Yesterday we looked at Grebanier's Proposition, and today I want to introduce you to another of Grebanier's tools for the improvement of plot, namely his theory about the Climax.
The word climax is, of course, commonly used in the description of plots in media of all kinds. 'The film's climax comes when the volcano erupts....' 'The situation rises to a climax when George shoots Mildred through the head....' And so forth. Usually the concept includes some sort of dramatic physical event or action.
Grebanier has a much more subtle concept of the Climax. For him, the Climax is indeed a key element of the plot, and of the utmost importance, but, as he explains, 'it may well be a moment that does not strike the audience with its importance at all. The Climax of the plot is the turning-point; it is the point from which there is no return. Thereafter events unfold with the same inevitability and logic which were present in the Proposition.'
For Grebanier, the Climax, like the Proposition, is an event which impacts upon the relationship between the central and second characters. And the Climax of a play (or other work) is the moment in which the most violent dislocation occurs in this relationship between the central and second characters.
We noted yesterday that the question which is posed in the Proposition of Romeo and Juliet is this: will Romeo find happiness with Juliet? Will they have long, fulfilled lives and have lots of children? And at first (unless members of the audience are familiar with the plot before they see the play) there is a possibility in the audience's mind that Romeo and Juliet may find happiness together. However, it is when Romeo kills Tybalt (an important member of Juliet's family) that any chance of Romeo being allowed to marry Juliet disappears, and the tragic ending of the play becomes inevitable.
Now as it happens, the Climax in Romeo and Juliet is a physically violent event. But the Climax need not always be physical. In The Importance of Being Earnest, the Climax occurs when Jack shows Miss Prism the handbag in which he was found as a baby. Miss Prism's acknowledgement that the bag is hers is what enables Jack to discover who his parents were (and also to discover that he was christened with the highly desirable name of Ernest), and this reverses the apparent impossibility of his marrying Gwendolen.
The Climax, Grebanier emphasises, has nothing directly to do with the Proposition. It is a separate element of the plot. It is indirectly related, however, in that it constitutes part of the working out of the answer to the third stage of the Proposition (the third stage being a question). The Climax is the deed which begins to provide the answer to the question.
How can you identify the Climax, if you're busy plotting a novel or a film script or whatever? Well, Grebanier argues that the Climax is always a deed performed by the central character. Romeo kills Tybalt. Jack shows Miss Prism the handbag. Furthermore, although the deed results in a change which has a major impact on the relationship between the central and second characters, it is a deed which involves not the second character but a third person. Not Juliet, but Tybalt. Not Lady Bracknell, but Miss Prism.
Grebanier is at pains to tell us, and I wholeheartedly agree, that neither the Proposition of your story nor the Climax can be summoned up out of thin air. That is not the way to go about things. Instead, you wait until you have got a story of some sort partly figured out in your head. Or, better still, on paper. Then you take a long hard look at it.
There are many, many aspects of a potential story which need thinking about. Not the least of these, in my opinion, are such factors as: How long is it likely to take to write this thing? Is there any realistic hope of selling it? But then, if you feel that the project is one worth pursuing, it is extremely valuable (in my experience) to look at the plot material in the context of Grebanier's ideas. I have more than once found that doing this exercise has helped me to see interesting and valuable possibilities in the material which had not been obvious to me before.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Grebanier's Proposition
If you've ever considered writing a novel, a play, or a film script, you will almost certainly have read one or more how-to books. Of which there are many thousands. So here, just to help you to sort out the wheat from the chaff, is a short piece about one useful mechanism for analysing and improving the plot of your masterpiece: Grebanier's Proposition.
Round about the middle of the last century, it became obvious that writing for the theatre was a remarkably effective way (at least in principle) of becoming rich and famous, with all the attendant benefits. And so any number of clever men (they were usually men) sat down and tried to figure out the secret of how to write plays which would be smash hits -- every single time.
A German chap called Freytag was, I believe, among the first. Unlike many theorists of the drama who followed him, Freytag had actually written some successful plays, such as The Bridal Journey, a comedy of 1844; he was also a novelist. In 1863 Freytag produced a book called The Technique of the Drama; and in 1894 an English translation became available.
Freytag was followed by literally hundreds of others, most of them out to make a quick buck. And they have their successors today, of course -- although, as the stage has dwindled into a minor art form, most modern theorists tend to concentrate on writing for the movies and television.
