MER-13565 COVER 2011.indd - Merton College - University of Oxford

HECTOR MACDONALD
might be able to write one. Astonishingly,
that fi rst attempt became a bestseller, The
Mind Game, translated into 18 languages
by the time I was 26.
Wow, this is easy, I thought. If that’s what
I can do (and earn!) when I know nothing
at all about writing, just think what literary
masterpieces I’ll be capable of with a little
craft and experience. It didn’t quite work
out like that. My second and third novels
were published to a resounding silence from
most critics and booksellers. This turns out
to be a common pattern for writers of ‘big’
fi rst novels. Luckily I still had my business
career, for which I am particularly grateful
now that the publishing industry is tearing
itself apart in a ‘perfect storm’ of economic,
technological and structural change.
Heaven knows how most writers are coping
MERTONIANS IN | LITERATURE
fi nancially as contracts are cancelled, terms
changed, stock remaindered, and new
works by veteran authors shunned in favour
of celeb ‘autobiographies’ and TV tie-ins.
But in all the technological upheaval
I have found an even more exciting
opportunity: I now edit www.BookDrum.
com, a crowd-sourced multi-media website
that collates pictures, music, video, maps
and background information to add a new
illustrative dimension to books as diverse
as The Interpretation of Dreams, Brighton
Rock and Siddhartha. Book Drum is already
much loved by teachers and students in
the US, and it offers scholars and authors
an unprecedented opportunity to annotate,
illustrate and continuously update their own
books. It’s a thrilling new development in
publishing, and we hope soon to produce
fully enhanced e-books, complete with
interactive maps, TV footage, relevant
songs and photographs all built into the
text. Publishing is a precarious business…
but these days it certainly isn’t dull.
LORNA FERGUSSON (1980)
I arrived in 1980, when Merton fi rst accepted
women. I was Scottish, my friend Catherine
Reilly, a brilliant bibliographer who later
won the Library Association’s Besterman
Medal, was Mancunian. I’d never drunk
Pimms in my life before I arrived here. All
round culture shock. During my studies,
I found myself both fulfi lled and frustrated,
particularly by assumptions that I would go
on to teach. How could I reconcile my love
of literary criticism with my desire to be
creative, to be my own person?
Reader, I managed it. I still live in
Oxford, never having tired of its beauty and
its cultural history. I did end up teaching
POSTMASTER | 2011
FEATURES
literature, and after publishing my novel,
The Chase, with Bloomsbury, I’ve been
involved in creative writing teaching too.
Three decades ago, there was Arvon and
there was Malcolm Bradbury’s Creative
Writing MA at UEA – but not much else.
Now, literary conferences, festivals and
courses burgeon up and down the land: there
seems to be an incredible hunger in people
for self-expression and for some way of
validating their desire for self-expression.
You can argue that much of it is solipsistic
and unrealistic in its expectations. You can
argue that writing can’t be taught (and I
won’t get into that debate at present!) – but
we are in the midst of a revolution in the
publishing world which is part-daunting,
part-exciting. Writers can fi nd their own
way to readers, through social media,
through print on demand, through the
Kindle.
I’ve taught for the Writers’ Conference at
the University of Winchester and for Oxford
University’s Department for Continuing
Education. Two years ago, I set up fi ctionfi re,
LORNA FERGUSSON
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