Did anyone see Martin Amis and John Banville on Newsnight?
Thu, 2007-09-20 13:11
#1
Did anyone see Martin Amis and John Banville on Newsnight?
...discussing the novel. Paxman asked whether modern fiction, to suit the modern reader has to be fast -paced. Amis agreed and suggested that is why poetry is marginalised these days because it does the opposite, it almost 'stops time' he said. John Banville pointed out that not everyone writes in turbo-narrative and his own style is almost poetic prose.
Another point I found interesting but not too surprising is that Richard and Judy bookclub nominations sell better than the Booker prize winner!
drew_gummerson
Ha, my mum watched this. She called me about it this morning.
She said, "....and Martin Amis said that Random House have this new young author coming out next year and I thought to myself I bet that's our Drew."
I love my mum.
In fact I do have the same editor as Martin Amis but I don't think Martin Amis would be talking about me somehow on national TV.
And mum carried on, "... then I went to the library this morning and I was telling the woman there about you. She said, 'Drew Gummerson, yes I know that name' and I went through what you'd done, performing at the Assembly Rooms (in fact, I didn't) and the woman said, 'yes Tripod, I did the posters for that..."
So if mum has anything to do with it, this time I will be known all over the place.
Fingers crossed.
http://www.frontlinebooks.co.uk/frontline/viewBlog.asp?blogID=1425
bobblehat2023
Yeah, not sure if poetry is more marginalised now than it has been before.
Most poetry has always been marginal with most eras having two or three stand out big names.
I think poetry seems more marginalised to poets because participation levels are increasing all the time, while the number of readers is fairly static.
The bit of the Newsnight discussion I caught was interesting, though.