The
ever-present combative dance between form and content has the current
publishing world in a spin. Advances in digital technology in
creation, storage and distribution have allowed a different kind of
content, some say of indifferent quality, to succeed in the ebook
market. This new genre has now broken its shackles to dominate the
printed form as well.
A
self-published erotic e-novel has mutated from a digital only
existence to smash all records for the printed book. Faster selling
than J K Rowling and Dan Brown, 'Fifty Shades of Grey' has just
clocked up sales of 20 million copies. Such staggering sales might
precipitate unfettered joy amongst struggling 'bricks & mortar'
booksellers – but on the contrary, the new genre of 'mummy porn' is
almost universally derided.
This
isn't prudery. Since the 'Lady Chatterley' trial of the sixties
booksellers have happily sold pornography – most of it more
explicit than '50 Shades'. Nor has it it exclusively been for a male
readership; Anais Nin, Erica Jong, Rita Mae Brown and Nancy Friday
have been around for thirty years and more.
'50
Shades' rankles the established literary world of publishers and
booksellers primarily because it is so poorly written. If porn is to
be the Next Big Thing, why could it not be competently written? If
you are tempted why not try one of the authors above – or 'The
Story of O', or Henry Miller, or the Marquis de Sade? Couple the
inferior content to the new technology that facilitated its
publication and you witness conventional bookselling's nemesis. The
brave new world of epublishing requires no editors nor chains of
bookshops to distribute the finished article. The result is there
are no 'gate-keepers' safeguarding the standard of what's published.
The result is millions of readers being short changed with rubbish
when there is so much better material out there.
With
unimagined synchronicity BBC radio chose to spend an entire day
reading James Joyce's 'Ulysses' at the very moment when '50 Shades'
became the fastest selling book of all time. Ninety percent of
booksellers and publishers' editors will gladly affirm that 'Ulysses'
is the finest book in the English language - even though ninety
percent of this sample will never actually finish the book. The same
sample that will condemn '50 Shades' without ever attempting it.
These two books occupy the extremes of literary experience – one
revered and read by a few, the other reviled and read by millions. Lit Crit dominated bt Clit Lit.
