| I don't know why I bothered with that | | | | I would vigorously contend, worse than having |
| question mark. Of course the internet is the | | | | no gatekeepers at all. An idiot like that is |
| future of the novel. It's the future of | | | | very likely to reject good books under the |
| almost everything. We have to remind | | | | impression that they're bad, and -- even |
| ourselves that the web is not much more than | | | | worse -- to publish bad books under the |
| ten years old, and that the revolution has | | | | impression that they're good. And if you |
| only just begun. Think of where the | | | | publish shit and tell people it's good, |
| automobile was after just ten years of | | | | you'll rapidly devalue the currency. The |
| existence, or the aeroplane, or moving | | | | asinine rise of the marketers -- i.e. |
| pictures. And think of how far they've come | | | | those geniuses who slap fancy covers on dud |
| since. We have seen, so far, only a tiny | | | | books and hype them obscenely beyond their |
| fraction of what the internet can and will | | | | actual worth -- might well deliver short-term |
| do. But I've already seen more than enough to | | | | profits, but only at the cost of ensuring |
| conclude that in my own field of interest, | | | | long-term catastrophe. The public will buy |
| literature, the writing is on the wall for | | | | one unreadable "masterpiece", or maybe two, |
| the traditional paper book.I don't say this | | | | but after sustaining a few serious burns |
| in a spirit of glee or provocation. In fact | | | | they'll stop buying books altogether. And |
| I would be much happier if it were not the | | | | then the culture starts to rot. Publishers |
| case. I love books. I love the way you can | | | | make less money, and the less money they |
| read them anywhere -- on the bus, the plane, | | | | make, the less willing they'll be to publish |
| over dinner, in bed, racked out on the couch. | | | | anything remotely risky. Pretty soon they'll |
| I love the way you can flick ahead through | | | | be publishing nothing but cookbooks by |
| them if you get bored, or flick back to check | | | | one-legged ex-Rugby stars, with the odd new |
| on stuff you missed. I love the way new ones | | | | novel by some established dinosaur tossed on |
| smell different from old ones. Yet it isn't | | | | as a bit of artistic garnish. A literary |
| hard to see how most of these things -- with | | | | culture run by people without brains might |
| the exception of the odor thing -- could be | | | | just conceivably survive. But one run by |
| replicated electronically, with some kind of | | | | people without balls is doomed.Something like |
| I-Pod-like device for downloaded text. | | | | this has already happened in Australia. That |
| Perhaps such a device exists already and I | | | | notional class of literati which is supposed |
| don't yet know about it. In any case, those | | | | to police our book culture, weeding out the |
| of us brought up on paper books, those of us | | | | bad books and publishing only the good ones |
| with a sentimental attachment to them, will | | | | -- having first rid these of any and all |
| not be around forever. Pretty soon we'll have | | | | grammatical howlers -- has died out, if |
| to yield the floor to a generation of people | | | | indeed it ever existed at all. No doubt this |
| for whom it's at least as natural to read | | | | has something to do with the thinness of |
| things off a screen as off a page. To them, | | | | the country's population base, combined with |
| the whole print thing, the whole concept of | | | | our long tradition of settling for |
| the hard copy, is likely to seem | | | | second-best in intellectual affairs. In any |
| superfluous. One day our grandchildren will | | | | case, the result is that the novel in this |
| look back on the daily newspaper -- that | | | | country is effectively dead as a form. Yes, |
| great wasteful slab of pulped flora that | | | | novels still get published here. But they're |
| turns obsolete a mere day after its creation | | | | like Wile E. Coyote running on a subtracted |
| -- the way we look back on such quaint | | | | piece of ground, treading air and not yet |
| historical objects as the penny-farthing, or | | | | knowing it. If anything remotely original and |
| the sheep-gut condom.If the internet is not | | | | exciting ever gets published here again, it |
| the future of the printed word, and therefore | | | | will be entirely by accident. Again I have to |
| of the novel, then my name's not Kirk | | | | point to the relative merits of cyberspace. |
| Kinbote. In fact, I'll go one step further: | | | | It's not enough to say that the web, in such |
| the novelist should want the internet to be | | | | a climate, is just as good as the traditional |
| the future of the novel. After all, what the | | | | publishers. It's better, because there's no |
