West Pier Words

Greed, Rich & Riots

2011-08-12T15:08:00.005+01:00

Greed is the sine non qua of our society. Back in the openly greedy days of the power-shouldered eighties, when lunch was for wimps and greed was a healthy appetite, through the caring nineties, and the naughty noughties, the avarice for more has never declined. The gap between the haves, and, in Bush's words, the have-mores, and the have-nothings has increased exponentially; within countries, between countries.

Do we need to look at examples of greed from those who believe themselves so privileged to ignore their digressions? The bankers and their bonuses; the politicians and their expenses; Murdoch and his phone-hacking?

What an example to set before the dumb and the dumbed-down. The dumbed-down are in the interest of all big business as is numbs their critical facilities. An individual who has not the vocabulary to express him or herself and who is bombarded by advertising which suggests they will better identify with their peers if they eat this, wear that, buy the other, and - surprise upon surprise - finds a: the acquisition of such goods or services leaves them as poor in fulfillment as before; b: poor and as wanting as before; c: poor as ever, may well prove frustrated.

I do not condone the riots. But I do not find them surprising. I have discussed the potential of such with my daughters for some months now. Ed Mileband echoes the thoughts I posted on a brilliant post by Motown, a black blogger, who suggests that the reasons for riots are more subtle and complex than the reactions and comments of knee-jerk politicians whose only interest is to preserve their positions and power.

What has happened cannot be reduced to a series of simplistic political posturing; it is as an outcome of intricate social webs. Read this article by Peter Osborne of The Telegraph. I am not a natural reader of that paper, but he summarises the problems brilliantly.

There used to be a sense of noblisse oblige among those who were rich; the more you own, the more you owe. Now the established wealth mock the new wealth for their bling but behave no differently. The competitive instincts of both parties is to stay floating atop the shit within their own social circles. Read a few books, I recommend Zola's The Kill, to see how nothing changes but everything changes century upon century.

I know. I come from a very privileged background in my not so distant background.

PS Howard Jacobson weighs in with his own considered thoughts in The Independent: They may be criminals, but we're the ones who have created them.

The Most Unlikely Agent ZigZag

2011-07-26T13:06:00.007+01:00

Eddie Chapman was the most extraordinary WWII spy you will never have heard of. Were he a fictional character, you would not find him credible.

I met him while browsing a second-hand book shop where my attention was drawn to his existence by a book entitled Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre. Implausible title, improbable character, I thought. A wannabe blockbuster, I thought, till I read the blurb where I discovered it was reprint for World Book Night 2011; to quote: 'one of 40,000 copies printed of each of the 25 brilliant titles selected…'. I looked at the list. They included many I have read, like The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon, Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Misty. Good company, I thought, I'll buy it.

Eddie Chapman was by all accounts a charmer. Terence Young, director of the first Bond film, who knew him when Chapman arrived in Soho, observed to a lawyer friend, '"He is a crook and will always be one. But he probably has more principles and honesty of character then either of us." […] Chapman would steal the money from your pocket, even as he bought you a drink.'

And Chapman was a crook, he was a member of the 'Jelly Gang', responsible for burglary the length and breadth of the country. With the police on his heels, he moved with his girlfriend and others to Jersey. It was in a restaurant there, that he made a spectacular exist befitting of Bond through a closed window to escape the law who had just walked in. Eventually he was caught and imprisoned locally. Bad timing. It was 1939. On 30th June 1940, the Nazis occupied the island.

Chapman, together with his less fortunate friend and fellow inmate, Anthony Faramus, decide on a ruse to get out of prison. They would claim they wanted to spy for the Germans. They made their ambitions known with no effect even after they were transferred to the Fort de Romainville prison in Paris. German bureaucracy may have been slow, but it was relentless and eventually Chapman was interviewed. And accepted. (Faramus, despite all Chapman's protests, remained in prison. He was to be the Germans' security for Chapman's good behaviour. Faramus was later transferred to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp but survived.)

So the story begins.

After training, Chapman is parachuted into a muddy field in Cambridgeshire and immediately gives himself up to MI6. Thanks to Enigma, the code-breaking machine, they are already aware of his existence, but can they trust him, a man, who by rights, should be in prison? Despite all their qualms, they take him on and he proves one of their greatest successes as a double-agent.

Ben Macintyre documents Chapman's career neatly and concisely without succumbing to any temptation to embellish. He is enough of a journalist to know that the facts in this case are more than sufficient to hold the reader's attention. But he is also enough of a journalist to know how to structure the telling in order to keep the pages turning.

You do not have to be a fan of the Boys Own Book of Adventures to enjoy reading the history of this archetype model. Eddie Chapman was an exceptional character. In the words of Colonel Robin 'Tin Eye' Stephens, 'The man [Chapman], essentially vain, has grown in stature and, in his own estimation, is something of a prince of the underworld. He has no scruples and will stop at nothing. He makes no bargain with society and money is a means to an end. Of fear, he knows nothing, and he certainly has a deep-rooted hatred of the Hun. In a word, adventure to Chapman is the breath of life. Given adventure, he has the courage to achieve the unbelievable. His very recklessness is his standby.'

PS Bang on cue, World Book Night publishes the one hundred contenders for 2012, here.

PPS Just noticed it is on a 342 book offer at Waterstones, (342 - neat, huh? I should have been a copywriter.)

Ooops. Correction, the book was Alone in Berlin which a reviewed a few posts ago. (Nurse! Nurse! It's time for my medication.)

Bastard

2011-07-13T08:11:00.002+01:00

I have known of Rupert Murdoch and his methods since he took over The Times in 1981.

I was a new group head in Leo Burnett, the advertising agency, and the paper was one of my accounts. I wrote the line ' Have you ever wished you were better informed?' Sounds clunky now, but we didn't have Wikipedia in those days. (And schoolboys called William ran round in ragged flannel shorts with a catapult stuffed in their pockets.)

Brian Todd (if I remember correctly) was the marketing manager. A chain-smoking fifty-year old on the business side of the business, and so derided by his then editorial colleagues - there being a serious split between editorial and business employees - was systematically humiliated by Murdoch's henchmen. And I mean humiliated, I could recount the details, before he was handed his cards. Why? The word 'marketing', i.e. selling, was a cardinal sin according to the bible that was Murdoch. Out went Brian, ousted by the king of marketing, in a manner that would amount to grievous abuse today.

Even at my then young age, and so not over-sympathetic with 50+ men, I was appalled. I have waged a one-man war against the owner ever since. He is brutal.

I don't believe Murdoch's downfall is imminent. He is a man who bathes in oil.

I met him once. I was in a meeting a few years ago with his daughter, Liz, at Sky when he popped his head around the door. If only I had a gun, I thought, the world would be better.

I am not joking.

Giggles

2011-07-01T07:08:00.007+01:00

Sue, as in ex, had a bad fall yesterday. She, along with friend, Mary, daughter, Em, and grandchildren, Amy and Katie, was going for a picnic when she tripped over a protruding fire hydrant cover. According to Em, she lay motionless for a couple of minutes. When she came to, she complained of pains in her stomach rather than her head. Diagnosing remotely, It sounds to me that she knocked herself out for a second or two. I spoke to her and she denies the charge; however, I stick to my diagnosis. She, being an enthusiastic tennis player, was more concerned about the damage to her right hand. (She has since informed me it will not impede her aces; the graze not being situated where her hand meets the racquet.)

But, to the point: Amy's immediate reaction to her grandmother's fall was to giggle. Callous, you may think. But her mother, Em, being so much more sensible than me, understood: young Amy's reaction was a means of coping with a situation she had not met before. She, Em, told me had reacted in the same way in similar circumstances in her own young age.

When reported to Sue, she said the same. She related a story of a school friend from Hong Kong who was looking forward to seeing her father after a year's absence when it was reported he was killed in a car accident. The whole class, according to Sue, collapsed in giggles.

Giggling as a means of coping is not a phenomenon I have met before. I have known of giggling as means of overcoming moments of embarrassment - it seems appropriate as a means of self-effacement - but never as an expression of shock.

I am now in shock. I thought I knew it all.

Cockney: or Town Meets Country

2011-06-23T13:30:00.004+01:00

I am a collector of dictionaries, particularly any relating to slang. One reason being you come across unlikely little gems like this, lifted from a compilation by Michelle Lovric in The Scoundrel's Dictionary.

To quote:

COCKNEY

A nickname given to the citizens of London, or persons born within the sound of Bow Bell, derived from the following story: - A citizen of London being in the country, and hearing a horse neigh, exclaimed, Lord! how that horse laughs! A bystander informed him the noise was called neighing. The next morning, when the cock crowed, the citizen, to show he had not forgotten what was told him, cried out, Do you hear how the cock neighs?

(I don't suppose they ever saw a horse or heard a cock crow in the East End back in them days seeing how they was all sapsculls or half out to sea.)

PS A source of Lovric's work seems to be the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence, for the definition of the Cockney above, among others, is lifted straight from it. Quite interesting is the fact the 1811 Dictionary goes on to to state:

Whatever may be the origin of this appellation, we learn from the following verses, attributed to Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk, that it was in use in the time of king Henry II.

Was I in my castle at Bungay,

Fast by the river Waveney,

I would not care for the king of Cockney;

i.e. the king of London.

Alone in Berlin

2011-06-17T16:47:00.014+01:00

The problem of reviewing books is, when you stumble upon a gem, your immediate instinct is to lend it to all and sundry with the result that you find myself having to write the review without the book to hand.*

Such is the case of Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, also titled Every Man Dies Alone, or, Jeder stirbt für sich allein in the original German.

It was written in 1947, so I have been slow to come to it; nonetheless, it is an outstanding piece of writing. According to Wikipedia, Primo Levi claimed it to be 'the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis', and he should know better than I.

It is story based on true facts; on a couple, Otto and Elise Hampel, who were once enthusiastic National Socialist party followers until Elise loses her brother in France. (In the book, the lose is transcribed to their only child.) Thereafter, they devise a unique and sadly pathetic method of resistance to the regime, which is to leave messages on postcards in the stairwells of office buildings denouncing the Nazis. Their end is never in doubt and though their campaign survived a surprising length of time, two years or so, they were eventually caught and executed.

Fallada, a successful author pre-war, was caught up in the harsh politics of the time despite his attempts to remove himself, which gives him the authority and insight to write the book.

Alone in Berlin gives one a real sense of the fear and suspicion one has to endure in a totalitarian regime. You know at the outset the two protagonists will be caught, but it is the courage with which they face the day to day tribulations that is humbling. The most innocent encounter with a neighbour could prove their downfall at any moment. (Also, what is of interest for one who has studied the Holocaust, is the awareness the general public has of what is happening to the Jews; the debate swings back and forward as to whether all Germans at the time knew, and so were culpable, or not. This book indicates they did.)

Alone in Berlin has a particular significance now given what is happening in the Middle East as Arab nations rise, or attempt to rise, against brutal dictators. Without belittling the courage of Otto and Elise Hampel, one can regard their campaign of messages written on postcards as a forerunner of Twitter. (To expand on the thought, Fallada details how the couple hoped their messages would be passed from hand to hand to be spread across the city much like tweets.)

Read Alone in Berlin not just for the story of two amazingly brave but very ordinary people caught up in circumstances beyond their control, but also for the writing. Fallada writes with a busted flush so to speak, you know how the book will end the moment you open it, so he concentrates on the environment of repression that he knows from personal experience, and while the ending is inevitably sad the book manages to remain optimistic, perhaps because it was written in the knowledge of the outcome of the war.

Fallada wrote the book in just 24 days not long before he died.

* Although 'you find myself' is grammatically incorrect within the context of the rest of the sentence, there is a curious accuracy to the thought. I leave it as is.

Bang Goes My Knighthood

2011-05-02T09:40:00.001+01:00

Given the ecstatic news of Will’s and Kate’s wedding, it seem sacrilegious to write on any topic other than the nuptials. Certainly the UK papers are still full of the Royal news: Where is the honeymoon? How much is costing? Will they use the missionary position?

I can’t wait to be told. But trust Osama bin Laden to spoil everything by going and getting himself killed. I imagine the Daily Mail’s newsroom must be in turmoil over what to flag across their paper.

Present headline reads:

William to whisk Kate on £4,000-a-night tropical honeymoon... but couple face ten weeks APART as he is sent to serve in the Falklands

Future headline?

William & Kate honeymoon romp disturbed by Osama bed Linen?

Osama bin Laden comes between William and Kate?

I knew I should have been a sub-editor.

Mentors, Guides and Gandalf [Grand Elf for the illiterate]

2011-04-15T10:33:00.004+01:00

I posted this comment on the excellent service offered to writers, and I have taken advantage of what is on offer so I speak from experience, by BubbleCow, and it seemed to me a point worthy of wider interest:

My personal gripe from my former career (advertising copywriter) is I miss the Traffic Manager, Hazel, for that was her name - we followed each other from agency to agency. She knew me, could buck me up when down, kick me when lazy, and keep me on the rails generally. A personal mentor who takes no shit but understands my moods would be my lottery prize.

Hazel was the most unflappable individual I have ever met. Her only fault was that she would insist on telling me her dreams from the previous night. As far as work was concerned, she could coax a stone out of blood. And invariably it would be a gem (I'm not blowing my own trumpet, but I was good).

Now that I foolishly throw myself on the sword of my own angst in an effort to write something trully original, I miss her. I need Hazel to tell me when I am doing good and when I am just indulging in pathetic, creative tantrums. A good slap would not go amiss, though Hazel would never slap but just recount her latest dream. It was enough.

She should have gone into publishing were it not for the fact she was not hugely motivated by literature.

I suppose there are two points arising: every writer needs a mentor; and I should get in touch with Hazel again.

I ought to add Hazel became the Production Director of a number of agencies so was no light-weight.

Whither Confidence?

2011-04-13T07:33:00.007+01:00

Let's start, like all indifferent news articles, with a platitude: personal confidence is as wobbly as a jelly set before a gang of children at a street party to celebrate a royal wedding. [ I expect a call from one of the tabloids any minute now after such a well extended, topical metaphor. Hello? The phone's ringing.]

If you follow any sport, you will hear trainers, coaches and managers as well as the individuals concerned constantly referring to this mysterious quality described as confidence. You will watch a team of talented individuals either dominate or collapse and so celebrate or scratch your head. Certain individuals seem to be able to instil confidence in others, Sir Alex Ferguson being the exemplar. Indeed, the measure of a good manager in any sphere is one who can inspire confidence in those he or she manages.

But what is confidence?

For those who know no better and have no experience to prove otherwise, confidence frequently emerges as arrogance. Ugly but forgivable in the young. Less attractive in those who are older. But it is a fine line that exists between an overwhelming sense of self, of one's superiority, and the comfortable knowledge of what one is and what one can achieve. This is not to say confidence is the recognition of one's boundaries in the sense that one knows how far to trespass but the recognition of what binds you and how much further you must push. It is at this point that one becomes wobbly and self-belief is your only ally. You can see the circularity of the argument. Pushing further means placing yourself in a position where you have no experience, where, like the young, you must rely again on naked belief in your abilities. How easy it is for the circle to crack and for you to doubt the talent that brought you to this point.

It happens to individuals who play team sports; the multi-million pound striker you goes game after game without scoring a goal. It infects whole teams who find themselves unaccountably losing after reigning supreme. And most especially it paralyses those who rely on their wits to produce.

I have yet to define confidence, only the situation that anyone who writes will recognise. Confidence is like water. It trickles away between the synapses without you being aware until you find yourself dehydrated and depressed for no obvious reason. The situation is made no easier by the fact that the motivation for some of us who write is to assert ourselves, to express our individuality through words. I make this distinction of a writer who writes to push boundaries from those who write for more obvious commercial reasons not to say that one is better than the other but that the latter is more amenable to being motivated than the former.

Given a brief, the objective is clear so the writer who struggles can be encouraged. Given no brief but the desire to bring to the surface some ineffable idea, who can rally? It is this ambition that makes certain authors famously difficult. The struggle they face is with themselves and out of that struggle the work is created - if and when it is.

If this were a well-rounded article, I would now offer the magic solution. Bang and the dirt is gone.

I have this vague belief that a lapse in confidence for a writer is similar to a stitch for a long-distance runner. You have to persevere; run it off. But it is a rubbish metaphor. You never notice your confidence draining away. It is only when, like me, you are trying to write a letter for a part-time job that has your name all over it in embossed lettering and you cannot string an opening sentence together after three days of banging your head against the screen that you discover jellies look positively concrete compared to you.

Having said that, this is a dreadful warning for anyone with aspirations that are out of control: an interview with Tony Hancock, one of Britain's most brilliant radio comics, which took place in 1961 - though according to Wikipedia it was in 1960 - with John Freeman on Face to Face and just before his break with his writers, Simpson and Galton, and subsequent rapid decline into alcoholism and eventual suicide in 1968.

Anon: Fequently on radio and television and nine films you play artists and intellectuals…

TH: Yes

Anon: Does this mean you would like to be one?

TH: Well actually, I think I am deep down. It's never been appreciated entirely but I think it's there. I think I can safely say that. It's only a question of time.

Anon: Before what?

TH: Before it's recognised.

Correction: The quote is not from Face to Face: I've just watched the original interview on YouTube and though fascinating the above does not feature - I got it from BBC Radio Extra Bollocks (the link will only last for a week). However, the Freeman interview is well worth thirty minutes of your time, be you a fan or not. Part I, Part II, Part III.

Emotive Language

2011-03-26T08:36:00.006Z

I am sitting at my computer; I have been since 5.30 a.m., listening to BBC Radio 4, thanks to a neat widget, while scanning the papers online or staring down the road opposite that leads the eye out to sea.

So the scene is established.

To the point: I just heard a review of the papers on This Morning, Radio 4's news programme 6 - 9 a.m., where the newscaster read a piece from The Independent, to whit:

'Stray cats provide a flicker of movement as they wander in the newly emptied landscape.'

'The brooding presence of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant…' [My emphases]

Now, apart from the obvious clichéd use of brooding to describe the presence of the power plant, what role do cats have in a factual report on the real dangers of a damaged nuclear reactor whether they flicker or not across an emptied landscape?

It requires no poet to understand the desire of the author to employ such descriptions but to what extent do they detract from his intention? The truth of the horror that has engulfed Japan requires no embellishment and it is only an inflated ego that looks to add his or her paint strokes. Or, do we readers need such hyperbole to colour our jaded palettes?

Journalism has been described as the art of painting a picture (at some point these metaphors must end) but at what point does the personal image interfere with the facts as presented? As a student of Literary Criticism, I understand that text is all; i.e. it is impossible to remove one's self from a scene, in other words, you, all the components that make you, will interpret a situation singularly and the language you use to describe it will never fully encompass your thought or motivation. So the idea of wilful artfulness, the desire to manipulate language to a purpose is usually pursued for one's own ends rather than as an exposition of what is presented. One is far too conscious of self to be objectively involved in the other.

Of course, there are people we read precisely because we are more interested in their opinion than their reporting; however, when it comes to news, i.e. the facts of a situation, I prefer the reporter to disappear insofar as it is possible.

Three Very Different Novels

2011-02-28T10:56:00.012Z

I continue to dip in and out of Perec's Life: A User's Manual as and when ordered by the doctor for my general sense of well-being. [Bang on: that Mr. Scott Pack tries to steal my thunder with this feeble attempt of a post on Perec: The art of reviewing a book that has no punctuation or capital letters. Too late, Mr. Pack, I sneer, I was there first.]

There is no such sense of holiday dalliance with Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, a book I read last month. This involves total immersion with no snorkel. So, before I take the plunge, let me first deal with Thomas Eidson's St. Agnes' Stand.

St. Agnes' Stand

From his prose style, it is evident Eidson is a fan of Hemingway; his prose is taut, well-muscled, and walks with a testosterone-laden swagger.

The story is best described as a contemporary western. It opens with a man on the run with his dog who comes across a group under siege from a band of Apaches. The group consists of three nuns, lead by the eponymous Sister St. Agnes, together with seven orphaned children they have recently rescued. The Apaches have already caught and horribly tortured one nun and her Mexican wagon driver who were attempting to make a run for help. Against his better judgement, Swanson, for that is the man's name, decides to assist. To the Catholic sister, Swanson is literally the answer to her prayers and she never doubts for an instant his ability to save them for, as she constantly reminds him, he was sent by God.

The story tells of the increasingly personalised battle between Swanson and Locan, the giant leader of the Apaches, who is rapidly losing face with his party of braves. In some respects St. Agnes' Stand may be regarded as a conventional western. The characters are personalities you would expect to meet. It is no surprise, for instance, to discover the good Sister St. Agnes turns out to be a whisky-drinking, poker-player, thigh-slapping (OK, I made the last up) nun-of-a-gun. What is surprising, even questionable, is the underlying theme, which is one of faith, specifically Catholic faith versus savage superstition, and I do not employ the term savage lightly, because Eidson absolutely demonises Locan and his followers in a surprising manner given the date of publication, 1994. There is an argument to be made that Eidson is thoroughly contemporary in that he is the literary equivalent of Quentin Tarantino or the Coen brothers in his exploration of violence but where the latter comment, in their different ways, on attitudes today, St. Agnes' Stand reads like a good, ol' fashioned parable of good versus bad. And the bad are still Injuns and those of that ilk.

That said, it is still a good read and worthy of your own appraisal.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

I think of Murakami as Marmite – you either love him or hate him, and I love him. (For those who are not Brits, Marmite is a spread*; you either love it or hate it. I hope that clarifies the analogy.)

Like with all Haruki Murakami's work, there is no simple way to summarise the plot. So I will save myself the effort and quote from the blurb on the back:

'Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As the compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life – spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table – are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.'

Clear?

As hinted, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle explores the way life develops through circumstance, inexplicable promptings and chance events, and much of its charm, from a westerner's point of view, is the cultural difference in attitude displayed by Okada to each twist in his day. It is not that he is fatalistic but accepting, with an almost naïve curiosity, of whatever might happen next.

It is very seductive and you soon find yourself infected by his ingenuousness. To appreciate Murakami, you too, like Toru, must travel blind trusting that you will be transported safely. And you will be, trust me.

* Something you spread on bread, toast preferably, and not a large tract of land in Wyoming.

Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

2011-02-17T17:39:00.006Z

On the back of reading Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, I have just about finished her A Place of Greater Safety.

