January -
June 2006
June
15/06: Heirs with Airs
A judge has ruled
that the rights to John Steinbeck's
most famous novels should be seized
from his publisher - despite a
written contract signing those
rights away - and handed over to the
author's descendants. On a related
front, a profile that ran this week
in the New Yorker of James
Joyce's son and literary heir
Stephen portrays him as an
obstreperous, vengeful figure
determined to enforce extreme, and
occasionally ridiculous,
restrictions on the use of his
father's literary estate.
Whether the next
generation(s) are in the right about
their rights is a question that can
only be argued by copyright lawyers.
What is important to keep in mind is
that none of this has anything much
to do with literature. The parties
might as well be fighting over the
family silver. Indeed, the New
Yorker piece ends with the story of
Stephen Joyce bragging about his
successful fight to recover two
Joyce keepsakes that had remained in
the SUNY-Buffalo
collection for forty years: a charm
engraved with the words “Finnegans
Wake” and a pen that Joyce had
used to sign copies of that book.
“How many people will fight on and
on for something they believe in?”
he asks.
One can only wonder
what the "something" is
that Mr. Joyce imagines he is
fighting for in this case. We're not
even talking about a text here, but
a charm and a pen. What do they have
to do with Joyce's literary legacy?
In Joyce's defence,
at least he doesn't seem to be doing
it for the money. He's doing it for
the sheer thrill of being a pain in
the ass to as many people as
possible (a goal I can imagine his
father approving of).
The Steinbeck case seems more about
the bottom line. Though that hasn't
stopped the family from wrapping
themselves in a cloak of
self-righteousness. According to the
Steinbeck family's lawyer, his
"clients' primary concern . . .
[was] to protect and preserve the
legacy of John Steinbeck."
Huh? What exactly
was Penguin doing that was
threatening the preservation of that
legacy? This case was about
establishing property rights, and
nothing else.
Which may be as it
should be. But really, I could live
without heirs - who, after all,
contributed nothing toward the
creation of these books - giving themselves airs.
They're just a bunch of people with
famous last names.
April
27/06: How to
Publish a Bestseller, or
Schadenfreude, All Over Again
Numerous passages
from a new teen
"chick-lit" novel by
Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard
undergraduate, appears to have been
plagiarized. The novel in
question, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got
Wild, and Got a Life, was part of a two-book package
deal for which Viswanathan, then
aged 17, received a reported
$500,000 advance (an amount her
publisher has denied).
Not since, well not
since the James Frey case a couple
of months ago, has there been such a
reaction to a publishing story in
the news. The blogs, of course, have
been all over it. Within 24 hours
Slate.com had run no fewer than four
headlines concerned with the story.
The mainstream media, initially slow
to respond (and heavily reliant on
reporting from the Harvard
Crimson), are now lining up with
background features. The coverage
has been critical, with little
sympathy extended to Ms. Viswanathan.
Alex Beam's column "Pity poor
me, all the way to the bank" in
the Boston Globe even dubs her
"the Queen of
Schadenfreude."
I find it a
fascinating story for reasons that
go well beyond the purported
author's purported copying or "cryptomnesia"
(just one of the many new words I've
been learning in the last couple of
days). Even more than with the Frey
case it opens windows into the
publishing industry that many would
probably prefer to keep shut. Best
of all, it offers an account that I
hope will be studied in publishing
programs all over North America on
"How to Publish a
Bestseller." You just have to
follow these few simple steps.
Step One -
Pick an "Author" (more on
the quotation marks later):
I'm starting off
with this because I think it's where
the story should begin. Not everyone
agrees. A New York Times
article on Viswanathan's publisher
(Alloy Entertainment) is headlined
"First, Plot and Character.
Then Find an Author." I see
their point, and I accept that an
author is inessential. But I'm
talking about an "author."
Now there isn't much
to do here aside from getting
someone young and good-looking.
Kaavya Viswanathan is very young and
very good-looking. It should go
without saying, but we'll say it
anyway: If she weighed 300 pounds,
was in her late 30s, and had
problems with unwanted facial hair
there is no power on earth that
could have got her a book contract.
