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 agree. That 'KKK' thing is utterly disproportionate and reflects badly only on the person saying it.

Sorry, but apologising for the 'whole thing' and words about 'overreaction' do not constitute an apology to person she bullied and threatened on social media. If she's done so then fair enough, but as it is, I get the impression that, even now, Clanchy doesn't really see how outrageous her behaviour towards that reviewer was.

And yes of course it's unacceptable to abuse her in return.

As I said, there are just so many articles/results on Google that I couldn't find her responses to Goodreads reviews. I can't recall if she has specifically and explicitly apologised for that.

The whole affair has generated an extraordinary and massive amount of comment.

‘Sorry, but apologising for the 'whole thing' and words about 'overreaction' do not constitute an apology to person she bullied and threatened on social media. If she's done so then fair enough, but as it is, I get the impression that, even now, Clanchy doesn't really see how outrageous her behaviour towards that reviewer was.’

No, it probably doesn’t (I don’t know whether she apologised specifically for that, and I don’t know exactly what she said to the reviewer either). It doesn’t make some of the ways she has been treated in light of her very obvious distress and grief acceptable.

She could have used that Guardian interview with Gaby Hinsliff (linked in the op) to make a clear statement about it but all I can see is a concession that she overreacted.

Like I keep saying, I'm not totally unsympathetic to her. I can see that she set something in motion that she couldn't control. But (as I've also said before) I need to see her acknowledge what she did before I can take her seriously.

It’s not about whether I take her seriously. She doesn’t need me to. She has the right to publish a memoir I think was unwise.

Clanchy’s critics are now encouraging their followers to write physical descriptions of her.

It seems to me like some people can’t handle having half a point. They have to go out of their way to make themselves look unreasonable.

What is also in a state of flux at the moment is the relationship authors have with readers. Social media has utterly changed the dynamic and landscape.

Authors are heavily pressured to have sm presence and interact with readers. They are expected to respond to reviews, readers, etc. A sizable chunk of time is spend 'creating a brand' - which is to say, selling oneself by sharing personal story/intimacies.

However. Authors are watched closely and are heavily censured if they respond or interact in a way that is considered 'punching down'. Anyone with a publishing deal or a larger sm audience is seen as 'privileged'. Accepted wisdom is that any reader can say absolutely anythign about an author and the author can not and must not respond. Chimamanda Ngochi Adichie's essay on this dynamic was acerbic, painful and insightful.

www.chimamanda.com/it-is-obscene-a-true-reflection-in-three-parts/

It's uneven and difficult to navigate. I'm very glad to be well out of the industry, tbh, which increasingly seems to mean volunteering oneself as a passive punchbag for the mob.

'The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.'

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think it's a bit of a reach to frame an attempt to instigate a social media pile on as interacting with your readers.

I don't care which side of this debate you're on. Gleefully abusing another woman on Twitter is disgusting behaviour.

I was making a general comment on author/reader dynamics and social media, not specifically thinking of Clanchy

Ok my apologies.

Isn't that the main thing this thread was about, in the beginning? The effect this kind of thing has on authors and publishing?

If you look at all the memoires and essays and reflections etc published from 1920 until now, KC's book is pretty mild, even if you don't like the things she said. And plenty of people think what she said is just fine for the kind of book it is.

If you look at all the bad behaviour of authors over the years, this particular debacle is pretty low key - some bad judgement and a little too proud maybe to back down. It's not difficult to think of a great many authors who have been worse (not to mention other kinds of celebrities.)

Combine that with the kinds of problems we all know authors have been having in terms of publishing books that are either controversial, or don't tick all the right boxes, or cases where authors are being told they can't write about certain people, very fraught and obscure "rules" for describing people.

That's not a healthy publishing industry and as a reader it's no bloody wonder so much that comes out now is insipid and pointless.

That's not a healthy publishing industry and as a reader it's no bloody wonder so much that comes out now is insipid and pointless.

God, yes. So much new writing is just awful - you can see the writers trying so hard to tick all the right boxes. They are terrified to take any risks. It's miserable.

@MangyInseam Yes! Absolutely, all of this. Everyone will have different views on KC's books (which is perfectly fair - there are plenty of books I hate!), but trying to turn that into cancellation, punishment and personal condemnation is just odd in the context of all the other books out there, and how other writers behave and have behaved. It's so very not shocking that the target of this happens to be a middle aged woman. And now people on this very thread are claiming she's so 'powerful'...? 🙄

Yeah, no.

Publishing has been under a lot of pressure from so many angles for so long.

It does refuse to lay down and die, however, which is heartening.

Everyone will have different views on KC's books (which is perfectly fair - there are plenty of books I hate!), but trying to turn that into cancellation, punishment and personal condemnation is just odd in the context of all the other books out there, and how other writers behave and have behaved.

That's the bit I have a problem with, but I find it more scary than odd. It's not a great time to be a woman writer, unless your views fit the orthodoxy, and even then! I'd hardly call KC a woke - she was pretty much a leftist liberal in line with all the key talking points as far as I can tell.

I've actually just unfollowed Chimene Suleyman and Sunny Singh on Twitter. I admired Suleyman for her work on The Good Immigrant and Singh for the Jhalak Prize, but with Suleyman mocking Clanchy's grief for her mother, and Singh retweeted followers' disgusting physical descriptions of Clanchy, I can't keep following them. It's bullying and it's ugly.

There's also an irony in the fact that the same people who called Clanchy out over inappropriate speech are themselves willing to target her with hate speech. Clearly it's one set of standards for people they don't agree with, and a different set of standards for people they do.

Call me an old-fashioned liberal, but I think bullying on social media is repugnant, regardless of the colour of one's skin.

It has seemed to me that the underlying problem is that there is an element that is becoming increasingly evident in identity politics, at the cultural level, where there are some significant taboos around mentioning elements of appearence that might relate to race or ethnicity. For example, things like describing someone's skin colour.

I don't think Clanchy got the memo on that yet, I see some other writers becoming increasingly aware of it. And with people who are a bit younger, some don't seem to understand that this is relatively new, and also not all that common outside places like the US and Canada and the UK. (Not to mention some people think it's not a useful taboo.) So to them, they think that when they hear people talk this way it is evidence of not toeing the line on what they think are obvious taboos around racialized descriptions.

I had a conversation with a client at work the other day, an immigrant from a country where this isn't the case. He was showing me family pictures and quite happily explaining why his siblings weren't as dark skinned as he was, assuming I'd noticed and wondered about it. I had noticed, but I would never have said so because it's just not done here, I'd at least worry that other people around would overhear even if I didn't think he'd be bothered. It just wasn't on his radar at all that it might not be something you'd discuss openly.

Wow the twitter stuff sounds utterly repulsive. It just sounds like bullying.

Ugh I went to have a look and the examples I saw were all about her skin colour. It's racist abuse. From the people who think they are the "right side of history". That is fucked up.

The current tweets about KC are really unnecessary & unpleasant IMO.

The KKKlanchy thing is awful and in my view is both defamatory and hate speech.

I do know I have no interest ever in buying any books by any of Clanchy, Singh, Suleyman or Rajesh.

@beastlyslumber It's definitely scary. I have no desire to engage with publishing any more - I know it was always cutthroat and intense, of course, but the addition of social media just seems to have made it utterly toxic. Especially for women.