Pulitzer -- yawn -- prizes

The Literary Saloon informs us that this year's Pulitzer prizes have been announced.

Now there was a time when the Pulitzers carried some weight with me. That was back in the days when they awarded prizes to stuff that was halfway entertaining and interesting. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the best play award in 1955, for instance. But personally I stopped paying much attention in 1979, when Sam Shepherd's play Buried Child came top of the pile. I saw the original production in the Village, and mighty tedious it was too. Derivative, also. When I came out of the theatre the man in front of me said to his companion, 'Well, I guess I know too much about the history of the theatre to enjoy that one.' Me too. There were bits of everybody in it.

As for the fiction, that prize has also gone increasingly highbrow over the years. Back in 1928, the winner was Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I read that when I was 12, with no difficulty at all, and it was an enormous seller, all over the world, because it was a good read and contained some interesting ideas (why do some good people die and some bad people live?). Even Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny (1952) could, I think, be described as popular fiction. But who has heard of, much less read, Empire Falls, by Richard Russo (the 2002 winner)?

Anyway, this year's fiction winner is Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Just for fun, I looked it up on Amazon.com. The average review score is four stars, and there are the usual tributes to the beautiful writing and such. But if you scroll down a bit you find the following:

This is a novel only in the barest sense. There is little plot, and what plot there is, is so mundane and pedestrian as to smack of a first year literature student struggling to piece together various story lines from past read works. Gilead is really the musings and sometimes arcane philosophy of Ms. Robinson, written in various letters by an underachieving preacher. The book is a tedious read, and after the first few pages, one reluctantly treads on, hoping for some epiphany, or at least a surprise along the way. It never comes, and after a while the reader only wants to finish the boring treatise.

So don't say you weren't warned.

Bits and pieces

Before I forget, here are some bits and pieces that I picked up over the weekend:

Persistence

If you want to read about how you can spend thirty years trying to get a book into print, and eventually succeed, click here for Paul Clayton's account.

New self-publishing option

Publishing News ran a piece about Susanne McDadd's Publishing Services company. McDadd has had a bumpy ride in publishing, but has doubtless learnt much along the way. She is a former non-fiction director of Faber, and was a founder of Metro Publishing; that firm was eventually sold to John Blake. Now she runs a company which offers a range of valuable services for small publishers and authors.

Anyone who has a book which they would like to see in print should take a close look at this option. I say book, rather than novel, because the company specialises in non-fiction. There is much valuable, and free, advice on this site and it would repay study. All in all, it seems to be one of the best self-publishing possibilities that I have come across, but I get the definite impression that they are looking for writers with a professional approach; out-and-out amateurs and dreamers would, I suspect, be given a polite but brisk brush-off.

Daily Mail self-publishing offer

On Saturday morning I found myself in a coffee shop where there was a copy of the Daily Mail's Weekend section. This included the second in a series of three articles on how to write your own blockbuster, or some such title. The article does not seem to be posted on the Mail's web site, but you aren't missing much because it was pretty feeble. However, the article did repeat the Mail's offer to print some copies of your book for you. The details of that offer are available online: click here.

Unlike the company mentioned immediately above, the Daily Mail offer seems to me to be aimed very firmly at complete amateurs who know nothing at all about how to get into print. The instructions on how to prepare your digital file for the printer seem to me to be likely to lead to endless confusion, correspondence, and unhappiness. And why the Mail is bothering I really don't know. Presumably someone in their marketing department has noticed that there were 46,000 entries for Richard & Judy's recent competition for would-be novelists, and has decided that there is some benefit to be had from making offers to this group.

I wouldn't go that way myself, but I thought you ought to know.

Million Writers Award

The winner of the Million Writers Award, which I wrote about on 24 February, has now been announced. It is Alicia Gifford's Toggling the Switch. You can read the winning story, and the nine runners-up, on the storySouth web site.

Blogger hits big-time!

Or so Publishing News would have us believe. PN tells us that Gollancz editorial director Simon Spanton 'has plucked 26-year-old Scott Lynch from obscurity, launching him to potential stardom.'

