From the Editors, Issue One
‘It’s one thing to kill your darlings, quite another to throw the baby out with the bathwater’ – Martin Shaw’s response to Gideon Haigh
It would appear that Gideon Haigh found it irresistible – when invited to write a piece for a new magazine called Kill Your Darlings – to mount a wholesale assault not just on his putative target, (alleged) hack reviewers, but the wider Oz literary culture itself – from his point of view a ‘small, snobbish, fashion-conscious’ bratpack colluding (no less) to dish up the literary equivalent of Myki ‘smart’ cards to an unsuspecting, impoverished reading public.
Now, I’m the last one to suggest this doesn’t make good copy – Haigh’s journalistic credentials stand him in good stead here. For those with long enough memories, his essay stands in the clear tradition of Mark Davis’s incendiary Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism – all very self-righteous and frothing at the mouth at perceived cultural apparatchiks. But in Davis’s case I remember thinking he did at least have some salient points, and certainly the career of the reigning pontiff in Australian literary criticism at the time, Peter Craven, never seemed to quite recover from Davis’s rather withering analysis of his motives.
I can only speak for myself though in finding Haigh’s assessment of the current crop of literary reviewers well wide of the mark. To my mind, by contrast, it seems a veritable renaissance at present in Australia’s reviewing culture. When JM Coetzee’s latest novel Summertime appeared last year, I relished the wonderful extended analyses by the likes of Geordie Williamson, James Ley and Delia Falconer that appeared in various publications. Indeed (and again contra Haigh), whomever reviewers such as these decide to write about, I inevitably tend to read their reviews: I know I’m going to be entertained and instructed, as expected from all good criticism. Kevin Rabelais and Jennifer Levasseur regularly publish considered and well-researched pieces, and a raft of others – the likes of On, Bradley, Starford, Williams, Swinn and Case (I’m probably leaving several noteworthies out here – please don’t take offence!) – all bring intelligence and taste to their – yes – usually very modestly remunerated commissions.
Of course, there’s still the occasional punitive piece (seemingly something Haigh wishes more of) but most readers, I’m sure, think: ‘surely-there’s-another-agenda-going-on-here?’ The most recent example that comes to mind is Catherine Ford’s near demolition of Cate Kennedy’s debut novel The World Beneath late last year, all very peculiar coming from a fellow well-regarded short story practitioner whose own first novel seemed to find scant fanfare. And that Melbourne literary types now grace the glossy supplements under the heading ‘Page Turners’ suggests the marketing wing of the new Wheeler Centre might be overdoing the ‘writer-as-celebrity’ just a tad.
But overall I fear that Gideon, you’re just not reading the review pages these days! That is probably the thing for all of us to be really concerned about – that books seem to be getting shunted ever deeper into the recesses of our newspapers. But still there are glimmers of hope – Ben Naparstek seems to have upped the word count at The Monthly for his book reviews page, giving reviewers more space to do some sort of justice to their subjects. He even ran an extraordinary critique of a book written by his chairman’s wife – no shrinking violet this man! Over at The Australian Miriam Cosic regularly has well-considered pages. I could go on.
So: Ozlit seems to me to be in remarkable good health at present, despite Haigh’s diagnosis to the contrary. Lots of new (and sometimes very exciting) work, considerable marketing and (healthy) buzz surrounding both new and established writers, and, most of all, much good faith amongst all those who work in and care for the industry, not least amongst the ranks of professional book reviewers.
My great literary and intellectual hero, the late WG Sebald, remarked somewhere once that a writer must at all costs avoid the contemporary literary marketplace – fashions, literary ‘rivals’, etc. – and indeed his own fame accrued only slowly and amongst a small dedicated following (much like Cormac McCarthy’s, I might add). Now each writer has of course to handle the accoutrements of publicity, of forging a career as a writer, each in their own way – a by no means easy task to negotiate in a culture which puts such a small premium on the written word.
But, a gravy train? Haigh’s insinuation is a bit of an insult – to authors and reviewers alike. It’s one thing to kill your darlings, quite another to throw the baby out with the (damn fine) bathwater.
Martin Shaw is books division manager of Readings Books Music & Film and an editorial adviser to Kill Your Darlings.
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3 Responses to ‘It’s one thing to kill your darlings, quite another to throw the baby out with the bathwater’ – Martin Shaw’s response to Gideon Haigh
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11:02 am, February 28, 2010
Martin Shaw, responding to Gideon Haigh’s criticism of reviewing in Australia, refers to a review of Cate Kennedy’s novel, The World Beneath, which I wrote for The Age late last year, describing it as a “near demolition” of the work.
Am not sure what a “near demolition” is, exactly, but it seems to me that Shaw has attempted to malign two things at once with his comment: my review, which, in my opinion, is far from “demolishing”, and Cate Kennedy’s novel, which is neither “demolished” by this review, nor, in any case, “demolishable”.
Mine is a critical, forthright review, yes, about a novel which I felt disappointing, considering the obvious talent of its author – a talent I point to in my review — but it is not a malicious review and it is written, as I write any review, with a deeply serious and, I hope, lively, engagement with the text.
Shaw suggests that my review was written with “an agenda” in mind. It’s not clear what that would be, but he seems to infer that as the author of a first novel published in 2000 – that is, ten years ago — which received, in his words, “scant fanfare”, I was criticising Kennedy’s novel out of a lingering sense of rejection from that experience, of being criticised myself.
