Dear Prime Minister Harper: I hear you are writing a book. On the
history of hockey, no less. So I thought as someone who has been writing
books for over 20 years, I would offer a few tips to you, an emerging
writer.
First of all, you are starting your writing career at a good time.
Canadian literature is known around the world for its excellence. At
least six of our prominent Canadian authors have recently won major
international awards like the Man Booker and the Impac Prize. And many,
many Canadian writers, both English and French-speaking, have found
readers in foreign countries.
Why, just the other day a friend told me that on a sailing holiday in
the Caribbean, she and her partner discovered they could trade one
Canadian book for two American books with other sailors. These sailors
were both American and Canadian and they all thought Canadian books were terrific, hence their exchange rate.
However, I admit that my first reaction to the news that you were
writing a book wasn’t so charitable. I asked myself: is it right for
Prime Minister Harper to be indulging his literary ambitions on our
time? Then I realized that you are no different from many authors who
hold down a job in order to buy time to write. So why should I be
begrudge you the few hours of scribbling many of us struggle to fit in?
You mentioned that the research for your book has slowed down since you
became our twenty-second prime minister. Naturally, I wasn’t surprised
and I thought of suggesting that you try for Ontario’s $1500 Dollar
emerging writers’ grant and hire your own researcher. Like all emerging
writers in Ontario, you are entitled to apply, although this modest
start up will barely cover a researcher’s fee for no more than a few
months. Nor will it help much to offset some of your moving costs, Mr.
Prime Minister, if, God forbid, you lose your day job in another election.
Anyway, it will all become clear sailing once you’ve found a Canadian
publisher. Then you will be a candidate for the perks that are available
to veterans like myself––the Canadian writer in residence posts (whose
payments don’t come close to politicians’ salaries although these
positions amount to a second, full-time job done to finance your
writing.) Or maybe you will be able to scrounge up the odd grant
although I should warn you that competition is tough since our literary
success has encouraged novices such as yourself.
But don’t let that discourage you: if your book manages to reach a few
readers at the library, you will be eligible to receive the under-funded
and now fast-shrinking fee for Public Lending Right paid annually to
Canadian writers.
One thing, though. If your hockey book is bought by a foreign publisher,
it will be tricky for your foreign publisher to dig up money to
publicize your book. Publishers even in sports-positive country like the
United States mean well but frankly, with an unknown foreign writer such
as you, (yes, even a writer who heads up the country where the cold air
comes from)––these American publishers will still need encouragement to
promote your work.
Alas, the funding that once helped Canadian writers reach their world
audiences has vanished. Thanks to you slashing $11.4 million from our
cultural programs abroad, thirty years of support has gone overnight.
Alas again, our cultural diplomats who were once employed to promote our
culture abroad now have no way to publicize anything, let alone our
writing. And knowing the stock you place in short term results, these
hard-working folks may soon be out of a job altogether.
In short, I’m afraid our diplomats won’t be able to help you the way
they once helped Margaret Atwood, for instance, or myself. It is
precisely an emerging writer like you, one who doesn’t yet have any
foreign readers, who will be muzzled.
But we all start in a small way, Mr. Prime Minister, when we write our
first book. Even Yann Martel, whose world bestseller The Life of Pi has
been translated into 35 languages, didn’t begin with the global
readership he has now. It takes time and money for an author’s work to
reach an audience.
And now I’m coming to my biggest tip. What countries like Ireland know
(and Canada too, before you became prime minister): you have to grow
literature, like other businesses. Just the way the Ministry of Natural
Resources, (both federal and provincial), benefits the oil and gas
industry by researching oilfields, and just as the flow-through tax
credit encourages the Canadian mining world to develop risky mines––so
has cultural funding helped us Canadians artists contribute to our
economy through our valuable exports. Did you know that for every dollar
you invest in the arts you get eight back, Mr. Prime Minister? Today, as
a small country, we have been boxing above our weight.
My Spanish publisher, Pilar Alvarez-Sierra, mused about your dilemma
with a possible (or not so possible) foreign publication: “The power of
a country, its capacity to have a real impact in the world around, is
also measured in its cultural representatives, I am positive about that.
And a country should invest in opening their frontiers to the rest of
the world promoting its writers, painters, film makers, and so on. For
example, could the Spanish government say that Almodovar shouldn't
receive money from the cultural institutions for promoting his films
abroad? He deserves it, and he gets it, and thanks to the first time he
got the money to travel to America and promote his films there, he is
now one of the best known Spanish artists in the world, and a huge
publicist for Spain everywhere.”
So get those stars out of your eyes, Mr. Prime Minister. Sure, elbow
grease and accounting procedures help, but writing a book, like the
drilling a mine or an oil well, does not happen in a vacuum. Artistic
talent, like business enterprises, thrives in a society with good
infrastructures.
However, far be it from me to stop a writer like yourself from
harbouring your dreams. Your book could still appear on a prize list
whose financial awards––(however rosy the amounts sound in the
newspapers––don’t come close to covering the costs of living for the
three to five years it takes to write another book.)
Look here––say your publisher decides to enter your book in the $25,000
The Charles Taylor Award for Literary Nonfiction. And say your book is a
gem, you may get nominated. Or even win it.
Not that I want to trick you into unrealistic expectations, Mr. Prime
Minister. The reception to a first book is hard to predict. Actually,
the reception to any book is unpredictable and I haven’t met a single
publisher––Canadian, American, or European––who can tell me six months
before their new books come out, which one will hit either the prizes or
bestseller lists.
It’s gambler’s market, and you will just have to take your chances with
the rest of us.
Susan Swan is a Toronto novelist who will be attending the Awakening in
Ottawa April 16 on Parliament Hill as vice chair of The Writers’ Union
of Canada.
This article was published in the Globe and Mail, Saturday, April 14, 2007
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