At one time in my life -- for several decades in fact -- I made it my practice to read all these books, as and when they appeared, and to research into the older ones too. Not many people, I suggest, have on their shelves a copy of How's Your Second Act?, published in New York in 1918. But I've got one; and a lot more besides.
I could go on for hours, but let us stick to the point: Grebanier's Proposition.
Bernard Grebanier was evidently a professor of English at Brooklyn College, and he wrote a number of scholarly books. In 1961 he produced Playwriting: How to Write for the Theater; and it's still in print. Grebanier's book is, I suggest, not only one of the most valuable how-to books if you're thinking of writing drama (for any medium), but it is also a useful source of ideas for novelists. And the most useful practical tool in it is what Grebanier calls the Proposition: it's a device to assist you with plotting.
Like every other theorist of drama or the novel, Grebanier was much preoccupied with plot. Each and every one of the early theorists was concerned to find the magic formula: to identify the key elements of the successful plot, and so to provide a way to ensure that whoever slotted all those elements into his story would inevitably and invariably produce a sure-fire hit. Sadly, no one has managed it so far.
Also like every other theorist, Grebanier built on the ideas of those who had gone before. And in his case he was particularly impressed by a man called William T. Price (1846-1920). Price had laboured for years to find a logical equation (or the logical equation) in which any sound plot might be stated. Price sought to develop a way of describing a plot with the simplicity of the syllogism of formal logic. So here is an example of a syllogism, which is in three parts:
Let's cut to the chase. Grebanier revised and developed Price's work, and in the course of his book he argues that a sound plot -- i.e. one which will hold the attention of an audience -- can be stated as a three part Proposition. Here is the plot of Romeo and Juliet, expressed in Grebanier's terms:
This is not the place to reprint the whole of Grebanier's argument. But it is important to note, for instance, that he argues that the three stages of his Proposition have a logic and an inevitability about them. There are also certain fixed principles, such as that the third stage always takes the form of a question; and stages one and two always involve the same two characters, the central character and the second character. Romeo and Jack are central characters; Juliet and Gwendolen are second characters. (The identification of these first and second characters is by no means always obvious.)
Perhaps you are unimpressed. However, I can only say that in fifty years of reading both crude and vulgar how-to books on the one hand, and learned scholarly tomes on the other, this is the best I can offer you by way of a good working tool.
Personally, I have found it thoroughly advantageous to consider the plot of anything -- stage play, short story, novel -- in terms of Grebanier's Proposition. Once I have accumulated a certain amount of story material, I find that I then need to sit back and ask myself what on earth this story is all about. What kind of book is it? Which genre does it fit in? What emotion am I intending to create in the reader?
As a part of that process I ask myself which of my various characters is the main character, in Grebanier's terms; which is the second character; and what is the question which the story might be said to be answering.
Of course the only way for you to find out whether this exercise is going to be of the slightest value to you is to read the book for yourself.
If you do so, you will soon find that Grebanier experienced the same problems as everyone else who has sought to analyse great dramas of the past and to isolate their key components -- namely that he sometimes has to force the material to fit his template.
Never mind. Even if he did not find the complete and infallible answer to everything, he did produce a stimulus to useful thought. Which is more than can be said for many.
Coming soon to a blog near you: Grebanier's Climax. (Not nearly as racy as it sounds.)
Round about the middle of the last century, it became obvious that writing for the theatre was a remarkably effective way (at least in principle) of becoming rich and famous, with all the attendant benefits. And so any number of clever men (they were usually men) sat down and tried to figure out the secret of how to write plays which would be smash hits -- every single time.
A German chap called Freytag was, I believe, among the first. Unlike many theorists of the drama who followed him, Freytag had actually written some successful plays, such as The Bridal Journey, a comedy of 1844; he was also a novelist. In 1863 Freytag produced a book called The Technique of the Drama; and in 1894 an English translation became available.
Freytag was followed by literally hundreds of others, most of them out to make a quick buck. And they have their successors today, of course -- although, as the stage has dwindled into a minor art form, most modern theorists tend to concentrate on writing for the movies and television.
At one time in my life -- for several decades in fact -- I made it my practice to read all these books, as and when they appeared, and to research into the older ones too. Not many people, I suggest, have on their shelves a copy of How's Your Second Act?, published in New York in 1918. But I've got one; and a lot more besides.
