You can always count on The Independent’s literary editor Boyd Tonkin to say something interesting while the rest of the world is whining pitifully about the demise of the book, reading and publishing in general. Instead of griping about the credit crunch like everyone else, Tonkin in last Friday’s Independent has the following to say:
‘Where could the silver lining lurk? Might the flight of big – or even middling – money from literary publishing prompt a quest for bolder choices and wider horizons from authors who know that their finely-finessed debut now stands no chance of reaching the Richard-and-Judy sofa or the Waterstone’s front table? If slimmer cheques and smaller expectations force some novelists to give up altogether, surely they might inspire others to thumb their noses at a deep-frozen marketplace and go – as it were – for broke … No one proposes that lean years will lead novelists (still less publishers) to snub the market, dump all material aspirations and pursue a dream of perfection. Yet some at least sense a chance that emptier pockets might bring fuller minds. As for favoured genres, much escapist pulp and feelgood schmaltz flourished in the eventful Eighties, and will no doubt do so again. Celebrity titles also began to shout then: the same genre, having pampered publishers though good times, will now be expected to cosset them through bad. But new marvels, and new gifts, will come to light.’
Which would be a very fine thing indeed if it were to happen – we could do with a bit more ‘going for broke’ in the writing world right now. In fact, I’m inclined to agree with the fairly controversial statement at the end of Tonkin’s article by Geoff Dyer (novelist and critic:
‘Anyone who has an eye on the market is not a writer but a whore. Nothing wrong with being a whore, of course – just don’t try to make out you’re a writer. Writers sometimes talk of pressure from their publishers to do this or that in order to be more commercial. Nine times out of ten this is sophistry and cowardice… I have this existential conception of writing not as a career but as a back-against-the wall option, the thing you turn to when you’ve got no other way of making a mark on the world. In those circumstances, whether or not you’re going to be adequately recompensed is irrelevant. ‘
Music to my ears, indeed…
Sharon