Though she might have been able to
write one, she would never be
allowed to identify herself as the
author.
She might, however,
have been able to find employment as
a "packager" . . .
Step Two -
Labeling (also known as
"Identifying a Niche and/or
Demographic"):
In a recent column
appearing on Slate.com ("The
End of Originality"),
"Hollywood Economist"
Edward Jay Epstein explains why
"originality is anything but a
virtue" in Hollywood. A lot of
the same reasoning holds for the
publishing world. The
"underlying reality of today's
entertainment economy," Epstein
writes, is that "audience
creation" has become "just
as important a creative product as
the film itself." The key to
success is to properly prepare an
audience for the product. This is
the same kind of market creation
John Kenneth Galbraith described as
characterizing the New Industrial
State, and is the model which I
adopted in my essay on "The
New Industrial Art."
Galbraith pointed out how the manufacture of demand by advertising is an absolutely essential component of an
industrial economy. This is because the things made by such an economy are so
expensive and take so long to bring from the concept stage to their actual
production (sound familiar?). When they finally do get to market, the consumer must
be primed and ready to buy. It is not enough to simply build a
better mouse-trap; one has to create the demand for it as well.
The easiest (that
is, most effective and cheapest) way
to prepare an audience for the
product is to just keep turning out
the same product. Hence Epstein's
argument for the end of originality,
and why you're seeing so many
sequels, re-makes and adaptations
from popular comic books at your
local theatre. The same model
applies in publishing, where
formulaic genre fiction rules the
roost when it comes to actually
selling books. It also provides the
logic behind every huge advance. Put
simply: The larger an author's
advance, the less original
the book is expected to be. Charles
Frazier wasn't paid eight million
dollars to write a hilarious farce
about nightlife in London in the
1960s. He was paid eight million
dollars to write another Cold
Mountain (and, from the
reports that have been circulating,
that's what he's going to deliver).
Dan Brown is getting paid to write
Dan Brown novels, which is
(fortunately for him) all he can
write. And so it goes. As I've said
before, no one, not even a
first-time novelist, is paid big
money to write the Next Big Thing.
He (or she) is being paid to write
the Last Big Thing. Which they
usually do.
In today's
publishing world labels can do a lot
of the heavy work of audience
creation for you. With How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got
Wild, and Got a Life was a
well-labeled production. It was
identified as "chick-lit"
for a specific audience: the teen or
"tween" crowd. It also
sneaks in an extra demographic edge
with the ethnic angle. In case you
missed it, the title is a deliberate
echo of Terry McMillan's How
Stella Got Her Groove Back. Know
your audience. And let your audience
know that you know.
Step Three -
Manufacture Buzz:
I love all the buzz
about buzz. I especially like it
when people act as though it's some
kind of "bottom-up" force
that can suddenly take on a life of
its own and transform the economics
of the marketplace.
This is, of course,
nonsense. It doesn't happen that
way. Buzz is always
manufactured. This can be done in
various ways. Two of the most
popular are:
(1) Offering a huge
advance. Is it stupid to give an
unknown author $500,000 for a first,
unwritten, novel? Not at all. You
just have to see it for what it is:
an advertising expense. Give that
kind of money to a 17-year-old and
what have you got? A great book? No!
Something even better: A story!
Just release the figures and let the
wires heat up with outrage,
disbelief, and mutterings about the
power of agents. That's buzz!
(2) Announce the
film deal. Not only is the book,
which hasn't even been published
yet, already a bestseller, it's also
about to be made into a major motion
picture! (The rights to How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got
Wild, and Got a Life were sold
to DreamWorks a couple of months
before the book was released.)
That's buzz!
Step Four -
"Write" the Book:
Did you get those
quotation marks? Yes, we're back to
the wonderful world of the
"author" (first described
here in "The
Death of the 'Author'"
several years ago). And what is it
"authors" do? Well, we're
not sure, but apparently they don't
write. In fact, not only do they not
write, they don't even
"write."