I could go on for hours, but let us stick to the point: Grebanier's Proposition.
Bernard Grebanier was evidently a professor of English at Brooklyn College, and he wrote a number of scholarly books. In 1961 he produced Playwriting: How to Write for the Theater; and it's still in print. Grebanier's book is, I suggest, not only one of the most valuable how-to books if you're thinking of writing drama (for any medium), but it is also a useful source of ideas for novelists. And the most useful practical tool in it is what Grebanier calls the Proposition: it's a device to assist you with plotting.
Like every other theorist of drama or the novel, Grebanier was much preoccupied with plot. Each and every one of the early theorists was concerned to find the magic formula: to identify the key elements of the successful plot, and so to provide a way to ensure that whoever slotted all those elements into his story would inevitably and invariably produce a sure-fire hit. Sadly, no one has managed it so far.
Also like every other theorist, Grebanier built on the ideas of those who had gone before. And in his case he was particularly impressed by a man called William T. Price (1846-1920). Price had laboured for years to find a logical equation (or the logical equation) in which any sound plot might be stated. Price sought to develop a way of describing a plot with the simplicity of the syllogism of formal logic. So here is an example of a syllogism, which is in three parts:
- All men are mortal.
- Socrates is a man.
- Hence, Socrates is mortal.
Let's cut to the chase. Grebanier revised and developed Price's work, and in the course of his book he argues that a sound plot -- i.e. one which will hold the attention of an audience -- can be stated as a three part Proposition. Here is the plot of Romeo and Juliet, expressed in Grebanier's terms:
- Romeo meets Juliet and falls in love with her.
- He marries her.
- Will he find happiness with her?
- Jack asks Lady Bracknell's consent to marry Gwendolen.
- Jack is forbidden, by Lady Bracknell, to marry Gwendolen unless he can acquire parents.
- Will Jack succeed in acquiring parents?
This is not the place to reprint the whole of Grebanier's argument. But it is important to note, for instance, that he argues that the three stages of his Proposition have a logic and an inevitability about them. There are also certain fixed principles, such as that the third stage always takes the form of a question; and stages one and two always involve the same two characters, the central character and the second character. Romeo and Jack are central characters; Juliet and Gwendolen are second characters. (The identification of these first and second characters is by no means always obvious.)
Perhaps you are unimpressed. However, I can only say that in fifty years of reading both crude and vulgar how-to books on the one hand, and learned scholarly tomes on the other, this is the best I can offer you by way of a good working tool.
Personally, I have found it thoroughly advantageous to consider the plot of anything -- stage play, short story, novel -- in terms of Grebanier's Proposition. Once I have accumulated a certain amount of story material, I find that I then need to sit back and ask myself what on earth this story is all about. What kind of book is it? Which genre does it fit in? What emotion am I intending to create in the reader?
As a part of that process I ask myself which of my various characters is the main character, in Grebanier's terms; which is the second character; and what is the question which the story might be said to be answering.
Of course the only way for you to find out whether this exercise is going to be of the slightest value to you is to read the book for yourself.
If you do so, you will soon find that Grebanier experienced the same problems as everyone else who has sought to analyse great dramas of the past and to isolate their key components -- namely that he sometimes has to force the material to fit his template.
Never mind. Even if he did not find the complete and infallible answer to everything, he did produce a stimulus to useful thought. Which is more than can be said for many.
Coming soon to a blog near you: Grebanier's Climax. (Not nearly as racy as it sounds.)
The right idea
A.M. Burns done got the right idea. Or so it seems to me, judging by the blog.
Entitled The Conceit, A.M. Burns's blog is built around the following notion:
Entitled The Conceit, A.M. Burns's blog is built around the following notion:
Can creative writing be taught? That depends on what kind of writing matters to you. University cirriculums direct students toward literary fiction. If that's not your cup of tea, then you don't need a University to learn to write well.Seems good to me. And the 19 January post on declining literacy and dying novels says it all.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
More on Peter Pan
M'learned friend C.E. Petit Esq. has, as usual, some pertinent things to say about the Peter Pan/J.M. Barrie copyright/intellectual property/perpetual motion/whatever fiasco -- nip over to Scrivener's Error to take a look. I'm sure he's right, in the sense that it's all way beyond my understanding, or most of yours, and is best avoided.
