Britain - The arts

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In 1974, Stanley Middleton won the Booker Prize for his novel Holiday. He went on to become one ofthe country's most highly novelists. V. S. Naipaul is even more revered. Born inTrinidad but resident in Britain since 1950, he also won the Booker Prize (in 1971) for his novel In A Free State, and in 2001 was the Nobel Prize for Literature.Unfortunately, it seems that the works which won them those prizes in the 1970s are, in the twenty-first century, not even good enough to find a publisher. In 2006, The Sunday Times newspaper an experiment. It out the first chapters of the two novels, only the names of the authors and the main characters, and sent them to twentypublishers and twenty literary agents. Only half of these even to reply. Of those whodid, there was just one mild expression of interest in Middleton's novel, but none at all in Naipaul's.That no agent or publisher the widely-acclaimed quality of the latter's writing is enough. What is even more startling is that not one of themrecognizedthe writing as Naipaul's. The experiment drew attention to charges that the British publishing industryis no longer capable of new literary talent and has become with celebrity publishing. There is undoubtedly some truth in these allegations. Part of the problem,though, is simply the volume of manuscripts by agents these days. Creative writingcourses are and increasing numbers of people are authors.As one agent put it 'it would be a foolish person who they read every sentence' ofeverything that is sent to them.