The Booker Prize isn't as important as a lot of folk think

Tim Worstall reports on a lefty professor's comments about the Booker Prize:

The Booker now has a stranglehold on how people think of, read, and value books in Britain. It has no serious critics. Those who berate its decisions about individual awardees (James Kelman’s prize back in 1994 prompted one judge to say it was “frankly, crap”) ritually add to its allure.

Thing is that, if we look at book sales in the UK, the Booker Prize is marginal at best. I remember reading a tale from SF writer Neal Stephenson where he talked about being at a literary event with a well-regarded writer of literary fiction. From memory it went something like this:

Writer: "So what do you do for a living?"

Stephenson: "I write"

It continued in the vein because the writer (a tenured professor at a good university) couldn't get to grips with the fact that Stephenson earned a very good living writing science fiction - indeed the Baroque Trilogy is one of the very best ever science fiction trilogies. All the writers this person knew had another job, most usually in or associated with a place of learning.

We need to remember that over half of book sales are children's books and non-fiction while 60% or more of adult fition sales are genre (crime, romance, fantast, science fiction, historical).

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The ten books every child should read before leaving school (or why I hate English Literature revisited)

"These are the ten books every child should read before they leave school". So proclaims the headline of yet another attempt to create a new canon - this time by the time-honoured process of surveying 500 English teachers. This list (with the possible exception of Harry Potter) is unsurprising - the obvious couple of George Orwell books, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, some stuff by Dickens and the godawful Pride and Prejudice (or Gold Diggers of 1815 as I like to call it).

It really is time these teachers got out from under their obsession with Dickens, Austen and 20th century American literature (almost all of which is much better in film than prose). And chose a different, more interesting, relevant and challenging set of texts for children to read. Is it any surprise that people are turned off reading for pleasure if the dreary existence of Lennie Small is rammed down their throats at school. I can't think of a less relevant book to a 14 year old Pakistani girl in Bradford.

And the same goes for the rest - again with the possible exception of Harry Potter. What we haven't got here is any literature that presses the sorts of button that film and TV are pressing in the minds of modern British children. And it shows, which is the worst failing of English literature as a subject, the sad narrowness of the way it's taught. So here's a two-fingered salute to the English teachers and Simon's list of ten books every child should read before leaving school (except I don't mean it, of course):

1. Neuromancer - William Gibson's birth of cyberpunk novel, a picture of the on-line world created before we were all on-line.
2. Dune - Frank Herbert's masterpiece: want to know where the Star Wars themes came from? A pseudo-religion based on mind control, a galactic empire, good vs evil, giant worms and psychoactive drugs on which everything depends.
3. Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner takes us to an over-populated world filled with pop-up ads, drive-by shootings, suicide bombers and dysfunctional governments
4. A good translation of Beowulf - either Tolkein's prose translation or the stunning (if less true to the text) epic poem by Seamus Heaney. This is where we come from - ur-England and we should not lose it
5. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks explores teenage violence including the eponymous wasp factory. More contemporary than Lord of the Flies by encompassing mental illness and isolation, issues of importance to teenagers
6. The Lord of the Rings - it wasn't voted the best novel for nothing and Tolkein's great work isn't merely a fantasy. It's themes grow out from the myths and legends of Northern Europe and link to the idea of quest and the powerful message that, in the end, we all have it within us to do the extraordinary
7. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - OK the original radio series probably sets the bar too high for later books and films but the books are funny, interesting and filled with thoughts and ideas that really do speak to modern life
8. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick's alternative history is brief, telling and a great reminder that we all have in us the capacity for good and for great evil.
9. I, Robot - Isaac Asimov's best robot book (and nothing at all like the film of the same name) coins the three laws of robotics which every child should discuss and debate for it really is their future now
10. Swallows and Amazons - we've sort of forgotten about how childhood should be and, more than any other novel, Arthur Ransome's tale of kids mucking about on boats in the Lake District is the best evocation of the glory years of childhood.

