There was always a staginess about the book trade. A sense of goings-on behind the scenes. But it had a touch of West End refinement. Though reviewers dipped their pens in vitriol, we readers knew our place. We kept schtum — clapped politely.
Now, as headlines swirl round children’s writer David Walliams, the pantomime season is upon us. We are urged to boo and hiss and lob custard pies. And yes, there is retro pleasure in this tale of skullduggery and ingenues. The man with star billing is outed as a cad. He’s Captain Hook and King Rat rolled into one.
But histrionics have also infected the highbrow stuff. Take Radio 4’s recent podcast about the writer Kate Clanchy, Anatomy of a Cancellation. Her prize-winning memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me came out in 2019. In Scene One the book was feted. By the second act, Some Kids and Kate herself were being reviled.
Anatomy of a Cancellation aspires to be a sophisticated six-parter, yet the basic premise is simple. The audience must guess. Did the writer get ejected from the ball, by Ugly Siblings who envied the beauty of her prose? Is Kate the virtuous, put-upon heroine?
(Oh yes, she is!)
Or is Some Kids I Taught racist, disablist, and classist? In which case justice requires her to be banished, to live unhappily ever after. Is Clanchy the Wicked Witch of the West?
(Oh no she isn’t!)
Such literary shenanigans have been a feature of 2025. For instance, there was August, when the longlist of the Polari Prize for “LGBTQ+” writers was unveiled. The Prize was set up by Paul Burston, who chairs its judging panel. Paul doesn’t just run a literary salon — he’s been a gay rights activist since the AIDS epidemic began. You would think he’d be forever numbered among the good guys.
Paul’s problems started when Polari longlisted the novel Earth by John Boyne. John is not just the author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He is a supporter of JK Rowling, who denies that there’s anything “transphobic” about single-sex spaces. Boyne’s longlisting led to a frenzy of panicking authors, all desperate to withdraw from the Prize.
When we accept an ideology which holds that everyday words are “micro-aggressions”, publishers become helicopter parents
It was a crazy plot twist. When AI and free digital content make it hard for writers to scratch a living, shouldn’t writers cherish such competitions? Evidently not. An Author Statement in the form of an open letter opined, “Trans people’s existence and their right to live full public lives as they choose are matters of fact, not questions for debate.” The letter got over 800 signatures. Polari cancelled the Prize.
To those of us who just wanted to sunbathe with a beach read, such performativity came over as a Punch and Judy show, where Mr Punch engaged in multiple acts of self-harm.
There is a serious side to this. When we accept an ideology which holds that everyday words are “micro-aggressions”, publishers become helicopter parents — their writers wayward kids who must be strictly supervised.
One spectacularly daft exchange in Anatomy of a Cancellation involved a sensitivity reader. She said it was permissible — good even — to tell readers that a “non-white” character has curly hair. But to describe the same person as having hair that “frizzed wildly” would be evocative in the wrong way. A cue for me to waste hours wondering, whether I was, or was not, allowed to describe my own Ashkenazi mother’s hair as frizzy.
This sort of editing discourages risk and promotes censorship. The writing which results is horrifyingly bland. But ultra-processed fare is what many in the trade aim to provide.
Worst of all the way in which some writers, like turkeys voting for Christmas, support this clampdown on free expression. The Polari letter referred to “questions for debate” as if debating was an intrinsically dodgy process, and not the oxygen of cultural life.
Novels and memoirs are now routinely scanned for “othering” and instances of “literal violence”. Readers are invited to participate in regular Hate Sessions about flawed books, written by faulty people. The attacked writers defend themselves, claiming their artistic intentions are pure. If evidence of sound character is required, this can be found in their mentoring, their community work.
Rosie Kay, co-founder of the “Freedom in the Arts” project, flags up the danger of this type of response: “Once we accept the framing of ‘good person vs. bad person’ we’ve already stepped into a theatre not of our choosing.”
If we make a New Year’s Resolution for literature, what should it be? Traditionally this is the season for tedious goodness. People try gym membership or Veganuary. But when it comes to the arts, we should ditch being good. And, as this is peak time for family lawyers, why don’t Literature and Morality get that divorce? Why not admit it? Anyone involved with literature has to be selfish, insanely nitpicky, a pain to live with. Writers moan, kvetch, and quarrel. Their social skills are rudimentary — inevitable as they spend so long on laptops playing with imaginary friends.
Let’s let writers get on with being imperfect. Who knows — this might even result in getting better books to read.
We can but hope.
