Review: Go Set a Watchman

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I was one of the 100,000+ readers who bought a copy of Go Set a Watchman on its first day of issue. For me To Kill a Mockingbird is a great work of literary, social and political significance. So, I was anxious to read Harper Lee’s second (or first) novel which apparently served as the draft which became To Kill a Mockingbird. The pre-publication reviews of Watchman, which were largely uncomplimentary, didn’t deter me.

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Harper Lee

So, Lee submitted a draft of Watchman to publisher J B Lippencott, where an editor suggested that she re-write the book in the first person, from the perspective of Scout, a young girl. The re-writing took two years, during which Lee became so frustrated she threw the manuscript out the window of her New York apartment into the snow. Her literary agent persuaded her to retrieve it and carry on. Reportedly, during the re-writing, Lee’s editor was closely involved with her.

Two of the principal characters, Scout and her father Atticus, appear in both novels. But, in Watchman, Scout has become Jean Louise, a twenty-something, new York-based, adult, and Atticus is now in his seventies, still living in the rural Alabama town. Three new major characters are introduced in Watchman: Henry Clinton, a life-long friend and marriage prospect; Aunt Alexandra, her father’s sister, an arch, small-town, Southern traditionalist; and Dr John, her father’s brother, and eccentric but wise philosopher. Jem, Scout’s older brother, is strangely dead.

In Mockingbird, the plot focused on the trial of a black man who is wrongly accused of raping a white woman; he is defended by Atticus, the small town lawyer. This tightly-focused plot yields themes of justice, racial and sexual equality, love and duty.

In Watchman, the story follows Jean Louise’s relationships with Henry, her aunt, her uncle and her father. Race is again an issue, but less dramatic and compelling: the grandson of Jean Louise’s childhood black, nanny/mentor has killed an old white man in a car accident which was the grandson’s fault. This time, Atticus is revealed as a racist who wants to limit the freedom and political power which black people have acquired over the preceding twenty years. The message I get from the book is that how one acts on vital issues, such as race relations, is determined by our conscience (the Watchman), and our conscience is influenced by our context, which must also be respected. At the very least, Watchman seems to be a watering down of the clear, landmark message of Mockingbird. Disappointing!

The characters, the setting, and the context of Watchman are all well defined, credible and real. These descriptions rely on interesting, unique writing. Some of the dialogue comes across as contrived, rather than natural. Frequently, there are references to obscure literary figures: these references tend to confuse rather than illuminate. Apart from my concerns about the message of the novel, the plot seems to have been created ad lib. Too much text is devoted to setting the context, and exploring dead ends (Jean Louise’s relationship with Henry), and not enough effort is exerted on defining the role and implications of the Watchman.

One can’t help but wonder if the editor behind Mockingbird were still alive and involved with Watchman, what would the recent novel be?

Review: No Longer Human

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I bought this book by Osamu Dazai at the Kaizosha Book Store at Narita Airport on the way back from Tokyo to London. It was one of perhaps a dozen novels available in English from the bookstore.

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Osamu Dazai

Having never read the work of a Japanese novelist, I was eager to try one.

The translator, Donald Keene, has an introduction in which he explains that the literal translation of the Japanese title, Ningen Shikaku, would be “Disqualified as a Human Being”. Having read the novel, I don’t feel that either title does the work justice, but I can’t think of a better one. Keene makes the point that Japanese writers and literary intellectuals, in general feel isolated (as is Yozo, the protagonist in No Longer Human) from the West, where the perception may be that Japanese writers have nothing interesting to offer.

Dazai (June 19, 1909 – June 13, 1948) grew up in a small town in the remote north of Japan. His family was wealthy and educated; Dazai himself was familiar with European literature, American cinema, modern painting and sculpture. So he was very much aware of Western culture. Dazai’s earlier novel, The Setting Sun, was reviewed by Richard Gilman in Jubilee: “Such is the power of art to transfigure what is objectively ignoble or depraved that The Setting Sun is actually deeply moving and even inspiring. . . . To know the nature of despair and to triumph over it in ways that are possible to oneself – imagination was Dasai’s only weapon – is surely a sort of grace.”

