Andrew Blackman

So it seems that due to a procedural anomaly, a whole year’s worth of novels missed out on being considered for the Booker Prize. This is being remedied by a retroactive award, with a shortlist of novels from 1970 being drawn up by three judges and then a public vote to decide the winner.

I think this is interesting – partly for a window onto a year’s writing (lots of names I recognise, but not a single book I’ve read), but also for raising questions of how we judge literature. I bet that a lot of people, like me, haven’t read any of the books, and probably won’t have read them before the votes are cast. So what will the votes be based on? Names, probably – liking other Ruth Rendell novels so assuming this one was probably good. Or perhaps they’ve read one, and will vote for that one. I’d imagine that the number of people who have read every book on the shortlist and can choose between them all on an equal basis is very small. It’s different from previous public votes, like the Best of the Booker, where you were voting for a range of high-profile books across 40 years, and there was a better chance of having actually read them. So it will be interesting to see how it works out. The choice will almost certainly be different from what it would have been had the prize actually been awarded in 1970 through the usual process.

I am happy of course for the writers too, to get some long-overdue recognition. I do feel a little sorry for those who experienced the excitement of seeing their name on the shortlist, allowed their thoughts to wander to how they would spend the £50,000 cheque that a Booker winner receives, and then saw this at the bottom of the announcement: “The winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize will receive a designer bound copy of their novel.” Hmm. Giving someone a copy of their own book is not the best prize in the world. It’s certainly not £50,000. But I suppose the real prize is the recognition, and also the nice boost to royalties from readers rediscovering your work.

Andrew Blackman Literary news lost booker, man booker prize

One of my fellow Legend Press authors, Mark Piggott, wrote an interesting article in the Independent about ’state of the nation’ novels. I thought it would be complaining that nobody’s writing about contemporary British issues these days – there’s been quite a bit of that recently, because historical novels have been getting a lot of the awards and attention lately. But he takes a more interesting line, noting that historical novels have been getting the attention, but pointing out the wealth of books tackling contemporary issues (of which mine is listed as one, although that’s not the only reason I liked the article!).

Piggott also explores the difficulty of writing a ’state of the nation’ novel, getting good quotes from some major British literary figures. Martin Amis thinks it’s down to a lack of national pride – the US now produces more state of the nation novels, because it’s the centre of the earth; British novelists are more like dissidents. Toby Litt says that writers are trying it, but in a “more focused” way – “they don’t do sweep, they do stab.” Piggott also makes the point that sometimes it’s new arrivals who most effectively hold a mirror up to British society, and so the place to look is more on the margins than on the Booker Prize shortlist.

Anyway, as someone who aspires to describe at least a part of the state of the nation in his writing, I thought it was a good exploration of the difficulties and possibilities of doing this, and also a guide to some of the more interesting names in British literature.

Andrew Blackman Literary news british fiction, contemporary fiction, independent, mark piggott, novels, state of the nation

The other day, I picked up a copy of The Times because of the news of J.D. Salinger’s death on the cover. I read about Catcher in the Rye and its skewering of “phonies”, and how Salinger retreated to his home in New Hampshire and ignored the world for about forty years. Then I read the rest of the paper, an unusual thing for me to do these days. I read an article about Britain’s measure of inequality hitting a new high, and why this was not a bad thing. I read about the latest inquiry into the Iraq War, and how the commission is mostly composed of Tony Blair’s old friends. I read about how Blair, surely the very definition of a phony, would appear before the commission and justify his decision. I read and I read, and the more I read, the more attractive the idea sounded. A house in New Hampshire, the life of a recluse, an escape from the lies and shallowness. Reading The Times these days, or any other Murdoch paper, often has that effect on me.

Anyway, I’m rereading Catcher in the Rye this weekend. I read it years ago but can’t remember much about it. My memory’s awful. I’ll post a review when I’m done. RIP Mr Salinger. In an age where self-publicising seems almost compulsory, it’s refreshing to hear of someone who just didn’t bother. There’s even a rumour that he was writing all that time, not for the world or for fame or for approval or for money, but purely for the love of it. What a strange concept.

