Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

I never cease to be amazed by how quickly bestselling authors can plummet to obsurity within a decade. Every day I see the same names: Dornford Yates, Howard Spring, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Mazo de la Roche and Warwick Deeping. In their time, they were incredibly successful, but by the mid-1960s they had disappeared from view.

At a glance, it looks as if some sort of literary Stalinist purge has taken place, but the reality is a combination of changing fashions and writers dying of old age. Nevertheless, there seem to be distinct geological periods in literature that are defined more by the forgotten authors than the ones we remember. Howard Spring and Warwick Deeping belong to the interwar years, whilst Silas Hocking and Mrs Henry Wood are indelibly linked to the late Victorian period.

I almost sound as if I know what I'm talking about. It is amazing how quickly I have gone from being a complete charlatan to someone who can convey an air of authority when talking about rare and antiquarian books.

Only last week, I received a phone call from a man whose grandparents had just died. He wanted me to value their books and, flattered by the prospect of behaving like an Antiques Roadshow expert, I agreed to pay him a visit later that day (perhaps I should have enquired how his grandparents came to die at the same time, but I did at least leave his address with my colleagues in case I never returned).

Today I discovered a new author: Harry Stephen Keeler, described by Wikipedia as a "prolific but little-known American author."

I don't think I'll ever read "The Tiger Snake", but it has some cracking chapter headings that read like the plot of a Gay Men's Press novel:

• Queer Business

• The "Man-Trap"

• The Hand From Out The Dark

• A Quandry

• Mr Smock Receives

• Information From an M.D.

As for Mr Keeler, he seems to have hit on a novel solution (no pun intended) to the problem of a receeding hairline:

King's Bishop to Pawn*

Yesterday evening I was desperately trying to read an article by Rupert Thomson in the Guardian Weekend magazine, but my wife had other ideas:

"Jenny's suggested that we all go to the zoo."

"Hmm?"

"It would be lovely for the children and I think you'd get on with Dave."

"Hmm. Good idea." (at this point I pointedly picked up the magazine to indicate that the conversation was over.

"Dave often plays chess with his next door neighbour. They're nudists."

"Hmmm."

"Yes, when Dave goes round there for a game, the neighbour isn't wearing any clothes."

At this point, I thought that my wife was employing a tried and tested technique to see if I was listening to her but no, apparently Dave really does play chess with a naked man. The neighbours are nudists and their house rules are simple: no clothes. Dave never bats an eyelid.

I'm not sure if I'd be quite so relaxed about naked chess, or indeed anything that involved nudity, but perhaps I'm in the minority. Several people at work have posted rather revealing photos of themselves on Facebook.

Two weeks ago, a girl who works in our warehouse paid to have some "glamour" photos taken of her and her sister. I'm sure you can picture the scene: two teenage girls, one seedy, middle-aged photographer and a studio that looks like something out of a 1970s porn film.

The session began with some harmless, slightly revealing poses. Then the photographer opened a bottle of wine and encouraged the girls to have a glass or two. Soon, inhibitions (and clothes) were quickly shed and with minutes, the sisters wearing nothing but a smile.

I can understand how the combination of youth, flattery and alcohol helped to remove any inhibitions about posing naked. What I can't understand is why, in the cold sober light of the next day, the photo session was posted by one of the sisters on Facebook for everyone to see.

This is one of the milder shots:

Apparently, the photographer told the girl that he had "contacts" who might be able to offer her solo, webcam work. That registers 9.5 on the seedometer.

Another colleague, in a moment of madness, decided to post a profile picture of himself on Facebook, standing in a shower. Admittedly, he'd covered his offending articles with a towel, but in a pose that made him look like the poor man's Tom of Finland. He was universally ridiculed.

With so much nudity around, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in a minority. Are more people at it than I realised?

I sincerely hope not because, with the best will in the world, most people look better with their clothes on.

*This post was originally called "King's Bishop to Porn" - I forgot about search engines.

Martin Amis

Poor old Martin Amis. He's so easy to dislike, partly because of his ridiculous bad boy persona (cultivated against a backdrop of privilege and opportunity), but mainly because he takes himself so seriously.

I admit that I'm prejudiced. When I became a bookseller, Amis was one of a generation of writers who were portrayed as young and edgy - more American than British - capturing the late 20th century zeitgeist. The reality was a small group of nice, upper-middle class men in their 40s, writing fiction that was technically innovative, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Turn the clock back to the mid-1990s and Martin Amis was at the top of his game: still the enfant terrible of British writers, but with a beautiful new wife, new teeth and a £500,000 advance from HarperCollins. Then, as in many great novels, hubris was followed by downfall.

The Information was Amis's first novel for HarperCollins. It was a disaster. It had been decided that as Amis was such a strong "brand", the usual convention of having the title and author on the dustjacket would be abandoned. Instead, there would be a simple "i".

Unfortunately, less wasn't more and the novel flopped. It's hard to tell how many sales were lost as a result of the bold cover design, but I think it's safe to say that HarperCollins didn't recoup their advance for a long time (if ever). In spite of this fiasco, the creative team behind the "i" still won an industry award.

The pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction since The Information. Amis is frequently caricatured as the young pretender who sold his soul for the Murdoch shilling to buy new teeth. Every new work seems to prompt a spate of vitriolic views.

The reason I'm writing this is because I found a copy of Amis's memoir Experience the other day, lying on top of a skip. It was a perfectly good copy, but because its sales ranking on Amazon was so low, it was about the be pulped. I picked it up and saw this passage:

"On a tube train to Earl's Court I saw a young man reading The Rachel Papers, about a week after its publication. He was enjoing the book, and in the best possible way: a reluctant smile, an unreluctant smile, a reluctant smile, and so on. I still regret that I didn't go up to him. But I told myself: listen, this will be happening all the time - get used to it."

I immediately thought "Typical Martin Amis. Bloody arrogant..." and almost threw the book back into the skip. If I had, I would have missed the next sentence:

"I need hardly add that it didn't happen again for about fifteen years. When my first novel won the Somerset Maugham Award I told myself the same sort of thing: get used to it. And that never happened again."

Shamelessly stolen from a Facebook friend...

But it's too good not to share: