]]> http://benleto.com/blog/1248/death-of-the-novelist-3/feed/ 3 http://benleto.com/blog/1241/death-of-the-novelist-2/ http://benleto.com/blog/1241/death-of-the-novelist-2/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:32:42 +0000 Ben http://benleto.com/blog/?p=1241 One day, someone might even ask why I stopped.

I’ll reply that I found all the people I wanted to share the world I saw with.

Anyone who wants to work in publishing, stop.

Sit down, put your feet up for an hour or two, make a cuppatee and read this.

It far more eloquently articulates what I was previously trying to say about the state of publishing in the currently looming recession, and the implications for those with barely a foot on the first rung.

There are things I remember having a profound effect upon my conception of the world as an artist. Some of them are time-honoured and conventional, such as Wilde’s De Profundis. Other examples some might raise their noses at, such as the first time I properly heard Björk or when I spent a week in Skye listening to little else but Patrick Wolf’s Wind In The Wires.

On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile is certainly one of these things. It’s possibly, for an unpublished writer in the early 21st century, the most crushingly depressing and yet strangely comforting overview of the writing-to-publishing process to be read.

Early attempts at networking typewriters often proved unnecessary and silly.
Image by radiospike photography

Too many writers are currently too focused on being published rather than simply writing, because publishing is their only perceived means of not only marking their success as a writer, but developing an audience. This is not just an improbable method to begin with (as the essay demonstrates), but is currently less likely than ever to work. In short, and as I suggested previously, writers have to find their own platforms. They have to seek out both audience and merit on their own, and on their own terms.

So here’s one particularly nice little shelter for budding bloggers and weary writers alike to huddle under, as recently pinched from a friendly Canadian’s blog.

Six Sentences is an open submissions site and online community where anyone may write anything they wish, so long as it’s in the eponymous six sentences. It’s very similar to another site I once used called 100 Words, though perhaps a little more beginner-friendly by not strictly obligating you to both write and edit every day for at least a month in order to feature on the site, though that in itself is a great discipline for those who need it. I also got in a huff with 100 Words as I stuck to it diligently without missing a single day for a whole year, but lost six months worth of entries when they migrated to the new site, despite my emails as requested that resupplied my missing posts. As a result my Year of Hell remains incomplete, but I’ve been slowly republishing the individual entries here on my own blog.

My little offering to ‘Six’ however, based on a perhaps easily deducible recent event, is here. Feel free to furnish me with as many, or as few votes, as you feel it deserves. Like Post of the Week (which yours truly also often judges), the most popular entries are shortlisted to find an overall winner for each month, but it really, honestly isn’t about ‘winning’ anything. It never was. Sites like this are wonderful little virtual gems – not just as an opportunity to get your voice heard in a climate increasingly hostile to new writers, but to hear others’ and build up a sense of community – something that anyone who’s sought a career in literature will tell you very rarely comes easily. It’s certainly the sort of lifeline that will prove inevitably invaluable to authors already struggling to speak as the ship takes on more water.

Hallo? Lewis who?

I learnt this professionally in my last job, and I’m learning this now personally as a perpetually overlooked jobseeker in a pool of perpetually overlooked jobseekers. Recruitment, despite its fondness for the phrase, does not “think outside the box.” For example, recruiters will want graduates of a particular discipline because of its assumed skills, but very rarely consider a graduate with exactly the same skills acquired in another subject. Alternatively, in the USA a graduate means someone with a degree, while in the UK it means someone straight out of university. Monkey see, monkey do, and publishing is no different. Despite their pool being now totally flooded, publishers still feel they no longer have the luxury of taking a chance on anything that isn’t a guaranteed seller, and are sticking with the tried and true all-year stocking filler to stay float.

Enter the celebrity: the quick and easy cookbook or the cash cow latest autobiography, surely worth a read by the voracious speed the person who’s name and picture on the front had it compiled and usually only months after their indiscretion/accident/affair/appearance on Big Brother. It’s uncomplicated, familiar and demands little. And it sells.

