The Lonely Sea: Collected Short Stories

Alistair MacLean on the 'Rewards and Responsibilities of Success'

Some time in 1954 the GLASGOW HERALD ran a short story competition. I had no writing aspirations — I won't say literary aspirations, for there are a considerable number of people who stoutly maintain that I never had and still don't have any literary aspirations — and no hope.

However the hundred pounds first prize was a very considerable lure for a person who had no money at all. I went ahead and entered anyway, with a West Highland sea story carrying the title THE 'DILEAS'. I won and was approached by Ian Chapman, the present chairman of Collins, the publishers, who asked me if I would write a novel. To everybody's surprise, Collins remain my publishers still. After twenty-seven years.

During those twenty-seven years I have written twenty-seven books, fourteen screenplays, and numerous magazine and newspaper articles. It has been, and remains, a fair enough way of earning a living. I have been called a success, but 'success', in its most common usage, is a relative term which has to be applied with great caution, especially in writing.

Quantification is far from being all. Some of the most 'successful' books, magazines, and newspapers in publishing history have beggared description when one tries to describe the depths to which they have descended. Enlightenment may not be my forte but, then, neither is depravity.

It is difficult to say what effect one's books have had, what degree of success or failure they have achieved. Consider, for instance, the reactions of those who had the debatable privilege of being on the GLASGOW HERALD'S editorial board at the time when those short stories of long ago were under consideration.

Some may feel, or have felt, a mild degree of satisfaction that they had the foresight or acumen to pick on someone who was not to prove a total dud: all too many writers produce one story and then are heard of no more. Others on the board may have felt a profound indifference. Still others, gnashing their figurative teeth, may have rued the day they launched on his way, a writer whose style, they felt or feel, in no way matched the high standard set itself by Scotland's premier newspaper. I shall never know.

The effect on the reading public is equally hard to gauge. I did write a couple of books which I thought might be judged as being meaningful or significant but from readers' reactions I was left in no doubt that the only person who shared this opinion was myself. I should have listened to Sam Goldwyn's dictum that messages are for Western Union.

I have since then concentrated on what I regarded as pure entertainment although I have discovered a considerable gulf may he between what I regard as entertainment and others' ideas on the subject.

I receive a fairly large mail and most of it is more than kindly in tone. I am aware that this does not necessarily reflect an overall consensus of approval: I am essentially a non-controversial writer and people who habitually sign themselves 'Indignant' or 'Disgusted' of Walthamstow or wherever, don't read my books in the first place, or if they do, don't find the contents worthy of disparaging comment.

The effects of writing on myself, of course, I know fairly well although I'm aware that, even here, there may be room for blind misappraisal. The main benefits of being a full-time writer are that they confer on one a marked degree of independence and freedom, but that freedom must never be misinterpreted as irresponsibility.

I don't have to start work at nine a.m., and I don't: I usually start between six and seven in the morning. But then, though I often work a seven-day week, I don't work a fifty-two week year.

Being in a position where there is not one person, anywhere, who can tell you what to do — and that's the position I'm in — is quite splendid. But no one is wholly independent, I have a responsibility towards my publishers.

Publishing houses are not, as has been claimed, a refuge for rogues, thieves, and intellectual criminals who depend for their existence on their expertise in battening on the skills and talents of the miserably rewarded few who can do what the publishers are totally incapable of — string together a few words in a meaningful fashion. Some publishing houses are run by people who are recognisably human. Mine is notably one of those.

I feel some responsibility, though not much, to book editors. Collins New English Dictionary defines an editor as one who revises, cuts, alters, and omits in preparation for publication. I feel moderately competent to attend to the revising, cutting, etc., before it reaches the editor. But they can be of help, to some more than others.

I feel no responsibility whatsoever towards book critics. The first criticism I ever read was of my first book, H.M.S. 'ULYSSES.' It got two whole pages to itself in a now defunct Scottish newspaper, with a drawing of the dust jacket wreathed in flames and the headline 'Burn this book.' I had paid the Royal Navy the greatest compliment of which I could conceive: this dolt thought it was an act of denigration.

That was the first so-called literary review I ever read: it was also the last. I'm afraid I class fiction book reviewers along with the pundits who run what it pleases them to term 'writing schools'. One must admire their courage in feeling free to advise, lecture, preach, and criticise something which they themselves are quite incapable of doing.

My greatest responsibility and debt are to those who buy my books, making it possible for me to lead the life I do. Moreover, while deriving a perfectly justifiable satisfaction in pointing out my frequent errors of fact, they never tell me how to write. I am grateful.

One great benefit arising from this freedom is the freedom to travel. I do not travel to broaden the mind or for the purposes of research. True, I have been to and written about the Arctic, the Aegean, Indonesia, Alaska, California, Yugoslavia, Holland, Brazil, and diverse other places, but I never thought of writing about these locales until I had been there: on the obverse side of the coin I have been to such disparate countries as Mexico and China, Peru and Kashmir and very much doubt whether I shall ever write about them.

About future writing I really don't know. From time to time, Mr Chapman has suggested, a trifle wistfully I always think, that some day I might get around to writing a good book. Well, it's not impossible for no doubt to the despair of all those book reviewers I never read, I wouldn't like to retire quite yet.