What's on your (literary) mind?

[Aravis]

But they didn't claim that these were unintentional, only that they were found in a high school essay. They might well have been written this way on purpose.

Still funny. Perhaps more so. ;D

[wordswordswords]

I have a blog consisting of my opinions of some books I've read over the last 20-plus years.

Does anyone want to link to this blog? If not, I'm seriously considering making it a private blog because some unpleasant comments keep appearing there.

[RobertGraves]

What, do people not like your reading tastes or something Words?

[wordswordswords]

Apparently not, Robert. It's getting a bit tiresome--having to delete the comments.

[Aravis]

Words, are they real comments or is it comment spam? I get a lot of those too and have closed comments on all of my older posts, which is where the spam bots usually start looking for an active blog.

I would be happy to provide a link to your blog if you would like more exposure. Of course, if you prefer to go private then I won't.

[wordswordswords]

It's just someone commenting "Boring!" or "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

No big deal, really, except that to make my updates available for readers, I have to make sure those comments aren't there because they appear instead.

My blog is so unbloglike (just an alphabetical list of books and comments on them) that I'd be thrilled if anyone wanted to link to it! Thanks for offering, Aravis--and link away.

[Aravis]

I added a link to your site from mine, and also featured it in my blog post tonight. Hope you get better comments in future. Good luck!

[RobertGraves]

If you leave me a link via the PM that'd be great, Words.

[pinkozcat]

I've just had a look, Words.

There are not many authors I've read but your blog makes interesting reading.

I usually go to BookCrossing to get information on books and your place looks to be a good alternative site for me.

Thank you.

[Aravis]

Robert (and all interested parties), here's a link to her site:

Some Books I've Read Since 1982

[wordswordswords]

Thanks so much, Aravis! (Actually it's just some of the books I've read. I didn't bother to comment on most books I read over those years, and I lost the comments on many others because of a computer problem I had.)

The link to the blog is always available in my Profile.

pinkozcat, thanks so much for giving a look.

[wordswordswords]

The well-known writer of fiction and plays, Saul Bellow, has just died.

Is anyone a fan of his writing? I've read a number of his novels.

[RobertGraves]

Why bother with Patrick White
Would a manuscript from the 1973 Nobel laureate pass muster today? Jennifer Sexton tries an experiment
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July 15, 2006
HE is the nation's most lauded novelist, our only Nobel prize-winning writer, twice a winner of the Miles Franklin award and three times the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medallist. Yet without his name on the cover, Patrick White's work is apparently of little value to Australia's publishing industry.
Inquirer submitted, under a pseudonym, chapter three of White's The Eye of the Storm to 12 publishers and agents. This novel clinched his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973, with the judges describing it as one of his most accomplished works.

Not one reader recognised its literary genius, and 10 wrote polite and vaguely encouraging rejection letters. The highest praise was "clever". A low point was a referral to a "how to" book on writing fiction.

Pan Macmillan referred the author to writers' workshops; Mark Latham's agent, Mary Cunnane, recommended the author improve by reading Penguin Books' The Art of Writing, for hints on character and form. Text Publishing, which prides itself on finding and publishing Australian literature, sent back a form rejection letter and HarperCollins flicked it back unread.

For the experiment, the title of the manuscript was tweaked to become The Eye of the Cyclone, and an anagram was used for the author's name, Wraith Picket. And the age chosen for the 33-year-old father of one was the number of years that have passed since White wrote the novel.

Cunnane is a respected agent of 30 years' experience. She wrote: "Alas, the sample chapter, while (written) with energy and feeling, does not give evidence that the work is yet of a publishable quality.

"I suggest you get a copy of David Lodge's The Art of Fiction (Penguin) and absorb its lessons about exposition, dialogue, point of view, voice and characterisation."

Nicholas Hudson, of Hudson Publishing, found the work perplexing. "What I read left me puzzled. I found it hard to get involved with the characters, so it was not character-driven, nor in the ideas, so it was not idea-driven. It seemed like a plot-driven novel whose plot got lost through an aspiration to be a literary novel. It was very clever, but I was not compelled to read on," he wrote.

