I note that on May 6th Ginny asked:
The thing I can't figure out is why some authors … feel that they know they automatically are exempted from prizes because of the way they write. That does not make sense to me. Why should that be? What are they lacking?
I'd like to suggest that one of the things that we have to consider here is an element that I don't believe has been mentioned yet, that of the publishing business itself. In the last two decades it has changed dramatically.
The Random House of Bennett Cerf, Simon & Schuster, Borzoi Books, … all of the familiar names that have, in the past, published not only the best-known authors but which have made the ongoing effort to uncover and publish what they deemed the most worthy of new authors, are gone now. As many of you may know, these familiar book publishers, along with a great many lesser known houses, have been absorbed by some of the giant “media” businesses and in some cases by business men that have had no experience whatever in publishing but who have made fortunes in unrelated fields of commerce. The common object of all of them has been to increase the bottom line profitability of their business holdings and in their thirst for greater profitability they have expected publishing to yield to their familiar and predictable rules of the marketplace for ever greater returns on their investment.
There can be no question but that the “blockbuster” new novel is highly profitable for its publisher. The next Harold Robbins, Stephen King, Tom Clancy or Jacqueline Susann have made fortunes for themselves and for their publishers, and in such authors the new publishing businesses have sought a formula for recognizing, publishing and promoting them. Literary merit is
not a consideration in such an approach, as it was for, say, someone like Bennett Cerf of Random House or Simon & Schuster's Richard Simon (Carly Simons' father), even though reviews and flyleaf's promotions on a new book jacket would have us believe otherwise.
The popular authors that I have named have come to be called “formula writers” in many circles, i.e. they deliberately write to appeal to the greatest possible numbers in the potential book-buying public and their successes have been in popularity and financial accomplishment rather than so-called ”literary merit.” They are all recognized as the authors of “page-turners” rather than as offering beautiful prose, or any novel or timeless, unexplored insights into the nature of the human experience—one of the traditional measures of literary merit. Tom Clancy's dialogue is often clunky, awkward and not at all natural; Jacqueline Susann wrote in a preposterously melodramatic soap opera style, calculated to keep us glued to the page. It was writing unrelated to the lives that most live, but it was wildly popular and a money maker; good “escape” reading; good entertainment, as in a movie.
So then, back to Ginny's question.
I suspect that any of the popular authors, and perhaps the one that Ginny referred to, are doing nothing more in saying that “ … they know they automatically are exempted from prizes because of the way they write” are telling us that they do not aspire to be another William James, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser or Wallace Stegner. That's a pretty rarefied atmosphere to be keeping company in. A great many of us would rather find the Hope diamond in our backyard than the Rosetta Stone. The Booker, Pulitzer, etc., are still awarded for what I have called literary merit, rather than popularity. In some cases the issue isn't that they are “lacking” anything, but rather that they have made a choice; a choice for notoriety and a fat wallet. Indeed, many of our popular authors are incapable of the kind of writing that would garner them a literary prize, but then the consolation prize isn't all that bad, now is it?