But why do they sell so well? Celebrity autobiographies in particular are designed to be an easy read, but they’re certainly not cheap (the hardbacks sold before Christmas all retailed at just under £20). It’s largely because they’re marketed well, and marketing isn’t about finding out what the public want. It’s about telling them what to buy. People will want asbestos sandwiches if they’re told they’re cheap and good for you.

Though it is questionable what Jordan’s third ghost written autobiography’s contribution to the ultimate sum of human knowledge will be, I’m sure it has its place in the world, even if nothing more than a demonstration of personal choice. The problem is that the people who produce such material are not motivated by such paraphernalia as art or literature, or even clumsy irritants like good writing or the ability to tell a decent story. We all know what the motivation is, and its this and this alone behind the new bestsellers.

There was surely a time when books were just books. I’m certain there was even a time when autobiographies came in one book and not three staggered releases. But now it’s all just another part of a larger brand to make money. Literature is now slowly becoming more and more of a slave to that ultimate human false god of everything whimsical and fatuous: fashion, and there’s no better example of fashion than The Emperor’s New Clothes. People glibly chatter about the latest celebrity to flash their tits on Big Brother or get sacked from ITV for saying “fuck” at a flower show, and marketers hear this and hurry out a book to make a quick taking out of it. Suddenly a dozen clones appear on the shelves telling similar stories. The bookshops at Christmas are saturated with these autobiographies just as the charts are stuffed with winners of talent contests – singers so talented they seem as capable of writing a song as most new celebrities do their own life story.

This is all of course surely nothing new. T’was ever thus and there is nothing different about what is happening here. The difference now is that publishing houses are taking huge losses in profits as a result of the looming recession, and are propped up more and more by their celebrity titles, increasingly to the detriment of their shrinking literary fiction readership.

Again, one might argue that even this has happened before, back in the eighties where such titles first exploded onto the book market, reinflating a very nervous industry with new life. But the difference between now and the last recession is the presence of the internet. Today’s writers can, and indeed do, turn to the internet or its self-publishing opportunities as an immediate medium (Hi there!) for their scribbles, abandoning the traditional and increasingly frustrating approach.

Publishers could therefore be shooting themselves in the foot by clinging to this ‘let them eat pulp’ strategy. As more first time writers get increasingly frustrated with publishers’ narrow remit in a market that’s all but closed its doors to new material (as well as having to keep one eye on Richard and Judy to know what people want to read rather than think about what they want to write), they’ll start to look for new ways to reach their readership, and online or self-publishing are both natural and less stressful reflexes. Those who have the luxury of now writing whatever they wish without any desire to make money from it are either already a well-established literary heavyweight, or already publishing online. One way or another, and for the time being at least, anything that isn’t part of a genre or a brand is slowly becoming an endangered species as more and more specialised publishing houses struggle to stay alive.

I wasn’t born a literary snob. It took many years of hard work reading and thinking without being told to. And reading a lot, not just what I think I’d like. The latest autobiography has its place along with anything else that isn’t written by William Shatner, but not at the expense of names fast-vanishing from the public’s consciousness because there hasn’t been a film made about them yet. It would be a very tiresome world if all we had to choose from were Woolf, Tolstoy or Hemmingway (and the less said about Dickens or Austen the better). But in a few decades it’s not hard to imagine bookshops, if they indeed still exist, that feature one shelf of “classics” and aisles and aisles of the latest shocking secrets of a probably perfectly nice individual painted up by money-makers into a z-list festive flash in the pan; a forced marriage of Shakespeare and Jade Goody, bashing her husband on Jeremy Kyle for not keeping it ‘real’.

And if you think I’m overreacting, or possibly sounding like any other unpublished writer, you might want to read this:

“In the future it is possible that a new kind of literature, not involving individual feeling or truthful observation, may arise[...] Or perhaps some kind of low-grade sensational fiction will survive, produced by a sort of conveyer-belt process that reduces human initiative to the minimum.”

