Genre Vs Literary Fiction, Again

A couple of interesting articles were brought to my attention today, both concerning the ongoing genre fiction vs literary fiction debate. The first was sent to me by the very nice lady who gave me a most kind review for The Twelve in The Observer back at the star of July, literary agent and critic Nicola Barr (who is actively seeking Northern Irish writers, let it be known). It was an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that asserted the importance of contemporary plot-driven fiction, describing how the character-based fiction of modernists of the twentieth century, and its tendency to focus on internal (i.e. character) rather than external (i.e. plot) conflict, had its place in the 19-whatevers, but that in the twenty-first century, so-called genre fiction is better placed to reflect our society.

I'll admit my bias on this point. I've made my case on this before, stating my belief that "genre" story-telling can address big issues in a way that other forms of fiction can't, particularly when those issues are so big and so raw that tackling them in a more literal way is impossible. My hat's off to Lev Grossman for taking this stance.

I saw the converse of this point of view when I posted a link to my Facebook page. Gavin Carville responded with a link to a Guardian article about comments made by Booker-winning Scottish author James Kelman during the recent Edinburgh Festival. I hesitate to quote a newspaper, knowing first-hand how slippery and tricksy a newspaper quote can be, but his words are reported thusly:

"If the Nobel Prize came from Scotland they would give it to a writer of fucking detective fiction or else some kind of child writer or something that was not even news when Enid Blyton was writing the Faraway Tree because she was writing about some upper middle class young magician or some fucking crap."

No prizes for guessing that Mr Kelman was referring to Ian Rankin and JK Rowling in that quote. I was tempted to call the latter part of his spiel simple class bigotry, but I remembered that I myself have used the term "middle class navel gazing" to describe much of today's literary fiction, so I will point out my own hypocricy rather than someone else's. I confess I have not read any of Mr Kelman's work, so may not be fully qualified to comment, but I can't hold back on my contempt for this statement, if it is indeed accurately represented. It is the worst kind of snobbery (not even inverted) and literary bigotry, and utterly pompous. For an author who sells himself from a working class soap box, it displays a shocking arrogance regarding the reading habits of the proletariat he claims to embody on the written page. Worst of all, it is precisely this kind of supercilious intellectual vanity that has most people watching X Factor on a Saturday evening instead of reading a book.

There's an interesting debate here about the rights and wrongs of the statement. The fundamental point that most of them miss, however, is that the distinction between literary and genre fiction is purely a matter of commercial expediency. A means of categorisation that publishers and retailers use to arrange books on shelves, and target their respective audiences, is being used by so many as a measure of quality when it has no bearing whatsoever on the intellectual or emotional weight of the material being sold. So-called genre fiction is equally capable of revealing the truth about ourselves that is for some reason seen as the preserve of "literary" work. So-called literary fiction is equally capable of being the vacuous eye candy time-and-shelf filler that so many dismiss "genre" books as.

Here's a point of view from someone who came from a working class housing estate, and still lives on one: Class is not only a matter of money and social borders. There is also a self-sustaining intellectual class system that is based not on actual intelligence or the value of ideas, but on the pomposity of individuals who regard their own expressions of self as being superior to those of others based purely on an aesthetic laid down by the artistic establishment.

Thank God no one really listens to them.

On Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Other Insufferable Tosh

I posted on Twitter this morning about having watched Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona last night, and that I hadn't disliked a movie so much in ages. There were a few comments on my Facebook wall in response, so I thought I'd elaborate here, and tie it in to another topic that's been floating around the Interwebs in recent days.

Sometimes a film is poorly made; sometimes it has a turgid script, or bad acting, or uninspiring photography, or any number of faults. I can't say Vicky Cristina Barcelona (henceforth known as VCB) had any such flaws. It was certainly a well-crafted film, as one would expect from Woody Allen. But I used the word 'dislike'. There are many movies that I think are bad, but there are few I actually dislike. Because dislike is personal. Dislike means something in the film actually bothered me. One film I dislike, for instance, is The Devil's Own. I don't dislike The Devil's Own because it's a formulaic and predictable thriller; I dislike it because it displays a shocking ignorance of, and insensitivity to, its own subject matter.

I approached VCB with a positive frame of mind. For one thing, I have visited Barcelona three times, and it is one of my favourite places on earth. For another, I generally have a lot of time for Woody Allen. And yet another, the movie has an excellent cast, and not just in terms of eye candy. Thus, I was hopeful as I inserted the Blu-Ray into my player.