No Longer Human is told in the first person by Yozo the youngest child of a large, well-to-do family in the north of Japan. In this regard, Yozo’s background (and perhaps his feelings about others) mirror those of Dazai. The story begins in childhood and continues until about the age of thirty. Yozo is a good-looking child, but he suffers from and extreme lack of self-confidence, and to put my own diagnostic on it: he also suffers from some form of autism in the sense that he has difficulty interpreting the emotions and the motivations of others. His father, a powerful figure, remains remote. He feels disconnected from most of the humanity around him. His coping mechanism is to be the clown: valued by others as a sort of entertainer. While Yozo is obviously intelligent, his disconnection means that he has no real identity or a goal in life. Instead, he is buffeted hither and thither by the forces he encounters.

This theme of disconnection is central to No Longer Human, and it is reinforced by contrast with supporting characters. Yozo’s wife, Yoshiko, is trusting of other people to a fault. Yozo’s companion, Horiki, has an entirely selfish method of dealing with other people. Flatfish, Yozo’s family-imposed guardian, is entirely logical. Given that Japanese society is tightly constrained by a complex web of un-written rules of interaction, it must be particularly interesting in Japan to consider the fate of someone who has never learned the rules, but is Japanese.

Yozo stumbles from one disaster to another, but one cannot help but feel some sympathy for this crippled human being. These feelings of sympathy are aided by the various women who fall in love with Yozo for the “good boy, the angel” that he is. It deepens the tragedy that Yozo is unable to see past the feelings of self-denigration the kind, even loveable character that he is.

If No Longer Human is representative of modern Japanese literature, I would say: “Seek it out!”

The Secret of Great Writing

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In the autumn of 1938, a sophomore at Radcliffe College, Francis Turnbull, sent her latest short story to family friend, F Scott Fitzgerald.  His response is recorded in F Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters.

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F Scott Fitzgerald

Dear Frances:

I’ve read the story carefully and, Frances, I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

This is the experience of all writers. It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. Ernest Hemingway’s first stories ‘In Our Time’ went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. In ‘This Side of Paradise’ I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile.

The amateur, seeing how the professional having learned all that he’ll ever learn about writing can take a trivial thing such as the most superficial reactions of three uncharacterized girls and make it witty and charming — the amateur thinks he or she can do the same. But the amateur can only realize his ability to transfer his emotions to another person by some such desperate and radical expedient as tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.

That, anyhow, is the price of admission. Whether you are prepared to pay it or, whether it coincides or conflicts with your attitude on what is ‘nice’ is something for you to decide. But literature, even light literature, will accept nothing less from the neophyte. It is one of those professions that wants the ‘works.’ You wouldn’t be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave.

In the light of this, it doesn’t seem worth while to analyze why this story isn’t saleable but I am too fond of you to kid you along about it, as one tends to do at my age. If you ever decide to tell your stories, no one would be more interested than,

Your old friend,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

P.S. I might say that the writing is smooth and agreeable and some of the pages very apt and charming. You have talent — which is the equivalent of a soldier having the right physical qualifications for entering West Point.

 

F Scott Fitzgerald makes a very good point: that the most important skill of a writer (of fiction) is to be able to convey the feelings of his/her characters to the reader in a unique and compelling way.  It is not enough to tell the story clearly and neatly, gaining the reader’s attention. As he puts it, we have little interest in a ‘soldier who is a only little brave’.

How does one convey feelings in this compelling way?  First of all, as a writer, one must feel the feeling; it is not enough to imagine how it would feel.  Then, one must place oneself into the character so that the expression of the feeling is consistent with the character’s personality: different people express anger (for example) in different ways.  Finally, one has to ‘paint the picture’ carefully selecting from all the many available devices:  How does the character look?  What does she say?  What does he feel?  How do others react?  What does it sound like?  What’s a good analogy?

Easy to say.  Not so easy to do!

The Character: David Dawson

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General David Dawson is a character who appears in two of my novels: The Iranian Scorpion and Hidden Battlefields.  He is the father of Robert Dawson, the principal character, a US Drug  Enforcement Agent in both books.

Why is he there?  Several reasons.  He is a different character than Robert; he is impulsive, hot-tempered, impatient, and something of a womaniser; traits which Robert does not share with his father.  But David is also brave (a decorated military commander), intelligent and ambitious; attributes which are visible in Robert, too.  The general’s relationship with his son is complex.  On the one hand, he is disappointed that Robert did not follow him into a military career.  He wonders, sometimes, whether his son is worthy of his heritage.  But at the same time, he feels genuine affection for his only son and admires his accomplishments as a DEA agent.  There is also a love rivalry between the two men for a very attractive woman.  This rivalry begins in The Iranian Scorpion and reaches crescendo pitch in Hidden Battlefields.  In this situation, David’s wild impulsiveness, and Robert’s cool-headedness come into play.