| novelist craves above anything else is | | | | material of which it's afraid. It excludes |
| control. And publishing your own stuff on | | | | nothing. Which is, I repeat, better than |
| your own site gives you unqualified control | | | | excluding just about everything on grounds |
| over it. There is, first of all, an absolute | | | | that have nothing to do with quality.For a |
| guarantee of publication. There will be no | | | | culture to actually be a culture, for it to |
| intermediaries. Nobody will alter a word of | | | | live, publishers need to invest in more than |
| what you have written. No grinning editor | | | | just the established brand names. They need |
| will propose "working with you" on the text. | | | | to seek out new and different and risky stuff |
| Debates regarding punctuation need not be | | | | as well. They need to publish books that |
| entered into. Nobody will insert any | | | | might fail. They need to publish, to say it |
| redundant comma, or remove any necessary one. | | | | plainly, a lot of books, so that we get the |
| Apostrophes will not be relocated from where | | | | kind of critical mass from which, if we're |
| they belong to where they don't. You can | | | | lucky, one or two excellent and lasting |
| control line-length, font, point-size. Any | | | | things will emerge. American culture takes a |
| genuine writer is bound to be tantalized by | | | | lot of shit, but what other culture could |
| these possibilities. Of course, there's the | | | | sustain a young novelist as prodigiously |
| burning question of how you're going to make | | | | talented but downright perverse as David |
| money out of the thing. This is a serious | | | | Foster Wallace? Certainly the thousand-page |
| question, and I'll get back to it eventually. | | | | Infinite Jest would have got short shrift |
| But apart from that gargantuan caveat, web | | | | from any publisher here. Wallace would have |
| publication looks in many ways like a | | | | got it straight back by return post, in a |
| novelist's paradise.But hang on. Isn't there | | | | crate, at his own considerable expense. Only |
| an important sense in which the rise of web | | | | in a culture as broad-shouldered, as robust, |
| publication would spell disaster for the | | | | as America's could a writer like Wallace |
| novel? Because a published novel, in the | | | | thrive. There's only one other culture from |
| traditional sense, isn't just a novel that's | | | | which he might conceivably have emerged: the |
| been printed on paper, is it? It's a novel | | | | culture of the web, in which true talent, no |
| that's been vetted, that's passed muster. | | | | matter how weird it is, always seems to find |
| The publisher, the gatekeeper, has lovingly | | | | some kind of audience.Remember when The |
| hand-selected it from a chaotic bale of far | | | | Beatles, not long before splitting up, |
| lesser manuscripts. Quality control has been | | | | founded Apple Corp., the idealistic |
| exerted. And without quality control, all | | | | publishing/recording/filmmaking company that |
| we'd have would be an undifferentiated | | | | would -- so the argument went -- forever |
| sludge of material, about 99% of which is | | | | eliminate the artist's degrading obligation |
| bound to be worthless, right? Isn't that all | | | | to go down on his knees in some suit's |
| the web is? An unsifted mass of largely | | | | office (probably yours, sneered Lennon at |
| valueless information, with nobody in | | | | some unlucky journalist) in order to get his |
| authority to guide us through it?It's a sound | | | | stuff out to the public? Apple of course |
| argument, in principle. But it only works in | | | | failed to deliver on that dream, because its |
| practice if the quality controllers know what | | | | employees were promptly buried under an |
| they're doing. And in my own country, | | | | avalanche of submissions. But think of the |
| Australia, there is ample evidence to suggest | | | | web as one giant and unswampable Apple Corp., |
| that they don't. There is ample evidence, in | | | | capable of publishing an infinite supply of |
| fact, to suggest that they're either asleep | | | | creative work, without the mediation of those |
| at the wheel or brain dead. Publishing in | | | | parasitic and vaguely contemptible middlemen |
| this country is growing more fatuous by the | | | | who have until now stood between the artist |
| day. A good half of the books published here | | | | and the public. If the idea of infinity |
| are autobiographies of cricket players, or | | | | scares you, I can only repeat that it is far |
| celebrity memoirs that would be uninteresting | | | | preferable to entrusting our cultural future |
| even if their authors could write, or | | | | to the personal tastes of some bureaucrat |
| reflections by former newsreaders on the | | | | who doesn't know his arse from his elbow, but |
