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“All you need is a five-minute spot on a morning TV show,” a colleague told me recently. “Then everyone will buy your novel.” I tried to picture myself, with my horror of being filmed, in thick orange makeup, perched on a sofa in a brightly lit studio while trying to talk about how the French critic Hélène Cixous inspired me to want to write the first great ovulation novel. It sounded ridiculous for all involved.
Yet when you’re a writer, you are supposed to take every opportunity you can get. That was the attitude to news that Helen DeWitt had turned down the $175,000 (£129,000) Windham-Campbell prize on the basis of being unable to fulfil its promotional obligations, which included six to eight hours of filming. The prize, which this year was given to eight writers in recognition of their life’s work, is intended to give recipients time and space to work independently of financial concerns.
DeWitt is a critically acclaimed author, and her debut novel, The Last Samurai – published 26 years ago – is widely regarded as a work of innovative genius. Opinions on her recent stance are strongly divided: some have praised her principled refusal to play the self-promotion game that takes so much out of writers, while others have called her a spoilt, entitled nightmare.
A prize like that is the dream, and the DeWitt controversy has somewhat overshadowed the eight other winners. One is Gwendoline Riley, an author of wry, quiet books exploring family relationships. Riley has a certain cachet, but her immense talents have long been overlooked and she was dropped by a previous publisher. Pleasingly, she rarely smiles in photographs. On receiving the prize she sounded stunned. It is a huge sum that any writer cannot help but spend in their head.
Unless you’ve written one of the few titles earmarked as bestsellers on acquisition (which come with the marketing budgets to match), times are tough out there. So certain “moments” have the potential to make your career: a prize, a TV appearance, Kaia Gerber reading your novel on a sunlounger, Dua Lipa selecting it for her book club. Literary fiction is in Vogue in both senses, though whether that translates to actual sales and career longevity is uncertain.
You only need to look at average author earnings to see that, for most people, literary writing is an unstable career (I am on track to die a renter). Yes, to an extent that is our choice, but its precarity is only increasing. Reading through DeWitt’s posts, a picture of a supremely talented writer emerges, one who has faced long periods of living hand to mouth, being out of print, tricky paths to publication causing untold stress, struggles with depression and executive dysfunction, and caring responsibilities. Many authors can empathise.
Unable to commit to the promotional work required, DeWitt says she asked the prize organisers for adjustments that they ultimately refused. According to the novelist Daisy Lafarge, this revealed an attitude to disability and chronic illness that is “impoverished and embarrassingly outdated”. “The prize’s refusal to meet her halfway exposes something I’ve found to be endemic in the book world,” says Lafarge, who adds that the art world is way ahead on facilitating the access and assistance needs of artists. In publishing “if you’re not able-bodied, your choices are to drop out or just grit your teeth”. Both are costly.
Another author, who asked to remain anonymous, had a different view. “Someone was offered an opportunity which for various reasons she had to decline. That is fine. Were I offered a six-figure sum in exchange for running a marathon, I would have to decline. In all walks of life there are social and mental and physical conditions that make some opportunities unsuitable.” They note that this sort of thing happens all the time – to disabled people, to people with health issues, to carers and people without childcare help. It is only the sum of money that has made people take notice.
Yet this controversy doesn’t only highlight inclusivity issues in publishing. It’s also that writing no longer feels like the main job. Many writers are oddballs, and some are geniuses whose giftedness is arguably a form of neurodivergence. Artists such as that can be sensitive and difficult. They need uninterrupted time to create. They do not fit easily into the world of professionalised self-promotion that constitutes modern publishing. As DeWitt wrote in a blog post: “We can think of so many writers we admire for whom the whole thing would be unthinkable – off the top of my head, Dickinson, Proust, Kafka, Beckett, Pessoa, Salinger, Harper Lee, Pynchon, DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Ferrante.”
Shedding light on the industry is crucial. How many readers know that prizes aren’t as purely meritocratic as they appear? That they can have secretive nomination processes – some allowing only one or two entries per imprint, dependent on track record – and come with promotional strings attached? That none of it can be said to be truly fair? That, ultimately, we are all scrabbling for scraps?
There is so much about publishing that I would change, but there are also glimmers of hope that the work still matters: Riley’s win, free public readings being back in a big way, the anonymous writer Liadan Ní Chuinn being shortlisted for this year’s Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award (the organisers represented her using a silhouette instead of a photograph, and allowed her interview answers to be voiced by an actor).
Meanwhile DeWitt announced yesterday that a conservative university thinktank had offered her a grant of $175,000 with no strings attached in a move several writers of my acquaintance called “hilarious”. Perhaps DeWitt isn’t so bad at publicity after all. As for me, I await my call from BBC Breakfast.
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