A few days ago I passed on a piece of news that had taken center-stage as an indication of the power of fans. The issue involved writing superstar J.K. Rowling, who had been asked (would “demanded” or “requested” be better words?) by Lynn Shepherd to stop writing. If not for a nobler reason, at least in order to give some space to the debutantes and the not-so-lucky.
"@white0gargoyle:What storm! "@JimMurrayAuthor:Crime author reaps whirlwind after urging JK Rowling to stop writing http://t.co/ACNdcxO3xL""
— Francisc Nona (@ferinona) March 2, 2014
One thinks
about this and somewhere, in the deep recesses of one’s hopeful mind, the
torturing thought appears to make sense. It’s not unlike asking a billionaire
to stop making so much money, lest poor startups are left with mere bones to
chew on. (Not to mention the really poor, who don’t even have a business to
complain about!)
Except we’re
not talking about making money here – in spite of the frighteningly big cheques
Rowling is cashing in. No, it’s not about money. It’s about writing. What
bothered the author of the anti-Rowling tirade (subsequently turned, of course,
into kind apologies) was the extent to which the mother of Harry Potter has
been monopolizing printed space. And that’s exactly where it doesn’t quite make
sense to complain. Why? Because there’s no such thing as monopoly in the world
of authors. Yes, yes, I know. I know about those who sell millions of copies, I
know about the Dan Browns, the Stephen Kings, and the Dean Koontz’s of the
writerly world who seem to have taken book selling to fictional dimensions. But
they are far from monopolizing literature. With or without them, literature is
doing just as fine. There are still Noble prizes to be won, the Booker grows in
prestige every year, and even if we don’t think much of these distinctions, the
success of the famous doesn’t stop cohorts of (often bad, often good)
self-published authors to rise to internet fame like mushrooms after a good
summer rain.
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| Lynn Shepherd via www.lynn-shepherd.com |
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| J.K. Rowling via mayhementertainment411 |
Let’s think
about it. Monopoly means the power of one.
It’s dictatorship, tyranny, bad stuff. In a monopoly situation all alternatives
are paralyzed. Is that what’s happening around the J.R. Rowling industry? Has
she killed all possibilities? Are there no other writers publishing and making
a lot of money? Are there no fans of other authors who hate Rowling just as
much but who would give their lives (metaphorically, of course) to the cause of
their own idols? If the answer to any of the above is ‘no,’ we can safely rule
out the possibility of monopoly.
One can’t accuse
J.K. Rowling of running a monopoly (which she isn’t properly running, since it’s
mostly done by her vehement readers) in Rowling Land. Neither can one accuse Dan Brown or
Stephen King of the same, when it all takes place in Brown Land or King Land.
What these things I call lands have in common is their isolation. They are exclusive
territories, with fans who throw their own tantrums, and with readers who have
their own tendencies towards xenophobia. But they don’t spill out. Not so much
as to worry anybody who is concerned by the fate of literature. They are mostly
confined to their reading pleasures and to the circles of aficionados they are
affiliated to. They don’t bother the reading time of those who want to read
Dickens or who think that Dickens is the only one worth one’s attention. The
latter, as we can see, aren’t any better than the former, since what they’re
advocating is an equally exclusivist approach to whatever is the object of reading.
My point is
this: reading is free. One cannot be
persuaded to read what one doesn’t like, which is not unlike saying the
opposite: that one always reads what one likes best. Whatever makes them happy!
And so, one’s
audience must not be taken to be the only audience there is. Because it’s not.
I, personally, haven’t read any of
J.R. Rowlings’ books. I didn’t do it because of some literary purism. I simply
never had time to approach them. The same way I’ve never had time to finish Anna Karenina. So I am not part of the
Rowling audience. But there are many, very many, who do belong in the class of Harry Potter readers. Why should I
stumble upon them? Why should I be frightened by them? Why should I be worried?
It’s likely we’re never going to cross paths. At the end of the day, we have
our own preferences and our own reading schedules, which may or may not
collide. If they do, we can talk; if they don’t, we don’t even have to pretend
we’ve never heard of each other.
