1 00:00:07,300 --> 00:00:15,580 My name is Ellika Burma and this is Erika Lombards, and we are respectively the principal investigator, as it's called, 2 00:00:15,580 --> 00:00:23,980 and the postdoctoral research assistant on this project, broad title, Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds. 3 00:00:23,980 --> 00:00:37,890 But this particular reading series we all involved in is Great Writers Inspire at Home. 4 00:00:37,890 --> 00:00:44,610 So this the series, the the seminars that we're all involved in, the workshops, 5 00:00:44,610 --> 00:00:55,050 explore how books come to us and how we as readers come to books, and it's those pathways that we're particularly interested in. 6 00:00:55,050 --> 00:01:03,570 These are not theorised pathways necessarily. And they're also not necessarily critical pathways, their pathways involving that immersion in a book, 7 00:01:03,570 --> 00:01:13,600 immersion in a in a in a poem or in a story or in a novel that we have as readers. 8 00:01:13,600 --> 00:01:25,910 And what this then raises is a question of being addressed, how we are addressed by books, some people might say by texts, 9 00:01:25,910 --> 00:01:38,240 but that's a word that we we're a little bit uncertain about in this project, how books and poems call to us and how they tell our stories or not, 10 00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:44,480 which is relevant to the fact of the the writers, the British writers, 11 00:01:44,480 --> 00:01:55,760 Asian and black British writers that we have invited to participate in the project, how books current today available to us tell our stories or not. 12 00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:59,900 And if they don't tell our stories, how then do they appeal to us? 13 00:01:59,900 --> 00:02:07,880 Where do we identify? And this then relates to a further question, as I've already anticipated, of identity, 14 00:02:07,880 --> 00:02:19,250 how our identities are supported, echoed, confirmed, or in fact negated in the books that we turn to read. 15 00:02:19,250 --> 00:02:24,920 And there's a particular emphasis on that verb turn in that in that question. 16 00:02:24,920 --> 00:02:27,770 It's not simply a question of the books we read, 17 00:02:27,770 --> 00:02:39,260 but the books we actually turn towards to read the books we feel called by the books that relate to us in some way. 18 00:02:39,260 --> 00:02:50,030 And just to pick up two instances of writers who have addressed this question of calling and of identifying with a story, 19 00:02:50,030 --> 00:02:54,740 a book, a text, a poem or not feeling negated. 20 00:02:54,740 --> 00:03:07,340 Here are two examples. This is Edouard Loui, who's a French writer, and he wrote this. 21 00:03:07,340 --> 00:03:12,950 He was he's talking about his reminiscing in a piece in The Guardian in February. 22 00:03:12,950 --> 00:03:22,640 He's reminiscing about a conversation with a taxi driver in which he announced that he was a writer and the taxi drivers response to him, 23 00:03:22,640 --> 00:03:30,650 which resonated with his own experience, his own relationship and his family's relationship with literature, with books. 24 00:03:30,650 --> 00:03:34,430 Literature was not something we paid any attention to. 25 00:03:34,430 --> 00:03:43,160 Quite the opposite. On television, we would see that the literary prises went mostly to books that did not speak of us. 26 00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:52,490 And in any case, like the taxi driver, we were aware that prise or no prise books in general took no interest in our lives. 27 00:03:52,490 --> 00:03:56,900 My mother would say it over and over us, the little folks. 28 00:03:56,900 --> 00:03:59,180 No one is interested in us. 29 00:03:59,180 --> 00:04:08,300 It was the feeling of being invisible in the eyes of other people that drove her to vote for Marine Le Pen, as did most of my family. 30 00:04:08,300 --> 00:04:14,230 My mother would say she's the only one who talks about us. 31 00:04:14,230 --> 00:04:19,660 So you see how that that quotation raises this question of the books that talk to us, 32 00:04:19,660 --> 00:04:27,050 that tell our stories, that have an interest in the little folks and the and the books that don't. 33 00:04:27,050 --> 00:04:33,820 And Erica has some fascinating stats in a moment to share with you about that. 34 00:04:33,820 --> 00:04:39,790 Here is the other example from a writer participating writer on this in this project, 35 00:04:39,790 --> 00:04:46,510 Aminatta Forna, in which she she she talks about taking back stories and reversing the gaze. 36 00:04:46,510 --> 00:04:52,120 So she talks about owning stories where there aren't stories that call to us. 37 00:04:52,120 --> 00:04:57,310 What then do we do as writers? How do we adjust the balance? 38 00:04:57,310 --> 00:05:01,660 And she says the power of the story lies in the hands of the storyteller. 39 00:05:01,660 --> 00:05:08,290 To see oneself only ever reflected to through the eyes of another is to view the self through distorting lens. 40 00:05:08,290 --> 00:05:17,860 This is the shared experience of all those whose place in history has been marginalised as she goes on to quote someone called Cornelius Eady, 41 00:05:17,860 --> 00:05:24,550 who's the father of Cave Covais Khanum, a writer centre with a focus on African-American writing, 42 00:05:24,550 --> 00:05:28,390 and he said with startling foresight, according to her. 43 00:05:28,390 --> 00:05:37,600 Right now, as we speak, this is, by the way, Eddie was speaking in November last year as Trump had been elected. 44 00:05:37,600 --> 00:05:39,760 Right now, as we speak uptown, 45 00:05:39,760 --> 00:05:48,190 there are people in a building who are trying to write a narrative about who we are and who we are supposed to be and what to do about us. 46 00:05:48,190 --> 00:05:53,980 When you lose that story or you allow that narrative to be taken from you. 47 00:05:53,980 --> 00:06:03,100 Bad things happen. It's our job and our duty to make sure we get to write our own story, the fullness of who we are in our own language, 48 00:06:03,100 --> 00:06:15,160 and what that project, what this project then would contribute to that observation is the making sure we also get to read our own stories. 49 00:06:15,160 --> 00:06:24,340 Right. And how we identify and this is as important, how we identify what those stories are, 50 00:06:24,340 --> 00:06:30,400 how we reach those stories out there, and how we feel drawn in by those stories. 51 00:06:30,400 --> 00:06:43,350 What is it about those stories that lets us in? So just a few words on on the post-colonial, because that is a word that is mentioned in our blurb, 52 00:06:43,350 --> 00:06:51,660 postcolonial writing is conventionally seen as relaying stories from the periphery, the third world, the global south. 