I think the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard feeling began about fifteen minutes in. The problem was this: these characters meant nothing to me. The story, in a nutshell, centres on two young women summering in Barcelona. They are approached and individually seduced by a local artist, and matters are further complicated by his unstable ex-wife. All well and good. But then my inverted snob started to rear his ugly head.

The two young women had no visible means of support. One is studying for a Masters in Catalan culture (as an aside, all the Catalan characters strangely spoke Castilian Spanish, rather than Catalan, which is the dominant language of the region), while the other had just spent many months making a twelve minute film. In other words, they were trust fund kids, living off their fathers' money while arsing about in Europe. In yet other words, they were feckless young adults who had grown up with no idea of the realities of life or the issues that affect most people day to day. While they're mooning around, whinging about the pain of love and desire and commitment, real people are working their guts out and wondering if they can make the next mortgage payment. When the intrusive narrator (and that was one specifically bad part I neglected to mention) tells us how the artist, played by the excellent Javier Bardem, bought his beautiful house with its rambling rooms and gardens from another artist, he neglects to tell us how the artist paid for it. I don't know a single artist who can afford anything other than a normal standard of living, at best, let alone a life of luxury. Then along comes Penelope Cruz, playing a deranged ex-wife whose deep love for the artist drives her to violent rage while she drives us to slap her about the head and shoulders.

So, despite their good fortune in life, these four characters are not a happy bunch. I wish I could afford to be that bloody miserable. While I didn't grow up in poverty, things were tough. I know my mother often went without so that us kids could have basics like shoes or milk money for school. I grew up in a house where a can of Coca Cola was a special occasion luxury. By special occasion, I mean Christmas, or the time I nearly lost my little finger to a school gate, and I got a can of Coke for being brave as the doctors worked on my damaged hand. How can someone like me (not to mention anyone who grew up in real hardship) be expected to feel anything but contempt for a cast of characters who are so vacuous and self-absorbed as those in Vicky Cristina Barcelona? Is there a film genre specifically for those privileged few who have been cushioned from reality all their lives?

As I watched the movie, all the time resisting the urge to just press the Stop button, I couldn't help but think of recent online debates on literary versus genre fiction. There was the Esquire article, and Jason Pinter's response, and then this little gem brought to my attention by Lisa Kenney via Facebook. The argument in that second piece was basically that if the unwashed masses would only give literary fiction a chance, we might have an epiphany and forever leave the intellectual deserts of our crime and romance books, and discover the delightful oases of cerebrally challenging and important works at the higher end of the market.

Bullshit.

There is good and bad in all fiction, whatever the genre. And whatever some might like to think, literary is just another genre, a means of organising the shelves in bookstores. I have read as many works from the literary shelf as any other genre. Some of it was brilliant, some of it was tosh. But here's the problem with literary fiction versus other genres: bad literary fiction is insufferable. I simply can't endure the kind of middle-class navel gazing that bogs down the literary field. Good crime novels are just as capable of shining a light on the human condition as good literary fare. Bad thrillers may be unbelievable, shallow, or even manipulative, but bad literary novels are self-important and pretentious. And worst of all, bad literary novels, and bad art-house movies for that matter, are just plain dull.

The Hidden Depths of Genre

This post was inspired by two things. One of them was this very snotty and condescending piece at Esquire magazine's website, which masquerades as a review. Jason Pinter did a better job of critiquing this critique with his own much more intelligent piece.

The other was watching the movie Cloverfield over the weekend. On the surface, Cloverfield seems the very model of an Event Movie, a film driven more by hype and special effects than plot, dialogue or meaningful characterisation. A typical monster movie, in other words, albeit set apart from the crowd by the jerky camcorder photography (which transfers to the Blu-Ray format better than you might think). If we take Cloverfield at face value, then it is a brilliant example of its kind. It's breathlessly paced, lean as a 100-metre sprinter, and has all the crash-bang-wallop and scares you could want in its ninety minute duration.

But there's so much more to Cloverfield than the visceral spectacle of a monster levelling skyscrapers. While characterisation and real dialogue aren't a big part of the movie, and given its format and streamlined running time they aren't overly missed, it is certainly more than throwaway popcorn fare.