You can pick your own ten or a dozen or fifty. The point here is that my list is every bit as good - no better - than the list those English teachers have churned out. I think it would be great if every child read these books but I know that some would be hated - as I hate Pride and Prejudice - by young people forced to read them or told that this stuff they don't like is what we mean by "good literature". I'm sure that your list might feature a different emphasis - urban grit, mystery, romance or whimsy. There's no right answer and what we should be doing is hoping that every child reaches 18 having created their own list of ten fantastic books that really mean something, that they'll bore their own children about and maybe write up in indulgent blog posts.

Get reading folks!

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No book programmes on TV? Rather than moan about it, Mr Harris, go and make one

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I make no secret of my dislike for the manner in which books (and arts in general) are discussed by the folk in the media. So I was struck by the report that Robert Harris, who I gather is a successful author, had a go at the BBC - and broadcasting in general - for its coverage of 'books':

‘Today we have 300 television channels and no dedicated book programme and it does seem to me that that is an absolute disgrace,’ he told the audience, who cheered in response. ‘The BBC, a monetary funded organisation, should do a bit more to help business. Whether we write fiction or non fiction, we provide the basis for movies, for documentaries and I do think Tony Hall if you’re watching this on the BBC news do a little bit more for the book trade please."

OK, let's take Mr Harris at his word and agree that (as he told the reporter) there is a demand for a TV programme about books. If this is the case then there is a market opportunity and Mr Harris, rather than expecting the BBC to spend taxpayers money on making such a programme, should invest his own cash - or cash from other investors - in what is clearly a great business idea.

Unless, of course, the demand is only from the tiny audience of self-important glitterati in which case, Mr Harris, this is just special pleading.

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“A book is a loaded gun.” So ban them or burn them.

 

One of the first targets of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi organization were books. This began in 1933, shortly after Hitler seized power in Germany. He ordered leaders of the regime to confiscate and destroy any literature deemed subversive to the National Socialist agenda. The elimination of these documents was carried out in a ceremonial fashion. Public book burnings were held for all the citizens to view. These demonstrations were held in both Germany and Austria. All works authored by Jewish, communist, pacifist, socialist, anarchist and classic liberals were fair game.

It does seem that we have learnt nothing. Here - in the latest example of Labour's selective memory about free speech - is a proposal to ban Hitler's turgid racist tome, Mein Kampf:

“Of course Amazon – and indeed any other bookseller – is doing nothing wrong in selling the book. However, I think that there is a compelling case for a national debate on whether there should be limits on the freedom of expression,” writes Docherty to Javid.

Of course Docherty is very careful to tiptoe around making a specific proposal to ban Mein Kampf but the very fact that he can countenance such a ban (or a limited ban where only a few specially licensed academics can view Adolf's incoherent racist ramblings) reveals just how much of a problem the left has with the idea of free speech.

The question for Docherty is where the line is drawn. Do we draw it, as he suggests around the idea of 'hatred' and if so what do we mean by hatred? Do we consider the consequences of a given writing - in which case Das Kapital is just as much a candidate for Docherty's Ban with its fomenting hatred of enterprise, initiative and free choice. And what are we do do about religious books like the Koran or Bible with their incitement to kill infidels, execute gays, stone adulterers and slice chunks off burglars? Do we ban them too?

What should worry us most isn't merely the fact of a Labour MP calling for books to be banned but the concluding rational that Docherty puts up:

Docherty said that the reality today is that if “someone puts the contents of Mein Kampf on to a blog, the police would knock on their door …

This is maybe true. And if it is, it is a damning observation of our supposedly free society. It scares me just how close we are to banning books simply because they promote ideas we find discomforting, disturbing or contrary to the current 'truth' and 'wisdom'. We need books - all of them, good and bad:

“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves” 

So wrote Ray Bradbury in his passionate defence of the book, Fahrenheit 451. Docherty and the other banners or burners are scared, fearful the good men will be corrupted by words on the page. That we won't see through to the evil or some ideas - whether from Trotsky or Hitler, Guevara or Goebbels. Docherty and all the anti-free speech left are wrong. We are stronger, better and more decent than that - and we deserve the right to know evil for what it is.