Most readers will admire the general when he strays off his assignment as a nuclear weapons inspector in Iran, but one cannot be astonished when his impetuousness gets him into serious trouble.  Similarly, in Hidden Battlefields, he places himself in situations where his military skills are called for, but are not always used to the best advantage.

Robert’s mother is mentioned in The Iranian Scorpion as an embittered ex-wife, but she re-appears in Hidden Battlefields as a happily re-married woman who successfully takes some control over her ex-husband in a situation where Robert has no levers to pull.

So for me, the secondary characters in a novel help to define the values and the personality of the main characters.  Secondary characters also add depth and interest to a novel; without them, at best, a book becomes two dimensional.  In addition, they are usually essential to the progress of the plot, and, as in both of the above novels, they help the author express a theme.  The Iranian Scorpion, is about what it takes to succeed in a challenging situation: more than a intelligence, a plan and courage: it takes attention to detail and luck, as well.   In the case of Hidden Battlefields the theme is that while we as individuals have major, un-resolved conflicts going on in our heads, we cannot reach our full potential as human beings.

Dealing with Pirates

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The July issue of IBPA Independent magazine has an article entitled “My Battle with Pirates” by Rhonda Rees.

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Rhonda Rees

The article begins:

Late one evening, shortly after I had self-published Profit and Profit with Public Relations: Insider Secrets to Make You a Success, I decided to run a Google search for it – and there it was, staring me right in the face.  My book, along with hundreds of others, was being given away free with the simple click of a button.  By the time I had discovered this, one website had already given away 600 copies of my book, and another one, which had the nerve to say that it had my blessing, had given away 1,500 copies.  As you can imagine, I was shocked.  And as I now know, you may find yourself in this very same unwanted position.  Any book can be pirated online.  It’s not just the famous writers and recording artists who are being ripped off.  Even the fact that I trademarked and registered my title here in the United States didn’t keep my book safe, since many pirates are located overseas.

I decided to take her advice and run a Google search: “<title of book> free download”.  Three of my six novels produced results of commercial websites that had my copyright material on them.  Two of the three promise “free downloads”.  All three referred me to the website http://www.donnaplay.com, where I had to register to be eligible for the free downloads.  It turned out that I had to provide my credit card information, because after a five day free trial, there is a monthly fee.  So the downloads aren’t really free.

The two websites that initially came up promising free downloads had contact forms where I could request that the page be deleted from their site.  The third had a similar request form, but it was not live, and the telephone and email information was obviously false.

So what does Ms Rees recommend?

  • Run a Whois search to find information such as who owns the domain names, where and when they were registered, and when they expire.
  • Send out emails to find out what company is hosting the site so that a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice can be sent out.  The notice has to be correctly worded and DMCA.com can help with that task.  There is also a free sample DMCA letter posted by Gene Quinn, a patent attorney and the founder of IPWatchdog.com (ipwatchdog.com/2009/07/06/sample-dmca-take-down-letter/id-4501)
  • Send the DMCA takedown notice by email to the web hosting company which is obligated to notify its clients (the culprits) within 24 hours to have them remove all the information.

I, also, was rather shocked that half of my novels are being pirated.  I think my next step will be to get my publisher involved with http://www.donnaplay.com.  If that illegal site has three of my novels, they must have at least one hundred of the publishers other titles.

I’ll keep you posted!

Payments by the Page

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In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph there was an article “Amazon to Pay Authors by How Much We Read”.  It said that Amazon will begin paying royalties based on the number of pages read by Kindle users, rather than the books they download.  This system will begin on July 1 and “initially” applies to authors who self publish their books via the Kindle Direct Publishing Select (KDP Select), which makes books available to download from the Kindle library and to Amazon Prime customers.

The article said that if a reader abandons a book a quarter of the way in, the author will get only a quarter f the money they would have earned if the reader had finished the book.

Amazon claims its method is a fair way of rewarding authors who write lengthy books but have previously earned the same as someone who crafts 100 pages.  “We’re making this switch in response to great feedback we received from authors who asked us to better align payments with the length of books and how much customers read”, the company said.  “Under the new payment method, you’ll be paid for each page individual customers read of your book, the first time they read it.”  To prevent authors beating the system by enlarging the type and spreading our their work over a larger number of pages, Amazon has developed a “Kindle Edition Normalised Page Count” which standardises the font, line height and line spacing.

