- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Bookends
- Review Article: Yes
- Article Title: Bookends | June 1979
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
While the art of the ghost writer has a long and honorable history, the court case concerning the extent of Graham Yallop’s responsibility for the book on the recent test series raises a number of general issues apart from the outcome of this particular dispute. At its best, the practice of ghost writing enables the general public to share the experiences of people who have had interesting lives but do not command the verbal skills necessary to constructing a book. Yet the ghost writer may also be the unacknowledged creator of the characters who figure in his work. Few politicians now will risk either the off-the-cuff remark or even the considered epistle, so that the contest of political leadership can degenerate to a trial of speechwriters’ skills. The most proficient comedians are, of course, creatures of their scriptwriters, but they at least exact nothing from us but our laughs. As our sportsmen and women become media figures there is a danger that the players as well as the game will be taken over by the media barons, with the ghost writer acting as puppet master. Fortunately, cricket, a sport which seems able to elicit passions altogether out of proportions with the leisurely pace of the game, has always had players who are as much at home with words as with bat and ball. One of these, Jack Fingleton, was the subject of a review last month; another, Frank Tyson, is a regular contributor to our pages. Their individuality provides some security that the age of the manufactured human is not yet quite triumphant. It would seem, however, that in a world of instant media heroes, publishers have a responsibility to their readers to tell them whether the words they are reading belong to the ostensible author or to an unseen ghost.
Many of us hoped that the ending of the traditional book market agreements by which publishers split the English-speaking world neatly up between themselves would have meant better and quicker access by Australians to all books, regardless of where they were first published. This has not happened.
One problem is that American companies which used to distribute in Australia have either been taken over by English firms or have sold their Australian rights to British publishers who have established Australian branches. The consequence is that the American imprints have disappeared from bookshop shelves, but have not been replaced by British editions. As I write, for example, the time it takes for the publishers to provide a copy of Dostoevsky’s stories is three weeks – for a title which, until the beginning of this year, was readily available throughout Australia.
The argument by British publishers for the high prices they charge in Australia is the large investment they have made in warehouse facilities here. Yet these warehouses seem rarely used for short-run titles, and even for those with a large anticipated sale there seems an undue reluctance to obtain stock in advance of firm orders. And when the stock does arrive, the publisher makes his profit twice – once by selling it to his Australian office, and once when the customer buys it.
Elsewhere in this issue readers will notice the first of our regular surveys of the textbooks which are available for Australian secondary schools. Next month we will look at mathematics, and the following history texts. These surveys are not intended to be exhaustive, but to indicate to readers the tendencies in textbook publishing and therefore, presumably, in teaching, and to look at a representative sample of the books available.
Latest hideous neologism to surface appeared during the Victorian elections while Dr David Armstrong of the Australian Democrats was holding forth on the highly desirable aim of enticing our officials to come out of their closets. What the country needs, he exclaimed, is a policy of bureaucratization. It’s words like that that make the red tape that binds us all.
Comments powered by CComment