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Transition Network - smug folk who want higher prices

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There's a particular sort - I call them 'local protectionists' - who think the salvation for poor communities, indeed for our economy, is for prices to be higher. That's right folks - there really are people out there who believe poverty will be resolved, sustainability achieved and resiliance maintained by stuff being more expensive.

I've written about Transition Towns before pointing out that they don't do what they claim at all (assuming 'helping the poor' is part of the point) but actively make life worse for the least well off in the communities they colonise.

Their nonsense - dangerous, divisive, damaging nonsense - is encapsulated in this smug post from Rob Hopkins, the daddy of Transition Towns and ruiner of Totnes. The post catalogues Rob's little adventure closing down his Amazon account:

I've done it.  I've closed my Amazon account.  I now stand before you as an ex-Amazon account-holder.  I feel curiously shaky, but at the same time empowered, excited even.

It's OK, the blog calms down a little as Rob explains all about how evil Amazon is as a business and how he not only wanted to close the account but wanted his reasons ('I don't like how you do business') to be registered. Perhaps even tattooed on Jeff Bezos' backside.

And Rob then concludes with a call for higher prices:

Me, I resolve to buy less, but better. Less, but longer-lasting. Less, but local. The thought of where we will end up in 5 years time, 10 years time, 20 years time, if companies like Amazon continue as they are, really frightens me. It's not good, it's not right. It's not about our needs, it's about the needs of huge investors. I want a different world for my boys. I can't, on my own, do that much about it. I can't insist that the UK government legislate so that, as in Holland, the Recommended Retail Price (RRP) is the legal minimum at which any book can be sold, although I think that is grounds for a really timely campaign. 

We used to have price fixing for books. Publishers loved it. And books were more expensive (lots more expensive). This smug bloke wants those prices to be higher - for rules to passed to make this so. And for all of us to be less well off.


Dreadful.

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The Spectator parades its SF ignorance (again)

Apparently Douglas Adams is the only ever comedy science fiction writer:

Had he not died 12 years ago, Douglas Adams would have been recovering today from celebrating his 61st birthday. Yesterday, Google produced a doodle in his memory. And the Guardian published an interesting piece which declared that Adams remains the king of comedy SF, before going on to argue that he was unique, pretty much the only writer in that genre. Take a bow Mr Adams; you’re top of a league of one.

Funny that the Guardian article didn't say anything of the sort - it even cites some other SF comic writers! The point was rather that Adams broke through to a much wider audience, something that other SF comedians largely failed to do. As ever The Spectator parades its SF ignorance.

And the grandpa of SF comic writers - and writer of "And then there were none" - Eric Frank Russell needs a bit more of a hearing:

“You seem to fit the part all right. Your technical record is first-class. Your disciplinary record stinks to high heaven.' He eyed his listener blank faced. 'Two charges of refusing to obey a lawful order. Four for insolence and insubordination. One for parading with your cap on back to front. What on earth made you do that?'

I had a bad attack of what-the-hell, sir,' explained Leeming.” 

That's from 'Next of Kin" (originally published as "The Space Willies" - which I could explain but that would be too much of a spoiler) - a real laugh out loud book. Go read!

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Gold Diggers of 1813

I tried. I really did try. I picked up that book, peered at its small text, checked its heft and began to read. After all, the English Literature folk told us it was THE BOOK. Captivating, challenging, fascinated, filled with wonder and marvellous writing.

I open the page and begin to read:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

A smile crosses my face. I know that bit. Everyone knows that bit - it's the whole point of the book (or maybe those literary mavens haven't read past the first line either). I plod on, characters unfold before me - assorted Bennet's some chap called Darcy and a gaggle of other girls, boys, men and women. I may, of course, be mixing my reading up with glimpses of TV and film adaptations. But whatever, it's just a book about gossip.

It is a dreadful indictment of English Literature that such glory is placed on this elaborately bedecked monument to the trite. Or so it seems to me - how a novel of manipulative gold-digging set in an exclusive, limited world got to be held up as such a paragon escapes me entirely. Yet it sets the tone for our literature - or at least for that literature considered to be "good" by the cognoscenti. A shallow little story - no breadth of vision, no painting of the world, just a pinched, narrow little place filled with gossip and tittle tattle, giggles and frills.

