Reasons to Be Cheerful

The call for sexist publishing seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

2018 was meant to be the “year of publishing women”, after the novelist Kamila Shamsie challenged the books industry to publish no new titles by men for a year, in order to “redress the inequality” of the literary world. In the end, the tiny independent And Other Stories was the only publisher to rise to her challenge.

Good. Books should be published on merit, not the sex of the author. We get the usual Guardianista whine about publishing being dominated by men. This despite the shelves positively collapsing under the weight of female authored fiction – just go into any bookshop and you will see plenty of female authored fiction.

Her provocation, published in the Guardian back in 2015, saw the novelist lay out in detail the disproportionate space given to male authors and reviewers in the press, the male skew to writers submitted for the Booker prize and the greater number of male protagonists in award-winning novels. “Like any effective system of power – and patriarchy is, over time and space, the world’s most effective system of power – the means of keeping the power structure intact is complex,” she wrote, then suggesting “a year of publishing women: 2018, the centenary of women over the age of 30 getting the vote in the UK, seems appropriate.”

Bullshit. Seriously, utter, utter bullshit. The big publishing houses are notoriously difficult to break into. For Every J K Rowling (female) there are hundreds of perfectly good writers who are rejected because the gatekeepers don’t think they will sell – men and women. They do not make their decision because the author is male or female, but will it sell. Those who rejected Rowling got it catastrophically wrong as other well know authors (P D James springs to mind – oh, yeah female) have shown us, but it is not sexism, it’s incompetence. As for the Booker Prize, why would anyone want to be considered for that pile of pretentious wank? Seriously. None of my scribbling will ever come close. I write pulp fiction designed to be mildly entertaining and am happy to do so. I also tend to have female protagonists, but that’s a personal thing. I have no intention of writing the kind of turgid worthy prose – nor do I waste time reading it these days, having made my eyes bleed reading Salman Rushdie – that makes Booker Prize material because I have better things to do with my time, such as poking pins in my eyes.

So, overall, I am pleased that the publishing world has chosen to ignore Shamsie’s nasty little exercise in third wave feminism – although rather than remain silent, they should have called it out for what it is; blatant sexism.

I suppose she could always try Leg Iron Books and see if she will get a sympathetic hearing there?

3 Comments

  1. having made my eyes bleed reading Salman Rushdie

    Agreed. Likewise ‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth. Dire. After a couple of chapters I decided to stick with ‘The Beano’. Much more intellectually satisfying.

    I suppose she could always try Leg Iron Books and see if she will get a sympathetic hearing there?

    Heh! I’d love to see his email response to a suggestion like that! 🙂

  2. Both the Booker prize and the Turner prize are just exercises in intellectual masturbation:-

    It’s unpleasant for any onlooker;
    It gives a warm glow of satisfaction to the perpetrator;
    It’s of no conceivable use to anyone else.

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