Fifty Shades of Gay, and other (offensive) stories

You can't fail to notice the proliferation of several things in the media at the moment:

- The rising aggression between Middle Eastern and Western diplomacy.

- The rise of really, really badly thought through media items.


I'm not suggesting one is in any way responsible for the other - necessarily. 
Let me be more specific:

Twilight erotic fan fiction turned 'spankbuster' bestseller trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, by now infamous E.L. James, has sold an estimated 5.3 million copies in print and, most notably, in ebook format. That means in Britain it has out sold Dan Brown's previous chart toppers, the Highway Code, and the Bible.

I have not read all of it. But I have read enough. Let's not beat around the masochistic
bush here: it is very badly written. I'm not being snobby. I don't like the Harry Potter books (I know - GAH!), but I do think J.K. Rowling has studied her form and implemented it with skill. E.L. James has not. It is poorly conceived, rendered in clunky, unnecessary and repetitive prose. If you ask me, the sex scenes are written like biology text books. AKA with such robotic literalism that the chance of me getting off on it is equal to dry-humping the corner of a disconnected microwave.

The issue here shouldn't be taste - but it invariably is. Taste is representative of morals, both individual and collective. Taste informs us of who we are. Taste tells us what is right, and what is wrong. And if someone's taste is different, how do we deal with that?

The recent conflicts in Libya and elsewhere have been partially attributed to the offensive anti-Mohammed video made by a middle-aged Californian douche-bag (although there is now speculation about it's creator and circulation). The American embassy was burnt to the ground, the ambassador executed. Russia is considering blocking Youtube as a result. Pakistan and Bangladesh reportedly already have. Google has agreed to ban the clip in India, Indonesia, Libya and Egypt, to comply with state laws. 

Salman Rushdie has recently released his memoir of being in hiding during the fatwa years after the publication of The Satanic Verses. It's called Joseph Anton, after his pseudonym during that period - from the first names of his favourite authors, Conrad and Chekhov. Speaking to the BBC, he comments that he doesn't think that book would be published today. He thinks publishers wouldn't take the risk. Recently, Channel 4 declined a press showing of a documentary about the history of Islam due to 'legitimate threats' from undisclosed extremists. The action then, agreeing with Rushdie's view. 

Respect is important. It's more than important. Mutual respect for everyone, regardless (and perhaps because of) differences is key to democracy. Not just democracy, but basic equality on a one to one level. The older I grow the more I realise the importance of respect.

But, to quote Rushdie, as well as the right to respect, in a free society we should all also posses the 'right to offend.' Being offended goes hand in hand with being able to speak freely, and consequently to act freely. When a government denies its citizens the right to offend they are essentially denying their freedom of speech, and thus their freedom. 

People talk a lot of shit in Britain. People talk a lot of shit in the US (Particularly Mitt Romney). But talking shit is as essential to democracy as talking sense - although, of course, the definition of 'sense' is debatable, as it should be. It should not be state regulated. Imagine if David Cameron enforced what the definition of Sense in Britain was, like an autocrat? Shudder. And no more red faced cartoons of him falling over in the tabloids. 

A personal example:

I'm bisexual. I'm more on the gay end (um?!) of the spectrum, but I want to be honest with you. I grew up in a small part of the rural South West of England. As you might imagine, not everyone was happy about this aspect of myself that is as inherent as my white skin and brown hair. There is nothing I can do about it. It wasn't a decision. It is part of me. It's not the whole part, but it's an important facet. 

When phrases like, 'That's so gay,' were going around, I wondered, 'Am I offended? Is this belittling me? By someone saying this, are they saying "being gay" is bad, and thus, that I am bad?' When I heard people say it, I would think of the kids who used to say things to me at school, the strangers who would make assumptions at parties, the adults who should know better but still cling onto their childish prejudices. I think about how people are afraid of things they don't understand. I think about how at first everything is foreign and strange and scary. I think about how we all stereotype in order to understand something at first. I think about how the stereotype is never the full story. 

I think about how we are all just trying to make sense of things with what we've been given, from our culture, our family, from what we can perceive with our senses. I think about this, and I think, 'Am I offended when people say "That's so gay".'

As it turns out, I am slightly offended. I am slightly offended because it strikes a personal chord with me - it chips at an insecurity. It's the obvious negative inference. I might tell them to think about it. I might say, You know, that's kind of offensive. Or I might not. What I would certainly not do, is fire bomb their house because I felt personally attacked. 

Think about why they're saying it: are they saying it to offend gay people? Are they saying it to make a statement that they themselves are not gay? Are they saying it because their group of friends are saying it? Are they saying it to be cool, to be normal? Have they thought about it at all? Am I so insecure that I have to torch their house? Will that actually solve any of the issues here??


(Incidentally, Fifty Shades of Gay is actually a real book. Which, frankly, is unsurprising: the copy always gets copied.)

So before you jump to write an offensive comment about me in the comments box, think about it: at least you can make that comment. You can tell me I've got it all wrong, that I'm prejudiced, degraded, immoral. That I don't know what I'm talking about. That your opinion is the only right opinion. 

And thank goodness that you can. 

