The conference continues from Part One in the evening on August 5th in Sanders Theater and concludes with a final panel discussion in response to Livingston’s “Paperback Books and the Writer” and Sloane’s “The Editor and The Author.”
The media file is not available| Time | Annotation | Layer |
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| 10:41 | APPLAUSE | Audience |
| 17:34 | LAUGHTER | Audience |
| 17:37 | APPLAUSE | Audience |
| 18:46 | LAUGHTER | Audience |
| 36:08 | I'd like to ask Mr. Simenon and Mr. Sloane perhaps to discuss the influence of literary prizes given by juries of literate men on the sale of books. The reason I asked Mr. Simenon and Mr. Sloane to consider the question is because in France, the literary prizes seem to have very much the same effect on the sale of a book as the Book of the Month selection here. | Audience |
| 36:40 | And I was just curious to know whether they see a trend in this country with Mr. Ellison's winning of the National Book Award and William Styron's winning the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, prizes like those on which you have men like Alan Tate on the juries. Do these have any effect on sales? And if so, do they see any trend toward a reinforcing of this particular phenomenon in the future? | Audience |
| 42:08 | APPLAUSE | Audience |
| 0:02 | I think now we can have a roundtable discussion of these points as presented by two representatives of the publishing world. Would Mr. Lytle, since his name has been mentioned, would he like to speak? Mr. Stone, would you pass the microphone down? | Carvel Collins |
| 3:23 | Is there any other member of the panel who will speak to either of these speeches? Mr, O'Connor? Thank you. | Carvel Collins |
| 10:41 | Mr. O'Connor. | Carvel Collins |
| 10:49 | Before asking Miss Livingston to speak about this, one thing troubles me. In the first evening, you made a very good and very proper plea for the novel to become more popular, be more widespread, not be just the possession of a small group. Yet when a novel sells, what was the figure, 6 million copies in a nation of over 150 million, is I don't want to misinterpret you. | Carvel Collins |
| 11:18 | But your present statement seems to me to suggest that this has become too popular. What is the issue here? Something between the Monday night and now, there is a difference which you can resolve. And I would like to have you do it for me only, if not for anyone else. | Carvel Collins |
| 13:24 | Miss Livingston, please. | Carvel Collins |
| 18:00 | Mr. O'Connor? | Carvel Collins |
| 18:03 | Mr. Frohock? Mr. Sloane? Mr. Frohock, please? | Carvel Collins |
| 29:34 | Thank you, Bill. Mr. Simenon, you have had some experience with publishers. Would you speak to this? | Carvel Collins |
| 33:23 | Thank you very much. Mr. Ellison, have you any thoughts on this subject? | Carvel Collins |
| 35:53 | Thank you. Are there questions from the audience? Question right here in the third row. | Carvel Collins |
| 37:09 | Mr. Sloane, would you, as a publisher, speak to this? | Carvel Collins |
| 40:21 | Mr. Simenon. | Carvel Collins |
| 41:19 | Mr. Frohock, will you speak on this subject? | Carvel Collins |
| 41:53 | Is there one more question from the audience over in this side? If not, I should like to thank the members of the conference and the audience and adjourn. | Carvel Collins |
| 11:35 | I think I said today, Mr. Chairman, that I entirely accepted Mr. Lytle's view of the aristocracy. I just want the aristocracy to be as wide as possible. I say the whole tone behind this implies that you're not really interested in an aristocracy. | Hilda Livingston |
| 12:02 | And I pointed out that the reading public for the 19th century novel was the whole middle class. It was a huge reading public. But it left out a great many people. I don't complain about that at all. I say society was fully representative society. | Hilda Livingston |
| 13:25 | Well, should I talk into that? This? First of all, I want to apologize to Mr. Lytle. I didn't mean to take your name in vain. And is it right now, Lytle? | Hilda Livingston |
| 13:40 | I'm glad we agree on the strict form of art as being superior. I certainly agree with you. And what I was trying to say was that in our experience, it is not only superior, but it is the one that endures the longest, which is an interesting influence in this mass distribution. But now I have so many notes from Mr. O'Connor that I'm not sure I'm going to get them all. | Hilda Livingston |
| 14:06 | Well, I would like to disabuse you of my starry-eyed idealism. And I'm rather touched by it. It's a quality that's diminishing rapidly as old age overtakes me. And I'm glad we met tonight. Now your concluding remark, Mr. O'Connor, was something about a representative audience. I've never written a book. So I can say this with absolute impunity. | Hilda Livingston |