Welcome to
"packaging," publishing's
Word of the Year. What it refers to
is the process of putting a book
together as product. It involves
writing, editing, marketing, and
various other things. An idea or
concept (hopefully not very
original) goes in at one end of the
machine and after a mysterious
process involving various committees
a book pops out the other end. At
least it looks like a book, though I
prefer the word product. Really,
it's very hard to think of such a
thing as being "written"
in any meaningful sense at all. This
has led to some of the more
interesting comments with regard to
the Viswanathan case. According to
her defenders (and she has some),
Viswanathan may not have had
anything much to do with the
"writing" of her book at
all. The plagiarized portions could
have simply been inserted by an
anonymous packager, or even (better
yet), software designed for the
purpose. In fact, maybe the same
anonymous packager (or software)
wrote the books that were
plagiarized! It's enough to make
your head swim!
Step Five -
Ride the Fallout:
And then . . . the
collapse. The author exposed as a
fraud, the book pulled from the
stores. Is this
the end of what promised to be a
brilliant career? Is it all over for
Opal?
Far from it! Did
l'affaire Frey kill A Million
Little Pieces? Sales jumped! And as for Ms. Viswanathan, she has
even less to worry about. After all,
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a bestseller
and award-winner again. As Alex Beam
points out, ripping off Martin Amis
didn't do anything to hurt Jacob
Epstein's career. Americans love a
tale of redemption. Might there be a
chance for Opal to do Oprah
anytime in the future? Where will
the bidding begin in the tell-all
account of how this sordid affair
happened? Will it be fiction or
memoir? And who will produce the
author's autobiography?
I tell you, this
could turn into a franchise.
March
10/06: Return of the E-Book
E-books (and their
near kin) are in the news again this
week, with stories about the next
generation of digital readers and
electronic ink technologies, the
announcement of the Lulu Blooker
shortlist for "blooks"
(books based on blogs or websites),
and the launch of a new serial novel
online at Slate.com.
I say e-books are in
the news again, but they've never
really gone away. Still, I haven't
had much to say about them since way
back in 2000 (!), when I made the
following comments:
"The question of what effect the Internet will have on the kinds of books we
read is larger than the issue of serialization, but may be related. My sense is
that few people (present company excluded) actually read the Internet,
except for very brief essays (or reviews). Personally, I couldn't imagine
reading an entire novel on-line, no matter how small they made the installments.
Then again, I didn't grow up digital." March
2000
"On the viability of the e-book. Personally, I don't see it
happening yet. Stephen King would seem to have been the ideal candidate to
succeed: his style of writing is particularly well-suited for serial
publication, he is the biggest brand-name in publishing today, and he has a huge
online audience. Nevertheless, even after sinking enormous amounts of his own
money into his first independent e-novel venture, The Plant, he seems to
have stumbled. One man, no matter how big, cannot be 'big publishing's
worst nightmare.' The industry is bigger. It is the promotional and
advertising budgets and media networks of the big publishers that make authors.
Without it, any writer hoping to stand out in the 500-billion-channel Internet
universe has no hope at all." November
2000
Some hits and misses
there, I think. But five years later
on it may be time to re-visit the
topic.
In part because five
years, in the current environment,
is a lifetime. It still amazes me
that the first image-based Internet
browsers weren't widely available
until about 10 years ago (the very
first, Mosaic, came out in 1993).
Before that the Internet was
basically just e-mail, bulletin
boards and newsgroups. For those
with the bandwidth to keep up, we
seem to be living through a
revved-up replay of the evolution of
communications technology, with the
Internet first imitating the printed
word (websites as journals, zines,
or newspapers), and then moving on
to radio and television (the website
as podcasting channel or
station).
Where does that
leave books?
As I read the
Blooker site, still at the top of
the food chain. For all its digital
sexiness, the thing that strikes me
about the Lulu Blooker prize is that
it's really just another book prize.
You can't submit an online
publication or e-book, only a
printed and bound paper product. The
only thing that makes these books
any different is where they got
their start, which is on the
Internet.
Well . . . so what?
Such a connection seems kind of
arbitrary to me. Lots of books are
published out of newspaper or
magazine articles - do they have a
special prize?
