'Ways of Reading'

They were on their 3rd edition of the core English Literature text Ways of Reading, and still Montgomery et al had failed to nail down your favourites. They did not tally up the pros and cons of a park bench on an unseasonably warm spring day against the tented solitude of a heavy quilt. The good doctors did not care how lightly one would perch on your fingertips as you lay on the grass, or about the forgotten ones you trawled over heavily after one too many glasses of wine. Nor did they acknowledge the equal absurdities of you on the train, holding up the cover of To the Lighthouse for others to see, or squirrelling away a boy wizard in a magazine, between pages nine and three-quarters.

They were in the business of temple building, erecting great marble monuments to perfectly resonate and amplify their own voices; or demolition, pulling down the roaring chambers of others upon their heads. They were nowhere near describing your brand of falling away from the world: of lowering yourself into a dark well in a tiny bucket with only a stick to defend yourself with, and a flickering torch to light up all the things down there.

Literary fiction is dead?

In the words of someone cleverer than me, ‘How am I supposed to know what I
think until I’ve written it down?’ So here’s what I’ve been thinking about
with regards to my job and its relation to my writing, and forgive me if I
go on a bit, but I hope it’s interesting anyway.

I was having a drink with some people from work last night and, being a group of publishing types and book nuts, the
conversation inevitably turned towards our industry and books generally. Our
commissioning editor who buys our commercial non-fiction list stated, pretty
firmly, that literary fiction is dead, or at least dying. This seemed like a
pretty bold statement, yet looking at the book market as it is now, it's
hard to deny that there's been a sharp decline in literary fiction buying,
even as book sales as a whole are on the increase.

There are, as I see it, two big factors and one small factor for the
continuing decline in literary fiction (sorry poets, I'm only going to talk
about novels for now, but much of this probably applies). The small reason
is that fewer people want to read challenging, different, or 'difficult'
books any more. Why this should be - English poorly taught in schools, the
rise of easier to consume entertainment like TV and computer games, or a
more general intellectual apathy - is a whole other matter.

That's still only a relatively small cause in my view. I have trouble
entertaining the idea that people as a whole are getting less intelligent,
and want to be challenged less (in fact in many ways I think the opposite is
the case, though not always with regards to the arts). That leaves the big
reasons: publishing groups (as opposed to houses), and book discounting.

Let's start with the groups. Aside from Bloomsbury, which has lived off
Harry Potter for the last 10 years, three publishers now call the shots in
the UK book market: HarperCollins, Random House, and Penguin. They are huge,
and diverse. The Random House Group imprints include the literary Chatto,
Vintage, Harvill Secker and Cape (collectively CCV), the commercial arm
Cornerstone (previously CHA), Ebury, BBC Books, Virgin, its sister company
Transworld and all of its imprints, and the newly formed Preface and
Mainstream imprints, and more besides. The publishers are spread over two
large offices in London, and distributed from three huge warehouses (and I
mean the kind of huge that inspired me to write a story about it).  I think
you get the idea: it is, all caps BIG.  And it’s not even as large as the
Harper group, which just beat Random in market share last year.

So what, you might say? In a capitalist society, if something makes money it
grows, and if it doesn’t it dies. But the effect on what is being published,
and more importantly how it’s being published, are clear. Books are less
diverse, and lists more subject to the latest bandwagon than ever before:
witness the rise of my pet hate the misery memoir. Or celebrity
autobiographies. Or, this Christmas, celebrity comedians from a
working-class background. It’s reached a point now, as Dan Franklin said in
his guest talk, where on a publishing group level like Harper and Random,
profitable commercial non-fiction (i.e. the few books that sell astronomical
numbers like Peter Kay) is effectively funding non-profitable literary
fiction. It done because, unprofitable as it is, people like Dan who’ve been
in publishing for years love books like that, and have the power to push
them through, and also because there’s a chance you may have a big prize
(Bookers etc.) winner in there to turn your tiny profit margin around. But I
don’t see how that’s a sustainable way for a business to run. To have one
side of a company weighed down by another simply because you love having it
around is not something I can see continuing for very long, especially
considering that anyone who has risen to the upper-echelons of the group has
come from the commercial arm of the company,

