The Elegant Variation

KILL THE MESSENGER

Why is it that pieces like this one - which contain any number of things with which we agree - ultimately end up irritating us?

Still, the recognition for a novel that was the object of so much rejection seems to confirm the view that the business is hostile to fresh talent. Certainly JK Rowling, who could now buy most publishers, couldn't get her manuscripts bought by one when she began. And yet a publishing accountant might argue that Catherine O'Flynn's Costa success does not prove the book houses wrong. Increasingly, judgments involve not literary quality but commercial prospects.

These vicious economic predictions have come into publishing because of a collapse in the market for fiction that prizes prose over plot. At the Christmas parties, many publishers were talking guiltily about new books by authors you might have heard of - winner of a Whitbread 20 years ago, writer of that book that became that film - that they have been forced to turn down because marketing was alarmed.

On the one hand, it's simply silly to say that publishing is hostile to "fresh talent," as the number of debuts published each year surely attests.  On the other, it's entirely fair to say that marketing departments hold far too much power in the current literary landscape.  And it's sillier still to fall on the cliché of "prose over plot" when backhanding literary fiction.  Pieces like this mix legitimate criticism with anti-intellectualism and ressentiment and end up a distasteful leper's stew.  In the end, we learn more about the author's prejudices than about the prejudices threatening fiction.

An old stand-up comic friend used to say, following a failed joke, "There's a successful joke in there, somewhere."  Somewhere, there's a successful essay on what ails serious fiction.  If you can find it, please alert us.

A KIWI FOR WYLIE

Andrew Wylie has added the estate of Janet Frame to his already impressive client list.

New York- based literary agent Andrew Wylie, who represents top writers, including Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, was hired in January by the Janet Frame Literary Estate to sell her latest book, and other previously published work, internationally.

MAD MAX II - AGENTDOME

We were delighted to read Galleycat's post this morning announcing Dan Conaway's move from being an editor Putnam to being an agent at Writers House.  Dan's a remarkably thoughtful, passionate book person - many of you will remember his turn as Mad Max Perkins - and we have obvious strong feelings towards Writers House.  It's a great move for all concerned.

WOW!

Jeez, we lose internet connection for a few days and what happens?  Judith Regan gets fired.

HarperCollins announced the firing, “effective immediately,” in a two-sentence news release that was issued about 7 p.m. Eastern time. The announcement was made by Jane Friedman, president and chief executive of HarperCollins, who has long had a strained relationship with Ms. Regan.

The statement said Ms. Regan’s publishing unit and its staff would continue as part of the HarperCollins General Books Group, but it is unknown whether that group would remain in Los Angeles, where Ms. Regan moved it from New York earlier this year.

Really, you can take it back to NY.  We don't want it here.

A LITTLE LIGHT READING

A 900-page French novel written by an American is the surprise hit of the season, and has prompted a bidding war for the world  rights.

Suffice it to say that noone quite expected Les Bienveillantes (The Furies) to be the runaway success of the rentrée litéraire (the busiest publishing period of the year, in September). A first-person narrative by a Nazi officer, detailing the bureaucracy and the horror of the holocaust, Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes is a 900-page, rather innocent-looking tome.

Publishers Gallimard equally did not expect the runaway success of the book, and are now looking at six-figure sums for the English-language rights to the book. A deal has already been concluded with a German publisher, and the negotiations will continue this week at the Frankfurt book fair.

THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE TO ME

Are book advertisements hopelessly unimaginative and ineffective?  Copyranter shows us how he got his name.

Open any New York Times Arts Section to the book page and look at the ads—every single one of them looks EXACTLY the same: big jacket shot, surrounded by “Read it today!”—USA Today; “Entertaining read!”—Entertainment Weekly; and other such asinine attributes (at right, we have the brilliant move of repeating the author's name and title as the "headline"). Not one of the ads provokes even a slight glance in its direction.

The rest of his post is considerably less decorous.  It's hard to believe he makes a living with words.  But - with the latest NYTBR on our desk - we find he's hard to argue with.

