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Imagine a writer whose work you admire is suddenly found cheating on his wife; or inappropriately ‘mentoring’ some lovely he met on an Arvon course; or retweeting white supremacist memes on Twitter. How woud you react? Would you remove his books from your shelves and send them to the charity shop or – for fear of moral contagion – simply hoy them into the woodburner?
Perhaps you will think these are silly questions. Perhaps you won’t. Still, it won’t matter soon what you think. A number of publishers have decided to take the matter out of your hands. More and more of them have, in recent years, been adding ‘morality clauses’ to their contracts; a New York Times report says these include HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House and (though the publisher declined to confirm it) Hachette. This news is being greeted with some alarm by the admittedly few writers who bother to read them.
This is, it should be said straight out, not so simple as a ‘freedom of speech’ issue. A morality clause doesn’t police (as private publishers are entitled to, tut-tut though we may) the acceptable parameters of what a writer can say in their work: rather, it reserves the right to pull the work from the shelves if the writer does something they don’t like in their public life, or does something in their private life that becomes public. But in making it a point of something so nebulous as morality, that writes the publisher willing to act in bad faith quite the blank cheque.
The timeworn argument about the separation of life from art needs little rehearsal here. Morality clauses – even if we stuck within current liberal tramlines and gave atheists, adulterers, suicides and sodomites a free pass – could deprive us of the works of Cicero (slave owner), Ben Jonson (murderer), Jean Genet (thief), William Burroughs (manslaughterer), Arthur Koestler (rapist), Hunter Thompson (dangerous driver), T S Eliot (antisemite), Philip Larkin (racist), David Foster Wallace (intimate partner violence, sexual harassment) the Earl of Rochester (all-round bad egg) and any number of others.
And if you started rounding up anyone whose private behaviour or public utterances could cause a scandal on social media – just think of the hashtags you’d get from Dante Gabriel Rossetti plundering his wife’s grave to retrieve a sonnet sequence – the canon would consist of George Herbert and Dorothy Wordsworth.
The reason the issue arises now, though, is nothing to do with morality. It’s to do with public relations. In part, this is because the publishing business model has changed. Writers are no longer, to the same extent they once were, the anonymous or private suppliers of texts that go out into the world. They are personalities: marketable brands in themselves. They are expected to promote their books with personal appearances and readings; to give interviews. If they already have a telly profile or a substantial social media presence, that will be baked into the contract. Publishing acquisitions meetings take into account how ‘promotable’ an author is; periodicals trail their star columnists with photographs and marquee bylines.
A consequence of this is that the publisher then has a financial interest in how they conduct their private lives. Just as Kerry Katona ceased to be a representative of the wholesome supermarket chain Iceland – “That’s why mums go to Iceland” – when she was filmed hoovering up fat lines of cocaine while she was supposed to be looking after her kids, writers can become a liability to their publishers if they’re caught doing something that compromises the public image that is one of their selling points.
Sometimes, mind you, that selling point might not be morality but the opposite. Who can forget Ozzy Osbourne’s poignant objection to using a bubble machine in one of his live shows: “I’m fucking Ozzy Osbourne, I’m the Prince of fucking Darkness. Evil! Evil! What’s fucking evil about a shitload of bubbles!?”
So there is some merit to the publishers’ case that they have a financial interest in the public personas of their authors. But this is not simply a way of finding a legal mechanism whereby you can get out of publishing a children’s book if you discover the author is a serial child molester. To determine the extent to which this is predicated not on real moral objection but on the fear of bad publicity, we need look only at the new Conde Nast boilerplate, which reportedly gives the company the right to drop a writer if, in the company’s “sole judgment”, the author “becomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, complaints or scandals”.
Writers and publishers have as their raison d’être the production of original thinking. But here, at the very contract stage, is an active capitulation to groupthink. Not “we can drop you if you’re criminally immoral”: rather, and expressly, “we can drop you if we think people disapprove of you”. In the social media age that’s especially alarming. Social media is set up to be an engine of perpetual outrage. That is its neurological business model: a perpetually self-feeding howl-round. It is, as the futurologist (or whatever he calls himself) Jaron Lanier likes to call ‘BUMMER’: Behaviour of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent. There’s money in the mayhem.
And here, at the heart of it, is the serious point. A Twitterstorm, as it is, can’t do anything but huff and puff. It’s noise: sound and fury, signifying nothing. It’s a huge number of people on the internet deciding that they strongly disapprove of you and getting a little dopamine hit every time someone else interacts with their statement of disapproval. If you sit it out, if you don’t actually mind, if you DGAF, as the young people say, it will blow itself out.
That is easier said than done. It takes some stones to register the furious ad-hominem (or ad-feminam) rage of tens of thousands of strangers and not feel just a tiny bit scared or upset. Most of us, as social animals, are set up to care what others think about us. But however horrible it may be, being slated on social media cannot directly damage our livelihoods.
But in a world where ‘the optics’ matter – the world of brand management – publishers mind very much. So they write in morality clauses as a sort of escape hatch. If their author gave an interview in which he or she said something that has incited the fury of the mob (and let’s not forget that that fury can be and is, particularly in the political arena, purposefully gamed by interested actors), they can drop the author like a hot rock before brand contamination sets in.
And that doesn’t defuse the likelihood of Twitterstorms: rather, it incentivises them. It means that those who are outraged, or just pretending to be because they’re bored, or crave approval, or have clambered on a passing bandwagon, or are being paid a decent wage to sit in a troll farm in the former Soviet Union claiming to be a midwestern hockey mom, now have a concrete means of damaging their target’s livelihood and/or inflicting financial harm on the institutions or publications that employ them. This is to quail at paper tigers and attempt to appease them by giving them real teeth. That really is a bummer.
questingvole 
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SubscribeThe thought of Mosques being built anywhere in England gives me the creeps, but the thought of them being built in the countryside makes me feel angry and very sad.