The other side
On the
other hand, though, let’s take a look at the opponent as well. It’s only fair
to say that, if the argument from the freedom of expression is brought about,
then her point should be examined at least with some attention. I would, if I were
one of her critics, try to think positively about something that appears in eminently
negative lights. What I have in mind is a blog post by Chuck Wendig the other
day, who, on a completely different topic, was encouraging people in general (not necessarily the class of
readers) to think before judging. That would involve, in his words, thinking in terms such as the following:
“Assume that people who are outraged are sincere and earnest. You don’t have to think they’re right, mind you — nor do you need to appease and placate just because it’s outrage. But assume it’s real. Assume it comes from a place of hurt and not that it’s manufactured just for drama’s sake. Sure, sometimes it is. But you don’t know that and it’s very hard to tell unless you really know the heart of a person — how do you know that they’re just stirring shit because they like the smell and not because they’re actually upset? You don’t. Everyone should approach each other like they’re coming at common ground from different ends, not that they’re trying to burn the crops and salt the earth.”
Take a
positive twist on your darkest thoughts – this is Wendig’s point. That, to the
headless fury of offended fans, doesn’t quite occur as a possibility. Not very
often. But to think in response to this Rowling tornado, let’s admit it: the
critic was using a tool widely used since reading has become professional and
(more recently) interactive. And that tool is called criticism. Just like the fans who exploded against her, maybe all
this was her having a word to say about something she didn’t like. Somehow she
chose to focus on the wrong thing. Had she stopped at a more specific issue,
she would have generated one of those gentle debates that animate fan groups
around the world: things to do with character construction, style – you know,
the usual stuff of writing.
Fans have been adapting Shepherd's post,
making it into attacks against her own books.
The author of this video went on to post a similar 1-star review
on her Amazon account, just to make the point clearer.
But what if
Shepherd is onto something? At the end of the day, frankly speaking, yes: J.R.
Rowling is getting more primetime than many other authors. And yes, any article
published in a newspaper, a magazine, or a blog takes up print territory to the detriment of all
the other articles which could have appeared in the same space. So her
calculations are not so darn far-fetched as to completely exclude the point
she’s trying to make. Mathematically speaking, she’s right. She’s also right
statistically, and for the same reasons: the more attention is paid to a
writer, the more he or she gains in the fans department; and the more they do
so, the more likely it becomes for their names to appear at the top of all lists of
preferences. Poor unknowns, they can only contemplate the rise to power of
others, while their own work remains hidden in the clutter of anonymity.
There’s no real monopoly. Not in literature
It looks
like I’m returning to the same point over and over again: Lynn Shepherd got the
wrong footing on the problem by asking that Rowling stop writing to give the
world a better chance. Because – I’m saying it again, I don’t know why – there
is no monopoly. Or if there is, it is something way out of a writer’s control. If
we look at the list
of bestselling authors assembled by Wikipedia, Shakespeare and Agatha
Christie are the heads of the entire tribe of writers, with sales between 2 and
4 billion units. I don’t know about Christie, who seems to have grown on the
hype of popular culture in the 1970s and ‘80s; but Shakespeare? Poor man would
be gob smacked to see the extent to which his celebrity has taken his plays and
poetry.
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| William Shakespeare via Wikipedia |
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| Agatha Christie via www.nofemininonegocios.com |
What’s more important, though, Shakespeare had no contribution to the spreading
of his fame, which started taking off for real only in the late seventeenth
century, when he’d been mere shiny bones for about three quarters of a century.
His VIP status proves once again that ceasing to write (and to live altogether,
for that matter) is no guarantee that fame will plummet.
Who’s the exclusivist?
It’s not
clear if Rowling has retaliated. It would have been hardly necessary, since her
fans have taken the issue into their able hands and manufactured enough damage
to go with the campaign.
You can’t
mess with a Lamborghini of contemporary literature and expect to get away with
it. That’s a simple lesson many should learn right now, before they put their
minds to doing something similar. A lesson Lynn Shepherd was very much aware of (see the
first paragraph of her article). But if we look at things from a certain
perspective it’s not even hard to see that the one who’s attempting a monopoly
is not Rowling, but Shepherd herself. How else could one interpret words such
as these:
“By all means keep writing for kids, or for your personal pleasure – I would never deny anyone that – but when it comes to the adult market you’ve had your turn.”
When you
want to shut a door so as to keep someone out, whoever that someone may be, you’re
sending bad vibes around yourself. And then wait till the passionate ones react…
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