I think many people have a manuscript in them, but only a small fraction of those have a book worth publishing. As far as I’m concerned, everyone should learn to write, even if that skill is only applied to their reading. I appreciate every machine in my house more once I’ve taken it apart and put it back together. Writing should be used the same way. But that doesn’t mean your writing needs to be published. The Guardian looks into things.
It’s hard to think of any other art form so consistently assumed to have absolutely no bar to entry.
You rarely see comedians or television presenters presuming to try their hand at being a concert pianist. And yet producing a novel is now such a well-established rung on the light entertainment career ladder that these books are in danger of becoming the rhododendrons of the publishing ecosystem: not necessarily unappealing, in their own gaudy way, but in danger of choking off every other variety.
Tolu Oloruntoba makes it a Double-Double, winning both the Governor General’s prize (I was a jury member and can tell you it’s a great book) and the Griffin Prize…. go out and get it, if you haven’t;
Poetry types have one tenth of their attention glued on the internet today to hear who all is going to win the Griffin Prizes. (The other 9/10ths are split between their day jobs and checking Twitter for people sub-tweeting them.) Watch here:
An article in Quartz leads to this piece at Gawker on how reference letters have a basis in discrimination, particularly against Jews, and should be abolished as gatekeeping entrance requirements to academic establishments, residences, and awards. You know, I have to say I agree. Pr at least, I’d be happy to just not have to write them for any reason. They’re like book reviews for me. I agonize over them. I’ve done about five in the last year and they’re an enormous amount of work. I mean, I’ll do it because they’re my students and colleagues, etc., but being a non-academic poet in a world dominated by academics, there’s a part of me that goes, listen… Ask someone who has a cushy tenure track position. This is actually part of their job they get paid for. Of course, I never would. They’re good people, and I’m honoured to be thought of at all, as I age into obscurity. But besides any gatekeeping work they do, they also keep both the referee and the referred super distracted with what amounts to pointless busy work.
Reference letters, in addition to just being a pain in the ass, have an anti-Semitic origin story in the U.S. “In the 1920s, the heads of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton decided they were admitting too many Jewish students,” writes Sarah Todd in a recent article for Quartz, citing Jerome Karabel’s history of Ivy League admissions, The Chosen. “Until that point, acceptances had been determined largely by students’ scores on entrance exams, giving administrators little control over who made the cut.” The letters were instituted as a subjective criterion, a way to say, well, yes, this Jewish student over here has higher test scores, but this non-Jewish student has a glowing recommendation from an alum, so.
That the practice has endured at the undergraduate level is bad enough; that it has been adopted by most higher-level literary institutions in the country, all of whom claim diversity as a central aim, is revolting. The letters were not only born of discrimination, but carry it forward. For a writer to know someone they can ask for a reference, especially one that might move the needle, means they have already been admitted to an exclusive institution, or more likely, several. Those who haven’t — marginalized people, people who cannot afford to attend a fancy university, people with no generational connections, people who do not live in literary New York City — are out of luck.
Bookninja 