Earlier this month, in an indication of how much the critical scene has changed, my publishers bought lunch for nine writers and nine of the UK's biggest literary bloggers. By biggest, I mean that their sites get a lot of traffic, not that the bloggers themselves are physically enormous. By lunch, I mean sandwiches that I couldn't eat because my mouth was super-busy talking about the wonder that is me. By nine writers and nine bloggers, I mean nine writers and five bloggers. Four of the bloggers had to cancel at the 11th hour, leaving their comrades outnumbered.
Naturally we took full advantage, with Andrew Miller and Alexei Sayle holding the bloggers down while the rest of us took turns to pummel them with edifying and hilarious anecdotes drawn from our own lives. By anecdotes I mean subtle exaggerations, slightly embellished stories, and willfully distorted scenes. Giving nine fiction writers a platform and expecting them to faithfully recall reality is like feeding toddlers Frosties and ordering them to sit still.
The bloggers, of course, were patient with us. Literary bloggers are strong independent voices who are above the whole apparatus of newspaper book reviewing. They read and critique for the love of it, their impartiality is unquestioned ... ooh, and they get up to a 6% kickback off Amazon when you click through on one of their links. I'm just saying.
I learned this and further eye-opening facts from Jackie of the excellent Farm Lane Books Blog when I finally stopped talking for one second. It turns out that some book blogs are tidy businesses now, with unique visitors in the high tens. or low hundreds, of thousands per month. Of course, many are not-for-profit, or agnostic when it comes to book retailers, but for the ones that do link through to Amazon, in some cases they'll make more from the sale than the author will.
The event was run using the speed-dating format. The bloggers stayed where they were while the writers flitted from table to table, like anxious suitors wearing their best plumage. I'd dressed head-to-toe in black and put on the shoes that make me look a bit taller, because I'd been expecting to finally meet the person who'd given me the worst review I have ever had in my life. More on her later.
She hadn't turned up, so I moved on to talk with Sue Magee of The Bookbag. Like Jackie, Sue is one of the good guys. What I learned from her is how big some of the literary blogs are now, and how all-consuming the work is for the most committed bloggers. The Bookbag is run on a voluntary basis by Sue and Jill Murphy and involves over 100 volunteer reviewers who are auditioned and edited by them. They receive hundreds of books each month from publishers, and each year they review thousands.
These are not the storied "guys in their pyjamas" bloggers. Their operation has a depth – if not yet a reach – that eclipses the books desk of any of the major newspapers. Sue (who herself reviews a book every two days) has an attitude to her work that is shared by the best newspaper books editors: she likes readers and reading, she isn't thrilled by snark, she regularly keeps her silence rather then posting a bad review of a little-known writer, but she occasionally feels a duty to publish a critical review of a writer who is big and ugly enough to take it.
As a writer I've had fair and unfair treatment from newspaper journalists and bloggers alike, and I don't buy into the idea that one stream runs purer than the other, or even that the two streams still run separately. Just as the best bloggers embody old-school editorial ideas of fair play, editors from the print world such as Ron Charles of the Washington Post are now innovating like bloggers.
Now that I've said I don't favour traditional journalism over blogging, I can turn to the author of the worst review I've had. I was really looking forward to meeting her. I don't know what I was hoping for. In Scenario A, I came up with such a magnificent literary diss that my words physically changed the neural pathways in her cortex and she was only ever able to write nice things ever after. In Scenario B, we made up and, 50 years later, were still laughing about how our great literary collaboration had begun with such an ugly misunderstanding. And in Scenario C, I wouldn't remember anything and I probably wouldn't even have to go to prison because it would have been what the French call a crime passionnel.
In the event, she didn't show up. Talking with a couple of the other writers in the room, it seemed that she'd taken a hatchet to them too. And joking aside, writers do harbour really quite dark thoughts about certain reviewers. Maybe it was tactful of my reviewer not to attend, and I'm going to extend her the same courtesy by not linking to her review.
Bloody hell, it was a piece of work though. It was like a hunting spider – so alien, so purposeful and so cold-hearted that by the end of it I had developed Stockholm syndrome and formed a certain tentative admiration for my captor. The worst part, of course, was that so much of what she said was insightful and true. Like the greatest art, it had a very powerful effect on my emotions. And in saying this, perhaps I am admitting that her review was high art.
This is a great strength that literary bloggers have. They do not have to write for a mass audience, their excesses are not necessarily reined in by an editor, and so they are free to produce indecent, funny, inappropriate, uplifting, provocative, controversial or unconventional reviews, just as they are free to produce reviews that are vicious. I defend their right to be vicious and I don't take it personally anymore, because I see literary viciousness as a dark art that sometimes needs writers as its canvas. I do worry about some of the writers who are just starting out, though. Some of the more casual meanness that happens online might be avoided if the reviewer imagined the author reading their piece, or if they envisaged a day where they had to meet face-to-face in a room.
Everyone, bloggers and authors alike, enjoyed the lunch and understood each other better for it. I was inspired by meeting book bloggers who give so freely of their time and talent. For some it has become their full-time job; for others, like Will Rycroft of Just William's Luck, it's something he does between jobs. Having been a very entertaining lunch companion he excused himself early, rushed from the room, and half-an-hour later was on stage for the matinee of War Horse, round the corner in Drury Lane. Locked in our intricately choreographed speed-date, authors and bloggers watched him go with a certain amount of envy.
"Ooh," said the multi-award-winning novelist seated to my right, "that boy actually has a life."
