New Grub Street

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Swamped in the Flood of Literature & Should We Review Our Friends’ Books?

Should we review our friends’ books?  Yes, at our blogs!

In journalism, strictly speaking, it is a conflict of interest to review a friend’s book.

But the ethics of literary journalism are always in flux–you never know who knows who–and literary mores were entirely more flexible in George Gissing’s 1891 novel, New Grub Street.  In this fascinating book about the writing world in nineteenth-century London, the characters dash off anonymous book reviews, often having barely skimmed the book.  One particularly vicious editor does hatchet jobs on his enemies’ books: the level of paranoia being what it is, the authors sometimes blames the wrong man for the bad review.

And so we applaud the ambitious, not altogether likable Jasper Millvain when he writes anonymous rave reviews for two different journals of his friend Biffen’s naturalistic novel, Mr. Bailey, Grocer.  The starving Biffen spent two years writing this nearly perfect, if tedious, book, and risked his life to save the manuscript  from a fire in his lodging house.

Jasper doubts if the reviews will do much good, even though he uses the word “masterpiece.”  He tells his sister Dora, who admires the book,  “Most people will fling the book down with yawns before they’re half through the first volume.”  And he knows some would think it unethical for him to review the same book twice.

And then he delivers a soliloquy about the trade of literature.

Speaking seriously, we know that a really good book will more likely than not receive fair treatment from two or three reviewers; yes, but also more likely than not it will be swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week, and won’t have attention fixed long enough upon it to establish its repute. The struggle for existence among books is nowadays as severe as among men. If a writer has friends connected with the press, it is the plain duty of those friends to do their utmost to help him. What matter if they exaggerate, or even lie? The simple, sober truth has no chance whatever of being listened to, and it’s only by volume of shouting that the ear of the public is held. What use is it to Biffen if his work struggles to slow recognition ten years hence? Besides, as I say, the growing flood of literature swamps everything but works of primary genius.

Today many good  books are still “swamped in the flood of literature.”  From my amateur reader’s point of view, the same few books are reviewed in every paper, and yet tens of thousands of books (too many books?)  are published.  The list of books to be reviewed is magically pre-determined by a conspiracy of marketers, editors, and (possibly) witches and warlocks(!).  Yes, I want to read about established writers, but am dubious about some of the “hot” debuts.  Caveat Emptor is my motto.  Some of the “cooler” debuts might be my reading.

Naturally, a lot of the oddball stuff goes missing from book review journals. This year two excellent novels which deserve more press are Karen Brown’s eerie novel, The Clairvoyants (which I wrote about here), and Erica Carter’s harrowing novel about three down-and-out women in Arkansas, Lucky You (which I wrote about here).  Some books are passed around by word of mouth.  Still, reviews help.

And what about the small press stuff? Where is that reviewed?   A small press editor told me many, many years ago that, from the monetary point of view, it was better to publish a bad book by a charming writer with a lot of friends than a good book by a solitary writer with few friends.  (The bad writer’s book sold; the good writer’s did not.)  But he wanted to publish good books, so instead got a lot of grants.  And did not make money.

Hm, I never thought of it that way!

But what if it’s a great book?  Where are all the great books?  I loved Lidia Yuknavitch The Book of Joan, a stunning novel that is, thank God, widely reviewed.

There must be more like Lidida Yuknavitch writing.

IT’S SUMMER!

The rain stopped late Saturday afternoon, and we’re wallowing in green.  This is what Memorial Day weekend looked like.

So green, isn’t it?

Yellow flowers always cheer me up!  And does anyone know what these are called?

Happy biking, happy swimming, happy sitting around in shorts!

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George Gissing’s “New Grub Street” & My Top Five Summer TBR List

In 2007 I scrawled in my book journal:

Why read anything but George Gissing? One can’t read genre fiction all the time. If one isn’t reading a mystery or a science fiction novel, one might as well read Gissing. Not a likable writer:  too gloomy, too depressive. But his books are  both pageturners and classics. In New Grub Street, he writes about money-grubbing writers in unrelenting poverty.  It is a masterpiece about churning out pages  for pay.

