing of Irish history and culture, might be forgiven for thinking that she was in the present day.
The principal character in Christine Falls is a man called Quirke. He is a pathologist by profession, and a widower. Again referring to the back cover of the book, we are told that Quirke is 'a truly original addition to the pantheon of crime fiction detectives', and so one gathers that he is to feature in a series of books. But original? Scarcely.
The story begins when Quirke comes across his brother-in-law, Malachy Griffin, in the pathology department. Griffin, a paediatrician, is busy entering false information on the death certificate of a young woman called Christine Falls. And this triggers off Quirke's determination to find out who Christine Falls was, and how and why she died.
The virtues of Christine Falls are that Benjamin Black understands the time and the culture that he is writing about, and portrays it very well. I am only an occasional visitor to Ireland, but I find it fascinating to observe the changes that have taken place there over the past forty or fifty years.
In the 1950s Ireland was a theocracy: it was governed, effectively, by the Church, which means the Roman Catholic Church. Only the weekend before last, I was at a party in Ireland at which a woman of my own age reminded me of what I already knew, namely that, in times past, the Church controlled everything. Not only Church affairs (of course), but politics, business, and the arts. Probably sport too.
Now, said my informant, that had largely gone. Partly as a result of revelations of child abuse by priests, partly because of the influence of the outside world, through books, television, films, and the internet, the Church had lost its grip. My informant, a lapsed Catholic herself, largely approved of that. But what had also been lost, she said, was the discipline. The baby had gone out with the bath water, and she wasn't happy with the result.
Such rapid changes in a society over a relatively short period of time will provide, of course, enough material for a dozen novels; and perhaps that's what Black/Banville intends to show us. Though as his protagonist is in his forties, he may have to swap him at a certain stage.
In any event, what we have here is principally a portrait of a time and a place, of certain sets of assumptions about the right and wrong way to do things, and of the good and bad consequences which can result. For me, at least, it was an interesting novel.
The shortcomings of Christine Falls are, however considerable.
To begin with, it is labelled 'crime thriller'. But where is the crime? I've found more in an episode of Balamory. There's the falsification of the death certificate; a bit of GBH when Quirke is beaten up; and some wilful breaches of the US immigration laws (which are hastily skated over, I note), and... that's it. There's no murder, let alone a series thereof.
As for a thriller... Not really. Black even fluffs the scene where Quirke is beaten up, because Quirke realises almost at once that the men have been sent to hurt him, not kill him. (Hint: next time, Ben, have Quirke think he's going to die, and then have him wake up in hospital and be told by a doctor that the men obviously didn't intend to kill him because they kicked him everywhere but on the head.)
In terms of its stated genre, therefore, Christine Falls is a bit of a non-starter. It's more like a mainstream novel. As such it held my attention all right, but it's not what it says on the label.
What really annoyed me about his book, however, was a failure in elementary narrative technique. Or perhaps I should say that the failure disappointed me. I certainly wasn't surprised by it, because literary folk seem to me to be fairly clueless when it comes to the vulgar business of keeping the reader glued to the page.
The plain fact is, Black simply doesn't know how to use viewpoint properly.
My own beliefs about the most effective point of view were set out on this blog some time ago, in a series of five posts beginning on 4 November 2004. I won't repeat myself here.
Suffice it to say that I firmly believe, as do many others who know what they're talking about, that the most effective way to write a novel these days is from what has been called the 'main-character viewpoint'. In other words, you describe the action as it is experienced by one principal character at a time. By all means vary the point of view, by allowing us to see the world through other characters' eyes. But stick to one point of view in each chapter -- otherwise the modern reader (if she has any sensitivity to what she is reading) experiences a nasty sense of dislocation.
Twice in the first ten pages, Black mucks us about. We start a chapter from the point of view of one person, and then suddenly lurch into another. My note for page 9 says: We are all over the bloody place, chopping and changing like a drunken sailor. The poor bloody reader is left [excuse the mixed metaphors] like a man in five feet of moving water, trying desperately to find his footing, and, for the most part, failing. What [my note asks rhetorically]was Ed Victor doing?
Ed Victor, for them as hasn't heard of him, is Banville/Black's agent, and a mighty power in the land. Well, ole Ed may be good at holding a gun to publishers' heads, but, despite working with Jack Higgins, he apparently still has something to learn about how to write an effective piece of commercial fiction. And for that matter, why didn't the editors at Picador sort this sort? Oh, but then, of course, Picador is a literary imprint, and the gentlefolk there don't dirty their hands with such sordid matters as telling a story effectively.
This clumsy handling of viewpoint continues throughout the book. And there are other signs of inexperience in this genre too. On page 53, a piece of backstory is conveyed in a remarkably clumsy manner:
Fortunately, there are compensations for these irritations. On page 272, for instance, we get a very good insight into the way in which, as my recent informant reminded me, the Church fixed everything.
All of which is sensible enough.
Christine Falls is described by the publisher as a 'crime thriller', and as such it scores about 7 out of 10, in my judgement. Not bad, then, for a beginner.
The novel is set in 1950s Dublin -- or so the back cover of the book says. But we are never given the precise date, and we don't even get any hints, from the names of Prime Ministers or Presidents, as to the decade. The casual reader, who knows nothing of Irish history and culture, might be forgiven for thinking that she was in the present day.
The principal character in Christine Falls is a man called Quirke. He is a pathologist by profession, and a widower. Again referring to the back cover of the book, we are told that Quirke is 'a truly original addition to the pantheon of crime fiction detectives', and so one gathers that he is to feature in a series of books. But original? Scarcely.
The story begins when Quirke comes across his brother-in-law, Malachy Griffin, in the pathology department. Griffin, a paediatrician, is busy entering false information on the death certificate of a young woman called Christine Falls. And this triggers off Quirke's determination to find out who Christine Falls was, and how and why she died.
The virtues of Christine Falls are that Benjamin Black understands the time and the culture that he is writing about, and portrays it very well. I am only an occasional visitor to Ireland, but I find it fascinating to observe the changes that have taken place there over the past forty or fifty years.
In the 1950s Ireland was a theocracy: it was governed, effectively, by the Church, which means the Roman Catholic Church. Only the weekend before last, I was at a party in Ireland at which a woman of my own age reminded me of what I already knew, namely that, in times past, the Church controlled everything. Not only Church affairs (of course), but politics, business, and the arts. Probably sport too.
Now, said my informant, that had largely gone. Partly as a result of revelations of child abuse by priests, partly because of the influence of the outside world, through books, television, films, and the internet, the Church had lost its grip. My informant, a lapsed Catholic herself, largely approved of that. But what had also been lost, she said, was the discipline. The baby had gone out with the bath water, and she wasn't happy with the result.
Such rapid changes in a society over a relatively short period of time will provide, of course, enough material for a dozen novels; and perhaps that's what Black/Banville intends to show us. Though as his protagonist is in his forties, he may have to swap him at a certain stage.
In any event, what we have here is principally a portrait of a time and a place, of certain sets of assumptions about the right and wrong way to do things, and of the good and bad consequences which can result. For me, at least, it was an interesting novel.
The shortcomings of Christine Falls are, however considerable.
To begin with, it is labelled 'crime thriller'. But where is the crime? I've found more in an episode of Balamory. There's the falsification of the death certificate; a bit of GBH when Quirke is beaten up; and some wilful breaches of the US immigration laws (which are hastily skated over, I note), and... that's it. There's no murder, let alone a series thereof.
As for a thriller... Not really. Black even fluffs the scene where Quirke is beaten up, because Quirke realises almost at once that the men have been sent to hurt him, not kill him. (Hint: next time, Ben, have Quirke think he's going to die, and then have him wake up in hospital and be told by a doctor that the men obviously didn't intend to kill him because they kicked him everywhere but on the head.)
In terms of its stated genre, therefore, Christine Falls is a bit of a non-starter. It's more like a mainstream novel. As such it held my attention all right, but it's not what it says on the label.
What really annoyed me about his book, however, was a failure in elementary narrative technique. Or perhaps I should say that the failure disappointed me. I certainly wasn't surprised by it, because literary folk seem to me to be fairly clueless when it comes to the vulgar business of keeping the reader glued to the page.
The plain fact is, Black simply doesn't know how to use viewpoint properly.
My own beliefs about the most effective point of view were set out on this blog some time ago, in a series of five posts beginning on 4 November 2004. I won't repeat myself here.
Suffice it to say that I firmly believe, as do many others who know what they're talking about, that the most effective way to write a novel these days is from what has been called the 'main-character viewpoint'. In other words, you describe the action as it is experienced by one principal character at a time. By all means vary the point of view, by allowing us to see the world through other characters' eyes. But stick to one point of view in each chapter -- otherwise the modern reader (if she has any sensitivity to what she is reading) experiences a nasty sense of dislocation.
Twice in the first ten pages, Black mucks us about. We start a chapter from the point of view of one person, and then suddenly lurch into another. My note for page 9 says: We are all over the bloody place, chopping and changing like a drunken sailor. The poor bloody reader is left [excuse the mixed metaphors] like a man in five feet of moving water, trying desperately to find his footing, and, for the most part, failing. What [my note asks rhetorically]was Ed Victor doing?
Ed Victor, for them as hasn't heard of him, is Banville/Black's agent, and a mighty power in the land. Well, ole Ed may be good at holding a gun to publishers' heads, but, despite working with Jack Higgins, he apparently still has something to learn about how to write an effective piece of commercial fiction. And for that matter, why didn't the editors at Picador sort this sort? Oh, but then, of course, Picador is a literary imprint, and the gentlefolk there don't dirty their hands with such sordid matters as telling a story effectively.
This clumsy handling of viewpoint continues throughout the book. And there are other signs of inexperience in this genre too. On page 53, a piece of backstory is conveyed in a remarkably clumsy manner:
And so on.'Did they beat you in that place you were in, in Connemara -- what was the name of it?'
'Carricklea Industrial School, so-called. Yes, they beat us. Why wouldn't they?'
Fortunately, there are compensations for these irritations. On page 272, for instance, we get a very good insight into the way in which, as my recent informant reminded me, the Church fixed everything.
Sister Stephanus came back into the room, shaking her head. 'Dear Lord,' she said wearily, 'what a business.' She turned to the priest. 'Did the Archbishop...?'
He nodded. 'I spoke to his office. His people will have a word with the Commissioner -- there'll be no need for the police to get involved.'
So, as I say, 7 out of 10. Could do better.
I have remarked here before that the people who understand best how to write commercial fiction are the agents who have to sell it, week in and week out. Of these, the current leader is Al Zuckerman, founder of Writers House and author of Writing the Blockbuster Novel. Perhaps Ed Victor should swallow his pride and send his man for an afternoon's training by Dr Al. Go on, Ed. It'll be worth it.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Friday things
More on O.J.
Answers -- of a sort -- to some of the questions that I posed on Tuesday are beginning to emerge. Most of them are summarised by Publishers Lunch, drawing on US press reports.
You may remember that I wondered aloud about who initiated the book that dare not show its face in the first place. Was it O.J. himself, an agent, lawyer, publisher, friend of his late wife's, or who?
Publishers Lunch (using the Wall Street Journal* as source) quotes Yale Galanter, O.J.'s usual lawyer/spokesman, who says, 'It wasn't ours to begin with,' adding, 'The project started, was conceived with and always belonged to HarperCollins.'
(*Note: the WSJ is one of those papers with a death wish that won't let you in unless you're a subscriber.)
In other words, if I read this aright, the project began in the devious mind of Judith Regan, which surprises me not at all. And if she dreamed it up, I would expect her to control every aspect of it. Which, I imagine, others in the HarperCollins arena would not be unhappy about, because then she could take all the blame.
And what about the money -- which is what it's all about really -- who's been paid and how much? Galanter says, 'He [O.J.] doesn't have a reaction one way or the other [to Murdoch's decision to dump the book] because all of his contractual obligations have been fulfilled.' He adds: 'There were no contingencies about it being published, or how many copies had to be sold or any of that stuff. All that's done.' He admits Simpson was compensated already and says those obligations 'weren't contingent upon any type of book or interview.'
Which I take to mean that O.J. got paid a flat fee up front. We don't know how much, but the figure originally suggested in the National Enquirer was $3.5 million. PL thinks that attorneys acting on behalf of the murdered woman's family will force a disclosure of the actual figure in due course.
The ghost writer for If I Did It was Pablo Fenjves, a former co-worker of Judith Regan's at the National Enquirer, who was also a witness for the prosecution in O.J.'s criminal trial (he heard a dog barking, which apparently was enough to get him on the witness stand).
Finally, if you are remotely interested, PL points out that the Amazon.com page for the book is still up, and you can read some customer reactions, the most interesting of which are perhaps the tags that people have attached to the book: e.g. boycott (49), disgusted (31), and so forth.
Selling yourself for fun and profit
Ever heard of Squidoo? You probably should have. Anyway, if you're a writer, looking for yet another way to get your name known for zero money, Marti has a free ebook that tells you how to do it. She seems to have alarming amounts of energy.
Loyalty
An agent once reminded me, when she thought that I was approaching something in an excessively objective manner, 'You know, Michael, 'this is a very friendly business.'
How friendly is made clear in a post by bookseller Bob Gray, who takes a dim view of Random House 'letting go' an elder statesman of the travelling rep brigade. (Link from Lynne Scanlon.)
24 varieties of anger
If you are interested in the effect that emotion has on physical health, then you might, perhaps, be interested in Brenda Shoshanna's new book, The Anger Diet. I don't say I recommend it, please note -- because for one thing I haven't read it. But I just say that if you are interested in mind/body interaction you might be interested in Shoshanna's identification of 24 kinds of anger and ways to deal with them.
Collaborative authorship
A formidably complicated project is under way which will allow a million (give or take a few) contributors to write a book on good practice in business management. It's all very Web 2.0 and Wiki and all like that. Big names are involved: Pearson, Wharton, MIT.
Still in fashion
Sex is apparently not about to go out of fashion. Publishers Lunch announces that Jennifer Stevenson has contracted with Del Rey (agent Donald Maass) for a series of books which will probably be called The Sex Files.
One of these, Brass Bed, is about an English lord who is bound to a brass bed by a witch's curse until he satisfies 100 women -- the one hundredth being a Chicago fraud detective called Jewel Heiss.
Good grief, this Stevenson woman clearly has a deranged imagination and her books should be denounced by all right-thinking persons. If you wish to dispose of your ARC, send it to me and I will see that it is dealt with appropriately.
Great minds
In search of plagiarists, Paul Collins discovers that, er... lots of people use similar phrases. Unless you happen to write 'It seems to me that this should not be unusual', in which case, apparently, you're on your own. (Link from Literary Saloon.)
Slava's Snow Show
Yesterday evening to the Theatre Royal, Bath, to see Slava's Snow Show. This is hard to describe. It certainly isn't a play -- not a line of English spoken all evening, and only a sentence or two in anything. It isn't a musical, in the ordinary sense. Neither is it ballet or opera. It isn't circus, though Slava is often described as a great clown. There is certainly quite a lot of mime.
In any event it's very beautiful and enthralling and funny, and you should see it if you get the chance. The tour of England finishes this week, but it's been seen all over the world and it is in the Teatro Olimpico in Rome in December. Find it if you can.
It's Russian, originally.
Digital doings
If you are interested in the impact of new technology on printing and publishing, the place to go is Digital Publishing News.
The first big change, DPN claims, is the invention of new display technologies, so called e-paper.
Further freaks
Further to my review on Monday, Dave Lull* writes to tell me that Leslie Fiedler wrote a well respected book called Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self. 'Witty, erudite, outrageously imaginative,' said the Library Journal, 'Freaks is a sober historical survey of social responses to physical abnormality.'
I always thought old Leslie was slightly barmy myself. It was an article in Esquire that did it. He quoted William Faulkner talking about how a man always hated his wife, and said something along the lines of 'How true'. Speak for yourself, I thought.
*Dave Lull, by the way, must be the world's greatest tipper-offer in the book world. Google "Dave Lull" and see. And by the look of him he reads even more than I do. Can't be good for you, Dave. Try to get out more.
They don't make 'em like that any more
I have been doing some research into Soho recently. More of that later. But I thought you might, just possibly, be interested in an article about Sandy Fawkes, a character who might best be described by that hackneyed term 'colourful'.
Sandy was one of those formidable drinkers who drift into Soho, find their own favourite position on the end of a bar in one of the famous pubs, and then stay there more or less for ever. See my bit on Julian Maclaren-Ross for news of a few more of the same.
Can you bear it?
I don't care to tackle the book myself, but, for those strong enough, Alan Hall and Michael Leidig have written a book called Girl in the Cellar. This is an account of the ordeal of Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl who was kidnapped at the age of ten and held prisoner for eight years. Excerpts can be found in the Times this week.
Latin is such fun
Do you remember how much fun your Latin lessons were? No, no, don't go away. They weren't as bad as all that. And Joel Rickett (deputy editor of the Bookseller) points out that a little book called Amo, Amas, Amat and All That is selling very nicely (1,000 copies a week) as a Christmas-stocking filler.
Rickett also reckons, by the way, that Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion is going to surprise everyone with its sales this Christmas. 'Its a real heavyweight book,' he said. '... but every year, there's something that comes from leftfield and I think this is it.'
Not another one!
The Times reports that Rudolph K has been nicking rare books from the University of Erlangen in southern Germany. Estimated value £541,000. That bloke in Manchester was an amateur by comparison.
Blair and Archer
I made reference, the other day, to that undeservedly criticised and much-put-upon chap, Jeffrey Archer. And a correspondent reminds me that, by a complete coincidence, there is also a chap called Archer in John Morrison's 2005 book, Anthony Blair, Captain of School. So here, just to set the right tone for the weekend, is a brief extract from the epilogue to that novel -- an epilogue in which, I may say, something very nasty happens.
But we will not dwell on that. Let us, instead, draw moral succour from the fact that chaps who get into a spot of bother here and there can always redeem themselves. Well, more or less.
Answers -- of a sort -- to some of the questions that I posed on Tuesday are beginning to emerge. Most of them are summarised by Publishers Lunch, drawing on US press reports.
You may remember that I wondered aloud about who initiated the book that dare not show its face in the first place. Was it O.J. himself, an agent, lawyer, publisher, friend of his late wife's, or who?
Publishers Lunch (using the Wall Street Journal* as source) quotes Yale Galanter, O.J.'s usual lawyer/spokesman, who says, 'It wasn't ours to begin with,' adding, 'The project started, was conceived with and always belonged to HarperCollins.'
(*Note: the WSJ is one of those papers with a death wish that won't let you in unless you're a subscriber.)
In other words, if I read this aright, the project began in the devious mind of Judith Regan, which surprises me not at all. And if she dreamed it up, I would expect her to control every aspect of it. Which, I imagine, others in the HarperCollins arena would not be unhappy about, because then she could take all the blame.
And what about the money -- which is what it's all about really -- who's been paid and how much? Galanter says, 'He [O.J.] doesn't have a reaction one way or the other [to Murdoch's decision to dump the book] because all of his contractual obligations have been fulfilled.' He adds: 'There were no contingencies about it being published, or how many copies had to be sold or any of that stuff. All that's done.' He admits Simpson was compensated already and says those obligations 'weren't contingent upon any type of book or interview.'
Which I take to mean that O.J. got paid a flat fee up front. We don't know how much, but the figure originally suggested in the National Enquirer was $3.5 million. PL thinks that attorneys acting on behalf of the murdered woman's family will force a disclosure of the actual figure in due course.
The ghost writer for If I Did It was Pablo Fenjves, a former co-worker of Judith Regan's at the National Enquirer, who was also a witness for the prosecution in O.J.'s criminal trial (he heard a dog barking, which apparently was enough to get him on the witness stand).
Finally, if you are remotely interested, PL points out that the Amazon.com page for the book is still up, and you can read some customer reactions, the most interesting of which are perhaps the tags that people have attached to the book: e.g. boycott (49), disgusted (31), and so forth.
Selling yourself for fun and profit
Ever heard of Squidoo? You probably should have. Anyway, if you're a writer, looking for yet another way to get your name known for zero money, Marti has a free ebook that tells you how to do it. She seems to have alarming amounts of energy.
Loyalty
An agent once reminded me, when she thought that I was approaching something in an excessively objective manner, 'You know, Michael, 'this is a very friendly business.'
How friendly is made clear in a post by bookseller Bob Gray, who takes a dim view of Random House 'letting go' an elder statesman of the travelling rep brigade. (Link from Lynne Scanlon.)
24 varieties of anger
If you are interested in the effect that emotion has on physical health, then you might, perhaps, be interested in Brenda Shoshanna's new book, The Anger Diet. I don't say I recommend it, please note -- because for one thing I haven't read it. But I just say that if you are interested in mind/body interaction you might be interested in Shoshanna's identification of 24 kinds of anger and ways to deal with them.
Collaborative authorship
A formidably complicated project is under way which will allow a million (give or take a few) contributors to write a book on good practice in business management. It's all very Web 2.0 and Wiki and all like that. Big names are involved: Pearson, Wharton, MIT.
Still in fashion
Sex is apparently not about to go out of fashion. Publishers Lunch announces that Jennifer Stevenson has contracted with Del Rey (agent Donald Maass) for a series of books which will probably be called The Sex Files.
One of these, Brass Bed, is about an English lord who is bound to a brass bed by a witch's curse until he satisfies 100 women -- the one hundredth being a Chicago fraud detective called Jewel Heiss.
Good grief, this Stevenson woman clearly has a deranged imagination and her books should be denounced by all right-thinking persons. If you wish to dispose of your ARC, send it to me and I will see that it is dealt with appropriately.
Great minds
In search of plagiarists, Paul Collins discovers that, er... lots of people use similar phrases. Unless you happen to write 'It seems to me that this should not be unusual', in which case, apparently, you're on your own. (Link from Literary Saloon.)
