Some sharp comment from people in the book
world in 2002.
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archive 2001
- 'Be Original'
- Book into Movie
- 'The next Alice Sebold, or a goat?'
- Too Old to Write?
- Christmas Book Discounting
- Frantzen on Writing
- 'Every writer is unique'
- Learning to Write
- Moby on the Companionship of a Book
- Why Choose the Name Hermux Tantamoq?
- The moral duty of the author
- 'Write the book you most long to read'
- Just a Storm in a Literary Teacup?
- 'The book was powered by rage.'
- Ackroyd on Writing
- Why Readers Love Sagas
- More debate on ‘Writers for Hire’
- ‘It was always children’s books I wanted to write.’
- ‘Mean-minded, filled with rage and envy’
- Are Literary Agents turning into Hustlers?
- Writing as Hard Work
- Walter Mosley on Writing and the Black Community
- Ten Years in the Writing
- Terry Pratchett on fairy tales, Harry Potter and genre writing
- Bainbridge on Writing
- 'Not just another consumer product'
- Young Writer Hits the Headlines
- Author Overwhelmed
- Writer Turns down Movie Deal
- An Author’s View of the Amazon Used Books Controversy
- Libraries – Are They Essential or Irrelevant to Today’s
Readers?
- Distinguished publisher of Byron, John Murray Ltd, sold
to Hodder Headline.
- Poetry 'like whispering to the soul'
- Books Change People's Lives
- iPublish’s Beneficial Effect on Time-Warner Publishing
- Booker Prizewinner Auctions Backlist
- The role of publishers as a useful filter
- Norman Mailer on life as a writer
- Joanna Trollope, writing in the Sunday Times about
writing fiction
- Robert McCrum in the Observer on hype in the book
business
- The dilemma posed by thriller-writing in the shadow of
September 11th
30 December 2002
'Be Original'
'Literature's first commandment is: Be Original. Writers
have many tasks to perform in a book, but establishing an originality of
tone, subject matter or attitude is the one that counts, the litmus test of
consequence. Originality is like charisma. It’s hard to define, but we
know it when we find it. In literature, it’s often associated with
obsession. Books that are written out of the author’s unquenchable desire
to communicate his or her subject are the ones that stand out. Originality
plus obsession equals that little touch of madness that can make a book
truly outstanding.’
Robert McCrum, Literary Editor of the Observer, in his column,
The World of Books.
Back to Top
23 December 2002
Book into Movie
‘There is great frustration as an agent in the lack of influence you
have on movies. An author trusts you to sell their book not only because
you make them money, but because you understand their vision. Here, I
went through three drafts with Bonnie before a publisher ever saw it. I'd
like to be there to make sure we've got the right writer, one who
understands. I'd like them to know my vision, to have to consider it. I've
got a point of view and I want it to matter. There is a wall, with
authors and agents on one side and screenwriters and directors on the other.
It's not an intelligent or necessary wall, but it's always been there.’
American agent Richard Pine in Variety, talking about why he took
on the assistant producer’s role to protect his author’s interests on
set.
Back to Top
16 December 2002
'The next Alice Sebold, or a
goat?'
'People who want to get published think that publication
will give them self-esteem, and peace of mind, make them feel whole and
redeemed. But it's a fantasy, like thinking that marriage, or weight loss,
or money will make you well. You only look forward to publication and
touring the first two times. Then, even thinking about it is like
anticipating periodontal work. It's like weeks and weeks of labor, waiting
to see if your baby book will look like the next Alice Sebold, or a goat.’
Anne Lamott, in Salon
Back to Top
9 December 2002
Too Old to Write?
‘I represented a writer some years ago called Kay Mitchell who started
writing in her late 50s and published many successful books. She said she’d
been to a writers’ seminar and there were a couple of young publishing
people from the literary imprints who said quite blithely: If you haven’t
got your first book published by 40 there’s really no point in trying. Kay
said if she’d heard that before she’d got an agent, she would have
believed it and just given up. I think that’s a wicked thing to say
because people know more when they’re mature. Writing is an intellectual
activity keeps the brain going and you don’t have to be particularly
active to do it.’
