Good grief

[desperance]

Just to emphasise - as though we didn't know already - how utterly pointless a public poll can be, The Book Magazine has polled its readers to learn who is the greatest living British author. Their verdict? J K Rowling, streets ahead of Terry Pratchett in second place. I suppose it's predictable, but it's also stupid. Fond as I am of Pratchett, it's still stupid, for any given value of greatness. And all the more meaningless, when you look at the rest of the top twenty, which gives you a mixed run through current bestsellers and Grand Old Names - and then there's Alasdair Gray, who is neither.

For those who can dredge up any interest at all in such an absurdly skewed list, the top 20 (as reported in Pravda, which is the only pleasure I can derive from this whole farrago) is:

1 - J K Rowling
2 - Terry Pratchett
3 - Ian McEwan
4 - Salman Rushdie
5 - Kazuo Ishiguro
6 - Philip Pullman
7 - Harold Pinter
8 - Nick Hornby
9 - A S Byatt
10= - Jonathan Coe and John Le Carre
12 - Doris Lessing
13 - Alan Bennett
14 - Iain Banks
15 - Muriel Spark (an interesting definition of 'living', but hey...)
16 - David Mitchell
17 - Martin Amis
18 - Ian Rankin
19 - Pat Barker
20 - Alasdair Gray

Now draw up a demographic of one magazine's readership, such as might produce this range of results. Sheesh...

Comments

[readwrite.livejournal.com]

What, no Jeffrey Archer?! No Jackie Collins?! What a bunch of snobs.

The only magazine I can think of that would publish all of these would be some hypothetical British equivalent of The New Yorker. (The Londoner?)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey now, none of this metrocentrism (a word I seem to have invented, but I hope its meaning is clear): we too have cities outside the capital. If I edit such a magazine (and yes, I confess, I'd love to), it'll be called The Novocastrian. And actually I would happily publish everybody on that list except perhaps Rowling. I don't say that she can't write well, only that I'm still waiting for the evidence.

[readwrite.livejournal.com]

Oh, do you think she's really that bad? I've never read a whole HP book, but I've dipped into them enough to get the impression that her prose may not be golden, but it is all right. (Of course, I haven't ever been privy to the pre-copy-edited version, but I've heard no horror stories.) I feel like she gets piled onto much as some people rag on Stephen King (who I think writes well, basically--and I have seen his stuff before it was final) because he's so successful. (And in case you're wondering, I'm a big fan of lots of fairly difficult literary writers--Proust, Nabokov, etc.--but I have great respect for straightforward prose as well.)

One great thing about Britain is that you get to have great adjectives for cities: Oxonian, Mancunian, Glaswegian, Liverpudlian...while we Americans are stuck with ordinary suffixes. Well, there are Mainiacs, but that's not an official name...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Do I think Rowling is that bad? No-o. With hesitations. I think she's pedestrian, largely; I think she has no feeling for language per se, for the excitement of the thing itself; it's just a tool to her. And I do distinguish between her and, say, Jeffrey Archer, who does active damage to the language every time he scribbles another page. Those who are tone-deaf should not attempt to sing.

I'm sure Rowling does suffer extra and possibly unwarranted criticism - from me, as much as others - just because she is so successful. I can't help it; somebody reaches that many readers, I just want to see them doing the job well. And to my mind, using a rich language richly is an element in that, and I do just find her prose quite dull. And her plotting leaden, and...

I've always admired Stephen King's early books; and I agree with you, he does write well, within a compass. I don't demand fancy writing; I'm quite happy with robust, so long as it's getting down and dirty with what's available. I got bored by later King, he didn't freshen, tho' I'm told I've missed some good stuff recently.

It's true, we Brits do have a linguistic advantage (I'm an Oxonian by birth, as well as being Novocastrian by choice), having the roots of modern English laid out in our geography, as it were. Which may have influenced the value that I lay on style, as well as everything else that we demand from our writers...?