Slava's Snow Show
Yesterday evening to the Theatre Royal, Bath, to see Slava's Snow Show. This is hard to describe. It certainly isn't a play -- not a line of English spoken all evening, and only a sentence or two in anything. It isn't a musical, in the ordinary sense. Neither is it ballet or opera. It isn't circus, though Slava is often described as a great clown. There is certainly quite a lot of mime.
In any event it's very beautiful and enthralling and funny, and you should see it if you get the chance. The tour of England finishes this week, but it's been seen all over the world and it is in the Teatro Olimpico in Rome in December. Find it if you can.
It's Russian, originally.
Digital doings
If you are interested in the impact of new technology on printing and publishing, the place to go is Digital Publishing News.
The first big change, DPN claims, is the invention of new display technologies, so called e-paper.
By 2010 these will be commonplace and widely used for reading printed documents including newspapers, books, and magazines, and in so doing will have a profound effect upon all sectors of the publishing industry.Note to the boys who write this stuff. New technology does not do away with the need to use the occasional comma and hyphen.
The second technology driven revolution is the arrival of Web 2.0, the next stage in Internet evolution, which thanks to high power personal computers and broadband communications looks set to completely change the way that we all use the Web.
Further freaks
Further to my review on Monday, Dave Lull* writes to tell me that Leslie Fiedler wrote a well respected book called Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self. 'Witty, erudite, outrageously imaginative,' said the Library Journal, 'Freaks is a sober historical survey of social responses to physical abnormality.'
I always thought old Leslie was slightly barmy myself. It was an article in Esquire that did it. He quoted William Faulkner talking about how a man always hated his wife, and said something along the lines of 'How true'. Speak for yourself, I thought.
*Dave Lull, by the way, must be the world's greatest tipper-offer in the book world. Google "Dave Lull" and see. And by the look of him he reads even more than I do. Can't be good for you, Dave. Try to get out more.
They don't make 'em like that any more
I have been doing some research into Soho recently. More of that later. But I thought you might, just possibly, be interested in an article about Sandy Fawkes, a character who might best be described by that hackneyed term 'colourful'.
Sandy was one of those formidable drinkers who drift into Soho, find their own favourite position on the end of a bar in one of the famous pubs, and then stay there more or less for ever. See my bit on Julian Maclaren-Ross for news of a few more of the same.
Can you bear it?
I don't care to tackle the book myself, but, for those strong enough, Alan Hall and Michael Leidig have written a book called Girl in the Cellar. This is an account of the ordeal of Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl who was kidnapped at the age of ten and held prisoner for eight years. Excerpts can be found in the Times this week.
Latin is such fun
Do you remember how much fun your Latin lessons were? No, no, don't go away. They weren't as bad as all that. And Joel Rickett (deputy editor of the Bookseller) points out that a little book called Amo, Amas, Amat and All That is selling very nicely (1,000 copies a week) as a Christmas-stocking filler.
Rickett also reckons, by the way, that Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion is going to surprise everyone with its sales this Christmas. 'Its a real heavyweight book,' he said. '... but every year, there's something that comes from leftfield and I think this is it.'
Not another one!
The Times reports that Rudolph K has been nicking rare books from the University of Erlangen in southern Germany. Estimated value £541,000. That bloke in Manchester was an amateur by comparison.
Blair and Archer
I made reference, the other day, to that undeservedly criticised and much-put-upon chap, Jeffrey Archer. And a correspondent reminds me that, by a complete coincidence, there is also a chap called Archer in John Morrison's 2005 book, Anthony Blair, Captain of School. So here, just to set the right tone for the weekend, is a brief extract from the epilogue to that novel -- an epilogue in which, I may say, something very nasty happens.
But we will not dwell on that. Let us, instead, draw moral succour from the fact that chaps who get into a spot of bother here and there can always redeem themselves. Well, more or less.
'Did they really send you down at the Old Bailey? What happened, exactly?'
Archer paused again. He drew a circle in the sand, and continued.
'Some business about share certificates, and loans, and promissory notes. I won't bore you with the details. Take my advice, never trust a lawyer and especially not a judge. I now know, the prisons are full of innocent men who have been tripped up by the law.'
'How awful,' said Blair, shaking his head.
'When they let me out, I travelled here and decided to stay. And how about you? I heard about the Mesopotamia business.'
'I was innocent too,' said Blair. 'But I managed to stay one step ahead of the lawyers. The way I see it, you have to follow God and your conscience. What counts is knowing, deep down inside, that you're doing the right thing.'
'Good for you, old chap,' said Archer. 'Wish I had. Of course, I wasn't religious back then. That might have helped. At least I never got anyone killed.'
Blair decided to change the subject. 'Did you ever get that novel published?' he asked.
'Not yet. Publishers are such duffers. But I'm going to persevere.'
'I might try writing a novel some day. The mater always said I was good at making things up.'
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Watch out for Aultbea
The Independent this week reveals that our old friends Aultbea Publishing Ltd. are about to publish a book by one of the world's youngest authors. (Thanks to Nicholas Clee for the Indie link.)
Christopher Beale, aged six and a bit, has written a 1,500-word, five-chapter 'novel', entitled This and Last Season's Excursions. Publication date is 25 November.
Aultbea specialises in publishing the work of young authors, and the 'owner' of the company, Charles Faulkner, has a history of obtaining masses of publicity for them. If past performance is any guide, therefore, the next week or so should see a spate of national newspaper interviews and items on television news about young Christopher Beale. Watch out for them.
The Aultbea operation has been discussed here, at wearisome length, on several occasions. If you have the strength and patience to consider the matter, useful summaries were posted here on 30 June 2005 and on 18 July 2006.
Briefly, Aultbea is a very small publishing company. According to several reports that have reached me, some of them in the form of comments on my post of 18 July, it is common practice for Aultbea to shower praise on a submitted manuscript, and to suggest to the author that fame and fortune are shortly to be his -- provided, of course, that he coughs up £10,000 or so to finance the operation.
Now in principle there is nothing untoward about asking an author to contribute to the cost of publication (see 18 July for further comment); quite a number of firms have historically done this in an ethical way. And I do not wish to seem vindictive towards Aultbea.
Nevertheless, I note that the Aultbea web site is quite remarkably uninformative about any number of aspects of the company's modus operandi. And, if I were a newspaper editor or reporter, faced with an Aultbea press release about the Christopher Beale book, I really think I would want answers to a number of questions before giving it space.
For my own part, just based on the data already published here, I would be interested to know the following:
Who handles sales and distribution for Aultbea?
What were the Bookscan sales figures for Emma Marie Urquhart's Dragon Tamers? (The book was famous for 15 minutes.)
How many of the stated 50,000 print run for that book remain?
Why did Aultbea 'pull out' of the reported Hollywood film deal for Dragon Tamers?
Why are none of Emma Marie Urquhart's books now listed on the Aultbea web site (though some of them are still on Amazon.co.uk)?
What happened to the other 'multimedia deal' for Dragon Tamers that was 'in late stages of negotiation' in June 2005?
It seems to me that any reasonably intelligent and diligent reporter should be able to formulate a dozen similar questions for himself. For one thing, if you Google "aultbea publishing", then the first hits you get, after two from the firm itself, are GOB posts which suggest that such questioning might be fruitful.
It will be very interesting to see, over the next week or two, whether any media representatives are prepared to trot out the old familiar flim-flam, or whether, on this occasion, they are just a little bit more sceptical, and less ready to reprint Mr Faulkner's press release verbatim.
Christopher Beale, aged six and a bit, has written a 1,500-word, five-chapter 'novel', entitled This and Last Season's Excursions. Publication date is 25 November.
Aultbea specialises in publishing the work of young authors, and the 'owner' of the company, Charles Faulkner, has a history of obtaining masses of publicity for them. If past performance is any guide, therefore, the next week or so should see a spate of national newspaper interviews and items on television news about young Christopher Beale. Watch out for them.
The Aultbea operation has been discussed here, at wearisome length, on several occasions. If you have the strength and patience to consider the matter, useful summaries were posted here on 30 June 2005 and on 18 July 2006.
Briefly, Aultbea is a very small publishing company. According to several reports that have reached me, some of them in the form of comments on my post of 18 July, it is common practice for Aultbea to shower praise on a submitted manuscript, and to suggest to the author that fame and fortune are shortly to be his -- provided, of course, that he coughs up £10,000 or so to finance the operation.
Now in principle there is nothing untoward about asking an author to contribute to the cost of publication (see 18 July for further comment); quite a number of firms have historically done this in an ethical way. And I do not wish to seem vindictive towards Aultbea.
Nevertheless, I note that the Aultbea web site is quite remarkably uninformative about any number of aspects of the company's modus operandi. And, if I were a newspaper editor or reporter, faced with an Aultbea press release about the Christopher Beale book, I really think I would want answers to a number of questions before giving it space.
For my own part, just based on the data already published here, I would be interested to know the following:
Who handles sales and distribution for Aultbea?
What were the Bookscan sales figures for Emma Marie Urquhart's Dragon Tamers? (The book was famous for 15 minutes.)
How many of the stated 50,000 print run for that book remain?
Why did Aultbea 'pull out' of the reported Hollywood film deal for Dragon Tamers?
Why are none of Emma Marie Urquhart's books now listed on the Aultbea web site (though some of them are still on Amazon.co.uk)?
What happened to the other 'multimedia deal' for Dragon Tamers that was 'in late stages of negotiation' in June 2005?
It seems to me that any reasonably intelligent and diligent reporter should be able to formulate a dozen similar questions for himself. For one thing, if you Google "aultbea publishing", then the first hits you get, after two from the firm itself, are GOB posts which suggest that such questioning might be fruitful.
It will be very interesting to see, over the next week or two, whether any media representatives are prepared to trot out the old familiar flim-flam, or whether, on this occasion, they are just a little bit more sceptical, and less ready to reprint Mr Faulkner's press release verbatim.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Wednesday wonders
Death on her hands
Last Saturday's Irish Times ran an interview with the State Pathologist, Prof. Marie Cassidy. She does the same job that Quirke does -- Quirke being the main character in Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black, aka Booker prize-winner John Banville, of which more when I've finished reading it.
Of course there are quite a few lady pathologists around these days, particularly in fiction and drama: e.g. Patricia Cornwell's novels and Silent Witness; for the latter, it is suggested, Cassidy was the model. Nevertheless, if I were a trade publisher I would sign up Prof. Cassidy for a ghosted autobiography. Fast.
Jeffrey from the ashes
'You can’t keep a good man down,' says the Sunday Times, 'nor indeed Lord Archer.' How very rude. Bloody true though.
Bestselling novelist Jeffrey Archer, Lord Archer to his friends, was always a shade economical with the truth, and was ever ready to exercise his vivid imagination; the result was that, in 2001, he got sentenced to four years in the slammer for perjury. As is the English way, he served two of the four and then got let out. Since then he has exploited his jail time to the full, with a diary of his prison experiences and a book of stories based on tales told to him by fellow prisoners.
Now he's signed a new three-book contract with Macmillan. The first book, A Prisoner of Birth, tells the story of a man who believes he has been wrongly convicted. Well yes. Quite, quite. Who better to write such a tale than Lord A?
Good old Jeffrey. He's always good for a laugh, isn't he? Provided you have a very black sense of humour. I wonder if book-buyers and booksellers will boycott this one? O.J., after all, was found not guilty, whereas Jeffrey did time. Should be a no-brainer really, shouldn't it?
New founts for old
Speaking of the Times, the old lady has had a rejig. The paper has commissioned and adopted a new fount, which is what the rest of us call a font.
Times New Roman was designed in 1931 by Victor Lardent (so Mr Bringhurst tells me); it had 'a humanist axis but Mannerist proportions, Baroque weight, and a sharp Neoclassical finish.' But you probably knew that already. Now Neville Brody has designed something more in keeping with modern needs.
How are the mighty
Fifty years ago, the Reader's Digest was arguably the most successful magazine in the world. Run from a country estate in Pleasantville, Westchester County, the RD seemed to be a permanent fixture. I was interviewed for a job there once, come to think of it. Didn't get it.
But times change, and gradually the magazine lost ground. Now the company has been sold for $1.6 billion. Which is still quite a lot of money, of course. The Telegraph gives details; link from booktrade.info.
Salesmanship for the self-publisher
Iqbal Ahmed has an article in the Independent which contains some information which will be useful to any self-publisher. Link from booktrade.info.
Slightly Foxed
Slightly Foxed is a 'lively quarterly book review for non-conformists – people who don’t want to read only what the big publishers are hyping and the newspapers are reviewing.' It ain't cheap, but a year's subscription for a bookish significant other might be a good Christmas present. (And you could always read it yourself afterwards.)
More on McKeith
Gillian McKeith is a UK-based TV food guru. Her basic routine, in several series of half-hour TV shows, is to take a grossly fat and unfit person, persuade them to stop eating junk food and supermarket shit, and start taking exercise. Not surprisingly, this usually brings about a dramatic transformation in a few weeks.
So far so good. Nothing but good done there, you might think. And there are, of course, books to accompany the TV series, and they sell in vast numbers.
However, the lovely Gillian is another one who is a bit economical with the truth, and inclined to exercise her imagination somewhat; some of her more brazen activities were described here in January 2005.
Now there's more. The Times tells us that Gillian has recently been censured by a government watchdog for selling a range of endorsed herbal sex aids without a licence; furthermore, the sex aids don't actually work.
Gillian McKeith is broadly on the side of the angels in that she persuades people to stop killing themselves; but her business methods are questionable. On her web site she still refers to herself as 'Dr' McKeith, even though, as the Times points out, 'her credentials as a scientist have come under suspicion previously as she obtained a PhD from the non-accredited American Holistic College of Nutrition in the United States.'
Susan Hill blacklisted
I come a bit late to this, it seems, but Galleycat gave me an introduction to the story.
Susan Hill, who is a novelist, playwright and publisher, and excels at all three, did a bit on her blog recently in which she argued that the big-time 'professional' reviewers, in the posh literary journals, are increasingly irrelevant. In the process she was a bit outspoken about the ' – with honourable exceptions – arrogant, lazy, stuck-in-the-mud, cliquey little set of literary editors, and/or "mandarins".'
Now she's had an email from one of these arrogant et cetera, telling her that her books will never be reviewed in his/her journal again. And Susan chooses to let him/her be anonymous, which is too kind in my opinion.
Richard Lea in the Guardian will bring you up to date. Clive Keeble and Steve Clackson are among the commenters.
Last Saturday's Irish Times ran an interview with the State Pathologist, Prof. Marie Cassidy. She does the same job that Quirke does -- Quirke being the main character in Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black, aka Booker prize-winner John Banville, of which more when I've finished reading it.
Of course there are quite a few lady pathologists around these days, particularly in fiction and drama: e.g. Patricia Cornwell's novels and Silent Witness; for the latter, it is suggested, Cassidy was the model. Nevertheless, if I were a trade publisher I would sign up Prof. Cassidy for a ghosted autobiography. Fast.
Jeffrey from the ashes
'You can’t keep a good man down,' says the Sunday Times, 'nor indeed Lord Archer.' How very rude. Bloody true though.
Bestselling novelist Jeffrey Archer, Lord Archer to his friends, was always a shade economical with the truth, and was ever ready to exercise his vivid imagination; the result was that, in 2001, he got sentenced to four years in the slammer for perjury. As is the English way, he served two of the four and then got let out. Since then he has exploited his jail time to the full, with a diary of his prison experiences and a book of stories based on tales told to him by fellow prisoners.
Now he's signed a new three-book contract with Macmillan. The first book, A Prisoner of Birth, tells the story of a man who believes he has been wrongly convicted. Well yes. Quite, quite. Who better to write such a tale than Lord A?
Good old Jeffrey. He's always good for a laugh, isn't he? Provided you have a very black sense of humour. I wonder if book-buyers and booksellers will boycott this one? O.J., after all, was found not guilty, whereas Jeffrey did time. Should be a no-brainer really, shouldn't it?
New founts for old
Speaking of the Times, the old lady has had a rejig. The paper has commissioned and adopted a new fount, which is what the rest of us call a font.
Times New Roman was designed in 1931 by Victor Lardent (so Mr Bringhurst tells me); it had 'a humanist axis but Mannerist proportions, Baroque weight, and a sharp Neoclassical finish.' But you probably knew that already. Now Neville Brody has designed something more in keeping with modern needs.
The new fount, Times Modern, blends the traditional and functional lines of the existing Times New Roman and melds them with sharp angular details to give a condensed face that perfectly fits the smaller-sized newspaper.I don't like it much, but I may get used to it.
How are the mighty
Fifty years ago, the Reader's Digest was arguably the most successful magazine in the world. Run from a country estate in Pleasantville, Westchester County, the RD seemed to be a permanent fixture. I was interviewed for a job there once, come to think of it. Didn't get it.
But times change, and gradually the magazine lost ground. Now the company has been sold for $1.6 billion. Which is still quite a lot of money, of course. The Telegraph gives details; link from booktrade.info.
Salesmanship for the self-publisher
Iqbal Ahmed has an article in the Independent which contains some information which will be useful to any self-publisher. Link from booktrade.info.
Slightly Foxed
Slightly Foxed is a 'lively quarterly book review for non-conformists – people who don’t want to read only what the big publishers are hyping and the newspapers are reviewing.' It ain't cheap, but a year's subscription for a bookish significant other might be a good Christmas present. (And you could always read it yourself afterwards.)
More on McKeith
Gillian McKeith is a UK-based TV food guru. Her basic routine, in several series of half-hour TV shows, is to take a grossly fat and unfit person, persuade them to stop eating junk food and supermarket shit, and start taking exercise. Not surprisingly, this usually brings about a dramatic transformation in a few weeks.
So far so good. Nothing but good done there, you might think. And there are, of course, books to accompany the TV series, and they sell in vast numbers.
However, the lovely Gillian is another one who is a bit economical with the truth, and inclined to exercise her imagination somewhat; some of her more brazen activities were described here in January 2005.
Now there's more. The Times tells us that Gillian has recently been censured by a government watchdog for selling a range of endorsed herbal sex aids without a licence; furthermore, the sex aids don't actually work.
Gillian McKeith is broadly on the side of the angels in that she persuades people to stop killing themselves; but her business methods are questionable. On her web site she still refers to herself as 'Dr' McKeith, even though, as the Times points out, 'her credentials as a scientist have come under suspicion previously as she obtained a PhD from the non-accredited American Holistic College of Nutrition in the United States.'
Susan Hill blacklisted
I come a bit late to this, it seems, but Galleycat gave me an introduction to the story.
Susan Hill, who is a novelist, playwright and publisher, and excels at all three, did a bit on her blog recently in which she argued that the big-time 'professional' reviewers, in the posh literary journals, are increasingly irrelevant. In the process she was a bit outspoken about the ' – with honourable exceptions – arrogant, lazy, stuck-in-the-mud, cliquey little set of literary editors, and/or "mandarins".'
Now she's had an email from one of these arrogant et cetera, telling her that her books will never be reviewed in his/her journal again. And Susan chooses to let him/her be anonymous, which is too kind in my opinion.
Richard Lea in the Guardian will bring you up to date. Clive Keeble and Steve Clackson are among the commenters.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
O.J. Simpson and the book that never was -- yet
I think I’m going to assume that you’re more or less up to speed on black US football star O.J. Simpson and the murder of his wife Nicole, plus friend Ronald Goldman, in 1994.
Suffice it to say that O.J. was charged with murder and got off. Mainly because he paid for a massively high-powered legal defence team, which left the prosecution fighting well above their weight.
I wouldn’t wish to make too many broad statements here, but I think it is fair to say that most Americans, particularly white middle-class Americans, took the view that O.J. was in fact guilty as hell, verdict or no verdict.
A few weeks ago, a story surfaced that O.J. had written a new book in which he described how he thought the murders might have been committed -- speaking, as it were, from the point of view of someone who might have been there but wasn’t. Payment of $3.5 million for this book was mentioned.
Various notable and influential parties declared themselves outraged at the very idea of O.J. making any money out of such a book.
The book story was comprehensively denied by O.J.’s lawyer, Yale Galanter.
Then, last week, we learnt that there really was a book, called If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened. It was going to be published by Regan Books, part of the HarperCollins empire, which is itself part of Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corp.
Further expressions of outrage were then heard across the whole of America (and elsewhere). Just by way of example, abebooks.com did a quick and dirty survey of book buyers and booksellers and found that 97% of the former and 96% of the latter declared that they wouldn’t touch a book of that kind.
And then, yesterday or thereabouts, Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp boss man himself, announced that he personally had decided that the O.J. book project would not go ahead. Neither would Fox TV (another Murdoch/News Corp enterprise) be broadcasting the interview with O.J. which had been recorded by Judith Regan, head of Regan books; in that interview, it was said, O.J. as good as confessed to the two murders.
The Murdoch decision is announced in today’s UK Times, which is yet another News Corp publication, of course; and for a possibly more objective account of the decision, you can go to the Independent.
I think I will leave all the moralising about the O.J. publication to others, and just concentrate on a few aspects of the publishing process that I find intriguing.
First, I find it interesting that this book was signed up by Judith Regan. This lady has quite a publishing history, and has been variously described as ‘the enfant terrible of American publishing’, the ‘angriest woman in the media’ and a ‘foul-mouthed tyrant’. A former friend (former, I note) described her as ‘the highest functioning deranged person I've ever known.’
Regan has issued a 2,200 word statement on why she decided to publish If I Did It, and if you care enough about this case to have read this far, I recommend that you read the Regan statement in full. Some will regard it as over-emotional, and excessively personal, and it certainly rambles a bit in places; overall, however, I think it constitutes quite a reasonable rationale for publishing the book; and it also constitutes a pretty good defence of publishing controversial and ‘offensive’ material in general.