That was written over 60 years ago, as a slightly tongue in cheek conception of a future where art is nothing more than an idle distraction for the workers of industry. His name was George Orwell; a man who’ll probably be forgotten in less than a century by the majority of the population because he didn’t write Hamlet but some autobiography or sumfink about Big Bruvva rather than get his tits out on it.

For more on this, there’s an excellent article recently published in The Independent. It’s very frustrating to sit down one night to draft your first blog post in a month, only to wake up the next morning and find someone had already written it the day before.

There are a great number of authors currently paying tribute to her no-nonsense, informal and direct manner. I encountered this first hand when I submitted my novel to her earlier this year, kindly referred by my university tutor who she had represented for several years. She responded within a matter of weeks, praising the submission having evidently actually read it, and though she did not take it on, explained quite clearly why and recommended in a not at all general way how I could proceed.

For a first time author trying to get published I can’t tell you how surprising it was to encounter a prospective agent who had not only demonstrably read at least most of what you’d sent them, but congratulated you on it as well, taking the time to write to you personally. Her advice and encouraging tone, in only a brief letter, gave me a huge confidence boost for something I was increasingly losing all hope and interest in. It was enough to carry on, refreshingly different from the usual nameless template rejection letters, exactly three months since submitting each and every time, my manuscript always returned as pristine as I had sent it without so much as a dogeared page.

I find it an uncomfortable thought that at the time she replied to me, she was entirely unaware of the condition that would take her life in only six months time. It’s very sad to think that there is one less individual in the world of that character, and particularly in an ‘industry’ more and more orientated towards its ‘market’ and less towards the individual people that make that market up.

It’s been six years now since I went to the Fringe with him and Andrew. Andrew’s now a successful headlining standup comedian. John’s now finally starting to get recognised for his music on an overdue scale. There is no greater pain than seeing friends succeed. After I read the review I spoke to a friend who was both supportive and dismissive of my clichéd laments, suggesting that as a musician he knows exactly how any writer must feel – anonymous and invisible. And it’s true. Everyone claims to be a writer at some point because it’s easy to say it. All you need to do is write something. You don’t even need to show it to anyone. You don’t need a stage or an instrument or a canvas that others can view to validate your claim; your identity. Thus the only validation becomes how ‘successful’ you are – “do you have an agent?” “Are you published?” “How many copies have you sold?” “No? Not yet? None? Oh.” To paraphrase the original little green man, a writer craves not these things.

It’s a profession anyone can claim and dismiss in a moment, but few truly understand unless it’s something they truly are. I can thus take some comfort from that I suppose. I am a writer. I am. I am a writer. I am because I keep going. I keep writing. Even when I think I’ve given up – even when I think I’ve achieved nothing but ‘failure’ because my markers for success are foolishly set by an uncomprehending society rather than by myself, I still don’t put down the pen or stop typing. I am still writing even in this journal, more often than ever in fact. Is this just habit? Is this courage? Is this faith? Either way I feel that it is not something that ‘failure’ can triumph over. This is the person I am. This is the self I bare to the world.

Josh Todd has started the day in what only the British would consider true Parisian style. It’s not yet lunchtime and he’s had, by his own admission, “plenty of wine this morning.” Here on one of his many visits to Paris, his “local town” and “where his heart lies”, Yorkshire-born Josh calls himself “just a young eighteen year old traveller”. Some of his friends call him a grandad. Anyone who’s heard his music however could only ever call him an upsettingly talented and rising artist.

Signed to Playground Records aged only 13, Josh has since been releasing music under the name of Bark Cat Bark. As a classical musician playing the undeniably modern, it’s refreshingly difficult to crowbar his sound into any one genre, much like his contemporary influences of Beirut, Patrick Wolf and Final Fantasy, amongst others. He’s a polymath with what seems like every instrument any musician has ever heard of and a few I certainly haven’t, including the Bouzouki, Gayageum, Euphonium, Kinnor, Bandura and the Kokyu. Musically ignorant folk such as myself would probably be found trying to order these names in a Korean restaurant, whilst talking to Josh for only a few minutes can make you feel like you eat too many Doritos and watch too much TV by contrast.

