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I Go to London
There's nothing so unfriendly as a large city.
London proclaims its hugeness completely with its taciturn commuters and
tight-lipped cab-drivers. Anywhere else in the world it's impossible to
stop a taxi driver from talking--they're like prisoners on death row,
hungry for human contact. Not here. It's twenty-five degrees Celsius in
late April--unheard of weather. It is just five days until the general
elections--everyone knows that Labour will steam in. Still, my taxi driver
has nothing to say, nor does the porter at my hotel, or the newspaper
vendor, or anybody else for that matter. London has not changed at all.
I am here for the tenth anniversary celebrations of the Commonwealth
Writers Prize. Sia Figiel has won a regional prize for her novel Where
We Once Belonged, and Pasifika Press has sent me over to represent the
company which published the work and to tie up UK rights for it. When it is
over and I am seated in a plane high above Siberia, my journey here will
remind me of Ross McKelvie's film Sherman's March, in which the
documentary maker receives a US$20,000 grant to make a film about the
American Civil War, but spends his time and the money on visiting family
and friends, and surviving prospective spouses. I come a long distance to
make, I feel, little or no headway on my immediate task, but wander around
the London I used to know quite well, bumping into my past at pubs, those
pokey London squares and parks, and on the streets which are still the home
of the homeless and are still unevenly paved, without gold or any sign of
Dick Whittington's cat.
It turns out that the Commonwealth Writers Festival is just that: a
writers' festival. The authors, old and new, are bused about the
metropolis. An ex-colonial school-marm marshals these poor (destitute is
probably a more accurate word) 'creative spirits' about like the sergeant
major from a Boer War garrison. The writers speak, sign books and then
return to their hotel rooms in Kensington. Some, like Sia, sneak out at
night for illicit drinks, or during the day for lunches in the West End. I
gather that they do have time to talk with one another, because they are
all very enthusiastic about one another's work. But the over-riding
impression is that they are actors in another BBC production of
Colditz, and must band together in order to survive the severe
deprivations war encourages and to repel the immense cultural onslaught
their capturers' empire imposes on them.
Publishers are not allowed ... although there is space for 'important'
publishing houses. Faber & Faber and Longmans somehow receive trestles
on which they load huge piles of Asian, African and Caribbean literature.
The only book from or about my part of the world seems to be a collection
of essays on the work of Janet Frame.
There is, in fact, little or no space for small independent publishers such
as Pasifika, Zimbabwe's Baobab Books and South Africa's Hibbard Publishers,
all of whom have sent over representatives at great cost in order to
support their authors publicly. It's as if, between the author's concept
of the work and events such as these prize-givings nothing happens--the
books just make themselves--and, because only the larger publishing houses
are able to push funds which might be used for book production into that
glitzy world of book promotion, the book world appreciates the final
product, its packaging and packagers more than the creative process which
made the work. Sometimes, too, authors seemed dazed by the product of their
labours, and seem to forget what brought them to put pen to paper at the
start. Here I am, then, in the centre of London cynically poking holes in
the fabric of an industry--nay, a craft, an art!--which not so long ago I
considered truly vocational. Only a city as large and unfriendly as London
can produce such disaffection.
I talk at length with Irene Staunton of Baobab about small publishers like
ourselves. Are we 'Commonwealth' publishers, 'Third World' publishers, or
simply 'Bottom of the Heap' publishers? As Faber, Chatto and Penguin jockey
to secure rights to our authors' next books, we ask ourselves why we bother
to support a system which inevitably feeds the bigger fish of international
publishing and leaves the regions of origin all the poorer. For often works
by regional writers are unavailable in their own countries because these
larger companies have neither the infrastructure nor the monetary incentive
to supply that market. Why, only last year in Western Samoa I found just
one Albert Wendt book available, his first novel Sons For The Return
Home, in its new University of Hawai'i Press edition--and this in the
midst of a literature and arts festival. Often we small publishers are
expected to carry an author until such time as he or she is 'ripe' ... then
it's off to the sharks and whales of the industry. Irene says she's only
ever 'lost' one author to a large publisher, because she has always
insisted on the writer's acknowledgment of the 'option on the next book'
clause, which is a standard element in almost any book publishing contract.