Then there’s the TV interview. Regan is no stranger to TV. She once had her own show on Fox, called Judith Regan Tonight. Buried somewhere within the mountain of print and talk which has already accumulated about this matter, there may be a clear statement as to who created the O.J. interview and who owns the rights to it. But I would be surprised, and disappointed in Ms Regan's smarts, if she wasn’t the ultimate owner.
Next, I wonder who actually wrote the new O.J. book. I think we can safely assume that the former football star did not pen it himself. Neither am I being entirely frivolous when I say that I wonder if O.J. actually read what his ghost produced. Many a UK sports star has cheerfully admitted to never having read his own ‘autobiography’, and indeed Roy Keane used that assertion as the main plank in his defence when challenged about the contents of his book.
Who first dreamed up this idea? And who owns the rights to If I Did It? Regan says that she didn't pay O.J. directly. ‘I contracted through a third party who owns the rights, and I was told the money would go to his children.’ If nothing else, this is an unusual way to write a publishing contract, and, judging by his reported statements, O.J.’s usual lawyer knew nothing about it. Publishers Lunch says that Attorney Yale Galanter told the NY Post that he had first learnt of the deal on Monday 13 November. That was the day when Regan recorded her TV interview with O.J., and by that time large numbers of copies of the book had surely been printed.
Speaking of numbers printed, Regan/HarperCollins have not officially announced a figure for the first printing, but Publishers Lunch says that ‘the initial planned cap of a 300,000-copy laydown was exceeded, perhaps by as much as another 100,000 copies. These numbers are essentially confirmed by Harper Canada CEO David Kent in the Toronto Star.’
Now that is one hell of a lot of books. Even 300,000 hardbacks occupy a huge amount of warehouse space and weigh – what? – hundreds of tons? So what’s going to happen to them? They’re going to be pulped? It’s a good many years since I pulped any hardbacks, but I seem to remember that it was technically very difficult; not like paperbacks. And what is the ‘shrinkage’ on this pile of books going to be? In other words, how many of them will walk out of the warehouse of their own accord, soon to surface on eBay? Lots, I expect.
Then there’s the minor problem of contracts. The ‘rights owner’ – as yet unidentified, as far as I know – presumably has a contract which calls for publication. Publishing contracts normally do. If the contract has been unilaterally cancelled, I would expect said rights owner to be able to argue for a considerable sum in compensation. Not to mention the ghostwriter, who may well be in a for a cut of the royalties.
All of that being the case, how come, I wonder, that Rupert Murdoch has had a sudden fit of conscience, outbreak of umbrage, sudden attack of ethics?
My guess is that he hasn’t had any such thing. Rupert has just done some figures on the back of an envelope. He has calculated the cost of dumping this project, and has worked out, without too much difficulty, that it is much less than the cost (to News Corp overall) of letting it go ahead.
Lots of outraged customers, stakeholders, and shareholders, can cause quite a lot of damage to News Corp, far outweighing the potential profit. HarperCollins may be a big company in publishing circles, but it constitutes, as someone once said, but a single pixel on the News Corp screen.
In other words, I see the Murdoch decision not as censorship, which I would object to, but as pure commerce. As such it makes sense.
Other businessmen, however, will also have their calculators out, and will be able to do quite different sums from those of Mr Murdoch. My insights into American culture are these days obtained by, so to speak, squinting through a keyhole into a large room; in other words, I only see a small part of the whole picture. But, ignoring for the moment the noisy Disgusteds of the US equivalent of Tunbridge Wells, my guess is that there are vast numbers of punters out there who would be quite willing to shell out, say, a discounted $20 or so for the O.J. confession.
I would be willing to bet, but for one little thing, that, within twelve months, some other publisher wll have picked up the rights to If I Did It, published the book, and had a number one New York Times bestseller with it.
And what is that one little thing which I think might get in the way of a new publisher for If I Did It?
Ah yes. It’s the fact that we live in the digital age. Where there is a demand, and where there is an expressed intention to suppress the object of desire, we can safely guarantee that somebody, somewhere, will digitise a copy and spread it around.
My wager is that, before too long, the text of If I Did It will be released, by a pirate, online. And so will the video of the TV interview.
Even those unauthorised releases might not entirely kill off an authorised version of the book. Far from it. But if the releases do happen, and if they take away the market for the book, then the rights owners of both book and TV show have an even stronger case for compensation from News Corp.
More, I suspect, later. This one will run and run.
See also:
Madame Arcati
Galleycat
Sara Nelson
If I Did It wikipedia
Suffice it to say that O.J. was charged with murder and got off. Mainly because he paid for a massively high-powered legal defence team, which left the prosecution fighting well above their weight.
I wouldn’t wish to make too many broad statements here, but I think it is fair to say that most Americans, particularly white middle-class Americans, took the view that O.J. was in fact guilty as hell, verdict or no verdict.
A few weeks ago, a story surfaced that O.J. had written a new book in which he described how he thought the murders might have been committed -- speaking, as it were, from the point of view of someone who might have been there but wasn’t. Payment of $3.5 million for this book was mentioned.
Various notable and influential parties declared themselves outraged at the very idea of O.J. making any money out of such a book.
The book story was comprehensively denied by O.J.’s lawyer, Yale Galanter.
Then, last week, we learnt that there really was a book, called If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened. It was going to be published by Regan Books, part of the HarperCollins empire, which is itself part of Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corp.
Further expressions of outrage were then heard across the whole of America (and elsewhere). Just by way of example, abebooks.com did a quick and dirty survey of book buyers and booksellers and found that 97% of the former and 96% of the latter declared that they wouldn’t touch a book of that kind.
And then, yesterday or thereabouts, Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp boss man himself, announced that he personally had decided that the O.J. book project would not go ahead. Neither would Fox TV (another Murdoch/News Corp enterprise) be broadcasting the interview with O.J. which had been recorded by Judith Regan, head of Regan books; in that interview, it was said, O.J. as good as confessed to the two murders.
The Murdoch decision is announced in today’s UK Times, which is yet another News Corp publication, of course; and for a possibly more objective account of the decision, you can go to the Independent.
I think I will leave all the moralising about the O.J. publication to others, and just concentrate on a few aspects of the publishing process that I find intriguing.
First, I find it interesting that this book was signed up by Judith Regan. This lady has quite a publishing history, and has been variously described as ‘the enfant terrible of American publishing’, the ‘angriest woman in the media’ and a ‘foul-mouthed tyrant’. A former friend (former, I note) described her as ‘the highest functioning deranged person I've ever known.’
Regan has issued a 2,200 word statement on why she decided to publish If I Did It, and if you care enough about this case to have read this far, I recommend that you read the Regan statement in full. Some will regard it as over-emotional, and excessively personal, and it certainly rambles a bit in places; overall, however, I think it constitutes quite a reasonable rationale for publishing the book; and it also constitutes a pretty good defence of publishing controversial and ‘offensive’ material in general.
Then there’s the TV interview. Regan is no stranger to TV. She once had her own show on Fox, called Judith Regan Tonight. Buried somewhere within the mountain of print and talk which has already accumulated about this matter, there may be a clear statement as to who created the O.J. interview and who owns the rights to it. But I would be surprised, and disappointed in Ms Regan's smarts, if she wasn’t the ultimate owner.
Next, I wonder who actually wrote the new O.J. book. I think we can safely assume that the former football star did not pen it himself. Neither am I being entirely frivolous when I say that I wonder if O.J. actually read what his ghost produced. Many a UK sports star has cheerfully admitted to never having read his own ‘autobiography’, and indeed Roy Keane used that assertion as the main plank in his defence when challenged about the contents of his book.
Who first dreamed up this idea? And who owns the rights to If I Did It? Regan says that she didn't pay O.J. directly. ‘I contracted through a third party who owns the rights, and I was told the money would go to his children.’ If nothing else, this is an unusual way to write a publishing contract, and, judging by his reported statements, O.J.’s usual lawyer knew nothing about it. Publishers Lunch says that Attorney Yale Galanter told the NY Post that he had first learnt of the deal on Monday 13 November. That was the day when Regan recorded her TV interview with O.J., and by that time large numbers of copies of the book had surely been printed.
Speaking of numbers printed, Regan/HarperCollins have not officially announced a figure for the first printing, but Publishers Lunch says that ‘the initial planned cap of a 300,000-copy laydown was exceeded, perhaps by as much as another 100,000 copies. These numbers are essentially confirmed by Harper Canada CEO David Kent in the Toronto Star.’
Now that is one hell of a lot of books. Even 300,000 hardbacks occupy a huge amount of warehouse space and weigh – what? – hundreds of tons? So what’s going to happen to them? They’re going to be pulped? It’s a good many years since I pulped any hardbacks, but I seem to remember that it was technically very difficult; not like paperbacks. And what is the ‘shrinkage’ on this pile of books going to be? In other words, how many of them will walk out of the warehouse of their own accord, soon to surface on eBay? Lots, I expect.
Then there’s the minor problem of contracts. The ‘rights owner’ – as yet unidentified, as far as I know – presumably has a contract which calls for publication. Publishing contracts normally do. If the contract has been unilaterally cancelled, I would expect said rights owner to be able to argue for a considerable sum in compensation. Not to mention the ghostwriter, who may well be in a for a cut of the royalties.
All of that being the case, how come, I wonder, that Rupert Murdoch has had a sudden fit of conscience, outbreak of umbrage, sudden attack of ethics?
My guess is that he hasn’t had any such thing. Rupert has just done some figures on the back of an envelope. He has calculated the cost of dumping this project, and has worked out, without too much difficulty, that it is much less than the cost (to News Corp overall) of letting it go ahead.
Lots of outraged customers, stakeholders, and shareholders, can cause quite a lot of damage to News Corp, far outweighing the potential profit. HarperCollins may be a big company in publishing circles, but it constitutes, as someone once said, but a single pixel on the News Corp screen.
In other words, I see the Murdoch decision not as censorship, which I would object to, but as pure commerce. As such it makes sense.
Other businessmen, however, will also have their calculators out, and will be able to do quite different sums from those of Mr Murdoch. My insights into American culture are these days obtained by, so to speak, squinting through a keyhole into a large room; in other words, I only see a small part of the whole picture. But, ignoring for the moment the noisy Disgusteds of the US equivalent of Tunbridge Wells, my guess is that there are vast numbers of punters out there who would be quite willing to shell out, say, a discounted $20 or so for the O.J. confession.
I would be willing to bet, but for one little thing, that, within twelve months, some other publisher wll have picked up the rights to If I Did It, published the book, and had a number one New York Times bestseller with it.
And what is that one little thing which I think might get in the way of a new publisher for If I Did It?
Ah yes. It’s the fact that we live in the digital age. Where there is a demand, and where there is an expressed intention to suppress the object of desire, we can safely guarantee that somebody, somewhere, will digitise a copy and spread it around.
My wager is that, before too long, the text of If I Did It will be released, by a pirate, online. And so will the video of the TV interview.
Even those unauthorised releases might not entirely kill off an authorised version of the book. Far from it. But if the releases do happen, and if they take away the market for the book, then the rights owners of both book and TV show have an even stronger case for compensation from News Corp.
More, I suspect, later. This one will run and run.
See also:
Madame Arcati
Galleycat
Sara Nelson
If I Did It wikipedia
Monday, November 20, 2006
Armand Marie Leroi: Mutants
Mutants, by Armand Marie Leroi, is not what you might think. It isn't a horror novel, or a piece of science fiction. In fact it isn't fiction at all: it's a serious and scholarly non-fiction work, and its subject is the human body.
More precisely, Mutants is a book about variations in the human body: some of them minor and almost welcome (red hair as opposed to black hair), and some of them not only unwelcome but also frightening and horrible: gross deformities, or mutations, which arise from deficiencies in particular genes, and from the errors made by the machinery that copies or repairs human DNA.
In the course of considering these mutations, Leroi illuminates the current state of research into genetics, and gives us a historical survey of the human fascination with such creatures. He also considers a number of related issues, such as the nature of beauty.
The first thing that a reviewer has to say about Mutants, in all fairness to the reader, is that you need a strong stomach to read the book, and an even stronger one to contemplate the many illustrations.
At least in the case of a Dutch child, born in 1995, with the remains of 21 foetuses (as determined by a leg count) embedded in its brain, we are spared an illustration; though such undoubtedly exist. But if you've ever seen Tod Browning's 1932 film Freaks, you will know what to expect. (Freaks was banned in the UK for thirty years.)
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medical men were fascinated by these accidents of nature, and the deformed foetuses were preserved and even collected. They were frequently referred to as 'monsters', and to have given birth to one, or even to have delivered it, must have been a frightening experience.
The birth of such a deformed child was widely regarded as a portent of something or other, and the parents would no doubt have been overwhelmed by feelings of shock, horror, and guilt. 'Of all the doctrines that have been occasioned by human deformity,' says Leroi, 'none is more dismal than the belief that it is due to some moral failing.'
As late as the nineteenth century, Leroi tells us, the citizens of Amsterdam bought Willem Vrolik's anatomical collection for the sum of 12,000 guilders. It contained 1503 specimens in all, 360 of them people with various congenital afflictions; most of these were infants preserved in alcohol or formaldehyde.
Many other institutions, such as Guy's Hospital in London, had similar collections. And on a less formal scale, when I worked in a hospital as a student, the mortuary technician showed me a pair of (dead) conjoined twins; they were wrapped up in an old towel and had been kept in cold storage for many years, for no reason whatever beyond their novelty value, as far as I could see.
I will not upset you with a more detailed description of the subject matter of this book. But I would not wish you to think that Mutants is some sort of popular, shock-horror treatment of a faintly revolting subject. It is not a fairground sideshow. It is, rather, a thoughtful and (as far as I can tell) absolutely up to the minute account of how and why things go wrong in the reproduction of humans and other species.
The author of Mutants, Armand Marie Leroi, is a Reader in evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College, London (a distinguished institution), and he clearly has an encyclopaedic grasp of all the latest research in this field. Some of the book is therefore not readily intelligible to the lay reader.
Nevertheless, the book is clearly, and rightly, intended as reading matter for the interested general reader, as well as the specialist, because the whole question of deformity merges into issues such as the treatment of diseases with a heredity component (such as breast cancer) and the problem of ageing in general.
Also relevant are the effects of certain drugs: thalidomide, for example, gave rise to a large number of phocomelic infants, though such were known before the introduction of that drug. In the eighteenth century, there was a famous Parisian juggler, Marc Cazotte (known as Le Petit Pepin), whose hands and feet were joined directly to his body.
History is, in fact, not short of famous if unfortunate people who were renowned and perhaps honoured for the injuries which genetic fate had done to them. There was Joseph Boruwlaski, a dwarf who was a favourite of the pre-Revolutionary French court. There was the Gonsalvus family of hypertrichotic (hairy) people. Less happily, there were the Ovitz dwarfs, who caught the eye of Joseph Mengele in Auschwitz; some of them even survived his attentions.
Cretins, castrati, hermaphrodites, albinos, and every other kind of human distortion, are all dealt with in this book. But they are dealt with kindly, with a compassionate touch. The causes of their afflictions, if known, are fully described in appropriate scientific terms, and their stories are told in human terms which will carry along those who do not follow the details of the science.
We may not be helped, for example, by the information that the most common cause of albinism is homozygosity for a 2.7 kilobase-pair deletion in the P gene, but it will do us no harm to have a greater awareness of the difficulties which are experienced by albinos; or indeed, by those born piebald, because there are some such.
Perhaps the most surprising feature of this book is, however, the style in which it is written. Not only is it readily comprehensible (apart from the pure science passages), but it is witty, thoughtful, and in places almost poetic.
At one point Leroi tells us, for instance, that 'the fragments of myth, folklore and tradition that remain to us from a pre-scientific age are like the marks left in sand by retreating waves: void of power and meaning, yet still possessed of some order.'
And Leroi is clearly a well-read man. In relation to Alexina Barbin, for example, a nineteenth-century French hermaphrodite who was brought up as a girl but who who developed a distressing habit of falling in love with other girls in her convent school (and later had to shave), Leroi reminds us that her case is reminiscent of Stendhal's De l'amour, in that, in the Romantic era, 'to love, to truly love, was to exalt the beloved, to abase oneself, to love without hope of return.'
This book was given to me by a neighbour, who told me frankly that she had offered it to others before me, and they had politely declined. I can understand why. Nevertheless, I learnt something useful from it in the first ten seconds, and you may too. If nothing else, it would provide raw material enough for a dozen novels.
Mutants is a learned, humane, and polished work, the outcome of many years of study and careful thought, and it is full of insights both scientific and intuitive. I am not surprised to find that in 2004 it was the winner of the Guardian's First Book Award. It certainly deserves recognition.
More precisely, Mutants is a book about variations in the human body: some of them minor and almost welcome (red hair as opposed to black hair), and some of them not only unwelcome but also frightening and horrible: gross deformities, or mutations, which arise from deficiencies in particular genes, and from the errors made by the machinery that copies or repairs human DNA.
In the course of considering these mutations, Leroi illuminates the current state of research into genetics, and gives us a historical survey of the human fascination with such creatures. He also considers a number of related issues, such as the nature of beauty.
The first thing that a reviewer has to say about Mutants, in all fairness to the reader, is that you need a strong stomach to read the book, and an even stronger one to contemplate the many illustrations.
At least in the case of a Dutch child, born in 1995, with the remains of 21 foetuses (as determined by a leg count) embedded in its brain, we are spared an illustration; though such undoubtedly exist. But if you've ever seen Tod Browning's 1932 film Freaks, you will know what to expect. (Freaks was banned in the UK for thirty years.)
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medical men were fascinated by these accidents of nature, and the deformed foetuses were preserved and even collected. They were frequently referred to as 'monsters', and to have given birth to one, or even to have delivered it, must have been a frightening experience.
The birth of such a deformed child was widely regarded as a portent of something or other, and the parents would no doubt have been overwhelmed by feelings of shock, horror, and guilt. 'Of all the doctrines that have been occasioned by human deformity,' says Leroi, 'none is more dismal than the belief that it is due to some moral failing.'
As late as the nineteenth century, Leroi tells us, the citizens of Amsterdam bought Willem Vrolik's anatomical collection for the sum of 12,000 guilders. It contained 1503 specimens in all, 360 of them people with various congenital afflictions; most of these were infants preserved in alcohol or formaldehyde.
Many other institutions, such as Guy's Hospital in London, had similar collections. And on a less formal scale, when I worked in a hospital as a student, the mortuary technician showed me a pair of (dead) conjoined twins; they were wrapped up in an old towel and had been kept in cold storage for many years, for no reason whatever beyond their novelty value, as far as I could see.
I will not upset you with a more detailed description of the subject matter of this book. But I would not wish you to think that Mutants is some sort of popular, shock-horror treatment of a faintly revolting subject. It is not a fairground sideshow. It is, rather, a thoughtful and (as far as I can tell) absolutely up to the minute account of how and why things go wrong in the reproduction of humans and other species.
The author of Mutants, Armand Marie Leroi, is a Reader in evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College, London (a distinguished institution), and he clearly has an encyclopaedic grasp of all the latest research in this field. Some of the book is therefore not readily intelligible to the lay reader.
Nevertheless, the book is clearly, and rightly, intended as reading matter for the interested general reader, as well as the specialist, because the whole question of deformity merges into issues such as the treatment of diseases with a heredity component (such as breast cancer) and the problem of ageing in general.
Also relevant are the effects of certain drugs: thalidomide, for example, gave rise to a large number of phocomelic infants, though such were known before the introduction of that drug. In the eighteenth century, there was a famous Parisian juggler, Marc Cazotte (known as Le Petit Pepin), whose hands and feet were joined directly to his body.
History is, in fact, not short of famous if unfortunate people who were renowned and perhaps honoured for the injuries which genetic fate had done to them. There was Joseph Boruwlaski, a dwarf who was a favourite of the pre-Revolutionary French court. There was the Gonsalvus family of hypertrichotic (hairy) people. Less happily, there were the Ovitz dwarfs, who caught the eye of Joseph Mengele in Auschwitz; some of them even survived his attentions.
Cretins, castrati, hermaphrodites, albinos, and every other kind of human distortion, are all dealt with in this book. But they are dealt with kindly, with a compassionate touch. The causes of their afflictions, if known, are fully described in appropriate scientific terms, and their stories are told in human terms which will carry along those who do not follow the details of the science.
We may not be helped, for example, by the information that the most common cause of albinism is homozygosity for a 2.7 kilobase-pair deletion in the P gene, but it will do us no harm to have a greater awareness of the difficulties which are experienced by albinos; or indeed, by those born piebald, because there are some such.
Perhaps the most surprising feature of this book is, however, the style in which it is written. Not only is it readily comprehensible (apart from the pure science passages), but it is witty, thoughtful, and in places almost poetic.
At one point Leroi tells us, for instance, that 'the fragments of myth, folklore and tradition that remain to us from a pre-scientific age are like the marks left in sand by retreating waves: void of power and meaning, yet still possessed of some order.'
And Leroi is clearly a well-read man. In relation to Alexina Barbin, for example, a nineteenth-century French hermaphrodite who was brought up as a girl but who who developed a distressing habit of falling in love with other girls in her convent school (and later had to shave), Leroi reminds us that her case is reminiscent of Stendhal's De l'amour, in that, in the Romantic era, 'to love, to truly love, was to exalt the beloved, to abase oneself, to love without hope of return.'
This book was given to me by a neighbour, who told me frankly that she had offered it to others before me, and they had politely declined. I can understand why. Nevertheless, I learnt something useful from it in the first ten seconds, and you may too. If nothing else, it would provide raw material enough for a dozen novels.