But the Blooker
promoters assure us that this marks
"a new stage in the life-cycle
of content, if not a new category of
content and a new dawn for the book
itself". Oh, please. These are
published books; they aren't a new
category of anything. And who came
up with that line about the
life-cycle of content? I mean, sure
most of these books are going to end
up being pulped (that is, to
continue the metaphor, they will die
and rot), but do we need to be
reminded of that fact in the
promotional literature?
Slate is
trying something a little different.
But just a little. The Unbinding
by Walter Kim is being hailed as
"the first Net Novel":
"one that takes advantage of,
and draws inspiration from, the
capacities of the Internet. . . . It
will make use of the Internet's
unique capacity to respond to events
as they happen, linking to documents
and other Web sites. In other words,
The Unbinding is conceived
for the Web, rather than adapted to
it."
I hate to be a wet
blanket, but this sounds to me like
just another bit of Internet fiction
with hyperlinks. I've been reading
those since . . . well, since
Mosaic. Those earlier Internet
fictions were also conceived for the
Web, rather than adapted to it. In
other words, I'm not sure this is
the first anything. But, as with the
Blooker blurbs, there is quite a bit
of spin. My favourite part comes
when Slate editor Meghan
O'Rourke talks about why there has
been a lack of literature being
written on the Web (actually, there
has been no lack, but that's another
story). Her explanation?
"When Stephen
King experimented with the medium in
the year 2000, publishing a novel
online called The Plant,
readers were hampered by
dial-up access. But the prevalence
of broadband and increasing comfort
with online reading makes the
publication of a novel like The
Unbinding possible."
Uh-huh. Do tell. The
reason The Plant didn't take
off was because we were
"hampered" by our dial-up
access. Now that we all have
high-speed, literature on the Web
can finally become a reality.
A couple of items
for Ms. O'Rourke's attention: (1) A
lot of people still use dial-up. In
fact I still use it at home. You
don't notice it when reading
something online. (2) If you really
want to know what hampers people on
dial-up, it's having to wait while
all those pop-ups and flash ads
plastered over every page of
Slate.com load. Your advertising
takes up ten times as much bandwidth
as any of your actual content. So
see if you can do something about
that first, and then we'll talk
about this Brave New World we're
entering into.
As for e-ink and
reading books by portable devices,
here is where I do have to change my
tune. For a while I couldn't see it
happening. The book is just too
effective and comfortable a
technology. But there are two big
pressures that are going to make the
switch to digital happen:
environmental and economic. Even if
all books are printed on
forest-friendly recycled materials,
there is still an environmental
footprint. A large one. I don't
think publishing as many books as we
do now is sustainable in the long
run. And economically it just makes
too much sense. Books are an
effective and comfortable
technology, but they are also an
incredibly expensive one. Reducing
their content to a digital format is
the only way to go. And as e-ink and
digital reader technologies continue
to improve, I suspect even hardcore
bibliophiles will be converted.
There are still
major issues, especially with regard
to copyright, to be resolved. But
I'm sure this is the way of the
future, and the near future at that.
We'll probably be seeing these
devices take off in a big way within
the next five years. My main concern
is how this will affect the way we
think of books. Will Pride and
Prejudice still be the same
thing when it's no longer a book but
merely a file? Are we likely to read
it the same way? Or will it simply
become another text from nowhere, a
batch of content completing its
life-cycle in the wireless ether, or
the fragmented detritus of our
memory (cards)?
February
21/06: Upon Further Review
The Toronto Star
has apologized for running a
negative review.
The review in
question is the one discussed in the
News item immediately below
("Manufacturing Dissent").
And I have nothing to add to what I
said there about it. But this apology is
another thing . . .
Book Editor Dan
Smith writes the following:
The review in
question "set a new high-water
mark for viciousness, toward both
book and author. We chose to live
with that."
Why? Because they
figured "most readers"
would be "predisposed"
toward the book anyway? How is that
an excuse for viciousness? How is it
even relevant to whether or
not they should have run the review?