This, it turns out, is just a grandiose way of telling us that Spanton has read some of Lynch's novel in progress, on Lynch's blog , and has put the guy under contract. To be precise, Spanton has signed him up for four books -- no doubt with some get-out clauses which we are not told about.

(By the way, Lynch's blog, Newbie writes a novel, does not seem to have been updated for the best part of a year. Perhaps because he's been too busy writing for Spanton. Or perhaps he's migrated it somewhere else. )

Scott Lynch's first book The Lies of Locke Lamora, will be published in January 2006. 'It is going to be a big book for us,' says Spanton.

Well, maybe. And then again, maybe not. Sometimes these things happen, and sometimes they don't. As I've said many times before, good luck to all involved; I wish them well.

Another small publisher

Before we leave the subject of small publishers and opportunities for new writers and self-publishers, you may care to take a look at the Black Fountain web site. Don't get too excited, because this publisher is not open to submissions at the moment. However, the site does contain a lot of good sense for those who are looking for a home for their ms, and offers some useful links.

Paul McAuley: White Devils

Paul McAuley is a writer whose work I found by the simple expedient of wandering round my local public library and trying to find something that looked interesting; and White Devils certainly is interesting.

The book is science fiction: perhaps a techno-thriller, though precise I cannot be, because I don't go in for defining genres in any more detail than crime, romance, et cetera, though I believe true fans do. In any event, this one is set in the future: the author doesn't tell us exactly when, but various references to earlier events suggest that the date is somewhere between 2040 and 2050.

White Devils, once it gets going, turns out to be a man of integrity takes on big business type of thing. It's set in a ruined Africa, where corruption of all sorts reigns supreme. And it's long: 521 pages.

Let's deal with a few shortcomings first. In the first few chapters there is too much authorial recounting of backstory for my taste. The dialogue is distinctly clunky in places, with characters telling each other stuff that they mostly already know, but which the reader also needs to know. And there are too many characters to begin with.

Now the virtues. The author seems to know his science -- he has worked as a researcher at various universities -- and he is able to make his vision of the future convincing (at least to me). He describes violent action extremely well. All in all he had no problem in holding me to the page; and I am far from being one of those who goes on reading out of a sense of duty.

In short, the book is thoroughly recommended if, in principle, you are open to that sort of thing. And I am not the only person who thinks so: White Devils has been widely reviewed, and highly praised.

On investigation, McAuley turns out to have been around for quite some time. He has written lots of other novels and many short stories. He has also won several prestigious prizes in the field of SF, or scifi, or whatever the approved shorthand term is. I can't keep up with these things, I'm afraid.

Incidentally -- and this is one of those serendipitous little snippets that you find out when you start looking up an author and his books and publishers and things -- McAuley has a book of short stories out. Its title is Little Machines, and it's published by an outfit called PS Publishing. And the thing that made me gulp a bit was that Little Machines is available in two formats: slipcased hardcover at £60/$90, and plain old hardcover at £35/$50. And editions like these apparently sell out fairly quickly.

Hmm. There must be more dedicated fans of this type of thing than I had realised.

Meanwhile the PS Publishing site is a useful resource if you are looking for more of McAuley's kind of book.

The Valve

I think it was Maud Newton, last week, who had a link to The Valve, which is a new blog.

Now The Valve, I have to say, ain't gonna do it for everyone. In fact, I am not sure it does it for me. But here's what it says about itself:

'The Valve is a literary weblog dedicated to the proposition that the function of the little magazine can follow this form. We mean to foster debate and circulation of ideas in literary studies and contiguous academic areas.'

See what I mean? This isn't going to fill every reader with wild enthusiasm, now is it?

What I think the blurb means it that The Valve is a blog which is going to try to do what most small literary magazines do: i.e., presumably, publish essays, criticism, the occasional short story, and perhaps some poetry.

Fortunately, if you read the opening article in full, or at any rate dip into it, it becomes apparent that the author, John Holbo, is an amiable sort of fellow, with at least a modicum of common sense. He has some interesting things to say about university presses -- and I used to run one once, so I have views on the subject. And he also has the virtue of at least suspecting that not all is well within academia.

For instance, he estimates that there are 30,000 academics at work in the humanities. But he points out that 'no one has a clear (or even unclear) sense of what work in the humanities presently needs approximately 30,000 hands to complete.'

