(2008-12-29) Dewitt Interview

IFBook interview with Helen De Witt. Fascinating bits on the breakage of time between Writing A Book and actually getting it published (Publishing Industry). So we really have no chance of being contemporaries of our own contemporaries, even if we want to - if we stick with the conventional publishing model. Books I wrote or started last year, five years ago, 10 years ago, might get into the public domain (she means readable by the public, not in the legal Public Domain) in 2012, 2022, or never. The determining factor is not the quality of the books; it's the extent to which Helen De Witt can marshal the social skills, the obstinacy, the willingness to suspend writing indefinitely to wheel and deal, to get the fuckers into print... The machinery of the publishing industry means that there's a very long gap between the point where the author crossed the finish line, moved on to other books, and starting working on something new and exciting, and the point where the book is acquired by an editor and starts the long journey into print. So if you publish a book you have to go back and eat your own vomit. Then the physical object is available for sale, you're expected to give interviews and go out and tell everyone how nice it tastes. Which means the book(s) you're actually excited about are ripped out of your head; you go back to the fragments on paper, and you see that this looked like a great book, but the person who could have finished it no longer exists, so you feel pretty sick. And lots on alternative Business Models For Information (like Patronage) to get writers paid.

There's more discussion of the interview here .