| 14:27 | If I had spent seven years of my life or even one year of my life writing a book, which to me was a very valid experience and communication, I would not feel that an audience of 5,000 or 4,000 readers was a representative audience. And that, unfortunately, is the fate of many truly fine first novels that are published in this country today. We talk about defining terms a good deal during this conference. So I want to define a term that I think we should all accept or reject before we go much further. | Hilda Livingston |
| 14:56 | I talked about paper bound reprints tonight. And a reprint, as you know, is simply a word-for-word rendition of a book that's originally been published at a higher price by a low capitalization publisher of good taste and high instincts. The only difference is it's cheaper. It's only a quarter instead of $3. And you can buy at a cigar store instead of Brentano's. | Hilda Livingston |
| 15:20 | Now this particular revolution, if you like, in merchandising doesn't alarm me nearly as much as it does you because I have a good deal more faith in the judgment of more than 5,000 people. There's one thing that's always puzzled me in relationship to the discussion. Faulkner's name, I guess, has been mentioned more commonly than any other contemporary writers in the course of this novel conference. | Hilda Livingston |
| 15:46 | And we all seem to be unanimously agreed that Faulkner at $3 is art. But Faulkner at a quarter is very, very dangerous. Well, I just can't accept that in a Democratic society and certainly not at Harvard University. | Hilda Livingston |
| 16:04 | It seems to me that whole point of view, Mr. O'Connor, and I don't mean this at all personally, represents the kind of closed shop attitude toward art that has made it so difficult for the artist or at least the writer to survive successfully in our society. I don't think that Faulkner has been particularly corrupted by having made some money out of our editions. A matter of fact, he got the Nobel Prize after we had sold about 5 million. That may have had a corrupting influence. But he seems to be holding it pretty well. | Hilda Livingston |
| 16:41 | You said something about, you're afraid that the people are going to get destroyed as writers because they sell a million copies or 6 million copies. A writer reads to be read by as many people as is written. Beethoven is no more vulgar today because millions of people listen to him on Sunday afternoons than he was 50 years ago when only a few people had gramophones. Art doesn't become corrupt because it's shared with more and more people because more and more people appreciate it. | Hilda Livingston |
| 17:08 | This is a point of view that I'm a little confused about. And I very much appreciate enlightenment. Then you talked about the fact that you're afraid authors might get corrupted by money. Well, I'm afraid this is likely. | Hilda Livingston |
| 17:20 | But authors have been corrupted before. They were corrupted by Hollywood. They were corrupted by the Book of the Month clubs. They were corrupted by the slick magazines. I guess every time an author looks around, he's tempted. But in the long run, I think-- | Hilda Livingston |
| 17:39 | There will always be some authors who are not going to sell out. And they're not going to sell out because they're being appreciated by people with only a quarter to spend any more than they would have because they were appreciated by a handful with $3 to spend. I conclude. | Hilda Livingston |
| 20:10 | Well, as you probably know, there are only two substantial original publishers now in paper bound editions. Others are trickling in. One is Gold Medal books and the other is Ballantine Books. And in effect, they cancel one another out pretty well because Ballantine Books have started out with an avowed, rather high-minded editorial purpose. And Gold Medal books have made no bones about the fact that they were packaging pulp in book form. | Hilda Livingston |
| 20:36 | And I honestly don't know the answer to that question, Mr. Frohock. I wish we all did because it's one of the questions that are perplexing publishers and reprinters and authors the most these days. As Mr. Sloane has indicated and as I have said, there's a real problem in publishing fiction originally these days. The trade publisher takes an enormous risk. The author invests his time. And the sales are frequently frightfully disappointing. | Hilda Livingston |
| 21:07 | There seems to be something rather unfair about a system that pays such dim rewards frequently for so much labor. On the other hand, the combination of trade publishing with reprints seems to have worked very, very well in most cases. But that's only 1,000 out of the 10,000 books that are published annually. | Hilda Livingston |
| 21:30 | I haven't the vaguest idea of what the future will be. I do know that as of the moment, originals in paper bound editions have tended to be much more of the pre-fabricated book. And I'm sure this is idealism. And I know that it's very unpopular, particularly at literary conclaves. | Hilda Livingston |