It is an historical, factually- based work charting the rise and eventual fall of the heads of the main characters involved in the French Revolution; Camille Desmoulins, Maximilian Robespierre, Dr. Marat, etc.

Mantel has used her considerable imaginative powers to explore the domestic background, i.e. the female perspective, of these figures during those whirlwind years while sticking to the original script as laid down by historical events.

I have a strong interest in this period. I was once intending to research a doctorate on the difference in attitudes to intellectualism between the English and the French since the Revolution to the present day and its consequences. So, my appreciation of the book is biased. I wonder how an uninterested reader will take to it. I believe anyone will admire the writing, but there is such a cast of characters, unless you have been previously introduced to them, they can prove confusing. Also, major events, like the desire of the protagonists to spread their ideal to other countries [so current given what is happening in the Middle East], e.g. the French invasion to liberate the Belgium sansculotte, are necessarily glossed over or the book would run to twice its 871 pages.

I have not read Wolf Hall but it seems to me A Place of Greater Safety is a rehearsal for the work that is to win Mantel her Booker. From my perspective it is fascinating. From anyone's perspective it is a lesson in how to write character and dialogue. Her women, evil, manipulative or innocent, are marvellous.

Old Farts Smell the Best

2011-02-09T13:26:00.002Z

I have hit a wall. Not literally, obviously, or I would be a flattened sort of creature with fingers of rubber.

My writing has collapsed into a litter of consonants and vowels that drift across the carpet to clutter in the corners ( how I love alliteration). My novel remains buried somewhere in the recesses of my computer awaiting the final polish from my magic duster. An idea for a series of inter-related short stories remains eleven pages of an idea for a series of inter-related short stories.

Nicola Morgan has posted on the issue of hitting walls and hit a nerve. (Well, you would, wouldn't you, hitting a wall at speed?)

The particular wall I hit was erected by the masons, Expectations, I could say Great Expectations but Arrogance may be more accurate. I had assumed I would be welcomed on a very prestigious course with rose petals strewn before me by the Dean; he turned up with thorns.

Collapse of the stout party, as they used to say. But do not weep on my behalf: the point I want to address is not the one entitled 'Managing Expectations', but 'Managing Growing Old'.

There, I've said it: I am growing old. Not a problem in itself, indeed, I read somewhere that older people are more content than at any other times in their lives. To an extent this is true but, being an awkward sod, I still have ambitions, the major of which is to write a novel worthy of serious consideration.

But what happens when you reach a certain age? All the sins of your past assemble in a single spot and assault you at once. It was once possible for me to breeze through life no matter what was thrown up with no other help than a nose-peg and cunning intelligence. Now, laxity is itself the problem.

Life, it seems to me, is an accumulation of habits and behavioural patterns. What suited when young and becomes comfortable through use is not easily dislodged in later life no matter how inappropriate

F**k it. I will now behave inappropriately. Inappropriate to my age and expectations. This is not say I will suddenly become an eccentric. That was my norm, i.e. to question the status quo, but now I will conform. I will vote Conservative and wear what few strands I have in a perm. I will get heated over issues of immigration and the collapse of English identity. Shiny faced posters of David Cameron will adorn my bedroom. Nick Clegg will be the custard on my pudding.

I will join the rich. Ha! You may laugh but all my life people have told me I would be rich. Now is the time. Personally, I am not a fan of the rich - and I know a few who are mega-rich - but it is time to join their ranks, if only to mock them for their narrow-minded, greedy assumptions.

How is this to be achieved? I don't have a clue but, believe me, it is not rocket science. It is a combination of nonce, greed, exploitation, ruthlessness, and testosterone - all qualities I have in abundance. (I would invite you to view my testicles if this were not a public domain.)

Why this sudden ambition?

i want to move back to London only to discover that all I can afford is a cupboard in a garden shed. Now, woodlice I count as among the best of my friends but I am allergic to rudimentary pots (aesthetically they cause me hives). So money is necessary.

Am I joking?

No. I will, despite others' expectations of what should, could, can be achieved by an old burst of wind like myself, find a means.

Sir Richard Dearlove - Tom Phillips?

2011-01-27T09:10:00.000Z

This article on Sir Richard Dearlove's evidence to the Chilcot inquiry caught my eye in the Guardian this morning, to quote:

Never let it be said that Britain's spies do not have a sense of humour. Ninety-three pages of evidence (pdf) given in private to the Iraq inquiry by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, have finally been released. Unfortunately, they have been so heavily redacted by the censors that some are entirely black, save for a lone, enigmatic question mark.

It reminded me of the work of Tom Phillips on whose work I posted earlier. It makes you wonder if Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, has secret longings to be an artist.

The Blue Tit Faction

2011-01-13T12:12:00.003Z

One of the few pleasures among my duties as a tempaculturalist is to watch with the same fascination of the cats, though perhaps not their appetite, (see final pic in my last post), the antics of the gang of little masked bandits who mount relentless raids on the Balcony Precinct of La Haute Houssais.

This CCTV pic gives little clue to the constant hustling of these would be jailbirds, for they be Blue Tits, one of a very small group of villains who make all their demands for mere peanuts.

Country Matters

2011-01-11T17:09:00.001Z

This week I am house-sitting for Stuart and Gabrielle, professional permaculturalists, in La Haute Houssais, Brittany, a hamlet so small it is easy to drive straight through and never notice it in your rear view mirror.

While here, I am also chicken-sitting:

Sheep-sitting:

Rabbit-sitting:

And cat-sitting:

I feel I can now justifiably call myself a man of the soil.

Santa Amy

2010-12-29T10:41:00.000Z

Overhead on Christmas morning, Katie, aged two, sitting up in bed addressing her still sleeping sister.

"Thank you, Amy," she said. "Oh, thank you, Amy. Thank you. Oh Amy, thank you."

Katie had discovered the stocking at the foot of her bed.

Frozen Fingers

2010-12-20T10:31:00.000Z

You may wonder why I have not posted recently but I find it difficult to type with fingers frozen to the keyboard. So instead of a blog, a couple of tracks on the subject currently closest to my wrists.

Life: A User's Manual, Georges Perec

2010-12-09T10:40:00.004Z

I smell like poo. Allegedly.

It was my birthday recently and I woke to a big dump of snow together with the information that I smell like poo. This news was sung to me over the phone by a gleeful Amy. It made my snowbound day.

So wrapped in layers of clothing and huddled around a candle - there's no heating in my flat - I spent the day reading Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec.

Perec, who died aged 46 in 1982, was a French novelist, filmmaker and essayist, as well as a member of the Oulipo group.

Founded in 1960, Oulipo, Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, continues to bring together intellectuals and masochists who enjoy making the art of writing even more difficult than it already is. They bind themselves with constraints so tight their vowels bleed. For instance, in a lipogram, the writer will deliberately exclude using a number of predetermined letters; in one variation, the prisoner's constraint, the writer will not use any letter with a descender or ascender, the letters b, d, f, g, etc.


Vist Yelena's blog for more of her excellent work

Perec, who among his many accomplishments compiled exacting crosswords for Le Point, once wrote a univocalic novella, Les Revenentes, in which 'e' was the only vowel he permitted himself. In contrast, his novel, La Disparition, was written without once using the letter 'e'.

You could say he was an eccentric. Or an ccntric.

La Vie Mode D'Emploi, or Life: A User's Manual, is his best known and most admired work. Needless to say, Perec did not make the work of writing his novel simple but an exercise in lexical acrobatics

I read somewhere the claim that Perec was a structuralist. Having studied the subject, I am less than sure, unless the writer is referring to the structure of the novel in which case Perec is less a structuralist and more an architect.

In Life: A User's Manual, Perec takes as his starting point the imaginary elevation of a building with rooms, including the stairwells, that form a ten by ten grid. The whole is imagined as existing in a single moment, as if a painting. The book travels around the building in a series of chess moves known as the Knight's Tour with one chapter devoted to each room. The stories relating to each are constructed by the use of a mathematical device: over the ten by ten grid of the building Perec lays a Graeco-Latin bisquare. From the little I understand, Graeco-Latin bisquare is an instrument whereby from a given number of elements or themes all possible combinations are revealed on the different squares without any repetition. To quote from Frieze:

Each box in which the knight landed gave coordinates referring to the ‘schedule of obligations’. These lists provided the objects, emotions, places and periods in time which would feature within each chapter.

In a scholarly paper, Memory and Oulipian Constraits, Peter Consenstein identifies '42 themes [that] were divided into ten groupings of four each, leaving room for two extra "themes." He goes on to suggest that Perec employs the constraints he imposes as the means to create the themes, 'In essence, the constraint determines the novel's themes; the theoretical consequences of working under constraint are such that the novel is "constraint-driven" not "theme-driven."

This may make the Life: A User's Handbook sound as joyous to read as John Harrison's Principles of Mr. Harrison's Time-Keeper, but joyous it is. To quote Paul Auster, who reviewed the book for The New York Times shortly after its English publication:

To read Georges Perec one must be ready to abandon oneself to a spirit of play. His books are studded with intellectual traps, allusions and secret systems, and if they are not necessarily profound (in the sense that Tolstoy and Mann are profound), they are prodigiously entertaining (in the sense that Lewis Carroll and Laurence Sterne are entertaining).

Appreciation or Appropriation?

2010-11-25T17:23:00.008Z

It’s blog time again. Though I do sometimes wonder why I bother. According to the stats for this blog, the reason why most people arrive here by a very curly mile is because they are searching on Google for the term ‘CurlyWurly’.

So much for my highbrow aspirations. West Pier Words will be condemned forever to be known as the blog of the curly wurlies. Well, better than the blog of the short and curlies, maybe, but only by a slim coating of chocolate.

Hot Cross Bun Fight

On the subject of blogs, there has been much heat generated recently by the issue of copyright. It kicked off when Cooks Source Magazine was caught lifting stuff wholesale from the web. The editor, Judith Griggs, defended her action to one who was ripped off, Monica Gaudoi, by saying, ‘But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!’

Jane Smith gives a blow-by-blow account here. Nicola Morgan and Lynn Price wade in with their cudgels too.

What joy, therefore, to discover today two books that take old books to create new works without changing a word but by removing words.

Courtesy of Visual Editions

It began as I followed the scent of a new book by Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes, published by Visual Editions. The first mention I came across was posted by The New York Times. To quote the publishers, “Jonathan Safran Foer has taken his favorite book, ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ by Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, and used it as a canvas, cutting into and out of the pages, to arrive at an original new story.”

A Short Detour

Having never heard of Bruno Schulz, mea culpa, I took myself to Wikipedia to discover he was a Polish Jew, who ‘nurtured his extraordinary imagination in a swarm of identities and nationalities; a Jew who thought and wrote in Polish, was fluent in German and immersed in Jewish culture, though unfamiliar with the Yiddish language’.

Something of a hermit, Schulz preferred to remain in his provincial town from where he observed the lives of his fellow citizens in a series of letters to a friend. These were to form the basis of his first book, The Street of Crocodiles.

Schulz was also an inspired artist, a talent that prolonged his life for a brief period when he was ‘adopted’ by Felix Landau, a Gestapo officer of the Einsatzkommando, one of five sections of the Einsatzgruppen. This group was originally formed to follow behind the frontline troops in Russia and clean up the radical elements left behind, i.e. murder the Jews and Bolsheviks.

The Einsatzgruppen were responsible for similar murderous work in Poland. (For an account, read Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning.)

Schulz was shot on 19 November, 1942 by a German officier, Karl Günther, in retaliation for Landau’s execution of the former’s ‘pet Jew’: "You killed my Jew - I killed yours."

(My interest in the subject stems from the fact the mother of my children is a Polish Jew and most of her family on her father’s side died in the Holocaust; in all likelihood they were exterminated at Treblinka.)

A Humment

I arrive back at the Tree of Codes via Asylum where John Self reviews Judith Schalanshy’s Atlas of Remote Islands, which is ‘that rarest of things, a coffee-table book which is actually worth reading’.

The point of relevance is that later, in the comments, John provides a link to an excellent review posted on Tiny Camels of Foer’s Tree of Codes in a post entitled The Politics of Erasure: Tree of Codes versus A Humment.

A Humment is another book I have never heard of. Actually, less a book, more a work of art still in progress. It is the work of Tom Phillips, an English artist who takes a Victorian novel, W. H. Mallock’s A Human Document, and decorates it, leaving words linked in bubbles to create a new story. It was first published in 1970, since when there have been three new editions, though it would be more accurate to say three new works such is the degree of revision subjected to them by Phillips.

Today’s excitement about A Humment is that it is going to be released as an iPad app. (It’s my birthday soon. Perhaps I will get one. One of each that is; original work, iPad, app. Ha! if Peppa Pigs could fly.)

A Question or Two

I presume both The Street of Crocodiles and A Human Document are out of copyright and therefore Foer and Phillips may do with them what they will. Is this the case, I don’t know?

Even if they were not, at what point does the reconstruction of a copyrighted piece take on the guise of art, i.e. a new and original work?

I referred to this issue last year in a post entitled, Cut, Paste & Copy: A Polemic. As I said at the time, I have written a 5,000-word short story as an exercise in existentialism where I took passages from the works of Henry Miller, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. I am sorely tempted to publish it in the form of an e-book to see what happens. (I would, of course, credit the passages lifted.)

PS The Guardian have just posted on the app for Tom Phillips' A Humment

Hiliary Mantel, Beyond Black

2010-11-08T11:27:00.009Z

Just because Ms Mantel won the Booker prize in 2009 with Wolf Hall is no good reason for me to read it immediately. In fact, the opposite; it's a good reason for not reading it immediately. I haven't read Ms Mantel before and feel the need to get to know her first before taking on her award winning work. As for all newly acclaimed authors whom I have never read, I want first to know her backstory.

So when I spotted Beyond Black in a secondhand book stall down on the front at a small weekend market by West Pier a few months ago, I bought it and added it to my reading list.

As one who has never been overcome by Jane Austen, I am suspicious of women writing of women, and Beyond Black is a story almost exclusively of women. I am particularly suspicious of stories of women who dabble in the dark arts, believe in the occult and place their trust in fringe remedies for life threatening diseases, such as a severe hangover. [It is evident I would not be a natural supporter of the Tea Party were I an American.] And Beyond Black is all about women with these hobbies: Alison, the main protagonist, her mother and grandmother are all natural psychics and Alison, in particular, spends her life negotiating the ground between the spirit world and here.

As Fay Weldon says in her review in the Guardian, 'If, as a reader, you feel briskly and brightly that dead is dead, alive is alive, and anything else is nonsense, this novel is probably not for you.'

I will flatly contradict her: this novel is absolutely for you.

Though the story may revolve around Alison and the spirits that keep invading her space, the spirits of vile men she knew as a child growing up with an equally vile mother who survived by providing services for the squaddies from the barracks around Aldershot, the story is really of two strong individuals, Alison and her business partner and full-time companion, Collette, each dealing with their past. You may take the ghosts literally or figuratively.

Now stories by women of women who are fully rounded individuals with all their flaws, and who deal as best they can with life instead of being overwhelmed by it, I enjoy. Stories written as richly, and with such depth and beautifully observed detail as Beyond Black are a treat all too rare.

Beyond Crusty

Today at 12.45 p.m. my first ever loaf was baked, classic soda bread, with the midwifery of a recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Baker and bread are doing fine.

That Was the Weekend That Was

2010-11-04T05:27:00.002Z

I had a truly fabbie weekend. Sue, as in ex, roasted half a pig with crackling of such cracklyness Gordon Ramsay would have awarded it an expletive explosion of a volume that would equate to three stars in the more demur world of Michelin.

I salivate in memory as I type. (Not a pretty sight, and causing havoc with my keyboard.)

Another treat was to be driven for the first time by newly qualified Emily in her brand-old new car. I flinched not once. In fact, I was rather impressed by her competence though I managed to refrain from saying so. She is five-foot nothing and a swollen head might have overbalanced her and caused an accident.

And then there was ~~Lady~~, ~~Holly~~, Polly, the twelve-week old ~~springer~~ COCKER spaniel that is the new addition to Emily and Danny's household. Despite the rapid turnover of her name in a short life, Polly is so laid back they should have named her Galene, the Greek goddess of calm seas.

Then there was the trick 'n treating. Very funny. Sue lives in quite a posh bit of South London, and we traipsed around behind all the posh families who were knocking on the doors of those foolish enough to leave a lighted pumpkin on the gatepost.

'After you.'

'No, after you.'

'Please, you were first.'

'But your children are younger.'

''They may look such but pre-juvenile plastic surgery is so efficacious nowadays.'

'I couldn't possibly, you have put yours down for Harrow.'

'I happen to know yours are down for Roedean and Eton.'

'Only if the Lehman Brothers' bonus is not taxed to buggery by the government.'

'Don't worry… David went to Eton and Nick to Westminster, so…'

'I hear Harrow is very good.'

'After you.'

All Souls, All Saints

2010-10-27T13:38:00.011+01:00

I have watched the growth of what I believed was the American import of Hallowe'en with cynicism, thinking, like Father's Day, it was created to give the retail trade another spurious event to promote. However, a tiny bit of research reveals the tradition evolved from an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain - a Gaelic word meaning 'end of the summer' - which is believed to have been a celebration of the end of the harvest and a time of preparation for the coming winter.

(Image courtsey of A Journey Around My Skull, by John Buckland Wright's illustrations for Poe's The Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales)

All Saints, to you who were not raised Catholics, originated with Pope Boniface IV, who instigated the idea in the early 7th century when he consecrated the Pantheon in Rome as a church dedicated to Saint Mary and the Martyrs, and ordered that that date, May 13, should be celebrated every year. Several centuries later, Pope Urban IV (d. 1264), ordered it to be a day specially to honour those saints who didn't have a festival day of their own.

How All Saints ended up being celebrated on 1st November, I have no idea.

All this is by way of an excuse to talk of books that go bump in the night. It was prompted by this article in The Paris Review which mentioned a book I have referred to in an earlier post, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

The mistake I made is I don't really do anything that goes bump in the night - books, films or theatre. I find life too frightening already, what with daughters and granddaughters, to further scare myself on a voluntary basis. What is really scary Is I will be facing them all for a belated birthday dinner in honour of Rebecca at my ex's on Hallowe'en. The littl'uns will be trick and treating. I won't.

I will be in bed early with the duvet over my head.

PS

This may explain my horror of horror. One of the many houses we lived in when I was a child in Malaya was a pre-war, single story house, built of wood then grey with age, and raised on stilts. You walked up the stairs, through the door into the main reception room, with bedrooms and what have you in the eaves on either side. Steps at the back led down to the box room and out to the servants' quarters. (We kids, Ukow, Onyow and I - and apologies to any Chinese speaker for my useless phonetic spelling - found a cobra's nest complete with eggs in one of the boxes out back. That was fun. I also discovered a hornet's nest under the building. More fun.)

To get to the story:

The house stood alone, away from other habitation, and when we first moved in my parents discovered a sign in the overgrown garden that they presumed was in Chinese. They thought no more about it.

Now, given the humidity, my parents slept in separate beds. One night they were woken by the most horrific screams seemingly coming from between the two beds. My father, who was raised in Burma and so well-used to the noises of the jungle at night, was still shaken enough to leap out of bed, grab his revolver and turn on the light. All they could see were some ugly stains on the wooden wall high up between the beds. It was, as you can imagine, very disturbing. Especially as the event happened on more than one occasion. They could think of no natural source or explanation for the tortured noises.

However, matters were to turn more sinister.

They invited a professor they knew to dinner one evening during the course of which they showed him the sign, curious as to what it meant.

'It is not in Chinese,' he said, 'but Japanese. This building was once an interrogation centre during the war.'

Genuinely spooky, no?

Fry's Five Boys

2010-10-19T18:28:00.006+01:00

This is a special post for someone I met at D. J. Kirby's launch of Without Alice a couple of weeks ago. This someone is slightly, ever so slightly, obssessed with a certain Mr. Fry.

I mentioned Fry's Five Boys Chocolate, as it was known, but was met with a blank. Not surprising as it was withdrawin in 1972, several years before this person was born.

As I remember, the bar had a soft centre with each section a different flavour.

It was pure serendipity that someone on The Antique Roadshow brought along a collection of chocolate bars which had been rescued from ancient station vending machines having fallen down inside, and one happened to be a Fry's Five Boys. The image is a screen-grab.

Dear Diary

2010-10-06T14:19:00.013+01:00

Dear Diary,

You have been very patient but my life is not filled with much excitement since I gave up extreme skateboarding to concentrate on my collection of 1930s dried peas. However, this weekend was an exception.

Saturday went to London on train with Sue. She was going on to see her fresh out of the box, brand new grandchild still with decorative bow and price tag in his hair. However, before separating, we went to the National Gallery to look at the work of Pissarro, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir and Degas, among others. And we did it just for the hell of it. We are both becoming very abandoned in our wayward lives.

Rebecca joined us straight from the hair salon for lunch in Chinatown. She did look rather gorgeous.

We, Sue and us, said our goodbyes on the tube and I went back with Rebecca to Bethnal Green. She, poor dear, was exhausted after a late night the night before. So as she went out to see friends in the evening, she promised not to be too late. She managed to get back before 4.00 a.m. I don't know what passes for early in London these days so made no comment.

Around midday Sunday, we met Emily, Amy and Katie at Old Street tube station. Young Amy looked like she'd stepped straight off the catwalk. Young Katie just scowled. It was a long walk back to Rebecca's, but it gave Amy the chance to show off her style to a wider audience. And, of course, it gave Katie the opportunity to glower at more people. (And, in the interest of fairness, I have to mention that Emily looked rather gorgeous too.)

The weather wasn't great, so we decided to go to the V & A Museum of Childhood, which so happens to be situated five minutes from Rebecca's flat.

A little of its history from their website:

The Department [of the original V & A] thought there should be similar museums in north, east and south London and in 1864 put the idea to each district. Only those responsible for Bethnal Green were interested and in 1868, following the architectural guidance of J. W. Wild, construction on the plot at Bethnal Green began. The work was carried out by S. Perry and Company, led by Colonel Henry Scott, an officer of the Royal Engineers. The Prince of Wales opened the Bethnal Green Museum on 24th June 1872. Wild had designed a garden, clock tower and library amongst other features. Due to the lack of funds however, his design was only fully realised in an 1871 edition of The Builder magazine. The final structure was decidedly less grand, the east and west façades being the noticeable remaining original design elements.

