Stay in Your Own Part of the Bookshop! Legitimation in the Literary Field and the Limited Exchange Value of Celebrity Capital

David Giles

doi:10.20897/jcasc/3114

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenon of boundary crossing between cultural fields and the role that different kinds of capital play in determining whether or not the crossing is a successful one. The fields in question here are those of entertainment (specifically, stand-up comedy) and literature, and the particular boundary crossing is represented by the figure of Ben Elton, a British comedian who has published 15 novels since 1989, with mixed critical and commercial success. One novel (Popcorn, 1996) received sufficient attention within the literary field to be long-listed for the Booker prize, an accolade usually reserved for writers belonging to the sub-field ‘literary fiction’. Others have fared less well, and after many years Elton’s credentials as a writer are still queried in some reviews of his work. I suggest that, from a close analysis of reviews in the UK press, Elton’s boundary crossing was initially enhanced by the amount of celebrity capital that he was able to export to the literary field. Despite his evident intention to remain a serious practitioner in that field, however, this capital has increasingly diminishing returns, and legitimation of his work is forever hampered by the image of his celebrity persona.

Highlights

The study of symbolic boundaries in social and cultural life has largely focused on their role in producing inequalities of social class, race and religion (Bourdieu, 1984; Lamont, 2000)
In this paper I am examining a somewhat different type of boundary crossing, one in which the agent would appear to carry a good deal of useful capital, but where that capital proves to be of limited use in achieving full legitimation in a different cultural field
Celebrity capital has been conceived as “accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media representations” (Driessens, 2013, p. 543), and enables celebrities to cross from unrelated fields such as entertainment into politics (Arthurs and Shaw, 2016), or across boundaries that separate high-status fields from lower ones, such as Paul McCartney’s migration from popular to classical music (Giles, 2015)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The study of symbolic boundaries in social and cultural life has largely focused on their role in producing inequalities of social class, race and religion (Bourdieu, 1984; Lamont, 2000). I am speaking of celebrity capital (Driessens, 2013) and its exchange value in the literary field, at its high-status end, the sub-field known as ‘literary fiction’. Giles / Ben Elton Books distinguishing criteria are mainly industrial rather than aesthetic: “a set of publishing processes and practices which include the composition and editing of the book and its design, marketing and distribution, as well as, most distinctively, its relationship with particular institutions such as literary prizes and broadsheet reviews” The case study that I will use to explore this particular boundary crossing is that of Ben Elton, a British standup comic and TV scriptwriter who has enjoyed considerable commercial success as an author as well as receiving some legitimation within the literary field, most notably the nomination of his 1996 novel Popcorn for the ‘long list’ of the Booker Prize. I will discuss some of the specific aspects of comedy that are relevant to this case study, and review the literature on the practice of book reviewing

Comedians and the Literary Field

The Institution of Criticism

Can Ben Elton Write?

CONCLUSION