We Need To Talk About Literary Fiction

The Bell Jar is coming to a coffee morning near you. But could Faber's 'repackaging' open the door to more classics being read?

The Bell Jar, a book I'd described as 'discombobulating', particularly the oft-quoted intro, was repackaged last week and released back into a world with its nose in a Kindle, reading Jackie Collins and thinking about who'd be the ideal presenter for Daybreak. Right?

And in probably less significant news that most likely only Guardian Culture section scourers will have observed, journalist Sam Jordison and his band of merry readers have decided on Proust as their next book for their online reading group. This part is devoid of sarcasm, by the way.

It seems to me that these topics interlock with each other and, I think, point to a great, positive future for the classics. I may be committing heresy here but if the Plath experiment goes well, maybe the publishers (Faber) could look at a few more of their untouchables and... well... touch them up a bit.

Regardless of the above however, the new cover is still horrendous. Based on the image to the right, I'm thinking Faber's design team works in a modern version of Frankenstein's lab, attaching jackets from middlebrow authors to more contentious work with all the insane zeal and panache of the eponymous doctor. Or should that be Dr Picoult? Perhaps these ladies will see a boost to their works on the back of Faber's decision to dress Plath's novel in such odd attire, but this new jacket is the equivalent of a Juicy Couture tracksuit.

It's fair to say that repackaging rings alarm bells for all the right reasons, usually. It's the literary equivalent of the 'reboot' that has recently pervaded cinema and particular the comic canon. Of course the bottom line in both industries is, um,  the bottom line and Faber have reported their new cultural positioning of the critically acclaimed proclamations of Esther Greenwood has gone down a storm. And that new Spiderman is way better than all the other ones.

Naturally enough the financial side here's perceived as a bit grubby - 'an increase in revenue', the most un-poetic language in the land. Yet everybody who claims reading as a hobby will have a conscious or unconscious interest in the future of books, and what can be done to refocus eyes and ears around them. Often the last thing of consideration is making the most money possible - and that's seems the right attitude for all sorts of practical reasons.

But all of the words I associate with a book - predominantly sensual terms - still represent the best foot forward vs the odourless, visually unobjectionable tablets gradually glazing eyes over and changing accounting practices in the optometry industry (maybe), and a book should make what it can of the visual element to attract itself to newer readers. Survival is, I guess, otherwise futile.

A lack of third dimension and more than a touch of dogma there, but hard to ignore. In that sense at least I agree with Faber. The other big reason I have for being the only guy in the 'mmm...maybe' camp relates to Jordison's on-going reading group who have made their way through some classics of the Western canon but, so far, nothing as big as Proust.

OK so they're only (only) reading Swann's Way, not the whole collection, but how many people have actually read Proust, Joyce, Eliot - and, for that matter, Plath? I've only read Joyce and Plath, and only one book by each. Here's a more general point; if that's what readers of the Guardian are reading, what about the rest of the country?

I admit something unconscious reared its head and just as quickly disappeared; that something felt sneering and a bit contemptuous. Basically prejudice - as if Proust should be for reading groups! But why? What do I know about reading groups? As soon as I gave this some basic consideration, I realised how foolish I'd been in not distinguishing principles from their practical applications, and perhaps there's an element of this behind the Plath debate.

Generally you don't appreciate a great by swaddling it in the pap Faber have dressed Bell Jar up in, and regardless of the marketing angle it's a strange decision to move a classic into middlebrow territory - yet it could an inspiring one, the bridge some would argue will join the worlds of genre and literary fiction.

OK, so the point is to sell more Bell Jar. But there's social utility here too - we're not talking collateral debt obligations (if anyone's a Michael Lewis fan I apologise for the plagiarism here, but it's an intelligent perspective). If in six months, those reading groups whom I sniffily dismissed are discussing a classic, Faber could justifiably point to a good deed done. It might put several comedians out of a job but would it be so terrible if Sophie Kinsella sold less and Stendhal, Lawrence (D.H), Yeats - i.e. the dark and sombre shelves of Waterstones marked 'classics' - sold relatively more?

Being reasonable, Kinsella, Vincenza et al are never going to go out of print, but a bigger share of readers' shelves claimed for literary fiction would still represent huge progress - and publishers would be back in business with a whole new range of books they could reintroduce to an intellectually starved climate. Plus, less Kindles. I just don't like them, OK?

Maybe it's snobbery or maybe it's protectiveness of what's rightly (my opinion) called a classic. It's a paradox, but it might be best for all, particularly those arguing the loudest, if this debate was parked on the shelf. It's beginning to look as fusty as some of the dust jackets on those works of literature Faber et al want to do something with.

Salman Rushdie: Last Action Hero

Am I the only person that wants to see a middle aged author have an argument with Chewbacca?

Just read Shortlist's interview with Sir Salman Rushdie and his possibly not extemporaneous relating of the 'furore' shall we say of that little book he published in 1989 (how can anything that well reported be something he needs to reach back into the recesses of his mind for?).