Hudson has since told Inquirer he recalled reading the manuscript and was being kind in his letter. "I was trying to be polite. I thought is was pretentious fart-arsery. I don't like White".

"Obviously, one has to ask, how the hell did this guy get to be a great literary figure? Right from the start, people were saying: 'Is this really as good as people are saying?"'

Lyn Tranter is a veteran of the industry and runs the agency Australian Literary Management. She said she couldn't take it because she didn't believe in it. "I'm sure you can appreciate that an agent must be totally committed to a work to sell it enthusiastically to a publisher; to do otherwise is not in the best interests of the author," Tranter wrote.

An editor at Giramondo, Chris Cyrill, dismissed the work, adding: "Please don't despair. Our judgment is well-schooled but inevitably subjective."

Pan Macmillan's acquisition editor Daniel Carlyle recommended writers' workshops to get the prose into shape. "If you are after critical analysis, it may be a good idea to join a writers' centre. There are centres in each state and these communities provide access to proofreaders, mentor programs and inside information about the publishing industry."

Aviva Tuffield, Scribe's fiction acquisitions editor, admitted "our reaction is subjective, of course, and another publisher may feel differently". But others did not feel differently.

Cameron Creswell Agency's Siobhan Hannan wrote: "It is vital that the agent representing you has the appropriate level of enthusiasm and commitment to your work in order to place it with a publisher. Another agent could well have a different and more enthusiastic response to your work and I would suggest that you contact some of the other agents listed on the website of the Australian Society of Authors."

Critics described the response as troubling, but of the 10 who put White on the scrap heap, only Text has since expressed an inkling of regret.

Text prides itself on discovering new Australian literary talent and boasts a higher proportion of Australian fiction on its list than any other publisher. So far this year Text has published four debut works.

One chapter should be enough when true literary talent is the author, Text's publisher Michael Heyward says. "Life in the prose should be self-evident ... It is every publisher's worst fear, that you will miss something."

He points out that J.K. Rowling went to four or five publishers before Harry Potter made her the richest writer in the world.

"The publisher's dream is to find a wonderful writer in the slush pile," Heyward says. This is a good kind of experiment for keeping publishers on their toes."

Shona Martyn, publishing director at HarperCollins, makes no apologies for blocking the manuscript before it was even read. Along with other big publishers such as Penguin, HarperCollins does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Despite the ban, thousands are still received, she says.

"The standard of work that comes in as unsolicited manuscripts is, as a general rule, extraordinarily low," Martyn says, adding that home word processing has made it too easy for budding writers to knock out a story.

A slush pile in publishing is an outdated way of seeking new work and it is expensive to employ people to read it, she says. Instead, HarperCollins runs a mentoring program through which selected new writers are assigned an editor to workshop the writing.

Martyn defends the editors who rejected White's work on the basis that publishing is a business. "They may well have recognised (the literary talent) but made the decision it was not viable," she says.

There is no point in publishing a work that is never going to sell more than 1000 copies. For a new literary author to sell more than 3000 books was a thrill.

"We want to find the good books, publishers are aiming to find brilliant new talent," Martyn says. "But publishing is a business and we are looking at what Australian readers want to buy. If more people wanted to read more books instead of watching celebrity ice-skating, I would be delighted."

James Fraser, publishing director of Pan Macmillan, says he is still finding gems among the slush pile, but this was not one of them: "It is not what we are after."

He is preparing ads promoting Pan Macmillan's policy of accepting unsolicited manuscripts and is hiring more editors to read them. From about 2000 unsolicited manuscripts, he finds about 10 good ones. "The 10 we do publish are highly successful," he says.

Tranter says Inquirer's experiment is "piss weak", in particular because White is not generally read and doesn't sell today. "I am looking at one thing and one thing only: can I sell it? And the answer is no, I can't sell The Eye of the Storm. As a literary agent my job is to secure the interest of the public."

