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Grauniad article about new novelists

59 replies

UnquietDad · 10/04/2008 17:01

here

Interesting, although hardly news. Also couldn't shake the idea that Jean-Hannah is bigging up her novelist friends.

The commenter who makes the point about review space has part of the story, and the one who brings up career sustainability has the other.

The same Sam Leith article which is quoted is also the one in which he says that if first novels are no good then he (in the Telegraph) just doesn't review them rather than giving them a bad review. Far more damaging!

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UnquietDad · 10/04/2008 17:02

Also very annoyed at "smaller authors who shun the London-centric ideal will never thrive". This of course has nothing to do with how bloody expensive it is to live in London?!

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poodlepusher · 10/04/2008 18:36

Its interesting to read about new talent. But you can practically see the erased quotation marks around the researched elements of her article.

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 10:03

I think she also over-estimates the importance of the "iron quadrangle" of Ishiguro, Amis, Barnes and McEwan.

They are simply four respected writers who pretty much every reader has heard of, that's all - and who have managed to combine "literary" style with "commercial" sales.

There are plenty more. What gets in the way of newish and mid-career writers is not these "big four" at all - it's the over-hyping of stupid celeb biogs and misery memoirs, plus over-enthusiastic advances for new writers who are then forced to sink or swim, don't earn out and don't get offered a second book.

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poodlepusher · 11/04/2008 10:36

I think that's just her playing to the perceived publishing "inner circle" or genuine ignorance.

Though to be fair, that combination of literary style and commercial success is what the publishers and writers are all after, isn't it...

There always have to be the winners of any race and the horses (or writers or whatever) who come in 2nd and 3rd.

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 10:41

Writing isn't a race, though.

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 11:49

Not long ago I had a Ready To Kill day on the professional front. A proposal of mine got a "you must be joking" from a young editor at S&S, phrased as "just not commercial enough. Didn?t he used (sic) to write XXXX? I?m sure I remember that name from years back when I worked in YYYY. Nothing ?wrong? with it but it?s a bit too ?cosy? for me, I?m afraid?. I?m really looking for burning social issues stuff, to be honest. ?.But really, it?s the usual story: without a TV/household-name profile, I see it struggling."

I mean, what a thoroughly depressing thing to say. You feel like picking them up and giving them a good smacking, don't you?? Why the feck do they just accept that this is the way things are, and that the reading public is so dim they won't buy it unless it's "written" by Colleen McChav? I suspect it's more to do with publishers' laziness - slebs promote themselves, everyone else needs some actual work.

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Kathyis6incheshigh · 11/04/2008 11:52

Vomit @ "I?m really looking for burning social issues stuff, to be honest"

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Eliza2 · 11/04/2008 11:58

Sometimes I think they need reminding who actually reads books. They seem to miss the point that most of the reading public is aged 30 plus and female. This demographic doesn't want Colleen Mc. Really, it doesn't.

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 12:03

Publishers are oddly reactive rather than proactive. They are less and less willing to plough their own furrow and more and more ready to follow a trend.

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Kathyis6incheshigh · 11/04/2008 12:06

LOL - the teen market at the moment seems to be all science fiction about a post-global warming drowned Britain.
Was not surprised when the book that won the Chicken House children's fiction comp was, guess what, science fiction about post-global warming.....

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 12:08

Wonder if they all watched "Life Force" back in 2000?...

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cyteen · 11/04/2008 13:08

"But it's also dispiriting to note the extent to which McEwan and his cohort (Barnes, Ishiguro, Amis - the usual posse) continue to dominate the shelves and the discourse when it comes to discussing contemporary Brit Lit."

So, er, which authors tend to get the main feature slot in the Saturday Guardian every single fucking week? Would that be new up and coming talent, or would it be the same coterie of tired old names that have been talked about for decades, constantly invited back to write about their own work, a pet love or each other's oeuvres?

FFS. I hope the Guardian chokes on its cake.

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poodlepusher · 11/04/2008 13:18

I agree completely that writing isn't a race. Publishers have been forced to make selling books a race though.

You can't please everyone all the time, and there are vastly varying talents between different editors. The comments you got back were crass. I don't know if you have an agent but its my understanding that badly expressed and unconstructive stuff like that doesn't land in the lap of the writer when all it does is depress / anger them.

Don't let that put you off what you're doing.