Mutants is a learned, humane, and polished work, the outcome of many years of study and careful thought, and it is full of insights both scientific and intuitive. I am not surprised to find that in 2004 it was the winner of the Guardian's First Book Award. It certainly deserves recognition.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Thursday stuff
Galleycat's tales
The Galleycat blog is normally good for a few interesting publishing stories. For example:
Deborah Smith, a mean-looking NYT bestselling author, refers to the 'all-around incompetency of the NY pub houses', and says that Anne Stuart 'succeeded on her own while surviving an enormous amount of publisher bungling that makes it, as I said, a miracle that any author rises out of the shadows to find an audience.'
Some writers really don't like publishers, do they? How could that be?
And then there's the news that O.J. Simpson really is doing a book in which he tells how he would have committed those murders, if he had, except that he didn't, of course.
O.J., even now, is not a name that means much outside the US, but this story reminds me that, if only I'd had the wit, I could have won some money for charity at the time of the original O.J. trial.
At that time my boss was an American, and he followed the trial closely. Towards the end, knowing that I had lived in the States for a while, he asked me whether I thought O.J. would be convicted. I told him no. By and large, I said, rich men don't get convicted of anything. That was true then, but less so now (Enron et cetera). I quoted examples; which I am far too cautious to repeat here. But my boss was quite sure that there would be guilty verdict. It's so obvious, he said.
Unfortunately I didn't have the sense to wager a substantial sum on the outcome. For charity, as I say.
One-liners
Time is running out and I am going to Ireland this weekend (hence no post tomorrow), so let's see what we can pass on quickly.
Google isn't the only outfit that wants to digitise the content of all the world's books. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Pastor Ted Haggard (why do I keep wanting to call him Father Ted?) has brought oodles of traffic to the site of one dedicated Christian who had deep suspicions about him years ago. There must be a book in this somewhere. To get the true flavour of Ted, you probably also ought to see Jesus Camp; thanks to Reese for the link. And if you really want to have a disturbed night, watch Pastor Ted in action just before you go to sleep.
Nicolette Jones, already well known in the book world, has won the 2006 Mountbatten Maritime book prize for her non-fiction book about Samuel Plimsoll, The Plimsoll Sensation.
I'm sure you're not short of things to read, but while I think of it there's another free ebook of mine (besides Avebury, that is). It's called Tales from the Retirement Home, and contains two short stories.
Speaking of Avebury, Steve Clackson, of Sand Storm fame, tells me that Google Earth has some stunning pictures of the prehistoric site as seen from the sky.
On Buzz, Balls & Hype, M.J. Rose quotes an experienced publisher on the nature of the business: 'We are engaged,' he says, 'in a quixotic act of legalized gambling.' He couldn't possibly have been reading that other free ebook, could he? No, no, obviously not.
Tom Bower's book about Conrad Black looks interesting (excerpted in the Sunday Times).
An interview with Clive James, also in the Sunday Times, proved more enlightening than most; but then, of course, I noticed that it was written by Bryan Appleyard. Should have known.
Peter Hall and David Hare say some surprising things about British theatre, e.g. that taxpayer-subsidised theatre has been a disaster. (I agree, of course.)
If you're a writer you might, perhaps, want to join Kimberly Dawn Wells's Write Kind of Life group on Squidoo. You have to register to get into a Squidoo group, which I think is off-putting, but maybe that's just me.
Bits of News is precisely what it says: various bits of news with associated comment: political, economic, scientific, technological, cultural. The organisers describe it as 'a sort of hybrid mongrel between the multi-user blogs, such as Daily Kos, and the traditional (though the tradition never amounted to much really) internet magazine, like Salon.'
Lynne Scanlon thinks that book editors should never be allowed to write jacket copy, and gives examples. I hated all of them. I usually ignore jacket copy until I've read the book -- or tried to.
If you believe in the new, er, paradigm, and think that words are enhanced by music, try the Chicago Public Radio's The American Life -- Stories of Hope and Fear.
If you're planning a UK-based police procedural or crime novel, you need to be reading police blogs. Commenter Jimmy provided a link to the blog of PC Bloggs, who describes her day with Mrs Dora Biddles. Meanwhile, in the Police Review, columnist Inspector Simon Hepworth says: 'I wonder if it is right for serving police officers to publish their blogs under a cloak of anonymity.' Indeed. We wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea about police work, now would we?
Ali Karim enjoyed the Stephen King show a great deal more than Madame Arcati did.
The Bat Segundo show interviewed Richard Dawkins (#78).
Speaking of Richard (we were at school together, you know; I keep telling people that, but not many are impressed), Publishing News reports that Tesco are going to include The God Delusion in their Christmas promotion. You have to laugh, don't you? Unless you're the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose.
If you like to listen to authors being interviewed, Danuta Kean has some Channel 4 Radio podcasts for you. Possibly adult in nature. It says. Ooer. Apparently Stuart McLean gets very personal indeed. Getting the podcasts to work is 'as easy as pi,' says Danuta, 'and twice as interesting (especially for anyone who wants to get published).'
I used to be very interested in the US mafia and all that. In 1958, at three o'clock in the morning, I walked past a car with a bullet hole in the window and a dead man inside. Well, all right, he was just sleeping, but you get the idea. I'm not interested in the Mafia now, on account of having grown old, but you may be, and if you are you should take a look at The Brotherhoods -- the true story of two cops who murdered for the Mafia.
Tim Curry reads Peter Pan. Good Grief. I wonder if he was wearing those fishnet stockings at the time. You can hear a clip too. Peter Pan is even weirder when read aloud than it is when you read the damn thing on paper.
Five Chapters is a web site which publishes a story a week, with one instalment each day. The site is not, in my opinion, easy to navigate, and the text size is too small and too faint. Apart from that, it seems to be quite a good idea.
Phil Ribaudo has written a novel called The Road Letters, and has published it through yet another self-publishing outfit called Aventine Press. I have no idea whether this book is good, bad, or indifferent, but Phil is doing all the right things. He has a web site, a very professional book trailer, sample chapters, recipes, and all like that. Good luck, kid.
Braindead
Finally, a word about those dreadful copyright pirates who put snatches of stuff on YouTube -- stuff that rightfully belongs to big companies, and has been used WITHOUT permission.
Take a look at what happened to YouTube usage in the days after Google bought it. The graph went flat. (Not at all sure that Alexa link will work, by the way, but take my word for it.) In other words, the kids have got the message. Google, the new 'responsible and ethical' owners of YouTube, are going to take all the fun out of it. If Google is going to delete, or try to charge for, all those bits of TV shows and so forth that the hardcore fans have posted there, then the kids are just going to fuck off and go somewhere else.
Google, the Times says, has held back $206 million (£109 million) of the $1.65 billion it spent to buy YouTube as legal security should any copyright actions be brought against the leading video-sharing website.
When will the braindead suits who run the big media companies learn any sense? No time soon, is my guess. The kids who get mad keen on a TV programme, or a film, and clip a bit of it to show to people on the web, and say Wow! isn't this great?, they're the best publicists in the world. And they work for nothing. It really isn't smart to treat them like thieves, and to try to charge them for doing your p.r. work for you.
The Galleycat blog is normally good for a few interesting publishing stories. For example:
Deborah Smith, a mean-looking NYT bestselling author, refers to the 'all-around incompetency of the NY pub houses', and says that Anne Stuart 'succeeded on her own while surviving an enormous amount of publisher bungling that makes it, as I said, a miracle that any author rises out of the shadows to find an audience.'
Some writers really don't like publishers, do they? How could that be?
And then there's the news that O.J. Simpson really is doing a book in which he tells how he would have committed those murders, if he had, except that he didn't, of course.
O.J., even now, is not a name that means much outside the US, but this story reminds me that, if only I'd had the wit, I could have won some money for charity at the time of the original O.J. trial.
At that time my boss was an American, and he followed the trial closely. Towards the end, knowing that I had lived in the States for a while, he asked me whether I thought O.J. would be convicted. I told him no. By and large, I said, rich men don't get convicted of anything. That was true then, but less so now (Enron et cetera). I quoted examples; which I am far too cautious to repeat here. But my boss was quite sure that there would be guilty verdict. It's so obvious, he said.
Unfortunately I didn't have the sense to wager a substantial sum on the outcome. For charity, as I say.
One-liners
Time is running out and I am going to Ireland this weekend (hence no post tomorrow), so let's see what we can pass on quickly.
Google isn't the only outfit that wants to digitise the content of all the world's books. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Pastor Ted Haggard (why do I keep wanting to call him Father Ted?) has brought oodles of traffic to the site of one dedicated Christian who had deep suspicions about him years ago. There must be a book in this somewhere. To get the true flavour of Ted, you probably also ought to see Jesus Camp; thanks to Reese for the link. And if you really want to have a disturbed night, watch Pastor Ted in action just before you go to sleep.
Nicolette Jones, already well known in the book world, has won the 2006 Mountbatten Maritime book prize for her non-fiction book about Samuel Plimsoll, The Plimsoll Sensation.
I'm sure you're not short of things to read, but while I think of it there's another free ebook of mine (besides Avebury, that is). It's called Tales from the Retirement Home, and contains two short stories.
Speaking of Avebury, Steve Clackson, of Sand Storm fame, tells me that Google Earth has some stunning pictures of the prehistoric site as seen from the sky.
On Buzz, Balls & Hype, M.J. Rose quotes an experienced publisher on the nature of the business: 'We are engaged,' he says, 'in a quixotic act of legalized gambling.' He couldn't possibly have been reading that other free ebook, could he? No, no, obviously not.
Tom Bower's book about Conrad Black looks interesting (excerpted in the Sunday Times).
An interview with Clive James, also in the Sunday Times, proved more enlightening than most; but then, of course, I noticed that it was written by Bryan Appleyard. Should have known.
Peter Hall and David Hare say some surprising things about British theatre, e.g. that taxpayer-subsidised theatre has been a disaster. (I agree, of course.)
If you're a writer you might, perhaps, want to join Kimberly Dawn Wells's Write Kind of Life group on Squidoo. You have to register to get into a Squidoo group, which I think is off-putting, but maybe that's just me.
Bits of News is precisely what it says: various bits of news with associated comment: political, economic, scientific, technological, cultural. The organisers describe it as 'a sort of hybrid mongrel between the multi-user blogs, such as Daily Kos, and the traditional (though the tradition never amounted to much really) internet magazine, like Salon.'
Lynne Scanlon thinks that book editors should never be allowed to write jacket copy, and gives examples. I hated all of them. I usually ignore jacket copy until I've read the book -- or tried to.
If you believe in the new, er, paradigm, and think that words are enhanced by music, try the Chicago Public Radio's The American Life -- Stories of Hope and Fear.
If you're planning a UK-based police procedural or crime novel, you need to be reading police blogs. Commenter Jimmy provided a link to the blog of PC Bloggs, who describes her day with Mrs Dora Biddles. Meanwhile, in the Police Review, columnist Inspector Simon Hepworth says: 'I wonder if it is right for serving police officers to publish their blogs under a cloak of anonymity.' Indeed. We wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea about police work, now would we?
Ali Karim enjoyed the Stephen King show a great deal more than Madame Arcati did.
The Bat Segundo show interviewed Richard Dawkins (#78).
Speaking of Richard (we were at school together, you know; I keep telling people that, but not many are impressed), Publishing News reports that Tesco are going to include The God Delusion in their Christmas promotion. You have to laugh, don't you? Unless you're the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose.
If you like to listen to authors being interviewed, Danuta Kean has some Channel 4 Radio podcasts for you. Possibly adult in nature. It says. Ooer. Apparently Stuart McLean gets very personal indeed. Getting the podcasts to work is 'as easy as pi,' says Danuta, 'and twice as interesting (especially for anyone who wants to get published).'
I used to be very interested in the US mafia and all that. In 1958, at three o'clock in the morning, I walked past a car with a bullet hole in the window and a dead man inside. Well, all right, he was just sleeping, but you get the idea. I'm not interested in the Mafia now, on account of having grown old, but you may be, and if you are you should take a look at The Brotherhoods -- the true story of two cops who murdered for the Mafia.
Tim Curry reads Peter Pan. Good Grief. I wonder if he was wearing those fishnet stockings at the time. You can hear a clip too. Peter Pan is even weirder when read aloud than it is when you read the damn thing on paper.
Five Chapters is a web site which publishes a story a week, with one instalment each day. The site is not, in my opinion, easy to navigate, and the text size is too small and too faint. Apart from that, it seems to be quite a good idea.
Phil Ribaudo has written a novel called The Road Letters, and has published it through yet another self-publishing outfit called Aventine Press. I have no idea whether this book is good, bad, or indifferent, but Phil is doing all the right things. He has a web site, a very professional book trailer, sample chapters, recipes, and all like that. Good luck, kid.
Braindead
Finally, a word about those dreadful copyright pirates who put snatches of stuff on YouTube -- stuff that rightfully belongs to big companies, and has been used WITHOUT permission.
Take a look at what happened to YouTube usage in the days after Google bought it. The graph went flat. (Not at all sure that Alexa link will work, by the way, but take my word for it.) In other words, the kids have got the message. Google, the new 'responsible and ethical' owners of YouTube, are going to take all the fun out of it. If Google is going to delete, or try to charge for, all those bits of TV shows and so forth that the hardcore fans have posted there, then the kids are just going to fuck off and go somewhere else.
Google, the Times says, has held back $206 million (£109 million) of the $1.65 billion it spent to buy YouTube as legal security should any copyright actions be brought against the leading video-sharing website.
When will the braindead suits who run the big media companies learn any sense? No time soon, is my guess. The kids who get mad keen on a TV programme, or a film, and clip a bit of it to show to people on the web, and say Wow! isn't this great?, they're the best publicists in the world. And they work for nothing. It really isn't smart to treat them like thieves, and to try to charge them for doing your p.r. work for you.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Miss Moneypenny unmasked
Few books have ever generated as much money as the series of thrillers written by Ian Fleming, from the 1950s onwards, featuring the British secret agent, James Bond. Today's Times suggests that, taking all sources into account, the Bond franchise has so far generated about $10 billion; that's billion with a b, and it is serious, serious money.
Not surprisingly, the literary estate of the late Ian Fleming is handled with due care and attention. Decisions are made by a company known as Ian Fleming Publications (IFP). The company's web site is currently under maintenance (it says) but it is normally found here.
One of the minor characters in the Bond books was Miss Moneypenny. She was, you may recall, the secretary to James Bond's boss, who went by the code-name M. And, as we noted here last July, Miss Moneypenny is currently in the process of publishing her diaries.
Sort of.
If you look back at my two earlier references to Miss Moneypenny's diaries, on 8 July and 29 August 2005, you will find that the publication of the first volume of a proposed trilogy of diaries was surrounded by mystery and confusion.
In summary, what happened was this. In July 2005, rumours of a Miss Moneypenny book began to circulate, and James Bond fanatics naturally checked with IFP for details. IFP denied all knowledge. Details of any forthcoming book were hard to come by -- no entry on UK Amazon, for example.
Then, in August, the Sunday Times ran an article which stated that the publisher of the Moneypenny diary (John Murray) had, at least for a while, tried to pretend that the book was somehow 'real'. The named author, Kate Westbrook, was, they maintained, a distinguished historian, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and so on. All of this the Sunday Times writer, Arts Editor Richard Brooks, quickly showed to be nonsense.
More importantly -- much, much more importantly -- there was confusion last July over whether, in order to publish a 'diary' by a character in the Bond books, the publisher and author needed, and had obtained, the permission of IFP, controllers of the Fleming estate.
The quotes from IFP in July, and in the August article in the ST, certainly left me with the impression that, initially at any rate, no such permission had been sought or given. 'In normal circumstances,' IFP's managing director was quoted as saying (August), 'we would have stopped this book. However, after detailed negotiations with John Murray we have reached an agreement.'
Which quote, I am sorry to say, I take to mean something like this: 'These slippery buggers at Murray thought they could get away with not giving us a cut, but now that we've hammered their heads against the wall several times, hard, they have seen sense.'
Why would IFP's boss say that 'in normal circumstances we would have stopped this book', if the project had been cleared with IFP from the very beginning, and there was every prospect of earning some income from it? IFP has, after all, commissioned several new Bond novels, written long after Fleming's death.
Volume one of the Moneypenny diaries duly appeared in October 2005, and, if the world subsequently wobbled on its axis, I am bound to say that I failed to notice.
Volume two of the diaries has just been published, nicely timed to fit in with the filmic debut of Daniel Craig as the new Bond. And, as part of the book's publicity drive, the author has written an extensive article about Miss Moneypenny; this article appeared in last Saturday's Times magazine.
The first thing we notice about this article is that the use of the pen-name Kate Westbrook has been all but abandoned. The article's heading tells us firmly that 'Samantha Weinberg celebrates the loyal and long-suffering secretary who helped put the ooh into 007.' And at the end of the article we are reminded that Secret Servant (volume two of the Moneypenny diaries) was 'written under the pseudonym of Kate Westbrook.'
What is more, we get a big picture of Samantha Weinberg 'doing her best Miss Moneypenny' impression. (The piccie is a good deal smaller on page 2 of the online version.)
Who is Samantha Weinberg? Well, it turns out that she's a pretty distinguished journalist and non-fiction writer, with a substantial track record. She also lives in Wiltshire, which shows remarkably good taste. But her agent's biography of her makes no mention of the Kate Westbrook alter ego.
What really caught my eye in last Saturday's Times article, and made me gulp a bit, was the first couple of paragraphs.
Corrine Turner, IFP's managing director, was quoted last August as follows: 'If this is fiction then it is very hard to tell the difference between fact and fiction. It’s very well put together. We were certainly led to believe by the publishers that there was a real Miss Moneypenny.' By the publishers, note. Not by Gillon Aitken, Samantha Weinberg's agent, or by Samantha herself.
There was no mention last August of Samantha Weinberg being introduced to IFP by Gillon Aitken, or to IFP being shown 'an outline for a series of "Moneypenny Diaries", which they seemed to like.'
All of which I find rather confusing.
That being said, the Moneypenny article in last Saturday's Times was tolerably interesting, as these things go. And whoever it was who persuaded the Times magazine to publish a blatant four-page plug for a new book, I take my hat off to them.
Not surprisingly, the literary estate of the late Ian Fleming is handled with due care and attention. Decisions are made by a company known as Ian Fleming Publications (IFP). The company's web site is currently under maintenance (it says) but it is normally found here.
One of the minor characters in the Bond books was Miss Moneypenny. She was, you may recall, the secretary to James Bond's boss, who went by the code-name M. And, as we noted here last July, Miss Moneypenny is currently in the process of publishing her diaries.
Sort of.
If you look back at my two earlier references to Miss Moneypenny's diaries, on 8 July and 29 August 2005, you will find that the publication of the first volume of a proposed trilogy of diaries was surrounded by mystery and confusion.
In summary, what happened was this. In July 2005, rumours of a Miss Moneypenny book began to circulate, and James Bond fanatics naturally checked with IFP for details. IFP denied all knowledge. Details of any forthcoming book were hard to come by -- no entry on UK Amazon, for example.
Then, in August, the Sunday Times ran an article which stated that the publisher of the Moneypenny diary (John Murray) had, at least for a while, tried to pretend that the book was somehow 'real'. The named author, Kate Westbrook, was, they maintained, a distinguished historian, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and so on. All of this the Sunday Times writer, Arts Editor Richard Brooks, quickly showed to be nonsense.
More importantly -- much, much more importantly -- there was confusion last July over whether, in order to publish a 'diary' by a character in the Bond books, the publisher and author needed, and had obtained, the permission of IFP, controllers of the Fleming estate.
The quotes from IFP in July, and in the August article in the ST, certainly left me with the impression that, initially at any rate, no such permission had been sought or given. 'In normal circumstances,' IFP's managing director was quoted as saying (August), 'we would have stopped this book. However, after detailed negotiations with John Murray we have reached an agreement.'
Which quote, I am sorry to say, I take to mean something like this: 'These slippery buggers at Murray thought they could get away with not giving us a cut, but now that we've hammered their heads against the wall several times, hard, they have seen sense.'
Why would IFP's boss say that 'in normal circumstances we would have stopped this book', if the project had been cleared with IFP from the very beginning, and there was every prospect of earning some income from it? IFP has, after all, commissioned several new Bond novels, written long after Fleming's death.
Volume one of the Moneypenny diaries duly appeared in October 2005, and, if the world subsequently wobbled on its axis, I am bound to say that I failed to notice.
Volume two of the diaries has just been published, nicely timed to fit in with the filmic debut of Daniel Craig as the new Bond. And, as part of the book's publicity drive, the author has written an extensive article about Miss Moneypenny; this article appeared in last Saturday's Times magazine.
The first thing we notice about this article is that the use of the pen-name Kate Westbrook has been all but abandoned. The article's heading tells us firmly that 'Samantha Weinberg celebrates the loyal and long-suffering secretary who helped put the ooh into 007.' And at the end of the article we are reminded that Secret Servant (volume two of the Moneypenny diaries) was 'written under the pseudonym of Kate Westbrook.'
What is more, we get a big picture of Samantha Weinberg 'doing her best Miss Moneypenny' impression. (The piccie is a good deal smaller on page 2 of the online version.)
Who is Samantha Weinberg? Well, it turns out that she's a pretty distinguished journalist and non-fiction writer, with a substantial track record. She also lives in Wiltshire, which shows remarkably good taste. But her agent's biography of her makes no mention of the Kate Westbrook alter ego.
What really caught my eye in last Saturday's Times article, and made me gulp a bit, was the first couple of paragraphs.
In other words, the story now is that IFP were involved, and gave permission for the Moneypenny diaries, from the very beginning. And there is no mention whatever of the publisher trying to persuade IFP (as reported in the Sunday Times last August) that the book was based on the diaries of a real MI6 secretary.A little under three years ago, my agent, Gillon Aitken, made a chance remark over lunch. “What do you think of the idea of a Moneypenny book?” he asked. “It’s brilliant,” I said without a second thought. “I’d kill to write something like that.”