The article mentions Unfinished: Kindle’s most difficult books:

Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty:  2.4% completed

A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking: 6.6% completed

Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman: 6.8% completed

Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg: 12.3% completed

Flash Boys, by Michael Lewis: 21.7% completed

Also mentioned in the article was data released by Kobo, the Kindle rival, which showed that only 44% of readers finished The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, which was one of the biggest sellers in 2014.

Hari Kunzru, the award-winning author of The Impressionist, said the system “feels like the thin edge of a wedge.”

Peter Maass, a writer and editor, said on Twitter: “I’d like the same in restaurants – pay for how much of a burger I eat.”

Kerry Wilkinson, whose Jessica Daniel crime series propelled him to the top of the Amazon bestseller list as a self-published author, believes the system is fair.  “If readers give up on a title after half a dozen pages, why should the writer be paid in full?” he said.  “If authors don’t like it, they don’t have to use KDP Select.  It’s opt in, not opt out.”  But Wilkinson found it “eerie” that Amazon was keeping tabs on what – and how – you are reading.  Even if it’s anonymous, that’s a lot of data mining.”

To Kunzru’s comment, there is no reason this system could not be extended to all Kindle editions, so that whoever holds the copyright (usually the publisher) would be paid on the percentage of a title that is read.  And, of course, other e-books (like Kobo) could adopt the same system.  So, it definitely sounds to me like the thin edge of the wedge.

I think the system sounds fair for mass market books which are intended for a broad group of readers.  I suspect that readers of crime, thriller, romance, historical novels (and other genres) generally finish the books they have bought.  But I also suspect that non-fiction books (such as self-help, political, business, nature, science, environment, etc.) are probably not finished in many cases.  Does this suggest that their authors deserve a lesser reward?  I don’t think so (only one of my published books – from long ago – is in one of the latter categories).  A reader may buy a non-fiction book, read 25% of it, and still be pleased with the book: s/he may well feel that s/he got her money’s worth, and in such a case shouldn’t the author get the full royalty?

The other concern I have is about works of top-class, leading edge fiction.  The Hawk comes to mind.  I suspect that quite a few readers decided that the prose or the subject matter was not for them.  This may also be true of works by Salman Rushdie or Jonathan Franzen, where the writing just went over the reader’s head.  I suppose that one could argue that if a potential reader had to pay only say 25% of the cost of a book to try it, that would provide the reader with an incentive to buy it and at least try it.  And, it would provide the author with at least some compensation.  I’ll be interested to hear what the top-class authors have to say about the Amazon scheme.  I don’t think they’re going to like it.  After all, they’re probably selling a lot of books that end up on the I Once Tried to Read This shelf.

 

Amazon: Friend or Foe?

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An article entitled: “Amazon: Friend or Foe? A Simple Question with a Complicated Answer” is in the June 2015 issue of the Independent, the monthly journal of the Independent Book Publishers Association.  It is written by Mike Shatzkin, who is CEO of The Idea Logical Company and a publishing industry consultant.  His blog, the Shatzkin Files (idealog.com/blog) is the source of the article. I think it is worth summarising Mr Shatzkin’s points.

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Mike Shatzkin

Mr Shatzkin begins by saying that Amazon has profoundly changed the publishing industry in three ways.  First, it has consolidated the book-buying audience online and delivers it with extraordinary efficiency.  For most publishers, Amazon is their most profitable account, if volume, returns and cost of servicing are taken into account.  Since this fact is almost never acknowledged, it is “one of the industry’s dirty little secrets”. For this reason, he says that Amazon must feel justified in trying to take more margin, an effort which the publishers resist because they don’t know where the demands will cease.  At the same time and in spite of the profitability of the Amazon account, many publishers feel more comfortable with a whole range of customer accounts.

Secondly, “Amazon just about singlehandedly created the e-book business”.  They made an e-reading device with built-in connectivity for direct downloading; this was done in pre-WiFi days so that Amazon was taking a risk that connection charges could destroy margins.  Amazon had the clout to persuade publishers to make more books available in e-versions, and they had the loyalty of book readers who bought e-books.

Finally, the success of the Kindle made self-publishing attractive.  E-books could be produced cheaply and sold at low prices with high margins.  It facilitated the process by creating an easy-to-use interface and efficient self-service.  Amazon represented a ready market for self-published e-books.

Shatzkin says that the first two of these three changes made Amazon a friend of the traditional publishing industry, while the third puts them more in the category of foe.

He goes on to say that Amazon’s data policies make them a foe: they do not share information.  Amazon does not use the industry standard identifier, the ISBN, for the titles that it publishes: it uses the ASIN and does not report on the volumes or the categories of ASIN’s.  There is a black hole in the data.

