Yesterday Chris collected the results of our blood tests. My two tests, for thyroid and cholesterol, turned out well, as did Chris’s for cholesterol and what he refers to as PSI which is evidently to do with the prostate so that is that for a while.
Up early this morning as, in my half sleep state, I suddenly thought of something I wanted to add to the book but even more important, how to bring all the strands together in the end and I knew if I went back to sleep it might have been forgotten.
In talking of books yet again, a very interest article in one of The Sunday Times’ Culture sections, well, an extract from the biography of William Golding and the publishing story of Lord of The Flies, another one that was turned down by publisher after publisher until it landed at Faber and Faber. Even here it might not have gone any further because their professional reader, a lady by the name of Polly Perkins (Isn’t there a pretty one of Paddington Green?) who also read for a number of other publishes and literary agents wrote “Time, the future. Absurd and uninteresting fantasy about the explosion of an atom bomb on the colonies. A group of children who land in jungle country near New Guinea. Rubbish and dull, Pointless.” This about a runaway literary best seller, praised on all sides and still selling by the thousands all these years later. Fortunately for Mister Golding and for us a junior director of Faber’s read and saw the book’s potential and persuaded the firm to publish it after some rewrites he suggested to the author who took him up on them. Golding was paid an advance of £60. Compare that to the £3000000 Mister Rooney was allegedly paid for a three part autobiography I am not sure has even seen the light of day, at least parts two and three, and part one seems to have sunk without trace. But what interest is there in the life of an eighteen year old footballer (which is what he was at the time) whose talent lies all in his feet? Obviously the publisher believed millions of pounds worth of interest. They could no doubt anticipate hearing the cash registers ringing all over the world.
We know that most publishing today is not about literature or even good writing but is purely about making money hence the plethora of chic-lit, misery memoirs and books purportedly by or about celebs and VIPs – here Mrs Rooney delivered more than her husband, shopping being a never ending subject with some women.
Evidently, according to another article, this time on literary frauds, some of the misery memoirs are pure fantasy anyway and should come under the heading of fiction but, hey, that’s the way the world has gone!