A lire, l’article de The Observer sur la situation dramatique d'une majorité d’auteurs anglo-saxons. Quand on sait que ce qui se passe là-bas ne tarde pas à se passer ici... le voilà le miracle de l’ultra-libéralisme en matière éditoriale: un saut dans le passé le plus noir!
From bestseller to bust: is this the end of an author's life?
The credit crunch and the internet are making writing as a career harder than it has been for a generation. Robert McCrum talks to award-winning authors who are struggling to make ends meet
extrait:
After a period of prosperity and tranquillity for British fiction that ran for about a generation (circa 1980 to 2007), writers are now being confronted with the hardship of literary artists through the ages. (It was said of Grub Street's 18th-century residents that "They knew luxury, and they knew beggary, but they never knew comfort.") Thomson, reviewing his situation and hoping, like Mr Micawber, that something turns up, says: "I don't buy anything. No clothes, no luxuries, nothing. I have no private income, no rich wife, no inheritance, no pension. I have nothing to look forward to. There's no safety net at all." He, and many others, are having to face up to unprecedented questions about their survival as writers.