In 1973, when White wrote the book, the publishing industry was vastly different. When he was in his prime, Australian literature was, for the first time, beginning to be taken seriously here and overseas. White's Nobel Prize sealed that reputation.

Only the most driven and determined writers stick with it full time. Others keen on flirting with the ambition but lacking polish, and perhaps real talent, did not have the luxury of a pool of government grants, the practical assistance of mentoring programs, editing services and agents to flog their wares.

As Frank Moorhouse points out in his three-part series "So what the hell happened to Australian writing" in The Weekend Australian in May, in 1973 there were 26 government grants for literature, one for every 500,000 people. In 2004 there were four times that number, 104; one for every 200,000 people. Thirty years ago there were no creative writing courses at universities.

Now 37 universities offer courses and 15,000 people enrolled at tertiary and adult education centres last year.

"Back then, there were no manuscript assessment services either. These are commercially run businesses offering, for a fee, to assess and help prepare a manuscript for publication; the Australian Writer's Marketplace lists 80 editing and manuscript services," Moorhouse says.

Only Adelaide had a writers festival in White's pinnacle year. In May this year 65,000 people attended the Sydney Writers Festival, up 20 per cent on last year. In 2005, 285,000 seats were occupied at writers festivals across the nation.

Then there was one literary agent to spruik work to publishers; now there are 20 and increasingly the bigger publishers won't consider a manuscript without an agent's referral. Where White took his own counsel on editing before submission and there were no editing services, now there are 80. White won the inaugural Miles Franklin Award with Voss in 1957 ahead of 19 entries. Now more than 50 novels are submitted by publishers. The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript for writers under 35 received more than 200 submissions last year, double the number of a decade ago.

As a judge of literature prizes, Moorhouse rates about 5 per cent of the works submitted to be of high quality: "successful, artful stories". The Weekend Australian's books editor and judge of this year's The Australian/Vogel prize, Murray Waldren, concurs with that proportion of quality to dross.

Moorhouse argues there is a cultural obligation and commercial imperative on publishers to properly assess manuscripts. "All bona fide manuscripts have to be professionally read and assessed or we run the risk of missing something brilliant. Game over," Moorhouse says.

According to the AusLit database, the multinational publishers and independent Allen & Unwin in 2004 published half the number of Australian literature novels of eight years ago, from 60 down to 32.

Imre Salusinszky, the new chairman of the Australia Council's Literature Board and The Weekend Australian's NSW political reporter, says the rejections were troubling but a work of great literature may not be immediately recognisable in one chapter.

"You are probably expecting a lot of them to recognise it is a masterpiece," Salusinszky says. "That is a sad example of a phenomenon that has been discussed and debated by various learned bods for 10 or 15 years."

But the literary genius overlooked is an inherent part of publishing history. Australian publishers are clearly missing opportunities, but there is nothing new in that because many a literary genius has struggled and fought for recognition. "It would not be the first time the genius got a rejection letter," Salusinszky says.

As to whether readers are missing out, Salusinszky doubts it. "Australian readers are only missing out if there are lots of Patrick Whites out there submitting manuscripts that are rejected. But I don't think (there) are. They (publishers) are sent a lot of crap," he says.

He says the acquisitions editors' failure to recognise White's pen is a symptom of an education system that does not value Australian literature. Australian classics are largely out of print, unread by the public and absent from university curriculums.

The Nobel Prize committee cited The Eye of the Storm as among White's "greatest feats". His are works that show an "unbroken creative power" to extract from the language "all its power and all its nuances".

"White's literary production has failings that belong to great and bold writing, exceeding, as it does, different kinds of conventional limits. He is the one who, for the first time, has given the continent of Australia an authentic voice that carries across the world, at the same time as his achievement contributes to the development, both artistic and as regards ideas, of contemporary literature," the announcement said.

According to David Marr's biography, White found it hard to admit his delight in his Nobel prize and expressed surprise at the public's response, writing to a friend: "I am amazed at the way Australians have reacted in a way they usually behave only for swimmers and athletes. I am very touched."