What's read and not there?

No blog this week, ‘cos after three weeks of intending to replace the guttering on the front verandah I’ve really got to get my act together and do it. So, no blog entry until next week ... except, hold on, what’s happened here? The sneaky little blighter is here all the same. It’s a blog post about there being no blog post. Hmm, bit of a paradox, that one. And there’s nothing like a good paradox, is there? Like:

There is no absolute truth.

Love that one.

Or:

I only ever tell lies.

Or:

Is the answer to this question ‘no’?

Which leads me to my favourite joke of all time.

Q: What’s red and not there?

A: No tomatoes.

And, talking of no tomatoes, I better go before I discover I’m not here either.

Recent reads

I’ve just made the wonderfully deliberate mistake of ordering a new stack of eleven novels and short story anthologies to read, without having finished half the previous stack yet, and before ordering in all the other titles I’m keen to read at the moment. Isn’t this great?! What a terrible pressure to be under, eh? There’s a rubble of ancient paperbacks on the floor, waiting to be dropped in at the second-hand bookshop, and there’ll be a new tower of books reaching towards the ceiling. Can’t wait for the post to arrive.

Note to self: start reading faster.

Finished Thirteen by Sebastian Beaumont (Myrmidon Books) a couple of weeks back. Had first come across this on Scott Pack’s blog, where he raved about it, and then Gary Davison gave it a good plug too.

'Stephen Bardot is a taxi driver working the night shift in Brighton. He works such long shifts that he is often driving while exhausted and it is then that he starts to experience major alterations to his perception of reality. People start to take lifts in his cab who know things they shouldn't, and who ultimately may not even be real.'

Although I found it very readable from the start and enjoyed plodding along with it, I felt as though I was plodding for a while and that those outstanding qualities I’d heard about weren’t really grabbing me, though of course this may well have been because of the way I was reading at the time (all those external factors which shape the way we engage with and interpret a book---pressures at work, the weather, interruptions). However, there came a mid-point where it seemed to shift into a higher gear and suddenly I found myself reluctant to put the book down. The dynamics of the story transformed it from being readable and good to compelling and outstanding. Whilst I can more or less track where this happened and why, I don’t want to touch on that here in case I give too much away, and certainly part of the ride with this novel is that there's an incremental unravelling of clues.

At times it reminded me of books I was drawn to as a teenager like Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes or John Fowles’ The Magus, and it felt like I was stepping into a shared element of those worlds again, which is not to say it felt derivative in any sense. Thirteen comes across as being a very fresh and original piece of writing, and the taxi driver narrator is absolutely convincing. It wasn’t available in Australia when I ordered it a few months back, so I had to order it through Amazon; however, I think it’d be received very warmly here.

Also finished M.J.Hyland’s How The Light Gets In (Canongate).

With this novel, all those external factors which influence the way we read a book seemed to conspire against the two of us getting along. It’s well-written, but it didn’t work for me. It has a sense of direction, but didn’t feel cohesive. Ho hum. Usually I’ll ditch a book after 40 or 80 pages if I’m not connecting with it, but everyone I spoke to who’d read this thought it was a good read and so I stuck it out, but ... well, you can’t win ‘em all, and sometimes, regardless of how hard you try, the connection just doesn't work.

Viral marketing?

A few weeks back I referred to a tall, round, brick chimney, which I thought might have figured in the landscape of my childhood, but couldn’t be sure. Well, my dear old mum e-mailed me soon after to not only tell me I wasn’t imagining this chimney (phew!), but that the name DOVER, which was painted down its height in large, white capitals, was there to advertise a bike pump.

As she pointed out, someone had gone to great trouble to advertise a product that was usually supplied with each bike as a matter of course. Indeed, it would be interesting to know how many people ever looked at that chimney and realised they’d lost their bike pump and needed to buy a new one---and a Dover bike pump at that? Or how many people, like myself, passed that chimney on a regular basis and didn’t have a clue what DOVER stood for? If the company owned the chimney it would make more sense to have a logo that size down the side of it, but I don’t think they ever did. Hmm.

Maybe, in a period where we talk about viral marketing and saturation marketing, this early marketing was about as incidental as it got. Advertising and marketing has changed a lot. And yet, in the world of books and music, word-of-mouth is probably one of the most effective forms of promotion there is. How many books have the critics slated or ignored, prior to them becoming phenomenally successful because a network of readers enjoyed them and recommended them to one another? Most of the books we buy, I think, are on our shelves because a friend or colleague told us they were a good read, and not because a critic in The Sunday Rag gave them five carrots or because we were sucked in by thirty seconds of prime time TV advertising or because they were plastered across the side of a bus or ... or painted down a chimney.