To anyone with half a brain, the movie's underlying theme is hardly subtle. But then neither was 9/11, the horrific event this film represents. Some scenes are so reminiscent of actual footage from 9/11 they must have been deeply disturbing for anyone who was there that day. Take, for instance, the scene where a group of people take refuge inside a drug store, sealing the doors just in time as a wall of dust and debris stampedes past the windows.

An obvious influence on Cloverfield comes from the other side of the world. The makers of this movie have openly stated it is an homage to Godzilla, a cinematic icon that has never successfully transferred to Western movies. But looking at the cultural context of Godzilla in Japan's history, there is a darker comparison. As Cloverfield acts as an analogy for 9/11, Godzilla is symbolic of Japan's coming to terms with the atomic bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both the first Godzilla and Cloverfield portray monstrous entities laying waste to entire cities less than a decade after both the respective countries suffered terrible attacks that were unimaginable before they occurred. Thus, what seems the most absurd of cinematic genres - the monster movie - is used to explore a horror that can't be expressed in a more literal, realistic way.

(A quick note before anyone points it out - the Cloverfield and Godzilla analogies are well worn, but I wanted to use them as known examples.)

And horror, as a genre, has always been used to explore more serious themes, from the 19th Century fear of scientific progress (Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) to the pain of a developing adolescent sexuality (The Exorcist, Let the Right One In). Genre fiction, whether that be crime, horror, science fiction, romance, whatever, is perfectly capable of tackling themes that more literary work will struggle with.

In fact, the best genre fiction does exactly that; it shows us things that would be too difficult to contemplate in any other context. Remember that next time you feel belittled by some supercilious literary type who wouldn't stoop to such trash as genre fiction.

The Politics of THE TWELVE

In recent days I have been answering questions about the politics of THE TWELVE. I suppose that was inevitable, given the nature of the story, its setting, and its characters. As I stated in an earlier post, I never intended THE TWELVE as a polemic. It was just a thriller that happened to be set against Northern Ireland's peace process. But everything in Northern Ireland is political, so there's no escaping the issues that have dogged this country since its inception.

I won't go into the background of the novel's setting; there's plenty of material out there on the Troubles. A lot of the information online is inaccurate, substituting fact for opinion, speculation and omitted truth. One only need read a few pages on Wikipedia to see how distorted some of the truth is, but if you read enough, you should get an idea. Revisionism is something we'll have to live with here, as people on all sides cherry pick history to present the version best suited to their own agendas.

Many will use these narrow windows on the past to justify the actions of certain individuals and organisations, whether they are politicians, security force personnel or paramilitaries. If there's a political thrust to THE TWELVE, it's this: the violence was never justifiable. Republicans may argue that armed struggle was the only way to achieve change in an unjust society. I would argue that the use of violence held back societal reform by decades, while the republican leadership used the blood of this country to grease its way to power. Loyalists may argue that their actions were necessary to protect their people from the aggression of insurgents and a hostile neighbour state. I would argue that the greatest threat to ordinary loyalist people is those same loyalist paramilitaries who to this day continue to leech off their own communities.

What I fear history will overlook is that whatever social conditions provided the kindling for the Troubles, it was the personal agendas of individuals on both sides of the divide that made the spark to ignite the conflict. Those individuals created and perpetuated a war to satisfy their greed for power, status and wealth, and when the war became untenable, they reaped the rewards of the peace process that followed. I don't think that's news to anybody here in Northern Ireland, yet we go out and vote for them election after election anyway.

A point that was raised by two of my beta readers when they reviewed early drafts of the novel was this: why did the ghosts (if they are indeed ghosts, rather than figments of the protagonist's guilt-driven imagination) have no names? The reason for this was simple. The victims of the Troubles, mostly civilians despite what paramilitary apologists would have you believe, are by and large nameless. I'm sure most of us can recall some names, perhaps from particularly notorious cases, or maybe people we actually knew who were caught up in the conflict. I would struggle to name more than a handful of people who lost their lives here. The rest have been washed away by time to become just numbers, lost among more than 3500 such people, now remembered only by those who loved them. Sadly, that number continues to grow in our supposedly peaceful utopia.