It is a lovely, large space, light and airy, with a broad gallery running around its midriff, filled with toys from every age right up to a plastic Harry Potter broomstick. We grown-ups rapidly shrunk to children again as we oohed and aahed at each toy we recognised from our childhood. Amy didn't get our enthusiasm. Katie glared; however, there was so much for them to get their hands on neither was particularly bothered one way or the other.

To round off our visit, Emily and Amy gave an impromptu puppet show that, much to their surprise and Amy's delight, drew a crowd. And Katie discovered a sandpit was the answer to relatives who annoy and was very happy.

On Monday, I did little till the evening when I went to D J Kirby's book launch at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green. There was a Tube strike so I had to bus it. I don't know if the strike brought out the Dunkirk spirit among those who managed to make the event, but there was a great atmosphere with lots of mingling. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, though the evening, of course, belonged to Denise and her newly minted Without Alice.

So, dear Diary, I made my way south on Tuesday to a flat empty of small children demonstrating their karate prowess with blows from needle sharp elbows to my most delicate parts or reducing me to jelly with their laser-eye treatment but filled with the sound of someone somewhere in the block arbitrarily drilling holes in concrete just to drive me mad.

I can only take so much excitement these days.

Creative Writing Course: Lesson Four

2010-10-01T12:06:00.003+01:00

The Evolution of Language

The history of literature is most visible in the changing face of its language. This is Mr. Lockwood describing his arrival at Wuthering Heights, the book being published in 1847:

'One step brought us into the family sitting-room, without any introductory lobby or passage. They call it here "the house" pre-eminently. It includes kitchen and parlour generally. But, I believe, at Wuthering Heights the kitchen is forced to retreat altogether into another quarter -- at least I distinguished a chatter of tongues and a clatter of culinary utensils deep within; and I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking about the huge fireplace, nor any glitter of copper saucepans and tin cullenders on the walls. One end, indeed, reflected splendidly both light and heat from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, on a vast oak dresser, to the very roof. The latter had never been underdrawn; its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes and clusters of legs of beef, mutton, and ham concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns and a couple of horse-pistols, and, by way of ornament, three gaudily painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures painted green, one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade. In an arch under the dresser reposed a huge liver-coloured bitch pointer surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs haunted other recesses.'

This is a description of Bunker's Hill in the opening chapter of Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1913:

'The houses themselves were substantial and very decent. One could walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks in the sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches, little privet hedges, and dormer windows for the attics. But that was outside; that was the view on to the uninhabited parlours of all the colliers' wives. The dwelling-room, the kitchen, was at the back of the house, facing inward between the blocks, looking at a scrubby back garden, and then at the ash-pits. And between the rows, between the long lines of ash-pits, went the alley, where the children played and the women gossiped and the men smoked. So, the actual conditions of living in the Bottoms, that was so well built and that looked so nice, were quite unsavoury because people must live in the kitchen, and the kitchens opened on to that nasty alley of ash-pits.'

Both passages are highly descriptive, but you can sense a shift in attitude: where Emily Brontë's prose moves at a somewhat leisurely pace, Lawrence's is marginally more brisk. Sixty-six years later, the reader has less time to linger, to luxuriate in a bath of language, especially as it is a year tense with the anticipation of war. After the Great War, of course, all lies in fragments, as best exemplified in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

Today's Shorthand

Now, nearly a century after Sons and Lovers, with barely the time to identify our arse from our elbow, we have developed a sophisticated shorthand to compress and read information. This is in no small part due to the influence of film, the internet, texts on mobile/cell phones and all pervasive graphics .

Why do I go on about history when you are trying to write a book today? Because you are the child of history. You are in a process. And you need to understand the process and why we have arrived at this point to write successfully for a contemporary readership. Okay, I doubt Dan Brown cares a fig about history - well of course he does; he's managed to reinvent it very successfully in a language neanderthals would have understood.

Understand the History of Your Genre

My point is not that you as a writer of a particular genre need to go back to university but that you, as the writer of a particular genre, should understand how that genre has changed over the years and why it has now reached the point it has. Understanding this will help make your writing pertinent, contemporary and, with luck, more publishable. It will also help you push the envelope, to use an ugly metaphor, of the genre and write something truly original.

In brief, my message is to read in and around what you like to write about. But to read critically.

Writers on Writing - AuthorScoop

2010-09-26T08:32:00.017+01:00

I have collected my favourite quotes by authors on writing published by AuthorScoop over the weeks and reproduce them here:

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” - TS Eliot

“Writing a first novel takes so much effort, with such little promise of result or reward, that it must necessarily be a labour of love bordering on madness.” - Steven Saylor

“The business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.” - Thomas Hardy

“Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.” - Norman Mailer

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.” - William Golding

“Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.” - P.G. Wodehouse

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood I should have known perfect bliss.” - Charles Dickens

“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” - Woody Allen

“The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.” - John Steinbeck

“The cure for mixed metaphors, I have always found, is for the patient to be obliged to draw a picture of the result.” - Bernard Levin

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” - Gene Fowler

“When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.” - Blaise Pascal

“Publication is the auction of the mind of man.” - Emily Dickinson

“A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.” - Ring Lardner

“No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.” - Henry Brooks Adams

.“What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse.” - Ray Bradbury

“Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.” - Gustave Flaubert

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.” - H. G. Wells

"Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”

“A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.” -Rebecca West

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” - C. S. Lewis

“Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.”   -Franklin P. Adams

“Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.” - Terry Pratchett

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“Character, in any sense in which we can get it, is action, and action is plot.” - Henry James

“Every man’s memory is his private literature.” - Aldous Huxley

“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.” - E.M. Forster

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.” - Joyce Carol Oates
“I can’t bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.” - D.H. Lawrence

“Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.” - J.G. Ballard
.
“Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren’t.” - Julian Barnes

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” - Rudyard Kipling

“We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.” - Paul Auster

“I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.” - Umberto Eco

“And I don’t want to begin something, I don’t want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it’s my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.” - John Irvin

But, before using these quotes, remember Leonardo da Vinci's wise words; "Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory."

Women of Fine Sensibilities

2010-09-21T12:44:00.003+01:00

It was elder's birthday last week and, being a confused individual with but a fingernail grasp on reality, the date crept up on me before I knew where I was. I remembered on the day, when I finally noticed it was the day, but had not sent card or present.

Blessed be Amazon of the super fast delivery. The next day the book she requested landed on Rebecca's desk at work just before lunch. It was Jilly Cooper's latest, Jump. She had asked for it almost defiantly, challenging me to sneer. As if… but seriously as if I would. I read a wide range of authors and genres to suit different moods, and trash literature, and I mean that in no pergorative sense, is an important part of my diet.

Though I have never read Ms Cooper I feel a distant connection. In the days before she departed to Gloucestershire, she lived in Barnes or nearby and supported Rosslyn Park FC, one time gem of the rugby world, as I did.

She is also barking. Completely screwy. Nutty as a fruit cake on a late winter's day in the glorious tradition of eccentric Englishwomen. Another, Margaret Rutherford, at one time lived in Richmond, Surrey. My mother saw her frequently and told me how she, Ms Rutherford, would dress to keep warm in cold weather; under a billowing cape she would suspend hot water bottles about her person from a belt around her waist. And this was well before the days of central heating. Brilliant.

Coincidently, Margaret Rutherford spent her last days with her beloved husband, Stringer Davis, in Gerrards Cross, where my ex, Sue, another delicious slice of cake, grew up.

This is Sue scarying the local Chinese population over a Dim Sum meal prior to departing for a Harry Potter themed children's party. It was later reported several horses in the vicinity needed psychiatric support.

Taking full advantage of the weather, I spent a wonderful weekend with the other Sue in my life. She has commented on it here. As you will read, she has being going through various traumas but is surviving. If anyone should be barking it is her. I do my best. Woof!

Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro

2010-09-12T08:35:00.008+01:00

I have recently been concentrating on writing short stories. I have several sparkling beginnings and an equivalent amount of flat ends.

So, in the interests of learning of such rudiments as structure and what have you, I have been reading various anthologies. The one collection I could not put down was Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuro Ishiguro. It consists of five stories linked by the common theme of music. Occasionally the same character, or reference to such, crops up within the stories.

Crooner

The first, Crooner, takes place in Venice, where 'one of the 'gypsies”, an outsider, a Hungarian guitarist by the name of Janeck, plays in various bands around St. Marks Square. One day, he spots an American crooner of the past, Tony Gardner, a favourite of his mother and one of the greats.

The two meet and Janeck is introduced to Gardner's wife, Lindy. Their relationship, that of Gardner and is wife, is ambivalent at this stage. When Lindy leaves, Gardner outlines a plan he has in mind for this special trip he and his wife have made, and that is that Janeck should accompany him on guitar while he, Gardner, surprises his wife with a serenade made from a gondola while she is in her hotel room later that evening. Janeck is stunned by the romance of these older people.

As the story develops, we learn how Lindy plotted and planned with other girls in an LA café to ensnare a star. First there was a marriage to another singer, but one in a minor league, who was swiftly divorced once she had caught the eye of the premier league player, Gardner. It was a business Gardner accepted. However, over the years they had fallen in love and now he wanted to serenade her. Yet, as they circle in a gondola poled by a viperous gondolier already known to Janeck for his Janus-faced behaviour, one opinion to his face, another behind his back, waiting for a light to appear in Lindy's room, Gardner appears surprisingly gloomy.

At last a light appears yet still Gardner seems reluctant. Eventually, he starts to sing and Lindy, attracted by the sound, appears at the window. She does not swoon or smile but seems irritated by his attentions. She retreats from the window as Gardner sings a song of particular romantic significance to the two. As he ends his third and final song, weeping can be heard from the room.

Janeck is very confused until Gardner elucidates. Though they are both very much in love, he is making a comeback and needs a younger wife to suit his new image. So they are separating and this is the swansong.

Iago

I found this the most difficult of all the stories. I could not accept the premise until I dwelt on Ishiguro's elaboration of the gondolier character. It then occurred to me he is the cousin of Iago, and, of course, the setting is Venice, and there is a murder of sorts – Killing me softly with his song – in the final scene of the spouse by her love-stricken husband. Moreover, marriages for status and power have always been arranged, one way or another, back to the Bard's day and before.

I may have spoiled the story, but I cannot possibly have spoiled your enjoyment of reading Ishiguro's words. What strikes me forcibly about his writing is the translucence of his language. There is no showing off, no reaching for the dictionary, just simple prose, all the more elegant for its simplicity.

I see I have not written a jot about structure and what I have learned. One for a later date, perhaps.

Very Funny Sheep Animation

2010-09-07T10:40:00.000+01:00

No sheep were hurt in the making of this production. (Though several might have been eaten later.)

Thanks to http://www.wimp.com/sheepart/ And if you like that, this of Bill Bailey's duelling sitars is fun too.

Who talks the most sense?

2010-09-03T12:51:00.006+01:00

Sense is an interesting concept. Common sense is generally agreed to be a practical piece of advice that best addresses a specific situation. But, of course, the idea of sense is only circumstantial; historically, culturally and, to repeat myself, circumstantially based.

I, a former Catholic with something of a privileged background, will offer very different advice on a particular situation to a Muslim from a less fortunate background.

These thoughts arise out of an hour long conversation with my daughter, who, with young children, is going through a hiatus in her relationship with her partner. The fact it is a crisis identified and classified by academics helps her the none. Classically most divorces happen either when children are young or when they have fled the nest. For her the crisis is real. At this point it is not threatening, but left to fester will burst.

So I spent an hour on the phone giving her the benefit of my advice. We talked of everything, including sex, which is always a strange subject for a father to daughter. Why, I wonder? The taboo of incest hangs in the air. It is not, as her father, that such desire has ever dwelt but the worry that such desire might exist always shades frankness. Thank goodness my daughter is oblivious of such thoughts. She has an openness and innocence, not to be confused with disingenuousness or lack of imagination, to engage in the subject objectively.

So I gave her the benefit of my wisdom as best I could.

But… there is always a but, I come away worrying of what she has taken from what I said; worrying about what I'd said; just worrying. It is an enormous responsibility to offer advice. What life has taught you is not necessarily a lesson of consequence to another. What you preach as a virtue can prove yet another weight rather than the comfort you hoped.

Anyway, and I say this in no way to prove my virtuousness , I have sent money for her and Danny to have a break. It is the best money I have ever spent and I feel blessed that I can afford to do so.

E. L. Wisty Observations on Mining & Publishing

2010-08-16T10:45:00.001+01:00

In a complex, roundabout manner I was reminded of E. L. Wisty when commenting on Eric, the name Stuart has given his Stictoleptura rubra - or beetle to you and me.

In this clip E. L. Wisty, aka Peter Cook, comments on his career as miner and author.

'Of course that's the wonderful thing about being an author,' he says, 'you can put as many nude women in as you like.'

Gallows Humour

2010-08-09T02:39:00.005+01:00

My attention was drawn to a new series on BBC1 called Getting On, starring Jo Brand. Now, Jo Brand, a former psychiatric nurse, is not everyone's cup of dribble, but this, and I was hoping it would be a one-off, is hilarious in its matter-of-fact, deadpan, smack-me-to-see-if-I-am-alive humour. (One-off because it is a jewel, the savour of which I do not want diluted.)

I love its unsentimental, yet contradictory affection, for those whose minds or bodies have given up the struggle.

We are all those who are portrayed, if not now at some point should health - a term to question- permits us. We will be the beneficiaries of the well-meaning patronisation or indifference of professional carers. Do not get yourselves in a knot about the issue. Laugh.

If you can, watch it.

Sue, who told me about this, told me of her mother, an East-End Londoner who found herself married to a country bumpkin sometime during/after the war ( Sue will correct me) and who had been a nurse.

At some point, when young, she, Sue's mum, and other young nurses had to deal with the body of a vastly overweight woman, who, for obvious reasons, had been laid on a waterbed during her final days.

The situation they faced was impossible. Everything wobbled, The harder they attempted to move the corpse, the stronger the waves. Needless to say, they collapsed in giggles. The image is delicious. It is an invitation for the alive and active in their declining years to put on weight if only to provide others with a laugh when dead. To reinforce their sense of living.

What better inscription on one's tombstone. Morose when alive: a giggle when dead.

This Stuff Called Writing

2010-07-31T17:54:00.004+01:00

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.   — Cormac McCarthy (quote courtsey of here)

I started as a writer at the age of twenty. My first assignment in my new career as an advertising copywriter was to write a leaflet for an ergodynamically designed hospital bed. The first thing I had to do was look up the word ergodynamic. Between brief and final setting, the leaflet took eighteen months, exactly the length of time of my stay at that particular agency. (It was not a wasted period; I met my wife to be there in a fringed leather mini-skirt and wearing a headband with a feather stuck in it. Don't ask.)

I had no confidence in my writing ability in those days. Nor in the following years. But such was the chorus of comments on my ability I came to believe I could write. A belief reinforced by the comments made on my essays while at university as a mature student.

So I can write. What does that mean?

First and foremost it means having the ability to read. Not just being able to read, but to absorb. I always read well beyond my age. At prep school I read all the Greek classics, maybe in dumbed down versions but I don't think so. I remember finding books aimed at my age group patronising and irrelevant, which is not to say I ignored Capt. W. E. Johns or Enid Blyton, but...

By my late teens, I had read most contemporary Catholic authors thanks to my Mum's library; writers like Waugh, Greene, Orwell [frustrated Catholic], Forster [wannabe frustrated Catholic], Hemingway [closet gay and thus frustrated Catholic], Lawerence [ditto], as well as the new wave authors, Lynne Reid Banks, Sillitoe, and other heretics who suffered from a lack of a Catholic upbringing. (Coincidentally, I was raised by Jesuits from the age of seven.)

So to write, you must read. But critically. And one's critical faculties should develop with age. It is not enough to say 'I thought this or that book was jolly good' when thirty. Less so when forty. And unforgivable when older. And to read critically is not an excuse to join the panel of Whose Line Is It Anyway and be scathingly witty - in your eyes if not in anyone else's - but to understand current trends in literature. To understand how and why the process of storey-telling has changed over the decades and so be in a position to make constructive comment. Otherwise when it comes to writing, you will only churn out a mess of words as nutritious as over-boiled cabbage. It might sell and, given the nervousness of the day, will sell. But you have to ask yourself, do you want to be remembered as the one who over-boiled the cabbage. Well, do you punk?

So to write, you must read and you must read critically. You must also write. Always the obvious statement, nonetheless true. Now I have known individuals who have met all the conditions as laid down and not been able to write. I don't mean they were incapable of stringing a sentence together, and in most cases their ability, in terms of spelling and grammar, was far superior to mine, but they could not for the life of them write.

I have pondered long and sleeplessly on this dilemma and have come to the conclusion they have never had to write on behalf of others. When forced to do so, you lose a sense of self; your concentration is on the words and the sense they convey on behalf of your sponsor. So, when it comes to writing for self, the discipline remains; in a sense you become your own sponsor and therefore are in a better position to write objectively.

Does this mean you have to write commercially to write successfully? Please, do I sound that dogmatically stupid? [Rebecca, Emily - shh!]

The issue is the degree to which you write self-consciously. The golden rule is, you cannot carry any sense of self when writing. Your job is to place words on the page in the most appropriate order. It is, or should be, as impersonal an exercise as stacking bricks. Yet, when you stack your bricks, remember to wear a rose stapled to your heart. Great writing also requires passion and the poetry to express it.

(Image courtesy of Nathan Sawaya)

The Immutiable Mixture of Sex & the Writer

2010-07-24T00:30:00.005+01:00

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.   — Cormac McCarth.

I started my career as a writer at the age of twenty. My first assignment in my new career as an advertising copywriter was to write a leaflet for an ergodynamically designed hospital bed. The first thing I had to do was look up the word ergodynamic. Between brief and final setting, the leaflet took eighteen months, exactly the length of time of my stay at that particular agency. (It was not a wasted period; I met my wife to be while there, Sue.)

I had no confidence in my writing ability in those days. Nor in the following years. But such was the chorus of comments on my ability I came to believe I could write. A belief reinforced by the comments made on my essays while at university as a mature student.

So I can write. What does that mean?

First and foremost it means having the ability to read. Not just being able to read, but to absorb. I always read well beyond my age. At prep school I read all the Greek classics, maybe in dumbed down versions but I don't think so. I remember finding books aimed at my age group patronising and irrelevant, which is not to say I ignored Capt. W. E. Johns or Enid Blyton, but...

By my late teens, I had read all the classics and most contemporary Catholic authors thanks to my Mum's library; writers like Waugh, Greene, Orwell [frustrated Catholic], Forster [wannabe frustrated Catholic], Hemingway [closet gay and thus frustrated Catholic], Lawerence [ditto], as well as the new wave authors, Lynne Reid Banks, Sillitoe, and other heretics who suffered from a lack of a Catholic upbringing. Coincidentally, I was raised by Jesuits from the age of seven.

So to write you must read. But critically, and one's critical faculties should develop with age; it is not enough to say 'I thought this or that book was jolly good' when thirty. Less so when forty. And unforgivable when older. And to read critically is not an excuse to join the panel of Whose Line Is It Anyway and be scathingly witty in your eyes, if not in anyone else's, but to understand current trends in literature. To understand how and why the process of storey-telling has changed over the decades and so be in a position to make constructive comment. Otherwise when it comes to writing, you will only churn out a mess of words as nutrious as overboiled cabbage. It might sell and, given the nervousness of the day, will sell. But you have to ask yourself, do you feel like being remembered as one who overboiled the cabbage. Well, do you punk?

So to write, you must read and you must read critically. You must also write. Always the obvious statement, nonetheless true. Now I have known individuals who have met all the conditions as laid down and not been able to write. I don't mean they were incapable of stringing a sentence together, and in most cases their ability, in terms of spelling and grammar, was far superior to mine, but they could not for the life of them write.

I have pondered long and sleeplessly on this dilemma and have come to the conclusion they have never had to write on behalf of others. When forced to do so, you lose a sense of self; your concentration is on the words and the sense they convey on behalf of your sponsor. So, when it comes to writing for self, the discipline remains; in a sense you become your own sponsor and therefore are in a better position to write objectively.

Does this mean you have to write commercially to write successfully? Please, do I sound that dogmatically stupid? [Rebecca, Emily - shut it!]

The issue is the degree to which you write self-consciously. The golden rule is you cannot carry any sense of self when writing. Your job is to place words on the page in the most appropriate order. It is, or should be, as impersonal an exercise as stacking bricks. You and the words on the page should be on speaking terms, obviously, but not sharing a bed. Sex is so messy in ths case.

And So To London Town

2010-07-20T11:02:00.009+01:00

I adjourned to London for the weekend. There, Rebecca and myself went to see the Alice Neel exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery on Saturday.

Neel is not an artist I know. Read the details of her bio on Wiki: briefly, she lost both her daughters, one to diphtheria, the other, Isabetta, to her Cuban husband who absconded with his daughter when he returned to his homeland. These personal tragedies inevitably resulted in Neel spending time in a psychiatric unit. Later, she had two boys by different fathers, the first to Jose Santiago, a singer, the second to Sam Brody, the Communist intellectual.

Neel was a communist sympathiser and associated with many of those on the left, an inclination hardened by the suffering she witnessed during the depression.

She was not a fashionable artist in that she followed contemporary trends in her homeland but was drawn more to the work taking place in Europe.

This exhibition concentrates on her portraits. Simple, bordering at times on caricature, they are thoughtful studies of her subjects and reveal more of her sitters than they might have wished, her study of Andy Warhol post the assassination attempt on his life being a case in point.

Also included in the exhibition are a number of cityscapes reminiscent of Edward Hooper's work in their sense of isolation; though, where Hooper concentrates on the psychological isolation of the individual, Neel focuses on the physical, as well as spiritual, alienation as an outcome of poverty and the depression.

In the evening, we, with friends of Rebecca, went to see Christopher Nolan's Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page among others.

Apparently there has been much noise heralding this film. Most of it as far as I was concerned was lost to the mew of gulls raiding the bins in Brighton. That said, whatever the hype, the film lives up to it. An intricate plot credible in its logic, faultless acting, seamless cinematography, everything slots into place. When I say everything, I do not include the cinema, Richmix on Bethnal Green Road. They should have issued us with jungle fatigues along with the tickets such was the heat and humidity in the packed auditorium.

