Celebrity Book Culture: EXPOSED!!! the panel
some thoughts I shared at the Singapore Writers Festival and some thoughts I had later on
I was featured at this year’s Singapore Writers Festival, a pleasant surprise since I haven’t published much recently. When I read the invitation for the panel “Celebrity Book Culture: EXPOSED!!!”, I thought of the opening to Patricia Lockwood's review on John Updike: “I was hired as an assassin.” Allow me my indulgences.
I shared the stage with novelist Balli Kaur Jaswal and content creator Jack Edwards. YEOLO, also a content creator, moderated our discussion. I, personally, thought we had a robust and enjoyable conversation. The Straits Times reporter who covered the event did not agree.
It’s a free press, of sorts, so I’m not offended. If anything, I’m grateful for the push to put my thoughts from the panel in writing.
The reporter was correct in saying that my issue with the celebrity-book-culture machine really does come down to money (or “money-making business”, I suppose). The main argument for celebrity book clubs is their ability to catapult a book into bestseller lists. Toni Morrison apparently received a larger boost in sales from Song of Solomon’s inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club than literally winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. All writers want more readers, right? And aren’t we always complaining about there being no money in publishing? Besides, isn’t it a good thing that more people are learning about Morrison’s work? She’s a writer of international importance!
My answer to all of these questions is a resounding yes. I think more people should read. I think writers should be paid more. I think it’s good – for readers, writers, and reading culture at large – that more people read writers like Morrison. I don’t think celebrity book clubs should be abolished. I was responding to the question “what book have you found through a celebrity book club?” I truly just don’t pay attention!
Celebrities are not altruists, they are businesses. Every public-facing project they undertake is supported by professionals like accountants, brand managers, and lawyers to make money or at least augment the celebrity’s brand to facilitate making money in the future. I don’t believe that celebrities who run book clubs read especially widely or monitor trends in the publishing world. They have teams to do that. Celebrities are not uniquely positioned to have good taste in literature. They understand that cultivating a literary aura projects a favourable image. Given that celebrities and their brand-building exercises already dominate other industries like fashion and skincare, I don’t need them in my reading life.
Celebrities have an outsized effect on a book’s sales because society accords them that influence. Meanwhile, literary magazines keep shuttering because there’s no money. Even the magazines that survive, or come back from the dead, can often only pay honorariums rather than a liveable wage. That excludes all the publications that run solely on volunteer labour and goodwill. (The website Who Pays Writers is a crowdsourced database of publication pay rates. According to recent entries, the Los Angeles Review of Books pays 100 USD for a 2,000-word essay, both Tor.com and Book Riot pay 80 USD.)
These publications are run by people invested in the literary world. They are some of the only places that publish reviews and criticism. They give unpublished writers their first bylines. What would our literary culture look like if they had enough readers to be financially sustainable? If they had palpable impact on popular culture?
Instead, publishing is a quasi-lottery system. While some writers will land six-figure deals, the vast majority will never earn enough to quit their other jobs. Book advances vary wildly. Penguin, the publisher that makes headlines for multi-million dollar book deals with celebrities, on making a living as a writer:
The brilliant thing about writing is that it's flexible - most writers are able to fit it in around other work they might do. Author Jane Corry says: “If you don’t have a book contract that provides you with peace of mind, the best piece of advice I can offer is to have a part-time job that can just about pay the bills while giving you enough hours in the day to write.”
The conversation about funding in arts is one for another newsletter. Just briefly though1, I’m not sure that the answer lies solely in book sales. A book’s value isn’t inextricably tied to its material form. This poses a challenge for monetisation. Secondhand books, pirated PDFs, and library copies provide roughly the same experience as a new book. And unlike other mediums like film and music, you don’t need to see a writer at a live event or read in a specific venue for a book to really shine. Everything eventually gets folded into commerce but focusing merely on boosting sales holds literature hostage to the imperative to spend. We are readers, not consumers.
Is it any wonder that I don’t pay attention to celebrity book clubs? 😋🤗😋
Something interesting that’s come up in conversations about this panel is the question of what I think is right or wrong. Is it wrong to listen to celebrity recommendations? Is it wrong if you like a celebrity who recommends a bad book? Is it wrong to take recommendations from TikTok or Instagram instead?
I don’t think any of these things are wrong. But I also don’t think these are the right questions to ask.
In my view, reading is an apolitical act. I don’t think consumption is really a political act. (This is separate from spending money which is political.) For something to be political, it needs to, at the very least, have an effect on people outside of yourself. Reading a misogynist book isn’t political. Politics happens if the reader behaves poorly towards women. Likewise, reading a book about anti-racism isn’t a step towards a better political future. It only counts if what one reads manifests in how one acts.
This isn’t me saying that there’s no difference between good and bad ideas or that there is no point in having conversations about the politics of a text. I don’t think we should give up on leading ethical lives. My focus here is on consumption.
I think our contemporary culture equates consumption with morality. It’s a good trick. It replaces political awareness, an understanding that any desire to enact change must happen in coalition with others, with vigilance over what individuals do in their personal capacity.
It’s why so many book reviews on the Internet discuss “problematic” story elements in isolation. It’s why shoppers get defensive when experts point out that fast fashion is an exploitative industry. And it’s why well-meaning people horrified by Israel’s war on Gaza are circulating lists of businesses to boycott that are longer than the official BDS movement’s.
According to this logic, everything can be assigned an ethical value. And what we consume is a reflection of how moral, or immoral, we are. We want to be good people. We want to be seen as good people. Here, the focus remains ultimately on the self.
Links
This essay in The Drift about the books selected for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club.
Many books in the Witherspoon orbit are propelled, to varying degrees, by the much-discussed phenomenon of “women’s anger” — anger with idiotic men and the hollow promises of domestic life, with the traitorous cruelties enacted by other women, with the indignities of being overworked and underestimated. Witherspoon’s creative endeavors found a natural compatibility with the liberal feminist energy that animated the Women’s March, #MeToo, and Time’s Up, the last of which included Witherspoon as a prominent member.
While we’re talking about literary journals and book recommendations, SUSPECT just published its 2023 Book of the Year list. I’m honoured to have been asked to contribute again this year. The list comprises recommendations from Singaporean writers, artists, and thinkers. I think it’s a great resource. I picked up People from Bloomington because Jeremy Tiang recommended it last year. I wrote my recommendations for Minor Detail and Now You See Us before the festival. From how I ended my submission, you can see that I’ve been thinking about the same ideas for a while:
Us literary types should not kid ourselves. Reading books by and/or about marginalised people, the work of educating ourselves, does little to alleviate the conditions of said marginalisation. But while reading is not a political act, I believe that writing is. The learning still needs to be done.
A detailed look at the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) boycott efforts in The New Inquiry.
The PACBI guidelines are simple: they ask that institutions make a public commitment to refuse material support from the state of Israel and to reject projects that normalize Israel’s forced dispossession of Palestinians. The boycott is not interminable. It will end when Israel ends its occupation of Palestine, recognizes the equal rights of Arab-Palestinians, and lets refugees return home.
All of these pieces come from independent literary publications. 😃
Thank you for reading, see you next time
Even more briefly, I think the solution is a universal basic income.