53 00:06:51,660 --> 00:07:02,970 But we would want to add to those nominated spaces there that Britain, too, can be perceived as a post-colonial space. 54 00:07:02,970 --> 00:07:14,600 And that's one of the the questions, the explorations of all of these books that we're reading in this project. 55 00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:20,690 And with the emphasis on reading and readers, how do we then, as readers located in Britain, 56 00:07:20,690 --> 00:07:29,090 receive these stories, how we called buy them, how do they call us and how do we identify in relation to them? 57 00:07:29,090 --> 00:07:33,620 So we are fascinated to hear from those who have read these books. 58 00:07:33,620 --> 00:07:44,480 And we know that different groups have read different books. We we are very curious about how you felt positioned by the book. 59 00:07:44,480 --> 00:07:50,360 Did you feel positioned as a British reader? Did you feel positioned as an ordinary reader? 60 00:07:50,360 --> 00:08:03,920 Did you feel positioned as a literary reader? Did you feel yourself to be British in the ways in which the the book spoke to you, addressed you, 61 00:08:03,920 --> 00:08:15,590 or did you feel that you were reminded of aspects of your heritage for those of you who have backgrounds from elsewhere? 62 00:08:15,590 --> 00:08:21,740 So the accent throughout, and I'm sure we will repeat this throughout all the conversations will have the accent 63 00:08:21,740 --> 00:08:27,110 is on these verbs and it's very much on doing reading is doing reading as an activity, 64 00:08:27,110 --> 00:08:31,940 as an act. The accent on the verbs, locate, identify, call. 65 00:08:31,940 --> 00:08:41,090 I've used all of them in what I've already said. The accent then is not so much on representation, on speaking on behalf of or witnessing, 66 00:08:41,090 --> 00:08:48,060 which is still very much the the focus or the perceived focus in postcolonial writing and reading. 67 00:08:48,060 --> 00:08:55,640 So we're not that interested in images that stand for something else, experiences of difference or strangeness. 68 00:08:55,640 --> 00:09:03,530 We're much more interested in involvement in immersion through reading, so interested in moving beyond code. 69 00:09:03,530 --> 00:09:07,610 And in my bit after the break, I'll say a little bit more about that beyond code. 70 00:09:07,610 --> 00:09:14,600 How do we get there? But just to put it in a nutshell for now and then I'll hand over to Erica. 71 00:09:14,600 --> 00:09:22,010 We're interested in the novel, a poem or poem as an act of communication, not as standing for something else. 72 00:09:22,010 --> 00:09:33,380 So the experience of reading becomes primary. And for those of you who are at all familiar with Jacobsen's six linguistic functions, 73 00:09:33,380 --> 00:09:38,840 any any communication kind of groups itself or concentrates around, 74 00:09:38,840 --> 00:09:46,430 according to Jacobsson, one of those functions with poetic writing, literary writing, 75 00:09:46,430 --> 00:09:53,180 grouping here, according to Jacobsson, the poetic function of language. 76 00:09:53,180 --> 00:10:05,540 What we're really keen to do in this project, and I certainly am very intrigued by, is whether we can see the literary text, the book, the novel, 77 00:10:05,540 --> 00:10:16,790 the story, the poem as involving all of these functions at once in an unfolding and dynamic process, speaking to context, to information, 78 00:10:16,790 --> 00:10:22,430 speaking to the sender, the writers particular stance, emotions, 79 00:10:22,430 --> 00:10:31,100 speaking to your responses as readers will receive it receive is speaking also to the nature of the language, 80 00:10:31,100 --> 00:10:38,300 the channel, the the the metaphors or similes or what have you that you might be interested in. 81 00:10:38,300 --> 00:10:45,290 And then also, of course, to code. That is that is Jakobson in a very, very tiny nutshell. 82 00:10:45,290 --> 00:10:53,390 And I'll say a little bit more about that later. But what what we're really keen to do is to stretch that that diagram out, 83 00:10:53,390 --> 00:11:11,110 to see to see the writing and our reading of this writing as an act of communication unfolding in time, a bit like music. 84 00:11:11,110 --> 00:11:15,850 I want to talk about how books come to us, 85 00:11:15,850 --> 00:11:19,900 and I want us to think about what happens to books before they end up in our 86 00:11:19,900 --> 00:11:25,840 hands and how this can affect both what we read and our experiences of reading. 87 00:11:25,840 --> 00:11:36,010 So when most of us walk into a bookshop and we pick a book off the shelf, we don't necessarily think about what it takes to get it there. 88 00:11:36,010 --> 00:11:45,340 Maybe we have an idea of a writer toiling away in solitude in a quiet room with a quill pen or an old timey typewriter. 89 00:11:45,340 --> 00:11:54,010 And we have a kind of a montage in our heads of a thick manuscript envelope being sent of rejection letters until 90 00:11:54,010 --> 00:12:01,150 eventually there's acceptance in the meet sort of jump cuts to a book on the shelf or a book launch or something like that. 91 00:12:01,150 --> 00:12:05,500 It's a bit more complicated than that. 92 00:12:05,500 --> 00:12:13,270 This is a diagram by Claire Squires and Ray Murray that I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on because it's complicated. 93 00:12:13,270 --> 00:12:18,130 This is what is called a communications circuit, 94 00:12:18,130 --> 00:12:25,600 and it tells us about the different stages that a book needs to go through before it gets to the reader. 95 00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:36,940 So to simplify things, we have an author who in the UK usually needs to convince a literary agent that they write well enough. 96 00:12:36,940 --> 00:12:45,760 The literary agent takes on the author and then tries to sell the manuscript to the publisher. 97 00:12:45,760 --> 00:12:48,220 The publisher prepares the manuscript for publication, 98 00:12:48,220 --> 00:12:55,780 so typeset that edits it does a cover design in consultation with marketing people and sales people, 99 00:12:55,780 --> 00:13:04,900 and then printing companies make the book, which is then sold to various kinds of booksellers, wholesalers and then retailers. 100 00:13:04,900 --> 00:13:10,720 That's Waterstones or that sort of bookstore. 101 00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:20,950 And then that's where we come in as readers and buyers of books, because books are commodities and the book industry is fuelled by sales. 102 00:13:20,950 --> 00:13:28,610 At every stage of a book's life, there are decisions being made about what is likely to bring in the most profit. 