My daughter is studying Voltaire’s Candide and hates it. That’s OK, she’s allowed her opinion. But there’s a line in which I think Bill Gates would especially enjoy: ‘Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.’
It seems that Bill’s burgeoning new career as a book reviewer on GatesNotes is under fire from those who believe literary opinions should be the preserve of the so-called experts. Or fools. Bill, on the other hand, is keen to tell the world which books suit his taste.
His highly influential blog (part of his brilliant network of content marketing tools designed to maximise his philosophies) includes a list of some of the 50 or so books he’s enjoyed that year, including The Road To Character by New York Times columnist David Brooks (a bit long and disjointed, I thought, but nevertheless thought-provoking) and The Vital Question by Nick Lane (brilliant on the origins of life and why we are the way we are).
According to those who bow to the superior skills of the literary critics, Bill, by presuming that anyone cares what he reads, likes and thinks, is helping to destroy the books industry which recent figures suggest is worth £10 billion to the UK economy alone and almost £300 billion worldwide.
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| Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, participates in a panel discussion during the Financial Inclusion Forum December 1, 2015 at the Treasury Department in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) |
Some critics are outraged. The highly-respected DJ Taylor is quoted as saying: ‘What does Bill Gates know about books?’ He adds that ordinary people not steeped in literary criticism tarnish the industry: ‘There has been a loss of critical authority. You have to have some kind of language, some kind of protocols to have the conversation about the meaning of books.’
It’s a line that has been forcefully argued by Peter Stothard, the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, who believes that the rise of book bloggers is ‘to the detriment of literature’ because their tastes, knowledge and critical faculties cannot be trusted. Certainly can’t be as trusted as those precious types who sit in their ivory towers surrounded by mini-libraries of books that publishers have sent on to them, gratis. Presumably with companies like Amazon in mind (which accounts for 90 per cent of all book sales in the UK and whose book sales account for around 7 per cent of its $70bn annual revenue), Peter adds: ‘If the mass of unargued opinion chokes off literary critics…then literature will be the lesser for it.’
Has the mass of unargued opinion devalued film criticism or has it made bylined critics less snobby and more attuned to people’s tastes? Has the mass of unargued opinion devalued travel experts who jet around the world on PR-funded freebies, or has it made hotel establishments keener to keep the customer satisfied? Has the mass of unargued opinion destroyed news journalism or made it faster, fresher and sharper?
The most profound societal change that our digital age has created is the democratisation of opinion. Of course it’s always been there but the means of expressing it to a wide audience has always been highly restricted, the preserve of an elite few who enjoy telling us the difference between good and bad, right and wrong. Bill Gates might be good at making money, they would argue, but what does he know about books?
How conceited, arrogant and wrong. Presumably the same goes for book clubs, a phenomenon that conservative estimates believe adds up to 100million in individual sales in the US alone. Those, for instance, run by Oprah Winfrey (whose annual recommendation list causes a 2.5% decline in sales for all other books in the 10 days after they’re announced), Richard and Judy and Mark Zuckerberg, whose new online forum recommends titles that ‘emphasise learning about new cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies’. What do they know? Well, for one thing, they tend to know what people like – not ‘should’ like but will like.
In truth, most literary critics are brilliant, intelligent writers with a unique ability to know what books the wider public will devour and loathe. But that doesn’t mean their literary tastes are any better than Bill’s. And at the end of the day, if one of the world’s most famous individuals is able to enthuse a wider public, increase sales of books and spark intellectual debate (whilst making money for those poor souls known as writers), well isn’t that a good thing?
Even Voltaire would have raised a glass of absinthe to that.
Grant Feller is a media consultant and the Director of GF-Media
From: Forbes
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