Guardian article about Kate Clanchy "The book that tore publishing apart: ‘Harm has been done, and now everyone’s afraid’"

[miri1985]

www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/18/the-book-that-tore-publishing-apart-harm-has-been-done-and-now-everyones-afraid

Interesting article but Sarah Ditum said it on twitter better than I could "I think it's a major flaw that this article broadly assumes good faith on the part of cancel-culture agitators. A lot of them are perfectly self-interested and borderline sociopathic" twitter.com/sarahditum/status/1538144622643494912?cxt=HHwWgIC-3dCYy9gqAAAA

I like the fact that it's quite balanced and talks to both sides. I still feel out on a limb as regards the reaction to this, as I'm GC and hate virtue-signalling wokery, and I don't think cancel culture is a good thing, BUT I also thought Clanchy's tone in her book was awful and should have been edited and she should have been told why you don't write about people (*especially kids) like that way before it got published. I work in the field and if I'd seen those awful patrician, rude, prurient physical and personality descriptions in a manuscript I'd have raised it immediately. But I found myself in disagreement with a lot of people I admire on this. (And in agreement with some people I really don't!)

I'm sorry for her being in the eye of a storm, but her behaviour and attitude really haven't helped her.

It's an example of how cancel culture can be harmful, but at the same time, if someone is way out of line they should be told - but then they can just blame "cancel culture" and say they've done nothing wrong. And it ended up with people on both sides of it getting the cancelling and bullying treatment.

I thought at least some of the kids liked how she described them as it acknowledged something important to them? I'm thinking of the child described as having almond shaped eyes and being pleased as that was an aspect of her appearance that linked to her culture and she was proud of it.

I thought at least some of the kids liked how she described them

That might be the case, but I don't think it changes the fact that describing kids as if you're a Victorian phrenologist with a tape measure making notes on different ethnicities doesn't come across well. I don't actually think she meant it badly. She just isn't aware of how she saw all the brown kids and poor kids in that kind of "material for my evocative descriptions" kind of way without thinking of them as deserving of the respect needed to not do that. And I don't think all the descriptions would be so welcome, the ones about weight, facial hair etc. I can understand that many of the kids might think she's great (though potentially less so from a distance/with more awareness of history), but it's not just about that, it's about promoting a patrician, white saviour attitude.

And I don't normally talk like that - I'm as far from a SJW as you can imagine. But it leapt out a mile to me. Again, I'm confused by the side I found myself on in this.

I do believe Kate Clanchy has said that some were composite characters. I think she was aware that she shouldn't write an unflattering and recognisable description of a particular teenager.

I'm loathe to even get involved in this again, but the whole point of the book wsa supposed to be examining her motivations, possibly prejudices, etc. So yes, it did raise some uncomfortable questions - that was the point. As I understood it.

Kate Clanchy was not a victim of "cancel culture" in any way, and her behaviour was utterly abhorrent.

I think people forget that Kate herself started the scandal, when she read a negative (but fair and accurate) review someone left online, and threw a tantrum on Twitter about it, lying through her teeth that the reviewer had faked all the extracts quoted in the review and that she was the victim of some kind of malicious vendetta. I remember her tweeting something like "I am extremely frightened" which is a pretty awful thing to say in response to black women critiquing your work. If Kate hadn't kicked off on Twitter none of this would have happened, since no one even noticed or would have paid attention to some random online review.

The publishing world and book Twitter was hugely on her side to begin with and she had a tremendous amount of support, including very influential and famous authors with huge Twitter followings, until a few people actually bothered to fact check and read the book for themselves, and realised that Kate had lied and that all the quotes she'd claimed were faked were indeed in the book.

Even then she was not "cancelled." She signed a new book deal with a new publisher, re-released the book, and got an enormous PR boost off the scandal that she herself created! I can't count how many magazines and newspapers and TV shows she was interviewed in complaining about being cancelled. Honestly she deserves the Laurence Fox Award for "highest number of media appearances complaining about being cancelled."