But I wonder if it's fair to authors, so (unrealistically?) hopeful of
supporting themselves on royalty payments, to bind them to the small print
runs and regionalised audiences associated with small presses. Most of
these authors see themselves, quite rightly, as international writers
potentially on a par with any Amis or Atwood ... if they were just given
the opportunity. Small publishers would love to have firm, steady
relationships with larger publishers to make their 'big' authors go
further, but it just doesn't suit the economics of the mass market
paperback. When you're that big you want everything.
Irene is saddened by the situation but seems very philosophical. She
remarks on the Englishness of the English in order to change the topic of
our conversation. We are in a cafe in London University's African and
Oriental Studies faculty, and the courtyard outside is populated with
Japanese, Africans, Persians, Malays and Indonesians. Nothing is
particularly English about this place except the signs littering the
courtyard outside. Every possible segment of architecture to which a
bicycle might be secured has a sign pinned to it saying:
"NOTICE: any bicycle attached here will be
removed." So do we need the English to know we are in
England? Not here, no.
At the prize-giving itself, a Tory Lord laments the inevitability of the
new Labour government (just two days before the general election), and
talks about his family background so excessively that those grouped at my
end of the table either nod off, demand that their glasses be properly
recharged (several times), or adjourn to the bathroom to smoke and talk in
ease. I have a nice chat with the Papua New Guinea ambassador about the
Sandline crisis and Sir Julius Chan's future--is there one? It is a formal
event ... although the champagne is New Zealand sparkling wine, the table
wine is New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and the lamb is, in all probability,
New Zealand lamb (remember, some of us travelled 20,000 kilometres for this
meal!). When the prizes are announced, the domesticated clatter of English
hand claps is slaughtered by Sia Figiel's wolf-whistle of approval and
cheers of support from others who have not had the benefit of a Public
School education. I feel sorry for the English who, by nature, cringe at
this form of self-expression. But some, like the lively Beryl Bainbridge,
seem to agree that a good time should be had at such events and the authors
especially ought to enjoy themselves. Earl Lovelace takes the main prize
with his novel Salt. That Best First Book Prize Sia Figiel was after
goes to Canadian Ann-Marie MacDonald for her tome Fall on Your
Knees. These two major prize-winners have been selected from the eight
regional winners. No one seems particularly satisfied that there need to be
overall prizes, because there is a sense that the other regional 'winners'
are now, due to a technicality of sorts, 'losers'. Afterwards it proves
impossible to get a cab in the region of St Pauls, and I walk towards Fleet
Street in the darkness wondering what perspicacious variety of stupidity
led me here--I am at once enlightened and, apparently, condemned to eternal
foolhardiness.
The afternoon before Sia flies out to Germany, I meet with her in her room
at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington. Her mother, Moana, has been
secreted in the room. Sia worries that Moana's smoking will betray her as
there are defense de fumer notices everywhere, and especially in the
bedrooms. I eat Sia's egg sandwich and discuss the prospect of a meeting
with a UK publisher to her. But, she's tired. She's not writing; she's
touring. And it will be several weeks before she stops travelling and
performing, and sets herself down to write. Until that time she will be,
like many of her fellow Commonwealth Writers Prize winners, earning her
keep by being a very public individual--she may even be looked upon as an
important representative of her country. The work of the writer will make
way for the public's perception and demands of the writer. What sort of
Jekyll and Hyde life do we force on authors?
And as I am flying back to the Pacific across Siberia, exhausted and
annoyed that somehow I have managed to see 101 Dalmatians three
times on three flights over the past two weeks, I wonder why I ever thought
I could live such a Jekyll and Hyde life myself. I am a book editor and
there are a good half dozen works sitting on my desk in Auckland. I am not
a man who has long 'publishing lunches'; I scribble notes on manuscripts.
Somewhere over Siberia, seated beside a man who is reading The Horse
Whisperer and a woman who is reading the Bible, I start to think again
about the Fijian dictionary I am supposed to be producing. Very soon I have
all but forgotten the Commonwealth Writers Prize and London. Even Sia is
far from my mind. The work is the thing, I dream. The work's the thing.
Visit the Commonwealth
Foundation for more about the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
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