As it happens, I didn’t have to. Gillon introduced me to Ian Fleming’s literary arbiters, I wrote an outline for a series of “Moneypenny Diaries”, which they seemed to like, and in a few short months had plunged myself into the world of James Bond, SMERSH and Miss Moneypenny.
Corrine Turner, IFP's managing director, was quoted last August as follows: 'If this is fiction then it is very hard to tell the difference between fact and fiction. It’s very well put together. We were certainly led to believe by the publishers that there was a real Miss Moneypenny.' By the publishers, note. Not by Gillon Aitken, Samantha Weinberg's agent, or by Samantha herself.
There was no mention last August of Samantha Weinberg being introduced to IFP by Gillon Aitken, or to IFP being shown 'an outline for a series of "Moneypenny Diaries", which they seemed to like.'
All of which I find rather confusing.
That being said, the Moneypenny article in last Saturday's Times was tolerably interesting, as these things go. And whoever it was who persuaded the Times magazine to publish a blatant four-page plug for a new book, I take my hat off to them.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Freedom of speech and the BNP
Freedom of speech is an issue which has been touched upon in this blog from time to time. For example, we have considered, you and I, Kembrew McLeod's book Freedom of Expression, and we have looked, more than once, at the wonders of the English law of libel. We noted that the most famous English libel lawyer, Peter Carter-Ruck, was described at his death as a man 'who did for freedom of speech what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen.'
And so on. But connoisseurs of this issue, particularly those outside the UK, may like to take note of a circumstance which has arisen in England during the last week.
There exists in the UK a small political party known as the British National Party (BNP). The party has a mission statement which you can read for yourself, but I don't think the members would complain too loudly if you described them as a white supremacist group. They might, perhaps, demur a bit if you described them as fascist, though plenty of their critics wouldn't hesitate to use that description. You could also describe them, in shorthand terms, as anti-immigration. Indeed the party leader seems to have made no secret of his view that all immigrants should be shipped back home -- wherever home is.
The party is headed by a Cambridge law graduate called Nick Griffin, and for several years now he has been going around making speeches -- as politicians do. Quite often, it seems, these speeches are made in front of audiences which deliberately do not include members of the press or other media.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, this exclusion policy aroused suspicion as to what was being said, and in 2004 the BBC smuggled in a camera and sound system to make a secret film of Griffin in action. Parts of the speech so recorded were then shown on TV.
In his speech, Griffin can be heard pointing out that, if the police got to know what he was saying to his supporters, he could get seven years in prison. So much, he implied, for the principle of free speech. He also described Islam as a 'wicked, vicious faith', and said that Muslims were turning Britain into a 'multi-racial hell hole'.
Sure enough, when this matter was drawn to the attention of Inspector Knacker of the Yard, and other authorities, Griffin was in due course prosecuted for using words likely to incite racial hatred.
At the first trial the jury failed to agree. But instead of then dropping the case, the authorities forced a retrial. However, on 10 November a jury in Leeds unanimously brought in a not guilty verdict on both Griffin and a colleague who faced similar charges. This verdict was promptly hailed by the BNP as a victory for free speech.
There were numerous reactions to this series of events. The most important, however, came from the man who is thought by some to be our next Prime Minister -- if ever, that is, our beloved Mr Blair should (God forbid) step down. Our next Prime Minister promptly declared that, since Mr Griffin had been acquitted, it was obviously necessary to tighten up the laws about what could and could not be said on racial matters.
But wait. By a curious coincidence (if you believe in coincidences), on precisely the same day as Mr Griffin was cracking open the champagne (kindly donated, the BNP tells us, by a French right-wing party), a speech was being made by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5.
Aside for overseas readers. MI5 (once department 5 of the Ministry of Information) is the body responsible for anti-espionage (and nowadays anti-terror) work in the UK. MI6 (the outfit that James Bond worked for) is reponsible for gathering intelligence from overseas. John Le Carre worked for both at various times.
Dame Eliza was speaking, as Mr Griffin had been, to a 'specially invited audience', and not to the general public. However, her remarks were issued to the press and were posted on the MI5 web site.
Young British Muslims, said Dame Eliza, were being groomed to become suicide bombers and her agents were tracking some 1,600 suspects, most of whom were British-born and linked to al Qaeda in Pakistan. 'We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer 30 ... That we know of.'
Here is another direct quotation from her speech: 'The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified.'
The response to this speech from Mr Blair, our glorious leader whom Allah preserve, was: 'I think she is absolutely right in saying that it will last a generation.... This terror threat is very real,' he added.
So. Mr Griffin describes Islam as wicked and vicious, and gets prosecuted for inciting racial hatred. The head of MI5 says that the range of factors that are motivating acts of terrorism include perceived injustices against Muslims around the world and extreme interpretations of Islam, and Mr Blair pats her on the back.
The fact that there is a a bit of a left hand/right hand problem here has not, you will be pleased to hear, gone completely unnoticed. For comment, you could try, for example, Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, or Libby Purves in today's Times, or just read the letters in today's Times.
And if you're really, really keen, when you've absorbed all that, and are in training to face an audience or become a Church of England vicar or something, then you might like to limber up by preparing answers to a few questions of the sort that used to appear in examination papers set by the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. (What the present practice is in those universities I know not; but, at a guess, candidates probably don't have to write essays any longer; just tick boxes. Such is progress.)
Anyway, as I say, here are a few questions of the kind that arts graduates of my generation used to have to answer: usually at the rate of four in a three-hour paper.
1. 'The English were driven insane by the second world war.' Discuss in relation to the immigration policies of successive British governments since 1945.
2. Enoch Powell was right. Discuss.
3. Compare and contrast the political philosophies of Mr Blair and Mr Griffin.
4. Immigration is one thing; occupation is another; and occupation by racial groups which are plotting the destruction of their host communities is yet a third. Discuss in relation to the present position in some British cities.
And so on. But connoisseurs of this issue, particularly those outside the UK, may like to take note of a circumstance which has arisen in England during the last week.
There exists in the UK a small political party known as the British National Party (BNP). The party has a mission statement which you can read for yourself, but I don't think the members would complain too loudly if you described them as a white supremacist group. They might, perhaps, demur a bit if you described them as fascist, though plenty of their critics wouldn't hesitate to use that description. You could also describe them, in shorthand terms, as anti-immigration. Indeed the party leader seems to have made no secret of his view that all immigrants should be shipped back home -- wherever home is.
The party is headed by a Cambridge law graduate called Nick Griffin, and for several years now he has been going around making speeches -- as politicians do. Quite often, it seems, these speeches are made in front of audiences which deliberately do not include members of the press or other media.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, this exclusion policy aroused suspicion as to what was being said, and in 2004 the BBC smuggled in a camera and sound system to make a secret film of Griffin in action. Parts of the speech so recorded were then shown on TV.
In his speech, Griffin can be heard pointing out that, if the police got to know what he was saying to his supporters, he could get seven years in prison. So much, he implied, for the principle of free speech. He also described Islam as a 'wicked, vicious faith', and said that Muslims were turning Britain into a 'multi-racial hell hole'.
Sure enough, when this matter was drawn to the attention of Inspector Knacker of the Yard, and other authorities, Griffin was in due course prosecuted for using words likely to incite racial hatred.
At the first trial the jury failed to agree. But instead of then dropping the case, the authorities forced a retrial. However, on 10 November a jury in Leeds unanimously brought in a not guilty verdict on both Griffin and a colleague who faced similar charges. This verdict was promptly hailed by the BNP as a victory for free speech.
There were numerous reactions to this series of events. The most important, however, came from the man who is thought by some to be our next Prime Minister -- if ever, that is, our beloved Mr Blair should (God forbid) step down. Our next Prime Minister promptly declared that, since Mr Griffin had been acquitted, it was obviously necessary to tighten up the laws about what could and could not be said on racial matters.
But wait. By a curious coincidence (if you believe in coincidences), on precisely the same day as Mr Griffin was cracking open the champagne (kindly donated, the BNP tells us, by a French right-wing party), a speech was being made by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5.
Aside for overseas readers. MI5 (once department 5 of the Ministry of Information) is the body responsible for anti-espionage (and nowadays anti-terror) work in the UK. MI6 (the outfit that James Bond worked for) is reponsible for gathering intelligence from overseas. John Le Carre worked for both at various times.
Dame Eliza was speaking, as Mr Griffin had been, to a 'specially invited audience', and not to the general public. However, her remarks were issued to the press and were posted on the MI5 web site.
Young British Muslims, said Dame Eliza, were being groomed to become suicide bombers and her agents were tracking some 1,600 suspects, most of whom were British-born and linked to al Qaeda in Pakistan. 'We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer 30 ... That we know of.'
Here is another direct quotation from her speech: 'The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified.'
The response to this speech from Mr Blair, our glorious leader whom Allah preserve, was: 'I think she is absolutely right in saying that it will last a generation.... This terror threat is very real,' he added.
So. Mr Griffin describes Islam as wicked and vicious, and gets prosecuted for inciting racial hatred. The head of MI5 says that the range of factors that are motivating acts of terrorism include perceived injustices against Muslims around the world and extreme interpretations of Islam, and Mr Blair pats her on the back.
The fact that there is a a bit of a left hand/right hand problem here has not, you will be pleased to hear, gone completely unnoticed. For comment, you could try, for example, Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, or Libby Purves in today's Times, or just read the letters in today's Times.
And if you're really, really keen, when you've absorbed all that, and are in training to face an audience or become a Church of England vicar or something, then you might like to limber up by preparing answers to a few questions of the sort that used to appear in examination papers set by the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. (What the present practice is in those universities I know not; but, at a guess, candidates probably don't have to write essays any longer; just tick boxes. Such is progress.)
Anyway, as I say, here are a few questions of the kind that arts graduates of my generation used to have to answer: usually at the rate of four in a three-hour paper.
1. 'The English were driven insane by the second world war.' Discuss in relation to the immigration policies of successive British governments since 1945.
2. Enoch Powell was right. Discuss.
3. Compare and contrast the political philosophies of Mr Blair and Mr Griffin.
4. Immigration is one thing; occupation is another; and occupation by racial groups which are plotting the destruction of their host communities is yet a third. Discuss in relation to the present position in some British cities.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Wilson Stephens: The Kennet
Wilson Stephens's 1985 non-fiction book, The Kennet, is a small book in every way. It measures about 7" x 5", and runs to 48 pages only. It contains, I would guess, less than 10,000 words, plus about 18 black and white line drawings by Gabriel White.
I found this book in the back of a dusty old junkshop, and the first question that I asked myself was, How could a book like this be economically viable? And the short answer to that is that it probably wasn't; but more of that in a moment.
The subject matter of The Kennet is the tiny English river of that name -- a river so little known that I would bet that many people who live within ten miles of it have never heard of it. The river has its source in Wiltshire, near Avebury, and it winds its way forty miles south-east to Reading, where it joins the Thames; and after that no more is heard of it.
Wilson Stephens was for many years the editor of The Field, a magazine for the hunting, shooting, and fishing brigade, and so clearly had a deep-seated love for the English countryside. Gabriel White was a minor artist who himself wrote books about Sickert and Edward Ardizzone.
Stephens chooses to describe the Kennet from the point where it joins the Thames to its source. The city of Reading, where the Kennet merges with Thames, he describes as England's Silicon Valley; this is the base area (he says) of the UK's advanced technology, and it lies half in the present and half in the future. And at the source of the Kennet we have the precise opposite: we have an area of famous prehistoric sites, and the land is more than half in the past.
It is clearly the area which surrounds the source of the Kennet which interests Stephens most, and his description of it is lyrical rather than documentary. Here, within a few square miles, we have some of the oldest and most famous prehistoric sites in the world: the English equivalent, loosely speaking, of the Pyramids.
Just to give a few examples: the Kennet, hardly more than a stream, meanders past the stone circles at Avebury (important enough to be a world heritage site), Silbury Hill, and West Kennet Long Barrow.
Stephens is impressed (and so am I) with the size and grandeur of these man-made features, which have already lasted for the best part of five thousand years. He makes the point that it would be a serious mistake to think of the people who built these constructions as primitive and uncivilised.
All in all then, The Kennet is an interesting if odd little book, which would be of interest to few, unless they live in Wiltshire, and the book would be hard to find these days, even if you wanted a copy. So why am I mentioning it?
Two reasons.
First, I note that the book was published by Muller, Blond & White, and thereby hangs. Let us begin with the firm of Frederick Muller.
The British Library records 354 books published by Frederick Muller, the first being in about 1932 (I say about because some books were undated). In the 1950s, Muller must have been quite a successful company, because it published the UK edition of Grace Matalious's Peyton Place, a book which was a big seller in the US on account of its 'racy' content. By today's standards it was about as racy as a well controlled church picnic, but you get the idea.
I had a book published by Muller myself, in 1980: Counter-coup, written under the pen-name Michael Bradford. By that time the company was clearly in some difficulty. I visited the office at one point, and was somewhat shocked by the cramped conditions in which the staff worked.
Muller at that time was owned by the UK television company HTV. But they never managed to make a success of it, and it ran up debts. There was a man called Antony White associated with the company at that time, and sometime in the early '80s he bought the company for a nominal £1. He was obliged, however, to take on the company's debt, which I seem to remember was £400,000.
I wrote another Michael Bradford book at about that time, and I was contractually obliged (I think) to offer it to Muller. Antony White took me to lunch to tell me that he didn't want to publish the book, which didn't distress me particularly because I'd made next to nothing out of the first one, and so far as I know it was never reviewed anywhere. But I thought it was odd to invite me to lunch to say no, when a letter would have sufficed.
Anyway, I see from my file that, by 1984, Frederick Muller had merged with the firm of Blond and Briggs. And, as the Wilson Stephens book demonstrates, there had, by 1985, been yet another desperate attempt to restructure and, no doubt, refinance the company, in the form of Muller, Blond & White. Unfortunately, I doubt whether The Kennet did anything to improve the firm's financial position.
At some point, all attempts to breathe life into this failing enterprise came to an end, and the firm disappeared into Hutchinson, now part of Random House, where not a trace of it can be found: not even an imprint.
It is possible that further details of the various incarnations of Muller, Blond & White can be found in Anthony Blond's recent autobiography, Jew Made in England. The publisher tells us that 'Although Blond’s various publishing enterprises all came to assorted grief, he left behind a legacy of brilliance which few others will ever match.'
And who, I wonder, is the power behind Timewell Press, the publisher of Jew Made in England? The web site is a bit coy on that point. Companies House tells us little, apart from that fact that the company was set up in 1997.
Anyway, it is perhaps worth making the point that those of us who are writers are often critical of publishers. But we ought to remember, just occasionally, that there are in this world even bigger optimists and dreamers than the writers, and they are the people who start up publishing companies, or buy them for £1 with £400,000 of accompanying debt. And quite often these people end up with rather more severe damage to themselves than that which is generated by a rejection letter.
Finally, though you will long since have forgotten, there is a second reason for mentioning Wilson Stephens's book on the Kennet. And that is that I wrote a book about Avebury myself. It was mainly a collection of photographs, with an accompanying description. What is more, I wrote it as an ebook and you can read it FREE of charge. Click here for details. (Note: it's a 4MB file, so with a broadband connection it will take a minute or so to open. On a 56K connection, you probably shouldn't bother.)
Avebury in Winter is a book that I wrote about three years ago, and published in early 2004. Looking at it now, I am slightly astonished by the speed at which bits of it have become out of date. The section at the start, on how to read a PDF file, was written because I then thought it was needed. But today, I suspect, readers are going to think it both unnecessary and condescending. And ditto for the technical notes at the end. Largely out of date, given the speed at which broadband has spread.
Whatever. You might like to have a look at Avebury in Winter just to see what can be done with an ebook if you wish to do so. But don't assume that you can make any money out of an ebook, unless it's on a topic of very broad interest.
I found this book in the back of a dusty old junkshop, and the first question that I asked myself was, How could a book like this be economically viable? And the short answer to that is that it probably wasn't; but more of that in a moment.
The subject matter of The Kennet is the tiny English river of that name -- a river so little known that I would bet that many people who live within ten miles of it have never heard of it. The river has its source in Wiltshire, near Avebury, and it winds its way forty miles south-east to Reading, where it joins the Thames; and after that no more is heard of it.
Wilson Stephens was for many years the editor of The Field, a magazine for the hunting, shooting, and fishing brigade, and so clearly had a deep-seated love for the English countryside. Gabriel White was a minor artist who himself wrote books about Sickert and Edward Ardizzone.
Stephens chooses to describe the Kennet from the point where it joins the Thames to its source. The city of Reading, where the Kennet merges with Thames, he describes as England's Silicon Valley; this is the base area (he says) of the UK's advanced technology, and it lies half in the present and half in the future. And at the source of the Kennet we have the precise opposite: we have an area of famous prehistoric sites, and the land is more than half in the past.
It is clearly the area which surrounds the source of the Kennet which interests Stephens most, and his description of it is lyrical rather than documentary. Here, within a few square miles, we have some of the oldest and most famous prehistoric sites in the world: the English equivalent, loosely speaking, of the Pyramids.
Just to give a few examples: the Kennet, hardly more than a stream, meanders past the stone circles at Avebury (important enough to be a world heritage site), Silbury Hill, and West Kennet Long Barrow.
Stephens is impressed (and so am I) with the size and grandeur of these man-made features, which have already lasted for the best part of five thousand years. He makes the point that it would be a serious mistake to think of the people who built these constructions as primitive and uncivilised.
All in all then, The Kennet is an interesting if odd little book, which would be of interest to few, unless they live in Wiltshire, and the book would be hard to find these days, even if you wanted a copy. So why am I mentioning it?
Two reasons.
First, I note that the book was published by Muller, Blond & White, and thereby hangs. Let us begin with the firm of Frederick Muller.
The British Library records 354 books published by Frederick Muller, the first being in about 1932 (I say about because some books were undated). In the 1950s, Muller must have been quite a successful company, because it published the UK edition of Grace Matalious's Peyton Place, a book which was a big seller in the US on account of its 'racy' content. By today's standards it was about as racy as a well controlled church picnic, but you get the idea.
I had a book published by Muller myself, in 1980: Counter-coup, written under the pen-name Michael Bradford. By that time the company was clearly in some difficulty. I visited the office at one point, and was somewhat shocked by the cramped conditions in which the staff worked.
Muller at that time was owned by the UK television company HTV. But they never managed to make a success of it, and it ran up debts. There was a man called Antony White associated with the company at that time, and sometime in the early '80s he bought the company for a nominal £1. He was obliged, however, to take on the company's debt, which I seem to remember was £400,000.
I wrote another Michael Bradford book at about that time, and I was contractually obliged (I think) to offer it to Muller. Antony White took me to lunch to tell me that he didn't want to publish the book, which didn't distress me particularly because I'd made next to nothing out of the first one, and so far as I know it was never reviewed anywhere. But I thought it was odd to invite me to lunch to say no, when a letter would have sufficed.
Anyway, I see from my file that, by 1984, Frederick Muller had merged with the firm of Blond and Briggs. And, as the Wilson Stephens book demonstrates, there had, by 1985, been yet another desperate attempt to restructure and, no doubt, refinance the company, in the form of Muller, Blond & White. Unfortunately, I doubt whether The Kennet did anything to improve the firm's financial position.
At some point, all attempts to breathe life into this failing enterprise came to an end, and the firm disappeared into Hutchinson, now part of Random House, where not a trace of it can be found: not even an imprint.
It is possible that further details of the various incarnations of Muller, Blond & White can be found in Anthony Blond's recent autobiography, Jew Made in England. The publisher tells us that 'Although Blond’s various publishing enterprises all came to assorted grief, he left behind a legacy of brilliance which few others will ever match.'
And who, I wonder, is the power behind Timewell Press, the publisher of Jew Made in England? The web site is a bit coy on that point. Companies House tells us little, apart from that fact that the company was set up in 1997.
Anyway, it is perhaps worth making the point that those of us who are writers are often critical of publishers. But we ought to remember, just occasionally, that there are in this world even bigger optimists and dreamers than the writers, and they are the people who start up publishing companies, or buy them for £1 with £400,000 of accompanying debt. And quite often these people end up with rather more severe damage to themselves than that which is generated by a rejection letter.
Finally, though you will long since have forgotten, there is a second reason for mentioning Wilson Stephens's book on the Kennet. And that is that I wrote a book about Avebury myself. It was mainly a collection of photographs, with an accompanying description. What is more, I wrote it as an ebook and you can read it FREE of charge. Click here for details. (Note: it's a 4MB file, so with a broadband connection it will take a minute or so to open. On a 56K connection, you probably shouldn't bother.)
Avebury in Winter is a book that I wrote about three years ago, and published in early 2004. Looking at it now, I am slightly astonished by the speed at which bits of it have become out of date. The section at the start, on how to read a PDF file, was written because I then thought it was needed. But today, I suspect, readers are going to think it both unnecessary and condescending. And ditto for the technical notes at the end. Largely out of date, given the speed at which broadband has spread.
Whatever. You might like to have a look at Avebury in Winter just to see what can be done with an ebook if you wish to do so. But don't assume that you can make any money out of an ebook, unless it's on a topic of very broad interest.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Friday fillets
Summary execution
Private Eye this week says that President Bush has had, at last, good noose from Iraq; he was hoping that a big swing in Baghdad would help him in the mid-term elections (though it doesn't seem to have done); and that Saddam Hussein has asked Lord Hutton to be his lawyer (an incomprehensible joke unless you're English).
And the Times this morning has Gerard Baker commenting on the proposed hanging of Saddam as follows: 'Characteristically among most of the world's intellectual and political classes there seems to have been a good deal more sympathy for Saddam than for the man who toppled him. How terribly uncivilised of the Iraqis to put him to death!'
