Soviet-style groupthink means only one thing: terrible books
In 1957, the manuscript of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and handed to the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. The book was hailed as a masterpiece, and in 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, an honour that he initially accepted, but then, under pressure from the Soviet literary establishment, renounced.
Is Doctor Zhivago still a masterpiece? If excellence in art is the ability to channel brilliance of imagination into equally brilliant language, then Pasternak stands as one of the indisputable pillars of Russian literature.
But the definition of excellence is changing. Julie Finch, the chief executive of the Hay literary festival, observed that, “Youth audiences don’t really care for something that was published 20 years ago, they care about what’s popular now.”
Alongside popularity, a host of other qualities are now required. The self-appointed cultural commissars of our own time are just as vigilant as the state apparatchiks of the former Soviet Writers’ Union, and their verdict can be equally fatal to a writer’s work.
Joining such high-profile casualties as J K Rowling and Kate Clanchy, Elizabeth Gilbert, the vastly successful author of titles such as Eat, Pray, Love and City of Girls has postponed indefinitely the publication of her latest novel, The Snow Forest.
Gilbert had promised that her novel, set in Soviet Russia, would venture into “the deepest realms of the Siberian taiga, and into the heart and mind of an extraordinary girl born into that world”. No one other than Gilbert and her associates has yet read the book. But that didn’t deter hundreds of people from posting negative comments on the reviews website Goodreads. The mere fact of a Russian setting was enough to condemn it.
Gilbert’s decision to postpone publication was apparently her own, and on the basis of her previous books, The Snow Forest was possibly not a masterpiece: it is more likely to have been extremely enjoyable and entirely harmless, to the Ukrainian nation and everyone else.
From this latest publishing debacle, two thoughts emerge: when groupthink takes over publishing, nothing but bad books result. And when Gilbert comes to release The Snow Forest, she should remember Boris Pasternak’s response to his critics: “Don’t yell at me,” he said. “But if you must yell, at least don’t do it in unison.”
Summer blues
The pithy description of the English summer as “three fine days and a thunderstorm” is due an update. These days, “three fine days and a water shortage” is an apter description.
Throughout this winter and spring, our garden in the Kentish weald was regularly flooded. Now, South East Water has imposed a hosepipe ban, and nearby villages have had no water at all.
The leaders of our national utilities seem perennially wrong-footed by our temperate climate, and it is invariably the customers who suffer. But if we were to subject the CEOs of these companies to the suffering they inflict on their customers, the problems would be resolved within hours.
So, for David Hinton of South East Water, I prescribe several days with dry taps, a sick relation needing care, a water-dependent business (farming, hospitality) and a response along the lines of, “We apologise for any inconvenience caused, but it’s your own fault.”
PS: it’s now raining buckets outside.