As I pointed out at
the time, the problem wasn't that
the review was vicious. It was that
it was a lousy review. The
reviewer didn't even lay a glove on
his target. He took a pass on the
book and went straight after the
author. That's why I wouldn't have
run it. What I objected to was the
whole notion of the review as being
cheap "entertainment,"
what Smith (approvingly?) quotes
another hack as calling "a good
literary hair-pulling." A good
bad review should at least aspire to
be something more than (quoting my
earlier commentary) "shallow,
personality-driven, pot-stirring
crap."
And then it
comes. The old line, the old lie,
that is an essential part of all
such discussions. Do you know what
I'm talking about? I'll bet you do.
Hang on, because here we go again:
"Let us share
one salient fact: The CanLit wading
pool is far too tiny to ever
guarantee three degrees of
separation, never mind six -
although we really should do better
than one, as in [this] case. In a
little world of juried
state-sponsored publishing, conflict
of interest is never far away."
There you have it.
The "small world of Canadian
publishing thesis" strikes
again.
I am so fed up
with this! Look, it's one thing
to say that every Canadian writer
knows another Canadian writer. Or
that every Canadian poet knows
several other Canadian poets. That's
probably true. But how do you go
from that to saying that every
Canadian writer knows every other
Canadian writer? Or that every
Canadian poet knows every other
Canadian poet? This is what the
"small world" thesis
amounts to.
And it's not true.
I've been reviewing books for nearly
ten years (and not just online but
for a mid-size Ontario daily). I had
lunch with Russell Smith about five
years ago. Aside from that I'd be
hard pressed to come up with five
other Canadian authors I've ever
met. Does Zach Wells count? I saw
him at the cottage last summer. But
then I haven't reviewed any of his
books. So take him off the list.
In fact, not only do
I not know any Canadian writers, I
don't even know anyone who knows any
Canadian writers.
Do you see my point?
Am I so unusual? Or do you think
there might be a lot of people like
me? People who write and review
books but who don't live in Toronto,
who don't go to award galas or
readings, and who . . . well, who
just don't count.
What really
makes me mad about this is the way
the "small world" thesis
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If we say that Canadian publishing
is a small world, what does that
mean for the people who aren't in
it? Well, for starters it means:
Good luck getting your book
reviewed! You see, nobody knows you,
or they don't know someone who knows
you, so obviously you can't be
reviewed. You're not in the pool.
"Conflict of interest"
among reviewers isn't a regrettable
necessity, it's an essential way of
letting us know who's in and who's
out.
It's how we do
business in this tiny country.
February
16/06: Manufacturing Dissent
A harsh review of a
new Canadian novel is being
described as
payback for an earlier attack by its
author on the reviewer.
When I first heard
about this (as it was reported on the
excellent Quill and Quire
blog) I thought it might be
interesting. The author of the book
in question writes a dreadful
"urban bimbo" column for
the Globe and Mail, but even
by her own low standards her
previous attack on the reviewer had
been a surprisingly snotty
performance. Unfortunately, the
reviewer, who had plenty of time to
sharpen his knives, wasn't up to the
task of writing a great bad review.
The comic invective was generic. Yes,
we were told, the book
was terrible, but there was no
explanation of exactly what it was that made
it so bad. A paragraph of supposedly
representative prose was quoted, but
nothing was done with it. Meanwhile,
the reviewer's own prose - which
was, apparently, already heavily
edited - seemed in need of a hand.
The badness of the book under review
was said to
"illuminate the limitations of
my thesaurus" (illuminate?),
and reference was made to "the
stench of this slush pile"
(said stench weirdly emanating from the book
itself rather than being meant as a dig at its
provenance).
There isn't much
about this
little dust-up worth
commenting on. I haven't read either
of the books in questions, and,
to judge from what I have
read of the authors, it may be a
cold day at the cottage before I do.
But it does make you wonder why
either "review" was picked
to run in the first place.
Now as regular
readers of this site know, I have
nothing against negative reviews. I
took Dale Peck's side in the ghastly
"snark" debate. I
subscribe to Canadian Notes and
Queries and eagerly await each
new critical volume from The
Porcupine's Quill. When, earlier
this week, it was revealed that the Guardian
had killed a negative review of a
book by one of its contributors I
was dismayed. I enjoy a healthy
critical debate.