(Note to Martin Shaw: The hurt’s over now. It’s been ten long years, with sleepless nights, but I’m over it. Truly. And I still, by the way, regard that “mean” reviewer who criticised me, Owen Richardson, to be one of the best that this country can claim, and a sadly under-utilised one.)
There’s something very demoralising about Martin Shaw’s response to Haigh’s piece on the diminishing state of Australian book reviewing.
If Shaw sees “agendas” where they don’t exist and is affronted by a seriously considered response, such as mine, to one of this country’s most capable and lauded writers – her work is robust and deserves a like response; it does not require the scaffold-support of a reviewer muffling his or her genuine responses to the work — then surely this is a sign of just how cosily received, comfortable and anxiously defended Australian literature is.
And on the subject of agendas…how would Martin Shaw feel if he were questioned on his motives, when he defends an author from criticism, because of his position as manager of a book store that sells that author’s work?
Surely these sorts of comments are the ones which halt the conversation, the “literary dialogue”, such as it is, from moving forward in this country?
11:26 pm, February 28, 2010
Catherine – I think you are completely correct to haul me over the coals on this one. When I tried to think of an overtly critical review in the near past, it was yours I thought of – but I don’t tend to keep a file of reviews (hence I have not studied your review since, and I recollect it only dimly), nor have I done any proper study of the reception of Cate’s (or indeed your own!) books. So flippancy is a dangerous thing, and I thank you for setting the record straight. And I unreservedly apologize for seeming to question your motives.
I think you open up an intriguing topic: should writers review their contemporaries? Of course we all remember what happened when The Monthly last year sought out whom they considered the best person to review a new book on Julia Gillard….
But I’m thinking rather of the fiction writers and poets. Not so long ago I talked to an Australian fiction practitioner who told me about their nascent foray into book journalism, and that they were rather struck by the fact that the only thing literary editors wanted to know was: “are you prepared to review other Australian writers?”. Whether they wrote well or averagely, this was the key thing.
As I suggest in my piece, the “impartial” review by a non-practitioner might be a safer course. But I realise how diminished many of our literary pages might be as a result – for of course the people who care most about writing, and understand its demands better than anyone, tend to be writers!
Finally vis-a-vis my vested interest etc. It’s funny – I almost always find that even the most positive reviews have at best a marginal impact on sales at the shop I work at, and I can’t imagine it’s much different across the wider market. Even more reason then for the cultural pessimist to fear that no-one’s paying any attention! And clearly any publicity is good publicity to a certain extent, and I concur with Gideon that a much worse fate is to be overlooked entirely, or to be only reviewed in capsule form in our broadsheets.
But again, I fail to see the lameness which you and Gideon seem to find in contemporary reviewing. As I argue, Australia seems to me to have more reviewers of note now than I can ever remember in the past, and I don’t detect anything less than a critical engagement on their part. And I fear that the longer the debate is about some purported cosy “Club Ozlit” (which is never supported by a concrete example, I might add), the further the avenues for talking about books are being eroded (witness Fairfax’s apparent plan to run a great deal of their books content in both The Age and the SMH, effectively halving perhaps their original content).
6:41 pm, March 1, 2010
Martin, you have some reviewers you like. So do I – including a couple of those you name. You think this makes for a thriving literary culture. I can’t agree. But why would you speculate that I am not ‘reading the books pages’ because I am failing to savour the ‘glimmers of hope’ I might find there? Not much of a culture, really, when ‘glimmers of hope’ constitute a ‘veritable renaissance’, is it?
As a matter of fact, I read the books pages all too closely – perhaps the last part of the newspaper I study with any enthusiasm. There I encounter diminishing space, diminishing aptitude, and, I fear, a rather faltering resolve in the level of commitment to a craft that has never received much patronage from proprietors, and now receives less than ever: the Canberra Times and the Brisbane Courier-Mail, for instance, now no longer even pay for reviews; you get the book, and that’s it. If, like me, your research brings you in contact with lots of old newspapers, it’s a constant shock to see how much space newspapers once devoted to books, and how relatively paltry in the space now. With the explosive growth in the volume of publishing, perhaps a smaller proportion of the total number of new books are reviewed now than at any stage in our history. Of course, JM Coetzee will attract studious and appreciative reviews. But what if you’re a first novelist whose book is thrown in with a bunch of other first novels because….well…they’re all first novels, aren’t they? You confine your assertions to reviewers of fiction without any comments on the reviewing of non-fiction, where the situation, I believe, is especially dire. In two fields in which I write, sport and business, there are no regular reviewers at all, and never really have been.
You’re putting words in my mouth when you say I am calling for more punitive reviewing, but if your idea of a punitive review is Catherine Ford’s review of Cate Kennedy then you really are an inattentive reader: Australia could do with more such perceptive and instructive notices. I think your response to that review is indicative of the malaise I’m describing: that on one of the rare occasions you encountered a reviewer independent enough to utter a few wholesome truths, you automatically assumed there was a hidden ‘agenda’ involved. Still, I’m glad you responded. It can only be good if reviewers and literary editors know their work to be the object of interested eyes, appreciative and sceptical.