So the guy is capable of rational thought. Furthermore, he, or one of his colleagues, has had the good sense to include the GOB on their blogroll, so it would be ungracious to do other than reciprocate.

More on self-publishing

In recent months the Independent has had quite a bit to say (I seem to remember) about self-publishing, and today there is more of the same. If you are thinking of going down that route, the article is worth reading. Subject to a few caveats, set out below.

The article consists mainly of a series of outstanding success stories, featuring authors who have published their own books and made modest fortunes out of it. All very interesting, and inspiring up to a point. I fear, however, that these tales may be somewhat misleading.

In the first place, the article does not really make clear that, if you are to publish a book successfully, all on your own, you either need a great deal of knowledge of the book trade, before you start, or you need to get that knowledge from someone else. And the someone else may need to be paid.

Secondly, the article consistently underestimates (probably not deliberately) the amount of sheer hard work, and the inordinate amounts of time, that are involved.

Third, the cost figures are a bit odd. The author of the article, Dominic Prince, tells us that you can today get a self-publishing venture off the ground for a few thousand pounds, whereas in the past you would have been talking about a minimum of £10,000. Well, actually, you can get a book printed for a lot less than 'a few thousand' these days. But the real cost, and at least half the work, is in publicising the book.

One of the examples quoted by Prince is George Courtland, author and publisher of The Pocket Book of Patriotism. Whatever other skills Courtland may have, he is certainly a dab hand at publicity, and he was apparently willing to invest a substantial sum. One of his dodges was to give a party in London, to which he invited more or less every journalist in the land, as far as I can see. This seems to have been a success, but it doubtless took quite a lot of organising and cost money. (Hint -- journalists like lots of free drinks.)

Another area which is skated over is the difficulty of getting self-published books into the major retailers, such as Waterstones. Prince tells us the story of Tim Stafford, who (allegedly) dictated terms to Waterstones. This will raise a hollow laugh in some quarters. I know of at least one full-time professional publisher, not one of the big boys, who has recently been told by both Waterstones and Smiths that they are no longer willing to do business with him on any terms, because he is too small. So the idea that you, the first-time self-publisher, can tell these firms the basis on which you will condescend to sell your books to them is a little quaint, to say the least.

Perhaps the most telling comment is that made by Betsy Bell, who put together a cookbook for her student sons. After two years she felt that the book had become a drag. 'It had gone from being great fun to being a chore. I'd made a bit of money and it was time to get out.'

I suspect that the self-publishing business, if not carefully handled, can become a drag and a chore in a lot less than two years.

Seneca: Letters from a Stoic

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose thinking I much admire, seldom reads a newspaper; he prefers, on the whole, to read texts which have been around for a few hundred years. And it was Taleb who recommended the work of Seneca, whose writings are the best part of two thousand years old.

Seneca was born around 4 BC. Despite ill-health, he rose to prominence in Rome, the city which was then the centre of a mighty empire. He was active both in the courts and in politics. Later in life he was, among other things, a tutor to the boy who, in AD 54, would become the Emperor Nero. When Nero came to power, Seneca was for some eight years his unofficial chief minister.

After retiring from public life, Seneca devoted himself to philosophy. He was a member of a group known in ancient times as the Stoics, and he is chiefly remembered as the author of Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, generally known in English as Letters from a Stoic.

The Stoic philosophy calls upon man (a term which, as the old joke has it, embraces woman) to live in line with nature’s laws, and to accept uncomplainingly whatever fate may send him. It is considered important to rise above the wounds inflicted upon you by the goddess of chance, Fortuna.

Seneca’s Letters is a good book to leave in the bathroom, because it contains some 124 short essays, in the form of letters to Lucilius. On average each letter is perhaps a couple of pages long, and thus it can be read while waiting for nature to take its course.

In content, the letters are remarkably down to earth, and not at all difficult to comprehend. They relate to the problems of everyday life, and it would be pointless to quote from them at any great length. They have been read with interest, and the readers have found them valuable, for about twenty centuries, so there is little reason for not sampling them yourself.