All of which got me thinking about the topic of doing away with your enemies. Personally I don't think Saddam should be hanged. I think he should be shot. In fact I think he should have been shot the day he was captured.
Such a method of dealing with your enemies goes by the name of summary execution. And in case you think that I am being particularly brutal and insensitive, you may wish to know (or be reminded) that the question of summary execution has a longish, and not entirely unrespectable, history.
In my novel Beautiful Lady, written under the pen-name Patrick Read, and which was set in WWII, I wrote the following: 'The British government favoured summary execution for captured Nazi leaders -- put 'em up against a wall and shoot 'em. However, the view of other, more 'civilised' Allies was that legal methods should prevail; consequently the top men were tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.'
That was what I thought, then. Having been imbued, however, as a young man, with the firm idea that one should always check one's references, I looked this morning for evidence of that statement, rather than just rely on my memory.
I began with William L. Shirer's 1959 book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which is still, I think, a pretty authoritative source. But I can find no trace of a discussion of summary execution. Mind you, the book is 1200 pages long, so I may have missed it.
And then I did a Google. And what I found, of course, was that the question of summary execution in WWII is much more complicated than I had thought. There is a lengthy and interesting discussion of it in Leon Goldensohn's The Nuremberg Interviews. And that book as a whole looks as if it would be well worth reading.
Grooks
A commenter on my piece about Logan Pearsall Smith says that another writer with a similar approach was Piet Hein, the Danish poet, scientist, and architect. You can sample a few of his many thousands of 'grooks' here.
Narrative approach
The Seattle PI (link from Publishers Lunch ) carries a report on an example of the gift, or shared, economy in practice.
Three years ago, 'noted editor Tom Jenks solicited submissions from a few of his writer friends, then published six in the inaugural issue of Narrative Magazine, which was launched during 10 days of labors at a friend's sweltering house on Martha's Vineyard. There was no test marketing, no promotion, no advertising, no nothing other than a new Web site that had a two-page editors' note and six pieces with some formidable bylines, including Joyce Carol Oates, Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley, and Rick Bass.'
Today this free online magazine, appearing three times a year, has 15,000 subscribers. It is, of course, a pretty highbrow enterprise (at least by my standards), but Jenks's approach seems basically sensible: 'The audience is on the Internet now and the understanding is that it is an open and free medium. To bring people to literary work these days, you can preach to the converted. Or you can bring literary work to those who are not reading it otherwise. Our theme is: Let's make it accessible.'
Operation Emu
Back in June I mentioned a conspiracy-theory web site called Operation Emu. On investigation, by a bloke from the Baltimore Sun, this turned out to be a cunning plug for a novel by R. Brandon Barker. Well, now the book's out, and you can buy a signed copy. Wave it at the aliens when they arrive and you should be OK.
Lone Creek
Publishers Lunch says that any recommendation from bookseller Bob Gray is worth looking at, and Bob is currently keen on an April 2007 issue (yes, you're going to have to wait) entitled Lone Creek.
Written by Neil McMahon, Lone Creek features, among others, a Native American woman who wears a t-shirt that says 'Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorists since 1492', which I reckon is a darn good start.
John Symonds
Today's Times carries an obituary of John Symonds, a writer whose chief claim to fame seems to have been as the biographer and literary executor of Aleister Crowley -- sometimes known as 'the wickedest man in the world'.
Crowley was involved in magic, drugs, quite a lot of sex, and various other kinds of sin. Opinions of him vary: some see him as an opportunistic charlatan and con man, others as a genuinely dangerous magician who could draw upon dark powers.
Symonds's book on Crowley was published in 1952, and was given quite a lot of attention at the time. In the early part of the twentieth century there was in England a strong interest in magic and all things supernatural: consider, for instance, the Golden Dawn. And literary figures were often involved, from Yeats to Dion Fortune. In due course this led to Harry Potter and a thousand others.
Always trust a French lady
Chantal Burton writes from France to take exception, in the nicest possible way, to my assertion (Wednesday) that you should never trust a Frenchman.
There aren't really 3,000 literary prizes in France, she says. There are only 890. And they aren't all awarded in November.
'I for myself,' says Chantal, 'love to look out for the prizes that "normal" people do give - for example after the selection for "Renaudot" and "Goncourt" (2 of the 4 main prizes in the autumn season) these books are being read in schools by children and their teachers - and the "Prix Goncourt des Lyceens" and "Prix Renaudot des Lyceens" often is different from the one's chosen by the jury - and therefore even more interesting.'
Quite right too. I grovel in apology.
Romance rules
The Book Standard reproduces an article from the Bookseller about sales of romantic fiction in the UK. Mills and Boon are doing well it seems. As I recall, however, from a recent Publishers Lunch, the M&B parent company's annual figures reveal a less healthy position in the small print.
Hope for former colonials
Writers, as we all know, are often desperate to find a publisher. So desperate, in fact, that they even write to me, thinking I might help. And if you live in the US, then you might not think that Macmillan New Writing, a profoundly English firm, would be interested in you. But you might be wrong. David Isaak got a contract, and David Thayer has the story.
Oy! What about us?
Now here's a classic sentence from an article in Publishing News: 'Those of us who are concerned about the future of the book trade -- and that ought to be every publisher, bookseller, wholesaler, library supplier and librarian in the land -- owe a debt of gratitude to the BA Board.'
No mention of writers there, you will notice. Writers? Who needs 'em? Nothing but trouble.
Anyway, the article goes on about digitisation of content, as described in the UK Booksellers Association report, Brave New World. You can download this report for free, or buy a copy for £20. And there must be some ironic comment that I could make about that, if only I could think of it.
Lawrence Lessig is noticed
The Independent (link from booktrade.info.) has an article by Boyd Tonkin about Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons. Most of the information you will know already, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time.
As for the implications of Creative Commons, I am not too impressed by Tonkins's interpretation. 'The old principle of literary copyright is fast fading away,' he says, which I think is misleading.
Tonkin does us a favour, however, by drawing attention to Lewis Hyde's 1983 book, The Gift, which has just been reissued by Canongate.
Stephen King sings
Stephen King was in London, and, as you would expect, Madame Arcati was there.
Madame, we gather, was not over-impressed by the Hodder and Stoughton arrangements for Mr King's mingling with the masses. 'Are publishers the most cretinous people on this planet?' Madame asks. Well yes, indeed. That is a topic which has oft been debated in these very columns. But then Madame gets really rude, in terms which I could not possibly reproduce here.
Madame also took exception to the fact that Mr King was improperly dressed. (You will find it hard to believe, but the chap was not wearing a tie; and in the Middle Temple, too.)
And then Mr King sang. Or tried to. It was all too much for Madame, who may, just possibly, judging by her comments, have consumed one orange squash too many.
The great and wonderful thing about Madame is that, whenever she goes somewhere, you're jolly glad you weren't fool enough to make the effort to go yourself.
Private Eye this week says that President Bush has had, at last, good noose from Iraq; he was hoping that a big swing in Baghdad would help him in the mid-term elections (though it doesn't seem to have done); and that Saddam Hussein has asked Lord Hutton to be his lawyer (an incomprehensible joke unless you're English).
And the Times this morning has Gerard Baker commenting on the proposed hanging of Saddam as follows: 'Characteristically among most of the world's intellectual and political classes there seems to have been a good deal more sympathy for Saddam than for the man who toppled him. How terribly uncivilised of the Iraqis to put him to death!'
All of which got me thinking about the topic of doing away with your enemies. Personally I don't think Saddam should be hanged. I think he should be shot. In fact I think he should have been shot the day he was captured.
Such a method of dealing with your enemies goes by the name of summary execution. And in case you think that I am being particularly brutal and insensitive, you may wish to know (or be reminded) that the question of summary execution has a longish, and not entirely unrespectable, history.
In my novel Beautiful Lady, written under the pen-name Patrick Read, and which was set in WWII, I wrote the following: 'The British government favoured summary execution for captured Nazi leaders -- put 'em up against a wall and shoot 'em. However, the view of other, more 'civilised' Allies was that legal methods should prevail; consequently the top men were tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.'
That was what I thought, then. Having been imbued, however, as a young man, with the firm idea that one should always check one's references, I looked this morning for evidence of that statement, rather than just rely on my memory.
I began with William L. Shirer's 1959 book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which is still, I think, a pretty authoritative source. But I can find no trace of a discussion of summary execution. Mind you, the book is 1200 pages long, so I may have missed it.
And then I did a Google. And what I found, of course, was that the question of summary execution in WWII is much more complicated than I had thought. There is a lengthy and interesting discussion of it in Leon Goldensohn's The Nuremberg Interviews. And that book as a whole looks as if it would be well worth reading.
Grooks
A commenter on my piece about Logan Pearsall Smith says that another writer with a similar approach was Piet Hein, the Danish poet, scientist, and architect. You can sample a few of his many thousands of 'grooks' here.
Narrative approach
The Seattle PI (link from Publishers Lunch ) carries a report on an example of the gift, or shared, economy in practice.
Three years ago, 'noted editor Tom Jenks solicited submissions from a few of his writer friends, then published six in the inaugural issue of Narrative Magazine, which was launched during 10 days of labors at a friend's sweltering house on Martha's Vineyard. There was no test marketing, no promotion, no advertising, no nothing other than a new Web site that had a two-page editors' note and six pieces with some formidable bylines, including Joyce Carol Oates, Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley, and Rick Bass.'
Today this free online magazine, appearing three times a year, has 15,000 subscribers. It is, of course, a pretty highbrow enterprise (at least by my standards), but Jenks's approach seems basically sensible: 'The audience is on the Internet now and the understanding is that it is an open and free medium. To bring people to literary work these days, you can preach to the converted. Or you can bring literary work to those who are not reading it otherwise. Our theme is: Let's make it accessible.'
Operation Emu
Back in June I mentioned a conspiracy-theory web site called Operation Emu. On investigation, by a bloke from the Baltimore Sun, this turned out to be a cunning plug for a novel by R. Brandon Barker. Well, now the book's out, and you can buy a signed copy. Wave it at the aliens when they arrive and you should be OK.
Lone Creek
Publishers Lunch says that any recommendation from bookseller Bob Gray is worth looking at, and Bob is currently keen on an April 2007 issue (yes, you're going to have to wait) entitled Lone Creek.
Written by Neil McMahon, Lone Creek features, among others, a Native American woman who wears a t-shirt that says 'Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorists since 1492', which I reckon is a darn good start.
John Symonds
Today's Times carries an obituary of John Symonds, a writer whose chief claim to fame seems to have been as the biographer and literary executor of Aleister Crowley -- sometimes known as 'the wickedest man in the world'.
Crowley was involved in magic, drugs, quite a lot of sex, and various other kinds of sin. Opinions of him vary: some see him as an opportunistic charlatan and con man, others as a genuinely dangerous magician who could draw upon dark powers.
Symonds's book on Crowley was published in 1952, and was given quite a lot of attention at the time. In the early part of the twentieth century there was in England a strong interest in magic and all things supernatural: consider, for instance, the Golden Dawn. And literary figures were often involved, from Yeats to Dion Fortune. In due course this led to Harry Potter and a thousand others.
Always trust a French lady
Chantal Burton writes from France to take exception, in the nicest possible way, to my assertion (Wednesday) that you should never trust a Frenchman.
There aren't really 3,000 literary prizes in France, she says. There are only 890. And they aren't all awarded in November.
'I for myself,' says Chantal, 'love to look out for the prizes that "normal" people do give - for example after the selection for "Renaudot" and "Goncourt" (2 of the 4 main prizes in the autumn season) these books are being read in schools by children and their teachers - and the "Prix Goncourt des Lyceens" and "Prix Renaudot des Lyceens" often is different from the one's chosen by the jury - and therefore even more interesting.'
Quite right too. I grovel in apology.
Romance rules
The Book Standard reproduces an article from the Bookseller about sales of romantic fiction in the UK. Mills and Boon are doing well it seems. As I recall, however, from a recent Publishers Lunch, the M&B parent company's annual figures reveal a less healthy position in the small print.
Hope for former colonials
Writers, as we all know, are often desperate to find a publisher. So desperate, in fact, that they even write to me, thinking I might help. And if you live in the US, then you might not think that Macmillan New Writing, a profoundly English firm, would be interested in you. But you might be wrong. David Isaak got a contract, and David Thayer has the story.
Oy! What about us?
Now here's a classic sentence from an article in Publishing News: 'Those of us who are concerned about the future of the book trade -- and that ought to be every publisher, bookseller, wholesaler, library supplier and librarian in the land -- owe a debt of gratitude to the BA Board.'
No mention of writers there, you will notice. Writers? Who needs 'em? Nothing but trouble.
Anyway, the article goes on about digitisation of content, as described in the UK Booksellers Association report, Brave New World. You can download this report for free, or buy a copy for £20. And there must be some ironic comment that I could make about that, if only I could think of it.
Lawrence Lessig is noticed
The Independent (link from booktrade.info.) has an article by Boyd Tonkin about Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons. Most of the information you will know already, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time.
As for the implications of Creative Commons, I am not too impressed by Tonkins's interpretation. 'The old principle of literary copyright is fast fading away,' he says, which I think is misleading.
Tonkin does us a favour, however, by drawing attention to Lewis Hyde's 1983 book, The Gift, which has just been reissued by Canongate.
Stephen King sings
Stephen King was in London, and, as you would expect, Madame Arcati was there.
Madame, we gather, was not over-impressed by the Hodder and Stoughton arrangements for Mr King's mingling with the masses. 'Are publishers the most cretinous people on this planet?' Madame asks. Well yes, indeed. That is a topic which has oft been debated in these very columns. But then Madame gets really rude, in terms which I could not possibly reproduce here.
Madame also took exception to the fact that Mr King was improperly dressed. (You will find it hard to believe, but the chap was not wearing a tie; and in the Middle Temple, too.)
And then Mr King sang. Or tried to. It was all too much for Madame, who may, just possibly, judging by her comments, have consumed one orange squash too many.
The great and wonderful thing about Madame is that, whenever she goes somewhere, you're jolly glad you weren't fool enough to make the effort to go yourself.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Jon Courtenay Grimwood: End of the World Blues
When I reviewed Jon Courtney Grimwood's last book, 9tail Fox, I suggested that it belonged in a genre with the label 'speculative fiction'. I was ticked off by one commenter, who said that that was just a euphemism for science fiction; but another commenter pointed out that science fiction and fantasy quite often overlap, and that sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, and that speculative fiction is a pretty good term to cover books which don't fit comfortably into either category.
I'm inclined to agree with the second bloke. So I think I will call End of the World Blues speculative fiction.
The action takes place mostly in the present, or near future, but it's a world with a slightly different feel to it somehow; a kind of parallel universe. For one thing, it's a world in which Gully Jimson paints nudes. In that world we have the story of Kit Nouveau, a British ex-soldier with wounds in the head. Kit has ended up in Tokyo, where he has a potter wife and runs a bar for bikers.
Running alongside that story, and intertwined with it, we have the story of a teenage girl with dual identity. On the one hand she is Nijie, who has stolen fifteen million dollars and who rescues Kit from a man with a gun by driving an ivory spike into the gunman's head. And on the other hand, some long, long way into the future (I think), she is also Lady Neku, aka Baroness Nawa-no-ukiyo and other names, who is trying to get out of an arranged marriage and lives in a castle which talks to her.
At which point I hope you understand why I think this book is neither pure science fiction or fantasy. It is, in fact, a fairly hard-edged thriller, but not too gory, set in a strange world and peopled by odd characters. People get murdered, places get blown up, our hero is in peril, our heroine is in peril, and all like that.
I found it pretty entertaining on the whole, but it definitely isn't going to appeal to everyone. The plot, it is fair to say, is extremely complicated, with bluff and counter-bluff, and dead people who come back to life; and that's just in the 'real' world. In Lady Neku's world it's even more complicated. You really have to pay attention to what's going on, and remember things.
Round about page 230 (out of 342), I thought the action was starting to flag a bit, but at that point, within ten pages, the story perked up again. Now that I regard as the sign of a writer who knows what he's doing. I was rather impressed. And from then on I was carried along quite fast to the end.
Jon Courtenay Grimwood is a former winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel (Felaheen), and if he writes slightly weird books it's hardly surprising, because he himself was officially dead for two years.
I'm inclined to agree with the second bloke. So I think I will call End of the World Blues speculative fiction.
The action takes place mostly in the present, or near future, but it's a world with a slightly different feel to it somehow; a kind of parallel universe. For one thing, it's a world in which Gully Jimson paints nudes. In that world we have the story of Kit Nouveau, a British ex-soldier with wounds in the head. Kit has ended up in Tokyo, where he has a potter wife and runs a bar for bikers.
Running alongside that story, and intertwined with it, we have the story of a teenage girl with dual identity. On the one hand she is Nijie, who has stolen fifteen million dollars and who rescues Kit from a man with a gun by driving an ivory spike into the gunman's head. And on the other hand, some long, long way into the future (I think), she is also Lady Neku, aka Baroness Nawa-no-ukiyo and other names, who is trying to get out of an arranged marriage and lives in a castle which talks to her.
At which point I hope you understand why I think this book is neither pure science fiction or fantasy. It is, in fact, a fairly hard-edged thriller, but not too gory, set in a strange world and peopled by odd characters. People get murdered, places get blown up, our hero is in peril, our heroine is in peril, and all like that.
I found it pretty entertaining on the whole, but it definitely isn't going to appeal to everyone. The plot, it is fair to say, is extremely complicated, with bluff and counter-bluff, and dead people who come back to life; and that's just in the 'real' world. In Lady Neku's world it's even more complicated. You really have to pay attention to what's going on, and remember things.
Round about page 230 (out of 342), I thought the action was starting to flag a bit, but at that point, within ten pages, the story perked up again. Now that I regard as the sign of a writer who knows what he's doing. I was rather impressed. And from then on I was carried along quite fast to the end.
Jon Courtenay Grimwood is a former winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel (Felaheen), and if he writes slightly weird books it's hardly surprising, because he himself was officially dead for two years.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Midweek blues
Never trust a Frenchman
The Observer carried a story to the effect that there are 3,000 literary prizes in France, most of them, it seems, being awarded in November. And there are some people who take the view that the judging of these awards is not entirely objective.
Says the Obbie: 'The 60-odd life members of the juries of the major prizes find themselves accused of back-scratching, favouritism, self-seeking commercialism and downright corruption.'
Apparently it's the system whereby judges are appointed for life which causes all the trouble. 'There are systems in place,' says one commentator, 'that benefit everybody except the consumer.'
Hard to believe, really, isn't it?
A very common name
I had an email recently from a lady whose name is shared by only one other person on the planet: her niece. But my name is as common as muck. What is more, several other Michael Allens are involved in the book world in one way or another.
One such Mike Allen is a poet and editor of various anthologies of fantasy stories. Details on his web site.
Dawkins, God, and Pastor Ted
Fifty years ago, I was at school with a chap called Richard Dawkins. It was a boarding school, and we were in the same house, so I suppose I must have seen quite a lot of him, day in and day out, but I can't say that I remember much about him. He was a couple of years younger than me, and therefore, as is the way with schoolboys, he was almost invisible.
However, in recent years Dawkins has become highly visible, mainly through his books. Academically he is as prestigious as you can get, currently holding the post of Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and, despite the fact that they deal with complicated subjects, his books have managed to find a popular audience.
The latest Dawkins book is The God Delusion, which constitutes an attack, I think it is fair to say, on 'the idea of a supernatural creator that is appropriate for us to worship'. In the UK this book is selling remarkably well, with 9,133 copies shifted last week.
I was reminded of Dawkins by a post on the Riotlit blog (thanks to Daniel Scott Buck for the link). Said post, by Brad Listi, is about the Christian evangelist Ted Haggard. Yea, verily, the same Ted H who has just been been caught with his pants down -- and with a bloke too.
Brad Listi provides a link to part of Richard Dawkins's recent TV programme about religion, The Root of All Evil? In that YouTube clip, Dawkins shows Haggard at work, and then interviews him. To my eye, Haggard comes across as a very nasty piece of work indeed. As Dawkins points out, Haggard would have fitted in quite nicely as a warm up act at a Nuremberg rally.
The word that popped into my head, on viewing Pastor Ted up close, was 'psychopath'. So I looked it up. Turns out that Ted has a good many of the diagnostic criteria, but not perhaps a full set.
Oddly enough, the News page on Pastor Ted's own web site says nothing at all about his current difficulties, but the Times quotes him as follows: 'I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life.'
That much, frankly, we could have guessed from the Dawkins clip.
Henry Darger
Have you ever heard of Henry Darger? I hadn't, until yesterday, when I read a reference in the Times to an Artsworld TV programme about him.
Henry Darger was, apparently, 'a reclusive Chicago janitor with an amazing secret — a 19,000-page novel about a fantasy land, lavishly illustrated with intricate watercolours, which was found in his rubbish-strewn flat after his death in 1973.'
When I came to Google Mr Darger, I was rather dismayed to find that he is a controversial figure, being accused in some quarters of an unhealthy interest in child abuse -- and, some say, he was possibly guilty of murder, to boot.
Mobile Libris
Crumbs. Now here's something that really took me by surprise. Cantara Christopher, of Cantarabooks and several mentions here, told me about Mobile Libris, a New-York-City-based outfit run by Sharon Preiss. Working on behalf of authors or publishers -- big and small -- Sharon handles book sales at authors' readings and other book events. She is reportedly very good at this.
Just how good becomes clear when you go to her web site. See, for instance, the endorsements from the authors of The Nanny Diaries and HarperCollins, as well as some smaller names. But what really caught my eye was the number of events handled. On October 17, for example, there were six in one night.
