Autumn XXII. Older writers

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn XXI. Young writers

I wonder whether it be really true, as I have more than once seen suggested, that the publication of Anthony Trollope’s autobiography in some degree accounts for the neglect into which he and his works fell so soon after his death. I should like to believe it, for such a fact would be, from one point of view, a credit to “the great big stupid public.” Only, of course, from one point of view; the notable merits of Trollope’s work are unaffected by one’s knowledge of how that work was produced; at his best he is an admirable writer of the pedestrian school... it would be a satisfaction to think that “the great big stupid” was really, somewhere in its secret economy, offended by that revelation [in his autobiography] of mechanical methods which made the autobiography either a disgusting or an amusing book to those who read it more intelligently. A man with a watch before his eyes, penning exactly so many words every quarter hour -- one imagines that this picture might haunt disagreeably the thoughts even of one of Mudie's steadiest subscribers [Charles Edward Mudie, English publisher and founder of Mudie's Lending Library and Mudie’s Subscription Library], that it might come between him or her and any Trollopean work that lay upon the counter.

...At that happy time (already it seems so long ago) the literary news set before ordinary readers mostly had reference to literary work, in a reputable sense of the term, and not, as now, to the processes of “literary” manufacture and the ups and downs of the “literary” market. Trollope himself tells how he surprised the editor of a periodical, who wanted a serial from him, by asking how many thousand words it should run to; an anecdote savouring indeed of good old days... There has come into existence a school of journalism which would seem to have deliberately set itself the task of degrading authorship and everything connected with it and these scribblers (or typists, to be more accurate) have found the authors of a fretful age only too receptive of their mercantile suggestions... It is not easy to see how, in such an atmosphere, great and noble books can ever again come into being....

Alpha.

Interesting to read this today when the "literary" market is seen as under threat from online distributors and a lack of willing readers. Gissing here again reminds me of a concept I learned from Albert Jay Nock -- that Gresham's Law also applies to publishing.

[from Wiki] Gresham's law is an economic principle that states: "When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good".

Nock observed that, just as bad money displaces good, bad books displace good books. He attributed this to increasing levels of literacy. When  reading was the monopoly of the elect, those few people who read determined what would be published. When, in the 19th century, literacy spread to the general population, then that much larger market came to determine what books would be worth publishing.

In fact, I think Nock was overstating this disaster. I might agree that the better books today are published by university and small presses, and not by the big publishers, but then those big publishers only exist because they do cater to the mass market. The previous market still exist, it is just trivialized in monetary terms by the devalued -- in literary terms -- market that I believe Gissing would associate with “the great big stupid.”

And as for a word count for a serial, I wonder if Gissing every had to lay out a page of print. Journalistic printing is a matter of columns and column inches, of page real estate. If, after reading what he wrote here, I were printing something of his in a newspaper he would find his prose sandwiched between ads for ladies undergarments and livestock feed.

Music, again.

I keep coming back to music. Both as something that takes me back in time and also as the thing I most remember in the past. Besides the Nat King Cole song that takes me back to my bedroom on a Louisville suburban street in the late 1950s, there’s a Hollie’s song that puts me in a classroom in the San Fernando Valley in the mid-’60s, a Mamas and Papas song that puts me in a school talent show around the same time, a Gary Puckett song that puts me in a particular car on a particular street in Phoenix in the late ‘60s. A Beatles song that puts me in the same car on a different street in Scottsdale, Led Zeppelin songs that put me in a cabin in the woods, Simon and Garfunkel or Cream songs that put me at that same camp in the mountains, also in the late ‘60s. And most of the Crosby, Stills & Nash album lands me in the stew of my college years. There’s even a Blossom Dearie song that puts me in a lawn-chair inside my apartment here in the early ‘80s. But let’s do that over, take two: The careers of two men have shaped to an amazing degree the music I’ve listened to and loved. The first is Ahmet Ertegün and the second is Clive Davis. I suppose if they hadn’t been around other execs would have discovered most of the talent they discovered, but I wouldn’t want to risk losing some of Ertegün’s discoveries in particular. Subtract the acts they discovered or developed and the soundtrack of my life would be a very different thing.
It would be interesting to know the exact process involved in linking these songs with times in my life. I’m fairly certain hormones play a role, but time would seem to be as much a factor in creating these bridges as the songs are in linking the present to the past. I would guess it takes two to three decades for one of these musical connections to take shape -- at least I can’t identify any strong connections after the mid-1980s. It will be interesting to see if that changes. If ten years from now I will have similar musical connections to the 1990s.