It was with this slightly sinking feeling of having wasted the twenties I spent my teens looking forward to that I sat down with a cup of conspicuously unFrench coffee to ask him some fatuous and irrelevant questions.
 
 
Ben Leto: Okay then, here goes, straight off the top of my head.

Josh claps his hands once.

BL: Let’s play with synesthesia. What colour would you say typifies your last album, Rest in Tale?

Josh Todd: Can’t we start off like, “hey, hey, I’m currently in Paris, yeah…”?

BL: You see, I’m not very good at this. To do this properly we’d have to be sitting at a café des artistes with a notepad and dogeared copy of Rimbaud on the table next to an overflowing ashtray and two empty glasses of red wine.

JT: Ha ha! Those interviews have happened before, and let me tell you, they’re not so good. Half the time both of us wouldn’t even talk about anything. The Newcastle Metro interviewed me like that, and we didn’t even get an interview done. Still haven’t.

BL: They’d be good with me. The interview would last seven hours and we’d be smashed. Think Withnail and I meets Time Out.

JT: Ha ha! Sounds great! We shall do it sometime then. But in answer to your first question it would be ‘brown’, as it is very dismal, and mucky.

BL: Ha! I knew it! A rusty brown.

Josh laughs.

BL: See? There’s hope yet for this interview.

JT: Ha ha! Come on, keep them coming. I’m on a roll.

BL: Shit… um… (orders another Absinthe)

JT: Such a good drink!

BL: Would you say you were a loner at school? If so, was it by choice, and if not, did you care?

JT: I was very popular at school actually. I always used to get nodded at as I walked through the corridors with my violin in hand and known as the ‘class clown’. It was only in college when I started really settling down and being what I found to be myself. I like my inside time, and also love going clubbing with a selected few.

BL: Some people would say the ‘class clown’ avoids being taken seriously – standing out just to fade his true self into the background. Were you quite open about who you were, or did you let people assume you were who they perceived you to be?

JT: I have always been very open. I really couldn’t care less about what someone thought. If I enjoy what I do, I enjoy what I do. No one can tell me different.

BL: There was something you said before about your music being like a relationship between a man and a woman. What does that mean? And why the male/female dynamic particularly? Would you say you consider your music’s like the feelings in romantic or sexual relationships?

JT: Well, let’s say the woman is the music I create. The woman can irritate me and my emotions which then causes us to fall out and stay away from each other for a while. Then when I return to her we are full of love again. Just like any normal relationship between a man and a woman.

BL: Is it therefore a conscious choice that you use female vocalists? Have you considered using a male vocalist for any of your songs?

JT: There is a song in production where Jack Colwell is appearing on vocals. Jack is a talented young man indeed. As for female vocalists, I don’t know how it came about. It depends what mood my music gives out and then I will decide if I want a female or male to sing or even, in some cases, no one sings and it stays as one instrumental, then later in life they come back and we put vocals to it. ‘I Saw A Wolf’ was officially an instrumental on an old vinyl of mine, but then last year we thought of some lyrics and Katie Morrice arose to the challenge of singing them.

BL: You mentioned that you don’t like performing in England anymore. Do you think of yourself as an English musician when you’re playing abroad? Songs like ‘Baron’ have, I think, a definitively British parochial sound. Is this something you try and express in other countries?

JT: When I play in different countries I see myself as one of that nationality. I give all my songs their country’s sound. But when I am back in England I see myself as just a normal Englishman – a Yorkshireman. I tend to gasconade about being from Yorkshire. The songs that you hear that sound like they are not English in any way at all is because they’ve not been recorded in England. They have been recorded in different parts of the world, e.g. Bahrain, Paris, Arrecife… Ichabod Crane was recorded in England, hence why it sounds like a 17th century English classical piece. And the Sitrah album was recorded in Bahrain where I used sitars, darbukas And qanuns which are their country’s instruments. I like to experiment in different countries with different instruments.