Just occasionally, I have spotted something in Seneca which might be particularly relevant to the writing life. In letter VII, for example, Seneca refers to a craftsman who was asked why he took so much trouble over something that would never reach more than a very few people. ‘A few is enough for me,’ said the craftsman. ‘So is one; so is none.’

Would that all writers could be as Stoical as that, for reaching a very few people is usually their fate.

In letter IX, Seneca points out that there is often more pleasure to be had from painting a picture than from having completed it. When the artist is at work, and ‘his whole attention is absorbed in concentration on the work he is engaged on, a tremendous sense of satisfaction is created in him by this very absorption.’

The habit of speaking too quickly is criticised in letter XL. Gabbling, says Seneca, is to be deplored. The wise man is a slow-speaking person. CNN reporters please note.

Enough. It would, as I say, be invidious to quote any more bits and pieces. Particularly as Seneca himself, in letter XXXVI, warns us against the practice. ‘It is disgraceful,’ he says, ‘to go hunting after gems of wisdom.’

Read him yourself.

Patricia Ferguson

Booktrade.info kindly pointed out an article in the Independent on Sunday which highlighted the trials and tribulations of a writer called Patricia Ferguson.

Patricia is a past winner of the Somerset Maugham award and a Betty Trask prize. Neither of these is an easy thing to win, and to win two constitutes a considerable achievement. Unfortunately, such achievements apparently count for nothing among modern publishers, who examine only the sales figures. And, since the sales of Patricia's earlier books were not impressive, she couldn’t find a mainstream publisher for her new novel, It So Happens.

Eventually, after a two-year search, a small firm called Solidus proved willing to issue the book. And now, to the author’s surprise, It So Happens has been longlisted for the Orange prize.

Solidus is a very small publishing house which works through POD. The web site states that they ‘specialise in publishing the work of established authors who want to make a break from their usual subjects, or to experiment with different ways of writing. Many writers find that traditional publishers require them to repeat earlier success and write within the narrow confines of accepted genres. We want to encourage writers to follow their own paths and to allow them to reach readers who may not have met their work before.’

All of which is precisely what I warned you about a few days ago. Publishers want you (a) to sell lots of books, and (b) to do the same thing over and over. Fail to do either of these and you will lose out.

Meanwhile Patricia is now getting a new lease of life, and good luck to her.

Amanda Craig,who reviewed It So Happens in the New Statesman, is quoted as follows: ‘I'm furious that the book wasn't picked up by anyone else. It wasn't as if she didn't have a really good track record. The trouble with publishing is that with the accountants running things, everything is dominated by how much your last novel sold. For middle-aged, mid-list authors, the result is disastrous.’

So three cheers, says the Indie, for one tiny publisher who was prepared to take a risk. And I add a fourth cheer too.

Other writers who are looking for a publisher should note that the Solidus web site says that the firm is not currently reading new submissions. But no doubt there are other publishers. You just have to keep searching.

A note about comments

This blog makes use of Blogger.com facilities, and I have tried to set the Blogger options so as to make it as easy as possible for people to post comments.

I would like you to be aware that the Blogger system is set up so that, whenever someone posts a comment, I get a copy of it by email. You can later delete your own comment from the blog, if you wish, and the public will not be able to read it, but I will still have had the email.

If you expect me to reply, or hope that I will, probably your best plan is to send an email to me direct, rather than post a comment. You can find my email address through my Blogger profile -- use the link at the top of the right-hand column on this page. I cannot send a reply to you if you simply post a comment -- in other words, although I get an email containing your comment, the 'reply' facility doesn't work because the system doesn't have your address.

The only exception (I am guessing here) is if you are already a registered Blogger.com user yourself; then the email containing your comment does seem to contain your email address for me to reply, if I want to.

Hope that's clear.

Occasionally, if I felt it was sufficiently important, I have been able to trace an email address for a commenter via Google or some other device, but that is the long way round the houses; and it isn't always possible.

John Buchan: The Three Hostages

John Buchan is a now a largely forgotten writer. However, he retains a small group of admirers, and they have formed a John Buchan Society to preserve his memory; their web site contains a mass of useful information.