What sort of place are we if consider well-written but shallow stories to be the acme of literature. That 200 years after publication, whole pages in hundreds of newspapers, journals and magazines are given over to polishing a petty little story of 18th century middle-class gossip.

But then one of the moments I will cherish to my grave was the sight of Clive Anderson having to announce that "The Lord of the Rings" had beaten "Pride & Prejudice" to win the BBC's "Big Read"!

The right book won, of course.

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I guess most members of the Society of Authors never studied statistics...

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A little storm on a bookshelf stirred up by the Society of Authors (an august body that I'd never heard of - can't see why authors need a society but, hey, that's there business) over the Public Lending Right (PLR) scheme that gives authors a payment based on how many times their books are borrowed from public libraries.

Last week DCMS confirmed that most community libraries will not be included in the Public Lending Right scheme (PLR) which provides authors with a modest payment...

And...

Taking volunteer libraries out of the scheme will lead to a drop in book loans which may encourage Government to propose cutting the already meagre fund still further.

Essentially, the Society of Authors having had the system explained to them (a sample of libraries is taken - mostly for convenience large central libraries - from which an estimate of borrowing numbers is calculated) have decided to make up a scare story to cover up their embarrassment. There are actually no changes to the scheme and authors will be paid precisely what they would have been paid prior to the arrival of these community (i.e. volunteer run) libraries.

More importantly, the argument that "taking volunteer libraries out of the scheme will lead to a drop in book loans" is patent nonsense. Unless of course the Society of Authors can find some evidence that borrowing rates have some relationship to the amount of PLR paid to authors - which that can't because there isn't any.

And somehow I doubt that authors will suddenly stop writing because that cheque for £270 (roughly the average author payment under the scheme) doesn't land on the mat. Or is a little less - perhaps £220.

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Some thoughts on toll bridges and copyright

Driving home from City Hall this afternoon I listened to a sweet little interview with a woman who had bought a toll bridge.

Grahame Penny and Maggie Taylor paid £403,000 for the Whitney-on-Wye bridge between Hereford and Hay-on-Wye. The crossing, which comes with a two-bedroom cottage and 1.1 acres, was built in 1779 and was granted exemption from tax by an Act of Parliament as it was privately funded.  It brings in around £2,000 per week but the couple will have to pay for annual maintenance and any staff costs.

It seemed to me that this little property might help us to understand the debate that carries on about copyright and intellectual property. But more of that in a minute – firstly we need to understand that ‘property’ is not a thing but a ‘right’. The access to my house is across land in the ownership of others but that access is my property – I do not own the land but own the right to cross that land so as to reach my house. I cannot parcel up that right but I can, should I wish, sell it -  which is what Bradford Council does with the right to fish in Chellow Dene reservoirs.

Mr Penny & Mrs Taylor own a bridge across the Wye and are permitted by law to charge you for the use of that bridge. When you drive up and hand over the necessary 80 pence, you are permitted – you have bought the right – to cross the bridge. Just once – if you come along tomorrow, you will have to pay again to have the right to cross the bridge.

Similarly, when I go to the cinema I buy a ticket allowing me to watch a particular film once and once only. If I want to watch that film again, I have to pay again just as I do with the toll bridge. And the same applies to a host of other rights to make use of another’s property – railway tickets, amusement parks, football matches and theatrical performances all spring to mind in this regard. Indeed, we even have to pay to use the lavatory.

All of these are examples where the right to use a particular “resource” is granted to the purchaser on a limited basis – most usually one use but it could be unlimited uses for a given period of time or a pre-determined number of uses. Copyright operates under the same principle – when you buy something ‘created’ by someone else it could be for your exclusive use or more typically for your use alone. Just as your 80p gets you one trip across Mr Penny & Mrs Taylor’s bridge, the money you hand over for an e-book to go on your kindle give you the use of that work and no-one else.

