As darkness fell and the rain could be heard lightly hitting the wigwam this evening, Irvine Welsh and Paul Morley settled in for what started out as an intelligent chat about what it meant to be a writer. Towards the end it became one of the most lively and interactive discussions of the event so far.
It quickly became very clear that Paul Morley and Irvine Welsh are a great deal more intelligent than any of their previous media appearances had led us to believe. Over the course of an hour the very point that the media warps and reduces down intelligence to something more “manageable” became a core part of the conversation, and ultimately became an audience debate.
The media it was argued, assumes the audience is stupid. The systems in place, the way quality is determined by publishers, bookshops, critics, even some of the audience, all progresses an ethos of dumbness on the part of the consumer.
Publishers need to select material that will be popular as their metric of success is sales. They assume that intelligent or experimental work will be harder to promote and find prominent shelf space in bookshops, because the audience is not clever enough to digest that kind of work on its merit.
Booksellers – at least the large chains – need to select material that they think will be popular, as their metric of success is sales. They don’t want to take intelligent/experimental work from publishers because the sales cycle assumes that their customers are stupid and that a buying decision needs to be instinctive rather than a considered and intelligent choice.
Critics need to position themselves from a perspective of popularity, as their measure of success is how many people agree with them. They aren’t as bothered about whether the audience agrees with them as they are whether the publishers, booksellers and ultimately their editors believe they are able to accurately predict that a book will sell well. Therefore, they need to take the position that publishers and booksellers have adopted: the audience is stupid.
The word best used to describe this situation is “commodification”. By reducing art – specifically literature in this context, but the argument applies to all culture – to a commodity that can be packaged, branded and sold through simple marketing messages, ultimately the market heads towards mediocrity.
The audience raised several good points about ways to address this. For starters self-publishing through Print-on-Demand and online services no longer has the cost or issues related to self publishing/rip-off merchants of the past. Welsh pointed to Chuck Palahniuk who has fostered an online community that means he could very easily eliminate his publisher with future releases and sell directly himself. Part of the reason he would remain successful however, would be he fact that as author of Fight Club and other cult classics he is an established name with a core fan base that will assure him of sales.
What about new-comers? How do the young talent get to that point?
Morley developed a point that ultimately the media were to blame. “If you were going to lay landmines right now to change this situation, I’d start with the media”, he said. “The conservative media we have today frightens me”, was a point he had made earlier. Phrases like “cultural revolution” started to crop up. Other felt there was a conspiracy that the media needed the audience to be kept dumb in order to be able to get away with lies that they tell.
The debate spilled out of the tent and into the bar. What does “good” mean in the context of literature? Will it always transcend above the mediocre? Does the metric of “sales” define it, or can a piece of work be considered “good” and only be loved by a handful of people?
All deep and philosophical points as the conversation moves into the night, and the talent make the most of the networking opportunities a night in Urbis affords.
Faced with choices right now I feel that I can best serve my intentions of being here by getting some sleep for a few hours. I will return in the morning bright and refreshed and willing to take on the tail end. By the looks of things, the enthusiasm and interest is not waning within the talent and so all hail to them.
I have to go and dream about Zen And The Art of Motorcylce Maintenance before dawn.
Dim Sum Digital 