The following day, I left Rebecca, who was going to the Grace Jones concert in Victoria Park, to make my way south to see Emily and the girls for a picnic in Morden Park. Several ducks and a shoal of fish have reported to the veterinary for extended stomachs due to a surfeit of bread.

(There was a moment of pure serendipity just before Rebecca and I parted company. We were having a coffee near Old Street tube station when I mentioned the fact the first person I knew from my circle to have made the move to East London was a friend from long ago, a former neighbour when we lived in Fulham, and work colleague, Rick Holmes. Almost on cue, Rebecca pointed over my shoulder and said, 'But there's Rick!' And so he was with son, Matthew. Rick has always had aspirations to be an author and over the years has had bits and pieces published, or so I believe. Now, I learn, he has finally completed his first novel, which is great news.)

Amy suffered a slight wobble the following day, Monday. Next school year, i.e. next term, she will be in Orange class - not Red, you understand, but Orange which is so unfair because her friend will be in Red while she'll be in Orange. I tried to point out the advantages of Orange, free tickets to the cinema on a Wednesday, but she would have nothing to do with my blatant distraction ploy and pretended she didn't understand what I was talking about.

The imminent dissolution of her physical association with her friend, however, was not the cause of the wobble. The cause of the wobble was meeting the new teacher, not just new as her form teacher, but new to the school, so a completely unknown entity. And teachers as unknown entities are frightening aliens when you are just five and a bit.

I called Emily to make sure Amy had not been eaten during the day and am happy to report she suffered not a nibble. I also have to report Katie was callously indifferent to her sister's trauma and glared in her normal manner throughout.

(For an alternative point of view regarding Inception read Mr. Palinode's pernicious piece. Warning: contains spoilers and may have been exposed to nuts.)

A Plethora of Books

2010-07-14T06:44:00.009+01:00

Of late I have been mostly reading.

In no particular order, I have read two novels by Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore and as mentioned before, Sputnik Sweetheart.

I picked up Murakami because one of the readers of my novel, yet to published, said it reminded him of his work. Hmm… if only.

Murakami is up there with Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee in my estimation. If you have never read him, do. Japan boasts two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Murakami deserves to be the third.

I have two other of his works lined up, Norwegian Wood and Dance Dance Dance.

Henning Mankell, creator of Kurt Wallander, has also commanded my attention and I've just completed three books in rapid succession: Sidetracked, The Fifth Woman and One Step Behind.

I caught the tail-end of an interview with Mankell by James Naughtie last week on Bookclub. (I am catching up with it as I write. So can you here.)

I find Mankell très sympa as an individual not least for his work in Mozambique. It is a quality which shines through his writing; the feeling that the author is genuinely concerned about and interested in people. (I also like the translations which occasionally strike one as clumsy in their use of English, but, having visited Sweden frequently over a period of years, they capture the intonation of the impeccable yet idiosyncratic Swedish style of English.)

I dare you to pick up a Wallander book and put it down without completing it. I would say they are perfect holiday reading if that didn't sound belittling of their quality and depth.

I have also been reading a lot of the later John le Carré novels, including The Constant Gardner and A Most Wanted Man. I am doing this for personal reasons that I will not expand on for the moment. All I will say is I find him hard work. He has always been awkward to a degree but it seems there was a time and place for what he had to say and the way in which he said it. Now he looks exposed and all that remains is the struggle with his language.

I have also bought two books which boast they have sold 2.5 million copies apiece, Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Markus Zusak's The Book Thief.

Barbery deserves her success. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a terrific read, learned, intelligent and witty - it helps I read phenomenology for my Masters but don't let that put you off. My only gripe is the ending. Unless I am missing something I found it a cop-out.

Zuzak's novel I abandoned after two chapters. It reads like a how to write your first novel with boxes complete with ticks visible on every page.

Finally three oddities: first, Coma by Alex Garland, he of The Beach fame. More a novella than a full novel, it is a brave and generally successful exercise that sets out to explore the boundaries of consciousness from the perspective of someone in a coma. (To add interest, it is illustrated by his father and political cartoonist, Nicholas Garland who I met many years ago.)

The second is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Jackson is not someone I have heard of. She was born in 1916 and died in 1965. To quote from the introduction by Jonathen Lethem, she 'is one of American fiction's impossible presences, too material to be called a phantom in literature's house, too in-print to be "rediscovered," yet hidden in plain sight'.

I am not a great fan of horror - though that may not be the best descriptor, spooky would be better - but I thoroughly enjoyed this. It is a simple story of two reclusive sisters living with an aged uncle in a grand house. But why do the locals hate them so?

Finally, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. If I explain the premise you will get the flavour: literary crime is on the increase, not puny acts of plagiarism but wholesale kidnapping of characters to be held for ransom, or the story gets wasted. Now Jane Eyre is missing.

At times Fforde's invention becomes too frantic but on the whole The Eyre Affair is good fun.

Like Bees To Honey encore pour de la bonne chance

2010-07-08T19:51:00.002+01:00

I have a new regime… sort of… it's getting there. I now swim in the Regent Swimming pool for thirty minutes in the morning. Suitably drained, I then cross the square to Brightons award winning Jubilee Library to stare at a blank spot hovering over my netbook for an hour and a half. It seems to be working. I have written nothing worthwhile for the past three days.

However, to the point. Today, while at the library, I picked up one of the few council generated leaflets I have seen of genuine interest. Appropiately enough given the current hysteria over Caroline's rave-reviewed novel, Like Bees to Honey, it concerns bees. (I particularly like Mia Falcon's illustration of a bee in the header.) Herewith:

Now bees are not annoying little metaphors for looking busy to be swotted with a rolled up newspaper, on the contrary, they play a vital role in the economy of this country, viz. this BBC report [I once got told off for misusing viz. and was so flabergasted I never heard the correct use of the aforementioned. Anyone know?]

Overleaf, it mentions the fact there are 24 species of bumblebee in the UK as opposed to the 44 species to be found in France. I only mention this because I think a couple of permaculturalists I know in Brittany should take note. It has nothing to do with the fact I like honey.

Sound Familiar?

2010-07-04T10:58:00.002+01:00

"My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about," she said. "Images, scenes, snatches of words… in my mind they're all glowing all alive. Write! they shout at me. A great new story is about to be born - I can feel it. It'll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere."

Haruki Murakami, Spuntik Sweetheart, p16

And Happy Independence Day to my US readers, if that is the correct salutation.

Some Waiters Recieve Tips. Not Me.

2010-06-20T10:09:00.004+01:00

I notice I have not revealed much of what is going on in my life over the past few months; however, it being Father's Day and I being a Father, though Fathers with a capital ef in my life walked endlessly long galleries, wore black robes with wings and the white halo of a reversed collar at their necks, and were of the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as Jesuits or, in the vulgar, as Jays, but it being Father's Day, as I was saying, I thought the time ripe to tell my loyal readers more, though why the one should prompt the other will remain a mystery there being no obvious link. And, while on the subject, it would in all probability be quicker for me to phone my loyal reader and tell them my news personally, unfortunately, I do not have their number.

(Anyone recognise the style of the opening? No? Hint: Radio Four is currently serialising his most famous works. Very well, I shall have to tell you. John le Carré. Isn't it obvious now you know?)

Actually, John le Carré is part of my news but not a part I am at liberty to reveal for reasons concerning which my fingers are still crossed and so refuse to type an account. There is much my fingers are refusing to type at the moment: like all extremities, they are most superstitious being, as they are, situated so far from Central Control and thus vulnerable to every rumour and snippet of gossip doing the rounds. Having being burnt several times, they now wisely keep their councils to themselves and refuse all instruction even from the most impeccable of sources.

In brief, I have been waiting. I still am waiting. Certain things I have been waiting for have materialised, like a sum of money I had forgotten about that means I have been able to jack in my job and stop bothering people on the phone in a professional capacity. The sum of money is not a fortune, but enough to tie me over for the immediate future; just enough, I hope, to take me to the next stage of which my fingers refuse to type.

I am waiting for another sum of money I also believe I am owed that would make all the difference longer term but which those who are holding pretend does not exist. They, the holders of this other sum, are standing in the middle of the room with their fingers in their ears and their eyes screwed tight, chanting, 'I can't see you. I can't hear you. You don't exist,' over and over. I have invested some of the first sum in a manufacturer of darts and am throwing examples of their produce at the chanters with increasing accuracy.

Bertrand Russell said, 'The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.' If this be the case a lot of magical things are going to get very bored waiting for me.

While waiting, I have mostly been celebrating birthdays. First, there was Amy's fifth, followed by Katie's second and finally ex-Sue's sixtieth (and still not a grey hair!).

Katie the Glare and Trainee Senior Manager of Being Severe

Amy the WAG and Trainee Film Premier Attendee & Star

Repetition in Like Bees To Honey

2010-06-15T09:40:00.007+01:00

For reasons too complicated to arrange in any sort of order, I received a free copy of Like Bees to Honey with the promise I would review it. For other reasons, wrinkled beyond repair, I have been slow on the uptake. Caroline’s book has already been well reviewed. Here are a few:

So rather than a straight review, this is more of a commentary – with no spoilers.

Like Bees to Honey is Caroline Smaile's fourth novel. It is an account of a journey as much figurative as literal. It describes how Nina comes to terms with the loss of her first-born, her son, Christopher. She travels to Malta, the island where she grew up, the island from which she feels ejected, rejected. Nina's guilt, her grief, is compounded by her feelings of isolation from her family, her father especially.

Caroline does not chose easy subjects, her first book and its sequel, In Search of Adam and Disraeli Avenue, deal with child abuse, and her second, Black Boxes, with depression. (As a consequence I have yet to read it, being occasionally too close to the topic for comfort.) But she handles her material with a deft hand, avoiding the glitter of cheap sentiment and any attempt to manipulate the emotions. You suffer no slap in the face, no hysterics. You are led gently into the depths of grief that Nina experiences with the use of wit, great invention and an idiosyncratic style.

Words like haunting, lyrical, effortless, stunning have all been employed to describe her work, with justification, but it is Caroline's style I want to comment on as it is singularly individual.

A significant example is her use of repetition. Repetition plays a central role in the human psyche and fascinates children, psychologists and philosophers alike.

Children (okay, I am extrapolating from a research sample of one, namely myself) will repeat a word or phrase over and over to the point where all that is left is the sound stripped of its associative meaning, a noise that sounds plainly ridiculous on its own. And in this context, it is relevant to point out our word barbarian derives from the Greek barbaros, itself based on bar-bar, a meaningless repetition the Greeks employed to mock the sound of foreign tongues.

Freud, a child on a large scale albeit too clever by half for his little cotton slips, ties himself in knots in Project for a Scientific Psychology, his earliest work, trying to explain the function of repetition in terms of memory. I shall not repeat his mistake and tie myself in knots attempting to unravel his pseudo-scientific explanations.

The 19^th century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, under the nom de plume, Constantin Constantius, wrote a work of fiction called Repetition. (Coincidently, while checking out if Like Bees to Honey was yet in stock in Waterstones, I came across a copy of Repetition and would have bought it but for the price. If only bookstores would desist from sticking prices on books, I would buy them all.)

This is the quote that prefaces the book:

‘Repetition and recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions, for what is recollection has been: it is repeated backward, whereas repetition properly so-called is recollected forward.’

Kierkegaard, with Hegel, is one of the fathers of existentialism and you can see this thought emerge in the split between the passivity of recollection and positivism of repetition. For Kierkegaard repetition is fundamental to his faith. Unlike the Catholic Church, against which Kierkegaard stood and in which he identifies the repetition of the Mass as a form of passive congregational recollection, the individual, for he believes the relationship with God is individual, must constantly renew his or her faith in “the power which posited it” through positive acts of individual repetition.

Finally, to demonstrate this obsession in defining the role of repetition is thoroughly contemporary, I quote Jacques Derrida from Spectres of Marx:

‘Repetition and first time, but also repetition and last time, since the singularity of any first time makes of it also a last time.’

Despite the apparent randomness of these references, they can all be applied in one way or another to Like Bees to Honey.

The mother of the child, the one who goes back to Malta to find the direction forward in her life, is the child of the novel. She searches out her mother for forgiveness, for comfort, for reassurance.

the heels of my boots clip clap

~cl -ip

~cl -ap

~cl -ip

~cl -ap

There is a therapist, a most unlikely therapist, but one who listens to her, who guides without leading, one who asks difficult questions of her.

Jesus [the unlikely therapist]: Good, then I'll tell you how St Thomas Aquinas was a saintly man who asked the very question that I know you are seeking answers for, Nina.

There is the smell of incense everywhere, Malta is a Catholic country, and like all lapsed Catholics the mother is but a Catholic who has yet to find the certainty of answers.

St Paul's Church looms in front of me […]

I stand on the pavement, in front of, before the limestone building. I curse St Paul

'You've fucked up too many lives,' I whisper.

There is also the barrier of the language, Malti, to quote, ‘a Semitic language, filled with borrowings from Italian, Arabic and English’, a very foreign language, and one that needs constant repetition if we are to understand. (Though Caroline omits how we are supposed to pronounce the words.)

Wienħed, tnejn, tlieta, erbgħa, ħamsa

~one, two, three, four, five

Finally, there is the repeated endearment of Nina’s mother – qalbi: my heart – repeated regular as a heartbeat with every beat resonating for a first time and a last time to a different tune, its meaning subtly altered by the circumstances in which it is uttered.

Repetition can be threatening, instructive, loving, or indicative of boredom, frustration or emphasis. It can also be irritating but such is Caroline’s deft touch it rarely, if ever, proves so, and when it does it is only to draw your attention to her use of repetition and cause you to think on her reasons.

I haven't forgotten, But Someone Has

2010-05-19T20:24:00.004+01:00

A major triumph. I have remembered the London launch of Caroline Smaile's Like Bees to Honey. The location and the time. And this time I will make it to the reading. (Promise, Caroline.)

I am burnishing my nails as I write, no mean feat when I usually employ two hands to type.

However, someone has dropped a brick somewhere, contaminating atmosphere and blackening the sun.

I have been invited to take part in the book tour, publishing one of the chapters of the book here. A great honour. Today I received an email from someone who will remain nameless to save unnnecessay global warming, but who works at Caroline's publishers, The Friday Project, Harper Collins, asking me if I have had had difficulty downloading/embedding the chapter.

This is the first communication I have had since accepting the invitation back in March. And the tour, I am informed, starts tomorrow.

Thursday, 20th May

Someone really has forgotten. This unique experiement in online publishing has started without me *sob*. But I don't want my tears spoil the party. I shall just go and blow my nose in the corner. You can either go direct to Caroline Smailes for the full spec.

Or read Like Bees to Honey here, here, here and, oh, here here and here, not missing there:

Chapter 1: Chasing Sheep Chapter 2: Helen Redfern Chapter 3: My New Notebook Chapter 4: Jon Mayhew Chapter 5: L-Plate Author Chapter 6: Jamieson Wolf Chapter 7: Rowan Coleman Chapter 8: Live. Love. Learn. Write. Chapter 9: Dave Roberts Books Chapter 10: Nik's Blog Chapter 11: Fiction Is Stranger Than Fact Chapter 12: Kelly Railton Chapter 13: Megan Taylor Chapter 14: BubbleCow Chapter 15: Fluttering Butterflies Chapter 16: debs-daydreams in the shed Chapter 17: Matt Hill Chapter 18: Writing about writing Chapter 19: Not Only In Thailand Chapter 20: Password Incorrect Chapter 21: The trouser Press Chapter 22: Angie's Write Chapter 23: Just Keep Writing and Other Thoughts Chapter 24: Tea Stains Chapter 25: Chez Aspie Chapter 26: Planting Words Chapter 27: Being Lucy Diamond Chapter 28: Reallygood Thinking Chapter 29: Gemma Burgess Chapter 30: Sarah's Writing Journal Chapter 1 (and yes, it's a different one): Wordy Blog

Postscript Numero Duo

The person who must not be named has sent me effusive apologies. (Isn't it interesting that effusive and effluent share the same etymology? No? Perhaps it's me.) Apart from the apologies, he has also offered to send me a copy of Like Bees to Honey. How sweet! And how lucky am I!

Less is More or Less

2010-05-13T11:54:00.001+01:00

"Dear brethren, I am reminded of the story of the child who never spoke. It is an apocryphal story no doubt, but nonetheless contains a moral, especially for those among us who feel moved to blog.

This child of which I speak was in every other respect perfectly healthily. There was no apparent physiological reason for its failure to communicate. Naturally, its loving parents were driven to distraction by it silence. And what parent among us would not be? Of course, some might imagine such an offspring to be a blessing and wish all children to be so afflicted, but these are wicked thoughts.

As I say, these good people were at their wits' end. They had exhausted every possibility; tried every potion and remedy; visited every expert and every quack to deliver up their child to the ministrations of shamen and witchdoctors, necromancers and wizards, consultants and mime artists, all without result.

Finally, word reached them of an eminent Harley Street child psychologist who, if the rumours were to be believed, could work miracles with the young. He was their last hope. So, emptying their bank balance, they booked an appointment.

On the day, they and their child were ushered into the presence of the illustrious man who was bent over his desk in study. Without looking up he beckoned them in. They stood nervously in a family group before him until he, raising his head, demanded the parents leave. With all their savings at stake, and more, the parents were disgruntled to say the least, but leave they did.

The psychologist indicated to the mute child, now aged seven, to be seated. The child sat. The eminent psychologist returned to his work and for some minutes they remained thus in silence until the psychologist asked, 'Tell me, why have you never spoken before?'

'Because I never thought I had anything worth saying," replied the child.'

Creative Writing Course: Lesson Three

2010-03-29T18:38:00.004+01:00

Routine, Routine, Routine

By deliberately failing to follow-up on the promise made in my last lesson to write on this topic, I have illustrated the importance of the subject. (This declaration both encapsulates the proposition and its demonstration. How mathematically neat is that?)

A routine should not be confused with a rut.

Ruts are things you get stuck in that take you away from what you want to do. (I vaguely remember reading/hearing an account that on certain cross-country routes in South Africa - or was it East Anglia? I forget - the ruts in the road were so deep, drivers had to be cautious of the ones they selected or they would end up in Dar-es-Salaam when aiming for Johannesburg.) And it simply does not do to set out to write the Great Romantic Novel and end up writing endless lists of Things To Be Done none of which ever Get Done. For Getting Things Done is the objective of a helpful, healthy, low-fat routine.

Trollope, the elder, of the Borechester novels fame, who died exactly 64 years and 360 days before I was born, wrote religiously for two hours every morning before going to work. If he finished one novel with five minutes to go, he would set out a fresh sheet and begin the next. (He worked for the General Post Office, as did Henry Miller, though I am not sure if the Post Office in New York is of the same rank or lower, before he moved to Western Union during which time he wrote his first novel - Moloch or, This Gentile World. Miller had his own routine. He would adjourn to his local library to learn a new word each day that he would then employ in his current writing, opus, scribblings, composition.)

I discovered the awful truth about writing and routine when I interviewed Brighton author, Sebastian Beaumont, for a local rag. He insisted the only way to write was *gasp* to write *double gasp* regularly. I instantly dismissed this outrageous sentiment as I had seen a programme on Lord Archer of "Never Knowingly Told the Truth" infamy in which he advocated the same and, having read one of his books, the first, I assumed his inability to string two words together without creating a cliché was due to his unfortunate habit of writing at a set time each day with the same regularity that he sat on the pot. (Indeed, judging by the results, it would not surprise me to learn he completed both tasks simultaneously.)

Now, as implied earlier, a routine can appear as unappetising as a diet; a lot of chewing for little reward. And the truth is, to begin with, the unaccustomed exercise can cause severe cramp. But give it time. Even if you sit in front of your pad or screen itching to write Polish the Front Step, Beat the Carpets, Buy Flowers, Make a Window in Diary for Mother-in-Law, Make Father-in-Law a Widower, Book Cortège … and do nothing for the first few days you will be on the way to establishing a Routine.

Of course, it is helpful if you write something; however, if completely stuck as to whether the hero should be tall, dark and handsome, or short, fat and blonde, follow the advice of Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, and scribble anything that comes into your head with the promise that you will never read it again. Ideally, scribble 500 words each day.

It is surprisingly cathartic for a number of reasons. First, lots of stuff you have carefully stored in the trunk in the attic marked Never To Be Opened will spill out. It will spill out because you know there is no audience for what you write – it is never to be read, not even by you – so it is safe. There is no need to concern yourself about style, grammar, spelling or any other mistress who peers over your shoulder when you engage in Proper Grown-up Writing. You are writing and gradually writing will not be so foreign an activity. Of greater importance, you will have established a routine. And for once a routine is like a rut, once set it is hard to crack.

(If you persist with Cameron’s exercise, you will read what you have written but some months later, not to critique the content but recognise your voice.)

The next lesson, An Economy of Words, will lift the lid on the short story to determine which engine most efficiently converts the fuel of the imagination into motivating prose without producing redundant and over-engineered metaphors and so save the planet.

[You will note I have discovered the Joy of Capitalising Initial Letters for no apparent reason. Call me mad, but I'm just crazy that way.]

Come On, Girls, Let's Say it...

2010-03-10T23:05:00.003Z

BRIGHTON PROMETTES

because you're worth it. But, let's face it, you're not half the value your grandmothers were.

Creative Writing Course: Lesson Two

2010-02-27T20:52:00.002Z

Despair and Feelings of Total Uselessness

There is nothing more terrifying for a writer than to face the white expanse of a virgin page.

It brings home how alone you are. How terribly, terribly alone.

Which way to turn? Whatever direction you choose is a desecration. Does it not feel a sin to mark the terrain with your pointless remarks? Who are you to record such stuff? Who will be interested in reading your trite observations?

In this bleak landscape, it is easy to mistake the whistle of the wind under the door for the sound distant laughter. (Ignore the fact that, frequently, it is the sound of distant laughter and not the wind under the door.)

The point is to be positive. You may feel completely useless; in truth, you may be completely useless, and, let's face it, most wannabe writers are completely useless. But don't let that get you down. Remember the top half of the best seller list is filled by celebs who find it difficult to articulate their glottal stops, let alone spell them.

A trick I find very useful in dealing with the mocking behaviour of a blank piece of paper is to put it firmly in its place by scribbling my acceptance speech for the Man Booker Prize all over it.