103 00:13:28,610 --> 00:13:34,340 Profit can come in different forms. The main one is economics, so that's book sales, that's money. 104 00:13:34,340 --> 00:13:41,060 But there's also symbolic profits and that's one's reputation in relation to the competition. 105 00:13:41,060 --> 00:13:47,710 That's things like literary prises, good reviews that can also translate into economic profit. 106 00:13:47,710 --> 00:13:54,500 So if you win, the book is often a huge spike in your sales, but that's not necessarily the case. 107 00:13:54,500 --> 00:13:57,980 Profit potential has everything to do with the reader. 108 00:13:57,980 --> 00:14:04,310 But I want to draw a distinction here between the real people who buy or borrow and read books and the 109 00:14:04,310 --> 00:14:09,800 readers and book buyers that publishers have in mind when they're making their publishing decisions. 110 00:14:09,800 --> 00:14:14,750 There's an important difference between the two, and I'm going to talk more about that. 111 00:14:14,750 --> 00:14:20,240 But what's important here is that it's the publishers sense of the market that influences 112 00:14:20,240 --> 00:14:26,790 both what they choose to publish and how they present that book to the market. 113 00:14:26,790 --> 00:14:32,460 And I should add here that booksellers have a lot of influence in this regard as well, 114 00:14:32,460 --> 00:14:37,830 because they're the ones who are buying from the publishers to sell to to readers. 115 00:14:37,830 --> 00:14:42,960 So who are the publishers and who are they publishing for? 116 00:14:42,960 --> 00:14:46,140 This seems like a useful question to ask. 117 00:14:46,140 --> 00:14:55,440 It may not surprise you that in Britain, in the publishing industry, it's has been and continues to be overwhelmingly white in composition, 118 00:14:55,440 --> 00:15:04,090 especially at editorial levels, the people who are choosing which books to take on and how to kind of work with the text itself. 119 00:15:04,090 --> 00:15:11,770 Writing The Future, which is a 2015 report that's based on hundreds of interviews with publishing industry insiders and authors, 120 00:15:11,770 --> 00:15:20,710 suggests that these predominantly white publishers are concentrating on a market that comprises what they called people like us. 121 00:15:20,710 --> 00:15:29,810 And by people like us, they mean white people, female people who are aged between thirty five and fifty five. 122 00:15:29,810 --> 00:15:35,910 So, again, going back to Aminatta Forna, this is something that she says, 123 00:15:35,910 --> 00:15:43,130 she says there is an orthodoxy whereby the presumed reader is totally monocultural, white middle England. 124 00:15:43,130 --> 00:15:47,090 We know from looking at census data that this is a very outdated view. 125 00:15:47,090 --> 00:15:52,190 I think sometimes a paradigm gets created and everyone starts to subscribe to it. 126 00:15:52,190 --> 00:15:57,790 So there's no doubt that there is a market that fits this demographic profile. 127 00:15:57,790 --> 00:16:03,560 But this is not the only market and in the future, with the demographics of Britain changing, 128 00:16:03,560 --> 00:16:10,160 there's a good chance that this idea of the market is going to be increasingly obsolete. 129 00:16:10,160 --> 00:16:19,030 But when economic times are tough and they have been tough for the last decade, publishers tend to make more conservative decisions. 130 00:16:19,030 --> 00:16:26,950 They're more likely to do what they know works for a market that they know rather than taking a risk on something different. 131 00:16:26,950 --> 00:16:38,230 And this has meant that writing by black, Asian and minority ethnic authors in the U.K. has been consistently under represented. 132 00:16:38,230 --> 00:16:43,240 The Writing in the Future report suggests that things have actually gotten worse in the last 10 years. 133 00:16:43,240 --> 00:16:48,970 Statistics in the bookseller show that out of thousands of books published last year in twenty sixteen, 134 00:16:48,970 --> 00:16:58,410 fewer than one hundred were by non-white British authors, which is quite a shocking statistic. 135 00:16:58,410 --> 00:17:10,640 I think this narrowing of scope, this kind of whitewashing perhaps is something that we see reflected in school curriculums as well. 136 00:17:10,640 --> 00:17:19,370 But it's not just a case of underrepresentation. It's also, to some extent, a case of misrepresentation, according to writing in the future. 137 00:17:19,370 --> 00:17:28,070 That same report, and I quote, The best chance of publication for a black Asian or minority ethnic novelist is to write 138 00:17:28,070 --> 00:17:33,800 literary fiction that conforms to a stereotypical view of black or Asian communities. 139 00:17:33,800 --> 00:17:41,720 Writers are advised by agents and editors to make their manuscripts marketable in this country by upping the salary count, 140 00:17:41,720 --> 00:17:47,720 dealing with gang culture or some other image that conforms to white preconceptions. 141 00:17:47,720 --> 00:17:54,680 In addition, the same report found that a majority of black Asian minority ethnic novelists reported that their ethnicity 142 00:17:54,680 --> 00:18:02,340 was the main focus of their publisher's publicity campaign rather than any more universal aspect of the book. 143 00:18:02,340 --> 00:18:09,990 So effectively, if you are a new black British writer at the moment, there's a kind of pressure on you, whether implicit or explicit, 144 00:18:09,990 --> 00:18:17,130 not only to write a certain kind of book that maybe plays into existing cultural or racial stereotypes, 145 00:18:17,130 --> 00:18:24,660 but also to allow these aspects of your identity to be the most prominent thing associated with you and your writing. 146 00:18:24,660 --> 00:18:39,110 At worst, this potentially turns writers and books into kind of the objects of anthropological study, no longer crafters of words and worlds. 147 00:18:39,110 --> 00:18:44,630 I think it's important to note here that publishers are not necessarily trying to please real people, 148 00:18:44,630 --> 00:18:49,070 but they may be operating out of their own narrow expectations. So this is a presumed market. 149 00:18:49,070 --> 00:18:51,950 These are imagined readers. And of course, 150 00:18:51,950 --> 00:19:04,130 even those who might count as part of the white female market won't necessarily share the preferences or prejudices that publishers might be assuming. 151 00:19:04,130 --> 00:19:13,040 And I also want to be clear that their writers at work who subvert these kinds of expectations in their writing or who toy with them in exciting ways. 152 00:19:13,040 --> 00:19:18,290 But let's think about the implications of this situation for readers. 