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Circus of Dreams: Adventures in the 1980s Literary World
Something extraordinary happened to the UK literary scene in the 1980s. In the space of eight years, a generation of young British writers took the literary novel into new realms of setting, subject matter and style, challenging - and almost eclipsing - the Establishment writers of the 1950s. It began with two names - Martin Amis and Ian McEwan - and became a Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson and Pat Barker among them. The rise of the newcomers coincided with astonishing changes in the way books were published - and the ways in which readers bought them and interacted with their authors. Suddenly, authors of serious fiction were like rock stars, fashionable, sexy creatures, shrewdly marketed and feted in public.
The yearly bunfight of the Booker Prize became a matter of keen public interest. Tim Waterstone established the first of a chain of revolutionary bookshops. London publishing houses became the playground of exciting, visionary entrepreneurs who introduced new forms of fiction - magical realist, feminist, post-colonial, gay - to modern readers. Independent houses began to spend ostentatious sums on author advances and glamorous book launches. It was nothing short of a watershed in literary culture. And its climax was the issuing of a death sentence by a fundamentalist leader whose hostility to Western ideas of free speech made him, literally, the world's most lethal critic.
Through this exciting, hectic period, the journalist and author John Walsh played many literary editor, reviewer, interviewer, prize judge and TV pundit. He met and interviewed numerous literary stars, attended the best launch parties and digested all the gossip and scandal of the time. In Circus of Dreams he reports on what he found, first with wide-eyed delight and then with a keen eye on what drove this glorious era. The result is a unique hybrid of personal memoir, oral history, literary investigation and elegy for a golden age.
The yearly bunfight of the Booker Prize became a matter of keen public interest. Tim Waterstone established the first of a chain of revolutionary bookshops. London publishing houses became the playground of exciting, visionary entrepreneurs who introduced new forms of fiction - magical realist, feminist, post-colonial, gay - to modern readers. Independent houses began to spend ostentatious sums on author advances and glamorous book launches. It was nothing short of a watershed in literary culture. And its climax was the issuing of a death sentence by a fundamentalist leader whose hostility to Western ideas of free speech made him, literally, the world's most lethal critic.
Through this exciting, hectic period, the journalist and author John Walsh played many literary editor, reviewer, interviewer, prize judge and TV pundit. He met and interviewed numerous literary stars, attended the best launch parties and digested all the gossip and scandal of the time. In Circus of Dreams he reports on what he found, first with wide-eyed delight and then with a keen eye on what drove this glorious era. The result is a unique hybrid of personal memoir, oral history, literary investigation and elegy for a golden age.
432 pages, Paperback
Published May 2, 2023
34 people are currently reading
398 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 15, 2023
If I read a more comprehensively entertaining book this year than Circus of Dreams I’ll count myself very fortunate. A tour of the Eighties London literary scene by one who was there (John Walsh was, among other things, the literary editor of the Sunday Times for most of the decade), it is jam-packed with juicy anecdotes, larger than life characters and towering talents (sometimes with egos to match). Everyone who was everyone passes through these pages, and Walsh knew them all. His perspective moves from that of an outsider to that of someone very much at the centre of the world he describes so vividly, as he moves from a reader, to a job in Gollancz’s publicity department, to working on the now defunct Books and Bookmen magazine, and ultimately to his dream job on the Sunday Times. Walsh makes a convincing case for the Eighties as a radical reboot to English Letters, as authors like Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain, Angela Carter and many others, enthusiastically supported by dynamic publishers, react with vigour and style to the moribund, self-satisfied and amateurish world of the previous decades.
July 24, 2022
3.5 stars. This was a really fun book to read especially if you are interested in the literary world and hearing a stories about British writers. I really loved the parts about Anthony Burgess and found them so funny and insightful. The book is more of a memoir about Walsh’s time with these writers when he worked in the publishing industry but it was really inspiring to read about and I loved all the gossip about people like Martin Amis and Angela Carter.