Implicit Narratives

This is pleasant over dinner. 

'When you can't enter through the front door, kick in a window.'

That's a quote from author Liz Fichera. I tried to find the, 'A writer is only a reporter for what they have lived,' one, but Google's throwing out, ur, googlies today. If you know who said that, please add it to the comment box - it's killing me!

You may be wondering why the intimate cast of The New Adventures of Superman are standing, in all their awkward glory, above these sentences. Well, it's partly because I can't get that incredible opening theme music out of my head - but mostly because I'm going to be starting a Journalism MA at London College of Communication in just under a month and a half. You can call me Clois from now on ... or 'JIMMY!'

I was initially worried about this decision. I thought, 'Shit, journalists are all hideous photo-rats gagging to type intrusive words about Jordan's tatters falling out of a limo.' I thought, 'Journalism isn't real writing. Not real writing.' I thought, 'I don't want to be one of those people who put off their dream forever and then have a breakdown age forty at their misspent youth.' I thought, 'This isn't me. I don't want to do this.'

Then I thought about it more logically: What the hell is this blog if not journalism? What the hell is the stuff I write for magazines if not journalism? Am I losing my integrity as a writer? No. Am I a person who can only write one kind of thing at one time, AKA, solely the afore mentioned boob bashing (dear God...)? No, I am not. Do I want to affect people and the world with my writing? Hell yes! Can I make a living as a prose writer yet? Hell no! But do I love to write and want to learn more about writing all sorts of things? Yes, yes I do.

This is literally how I decided to apply for this course.

I always knew writing was never going to be easy. I'm not doing it to be rich or famous. I'm doing it because I can't not. It's a part of me the same way my little eyes and big nose are a part of me (ur, sort of). I was one of those kids who, like Jill Murphy, author of The Worst Witch books, spent their childhood literally putting books together with A4 and a stapler. After a long period of adolescent/adult confusion, I realised about 2 years ago, that I had to devote myself to this, or I would never really be happy or feel fulfilled. I mean sure, maybe I've gone a bit overboard with the work and the heart palpitations and stuff, but I'm more than willing to suffer for my art - not that I'm saying over-work is good. Take breaks. Have baths. Yaddy yaddy yadda. Do the work.

So, here is a list of things I've learnt about writing in the past two or three years. They are as applicable to journalism as they are to prose. Hopefully you'll find them helpful, or at least interesting. Please feel free to add any in the comments:

1 - Take everything you write seriously. Even if you think it's not that important, even if you think it's trivial or ridiculous. The way you write is your manifesto to the world. The same way a great actor can make the lines their character speaks into and icon or a breathtaking performance, so the way you pen down you assimilated information and thoughts can make seemingly unimportant things potent. Think of the pubic hair caught in the knicker elastic on a failed wedding night in Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. It serves as a microcosm of the awkwardness between the young newlyweds. It's poignant because it's written to mean more. It is one serious pube that tells you everything.

2 - What are you trying to say with your writing? What's the point? Why are you doing this? What does it mean to you and to the people you want to read it? What are you trying to affect here? Are you trying to get something out? What is that? Why is this the best medium? Ask yourself the fundamental questions and get the answers.

3 - Everything is a story. I hate the word 'story' so let's swap it for 'narrative.' Even gossip magazine articles are narrative: 'Jordan seen with new interest last week shopping in L.A. OMFG! What will Pete say??!' is a story. The fact that these people are real (hmm....) gives it extra excitement, but the construct is a standard narrative piece. All art is in someway narrative. Even Ulysses is a story. Songs are narrative ('Tonight's gonna be a good, good night...'), poems are narrative ('They fuck you up, your mum and dad...'), photography and painting are narrative. Think of The Scream. It's so unsettling because we don't immediately understand it, we want to work out the back story. Even if it is not explicitly a narrative, it suggests one, often it is the onlooker/reader/audience members' life story. That's what makes powerful art, powerful prose, and good journalism.

4 - If you can't be bothered, don't bother. It's not manual labour, but writing is certainly hard work. When you're writing, sometimes all you want to do is get away and chase that fluffy-tailed dog outside the window. If you do and don't come back. Never come back. Writing is work you should believe in, and you should always struggle, suffer and persist with what you believe in. I'm not saying 'suffering' is intrinsic to the creative make up in a way where you force suffering on yourself to fit a mould. What I mean, is that anything you care about will at some point cause you pain. It's an inevitability - but pushing through it, conquering it, is like, the best thing ever.

5 - Use your fears to make you accurate. When you're faced with a blank Word document, your mind and fingers can seize up. Fear of getting it wrong or doing something stupid has taken over. Use this fear to your advantage: it is your weapon. Fearless writing leads to sloppy writing, a laFifty Shades Of Shit (seriously, the opening two paragraphs are about the protagonist brushing her hair! WTF!! Hash tag fail E.L. James). If you really care about your writing, you will be scared of it. Are you scared of love? Of course you are. Instead of seizing up and comatosing yourself pre-fluffy dog play, use your concern to make you think, 'What am I saying here? What do I want to say? What do I want people to feel? What's the mood I want to evoke? Who is my demographic? Once you can answer these questions (questions are super important to the young writer), you will feel more confident in what you're writing. Your own parameters are key.