153 00:19:18,290 --> 00:19:23,870 When a British writer or what he or she writes or writes about is presented in this way, 154 00:19:23,870 --> 00:19:31,340 what might it mean for why treat his experiences of this book or the senses of themselves in relation to it? 155 00:19:31,340 --> 00:19:39,530 And what might it mean for black, Asian and minority ethnic readers experiences of this book or their sense of themselves? 156 00:19:39,530 --> 00:19:49,890 These are the questions I want us to have in the back of our minds as we move on to something more practical, which is Butkovitz and I think this is. 157 00:19:49,890 --> 00:20:02,910 Kind of a way in which a lot of these ideas are really clearly illustrated, so we're all familiar with the kind of shorthand language of book covers, 158 00:20:02,910 --> 00:20:08,370 and that's how publishers and marketers try to entice us to buy or to read a book and how they 159 00:20:08,370 --> 00:20:15,180 communicate what what is what we can expect when we read it to know if it's our kind of thing. 160 00:20:15,180 --> 00:20:26,510 So, um, I'd like to ask the audience what what do you expect when you see a book that looks like this? 161 00:20:26,510 --> 00:20:33,530 Anyone, anyone? Fifty Shades of Grey. 162 00:20:33,530 --> 00:20:38,540 If you can think about actually standing on this hill, I think you'd be falling for it. 163 00:20:38,540 --> 00:20:46,010 See how long it is. It's actually been Photoshopped. Yeah, definitely something kind of like a 50 Shades of Grey rip off. 164 00:20:46,010 --> 00:20:54,410 Maybe this is a case of a couple of publishers seeing something that worked and thinking, let's get on that bandwagon. 165 00:20:54,410 --> 00:20:58,430 That's how things like vampire romance novel becomes a genre. 166 00:20:58,430 --> 00:21:07,140 Right. Um, OK. So. The funny thing is that covers a very conventional two. 167 00:21:07,140 --> 00:21:15,930 This is a really interesting subgenre of back of women looking out at things at the top. 168 00:21:15,930 --> 00:21:25,290 You're going to see this everywhere. Now, from now on, it's I've ruined pretty much 70 percent of covers of literary literary fiction. 169 00:21:25,290 --> 00:21:33,720 And the one at the bottom is using the exact same image. That image comes up countless times and people's book covers, 170 00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:38,340 which is unfortunate for the author who thinks they're presenting something that's kind of new and original. 171 00:21:38,340 --> 00:21:44,580 But it's a moody picture. So, yeah, OK, so. 172 00:21:44,580 --> 00:21:58,180 The question I want to ask now is what happens when the genre, the genre of a book becomes an entire cultural or religious identity? 173 00:21:58,180 --> 00:22:06,160 Again, you can see a double image there and then what happens when a whole continent becomes a genre so that any 174 00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:15,530 book about Africa necessarily needs to have a kind of Lion King acacia sunset thing going on on the cover, 175 00:22:15,530 --> 00:22:22,610 no matter how different the actual books are within that group. 176 00:22:22,610 --> 00:22:25,010 So now this is this is a question I to ask is, 177 00:22:25,010 --> 00:22:37,620 does this look like does this look like a book that includes the author's experiences of living in a caravan in Scotland? 178 00:22:37,620 --> 00:22:42,100 So one of the things we find with lots of fauna and. 179 00:22:42,100 --> 00:22:52,970 To be fair, OK, I grew up in Sierra Leone and in Scotland, what we find is that she's consistently positioned as African in. 180 00:22:52,970 --> 00:23:03,170 Kind of the way that she's presented in the U.K. market, so let's look at this is Jordan, Gosia, a teacher's books, Purple Hibiscus and half votes. 181 00:23:03,170 --> 00:23:13,250 And this is in itself a kind of a fun subgenre, which is sort of blurry black woman's face with some kind of smeared colour somewhere. 182 00:23:13,250 --> 00:23:18,630 Um, now let's look at the memory of love. 183 00:23:18,630 --> 00:23:22,790 I mean, it's clearly in the same genre, right. 184 00:23:22,790 --> 00:23:28,860 Of of book covers. So Forna is being positioned as being like a teacher. 185 00:23:28,860 --> 00:23:38,950 I'm. Just a fun fact is that here's Lawrence Hill's book, Someone Knows My Name, which uses the exact same picture. 186 00:23:38,950 --> 00:23:42,200 It's doing the same thing. And it also won the Commonwealth writers prise. 187 00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:57,220 So the memory of loved it as well. Um. OK, so now I want to sort of zip back to what we might think of as literary fiction in Britain. 188 00:23:57,220 --> 00:24:02,860 Can can you tell me the kinds of words you might use to to talk about these covers? 189 00:24:02,860 --> 00:24:13,190 What are the connotations that you'd have? Anyway, nostalgia. 190 00:24:13,190 --> 00:24:23,420 Tasteful, melancholy. Pardon me, Blake, but also bleached, bleached out, especially on the right. 191 00:24:23,420 --> 00:24:32,270 Pretty predictable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 192 00:24:32,270 --> 00:24:42,800 Is that that you just you just get that from the cover. It just screams overrated anything. 193 00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:53,530 I see there's there's a back story to the of your going on here, but you're telling the same old story, I'm sure. 194 00:24:53,530 --> 00:25:00,020 Well, let's let's think of that in comparison to these ones. 195 00:25:00,020 --> 00:25:07,330 Joe, also by British writers, what are some of the words you use to describe these? 196 00:25:07,330 --> 00:25:13,630 An exotic. Powerful. 197 00:25:13,630 --> 00:25:25,790 Let's just let's go back to. I mean, that's quite the there are some orange and ridiculous. 198 00:25:25,790 --> 00:25:33,050 I like a parent or something, is that right? 199 00:25:33,050 --> 00:25:38,890 Childlike appeal. I'm seeing some nuns in the. 200 00:25:38,890 --> 00:25:44,280 Infantilized, do you think that's infantilizing what's on the book or infantilizing the. 201 00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:52,060 Person who's supposed to buy is. When you do, the Clintons think this is the right team and that's why you. 202 00:25:52,060 --> 00:26:01,960 The other. So this one is for male Greenup's, I don't know if we're getting this, 203 00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:12,380 we should probably give you a mike to catch this, but I thought it was quite male. 204 00:26:12,380 --> 00:26:17,030 OK, can you can you say that again into the microphone, sorry, just so that we can record it, 205 00:26:17,030 --> 00:26:23,720 otherwise you're going to be sort of faint voices that are used is used in both of those books is quite a male Sundt, 206 00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:27,920 it seems to me, because it's got seraphs the Atonement particular. 