Rosalie Ham’s first novel The Dressmaker, which I read in 2005, was one such word-of-mouth success---a quirky 'Australian gothic novel of love, hate & haute couture'. I'm not sure what the critics had to say about it at the time, but for months everyone I met who was recommending a book was recommending this one until it became too difficult to resist buying. It was well worth it as a good read, which also made it the best kind of success story.

"Curiouser and curiouser!"

‘There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked, and when Alice had been all round it, and tried them all, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again: suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing lying upon it, but a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first idea was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall ...’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures under Ground, Dover Publications)

As a teenager of the trippy, hippy-happy seventies, I’ve seen a few people chase white rabbits down dark burrows. However, the hall that Alice finds herself in, with its many doors, has, with the ticking of the rabbit’s watch, acquired less of a surreal association for me, than as a place that symbolises the possibilities in life. Behind each door is the adventure of a new opportunity, with its own risks and rewards, dangers and pleasures, and in the grounds of each new opportunity there’ll always be another burrow and another hall with doors all round. And doors like this should be opened, never shut, don't you think? If you find a key to a door, then you have to see what’s on the other side. After all, if only monsters lurk there, and you don't want to learn to dance with them, it’s sometimes possible to step back.

Last week a door opened. And after a quick peek through, I couldn’t see any monsters. Not one.

Having mentioned in my last post that The View From Here had been relaunched as an online literary magazine, I was delighted to receive an invitation `to become a regular contributor. It’s fair to say my first reaction was one of panic because, despite the comments I’ve made about change and opening doors rather than shutting them, I’ll initially resist change with the best of them. Too right, I’ll sink into a comfortable routine if I can. After all, there aren’t enough hours in the day to do as much writing as I want and still earn a living as it is. All the same, after giving myself a good talking to, I reminded myself that this is exactly the type of door I like and that the view from its threshold is exciting. Very exciting. So, to hell with sleep and chewing meals properly and getting to work on time and ... and ... there are lots of ways to find an extra hour or two in the day to do the things you love doing. Aren’t there?

Come and visit. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

There's no way this post could finish without Jefferson Airplane playing White Rabbit.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

There’s only one thing we can guarantee will remain the same in life, which is that nothing will remain the same in life. Big changes or small changes, the only thing that doesn’t change is that everything changes. Dylan, Bowie and a thousand others have sung about it, Chaucer and Heraklietos wrote about it, Macmillan proclaimed about it, Darwin got a real grasp on it, Lao Tzu ... the list is long and constantly being added to because the earth and her inhabitants have been changing since before they began.

Even Anonymous gives a qualified assent: “Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.”

There’s been a big change afoot at PaperBooks during the last few weeks, which would’ve been inappropriate for me to hint at, let alone comment upon at the time. However, with the news released to the media last weekend (see Book Trade News, The Bookseller, Legend Press), I reckon I can now explain to all those lovely people who’ve been asking when The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore will be released, and who I’ve been fobbing off with the vaguest of replies and a quick change in subject, that PaperBooks have been bought by Legend Press. Yes, it’s a done deal! I understand that PaperBooks will continue to exist as a separate identity, but that this union will not only give both houses greater stature but that it’ll create efficiencies which will see an increased list of titles and broader marketing and promotion opportunities. (I’m beginning to sound more like a business executive than an author, so I’ll stop there.) What it means for The Snowing and Greening is that we’ll be working towards a new release date and will let everyone know this as soon as is practicable.

I’d like to say a public thank you to the dynamic Keirsten Clark, who established PaperBooks and who, through her editorial insight, helped me develop a sharper focus for The Snowing and Greening. Keirsten is going to concentrate her energies on her other business, the literary consultancy Writing.co.uk , so, if you're after assistance in developing a manuscript, have a close look at the opportunities available there. And congratulations to Tom Chalmers, who, in establishing Legend Press and taking on PaperBooks, must also be pretty darned dynamic.

