Posted by Nicholas at March 5, 2006 09:47 AMThis is a fascinating mystery story. As someone who loves books and has worked in publishing, I have long been perplexed by the massive sales of leaden conspiracy 'thrillers' (as I have to write it, being really very ungripped) and of pseudo-histories.
These are strange alien artefacts in the literary world. They appear to be books, having the same physical manifestation. Yet the words in them have no rhythm, and make no sense, the world they portray is all surface, all banality: all invented, but paradoxically without imagination.
The familiar book, grounded in fact or rich in fiction, sells (mostly slowly) to an audience that comes back for more books. These . . . I need another wordname . . . reads are bought in vast numbers by people who do not otherwise read. You see them swarming on the tube, at bus-stops, in advertisements as book-club special offers, everywhere. And then they are gone. Where?
Few have the life-span of a book, it seems. But where do they go to die? They are seldom seen in second-hand shops. And why are they so successful when they are plainly so inbred?
Guy Herbert, "The case of the recycled tripe", Samizdata, 2006-02-28
Visitors since 17 August, 2004