207 00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:37,790 It's all it's all lines and calls. So, yeah, I mean, I don't find those appealing, whereas I do find the other books that's much more exotic, 208 00:26:37,790 --> 00:26:43,690 much more intriguing would be much more likely to pick those off the shelf and to read. 209 00:26:43,690 --> 00:26:48,610 And of course, he does have a very large McKewon, has a very large male readership. 210 00:26:48,610 --> 00:26:53,560 He's a top writer for female readers. Yeah, yeah. 211 00:26:53,560 --> 00:27:06,120 Well, you said. Is not white men actually said white women, white women. 212 00:27:06,120 --> 00:27:15,780 But what women the publishing industry is the publishing industry. Well, actually, we don't have statistics for the U.K., but in the US at least, 213 00:27:15,780 --> 00:27:20,730 editors and publishers, I think it's like seventy nine percent of women. 214 00:27:20,730 --> 00:27:25,610 And I think but I think anecdotally it's quite similar in. 215 00:27:25,610 --> 00:27:33,710 The U.K., although that is still a kind of a boys club involved, but but there's also a question of these female, 216 00:27:33,710 --> 00:27:41,810 let's assume female editors and publishers presenting mckewon in this case in a certain way to a presumed audience, 217 00:27:41,810 --> 00:27:45,020 is that there's a structure of expectations that's being played, too. 218 00:27:45,020 --> 00:27:50,360 And there's also I mean, it's also difficult in all of these images assessing chicken and egg. 219 00:27:50,360 --> 00:27:58,430 You know, what comes first. The perceptions and those perceptions are enhanced and supported, by the way, in which the books are presented. 220 00:27:58,430 --> 00:28:02,150 And then those that in turn, of course, shapes the. Yeah, it's a feed. 221 00:28:02,150 --> 00:28:03,230 It's a feedback loop. 222 00:28:03,230 --> 00:28:13,640 So so that's why we know what a Fifty Shades of Grey look like book cover is, because we've come to associate that with certain kinds of books. 223 00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:18,750 So we've kind of been, you know, conditioned in a way as well. 224 00:28:18,750 --> 00:28:25,100 OK, so now I want to move across to three different covers of the same book, 225 00:28:25,100 --> 00:28:35,630 and I'd love for people to tell me what you think, what what's going on in these three covers. 226 00:28:35,630 --> 00:28:41,190 If you're not familiar with Brick Lane, it's a Booker Prise winning novel. 227 00:28:41,190 --> 00:28:52,040 Um, it largely takes place in London, I think is something that I just throw out there as you look at these covers. 228 00:28:52,040 --> 00:29:00,610 It's pretty much. Can we have a Michael? 229 00:29:00,610 --> 00:29:07,630 It's very much a woman's story, obviously, the the one on the far right, which is based on the film, 230 00:29:07,630 --> 00:29:13,820 which I haven't seen of it, and then the middle one is clearly, again, the idea of women together supporting each other. 231 00:29:13,820 --> 00:29:18,520 But the the one on the left, I think, looks like kind of patchwork quilt. 232 00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:22,300 So that, again, is a kind of women's activity. 233 00:29:22,300 --> 00:29:32,500 So it is clear that it is meant to appeal to your sense perhaps of the repressed Bangladeshi, I think is Bangladeshi that right woman? 234 00:29:32,500 --> 00:29:38,650 And I think that kind of limits its readership when you if you go into a shop to buy that, 235 00:29:38,650 --> 00:29:46,360 that does very much look like a book that's designed to appeal to women who need some kind of solace in female company. 236 00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:56,480 Hmm. Yeah, I think there is definitely a gendered aspect to this one on the left is more. 237 00:29:56,480 --> 00:30:05,800 I'm sorry, just can you I'm waiting for the man he's intimidating you to say that the one on 238 00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:14,530 the left feels more useful and accessible to a wider market than the two neutrals. 239 00:30:14,530 --> 00:30:23,080 So it's sort of more of my background, more gender neutral for me, basically sort of playing on the subject. 240 00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:30,280 Yeah, I think I'd agree with that. Actually, that's the hard cover. I think it's the double day version. 241 00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:34,810 It might interest you to know that the one on the left is actually the British hardcover. 242 00:30:34,810 --> 00:30:40,600 And these are the two are by Scribner, which is based in New York. 243 00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:49,410 I don't know if that effect was published. Yes, that's the first one. 244 00:30:49,410 --> 00:31:03,190 Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, I want to talk about this, this movie tie in addition a little bit, because does that does it scream London at you at all? 245 00:31:03,190 --> 00:31:09,380 I mean, I would think that this is about a kind of a. 246 00:31:09,380 --> 00:31:21,080 A woman in a rural setting, maybe kind of again, is that idea of female companionship like and this kind of wistful, 247 00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:29,710 I don't know, slightly, slightly, sort of, you know, over the shoulder. Look, I can tell you for a fact that they made the background more orange. 248 00:31:29,710 --> 00:31:33,400 Because one of the things in preparing for this presentation, 249 00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:42,940 I looked at a lot of different book covers and one of the things I noticed was that you pretty much don't get an Indian book that's blue. 250 00:31:42,940 --> 00:31:48,250 Your colour palette is sort of purple, yellow, orange, red. 251 00:31:48,250 --> 00:31:53,380 And it needs to be that because otherwise people aren't going to know that it's it's to do with the subcontinent. 252 00:31:53,380 --> 00:31:57,970 You know, African books are a bit harsher. 253 00:31:57,970 --> 00:32:02,620 You might get some, like luminesce, sort of like angry colours. 254 00:32:02,620 --> 00:32:11,290 And mainly it's just sort of sunset your sunset palette and some harsh black silhouettes or something like that. 255 00:32:11,290 --> 00:32:16,510 So, yeah, I think is that yeah, that's what I have. 256 00:32:16,510 --> 00:32:23,380 But I just want to. Go back to this kind of contrast that we have. 257 00:32:23,380 --> 00:32:35,000 And for us to bear that in mind the next time we're looking on a bookshelf, Tesser. 