Tim Parks: Where I'm Reading From (Harvill Secker)

This request was by no means unusual. Such is the present state of the world of letters that many neophytes feel entitled to receive state aid or believe they are capable of teaching others the tricks of the trade. How did things reach this pass? It is one of the many questions Tim Parks attempts to answer in his long-overdue, challenging and absorbing book. "It is time," he immediately asserts, "to rethink everything. Everything." By which he means why and what people write and what reward they can expect to get from their endeavours. His writ runs large, encompassing translation and copyright, the legitimacy (or otherwise) of literary prizes, and what one might expect to get from a creative writing class. If by its end you still feel writing is the career for you, then don't say you were not warned.

Certainly, Parks knows of what he speaks. In a chapter titled Are You The Tim Parks Who...? he describes his various personas which change depending on the reading audience. In England (his word), he says he is best known for his light "though hopefully thoughtful" non-fiction. In Italy, where he lives and teaches, his reputation rests on a book about football supporters and columns in newspapers. In other European countries, it is as a serious novelist that his name resonates. Meanwhile, in the United States, he is associated with high-toned criticism which appears in the New York Review of Books. Then, on top of all of this, he plies his trade as a translator, which gives him a certain kudos in academic circles.

Many, indeed, are the pies in which Parks has his fingers. This is what gives Where I'm Reading From the authority and authenticity absent from other books which purport to take the temperature of the literary climate. It is one, however, in which there is cause for depression. "When was it exactly," asks Parks, "that becoming a writer became a career choice, with appropriate degree courses and pecking orders?" He suggests that it can be traced to 30 or, more likely, 40 years ago. This is probably about right. Though Parks makes no mention of it, a significant landmark was surely the founding by Malcolm Bradbury of Britain's first creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. Like many such innovations, it had its origins in the United States and it took its time to make it across the pond. Bradbury, who was enamoured of all things American, enlisted the help of Angus Wilson (then an eminent novelist, now rarely mentioned in dispatches), and within a few years could boast alumni of the pedigree of Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Rose Tremain. Thereafter, one might sourly say, it was all downhill.

I am being facetious but justifiably so. Throughout the 20th century the trend, as measured by Parks, has been away from writing as a creative act to that of a fame and fortune-seeking business, nowhere more so than in our universities where many of those teaching literature are incapable of distinguishing between Martin Amis and an MBA. "One of the myths about creative writing courses," writes Parks, "is that students go there to learn how to write. Such learning, if and when it takes place, is a felicitous by-product that may or may not have to do with the teaching; the process of settling down to write for a year would very probably yield results even without teachers."

What students attending such courses do receive for their money is a network of peers and potential backslappers and whatever contacts the tutors feel inclined to pass on to them. They are also taught - if that's the right term - how to sell themselves and their wares, using Facebook and Twitter and their personal websites, shamelessly telling their few followers and fellow travellers how wonderful they are, where they'll next be appearing in public, listing the prizes they've been given and drawing attention to favourable reviews.

It would be wrong, however, to suggest that such nuts and bolts are the nub of Parks's book. While he is rightly interested in how writers make ends meet in an era when copyright is increasingly difficult to police, he is also concerned with the kind of literature that we, in this global marketplace, are consuming. Donning his translator's capello, he recalls the experience of having his excellent book on the Italian train network published in the US. Every word, it seems, had to be made crassly clear to American readers. Thus two-syllable 'carriage' became one syllable 'coach', often to the detriment of a sentence's rhythm.

Such, however, is the power of the American marketplace that publishers there can dictate their own terms, leaving writers the choice either to take or leave what's on the table. Invariably, they take it and thus allow their work to be pummelled into unrecognisable shapes. Is such homogenisation necessary? You would think not but it is constantly happening. "One thinks of how thoroughly the Harry Potter novels were Americanised for their US editions: would they really have sold fewer copies had the Anglicisms been kept?" writes Parks. "Wasn't half the charm of the series its rather fey Englishness (occasionally Scottishness)?"

The picture that emerges over the course of 40 punchy chapters is that of a culture in which difference is viewed as a hindrance or a nuisance. To be successful an author must write about universal things in a language that can be rendered into the plainest of English. What we then get are bland books written in an undemanding style and in simple language that cross continents with the minimum of fuss. If publishers could invent the literary equivalent of the Big Mac or Coke they would. Instead, they seek out books which, when translated, lose nothing stylistically, because often there was nothing there to lose in the first place. In the meantime, many good books by many great authors remain untranslated into the world's dominant languages because their roots are in tongues with few speakers and located in places which are alien to most of us. The only consolation is that we'll probably never know what we're missing.