Andrew Blackman Literary news death, J.D. Salinger, phony

Some interesting analysis of US and UK reading habits, courtesy of the summer edition of The Author magazine:

• American readers prefer romance; British ones prefer literary fiction
• Men make 35% of book purchases in the US; 42% in the UK
• In both countries, two-thirds of books are bought by people over the age of 42
• In fiction, mystery and romance account for 58% of purchases in the US, compared with 31% in the UK
• In non-fiction, religious books do well in the US; celebrity biographies in the UK.

Original source was a presentation at the London Book Fair by survey companies BML, who surveyed UK readers, and Pub Track/Bowker, who did the same in the US. At first I was quite struck by the fact that two-thirds of books are bought by people over the age of 42, and was going to start writing about how young people don’t read etc etc. But then I realised that probably two-thirds of adults are over 42 anyway, so actually it’s the sort of proportion you’d expect!

I guess the real question is why men don’t read very much. Certainly when doing publicity for my book, I’ve noticed that most of the people who turn up to readings and speaking events are women, and on sites like Goodreads or in book blogs, I’d say there are more women than men. That’s just my own experience, though – what do you think? Are there more women than men involved in reading and talking about books? If so, any idea why? (No need for proof or data of any kind – wild speculation is more than welcome here!).

Andrew Blackman Interesting snippets, Literary news book buying statistics, Interesting snippets, reading habits, UK, US

I was happy to see a call for entries for the Luke Bitmead Writers’ Bursary 2009. Luke wrote an excellent book, White Summer, in 2006, but died only a few months after it was published. His second book, Heading South, co-written with Catherine Richards, was published posthumously. His family then set up a foundation to help other young writers, and award a prize every year to an aspiring novelist.

This is the prize that I won last year, leading to the publication of On the Holloway Road. You enter the first three chapters of your novel, and it’s judged by a panel including novelists Deborah Wright and Zoe Jenny, as well as Luke’s family and the Legend Press team. The winner gets £2,500 and a publishing contract with Legend Press.

I’d strongly recommend this to any unpublished writers who are looking for a break. It’s free to enter and winning is a fantastic way to get published. It has quite literally changed my life.

I love contests in general, especially for new writers. The big advantage is that you’re on a level playing field. Usually the manuscripts have to be anonymous, so it doesn’t matter whether you have any track record, any contacts in the publishing world, etc. It’s all about the writing, and that’s what you want as an unpublished writer. Also, the contest organisers have actively asked for submissions and are looking for a winner, so you know your work will be read. It’s very different from submitting your manuscript to an editor or agent who’s swamped with submissions and is looking for any excuse to reject you. If you win, or are even shortlisted, it’s something to put on your writing CV for the rest of your life. Contests are how I got my first essay, my first short story and now my first novel published. Enter more contests!!

Even if you don’t plan to enter, the website for the foundation is worth a look. It was originally Luke’s personal website/blog, so you can see his posts and photos from 2006, and his family have now added information about the memorial fund. As well as helping new writers, the fund aims to spread awareness of mental health issues and encourage greater research and understanding, so it’s a good cause. And do check out both of Luke’s books – they are both well-written, very good reads.

Andrew Blackman Literary news luke bitmead, unpublished writers, writing contest

Interesting piece in The Guardian recently about the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare and his alleged ties to the Hoxha regime. I went to see Ismail Kadare speak at the Southbank Centre in London last year, and he addressed this issue very effectively, I thought.

He said that the people who tell him he should have spoken out are basically saying to him “You should have died.” That’s what dissent would have cost him in those days – the regime simply didn’t tolerate opposition. He would have been thrown in jail, or killed. He could perhaps have tried to defect to the West, but then of course his family would have suffered, and his friends, and anyone connected to him. So he did what many people did under Communism, and what many people have done under all kinds of authoritarian regimes at different times. He lived his life, and he made compromises in order to stay alive.

It’s easy to look back now and ask how he could have lived in such times and not said anything. But I ask myself what I would have done in his shoes. I’d like to think that I would have been a brave dissident speaking truth to power, but honestly I don’t know. How much do I even exercise my freedom of speech right now, in a country where, despite the growing culture of government surveillance and control, I am still free to speak out? Don’t I make compromises myself, in much easier conditions? Would I really speak out in a place where the urgency to do so was much greater, but the cost was also so much higher? Having never been in such a situation, I don’t think I can say.

