Potboilers - art or trash?

My Mum is reading Maura's Game by Martina Cole. i'm afraid it's depressing that this Sh***e gets published while some of great stories and great writers that we have here don't get a look in. When new writers read the stuff that MC gets published they think they've got a chance, and why not, she may well be a talented writer who tailor's her work to appeal to a certain audience, but i read one chapter and gave up. Total pish.

They're usually books that people want to read. Whether or not that makes them art is another matter but I'm not clever enough to have opinions on those kinds of issues.

Hmmm. I think by the same token as you can have disposable music which flowers and is just right for certain conditions, and junk food that fills a gap when you can't be arsed to cook then junk novels are acceptable. I think the problem is more that the margins on book sales are now such that bookshops are only interested in books that shift many thousands of units. The people who write here don't want to write a Jackie Collins (And controversially, maybe they wouldn't be able to manage it if they did want to - if it were really that easy, we'd all be writing very very commercial stuff and getting a deal) - the point really is that there ought to be room for both the light and frothy and the more skewed and thoughtful, both in bookstores and in publishers thoughts. Sometimes - particularly when you're on holiday, you just want to read something trashy, and better that than not reading at all.

I don't think Martina Cole is trash - but then I'm a popular fiction fan. "Faceless" has quite an ambitious structure, running several parallel plots in juxtaposition, though Cole didn't, in my opinion, quite pull the multiplicity off. Writing "potboilers" that go onto the bestseller list is very tricky, in my opinion. Writing successful thrillers is tricky. Literary writers are on unsafe ground, it's my guess, if they assume that they could do that if they wanted to. From the point of view of an older writer, I'd say that popular fiction is probably a better field to try to break into than literary fiction, because all that matters is the book, and the "image" doesn't come into it. (This isn't a cop out: I don't see why popular fiction shouldn't be well written - Andy McNab [with the aid of his writing team, no doubt]}, Terry Pratchett, Lemony Snicket - they write good quality prose, on the whole.) Those of you who are older and feel less, as I do, that they're less likely to be wanted by agents and publishers, might be interested in this snippet from the Guardian: "Sheila Quigley has won a £300,000 two-book deal with Random House. Quigley offers a contrast to the twentysomething London journalists who seem to have enjoyed a monopoly on the big deals recently: she is a fifty-five-year-old grandmother of seven living in a housing estate in the north east. Agent Darley Anderson said, "Her first draft was very rough, but when I got the third draft, I thought 'bloody hell - she's done it." Quigley's debut "Run For Home" is out in April." Since Darley Anderson is the agent of Martina Coles, I suspect he's looking for a north-eastern version of the cockney gangster stuff Coles writes. If I may end this post on a personally depressing note, however, I should say that I queried Darley Anderson about a thriller I have written involviing working-class characters, and he never replied. d.beswetherick.

When submitting work to publishers I'm always stumped on which market to aim at - popular or literary. It's a pity that art and trash have got to be separate - and that so little of what's on the shelves are by new authors. We need to start taking risks again. Jackie Collins's novels are surprisingly humourous, and the Lucky series is definitely the best - she's created a robust heroine and the appeal of these books goes beyond merely selling a glamourous lifestyle (which is largely fantasy anyway). Martina Cole has said that she writes about the environment she grew up in, and on the whole she does avoid romanticising a life of crime. Sometimes though I wish she'd be a bit more thoughtful with it, but maybe that just wouldn't sell. Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler both started out as pulp writers but their work is actually very dark and complex. On the other hand, some (though not all) current literary fiction is dry, formulaic and dull. I was really cheered up by Sheila Quigley's success and look forward to reading it. But I get really fed up with people saying, "Keep up the writing - you could be the next JK Rowling!" Are JKR's millions the yardstick by which we must all be measured? More intelligent writing on dangerous, provocative topics - the stuff of life - is what I'm craving now. I'd cite Jake Arnott's The Long Firm as one example.

I have recently discovered Anne Tyler...I had to be bullied to read her stuff, was so sure it wasnt my thing.. have now read Patchwork Planet, Accidental Tourist and Ladder of Years, and have really enjoyed them all.... she is quite popular isnt she? Ive also a lot of time for maggie o' farrell and I think shes termed popular too.. good for both of them i reckon. Id give my eye teeth to write like O' Farrell. Wuthering Heights made me weep with frustration. i hated it i'm sorry to say...

I read a James Patterson that I found down the back of a settee whilst caravaning in France - the previous occupants had left it there. I read it all da way through, and found it to be like a humorously crap film thriller. This, and other snippets, lead me to believe that the genre operates on the basis of trying to write a prose version of an ITV police drama. The reason I err to the arty side of books is that I'm too lazy to read if all I want is entertainment and thrills - we have a TV and a gaddamn video rental place next door for that! Ergo, to be worth the effort, a book has to be either be about something I'm already very interested in, part of my literature course, or a personal find that reads more like a communication - a confession, using language as a pirate radio station - than something trying to manipulate me.