Agent Carole Blake of Blake Friedmann in Publishing News
Back to Top
2 December 2002
Christmas Book Discounting
‘The trouble with discounting, as I have said before, is that it
lowers the price and cheapens the product. And as the product is
cheapened, as consumers come to expect lower prices, so discounts have to
cut ever deeper. Removing printed publisher prices from books is one way of
diminishing the appeal of discounting, but not without adding extra costs
for retailers. Unfortunately, it seems that the retailers best equipped
to exploit printed prices are not retail booksellers but supermarkets…
‘It’s time again for the great Christmas giveaway. By which I mean the
proportion of the cover price of each discounted book that booksellers
effectively hand back to their customers. You would have thought that
Christmas would be the one time of year when books effectively sold
themselves even at full price, but instead booksellers take advantage of
the seasonal surge in demand by dropping prices and encouraging customers to
go and spend the money they save elsewhere.’
David Blow contributing to the ongoing debate about the effect of
discounting in the British weekly publishing paper Publishing News
Back to Top
25 November 2002
Frantzen on Writing
‘I feel ambivalent about things. I feel caught between narratives
everywhere I turn. Am I a Midwesterner? Am I an Easterner? My parents were
totally different people in my life. Am I like my mom? Am I like my dad? Am
I a social novelist, or am I sort of an old-fashioned domestic novelist? Do
I feel comfortable being an isolated individual or do I crave acceptance? Do
I want the comforts of being cool or the comforts of being part of the mass?
. . . In my initial relations with the media last fall, that gave rise to
this tremendous confusion. Because, I think, although I'm not sure, that
people want you to be one thing or another…’
‘I have a very thick sheaf of notes. The writing goes very, very fast
and is so fun and is over so quickly. It's sort of tragically short compared
to the difficulty of finding the tone and the right story to tell. That's a
matter of a kind of Socratic dialogue with oneself. You know right away if
it doesn't work. You can tell the next morning. And I'm at the stage where
nothing works. But that's how it is. In some ways it's gratifying to find
that I'm not happy with most things I write.’
Jonathan Frantzen, author of The Corrections, quoted in the Washington
Post
Back to Top
18 November 2002
'Every writer is unique'
‘The best general advice a would-be writer can listen to is never to
listen to general advice, except in the presentation of work to agent or
publisher. Anyone propounding rules or principles that are supposed to
apply to everyone is a charlatan. Every writer is unique, or ought to be,
and so your problems are unique. If you can find a mentor, someone
who'll work over your manuscript with you one-to-one, then you've found a
treasure - so long as you remember that even a guru can be wrong.’
Chaz Brenchley on the MurderSquad site:http://www.murdersquad.co.uk
Back to Top
11 November 2002
Learning to Write
'Most of these early efforts were
pretty bad, but I learned a lot. Many of the students I teach find it hard
to believe that a person might write three or four unpublishable novels
before they write one that’s anywhere near decent. That’s probably
because the idea of writing just one seems like a monumental task. But
not if you love it.’
Bestselling crime writer Peter Robinson in the UK publishing
magazine Publishing News
Back to Top
4 November 2002
Moby on the Companionship of a Book
‘When
someone finishes a book, they put it in a little box and when someone else
wants a new book, they look into the box and find one…
Ozzy Osbourne used to snort ants. Led Zeppelin had sex with hookers
on private planes. And I start a book club. Because one can only snort so
many ants and have so much sex before one starts to long for the comfort and
companionship of a book.’
Pop
star Moby, who has started a book club of sorts as part of his current tour.
Back to Top
28 October 2002
Why Choose the Name Hermux Tantamoq?
‘The letters I’d drawn said nothing and I had to give up my
assumption that it had to be a regular name and come up with something I’d
never heard of, and for the first time with words, I had an authentic
literary experience… I realised I didn’t have to try and tell the
truth, that I could lie – in fact, I had to. I do, though, have to tell
emotional truths.’
‘At the end of the day, Hermux is a real imaginary mouse.
I was drawn into the stories, it wasn’t premeditated and began as a
game that had to be played at long distance. I had to make my wife, who was
on a buying trip in South-East Asia, laugh, and if I could do that when she
wasn’t there in person, I’d succeeded.’
