2009 - 2012
I must admit that during these years Booktopia took over much of my creative life. I was writing for Booktopia, creating content for the blog, reviewing books for the newsletters, running the Booktopia social media. It was (and is) a very demanding and dynamic place to work. I did revise A Gentleman of Sorts during this period, too, but not too much. I was pleased with the book and was hopeful that one day it would be published.
Below is an example of the writing I was doing for Booktopia in these years.
The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book.
The book is terminally ill, say those in the know, and lies near death in a private hospital plugged into a life support machine and surrounded by close friends and relatives. Right now, across the world commentators are drafting moving eulogies. Commemorative plates and tea towels are being made. Songs are being written. A mini-series is planned. TV people are putting together five minute montages for the news bulletins which touch on the book’s long and varied history
Everyone is preparing themselves for news because no one wants to be caught off guard. At any moment word may come. The book is dead.
But then, isn’t this is all rather familiar? I grew up in the seventies and eighties and back then top people had said something similar. They said that while the whole world was off watching TV the book had died of neglect in a rented apartment, friendless and alone. A few learned souls, a loneliness of dust-covered professors and dowdy librarians, had even been brought in to identify the corpse.
There had been no elaborate funeral planned for the book then. A pauper’s grave had awaited, and there, we were told, the book had been unceremoniously dumped. No one had wept.
Back then when the news had broken, people had been genuinely surprised to learn that the book had been living amongst them at all, they had assumed the book had died long ago. The book seemed to belong to another age altogether. The dark age before TV.
I suppose the prophets of doom did have a point. I’m sure I remember teachers teaching literature to students who had never read for pleasure. These were teachers who would no sooner expect a student to read outside the requirements of the curriculum than their colleague, the Latin teacher, would expect students to speak Latin outside of the classroom. And, really, these English teachers, the poor servants of an absent master, could only go through the motions. I imagine that any rare successes served only to underline the futility of the whole enterprise. For, to all concerned, the book was dead.
And where imagination still existed, it was nourished by a thin broth of TV and, beyond the thrall of the TV, film. It is easy to forget just how dominant TV was. There was no real competition from any other medium. For thirty years TV ruled unchallenged. Those living in its shadow soon took ill. First the book, and then film. To survive, film pumped out grandiose spectacles of a kind TV could not emulate. Star Wars, Superman, Jaws.But these did not save film. It was the video player that saved film. When film entered the home via the rented video cassette, it occupied the TV. And TV began speaking a new language. The video reintroduced the beginning, middle and end, the natural rhythm of the imagination, which TV had abandoned with its endless stream of programming.
Then the damnedest thing happened, the rhythm of film revived the wider world’s interest in the book. Some discovered that certain films were based on books. On one man’s books in particular, too. As I recall it, the book rose from the dead, beckoned out of the grave by the imagination of Stephen King. Suddenly a few teens were reading. They were choosing to read. They were turning off TVs. This faint heartbeat gave the book a fragile existence.
But the book had never really been dead, had it? No. And the book won’t die now, will it? No.
The book has always lead a double life – a private life and a public one. In the book’s public life its health is judged by sales, media coverage, popular influence and contemporary relevance. In the seventies and eighties because sales dwindled, because media coverage was negative, because its popular influence was nil and because it had no contemporary relevance, the book’s public life did meet its end in a pauper’s grave. And no one wept.
But the book lived on its private life. The wider world does not monitor the health of the book in its private life because it only recognises the book’s public face. Which is to be expected. The public face is a commodity, while in private the book is not bound by the expectations and conventions of business. Its value does not fluctuate according to the whims of commerce, for its value comes from within not from without.
The most baffling thing about the private life of the book, and this is why it doesn’t get any press, is that it belongs to everyone and therefore no one person in particular. So it is both priceless and worthless in the same breath.
The wider world can get excited about books when, as in the case of J.K. Rowling, someone makes a squillion dollars writing them. There is a story to tell and one that is easy to quantify. Books suddenly have a monetary value which can be compared with other commodities.
While I credit Stephen King with raising the public life of books from the dead, it wasn’t until the release and subsequent success of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and its sequels, that the book was able to walk without the aid of nurses. J.K. Rowling did more for the book than can be measured. The success of these books changed the way people thought about books and reading. Harry Potter Inc. took the book back to the days of its greatest successes – back to the days when Charles Dickens was the most famous man on the planet.
And yet suddenly, when the book seems at its most vigorous, when more people than ever are reading, when publishers and booksellers are finally making some money from the thankless enterprise, news comes that the book is ill, terminally so.
But the news is false – a rumour started by an accountant at work in unimaginative publishing house. Both the public and private manifestations of the book are well. More than well, robust. In a digital world of unimpeded exchanges of information, of open ended discourse, of perpetual updates and addenda, the book is a refuge, a closed circuit, something complete, a place where captured thoughts have ripened and matured. Truth be told, the wider public has developed the habit of thinking well about the book so that today there are more readers than ever before, reading more widely than ever before, with access to more books than ever before. So regardless of the format the wider public chooses to read – hardback, paperback or digital – until they can be persuaded that an alternative is better, the book, with it’s beginning, middle and end, is here to stay.