Without this protection, how are we to prevent you taking that e-book and selling it yourself? Not just to Mrs Smith next door but to thousands of others – all of whom might have bought the book. Even worse, you may choose to simply give the e-book away to anyone who wants it completely destroying the opportunity for the creator to benefit from his efforts. And it doesn’t really matter whether the creator is a multi-billion dollar film studio or a penniless writer in a damp flat.

If the creator chooses to let you use his work on this basis that is his right. But to suggest that he should have his right curtailed because “information wants to be free” is to create a circumstance where a man cannot profit from his own creativity. There is a case for debating what is covered by copyright – is a musical performance copyright or merely the music itself, for example – but the concept is absolutely central to the success of service economies.

The problem is not one of principle – copyright remains important – but of enforcement. Put simply, the on-line world makes it more and more difficult to police copyright effectively. And, as we have seen with the music industry, this pressure results in a dramatic change in business model. It is safe to bet that the same problem will be faced by the book publishing industry (the journal publishing business started its change and began its debate some twenty years ago) and the film industry.

And the main impact of this will be to make the published, copyright-compliant product much cheaper. Which is as it should be – instead of paying several thousand pounds for a subscription to the Journal of Consumer Marketing, the library now pays the same price for access to over 100 journals in that publishers portfolio. And the same will apply with music, books and films.

But this is not about getting rid of copyright, it is about the business models needed in an environment where the comprehensive policing of copyright simply isn’t an option.

However, we still have to remember that the more free riders, the less likely people are to create. To return to our toll bridge, Mr Penny & Mrs Taylor face competition from free bridges elsewhere on the river but that isn’t an argument for removing their rights.  So why should that fact that the web has led to an increase in free riders mean that copyright owners should lose their rights?

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Put the books down, look out the window and think for yourself.

Once upon a time there was a blank page – Locke’s tabula rasa. We couldn’t lean on some other persons thinking as a replacement for our own consideration of the truth. We had to look, listen, poke at, pull apart and generally fuss around at the world so as to get some information – followed by thinking about what it all meant.

Somewhere we’ve lost this – not entirely but mostly. Rather than craft our own arguments based on the evidence we’ve found, we turn instead to Professor X or Doctor Y and say, “look at the very clever person and what they say, I am clever too because I’ve read their writing and cleverer still for telling you about its wonders!”

Essays, articles, reports – even dissertations – are constructed through the careful rewashing of someone else’s work. This isn’t plagiarism, nor is it entirely without use but such an approach reveals in us a lack of thoughtfulness, a craven adherence to the status quo presented by our betters. We comply with authority’s bias and prejudice for fear that disagreement would mark us apart and down.

The creation of entire philosophies through the recycling of others' opinion – I quote someone, someone else quotes me quoting that someone and so on until the original someone quotes me quoting him! Replacing that blank page we have a vast wall covered in scribble, indecipherable as a whole but interpreted by a select group who understand the occult nature of that graffiti. As a result we learn nothing but that some acolytes are granted the great privilege to interpret the myths for us lay supplicants. And woe betide those who question those acolytes.

Perhaps we should start to question the basis of our policy-making – the pretence that the evidence it uses is real, the fiction that its processes allow for genuine review. What we need isn’t just a politics of doubt but a rediscovery of autodidact questioning and the questioning of authority. We need an end to telling people their opinion is worth less than some other person clutching a piece of paper from one university or another.

Above all we need to promote and champion people who doubt – who start with that tabula rasa rather than with someone else’s – be it Marx, Keynes or Rothbard – prescription for perfection.

Put the books down, look out the window and think for yourself.

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The Clear Out

The task is now - but for the odd straggler lurking in further flung corners of the house - complete. All our considerable collection of music is loaded on to the computer. The question is whether to keep the huge piles of CDs or to send them down the road for some other folks' pleasure?

And, as you know with these things, there are two sorts of people - chuckers and hoarders. Some folk take a great delight in clearing things out - clothes, books, records, CDs, kitchen utensils, wives, children. Gleefully disposing of all the flotsam and jetsam of our lives so as to remain in minimalist perfection.

