Some things never change. The economy goes into a slump, global warming gives us wonderfully erratic weather – but the publishing world parties on. As I discovered at the London Book Fair earlier this week, the tomes are still being hyped, deals are still being cut and – sad fact about high writing culture – the massive sales of franchise authors such as James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell are still bankrolling delicately considered tales by true artistes which often fail to recoup their advances – even when celebrated in glowing newspaper reviews.
Publishing has always been one of the nicest (genuinely) of the arts industries, peopled by dedicated editors, agents and readers who have loved books all their lives. It isn't a snakepit or a sharks' paradise. And while it may, in these cutthroat times, be coming forcibly to resemble the music industry – every author needs a hit to survive and it's just much harder to get a deal – it remains a bastion of integrity.
However, it's still a business, and profit is still the goal. Finding an intelligent but accessible book that draws a mass of readers but sustains serious critical attention is the perfect deal for a thoughtful editor. They have a tough task: a responsibility to their company to make money combined with a responsibility to acquire novels of quality.
Surveying the ranks of inquisition-style grey-beige tables in the agents' area upstairs at the London Book Fair, watching the agents pitching books and authors to publishers from all over the world, I wondered what kind of works they were talking about. What novel combines glamour, excitement, breadth, topicality? The brief and nasty phenomenon of the women's "bad girl" sexual confession book passed, unlamented. Chick-lit and dick pick (hello, Ian Fleming) may sell a lot but falls well below the critical radar. Murder mysteries and police procedurals have always done well but suffer – probably unfairly – from being in the genre ghetto. And label lit – you know, Devil Wears Prada, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Bergdorf Blondes – is looking a little outdated, a little spring/summer 2005.
I got my answer on Tuesday night, the night of the launch of Stephanie Theobald's latest novel, A Partial Indulgence. The after party was at the Josh Lilley gallery, the tone was haute hipster, the book is the latest dazzling instalment in a compelling, elite genre: the art lit novel. A Partial Indulgence traces what happens when a dissolute art dealer meets a craxy-sexy-cool (in the best tradition) genius artist called Cosima and a streetwise maid turned muse.
Clothed in a shellacked, hard-edged, hypnotic coolness, the story – and the art lit genre generally – combines everything the publishing industry is reaching for, without wanting to admit to it. There's the blockbustery examination of artists' money, greed, sex, ambition, fame, social climbing and patronage; the well-dresed milieu of wannabes, trendsters, enablers and groupies; the epic rise and fall of the once celebrated; the weird, bent, exciting line where beauty and creativity meet opportunity and exploitation. But while these themes would be seen as risible or ridiculous when allied to a story about, say, investment bankers, lawyers or Sloane jockeys, the association with the art world gives it a thin veneer of intellectualism. It's the perfect meeting of high culture and base materialism, a fug of champagne fumes and gallerists' cologne gently concealing the hypocrisy beneath. The art lit novel is the acceptable blockbuster of the intelligentsia, a wittily disgusted diatribe that often comes with the added bonus of including dreadful people they know, thinly disguised.
The art lit novel has always caught readers' eyes. There was Boogie Woogie by Danny Moynihan, published nearly a decade ago; the film adaptation is coming out next month. Before that were despatches from the up-and-coming Meatpacking District and Chelsea gallery areas in Tama Janowitz's novels (incidentally her latest, They Is Us, is excellent). And in the last year or so we've had Kate Muir's West Coast, about a rich playboy artist. It's the ultimate escapism – a way to touch the hysteria, hero-worship and hype of the art world for people who can't afford to join it and are too sensible to want to. Come on, editors, get out your chequebooks.