I have the usual mixture of pity and admiration for the man that no doubt most people do and it must be a trifle unsettling to see your own name running neck and neck in the interest stakes with what's still a pungent and immersive read.

But. It did give me an idea. As I sat freezing on the tram I started thinking of Rushdie as a character in his own narrative; the urgency and sharp practices of his unique situation were so alien they made a seamless transition in fictional territory.

So then I started imagining other writers as characters apart from their work, Rushdie almost coming across as a - dare I say - Bournesque figure (specifically I'm thinking Guardian journalist Paddy Considine in the third one) and I nearly missed my stop. But that was due to the tannoy being totally out of the loop (we stopped at Piccadilly three times in my journey apparently).

The below are simply caricatures; I thought it best to keep them simple but there is possibly a few curveballs in there depending on perspective. With each I have tried to tie them to an outpost in pop culture. I have gone purely for entertainment value; generally where they would be least comfortable, I have placed them. Avant:

Jonathan Franzen as Hooper (played by Richard Dreyfus) in Jaws

This would be a sparkling comedy with Franzen in there - Jaws is one of my all-time faves and there are so many tight scenes between the trio which would probably split my sides if Franzen was in there. Specifically I'm imagining him as a blend of the good doctor and himself - uppity, snappish, warm and empathetic. The cage scene could descend into Marx Brothers-levels of hilarity (I am generally imagining a sped-up scene of the shark chasing a furiously pedalling Franzen around his smashed cage set to trumpets) and the final release post-sharksplosion I would probably finish with a really waspish comment which Scheider just doesn't get before swimming off.

Italo Calvino as Rufus T. Firefly (played by Groucho Marx) in Duck Soup

Calvino always struck me as a guy who had a ball writing his classics. Less so with the headliner If On A Winter's Night... this nevertheless had its quietly farcical moments (the visit to the publishers of the mysterious text is a scream and the relaying of the villainous author seesaws between bright hilarity and black drama). Calvino is one of my faves so I wanted to give him something he could really chew on, and I think he wouldn't have looked out of place in the Marx Brother's classic brouhaha Duck Soup. Imagining the Italian in slapstick mode is easy and in his eager playful style he upends the heaviest of topics, an enduring strength of the best satire and comedy. I may have broken my own rules here but I'm pretty sure this would deliver in spades.

Stephen King as Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) in The Shining

Yeah OK so we all know Torrance really is King; the raging alcoholism, the desperation for familiarity in his environment that made both authors, real and written, reach out for increasingly weird behaviours as success (and the ever-present fear of failure) manifested. But having read almost all of King's 'good' stuff in my early teens and knowing what he thought of Kubrick's take on his superb tale, I would be generally interested to see King take that role himself. I thought the raving Jack Nicholson did an incendiary job, coming to pieces in a totally 'believable' way and his easy camaraderie with the racist bartender is a scene that regularly flies under the radar but is brilliantly creepy on repeat viewing. Playing devil's advocate, I would of course love to be a fly on the wall for the filming too. King vs Kubrick; and that's definitely the way it would have gone down.

Hunter S Thompson as Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) in Apocalypse Now

A good friend of mine once described Thompson as the sort of liberal who wants absolutely nothing to do with the state; I think I'd take that one step further and say he wanted nothing to do with society, unless it was on his terms. Principles were, as far as I can tell, there to be tested to the limit. Preferably whilst on drugs.

The heady combination of imported dogma and foreign rule were prevalent in both Conrad and Thompson's day and both have clear disgust for it. There's an ironic tendency for those ideals to twist and warp due to the very fact of their inflexibility however and very occasionally come unmoored, leaving their proponent appearing detached or worse, insane. Thompson was never a man to shy away from debate and controversy and Kurtz, one of the great sociopaths of the 20th century, has floated from the shores of existence through a combination of intellectual loneliness and tyrannical abuse of power. Thompson's wide-eyed mix of fascination, wit and disgust in essaying these nutcases would, in my eyes make for a good role reversal.

 

Will Self as Captain Han Solo (played by Harrison Ford) in Star Wars Ep IV: A New Hope

My goodness. I'm not sure how this might pan out but I'm basically thinking of the almost narcoleptic Self of Shooting Stars fame when I think of this superimposing. Self as the space cowboy of flowing locks, stylish waistcoating and pilot of the Millennium Falcon would probably be a mess but a man whose work was recently described as 'dazlling' trying to crash his way headfirst through the appalling contrivances of Lucas's space soap opera could potentially be the funniest thing on film.

I regularly associate Self with director Christopher Guest for no other reason than both have been known to lampoon modern wants with impervious wit (they have to my knowledge never worked together) and I like imagining Self in Spinal Tap. But Self having to converse -without shedding a tear of despair - with Chewbacca, an aggressive intergalactic Furby, would truly make my day. With apologies to Mr Self.