China Miéville_ Writers Should Welcome a Future Where Readers Remix Our Books _ Books _ the Guardian

8/18/2019 China Miéville_ Writers Should Welcome a Future Where Readers Remix Our Books _ Books _ the Guardian

1/111/11www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/21/china-mieville-novels-books-anti-piracy

China Miéville: Writers should welcomea future where readers remix our booksNovelist says anti-piracy measures mooted for literature are

'disingenuous, hypocritical, ineffectual' and 'artistically philistine'

Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 August 2012 1 9.1 5 BST

China Miéville at t he Edinburgh int ernational book festiv al, wh ere he called for a uniform, blanket salar y

for w riters, n ovelists and poets equivalent to the 'wage of a skilled worker'. Photogra ph: Jeremy Sutton-

Hibbert/Getty Images

China Miéville, author of novels including The City & the City and Embassytown, has

described anti-piracy measures for literature in the digital age as "disingenuous,

hypocritical, ineffectual" and "artistically philistine".

Speaking in Edinburgh at a debate on the future of the novel, Miéville said that just as

music fans remix albums and post them online, so readers will recut the novel.

He and his fellow writers should "be ready for guerrilla editors", he said, adding: "In the

future, asked if you've read the latest Ali Smith or Ghada Karmi, the response might benot yes or no, but which mix?"

There was, he said, a "blurring of boundaries between writers, books and readers,

self-publishing, the fanfication of fiction".

The comments were made during the last of the five debates at the Edinburgh world

writers' conference, which has brought together 50 authors from countries ranging from

Scotland to Argentina and the Dominican Republic to Pakistan.

They include Kamila Shamsie, Ali Smith, Yiyun Li, Ahdaf Soueif and Jackie Kay.

The ev ent, part of the Edinburgh international book festival, was a 50th anniversary

restaging of the 1962 Edinburgh writers' conference.

The original event – notorious for its passionate exchanges between writers – was

attended by such figures as Rebecca West, Muriel Spark and Mary McCarthy.

The effect of the internet and digital distribution on fiction, said Miéville, would not be



about creating "enhanced" ebooks, which he called "a banal abomination".

Rather, the effect would be to heighten the openness of texts. "Anyone who wants to

shove their hands into a book and grub about in its innards, add to and subtract from it,

and pass it on, will … be able to do so without much difficulty."

But Ewan Morrison, author of Tales from the Mall, called Miéville's vision of the future

"naive, and based on what I would call dot-communism, which is a spurious leftism

based on collectivity , that we are all heading towards a world where information will be

shared".

The problem of this new world was that it would be "demonetised" for writers, he said,

"and therefore none of us will be making a living when we have all these books that are

mashed up".

Poet John Burnside said he doubted the existence of a future online utopia, arguing

against Miéville's view that the "original text will always still be there. It will not be

stolen".

Burnside said: "You say that the text will always be there. I don't trust the state, big

companies and religious nuts not to try to erase the text and replace it with their version

– so that at the end of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov [its main character] ends up

finding Jesus and moving to Utah and lives happily ever after.

"I am not arguing about the excitement of technology, I am just urging a lot of caution

and a lot of mistrust of the kind of people with an axe to grind who may try to erase the

texts we care about."

Miéville also called for a uniform, blanket salary for writers, novelists and poets,

equivalent to the "wage of a skilled worker".

Such a move, he said, would cut against the "philistine thuggery of the market" that

failed to sift the good from the bad. And, though it would cause writers at the top of the

bestseller lists to lose income, such collectivisation would for most writers "mean an

improvement in their situation, an ability to write full time".

Writers at the debate also spoke about novelists' negativity about the future of the form.

Poet Jackie Kay questioned the gloom, saying: "Just as religious people are often

predicting the end of the world, so novelists are often predicting the end of the novel.

Poets never talk about the death of the poem. Why do novelists have this extreme

anxiety?"

Kamila Shamsie, the Pakistani novelist, talked about the creativity engendered by

significant technological change. Writers such as Italo Calvino had emerged, she said, in

the wake of the rise of TV and film, when the dominant story telling form was changing

from page to screen.

"The novel has to find somewhere else to go. If the threat of something new and

different and bigger than you creates Calvinos, then it is not a threat," she said.