Next: Autumn XXIII. A Reckoning.

Autumn XXI. Young writers

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn XX. Wine and war

Is there, at this moment, any boy of twenty, fairly educated, but without means, without help, with nothing but the glow in his brain and steadfast courage in his heart, who sits in a London garret, and writes for dear life? There must be, I suppose; yet all that I have read and heard of late years about young writers, shows them in a very different aspect. No garretteers, these novelists and journalists awaiting their promotion. They eat -- and entertain their critics -- at fashionable restaurants; they are seen in expensive seats at the theatre; they inhabit handsome flats -- photographed for an illustrated paper on the first excuse... Many biographical sketches have I read, during the last decade, making personal introduction of young Mr. This or young Miss That, whose book was -- as the sweet language of the day will have it -- "booming"; but never one in which there was a hint of stern struggle, of the pinched stomach and frozen fingers. I surmise that the path of "literature" is being made too easy... writing has come to be recognized as a profession, almost as cut-and-dried as church or law; a lad may go into it with full parental approval, with ready avuncular support... Starvation, it is true, does not necessarily produce fine literature; but one feels uneasy about these carpet-authors. To the two or three who have a measure of conscience and vision, I could wish, as the best thing, some calamity which would leave them friendless in the streets. They would perish, perhaps. But set that possibility against the all but certainty of their present prospect -- fatty degeneration of the soul; and is it not acceptable?

...It happened that, on one... evening [30 years earlier], I was by the river at Chelsea, with nothing to do except to feel that I was hungry, and to reflect that, before morning, I should be hungrier still. I loitered upon Battersea Bridge -- the old picturesque wooden bridge, and there the western sky took hold upon me... I sat down, and wrote a description of what I had seen, and straightway sent it to an evening newspaper, which, to my astonishment, published the thing next day -- 'On Battersea Bridge.' How proud I was of that little bit of writing!... I wrote it because I enjoyed doing so, quite as much as because I was hungry; and the couple of guineas it brought me had as pleasant a ring as any money I ever earned.

Alpha.

I confess that I can identify with the sour grapes Ryecroft expresses here. When I was a computer programmer there were some startups here in San Francisco, but most of the established companies were still in Silicon Valley. I spent an inordinate amount of time commuting down there, mostly by train. And, while the pay and perks were certainly much better than I was used to, they were not close to what you would find today.

Today a significant number of the people in the business -- and even of the most dynamic businesses -- are determined to be here in The City. From where I lived in the early 1990’s I could today walk across the street to work at Twitter, for example. The truth is that I would not be qualified for these apparently similar jobs. I was only in demand because it was a new industry and I was self-taught. Frequently I see coding that would have embarrassed me to have published, but that’s always the case.

As I was reading Ryecroft, I remembered similar stories of fortunate young literary pupa my friend K--- reported to me from the end of the 20th century with, I seem to remember, a similar lack of bonhomie. Today I suspect the young literary elite benefit more from exclusive schools than from fashionable restaurants; and more from literary prizes than from handsome flats.

While there is really no evidence to support this supposition, I wonder if Ryecroft here isn’t also sensitive to the Greshamization of literature (definition next post, sorry), which was just getting started toward the end of the 19th century as literacy rates rose. (And isn’t it wonderful that there is a popular author named John Grisham who so aptly exemplifies the meaning of that term borrowed from economics.) With the development of a mass audience for “literature” the economic stakes started to rise and the market started to change. Literature was now a career a good, middle-class child might unashamedly seek simply because it might well be profitable. And this was before movie rights and author tours and Oprah.

Literature was becoming trade, pure and simple, where it had previously been a special case intellectual activity that, of necessity, included aspects similar to trade in general. The Marbled Pages in early editions of Tristram Shandy are actually a good example of this trend. In Laurence Sterne’s day artists (or artisans) could produce unique works for the very limited book audience of the day, while in the 20th century, Mephistophelian machines would mass produce -- print, bind, dust jacket, and package -- the bestsellers intended for a very different audience.

Next: Autumn XX. Older writers.