Whilst I’m plugging, but still on the subject of change, big things have been happening over at Mike French’s site The View From Here recently. It’s no longer a blog as such, but has evolved into an online literary magazine. With his regular book reviews and interviews, Mike has been heading inevitably towards this change and it’s great to see the place he’s arrived at. It’s a boon for everyone interested in literary events, and Mike has reinforced this by affiliating with Cornerstones, another British literary consultancy. Recent interviews that Mike has conducted at The View From Here include Julian Barnes, Helen Corner, Tom McCarthy, Antony Moore, Paul Torday, Edward Smith (YouWriteOn.com) and yours truly. Not only is Mike French’s site well worth a visit but, for anyone interested in all things literary, it’s worth adding to your Favourites list if you haven’t already done so.

Thought I might finish with a YouTube clip of Bob Dylan singing The Times They Are A-Changing, or of Schopenhauer saying “Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal", or of Darwin setting sail in the Beagle, but thought I’d finish with a little light relief instead. Maybe this clip is about resisting change or maybe it suggests that sometimes things don’t change that much in some respects, or that things happen at their own sweet pace---you can decide for yourself---but I love the wink at the end.

Doing Donne

There was a time I read too many nineteenth century novels. It placed me in danger of writing tortuously long sentences, that, whilst resembling the metaphorical labyrinth they may have been attempting to convey, provided little in the way of illumination or hope for the hapless traveller who found his or her self trapped in the midst of such a dense text, and which, in terms of narrative style, became, dear reader, a little self-conscious and over-indulgently introspective … Phew! Glad I got that off my chest. These days, I read modern literature by choice.

Except when I don’t.

Recently I’ve been revisiting the literature of Elizabethan and Jacobean England---love the bawdiness and the cloak-and-dagger thriller stuff---but can go there safely it seems. There are no disastrous side-effects.

One of many favourites is John Donne (1573-1631), playboy and priest. Whilst his life story is fascinating in itself, it’s the cleverness of his conceits (those extended metaphors, developed at several levels to pursue a logical, but sometimes fatuous, argument), coupled with his ability to achieve a flawless fluency in meeting the technical demands of each poem, that really knocks my socks off.

So, taking a leaf from Alina Sharon’s blog and her regular feature Respect The Classics!, here’s a seductive John Donne poem:

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deny’st me is;

It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Thou know'st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,

And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?

Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou

Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.

'Tis true, then learn how false fears be;

Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,

Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

PS. Does John Donne look a bit like Errol Flynn or what?

PPS. To add to the Elizabethan ambience, and to underscore the power of logic and rhetoric for this period, here’s a very short Black Adder sketch.

Strong Language Warning

Warning: this post contains 'strong language'.

Whenever I see “Strong Language Warning” on a CD cover or a book cover, I think of storm warnings issued over the radio, of hurricanes or gale force winds. I imagine fishing trawlers tossed from peak to trough of 8 metre high waves, with thunder and lightning crashing into a dark ocean, and of lives in peril. And then I think of D.H.Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and know I'll listen to the CD or read the book regardless of such a warning, because it'll inevitably be over a storm in a teacup.

On the whole, we’re an inventive and playful species, and one of our inventions is language. It’s an artificial construct, which we communicate through, build upon and play with. And yet, as with all artificial constructs, the way we use it, abuse it or play with it, says something about us and the era we’ve created for ourselves.

It strikes me as odd sometimes that people will complain that so-and-so “used the F word” or so-and-so “used the C word.” As if the actual pronunciation of the word ‘fuck’ or ‘cunt’ might cause the sky to fall down. It’s just about okay to write ‘f***’ or ‘c***’ in a publication like a newspaper or a magazine, but not the complete word. The most obvious allusion is fine, but not the actual word in full. It’s as if we’ve invested these specific sounds and symbols with such power that they have a magical, but destructive potency, of their own. But why do we do this? What is it we’re really frightened of?

One answer, I believe, is that such responses reflect what is currently socially taboo; that language is a barometer of the age in which we live, and that ‘unacceptable language’ reflects that which society, as a whole, hasn’t yet matured enough to accept. We deem that language is offensive, or strong---and thereby use it abusively, offensively---when we’ve become uncomfortable with what it was intended to convey. And perhaps the only way to overcome this and move forward is to reclaim the word and the idea behind the word, and to refuse to snicker or be offended or complain when someone uses ‘strong language’.