| difference between Generation X and | | | | thinks that he does. The question of which |
| Generation Y, or barbecue cookbooks by | | | | books will survive, and which ones won't, is |
| half-assed TV personalities. (If they | | | | far too important to left to a handful of |
| actually are half-assed, having lost an | | | | marketers and semi-lettered literati. The |
| appendage or two in the course of some | | | | public has to be in on it to some extent.It's |
| unnecessary but "inspiring" journey to the | | | | probably time for a confession. Don't get me |
| top of some indomitable mountain, then so | | | | wrong: this confession does not alter the |
| much the better, as long as they've got an | | | | truth-value of the foregoing arguments. |
| arm left to write the memoir.)What matters | | | | Everything I have said remains watertight, |
| about books these days is whose face is on | | | | objectively ship-shape. But here is the |
| the front cover, not what is written inside. | | | | confession. I am a novelist myself, and for a |
| In this sense at least, the web -- that | | | | depressing year or so I have attempted, |
| supposedly anarchic no-go zone of unfiltered | | | | without raising a single spark of interest, |
| information -- is in fact a rather more | | | | to sell my masterwork to this country's |
| rigorous enforcer of quality control than our | | | | moribund publishers. And I tell you, there is |
| traditional publishers are. Your web page can | | | | no experience more surreal than submitting |
| look as fancy as you like, but if it doesn't | | | | one's stuff, again and again, to the |
| deliver on content, people will hit the | | | | burnt-out remnants of an industry which, |
| back button. By some strange law of | | | | although nominally concerned with the |
| publishing physics, people will, under | | | | business of publishing books, has essentially |
| certain circumstances, pay for unreadable | | | | given up on the whole notion. It's like |
| tripe; but under no circumstances will they | | | | shouting into a void.And so I have |
| read it for free.As for the highbrow stuff, | | | | indignantly published my book online, where |
| one of the most celebrated Australian novels | | | | it is freely available to anyone who wants to |
| of recent times had a glaring error of | | | | read it. Which is to enter another kind of |
| grammar in its second sentence. I repeat: in | | | | void -- a bigger but more democratic one, |
| its second sentence. Is it trivial to mention | | | | which has no prima facie aversion to new |
| this? Or does the fact that no editor picked | | | | material. On the contrary: it wants you. Or |
| up this howler reinforce the point that the | | | | at any rate, it doesn't not want you. It |
| editor as gatekeeper, as fastidious guarantor | | | | wants stuff. People want the stuff that's on |
| of quality control, is these days a purely | | | | it. Some of them will come to your page. If |
| mythical figure. If a publishing house can't | | | | it delivers what they want, they will stay. |
| even guarantee adherence to simple rules of | | | | If it doesn't, they will go. Most of them |
| grammar, its imprimatur is worthless. For all | | | | will go. Some of them will stay. If enough |
| the help his editors gave him, this guy's | | | | of them stay, then maybe your site will |
| novel might just as well have been | | | | amount to something.And that's about all I |
| self-published on the web.Here's a pertinent | | | | have to offer on the topic. I think I said, |
| anecdote for you. At a recent and | | | | back at the start of this article, that I |
| excruciating social function, I happened to | | | | would come back to the subject of money. I |
| find myself seated next to a fellow who | | | | lied, sort of. I really haven't worked that |
| was, and as far as I know still is, employed | | | | bit out yet. All I can do is propose, without |
| by a globally reputable publishing house as | | | | a great deal of conviction, that anything |
| a senior editor of fiction. Finding him | | | | that's any good will eventually draw some |
| generally unimpressive, I generously raised | | | | kind of audience, and that anything that |
| the subject of fiction, so as to let him | | | | draws an audience will also, eventually, |
| riff freely on a topic he presumably knew | | | | make some kind of money. That's my working |
| something about. I mentioned Catch-22. It | | | | hypothesis. We'll see how it goes.Kirk |
| swiftly emerged that he'd never heard of it. | | | | Kinbote, operating from behind at least a |
| He thought I meant The Catcher in the Rye. | | | | brace of pseudonyms, was the key creative and |
| When I subsequently referred to Thomas Wolfe | | | | design force behind home of the online novel |
| he thought I was talking about Tom | | | | "A Dancing Bear. |
| Wolfe.Having gatekeepers of that caliber is, | | | | |