Towards the end of the debate, Kay came up with an impromptu play on words that

may have summed up the mood.

"What's not novel about the novel is navel-gazing," she said.

Miéville spoke of a broadening of opportunity brought about by the internet's "long tail".

He hoped, he said, that the English-language publishing sphere would start "tentatively

to rev el in that half-recognised distinctness of non-English-language novels".

He pointed out that "obscure works of Russian avant garde and new translations of Bruno Schulz are av ailable to anyone with access to a computer. One future is of …

decreasing parochialism."

Citing Ubuweb – the online archive for avant garde poetry – he added: "With the

internet has come proof that there are audiences way beyond the obvious."



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Comments25 comments, displaying Oldest first

Sei Array

21 August 2012 8:18PM

A living wage for writers and poets?? I 'd be all for that. I 'vealways wanted to tell the boss that I'm leaving "to take up

writing as a career."

As for novel mash-ups, and remixes, how do we know that James

Joyce and Chip Delany haven't already done that with Ulysses

and Dhalgren. And would any but the most ex cruciatingly astute

notice anyway?

To wound the autumnal city indeed!!

Yes....someday we will all be well, more like Benny Noakes I'm

afraid, reading our own mashups and going, "Christ!! What an

imagination I have!!"

But actually, most people don;t have much imagination to begin

with, so there is still a ray of hope for the written word.

obenole

21 August 2012 8:37PM

What's novel-gazing about the navel is not the not

I'm still waiting for godotcom

Which is obvious btw (beyond the way )

Hedgehogger

21 August 2012 8:37PM

Appropriate coming from Mieville since The City and the City

ranks as one of most appallingly edited (and hence barely

readable) novels I've read, which was a shame as the core idea

was good. Maybe he just needs to find a decent editor or listen to

the one he's got.

Menardo

21 August 2012 8:43PM

Where has posted his novels for "remixing"? I'd love to get my

hands on them and add my own meaning to them. Why should

his thoughts matter on something he's put his name on, the



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elitist. It's my turn to decide what China Meiville writes like.

Or is he just saying things to be noticed?

KingLudd

21 August 2012 9:07PM

Poet Jackie Kay questioned the gloom..... Poets never

talk about the death of the poem. Why do novelists

have this extreme anxiety?"

How many poets make a living from writing? The ones I know

have alternate forms of income. Poets never talk about the death

of the poem because it was never alive, as a way of supporting

yourself, in the way that the novel has been.

The time you invest in writing a book is vast. Absolutely

enormous. I don't think anyone who hasn't done it can easily

grasp the extent of the commitment. In some cases it's a lifetimes

work. And then to have that all stolen from you. It's an

unbearable prospect.

The problem is, of course, that if there's no money to be made

people just won't write books. This comments section here is

always chock full of beautiful souls who bang on about how "it's

not about the money maaaan" - and "hey guy, art is like, an end

in itself? and if you're doing it for the bread then, like, you totally

shouldn't be doing it?". It makes me spew like that kid in the

Exorcist. Green pea soup at 1000psi all over the laptop screen.

We don't want to light our Montecristos with tenners and snort

coke off bald midgets heads. We just want to be able to feed our

families. You know, like you do.

All very well citing Calvino as an example of innovation,consequent on technology. But I think if Calvino had faced the

prospect of all his novels being pirated by some little arsehole

called Josh, after having the endings rewritten by a middle aged

30 stone slash writing civil servant called Marion..... and if he had

then discovering that Invisible Cities had been creatively

reimagined so that it was largely about RPattz........ and that

Marco Polo and Kublai Khan were now having a torrid gay

relationship, I think he would've thrown himself under a passing

Fiat and saved the future the trouble of starving him.

Refactories21 August 2012 9:09PM

"I don't trust the state, big companies and religious nuts not to

try to erase the text and replace it with their version – so that at

the end of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov ends up finding

Jesus..."

Er...

Sunburst

21 August 2012 9:13PM

He and his fellow writers should "be ready for

guerrilla editors", he said, adding: "In the future,

asked if you've read the latest Ali Smith or Ghada

Karmi, the response might be not yes or no, but which



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mix?"

Frightful.