To an extent, D.H.Lawrence achieved this approach with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, even though the novel was banned in 1928 and Penguin Books were prosecuted (but vindicated) under the Obscene Publications Act during 1960 when they decided to publish it. Sometimes it takes an age for society to move forward, but sometimes, unfortunately, we also go backwards.

There’s an anecdote from the introduction to Lady Chatterley’s Lover that’s stayed with me from when I first read it, which is relevant to the way we use and abuse language, and what it says about us. It goes something like this:

A soldier, recently returned from overseas, appears in court on assault charges and is asked to explain himself to the magistrate. “Well, your honour,” he says, “I’d spent eighteen fucking months fighting for King and country, and when I’m demobbed what do I fucking find? I arrive home on the last fucking train of the day, and decide to surprise my wife, so I walk all the fucking way home, let myself quietly into the fucking house, and make my way up the fucking stairs to our bedroom, where I fucking find ... where I find my wife having relations with a stranger.”

Thinking about voice

It’ll be no surprise to those who’ve been visiting this blog a while that I’m a fan of Raymond Carver’s short stories. And so, this morning, to celebrate the holiday, I began Sam Halpert’s Raymond Carver, an oral biography (University of Iowa Press, 1995). My daughter bought it me a few months back, and it’s been one strata of The Stack ever since, protected by the supplier’s shrink-wrapped plastic, in preparation for such a moment.

How I’ve been looking forward to peeling off that plastic wrap and getting into it! And, though I generally prefer fiction to biography and am just a quarter of the way in, it hasn’t failed to delight.

It’s got me to thinking (yet again) about voice.

Richard Cortez Day, who took some creative writing classes that Carver attended early on, has this to say in the opening interview: 'As soon as I saw his first manuscript I realized that this guy could really do something, because he had a strong sense of narrative. Of course a lot of writers have that, but not many know the other two things, and though one of them can be learned---the use of detail to establish a reality---the other I believe cannot be learned. It’s the real gift, the true sign of whether a person is a writer or not---and that is the voice. And right from the start Ray’s voice was authentic, personal, and compelling. A bit Hemingwayish maybe, but that’s OK---you have to work through some predecessors.'

I’m not sure about that business of it being learned or not (the nature versus nurture argument too often generalises and simplifies a point of view to the point of meaninglessness), but I do believe voice is something that’s developed and that can become more pronounced with time, practice and confidence. But it’s also something that can be spoiled, by being too measured, too cautious, too refined, self-conscious, or smug. As readers, we all have preferences of course for the type of voice or tone of voice that we prefer attuning ourselves to throughout the journey of a story, but me---well, I’m probably more comfortable with one that borders on being a tad raw rather than carefully polished. (It's what'll hold me to a novel like Charles Bukowski's The Post Office, for instance, when I'm feeling there's not enough else.)

It’s an elusive quality though and not that easy to define, which is possibly what Day was alluding to. It’s not necessarily the narrative voice we’re talking about, because the narrator can be as much a shaped character as any other character, with flaws and idiosyncrasies which mark his/her voice and interpretation of events; although sometimes, when that isn’t the case, the narrative voice may indeed be the authorial voice. But often, I think, when people are talking about this authorial voice what they’re really talking about is ‘style’---except ‘style’ is a less fashionable word. All the same, what’s being discussed is no different: the type of choices that define an author, the vocabulary that’s drawn upon as a whole, the selection of what’s important and how it’s shown, along with the omissions and silences---these are perhaps the things which contribute to that quality of voice or style and which might sometimes be described as ‘authentic, personal and compelling’.

Yes, I think that's it.

To finish, I’ve just got to a section where Scott Turow (novelist and lawyer) adds this to the debate: 'There’s a massive difference between the writer as a person on the one hand and his work on the other. There’s an invisible element in writers. Indeed, one of the things that drove me to law school was the fact that hanging around with these guys, I came to realize that writers as a group do a miserable job of talking about themselves. They’d be happy to tell you stories, repeat stories to you that they heard, but when it came to talking about their inner selves ... very little. I found that lawyers are much more open ... Writers in many ways write because there are things that are otherwise unapproachable for them.'

Hmm.

The importance of a good editor

I’ve been editing and redrafting Novel Two recently. (Am not going to say what it’s about or even what its working title is because I’ve manufactured a superstition for myself about the dangers of doing that.) Everything was sweet until a couple of weeks back, though, when I began to suspect something was missing and that I needed to build in a transitional scene. Exactly the sort of challenge I enjoy. So I spent the last fortnight building this scene, playing with a couple of thousand words and the ideas behind them, juggling them around, dropping a few, picking up a few new ones ... editing, refining, redrafting, working through it again and again, until the new section felt as polished as those on either side.

