Conversations With Mr. Prain Read Online Free PDF Page A

in his imagination, and he was frustrated that he had managed to express only a fraction of what he felt was true and heartfelt. Should Dostoyevsky have tailored his work to fit the market-place and thought not so much about truth but more about whether his product was going to be a hit?”
    “Not at all,” he said. “A writer must always write according to his conviction.”
    “But the requirements of the market may mean that this writer might never be published.”
    Mr. Prain almost sighed. “Perhaps. But I would not advise a novelist to be guided by market forces. Thatwould be a form of censorship. I am simply asking for an awareness of the problem on the part of those who write: that the artistic worth of literature must be weighed against its commercial appeal, to some degree. The novelist must nevertheless write in accordance with his own inspiration and purposes.” He was now fixing me with a stare. I found this uncomfortable, and had to avoid it. I glanced down at my folded arms.
    “Isn’t there a palate for particular ideas and forms at particular times? You might be saying something people don’t want to hear, but really need to. If I made the best spirulina smoothie in the world but tried to sell it in China, where no one drinks spirulina smoothies, that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
    Mr. Prain looked at me with a certain bafflement. He had undoubtedly never heard of a spirulina smoothie, but he did not admit it. “Timing is important. A good writer should be able to pick up on current issues and address contemporary local concerns.”
    “That’s not what I’m saying,” I said. “It isn’t a question of current issues. It’s a question of vision, and the way this is expressed. One can be ahead of one’s time, or culturally alien, or too radical, and therefore not commercial.”
    Mr. Prain’s voice grew a fraction louder. “And this is where we hope our editors have sufficient skill to recognise the valuable new talents who will gain a market niche, albeit a small one. I’m not saying it’s easy, or that geniuses are never overlooked, but some effort is made to sort thesheep from the goats, and sometimes we will try to sell the tastiest ‘spirulina smoothie’ to China, to use your image, simply because we think a novel ought to be published. In this instance, any sales are a veritable bonus.”
    “But meanwhile,” I continued, “the writer who isn’t noticed, whose vision is just not very tasty, starves to death in a garret, or abandons writing.”
    Idiot, I thought. You’re exaggerating. Don’t get so vexed. Don’t take it personally.
    Mr. Prain gave me an almost compassionate look. I was, after all, a woman. A woman’s innate leanings toward hyperbole would scramble any discussion, and create a muddle in which she would quickly entrap herself. I saw him decide afresh that he was my intellectual superior. “I should hope that a truly committed writer, who is truly inspired and has a true sense of vocation, would never abandon writing.”
    Well, what else would he say? Starve in a garret! Where did I drag up that phrase from? Victorian melodrama? And wasn’t he right? How could anyone driven to write creatively give up writing?
    My eyes fell on a portrait of a woman clad in a morning dress of the 1840s. It was severely narrow-waisted, made of printed alpaca, with a large white lace pelerine and voluminous Victoria sleeves. She had a lace bonnet on her head and her hair hung around her face in two sets of perfect ringlets. Her hands were held in front of her belly. On the third finger of her left hand was a ring.Immediately, I felt a strangling sense of constriction. I knew that the bodice of her dress was long-waisted and tight, boned in the front, the three bones spreading up in a fan from the point, pressing down the diaphragm and hampering breathing. Under this was a stay extending over her breasts, abdomen and hips, with a whalebone busk vertical along the front. The cuffs around