What I do know is that Ismail Kadare is a great writer who made an important contribution. Possibly he would have made a more important contribution by speaking out against the regime and getting himself killed, or possibly he made the right choice in continuing to write – he said at the Southbank Centre that it was important for Albania to have literature in those times, however flawed or compromised. Either way, I understand why he did what he did and I don’t feel in a position to condemn him for it.

Andrew Blackman Literary news albania, authoritarian regime, communism, dissent, freedom of speech, ismail kadare, kadare

I was excited to read recently that Jack Kerouac’s unpublished first novel The Sea is my Brother is to be published next year. I thought Peter Townshend wrote an excellent piece about the event and its possible implications.

One note of caution, though: I wonder why The Sea is my Brother has not been published before now. The stories I’ve read about it refer to it as Kerouac’s “lost” manuscript, but don’t explain where it was lost and how it was found. I’d love to discover a new Kerouac masterpiece, but I’d hate to have the disappointment of reading a first novel that had been kept under lock and key for 60 years for the simple reason that it didn’t measure up to his later work.

I guess I’ll have to read it and find out. Exciting news, anyway.

Andrew Blackman Literary news first novel, kerouac, lost manuscript, the sea is my brother

In the course of researching my speech at Leicester University earlier this week, I discovered that last year 120,947 new books were published in the UK (source: Nielsen Bookscan).

I found this quite depressing, not just as a writer but as a reader. As a writer, of course, it makes me worry about how hard it will be to get my book noticed among 120,946 others, and also about whether the world really needs another book at all. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised its implications for me as a reader.

I don’t count how many books I read, but I’d guess it averages out to a couple a week, so possibly a hundred in a year.  A hundred out of 120,947. Of all the knowledge contributed to the world in the UK each year, I am accessing less than 0.1% of it. And that’s only books published in the UK.

And when I thought about it some more, I realised that a lot of the books I read are not newly-published. I spend a lot of time catching up on the millions of books published in the centuries before I was born. The British Library helpfully estimates that to get through all 14 million books in its collection would take about 6,000 years.

My point? I don’t know anything more than a tiny, tiny slice of what there is to know. Of course that doesn’t mean that I can’t have opinions. But it does mean that I should be humble, and always be willing to admit that I’m wrong, that there’s a lot of stuff I just don’t know about.

There is a bright side, however. Actually, two bright sides, if that’s metaphorically possible.

For one thing, quite a lot of those 14 million books in the British Library are ones I could quite happily do without reading.

For another thing, nobody else knows anything very much either. Even an avid reader couldn’t get through more than a few hundred books a year, still a tiny fraction of the whole. So all anyone can hope for is either to be an expert on some tiny subject or to have a broad knowledge with lots and lots of gaps. It’s heartening for me to remember that just as I have a deep insecurity about all the things I don’t know, so must Salman Rushdie. So must Barack Obama. So must all the critics, all the journalists, all the TV talking heads. Even Tolstoy and Goethe and Proust must have had the odd moment when they wondered if they really knew what they were talking about.

Somehow I find that heartening. It’s like the old trick of losing your fear of someone who intimidates you by picturing them on the toilet. It’s a reminder that we’re all human. No matter what we say or how many pretences we go through, we’re all human, and none of us knows very much at all.

Andrew Blackman Literary news books, british library, ignorance, Interesting snippets, knowledge

I really need to read more. Apparently David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide last month after years battling depression, was the “most brilliant American writer of his generation.” I have not read any of his books – in fact, I hadn’t even heard of him until I saw the mention on the Guardian site and a reprint of a speech he gave recently. I can certainly relate to a lot of his frustrations with daily life and his struggles to remember the bigger picture. I also liked his comments about the writing process in this old interview in Salon. I have added his “Infinite Jest” to my reading list, but apparently it is something like 1700 pages so I will have to set aside quite a bit of time….

Andrew Blackman Literary news