Actions and reactions…

A review was published in today’s Scotsman newspaper of Esther Woolfson’s beautiful and unusual work of literary fiction, Piano Angel. Like most Two Ravens books and authors, Esther has a very distinctive voice – a very distinctive way of using language that beautifully reflects the interior world of her characters. The reviewer in question clearly took severe exception to the book – as reviewers often do and are entitled to, arguably even with first novels - but, more problematically, made a couple of false and damaging statements about Two Ravens Press’ editorial policy. Because of the obvious damage to our reputation that such false statements will do, we have made a formal complaint to the editor of The Scotsman. Hopefully the situation will be rectified appropriately, but we wanted to clarify our editorial position for anyone who reads this blog and who may have read the review in question and have concerns about our quality control (though hopefully those of you who’ve read our books won’t!)

The review states: “A good editor would have cut this book down by two-thirds, and told Woolfson to rewrite. Two Ravens have a non-editing policy, which, on the strength of this novel, is a policy they need to change, and fast. This novel is simply not ready for the market, and handing it over, unedited, in this way, may even have done Woolfson’s nascent career as a novelist some harm.”

Two Ravens Press does not and never has had a ‘non-editing policy’ and nor, in the case of this or any other manuscript, as the author will confirm, did we ‘hand it over, unedited.’ Piano Angel was edited thoroughly and with the author’s full cooperation. Our position on editing is very clear and we have stated it on many occasions: if a manuscript needs extensive rewriting or restructuring, then we simply do not take it on – clearly, neither it nor the author are ready for publication. But we do indeed edit where required, and we edit thoroughly and extensively. (See my interview on the Vulpes Libris blog back in February for more on this point.) We don’t, however, presume to rewrite an author’s book for them – if we don’t like it or we don’t think it’s good enough, we simply don’t publish it. The quality of our books can be clearly seen in the positive reviews they receive and in the large numbers of them that have been called in by external literary bodies to be considered for prizes (including, recently, Piano Angel).

It’s also important to write in defense of the author, even though we’re not questioning any reviewer’s right to dislike a novel. Esther is an experienced and accomplished writer. Her recent work of non-fiction, Corvus (published by Granta) has been well reviewed. The publication of Piano Angel was funded by the Scottish Arts Council – on the basis of a submitted manuscript – and I would suggest that this implies some external quality control. It also received a very positive review in The Herald a week ago. But as with any book, readers will make their own mind up about it and that is exactly how it should be.

As I’ve so often said on this blog, there are days in this business when we wonder why we are in it. I know it’s always possible to sound whiny when you write such things, and we really don’t mean to be – we simply mean to accurately reflect the ups and downs of life as a small publisher. But we do work very very hard at this for absolutely no financial reward to date and very little anticipation of any in the near future. We do it because we are passionate about good literature and good writers. We do it, obviously, because we hope there will be some small reward in the future … but in the literary business, trust me, it isn’t going to be anything to write home about! We will continue to be passionate about good literature, but frankly the process of getting it out there sometimes stinks, and our energy flags more and more with every malicious hit that we take.

On the other hand … once upon a time, in another life as a psychologist, I used ‘writing therapy’ quite extensively – including poetry therapy. One of the poems that I most often used to give clients who felt they were in situations that were unbearable or where it seemed that the entire world was completely insane, was Wendell Berry’s wonderful Peace of Wild Things. Here are a couple of lines:

 When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things…

(Read the rest of it – it’s wonderful. If you Google it you’ll find the whole thing in a couple of different places.) This morning down by the lochside walking the dog, I encountered, as I so often do at this time of year, a large and solitary seal who I’ve seen down there many many times in the five-plus years I’ve lived here now. The seal sits in the water with its head sticking out and listens attentively while I treat it to my best rendition of whatever piece of music happens to come into my head (they say seals like to be sung to – this one obviously has very catholic tastes). In many ways, and on many days, it’s my therapist. On days like today, I think Wendell Berry had it 100% right.

Sharon