A line from John Hewitt's The Bloody Brae is quoted by one of THE TWELVE's characters: God forgives all soldiers. Perhaps that's true. This society certainly seems to have done so, but more out of political expediency than compassion for those who were manipulated into committing terrible sins by the politicians of all hues now dividing up the cake at Stormont. And I, like everybody else, can live with that. It seems a price worth paying if it means my children, should I ever have any, can grow up in a happier place than I did. It doesn't mean it's without pain, though.

Like I said, THE TWELVE was not written to make any political point. It was written as an entertainment, a thriller that will hopefully keep you turning pages into the small hours. If it achieves that simple purpose, then I will be very happy. But all fiction has themes, whether overtly expressed or not. And whether I like it or not, these themes are present in the novel. You can make of them what you will, because really, I just want to scare the crap out of you.

The Difficult Second Album

I've been threatening to blog about this for a while now, so here it is: I have the Second Book Blues.

Where The Twelve/The Ghosts of Belfast was written incredibly quickly, Book Two is proving a struggle. Seriously, it's like pulling teeth trying to write this thing. And why is that?

There are lots of reasons. Some are practicalities, such as the story being much more complex and less linear, with a larger cast of characters. Another is the problem of having less available time in which to write (and that situation is only getting worse).

But I think the greater obstacles are psychological. For one, there is now a deadline, a date on the calendar for which I am contractually obliged to have this book written for. A while ago, it seemed a lifetime away. Now it feels like it's right around the corner, a problem that's exacerbated by the first book's publication and the attendant hoopla standing between me and there. This means a new ingredient that has never been in the writing process for me before: pressure.

Another aspect to this is the knowledge that this book will be published. The first book was written purely on hope, with nothing to lose but time. It didn't matter if it was any good or not at the time it was being written, so out it came, unhindered. Not so book two. Every single word I write, I know seasoned publishing professionals are going to scrutinise. My agent, my UK and US publishers. This leads to deepening of the already niggling insecurities. What if they find out the first book was a fluke? What if they discover I'm a fraud, that I was never any good in the first place? So now I'm constantly second-guessing myself as I write. And what does that make? More pressure.

Then on top of all that, there's the anxiety of Book One's looming publication. I've had more than one sleepless night about that already. What if it doesn't sell? What if it gets panned? What will my friends and family think if it all fizzles out, dies a death just as it enters the world? And yet more pressure.

I take comfort from knowing that I am not alone in this. A couple of the seasoned professionals mentioned above have told me it's not uncommon to have a hard time with book two. As one told me, I had all my life to write Book One. Now I've got to write Book Two in just a few months. That makes me feel a little better.

And before anyone else raises the point, I know this sounds like whining. I know many writers would give just about anything to have the opportunities I've had. I don't take any of them for granted. But still, it's tough.

On Snobbery

There has been a debate raging over at a well known agent's blog. If you're aware of the agent, then you're probably aware of the debate, and you're probably as bemused as I am. The discussion branched from a post about an American university press, and its view of literary agents.

One particular commenter has been arguing that literary agents by and large have a negative effect on the publishing industry, that they are motivated by greed to the exclusion of literary merit, and that university presses should be kept free of their influence. I was tempted to weigh in to the debate, but I am wary of entering into discussion with someone whose mental health I have cause to doubt.

The individual in question is deeply arrogant. And like most deeply arrogant people, he is also a fool. He has a greatly inflated sense of his ability as a writer, but a seemingly low level of self-awareness. What's more, he seems unable to absorb or comprehend the points others make to him.

Now, the Internet is not short on people who are unable to distinguish opinion from fact. One need only read a few posts on the average web forum to find many who are unable to conceive of a world beyond their own experience, despite the vast ocean of information available to them. They can usually be identified by the belief that the phrases "Period", "End of story", or "Nuff said" render all counter arguments invalid. Or they may use that invincible trump card against anyone who has been a member of a community for five minutes less than them, and call them "n00b" (note the use of zeroes, there).

The only thing more insufferable than that kind of wilfully obtuse belligerence is when it is coupled with intellectual superciliousness (that's right, I'm bringing out the big words). And if that superciliousness can't even be backed up by some sign of real intelligence, then is there any point even trying to discuss anything with such a person?

Anyway, I digress. The point of my rant is not to decry the commenter in question, but rather to argue against the basics of his position. I'll take a bit of a liberty and sum up his argument: literary merit and commercial appeal are mutually exclusive. If a piece of work can appeal to a broad audience, it is inherently lacking in quality. True quality will always have limited appeal because it can only be appreciated by those few with the cerebral capacity to do so. Okay, I'm putting words in the guy's mouth here, but it's my blog, and I can do what I want.