But that's not what
this is.
What it is, or at
least what it seems to me to be, is
an artificial attempt to get
attention by replacing critical
debate with personal confrontation.
This has always been
with us. At least twice since I
started running this site I've been
invited by media figures to get into
a pre-arranged argument over
something that I didn't really care
about (and they didn't either)
because the resulting scrap would be
"interesting." I think in
one case mention was made of this
ersatz argument being a
"debate." But really it
was all about being entertaining.
And since I do a poor job of this I
had no trouble turning these offers
down.
Of course, if you do
want to get people's attention,
nothing draws a crowd like a fight.
Hence the careers of people like
Christopher Hitchens. And hence the
cover essay in Harper's a few
months ago. In that bloated piece
Ben Marcus was defending
experimental fiction from mainstream
critics like Jonathan Franzen. At
least that's what I thought the
essay was going to be about. Alas,
as the title made only too clear
("Why Experimental Fiction
Threatens to Destroy Publishing,
Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We
Know It"), the essay was really
just a relentless battering of
Franzen. I finished it without any
clear idea of what had been said on
the subject of experimental vs.
non-experimental fiction. The only
thing that registered was that
Marcus really hated Franzen. Or was
at least pretending that he did.
And this was a
"debate." Harper's
was apparently even e-mailing select
blogs to start some buzz growing. It
didn't go anywhere. I tell you,
there is wisdom in these blogs. They
can tell when they're being played.
And to give everyone credit, the
same attitude seems to have
prevailed over this most recent
Canadian squabble. Ignore these
people (it's why I left them
nameless) and maybe they'll behave.
So why am I saying
anything about this here? Just
because I want to take a shot at
shaming the editors of what I
believe are Canada's two
largest-circulation newspapers. Book
reviews are already an endangered
species. There are plenty of quality
titles, especially from the Canadian
small press, that will never be
discussed on the book pages of the Globe
or the Star. And why? Because
they'd rather gives us this shallow,
personality-driven, pot-stirring
crap instead. We deserve better.
January
16/06: The Awful Truth
BookNet Canada, a
new system for tracking book sales
in this country, has just released
its first report, covering the
four-week period ending December 4,
2005. The results were published in Quill
and Quire.
As a report in the National
Post puts it, the BookNet
numbers - which are based on figures
obtained from retailers making up
65% - 70% of the total book market -
throw "into question the
accuracy of some previously
published, widely quoted bestseller
lists." According to the new
system, not one Canadian book was
among the top 20 sellers in the
pre-Christmas season. Mass-market
books from foreign authors
dominated.
Well no kidding. Did
anyone ever believe the bestseller
lists from the Globe and Mail
and Maclean's? I still have
no idea where they get their numbers
from. Five years ago, when Bookscan
was set to unveil a more accurate
tracking system in the U.S. I had
this to say (full comment here):
"I must say it's about time. One wonders if we will be able to get the same
service here. For years I have been puzzled by Canadian bestseller lists that
persistently place the highly literary work of our countrymen and - women above
the latest offerings from Stephen King and Danielle Steele. Any pride I might
feel is usually outweighed by disgust at such a transparent fraud."
Now we have the
awful, if unsurprising, truth. No,
we weren't all rushing out to buy
the Giller Prize winner or other
well-respected literary tomes when
we were doing our Christmas
shopping. We were buying whatever
Oprah told us to buy, as well as the
latest edition of that classic
bathroom companion, the Guinness
Book of World Records.
The time has come
for the Globe and Maclean's
to get rid of their lists. As
currently constituted they are only
useless exercises in cultural
politics and the space given over to
them could be better used for
something else.
January
12/06: Truth and Consequences
An investigative
report appearing on The Smoking Gun website claims
that James Frey's 2003
"memoir" A Million
Little Pieces "wholly
fabricated or wildly
embellished" some details. Frey's book, which was initially
published to very mixed reviews and
limited sales, became an overnight success after being selected by
Oprah Winfrey for her popular
televised book club in September 2005.