And over on Bookslut Michael Schaub tells us that the now-announced title of the new sequel to Peter Pan is Peter Pan in Scarlet. And he also adds that, if you're going to write a sequel to a beloved children's book, 'the first thing you want to do is make sure the title can't be interpreted in any sexual, obscene way.' Which is also a mystery to me, but then I have led a very sheltered life.
Should you wish to study the exact wording of the British Government's generosity towards the Great Ormond Street Hospital, you can find it in section 301 of the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988. And gripping stuff it is too. A classic example of a bit of special pleading and last-minute fudge, tacked on to the Act because Uncle Jim (Callaghan) was an old softie.
And over on Bookslut Michael Schaub tells us that the now-announced title of the new sequel to Peter Pan is Peter Pan in Scarlet. And he also adds that, if you're going to write a sequel to a beloved children's book, 'the first thing you want to do is make sure the title can't be interpreted in any sexual, obscene way.' Which is also a mystery to me, but then I have led a very sheltered life.
Should you wish to study the exact wording of the British Government's generosity towards the Great Ormond Street Hospital, you can find it in section 301 of the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988. And gripping stuff it is too. A classic example of a bit of special pleading and last-minute fudge, tacked on to the Act because Uncle Jim (Callaghan) was an old softie.
New initiatives
You don't need me to tell you that all sorts of new initiatives in the book-publishing business are being launched on a daily basis. Here are a few which have come my way.
An outfit called Blood and Treasure has set up shop to publicise a new book called Institutionalized. This has the great virtue of being a comedy, so at least they don't take themselves -- or at least the world -- too seriously. You can download the first chapter and test-drive it free.
Then there's a new blog from That Girl Who Writes Stuff. If nothing else, That Girl has read and enjoyed some seriously weird stuff, and has links to some horrible dog-fights in the world of underground literature. She is a Noah Cicero fan, by the way. And also reads Carlton Mellick, so she clearly has nerves of some tough substance of the kind that used to be made in Sheffield. When I were a lad.
And finally we have the Mainstay Press. I take my hat off to anyone who founds a new publishing company in this day and age. Yes, I've done it myself. Sort of. (Kingsfield Publications, and if you're trying to find a publisher for your own book, please note the statement on the home page.) But it takes some money, more time than you could possibly imagine, and a great deal of effort. In return you get... well, frankly, not a lot. Except the satisfaction of doing the job well.
The Mainstay Press mission statement says that the firm 'publishes books geared to social change, along with other political books – fiction and non-fiction both. Mainstay books help readers understand the realities and possibilities of contemporary social and political life – the life of the public that is profoundly related to the personal lives of people everywhere.The politically progressive literary and popular works of Mainstay Press challenge the politically limited nature of American (U.S.) fiction, in particular, by exploring public realms of crisis today...' And so forth.
Serious stuff, you will understand. The three founders describe themselves as 'world class writers' and that's OK by me. Modesty, as I have often remarked before, is the enemy of talent. And they are certainly fearsomely intellectual, with several published works each.
The Mainstay web site offers a long and very high-powered essay on progressive political fiction, by Tony Christini, and there are other offerings on the same level from the other two founders, Andre Vltchek and Mike Palecek.
Well, another of my regular comments is this: The last great privilege of the Englishman is that he can still afford -- just -- to ignore politics. And I used to believe it. But I don't think I do any longer. Not with George Galloway on Celebrity Big Brother.
An outfit called Blood and Treasure has set up shop to publicise a new book called Institutionalized. This has the great virtue of being a comedy, so at least they don't take themselves -- or at least the world -- too seriously. You can download the first chapter and test-drive it free.
Then there's a new blog from That Girl Who Writes Stuff. If nothing else, That Girl has read and enjoyed some seriously weird stuff, and has links to some horrible dog-fights in the world of underground literature. She is a Noah Cicero fan, by the way. And also reads Carlton Mellick, so she clearly has nerves of some tough substance of the kind that used to be made in Sheffield. When I were a lad.
And finally we have the Mainstay Press. I take my hat off to anyone who founds a new publishing company in this day and age. Yes, I've done it myself. Sort of. (Kingsfield Publications, and if you're trying to find a publisher for your own book, please note the statement on the home page.) But it takes some money, more time than you could possibly imagine, and a great deal of effort. In return you get... well, frankly, not a lot. Except the satisfaction of doing the job well.