Henry Baum makes progress
Henry Baum's book North of Sunset was reviewed here on 14 March 2006. I wasn't wildly enthusiastic, but the Poddy Girl liked it a lot. Now Henry has won himself an award: to be precise, North of Sunset was the grand prize winner ($1,000) at the 2006 Hollywood Book Festival. This got him, Cantara Christopher tells me, on to the books of top-tier literary agent Frank Weimann.
All of this was achieved, please note, through a book published by Lulu.com.
Perhaps because he sees opportunities opening up, Henry has decided to give up his blog -- or at any rate reduce his workload considerably. 'All the energy I expend here should probably be put into my novel,' he says. Which sounds quite sensible to me.
More unmentionables
Yesterday I mentioned, briefly, and at the risk of indelicacy, the question of bathroom books. And I knew that I'd read something more about that subject recently, only I couldn't remember where. Now I have remembered. It was at Void magazine. Where they are definitely indelicate about it.
Alternative Diana
In a comment on the Eve Pollard/Jackie Kennedy novel, mentioned last Thursday, Iain said: 'I don't know if we've had a what-if novel about Princess Diana, but if not, you can put money on it that we're going to get one. And probably more than one.'
Well, actually we've not only had one, but it was published while she was alive. And it was really rather delightful. It would have been hard, I think, for any reasonable person to take exception to it, because it was all so lighthearted and very human.
Entitled Di and I, the alternative Diana book was written by Peter Lefcourt, and was published by Gollancz in 1994. The Daily Mail described it as 'deft, clever, and very, very funny.' And the Sunday Telegraph said it was 'notably well written and extravagantly funny.'
It's a while since I read the book, but I seem to remember that Di and a new husband end up running a McDonald's franchise in America, and Fergie (currently Duchess of York) goes off with Ross Perot (remember him?).
Actually I think I might read it again.
The joy of selling
Tonto Press boys have further info on selling to the UK high-street shops, and promise an insight into dealing with the library service soon.
UK Writers conference
Kate Allan tells me that the Verulam Writers Circle (based in St Albans) is organising a conference next February. Speakers include Jonathan Stroud, of the Bartimaeus trilogy. (Did I ever read part three?)
Persistence pays?
Robert Eggleton wrote to me a while back and asked me to review his novel Rarity from the Hollow. I politely (I hope) declined, on account of the pile is far too big already, but I did mention him, and the mention drew a couple of comments.
Well, Robert is a persistent blighter, and when the associate editor of the Missouri Review was also a bit reluctant to give him her attention, he kept on nagging. She felt a bit guilty about not helping the first time around (as did I) and eventually she read a bit of the book and started thinking about it. You can read the result online.
The Observer carried a story to the effect that there are 3,000 literary prizes in France, most of them, it seems, being awarded in November. And there are some people who take the view that the judging of these awards is not entirely objective.
Says the Obbie: 'The 60-odd life members of the juries of the major prizes find themselves accused of back-scratching, favouritism, self-seeking commercialism and downright corruption.'
Apparently it's the system whereby judges are appointed for life which causes all the trouble. 'There are systems in place,' says one commentator, 'that benefit everybody except the consumer.'
Hard to believe, really, isn't it?
A very common name
I had an email recently from a lady whose name is shared by only one other person on the planet: her niece. But my name is as common as muck. What is more, several other Michael Allens are involved in the book world in one way or another.
One such Mike Allen is a poet and editor of various anthologies of fantasy stories. Details on his web site.
Dawkins, God, and Pastor Ted
Fifty years ago, I was at school with a chap called Richard Dawkins. It was a boarding school, and we were in the same house, so I suppose I must have seen quite a lot of him, day in and day out, but I can't say that I remember much about him. He was a couple of years younger than me, and therefore, as is the way with schoolboys, he was almost invisible.
However, in recent years Dawkins has become highly visible, mainly through his books. Academically he is as prestigious as you can get, currently holding the post of Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and, despite the fact that they deal with complicated subjects, his books have managed to find a popular audience.
The latest Dawkins book is The God Delusion, which constitutes an attack, I think it is fair to say, on 'the idea of a supernatural creator that is appropriate for us to worship'. In the UK this book is selling remarkably well, with 9,133 copies shifted last week.
I was reminded of Dawkins by a post on the Riotlit blog (thanks to Daniel Scott Buck for the link). Said post, by Brad Listi, is about the Christian evangelist Ted Haggard. Yea, verily, the same Ted H who has just been been caught with his pants down -- and with a bloke too.
Brad Listi provides a link to part of Richard Dawkins's recent TV programme about religion, The Root of All Evil? In that YouTube clip, Dawkins shows Haggard at work, and then interviews him. To my eye, Haggard comes across as a very nasty piece of work indeed. As Dawkins points out, Haggard would have fitted in quite nicely as a warm up act at a Nuremberg rally.
The word that popped into my head, on viewing Pastor Ted up close, was 'psychopath'. So I looked it up. Turns out that Ted has a good many of the diagnostic criteria, but not perhaps a full set.
Oddly enough, the News page on Pastor Ted's own web site says nothing at all about his current difficulties, but the Times quotes him as follows: 'I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life.'
That much, frankly, we could have guessed from the Dawkins clip.
Henry Darger
Have you ever heard of Henry Darger? I hadn't, until yesterday, when I read a reference in the Times to an Artsworld TV programme about him.
Henry Darger was, apparently, 'a reclusive Chicago janitor with an amazing secret — a 19,000-page novel about a fantasy land, lavishly illustrated with intricate watercolours, which was found in his rubbish-strewn flat after his death in 1973.'
When I came to Google Mr Darger, I was rather dismayed to find that he is a controversial figure, being accused in some quarters of an unhealthy interest in child abuse -- and, some say, he was possibly guilty of murder, to boot.
Mobile Libris
Crumbs. Now here's something that really took me by surprise. Cantara Christopher, of Cantarabooks and several mentions here, told me about Mobile Libris, a New-York-City-based outfit run by Sharon Preiss. Working on behalf of authors or publishers -- big and small -- Sharon handles book sales at authors' readings and other book events. She is reportedly very good at this.
Just how good becomes clear when you go to her web site. See, for instance, the endorsements from the authors of The Nanny Diaries and HarperCollins, as well as some smaller names. But what really caught my eye was the number of events handled. On October 17, for example, there were six in one night.
Henry Baum makes progress
Henry Baum's book North of Sunset was reviewed here on 14 March 2006. I wasn't wildly enthusiastic, but the Poddy Girl liked it a lot. Now Henry has won himself an award: to be precise, North of Sunset was the grand prize winner ($1,000) at the 2006 Hollywood Book Festival. This got him, Cantara Christopher tells me, on to the books of top-tier literary agent Frank Weimann.
All of this was achieved, please note, through a book published by Lulu.com.
Perhaps because he sees opportunities opening up, Henry has decided to give up his blog -- or at any rate reduce his workload considerably. 'All the energy I expend here should probably be put into my novel,' he says. Which sounds quite sensible to me.
More unmentionables
Yesterday I mentioned, briefly, and at the risk of indelicacy, the question of bathroom books. And I knew that I'd read something more about that subject recently, only I couldn't remember where. Now I have remembered. It was at Void magazine. Where they are definitely indelicate about it.
Alternative Diana
In a comment on the Eve Pollard/Jackie Kennedy novel, mentioned last Thursday, Iain said: 'I don't know if we've had a what-if novel about Princess Diana, but if not, you can put money on it that we're going to get one. And probably more than one.'
Well, actually we've not only had one, but it was published while she was alive. And it was really rather delightful. It would have been hard, I think, for any reasonable person to take exception to it, because it was all so lighthearted and very human.
Entitled Di and I, the alternative Diana book was written by Peter Lefcourt, and was published by Gollancz in 1994. The Daily Mail described it as 'deft, clever, and very, very funny.' And the Sunday Telegraph said it was 'notably well written and extravagantly funny.'
It's a while since I read the book, but I seem to remember that Di and a new husband end up running a McDonald's franchise in America, and Fergie (currently Duchess of York) goes off with Ross Perot (remember him?).
Actually I think I might read it again.
The joy of selling
Tonto Press boys have further info on selling to the UK high-street shops, and promise an insight into dealing with the library service soon.
UK Writers conference
Kate Allan tells me that the Verulam Writers Circle (based in St Albans) is organising a conference next February. Speakers include Jonathan Stroud, of the Bartimaeus trilogy. (Did I ever read part three?)
Persistence pays?
Robert Eggleton wrote to me a while back and asked me to review his novel Rarity from the Hollow. I politely (I hope) declined, on account of the pile is far too big already, but I did mention him, and the mention drew a couple of comments.
Well, Robert is a persistent blighter, and when the associate editor of the Missouri Review was also a bit reluctant to give him her attention, he kept on nagging. She felt a bit guilty about not helping the first time around (as did I) and eventually she read a bit of the book and started thinking about it. You can read the result online.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Logan Pearsall Smith: All Trivia
Fifty-three years ago, as near as I can figure, a schoolmaster of mine recommended that I should read Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith (LPS). Well, it's a bit late, but I've actually done better than that: I've just read All Trivia, which contains the whole of LPS's 'trivial' output.
The publishing history of this little non-fiction book, or series of books, is complicated, and would justify a scholarly monograph of its own. But as far as I can disentangle the facts from the catalogue of the British Library (BL), it goes as follows.
The BL records an undated LPS publication entitled Some Trivia; I suspect it was a privately published venture.
Then, in 1902, we have Trivia, published by the Chiswick Press. A mere 66 pages, and described as being 'Printed from the papers of A. Woodhouse, Esq. [or, rather, written] by Logan Pearsall Smith.' The bit in square brackets is presumably a BL insertion, and, equally presumably, the first book of trivia was written anonymously, or semi-so. Anthony Woodhouse, by the way, is described as being 'of Orchard Wheelhouse'.
Another edition of Trivia appears in 1918, this time published by Constable, an ancient and honourable firm which still, just about, exists, under the name of Constable & Robinson. This was stretched to 152 pages. And there is no mention of Woodhouse, with LPS being identified as the author.
Trivia was reissued by Constable in 1921, and More Trivia followed in 1922. Afterthoughts appeared in 1931 (83 pages), and in 1933 we get a combined volume called All Trivia. That is the version of LPS's trivia which I have been reading, and it claims to contain the contents of the earlier Trivia, More Trivia, and Afterthoughts. It also claims to contain Last Words, but as far as I can discover the last words never had independent existence: scarcely surprising, because they run to only eight pages.
The 1933 collection of All Trivia was reprinted several times, most recently in 1986, with a foreword by Gore Vidal; whom the BL, unaccountably, lists as Gove Vidas.
So, what on earth is All Trivia about?
It is, in fact, quite unlike any other book that I've ever read. It consists, for the most part, of very short fragments of prose, two, three, or four to a page, each with a descriptive title. Some can properly be described as pensees, and others as vignettes. Either way, they're short. Here is one, in its entirety, picked more or less at random:
What we have here then is a long (and yet short) series of thoughts, glimpses of people in the street, reflections, scraps of scholarship, gossip, catty remarks, complaints about going bald, getting old... and so forth. At the risk of being indelicate, I think I can say that this is the perfect bathroom book, to be dipped into while waiting.
When I reviewed LPS's A Treasury of English Aphorisms, back in August, I noted that, despite appearing to be a typically English man of letters, LPS was actually an American. Well, since then I've discovered a New York Times essay, from 1984, which tells you far more than I ever could about his background; and a fascinating story it is too. (Such are the wonders of the web, by the way. With a click of the mouse I can find a learned essay which would once, even twenty years ago, have required enormous labour to locate.)
Once he arrived in England, LPS seems to have known everyone. His sister married Bertrand Russell; Cyril Connolly was his secretary; he thought that A.L. Rowse 'might grow more mellow with the years' (but he didn't, of course).
My favourite trivial passages are, I think, those which one could properly classify as aphorisms, and which are contained in Afterthoughts. Here, to conclude, are a few of the afterthoughts which are, perhaps, relevant to the world of writing and publishing:
The publishing history of this little non-fiction book, or series of books, is complicated, and would justify a scholarly monograph of its own. But as far as I can disentangle the facts from the catalogue of the British Library (BL), it goes as follows.
The BL records an undated LPS publication entitled Some Trivia; I suspect it was a privately published venture.
Then, in 1902, we have Trivia, published by the Chiswick Press. A mere 66 pages, and described as being 'Printed from the papers of A. Woodhouse, Esq. [or, rather, written] by Logan Pearsall Smith.' The bit in square brackets is presumably a BL insertion, and, equally presumably, the first book of trivia was written anonymously, or semi-so. Anthony Woodhouse, by the way, is described as being 'of Orchard Wheelhouse'.
Another edition of Trivia appears in 1918, this time published by Constable, an ancient and honourable firm which still, just about, exists, under the name of Constable & Robinson. This was stretched to 152 pages. And there is no mention of Woodhouse, with LPS being identified as the author.
Trivia was reissued by Constable in 1921, and More Trivia followed in 1922. Afterthoughts appeared in 1931 (83 pages), and in 1933 we get a combined volume called All Trivia. That is the version of LPS's trivia which I have been reading, and it claims to contain the contents of the earlier Trivia, More Trivia, and Afterthoughts. It also claims to contain Last Words, but as far as I can discover the last words never had independent existence: scarcely surprising, because they run to only eight pages.
The 1933 collection of All Trivia was reprinted several times, most recently in 1986, with a foreword by Gore Vidal; whom the BL, unaccountably, lists as Gove Vidas.
So, what on earth is All Trivia about?
It is, in fact, quite unlike any other book that I've ever read. It consists, for the most part, of very short fragments of prose, two, three, or four to a page, each with a descriptive title. Some can properly be described as pensees, and others as vignettes. Either way, they're short. Here is one, in its entirety, picked more or less at random:
LPS, as you may have gathered, came from Quaker stock.THE POPES OF ROME
I love to lie in bed and read the lives of the Popes of Rome. I think I could read for ever the biographies of those Pontiffs. For while I am absorbed in the goings-on of one Innocent or Pius, the Pope before him fades away; the earlier Vicars of Christ have all vanished from my failing memory; I am ready to read anew, with ever-renewed astonishment, the outrageous doings of those holy and obstinate men.
What we have here then is a long (and yet short) series of thoughts, glimpses of people in the street, reflections, scraps of scholarship, gossip, catty remarks, complaints about going bald, getting old... and so forth. At the risk of being indelicate, I think I can say that this is the perfect bathroom book, to be dipped into while waiting.
When I reviewed LPS's A Treasury of English Aphorisms, back in August, I noted that, despite appearing to be a typically English man of letters, LPS was actually an American. Well, since then I've discovered a New York Times essay, from 1984, which tells you far more than I ever could about his background; and a fascinating story it is too. (Such are the wonders of the web, by the way. With a click of the mouse I can find a learned essay which would once, even twenty years ago, have required enormous labour to locate.)
Once he arrived in England, LPS seems to have known everyone. His sister married Bertrand Russell; Cyril Connolly was his secretary; he thought that A.L. Rowse 'might grow more mellow with the years' (but he didn't, of course).
My favourite trivial passages are, I think, those which one could properly classify as aphorisms, and which are contained in Afterthoughts. Here, to conclude, are a few of the afterthoughts which are, perhaps, relevant to the world of writing and publishing:
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.And finally, I believe, it is worth including LPS's epilogue in full. The reference to great writers, I think we can safely conclude, is largely, but not entirely, ironic.
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!
If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
When we find it amusing to shock people, we forget how shocking the experience it is.
A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.
If you are losing your leisure, look out! You may be losing your soul.
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
It is the misery of young people that they have to read each other's
books.
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.
Give me a bed and a book and I am happy.
EPILOGUE
'What funny coats you wear, dear Readers! And your hats! The thought of your hats does make me laugh.' Thus across the great gulf of Time I send, with a wave of my hand, a greeting to that quaint people we call Posterity, whom I, like other great writers, claim as my readers -- urging them to hurry up and get born, that they may have the pleasure of reading TRIVIA.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Robert Harris: Imperium
Let us begin with the author.
Robert Harris made his name initially as a political journalist for the UK broadsheets (i.e. the more respectable newspapers). In the 1980s he wrote a number of non-fiction books on political subjects. He had long nursed, however, ambitions to be a novelist, and in 1992 he wrote Fatherland.
This was a piece of alternative history. It took place in a parallel universe in which Germany won the second world war. Given Harris's extensive contacts in the media -- television as well as the press -- it is not surprising that Fatherland was something of a hit; and this was not entirely undeserved, because it was a pretty capable thriller.
Next came Enigma, another thriller, this time about the WWII code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. Readable, but no great shakes in my opinion. And finally in the thriller series, Archangel, a book about a long-forgotten son of Stalin's, and a novel which in my opinion was less than convincing.
In other words, what we have here so far is an odd sort of fictional career, in that the books -- to this reader at least -- tended to disimprove as they appeared. With most writers it's the other way round.
For his fourth book, Harris turned to the lays, so to speak, of ancient Rome. He wrote a book called Pompeii, which I'm afraid, given his track record, I didn't bother to read. And now we have Imperium, which is a novel about the life of Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), said to be the greatest orator of all time.
I have been reading a copy of the American edition of Imperium, the cover of which seems to me to be thoroughly uninspired. The UK one is no better, though less cluttered. The US cover has a picture of a golden wreath of laurels, of the kind which some Roman emperors wore on formal occasions, and were pictured as wearing on coins. And absolutely no one, I would say, is going to see this cover in a bookshop and go, Ooh, wow, that looks really interesting.
In the first place, what does imperium mean? It means precious little to me, and yet I was once taught Latin and some ancient history. What does it mean to some product of your local comprehensive? Bugger all, I suggest. (To save you reaching for the dictionary, Oxford says that imperium means absolute power, and is a seventeenth-century term.)
And what of the general design of Imperium? That's not very enticing either. The pages are long, and Mr Harris is not keen on paragraphs, so the appearance of the text is solid and uninviting. Page 72, for example, contains no paragraph breaks at all, and is just an unbroken slab of prose.
However, we soldier on, if without much enthusiasm so far.
The novel turns out to be a biographical account of Cicero's early public life, as related (in the first person) by his domestic slave and secretary, Tiro. Said Tiro was, it seems, the inventor of shorthand, and was thus able to write down Cicero's speeches as they were made, and was also able to take verbatim notes of discussions -- a talent which, as the book explains, sometimes alarmed those with whom Cicero spoke.
Cicero, it turns out, was both a lawyer and a politician, ambitious, able, and hard-working. A decent man, on the side of the oppressed. So far so good.
The first part of the novel describes how Cicero acts on behalf of those who have been robbed and worse by the governor of Sicily, one Gaius Verres. And it's an interesting enough story as far as it goes. The politics of ancient Rome were, however, fiendishly complicated, and this requires Tiro to spend much time and space explaining things to us; this does not help the story along.
By about page 50, I was making a note that this is a very masculine book. It's a book all about men. Women very seldom get a look in. And that's all very well, and no doubt true to its period, but is it going to help the author to find readers? I rather doubt it.
One of the few female characters who does appear is Terentia, Cicero's wife, who on page 122 gives her husband some good advice: 'Make your speech shorter!' This is a maxim which Tiro/Harris might have taken to heart.
Halfway thorough the book, at page 150, Cicero achieves his first major triumph. And at that point, I'm afraid, I stopped reading. The rest of the book, from a quick look, seems to be more of the same. And overall the book is reportedly the first of a trilogy.
There is no doubt whatever that Robert Harris has an intellect of the first order. He has a most astute eye for politicians, whether in ancient Rome or our own times, and he has evidently done an enormous amount of research. And Cicero was undeniably a fascinating man. But did I want to go on reading, after part one? Sadly, no.
And what of sales? Making full use of his old contacts at the Times and the Sunday Times no doubt enabled Harris to achieve the big extracts and interviews which were featured in those newspapers at the time of publication (4 September in the UK). But as of 4 November the book does not appear on the Times list of the 50 bestsellers. Neither, so far as I can see, is it featuring high on any of the various US lists. It's just not that kind of book.
Robert Harris made his name initially as a political journalist for the UK broadsheets (i.e. the more respectable newspapers). In the 1980s he wrote a number of non-fiction books on political subjects. He had long nursed, however, ambitions to be a novelist, and in 1992 he wrote Fatherland.
This was a piece of alternative history. It took place in a parallel universe in which Germany won the second world war. Given Harris's extensive contacts in the media -- television as well as the press -- it is not surprising that Fatherland was something of a hit; and this was not entirely undeserved, because it was a pretty capable thriller.
Next came Enigma, another thriller, this time about the WWII code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. Readable, but no great shakes in my opinion. And finally in the thriller series, Archangel, a book about a long-forgotten son of Stalin's, and a novel which in my opinion was less than convincing.
In other words, what we have here so far is an odd sort of fictional career, in that the books -- to this reader at least -- tended to disimprove as they appeared. With most writers it's the other way round.
For his fourth book, Harris turned to the lays, so to speak, of ancient Rome. He wrote a book called Pompeii, which I'm afraid, given his track record, I didn't bother to read. And now we have Imperium, which is a novel about the life of Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), said to be the greatest orator of all time.
I have been reading a copy of the American edition of Imperium, the cover of which seems to me to be thoroughly uninspired. The UK one is no better, though less cluttered. The US cover has a picture of a golden wreath of laurels, of the kind which some Roman emperors wore on formal occasions, and were pictured as wearing on coins. And absolutely no one, I would say, is going to see this cover in a bookshop and go, Ooh, wow, that looks really interesting.
In the first place, what does imperium mean? It means precious little to me, and yet I was once taught Latin and some ancient history. What does it mean to some product of your local comprehensive? Bugger all, I suggest. (To save you reaching for the dictionary, Oxford says that imperium means absolute power, and is a seventeenth-century term.)
And what of the general design of Imperium? That's not very enticing either. The pages are long, and Mr Harris is not keen on paragraphs, so the appearance of the text is solid and uninviting. Page 72, for example, contains no paragraph breaks at all, and is just an unbroken slab of prose.