258 00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:41,240 I was also struck by how many faces from the front are on the covers of very beautiful women, 259 00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:49,430 and so in one way that makes it seem that the view of women looking away is actually quite liberating because there's not going to be an 260 00:32:49,430 --> 00:32:56,690 unattractive woman if there's a woman's face on the front of the book and often from the so-called minority in terms of British culture, 261 00:32:56,690 --> 00:33:00,710 it's usually going to be a very attractive, beautiful, glamorous picture. 262 00:33:00,710 --> 00:33:02,810 And I think that often happens with the authors as well. 263 00:33:02,810 --> 00:33:08,330 Like many of the authors we're discussing on this project, and I know you're not discussing Zadie Smith, 264 00:33:08,330 --> 00:33:13,670 but she's one who's never discussed without the very glamorous image of her. 265 00:33:13,670 --> 00:33:17,820 And and so, you know, in one way, the books could appeal to women. 266 00:33:17,820 --> 00:33:24,230 The one on the right is going with the kind of Bollywood glamorous South Asian beauty sort of thing. 267 00:33:24,230 --> 00:33:28,190 And that happens to Adichie as well, I think. 268 00:33:28,190 --> 00:33:41,210 Yeah, I think one of the things I also draw attention to is what's at stake in having the back of a woman's head rather than her face on a cover. 269 00:33:41,210 --> 00:33:47,400 If you're aiming at female readers, say I'm. 270 00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:57,690 My feeling is that it's it makes that woman into a screen onto which you can project yourself so you can imagine yourself into that character. 271 00:33:57,690 --> 00:34:03,330 And these are pretty much, as far as I can tell, all or white women. 272 00:34:03,330 --> 00:34:09,810 But then you don't get that with this because there's an underlying assumption that you can't imagine yourself 273 00:34:09,810 --> 00:34:18,250 into this this point of view and maybe even you can't imagine yourself into this person's point of view. 274 00:34:18,250 --> 00:34:24,600 Um. So I think that's something to bear in mind as well, how that how that. 275 00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:32,780 You know, that becomes another person rather than a screen onto which you can or a kind of a way in, you know. 276 00:34:32,780 --> 00:34:39,470 I think it's interesting how many of us, yeah, we saw. 277 00:34:39,470 --> 00:34:45,180 Just when you think that there's only two or three that are actually confronting us. 278 00:34:45,180 --> 00:34:50,050 Of these guys are talking about. Oh, that's interesting. 279 00:34:50,050 --> 00:34:56,770 Yeah. I also I feel like the more minimal a book covers, 280 00:34:56,770 --> 00:35:01,090 the more sort of subliminally reminds us of like Penguin Classics and kind of 281 00:35:01,090 --> 00:35:06,310 the the tradition of rendering very respected books and very minimal covers. 282 00:35:06,310 --> 00:35:10,870 So all of the cluttered ones are kind of kind of removing them from that show. 283 00:35:10,870 --> 00:35:14,970 So maybe maybe not quite as serious. Yeah, definitely. 284 00:35:14,970 --> 00:35:24,670 And the difference between those two great ones is that there's a lot of seriousness about those as opposed to the funny. 285 00:35:24,670 --> 00:35:28,430 Yeah, kind of. Yeah, I think you're right. 286 00:35:28,430 --> 00:35:38,810 I mean, look at crowded lines, this is not serious, is really crowded, and then there's a kind of a and again, busy, busy stuff happening there, 287 00:35:38,810 --> 00:35:46,640 which is which is why I think the Monica Ali strikes us as being something that is more of maybe as you someone's age sort of gender neutral, 288 00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:58,380 or it may be presented as a much more serious, serious book. 289 00:35:58,380 --> 00:36:09,870 So, as promised, I'm just going to say a few words here without much assistance from the slides about how we come to books at a different level, 290 00:36:09,870 --> 00:36:24,600 how books appeal to us as well as texts in this case, actually, as as as a script for reading, if you like, as a score for reading. 291 00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:33,390 So the question here about I'm just going to put on a couple of key words under the heading of approaches to reading. 292 00:36:33,390 --> 00:36:44,640 What I'm interested in talking about here is how books identify readers and how we as readers relate to or identify ourselves through books. 293 00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:48,150 So this goes back to that point about the novel, the poem, 294 00:36:48,150 --> 00:36:53,850 or indeed the play script as an act of communication and how we become involved in this act. 295 00:36:53,850 --> 00:36:59,730 And that's what we're particularly focussed on here, 296 00:36:59,730 --> 00:37:09,030 with the emphasis on US readers as full participants in the thinking process that any text puts into motion. 297 00:37:09,030 --> 00:37:15,060 We're full participants along with the writers. The the writers generate the text, sure. 298 00:37:15,060 --> 00:37:20,760 But we as readers put life into the text in the same way, if you like, 299 00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:29,760 as a musician enlivens a score for music or indeed actors do with a play script. 300 00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:35,250 So we have full participants in the in the thinking process at any text puts into motion. 301 00:37:35,250 --> 00:37:41,850 And our thinking as we read finds its shape through the unfolding poem or novel as we 302 00:37:41,850 --> 00:37:48,390 read and as we project ourselves imaginatively into the scenarios presented to us. 303 00:37:48,390 --> 00:37:53,580 And for those of you who like a little bit of theory, a little bit of criticism, 304 00:37:53,580 --> 00:38:03,210 I'm particularly identified here myself with Rita Belski, a literary scholar who, in the limits of Critique, 305 00:38:03,210 --> 00:38:08,880 a book called The Limits of Critique, talks about literary engagement, 306 00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:16,950 that is engagement over critique in ways that are very, very useful to how we approaching reading in this project. 307 00:38:16,950 --> 00:38:24,900 In this book, The Limits of Critique, she distances herself from decoding and the hermeneutics of suspicion. 308 00:38:24,900 --> 00:38:31,410 I can gloss that in a moment that my pages are stuck together. 309 00:38:31,410 --> 00:38:38,580 That has become the default approach for literary reading really since the 1980s. 310 00:38:38,580 --> 00:38:47,370 Hermeneutics of suspicion interpretation based on the idea that there is some secrets in the text that we need to unlock, 311 00:38:47,370 --> 00:38:54,300 that we need to break open like sort of cracking open and not to get to the kernel. 