The Mainstay Press mission statement says that the firm 'publishes books geared to social change, along with other political books – fiction and non-fiction both. Mainstay books help readers understand the realities and possibilities of contemporary social and political life – the life of the public that is profoundly related to the personal lives of people everywhere.The politically progressive literary and popular works of Mainstay Press challenge the politically limited nature of American (U.S.) fiction, in particular, by exploring public realms of crisis today...' And so forth.
Serious stuff, you will understand. The three founders describe themselves as 'world class writers' and that's OK by me. Modesty, as I have often remarked before, is the enemy of talent. And they are certainly fearsomely intellectual, with several published works each.
The Mainstay web site offers a long and very high-powered essay on progressive political fiction, by Tony Christini, and there are other offerings on the same level from the other two founders, Andre Vltchek and Mike Palecek.
Well, another of my regular comments is this: The last great privilege of the Englishman is that he can still afford -- just -- to ignore politics. And I used to believe it. But I don't think I do any longer. Not with George Galloway on Celebrity Big Brother.
What the market wants -- or not, as the case may be
Val Landi has an interesting post on his blog about whether the current US mainstream publishers can or cannot bring themselves to publish a book with a terrorist theme.
It's a matter on which he has pondered before, and it is, of course, all related to his own ms in search of a publisher (A Woman from Cairo). Nevertheless, this post should certainly give pause for thought to anyone who, filled with enthusiasm, is about to devote the next year or two to writing a novel.
Who knows what will happen in that time? And who can say how it will affect the way in which editors will view your masterpiece? And might there not, in all seriousness, be less risky and more productive ways to spend your time?
Proceed if you must. But it is, as always, a pretty desperate gamble.
It's a matter on which he has pondered before, and it is, of course, all related to his own ms in search of a publisher (A Woman from Cairo). Nevertheless, this post should certainly give pause for thought to anyone who, filled with enthusiasm, is about to devote the next year or two to writing a novel.
Who knows what will happen in that time? And who can say how it will affect the way in which editors will view your masterpiece? And might there not, in all seriousness, be less risky and more productive ways to spend your time?
Proceed if you must. But it is, as always, a pretty desperate gamble.
The Pope cashes in
In the past, we have noted how even the heirs of latter-day saints such as Martin Luther King have charged money for allowing people to quote their words of wisdom. And now the Pope has got in on the act too.
The Times has the story -- or a version of it, because it will doubtless be reported all over. The Vatican has decided that the pronouncements of the current Pope, and his predecessors for some fifty years, shall henceforth be declared copyright.
In fact more than henceforth. Hence backwards too. A Milanese publishing house that had issued an anthology containing 30 lines from Pope Benedict’s speech to the conclave that elected him, plus an extract from his enthronement speech, is reported to have been sent a bill for €15,000 (£10,000). This was made up of 15 per cent of the cover price of each copy sold plus 'legal expenses' of €3,500.
Fifteen percent of the cover price of each copy sold? Seems a bit steep, doesn't it? Vittorio Messori, who has co-authored works with Pope Benedict and John Paul II, said that he was 'perplexed and alarmed . . . This is wholly negative and absolutely disastrous for the Vatican’s image.'
Well, far be it from me to worry about the Vatican's image but I'm inclined to agree.
The Times has the story -- or a version of it, because it will doubtless be reported all over. The Vatican has decided that the pronouncements of the current Pope, and his predecessors for some fifty years, shall henceforth be declared copyright.
In fact more than henceforth. Hence backwards too. A Milanese publishing house that had issued an anthology containing 30 lines from Pope Benedict’s speech to the conclave that elected him, plus an extract from his enthronement speech, is reported to have been sent a bill for €15,000 (£10,000). This was made up of 15 per cent of the cover price of each copy sold plus 'legal expenses' of €3,500.
Fifteen percent of the cover price of each copy sold? Seems a bit steep, doesn't it? Vittorio Messori, who has co-authored works with Pope Benedict and John Paul II, said that he was 'perplexed and alarmed . . . This is wholly negative and absolutely disastrous for the Vatican’s image.'
