Absolutely Fabulous Snobbery in the Writing World- Andrew Crofts
This month I read a couple of books about very different aspects of the writing business. Both deal in very different kinds of snobbery and both are highly entertaining. The first was “The Booker and the Best: Discrimination in the Book World” by Nicholas Clee. Nick is one of those connected individuals of the book world who gets asked to judge book prizes. He is also an author and believes that by classifying some literature as being “better” than others we are doing the publishing industry a great disservice. It is a short book – both provocative and funny, and available at the moment only as a Kindle Single. The second book was “The Vanity Fair Diaries” by Tina Brown, which covers her time re-launching the magazine between 1983 and 1992. Here we find an altogether more glitzy level of snobbery; somewhere between F.R. Leavis and “The Devil Wears Prada”, (I am exaggerating for effect, obviously). What is most fascinating about this book is that we now know the...