312 00:38:54,300 --> 00:39:01,650 And rather, Belski very helpfully wants to give acknowledgement as as do we on this project to the full 313 00:39:01,650 --> 00:39:09,840 complexity of aesthetic experience that unfolds when we encounter a text or a book as readers. 314 00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:19,920 Here's a quotation from Belski where she says, interpretation or reading is fundamentally a matter of mediation. 315 00:39:19,920 --> 00:39:31,440 Translation what she also calls transduction. This is what allows books to move across geographic boundaries, across temporal boundaries, 316 00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:37,050 cultural boundaries, as they are slotted into new and ever changing frames. 317 00:39:37,050 --> 00:39:47,010 She writes. Because if you if you really think about it's quite remarkable that we are able to enter other worlds through our reading through books. 318 00:39:47,010 --> 00:39:55,830 You know, it's something that's often said to key stage one, you know, young readers, you know, a whole new world opens to you through this book, 319 00:39:55,830 --> 00:40:04,770 but it is actually something worth thinking about how and how that process of boundary crossing actually happens. 320 00:40:04,770 --> 00:40:14,670 And this activity of slotting into new frames or immersion involvement in alternative thought worlds correlates with, for me, 321 00:40:14,670 --> 00:40:24,420 very interestingly, with Jane Katz's thoughts on the sympathetic imagination, which he writes about in his book The Good Story, 322 00:40:24,420 --> 00:40:33,870 which is actually based on dialogue that he carried out with a psychoanalyst who could see in this dialogue the identifications 323 00:40:33,870 --> 00:40:40,430 that are stimulated by the sympathetic imagination allow us to project ourselves into other mental states rights. 324 00:40:40,430 --> 00:40:48,000 So we we enter sympathetically into the mind world of the book and also of the characters. 325 00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:51,990 He also writes, this is a quote from him with a very simple quote. 326 00:40:51,990 --> 00:40:57,980 We live other lives from the inside. We're not just looking at, you know, these. 327 00:40:57,980 --> 00:41:08,780 Others, these other characters, as we're represented on book covers, know we are living these these lives, these worlds from the inside, 328 00:41:08,780 --> 00:41:14,420 in post-colonial contexts, including in Britain, often characterised by fraud, 329 00:41:14,420 --> 00:41:20,170 forms of division, inequality, separation, borders crisscrossing one another. 330 00:41:20,170 --> 00:41:29,150 This engagement is the sympathetic identification of bridging borders and translating difference can work in particularly effective and striking ways. 331 00:41:29,150 --> 00:41:37,600 And that's what we really want to explore, where we have the the discussions with with the writers in the weeks ahead. 332 00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:46,520 A very interesting question, which is for another time, but it is one that I'm hoping to pursue at some point, is whether these cross border IDs, 333 00:41:46,520 --> 00:42:01,100 these sympathetic engagements happen more intensely or with a greater frisson of excitement in post-colonial environments. 334 00:42:01,100 --> 00:42:04,940 But that is a very, very big question. 335 00:42:04,940 --> 00:42:12,800 So reading, then, is no longer so much driven from the point of view of this project by the sense that the novel, 336 00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:23,840 a poem is keeping something from us that demands decoding. So we can't we kind of not that interested in what this metaphor is telling us. 337 00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:38,000 We want to move beyond code and think rather about reading as a process of a continually unfolding process of inference gathering. 338 00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:44,240 This is why we're so interested in these recordings to so we constantly kind of taking it. 339 00:42:44,240 --> 00:42:51,920 I mean, it's happening and it's sort of nano micro second way as we read, we constantly sort of taking taking on meanings, 340 00:42:51,920 --> 00:43:00,240 rejecting some as not relevant to the story being constructed and accepting others. 341 00:43:00,240 --> 00:43:07,280 But and I think this is a this is an important watchword to move beyond code in terms of our reading, 342 00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:11,060 in terms of the teaching of literature is easier said than done. 343 00:43:11,060 --> 00:43:19,880 Our training in literary criticism, and this applies also to those of you who are a level readers in the room, are training in literary criticism, 344 00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:27,860 conditions us to approach a poem or a text through a particular framework or frameworks in quite a detached way, 345 00:43:27,860 --> 00:43:39,610 as if the you know, the book, the text is out there. And and it's something that we need to approach precisely by untying it, by cracking it open. 346 00:43:39,610 --> 00:43:50,470 So what we're keen to explore here is a much wider inference based model, which is temporally bound like music and really hard to capture, 347 00:43:50,470 --> 00:44:00,550 but we are interested in in getting hold of this interplay of flow and containment at every point as we read our thoughts flowing onto the next word, 348 00:44:00,550 --> 00:44:09,520 yet also shaped by that word as it passes and as it interacts with the other words in the sentence. 349 00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:16,320 And here I reach to some fantastic linguists called Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson 350 00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:22,460 would be very helpful to me in thinking my way through this this different approach. 351 00:44:22,460 --> 00:44:26,590 They write that the address see if you remember the Jacobsen's model earlier, 352 00:44:26,590 --> 00:44:34,330 the sort of the the the message the message receiver is involved in a continual balancing 353 00:44:34,330 --> 00:44:41,500 of inferences concerning that act of communication that is involved in any book. 354 00:44:41,500 --> 00:44:53,950 To put it very, very roughly. As the sentence unfolds on scrolls, meaning at once spreads out in the reader's mind and is channelled by it, 355 00:44:53,950 --> 00:45:01,660 spreads out, channel spreads out, channelled as we process new elements as we read. 356 00:45:01,660 --> 00:45:08,710 So all these elements are part of the communicative flow of of anything that we read, any bit of text, 357 00:45:08,710 --> 00:45:17,370 and I would just like you to pause for us or to pause for a moment on this quotation. 