Buchan was born in 1875, in Scotland; he was the son of a Calvinist minister. At one time he had to walk three miles to school each day, and three miles back, but he eventually made it to Oxford University.

From then on Buchan had a varied and high-powered career in both public and commercial life. At various times he was, for instance, a government administrator in South Africa, a director of Reuter’s, and a Member of Parliament. He was briefly the head of the UK intelligence service, and when he died (in 1940) he was Governor-General of Canada.

Given such a record of activity at a high level, it is surprising that Buchan ever had any time to write anything, but write he did: over a hundred books in all, of which about forty were fiction.

In my youth Buchan was famous as a thriller writer, and it is one of his thrillers that I want to discuss today: The Three Hostages.

First published in 1924, The Three Hostages features one of Buchan’s regular heroes, Richard Hannay. When the book begins, Hannay is just turned forty years of age, not long married, with a young son. After distinguished service in the first world war, he has retired to the country to fish and shoot. Before long, however, a national crisis arrives, and Hannay is told that His Country Needs Him. Reluctantly, Hannay has to respond to the call of duty.

The plot of The Three Hostages is pure blood and thunder; it is a melodrama. It is, however, an exceptionally intelligent and well told melodrama, and the reader is effortlessly carried along.

The main reason for discussing the book today is that it reveals how remarkably percipient Buchan was about future developments. When he wrote the novel, Buchan was approaching fifty, and had mixed for years at the highest level of UK politics and business. He was a well travelled and widely experienced man. It is nevertheless surprising to find how clearly he saw the problems that were developing in Europe.

I have argued elsewhere that the two world wars in the twentieth century effectively made the English people at least partially insane. Buchan saw it too, even in the 1920s. ‘Have you ever realised,’ one character asks Hannay, ‘the amount of craziness that the War has left in the world?’

Later, another character speaks of the dangers of propaganda. ‘Dick, have you ever considered what a diabolical weapon that can be – using all the channels of modern publicity to poison and warp men’s minds?’ This, please note, was written ten years before the appointment of Goebbels as Hitler’s propaganda minister.

The rise of Hitler, or a fanatic like him, is also foreseen. ‘In ordinary times he will not be heard, because, as I say, his world is not our world. But let there come a time of great suffering or discontent, when the mind of the ordinary man is in desperation, and the rational fanatic will come by his own. When he appeals to the sane and the sane respond, revolutions begin.’

At one point, Hannay meets a German whom he knew in the war, but is on good terms with. The German tells Hannay that Germany is now (in the 1920s, remember) no place for a moderate man. ‘You foreign powers have hastened our destruction, when you had it in your hands to save us. I think you have meant well, but you have been blind, for you have not supported our moderate men and have by your harshness played the game of the wreckers among us.’

So, one way and another, The Three Hostages is in interesting and entertaining read. It borrows, of course, from the past: the villain of the book has a touch of Svengali about him. And Buchan himself was borrowed from by his successors: Ian Fleming learnt from him.

But one cannot, I suppose – and I say this with a deep sigh – one cannot leave Buchan without touching, briefly, upon his alleged ‘anti-semitism’ and racism.

It is perfectly true that the 2005 reader, who has had an awareness of political correctness injected into his veins, will wince a bit at some of Buchan’s throwaway remarks. There are references, for example, to a ‘nigger band’ playing in a nightclub. And there are indeed derogatory references to Jews, as in the description of the same nightclub’s clientele: ‘the usual rastaquouère crowd of men and women… mixed with fat Jews and blue-black dagos.’

Before we get too excited about this, we do have to remember that we are talking about the English (a term which in this instance includes Scottish) upper classes here. Buchan married into the aristocracy, and he mixed with the greatest in the land. It is undeniable that, in the 1920s and 1930s, such people were typically arrogant, and were dismissive of almost everyone on earth apart from those few who came from their own select background. See the film Gosford Park if you want to know how they treated their servants.

Furthermore, we need to bear in mind that words such as Frog (for Frenchman), and Wog (for an Arab) were in frequent use well into my lifetime. Indeed, when I was a boy we were sometimes cautioned that ‘Wogs begin at Calais’. In other words, you can’t trust anyone but an Englishman; and you can only trust him if he went to the right sort of school.