It is never too early to write your acceptance speech. Indeed, I believe it portrays a healthy attitude to write it well before you have written the book. Nothing is more embarrassing than arriving at the plinth ill-prepared – ask Gwyneth Paltrow.

Having written several acceptance speeches in my time - in truth, it is all I have ever written - allow me to pass on the lessons learnt.

Humour: do not confuse accepting an award with being a stand-up comic. It is best to confine your wit to a few self-deprecatory remarks. (Do avoid making any such comments about your ability to write in case the audience agrees with you.)

Erudition: it helps; however, it would be a brave individual to follow in the footsteps of John Berger who, on winning in 1972, questioned the whole notion of the Booker Prize. To quote: “Since you have awarded me this prize, you may like to know, briefly, what it means to me. The competitiveness of prizes I find distasteful.” Disingenuous of him, I say.

Modesty: don't overdo it. Only politicians sincerely believe in modesty in much the same way they most sincerely believe they are mere representatives of their constituents, and genuinely sincerely believe they have been appointed by Divine Right.

On the other hand, it is unseemly to blow raspberries at your competitors as you weave your way through to the podium.

Finally we come to the issue of thanks. Who to thank? There are the obvious candidates – your agent, your publisher, your partner, your children (if applicable), your parents, your grandparents, your grandchildren (if applicable), your pets, your best friend, the partner of your best friend, Microsoft, Apple (choose manufacturer of your computer), all your friends on FaceBook, everyone who follows you on Twitter – you can see how rapidly the list grows out of control.

The solution is surprisingly simple. Just prepare a group message of thanks to everyone relevant and text them once you arrive at that point in your speech. If nothing else, it will prove entertaining as twenty mobile phones go off simultaneously in the room.

Lesson Three is entitled Routine, Routine, Routine. It will demonstrate how easy it is to get to handle the boring bits involved in writing a bestseller, namely the writing bit.

Creative Writing Course: Lesson One

2010-02-15T21:48:00.003Z

Right, pay attention in the back. Now, as my dedicated readers will know, I have mooted I would be running a creative writing course. And, despite the confusion posed by the absence of tobacco and alcohol, I have managed to put together my first lesson plan.

Lesson One: Getting Started

It is most important for the wannabe writer to settle somewhere quiet, free from all distractions.

If, as you settle yourself, you have a nagging feeling there is something you have forgotten to do, start by making a list of all the chores you have avoided over the last six months.

Now is as good a time as any to get them done.

I find polishing silver very conducive to the creative process. You may find black-leading the fireplace, polishing the doorstep, or washing the skylight equally as stimulating.

After such strenuous efforts a light meal is necessary. After the light meal, forty winks.

This process may take time. Two to three weeks is not unusual. The trick is to try and complete your tasks within the month or you will find the silver needs polishing again, the fireplace re-leading, the doorstep polishing, et cetera.

So finally, you are at your desk without a care in the world. Turn on your computer and spend a few minutes getting yourself in the mood by checking the blogs of all those fellow writers you follow.

The Readers Digest is so right; it does pay to increase your word power. Today, for instance, I discovered the word 'conniption' thanks to this post from Scott. According to Chambers, it is 'a fit of hysterical excitement or rage. [Origin unknown]'.

Don't you love 'origin unknown' in definitions. It's a challenge. The Online Etymology Dictionary posits a couple of thoughts for conniption's ancestry: '1833, Amer.Eng., origin uncertain; perhaps related to corruption, which was used in a sense of "anger" from 1799, or from Eng. dialectal canapshus "ill-tempered, captious," probably a corruption of captious'.

The Podictionary points to the first person on record to having a conniption fit as being one Aunt Keziah:

'The reason Aunt Keziah had a conniption fit was that back in the early 1800s the entire population of the town of Downingville in New England had prepared for a visit by President Andrew Jackson.'

[If President George W. Bush had claimed to be suffering from conniption, meaning he was constipated, would we have been surprised? Doubtlessly, we would all have been hysterical, but he had that effect on most of us, most of the time.]

It is now probably too late to think of writing, so make yourself a warm, milky drink, turn down the bedspread, place a notepad and pencil by the alarm and go to sleep.

Lesson Two will concentrate on the next stage of the creative process: Despair and Feelings of Total Uselessness.

That Was January That Was

2010-02-14T12:30:00.003Z

January has been a strange month. It appears my ability to concentrate has taken a holiday. Focus is a better word. My ability to concentrate is dissipated across a spectrum of associated subjects every time I attempt to focus on the one. Even writing this, I am thinking whether anyone is really interested in a diary entry; if so how to deliver it; to what extent that consideration, the awareness that what I write here will be read by others qualifies the text as a diary entry; whether life is 'the luminous envelope' as described by Virginia Woolf, 'surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end' and how I could translate that idea here in a style both contemporary and relevant.

(If you wonder why such thoughts should trespass, there are reasons. Indeed, my head is full of philosophy at the moment.)

January has been an empty month filled with intent drained off action. I overflow with promise. My conversations are filled with plans and all have received cross-party support. Despite that, I have failed to submit even an outline proposal to the planning sub-committee. And time is limited. Deadlines draw close. Elections loom.

I know I am being cryptic but superstition catches my tongue – I do not want to talk of my ambitions for fear they will be extinguished faster than a fireman's illicit fag.

For all its snow, January was not the cruellest of months. I was prepared for the blizzards. As I last posted. I knew I would be negotiating foreign terrain and with each day it becomes more familiar. Moreover, I have not stumbled. The absence of tobacco has not been missed. (A tremulous boast whispered through crossed fingers.) My strategies seem to be working.

The absence of alcohol has displayed different characteristics.

There is so much theatre, such ceremony, so many words involved in the pouring and downing of a glass of wine or pint of beer, its absence leaves a real gap. Not only are you, the novice teetotaller, unsure how to behave at the moment the sun crosses the yardarm, neither are your friends. It is like attending a mass where the celebrant has forgotten the order of service.

This is the social issue for which I have yet to devise the means to make all comfortable.

Postscript

Lane has just written of the difficulties of concentration for the new non-smoker here, so I am not the only… what was I talking about?

On Becoming a Non-Smoker

2010-01-18T23:34:00.007Z

Stuart, the permaculturalist, phoned over the weekend and noted I hadn't posted recently, I explained it had much to do with my resolutions.

For those who have never smoked, and those who wish to stop, quitting the habit requires you having to play subtle psychological tricks with yourself, the first of which is never to admit the fact you have quit.

If you regard yourself as someone who has given up smoking, then life becomes a constant battle against starting again. You are someone who is sacrificing something. Instead it is necessary to think of yourself as someone who does not smoke. Someone who does not smoke does not associate feelings of agitation with the lack of a cigarette between their fingers. They deal with the problem differently.

So, if you know someone who has stopped, never ever ask how it's going. Do not remind them they have quit smoking, that they are ex-smokers. Allow them, in their own time and if they so wish, to talk to you from a place that they define.

If they confess they have had a relapse, make no comment. Any comment, whether encouraging or consoling, is a form of judgment and is not needed unless actively sought. Nicotine is a serious drug, more addictive than any other according to a government advisor on drug misuse with whom I worked back in the eighties.

For those trying to kick the habit, you will know when the time comes to stop. It is a question of boxing yourself into a place where it becomes inevitable. And when you find that spot, you will find it simple to quit. Indeed, as Rebecca, who has also stopped [YEAH!], mentioned, the danger is you begin to believe, if it is that easy to stop, having the occasional cigarette won't matter. Believe me it will. Just remember the years it took you to reach the frame of mind where it became easy to stop.

I started smoking after a year free of the habit at four o'clock in the morning during an end-of-finals party here in Brighton. One fag wouldn't matter, I thought. It will only be the one. Ten years later I have finally managed to get back to where I was. At four o'clock in the morning I forgot I was a non-smoker and became someone who had stopped smoking.

Let me talk you through the process of what happens when you stop.

The first day is actually quite pleasant; least I found it so. You float around slightly abstracted like you have been administered a pre-op. Most of the physical effects you experience are as a result of your blood being cleared of carbon monoxide, which results in the capillaries opening up. So your fingers and toes feel warm, your eyes like they are letting in too much light, your appetite increases, and your chest feels as if it is over-dosing on oxygen - the reason why you give out great sighs every so often. [This may not be a correct medical analysis, but it is my explanation for the symptoms.]

Nicotine, one of the most poisonous and addictive of substances, causes cerebral changes - and not all for the bad.

According to the abstract of a report produced by the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center:

'Nicotine acts on a novel nicotinic receptor complex, identified by the Columbia group, that is strategically located at the sites of communication between neurons in the brain. At very low concentrations, nicotine activates the receptor and causes the neuron to release more neurotransmitter. The result is a much stronger signal. The researchers believe that nicotine's ability to strengthen signals between neurons may account for the complex behavioral effects of nicotine such as increased alertness and improved short-term memory.' *

So sudden withdrawal of nicotine causes a certain amount of confusion, to put it mildly, with one's emotions and brain patterns.

It takes a couple of weeks of dithering, of not being able to sit still or concentrate on anything for longer then 3.472 seconds, before life calms down again. If you want to quit, be prepared for this and accept it - not as a consequence of giving up smoking, otherwise the only cure is to resort to smoking again - but in the same way you accept different cultural norms when abroad because you are, indeed, in another country.

In Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking, which I haven't read but Rebecca has, he talks of being clean of nicotine in a matter of days but of being sullied by custom and associated habit for weeks.

I offer a personal instance; at work we have a fifteen-minute break mid-way through each shift, during which I would join the smokers outside. As I have posted elsewhere, I enjoyed those moments of polluting the fresh air with smoke as smokers are a garrulous lot.

Now I find myself stuck.

I don't want to join the smokers a) because I am a non-smoker, and b) because, though most smokers want to quit, they dislike it when someone breaks ranks as it highlights their failure. As a result, albeit unconsciously, they will undermine the individual's resolution in the hopes he or she will return to the fold and so confirm their belief that quitting is impossible.

"Never mind, chum, you gave it a good go. Have a cigarette."

If you are a non-smoker it is better to avoid former mates who smoke, at least for a good period. It does mean you have to create new routines of behaviour, and new reward systems. I find peanuts work. Peanuts and chocolate. I am now a 100 grams-a-day peanut man rounded off with a bar of Toblerone. (And I am becoming rounded too.)

One of the most noticeable symptons for those around a former smoker is their apparent grumpiness.

As I understand this, it is because nicotine dampens portals to the oldest parts of the brain that govern elemental emotions; when suddenly free of this control your emotions pop like firecrackers. You recognise you are behaving like a child, getting wildly over-excited by the most trivial events or discussions, but there is little you can do to manage it. It takes time.

It takes exercise. Endorphin rushes are a good replacement therapy, as well as a less-fattening reward system than peanuts and chocolate. (Though not as tasty.)

*http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol21/vol21_iss4/record2104.14.html

Things Change. Get Over It.

2010-01-01T12:13:00.002Z

A New Year, not a new decade as so many mistakenly believe - that don't start until next year. [For the mathematically challenged, you don't start counting to ten with a zero but a one: the zero marks the ten.]

So, after the pedagogical interlude, it is a time for reflection of what has past and will come.

I have achieved a number of things I can be reasonably pleased with over the last few months.

I have finished my first novel; it has been compared to the works of Haruki Murakami of Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore fame by my ex-editor. I'll take that as a yes then.

(This image is by Nick Kahn & Richard Selesnick, the former being a cousin of my daughters on their mother's side. If the birds were gulls, it would make a wholly appropriate image for the front cover of my book.)

I have yet to find an agent or publisher but blame myself for lack of effort. I sent it to three agents and received a standard rejection from the first, an encouraging refusal from the second and a dunno from the third.

Resolution number one is to end the year with the book published, or on the way to being published.

I have put the book one behind me and being getting on with book two. I am not sure of its merits but it means I have been writing. Indeed, over Christmas, in between the Duck à l'Orange and ducking to avoid the food flying from young Katie's plate, I finished a short story, The Waiting Room, which has received critical acclaim from those who have read it. (What does one do with short stories these days? I have been accumulating them and know not what to do with them.)

Resolution number two is to write regularly every day with a target of 1,000 words, though I will not beat myself up if I fall short occasionally.

Alcohol still haunts my glass; however, in this past year I made the effort to see my doctor to discuss the problem. That in itself is a small triumph. She is a wonderful woman, non-judgmental, patient, and happy to take the time to listen to me without lecturing me on the dangers, of which I am all too well aware.

Resolution number three is abstinence.

Day by day. It will not be easy but the positives are I will more likely achieve my target of 1,000 words a day; [Question: what is snot? Answer: one of a child's five-a-day, courtesy of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.] I will feel less useless, a contributing factor, I'm sure, to my bouts of depression; I will have more energy, the danger of which is I will become manic, not in a homicidal way, but enough to annoy all around me more than they have grown accustomed to. (Watch out, Emily, Rebecca, Sue & Sue.)

Resolution number four is to quit smoking.

As after this packet of cigarettes lying on the desk beside me. Rebecca and Danny, Emily's partner, have also resolved to quit the habit, so between us we should manage. I have done it before and can do it again. Besides, smoking encourages drink, drink encourages smoking.

Resolution number five is to get out of the mind numbing, expletive, expletive job I am doing.

I have a plan. It WILL work.

To all who are kind enough to read my posts, Happy New Year xxx.

At some point during the year, I mean to re-vamp this site and switch to WordPress to make it cleaner and less time-consuming to open.

Books & Christmas

2009-12-19T13:44:00.009Z

I have been mostly reading recently. All good stuff.

First Paul Auster: he is my kind of author, engaging, intelligent, enquiring and playful.

I have read his The New York Trilogy and The Book of Illusions.

The New York Trilogy starts with City of Glass in which a writer, Daniel Quinn, once a promising poet, now a hack writing under a nom du plume, has successfully created a popular crime fiction character. Quinn, who has all but lost a sense of self, identifies most strongly with the detective, the creation of his alter ego. Quinn's isolation is disturbed when he receives urgent calls that insist he is Paul Auster, private investigator. And so the road to madness is laid.

I have to admit I giggled as I read the beautifully witty way in which Auster, the author, unapologetically announces his intent: 'I,' he says, 'am going to play around with notions of identity. Yours as reader, mine as author.' [My quote.]

The second in the trilogy, Ghosts, scrubs all notion of personal identity by referring to individuals purely by colour, as Quentin Tarantino does in Reservoir Dogs. (I presume much comment must already exist as to whether or not Tarantino appropriated the idea from Auster.) The plot could not be simpler, one anonymous individual is commissioned by another anonymous individual to watch a third. Echoes of events that occur in City of Glass are faintly heard but their source is hard to pinpoint.

The final is The Locked Room, a reference to those mysteries where the victim is found dead in a room locked from the inside. In this context, it refers to the relationship of the reader and the text. Who is locked in, the reader to the text, the text to the reader? The plot follows the moral dilemma of a reasonably successful writer who becomes the literary executor of the as yet unpublished work of an old school friend, Fanshawe, an exceptional author, someone who has long vanished and is presumed dead. The writer identifies so strongly with his former friend, he marries his former wife and adopts his child as his own - he even allows the rumour that he is the author of Fanshawe's work to float unchallenged.

Fanshawe re-emerges - he is not dead - and asserts that he had long planned for his friend to follow the route he has taken. In this work, Auster rides his usual hobbyhorse of identity but spurs it with his other interest, one that examines the issue of coincidence. How are we to read coincidence? In the novel, coincidence is a useful device to move the story on; in life we apportion it a worth beyond its value - or do we? Is it another straw we grasp at to make sense of the senseless? Dependent on our view is how we deploy it in our writing.

Auster, to my mind, like Coetzee, and Hemingway or Camus of an earlier era, is a bare-bones writer. He explores the issues in the best fictive manner; one that is stripped of hyperbole; of over-manipulation of emotion through misuse of adjective, adverb, metaphor or simile; he treats the reader as an intelligent subject of an on-going debate through the medium of an engaging story.

Under strict instructions of Nicola Morgan, I bought Stephen King's On Writing. I am not one to buy do-it-yourself books. Ninety-nine point nine percent are crap. If you cannot work it out for yourself you do not have the interest, so save your money.

On Writing is the point nought point one percent.

I have never read Stephen King. He writes of stuff of which I am not interested. That said, I have watched many of the films that have spun off from his work - mostly because I admire the directors.

I was not immediately impressed by On Writing. King writes, at least here, in a folksy manner that annoys me intensely. It is a particular nuance of American writing, one that traces its attitude back to Mark Twain, another author I rejected at a young age for assuming, through its avuncular style, that we are all one big, happy family based on chummy Christian values. Bollocks, I say.

To be contrary, King's style allows you to skip through the first half of the book, a percentage devoted to the reasons why he chose to write - am I interested, no. It is a form of self-abuse where he, on the basis of his huge success, tells us how he managed an orgasm. Of more interest, would be an account of how he had failed. Of course, there are many writers who have failed; but who hears of them? The famous exception is John Kennedy Toole, who, sadly, killed himself because of his failure to get his work, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. With his mother's graft, it went on to win the Pulizer Prize for Literature after his demise. His drive I would be interested in.

The second half, King devotes to what he has learnt, or, for US readers, learned. This is interesting. Not that, if you happen to be someone who has written for years, you will learn much, but because it affirms what you have learnt/learned. Either way, it crystallises your thoughts. You are not alone in this strange business of ascribing words to page.

Stieg Larsson: I have just finished reading the first two in his Millenium Trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

The first is so much better than the second.

Both are designed to be block-busters, but in Dragon Tattoo, Larsson concentrates on the story, one, which of its genre, is full of twists and turns and wholly page-turning.

In the second, Larsson resorts to the tricks of the genre to such a degree that they become interfering; the backstory of every minor character is spelt out over pages to pad out the novel. It is clumsy, which is not to say the plot itself is not engaging. However, I shall not read the final of the trilogy. It has had mixed reviews and Rebecca, my daughter and doma matrix of book reviewers, tongue-lashed it.

In between, I have been reading various anthologies of short stories. I am writing - sounds too positive - have been writing a story that I know is good, but can I write it? No. It WILL happen.

Love and Happy Christmas to all my subscribers.

You can each, individually, win $1billion if you can identify the bank and code in Switzerland of my personal account and secretly transfer the monies to your PayPal account.

Offer open only to those over eighteen. People who are very clever at maths are ineligible. Those who have a weakness for red wine may suffer from a lack of concentration. Anyone who tries to seduce the judges will be looked at again, provided they are a) female b) hopelessly sex-obsessed. Entries from MPs and MEPs will be closely examined for flaws in their personal accounting systems - though we will accept it perfectly reasonable to claim £23,000 p.a. to feed the squirrels. Published authors are not eligible on grounds of total envy. Any agent who offers a contract, no matter how corrupt, bankrupting or feeble, will immediately be granted the code. The cost of posting this missive was half my brain; however, we do expect it to raise several brain cells in the interests of the Labour Government over the next decade.

Writing Right. Right?

2009-12-04T10:00:00.000Z

I plan to run a creative writing course in the New Year.

It's a bold step for one who is, as yet, unpublished but one I am looking forward to. I already have five people who are interested in joining. And having given the idea much thought, I am reasonably confident I can make a success of it.

My intention is to run it much like a seminar as I expect to learn as much as anyone who attends. The plan is to split the sessions, an hour and a half to two hours long, into three parts.

The first third will concentrate on the development of literature for the reason I believe it important a writer knows the place from which s/he is writing, historically and philosophically. So we will discuss a given text to determine what the attitudes of the period were and what the author believed was then possible to achieve in their writing. Thus we will move from the omnipotent narrator through modernism to post-modernism and on to contemporary genres of writing.

The second third will focus on their own writing. Each week I will set a technical exercise on some aspect of writing, which we will have discussed in the last third of the previous week's seminar. I will be attempting to stretch their understanding of how they can create different effects with words. Later we will look at all the components that make a good story; openings, conflict, rhythm, structure, et cetera.

It is a little loose at the moment but I have yet to work through the detail of the complete course. I also want to be flexible and allow them to dictate - to a degree - how the course develops.

I was going to blog of this later; however, I was prompted to write of it now by Nicola Morgan's post on The Really Very Simple Theory of Being Published; more specifically by her mention of Stephen King's On Writing, a book I have been looking for and have finally been forced to buy from Amazon (which annoys me given the percentage they take and the threat they represent to independent book shops).

News Round

2009-12-02T08:30:00.003Z

Let me begin by clarifying my earlier response to Lethe in his post, On Genius:

At heart, my argument is language is not transparent as in a glass doorway that opens directly to the thinking or feeling of the speaker. If it were, lawyers would be out of a job as there would be no debate over meaning.

One consequence is the transcendent, in other words, any value that can be described as belonging to us all, an absolute truth for instance, is compromised immediately one tries to define it. We necessarily can only talk of it from a time and place and, therefore, from a set of attitudes and assumptions that, for the most part, remain hidden from us. We are not gods and cannot take a god-like view of our world. We may feel we share common feelings, like love and a love of beauty, but to assert directly such feelings are common is beyond our scope; or, more accurately, beyond the scope of language.

So, my main criticism is the encompassing 'we' with which you make your observations of what appeals to you, in the singular. Yes, I may nod my head in recognition of your appreciation of a particular work of art; but, no, I shake my head when you infer there is 'a higher state of mind', some transcendental, Olympian viewpoint from where we can sit in common agreement of what constitutes beauty.

I hope, given I am forced to use words, that makes my position clear.

Irrelevancy

(I am listening to Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps while writing this, and Hannay has just confessed, "I did some savage thinking." Savage thinking! Deconstruct that.)

My Future is Being Charted

I have a plan, a plan so cunning Baldrick would lay claim to it as one of his own. The first part of the plan must needs be remain cloaked in mystery; however, if it succeeds it will mean I need not work for the next nine/twelve months while I research my next book. (The plan does not have to remain hidden in the Chenille weave of mystery but I do not wish to tempt fate by exposing it at such an early stage.)

The second part of my future lies at a university, yet to be determined. I have decided to read for an MA or DPhil in Creative Writing. My preference is for the doctorate as I would then be Dr. D R O'Connor Thompson and I believe the Thompson Twins had a hit with Doctor Doctor - it could become my anthem. (Besides, I have an MA and, looking at what is on offer, I would be repeating much of what I have learnt.) This second part is dependent on funding though I am so poor at present I doubt I would notice the difference.

