An excellent article.
Yes this is happening all across the arts including in publishing. There is a spiral of silence and people are frightened to speak out.
The only thing which will stop it will be the lawsuits and to a certain extent the profit motive. The NYT op-ed about American Dirt which Bari highlighted earlier in her twitter fe…
Yes this is happening all across the arts including in publishing. There is a spiral of silence and people are frightened to speak out.
The only thing which will stop it will be the lawsuits and to a certain extent the profit motive. The NYT op-ed about American Dirt which Bari highlighted earlier in her twitter feed mentioned how well that book had done in part due to its notoriety. This is the archived version: https://archive.ph/pHU4V
What also helps is how we spend our money. Look for and purchase books, go see movies, and plays, and dance performances that are fun, well-done and not covered in bland woke sauce.
Top Gun was the biggest movie of the year, a huge success. Let's make more of those things happen.
Yes ultimately I do think the profit motive will win out. Robert McKee in his classic book on screenwriting Story does mention that people do not respond well to having politized ideas rammed down their throats (screenwriting and writing for Harlequin has certain things in common and all the editors are trained on McKee) and preferred to be entertained. In the words of Martin Luther King Sr, not everything has to be political.
There have been huge problems with publishing and people being forced into narrow lanes. It is going to take time to fix. The idea was to open things up much more, but the real question is are these actions shutting things down?
Anthony Horowitiz is in today's Times, apparently he was not allowed to use the word scalpel in conjunction with a Native American character in case some reader thought of scalping -- the two words do not share the same root words. But the sensitivity reader whose opinion counted decided that it could cause offence.
Prof Deborah Appleman wrote the Presentism far from opening things up for minority authors, is actually the opposite and thus hurting the minorities it was supposed to help. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also made the same point in her lecture back in Dec.
Thank you for mentioning publishing. It's shocking the way literature has been politicized in recent years. Anyone who has approached a literary agent or publisher knows that they have their own DEI requirements for authors and manuscripts. If you don't conform to the new ideology, your "problematic" work doesn't see the light of day, regardless of its quality or appeal to readers. Not all of us became writers to engage in social engineering and propaganda. It's sad that so many authors acquiesce to it.
As I have been v involved in bringing some of this to light in the UK -- I was a 'free speech' rebel last November at the Society of Authors agm, sponsored the resolutions and stood up and spoke, I do know precisely what you are talking about. In the UK the Free Speech Union now has its Writers Advisory Council to assist as many of us resigned from the SoA afterwards. Gillian Phillips has her appeal being heard in September (she was sacked from her ghostwriting job because she put I stand with JK Rowling in her twitter handle). (I have written over 30 novels for Harlequin who are now own by Harper Collins)
There is this culture of fear and Spiral of Silence in publishing
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie did a brilliant lecture for the BBC on the need for freedom of expression when writing.
That sounds like a great start and I wish you and the other authors luck. I hope some authors here in the US take a similar initiative. It's crazy that something like this would even be necessary.
Publishing has 4 major players and they can be v risk adverse. There has been a huge consolidation in the last 30 years.
At least people are starting to speak about the self-censorship problem in the Arts and how it is leading to a flattening of what is on offer.
Don't get me wrong -- there are diversity problems within the industry and it is how do you handle it and it is complicated. For example, in 2004, Harlequin purchased the publishing arm of BET. It was not until 2017 that real concrete steps were taken to integrate black authors into all the various lines, rather than just having one hugely successful line with catered to the African-American market (and it had a hugely specific editorial). Against real pushback from certain progressive sectors, Harlequin persisted and now all the lines are integrated and you have a far greater range of black voices being published as well as other ethnic voices and unsurprisingly they have proved to be popular with the readership as they are delivering on the sort of the stories which the readers of a line want. I think the Powers that Be thought it would be much easier than it has been as the barriers were not obvious. Real change does take a long time. FWIW
An excellent article.
Yes this is happening all across the arts including in publishing. There is a spiral of silence and people are frightened to speak out.
The only thing which will stop it will be the lawsuits and to a certain extent the profit motive. The NYT op-ed about American Dirt which Bari highlighted earlier in her twitter feed mentioned how well that book had done in part due to its notoriety. This is the archived version: https://archive.ph/pHU4V
What also helps is how we spend our money. Look for and purchase books, go see movies, and plays, and dance performances that are fun, well-done and not covered in bland woke sauce.
Top Gun was the biggest movie of the year, a huge success. Let's make more of those things happen.
Yes ultimately I do think the profit motive will win out. Robert McKee in his classic book on screenwriting Story does mention that people do not respond well to having politized ideas rammed down their throats (screenwriting and writing for Harlequin has certain things in common and all the editors are trained on McKee) and preferred to be entertained. In the words of Martin Luther King Sr, not everything has to be political.
There have been huge problems with publishing and people being forced into narrow lanes. It is going to take time to fix. The idea was to open things up much more, but the real question is are these actions shutting things down?
Anthony Horowitiz is in today's Times, apparently he was not allowed to use the word scalpel in conjunction with a Native American character in case some reader thought of scalping -- the two words do not share the same root words. But the sensitivity reader whose opinion counted decided that it could cause offence.
Prof Deborah Appleman wrote the Presentism far from opening things up for minority authors, is actually the opposite and thus hurting the minorities it was supposed to help. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also made the same point in her lecture back in Dec.
American Dirt was such a great book!
Thank you for mentioning publishing. It's shocking the way literature has been politicized in recent years. Anyone who has approached a literary agent or publisher knows that they have their own DEI requirements for authors and manuscripts. If you don't conform to the new ideology, your "problematic" work doesn't see the light of day, regardless of its quality or appeal to readers. Not all of us became writers to engage in social engineering and propaganda. It's sad that so many authors acquiesce to it.
As I have been v involved in bringing some of this to light in the UK -- I was a 'free speech' rebel last November at the Society of Authors agm, sponsored the resolutions and stood up and spoke, I do know precisely what you are talking about. In the UK the Free Speech Union now has its Writers Advisory Council to assist as many of us resigned from the SoA afterwards. Gillian Phillips has her appeal being heard in September (she was sacked from her ghostwriting job because she put I stand with JK Rowling in her twitter handle). (I have written over 30 novels for Harlequin who are now own by Harper Collins)
There is this culture of fear and Spiral of Silence in publishing
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie did a brilliant lecture for the BBC on the need for freedom of expression when writing.
That sounds like a great start and I wish you and the other authors luck. I hope some authors here in the US take a similar initiative. It's crazy that something like this would even be necessary.
Publishing has 4 major players and they can be v risk adverse. There has been a huge consolidation in the last 30 years.
At least people are starting to speak about the self-censorship problem in the Arts and how it is leading to a flattening of what is on offer.
Don't get me wrong -- there are diversity problems within the industry and it is how do you handle it and it is complicated. For example, in 2004, Harlequin purchased the publishing arm of BET. It was not until 2017 that real concrete steps were taken to integrate black authors into all the various lines, rather than just having one hugely successful line with catered to the African-American market (and it had a hugely specific editorial). Against real pushback from certain progressive sectors, Harlequin persisted and now all the lines are integrated and you have a far greater range of black voices being published as well as other ethnic voices and unsurprisingly they have proved to be popular with the readership as they are delivering on the sort of the stories which the readers of a line want. I think the Powers that Be thought it would be much easier than it has been as the barriers were not obvious. Real change does take a long time. FWIW
This is true. Many turning to self-publishing to get away from it.
That's my plan. I had an agent briefly but I've lost faith in traditional publishing now. I'm going the indie route for the freedom and my sanity :-)