Featured Writer Index

FROM DOCTOR JOHNSON’S ‘VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES’ TO ORWELL’S ‘KEEPING THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING’, from George Gissing’s ‘New Grub Street’ to Paul Auster’s recent ‘Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle Of Failure’, the tribulations besetting the would-be writer have been well-charted. The lonely wrestling with the might of the English language; shifty or condescending patrons; discontented spouses; rejection slips to paper several garrets and a madhouse wall; acceptances which, once they come, never actually achieve the light of print: All these are discouragements enough. Especially for a type not noted for a tough skin. And meanwhile Tom Clancy & Co rake in millions ...

In this age of electronic payment and junk mail, now to the scourges above add the Vanity Press. Not that it ever refers to itself as such, preferring to seek out, rather, the quiet corners of otherwise respectable literary supplements. ‘Your Poems Considered’. ‘Be a Writer’. ‘New Authors. Publish your work.’ ‘Authors world-wide invited.’ You take the advert at its word and send off your manuscript, whether five pages or five hundred ...

A few days later – time being money, these organizations are nothing if not prompt – a peculiarly grandiose envelope arrives. Postmarked Cambridge, England, the left-hand corner carries a picture of the University’s spires, presumably uncopyrighted. Not yet knowing the nemesis ahead, you eagerly undo the seal. There on the letter-head are three different typefaces, the same appropriated spires recurring, your Christian name. ‘At certain points in a lifetime of work, it is helpful to both reflect on one’s career achievement as well as look forward to the challenges ahead,’ gushes typeface number one, split infinitive powerless to stop it. ‘All too often we may wish to promote our respective achievements without losing a sense of natural humility.’ Gush, guff, gush, your Christian name once more, a quote from Henry V: Such is a prologue to the big announcement in typeface two: Here is ‘your chance to be’, anonymity notwithstanding, ‘the proud owner of a signed and sealed Golden Scroll of Excellence’. Not only that. You can have it ‘mounted on a magnificent wooden base and eminently suitable for hanging on an office or study wall to reflect your achievements to date.’ Or ostentatiously suitable, revises a cautionary whisper of common sense.

‘A Special Invitation from the Senior Editor,’ the golden blurb spills onto another sheet. More gush and guff. Then, overleaf, ‘Your Personal Reservation Form.’ Now, in significantly smaller print, for the nitty-gritty: ‘For only $415 the Golden Scroll is yours. Or for an equivalent fee in sterling.’ The Award is international after all. Or, should you so wish, for a de luxe version you can pay $495. No, your eyes are not playing tricks: That’s debit, not credit. As if anonymity has not messed you around already, here it is pushing you up against a wall and leering, suggesting that you are too far gone to distinguish a plus from a minus. In a fit of amour propre you tear letter, envelope, form into tiny pieces. One more lesson learned, one more pitfall avoided ...

Until a fortnight later another letter arrives. Is it from the same organization or a dingy offshoot? You’re not told. Only that your submission has now been ‘certified as a semi-finalist’ in a competition which the advert did not mention, and ‘will automatically be entered into the finals’. Here the neat black print breaks into indigo italics: ‘IMAGINE YOUR POEM/STORY ...IN A BEAUTIFUL ANTHOLOGY!’ Three paragraphs and five more flourishes of your Christian name lead to the question, ‘SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?’ To add to the $495 payment requested previously, for $212 you can obtain your ‘personal copy of the publication in which your artistry appears.’ A few lines down, the PS, as if anticipating your misgivings, insists: ‘You should be genuinely proud of your achievement.’

Vanity, vanity, nothing but vanity! Worse still is the image of someone the other end sneering all the way to the bank. This letter goes the way of the first. Compared to such nonsense, plain oblivion seems almost a blessing. Never again, you vow, attempting to rise above the situation, the wastepaper bin your witness ...

Or not till next week. Into your pigeon hole drops, on the strength of that submission you’re beginning to regret having ever written, ‘Your Personal Invitation to acquire an Individual Award recognizing your unfailing service in World Literature.’ Imagination getting the better of you, you picture the honours ceremony, your anonymous self suddenly on the guest list, up there with Rambo, Sir Alec Ferguson, Victoria Beckham and a squad of ghost writers doubling as body-guards. Except here the Award is to be sent directly to your doorstep. Attached is an illustration of ‘An International Testimonial of Merit’, complete with your name misspelt and a passport photo of a bespectacled grey-haired lady resembling some dimly-remembered maiden aunt. ‘The Board has resolved that the above portrait be included in this Testimonial as verification of the honor bestowed ...Mark of distinction in this competitive world ...antique bronze ...fine milled paper to last generations ...’ More dreaming spires. Somewhere the thought, ‘If I were more successful, this could well be a practical joke from some envious rival, flattery as insult, a gilded put-down? If ...if ...’

