Bring out your dead! Or, a new kind of ghost-writer – Michelle Lovric

My subject in this Dickensian week is the ghosts of books past. But first we must take a detour into the construction industry.

Eighty per cent of the energy that a building will use over its lifetime has already been spent in its construction. Therefore architects and green-minded planners are now looking at refurbishing old urban buildings rather than demolishing them. City centres, it turns out, can be a better shade of green than the new so-called ‘green towns’. Moreover, in a city, the energy expended on lighting and infrastructure reaches a higher density of people. If you righteously inhabit a ‘green town’, you still have to get in your car and drive into a real dirty old town to work, shop or be entertained. (Even your cardboard coffin will have to be carried in a large petrol-guzzling vehicle to your green burial site.) If you live in a city centre, you can walk everywhere or use greenish public transport.

So how does this relate to books and publishing? And ghosts, for that matter? Well, in the rush for absolute novelty, I worry about the way many publishers forget their existing buried treasure. Why are so many fantastic books out of print? Why are so few relaunched? Or reprinted? How many authors are dropped at the first sign of sales becalming, with no questions asked about an ill-advised cover or a marketing non-event? Instead, some publishers are addicted to the Next Big Thing. Books are being put in their graves prematurely, in my opinion, and coffin lids are being nailed down on characters who are still breathing. The squirrel who forgets where his nuts are buried is likely to go hungry – some publishers could perhaps nourish their bottom lines if they remembered and dug up some of the valuable material they have ‘laid down’. I hasten to add that many publishers do keep their backlists alive, and all power to their elbows in this.

As an anthologist, I was always dismayed when publishers still claimed permission fees for extracts from books that had been out of print for more than fifty years. I could never be sure if these fees were precisely legal, or if the authors/estates would ever get a taste of them. But I did know that I’d be in time-wasting trouble if I didn’t pay them, so I did. And every time a publisher took my money for one of these forgotten books, I had a faint hope that some fresh, young, bibliocurious editor might descend to the cobwebbed vaults and view the mildewed file copy that (I hoped) they’d kept down there.

But what I really hoped was that the cub editor would think, ‘This is damned fine stuff. And still of interest. We should reprint this little masterpiece! It’s still just as good as it always was. One short life was not enough for it.’

And then we would see a return on a book’s energy – the writing, editing and designing: the eighty per cent of energy required in its original construction. Even if one or all three were tweaked a little to accommodate modern taste, and yes, that pernicious desire for something new, such books would still be greener than anything manufactured from scratch.

I’m not saying that new books should be banned. Quite the opposite. I want all deserving writers to be able to eat and buy a new pencil from time to time. No, what I am proposing is a new kind of ghost-writing: new books could be TWINNED with revivals of old, wonderful books on similar themes. The living authors could talk about the dead ones. The dead ones would talk, subliminally, to readers’ memories. Living and dead authors could go on virtual tours together.

Wouldn’t I love to be lit-twinned with Rhoda Broughton, or Augustus Sala? My latest, Talina in the Tower, is about a Venetian girl who turns into a cat in Victorian times. Therefore I’d love to twin it with the immortal (yet out of print) CATS: Their Points and Classification with Chapters on Feline Ailments and Their Remedies. How to Train for Performing Tricks, etc, by W. Gordon Stables, M.D., C.M., R.N.

The title belies the book’s lovely, arch tone, the irrepressible tendency towards anecdote and editorializing. He bemoans the shameful cat show classification ‘cats of no sex’, who are judged on weight alone. He has ideas for training cats to open and close doors, ring the doorbell and do somersaults on request. He tells horror stories of people who leave cats shut up in houses to starve to death while they go on holiday. Dr Stables has a great cat lexicon too. I have never seen it written before that cats say ‘Wurram’ – but they absolutely do. As for discipline, he admits that ‘there are times when even the most highly-trained cat will deviate from the paths of decency’. In this case, he unfashionably recommends a little bit of whalebone to switch the offender several times across the fore-paws or the tops only of the ears before turning her out of doors. Obviously I vehemently disagree with any corporal punishment for cats. All the better! Dr Stables and I can debate the matter with passion.

Then there’s the genial William Dean Howells, who lived in my own house in Venice at exactly the time that Talina in the Tower is set. His book, Venetian Life, is one of the most charming volumes written by a foreigner about the city. Venetian cats receive some honourable mentions. We’d have plenty to talk about, he and I.

So I’d be happy to go on tour with Dr Stables and Mr Dean Howells, answering questions about all things cat and all things Victorian Venice. I don’t believe the revived sales of their books would damage mine.

Does this sound like ‘Bring out your dead!’?

Is it a crazy idea?

And so was separating rubbish.

And so were energy-saving light bulbs.

And so were hyper-sexed thousand-year-old vampires.

So, no publisher-bashing comments please, as that’s not what this blog is about. Without publishers, there’d be no books at all. Much more interesting is this question: If you’re a writer, who would your writerly ghost-twin be? Who do you imagine opposite you in the Edinburgh yurt, swigging that last medicinal glass before your minder takes you up on stage? Or on that train to the school visit? Or sitting beside you signing at a bookshop?



Michelle Lovric’s website
Talina in the Tower is published by Orion Children’s Books

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