However, we soldier on, if without much enthusiasm so far.
The novel turns out to be a biographical account of Cicero's early public life, as related (in the first person) by his domestic slave and secretary, Tiro. Said Tiro was, it seems, the inventor of shorthand, and was thus able to write down Cicero's speeches as they were made, and was also able to take verbatim notes of discussions -- a talent which, as the book explains, sometimes alarmed those with whom Cicero spoke.
Cicero, it turns out, was both a lawyer and a politician, ambitious, able, and hard-working. A decent man, on the side of the oppressed. So far so good.
The first part of the novel describes how Cicero acts on behalf of those who have been robbed and worse by the governor of Sicily, one Gaius Verres. And it's an interesting enough story as far as it goes. The politics of ancient Rome were, however, fiendishly complicated, and this requires Tiro to spend much time and space explaining things to us; this does not help the story along.
By about page 50, I was making a note that this is a very masculine book. It's a book all about men. Women very seldom get a look in. And that's all very well, and no doubt true to its period, but is it going to help the author to find readers? I rather doubt it.
One of the few female characters who does appear is Terentia, Cicero's wife, who on page 122 gives her husband some good advice: 'Make your speech shorter!' This is a maxim which Tiro/Harris might have taken to heart.
Halfway thorough the book, at page 150, Cicero achieves his first major triumph. And at that point, I'm afraid, I stopped reading. The rest of the book, from a quick look, seems to be more of the same. And overall the book is reportedly the first of a trilogy.
There is no doubt whatever that Robert Harris has an intellect of the first order. He has a most astute eye for politicians, whether in ancient Rome or our own times, and he has evidently done an enormous amount of research. And Cicero was undeniably a fascinating man. But did I want to go on reading, after part one? Sadly, no.
And what of sales? Making full use of his old contacts at the Times and the Sunday Times no doubt enabled Harris to achieve the big extracts and interviews which were featured in those newspapers at the time of publication (4 September in the UK). But as of 4 November the book does not appear on the Times list of the 50 bestsellers. Neither, so far as I can see, is it featuring high on any of the various US lists. It's just not that kind of book.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Friday extras
Here are a few more bits and pieces which didn't make it into yesterday's post.
L. Lee Lowe has written the start of a Christmas story and invites others to finish it: young people especially welcome.
About eighteen months ago, I ran a short piece about Susanne McDadd's Publishing Services, and one of the books which she now handles is by Stephen D. Smith, aka the Rumpole of Rotherham. Lots of info about his Boozers Ballcocks and Bail is available on his web site, including sample chapters. It occurs to me that young Albert, who appears in chapter one, really ought to have been et by a lion.
UK-based readers who are interested in self-publishing or the technology of printing should have a look at RPM. This is a firm based in West Sussex with a keen eye on how modern digital printing can save money and assist those interested in short runs as well as long. Reams of stuff about self-publishing too.
Should you live in New York City, you can get free entertainment every third Wednesday night. Rachel Kramer Bussell, Village Voice columnist and erotic short-story writer, tells you all about it on her web site. She has published several collections of her own work, and appears in more anthologies than you can easily count. The young are so energetic!
Abebooks, which has sold 100 million books, has a blog.
Unsolicited says that book publicists suck. What can this possibly mean? Half the time I don't understand what young people are talking about. And where is East Buttfuck? (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
James Herbert is one of those down-market, low-profile writers who is never mentioned in the Times Literary Supplement but whose books sell in vast numbers. Currently he is at number 17 on the Times top 50 list, with The Secret of Crickley Hall. Herbert writes in the horror/thriller genre. I tried one of his early successes, years ago, and found it revolting so I haven't been back since, but he is, shall we say, not ignored by those who like that kind of thing.
If you are interested in the Long Tail phenomenon, discussed here more than once, the Sunday Times has some valuable reflections on the fracturing of the mass market. Closely related to that first article is another one on 'big earnings from small sales'.
Also quite amusing, from a certain point of view, is the Sunday Times's 'Geek breaks the iPod code', which describes how yet another teenager took a dim view of digital rights management. And he seems to be making a living out of it.
Cantara Christopher is one of those highly energetic and positive people who take it upon themselves to set up new publishing companies (Cantarabooks), new literary magazines (Cantaraville), and all like that. For my part, I stand in awe of such people. Cantara has an amazingly complex and detailed entry on My Space, which gives masses of stuff for free. But what you should really read is her piece entitled Can a publisher be sued for a bad review? If you ever wondered how much fun it can be to run a small publishing company and work on literary magazines, this makes it all abundantly clear. Today's required reading.
L. Lee Lowe has written the start of a Christmas story and invites others to finish it: young people especially welcome.
About eighteen months ago, I ran a short piece about Susanne McDadd's Publishing Services, and one of the books which she now handles is by Stephen D. Smith, aka the Rumpole of Rotherham. Lots of info about his Boozers Ballcocks and Bail is available on his web site, including sample chapters. It occurs to me that young Albert, who appears in chapter one, really ought to have been et by a lion.
UK-based readers who are interested in self-publishing or the technology of printing should have a look at RPM. This is a firm based in West Sussex with a keen eye on how modern digital printing can save money and assist those interested in short runs as well as long. Reams of stuff about self-publishing too.
Should you live in New York City, you can get free entertainment every third Wednesday night. Rachel Kramer Bussell, Village Voice columnist and erotic short-story writer, tells you all about it on her web site. She has published several collections of her own work, and appears in more anthologies than you can easily count. The young are so energetic!
Abebooks, which has sold 100 million books, has a blog.
Unsolicited says that book publicists suck. What can this possibly mean? Half the time I don't understand what young people are talking about. And where is East Buttfuck? (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
James Herbert is one of those down-market, low-profile writers who is never mentioned in the Times Literary Supplement but whose books sell in vast numbers. Currently he is at number 17 on the Times top 50 list, with The Secret of Crickley Hall. Herbert writes in the horror/thriller genre. I tried one of his early successes, years ago, and found it revolting so I haven't been back since, but he is, shall we say, not ignored by those who like that kind of thing.
If you are interested in the Long Tail phenomenon, discussed here more than once, the Sunday Times has some valuable reflections on the fracturing of the mass market. Closely related to that first article is another one on 'big earnings from small sales'.
Also quite amusing, from a certain point of view, is the Sunday Times's 'Geek breaks the iPod code', which describes how yet another teenager took a dim view of digital rights management. And he seems to be making a living out of it.
Cantara Christopher is one of those highly energetic and positive people who take it upon themselves to set up new publishing companies (Cantarabooks), new literary magazines (Cantaraville), and all like that. For my part, I stand in awe of such people. Cantara has an amazingly complex and detailed entry on My Space, which gives masses of stuff for free. But what you should really read is her piece entitled Can a publisher be sued for a bad review? If you ever wondered how much fun it can be to run a small publishing company and work on literary magazines, this makes it all abundantly clear. Today's required reading.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Thursday roundup
Let us see if we can provide a number of links and pieces of information without getting distracted into long discussions.
Jason Sandford is trying to trace a lost poem.
Bearparade has published The Living and the Dead by Noah Cicero, whose last book, Burning Babies, was reviewed here about a year ago.
The Looking Glass Wars, a story about Alyss of Wonderland, is now out in the US and being heavily pushed by Penguin, who have given it its own fancy web site.
Nicholas Clee, former editor of the UK Bookseller, and Hot Type columnist in the Times, has started a blog about cooking.
Tonto Press is inviting submissions for a new short-story anthology.
Danielle Steel says that she's doing 'more commercial things now', including offering a new perfume called Danielle. (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
There's a new imprint called Quiver, which offers books for for couples wanting to take their sex lives to the next level.
The new BBC TV series Robin Hood is turning out to be a disappointment, I fear, but if you're up for a Robin Hood novel then Andrew Fish has a brand-new one for you: Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow.
Econometric forecasting can help you to calculate the publication date of your as-yet-unagented novel.
Screenwriting guru Robert McKee is going to be in London again: 10-12 November; after Tel Aviv and before Toronto.
Don Swaim has lots and lots of audio interviews with writers; but you need Real Player, a program which in the past attracted a great deal of criticism. (Link from Fancyclown, who has just moved from his old place on Blogspot, which, he says, no one ever looked at.)
Should you have an MFA degree -- you lucky thing, you -- there's a conference for you, this very weekend, in New York City.
Should you be short of stuff to read, the Top Author Blogs site has a list of blogs by people who write.
Speaking of author blogs, David Salvage is a highbrow novelist and also a psychiatrist, and he has a blog too.
Merisi has views (and pictures from Vienna) on the question of writers in coffee shops; and she points out that, in a New York Times article (you have to register), the Starbucks chain says that it might get into the business of publishing new authors.
Insofar as there is any serious money in publishing, it's made out of textbooks and other boring bits; and the Sunday Times describes just how valuable such publishing companies can be.
Sacha Baron Cohen has written a book about Kazakhstan, but American publishers are terrified of its rude pictures. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Abebooks has news of a haunted bookshop. Ooer missus.
'Banned in Boston' used to be a great line for selling a book, and now it's Banned by Borders. Aury Wallington is a former Sex and the City writer, and her novel Pop is frowned on in some quarters, because, for a Young Adult book, it's a bit too, um -- aw gee this is so embarrassing -- explicit. OK? There, I said it. Lots of blogger comment, e.g. on Bookslut and Galleycat.
One way to write a poem painlessly is to do a search on Allmusic, as Martin Rundkvist did, and claim the result as your own.
Ian Brotherhood's hard-edged debut novel, Bulletproof Suzy, was inspired by a piece of Glasgow graffiti. A launch party takes place on Friday 27 October 2006 at 6 p.m. at Waterstones (formerly Ottakars), Buchanan Galleries, Buchanan Street, Glasgow. Firearms must be left at the door.
Robin Tamblyn was mis-named here as Russ Tamblyn a while back (must be a name from my distant past), but he's the author of King of Hollywood, a 'darkly comic tale of a gay Hollywood player's rise - and fall - from grace.'
Monsignor Quixote is a newish blog, described as 'A blog of UK literary news, aimed at film & television producers and journalists. Round up of relevant news from publishing industry and exclusives from UK publishers, agents and authors.' Definitely one to keep an eye on if you are aiming at the UK market.
Publishers Lunch reports that world rights to Teri Woods's originally self-published (1999) True to the Game, plus two sequels and two stand-alone street novels, have been sold to Karen Thomas at Warner, in a major deal, by Marc Gerald at The Agency Group. Decoded: 'major deal' means a sum in excess of $500,000.
Andrew O'Hara, of the Jimston Journal, points out that Flickr, a site for photographers, enables the use of a variety of Creative Commons licences.
You may be surprised to know that some people will pay $8,000 for a Stephen King book.
Ellen Simonetti is a former airline flight attendant, and she has just self-published Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant: The Queen of Sky Blog, and it looks like a lot of fun. It's fiction, by the way. Go to her blog for details. And don't miss the 'inappropriate' pictures that got her fired. And you can even listen to the phone call of her supervisor firing her. Now that, you have to admit, is pretty damn cool. I think this lady could go places.
Last: A commenter on yesterday's post refers us to a Washington Post review of UK journalist Eve Pollard's new novel, Jack's Widow. This review nicely illustrates the fact that not every reviewer is familiar with the conventions of the alternative-history genre. Furthermore, when such a novel features a character whom the reviewer revered in real life, he can get quite sniffy. Eve Pollard, I suspect, is tough enough to survive. In fact, I think Patrick Anderson had better avoid the combination of dark alley + Big Evie.
Jason Sandford is trying to trace a lost poem.
Bearparade has published The Living and the Dead by Noah Cicero, whose last book, Burning Babies, was reviewed here about a year ago.
The Looking Glass Wars, a story about Alyss of Wonderland, is now out in the US and being heavily pushed by Penguin, who have given it its own fancy web site.
Nicholas Clee, former editor of the UK Bookseller, and Hot Type columnist in the Times, has started a blog about cooking.
Tonto Press is inviting submissions for a new short-story anthology.
Danielle Steel says that she's doing 'more commercial things now', including offering a new perfume called Danielle. (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
There's a new imprint called Quiver, which offers books for for couples wanting to take their sex lives to the next level.
The new BBC TV series Robin Hood is turning out to be a disappointment, I fear, but if you're up for a Robin Hood novel then Andrew Fish has a brand-new one for you: Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow.
Econometric forecasting can help you to calculate the publication date of your as-yet-unagented novel.
Screenwriting guru Robert McKee is going to be in London again: 10-12 November; after Tel Aviv and before Toronto.
Don Swaim has lots and lots of audio interviews with writers; but you need Real Player, a program which in the past attracted a great deal of criticism. (Link from Fancyclown, who has just moved from his old place on Blogspot, which, he says, no one ever looked at.)
Should you have an MFA degree -- you lucky thing, you -- there's a conference for you, this very weekend, in New York City.
Should you be short of stuff to read, the Top Author Blogs site has a list of blogs by people who write.
Speaking of author blogs, David Salvage is a highbrow novelist and also a psychiatrist, and he has a blog too.
Merisi has views (and pictures from Vienna) on the question of writers in coffee shops; and she points out that, in a New York Times article (you have to register), the Starbucks chain says that it might get into the business of publishing new authors.
Insofar as there is any serious money in publishing, it's made out of textbooks and other boring bits; and the Sunday Times describes just how valuable such publishing companies can be.
Sacha Baron Cohen has written a book about Kazakhstan, but American publishers are terrified of its rude pictures. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Abebooks has news of a haunted bookshop. Ooer missus.
'Banned in Boston' used to be a great line for selling a book, and now it's Banned by Borders. Aury Wallington is a former Sex and the City writer, and her novel Pop is frowned on in some quarters, because, for a Young Adult book, it's a bit too, um -- aw gee this is so embarrassing -- explicit. OK? There, I said it. Lots of blogger comment, e.g. on Bookslut and Galleycat.
One way to write a poem painlessly is to do a search on Allmusic, as Martin Rundkvist did, and claim the result as your own.
Ian Brotherhood's hard-edged debut novel, Bulletproof Suzy, was inspired by a piece of Glasgow graffiti. A launch party takes place on Friday 27 October 2006 at 6 p.m. at Waterstones (formerly Ottakars), Buchanan Galleries, Buchanan Street, Glasgow. Firearms must be left at the door.
Robin Tamblyn was mis-named here as Russ Tamblyn a while back (must be a name from my distant past), but he's the author of King of Hollywood, a 'darkly comic tale of a gay Hollywood player's rise - and fall - from grace.'
Monsignor Quixote is a newish blog, described as 'A blog of UK literary news, aimed at film & television producers and journalists. Round up of relevant news from publishing industry and exclusives from UK publishers, agents and authors.' Definitely one to keep an eye on if you are aiming at the UK market.
Publishers Lunch reports that world rights to Teri Woods's originally self-published (1999) True to the Game, plus two sequels and two stand-alone street novels, have been sold to Karen Thomas at Warner, in a major deal, by Marc Gerald at The Agency Group. Decoded: 'major deal' means a sum in excess of $500,000.
Andrew O'Hara, of the Jimston Journal, points out that Flickr, a site for photographers, enables the use of a variety of Creative Commons licences.
You may be surprised to know that some people will pay $8,000 for a Stephen King book.
Ellen Simonetti is a former airline flight attendant, and she has just self-published Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant: The Queen of Sky Blog, and it looks like a lot of fun. It's fiction, by the way. Go to her blog for details. And don't miss the 'inappropriate' pictures that got her fired. And you can even listen to the phone call of her supervisor firing her. Now that, you have to admit, is pretty damn cool. I think this lady could go places.
Last: A commenter on yesterday's post refers us to a Washington Post review of UK journalist Eve Pollard's new novel, Jack's Widow. This review nicely illustrates the fact that not every reviewer is familiar with the conventions of the alternative-history genre. Furthermore, when such a novel features a character whom the reviewer revered in real life, he can get quite sniffy. Eve Pollard, I suspect, is tough enough to survive. In fact, I think Patrick Anderson had better avoid the combination of dark alley + Big Evie.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Lovely lady libelled?
It has been remarked upon here more than once, and particularly on 12 July 2004, that the English libel laws are a minefield for writers, publishers, newspapers, magazines, and so forth.
The basic position is that, if an aggrieved party sues a newspaper (or whoever) for libel, it is up to the newspaper (or whoever) to prove that the offending statement is true. Hence if you call someone a prostitute, you had better be damn sure that you got a receipt from her, complete with details of services rendered, and, preferably, a souvenir DVD of the entire transaction.
Thus it was that, last Wednesday afternoon, while taking tea in a modest little cafe not far from my home, my mouth dropped open with amazement. I was reading said cafe's house copy of the Sun, an English newspaper remarkable chiefly for its imagination when reporting facts. (Motto: if a deadline looms, make it up; and, generally speaking, make it up anyway, because that's so much easier than going out and getting hold of the truth.)
The Sun had been threatened with legal action by Heather Mills, who is currently married to Sir Paul McCartney ( a gentleman who once, I understand, achieved fame as a member of some kind of musical quartet).
Heather Mills is a young woman who was a successful model until she lost part of her leg in a road accident, an injury which for a while generated some public sympathy. However, questions have been asked about her past, and in recent months public sympathy seems largely to have evaporated. And since the news of her impending divorce from Paul McCartney broke, it has been open season on her reputation.
Heather is fighting back, via her lawyers, threatening to sue at least three UK newspapers, and last Wednesday the Sun ran a piece inviting Heather to say which bit of their reporting she took exception to. And, just by way of reminder, they published a list of what they had previously said about her.
This list included the following allegations: that she was, or had been, a 'Hooker, Liar, Porn Star, Fantasist, Trouble Maker, Shoplifter'. And it gave details of where, when, how much, how often, and so forth. If you want to read the story yourself, here's the link.
Interesting, isn't it, that Heather seems to have made up stories about her father abusing her as a child. Well, it's interesting if you read Monday's post.
Any one of the Sun's charges would be enough to cost the paper a huge sum of money in libel damages -- unless, of course, they can prove that they're true. Since the Sun is well aware of that, one can only assume that they have chapter and verse to back it all up. Which should make for lots of copy if it ever gets near a courtroom. Sometimes, of course, these libel writs just lie there until they expire.
The Sun's boldness was sufficiently noteworthy to generate some discussion in the Guardian's media column. When faced with a tricky piece of reporting which they would love to run as their own, but are very wary of, newspapers often decide to 'comment' on the situation instead. (As do even more cautious bloggers such as I.)
I was reminded of all this hooha by this morning's Times. Now the Times is, of course (or used to be), a newspaper that you can rely on. It normally checks its facts and is guarded in what it says. But this morning, in the People column, there is a report on remarks made by Jonathan Ross when acting as MC at some music awards ceremony.
Referring to the lovely Heather Mills, Mr Ross said: 'What a f***ing liar!' (The Times's asterisks.) 'I wouldn't be surprised if we found out she actually had two legs.'
Dear, dear me. What is the world coming to?
The basic position is that, if an aggrieved party sues a newspaper (or whoever) for libel, it is up to the newspaper (or whoever) to prove that the offending statement is true. Hence if you call someone a prostitute, you had better be damn sure that you got a receipt from her, complete with details of services rendered, and, preferably, a souvenir DVD of the entire transaction.
Thus it was that, last Wednesday afternoon, while taking tea in a modest little cafe not far from my home, my mouth dropped open with amazement. I was reading said cafe's house copy of the Sun, an English newspaper remarkable chiefly for its imagination when reporting facts. (Motto: if a deadline looms, make it up; and, generally speaking, make it up anyway, because that's so much easier than going out and getting hold of the truth.)
The Sun had been threatened with legal action by Heather Mills, who is currently married to Sir Paul McCartney ( a gentleman who once, I understand, achieved fame as a member of some kind of musical quartet).
Heather Mills is a young woman who was a successful model until she lost part of her leg in a road accident, an injury which for a while generated some public sympathy. However, questions have been asked about her past, and in recent months public sympathy seems largely to have evaporated. And since the news of her impending divorce from Paul McCartney broke, it has been open season on her reputation.
Heather is fighting back, via her lawyers, threatening to sue at least three UK newspapers, and last Wednesday the Sun ran a piece inviting Heather to say which bit of their reporting she took exception to. And, just by way of reminder, they published a list of what they had previously said about her.
This list included the following allegations: that she was, or had been, a 'Hooker, Liar, Porn Star, Fantasist, Trouble Maker, Shoplifter'. And it gave details of where, when, how much, how often, and so forth. If you want to read the story yourself, here's the link.
Interesting, isn't it, that Heather seems to have made up stories about her father abusing her as a child. Well, it's interesting if you read Monday's post.
Any one of the Sun's charges would be enough to cost the paper a huge sum of money in libel damages -- unless, of course, they can prove that they're true. Since the Sun is well aware of that, one can only assume that they have chapter and verse to back it all up. Which should make for lots of copy if it ever gets near a courtroom. Sometimes, of course, these libel writs just lie there until they expire.
The Sun's boldness was sufficiently noteworthy to generate some discussion in the Guardian's media column. When faced with a tricky piece of reporting which they would love to run as their own, but are very wary of, newspapers often decide to 'comment' on the situation instead. (As do even more cautious bloggers such as I.)
I was reminded of all this hooha by this morning's Times. Now the Times is, of course (or used to be), a newspaper that you can rely on. It normally checks its facts and is guarded in what it says. But this morning, in the People column, there is a report on remarks made by Jonathan Ross when acting as MC at some music awards ceremony.
Referring to the lovely Heather Mills, Mr Ross said: 'What a f***ing liar!' (The Times's asterisks.) 'I wouldn't be surprised if we found out she actually had two legs.'
Dear, dear me. What is the world coming to?
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