The Sandstone Blog
The News from Peterburgh
On the day of writing this blog I received an email from one of those colleagues I now have in the trade whom I have never met but, because this is the internet age, feel I know almost as a friend. I won’t embarass him by using his name but it was his duty to let me know that another High Street bookshop is closing down and that some of their Sandstone stock is to be sent back. We manage a joke or two on the subject. I tell him the shops wouldn’t have gone down if they had only stocked more Sandstone books.
For thirty three years I worked in and around the construction industry, mostly in water (often hot!), where companies have tended to go out of business more regularly. Tendering processes have also been hugely competitive and I have often seen workers laid off between contracts, often having to find some other permanent employer. I have been that soldier, so I know how it feels.
There is a cold wind now blowing through the world’s economies that is exacerbated for book people by the Internet Imperative, by ultra discounting and, I dare say, by the big hungers of the already well fed. As a Civil Engineer I was only too used to it. You might think then, that I would welcome Dame Liz Forgan’s announcement on Friday 24th April that the Arts Council of England is to be given an additional £44.5M of direct funding - and so I do. It is a qualified, slightly concerned welcome though.
Not much will go to Literature, of that you can be sure. Of such monies as will, I have come to wonder how best they might be spent. Here in Scotland, where we wait with baited breath for a similar announcement, much State support has been given over the years to the development of new writing and new writers. Training schemes have brought people on, so have Residencies and competitions such as the Neil Gunn Writing Competition. Here in Ross and Cromarty, under our enlightened District Council (now subsumed), we enjoyed the leadership of Aonghas MacNeacail, Thom Nairn and Brian McCabe. I am grateful for all of this because I am a beneficiary.
Once the home of publishing, fitting for the Country of the Enlightenment (those were the days), even the largest of Scotland’s present day publishers struggle to attain the status of ‘medium sized’ in the world. We have many fine writers of whom relatively few are published with a profit. Those who succeed in this way are, of course, snapped up and published elsewhere. On the larger, London, stage English writers will no doubt say the same because the few large publishers in the world are multi-nationals.
Canada once was a literary backwater. Gracing the world’s bookshelves now they have Robertson Davis, Margaret Atwood and many other real Greats. Names as varied as Don Domanski, Leona Gom, and Susan Ioannou give an idea of the country’s present cosmopolitan nature and powers of absorption and integration. Of course, literature is an integration process. Why burn books otherwise?
In Canada they support their own publishers and bookshops. Financial support goes to literature at point of purchase. Two minutes of thinking will show how the whole dynamic changes. Instead of total funding by grant, writers have a much better chance to make a living through selling their wares, that is to say their thoughts, feelings and poetic arc.
Readers develop a sense of loyalty and, eventually, pride. Careers can be made in writing, actually producing books rather than developing local therapies. Competition by small independent bookshops with the internet is actually possible. The thought processes, the ‘working out’ processes, so necessary to a healthy national psyche at least have a chance.
I hope that Council Members and Officials in England and Wales who are active at levels below Dame Liz will take this opportunity to do some deep thinking on strategies and in addressing the ‘what’s it all about’ question. My hope is that we in Scotland will do the same when our time arrives.
Art is art and will keep coming no matter what. There are strong arguments in freeing it from State funding. There is a level though, where art meets industry and trade. It is a mutual dependency quite different from the relationship with government, and indeed international capitalism, and when we introduce the readership it becomes a symbiosis. It’s that strong - need.
Let us look to these aspects and these methods when we consider the spiritual, economic and intellectual health of everyone in these islands. The single place where everyone meets is at the till.