Amazon also does not report on its sales of used books.  The used book market may help publishers sell more new books as the used book market offers a means for buyers to get a portion of their investment back.  But at the same time, when used versions are available almost simultaneously with new books, they represent a downward pressure on new book prices.  Over time, as demand for a given title decreases and the volume of used copies for sale increases, the price of used copies will decline.  But only Amazon has the useful data about the used book market.

Traditional publishers have no idea how large Amazon’s proprietary book publishing business is.  What volumes?   What categories?  How will recently published Amazon titles affect the prospects for titles under consideration by traditional publishers?

Shatzkin says that Amazon never saw the book business as a stand alone business.  Rather, it was focused on creating “life-time customer value” across a broad range of products.  While it clearly dominates the English-speaking book world, language differences mean that book markets will remain ‘local’ for a long time and strong local players will be hard to dislodge.

He says that the Kindle and Amazon Prime are powerful tools to retain customer loyalty.  Once one subscribes to Prime, all shipping charges are waived, removing the incentive to buy from others.  And, of course, Amazon has the world’s largest selection of printed and digital books in one place.

Looking ahead, Shatzkin sees the subscription services, such as Scribd, Oyster, 24Symbols and Bookmate (as well as Amazon’s own Kindle Unlimited) as pulling customers away from á la carte book buying.  Most of these sales will come out of Amazon’s hide.

His conclusion: Amazon will remain dominant in most of the world for the foreseeable future.  Although, with the next round of marketplace changes, Amazon will be challenged as it will dominate a small portion of the overall market.

Professor Harold Bloom

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On its ’10 Questions’ page at the back of Time Magazine, May 11th, there was a series of responses from Harold Bloom, who is a literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University.  He comes across as an iconic, contrary, interesting figure, and while he was teaching at Yale while I was there, I never met the man.

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In the ‘interview’ he makes several points about literature which interested me.  (He also discussed students and Yale and Naomi Wolf: of less interest.)

He was asked whether he was ever tempted to write a second novel, after The Flight to Lucifer.  His response was that on re-reading The Flight to Lucifer, he decided that writing fiction was not for him.  He was then asked what qualifies him to be a critic if he isn’t a novelist or a poet.  His answer was that he loves books.  To my mind, that’s a good answer.  To be a competent critic, one does not need to be a writer, but one must be an educated, insightful, voracious reader.  Good writers do not necessarily make good critics, and good critics can be poor writers.  What good writers and critics have in common is a love of reading.

He also says that ‘we live in an age of visual overstimulation’ and that the ‘pernicious screen’ destroys the ability to read well.  I’m not sure that it destroys our ability to read, but it certainly can distract us from reading, and I think this is particularly true of young people.

Bloom says that writers should read ‘only the best and most challenging and traditional’.  I don’t agree with this.  I think writers, as readers, need to experiment.  I find that when I read a book that is not one of the ‘best’ or is not ‘traditional’, my horizons are widened.  I can see mistakes that were made, and I can evaluate new approaches and techniques.  This is part of my learning process; sticking to the best, traditional literature narrows my vision.

Time asked Bloom whether he is familiar with ‘websites that provide reviews by common readers’.  Bloom’s response: “Their effect upon the mind is not good.  They do not enlarge and make the mind more keen and independent.  Reading is not in that sense a democratic process.  It is elitist.  It has to be elitist.”  What a lot of bullshit!  Bloom comes across as a dedicated elitist who wishes to protect his own sublime position as a critic.  While it may be true that many of the reviews posted on, for example, Amazon.com are cursory and less than insightful, it does not follow that such reviews should be deplored. Many readers have a desire to express their views on what they have read; to deny them the opportunity to express those views may take away part of their incentive to read.  Besides, a sophisticated review reader can find the wheat amid the chaff.  Reading is not a democratic process?  That’s a ridiculous statement!  If he meant that literary criticism is not a democratic process, I would agree.

Someday, I would like to meet Professor Bloom.

Review: Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo

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As a participant in the Reader’s Favourite book review scheme, I had to select a book from among those that had been submitted for review. Nearly all of the books submitted are in electronic format. I prefer hard copies, so I selected the book I wanted to read and bought it on Amazon.

Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo interested me for several reasons: It concerned the Second World War in the Pacific, and there were elements of Buddhism and Japanese culture. (I read much of the book while on a recent trip to Japan.)