That position is so easy to disprove, I almost feel bad doing it. While there are many, many bestselling books that we as readers of discriminating taste know to be of questionable quality, there are also many well-crafted, smart, surprising books that have flown off the shelves and made their authors household names. James Ellroy and Cormac McCarthy spring immediately to mind from my own bookshelf, and I believe the likes of Ian McEwan and Richard Russo do pretty well for themselves. That's four without even trying. There are also plenty more overtly commercial writers whose work easily stands up to any tyre kicking: John Connolly's prose and vivid description are as good as any in the Literary genre, John Le Carre's characterisation is melded to wonderfully dense plotting that exercises the brain as well as the pulse, and Thomas Harris (when he could be arsed) created some of the most haunting gothic horror of the late twentieth century.

When it comes right down to it, when we look at the cold and hard realities of fiction, Literary is just another genre, alongside crime, horror and romance. The halls of academia may have historically favoured one of those genres above all others, but academia has never been even-handed when addressing the arts. When I studied music at grammar school, the exam boards would only give a begrudging nod to The Beatles, and when I went to college to enrol in one of the UK's first popular music degrees, jazz was the favoured genre, not your plebeian pop or rock. Does that render Led Zeppelin invalid? Was Joni Mitchell's career intellectually inferior because she sold too many records? When the Sex Pistols fired a warning shot across the music industry's bow, was it an uncouth racket for the great unwashed, or was it a visceral explosion of heart and anger captured in twelve songs?

To cut oneself off from whole sections of a bookstore or library, purely out of intellectual vanity, is an absurd thing to do. To argue that quality and entertainment can't appear in the same sentence is nonsense.

But here's where I'm going to get a little controversial: we who find our home in the more commercial areas of fiction are often just as guilty of snobbery as the ivory tower dwelling hoity-toits we so love to have a pop at. Particularly among crime writers, there can occasionally be a certain amount of reverse snobbery in evidence. I am guilty of this, too. If you dig back you'll find a post from my now famous (at least in my house) Dinologue period where I rattle off a list of literary tropes that turn me off. God save us from middle-class navel gazing, was the gist of it. And I'll stand by that post, but I'll fully admit it was fuelled as much by a sort of literary class resentment as it was by a desire to talk up my own chosen genre.

And even more questionable is how quick we are to look down our noses at those we consider to have sold out, or are beneath our Ellroy and Leonard-honed sensibilities. Several big name authors have been dismissed while I've been in conversation with other crime writers, and I have joined in the booing and hissing. Our tower may not be ivory, but we're still not above feeling a little superiority to others.

Perhaps there's only one conclusion to be drawn from all this: we shouldn't take ourselves so bloody seriously.

Careful What You Write...

In one of those moments of vanity Googling (come on, we all do it), I was quite amazed to discover I had been quoted in an article in the Sunday Life, one of Northern Ireland's biggest Sunday newspapers, and part of the same stable as the Belfast Telegraph. Hmm, thinks I, I don't remember talking to anyone from the Sunday Life...

The article in question concerned a recent storm-in-a-teacup involving bestselling local author Colin Bateman. Briefly, a series of children's books by Colin features a young girl with Albinism. Given that Colin has a bit of honesty about him, he doesn't particularly sugar coat the character's experience, and she suffers some abuse because of her appearance. Fair enough, you'd rightly think, a kid with Albinism isn't going to go through life without getting some stick off other kids.

Apparently, some schoolkids didn't agree. Under the supervision of their teacher, they composed a letter of complaint to the author. Somewhere along the way, BBC Northern Ireland picked up on this and ran a story about it on their nightly news bulletin. So far, so trivial.

Anyway, Colin Bateman was rightly peeved and posted a strongly worded, but humorous, rebuttal on his blog. In a spot of media recycling, the Sunday Life ran a story about the whole sorry affair, quoting Colin verbatim.

And down near the bottom is this snippet:

'Fellow Northern Irish author Stuart Neville, who has released his debut novel The Ghosts of Belfast, sprang to Bateman's defence. "The BBC must miss having bombs and kneecappings to report," he said.'

YOU WHAT?!