Michael Hoeye, speaking in Publishing News about the anagram game
which produced the name of his mouse Hermux Tantamoq, main character in his
stunningly successful self-published first children’s book Time Stops
for No Mouse.
Back to Top
21 October 2002
The moral duty of the author
‘Death drives everything. One of my Greek teachers said
we have one true task, and that is learning how to die. But who am I to give
lessons? There are no real messages in my fiction. The first duty of the
novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are
sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying.
Books are written by the alone for the alone.’
Donna Tartt, author of The Little Friend, in USA
Today
Back to Top
14 October 2002
'Write the book you most long to read'
‘this is the most important rule: write the book you most long to read.
Writing a first novel takes so much effort, with such little promise of
result or reward, that it must necessarily be a labour of love bordering on
madness. So it was with my first novel, Roman Blood. I returned
from my first visit to Rome with my imagination on fire. Having become
addicted to crime fiction via Conan Doyle, what I most wanted to read was a
book that in 1989 seemed not to exist: a murder mystery set in ancient Rome…’
‘But to read that novel, I would have to write it myself. So I did. I
suspect this is how first novels are most often (or at least most
successfully) sparked: a reader experiences an overwhelming craving for a
book that does not yet exist. Whether the story draws on the first-time
author’s own life and experiences or not doesn’t matter, so long as
it conveys a truth that transcends the cramped tenets of mere realism.’
Steven Saylor in the Guardian
Back to Top
7 October 2002
Just a Storm in a Literary Teacup?
‘Any scholar who writes for a wider audience, who breaks new ground and
crosses academic boundaries, must expect some criticism, perhaps some
envy too… Anyone who writes for a general audience is bound to be in
debt to academic scholars who have studied their own subject in far greater
detail than can be communicated to non-specialists. Perhaps they are
suspicious of a scholar like myself who tries to tackle big ideas; perhaps
they would not try to make the sort of connections that I make between
different subject areas… If I had written it as an ‘academic’ work
it would have been 10 volumes long.’
Orlando Figes, quoted in the Guardian, after his new book Natasha’s
Dance had been reviewed with unprecedented ferocity by Rachel Polonsky
in the highly respected Times Literary Supplement.
Back to Top
30 September 2002
'The book was powered by rage.'
‘At university, one of my areas of study was Victorian literature, so I
decided to see if I could write a novel as carefully planned and constructed
as those of George Eliot, but with the narrative energy of Dickens.
‘I was a radical feminist, driven by many of the same things as Sugar
– adolescent alienation, solidarity with disenfranchised misfits on the
fringes of society. The book was powered by rage. I spent years in
libraries, reading the Illustrated London News for the year 1875,
guides for governesses, and treatises on hysteria. I planned the
architecture of the book for months. I sketched out what would happen in
every scene.’
Michel Faber, the author of the much-heralded first novel The Crimson
Petal and the White, which he started writing 21 years ago, quoted
in the Observer.
Back to Top
23 September 2002
Ackroyd on Writing
‘I try not to allow myself to be seduced by praise or distracted by
criticism. Of course, I value the honest opinions of people who know the
subjects that I’m writing about, but my objective remains to just get on
with the writing… I enjoy the work I do. I feel fully engaged with and
rewarded by it. I’m at my most content when writing.’
Peter Ackroyd on the critics and the writer’s life in The Times
Back to Top
16 September 2002
Why Readers Love Sagas
‘There’s a desperate search for roots in an age where we’re all
over the place and have no sense of where you came from or how you feel
about your place. You could be anywhere now… When you go to that author’s
next book, there’s a real sense of family and familiarity.’
Luigi Bonomi, agent at Sheil Land
‘A lot of women readers in particular have rotten circumstances –
money is tight, they’re struggling, perhaps they’re single mothers, or
dealing with elderly parents. To read about deprived circumstances in
which the heroine very often starts out and somehow struggles through can
only be a comfort. You can make sense of your life and feel something
will come of it. If it isn’t actually happening to you, at the very least
you can read about it.’
