James Meek's latest novel, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, bounced from the realisation that he lacked the talent to write trashy, commercial fiction. The former war correspondent for the Guardian and the Scotsman had just finished his third novel, The People's Act of Love, and held no hope of achieving any more than the fine reviews all his work had received.
It was 2005 and Meek was approaching his third decade as a journalist, a career he had started only in order 'to eat' until his books made enough money for him to devote himself to writing.
He began to consider giving up the search for new literary ideas and the hope that readers would be interested in what he wanted to write. He fantasised about making a fortune by writing for the maximum number of people without paying any concern 'to what is truthful or worthwhile'.
The only concession to his old artistic bent would be a refusal to appease middle America. He would write a thriller from a European perspective, giving his continental comrades all the funny lines, the sex and the triumph. American characters would be blandly drawn villains: dull-witted bullet magnets.
'I went through this whole thought process and then I realised I cannot write that book,' Meek says when we meet in Adelaide. 'I'm just not sure I have the skills. There is an assumption by so-called literary novelists that if they chose to they could write mass-market genre fiction. But I'm not sure most of them could.'
Meek doubted he was capable of sticking to a plan for an entire manuscript. Literary digressions were certain to freeze his pot-boiler. He'd have to settle for writing about the man he didn't become: the journalist who wrote the sell- out book.
Just as well: that thriller would have spoiled one of the rare happy stories for literary fiction in the real world: The People's Act of Love became the sort of unpredictable, irrepressible hit that unnerves the marketing departments of the publishing industry.