At 10:32 PM 12/04/2007, you wrote:
>One of the main things that bothers me is that we
have a lot of presses here
>propped up by government grant money. I appreciate
the fact that, were it
>not for these grants, these publishers wouldn¹t be in
business. And I
>accept that as a reality, but it means they do not
need to concern
>themselves with marketability and sales.
Selections and decisions about grant applications are usually
made by panels of artists, which makes for a lot of kafkaesk
arts politics. You think intrigue on RARA can sometimes be
intense...
There's also often a sense that focus shifts to please the
government of the day, however slightly, and governments
often express policies toward the arts that they believe
reflects the eminently sensible views of the folks who put
them in office, so the marketplace gets in there somehow, in
the end. The nice thing about this process is no one actually
has to actually read the book, or view the art, to know
whether it's any good or not.
> In my wildest quirk outside of my
>usual reading I actually really enjoy H. Mel Malton¹s
Polly Deacon series,
>but publishers like Rendezvous depress me. They would
have us think the
>cops are all stereotypical donut-eating, bumbling
idiots who can¹t connect
>two dots, and thank goodness the realtors and puppet
makers are out there
>solving murders.
I suspect the folks at Rendezvous felt they were taking a
pretty big risk at the time they started up. The only other
line I can think of devoted to Canuck crime is Castle Street
over at Dundurn Press. Ours is a small market and the
existence of publishers, even the once dominant M&S, is
precarious. Raincoast's recent success was largely gained by
having secured rights to sell the Harry Potter series here,
not from the sudden popularity of any of the Canadian
authors. We've still a somewhat colonial attitude to culture,
so I don't begrudge anyone writing or publishing what they
think will succeed. And some Rendezvous authors have written
darker stuff which we published in the Canuck Noir
anthologies. Even got a nice little noir from Eric Wright
(now with Dundurn) at the start.
>The reality is that authors such as Giles Blunt have
demonstrated that the
>setting can sell to readers if the writing is
strong.
>
>Margaret Laurence was about as bleak as it gets. Toss
in a crime and I
>could write books set in Canada... I¹d just have to
call it literature.
Not that it was all that easy for Margaret. And if it ever
got easier, it was because Hollywood made Rachel, Rachel,
based on her Stone Angel. The talent was always there, the
work strong, but she had to be validated by the dominant
culture before becoming acceptable here. Even then, I seem to
recall that she was not very welcome back in the small
Manitoba town where she grew up. And there was a push to ban
her books in the Ontario school district where she spent the
the last decades of her life.
Again, this is all magnified by Canada being a relatively
small market- one tenth the size of the US, but I think this
also feeds into what Willow is saying about self-perception
(we're too nice and polite to murder anyone) becoming a
difficult to overcome reality (we're too boring to host noir
fiction.)
Would you describe Giles Blunt's fiction, definitely good
stuff, as noir?
Best, Kerry
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Literary events Calendar (South Ont.) http://www.lit-electric.com
The evil men do lives after them http://www.murderoutthere.com
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