This takes me to my other big reason, though the two are very much linked:
book discounting. My favourite thing to tell people when I mention I work in
publishing is how discounting works. The table of books at the front of
Waterstones is not overstock: the publisher has paid a lot of money to get
them there. £5-10k is the kind of area we’re talking about for a single
title to be placed in a ‘3 for 2’ front of store (FOS) offer (though that
figure goes up in the Christmas season). My house paid WH Smiths a lot
of money (I can’t remember how much, but again in the 5-10k mark) to place
one of our titles in its top 10 chart for a month. Yes,
you read that right: a chart position is first paid for by the publisher,
and it’s only after it’s started to sell that it can stay in that chart or, as happens more often, drops
back to the shelves. Publishers pay for books to be faced outward on a shelf
rather that the normal spine out. Even the “Booksellers Choice” or “We
recommend…” is paid for.

This is great from the publisher’s perspective if you can get a book
discounted: it’s a crowded market, and, much like buying a bottle of wine,
if you’re not sure what you like the chances are you’ll go for the one with
the yellow half-price sticker on. But the damage this has done to the
undiscounted books is massive. There are a lot of novels out there, and even
a book lover like myself gets bewildered by the amount of choice out there.
If I don’t know what I want when I walk into a Waterstone’s, I can spend an
hour just browsing for something, and even then I might not get anything.
Now imagine what it’s like for the person who reads perhaps a half-dozen
novels a year, who maybe doesn’t find the idea of spending half and
afternoon in a bookshop terribly appealing. Where do they even start?

This has led publishers down a worrying path. Whether a book is discounted
or not, and what discount and placing that will be, is decided when the
titles are presented to the book buyers, usually around 6 months before. In
deciding the discount, the buyers are not just thinking about how much money
they are getting for it, but the amount of investment the publisher is
putting into the book. They bookshop is paying the same amount for a copy of
the book whether it’s full price, half price, or whatever, so it’s
effectively picking up the loss on the price reduction (hence why the
publisher pays for it). It wants its discounted book to do well, so it wants
to see what level of marketing budget and publicity the publisher is putting
behind it to make that happen. And here’s my point: if the publisher doesn’t
get the placement and discounting it expects for a title, the marketing and
PR budget is reduced, sometimes cut altogether. It happened to one of my
titles last week, it’ll happen again. Similarly, if the bookseller loves a
book, that title will often have money (and, not least of all, time and
energy) piled into it.

Discounts are all about the quick, flash in the pan, big sellers. They’ve
taken over bookshops to a large extent, and because of the money involved,
small independent publishers and literary fiction imprints (with the
exception of prize winners and Richard and Judy books) simply can’t afford them.

So where does that leave us? It may surprise you to learn that I’m not at
all doomy and gloomy about literary fiction’s future. The book industry is
witnessing a sea change.  The discounting I talked about is becoming a case
of ever diminishing returns, with publishers seeing people starting to react
against a devalued product (the endless bandwagon jumping and inferior
imitations of successful books). The ebook is coming, and no one yet knows
what will happen when (or indeed if) that has its “iPod moment”, especially
given news that Apple and Nintendo are both going to produce them.  And the
internet, which with few exceptions I have yet to see authors or publishers
really turn to their advantage, continues to cut out the “middle market”
that publishers have relied on for so long. An average book no longer sells
average copies: it sells hardly at all. With people able to talk about and
review and sample your product now more than ever before, with readers
essentially taking back the power of choice from publishers and booksellers,
you now have to be either very good value, or just very good.

Murakami, Hopper, and other stuff

I'm not feeling particularly inspired today, so I've just been reading and watching bits of TV. One of those fallow, nothing days that comes around when my creativity goes on a holiday, rather rudely without thinking to take me. Well, up yours creativity, I'll get along just fine without you.

On a brighter note, I have decided to do my dissertation on Haruki Murakami, having read Wild Sheep Chase and being surprised and shocked and entertained on every page whilst not really being able to place why. There's something of Kafka about him. His writing makes me feel dry inside - like driftwood, or like drinking espresso and smoking a slim cigarette. Light, papery. I can't figure it out yet, but it's got something to do with the way he talks about the routine things. Eating and smoking especially, and drinking beer, and talking to a girlfriend. As if all of the solid, rock hard things he's describing could waft away at any moment. I don't know why I like it, but I think it'll be fun to find out.