However, the moment I slotted it into place, it became blindingly obvious that it slowed the pace rather than enhancing it---whatever was I thinking of?---and so I ripped it out again. Now it’ll be filed away with the remnants of other deleted scenes and half-completed ideas in that bizarre wasteland of phrases and snippets. (It’s a place I go a-browsing every now and then, sometimes swinging a flame-thrower at the horrible mutations I discover lurking there, whilst rescuing other strange beasts I find.) But at least I can return to editing the main body of what's already written.

Of course, this isn’t two weeks work down the drain. It just means I have a better sense of the balance of the whole (I hope). Yet it highlights the importance of editing, and returning to a piece of writing in many different moods, because what might work one day might seem clumsy beyond belief the next; what might seem profound in the middle of the night may reveal itself as embarrassingly trite in the light of day.

This, coupled with the fact that I’m enjoying Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare at the moment (who illustrates how much of what we know about the bard is based on supposition and very few facts), put me in mind of the following excerpt about editing and editors. It goes to show that a good editor is invaluable and should always be listened to.

(Thanks, Martin, for posting this link to me.)

Bringing the stack down

In the town of my childhood, I think there once was a very tall, round, brick chimney. A couple of hundred feet tall, perhaps, with the name of a company (not the town) painted in large, white characters from top to bottom:

D

O

V

E

R

But I can’t be absolutely sure of this. It might be a memory from the town of my childhood, or from another place I’ve lived or travelled through, or it might be a fragment that’s been manufactured down at the Factory of the Imagination which has somehow found its way into my warehouse of memories.

It doesn’t really matter whether the image in my head is based on actuality or not though because the value of it remains the same either way: it represents for me, at the moment, the tower of books I’ve been putting to one side to read. The books I want to read rather than the books I need to read for work, that is. Most of them are presents from Christmas and a birthday, and I’ve been itching to start dismantling this stack for a while. It’s grown taller and taller and taller, threatening to topple, and (if it wasn’t for my fear of heights) I’d almost see my self as a steeplejack eager to get to the top of it, to begin demolishing it, layer by layer, all the way down to the ground ... simply so I can have an excuse to start building another one with even more books I'm keen to read.

On the very top, like a ring of capping bricks round its rim, were a number of magazines I subscribe to: back issues of Writer (from The Victorian Writers’ Centre) and The Author (from The Society of Authors). Inevitably, I began with these and came across some interesting snippets along the way.

Simon Brett, in his article on writers and depression (The Author, Autumn 2007) asks: ‘Was Georges Simenon’s opinion correct, that “writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness”? After all, normal people don’t need to write. They accept life as it is; they don’t suffer any urge to chronicle or ... to tidy up or improve it.’

I like this. I don’t necessarily agree with it being a vocation of unhappiness, but I do sometimes wonder what it'd be like to not need to write; to kick back and enjoy every single moment without feeling that itch to reflect and explore and get caught up in telling the stories that are revealed. Would life feel emptier or richer because of it? Why do we write?

Illustrator Korky Paul’s article on collaboration (ibid) struck a chord when he cited Paul Klee’s maxim that drawing was a matter of ‘taking a line for a walk’. Whilst this reminded me of the first time I misheard this saying as a child, and the difficulty I had in trying to work out why drawing was like taking a lion for a walk---surely no one could claim that art was that risky---it left me wondering whether writing is like taking an idea for a walk. Is it?

Lastly, Samantha Skyrme’s article (ibid) provided some delightful black humour when, in describing why publication dates are sometimes delayed, she stated: ‘I know of one multi-author book which has been with the publisher for so long (literally decades) that one of the authors has died of old age and the publication is still nowhere in sight’. Maybe I have a sick sense of humour, but I fell out of the chair when I read this.

And I thought it might provide an effective segue into saying thank you to all those people who've asked me recently (via e-mail, Facebook, telephone or in person) about the release date for The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore, and to those who've pre-ordered on Amazon. Thanks. A VERY BIG TOWERING THANKS! We probably won't make March, but things are moving along in the busy, busy publishing world and I hope you'll eventually think the wait worthwhile. I'll put a countdown on this blog as soon as the date is set in concrete.