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Looking out over the world with author Philip Brian Hall ...
I am happy to report that a major exercise to produce an author-narrated audiobook of "The Prophets of Baal" has been completed.
The recording worked out a tad short of nineteen hours for approximately 163,000 words. This averages about 143 words per minute, as delivered to the publisher, which I hope listeners will find a satisfactory storytelling speed.
This week, I have received confirmation that the recording passed quality control and the audiobook received approval for release to retailers. I understand that it may take a couple of weeks to become available, and I will let you know when it does.
In the unlikely event that anyone cannot wait to hear a sample of my reading style, you can always check out the recordings of Yorkshire poetry on my YouTube channel.
This is an old, and complex, question.
In particular, in Scotland at this time, Sir Walter Scott was writing the Waverley Novels, in which assorted historical gangsters such as Rob Roy McGregor were turned into loveable Robin Hood style rogues, and the nasty, brutish and short lives of Highland clansmen became rural idylls with hills thrown in. A fictional 13th century Scotland that had never existed was called retrospectively into being and some Norman robber barons, including a murderer called Robert de Brus, (anglicised to Bruce), were reinvented as patriotic Scots.
At this time also, a Scottish industrialist invented the modern short kilt as a suitable garment for workers in the new factories, the army decided that this invention was a suitable uniform for soldiers and adopted it, and the idea that each clan had woven a different tartan into their great kilts or plaids, (a sort of long blanket that was wrapped around the waist and then up over the shoulder and which doubled as a daytime overcoat and night bedding), was invented as one of the first ever tourist scams. Nobody seemed to notice that the science of chemical dyes had been pushed back a few centuries in history to allow this phenomenon.
Now, this was all great fun, as long as it was only used to boost the economy and fool the Sassenachs. (Which by the way was the original Gaelic Highlander’s term for the Saxon (actually mainly Angle and Briton) lowlanders who lived south of Stirling, not in England), and who wouldn’t have been seen dead in Highland attire.) But like many tellers of tall tales, the romantics talked themselves into believing their own fiction. Today the attire that was never worn even north of the Highland Line in antiquity, or south of the Highland Line at all, has been adopted as the national costume, and even some people who live here think that William “Wallace” (anglicised name) went around in late 18th century clothing.
So, in terms of the politics of his age, Bonaparte was correct in describing history as an agreed fable. But when you teach fables in schools for a couple of centuries, they become accepted truth, and when Hollywood takes those fables and turns them into money making blockbusters that masquerade as the truth, there are, sadly, ramifications in the real world. People believe what they want to believe, don’t they?
A thing one learns in the course of teaching philosophy is that the first person to lose his temper loses the argument. In former days, it was the norm that disagreement did not require incivility and that eccentric viewpoints did not make you a bad person. (Thanks to Rod Steiger for the unforgettable ad lib in “No Way to Treat a Lady”.)
When I was at Oxford, we went to hear speakers of every viewpoint. You need to hear people first hand because you absolutely cannot rely on reported speech. (A certain authoress in my part of the world has recently discovered afresh that it doesn’t matter what you said, it matters what people say you said.)Quality and marketability are not necessarily the same thing. There are at least three types of publisher.
Probably most numerous are the “More of the Same” group, who have established what sells in their market segment and are content to supply their readers with variations on that theme. There are writers who are (perfectly reasonably, since they have to eat) happy to write within these established bounds. I take this group to include the politically correct, who like to praise each other for their conformity.
Then we have the “Anybody Famous” group, who will take (or have ghost-written) works by celebrities, regardless of literary merit, because the bulk of their marketing effort has already been done without expense.
But also we have those who will at least entertain the unusual and the original. Now, these guys need to be brave, because risk precedes reward, and by definition a large proportion of risks won’t pay off. Sad to say, one of the risks is being unable to stay in business. I’ve worked with a number of those, so I do hope I’m not a Jonah. But I do believe that this group is far more likely to make a worthwhile contribution to literature, and that is probably why they do it.
Classics require to be written without fear.
When I was first published professionally, I joined an online forum which had many useful features, but on which you would get demands for censorship as soon as you strayed into controversial territory. (Being English, I had very little idea of how immune to criticism certain issues were in the US). You would also get quite horrendously politically-correct offerings which, to me, were almost unreadable in their sanctimony.
I well remember receiving a criticism on a story I wrote about The Albigensian Crusade, informing me I was being offensive to Catholics. I remember thinking, if modern Catholics are offended by their own church’s history, it’s going to be difficult to write about some subjects at all.
Now, one thing we know about fashionable morality is that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping. It also happens that modern identity politics is so destructive of social cohesion that either it, or society, cannot last long. In the former case, no one at all will want to read today’s politically-correct writing in two decades’ time; in the latter case, there’ll be no-one to read it anyway. Already half the population or more does not want to read what well-regarded writers of today are writing because they find it insufferably puritanical or intolerant.
Classics cannot be flavour of this month. Villains need to be nasty. Insoluble problems need to be stressful situations. People need to lose as well as win. The unspeakable needs to be spoken. Otherwise, we should give up writing and take up making blancmange.
What we, as writers, must resist is the temptation to self-censor because we fear the mob. Good writing may be loved by some, hated by others, but it is never bland.