Robert McCrum
despairs for high culture, comparing the author and publisher hunger for awards and critical accolades with the celebrity-hungry world of
The X Factor. In fact, he says that prizes like the Costa have turned writers from the 'virtue of disloyalty' to the 'vice of complicity', i.e. they are now stooges for the establishment in order to preserve and maintain their success.
If I was an aspiring writer (or even a published one with middling sales, just earning back my advance), I would be hoping for recognition and accolades, too. The image of a writer working late into the night on their masterpiece that confronts and exposes the status quo because he or she has a day job to pay the bills may sound romantic but is more likely to be depressingly tiring. Is it vain and perpetuating the lowbrow? Perhaps, but there's a good reason for that.
Simply put, most of the demand for cultural products is for what McCrum is describing as 'low culture', otherwise known as the mainstream. Authors, publishers and booksellers are going to pander to the mainstream since that's where they're going to make the money — supply therefore increases to maximise the income from this demand. It may be psychologically fulfilling to rant about the plethora of literary prizes and television / celebrity book recommendations reducing the breadth of books being published but it is ultimately futile from a commercial standpoint.
I would argue that authors and the public haven't changed in their desire for entertainment, whether they are producers or consumers — the publishing landscape, on the other hand,
has changed. Like the music business, authors (and their publishers) need to think about how they can connect with readers in order to get their work read, and the technology that has made the mainstream even more mainstream (and arguably more lowbrow) also offers the opportunity for creators who exist in the fringes to share their work more widely.
As long as those who ask difficult questions aren't shunned or persecuted, there
is no problem. Those who dwell at the edges of the mainstream will find each other in our connected age, and it's up to authors and publishers to find the audience for their work.