Book, Thursday To Thursday

On the subject of impecuniousness, I am frustrated by the fact I can do nothing with my novel at the moment. Most agents demand you send a s.a.e. with your submission and I cannot afford to do so. I can barely afford the postage to send the ms in the first place.

Indeed, the more I look at the world of publishing, the more it appears there is an assumption that you must be an individual of means to attend the party. I am happy to earn little from my scribblings, that is my fault for choosing to write the material I do; however, to get a foot in the door, to attend conferences, to submit material requires an income over subsistence, one I do not possess because I prefer to write rather than do more hours at the mindless work I do, the only sort a person of my age can find.

Gripe over.

And In Case…

you thought from my previous post I was the ugliest baby a mother ever had to suffer, I confuse you with pictures of me mere months later. All together now, a heartfelt ahhh!

PS Today is my birthday.

Closet Reading - Closet Portrait.

2009-11-29T16:57:00.002Z

I received a copy of Closet Reading: 500 Years of Humour on the Loo by Phil Norman from Scott Pack of The Friday Project.

"Quite interesting for anyone who's interested in this sort of thing," is flagged on the front cover, a comment made by John Lloyd, creator of QI.

Quite interesting is a fair summary; though, were the title a headline for an advertisement, it could justifiably be taken to the Advertising Standards Authority for not living up to the standards of being legal, decent, honest and truthful. Or, if it does, it does so only by the squeak of its varnished dust jacket.

The book is heavily weighted towards the wit and wisdom of the post-war period. The early centuries, from a mention of Boccaccio's Decameron (1353) to the emergence of Grubb Street at the start of the seventeenth century are run through in 25 pages; the following 38 pages bring us to the start of the nineteenth century; and, of the remainder, 139 pages are devoted to the post-war period.

It is quite interesting. It could have been a lot more interesting.

Norman struggles to find a suitable tone of voice with which to deliver his material. He cannot resist drawing comparisons of ancient wits with their equivalents of today; except they are not of today but of yesterday, for instance, Will Kemp who toured Europe in the 1600s is 'an Elizabethan Norman Wisdom'; Richard Tarlton, 'England's first true star comedian' is 'a versatile amalgam of John Sessions and Freddie Starr'; while the ballad is equated with 'Richard Stilgoe's sideways look at the week's events'; all of which gives the book an oddly dated feel.

Sorry to report Closet Reading is quite interesting. No more.

Of more interest is this photograph of the The Artist as a Young Discus Thrower.

Yes, dear reader, this is moi, aged what - 14 months? - in Libya, hurling an ashtray that I still remember, a promotional item of a glass tray surrounded by a rubber Dunlop tyre. (Only a mother, etc…) That said, one can identify stylistic trends that were to turn me into a fashion victim. Note the buttoned, woolly trews and elegant Clarks' sandals tightly buckled over fat feet, sheathed in voguish white ankle socks.

In Reply to Lethe

2009-11-23T16:46:00.003Z

I could not post this reply to a post by Lethe because of its length. Please read her post first and then my response. I love you all. You are my family. I am not argumentative.

You asked me to comment on your post and I have chosen to in serious vein given the thought you have applied.

Allow me, rudely, to pick at the seams first to test the strength of your material.

In your eighth paragraph you refer to the 'effervescence of language', and in the following of 'language in its purest, most accessible, most fluid form […] It's on a wavelength most of us can hear.'

Pedantically, effervescence means to bubble, to froth up: language does, indeed, bubble. It is not concrete; it does not point irrevocably to things but seethes around them, crashing over them to reveal their shapes as outlines much as a pier is made visible by stormy water. This, needless to say, is a Saussurean image; however, the fact is, as the late Jacques Derrida endless explored, language, or text, which is far more encompassing, is notoriously unreliable; treacherous even in the way that it undermines itself. So my ears twitch when I read of language, any language, being 'on a wavelength most of us can hear'.

My concern grows when I read a few paragraphs later of 'this ability to zero in on transcendence'. Here is an assumption of belief in a transcendence, or one that can be written on a menu for human consumption, human dialogue. Given the fish slipperiness of language, of the human mind, it is doubtful. You explicitly acknowledge this when you write, 'After all, the concept "art" is in our minds.' Art is artifice, as is language.

Given the direction of your thinking, it is of small surprise to find you drifting towards a Jungian construct of human consciousness - 'what if we attributed an author's sparkling sentences to a state of mind rather than an individual person?'. It is wishful, wistful.

Derrida has presented us with a problem that the Anglo-American tradition of thought is trying to solve through pure logic, forgetting pure logic, itself, is a piece of human engineering (my cards are turned face-up). Even it were proved beyond all doubt in all possible universes that mathematics was a transcendental language, it has already gone beyond the boundaries of what was once the definition of a science, i.e. a demonstrable proof of an experiment conducted in similar conditions producing equivalent results, as string theory, for example, is beyond demonstration and remains only a mathematical conjecture. Reductively, mathematics is only another language.

Derrida never denied the absolute, the transcendental, only the ability of man to bring it into a textual context, as the moment man attempts to do so, he corrupts it by the very process of the transmutation. (Derrida would never write as bluntly as I; indeed, I would be sent to the bottom of the class for being so direct.)

I have picked at the seams and, perhaps, found a few loose threads worthy of further thought. Now permit me to address the meat, or soya, if vegetarian, of your thesis: the concept of genius and criticism.

I love the sentiment, 'Art criticism flattens the journey, however, by making it into a vacation… etc.' It is accurate but begs the question as to what art criticism should achieve. Whose fault this desire for potted heros, self-affirming images of ourselves?

Let's discuss genius. Caravaggio has only been 'discovered' as a genius in recent decades. Why? I would assert for political reasons, not political as in government, but political as in polis, the people. In his paintings, he was the great democrat; recognisable individuals populate his paintings, his lighting technique mirrors contemporary portraiture, he was a rogue: in summary, he is a successful rebel and how we wish we had the balls to be him. In the arts, one can argue that the concept of genius is relative only because the impact of an individual on human consciousness, in terms of the written word or painted canvas, is harder to assess than that of a scientist such as Darwin or Einstein.

I believe your desire to link an individual's unique ability to a wider influence correct. I, too, counter the capitalist desire to divide and sell to us as dumb individuals, but I do not bow to their simplistic argument that you are either for us, i.e. progress in their terms, or the ability to sell more of the same crap from an ever limited number of corporations in the desire to make more profits for the few, or against us, i.e. a Sarah Palin socialist. (Why do so many Americans react so strongly against the idea of people socialising, being concerned about people in worse positions than themselves? It does my head in.)

Oops!

In conclusion, thank you so much for your post. It has got the blood pumping.

Tired Ideas: Fresh Manuscripts

2009-11-12T15:37:00.002Z

I read recently too many manuscripts submitted by novice writers begin with the protagonist waking up in the morning. (I found the comment on one of the many blogs I follow, most likely an observation made by an agent or publisher; I forget who, so whoever you are please accept my apologies for not referencing you.)

My immediate thought was 'Oh-oh'.

The first time my leading character is introduced, he is waking up. However, I think - I hope - I have avoided being too clumsy as the passages that precede his appearance establish why it is necessary that we find him in bed.

Besides, the story follows events over a period of just eight days during which his life becomes increasingly bizarre. Hence, the working title, Thursday To Thursday. And if I explained here the real reason why I have to have him wake on the first morning, I would spoil the whole raison d'être of the story.

(Am I becoming too defensive - probably. Would it prove disastrous if I was asked to revise the beginning - probably not.)

So let's get to the point: what other clichés in writing are there that the novice is guilty of? I am not talking about bad writing per se, but hackneyed plot development, characters, structure, et cetera. In other words, what are the common themes seen time and time again in the slush pile?

I am being more than a little cheeky because I am hoping others, especially publishing professionals, will develop this post into something interesting with their replies.

PS I have just spent an hour with a work colleague, who is reading for an MA in Creative Writing at Sussex, critiquing his first attempt at a short story. I am old enough to be his father. (On the other hand, he is precociously young - how many five-year olds are studying for a postgraduate degree these days?)

It is a frightening responsibility. Much was good, much was bad. I did my best to indicate what I thought worked and how the curate's parts could be improved. He appeared to take it well. I hope he took it well. I am sure he did. Yes, he did take it well. I wasn't too... no.

Hot News Straight Off the Door Mat.

My copy of Closet Reading: 500 Years of Humour on the Loo, by Phil Norman, has just arrived courtesy of Scott Pack of The Friday Project. I shall be reviewing it early next week. So for the next few days I shall be found behaunched.

Bonfire Night, Lewes

2009-11-10T08:20:00.005Z

Well after the event, your weary correspondent wipes his brow. It is such a responsibility reporting on an essentially English fête to a wide, international audience.

Guy Fawkes Night, celebrated on the 5th November every year, commemorates the antics of one Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up the the Houses of Parliament on the same date in 1605.

I, as a good Catholic of Irish descent, was informed by my grandmother, half-Burmese so she would know, when young that one of my ancestors was involved in the plot - a piece of personal history handed down to every individual who is a good Catholic of Irish descent and resident for most of their lives in the UK by every grandmother whether or not of Burmese ancestry.

Guy Fawkes Night is a celebration of the burning of Guy Fawkes, an Irish Catholic, at the stake; an occasion for much mirth and loud noises, and one, until recently, for strong anti-Papist strutting. Lewes, home town of Thomas Paine, author of Rights of Man, therefore, known for his extreme views regarding humanity, and someone to whom both the France and the USA are indebted for their present constitutions, reacted strongly to such a heritage by maintaining violent anti-Papist views long after the rest of the nation had grown-up.

(I can't download my pics of the event from my camera, so have posted this from the Daily Telegraph.)

Lewes is a venerable town, the capital town of East Sussex, and its inhabitants are very conscious of their antiquity. Most, too, are of a venerable age, and many have undergone several bypasses to allow them to maintain their hearts of oak attitudes. November the fifth is a day for them to let their hair down, or those who still have hair to let down.

Guy Fawkes Night in Lewes is a famed event. Your weary correspondent attended last Thursday, the first time he had done so since he moved to the coast ten years - I lie - eleven years ago. I am forced to wipe my brow again.

If I have this right, there are seven bonfire societies who maintain the traditions of the occasion. Keep that in mind as my report collapses into bewilderment.

The torch-lit occasion flickered between being that of a pagan festival, a memorial to the fallen of the wars, carnival, and a fancy dress party for the elite of the town.

The array of costumes was baffling: Greek hoplites rubbed shoulders with eighteen century courtesans, pirates exchanged pleasantries with matelots.

The sight of gangs of people marching through the streets bearing flaming torches is frightening. The only association one has with such images are of people bent on violence - perhaps I've watched too many Hammer Horror films.

It was very tightly organisated. Blazing fires in iron trundles were wheeled around the town and dropped at strategic points. Into these were dropped the torches collected from the gutters where they were deposited once expended. Sue, feeling the need to join in, reached for an abandoned torch and was immediately told off by a passing marcher. He, the fascist, was allowed to bear a torch because he, the fascist, was wearing the correct uniform.

Despite the organisation, there was, seemingly, a fear of riot. The last impression arose out of the number of riot police who stood around in aggressive poses with expressions that invited you to have a go if you think you're hard enough.

Lewes is determinedly middle-class. It is the county capital. So it is strange to see the strange contortions they, the inhabitants, go through to conform, on the one hand, and rebel, on the other. Invariably, their mutations require a target, as indicated, it was once the papists, nowadays, they create a caricature of some public personality to burn, usually political and more often than not an individual on the left of the spectrum, on whom they can vent their confusion.

Cally Taylor - the embarrassing secrets!

2009-11-09T07:55:00.004Z

Today, it is my honour to host a blog interview with fellow Brightonian, Cally Taylor, author of Heaven Can Wait. I have, unfortunately, never met Cally and can only put this down to her canny ability to hide in shop doorways every time she spots a small, bald geezer in a hat. (I wear the hat to hide my halo.)

As I am near the end of the line of her interviewers – my fault as I was late in responding – I decided all the relevant questions would have been answered and what was needed were truly incisive, Paxman type questions that would get to the heart of Cally the woman. So, employing the old ruse of an imaginary dinner party, I planted my barbs:

Your publishers hold a dinner party and invite Eddie Izzard, Zadie Smith, Ewan McGregor, Joanne Murray, Pierce Brosnan and Ian McEwan. Being in charge of the seating arrangements, who do you seat where? Of real interest, of course, is the question of who you seat on either side of you. (Remember, Eddie is wearing much sexier shoes than you.)

Oooh, brilliant question. I’ll add here that I’m glad you told me that Joanne Murray is actually JK Rowling because I was looking at that name thinking, huh who’s that? Okay, so back to the question – as there’s seven of us I think I’d sit at the head of the table so I could look at everyone. I’d have JK Rowling on my right so I could chew her ear off over dinner (not literally obviously) and I’d have Ewan McGregor to my left so I could gaze at him. Next to Ewan I’d put Pierce so they could talk acting and Eddie Izzard would sit next to Pierce. Next to JK I’d put Ian McEwan and Zadie Smith. Basically I’d have actors and comedians on my left and writers on my right. How’s that for organised!

You may replace one person; who goes and who is the lucky person to be invited?

I’d replace Zadie Smith as I haven’t actually managed to finish any of her books yet so that could make for an embarrassing conversation. I’d replace her with Margaret Atwood, who I LOVE, instead!

You have to select the menu; what do you choose for each course?

Oooh gosh – this is where I show my ignorance about fine dining so my answers are going to be a bit vague I’m afraid. I’ve got a bit addicted to Masterchef Professional recently and frequently see dishes that make me think ‘yum’ but can never remember the name of them!
For starter we’d have something involving prawns and crab and maybe a bit of chilli. For main course we’d have something yummy with lamb and there would be a chocolaty dessert to finish up (I’m easily pleased).

You must begin the evening by asking each of your guests one question; what is it?

JK Rowling – When your Harry Potter books became international bestsellers it felt like the whole world was speculating about what would happen in the final book. With such a weight of expectation on your shoulders how did you manage to write it without having a nervous breakdown?

Pierce Brosnan – Do you regret singing in Mamma Mia?

Ewan McGregor – If your wife learnt how to ride a motorbike and wanted to join you on your round the world adventures with Charlie Boorman would you be pleased or would you secretly be gutted?

Ian McEwan - I really enjoyed your novel ‘Enduring Love’. What did you think of the film adaptation?

Eddie Izzard - What joke do you wish you’d written?

Margaret Atwood – If someone told you that all copies of your novels had to be destroyed and erased from public consciousness except one, which one would you save? Why?

At some point, someone starts on a serious topic - apart from books and writing, what would hold your attention: their eyes, the cut of their trousers, high heels, or the topic? If the latter, what?

If someone started talking (or ranting) on a topic it would be their passion that transfixed me as I’m interested in what makes people tick. How long I’d listen would depend on the topic and whether I felt I could join in the discussion. I got into quite a deep conversation about religion at a party last night so maybe that as a topic.

Your favourite person present suddenly turns and asks, "Is it true you used to have dreadlocks and nose ring and double jointed toes, and actually SOLD your Blue Peter badge?" Do you confess or deny?

I confess, of course! And then I’d think, wow, Margaret Atwood has visited the ’25 things about me’ section of my website!

Later in the evening, you actually wrestle Eddie for his shoes. What sort of shoes would reduce you to such an embarrassing state?

I’m not much of a shoe fan as a) I’m a size eight shoe and b) I’m tall enough already without wearing high heels, but whenever I see a celeb wearing these Christian Louboutin shoes I do make a little “Oooh” noise.

Eventually, after a glass too many, you ask a really naff question of one of the company - the kind that wakes you up in a cold sweat asking yourself, 'Did I really say that?'. What is that question and to whom is it addressed?

If I was drunk I’d probably ask Pierce Brosnan to say “I’m Bond, James Bond” and then instantly regret it!

You Got a Dog?

2009-11-02T15:32:00.000Z

I've been traveling recently. A couple of weeks ago, Sue and myself went to stay at her sister's house in a new-build village just outside Dorchester for a few days.

I am no expert on newly built villages. This one was well laid out in that it was not regimentally arranged in rows, but wiggled around the contours of the hillside it was situated on. And though the houses were all based on one of two designs, their sameness was disguised by variations in ornamentation; a circular window here, a balcony there; smooth rendering on this one, exposed brickwork on that.

The village is too new to have found its soul. And despite the good intentions of its architects, it stands awkwardly on the hillside, uncomfortable as a teenage boy in a new suit.

The inhabitants, too, are self-conscious of their new status, uncertain of the behaviour expected of one living in a place that has been imposed on the countryside and not grown organically over time. Because they are aware they are out of place, townies living in a hedgerow, they overcompensate. They will not set foot out of doors without first pulling on their wellies. They dress down, adapting a style suitable, in their view, to one who now resides among cow pats. They have adopted a strange, truncated form of speech, a mode they imagine one must speak with a straw permanently located in the side of the mouth.

And everyone has a dog.

Sue and myself received strange looks because we did not have a dog. We heard mutterings from the locals.

"You got a dog?"

"I got a dog. But them, they got no dog."

"No dog? They must be up to no good if they've got no dog."

We stayed in most of the time.

Last weekend I went up to London to see the girls. Rebecca booked tickets to see UP at the iMax 3D cinema near Waterloo station.

It was my first experience of a 3D film since the days you were handed a pair of cardboard spectacles with one red lens and one green one. The spectacles we were handed were clear with each lens being polarised on a different plane.

The effect was stunning. The featured film was preceded by a short animation by Pixar that took full advantage of what could be achieved. At times the image appeared to be sitting on your chest.

As for UP, everything you have read about it is true. It is a wonderfully scripted film, which takes you through the whole gamut of emotions without once being mawkishly sentimental. Male friends of Rebecca, young men in their early thirties, confessed to having moistened eyes for periods of the film.

Yesterday, Sue, Richard and myself went to a house putatively owned by William Morris - the putative bit was on Sue's say-so.

William Morris did not so much as have a cuppa in the house. Admittedly, he had been hired to paste up the wallpaper, but the house, Standen in East Sussex, was commissioned by a wealthy London solicitor, James Beale, for his large family. The architect, Philip Webb, was a founding partner of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., so Sue's confusion is easy to understand.

I am not very good going around the houses of the worthy, particularly on a Sunday. It smacks too much of duty, a religious duty, and, indeed, overhead was one lady who said, "Usually, I go to church on a Sunday, but…"

It makes me want to make inappropriate comments at inappropriate times. Unfortunately each room is overseen by a voluntary supplicant, more often than not a woman of certain years, keenly made-up and dressed in Daily Telegraph best, and keenly keen to impart their limited appreciation of the objects d'art in the room. I do them an injustice. They give their time freely and the National Trust would sink without them.

I just hate the middle-class genuflection made at the altar of anything deemed to be educational and of worth. You are kindly invited to leave your critical faculties and intellect at the door.

Who Dictates What is Written: the Reader or the Writer?

2009-10-28T16:21:00.005Z

Most guidance you read on writing is aimed at the writer in terms of how to structure the work, develop the characters, refine the tone of voice, ad nauseam, i.e. how to improve your craft from a writerly point of view.

I, from an advertising background, constantly think of the reader.

'Of course,' you cry, 'it's obvious you have to think of the reader when you're writing an ad; you are trying to sell them something! I am trying to write a book and not flog someone a dead horse.'

The fact is all your efforts can amount to flogging a dead horse if you don't think of your reader. Because the fact of the matter is you are trying to sell them something. Your book.

There is an old adage in advertising that states you can sell anyone anything once; the trick is to be able to sell them it twice. That is where the money lies.

If you write a tome thinking only of what appeals to you, without doubt you will be the first to cry when you receive nothing but rejections. The whole function of publishing is geared towards thinking what the market, your potential reader, wants to read. If you are not geared to the same degree, there will be a clash of gears.

If, by some oversight of an editor's judgment, your book makes the shelves, people will buy it. A few, nonetheless some. However, if it fails to live up to their expectations those few will never buy another book you produce. As a reader, you know how many books you have bought on the spur and left, half-read, to curl at the edges never to buy a book by that author again. Worse than that, you will not be the beneficiary that no amount of advertising pounds/dollars/yen/yuan/rupees can buy; recommendation by word of mouth.

It is true advertisers chuck a lot of money at the reader, or market, to discover what the reader thinks, eats, drinks, wears and the quality of air that he or she breathes, so the copywriter has a fair idea of the person they are appealing to. The poor author does not have these resources. I correct myself: the author has an immeasurable wealth of data just down the road at their nearest bookstore.

Bookstores are filled with books that have succeeded in every describable genre. Read them. Have your favourite open on your desk as you write. These authors have an insight into what your readership wants. Do not be afraid of being a clone of the person you admire; you are far too surly, feisty, cocksure, a pain-in-the-arse to be anyone other than yourself and it will show in your writing. As I used to say to my girls, 'Don't copy my mistakes, learn from mine and find your own.' (They now tell me the same.)

Did Tolstoy, Dickens, Zola, Twain, Garcia Marquez, and others from different continents and sub-continents advocate what I am saying. I doubt it. The understanding of their readership was in their DNA; they had no need of trite observations from some hack lowly as I. For the geniuses among you, I apologise; for those, like I, struggling, I hope my comments help.

Rumble Strip - A Review

2009-10-18T09:39:00.002+01:00

I won, thanks to much ingenuity, cash and secret liaisons with the gorgeous, hugely talented and acclaimed sex goddess, Caroline Smailes, Rumble Strip.

Rumble Strip. Strange book. A graphic dissertation on the topic of road kill that depicts no living individual. Humanity is referred to through road graphics. Appropriate, perhaps, in terms of the message of the book, which is once in a car we lose all connection with humanity, with ourselves.

As one who has not owned a car for over fifteen years and who used to cycle everywhere in London on my daily commute, the message of the book had long been absorbed from the painful experience of years.

(Woodrow Pheonix sticks his pins in motorists; other targets are cyclists themselves and pedestrians who ignore cycle paths.)

Rumble Strip is a brave book, published by the brave, Myriad Editions.

I feel sad about this book because it only preaches to the converted. Everything it has to say is true but everything it has to say is known by us, in the know, and unwelcome, ignored, shunned by those whose concept of their dicks/fannies exceed the size of their organs, especially their brains.