And then I remembered - I'd left a comment on Colin's blog, which I immediately forgot about. And here I am, a couple of months later, discovering my own throw-away quip has been immortalised by the Sunday Life.

Now, there are a couple of inaccuracies and a possible false impression in this. First, "sprang to Bateman's defence" is a bit strong. I don't think I even got out of my chair when I typed it. Second, my debut novel won't see daylight until late next summer at the earliest (but, hey, thanks for plug, Sunday Life!). Also, this kind of gives the impression that there is some connection between Colin Bateman and me. Aside from a very nice congratulatory email he sent me a while back, Colin Bateman doesn't know me at all, and vice versa. I just happened to chip in on a rather daft topic on his blog one day.

Now, don't get me wrong; part of me is actually quite pleased to get a mention in one of our more popular newspapers, and I don't mind being shown to be on Colin's side in the matter (I am), and I don't even mind that the story is mostly a cut-and-paste job that's hardly a shining example of exhaustively researched journalism. But it does bother me a great deal that a simple glib comment I made with little thought behind it found its way into a national newspaper with my name on it. There's a lesson in that, folks...

Read the offending article here.

The Conduit Lectures Gazumped!

Thanks to Nathan Bransford for highlighting this series of articles by Barry Eisler. Mr Eisler has posted three articles on MJ Rose's blog which arrive at more or less the same conclusion I was building to in my How to Fix the Publishing Industry ramblings.

There are two key improvements over my posts, however.

1) Barry Eisler appears to actually know what he's talking about.

2) Barry Eisler has made his arguments in a reasoned and concise set of articles, rather than my random blathering.

Mr Eisler drops the ball on one significant element, though, and it almost destroys his entire point: he forgot to include Dinologue. How can anyone make a serious point without the use of dinosaur analogies? Really, Barry Eisler, this is just not good enough. I expect to see dino discussions in all future articles.

Because of Mr Eisler's omission, I intend to continue with the Conduit Lectures regardless of his doing the same thing only better. But with Dinologue.

A question for New Yorkers...

I had asked this question (as research for a short story) in the comments of my last post, but I'll repeat it here for those that missed it:

As a New Yorker, would you know off the top of your head who the Deputy Mayors are? Would you know their names and positions? Would you know what their individual offices are for? Right now, without looking it up, would you know who the Deputy Mayor for Administration is, and what he/she looks like?

Thanks to Cyn for already chipping in on this. :)

A most interesting post...

...from someone who actually knows what they're talking about can be found on Moonrat's blog.

I'm not sure if it was prompted by the first in the fabulous Conduit Lectures posts (in which I demonstrate that I don't know what I'm talking about), but it goes a long way to shedding light on why the publishing industry seems to move so slowly. An interesting read, and amongst all the blogs about the publishing industry out there at the minute, it's one of the most informative I've read in quite some time.

The Conduit Lectures: How to Fix the Publishing Industry, Part 2

Welcome to the second instalment of The Conduit Lectures, a series of blogs where I embarrass myself by blathering about things I have no business blathering about (whilst at the same time watching the Brazilian Formula 1 Grand Prix, which just got off to a dramatic start).

By popular demand, this rant will feature another sequence of dinosaur dialogue – or Dinologue, as it shall henceforth be known – but I will not bow to pressure to rename the series The Conduit Chronicles. So there. I will reiterate, these pieces are purely opinion and speculation on my part, and I’d welcome the comments of those more knowledgeable than myself.

Are we sitting comfortably? Then, let’s begin…

Books, books everywhere and not a word to read

There have been various posts on various blogs in recent days discussing the pros and cons of chain stores versus independents and large versus small publishers. In my part of the world, the independent book store is extinct. My local supermarket has a small book section that sells current bestsellers, but other than that I have to travel to an out-of-town shopping centre to be able browse books on a shelf. And this is where I start to get annoyed…

Girls and Boys

It’s clear that gender plays a significant role in our tastes in all forms of entertainment, from movies to music to books. I conform to many of the conventions; I have all the Star Wars DVDs, I have a penchant for questionable classic rock, and I’d rather eat my own hair than watch Dirty Dancing. But I also have The Devil Wears Prada alongside my Die Hard box set, and Joni Mitchell and Suzanne Vega CDs sit next to my AC/DC and Van Halen collections. While my tastes are influenced by my having dangly parts, they are neither defined nor limited by them.

