I’ve never read anything by James Patterson. I should say that right upfront, because after reading this article it’s unlikely that I ever will.
I’ve heard the name. I knew he was another Grisham or Dan Brown but not quite as big. But I’ve seen piles of his books in WH Smith at the airport (where else?); books where the author’s name is 3 times the size of the book’s title; books with a half-sinister, half-cutesy nursery rhyme title that you just know is about some evil sadist’s evil deeds and the race to bring him to justice; books illustrated with figures and landscapes that are somehow garish and muted at the same time. Shit books, clearly.
So it’s fair to say that without reading any Patterson I already didn’t have much time for him. But reading this article, Patterson doesn’t have much time for his audience. Sure, he talks a good game - give the people what they want, he says; all those millions can’t be wrong - but these appear to be mere platitudes as he orchestrates his publishing plan from up high.
Literally. Now in his 60s, for a typical novel he types a summary, hands it down to one of his team of jobbing young authors, who works it up and passes it back to Patterson for him to apply a bit of spit and polish before being dispatched to his fans. He does this several times a year.
We recently lost JD Salinger, a true man of (very few) letters, and here we have an individual who treats writing novels as mere workflow: just another system of production and delegation to be greased and made more efficient and improved upon. He is more executive producer than author.
Perhaps it’s the frustrated writer in me that takes such offence. Or else I’m just being snobbish. Either way, I’m sat here on my arse waiting for inspiration to strike me before I set pen to paper, and in the meantime Patterson has probably signed off 3 novels. But for me, part of the beauty of writing is in its mystique, and conversely, the mystique is in the beauty. Patterson takes this and basically writes a Lifehacker post on how to do it. It rips the soul of the fucking thing out.
