Elizabeth Baines is a novelist, playwright and blogger. Her work can be found at www.elizabethbaines.com,
and she blogs at http://elizabethbaines.blogspot.com and at the cutting http://fictionbitch.blogspot.com. Her first novel The Birth Machine has been reissued as it was
originally intended; here she relates why.
Christmas, a time for dreaming, and here, sure enough, are the Christmas books offering the dream that whatever your beginnings – East End boy selling TV aerials out of a van or anthropomorphized desert meerkat – with talent and determination you’ll succeed. It’s especially ironic, it seems to me, that it should be the publishing industry peddling this notion, since literary talent has never been less guaranteed to succeed within its prevailing culture.
Books are rarely chosen for publication on literary merit alone, however, and while the Holy Grail of mass-marketability is currently pushing things to the extreme, there have always been other cultural factors besides literary considerations determining the choices and making or breaking books and writers.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in