Why, then, do I feel so disadvantaged when I go to my nearest book chain? In my local branch of Eason’s I see yard after yard of pastel shades, funky typefaces, and cute girly caricatures (often involving handbags or stilettos). There are occasional patches of books with moody covers with abstract photography of barren cityscapes which usually denote the sixth in a series of murder mysteries starring some hard-bitten cop or another. Such novels are no more to my taste than the pastel shades are.

The question I find myself asking is: where are the books for me? I am an adult male with (I’d like to think) a reasonable level of intelligence and life experience. Why does somebody, somewhere, think that means I only want to read techno-thrillers or worthy literary fiction? I want books that entertain me while making me think. I want challenging characters in challenging situations. I want my imagination to be fired by being plunged into places I’ve never been, by experiences I’ve never had, by people I’ve never met.

What don’t I want to read about?

Here’s a list:

1. Doomsday weapons falling into the hands of terrorists/despots/mad industrialists.
2. Rugged mercenaries called Blaze McTesticle pursuing said Doomsday weapon.
3. Former-cops-turned-private-eyes with tragic pasts who…
4. Get called back into service by the organisation that fired them, or…
5. Get a message from an ex-wife/girlfriend/partner/boss/mentor they haven’t heard from in years who subsequently dies in suspicious circumstances leading to…
6. An investigation that leads the protagonist into dangerous territory, or…
7. A race against time to save some loved-one or other.
8. Middle-class, soul-searching, chin-stroking, navel-gazing explorations of the human condition with a male character aged between thirty-five and fifty who is…
9. A doctor…
10. A professor…
11. A teacher…
12. A novelist…
13. A journalist…
14. Especially not a journalist, who…
15. Has a mid-life crisis…
16. An affair…
17. A divorce…
18. A reconciliation with his estranged father, or…
19. Attends a funeral which forces him to examine the futility of his own existence.
20. Or even worse, a young academic who does any of the above while embarking on a torrid relationship with a kooky girl with unusually coloured hair.

Me man. Me no read.

As I understand it, the majority of fiction bought today is by and for women. Men buy comparatively few books. And why is this? Is it because men spend their leisure time on other things? Playing computer games? Watching sports? Watching television? Drinking beer and scratching their arses?

Actually, I spend a fair amount of time doing that last bit, but that’s not the point…

Is it simply that men generally don’t like to read? Or is there another possibility? Is it feasible that maybe, just maybe, men buy fewer books because the publishing industry isn’t producing enough of the kind of books they want to read?

So, where are the dinosaurs?

It’s Jurassic Analogy time. In this episode, we discover how T.Rex and Raptor view the male of the species…

EXTERIOR. DAY. NEAR A CLIFF FACE.

RAPTOR: What the hell is that thing?
T.REX: That? Oh, that's a caveman.
RAPTOR: Caveman? But we're separated by millions of years of evol--
T.REX: Shut up.
RAPTOR: But we couldn't possibly be in the same--
T.REX: Look, shut up! You're ruining the analogy.
RAPTOR: Jeez, sorry! So it's a caveman.
T.REX: Yeah, a caveman.
RAPTOR: So, what are they like?
T.REX: Well, you've basically got two types.
RAPTOR: And what are they?
T.REX: First, you've got the manly caveman. He likes hitting stuff with his club, running around a lot, scratching his ass. That kind of thing.
RAPTOR: He doesn't like anything too smart, then.
T.REX: Yep, that about sums him up.
RAPTOR: And what's the other type?
T.REX: The artsy-fartsy caveman. He's your intellectual type. Gazes at the moon and does cave-drawings. Y'know, artsy-fartsy stuff.
RAPTOR: What does he draw?
T.REX: Pictures about the futility of existence.
RAPTOR: Huh. Sounds boring. So, there's nothing in between? There are no other types? Just those two?
T.REX: Yep, just those two. They taste good, though.
RAPTOR: I don't know. I'm still not convinced by this analogy thing. I can't get past the millions of years of separation. I can't suspend my disbelief.
T.REX: Can't suspend your disbelief? Dude, dinosaurs can't talk.
RAPTOR: Oh…

Join me next time when I explore the topic of genre, and how while pigeonholing books may be a necessary evil, it's just that: evil.