It is, in blank form, a straightforward, well argued dissertation on the merits or opposite of the car; however, if my ego dictated that I need drive a monster, four-wheel drive around the small streets of Brighton, and plenty do, this is not a book I would pick up. If small, pocket-sized machine guns that sprayed people with the message from remote, safe distances could be packaged, I would be the first to buy.

Much effort went into Rumble Strip and it shows. It is not, however, a bible, as had been suggested.

Writing: The Way Forward

2009-10-11T18:46:00.003+01:00

Somewhere I read that writing is making a resurgence because of the growth of social networking. I can believe it; however, it will have a consequence, not unwelcome, on language. We refer back to Shakespeare as gospel but most in the know understand language or spelling was constantly under experiment during his ungoverned times.

We are going through a similar revolution.

My breeding is of the old school. That said, I am a writer, an artist, someone who is very interested in language and expression, so even if I tend to use the language of my generation to express myself, it is not true of my writing.

I offer an example of a Facebook dialogue between my daughter and friend:

Cast of characters:
Emily - my daughter
Amy - her daughter
Facebook user - female friend
Dan - Emily's partner

Emily Thompson is lovin Amy's hair. yay!!!
User: wht ya done girly xxx
Emily: she's all fringed up and lookin good.
User: cool thought it be ok where did u go ?? x
Emily: headmasters, she always suited a fringe when she was little. i've remembered why i grew it out now though, she looks older, my baby is growing up.
Emily: dan isn't working 2mora so he can have the girls when i go hospital, cheers though
User: ok mate no worries :-) x

So, purists, how do we handle this. To my mind, this is a minor contemporary drama, well communicated and it gives a clue to the global sway on expression the Internet now has.

Voice v. The World

2009-10-06T22:06:00.009+01:00

I want to clarify my jumbled thoughts in my last post, i.e. voice versus point of view.

I recently discovered a novella, though, in truth, it is more of a long short story than a novella, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, by Joseph Roth.

Joseph Roth was an alcoholic refugee in Paris prior to the last war. He wrote The Legend at a leisurely pace over the first four months of 1939 and died in the fifth before reaching the age of forty-five. The translator, Michael Hofmann, comments, 'it is clear Roth for some time had been running out of reasons to remain alive'. A sad reflection on sorry times. The book, however, is in no way sad, even though it charts the last few days of another drinker. Quite the opposite, it is a heart warming tale, a redemptive tale of one man's earnest endeavour to be decent. Whether he fails or succeeds is almost irrelevant because it is in his effort that he is blessed.

To the point: the book is written in a very individual style that, to my mind, reflects the world view of an inveterate inebriate. There is a dignity to the prose of a man doing his best to hold himself erect and not stumble. There is sense of confusion about what is happening and why it is happening, and small mercies are accepted as miracles without the need of further explanation.

These are the opening lines:

'On a spring evening in 1934 a gentleman of mature years descended one of the flights of stone steps that lead from the bridges over the Seine down to its banks. It is there that, as all the world knows and so will hardly need reminding, the homeless poor of Paris sleep, or rather spend the night.'

From these few lines, it is possible to recognise the voice of a seasoned author and the world view of the protagonist who is yet to be introduced.

The voice is visible in the confidence of expression, the world view in the weariness of the observation 'as all the world knows and so will hardly need reminding'.

Another book with a very recognisable world view, one that most will be familiar with, is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. Christopher, the fifteen old protagonist, has Asperger's and, therefore, an idiosyncratic means of engaging with the world. Haddon so well describes the logic of his central character that, as a reader, you find it a mind-wrench to detach yourself from applying the same reasoning to your own personal life.

The final book I was going to comment on was If nobody speaks of remarkable things by Jon McGregor because of its lyrical quality; overall though I was disappointed. To coin a neologism, it is CCTV literature; one of remote observations on the minutiae of those living on an anonymous street in an unnamed northern town. Very occasionally it takes you into a close-up to the only named character who is coming to terms with the fact she is pregnant. Although the opening presages a disaster that is only revealed on the final pages of the book, by that time I had long lost interest. (In any case, I had guessed the disaster correctly from the beginning.) The reason why I was going to select this as an example of a novel with a view of the world that reflected the attitudes of its characters was because of its language which, though poetic, is distant and uninvolved, qualities, I believed that commented on contemporary society. However, I was disappointed to pick up another book by McGregor, So many ways to begin, to discover he employs exactly the same tone to describe what I presume must be a different situation. Least I hope so. The first, in my estimation, was over-written.

Instead, I will choose In Search of Adam where Caroline Smailes invents not only a tone to match the outlook of her chief character but a form of writing that physically illustrates her fractured view point, and enhances the reader’s comprehension of the post trauma of child abuse. She achieves the same in Black Boxes, but is wise and intelligent enough not to employ the same tone or methodology but creates a new form of literature out of the scraps, the detritus that constitutes contemporary written communication. Both are brave and both work.

The conclusion is good writing, far from telling you how a character sees the world, demonstrates the individual's psyche in its structure, language and composition.

What Kind of Voice Have I? (Sung out of tune)

2009-10-02T15:34:00.001+01:00

Much is written about finding your voice, tone of voice, style and similar; indeed, it is something I worried at for a long period.

I was continually complimented on my writing at university by kind tutors, and wondered what it was they could see that I could not. I report this not as a puff to myself but as a problem for any writer.

Reading back to yourself a piece you have written cannot be equated to standing in front of a full length mirror. While it is true the silvered surface first presents you with all the faults you imagine of yourself, it is still possible to regard your image reasonably objectively.

When reading my own writing, all I replay is the struggle I had selecting every word, the choice of phrase, the debate I had about the structure of each sentence, and am still left wondering if one of the alternatives would not have been better. I find it virtually impracticable to view it dispassionately. And I certainly find it impossible to identity my voice.

I assume all writers discover this to be the case. I sincerely hope so, I don't want to be a loner all my life.

Now, what has brought on this crisis is the next book I am planning. It will, if all goes to plan, take in a tour of different European cities at different times during the last couple of centuries. I have been considering ways and means of achieving this so that the book does not rely purely on description to indicate different times, different places, but also on the texture of the writing. The danger is, if mishandled, it will resemble nothing more than a collage of poor pastiches of the various periods and so will prove an affront to the eye.

So, I conclude in my most judicial manner, there must be a single world view to act as the foundation for these historical monuments. Or a point of view, securely located in a defined era, that describes what it sees and how it sees with a definitive tongue.

I am sure I am not explaining myself clearly as I am still groping towards an understanding of how I want to achieve what I want to achieve . The thought is yet to emerge and remains somewhat wobbly in outline.

In my next post, I will use some examples to clarify something of what I am saying - especially the world view point.

The Kill, Émile Zola

2009-09-26T11:25:00.005+01:00

Silly quiz. What do you think this is? (Clue: it is edible) Answer at the end.

One of the books that I am currently reading is The Kill by Émile Zola, the second in Zola's cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart.

My interest is, on the one hand, for research purposes, on the other, for the sheer pleasure of reading Zola's sumptuous use of language.

'The front carriages were finally able to proceed, and one by one the whole line began to move slowly forward. It was like an awakening. A thousand shimmering lights seemed to appear, quick flashes played on the wheels, sparks flew from the horses' harnesses. On the ground, on the trees, appeared broad reflections of trotting glass. The glitter of wheels and harness, the blaze of varnished panels glowing with the redness of the setting sun, the bright notes of colour cast by the dazzling liveries perched up against the sky, and by the rich costumes spilling through the carriage doors, were accompanied by a continuous, hollow rumbling sound, marked by the rhythmic trot of the horses.'*

Zola regarded himself a faithful reporter of nature; "My big task is to be strictly naturalist, strictly physiologist," he writes. Yet, there is an intimation of impressionism in this vivid description of a logjam of society carriages finally becoming disengaged, best typified by the phrase 'sparks flew from the horses' harnesses'. By displacing the occasion of the sparks from the horses' steel-shod hooves to their harnesses, Zola allows himself free rein to create a less than strictly accurate, though nonetheless compelling, description of the dazzling effect of light playing on the cortège.

Zola is writing of an interesting period in the history of Paris; indeed, of the birth of Paris as we now know it. In 1851, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, following a coup-de-état, established himself as Emperor of the Second Republic. To give legitimacy to his seizure of power, he set about a process of modernisation that included the flattening of Paris.

Georges Eugène Haussman, Prefect of the Seine, was appointed to the task, one that he managed brutally, imaginatively and, financially, astutely.

And ruthless he was, to quote:

'Throughout the 1850s and 1860s a great number of buildings were torn down. Hundreds of thousands of people were evicted. Working-class people in particular were forced into cheaper outlying areas. On Haussman's own estimate, the new boulevards and open spaces displaced 350,000 people; 12,000 of them were uprooted by the building of the Rue de Rivoli and Les Halles alone.'**

Part of his raison d'être was to clear the slums which played host to the most unruly and politically hostile sections of society, and to establish broad routes by which the army and forces of law and order could reach trouble spots in good time.

The sudden and complete makeover of the capital city had a profound effect on the psychology, economy and morality of her inhabitants. It was a loosening of the stays. Old Paris was demolished, Gay Paris born.

*Brian Nelson, translator, OUP, 2004, pp 6-7
** ibid, p xiii

Surprised? And it is surprisingly delicious.

The Art of Writing Copy

2009-09-21T09:00:00.005+01:00

The art of the writer will vary according to the individual and must vary according to the subject matter. You do not write a dissertation in the same manner as you write a love letter. Least I hope not. So far, so obvious.

Copywriting is a singular discipline. It has a very specific objective and very targeted audience.

The copywriter is given a brief which is the distillation of mass of information on the product, the market and consumer. The good copywriter will not necessarily accept the brief at face value but will get to grips with the data themselves.

However, I digress. I am not talking of writing ads. But copy. Purists of English grammar will, at this point, be already writhing in agony. Take an aspirin, pour yourself a vodka martini and read on.

The function of copy is not to be beautiful literature. It is to sell. And the fact is most copy that is written for ads is never read. Less than 5% of the total possible readership will actually do so. (The figure may be inaccurate, nonetheless it is marginal.)

I once wrote a series of ads that got 98% readership. However, it was a campaign on an exceptional topic, the first major information campaign on AIDS in this country. (It was the worst copy I ever wrote as it was so mangled by the UK government Cabinet sub-Committee who had the final say.)

The astute reader will note what is written here is not good copy. Too many digressions - not to mention a little showing-off.

So when you sit down to write your copy your first consideration must be that your audience are not going to be vastly interested in what you have to say. If you are lucky, they will scan your text.

And the word 'text' is very apt. Because copywriters have been doing the equivalent of texting for years. The best carefully hone short, sharp sentences. Or condensed non-sentences. Between eight and twelve words is ideal. Written in a style that reflects the product qualities. Yet is witty and carries the reader effortless through the points that must be made.

This piece is over-fractured to make a point and, more than likely, has caused you to stumble once or twice. But then you read a blog differently to the way you read an ad.

The eye skips through ad copy and a good copywriter tries to write with a rhythm that eases its progress.

The first copywriter to invent this style of copy, and one that didn't eulogise the product beyond the bounds of credibility, indeed, effected the reverse, was Bill Bernbach, founder member of Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1949.

This is typical of the hype of American automobile ads in the fifties.

Then Bill arrives on the scene and, in 1959, introduces America to how advertising will shape up in the future (or should shape up) with this ad for the Volkswagen Beetle.

The copy reads:

Our little car isn't so much of a novelty any more. A couple of dozen college kids don't try to squeeze inside it.
The guy at the gas station doesn't ask where the gas goes.
Nobody even stares at our shape
In fact, some people who drive our little flivver don't even think 32 miles to the gallon is going any great guns.
Or using five pints of oil instead of five quarts..
Or never needing anti-freeze.
Or racking up 40,000 miles on a set of tires.
That's because once you get used to some of our economies, you don't even think about it any more.
Except when you squeeze into a small parking spot. Or renew your small insurance. Or pay a small repair bill. Or trade in your old VW for a new one.
Think it over.

It was revolutionary. And, though the art of the press copywriter is now near dead, it can still teach much to those who now write on-line content.

The Found Art Gallery II

2009-09-18T16:31:00.002+01:00

Following the outstanding critical success of my first Found Art Exhibition, nearly a year ago, I launch my second of more Objects Trouvés Avec Ma Caméra du Téléphone Mobilé - sounds so much more impressive en français, non?

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Bugs and Other Gripes

2009-09-14T06:52:00.001+01:00

I am envious of doers. My friends living in Brittany are doers. They have to be; they are permaculturalists with a small-holding and their animals will not stand for petty upsets in their personal lives. They need feeding - NOW.

There is something wonderful in the rhythms of life, in the seasons, in the-day-to-day necessities of living, in living, no better exemplified than in the naturalist's, Kingsdowner, blog. And this is especially true if, like Stuart and Gabrielle, you are responsible for the lives of others, even if your ambition, is, in the end, to fatten, kill and eat the animals you care for. Apologies to vegans and vegetarians, but that is as has been and so it will be for an age to come.

It is the caring that is all. We all live and die. Who we care for and who cares for us makes our lives. For care read love, read a shift of two letters, read life.

As an intellectual - and I wonder at the shiver that the use of such a word sends up the collective spine of the Western world, unless you happen to live in France - as I say, as an intellectual, as someone who is fascinated by thought, by the ideas that motivate us all whether we like it or not, are aware or not, I find the doing very difficult.

My ambition is great; my ability feeble.

I read the crabbit's blog, Nichola Morgan, who seemingly lives her life in whirl of writing, lecturing, chocolate and pointy shoes; I follow Caroline Smailes blog and her young man, Gary, who has set up what appears to be a very successful, first-aid emergency service to wannabe writers and wonder. I was like them. I used to be a doer.

Now I am less than sure where my arse is from my elbow. I used to be absolutely positive one was the object I sat on, the other I leant on; now, who knows. Such intermindableness breeds the same. I am no longer confident in what I say.

I need to write. Artists of every description, of any talent, are sensitive to the lack of logic of life. It is an inhibition. Yet how can one assert a point of view if one is less than certain any has any value?

Last night, I dug out all the sketches I have made over the last few years and was surprised how some still resonated. They were few but still made a point. Creating is a process that is very hit and miss. I, of course, want to hit. And, I suppose, the culmination of this thought is doing. To do is to do. Only by doing can we fail and thereby learn.

Back to novel two. Novel three, the one I really want to write, needs loads of research.

The image of the bug is for Kingsdowner. It and his/her relatives have recently been invading my and Sue's property and I hope he'll be able to identify it.

Art Overdose

2009-09-12T10:12:00.005+01:00

We went on a cultural weekend, my friend and I. First visit was to Pallant Art Gallery in Chichester. It is not the greatest of spaces with seven galleries being too grand, rooms is better, leading off a central galleria. However, the lighting is sensitive and the content worth the visit.

In the galleria hung the standing exhibition of Modern British Art: The First 100 Years - based on the assumption the art in Britain ended some time around 1977. Work by Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, and Eduardo Paolozzi took me back to the days when my hair reached my shoulders.

Examples from four artists under the title of The Scottish Colourists were exhibited in three rooms. It was interesting in that it demonstrated the extent to which landscape influences the palette.

I always associate Scottish Art of the late 19th, early 20th century with tertiary colours, reflecting the heather, moors and peaks of the Highlands. It was notable in several works on show; however, when the artists make their obligatory trip to France, they choose a primary-based palatte, influenced, no doubt, by the Impressionists but also by the fact their usual choice would be totally inappropriate. One painting stood out; washed-out in tone, it was a view of the corner of a white-washed building under the shadow of a tree. It so well expressed the feeling of torpid heat, one could smell the very individual fragrance of over-heated air.

The last exhibition we visited was Outside In, examples of Art Brut or Outsider Art, executed by those historically associated with the fringes of society - prisoners, drug and alcohol abusers, those with mental illness or learning difficulties…

The theme of most of the work was as might be expected - alienation, despair, loneliness - but some art transcended those bonds and was truly outstanding.

The following day we went to the Church of All Saints, Tudely, near Tonbridge in Kent; a small jewel box of a church blessed with stained glass windows by Marc Chagall. My companion has blogged on the history behind the commission, I shall just offer you these images:

You can see what I mean by the jewel box effect. The church is simply painted in white with no other decoration to clash with the windows.

All the windows are predominately blue, reflecting, perhaps, the drowning of Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid for whom the windows were commissioned as a lasting memorial. The only two windows that are immediately optimistic in colour values stand either side of the entrance.

Cult of the Done

2009-09-06T10:07:00.008+01:00

There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you're done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
Done is the engine of more.

I found this manifesto via a tweet from which these images come, respectively by James Provost and Joshua Rothaas . True it sounds like the commandments for a dubious religious group and the language is a little clunky; then it was executed in twenty minutes. That said, I do like some of the embedded thoughts.

It is in the doing that things get done: in the writing that books get writ. And though we are exhorted at every turn by every agent and publisher not to submit until it is perfect, it is necessary to understand what is meant by that.

There is no such thing as perfection. If there were all that could be done would have all been done years ago, and human beings would be sitting peacefully together making daisy chains. Indeed, there would be nothing for us writers to write about because that is what we constantly write about – the imperfection of man and woman.

What agents and publishers want is prose that is perfect as possible in its structure, grammar, and punctuation; plot, theme and expression. Not the perfect novel, as if there was such etched in iron, monitored by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures and stored, alongside the standard metre, in Sèvres. However, they do want your fingerprints all over the novel; your idyosyncratic eye, your quirky descriptions, your individual perspective. There will only ever be one Dostoyevsky, one Hemingway, one Flaubert, one King… name your favourite author, just as there will only ever be one you.

Pretending you know what your are doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing…

It is a truism to say mankind is constantly trying make sense of the world around, to impose form on the shapeless, find logic in the illogical, and I believe this to be more true of writers than anyone else (apart from politicians but who would want to be a politician?). So I like the reverse of this thought: when you are floundering, out of your depth and panicing, relax – this is reality. You, as writer, live in an unreal world of dreams where you impose your order on chaos through the power of your imagination. You have just woken up for a moment. Have a bath. Pour yourself a glass of wine. In due course your dreams will take a different shape and, suddenly, all will make sense again.

If it doesn’t, Failure Counts as Done. As Do Mistakes.

This I like even more. It is the fear of failure that most inhibits the writer. So many new writers produce manuscripts that are, in marketing parlance, me too books, i.e. works that are so similar to the mainstream of the genre there is no reason why anyone should pick them up to read.

Producing a book that dares to wave a page over the parapet of books lining the shelf, and shout ‘Yahoo! Read me I’m different” is risky. It may fail. However, if it does you will learn.

Did you write a book that was different for the sake of being different. In other words, something that is contrived and awkward. Not a good idea. Difference that is valid comes about through a unique insight or perspective; a point of view that is true to itself and not imposed.

We all know how difficult it is to write, Stephen Fry elegantly elaborates this very point in his latest post, so the dread that, after all the pain, the object produced is unreadable is a serverly restricting bridle. However, if you submit tamely, you will never discover what it is like to run free.

Blogs We Would Like to Read

2009-08-29T14:37:00.003+01:00

Imagine, and I will pick my heros, Descartes, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Emily Bronte and sisters, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, the list goes on, what would they be blogging today?

Here are my thoughts for some topics - I am sure there are better:

Descartes: Blogito ergo sum

J-P Sartre: Other people's posts are hell.

Emily Brontë: Heathcliff! You don't e-mail, you don't twitter, you don't post. It's been twenty years and still I haven't heard from you.

Greene: I must confess I wonder if it is sinful to share my thoughts with you.

Waugh: So vulgar!

Writing Don't Make a Writer

2009-08-26T20:23:00.006+01:00

Isn't it interesting the extent to which the blindingly obvious is stated as the brand new. Perhaps it's one's age but so much of what I read is equivalent to the instruction not to light up a cigarette in a petrol station.

So let's blind you with the obvious.

If you are a wannabe writer, if you have dabbled, if your mum loves your school essays, if all your friends tell you to set your stories down, do it.

It is a start. The start. But only a start.

Execute what you write in short, sharp sentences. Forget flowery descriptions, over-puffed analogies, excessive psychological motivations: stick with what happens. It will make you feel uncomfortable, as though you are truncating your talent. You are not. Your talent is not to establish a new set of clichés but to tell an unique story.

Strip all description. Allow the characters to speak for themselves without you interceding on their behalves and interpreting how the reader should understand what you mean them to say.

If he/she is irate, what they say should effect their irritation, not the adverb qualifying the mode of their speech.

"Fuck off" needs no qualifiers; less crude language, suitably crafted, allows the reader to understand how to read the mood of the protagonist.

On that topic, do not, more emphatically, DO NOT, attempt to control the interpretation of the reader. You have no control. To my mind, that is the joy of writing; you never know how the words you have set on paper will affect others; their imaginations, with your prompting, will escape into the night air to dance with moths.

Start simple, stay simple, pretend not to be a writer, i.e. someone you regard as a writer; be as true and honest to yourself and your characters as you can; worry about improving your words as experience teaches you; because you can string words together on a page does not make you a writer or author - years, and I mean years, of work take that. I know, I have written professionally for forty years and am just beginning to feel comfortable.

Is It Possible to Write Like My Heros Today?

2009-08-25T16:32:00.003+01:00

I twittered the following: Imagine being a Joyce, a Kafka, a Proust these days – what chance of getting published?

What chance, indeed?

My desire in my writing is to break the lines on the page. As a mature student, I spent four years studying literature and thought, or philosophy if you have to be so old-fashioned.

Ideas have always motivated me as they have the whole of society, whether it wishes to know or not.

I do not wish to write that which has been well written of before: I want to make people think about the whole process of writing/communication and how culturally, socially and, most deterministically of all, economically defined it is, and how contemporaneous all writing is.

I wish to challenge people’s conceptions about their lives, their views of their lives, their understanding of their lives. There are many books that, very worthily, expand our consciousness, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini provides and invaluable insight into another culture as well as dealing with the universal evil of abuse; Caroline Smaile’s In Search of Adam forensically analyses a compulsive disorder brought on by abuse. Both are important works in that they expand our awareness of the conditions of the world; however, they do not expand our understanding of the world, a world dominated by ideas, especially economic ideas, of how it best functions.

Words and pictures achieve fundamental shifts. They may take years to take effect, to alter consciousness, but they do. Recall the uphill struggle faced by the Impressionists, or Joyce, with his Catholic, Jesuit upbringing (I see similarities), struggling to get A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man published.