It ended up as the year's
second-highest-selling book (1.77
million copes in the US alone), and
is still going strong.
I can't remember the
last time I saw so much fuss over a
book story! Why? Sure it's a
bestseller, and yes Oprah is
involved, but that doesn't explain
this amount of botheration. Franzen
vs. Oprah was never this big.
A couple of things
come to mind. First: The feeling
that it couldn't
happen to a nicer guy. It's not as
well remembered now, but when this
book first came out all the buzz was
about Frey himself and what a
jerk he was (and this was after
his recovery from addiction). Especially annoying was
an infamous interview he gave for
the New York Observer where
he carped about the current literary
scene:
"I don't give a
fuck what Jonathan Safran
whatever-his-name does or what David
Foster Wallace does. I don't give a
fuck what any of those people do. I
don't hang out with them, I'm not
friends with them, I'm not part of
the literati." And on David
Eggers: "A book that I thought
was mediocre was being hailed as the
best book written by the best writer
of my generation. Fuck that. And
fuck him and fuck anybody who says
that. I don't give a fuck what they
think about me. I'm going to try to
write the best book of my generation
and I'm going to try to be the best
writer."
This is what's known
as talking the talk. And it's no
surprise there are some long knives
out now that he's having difficulty
walking the walk.
Then there is the
justifiable anger many reviewers
feel after being conned. Does it
make a difference whether everything
in this book really happened or not?
Ask the guy who wrote the review for
IndieLondon.com (I'm pretty much
pulling this one at random, but it
is representative), wherein it is said
that while A Million Little
Pieces "reads like a
novel," its tale is "made
all the more real by the fact that
it's a true-story," and that
"certain scenes that are almost
too graphic to read, [are] made all
the worse by our knowledge that they
actually occurred." Ouch! You
think the fellow who wrote that
isn't feeling a little pissed right
about now?
Further comment on
this matter seems totally
superfluous, but here are a few
observations:
(1) I've been a big
hater of the memoir genre for years
now. I even made
autobiography/memoir top of my list
of "Five
Books to Make the Heart Sink"
all the way back in 2000. Since then
I've heard the same complaint being
made a number of times by other
reviewers and critics. And
yet they keep coming. It
appears that Frey's book was
originally conceived as a novel, but
in order to be published had to be
re-branded as a memoir. I guess this
is what the age demands.
(2) Enough with this blab about the vague status
of "creative non-fiction"
and other such lame defenses! I am
thoroughly sick of this
"blurry" or
"gray" area between truth
(or the "essential truth",
as Frey kept calling it on Larry
King Live)
and fiction. This is total
nonsense.
If you change the facts you run a
disclaimer, which this book didn't
(though its sequel apparently does
"because of some of the issues
that had come up through the
publication of the first book,"
whatever that means).
And don't give me that line about
how every memoir "takes
liberties" or is necessarily just
a subjective take on events full of
personal impressions and hazy
recollections that can't be expected
to be fully accurate. There's a big
difference between getting something
wrong by accident and making it up.
Frey knew he was making
things up. How can a book both
consciously take liberties and,
as Frey's publisher claims, be
"true to his
recollections"? These are
simply contradictory
positions.
Frey has admitted
embellishing the truth, and
apparently sees himself as following
in a great tradition of American
autobiographical fiction..
Whoa! So there's no
difference between a novel with
autobiographical elements and a
non-fiction autobiography? These are
"
essentially" the same thing? And Frey
is therefore the heir
of Hemingway, Miller, Fitzgerald, and
Kerouac?
Stop with the spin.
This has nothing to do with the
difference between truth and
fiction. It was the messy result of
a debate over marketing strategies.
(3) Oprah. Ah yes.
To have come from Tolstoy and
Steinbeck and Faulkner . . . to
this. Welcome back. When Word of
Mouth got together that petition
asking Oprah to promote contemporary
authors again (see here),
was this what they wanted? It's what
they should have expected. It's what
everyone should have
expected. Could someone remind me
why, even if everything in this book
were 100% true, a pick like this
should make anyone feel good about
Oprah's influence on
publishing?