Your sense of achievement – diminished already – diminishes further on reading Visa, Mastercard, Access, beside each its small blue and expectant square. Yes. The reward for acquiring ‘the tasteful honors afore-mentioned’ is a debit of 100 pounds and 10 pence including postage. Meanwhile in cream or beige ‘The Pictorial Testimonial’ is a bargain at minus 92 pounds. Here must be two of the most extortionate sheets of quarto ever. For a further fee the certificates may be ‘laminated on their own wooden bases ready for hanging and so eliminating the need for framing.’ Forty six more pounds will make you ‘the recipient of both certificates bound in a folder of best chamois skin ...’ Answering that advert is taking on the dimensions of a curse that will not budge, a punishment for harbouring genuine literary ambitions to begin with. As if to prevent another unwanted encore, this time you don’t just tear up the dubious documentation but burn it, that milled paper to last generations turned to ashes.

‘As cold water in a thirsty mouth is good news from a distant country,’ says the proverb. Real news, that is. This pseudo version resembles another substance altogether, something one wouldn’t wish on anyone. Not for this did you spend those mid-nights crouched over the word-processor, agonising over le mot juste, the best rhyme, revising your revisions of revisions: And now you’re being charged for it, urged on to pay for your own efforts. Alienation of labour is one thing, but here’s an aspect of capitalism even Marx did not think of. As if a dustman would pay for emptying dustbins, a secretary accept being debited for typing letters?

Four, five more weeks pass. Then, lest you think you’ve been forgotten and the curse is lifted, another envelope arrives. Having escaped the lure of Golden Scrolls, you now find yourself being labelled with an untold myriad of others as ‘International Man of the Year’. The upshot is that you are offered a place in ‘The International Who’s Who of Intellectuals – in Standard Edition, Luxury Edition, or the exclusive Royal Edition.’ Provided, of course, you buy a copy. The bill, to be footed by your esteemed self, has now sky rocketed into the 500-1000 dollar range. As a sample payee/recipient there is a Professor from the Department of Industrial Automation, Waotung University. Among a pile of other achievements, he can boast of being ‘first class prize winner of the Xuzhou City audio-visual demonstration lecture match.’ Finally you are requested ‘to recommend the names of others you feel fit the criteria as an intellectual, and who would like to be invited to be included in the ‘International Who’s Who of Intellectuals.’ Spaces are provided for a dozen, each plus more lines for a ‘Full Address.’ (Vanity is evidently infectious ...)

All right, you asked for it. ‘Names embossed in gold on the spine, front and back covers,’ why not Kim Il Sung for his services to Political Thought? Freddie and the Dreamers for their contribution to modern music? The inventor of the Credit Card for services to economics? Though in the latter case the Edition would probably come free.

Or, as a genuine as opposed to a bogus contender, how about Ecclesiastes? ‘For what hath man of all his labour, and of his vexation of heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?’ Quite. ’Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun ...yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it to his portion.’ Timelessly to the point. And also, whether as commentary or antidote, a candidate for ‘Pearls of Wisdom’, or any other of the anthologies mentioned in the blurb – ‘A Lasting Calm’, ‘Flowers of Fancy’. Or maybe not. For one thing: Ecclesiastes probably had no bank account. As further grounds for rejection, Biblical shekels would not be an acceptable currency. Then, now the Temple is no more, there’s the problem of an address. In which case the less timeless talent of A.N. Whoever as evidenced in an unrhyming sonnet to his pet ego will have to take preference. This is also vanity, and if not ‘a great evil’, certainly in the running as a minor one.

‘SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?’ The golden blurb again picks ups its megaphone. You think of some corner of the rain forest cut down to provide paper – plain or beige or cream – for all those certificates, not to mention the varnished wall-plaques, those wooden bases. Then it’s back to the word processor, dispatching more poems, short stories, a never-ending novel into the void. That’s what.
At night, all this vanity gone to your head, you dream of tomorrow’s post. One envelope has ‘Save Trees’ biroed across the back. Two are in your own hand-writing, the only difference from waking life being the golden ink. Predicting the rejection slips, you find, a moment later, your predictions come true. ‘While enjoying your work, the editor regrets he cannot make use of it. You are reminded that a very dim view is taken of those who fail to include a stamped self-addressed envelope ...’ There’s a bill from the Gas Board, from the phone company, a pamphlet about double-glazing.

Just one envelope left.

On fine milled paper out slides an announcement that you have just been awarded ‘the Nobble Prize for Litterature.’ Amazing, but for those mischievous misspellings. You turn over. Less amazingly you are invited to place your order now, before demand outstrips supply. The fee, you cannot help noticing, has jumped from a thousand dollars to more than your life’s savings. Payment by Wire Transfer, Visa, Access, Master Card are, of course, accepted.

And at no extra charge, along with the prize comes an inflammable certificate …

First published in Spiked

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