| 21:48 | But it's true that the poor books drive themselves out of the market because the poor books are read by people for whom the reading experience is a different thing from the person who relishes and is rewarded by a good book. And I would think that the best control we have in original publishing at paper is the same we have in reprint publishing at paper, the public who responds to the books. | Hilda Livingston |
| 22:23 | One of the most fascinating books on our list, and this isn't a precise answer to a question, is Susanne Langer's book, Philosophy in a New Key, which had been published-- well, I think it had been imported in this country. It was published in Oxford, 1,500 sheets we imported. No, excuse me, there was a Harvard University press book. And heavens, in a first printing of 1,500 copies. And we did it as A Mentor Book in a very small first printing, 50,000. | Hilda Livingston |
| 22:57 | We have sold about 220,000 copies of this very difficult book on philosophy. And no one would have thought that that book would have had that vogue or that success in a paper edition. But it had. And I think for every Gold Medal book, you find an equally encouraging example on the other side of the fence. But I think the future is a great mystery to me. How about you, Bill? | Hilda Livingston |
| 29:40 | I think have nothing very interesting to say. Maybe about the publishing business, may just I have a remark. I don't think that the danger about publishing will come from the $0.25 edition on the contrary. | George Simenon |
| 29:59 | But maybe Mr. O'Connor was right in telling that the question of money necessary to publish a book now is a danger. And the danger come that the publisher, for first thought, is reason to I give the artist my money. | George Simenon |
| 30:24 | And for another reason was I think the length of a room and bookshops and everywhere, try to have books where sell in a very, very short time. A book now has to be selling three months or six months or eight months, try to have a book published one year before you can find it only in $0.25 edition. A $0.25 edition keep the books. | George Simenon |
| 30:53 | So the publisher first try to find what they call a bestseller. It's not necessarily a good book. It's a book with an interest to people at such time for such or such reason. So he don't try anymore to find author who will live for 30 years or 40 years in the public mind but an author who will give a fast money and as soon as possible. | George Simenon |
| 31:20 | For example, Conrad is considering the publishing business as a very bad author because Conrad still sell but still a few books every year. So it interest nobody to have covered in their house, you know what I mean? And then the publishers turned to get their money back through another way. They don't speak anymore about books about novels like novels. | George Simenon |
| 31:50 | But as Mr. Sloane say, it's as a piece of property. And as soon as they have the book and the contract is signed, they trying to sell no books, 3,000, 4,000. They're interested in books. But they're more interested in rights. They're selling rights, the radio rights, television rights, movies rights, and everything. | George Simenon |
| 32:15 | A first serial, second serial, if there's the average selling of a book said Mr. Sloane it's about 6,000. That cost no too much money because they didn't involve too much publicity, too much work. But to go from 6,000 to 20,000, it involves a big risk because you have at this time to do a publicity and to take a risk. | George Simenon |
| 32:46 | It's more interesting to sell just 3,000, even 1,000, even one book. But to sell in Hollywood the rights for $50,000 and to keep the half and sometimes more, and it's more interesting to sell it in the television of the same condition too. You know? And it's why the contract now, the printed contract and most of the publishing house speak very, very little about books but a lot about rights and about television, about everything with no books. That's the question. Why, I don't know. | George Simenon |
| 40:23 | Please, just INAUDIBLE first, I will say that I am against prize for any kind of art because I don't think that the artist has to be encouraged. If he is an artist, if he has to do something, he will do it against everything and against everybody. If he is not, you may give all the prize in the world. It will never be won. And it will tie. It will be an amateur. It will be a hard thing. | George Simenon |
| 40:53 | So I am absolutely against it. Now about the influence, you have this, I think, that the literary prize in France are more like here some books of the month. They are not read by the public. They are about to be in the good place and living room so people know that you are a literary people. | George Simenon |