And then came her
response. Oprah shrugged. No biggie.
Allegations of falsehoods are
apparently "much ado about
nothing." The
"relevant" part of the
book was its therapeutic message. If
it helps readers feel good about
themselves . . .
You have to wonder:
When did Americans become so
gullible? So accepting of authority
figures telling them not to worry
their empty little heads about big
questions that are just too hard for
them to figure out? So indifferent
to the truth? Can an analogy be made
between the Frey scandal and the
current political scene? Is the
fiction memoir far removed from the
faith-based presidency? Sure they
didn't find any weapons of mass
destruction or links to terrorist
groups in Iraq, but that doesn't
mean anyone actually lied.
Think of the "essential
truth"!
January
2/06: My Favourite Game - Round 2
In an experiment
conducted by the Sunday Times,
typed manuscripts of the opening
chapters of two Booker-prize winning
novels (V. S. Naipaul's In a Free
State and Stanley Middleton's Holiday)
were submitted to 20 publishers and
agents. "None appears to have
recognised them as Booker
prizewinners from the 1970s that
were lauded as British novel writing
at its best. Of the 21 replies, all
but one were rejections."
This stunt has been
done before, and I even wrote a
piece on it back in 2000 (see here).
The story then involved a French gossip magazine
submitting a best-selling novel written by a
TV news personality to several publishers, presenting it as a manuscript by a
first time author with an unknown name. All of the publishers rejected the
manuscript - which had been recently made into a TV movie. Indeed, the actual
publisher of the novel (which didn't even recognize its own work) added insult
to injury by refusing to return the manuscript without a self-addressed stamped
envelope.
Embarrassing? Yes.
But it doesn't tell us much we
didn't already know. Without an
agent, an unsolicited manuscript
coming off the street from an
unknown author isn't going to be
considered for publication. Even
agencies and publishing houses that
say they accept such manuscripts
don't really accept them, if
you know what I mean. I suspect the
manuscripts were scarcely looked at.
Eyebrows were raised
skyward at the rejection of
Naipaul's book. Doris Lessing
confessed herself
"astounded" and Andrew
Motion called it
"surprising." But was it
really such a surprise? Naipaul is a
writer with a big reputation, but
the point of the experiment was that
in this case his reputation did not
precede him. The manuscript was not
submitted by someone who had won the
Nobel Prize, but by a nobody. Should
it have been recognized as by
Naipaul? Not unless the younger,
front-line "readers" had
made a study of the man's work. In
a Free State was published 35
years ago. It is not a particularly
well-known book. I wouldn't have
recognized it. And I've never even
heard of Middleton.
Should the quality
of the writing been recognized?
Maybe it was. But our attitudes
toward these things changes. As
Naipaul admitted when told of what
happened, the world has moved on
since he wrote In a Free State.
What worked as literary fiction then
might not be what publishers are
looking for now. We like to think
good writing has a timeless quality
about it, but that's not necessarily
true from a publisher's perspective.
There are a lot of great books that
aren't in print anymore.
Of course this
perspective is anti-art. The Times
story quotes critics who "say
the publishing industry has become
obsessed with celebrity authors and
'bright marketable young things' at
the expense of serious
writers." But those bright
young things are marketable,
and that's what counts. And so the
forces of promotion and celebrity
becomes a circle of self-fulfilling
prophecy. Or, as another British
commentator had it this week in the Guardian:
"The absence of
surprise [in publishing] should
perhaps not be surprising, because
the way bookselling is organised
increasingly serves to eliminate it.
. . . In horse-racing terms, the
book trade is a bizarre inverted
handicap in which the runners with
pedigree and form gain all the
advantages, while the outsiders have
extra weights heaped on their
backs."
So no, it's not
surprising. But it's something to
keep in mind the next time you read
another predictable end-of-the-year
"best of" list, or another
diatribe by the powers-that-be about
the size of the slush pile and the
vanity of the great unpublished. The
problem is not that there are too
many books being published. The
problem is that too many aren't.