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Kathyis6incheshigh · 11/04/2008 13:32

On the Barnes/Amis/McEwan thing, I read Martin Amis's 'My Struggle' recently (or 'Experience', as it is actually called) and it was depressing the way a thread ran through the book of the same little gang of people, all male, London/Oxford-based and of a certain age and background, dominating the literary scene as authors & editors of literary review pages (Amis, Barnes, Raine, Hitchens, O'Hanlon...). What was even more depressing was how accepting they were of this state of affairs.

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 13:51

poodle: yes, I have an agent. Have had for 11 years. And yes, she normally shields me from that kind of stuff but I did ask specifically to know what this editor had said because I knew her form years ago. So more fool me!

kathy: the London literary scene is all a big back-slapping clique (though not necessarily an all-white, all-male one) and anybody who lives outside it is classed as "regional".

cyteen: yes, you have a point. Each of those novelists is guaranteed a review. And the space for new novelists to be reviewed is shrinking. But there are people lower on the "radar", e.g. Toby Litt, who get extensive review space (because the Grauniad knows them, I suspect, or wants to lick their arse). Could do with more space for fiction paperbacks, and also for children's fiction.

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Swedes · 11/04/2008 13:59

What do you think of no frills publishing deals where the publisher doesn't pay the author an advance? Is that becoming more common?

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 14:01

It's becoming more common and some people think it's the future, but nobody has yet made any serious money out of it. I'm dubious myself.

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Kathyis6incheshigh · 11/04/2008 14:19

I want to write regional literature - in the sense that place is hugely important to the stuff I am trying to write. I couldn't do it in London. If that would make it regional in a negative sense, well, that sucks.
Do you have a positive connection between place and what you write - or do you just randomly live where you do for reasons of practicality?

Ah well, maybe we can have a local literature revival in the same way as the local food revival....

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cyteen · 11/04/2008 14:27

UQD: one of my favourite things is Private Eye's yearly round-up of who's puffed who and how they know each other Hilarious and depressing at the same time.

Slightly off on a tangent, but it also pisses me off when I read about nominations for the various big lit prizes and judges supposedly 'snubbing' people - surely (and bless my naivety here if you like) books should be nominated because of their quality and/or suitability, not because they were written by a player in the lit scene? I seem to remember there being some hoo-ha about Ian McEwan not being nominated for something recently and everyone acting like he should automatically be in there just because he had published that year. There were several rather withering articles on the final shortlist's books, along the lines of "These are all very well, but where are the big hitters, where are the proper authors?"

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Kathyis6incheshigh · 11/04/2008 14:33

Ooh, I so agree about the 'snubbing' thing.
Hey, can you imagine being a judge of one of those things and having to agonise over it... 'Mart's latest book is crap but if I snub him he will never speak to me again....'

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UnquietDad · 11/04/2008 14:48

I randomly live where I do for reasons of practicality! And have yet to put it into fiction.

Yes, "snubbing" - Zadie was "snubbed" for the Booker, wasn't she? Despite the fact that she was only about 17 and it was her first novel. Not as if she won't have a chance in future...

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poodlepusher · 11/04/2008 20:18

I'm really glad you started this thread, it feels like the first discussion on Adult Fiction that hasn't just been a list of "oh I love this" or "I hate that". I was getting quite bored and despondent, so thank you.

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gracepaley · 11/04/2008 20:21

He hot, that Edward Hogan though.

(deliberately lowers tone)

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midnightexpress · 12/04/2008 19:11

At the risk of sounding like a corporate whore, I don't think the blame can be laid entirely at the feet of the publishers. The booksellers, particularly Borders and Waterstones must surely take some of the blame for the state of things.

I would also point to some of the creative writing courses, which seem to churn out hordes of bright young things who have very little to say (not surprisingly, since most of them are about 24 years old). These courses seem to be more about teaching people How To Get Published than about how to write (or indeed why).

UQD, I know you are involved in teaching CW, and am not intending to offend - would you agree though? DP recently finished an MPhil on one of the more lauded CW courses and was heartily disillusioned. He got a distinction, but was sick of the way that they try to teach you a particular way of writing that seems to rob 'real' writers of their true voice.

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midnightexpress · 12/04/2008 19:13

Oh and Eliza, I disagree - there is certainly a HUGE market for celeb biogs and misery memoirs. the publishers aren't stupid and they wouldn't be churning them out if no-one was buying them. So I'm afraid that the great British public must also shoulder some of the responsibility.

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