Michael Allen - A Writer's Guide To Everything Important - The Omnibus Edition Of Seven Essential Guides For Fiction Writers

It had been intolerable even in the 1920s, when D.H. Lawrence deliberately wrote a novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover , which broke various taboos. Lady C described in detail the sexual relationship between an uneducated working man and a high-born lady, and it made extensive use of all the forbidden words. A small private edition of this book was published in Paris, but no one, whether author, publisher or printer, imagined that it could then be published in England as it stood.

In 1959 a new Obscene Publications Act was passed by the British Parliament. This made it possible for a book to escape prosecution for obscenity if it was held to have ‘literary merit’. This was yet another vague phrase capable of more or less any interpretation, and the following year the English publisher Allen Lane decided that it was time to end the doubt and uncertainty. He therefore published an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a Penguin paperback.

The publication of Lady C (as it was widely known) constituted an open challenge to the law. And the authorities responded by prosecuting the publishers for obscenity.

After a lengthy trial, in front of a jury, Lady C and its publishers were acquitted – much to the disgust of the judge and the prosecuting counsel. From then on, those who wrote sexual descriptions in novels felt safe in what they were doing, even if they used formerly forbidden words.

Much the same developments occurred in the US, though without, so far as I am aware, such a clear-cut landmark ruling. True, the Supreme Court had in 1933 declared that James Joyce’s Ulysses was not obscene, and this opened the door for publication of ‘serious works of literature’ which included sexual description and four-letter words. But for some time puritanism remained the dominant force in US fiction.

By way of example, some readers may remember Grace Metalious’s 1956 novel Peyton Place (already mentioned as being published by Muller in England). Peyton Place, Wikipedia tells us, was ‘reviled by clergy’ on its first publication. In 1958, when I visited the US, I was told by one respectable matron that she had tried reading the book, and after skimming through a few chapters she had inserted it into the furnace which drove the family’s central-heating system.

Despite such reactions, Peyton Place remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. Some thirty years later, however, this wicked book was considered so tame that it was read aloud, in daily excerpts, on the BBC’s radio programme for middle-aged, middle-class housewives: Woman’s Hour .

Nevertheless, puritanism died hard, and nowhere was this more true than in the city of Boston, where the city officials had wide powers to ban anything that they considered ‘objectionable’. Among the twentieth-century works which fell foul of the Boston city fathers’ rulings were (inevitably) Lady Chatterley’s Lover , Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms , Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, and Naked Lunch , by William S. Burroughs. (Boston also banned the Everly Brothers’ song ‘Wake up Little Susie’. Go figure.)

From the 1960s onwards, attitudes changed. And not only in relation to books, but also in terms of what was possible on stage and in films.

In London, stage plays had been subject to strict censorship, which was mostly carried out by ex-army officers of a puritanical turn of mind. Nearly everyone regarded this archaic system as farcical, and in 1968 it was finally abandoned. The musical Hair, which had earlier been refused a licence, was finally produced on an English stage.

In the cinema, the US Hays code made it difficult to portray anything which might reasonably be called normal sexual relations between men and women, not to mention anything abnormal.

But times also changed in Hollywood, and when they did they changed rapidly. By 1979, when I visited New York for the third time, I was able to pay a few dollars and watch people having uninhibited sexual intercourse on a wide screen and in full colour, right on Broadway; I was in no fear of the place being raided.

This experience was, I must confess, something of a novelty. Remember that only twenty years earlier it had been impossible in England, and probably in the US, to find even a nude photograph of a woman, in a magazine, which did not have the model’s pubic hair airbrushed out of existence. But in 1979 I could now see the woman’s vagina, projected to a massive size on a huge screen. Not only that, but the woman was holding her vagina wide open for an erect penis to enter her. The experience of watching this was, as I say, something of a novelty; but after about twenty minutes I did begin to wonder whether there might not be better ways to spend my time.

The point of this rather lengthy subsection of chapter 2.5.2 is to make it clear to you that, where sex is concerned, writers now have freedoms which were almost unimaginable barely fifty years ago. And it has all happened during my adult lifetime.

Yes, of course, the question of sexual descriptions in fiction is still controversial. In October 2013, there was a huge row about ‘offensive’ books being made available through… yes, you’ve guessed it, W.H. Smith’s online bookshop! What an irony. And you can expect similar rows to rumble on for ever more. There will always be those who regard sexual descriptions in books as the work of the devil, and if you write explicit fiction you should be prepared to have to answer for your actions from time to time.

As George R.R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones series) recently put it: ‘I can write a detailed description of an axe entering a man’s head, and there is no outcry. But if I write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, the world comes to an end.’

2.6 A snapshot of traditional publishing at the end of the twentieth century

2.6.1 The purpose of this book – a reminder

Please allow me to remind you, before we go any further, that the whole purpose of this book is to provide what its title says: A Writer’s Guide to Trade Publishing.

It is not an investor’s guide to publishing, or a history of publishing (except insofar as you need to have a bit of perspective on the business); and it is not a guide to copyright or the legal complications of publishing contracts (although, by whatever gods you hold dear, you will certainly need such a guide if you are ever offered a publishing deal).

No. This ebook is just one man’s view of the way things are, and how we got here. If I end up sounding thoroughly jaundiced about trade publishing, that’s because I’ve been dealing with publishing firms for fifty years, and have read more widely about the business than is good for me. I should have been writing instead.

As a result of that process, I have indeed ended up jaundiced, cynical, depressed, occasionally disgusted, and certainly disillusioned. Sorry about that, but that’s the way it’s gone for me. You may have better fortune if you ever dabble in trade publishing. Good luck with that.

So, that having been said, let’s take a quick snapshot of publishing at the end of the twentieth century.

2.6.2 The British publishing scene in perspective

Here is a summary of the UK publishing scene which I wrote for my book The Truth about Writing , published soon after the turn of the century. The position in America, or any other western nation, would be pretty much the same at that time; the American market is five or six times larger than the UK, but the proportions in every country would be about the same.

One of the problems that we face in getting an overview of British publishing (or any other country’s equivalent) is that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics about the book business. However, here is a broad-brush picture, drawn from reasonably reliable sources.