I actually first got into him after watching the BBC's Imagine series on him. It's a brilliant series, and seems to turn me on to whatever it's documenting that week: before Murakami it was the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and this week was Werner Herzog. There's so much out there I haven't done and heard and read it can be quite bewildering at times. The classic consumer's lament: "More more more! No time, no time at all!"

And there's always someone who's read more or seen more. Must be very tiring for them. I'm a slow reader anyway, which does me no favours either professionally or academically, but I haven't had the discipline to teach myself to skim read. I enjoy going at my pace anyway - not being the quickest person myself it gives me time to figure out what's going on, especially at the start. I'm trying to start my own novel now, and blame that first chapter a little for a stall I'm in now. It's a big ask getting someone to start reading something that could take 6, 7, 8 even - hours of their lives. You're asking them to spend half a waking day sitting quietly, shutting out for the most part what's going on around them, and not look at anything but your words. It takes a special kind of confidence - some would say arrogance - to expect that you can get someone to do that. Basically, these first few chapters have to be fucking great or I may as well not bother. And I need to figure out where it's going or I really will get stuck. It's in there somewhere, I just have to wait for the solution to want to be found.

Now I'm going to do that thing that I recommend every writer do when they get thoughts like these: stick my head in an Edward Hopper painting, and write the first thing that comes into my head. No it's not going up here, but here's a painting anyway for you to try at home. Good night!

Hello little blog of mine, it's been a while hasn't it? I apologise for my neglect, but to prove I still love you here's a little tid-bit from the other day when I was commuting in to work.

A man on the train sat across from me, and after a minute reached into his satchel and pulled out a slim novel – a novella really, with a bleached out cover of a hill, covered in the kind of grass you find on sand dunes. Tall and harsh, as if the grip of the root balls had crushed the sand into the stems and the grey-green leaves.

There is nothing like being in thrall of a short fiction, its very lightness in your hands urging you to both read more and faster yet regretting that you are closing in on the end. He stared it down crossly, and at one time lifted a hand to his face and mouthed at his knuckles, leaving the cover bent and warped where he had gripped it. He was fast approaching the final page, and was slowly pulling the book apart as he did, breaking the spine, bending back pages as if more words might be hidden between the margins, a white tear appearing at the top of the cover and wending down toward the author’s name.

He got off the train at Baker Street, but instead of walking with the crowd, stood back out of the way, never leaving the book. He stood reading with an unblinking, pent energy. As the train carried us away I imagine him getting to the end, the author’s note and acknowledgments, the empty pages at the back. I wish I could remember the title.

Galactic events and Delta blues

I grew up reading sci-fi. I ate up the Star Trek series they stocked at the library. One of my favourite novels used to be Greg Bear's epic Eon, and one of my favourite short stories is still Arthur C. Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God. If you haven't read it yet, find it immediately, it's great. Anyway, none of that prepared me for the news that 1.4 billion light years away, NASA has found a black hole at the centre of a galaxy that is shooting a blazing ray of magnetic radiation that destroys everything in its path into its companion galaxy. A whole galaxy is literally being torn apart. A WHOLE GALAXY - before our very eyes.

I didn't have a specific point to make about this, except that it made me realise once more what a mind-buggeringly big place the Universe is, and we're all just puny humans compared to a galaxy being ripped apart. I feel Sigur Ros' song "Hoppipolla" would be appropriate for this moment (as it seems to be played in perpetuity whenever some massive natural event is being shown on T.V., which is quite frequently really), but really I think the only reasonable response is to cower somewhere dark and contemplate ones own infinite-smallness in the face of such things. Fortunately I've never been a very reasonable person.

Back on this planet, I sent my latest scrawlings to my tutor today, so I'll be interested to see what happens with that. For some reason in the space between screen and printed words to go off to be read, my work seems to turn from an admittedly rough yet hopeful draft to absolute nonsense, self-indulgent tripe of the lowest (or is that highest?) order. What happened? Personally I blame the print button on Microsoft Word: I'm sure it actually orders the computer to release a paranoia-inducing gas, through the keyboard perhaps (thanks Brass Eye). The real reason, I must confess, is the problem all writers have: having the perfect story / poem / novel in your head: it's beautiful images and thoughts, its pristine connections, and then mucking it all up by writing it down.