I would have liked there to be a bigger focus on the American scene but I guess this being a more memoir style he couldn’t have written about a scene he wasn’t really a part of.
I would have liked there to be a bigger focus on the American scene but I guess this being a more memoir style he couldn’t have written about a scene he wasn’t really a part of.
March 14, 2023
This is a memoire of Walsh's time as a book editor for British newspapers in the 1980s. He mentions a great many authors, some of whom I had read (ex. Julian Barnes), some of whom I had heard of but not read (ex. Martin Amis) and a great many I had never heard of (ex. Laurie Lee). I would say based on his summaries of books I've read that he has a real gift for getting to the heart of what a book is about. It was rather refreshing to read someone who seems to admire authors the way others admire actors or singers.
July 21, 2022
A rollicking account of the British literary scene in the 80s, the star authors, critics, publishing houses, Fleet Street and the hacks, written with much enthusiasm and some hilarious turns of phrase. Some of the stories are so bizarre and funny that they can only be true.
August 7, 2022
3.5 stars.
My eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to these kinds of books. I'm drawn to stories of literary celebrity, which usually disappoint, although reading a memoir of someone in publishing rather than from the authors themselves was a good departure. I was also intrigued by the book's idea of the "creation" of the literary celebrity in the 1980s, before which there weren't the big publicity tours and public readings that we see now with the publication of a new book. Walsh is good writer - he balances chronicling his own love of books and humble publishing beginnings before rising to a prominent arts critic with his observations of and interactions with the leading writers and critics of the day. Some encounters are lively and memorable, others subdued and embarrassing. I enjoyed reading much of it; frankly, though, it was too long. Lots of lists involving the same writers over and over, and of course styles evolve throughout the decade, but by the end the stories - aside from Rushdie's fatwa and his subsequent exile into hiding - made for tedious reading. I did, however, find plenty of titles to add to my reading list. On the whole, more of a book for niche readers.
My eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to these kinds of books. I'm drawn to stories of literary celebrity, which usually disappoint, although reading a memoir of someone in publishing rather than from the authors themselves was a good departure. I was also intrigued by the book's idea of the "creation" of the literary celebrity in the 1980s, before which there weren't the big publicity tours and public readings that we see now with the publication of a new book. Walsh is good writer - he balances chronicling his own love of books and humble publishing beginnings before rising to a prominent arts critic with his observations of and interactions with the leading writers and critics of the day. Some encounters are lively and memorable, others subdued and embarrassing. I enjoyed reading much of it; frankly, though, it was too long. Lots of lists involving the same writers over and over, and of course styles evolve throughout the decade, but by the end the stories - aside from Rushdie's fatwa and his subsequent exile into hiding - made for tedious reading. I did, however, find plenty of titles to add to my reading list. On the whole, more of a book for niche readers.
January 15, 2023
This is John Walsh’s account of his ‘adventures in the 1980s literary world’. It’s an exuberant, rollicking read, full of gossip and name-dropping. Sample line: ‘Despite his considerable reputation as a ladies’ man, he was as camp as a sequinned bivouac’.
I remember Walsh's columns in The Independent in the 2000s, but I hadn’t realised he’d earlier been books editor of the Evening Standard and the Sunday Times. His book charts his rise through journalism and the changes in the book world that took place alongside.
It’s the world of Martin Amis (especially), Julian Barnes, and the rest of the 1983 Granta Young British Novelists. Walsh places the emergence of a new generation of writers in context of the emergence of new publishers, expanded books coverage in the media, a growing profile for the Booker Prize, the emergence of Waterstones and literary festivals like Hay. To read Walsh’s account, the 80s were something of a golden age for British books.
I quite enjoyed it - it’s a readable insiders’ account, and I learnt a lot about how staples of modern British bookish life (like Waterstones!) came about. But… it’s also about 100 pages too long, and packed full of names. There are some amusing anecdotes, but it’s very much John and his mates. He’s clearly very taken with the likes of Martin Amis (whose autobiography ‘Experience’ I found excruciating).
