Too Catholic, Too Medieval

As a scholar of medieval literature, I’m long used to writing books that only a few people read and that make virtually no money. (A couple of very good notices in the Times Literary Supplement notwithstanding.)

Once in a blue moon, an academic monograph becomes a sleeper hit. One of my go-to examples is John Boswell’s 1981 book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. It bristles with footnotes that sometimes take up half the page, citing sources in half a dozen languages, living and dead. (This back in the days when footnotes were footnotes, and most academics couldn’t go more than two sentences without including one.)

Amazingly, the University of Chicago Press was pressed to keep ahead of the demand with multiple subsequent printings. Medievalist Carolyn Dinshaw, combing the archives of Boswell’s papers years later, found a sizeable cache of notes from readers that can only be described as fan mail. Including, memorably, one that read, “Do you have a boyfriend? And if so, would you consider dumping him?” Christopher Street, a gay cultural review that has sadly since folded, ran a cartoon of one man sitting at a bar asking another, “So, how about coming back to my place for a little Christianity, social tolerance, and homosexuality?”

John Boswell—Photo by Robert Giard

But most of us spend two or three years (or four, or five) working on a book, submit it to a university press, wait six to twelve months to get feedback from anonymous peers, revise in response to their comments, publish it, and eventually receive a royalties cheque that will maybe buy a few nice dinners out. (Cambridge currently owes me a princely sum in two figures.)

With all that in mind, I’ll admit that embarking on an historical novel smacked a little of mid-life crisis--cheaper than a Porsche, less embarrassing than a bad perm. I entertained a few delusions of grandeur as I sent a later draft out into the world. Until, of course, the perfunctory replies started to stack up on the corner of my desk: “Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, your project does not meet our needs at this time.” The literary agent who finally took me on pitched it unrealistically and misleadingly to the biggest Toronto houses. My favourite rejection among those was “Sorry, this is too Catholic and too medieval.”

If only I hadn’t excised the lesbian vampyre biker subplot.

But I digress, sort of. Choosing, years later, to self-publish my novel was a great decision. A reclamation of agency, an assertion of my belief in the book I’d written, and of my confidence that there were people out there who would want to read it. (A confidence, I’m happy to say, boosted by the reception I’ve gotten at readings--with another four coming up in Toronto, starting at the Centre for Medieval Studies on November 7, and one at Harvard on December 4.) I had a very smart and supportive editor, David Groff, in my corner. I had full control over design of the book, working with a terrific team at Palmetto Publishing. I never expected to have so much fun promoting it.

The encroaching commodification of human creativity--one among the many heinous effects of advanced capitalism on our lives--began well before any of us now living were born. Digital technologies have, paradoxically, both alleviated and accelerated the trend. Here I am, writing to you on Substack, about a book I chose to put out into the world without waiting on approval from a commerical editor under corporate pressure to snag a blockbuster. Here I am, a very small cog in the machinery of the increasingly monetized internet. To paraphrase Marx, we make art, but not under circumstances of our own making.

We go on. In fortunate circumstances not of our own making, we realize we have nothing to prove. We can still lay claim to our freedom to create.

You can find The Ram in the Thicket: A Novel of Medieval Norwich at Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, Amazon, and Indigo; or by special order at your local bookstore, and in Toronto, especially at Type Books on Queen Street.