Others, however, hoard. Collecting everything - gas bills, train tickets, football programmes, spoons. A vast array of life's detritus clogs up the house, the shed, the car's govebox making it actually impossible ever to find anything at all. So a task force is created to clear out and you disappear into the mounds of collected stuff.

What follows are little whimpers of delight. Brief explosions of pleasure at the discovery of something you'd forgotten you had - maybe its a programme for the 1970 Cup Final Replay or The Times Guide to the House of Commons for 1950. But more likely just a programme from the village gala or a tatty guide to some stately home or other. We shuffle through piles of magazines - The Economist, White Dwarf (the really old AD&D ones before it all got Warhammered) and the Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice - before latching on to a box of old records, cassette tapes or matchbox cars.


We lose track of time, we forget the aim of reducing some of this collection, this hoard. But what joy as we remind ourselves why we kept all that stuff. And will still keep it!

Clear out? We tried.

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Libraries really do need to change, you know

Yesterday, I had an interesting, if inconclusive conversation about the future of public libraries. Partly, this took place in the context of funding being withdrawn from the Bookstart** programme – a decision, some suggest will result in thousands of illiterate youths littering our streets unable to take a full part because they didn’t have “access” to books when they were at school.

Now, stepping aside from this argument (although I do note that even with this wonderful scheme we’re managing to churn out a truly depressing number of innumerate, illiterates from our schools), I think it sensible to consider the point and purpose of the public library. And, indeed whether the manner in which we organise the service continues to fit the purpose.

Bradford has 32 libraries (plus a mobile service of which more later) that get around 29,000 visits each week (which is around 1.5 million each year) from a population of 506,000 – which means that just below 6% of the district’s population visit in a given week. For a service seen as so critical to the future of the district this is a pretty poor show especially when 36% of library users are over 60 (and 31% describe themselves as “wholly retired”)*.

The truth is that public lending libraries are – to most of us – something of an anachronism. A generation of people brought up to use libraries continue to do so but there isn’t a replacement generation – or more accurately, not sufficient of a replacement generation to justify sustaining public lending libraries in their current form.

At the same time we continue to read – and in growing quantities if book sales figures are to be believed (these are for Q1 2010):

It reports that home sales have grown marginally by volume from 84.3m to 84.4m units, while value decreased by 3.3% from £287m to £278m. Conversely, export value sales grew by 2.4% from £196m to £201m, while volume sales decreased by 4.5% from 54.2m to 51.8m units.

And the biggest driver behind that increase was “volume sales of children’s books”!

Any local councillor will tell you, however, that you meddle with libraries at your peril! And you certainly don’t close them – that’s a sure recipe for petitions, protests and “more-in-sorrow-than-anger” letters to the local papers. Yet those same people protesting are often the very same people who have stopped using the library. The 94% who won’t be visiting this week.

Moreover, that 6% aren’t the needy, the poor, those who can’t afford to buy books. They are people who like the fact that they can get reading for free from the local council. Most of them are middle-class folk who also buy a lot of books. We should not kid ourselves that the poor are going anywhere near libraries – except on those one or two compulsory occasions when, in a search for scenery change the class teacher drags her charges down to the library.

We should begin to think more creatively about libraries – co-locating them with schools, increasing the use of mobile libraries that allow places like Cullingworth to have a service despite not having a library, targeting specific groups such as the housebound and disabled (particularly those with impaired vision where the general market doesn’t always suit) and making use of the library buildings for a wider range of services.

Above all thought should be given to what attracts folk – the old reading room concept no longer works, the lending library function is declining and specialist services (film, music and such like) are often better provided on-line. It beats me why great town centre libraries like that in Keighley don’t partner with one of the coffee chains – taking a leaf from the bookshop book so to speak. And why should we not charge those borrowing books a modest subscription? Most could afford £25 a year to use the library (and we could give discounts to children and workless) and that would go some way towards securing the service.

Lending libraries came about because books – and they were hardback books – were expensive. It meant that people who couldn’t afford all those pricey publications could have access to them – could read the wonders of our great canon of literature (or – as is more common – six romance novels a fortnight).

