THE AGE OF LITERARY LOLLY
it is time to regulate the literary world's pursuit of wealth
THE literary world is not driven by such mercenary motives as the City but it seems to he heading in that direction. We are entering the Age of Literary Lolly. In a distasteful but absorbing article in the Sunday Times recently, Melvyn Bragg salivated greedily at the sums now earned. For Tom Wolfe's next novel, he gloated, 'a $10 million worldwide advance was being constructed'. Ian McEwan's advance was 'well towards £650,000' and Peter Ackroyd was collecting the same sum 'in the UK alone' for two biographies; Fay Weldon was on the £450,000 mark, while Le Carre, 'not known to be greedy for macho adv- ances' — quite a stylist, Bragg, isn't he? received 'about £500,000'. According to Nicholas Shakespeare, writing in the Sun- day Telegraph, the way in which some publishers and authors work together to generate cash is none too fastidious. He cites the rise of the Designer Novel and its 'doyenne', one Caroline Upcher, 'editorial director of Century fiction'. She began in the film industry and moved to books by turning movie and television scripts into novels. Shakespeare quotes her as saying of her novelists: 'If they think they are writing literature they are shown the door
. I'm the biggest philistine that ever was, but at least I am making it work.'
City sharks would not be so frank. But the way in which some books are now flogged to the public resembles the pushing of rights issues or new companies. Once, a new writer won readers simply by the appeal of his work. The classic case is Dickens, then unknown, and the success of Pickwick Papers in 1836-7, sold in monthly parts, the print-order rising steadily as news of its authors' comic brilliance spread by word of mouth. Today, thanks to crass publicity techniques, television and the hoo-ha of literary prizes, novels are not so much selected by readers as hyped by literary power-brokers working hand in hand with the money-bags. It is not a pretty picture and it is in danger of becoming downright ugly. Readers are conned into buying trash or into thinking mediocre stuff is a masterpiece by methods not wholly unlike the marketing of high- return investment trusts and similar risky
ventures.
However, there is one important differ- ence between the City and commercial literature. The first is closely supervised, not only by such statutes as the Companies Act and the recent, draconian Financial Services Act, but by a good deal of self-regulation from the Stock Exchange Council and similar bodies, It may still be inadequate and the Left — not least `progressive' writers who are now coining it — thinks there should be more. But no one, so far as I know, has ever demanded comparable measures for the literary world, which has no legal regulation at all. If its financial pickings are now so huge as Bragg says they are, and Designer Novels can be foisted on a gullible public in the way N.Shakespeare describes, then perhaps the time has come.
City operators, who have to provide a staggering amount of documentation and cross innumerable hurdles before being allowed to sell the public shares in a new quoted company, must be amazed by the casual manner in which literary prizes key elements in the hyping process — are conducted. Who appoints the judges and by what process? What qualifies or disqual- ifies them? What declarations of interest must they make? How and on what basis are short-lists compiled, who does the compiling and are their credentials ex- amined? How closely are recipients scruti- nised? Are their possible connections with judges queried? I doubt if these questions are ever asked, let alone answered.
Then again, the rules of the competitions are often open to criticism, at any rate in the way they are applied. The first award of the new Irish Guinness Peat-Aviation prize, worth £45,000, was instructive. A panel of assessors drew up a short-list of five books. This was then sent to Graham Greene, the prize's 'adjudicator'. He re- jected all of them and chose instead, as he was apparently entitled to do under the rules, a quite different book, whose book- jacket already contained a plug by him and which is put out by his own publisher. The assessors objected to this and, following behind-the-scenes negotiations, of which the public was told nothing, the rules were changed, Greene's choice got an extra consolation prize of £18,000, and one of the original five was picked, it is not clear by whom but apparently not by Greene, who sat in glum silence at the ceremony. The winner, as it happened, was a literary editor. I say nothing about his or his book's merits or whether or not he should have got the prize. But it strikes me as odd that such a functionary should be in the running for a literary prize in the first place. After all in high finance, supposedly so wicked and jungly, a City editor who comments and in effect adjudicates on business doings accepts severe limitations on his own business activities. He is cer- tainly not allowed to organise and float new companies. The law and the City's own regulations are extremely strict about anyone wearing two or more hats where there may be a conflict of interest, present, past or future.
Now I know that the Guinness Peat business took place in Ireland but I don't think the literary scene here is all that different. According to the lip-smacking Bragg, in the present climate 'literary editors cut the mustard on the metropoli- tan party run'. This argot was unfamiliar to me but I gather Bragg means they are mighty important fellows, in a position to dispense much patronage and no doubt receive it in turn. With so much dosh around perhaps we should not rely so completely on their strong sense of virtue alone. They are not the only people in the game. In recent years it is said that a small group of writers, all chums, all at the same time producing books, reviewing books, and hyping and damning books on televi- sion and radio, have had the power to make or break fellow writers. Is this acceptable? Or ought those who judge books be quite distinct from those who write them? At present a chap may he producing a novel one year, judging a prize the next, back in the novel business the year after, and all the time looming large on literary broadcasting shows. Perhaps in the old days it didn't matter so much. But as the blurb on Bragg's article put it, 'Dramatic changes lard] transforming the once-sedentary world of books into big business.' If literature is now indeed big business, ought it not be subjected to some
of the regulations about ethics and poten- tial interest conflicts which big business
takes for granted? As they say in the, movies, 'Let's have some law around here.
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