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The author is John Oliver who has a Batchelor’s degree in Political Science and Religious Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara.  He was working in Hawaii when he met John Provoo and decided to tell his story. The book is therefore an autobiography; as it is written in the first person.

According to his ‘testimony’, John Provoo grew up in San Francisco, having been born in 1917. He was attracted to Buddhism and believed in the sanctity of all life. In March 1940, he went to Japan to study for the Buddhist priesthood.   He returned to the US in May 1941 under the threat of imminent war, and enlisted in the US Army. He was sent to the Philippines where he worked as a clerk in Army headquarters in Manila. He was captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Corregidor and became a prisoner of war. Much of the book concerns his time as a Japanese prisoner. Because of his fluency in Japanese and his understanding of Japanese culture he often had to deal directly with his captors. This led simultaneously to somewhat more lenient treatment of fellow prisoners and suspicions by the same fellow prisoners that Provoo was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When he returned to the US, he was accused of collaboration with the enemy, was acquitted and re-enlisted in 1946. For most of the next ten years, he was pursued by the US Justice Department for treason, and underwent several trials, during which his homosexuality was used against him. Eventually, he was acquitted and went to Japan to complete his Buddhist training and to Hawaii, where, as a high level Buddhist priest he lived the rest of his life, dying in 2001.

One has the sense, in reading the book, of an honest re-counting of history, and, as such, it makes very interesting reading: in particular, the conflicted position in which a Japanese-speaking Provoo found himself as a Japanese prisoner of war; the shameful conduct of the Justice Department in mounting a hugely costly campaign against him and in using his homosexuality against him. It appears that John Oliver undertook a considerable amount of independent research to complete this book, and that he did not rely only on what Provoo told him.

There are several areas that are worth mentioning. John Provoo was clearly a very complex character, but one does not get a full understanding of this complexity in the book. Rather, the emphasis is on the historic (what was done) rather than the psychological (why it was done). Might it have been a more interesting piece of literature if instead of being entirely in the first person, the author had intervened as the narrator now and then? In the latter part of the book, there is too much name dropping (who the various interested parties were), and on exactly what they said. I think it would have been sufficient to summarise the key points, and use footnotes where essential. While the writing is good and effective, there is very little description of the various environments in which Provoo found himself: again the emphasis on history rather than literature.

That said, Nichijo, (Provoo’s name as a Buddhist priest) is quite an interesting read. I enjoyed it.

Writers Earn £11,000 per Year

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-There was an articled in the April 21st edition of The Daily Telegraph entitled ‘Want to write?   Expect to earn £11,000 a year’.

This was sufficiently eye-catching that I think it bears repeating.  I quote:

To many, it is the dream job: toiling to create a fine work of literature or academia.  But the reality of being a writer has been laid bare in a new report highlighting the low earnings many endure.  A study, conducted by Queen Mary University of London, showed only one in ten authors can afford to earn a living from writing alone, a drop from 40% a decade ago.  A typical professional writer, it found, earned £11,000 annually.  In real terms, the average earnings of authors is down 8% since 2005, according to the report commissioned by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society.  Five percent of authors earn 42.3% of all income earned by writers, with the struggle for those working in non-fiction and academia particularly acute.  The study points to a publishing world where houses are less willing to take a chance on new authors, opting instead for ‘safe bets’ and celebrity writers.  The report, entitled The Business of Being an Author and based on a survey of nearly 2,500 writers, noted: ‘For the majority, writing remains a low-earning profession.’  A remarkable 17 percent of writers did not earn any money in 2013 despite 98% having had work recently published.  Women were found to earn 80% of the income of their male counterparts. Nicola Solomon, the chief executive of the Society of Authors, said publishers had been compelled to tighten their belts in recent years, investing in high-demand authors.  ‘There is a tendency towards safe,’ she said.  ‘But do we want safe?  Surely the whole point of reading is to be introduced to things that are daring and challenging and different?’   The report was ‘a bit depressing’, she said.  Earlier this year, a YouGov poll found being an author was the most desirable job in Britain, with 60% of people claiming they would like to do it for a living.

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Unquote.

This doesn’t surprise me and it confirms some of my own experience.  For me, as a retired business executive, I’m not writing to make a living.  I’m writing because I enjoy it, and because people who read my books tell me that they enjoy them.  I don’t feel that I have to concentrate on ‘what will sell’.  Rather, I can concentrate on what interests me and what will interest some people.  As long as I’m in good health, I don’t really have a deadline.  Someday, if I’m lucky, one of my novels will ‘go viral’, and I’ll have a £11,000 windfall!