Well, far be it from me to worry about the Vatican's image but I'm inclined to agree.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Caring about the quality of prose
Back in the mists of time, I was lucky enough to be taught by a schoolmaster who was interested in 'good writing' -- a loose term which I will leave undefined for the moment. At any rate, he had certain ideas about how sentences, paragraphs, and essays should all be constructed, and he did his best to din them into us boys.
Over the following decades I have done my own best to write 'good' prose, according to my schoolmaster's instructions: though it's a shifting target, because what works in one context and for one audience is going to offend another, and vice versa.
I mention this because a few days ago I reported that Thomas Melancholicus of The Anatomy of Melancholy had applied his critical faculties to the first few pages of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, and had found that he was not impressed by the quality of her writing.
Ever since that post appeared, there has been a spirited debate going on in the comments section about what does and does not constitute good writing. The debate has been passionate and not always good-tempered -- brothers and sisters in prose, let us not bad-mouth each other, please -- but the heart-warming thing is that people care deeply about how to communicate effectively. Would that there were more of them.
Over the following decades I have done my own best to write 'good' prose, according to my schoolmaster's instructions: though it's a shifting target, because what works in one context and for one audience is going to offend another, and vice versa.
I mention this because a few days ago I reported that Thomas Melancholicus of The Anatomy of Melancholy had applied his critical faculties to the first few pages of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, and had found that he was not impressed by the quality of her writing.
Ever since that post appeared, there has been a spirited debate going on in the comments section about what does and does not constitute good writing. The debate has been passionate and not always good-tempered -- brothers and sisters in prose, let us not bad-mouth each other, please -- but the heart-warming thing is that people care deeply about how to communicate effectively. Would that there were more of them.
The death of the high-street bookshop?
In the Independent (link from booktrade.info), Boyd Tonkin has an article on the future of British bookselling. And although the word 'British' is in there, it seems to me that much the same arguments apply everywhere else too.
Tonkin takes the view that British high-street bookselling 'now looks suspiciously like a murder victim who has decided to speed up his demise by committing suicide. The pincer movement executed by the likes of Asda [a supermarket] and Amazon has made the cut-throat discounting of a few sure-fire bestsellers the norm -- with all of its risks to future diversity. Far from resisting this assault, the retail chains -- and the corporate publishers whom they now bully - have opted to act as their own Sweeney Todds [a nineteenth-century Englishman who cut throats. Remember the Broadway musical? Wonderful. But I digress.]. At Christmas, stores worked frantically to teach shoppers that the true value of a much-publicised new book with a cover price of £18 or £20 is, let's say, £6.99. It amounts to voluntary death by a thousand cuts.'
He goes on to argue that, given the increasing difficulty of making any money out of high-street bookshop chains, it would be a smart move for publishers to assist the internet booksellers -- rather than complaining about developments such as Google Print and the Amazon 'Search Inside' facility.
Now, as you may have gathered, you won't read anything in the article that you haven't read before -- here, for instance. So why mention it, then? Well, because I find it encouraging that these fairly obvious truths -- obvious, that is, to those without a built-in fear of losing their job, seeing the share price drop the floor, et cetera ) -- are now becoming so unavoidably true that even the mainstream media have picked up on them.
Question is, who's going to get their arse in gear sufficiently soon to benefit from the opportunities? Instead of playing the Ain't It Awful record, over and over again.
Tonkin takes the view that British high-street bookselling 'now looks suspiciously like a murder victim who has decided to speed up his demise by committing suicide. The pincer movement executed by the likes of Asda [a supermarket] and Amazon has made the cut-throat discounting of a few sure-fire bestsellers the norm -- with all of its risks to future diversity. Far from resisting this assault, the retail chains -- and the corporate publishers whom they now bully - have opted to act as their own Sweeney Todds [a nineteenth-century Englishman who cut throats. Remember the Broadway musical? Wonderful. But I digress.]. At Christmas, stores worked frantically to teach shoppers that the true value of a much-publicised new book with a cover price of £18 or £20 is, let's say, £6.99. It amounts to voluntary death by a thousand cuts.'
He goes on to argue that, given the increasing difficulty of making any money out of high-street bookshop chains, it would be a smart move for publishers to assist the internet booksellers -- rather than complaining about developments such as Google Print and the Amazon 'Search Inside' facility.
Now, as you may have gathered, you won't read anything in the article that you haven't read before -- here, for instance. So why mention it, then? Well, because I find it encouraging that these fairly obvious truths -- obvious, that is, to those without a built-in fear of losing their job, seeing the share price drop the floor, et cetera ) -- are now becoming so unavoidably true that even the mainstream media have picked up on them.