Yes indeed. Not far from my home is a very pretty, quintessentially English village, or rather it was quintessentially English. A few years ago some farm buildings on the edge of the village became a mosque, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the last census revealed the population of the village to be 25% Asian. Meanwhile, not far away, an old pub deep in the woods has become a Hindu “studies centre”.
But I do live in Slough – 25% white British at the last census – and not far from the London Borough of Hillingdon – 48% white – so perhaps this encroachment, dismaying though it is, is unsurprising.
Read the article: not in the countryside but in a town, like where churches are repaired, sometimes.
In my rural idyll elections have been cancelled by the Labour national government at the request of the local Conservatives.
Fewer than 17% of the UK population live in what can accurately be described as ” rural areas” or villages. Which ever way the inhabitants vote or whatever their opinions are, they will never have as much sway with our politicians as urbanites.
“the reason potholes are never fixed is a lack of funding and council incompetence, neither of which would be helped by a Reform victory”
More likely, as in America, the reason infrastructure is always starved for attention and funding is that tax money is siphoned off into social engineering instead of civil engineering. In that sense, a Reform victory might well begin to turn the tide.
Lovely Poppy thank you. It does seem that English villages offer the only escape from grim national decline. However our Hampshire village is showing signs of creeping and unsettling change… the two over-sized care workers who cram into a little car and drive to administer ‘care’ to the unlucky elderly – in and out in minutes… the reckless drivers from Amazon and Evri…village feuds about the imposition of affordable housing… a new monstrous modern house to spoil the view…houses sitting empty as ordinary families appear unable now to afford four bedroomed homes with large gardens…. But the daffodils are heavenly.
As a native and resident of the north of England, i’ve recently had the opportunity to spend some time in a Hampshire village (not far from Winchester) and the difference in the quality of life was a real eye-opener, gorgeous and welcoming village pub included.
I hope your village survives the travails of what some call “progress”.
Poppy Sowerby is also proving to be an eye-opener. Having mainly written about the latest fads and trends amongst the younger generations (some of which, at least, was interesting) she’s beginning to expand her horizons; ironically enough, by reference to her roots. This article hits quite a few nails on heads.
It really seems like the price of housing is the cause, directly or indirectly, of half of our problems in the West.
Also, what’s with all the empty houses and apartments? NYC, where I live, is full of them.
Thank you, Poppy, for an acute piece of observation and analysis.
Really good piece.
Rather enjoyed reading this.
But really, Poppy : “sandstone Cotswold villages” ! A subtle April Fool’s wind-up ?
Correct. Oolitic limestone in fact.
“the reason potholes are never fixed is a lack of funding and council incompetence”
It’s because road maintenance is a licensed activity. and it’s illegal for anyone unlicensed to do the work. The certification is convoluted including things like a quality management system and audits in addition to the things you’d expect like material specifications. You can’t, as a competent adult, just fill in a hole.
The need for certification obviously limits the number of potential suppliers, which then, naturally, both pushes the price up and limits supply, creating backlogs due to the lack of sufficient certified suppliers. And since certification is an upfront expense, it acts as a barrier to entry for new suppliers, particularly for small businesses that do not have administrative ‘slack’ to afford to do the paperwork. Certification will always benefit larger suppliers as a result.
Now filling in a hole will need to comply with some basic standards, so it’s not a job for cowboys. But I would have thought a much simpler and cheaper process would be possible. Material could be bought ‘off-the-shelf’ to standards. Initial specific training just for pothole repair and how to do a good job could be provided for free by the council to interested parties (would it need more than a day?). And a council overseer could be employed to view the works as they take place to ensure they are competently done and then council certified for liability issues. A simpler process would allow smaller, local firms to offer services (perhaps at a fixed price), increasing supply, reducing prices and speeding up the number of repairs.
The ‘industry’, however would lobby against any such rationality – not only the existing contractors who have spent money on admin and training, but also the body of auditors, and all the specification and standards writers, the trainers, and the consultants and advisors who handhold the business through the certification processes. It’s in the interest of these groups to extend the requirements, possibly including hiring practices or sustainability. Certification becomes expensive, time-consuming and full of fees for ‘professionals’ and a long way away from the basic need to just fill in a hole.
Insightful comment.
We should definitely do as you say.
There is also, though, a question priorities. Until all the potholes are fixed, all MultiKulti outreach efforts and other non-essential council expenditure ought to be terminated.
Have you considered the issue of potholes identifying as Bumps?
I live in a village. We want our parish lengthsman back.
Oddly, all this bureaucracy over filling in holes brings forth exactly the very cowboys to do the job that no householder would ever employ. The road near me has had its potholes filled three times in eight years, and now awaits another load of tarmac sloshed roughly in the same holes
There was a scandal recently over the insulation of homes by registered suppliers, much of whose work was not only shoddy, but significantly below standard. And most of the work had been authorized and passed by council inspectors. Many of these homes are now unsellable. So even government registered suppliers are untrustworthy – as were the building inspectors at Grenfell.
How do we go forward when we cannot even trust our own government?
Aye, but who pays for it? 14 billion just to clear the backlog.
Reform and some of the Cons (the ones not in charge for most of my lifetime) are the only political movements that don’t actively mistrust and work to destroy rootedness, security and identity.