AGE & TREACHERY ...

No, of course there's no obsession with young successful debut authors.

For a young writer, publishing a story in The New Yorker's Début Fiction issue and locking down a book deal are the first steps toward literary Valhalla. Karen Russell, a 25-year-old Miami native, has accomplished both. Last year a story she penned, "Haunting Olivia," was awarded with Début status. Next month Knopf & Co. will release her first collection of short fiction, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

PAGING JOHN FREEMAN

By the way, we never responded to John Freeman's foolish blog post about bloggers and money and conflicts of interest because, honestly, it seemed like one of those wrong-headed ideas best left to sink under its own weight.  But had we mustered up the interest in responding, we probably would have said something along these lines:  By Freeman's reasoning, his own reviews (at least, any positive ones) can similarily be dismissed, given the acceptance of his host publications of advertising dollars from the publishers of said books.  Oh, he tries to preempt that line of debate:

It's one thing to accept advertising money: that's what has kept papers afloat for years. It's quite another to make a commission off the very object you are purporting to criticize

It's a nice little tautology but doesn't really go anywhere.  Freeman never really explains why sustaining a newspaper should be any different than sustaining a blog.  And why shouldn't we assume there's a possibility that reviewers might be subtly pressured to review a book one way or another?  Editors can be notorious for watering down - or heating up - negative reviews.  And finally, it's arguably considerably more meretricious to take adverstising greenbacks from anyone who can pay your page rates, versus being selective about who you choose to promote.  Basically, John wants us to take his word for his purity but doesn't accept that bloggers might, in fact, make decisions about their titles before slapping on an Amazon link.  (And in case you're wondering, we don't use any partner programs here, mainly because we're too lazy to manage the small amounts of money they might generate; but we don't look askance at those who do.)

C'mon, John.  If you want to pick a fight with bloggers, there are dozens of legitimate fronts you can attack.  But Amazon pennies?  You're normally an acute critic, but for that one, you win the TEV Out Of Touch Award for the week.  Let us know where to send your prize, a copy of John Updike's Terrorist ...

TROUBLE IN NEVER-NEVER LAND

The holder of Peter Pan's copyright is making noise about Alan Moore's Lost Girls, his forthcoming porno-graphic novel.

“We understand this graphic novel involves characters from the story of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan & Wendy,” which is, of course, in copyright in the U.K. and EU,” the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children said in a statement about Moore’s book.

The hospital, which was bequeathed the rights to the “Peter Pan” books by Barrie, said: “In order to be published or distributed in these territories, Alan Moore’s title would need our permission or license. From press coverage, we understand it deals with sensitive subject matter which does not initially seem appropriate to be associated with the hospital and with J.M. Barrie’s legacy to us.”

Not to mince words on the subject but we find Moore to be something of an overrated freak.  Nevertheless, what doesn't seem appropriate to us is making judgements about material without actually having, oh, you know, seen it?

DIDN'T WE JUST COVER THIS STORY?

In the Department of Nothing New Under the Sun, Canada's Book Expo seems to raise the same kinds of worries that the American version offered up.

Yet there seems little joy in the book biz these days. People in the industry — writers, agents, publishers, distributors and booksellers — seem to worry as much as those in the music industry, conventional TV broadcasting, AM radio and all the other cultural ecosystems supposedly on the endangered list. When Roy MacSkimming published his well-regarded history of Canadian publishing in 2003, he called it The Perilous Trade.

Sure, book types say, more books are being published than ever before, and more people want to write them. But the books that are being published lack literary merit while their marketing and promotion are a poor man's echo of what General Mills does for a new cereal. The worriers point out that, per capita, fewer people are buying books, serious readers are a minority, authors don't have the cultural importance of Lindsay Lohan and George Clooney, and if their book isn't noticed by Oprah or the Giller Prize judges, fuggedaboutit.

There's even a cranky Updike quote to complete the experience.