DISCLAIMER: The above text is the rambling nonsense of someone with no connection to the publishing industry other than being at its two extremes. All opinions expressed are more than likely the reflection of a bitter and cantankerous mind and no warranty as to their validity is given or implied. All comments are welcome, particularly from those who actually know what they're talking about. Just remember I don't.

The Conduit Lectures: How to Fix the Publishing Industry, Part 1

To celebrate the occasion of my 100th blog entry, I hereby introduce the inaugural edition of a new series I shall call The Conduit Lectures. In this series I will write at length, quite probably in rambling and nonsensical circles, on topics I know absolutely nothing about. At this stage I can't be sure how many of these diatribes there'll be, or how often they'll appear, but I can promise they will have no basis in reality, have few researched and verifiable facts, and be entirely subjective.

So, here we go…

How to Fix the Publishing Industry

That's a tough topic, and one I am in no way qualified to pontificate on. But I'm going to do it anyway. Of course, before we can fix anything, we need to establish:

What's wrong with the publishing industry?

In a nutshell, the publishing industry in Europe and the USA is failing to serve the two elements at the opposite ends of its spectrum, the two elements without which it could not exist. Those two elements are authors and readers.

Authors are struggling to get their work published, and even when they do, they seldom profit from it in any significant way.

Readers are struggling to find good books by new authors with fresh voices, and are instead falling back on established names and reliable genres.

The existing structures and business practices of the industry are failing to bridge the gap between those two elements.

At least the dinosaurs had an excuse...

A big hunk of rock from space did them in. If their woes were more like those of the publishing industry, the movie script of their decline might have been something like this:

EXTERIOR. DAY. OPEN SAVANNAH WITH PREHISTORIC SOUND EFFECTS.

T.REX: So, where's all the food?
RAPTOR: Dunno. There was plenty here yesterday.
T.REX: But I'm hungry.
RAPTOR: Me too.
T.REX: So, what are we going to do?
RAPTOR: There's a herd of herbivores way over yonder.
T.REX: What? I'm not going over there.
RAPTOR: Why not? We might be able to catch one and, y'know, eat it.
T.REX: But that isn't how it works. They're supposed to wander too close to us and we grab 'em.
RAPTOR: So, why don't we change the way it works?
T.REX: 'Cause we always do it this way.
RAPTOR: Oh. Well if you're not changing it, neither am I.
T.REX: Fine.
RAPTOR: Fine.
T.REX: I'm hungry.
RAPTOR: Me too.

While most industries, whether they be service or manufacturing based, have moved with the new dynamics of our world the publishing industry has for the most part remained mired in antiquated practices. Check just about any publishing professional's blog; when they're pressed about the industry's inefficiencies, they'll usually respond with something along the lines of, "Well, that's just how it works."

The Glacier

In most instances, a book will take from one to two years from the deal being struck to when it finally appears on shelves. Add to that the time it took to write it in the first place, plus if it's a first novel, the time it takes to find representation, and then the time it takes to polish and edit it before it goes out to editors. That might be three to four years between a writer first sitting down at a keyboard and the fruits of his or her labour appearing at a retailer near you.

They make movies in less time.

Of course, there are many things that need to occur in that chain of events, such as the actual writing, the drawing up of contracts, the copy editing, the marketing, all that stuff. But what I wonder is this: how much of that three to four year period is lost to simple inefficiency? I'm not offering an answer, or speculating. I simply don't know.

So, the author may knock out a polished draft in as little as six months to a year, and a reader will spend ten minutes browsing paperbacks on a stand before purchasing that author's creation. It's that enormous gap in between that concerns me, and quite frankly, I wonder why it doesn't seem to concern the industry.

How can any industry expect to thrive if it cannot react rapidly to changes in the market? Like a massive cruise liner sailing the literary oceans, the industry's turning circle is so large that changes in direction are achingly slow to the point of being imperceptible. Given this Ent-like pace, the industry naturally wants to avoid undue risks. It plays the long game, like a thrifty bank manager's retirement fund. Steady as you go.

It plays it safe.

In part 2 I shall explore one of the symptoms of this malaise, and how it results in my not being able to find a single book I want to buy when I visit my local store.

DISCLAIMER: The above text is the rambling nonsense of someone with no connection to the publishing industry other than being at its two extremes. All opinions expressed are more than likely the reflection of a bitter and cantankerous mind and no warranty as to their validity is given or implied. All comments are welcome, particularly from those who actually know what they're talking about. Just remember I don't.