Thank goodness for Faber & Faber!

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

26 February

Simply for this piece of drafting, which I spotted on the imprint page of Alan Bennett's Writing Home (Faber & Faber, London, 1995):

Alan Bennett is hereby identified as author of this work
in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988


That may not be sheer joy to you, but look at what is in the front of other books - until such time as I can explain myself...


Which seems to be now.

This is the more usual (if, I think, flawed) form of the notice under the 1988 Act, which in this case protects - thankfully - a rare talent*:

Mark Kermode has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work


The difference being that, according to this latter formulation, something - some prior act - other than the notice itself constitutes the assertion of the right to be identified as the author.

However, when I last attacked the Act in earnest - and probably s. 77 in particular - I could see no antecedent step envisaged by the legislation. So why this past tense of 'has asserted', and why the suggestion that, say, MK bellowed an announcement (which would still be an 'announcement', not an 'assertion') to that effect at daybreak in Parliament Square for seven days running?

Probably just foolish lawyers' caution, from which F&F wisely seems to have broken free - though I'd have to look at a few more of its titles to establish when, if I were that interested...


PS In fact, there is a more intriguing use of the second type of formulation quoted above that I have now found, which is in a Vintage Classics edition of Brave New World:

Aldous Huxley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work


Most people, I think, who know when the book was first published will be surprised by that statement (for Huxley, who was born in the tail end of the nineteenth century, died in 1963).

But not, perhaps, if they know the story that relates to Huxley's wife's and his belief in the possibility of extra-corporeal survival, and the story that is recounted about her attempts to make contact with him after he died...


End-notes

* For, and let's be honest, who else would want to lay claim to The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex (or The Boring, The Marginally Less Boring, and The Outright Tiresome), based on said author's tediously pedestrian account, in the first half of the first chapter, of collecting / buying cinema tickets for his daughter and him (which, so far, has taken up fourteen pages of my life)?

The cover of the book is loaded with plaudits: well, if (Empire), 'Film criticism is rarely [this] much fun', then Heaven help film critics; and, if MK (Sunday Times) has 'More opinions than Delia Smith has baking trays', then I not only fail to spot the relevance of the Delia-related comparison (unless she is cook-in-residence to that organ), but also think that I know where MK is best advised to shove such opinions (along with the trays)!


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