With the benefit of hindsight such attitudes are unattractive; but in their day they were commonplace, and it is a little hard to abuse Buchan for being a man of his time.

Once anti-semitism, in its virulent form, appeared in Nazi Germany, Buchan was quick to condemn it publicly; so much so that Hitler promptly added him to the list of men who, after the proposed German invasion of England, were to be imprisoned for ‘Pro-Jewish activity’. In due course Buchan realised the sensitivity of some of his earlier (and entirely trivial) references to Jews, and eliminated them from his later work. If you wish to know more, the issue has been dealt with in Roger Kimball’s valuable essay on Buchan.

It would be unfortunate, to say the least, if such a remarkable body of work, by such a remarkably far-sighted man, were to be ignored, or, worse, condemned, on the strength of a few lines here and there.

Should you be interested in the history and development of the thriller, The Three Hostages is a book you should read.

Honoré de Balzac: Lost Illusions

I had an email from Nassim Nicholas Taleb recently, in which he said that he had been re-reading Balzac's Illusions Perdues. Nothing, says Taleb, has changed in the book business in the last 150 years!

So I took at look at Illusions Perdues -- except that, not being clever enough to read it in the original French, I had to make do with the Penguin edition, in which the translation (Lost Illusions) is by Herbert J. Hunt.

Hunt's introduction to the book provides a necessary reminder (well, necessary for me) that the literary career was really quite well developed, at least as a possibility, in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Balzac was born in 1799 and died in 1850. In between he packed in an enormous amount of literary work and became both famous and (up to a point) financially successful; he certainly liked to live well, even if he didn't always pay his bills.

Lost Illusions was originally published in three parts between 1837 and 1843. It tells the story of a handsome would-be poet, Lucien Chardon. Lucien is ambitious but naive (sound familar?), and he leaves the provinces to make his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris. But he finds -- dear me, how distressing -- that talent counts for nothing in comparison to money, intrigue, and unscrupulousness. The novel paints, it is said, 'a scathing view of the world of letters'; and you don't need much insight to guess that many of Lucien's experiences are thinly disguised (if that) versions of what happened to Balzac on his way to the top.

In 1835, a friend of Balzac's tried to interest him in a real-life Lucien Chardon, a young man called Emile Chevalet. Balzac took at look at this wannabe writer and sent his friend a brutal report. 'This young man is characteristic of our times. When one has no particular aptitude for anything, one takes to the pen and poses as a talented person.' Even for those with real talent, Balzac insists, long and patient effort is needed. This point is later driven home in Lost Illusions.

Chapter Nine of Part II of Lost Illusions is perhaps the heart of the book. Its title is Good Advice, and in it Etienne Lousteau makes it plain to Lucien that genuine talent is unlikely to make much headway in the real-life literary world. Here are a few of Lousteau's observations:

'If you reckon to live on what your poetry brings in, you have time to die half a dozen deaths before you make your name.'

'Don't imagine that the political world is much cleaner than the literary world: in both of them bribery is the rule; every man bribes or is bribed. When a publisher is bringing out a more or less important work, he pays me not to attack it.'

'The experience of the first person who told me what I am now telling you was wasted on me, just as mine will no doubt be useless to you. It's always the same story, every year the same enthusiastic inrush of beardless ambition from the provinces to Paris.... They all fall into the pit of misery, the mire of journalism, the morass of the book-trade.'

'In short, my friend, the key to success in literature is not to work oneself, but to exploit others' work.'

'The more mediocre a man is, the sooner he arrives at success.... It will be a fight to the death if you have any talent, for you 'd have a better chance without it.'

Hmmm. Now that's really encouraging, isn't it?

Balzac's story, as you will have gathered by now, is repeated perhaps ten thousand times a year. The ambitious young writers (whether male or female) travel to Paris/London/New York (either literally or they send a ms), and discover, to their total amazement, that the world does not read three pages of their masterpiece and go WOW! This is SENSATIONAL!

Young writers always find this hard to believe. Even when they know that it happens every year to ten thousand young hopefuls, and has done for 150 years and upwards, they still find it a bit of a shock when it happens to them.