| 33:29 | Very little, actually. I not like Mr. Simenon. I only have one novel. But about the business of money corrupting the novelist, it just occurred to me that most of the-- well, not even most of the younger writers but many of the younger writers and indeed, many men who have mastered their craft cannot live on the returns from their work. | Ralph Ellison |
| 34:00 | And I'm just wondering whether it's any more corrupting to receive an income, a livable income, from the mass distribution of one's works than to know that every year or so, you're going to have to fill out an application to the Guggenheim Foundation or to the Rosenwald Foundation, which no longer exist, and for which I am very sorry because I had one of their grants once, or to have to go in and take an advance from a publisher when you don't know whether you're going to be able to finish a book. | Ralph Ellison |
| 34:40 | I don't know. I write for one reason, because I think I could make more money doing other things. And that is to get readers. And the more, the merrier. I don't think it necessarily corrupts the writer. I just think this. | Ralph Ellison |
| 34:59 | And here I'm selling the same old bill of goods that I was selling last night is that there must be some way of putting together novels which will speak on one level to the person who is just interested, whose interest is limited, whose interest is limited simply to what happens next and yet have all the other end at the same time. | Ralph Ellison |
| 35:28 | I remember that some very great novels appeared as newspaper serials. Dostoevsky certainly did and Dickens and many others. I don't think that destroys the writer. And I think the audience just-- well, you have to communicate with that audience. And your art form has to be molded by that. | Ralph Ellison |
| 0:02 - 42:08 | August 5 Panel Dicussion | Program |
| 18:15 | Yes because I speak from a slightly special vantage point, I'm one of that, how many is it, 6 million. Everyone else at this table down to Mr. Collins is either a writer or someone, a novelist, I mean, or someone intimately concerned with the production and marketing of novels. In other words, you people are all here living on me and people like me. | W.M. Frohock |
| 18:49 | I buy them. And there is no doubt at all that I buy a great many more in the run of a year because I can get one for the price of a package of cigarettes. And I'm inordinately grateful for the opportunity to buy a book and not a cover. Sometimes I wish the paper would last a little longer. | W.M. Frohock |
| 19:16 | But on the other hand, it's nice to have a book that you can mark up, cut apart, and so on, a very useful thing. I do have one question to ask. And I'm asking for information. Do you think that the same proportions of good and bad will stand as more and more, the paperbacks, not reprints, but the original publications, do you have any feeling that that will endanger us with an increased proportion of, there is always a necessary amount, a necessary part of the whole will be junk. Is that going to increase? Is there a danger of it? | W.M. Frohock |
| 41:24 | May I just add to that the reminder that among all the winners of the Prix Goncourt, there are probably two titles that can be retained. One of those was the Man's Hope of Malraux. And the other was, and I have not retained the title, either the second or the third part of NON-ENGLISH Those are the only two. | W.M. Frohock |
| 23:23 | It's a very great mystery to me. And I do have the feeling that, so far as the low-priced paperback reprints are concerned, the following characteristics of them as they appear to me to be, without either approval or disapproval, ought to be laid on the carpet. | William Sloane |
| 23:46 | In the first place, these books are the beneficiaries of the successful merchandising of another field, that is the magazine publishing field. And they're the beneficiaries of this in two ways. At the retail level, at the point-of-sale level, there are a very large number of places which have learned that they can make money off selling magazines. And the books are, from their point of view, identical, as far as record keeping and the like goes. | William Sloane |
| 24:18 | And second and much more important, the distribution system, which has made possible the large magazine industry of the United States is also being used by, I think, every one or all but one of the paper covered reprint houses. And that had these distribution systems not been in effect, it would probably have been quite impossible for my industry to finance any such development. | William Sloane |
| 24:48 | And I remember, and I am not at all sure whether the people directly concerned with it would remember this or not, but many years ago, when I was in the business of selling plays for amateurs by mail and working for a Boston company, I was asked to go and see Mr. DeGraff. At that time, I was an expert in direct mail. And I found Mr. DeGraff in a rather small office. | William Sloane |