Overall, you get the impression Walsh would love to be back at the parties (and his powers of recall suggest that, in his head, he still is). I do wonder if he’s reflected on the downsides of 80s literary life - particularly for the women who endured it. Walsh bemoans that new male writers in the 2020s are told that ’nobody wants to hear their stories’ - but while he acknowledges that it’s ‘a good thing that the gender imbalance should be redressed’ I think I’d have liked to see a bit more reflection on what was wrong about the books industry in the 80s, and Walsh’s own complicity in that. Rather, it’s all jolly japes.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ from me. Worth a read - flawed, but so was the decade.
I remember Walsh's columns in The Independent in the 2000s, but I hadn’t realised he’d earlier been books editor of the Evening Standard and the Sunday Times. His book charts his rise through journalism and the changes in the book world that took place alongside.
It’s the world of Martin Amis (especially), Julian Barnes, and the rest of the 1983 Granta Young British Novelists. Walsh places the emergence of a new generation of writers in context of the emergence of new publishers, expanded books coverage in the media, a growing profile for the Booker Prize, the emergence of Waterstones and literary festivals like Hay. To read Walsh’s account, the 80s were something of a golden age for British books.
I quite enjoyed it - it’s a readable insiders’ account, and I learnt a lot about how staples of modern British bookish life (like Waterstones!) came about. But… it’s also about 100 pages too long, and packed full of names. There are some amusing anecdotes, but it’s very much John and his mates. He’s clearly very taken with the likes of Martin Amis (whose autobiography ‘Experience’ I found excruciating).
Overall, you get the impression Walsh would love to be back at the parties (and his powers of recall suggest that, in his head, he still is). I do wonder if he’s reflected on the downsides of 80s literary life - particularly for the women who endured it. Walsh bemoans that new male writers in the 2020s are told that ’nobody wants to hear their stories’ - but while he acknowledges that it’s ‘a good thing that the gender imbalance should be redressed’ I think I’d have liked to see a bit more reflection on what was wrong about the books industry in the 80s, and Walsh’s own complicity in that. Rather, it’s all jolly japes.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ from me. Worth a read - flawed, but so was the decade.
May 23, 2023
This was a real bookman’s book and I enjoyed it immensely. Big recommend to anyone interested in the London publishing world, or anyone who loves a good string of adjectives (“He was a big, rumbustious, black-bearded, contemptuous, Rabelaisian, garlicky, cigar-chomping, voluptuously greedy man”). I wanna be John Walsh when I grow up.
June 21, 2023
I read John Walsh’s first book (about growing up as a cinema fan) a few years ago now. This book - about the London literary scene in the 70s & 80s is catnip for me. It has walk on roles for a host of my favourite authors and covers the period in which British literature is at its zenith. Amis, Barnes, Ishiguro, McEwan, Swift all feature. It conjures up the period vividly.
September 30, 2022
Entertaining, especially if you have read many of the authors mentioned, but too many long lists of names.
April 22, 2022
Absolutely loved this. A very amusing look at the UK publishing and (by association) bookselling world of the 1980s. Although there is a lot to cringe about when you compare it to how things are now, there is also a clear link between the characters who decided to shake things up a bit, along with a sea of new talent (who are mostly now 'The Establishment'), and where we have arrived now, with huge book launch events and even the huge current influence of tiktok. There are also plenty of appearances by now long-passed- away authors and publishing moguls. Needless to say there are a few gaps, as this is really an autobiography populated by many of the people John Walsh came in contact with, rather than a history of the period, and (strangely) the least entertaining chapter was the one on humorous writing, but from the start I thought it would land in my all-time top non-fiction list, which it now is. Very much recommended to anyone who had anything to do with books in the 1980s or for fans of the authors of those times. (Not sure why but my edition is called Circus of Dreams, not The Golden Page, if you are looking for it in the UK).
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews