Tuesday 2 June 2009

Death of the English Novel

I wholly agree with what Tim Lott says in his recent piece for the Independent, where he laments the death of the great English novel and a lack of ambition in contemporary English fiction:

"There are great writers out there," he says. "But none of them are English... English literature has lost touch with an important part of its function: to tell us who we are, where we are going and to help us understand our lives. Until a generation of writers comes along to fulfil this function, and a generation of publishers that will give them a voice, writing will remain as safe and reassuring as a suburban book club..."

What is more shocking is that if it's true more translated fiction is now available in English than, say, ten or fifteen years ago, most of it is of little literary value. There's been a general degradation of taste. We've got used to poor stuff. The parable of the English market is exemplified by Christopher Maclehose's path from the zenith of his Harvill days to his publication of the Stieg Larsson trilogy. This is not to accuse Christopher – far from it – I think he is simply a victim – like the rest of us – of the current market forces.

The market is desperate for bestsellers, not just national, but international hits. No one talks about real literature any more: only about Nielsen BookData figures. Sorry if I repeat myself (see this post or this one for more rants on this subjects), but most of the books that are now part of our canon didn't sell very well (or at all!) when they were conceived or first published. The side effect of the commercialization of writing is the stifling of true talent. Agents will only look for commercial offerings that can be easily packaged for risk-averse publishers – and this is why we have not had a great English novel in the last fifty or sixty years.

AG

10 comments:

  1. I have been to read the Independent article on the basis of your post, and the paragraph you cite is not there. Do you think it has been removed for legal or other reasons? Was it ever there?

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  2. Hi Maxine, it's there – third-last and penultimate paragraphs – the ellipsis is where the text has been abridged. Best, Alex

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  3. Hello Alma - thanks for the reply. Yes, the "none of them are English" sentence is there, but the paragraph about Christopher MacLehose is not, in the current online version. I imagine it has been taken down upon request, as it were.
    Incidentally, for what it is worth, I disagree strongly both with the Christopher Maclehose paragraph (I think Mr Lott has not examined the rest of the imprint apart from Larsson - although I believe Larsson can hold his own against the Harvill list) and with the entire article, which to my mind is one of those typcial "a five minute opinion before breakfast without doing any research" pieces, as well as extremely snobbish and superior.

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  4. Ah, sorry, please can you delete my previous comment (in response to yours of 02 June 2258) in moderation as I now realise that it is you, not Tim Lott, making that comment about MacLehose and English novels. My points hold, but should be directed at you, not him, sorry.
    I am afraid I think you (and Tim Lott) are misguided - there are many very good English (British if you include Welsh, Scots and N Ireland) novels being written, read and discussed as can very readily be discovered. This is not inconsistent with the fact that it is hard to make a profit as a publisher, nor with the fact that there is also a lot of dross being published.

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  5. Where are all these very good English novels, then? Titles please. And not just very good, but great – which was Tim Lott's point, and my point.

    AG

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  6. If history is any guide, you wouldn't recognize the great novels until at least 50 years later anyway. Most great literature is far ahead of its time and normally reviled when it first appears, just like most great scientific theories. And conversely, does anyone remember Nobel Prize winner Karl Gjellerup?

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  7. I don't think that the Nobel Prize, the post of Poet Laureate or any other literary prize signify true greatness. I believe what you say is very valid, Reg, especially for our 20th Century, but at the same time many great authors were recognized during their lifetime – just think of Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy for Russian literature, or Flaubert and Hugo for French literature. Before the nineteenth century, most literature was poetry written under commission or supported by patrons, and there was no mass circulation, so the dynamics were very different.

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  8. There's a lot of subjectivity about "greatness". For example, there are some in Tim Lott's list of "greats" where I'd take the opposite view.

    My view is that readers are not short of good books to read, English or otherwise. I don't think that these superior attitudes are very useful. I've read several of C. MacLehose's current list, as well as his previous (eg Peter Hoeg and Henning Mankell) and don't agree with your assessment.

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  9. You are right, Maxine – greatness is subjective, and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. But times sifts through, and by and large what is great – sometimes sooner, sometimes later – ends up in the Western canon. I have my doubts the Stieg Larsson books will make it, but I have the deepest respect for Christopher's taste, and his past and present publishing efforts.

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  10. As most publishers know, you need to publish a variety of books in order to make a practical venture of a publishing house. University presses like the OUP subsidize their scholarly publishing via text books, atlases and dictionaries; good presses like Maclehose do it via bestsellers like Larsson (and Larsson is good reading as thrillers go). High-minded writing only survives market pressures because it is held afloat by the 'low', not because it is commercially viable on its own.

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