Will some pretentious 19- year-old brat put his grubby paws on

masterpieces like Age of Iron, Black Box, The Heart of the

Matter or Invisible Cities and fill them with vile hipster lyrics or

appalling scribblings of their own? I hope there'll be a law against

that.

Then again, what would be the point of such mixing, whenliterature is one uninterrupted three-thousand-year-long

process of mixing and remixing. Homer remixed ancient Greek

folk tales, Virgil remixed Homer, Dante remixed Virgil, Goethe

remixed Dante, Proust remixed Goethe, Lawrence Durrell

remixed Proust, etc. Coetzee drew from Kafka who drew from

Dostoevsky who drew from Pushkin who drew from medieval

Russian peasant poetry. Garcia Marquez found lots of inspiration

in 17th century Baroque literature, then the whole of Latin

America found lots of inspiration in Garcia Marquez. David

Mitchell modelled Cloud Atlas on Italo Calvino's offbeat, multiple-

storylines stuff, and now plenty of young writers are remixingDavid Mitchell for their own multiple-storylines stuff. And so on,

and so forth. That's just how literature works.

So even though the traditional paper-and-ink text is,

conventionally speaking, closed, there has been enough

innovation and progress over the centuries, and there will be in

the future. No need to breach all borders by making the text

open 100% and let hordes of teenagers to ruin masterpieces.

Sunburst

21 August 2012 9:16PM

Oh, KingLudd. Also a fan of Invisible Cities! I applaud your taste.

DanNorth

21 August 2012 9:56PM

Re-mixed books, eh? I suppose there's no reason why it shouldn't

happen - it works in music, right?

But, I have to ask (and it's not a rhetorical question - I really

don't know the answer), where are these re-mixed books, and

who is writing/reading them? Is this an entirely theoretical

debate, or is there actually a demand, a push, for readers to be

able to re-write novels for their own purposes? Aside from the

recent and (please, god, please) short- lived fad for sticking

zombies/vampires in classic literature (a cynical commercial ploy

that by no means matches Mieville's characterisation of a

people's movement to collectivise writing), I don't know of any

examples. Nor can I imagine reading a novel and wanting to

rewrite it in my own image. I normally finish a novel eager to

move on to another novel, but hey, each to their own.

Also, this is rather like Barthes' 'Death of the Author' (1968),except that he was talking metaphorically - the onus shifts from

the author as the central source of meaning, to the reader, whose

active interpretation of the text reconstitutes it. But you don't

need to actually rewrite it to create your own interpretation. Is



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this just that very contemporary need to share every little

thought that crosses your mind? i.e. We can't read and interpret

something without then producing a new copy that matches our

own interpretation and passing it onto others?

clawsofaxos

21 August 2012 10:36PM

Miéville also called for a uniform, blanket salary for writers, novelists and poets, equivalent to the "wage

of a skilled worker".

Who is going to pay these wages?

clawsofaxos

21 August 2012 10:37PM

Also, we already have remixes of books. They 're called films, or

plays, or radio/TV series.

charrette

21 August 2012 10:42PM

Meanwhile, elsewhere in this same issue of the Guaridna

Kiss and tell: street artists imitate Gustav Klimt's

erotic art

A crew of nine leading lights from the street art scene

are making new works inspired by the great, sensual

Austrian – and Mode 2's response is characteristically

provocative. Etc.

and:

The Robinson Institute is supposedly an exhibition

about the banking crisis, but it is really a ramble: a

seven-part installation that involves much back-and-

forth around Tate Britain. Along the way, you see a

Victorian thresher, a copy of Polanyi's The Great

Transformation, portraits of Wat Tyler. It's meant to

be the collection of a wandering scholar – the

eponymous Robinson – but it's really a charge sheet

of how the British people have been nobbled down theages by their rulers. Yet the clips of Quatermass II

and references to Beatrix Potter make this less a tour

of leftwing anger than something disarmingly witty.

Those are the hallmarks of Keiller's work: a politics

that forsakes dogma for an undeniable love of

Britain's landscape and people. What more can we

say? Just go

I suppose one difference between remix music and remix art on

one side and remix novels on t'other is time - that it can take

rather too long to decide that a detourned novel just wasn't worth

the damned effort.....