| 25:14 | And he said to me, Bill, I am going to start a company which is going to sell books to the American public at $0.25 or less. And it's going to do it by mail, just like Holden and Juniors, only a little more so. And I understand you know what time of year to send out mailings and other things. | William Sloane |
| 25:33 | And this came about because Mr. DeGraff, classmate of a brother-in-law, and older brother-in-law of mine. So after about a morning of earnest conversation, I managed to persuade him that this would not work. But even the idea of Pocket Books, which is the originator of the $0.25 reprint idea was originally conceived, without reference to what subsequently turned out to be its greatest economic asset, or at least I think so, Hilda, which is the distribution system through which it operates. | William Sloane |
| 26:06 | And this carries with it from your point of view as writers and also as book readers a certain word of caution or warning. There's a limit to the display space, to the rack space, to the amount of choice which can possibly be offered to you as readers, as long as this distribution and merchandising mechanism is the one that is employed for the distribution of these low-priced books. | William Sloane |
| 26:36 | And 1,000 titles a year is, I think, really almost more than the traffic will bear. And those of you who have read some of the very interesting pieces written by Freeman Lewis and others on whether or not the mechanism will stand another book a month, well, know that this is a very serious problem. | William Sloane |
| 26:57 | There will never be a substitute for a really intelligent person for a bookseller who understands in what you are interested and who will go to the trouble of notifying you of this in the first place. Only one in 10 of the books that might interest you will ever appear in paper covers at all. Second place you may very easily miss them because they come and go on a 30-day average. | William Sloane |
| 27:28 | And it's not at all uncommon to miss something that you'd want very much. In a third place, most of us are, I think, a lot of different people in one. And this is where I am the most disturbed about this as an editor. I said earlier that I tried to identify myself with the prospective reader. Any editor does. It's at the editor's desk that the reader and the writer meet. I think I put it that way. | William Sloane |
| 27:56 | Now, I'm a lot of different people all in the same package. And I think you all must be the same. I have two or three extremely special interests. For instance, I am very much interested in certain problems connected with Mayan archaeology. And I think it'll be a long time before Pocket Books comes out with an inexpensive 35 cent copy of the best information which I would like to have on certain problems of Mayan archaeology. | William Sloane |
| 28:26 | The other hand, I would probably pay Mr. Wilson $10 for the Harvard University Press's volume on this subject, which if it hasn't come out yet, will undoubtedly someday come out and everything in between. I also enjoy the corniest kind of general fiction. I get a wonderful time out of things like Ravel and Arms and all. I mean, and at this point, I am one with 60 million Americans. | William Sloane |
| 28:55 | And yet, at the point of my interest in Mayan archaeology, I'm probably at one with no more than 1,000. And any intelligent person runs this whole gamut. The paper bound books do very well. | William Sloane |
| 29:09 | For that part of you which belongs to, what is it, the highest common multiple of the society in which you live. It will never nourish you it the reading level in the special areas where you're the most different from other people because it can't. And therefore, both are necessary. | William Sloane |
| 37:15 | This is a very intelligent question to ask and a very difficult one to answer. Either the first or second year of the National Book Award, a book which I published won the non-fiction award. As a matter of fact, it was a book written by a member of the Harvard faculty. The American Book trade purchased some 1,500 additional copies of this book, which we supplied with a band stating that the book had won the Award and the like. | William Sloane |
| 37:48 | And we took 900 of the 1500s back when the whole thing was over and the publicity had died down so that some 600 additional copies of this book were purchased and distributed in this country at a very substantial loss to the book's publisher, who had to pay the freight both ways and also was expected to buy a series of advertisements proclaiming the honor which had come his way. | William Sloane |
| 38:16 | And let me assure you that anyone who buys advertising space in the newspaper today needs to have a good bank account. On the other hand, I'm inclined to believe that the publishers welcome in this country some competition for the Pulitzer Prize awards, which up to the time of the National Book awards, were almost the only awards which had any significance at all. | William Sloane |
