Bloggasm

Ben Granger has been writing as reviewer and interviewer for Spike Magazine since early 2004, and writing as blog commentator for its blog Splinters since mid 2005.”

Simon Owens: As a book blogger, how successful do you think lit blogs are at promoting titles compared to other review venues?

Ben Granger: When reading blogs you have the thrill of the “samizdat” (not to be confused with the nut-ball right-wing website of the same name), feeling that this person writing before you is either praising or damning because they want to, there’s no time-serving or monied agenda behind it. They’re less likely to be engaging in internecine feuds or back-licking with their author mates either. In that sense, a review on a blog can seem more honest and valid. Of course it may not be, but it feels like it. But then reviews in established papers and magazines have massively higher audiences, which -may- just off-set this. It’s the old quantity/quality conundrum dontcha know.

Simon Owens: I’ve noticed that more and more authors are putting up their books for free online. Do you think this increases their chances at success? Are more and more publishers becoming open to this method?

Ben Granger: Music downloads were supposed to spell the death of the music industry, and of course didn’t. The success of Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen (Christ I feel like a desperate aging hepster writing that) can be purely put down to free downloads leading into multi-million sales. I see no reason why this shouldn’t follow in the book world, though I think it’s too early to tell at this stage. I would like to think it would, there’s something sweetly democratic about it. But let’s not go mad. Most stuff put out free will stay free, and largely free of readers too.

Simon Owens: Do you feel that book blogs are more open to small press titles than other mainstream review venues?

Ben Granger: Without a doubt. The bottom line is they review what they want to. I believe it was MC Hammer who once remarked of the Addams Family, they “Do what they wanna do, say what they wanna say, live how they wanna live, play how they wanna play”. A trillion considerations that mainstream reviews will take into account do not have to be done so by the bloggerati, so obviously small press titles will benefit. But it still boils down to the individual blogger’s interests in the end. They will also tend to be obsessed with reviewing and talking about just what they like, and time considerations on their life (if they’ve got a job like) will sometimes mean they’re even less likely to review what they don’t like than a mainstream reviewer. I’ve been sent several plugs from a creepy site trying to promote the virtues of incest. No thanks mate.

Simon Owens: What are some of your favorite literary genres?

Ben Granger: Impossible to say. Using “genre” in its most reductive sense, “crime”, “sci-fi”, “horror” etc. I’m not usually a fan of that lot, though I’ll like some of the best ie. PK Dick, Lovecraft, Ballard, Jake Arnott if we’re including crime etc. To be honest though I will usually read older books rather than new releases, so a new one really has to grab its teeth in my bum-cheeks for me to take interest. Bret Ellis’s Lunar Park succeeded superbly in that respect. But my reference points are in the past, I’m looking for something which approaches Celine, Greene, E. Bronte, Wilde, Parker, Orwell, Pat Hamilton or dozens of others I’ve loved.

Simon Owens: What upcoming book publications are you looking forward to the most?

Ben Granger: One of the absolute favourite books of my youth was Ripley Bogle by Robert Mcliam Wilson, an extraordinary account of a jaded, brilliant Irish down-and-out’s odyssey through London. I hear that Wilson, long missing from the literary scene, is to write a new novel called The Extremists later this year. I’m very much looking forward to that. Incidentally, I only found out about it from people posting comments on a blog post I did on Ripley Bogle. Another beautiful outcome of the medium!

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Ben Granger: When it comes to literary weblogs I’m afraid I don’t usually venture out of the ‘Brit-Lit-Blogs’ of which Splinters is a part. Ready Steady Book, Buzzwords, This Space, Bookworld and Scarecrow are all good reads, and usually from writers a good deal more committed than myself. There’s your five. What more do you want? How Stalinist that makes me sound, true though. If we’re allowed just sites rather than blogs, then another five would be Lenin’s Tomb, the site of journalist Johann Hari’s site (both these representing the political polar extremes of my zig-zagging brain), Bookmunch (fine review site), openDemocracy and MorrisseySolo.

(Related posts: Interview with Scott Esposito from Conversational Reading, New Best-of anthology to hit the market, INterview with Mark Sarvas from The Elegant Variation, Interview with Dan Wickett from The Emerging Writers Network, Interview with Michael Allen from The Grumpy Old Bookman)