Menardo

21 August 2012 11:18PM



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Oh for god's sake---ALL of literature is a remix of literature and

you have to be a moron to not see that. But you have to have the

courage to put your name--and your name only--to the result

instead of diving into someone else's creation and putting your

own stamp on their vision.

But even more importantly, real literature isn't about other

works of literature. It 's about lives being lived, and all the surface

issues of form are in service to the truths within. To discuss

literature in any other terms is to reveal one's self as a slave tofashion, as certain authors with shaved heads and tight t-shirts

are wont to do in the Guardian.

Robstacle

21 August 2012 11:38PM

"In the future, asked if you've read the latest Ali

Smith or Ghada Karmi, the response might be not yes

or no, but which mix?"

Oh come on, no reader is going to "remix" the latest novel just

because they have a digital copy and it's possible. If people

wanted to do that, they would have been doing it for decades, to

my knowledge, they hav en't. People wrote fanfiction before the

internet and continue to do so now. But remixing and editing?

There's just no appetite for it and I don't see how technology is

going to change that.

masteradamo

21 August 2012 11:53PM

Please consider this. Relatively soon, machines capable of

imitating the output of human brains will be generating novel

type tex ts algorithmically. While machines may soon be able to

ape consciousness with an impressive degree of accuracy, it is

unlikely that computers will be accorded the same type of

property rights which humans generally expect to enjoy. Who,

therefore, will own these automatic texts, and who will control

what happens to them?

"Easy," the practical minded reader might respond, "the person

who designed the algorithm." But anyone who's ever tried their

hand at programming software knows that behind every

application on a computer is a ladder of code, built of a history of contributions from a multitude of programmers. A piece of

software is much more like a machine, full of various patented

parts, than a text allegedly built out of nothing by a single author.

Thus there is no clear breaking point in the spectrum of

contended ownership between me saying that I own the texts

which my algorithm generates and HP claiming they own this

comment since I wrote it using their hardware--or, for that

matter, Firefox, or the people behind this website, and so on. In

addition to that, if my algorithm has any degree of cleverness, it

will have gone out there and allowed itself to be influenced by

other information which it encounters in its space, to the point where it can no longer be recognized as what I designed, such

that I couldn't take any more credit for it than a proud parent

might take for successful offspring.

I think perhaps what Miéville's idea implies, beyond the mere



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liberation of intellectual property, is the disintegration of the

prevalent mode of authorship itself-- not a new concept, but an

increasingly compelling one. What will change is not just what you

read, but the way you read it, the way you as a reader approach

the questions of intentionality and context and semiosis. This will

be a difficult transition for those who enjoy discussions involving

the mentioning of the names of as many authors as possible, but,

for literature as a whole, an exciting and maybe even

revolutionary shift.

The3rdMan83

22 August 2012 12:02AM

I would like to hear Miéville's thoughts in their broader context

because he seems like a really interesting guy. I'm guessing that

he's referring to a new kind of genre whereby writers put their

work up for remixes in the same way musicians do. If that's the

case then good luck to it. However it's not likely to be any good

when consent hasn't been given by the original author for a

million different reasons. So in a lot of cases where it wasn'tsupposed to be remixed, it would really just amount to artless

vandalism. However where people have written something as a

sort of open, collaborative effort then that could work quite well.

I would also like to say that I am not against piracy and don't

believe that this is a question of piracy, but is more about the

intentions of the original author. If I ever get a story published in

the future I wouldn't really care what happened to it after it's on

the shelf in terms of how well it sold providing lots of people get

to read it. However if I came across an edited down version of it

then I would go on a headhunt.

fuzon

22 August 2012 12:03AM

China Miéville is a v ery fine talent indeed, and so it is a shame to

read him spouting like a twit. No one who appreciates good

writing and storytelling wants the work of talented people to be

messed around with by any old so-and-so. We come to an author

as we come to any individual artist, to appreciate their

individuality and perspective. Yes, of course as someone said

above, authors "remix" others by building on the work, but we

appreciate Homer and Virgil as distinct entities and they compliment each other as such.

Miéville is, I fear, letting his ideological position muddy his

thinking. He believes that all men are equal in every way and so

there's such a big, happy collective waiting to happen in which we

might just as well read one person's version of a story than

another's. The trouble is, he doesn't actually believe this or he

would never write again - I guess he just feels guilty for being

talented.