Today it isn’t the price of books that stops people from reading, it’s that people aren’t interested in reading. They don’t want to bury themselves in what some smug literary critic (in this case from the Guardian) calls “thought-provoking books” because, to put it pretty bluntly, most of the literary novels that clutter up the prize shortlists are really dull. A little bit of me smiles with pleasure at the fact that Katie Price (or rather whoever wrote the book with her name on) outsells the entire Booker shortlist!

The time has come to free local councils from the straitjacket of their statutory duty and to allow a new generation of creative centres of knowledge, learning and pleasure to replace the old, stale and declining public lending library.

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*I will add a caveat to this by saying that the user survey – because of the way it is conducted almost wholly fails to capture numbers of users under the age of 15

**As a slight aside - I fail entirely to see why the publishing industry, filled as it is with wealthy, righteous lefties like Paul Hamlyn can't find it in its heart and deep pockets to find £10 million or so to carry on the programme. That seems a more honest and honourable approach than holding a gun to the taxpayers' heads

Thoughts on the bookshelf (and a gentle rant about artistic snobbery)

When you visit other people's houses do you take the chance to take a peek at the bookshelves (assuming they're the sort of folk that have such things, of course)? And do you consider that the bookshelf tells you a thing or two about the people you're visiting?

I find that books do tell you something about a person - my bookshelves (part of the biography section is in the picture above) will tell you that, when it comes to literature, we're pretty middlebrow - there's no Jane Austen, no Thomas Hardy and very little in the way of 20th (or 21st) Century literary novels. But then, as the shelf above tells you I'm firmly in the "Tolkein was the greatest 20th century writer" camp and watched with enormous pleasure a few years ago as The Lord of the Rings pipped Pride & Prejudice to the title of best ever book (or whatever). And the greatest pleasure came from seeing the disappointment of the clever-clever luvvies who would never admit to liking the book!

I'll be honest. I've tried to read these 'great novels' that make up the canon of English literature. I really have. But I can't get into them. The stories are thin, the characters are unattractive, the writing is stolid and you get page after page of 'oh so clever' description. Give me a good science fiction novel or a decent thriller any day - real stories with beginnings middles and ends. Yet, such delights are seen - somewhat sniffily - by many literary folk as somehow not proper writing even when they write the stuff. Here's Jeanette Winterson:

I hate science fiction. But good writers about science, such as Jim Crace or Margaret Atwood, are great. They take on science because it’s crucial to our world, and they use language to give energy to ideas. But others just borrow from science and it ends up like the emperor’s new clothes, with no understanding of the material. But you shouldn’t fake it because science is too important, it’s the basis for our lives. I expect a lot more science in fiction because science is so rich. I certainly learn from my books as I go along.

See what I mean? And we get round the problem by calling Margaret Atwood's science fiction, 'speculative fiction' instead. Which rather makes the point - most people can't see beyond the politically-correct banalities of Star Trek or the childish good humour of Doctor Who. Such people don't consider Frankenstein to be science fiction yet it undoubtedly qualifies - after all it explores the use and abuse of science, the ethics of humans creating life and the problem of identity (explored also by Asimov in 'I, Robot' and, delightfully, by Douglas Adams in 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy').

But I ramble - the point is that my tastes are mine. They are not better or worse than those who like literary novels and have read 'Sense & Sensibility' for pleasure. So why do people who have those highbrow tastes feel qualified to peer down at us lesser folk? Why is it that the great and serious literary discussion on TV and radio is always about the latest batch of dreary novels selected as some prize's shortlist (unless, of course, that prize is for horror, for crime writing or for fantasy)? The truth is that - just as is true across all of the arts - the public likes what the public likes. And the great and the good discuss the stuff most of the public think is crap and bemoan the fact that romance novels, musicals, twee pop songs and Jack Vettriano are preferred by us proles!

And Jack has it about right too!

"Every year the national galleries are given a budget from which to purchase new work for the collections and that money is the taxpayer's, but it seems to me that they take little notice of the taxpayer's money. Maybe, if they did take notice of what the taxpayers wanted then the b––––––– would actually show my work."

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