Were all publishing to cease and were all writers to fall silent the book would still live on. No-one can undo what has already been achieved. Our future, as our history, is permanently coupled with the book. So much so that when the end does come, it will be the end for both the book and humanity, which leaves no-one to make the pronouncement – the book is dead.
Below is an example of the writing I was doing for Booktopia in these years.
The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book.
The book is terminally ill, say those in the know, and lies near death in a private hospital plugged into a life support machine and surrounded by close friends and relatives. Right now, across the world commentators are drafting moving eulogies. Commemorative plates and tea towels are being made. Songs are being written. A mini-series is planned. TV people are putting together five minute montages for the news bulletins which touch on the book’s long and varied history
Everyone is preparing themselves for news because no one wants to be caught off guard. At any moment word may come. The book is dead.
But then, isn’t this is all rather familiar? I grew up in the seventies and eighties and back then top people had said something similar. They said that while the whole world was off watching TV the book had died of neglect in a rented apartment, friendless and alone. A few learned souls, a loneliness of dust-covered professors and dowdy librarians, had even been brought in to identify the corpse.
There had been no elaborate funeral planned for the book then. A pauper’s grave had awaited, and there, we were told, the book had been unceremoniously dumped. No one had wept.
Back then when the news had broken, people had been genuinely surprised to learn that the book had been living amongst them at all, they had assumed the book had died long ago. The book seemed to belong to another age altogether. The dark age before TV.
I suppose the prophets of doom did have a point. I’m sure I remember teachers teaching literature to students who had never read for pleasure. These were teachers who would no sooner expect a student to read outside the requirements of the curriculum than their colleague, the Latin teacher, would expect students to speak Latin outside of the classroom. And, really, these English teachers, the poor servants of an absent master, could only go through the motions. I imagine that any rare successes served only to underline the futility of the whole enterprise. For, to all concerned, the book was dead.
And where imagination still existed, it was nourished by a thin broth of TV and, beyond the thrall of the TV, film. It is easy to forget just how dominant TV was. There was no real competition from any other medium. For thirty years TV ruled unchallenged. Those living in its shadow soon took ill. First the book, and then film. To survive, film pumped out grandiose spectacles of a kind TV could not emulate. Star Wars, Superman, Jaws.But these did not save film. It was the video player that saved film. When film entered the home via the rented video cassette, it occupied the TV. And TV began speaking a new language. The video reintroduced the beginning, middle and end, the natural rhythm of the imagination, which TV had abandoned with its endless stream of programming.
Then the damnedest thing happened, the rhythm of film revived the wider world’s interest in the book. Some discovered that certain films were based on books. On one man’s books in particular, too. As I recall it, the book rose from the dead, beckoned out of the grave by the imagination of Stephen King. Suddenly a few teens were reading. They were choosing to read. They were turning off TVs. This faint heartbeat gave the book a fragile existence.
But the book had never really been dead, had it? No. And the book won’t die now, will it? No.
The book has always lead a double life – a private life and a public one. In the book’s public life its health is judged by sales, media coverage, popular influence and contemporary relevance. In the seventies and eighties because sales dwindled, because media coverage was negative, because its popular influence was nil and because it had no contemporary relevance, the book’s public life did meet its end in a pauper’s grave. And no one wept.
But the book lived on its private life. The wider world does not monitor the health of the book in its private life because it only recognises the book’s public face. Which is to be expected. The public face is a commodity, while in private the book is not bound by the expectations and conventions of business. Its value does not fluctuate according to the whims of commerce, for its value comes from within not from without.
The most baffling thing about the private life of the book, and this is why it doesn’t get any press, is that it belongs to everyone and therefore no one person in particular. So it is both priceless and worthless in the same breath.
The wider world can get excited about books when, as in the case of J.K. Rowling, someone makes a squillion dollars writing them. There is a story to tell and one that is easy to quantify. Books suddenly have a monetary value which can be compared with other commodities.
While I credit Stephen King with raising the public life of books from the dead, it wasn’t until the release and subsequent success of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and its sequels, that the book was able to walk without the aid of nurses. J.K. Rowling did more for the book than can be measured. The success of these books changed the way people thought about books and reading. Harry Potter Inc. took the book back to the days of its greatest successes – back to the days when Charles Dickens was the most famous man on the planet.
And yet suddenly, when the book seems at its most vigorous, when more people than ever are reading, when publishers and booksellers are finally making some money from the thankless enterprise, news comes that the book is ill, terminally so.
But the news is false – a rumour started by an accountant at work in unimaginative publishing house. Both the public and private manifestations of the book are well. More than well, robust. In a digital world of unimpeded exchanges of information, of open ended discourse, of perpetual updates and addenda, the book is a refuge, a closed circuit, something complete, a place where captured thoughts have ripened and matured. Truth be told, the wider public has developed the habit of thinking well about the book so that today there are more readers than ever before, reading more widely than ever before, with access to more books than ever before. So regardless of the format the wider public chooses to read – hardback, paperback or digital – until they can be persuaded that an alternative is better, the book, with it’s beginning, middle and end, is here to stay.
Were all publishing to cease and were all writers to fall silent the book would still live on. No-one can undo what has already been achieved. Our future, as our history, is permanently coupled with the book. So much so that when the end does come, it will be the end for both the book and humanity, which leaves no-one to make the pronouncement – the book is dead.