Of course, all human beings ought to be entitled to equality of

opportunity - but to believe in an equality of outcome whichdiscounts genuine talent and says that anyone's v ersion of

something is going to be just as valid as anyone else's is plain

dangerous talk.



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Menardo

22 August 2012 1:12AM

Response to masteradamo, 21 August 2012 1 1:53PM

You know, that all sounds really impressive, but it's mental

masturbation.

ArundelXVI22 August 2012 2:18AM

Utter bullshit. Writing and literature are not music; words,

sentences and ideas have meanings, and it is up to the talent of

the writer to shade those meanings, arrange those words in an

effective way . Music is comparatively free of such constraints-

notes or passages can evoke emotion and mood, but they need

not have meaning. Words and sentences do- that's what they're

there for.

"Reader remixes" sounds like a recipe for incoherent utter

garbage. Reminds me of the 90's when overcaffeinated geniusespredicted hypertext would transform literature. "Choose your

own utterly shit reading experience!". No. Art-making of any

kind is all about choices, what the "author" in any form

specifically chooses to do, and what he or she excludes and does

NOT do. Writing and literature perhaps most especially- the

exact arrangements of words, sentences, phrases, meanings and

shadings of, plot, narrative drive, begiinning and ending.. it is not

a collaborative medium, it simply isn't. What the author chooses

to put down, with care and artfulness, is exactly why some

writers are rev ered for centuries and others remaindered,

binned and forgotten. Their choices and use of words.

Write your own goddamned words, sentences, paragraphs,

books, is what I 'm saying. If you're any good. If not, give it up,

stop writing, I implore you. This sort of haughty dismissal of an

original author's work as fair game to steal and mash up into

amateur dreck is utter bosh, you can have it, I will stick to actual

literature thanks.

bloodynuisance

22 August 2012 2:40AM

Daft.

Excession77

22 August 2012 3:03AM

Is that anything like your remix of Cordwainer Smith (Scanners

live in vain, A game of rat and dragon etc.) in Embassytown?

OT. Is it just me or do you think he has something in common

with Peake... Almost having it in common that they both fail to

really belong in the repitive genres to which they have been

assigned? Is it the influence of China (the country)

perhaps...which is a biographical commonality they have I

believe.

Seriously though, that is how literature is remixed and its been



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José Manuel Bueso Fernández

going since just after the novel was invented. It would be possible

to say similar things about visual art as well. I'm not sure

anything beyond that is really possible.

Excession77

22 August 2012 3:08AM

Response to Robstacle, 21 August 2012 1 1:38PM

Well it has happened, I'm not sure anyone has ever beenespecially excited by Bowlderisation of Shakespeare, childrens

abridgers of folk tales and legends and Reader's Digest though.

Seems simply to irritate most people.

Excession77

22 August 2012 3:13AM

Response to masteradamo, 21 August 2012 1 1:53PM

We've had Markov for donkey's y ears now.

Seems to work ok. HMMs do not however even a little bit "ape"

anything to do with consciousness.

You are overthinking this.

In terms of creating artificial intelligence, the field has failed

miserably.

In everything else (I think we politely refer to this as "machine

learning" instead) it has been a rip roaring success.

littleredbookshop

22 August 2012 3:50AM

The problem with debates is people blurt out pretty much any

random, ill conceived idea that comes to mind, simply to keep the

whole thing lively . They shouldn't. Of course ev en more

depressing is that China actually thinks this is a good idea.

David91

22 August 2012 4:07AM

I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea of people being

determined and rewriting copyright works to suit their own

tastes so long as they don't then try to pass off this rewritten

work as the same as the originals or to sell them. What people do

for themselves or their friends is not particularly relevant to

publishing. But if these rewriters seek to profit from passing off

the rewritten works as new works by the original authors or

otherwise to confuse the general public, this does become

dangerous to the reputations of the original authors. Rewrites

clearly labelled as such are potentially OK so long as the

"remixer" is not trying to profit from this thin copying exercise.

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China Miéville_ Writers Should Welcome a Future Where Readers Remix Our Books _ Books _ the Guardian