| 38:43 | And a Pulitzer Prize or awards would long ago have fallen into disrepute if it were not for the fact that a good many of them are given for various newspaper activities such as cartooning, the best news photo, and other really ridiculous subjects. I mean, imagine giving a Pulitzer Prize for a photograph and allying that with the best novel, the best play, the best work of the creative imagination. | William Sloane |
| 39:09 | This is at the worst, a flick of the wrist in a minute. Maybe the man risked his life to get it. But the things are incommensurable. And there's a lot of bad feeling about this. And the Pulitzer juries got rigged and all kinds of things. Remember, a year in which a person who shall be nameless won the award for poetry in this country for a book which not one of you would recognize in the same year that Robert Frost produced a new volume of verse. And he didn't get the Pulitzer Prize because he'd already had it, you see. | William Sloane |
| 39:38 | So all this had brought a lot of bad feeling about the Pulitzer awards into being. And a competition for it seemed, to the book manufacturer's institute and the book publishers and the book critics, to be a good idea. Now, we all contribute quite heavily to the expenses of this. And it's an investment in publicity, if you want to put it that way. | William Sloane |
| 40:00 | On our part, we believe in it. And we hope that it will have a good effect, both upon readership for books overlooked by the Pulitzer committees, and on the Pulitzer committees themselves. But I don't think the influence in this country is anything like the one is in France. Mr. Simenon can speak about that. But-- | William Sloane |
| 0:26 | Well, I don't see how I could possibly disagree with such a beautiful woman bringing the horn of plenty in her arms. Except I would like to make one little correction, if I may. I feel like Mr. Ellison's Invisible Man, my name has been pronounced so many different ways. It's really a Scotch name, Lytle. And New England, as you know, are not the only people who had Puritans in that country. | Andrew Lytle |
| 1:10 | Scotch-Irish were very Puritan. They kept the Sabbath and everything they laid their hands on. And I'd like to keep my name, if I might. I was overwhelmed by what I heard. I see I made a mistake in plutocratic democracy of using the word aristocracy this afternoon. | Andrew Lytle |
| 1:39 | But all I was trying to say, finally, is that art, and it's not a big word. All it means is craftsmanship. That you don't take a foot at to lay the inlay to a fine tabletop, that you use the tools at hand that are best do the job and that that is the core of certainly all writing. | Andrew Lytle |
| 2:05 | And that the lesser and more dilute forms, even though they sell, finely depend on the stricter form. I'm sorry to say that I have much more to say except that I feel that it's the right I must write the book and that certainly the publisher should believe in it enough to go out and try to sell it. | Andrew Lytle |
| 2:31 | And I don't think finally that it's the publisher's business to determine the nature of the interest that the writer has in his craft, finally. Nor is he a literary critic, finally, as Mr. Sloane himself is he has said. Now all of these millions of copies that are sold, I don't know finally how are you going to distinguish who buys Faulkner and who buys, say a lesser, a Mickey Spillane, for example. | Andrew Lytle |
| 3:00 | And I don't see finally, what kind of a judgment that has. And maybe it doesn't matter, so long as they sell them. But finally, certainly, all fiction depends on the art form. That's all I have to say. | Andrew Lytle |
| 13:37 | That's right. | Andrew Lytle |
| 3:32 | I don't know that I have very much to say. And I'm very much afraid of saying what I have to say because it puts me into a state of permanent opposition. And that's a state I don't want to get into, particularly as my relations with publishers and agents have always been remarkably good. | Frank O'Connor |
| 3:57 | And in fact, the only advice I ever give young writers is, find a good publisher and find a good agent and stick to them for the Lord sake. Don't go wandering around. I think I was frightfully alarmed by Miss Livingstone's speech. | Frank O'Connor |
| 4:19 | I know it all sounds wonderful. Here is Faulkner by the 6 million. You're spreading the lies on a scale in which the light has never been spread before. Now, I'm a great believer, as you've gathered, in getting an audience for literature and in showing respect for one's audience. | Frank O'Connor |
| 4:46 | The moment you begin to talk to me about an audience of 6 million, I want to run. Remember, I realize perfectly well that Miss Livingstone is full of almost a starry-eyed idealism about this. But there are a number of wicked people in the world who will not have her idealism. | Frank O'Connor |