Question is, who's going to get their arse in gear sufficiently soon to benefit from the opportunities? Instead of playing the Ain't It Awful record, over and over again.
Another child prodigy to worry about -- well, two actually
I have never been happy about child prodigies. If I was religious, I would thank God for not having given me brilliant children. Bright, yes. Thank you, Lord. But not brilliant.
Apart from any other reason for distrusting early signs of genius, I spent most of my working life with people with IQs approaching 200, and you pretty soon learn that a man (or woman) can be a world-class physicist or mathematician and still display a remarkable reluctance to do anything sensible.
Anyway, Friday brought news of a couple more child prodigies for me to worry about. An anonymous commenter on the Libby Rees saga gave me a link to the web site of Adora Svitak, who is 8 years old, or thereabouts, and is described (by Good Morning America, no less) as 'a tiny literary giant'. The web site calls her a writer, poet, and humanitarian.
Hmm. Well, one thing's for sure; the media love her. Naturally. Whether it's good for a kid that age to be feted by national (US) TV is a different matter. The web site features extracts from Adora's various works, and, yes, she does have a blog.
I worry about this kid's future. And as if that wasn't enough, the web site has a link to info about another of the same. This girl is is Akiane, and the front page of her web site labels her officially as a child prodigy. She is also described as 'the only known child binary genius'. And she's been on Oprah, so it must be true.
Well, that's quite enough of all that for me, thank you.
And if you want to know what happens to children who get masses of media attention when they're young, the answer (apparently) is that they grow up to be novelists.
Take Macaulay Culkin, for example. Last heard of living in an apartment in New York and getting drunk with lots of young friends (oh, and giving evidence for Michael Jackson), Culkin, it appears, has been busy. He's been writing a novel. Well, a sort of novel.
The Book Standard gives us an early peek at the forthcoming Kirkus review of Macaulay Culkin's book Junior. The reviewer doesn't quite say This is a heap of shit, but he/she might just as well have, because that's what the review amounts to. The book, says the reviewer, 'briefly ascends to the level of mediocrity. Filled with jokes lacking wit, introspection devoid of insight, poetry made of nothing, this is a work frustratingly short on substance.'
This is going to annoy quite a few people, I feel. The book, that is. Not the review. I wonder what the advance was?
Apart from any other reason for distrusting early signs of genius, I spent most of my working life with people with IQs approaching 200, and you pretty soon learn that a man (or woman) can be a world-class physicist or mathematician and still display a remarkable reluctance to do anything sensible.
Anyway, Friday brought news of a couple more child prodigies for me to worry about. An anonymous commenter on the Libby Rees saga gave me a link to the web site of Adora Svitak, who is 8 years old, or thereabouts, and is described (by Good Morning America, no less) as 'a tiny literary giant'. The web site calls her a writer, poet, and humanitarian.
Hmm. Well, one thing's for sure; the media love her. Naturally. Whether it's good for a kid that age to be feted by national (US) TV is a different matter. The web site features extracts from Adora's various works, and, yes, she does have a blog.
I worry about this kid's future. And as if that wasn't enough, the web site has a link to info about another of the same. This girl is is Akiane, and the front page of her web site labels her officially as a child prodigy. She is also described as 'the only known child binary genius'. And she's been on Oprah, so it must be true.
Well, that's quite enough of all that for me, thank you.
And if you want to know what happens to children who get masses of media attention when they're young, the answer (apparently) is that they grow up to be novelists.
Take Macaulay Culkin, for example. Last heard of living in an apartment in New York and getting drunk with lots of young friends (oh, and giving evidence for Michael Jackson), Culkin, it appears, has been busy. He's been writing a novel. Well, a sort of novel.
The Book Standard gives us an early peek at the forthcoming Kirkus review of Macaulay Culkin's book Junior. The reviewer doesn't quite say This is a heap of shit, but he/she might just as well have, because that's what the review amounts to. The book, says the reviewer, 'briefly ascends to the level of mediocrity. Filled with jokes lacking wit, introspection devoid of insight, poetry made of nothing, this is a work frustratingly short on substance.'
This is going to annoy quite a few people, I feel. The book, that is. Not the review. I wonder what the advance was?
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