Review: New Grub Street
I began reading this book because it was mentioned in some writers’ forums. I’m studying to become a book coach, and some writers/coaches have alluded wryly to New Grub Street as an important book about the publishing industry.
Interesting, because it was published in 1891. And yet, they were right. Really, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
First, to readers who are not particularly interested in publishing, there is plenty of plot and character development. The lives and relationships of the characters are as intriguing as if they had pursued any other field. As with most Victorian novels set in London and its environs, there’s a great emphasis on money and class --tiresomely so. It’s one of the reasons I had a hard time liking any of the characters. While some of them strove to live their lives without consideration for class, a good number were very concerned about getting in with the Right Kind of People. Financial considerations drove much of the plot. In the current economic situation, it was rather tiresome to read a book in which so many people were on the edge of financial collapse and suffering terribly. And it's uncomfortable to hope that somebody's uncle dies so his heir can suddenly be rich.
One thing about the poor in Victorian London, though. You really begin to appreciate things like central heating, and butter for your toast. And washing machines.
The major benefit I derived from reading New Grub Street was the astonishing fact that the things I deplore about the publishing industry today are the same ones that the characters in this book either loathed or embraced. To wit, the reality that there are too many periodicals which are driven to produce content --any content-- constantly, in order to sell copies. This drives down the quality of what is produced. In addition, the majority of people who read are not interested in improving their minds or inspiring themselves to higher or better thoughts. Rather, they want to read ever-shorter pieces of drivel (apparently, the declining attention span is not a new thing). One character who embraces the reality of what we nowadays call “churn,” put it this way:
“I would have the paper address itself to the quarter-educated; that is to say, the great new generation that is being turned out by the Board schools, the young men and women who can just read, but are incapable of sustained attention. People of this kind want something to occupy them in trains and on ‘buses and trams. As a rule they care for no newspapers except the Sunday ones; what they want is the lightest and frothiest of chit-chatty information --bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery.”
Can you think of a better description of most of the stuff available on the internet right now? It's easy to imagine the Victorian internet article titled “Which Corset Are You?”
It seems that drivel has always existed. But it hasn’t succeeded yet in completely overwhelming society. In addition to "the quarter-educated," there are and probably always will be people who want to learn new things, read a well-researched and -reported article on a subject of great import, or be inspired to higher thoughts and feelings than the base ones stirred up by the vast oceans of “foolery” available at the click of a key.
Some will enjoy New Grub Street, as I have, as a commentary on literary society, some for its depictions of Victorians in various social positions. Some will like it because of the few sympathetic characters. It’s long and sometimes pedantic. I skipped some sections muttering to myself, “Gissing is putting his words into the character’s mouth, the pompous old windbag!” Perhaps that makes me one of “the quarter-educated.” Or maybe it just means that some manuscripts could still benefit from editing even though they were published a hundred and thirty years ago.