358 00:45:17,370 --> 00:45:23,160 I just read it and I would like you to observe as I read it, 359 00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:32,120 you've already read it silently, visually as I read it, I try to observe what is happening. 360 00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:53,290 For you, in your minds, in your perception, as you receive this sentence like a long legged fly upon the stream, his mind moves upon silence. 361 00:45:53,290 --> 00:46:01,280 Which is. From Yates's late poem, The Long Legged Fly. 362 00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:07,870 Like a long legged fly upon the stream, his mind moves upon silence. 363 00:46:07,870 --> 00:46:13,600 Whether you know the poem or not, I wonder if people could just worry about the microphone, 364 00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:25,260 if you could just sort of call out particular perceptions that come to you as you as you read those those two lines. 365 00:46:25,260 --> 00:46:35,370 I mean, surprising about it is it's kind of the wrong where I have to read it normally, see how it is my response to the Cyclone Larry five. 366 00:46:35,370 --> 00:46:42,360 So you start off being stopped and you're talking about you're actually forced to pay very close attention and follow 367 00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:58,860 the sentence word by word as it's being read by the time you get any other responses as opposed to the business, 368 00:46:58,860 --> 00:47:07,680 isn't it? So you can make two pages in a way that is a very precise photographic image. 369 00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:17,340 So even in this case, I had to speed up the first sentence on the second and the parallels between the two to see how this is just treated. 370 00:47:17,340 --> 00:47:26,320 So it forces you to focus you anything else? 371 00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:32,750 I think I can thought about. I mean, the only thing that I can think to accept that is pretty normal. 372 00:47:32,750 --> 00:47:41,220 I don't know, maybe five Al. 373 00:47:41,220 --> 00:47:48,800 This heavy is. Thank you. Yes, and thank you for movement on. 374 00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:59,930 The plan students removed from the site of the. Britney. 375 00:47:59,930 --> 00:48:06,080 It's quite a trembling silence, isn't it? It's a it's a it's a silence held in tension because there's there's movement and it's stillness. 376 00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:13,160 At the same time, the song, Like a Fly is still presumably on the surface of the of the stream. 377 00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:21,780 But the stream is moving right before. 378 00:48:21,780 --> 00:48:28,380 Yes, I know a great great in the silence is the constant right at the moment. 379 00:48:28,380 --> 00:48:37,020 It the man in the street as the silence instead of being consciousness as a street interrupted by silence is the other way around it. 380 00:48:37,020 --> 00:48:42,930 Silence is the street interrupted by something which is quiet or not even interrupted. 381 00:48:42,930 --> 00:48:48,480 Maybe. Perhaps just visited or. Yes, visited. Possessed. 382 00:48:48,480 --> 00:49:03,930 Immersed. Yes. Thanks for those those remarks, I think they've all been suggesting I'm really going to state the obvious now, 383 00:49:03,930 --> 00:49:10,770 but I think, you know, it's worth doing. So we're reflecting on the very, very complicated process that is reading. 384 00:49:10,770 --> 00:49:18,550 We are holding more than one thing in our mind at once when we read that right. 385 00:49:18,550 --> 00:49:23,800 It's we move very, very rapidly from the Somali word, which would, in a sense, 386 00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:28,090 we can disregard it's you know, it's right at the beginning and we could put it to one side. 387 00:49:28,090 --> 00:49:33,130 And we have fly. We have surface. We have stream. 388 00:49:33,130 --> 00:49:41,660 We have mined. We have we have stillness and movement together, dynamically together. 389 00:49:41,660 --> 00:49:48,170 And for me, there's something very interesting, perhaps the most one of the most interesting words, because it's a directional word, 390 00:49:48,170 --> 00:49:58,160 is the word upon in that in those two lines, because it's it's both this there's a signification of up being on the surface. 391 00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:03,380 Right. But there's also a signification of being held to being suspended up. 392 00:50:03,380 --> 00:50:10,310 Up. So. 393 00:50:10,310 --> 00:50:20,030 That was, pardon the pun, just skimming the surface, but how do we then approach reading of central importance then for for us? 394 00:50:20,030 --> 00:50:29,540 And we're going to keep exploring this as we go along, is that reading or interpretation is not something done to a poem, a novel, a text? 395 00:50:29,540 --> 00:50:39,140 It's not an invasive or aggressive act at dismantling, unmasking, breaking down and unpicking instead comprehension and interpretation. 396 00:50:39,140 --> 00:50:45,200 Reading is what happens in the course of as we're receiving the the book, 397 00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:53,120 the text through the play of meanings as the text or the poem presents itself to the reader. 398 00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:57,410 So reading then the readings that we're very interested in are readings that 399 00:50:57,410 --> 00:51:01,500 don't attempt to extract some some latent some period meaning in the text, 400 00:51:01,500 --> 00:51:13,400 some repressed message, some deeper interpretive code that lies behind the words on the page, the meanings seemingly on the surface, 401 00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:21,390 a rather reading sets different currents of suggestion and implication running. 402 00:51:21,390 --> 00:51:36,180 So quoting here from a cognitive theorist, Mary Crane, and this is my final bit of, if you like, I don't know, critique, I suppose, when reading. 403 00:51:36,180 --> 00:51:45,630 Mary Crane writes, We do not need to add theory to our experience of the text, but rather register what the text itself is saying. 404 00:51:45,630 --> 00:51:53,050 It's said act of communication that we are paying attention to. So our task is to follow our readings as we read. 405 00:51:53,050 --> 00:51:58,165 Think about how we are receiving the text.