| 5:10 | And that sort of attitude towards literature is not entirely new because in fact, it was the gospel of somebody who was anything but a starry-eyed idealist. And that was Lord Northcliffe, who valorized the English press out of existence. | Frank O'Connor |
| 5:32 | Remember the moment money comes into business on that scale, art begins to go out. I can hear Monsieur Simenon side beside me. I know he doesn't agree with me. But I've had some experience of this in the theater. And the thing which Mr. Sloane said is the real secret of it, that publishing in the 19th century was a smaller operation. | Frank O'Connor |
| 6:05 | And you realize that when you've worked in a theater, real theater like the Abay, that a problem of capitalisation becomes a very serious one. I realized that I could produce any play for 100 pounds, $300. And consequently, every young writer got a chance. | Frank O'Connor |
| 6:33 | And I'm quite certain, speaking as a man who has been director of a theater, that William Shakespeare's Henry V cost his company about $300, the most, $500 to produce. And the famous Hamlet that we saw cost $3 million to produce. | Frank O'Connor |
| 7:00 | Now the difference between the screen Hamlet and the theater Hamlet was that Shakespeare didn't have to worry about what he said. That beautiful scene in which the French officers speak, tell dirty stories, has just disappeared. So much capital has gone in. And I've worked on films as well as working in the theater. And I realized that the more capital you put into anything, the more people come along and say, oh, you can't say this. There's too much money involved in this. | Frank O'Connor |
| 7:33 | And I much prefer the smaller operation. Also when you get over-capitalization, don't forget that the squeeze is put on from other directions in the cinema. The squeeze is being put on by the workers as well. The industry has to pay out huge salaries. And the writers have to produce for the huge salaries. | Frank O'Connor |
| 8:01 | They've got to produce happy endings. It's just too bad. But happy endings are necessary. And the pressure gets more and more extreme. I firmly believe that you cannot have an art if publishing is going to be over-capitalized. I want to see books produced in reasonable editions. And I want them to see them produced as cheaply as possible. | Frank O'Connor |
| 8:26 | I do not want to have to cater for a public of 200,000 or 500,000, not because I don't respect them as much as I respect my own public of 3,000 or 4,000. I respect them every bit as much. But I know that if I attempt to reach them, I'm going to be destroyed as a writer. | Frank O'Connor |
| 8:54 | Also another thing I'm very much afraid of about these Pocket Books, I've seen it happen in England. Miss Livingstone described the work of the reprint editor, the reprint editor, with these figures in his head, is going to choose, perhaps in a most idealistic way, perhaps in a not very idealistic way, but it's already beginning to create an awful amount of mischief in England because you get the general idea, if this book is any good, it's going to appear in a pocket edition within a year. | Frank O'Connor |
| 9:34 | The fact that an author, and here, I am not speaking-- I shouldn't be speaking really at all because I'm involved in the matter. You get the feeling that any author who doesn't get into the Pocket Books can't be a really good author. And it's creating a new vulgarity, I think, in literature, a new snobbishness of sales. | Frank O'Connor |
| 10:00 | We're beginning to lose the old respect for the job as a job, whether it sells or whether it doesn't sell. And all I'll say is I know perfectly well Mr. Sloane and Ms Livingstone share my views on this. And would prefer a fine book which only sold 1,000 copies to a really bad book that sold 200,000. At least they would be, at the same time, earning their living and doing what they were put into the world to do. Still I just put that forward as a point of view that I am rather afraid of it. | Frank O'Connor |
| 12:27 | I want a representative audience. I mean, there is an enormous distinction between autocracy and any form of elective democracy. I think democracy was functioning in the 19th century, although the franchise was exceedingly limited. And in some ways in England, you got a superior type of politician when the franchise was so limited, merely because he didn't have to have the same demagogic appeal. | Frank O'Connor |
| 13:03 | All I'm afraid of is that somehow or other, we are going to reach the point where the value of a book disappears altogether. I am really talking about over capitalization, not that I don't want the 600,000 people to read the book. I do. | Frank O'Connor |
| 18:02 | I don't think there's anything-- | Frank O'Connor |