Several black women who'd critiqued the book and fact checked it on Twitter got a ton of online abuse and iirc even had people calling up their workplaces to complain, because of Kate lying that they'd faked quotes and saying she was scared of them. That's actual cancel culture!

I actually read the book and can't believe it got published without major editing. Everyone has fixated on one or two comments about non-white students and is acting like all this fuss is just because she said "skin like chocolate" once, but the whole book is stuffed with dozens and dozens of sentences that are at best ill-judged. For example the book has quite a few inappropriate comments about underage girls' bodies (referring to pubescent girls as "lithe" and "bosomy" and having "fresh mouths"); there's a a ton of fat shaming; one very poorly judged paragraph about a student of hers who was raped, including inappropriate and judgemental comments about the raped child's body; and the repeated sneering about white children and especially white working class children (calling them "drearily mediocre" and "feral", mocking their chavvy names, and saying she'd happily "slap a Burka" on them to cover up their rotting teeth and bulging double chins) are just vile. Accusing a child of lying when he claims not to be Jewish because he's got a big nose is obviously antisemitic, and why would you accuse one of your own former pupils of being a liar in print anyway?

Interesting and thought provoking article and posts on here, have only just heard of this story (been on a social media blackout).
My initial reaction is since when do you have to agree with everything you read? And if you don’t agree with it why must it be ‘cancelled’. I say this not having read the book (and from what I’ve heard I wouldn’t like it) but just because it’s offensive do we have to try to ban the bloody thing? I can see both sides but have to ultimately fall back on Voltaire’s “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.

I also thought Clanchy's tone in her book was awful and should have been edited and she should have been told why you don't write about people (especially kids) like that way before it got published. I work in the field and if I'd seen those awful patrician, rude, prurient physical and personality descriptions in a manuscript I'd have raised it immediately. But I found myself in disagreement with a lot of people I admire on this.*

I feel exactly the same, @RoseLunarPink

Authors shouldn't be publishing racist, fatphobic, classist, antisemitic work. I'm not sure how anyone can argue against that.

Of course it's caused a chill. It's created a situation where no author is going to be comfortable writing physical descriptions, much the same way authors are increasingly wary of writing about people from a different background from themselves. To sy nothing of dealing with difficult themes in a way the censors may not like.

It's awful to think of the books that wouldn't be published under this kind of regime.

You can argue against it by asking, “does free speech exist, or not?”

Of course it's caused a chill. It's created a situation where no author is going to be comfortable writing physical descriptions,

I don’t agree you can’t write physical descriptions. The problem here was partly that it was about real kids she worked with - even if some were composites she was appallingly rude and personal about their bodies and features when she should have been respectful - and partly a very particular kind of old fashioned British empire tone. You can write about appearance in other ways.

Re cancelling itself, I do agree that things like this shouldn’t necessarily mean a book being de-published or banned. They should be discussed and reviews can criticise them etc. A good editor would raise them before publication to make the author aware of how they sound and suggest changes - but that’s not cancellation and has been the norm for centuries.

And as a PP said, it wouldn’t have led to cancellation at all if she’d just accepted a bad review and maybe even learned from it, instead of drawing attention to it and accusing it of lying.

I'm with you and RoseLunarPink. And it was the watered down, edited version I read.

Authors are already dialing back describing people because of the current attitudes in publishing, so I can't really agree with you.

In general I don't think telling writers they need to be nice is good for literature or essay type writing. It's like telling comics they can tell whatever jokes they like as long as they are nice.

The right to speak and write freely without fear is so important. Where lines are unforgivingly or unlawfully crossed there are steps that can be taken. Where something just offends, well don't buy the book or switch off the program or rebuke or ignore the speaker but a sense of proportion is needed. The Kate Clancy work fits the latter category in my view.