What sort of individual today will try? Only the young and brave or the old and tired. I fall into the latter category. In music they, the young, are up to the challenge all the time; but such is the era, revolution has been pacified to become a wholly acceptable way to make money. Hurrah! for the angst of the young, they keep the needles/CD players/iPods turning and the money rolling.

I am not cynical about this age: I am cynical about the degree of manipulation that is ever easier with the advent of the digitial age and the usurption of the individual as they are ever more categorsied, classified, compartmentalised, and filed under W for Who Cares.

Those ignorant of Michel Foucault should read Michel Foucault – start with Discipline and Punish.

Given recent circumstances, the wankers in the City waving their million-plus bonuses in the face of us scrabbling to survive, and at it again, having lumbered everyone with a debt which will take years to eradicate, it is time we, writers, artists and the like, seriously assessed the make-up of the way we live.

I am not talking revolution but examination, Our system still favours the few and the fortunate and, for that very reason, has not resulted in La Terreur because, let’s face it, as writers we want to fit in, be part of the system with the hope we will be the next Stephen King or Margaret Atwood. I was part of the system. I earned shed loads when I was younger. I do not regret that but my ignorance of how 99% of the rest of the country lived. Now I have joined them I feel more secure. I still have friends who earn over a million a year – they think I am a joke. But we all die and a fat bonus does nothing to enhance a corpse;

Nonsense

2009-08-25T00:03:00.002+01:00

I want to upset all your sensibilties again and talk about depression.

I have been in – the word I would use is shit – but let’s be polite and call it an uncomfortable place that most of you will deal with comfortably.

There has been the ongoing battle with my agent – not so much him, but his aggressive cohorts who feel bethoven to throw out all who struggle to pay their rents, in an effort to prove how efficient they are. My problems are mine, self-inflicted, nonetheless, life, humanistically, should not be geared around an interpretation of capitalism: the West, increasingly the East, view the turnover of money as the only transcendental value – the function of monetary exchange is lost as being a means of idividuals maintaining their value as individuals.

There are other issues that, again, ‘normal’, individuals would deal with without considering them a difficulty.

I have been there, but not now.

If you feel awkward reading about others’ difficulties, leave now.

Because of the wonderful NHS dental service, I have not been able to afford to see a dentist for nine years. So far, I have had to pull out two of my teeth, there is another molar and incisor that are loose and will be out by within the next couple of months. I have lived with absesses in my mouth for the last six months.

Since I broke a front tooth at the age of nine, my teeth have always proved difficult, but I religiously saw my dentist every three months until I arrived in Brighton and the regime changed. Every visit was the equivalent of seeing a barrow boy who was more interested in flogging a set of cheap china than fixing the problem.

This is one issue.

Another, which I share with thousands, is being ‘of an age’.

My brain has not atrophied. My understanding of business and the machinations of office politics remain the same. I am not an idiot. Things change; it takes three and half minutes to catch-up. What person under forty believes that?

I feel totally useless.

My writing is my hope.

The worse of all is I upset all around me, particularly those I love most. I am fortunate in that I can still operate, so have an appointment with my doctor. If this seems a strange boast; admission of a failure is always difficult even if you don’t regard it as failure. I do.

Stupid me.

Do Not Reject if You Hate the Sight of a Grown Man Crying

2009-08-20T08:25:00.007+01:00

After weeks of fretting about my covering letter, writing it, re-writing it, having Gary of BubbleCow cast his long-lashed eye over it, the first agent to whom I apply doesn't want that at all. She sets out what she expects in a very precise brief.

Yesterday I sat down and wrote it. It took me a few hours to write the thousand word plus missive, the length it proved to be, and the result was more spontaneous, more engaging, and, I trust, will prove more likely to encourage her to read my submission.

Sending my ms to the first agent has proved an unexpected emotional hurdle. It's not that I fear rejection, I am prepared for that. I know enough from personal experience and have read enough on blogs of authors, agents and publishers that material is often rejected for a wide variety of reasons.

I feel it is the fact, by sending my work off, I will now have to take myself seriously as an author as opposed to a writer, which I have been all my career, and will have to adopt all the responsibilities of being an author, whatever they prove to be.

On the topic of rejection

It would help wannabe writers, or artists of any kind if they understood what they create is an object - a product. When people turn down your request to print, produce or exhibit, they are turning down the object - not you. It is a trick every artist must learn; to separate themselves from what they create.

The most obvious reason why a product is rejected is because it isn't good enough.

You have produced a can of beans that is full of dents. There is no point in getting upset or uppity when your attention is drawn to the defect. It is not a matter of opinion whether or not a can of beans has dents; someone who spends their life studying cans of beans will have a good eye for a dent on a tinned product from fifty yards beyond the biscuit aisle. The answer is to be humble; to listen, learn and invest in a delicate panel beating hammer.

The next reason why the rejection slip may land on your doormat is because, though your can of beans may be perfectly produced and delicious, the market may not yet be ready for beans in oyster and mango sauce.

Alternatively, the person you have requested to represent you may not deal with cans of beans at all, let alone with beans in oyster and mango sauce.

Of course, the opposite can be true; there might be a glut of people producing cans of beans and the market is beginning to suffer flatulence; one more may just get up the nose of the book buying public.

There is a myriad of reasons why an individual may choose not to represent you, some more apparent than others. Rejection does not necessarily mean you have produced a can of worms [you were waiting for that, weren't you?] but if objective criticism is offered consider it as it is meant, not as a personal insult, on the contrary, as a means to improve.

You may wonder at my insolence in writing of such things, being an as yet unpublished wannabe, but I used to lecture occasionally on the subject of Creativity for a couple of years at the London branch of Syracuse University. I attempted in my drole, self-depreciative, always entertaining yet modest style, to teach the students the importance of learning from other people's observations, not to take it personally, and above all to learn how to distance themselves from their work.

[The ultimate rejection letter?]

Postscript

The very wise, if unfortunately crabbitty, Nichola Morgan explains in great detail why your perfectly formed book may not get the nod from a publisher in her post, 'How to Make a Publisher Say Yes'.

They Call Me MISTER Blurb.

2009-08-13T16:39:00.014+01:00

I reviewed a book for a local freesheet a year or two back by local author, Sebastian Beaumont. It is entitled Thirteen and is based on his experiences as a taxi driver of the night (SFX: hooting of owls) while he studied for an MA or something grander.

Sebastian had already had five, I believe, books in the gay genre published but this was his first non-gay work. (If you want to read the review, you can download the .pdf file here; it is on page twelve. If you're sensible you won't.)

I enjoyed the book as did those to whom I lent it.

Recently, I had reason to call Sebastian in my quest to discuss the ins and outs of agents and how to approach them when he mentioned that the publishers had used a quote of mine as part of the blurb on the back cover of the second edition.

I went deaf for a few minutes as my listening apparatus became detached from my recording apparatus because my head was increasing its volume by a factor of ten.

Me, Mister Blurb!

Here is an interesting interview with Sebastion in the Guardian, Sebastian Beaumont's top 10 books about psychological journeys. He has a new book out, The Juggler, which I promised to review in return for his advice, as it is still in hardback and I brokeback I shall have to wait for the paperback to back my promise.

PS I have only just noted the typo, 'the feeing of otherness'! How much do ghosts and ghoulies charge these days?

Blisters

2009-08-12T17:01:00.008+01:00

I have just returned from a long weekend with Rebecca. She lives just off the Bethnal Green Road in the East End of London. She loves it, me too. It remains a bustling confusion of peoples of every colour, creed and background.

And there is a family connection. Her grandfather, my father-in-law, a Polish Jew who emigrated here at the age of fourteen, well before WWII, yet whose whole family went to the gas chambers of Treblinka, (this is my best guess, as they lived in Częstochowa and that was the destination for the Jews rounded up in that city), owned a jewellery store just off Brick Lane.

As an aside, my dear ex, Sue, tells me, as a boy, Mark, her father, was woken in bed by a German soldier who had his bayonet aimed at Mark’s throat. This happened in WWI. For whatever reason, the soldier did not execute his threat but left. This story, if true, and forgive me Sue if I have the details wrong, interests me for two reasons: first, I didn’t know Poland was involved in WWI; second, of all the nations at that time, i.e. before the rise of Hitler, Germany was the least anti-Semitic, so why the assault on a young Jewish boy – or was his religion of no consequence? On both counts I may be wrong and would welcome correction.

The shop still is as was though now sells designer clothes, or something equivalent, reflecting the increasing gentrification of the area.

The weekend was as a result of a promise made to Rebecca to decorate her flat. (I think feminists are correct and God is a female and the only reason She put men on earth was to decorate their daughter’s flats.)

Her living room and bedroom now have that heady aroma of fresh emulsion. And she is a very happy bunny. It is the anniversary of her moving in and, as she said, it is the first time it feels like her own space. So I am a happy bunny too. It is also my early birthday present to her, as my time is cheap and cash non-existent.

I also did a few other bits and pieces, hanging pictures, mirrors, coat racks, etc., - all the things you never get round to when you are single young woman with a busy life. Funny, it is the first time I have felt like a fully functional, grown-up dad. (Rebecca will, naturally, disagree with both descriptors.) Normally I occupy myself when with her by taking the mick out of her friends. I find myself very funny – they search for the address of the nearest funny farm.

PS Gary of the inestimable writer’s fourth emergency service – “Crooked crankshaft, sir? Give us a sec and your plot will be firing on all four in just a jiff” – has given my query letter a BubbleCow four star rating with minor concerns about the marque definition.

PPS This is an odd post - to link the unbelievable with the mundane - my only excuse is the mundane is what keeps us living and hoping.

Wish You Were Here.

2009-08-02T19:47:00.008+01:00

I met Richard for a pint and an orange juice - I had the pint. He handed back the hard copy of my MS with effusive apologies for the fact it now looks distinctly aged, the result of an accident with a mug of cocoa. I am pleased with the sepia effect; it makes my work look as though it has been typed on parchment.

I have since installed all his corrections onto my original and, I am pleased to say, while doing so spotted one or two typos that had escaped his forensic eye.

Overall, his comments were confined to correcting my crap spelling and abuse of language - to lay and to lie being verbs I constantly muddle, but only because Richard is continually picking people up on their misuse, and I am now so confused I invariably lay where I should lie and lie where I should lay. Life would be so much easier as a chicken because I could always claim I was laying when I was lying or lying when I was laying.

We still have a problem over the definition of the book. Even he is stumped as how to categorise it. I think I will stick with black humour.

Over the past weeks, as mentioned elsewhere, I have been attempting to write all the bits and pieces necessary to submit to an agent. Give me a brief to sell the benefits of nuclear war to pacifists and I would find it easier.

Right on cue Nicola Morgan, self-confessed crabbit and fount of all knowledge regarding the publishing world, posts on the topic of covering - or query if in the US - letters.

I am now so thoroughly exercised by the weight of responsibility bearing down on this simple missive, I will, in all probability, end up by sending them a post card wishing they were here.

A small plug for a blog I really enjoy, nothing to do with writing, but if you have any interest in flora and fauna, especially the former, you will be astounded by the quality of image and the erudition of Kingsdowner.

Post-Coital Tristesse

2009-07-28T09:30:00.005+01:00

Not that I have had a coital for ages and certainly not one through the post (would it fit through the letter box) but in place of deserved joyeux, I feel tristesse.

My book is complete. My final critic, Richard, a retired English tutor, has read and approved, with a few digs at some of my malapropisms, like grizzly instead of grisly, and is, at this moment, re-reading it for a final check before returning it for me to correct.

So I should be feeling good. Except I am not. If anything I feel deflated. It is a familiar sensation after any creative effort on my part. Is that it, is my interior response; after the intense concentration, application, worry and tension, is that it? Seems so.

Things, I know, will pick up once I start on the next stage, which is to get it published. Also, I need to start on my next book. I have been in a limbo for the past five or six weeks as each of my critics have kindly devoted their time to reading my work and delivering their judgment.

So it is finished - practically perfect as it is possible to be.

We had, that is Richard, Sue and myself, an interesting discussion about the title. Their view is it doesn't work. So we spent some time thinking of a replacement, an exercise that soon descended into a series of appalling puns on the word gull. Prior to the collapse of our collective dignity, we also discussed how best to classify the book. The best we could agree on were literary, contemporary, blackly comedic, and Kafkaesque - the last I am unsure of as it is usually a term employed when writers attempt to inflate the worth of their work, or wish to imply it is something other than it is - badly written and illogical.

My book adheres strictly to its own logic and for that reason we considered and rejected magic realism as it does not repeatedly present you with the fact you are now entering a time or logic warp. (Besides, Richard is not a fan of magic realism.) He promised to apply his considerable intellect in the search of the most appropriate word to categorise it.

I broke the bad news to Rebecca, re: the title, she having thought of it. She was stoic. Having spent the afternoon browsing the titles of books in Borders, I decided we were all trying too hard to find an intriguing title. Let the book intrigue and the title describe. For the time being I have decided to re-title it Thursday to Thursday. Rebecca approves.

Postscript
Richard mentioned my book reminded him of The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, not a book I have read. I have just looked it up on Amazon and discover this product description:

A masterpiece of black humour from the renown comic and acclaimed author of 'At Swim-Two-Birds' -- Flann O'Brien. A thriller, a hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender, brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle, and a chilling fable of unending guilt, 'The Third Policeman' is comparable only to 'Alice in Wonderland' as an allegory of the absurd. Distinguished by endless comic invention and its delicate balancing of logic and fantasy, 'The Third Policeman' is unique in the English language.

I don't think Richard had been drinking - he gave up some time ago.

Cut, Paste & Copy - A Polemic

2009-07-26T12:04:00.020+01:00

Is Copying Others Always Plagiarism?

Good old Jane Smith has designated today* as Anti-Plagiarism day. (This sentence was stolen from Nichola Morgan by the use of copy & paste. How easy it is to lift words out of the pages of others these days.) *Today, as in two weeks ago.

Let me state my point of view at the outset, which is I do not condone theft in any form, and intentionally passing off the work of others as one's own is theft. It is the intentionality of the act that in most respects defines it.

Music

There have been times when individuals have unintentionally copied another; musically, the most famous case I can think of is George Harrison's song, My Sweet Lord, which proved to be practically a note for note copy of a minor hit some years earlier of He's So Fine, composed by Ronald Mack, recorded by the Chiffons. In 1976, the case went to court and Harrison lost. A detailed account of the case may be read here.

Though he lost the case, Harrison preserved his reputation because no one could credit a man of his ability and integrity would deliberately rip off another.

Art

In the world of painting, artists constantly copy others, either in homage or in parody. My favourite is Manet’s Olympia. His is a comment on the nude as typified by Titian's Venus of Urbino where the female is essentially anonymous and on display for the male gaze; whereas in Olympia, Manet personalises the naked woman – note the difference in connotation of the word ‘naked’ compared to ‘nude’ – she is definitively a recognisable individual. His model, far from being coy, stares at the viewer challengingly, and the hand that covers her pudenda does so in a gesture of ownership not promise.

Today, the subtlety of Manet's critique may escape us but not so his contemporaries: "A yellow-bellied courtesan", "A female gorilla made of india-rubber outlined in black", “the Queen of Spades after her bath", were some of the comments made after its first exposition at the Salon des Refusées exhibition, the last, needless to say, being a racist comment.

Literature

Writers have similarly parodied the work of others, but some have gone so far as to take the words off the page of others in a deliberate effort to create a new work: William Burroughs is one such writer who immediately comes to mind.

I have done the same. I wrote a 5,000-word short story as an exercise in existentialism where I took passages from the works of Henry Miller, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. In effect, it was a collage and, indeed, the main character, who inhabits the skin of his mentors, would insist on being called Henry, Bill or Jack depending on his whim. If it were ever to be published, I would, of course, acknowledge the action I have taken and reference the passages I lifted – though not directly, as half the fun in reading it is to identify what has come from where.

Shakespeare Baffled

Playwrights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would be puzzled by the fuss; they constantly took wholesale earlier works of others to rewrite and pass off as their own.

T. S. Eliot in his critique of Hamlet, ‘Hamlet and His Problems’, from The Sacred Wood, ascribes the problem of the leading character, as he sees it, arising from the manner in which the play had passed from hand to hand until it arrives at the quill of Shakespeare. By now, what started life as a simple story of revenge, becomes ‘a play dealing with a mother’s guilt upon her son’, [p83] with the effect ‘Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion that is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear’. [p86]

Do we own our ideas?

My favourite aphorism of earlier days would be to say, God had the original idea and man has copied ever since. And I stick by the sentiment. We are all consciously or unconsciously influenced by the world through which we wander, and, inevitably, these thoughts pass into our own works.

The Statute of Anne, 1710, was the first law to establish the notion of copyright. It is, of course, a determinedly capitalistic concept, and this idea of ownership, to my mind, is the textual equivalent to the enclosure, or inclosure, of the common land in the Tudor period.

Anyone who has read The Golden Ass, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Boccaccio’s Decameron will recognise the common thread to many of the stories told. Before Claxton first established his press, when the oral tradition persisted, and which still does so in Africa and elsewhere no doubt, tales were passed on to be elaborated by the individual storyteller, the most famous being Shahrazād in The Thousand Nights and One Night: there was a common ownership of plot and character. Even now I believe this to be true, for, in a sense, plot and character arise out of the actions and personality of common humanity, and sometimes I find it difficult to understand how any individual can claim possession.

But I suppose we all need to earn our bread.

(Damn - I have read this several times and still find typos!)

This Week

2009-07-18T11:02:00.003+01:00

I am abused by some most villainous knave, some base, notorious knave, some scurvy fellow and it is doing my head in. So I am heading to Lewes to calm down.

I promised to comment on the issue of plagiarism and will do so later.

A Small Big Ben Boast

2009-07-11T06:31:00.006+01:00

My direct ancestor - great, great, great grandfather, or something - was Benjamin Hall after whom Big Ben is named. Today is its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Hurrah!

(He would have despaired at the thought of the Big Brother camera. And, by the way, the name Big Ben applies to the bell, not the tower.)

Catch-up

2009-07-03T08:59:00.006+01:00

The gaps between my posts are lengthening, my excuse is I am becoming overwhelmed by social networks of one kind or another. For instance, I spent this morning catching up on sixty plus posts on blogs I follow in between reading Tweets and glancing at Facebook.

I am sure it is all very necessary and will stop me from becoming the fossil of a social outcast in the twenty-first century, but it is time consuming.

News

Last Tuesday I went with Rebecca and a couple of friends to the J. W. Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy. Waterhouse is the Pre-Raphaelite who was never one of the Brotherhood. He would not feature on my list of preferred artists of the period - Whistler tops the bill as far as I am concerned - but I am very pleased I went.

(This is entitled, Circe Invidiosa: Circe Poisoning the Sea. I prefer the title, Circe Tests New Fairy Liquid.)

Apart from being an unbelievable draughtsman and colourist, he is interesting in that he stuck, more or less, to his theme throughout his life. At various times he is influenced by contemporary developments and interests, like Japonisme, female sexuality, and Impressionism, but his love for Neoclassicism and Romanticism remains with him up until the end.

If you have a heart of stone, the cure is at the RA.

On Monday, I visited Emily, Amy and Katie-the-trainee-police-siren. I have never heard a one-year old with such a loud voice. They are all coming to Brighton for the weekend, so you have been warned.

Book

I have shortlisted the agents I am interested in and have been working on my query letter and synopsis. Meanwhile I am waiting for feedback on the book.

Exciting News

I blogged some time ago about the topic for my next book. Close your eyes little ones, it will be about sex. On the way to work a week or two ago, I had a J. K. Rowling moment - the whole book came to me in its entirety. I even have a working title: Eyes Across a Canvas.

Not being one to take the easy route, it will require an enormous amount of research; however, the thought of that alone excites me.

I am also working on a children's story in conjunction with a work colleague who is an illustrator. This is more a project for both of us rather than something we envisage being published - though you never know. It will be Katie's story to follow the one I have written for Amy.

The Agent Hunter

2009-06-25T08:23:00.002+01:00

The book is out to be reviewed by an individual who will be my fiercest critic - my daughter. She also happens to represent my target market, i.e. someone who loves reading, particularly literary fiction, which I define as a book that requires the reader to engage intellectually with the content one way or another.

It has already passed one critic, who approved it with minor revisions. Once through my daughter's hands, it will be passed to a friend, who taught English for years, primarily for him to scrutinise my punctuation and grammar.

I have found it difficult to settle on the genre of my book. I have been told magic realism might be it from those who have some inkling of the plot. Reviewer number three will know.

In the meantime, I have started the hunt for an agent. I spent an hour in the library going through the The Writer's Handbook, made a long list and checked them out on the internet.

The latter was an interesting exercise; one agent who I liked the sound of had a site which was up and running except for the list of authors they represented - it was still 'under construction' (it would be one of the first pages I would construct were I they). Another hadn't updated their site since 2007. Another just had a single home page stating they were literary agents. And one I really warmed to has no web presence.

Given the importance of network marketing these days, it is a concern.

When Cyclists Give You the Willies.

2009-06-15T08:41:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, while wrestling with the edit of my last chapter, I was disturbed by the sounds of whistles, merry cheering and the sounds of people having fun. Out on my balcony, I looked down to discover a sea of bottoms.

It was the Brighton Naked Bike Ride, one of a series of similar events that take place in cities around the world in June to alert motorists to the fragility of the human body and the vulnerability of cyclists.

A poignant and timely reminder as a colleague at work was very nearly killed a few weeks ago when he was knocked from his bike by a lorry at a roundabout and the rear wheels ran over him.

He has had several operations on his legs, his left in particular, and the consultant is hopeful that it will be capable of 'load bearing', in other words he will be able to walk but how well remains to be seen.

I used to cycle to work regularly when I worked in London - it is the quickest way to commute - and on most journeys there was a near incident of one kind or another, cars pulling across in front of you to turn left with no warning, people in parked cars throwing open their doors without looking - that kind of thing. It seems unnecessary to say cyclists need to keep their wits about them; however, the number of people I see on bikes wearing headphones is frightening. How can they concentrate on what is going on around them if they are listening to music. Hearing is a key sense when cycling, it acts as a form of rear view mirror in alerting you of any unusual activity behind you.

I hope my colleague makes a full recovery. No one from work has been allowed to see him as yet but it is hoped someone will be able to do so soon.