Elizabeth Buchan, novelist and ex-chair of the Romantic Novelists’
Association
(both quoted in an article in Publishing News about the enduring
success of regional sagas)
Back to Top
9 September 2002
More debate on ‘Writers for Hire’
‘Stories are a good way of looking at complex issues because they
don’t polarise the argument … We leave the arguments open-ended
because it works best, although we would rewrite if asked to. We hope we are
writing rattling good yarns in the popular style. We are not talking about
the great modern novel.’
Simon Gibson and Adam Lury, British authors of Need to Know, the
story of an anti-globalisation Internet campaigner, which was commissioned
by the Foreign Policy Centre (a Labour think-tank).
‘It depends on the motives and how it’s done. All writers have to
earn a living but if the book is part of a drive to socially engineer that
is not right. When I did it I wasn’t trying to sell anything; I was
just accepting a commission and someone who commissions you often gives you
more freedom than a publisher or an agent.’
Fay Weldon, who last year accepted Bulgari’s sponsorship for her book The
Bulgari Connection
All quoted in an article in the London Observer
(see News Review 2 September 2002)
Back to Top
2 September 2002
‘It was always children’s books I wanted to write.'
‘It was always children’s books I wanted to write. As I was
growing up, I loved children’s books, but I couldn’t help thinking that
the world wasn’t really that neat. So I aimed to inject a touch more
realism. I’ve had several offers to write books for adults but I’ve
turned them all down.’
Children’s writer Jacqueline Wilson, in the London Independent on
Sunday
Back to Top
12 August 2002
‘Mean-minded, filled with rage and envy’
‘Writers are often envious, mean-minded, filled with rage and envy at
others’ good fortune. There is nothing like the failure of a close friend
to cheer us up.’
Peter Carey, the Booker prize-winning author, quoted in the Sunday
Times.
Back to Top
12 August 2002
Are Literary Agents turning into Hustlers?'
'The literary agent is becoming a thing of the past. The aesthete
in a dust-choked office, scanning a slush pile of unsolicited submissions
for buried genius, has given way to the Armani-suited hustler who is more
likely to be negotiating his authors on to television game shows than into
any bookshop ... 'The literary
agent used to be literature's first line of defence. That line has been
broken. The future could be grim.'
Danuta Kean, writing in the Daily Mail
Back to Top
5 August 2002
Writing as Hard Work
My job has fundamentally involved locking myself in a tiny cell-like
room for between four and five hours a day and struggling to bring to life
characters, plots, themes, story arcs, denouements. There are writers who
love writing. I am not one of them. I find it demanding, often boring,
extremely stressful and often agonising. It dominates my life well beyond
the confines of that office.’
Tim Lott, author of Rumours of a Hurricane, writing about an
author’s life in The Times
Back to Top
29 July 2002
Walter Mosley on Writing and the Black Community
'I'm trying to create a literature that everybody
reads, but that, on the other hand, black men can enjoy. This work has
deeply flawed characters, working-class people, although they may be
enjoying some success, and when they do something wrong, you can feel the
sweat. I know black women and black men can feel that,' but he is concerned
about the way forward: ' We're not building up the intellectual or economic
infrastructure of the black community. Most black writers are being
published today by mainstream publishers because they can make money doing
that. But as soon as that money turns soft, all could stop being
published. If we don't build up the infrastructure, if we don't make
sure that blacks are being hired as editors and members of the sales force, if
we don't give some of our books to black publishers, then we will have
no infrastructure. And what's happening now is not going to last.'
Walter Mosley in an interview with the Seattle Post Intelligencer
Back to Top
22 July 2002
Ten Years in the Writing
‘You can try to commodify writing, you can try to
regulate it and make people turn it out, but in the end it is a process
that is kind of organic. There are some flowers that only bloom every
two years …I wanted it to be a different, self-contained world that was
just as real as the world of The Secret History, and it takes time to build
up those layers of richness – you can’t fake that. Also the style of
this book was different; instead of a piece written for a single instrument,
it was written for a full orchestra – a much broader range of characters
and voices, and there were many technical difficulties in writing the book
that I simply didn’t face with The Secret History. So in that sense it’s
satisfying for me, and that’s why it kept me engaged for all these years.’
