MEDIA STUDIES
When they're not scratching one another's backs, they're scratching one another's eyes
STEPHEN GLOVER
Any suggestion that a novelist has written a roman a clef invariably draws forth howls of protest from the writer concerned, who does not like it to be thought that he or she has such feeble imaginative powers as to be forced merely to borrow from life. In an article in the Guardian, Ms Craig asserts that 'these characters are all figments of my imagination'. Those who know Mr Sexton and have read the book are not so sure. It is also pointed out that a character in the novel called No Sponge bears more than a passing resemblance to an obscure literary hack called John Walsh. In an article in the Independent, Mr Walsh lists some similari- ties between himself and his presumed lit- erary alter ego: both have curly hair, dress like dandies and are lapsed Catholic ex- grammar school boys; both are sons of doc- tors and both are gossip-writers turned lit- erary editors.
As I understand it, Ms Craig believes that literary London is an incestuous world in which writers either reward their chums with ecstatic reviews on the books pages or settle old scores under the camouflage of literary objectivity. Authors who lie outside this backscratching little circle are likely to be ignored. I doubt there are very many unregarded geniuses, but Ms Craig's account otherwise sounds perfectly con- vincing, if somewhat overdone. The wonder is that she should affect to be so critical. She herself is part of this set — indeed so much part that when she comes to write a novel (A Vicious Circle is her third) she bor- rows characters from it without in some cases even bothering to change the details. Her distaste evinces more an impatience with several former friends than a deep- seated rebellion against a world of which she remains part.
The question is how those who do not belong to this world should be on their guard against the slanted review. Of course a little inside knowledge can help. When the historian Andrew Roberts reviews a book by his fellow historian and friend, John Charmley, as he did in the Sunday Times of 15 September, the outcome is almost bound to be pleasurable for Mr Charmley. Outside the literary world, it was gracious of Sir John Junor to write so ecstatically in his recent Mail on Sunday column about the first issue of Punch, edit- ed by his old friend and lunching compan- ion, Peter McKay. In general, however, knowledge of the characters involved is no more than a useful aid. My own rule of thumb is to be on my guard against any review which is extravagantly nice or nasty about a living author.
It is often not very difficult to ascertain the true motives behind an attack on a writ- er or a book. It was obvious, for example, that A.N. Wilson's recent very amusing assault on Humphrey Carpenter in the Evening Standard was at least partly based on personal knowledge of Lord Runcie's new biographer. Mr Wilson made much of Mr Carpenter's untidy appearance as well as his malodorous air, and it was easy to imagine that the two men had come across each other at North Oxford dinner parties, and had perhaps even drowned their sor- rows together in pubs before Mr Wilson's sensitive nostrils cried 'No more!' On the other hand, Coln MacCabe's demolition of Melanie Phillips's new book in last week's New Statesman did not imply even a passing acquaintance with his unfortunate victim. He just loathed the book, and his reasons were rather persuasive.
I suppose that the best reviews, whether in praise or condemnation, are usually writ- ten by those who do not have a personal agenda. But the books pages would be much duller were it not for these eddies of hatred and affection. Ms Craig expects lit- erary men and women to behave as people have never behaved, and as she herself is plainly incapable of behaving. Readers know that back-stabbing and backscratch- Letters to the Editor Letters may be sent by E-mail to: editor@spectator.demon.conk ing go on. They have learnt not to believe everything that they read in newspapers.
Where is Rachel Campbell-Johnson? Every Wednesday for several months the beautiful head and neck of Ms Campbell- Johnson adorned the front page of the Times beneath the masthead, where the newspaper lays out its most glamorous wares. Rachel Campbell-Johnson on the children who can teach us compassion. Rachel Campbell-Johnson on a woman's right to inherit. Rachel Campbell-Johnson on ending the hypocrisy over prostitution. Rachel Campbell-Johnson on keeping the Antarctic a true wilderness. Always Rachel Campbell-Johnson, caught in the same fetching pose, luring readers towards her slightly dull Wednesday column.
I realise, of course, that the Times will seize every opportunity to put an attractive woman on its front page. (Not that it is alone among broadsheets. The Daily Tele- graph is almost as assiduous.) It is not often that you get a head-and-shoulders shot of a skimpily clad William Rees-Mogg on the front of the newspaper. But Ms Campbell- Johnson appeared so regularly beneath the masthead that I began to believe that the editor of the Times, or whoever orders these things, was trying to tell us something important about Ms Campbell-Johnson that the newspaper believed not only that she is a beautiful woman whose front-page photograph might sell a few extra copies but also that her column was worth reading for its great intrinsic merit.
Alas, I was fooled. Rachel Campbell- Johnson is gone. A couple of Wednesdays ago I picked up the paper and saw not her but Nigefla Lawson, her apparently beauti- ful head resting on her hand, a thin, inscrutable smile playing on her delicate lips — as though this was her rightful and natural spot. It emerges that the star-billed columnist Rachel Campbell-Johnson was not a star at all, but merely a stand-in for Ms Lawson, and now she has been shunted off unceremoniously to the outer reaches of the paper and her picture may never adorn the front page again. I don't want to be rude to Ms Lawson but in a mad way I had got used to Rachel Campbell-Johnson, and it lowers my spirits a little to think that my Wednesdays will now be marked out until the end of time by the gently smiling picture of another female columnist.
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