Musing about my badly-paid freelancing years, I recently returned to Gissing’s New Grub Street. Unlike the characters in New Grub Street, I happily wrote pop articles and reviews, and felt under no pressure, because it was not our main income. I enjoyed the work and appreciated the flexible schedule.  So many women of my generation needed flexible hours.

That is not the case in New Grub Street, where writers live in attics or depressing rooms, and must support themselves by churning out pages, and more pages.  In the first chapter,  Jasper Milvain, a savvy writer/networker, tells  his sisters that his novelist friend  Alfred Reardon will likely commit suicide.

“Things are going badly with him.  He is just the kind of fellow to end by poisoning or shooting himself.”

Reardon is one of the most wretched writers in literature.  His first two novels were successful and respected; now he is desperately writing a bad novel to support his his family.  His wife Amy refuses to leave their small flat for rooms in a poor neighborhood.  She  has suggested he write a “popular” novel, but it is beyond him.  When Margaret Home is published, he is depressed and is paid less than he’d anticipated.  It is a bad book.

In a chapter called “Rejection,” Gissing writes,

One of Reardon’s minor worries at this time was the fear that by chance he might come upon a review of ‘Margaret Home.’ Since the publication of his first book he had avoided as far as possible all knowledge of what the critics had to say about him; his nervous temperament could not bear the agitation of reading these remarks, which, however inept, define an author and his work to so many people incapable of judging for themselves. No man or woman could tell him anything in the way of praise or blame which he did not already know quite well; commendation was pleasant, but it so often aimed amiss, and censure was for the most part so unintelligent. In the case of this latest novel he dreaded the sight of a review as he would have done a gash from a rusty knife. The judgments could not but be damnatory, and their expression in journalistic phrase would disturb his mind with evil rancour. No one would have insight enough to appreciate the nature and cause of his book’s demerits; every comment would be wide of the mark; sneer, ridicule, trite objection, would but madden him with a sense of injustice.

This made me think about the importance of reviews. I  read reviews to find out about new books, not necessarily for the critical judgment.  Good reviews sell books, but do bad reviews kill them? I have blithely read between the lines and discovered some excellent books, despite bad reviews.  I loved Beverly Lyon Clark’s scholarly book, The Afterlife of Little Women, which a reviewer didn’t care for much.

Here is My Top  Five  Summer TBR list (and how I found out about the books).

1.  Jane Austen the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly.   I read a good review of this at The Guardian.  This intelligent book is the antidote to the conservative romantic interpretations of Austen’s work   I have been dipping into the book and very much admired the chapter, “The Age of Brass–Sense and Sensibility.”

She writes,

What we can say is that Sense and Sensibility, even in 1811, would have been read as a novel about property, and inheritance–about greed and need, and the terrible, selfish things that families do to each other for the sake of money.

2.  All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Sanders.  This well-reviewed SF novel just won the Nebula Award.  The back cover says, “An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological start-up are going to war as the world tears itself apart.”  Sometimes it takes an award…

3.  The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes.  All right,  I will read anything about classics (it’s my background–go, team!), and this retelling of the Oedipus tragedy, with its emphasis on the women in the myth, sounds fascinating.  In spite of lukewarm reviews in the UK, I cannot wait to read this novel. What do reviewers know?  Yes, Colm Toibin just retold the Oresteia, and everyone will read that, but I want to read a woman’s voice.  I do hope The Children of Jocasta  will be published here.

4.  P. G. Wodehouse’s The Mating Season, a Bertie Wooster and Jeeves book I’ve never heard of!  Found it by browsing online.

5  Kathleen Hill’s Who Occupies This House.  Her stunning small-press novel, Still Waters in Niger, popped up as a recommendation on my Amazon screen in 2000.  It is one of my favorite books.   Who Occupies This House, also published by the prestigious Triquarterly Press, has been moldering on my shelves for a while.   Am looking forward to it, but have read no reviews.

AND DO LET ME KNOW IF REVIEWS, GOOD OR BAD, INFLUENCE YOUR READING.  Yes, I’ve asked you before, but this time I mean it!