Regardless of the issues of free speech, good taste, and Kate Clanchy’s reaction, the thing I find most fascinating about this is that, in the publishing world which is supposed to be so very awake to “sensitivity issues”, this work slipped past their net. I have a strong suspicion that, if she’d committed her “sins” against certain other groups, it wouldn’t have got through. It’s coming to light that a number of prominent authors have children who have embraced the current fad, reflecting (I believe) the overpopulation of the industry, with people from a certain social strata, the current fad being over represented within that group.

There’s heavy irony in the situation. There’s this huge scandal brewing in the medical world, and an incredible social situation occurring in schools, and at the moment, no writer can reflect on those things in a way that, I believe, will stand up to future inspection. I am dying to write about this, but feel it’s so likely to get thrown out that I’m reluctant to begin, yet I feel it’s a theme that’s screaming out for fictional examination.

So yes, as an author, there are some topics I am deeply fearful of writing about, not because I fear reader backlash, but because of the industry itself. I’m not sure how it became so paranoid, but it’s profoundly unhealthy.

It wasn't just racist. It was ableist in the extreme and classist and just plain smugly self-righteous.
Dara McAnulty was bullied off Twitter for pointing out the awful section on autism. For context in case people have forgotten he's sitting his A Levels now.
Forgotten in all of the stories is that this began when Clanchy accused a reviewer on Goodreads of making up racist quotations that weren't in her book. But they were. Clanchy herself identified them as racist.
Pullman then called three WOC the 'taliban' for complaining about it while ignoring comments from other groups.
It also appears that they did NOT ask Joanne Harris to comment for this article.

I haven't read the book, nor had I heard of clanchy. But her piece in unherd on her sensitivity readers was hilarious so I will now.

Joanne Harris is an odious person so I don't really care if Hinscliff asked her for comment or not. Not sure why you think that's such a big gotcha @GrammarTeacher

I can't see how Kate Clanchy's book is defensible, for reasons already given on this thread. I've read the book - there's an obvious fondness towards all these children, and yet at the same time these awful ways of perceiving them, not even disguised. It's a kind of discomfort you might get away with in fiction but pretty gross in non-fiction, particularly in relation to children, "composite" or otherwise.

I think focusing on the end point of being "de-published" and cancelled avoids confronting what actually happened here. Clanchy's book wasn't just some quiet little self-published thing that twitter suddenly set its sights on and dragged through the mud, it was published by Picador who somehow didn't notice the issue, it was well reviewed across the press, it was considered by award panels etc and nobody raised an issue until the Goodreads thing, which in turn only blew up because Clanchy herself lied through her teeth about it (not just "this takes things out of context and misrepresents them" but actually "I didn't say that"; this makes it harder to believe that her ex students were as OK with it as she claims). The interesting story here for me isn't even about Clanchy's patrician worldview, it's about how the book world completely didn't notice it - and then when they did, suddenly threw her to the wolves. But you can object strenuously to Picador's abdication of responsibility here without treating Clanchy as an innocent victim.

@Clymene because the article says she was asked and didn't comment. It's bad journalism.

Agreed @NellWilsonsWhiteHair
Picador still have many questions to answer on this issue.

How do you know?m

The book was exploring the very issues it is accused of. How a writer could explore their own prejudices and snobbery without describing them, I don't know.

as an author, there are some topics I am deeply fearful of writing about, not because I fear reader backlash, but because of the industry itself. I’m not sure how it became so paranoid, but it’s profoundly unhealthy.

You'd have a struggle trying to publish them but please do write on the subject anyway.

For me, I find it's too intense and amidst things to write about these things without risking it becoming polemic. Much as a lot of it renders satire redundant, I find it too urgent to write on. It needs journalism and research and recording rather than literary interpretation. Maybe depends on the type of writing one does. And in fact the vast uncontrolled reams of surrealist fiction that are passing as policy, news and information give.me the horrors of adding more invented scenarios to the pile - something about the whole current situation makes me long for the driest most fact filled factual reportage like a thirsty person longs for cold water.

’I can't see how Kate Clanchy's book is defensible’

This ^

The scandal is that it was ever published.