Dear me, I need a drink.

Ahh, better. A bizarre business I'm getting into, writing. Zadie Smith discussed it rather fluently in her two part article in the Guardian a while back called "Fail Better" and "Read Better". In it she said:

"If it's true that first-rate novels are rare, it's also true that what we call the literary canon is really the history of the second-rate, the legacy of honourable failures. Any writer should be proud to join that list just as any reader should count themselves lucky to read them."

So I'm calmed slightly, though I sometimes think my paranoia about my own work is helpful, as a way of pushing me to do the necessary cutting, or the necessary work (because, let's face it, it's hard, mostly thankless work until you get published, and even then...)

That's enough of that for now: I think the Mississippi blues and red wine is going to my head slightly (Robert Johnson 'Crossroad Blues' and Echo Falls 'California Red' since you ask). Today, continuing my disregard for all things bank account-related, I bought Kate Noakes' Ocean to Interior, as I know the poet and happen to know she's rather good too. Continuing my sciencey-feelings, I also ordered the fantastically titled Your Inner Fish, a book about the evolution of all life from the cradle of the sea. No doubt I'll have to have Sigur Ros on loop whilst I read it.

H

The Return of the Prodigal Creativity

For Christmas, Santa gave me.....my creativity!

Hurrah! Honestly, it's been bloody ages, but I've been writing all day, some of it being good lovely stuff that could turn into a story I can show to other people with relative calm and ease. What do You do, imaginary reader, when your creativity pops out for an unexpectedly long period of time. Steve Martin (yes that one, he was actually brilliant in his time) says that he enjoys the fallow periods, as it means his brain is working on something without him needing to worry about it. And yet I always feel crushingly defeated, staring at a bunch of half baked ideas and aborted stories. Should I lighten up, or is Steve Martin just a big slacker?

(This essay, by the way, shows what I mean when I say that Steve Martin was great, before he sold his soul to the Hollywood way.)

To celebrate the return of the prodigal creativity, I've gone on a mini Play.com binge, with flagrant disregard for my post-Christmas bank balance, and bought:

1. Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope I got her compilation Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers... for free during my brief stint doing CD reviews for the Uni paper, and was befuddled and intrigued by turns, plus she sings like the love child of an immortal siren and saloon bar girl.
2. Camille - Le Fil This is actually replacing the (slightly illegally acquired) download copy that my computer, which has a better conscience than me apparently, deleted. It's a concept album with a single vocal line that runs throughout (the fill), and has some great tunes on it, like this one here.
3. I Am Kloot - Natural History Just a great album, Twist is probably the darkest love song I know. Sing along now: "There's blood on your legs / I love you"
4. Billy Collins - Taking Off Emily Dickenson's Clothes. Aside from the promise of a naked recluse (which, it should be noted, automatically gives any poetry collection a significant bump up in my books) I had no reason for buying this book in particular, except that I do like his poetry, obviously.

Anyway, enough of things I've bought before this turns into complete consumerist tripe, and enough YouTube for goodness sake, you'd think I don't know any other sites, like this one, or even this.

And now, I leave you to get my tea. I promise to do a much more writing oriented post next time (which is, after all, the point of this whole endeavour). Fair well!

And so it begins...

Hello there, imaginary You, and welcome to my blog, 'Crossed Synapses'. I'm going to be writing stuff up here that happens to amuse or excite me in some fashion, in the hope that it will do the same for You, and perhaps, from the fertile soil of random rubbish, an idea will spring forth that I can write about one day and make lots of money from. Like compost. Yes.

Positive, interesting, thought provoking comments are always welcome, and I'll make every effort to reply when I can.

Negative, hateful ones are fine too, and I'll do my best to ridicule you in a suitably embarrassing way, and then delete it. I'm not very good at comebacks in person, so I make the most of every opportunity I get to shame and laugh at nasty people if they happen across here- I have time to think and a thesaurus to hand, you jobbernowled sapheads you!

I'm out of time for now, so I shall leave you with four things that have amused/distracted me today: this, this, this, and this.

Bon soir!