The search for Southern Africa flava

Okay, I am biased. It is my writing. I am in good company: JK Rowling was turned down six times before her first Harry Potter was published. My memoir, Cracking China, has been turned down about eight times now by various SA publishers and agencies. Interestingly enough, they mostly praised the manuscript and say they would love to “work on the project” (man, they love that term) The reason given for turning down the manuscript is often budgetary. In fact, one publisher, which is a large international concern with an office in South Africa, has said they wish to review the book again in 2010 when the “new budget is in place” if I haven’t found a publisher.

Reading between the lines of “budgetary reasons” I sense the old Catch 22: I just do not have enough of a name. Everyone who has read Cracking China, including professional writers and editors has loved it, said it is marketable. But to find a publisher?

One of my novels, Flowers on Sappho’s Grave, is set in a fictional country, Qu’arti, deliberately almost an anagram of Iraq. The dictator’s name is Narouz and he bumps off his father, Haroun, the previous king, in the first chapter of the novel, for humping Narouz’s wife without her permission. Yep, the novel certainly starts off with more than one bang: Sex, rape, intrigue and one moerse sword-fight which puts back the Freudian penis envy back in the parricide that ensues. I got the idea for the book from La Cicciolina, that notorious Italian Minister of Parliament who was a porn star, who offered her body to Saddam Hussein on more than one occasion in exchange for hostages and peace. In my book I send in a South African meisie, Antoinette Cameron, to do the job on Narouz, but she soon discovers she is a pawn in a much bigger, global game. I know many readers, like me, love conspiracy theories and SA publishers praised it, but agh toe, just not enough about our precious South Africa in it, hey?

What is this, this parochial, myopic obsession that SA publishers have with novels having to be about South Africa or at least Southern Africa? In other words if someone submits a blockbuster worthy of a John Grisham or Dean Koontz (ahem), it gets turned down because there isn’t enough references to biltong, Table Mountain or the Karoo or whatever? It almost seems as if these publishers and agencies don’t see what the bestsellers are that are selling right now in CNA and Exclusive books. Sure as hell not just books about uit die blou van onse hemel and so forth, for crying out aloud. Local isn’t always lekker. No wonder many of these publishers are struggling and turning down manuscripts, based on “budgetary reasons”.

What I find amusing about the agencies is their need to try and impress writers with so-called knowledge, asking pithy questions such as “What are your Flesch Kincaid statistics?” (woof! … impressive, mysterious term that, Flesch Kincaid statistics! If you don’t know the term it just has you on your knees beating your chest as you bemoan your ignorance, doesn’t it just?) And, “how much head-hopping do you do in your first and subsequent chapters?” The somewhat rhetorical questions are followed by parenthetical suggestions, such as the school-marmish “if you don’t know what head-hopping means, then ask”. Yes ma’am!

Head-hopping is the latest, catchy term for narrative viewpoint, in other words from which point of view is the book written, the author’s or does it follow the viewpoint of character A, or does it often swap from character A to character B to C which can be confusing and tedious for the reader, depending on how it is done. These agencies come across as eager beaver undergrad English One students trying to impress their profs with the big words, when, really, the simpler, well known terms like “narrative viewpoint” do just famously. I remember one of my professors at Rhodes University, the great Ruth Harnett, correcting an essay of mine on Wordsworth, where, in my various excruciating attempts to be profound, said something like, “Wordsworth employs the imagery to suggest …” and she neatly crossed out “employs” with the suggested “uses the imagery?”.

“Flesch-Kinkaid statistics” refers to the readability of a text, that is, vocabulary level, sentence lengths and so forth. It is, in my opinion, very imperfect and is rather like trying to get a computer to predict how many people will want to read a particular book. It cannot predict reading pleasure, themes, humour, or the personality of the author. It is like taking a photograph of a meal and then assuming you know what it will taste like. “Personality of the author” has become increasingly important to me with regard to what I read. For me, aesthetics is increasingly becoming a function of what kind of person the author is, or how she or he comes across in the text, particularly in poetry, memoirs, literary criticism (JM Coetzee is a complete gentleman as he guides you through some pretty heavy discursion) and philosophy (Ken Wilbur is staggeringly well read but so down to earth). I am told my character in Cracking China is a muttery, grumpy bloke with his tongue usually in his cheek, and not unlike Eeyore the donkey.

Honestly, SA publishers are like AA Milne’s Hundred Acre wood. Nothing worthwhile exists outside of that small wonderland. I fail to see why they will only publish books that have a strong southern Africa “flava”.