This Is Just Too Delicious

Recently, The (London) Sunday Times indulged in a savage little exercise. To 20 literary agents and publishers in the U.K. they submitted in typescript form, and with pseudonymous titles and pseudonymous unknown author names, the opening chapters of two novels by two Booker Prize-winning authors: V S Naipaul, and Stanley Middleton. The bogus submissions were sent to agents rather than only to publishers because, as I've elsewhere on this blog made note, publishers today, and for some time now, won't so much as glance at a fiction manuscript by an unknown author unless that manuscript is submitted to them by a legitimate literary agent. Agents today (and also for some time now) do duty as initial manuscript screeners and new-talent winnowers for publishing houses, a function that used to be the province of a publishing house's in-house editorial staff. But today (and, yet once again, also for some time now), their ranks have been so thinned that such a practice is practically and economically out of the question.

And the result of that savage little exercise?

None [of the agents or publishers] appears to have recognised [the bogus typescripts] as [the opening chapters of] Booker prizewinners from the 1970s that were lauded as British novel writing at its best. Of the 21 replies, all but one were rejections [apparently, most of the publishers didn't even respond].

Gee. What a surprise.

RTWT here.