REALITY STREET

When Reality Street took on Philip Terry's strange and wonderful novel tapestry it was, well, because I thought it strange and wonderful, and not with any expectation of public acclaim or commercial success.

Oddly, it was the second Oulipo-influenced novel with a lower-case title that we had published - after Paul Griffiths' let me tell you - and also the second after that book to achieve national press reviews, in the most recent instance, Nicholas Lezard's pick of tapestry as paperback of the week in The Guardian, which led to a sudden sales boost. But lest it be thought there is a formula emerging, I'd better emphasise that both these books are very much sui generis. 

And I also hasten to say that in my ideal world all Reality Street authors should be shortlisted for every major prize available, and indeed win them all hands down.

That's not the world we live in, but I am no less delighted that Philip has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. This is a first for Reality Street as well as for Philip. I hope this will wake up a lot of new readers not only to his magnificent achievement but to the innovative writing that we have been toiling over the years to promote, sometimes in a very hostile commercial and cultural climate.

Innovative, there's a word. Sometimes I hate it almost as much as "experimental". Especially since it got co-opted in recent years by funding bodies and literary marketing communicators, sometimes to describe stuff that is anything but. So it was with a measure of cynicism that I read about the newly established Goldsmiths Prize for fiction which used the word in its advertising copy. But I was nevertheless attracted by its manifesto, and somewhat reassured by the composition of the judging panel, so we decided to put tapestry in for it and see what happened.

Well, we're in pretty uncharted waters here, so let's cross fingers until 13 November, but whatever the outcome, well done Philip for writing this book which will now get more of the attention it deserves.