BL: I actually thought Ichabod Crane sounded more French! Like something from the demise of aristocracy!

JT: Oh no! I was listening to a lot of English classical artists at the time, and the riff and everything just came to me in my room.

BL: Is that how you compose? Do your ideas generally come from soaking up other pieces and allowing them to shape your own, or do you start off with an idea and then listen to others to give it form?

JT: In all honesty, 10% of my music has come by listening to other artists and the other 90% is just sitting there in a quiet room.

BL: So do you find it easier to compose whilst travelling, or once you’ve returned?

JT: I like to take my dictaphone with me and whilst travelling in other countries by foot I will attatch my dictaphone to my belt, walk and take an instrument at random with me and play anything as I’m walking around, taking in the scenery and playing what I feel like, looking into the details of the scenery. Then if I’m not recording whilst I’m over in that country, I can bring my dictaphone back with me and listen back, then record it over here with it sounding that I’m still over in that country.

BL: Do you ever go busking when travelling? And do you ever play whatever you want then or just stick to written songs?

JT: I do love to go busking, without permission. But it is phantasmagoric! And you attract the right crowd! When I’m in countries like Macedonia I like playing the songs which they’re familiar with like Opa Cupa or Zemjo Makedonska. But when I play my own they seem to enjoy it, and that makes me gratified as can be.

BL: I can see you busking in the Piazza della Signoria. Have you?

JT: I have not played there, but I will most likely in October when I visit Florence!

BL: Crowley once said England is “the most fertile mother of poets, but she kills the weak and drives the strong to happier lands… The English poet must either make a successful exile or die of a broken heart.” I had that in mind when you were talking about the differences in audiences’ reactions in the UK and abroad.

JT: I like that! I’ve never read that before.

BL: Do you feel that we don’t appreciate artists here like they do overseas?

JT: I feel that way. I think it’s because people these days in England are too afraid of what people might think. This country’s people have sadly gotten this way.

BL: So what year is it in your head?

JT: Anytime from 1678 to 1741.

BL: You have a Yorkshire passport, but you suggested Paris is your home. Can you say why, or does it simply sing to you in a way UK cities don’t?

JT: The people in Paris have class whereas the people in England have baseball caps.

BL: So it’s just the people then?

JT: I personally think so, a mass majority. But again, I love the countryside in England. It’s absolutely breathtaking – where I can record some of my folk music over the grass and cornfields, where there are few people to be bothered by. I think the whole point to this travelling hobby of mine is that I can’t get what I want, unfortunately.

BL: When an artist gets what he wants, he stops being an artist and goes into HR.

JT: Music is my true partner, and a true partner never leaves. It would be half a millimetre from the impossible scale.

BL: It’s funny you say that about the people in Paris and the UK. I think London, for example, is a beautiful city – so much history and culture embedded into the stone and cobble when you walk the streets. It’s just the attitude of the majority of the people here I don’t like. I’ve found Paris can be very similar to London in terms of people’s attitude to each other, and particularly foreigners.

JT: I see what you mean. I did enjoy the historical side of London and the lovely places to go. But there’s something more about it that switches me right off the place.

BL: Do you have any vices, and do you think your music would suffer or benefit without them?

JT: I don’t really know. I make my music until it pleases my ears. Once my ears are pleased, I am pleased overall.

Josh laughs.

BL: Not one for creative celibacy then? The last of the great sensualists is alive and well! As Oscar Wilde once said (though strictly off record), ‘finish on something fatuous’: who from all of history would you most like to support in concert?

JT: My dream would be to travel round France to Lebanon with the man that is Zach Condon – me with my accordion and Zach with his ukulele and magical voice. There would be nothing greater in my eyes. Dream what you want to dream, go where you want to go, be what you want to be; because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do. It will happen.

BL: That’s a nice note to end on. Shall we have another Absinthe?

JT: Absinthe it up!
 
 
Bark Cat Bark is currently down and out in Paris and Yorkshire. He likes Rosé, anything by Zach Condon and playing with Mariopaint Composer. Order his latest album here while you still can.