Donna Tartt, whose second novel The
Little Friend will be published in October, speaking to The
Bookseller about why she has spent 10 years working on it.
Back to Top
15 July 2002
Terry Pratchett on fairy tales, Harry Potter and genre
writing
‘I always remember G K Chesterton’s In Defence
of Fairy Tales. Chesterton argued that it is wrongly held against fairy
tales that they tell children there are monsters. What fairy tales do is
tell children that monsters can be killed…’
‘When the hype about Rowling began, people who
didn’t know much about how children’s books have developed in the last
40 years acted as though everything in the Potter books was original… the
point is that nobody – not me, not J K Rowling – invented wizards or
magic universities or hats that talk. The defining characteristic of genres
is that things within the genre resemble each other. As an author you
are allowed to help yourself to what’s already in the pot but the very act
of doing that means that everything you write goes in the pot as
well. There are only two crimes: saying that you personally own the pot
or denying that the pot exists.’
Terry Pratchett, who has just won the Carnegie
Medal for children’s writing for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated
Rodents, being interviewed in The Times.
Back to Top
8 July 2002
Bainbridge on Writing
‘When you get older you get more doubtful
about what you can do. The writing becomes a job of work, and while that
doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy it, is does become much harder. The gap
between what you intend to do and how it turns out seems bigger, although
you do learn more all the time. When you are young it is just easy. But now
I know how difficult it is to write things to the standard I would like and
it is really quite scary.’
Beryl Bainbridge in the Guardian
Back to Top
1 July 2002
'Not just another consumer product
‘Books are not just another consumer product. They form much
of our society’s repository of ideas; they are the bloodstream for the
life of the mind. You have a responsibility to serve as well to gain,
for your books have the protection of the First Amendment.’
From a letter to the American chain bookseller Borders, protesting at
their new ‘category management’ scheme, which allows big publishers to
pay for research and influence in-store presentation. The letter was signed,
amongst others, by activists, Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky , publisher Andre
Schiffrin and Jonathan Tasini, President of the National Writers Union.
Back to Top
24 June 2002
Young Writer Hits the Headlines
‘I’m terrified of getting what I’m not deserving of, feeling that I’ve
got something for nothing…One of the things that made me do this I guess,
that made me give up my summer and write a thousand words a day, and get up
every morning at eight and sit down at my desk and not let myself get up
until four in the afternoon and have no fun was that very thing. I mean I
had the kind of parents who said go ahead and write a novel, and even if it
doesn’t get published you know it will be a good experience. But I felt
like this ridiculous rich kid sitting down to write a novel, like, who the
hell did I think I was, this stupid cliché. And the only way to
vindicate that was to make it good, you know, to really sweat at it.’
Nick McDonell, the 18-year-old author of Twelve in the
Observer
Back to Top
17 June 2002
Author Overwhelmed
It’s
like being ‘hit on the back of the head by a blunt object--in a good
way.
Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto, which has just,
rather unexpectedly won the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction. The
book had very high odds against it. ‘It ranks with Senegal beating
France in the World Cup as one of the best results for us this summer,’
commented one delighted bookie.
Back to Top
10 June 2002
Writer Turns down Movie Deal
’The minute a film is made, a book dwindles away and becomes nothing.
I want it to be a book that people can make the movie in their heads.’
Screenwriter William Nicholson, author of the Wind Singer children’s
trilogy, announcing at the Hay-on Wye Book Festival that he’s turned down
a $1 million offer for film rights in his books.
Back to Top
1 June 2002
An Author’s View of the Amazon Used Books Controversy
‘I wouldn't even have considered
Amazon.com as a serious used-book source if I hadn't heard about its recent
dispute with the Authors Guild … Books, like newspapers, are meant to
be shared, passed on and mulled over by more than one reader; I consider
dog-eared pages and margin scribbles reminders of all the other people who
like to read. At the risk of cannibalizing the $293 in royalties that I
earned last year, I don't think that steering readers away from affordable
used copies is the way to solve the problems of the publishing industry.
Let's keep the public libraries open, too.’
Michelle Slatella, author of 5 books, in
the New York Times