6 - (From Jack Kerouac's rules for writing) Be crazy dumb-saint of the mind. I agree. Do it.

7 - Keep it real. Like, what's the point in writing bullshit? No one gives a damn because they can't relate to it, the characters are inconsistent, the dialogue seems fake. Look at the world around you. Look at the life you have lived. A piece about a dragon and a wizard can seem 'real' if you recognise the emotions of the wizard, or even the dragon. People reading to escape still want to recognise something the can understand or feel emotion for. Report from life. Copy life, and expand. It doesn't make it a copout; it makes it worth reading. Stephen King thinks, 'Fiction is truth inside the lie.' Which is also true of non-fiction. As soon as you write it, it's interpretation, it's fiction. Which is why you have to aim for truth above all else.

Two more quotes on truth in writing:

'I always tried to start with one true sentence.' - Ernest Hemingway.

'Fundamental accuracy of statement is the sole morality of writing.' - Ezra Pound.

(I was going throw a Modernist stage.)

8 - Cut the adverbs. 'Will you kiss me?' she asked emphatically. No, I'm not gonna fucking kiss you. Know why? Because anyone who wants to 'empathically' kiss me should be snogging athesaurus. Most adverbs deaden the power of the verb. If your scene, or whatever, is written well enough, there should be little need for the adverb - your reader already knows how she would kiss me. The adverb exists in the mind of the reader as they imagine the scenario. Cut your fucking verbal cling-ons, E.L James.

9 - (A classic oldie) Read everything. I didn't realise how shit my work was until I read everything I could get my paws on. Suddenly you see that's a sloppy sentence. It's too long. That detail is generic. Shit, that's a mother fucking cliche and I didn't even realise. I have learnt nothing from reading this. It's throwaway fan fiction (or, need I mention it again, Fifty Shits of Grey.) In his book,On Writing, Stephen King says, 'If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.' Stephen, I hate your books, but I agree with the sentiment!

10 - Love it. If you don't sit back and feel the world is a better place after you've finished a first draft, maybe this isn't the thing for you. If it is, you already know how this feels. It's the best.

I hope you didn't think that was total wank. As ever, comments are much appreciated. I love a good discussion. Now, I'm off to watch that opening titles sequence again. You gotta love Teri Hatcher's shoulder pads and hair. And 'acting.'

Ciou!

FOR OUT OF THE HEART PROCEED

So, because I'm obsessed with the lit blog HTMLGIANT, I went there, read a review of Jensen Beach's debut collection of short stories, For Out Of The Heart Proceed, and immediately bought it.

The narratives are primarily first person, concentrating on father/son, husband/wife, male friend/male friend and man/bird relationships (that's right - bird). Each narrator struggles with decisions and feelings that fluctuate throughout the highly economic use of prose. Clipped sentences relay the fragility of emotion felt by his characters, by comments left hanging, ideas not fully comprehended. But the stories are not without humour. Often this humour is tinged with a sadness that links thematically to the concerns of each piece. A favourite example: against the wishes of his wife, a man decides to buy a peacock for their small house. When speaking to the farmer and owner of the bird, this conversation happens:

" 'It'd be a pity to break up a good thing,' the farmer said. 'The white bird is your bird's companion.'

'How so?' I asked.

'I think they're gay,' the farmer said. 'Gay birds,' he said and hung up the phone. "

After purchasing both birds when he previously only wanted one, due to costs, he decides to let one go, then the other. These moments of uncertainty run through many of the characters' situations. In the final story, a man kidnaps his son on the day his ex-wife and new boyfriend are moving him out of town. These father/son relationships I found the most poignant and complex. In another, a man consoles a father whose child was killed in the car he was driving by letting him chastise a teenage couple making the beast-with-two-backs in the college car park they patrol. These are powerful connections rendered simply and directly.

For Out Of The Heart Proceed is broken down into three sections containing six or seven hyper short stories finished with one longer piece - the last section ending with the eponymous title of the collection, a quote from the Book of Matthew. The stories are grouped appropriately, the first section, it seems, by birds - a strange and welcome idiosyncrasy.

Gather closer: it's all in the subtext. Beach evidently doesn't believe in telling his reader how to feel or judge his characters and their decisions. The stories concentrate on moments of stress, where decision-making is important to a greater story, where there isn't exactly right and wrong, but there is the perforation of the human heart and it's fractious demands.

Each story ends before it ends. They don't conclude expectedly, which, again, was an enduring trait I thought made the stories more alive and relatable. More believable in some ways. At times, I thought the prose was too deliberate, and I could see the structure of it in Beach's mind as he composed, which deadened moments and made them feel occasionally like first drafts.

Generally though, I would highly recommend this collection as an interesting, evocative and profound collection of contemporary prose. That's my official schtick, and I'm, ur, schticking to it.

Recent Reads in Red and White

Post Modernism is Dead; Long live Alt Lit

It's all about Alt Lit now.

Don't bother juxtaposing surreal and mundane scenarios and images any more.

Don't bother letting me know it's 'only writing.'

Don't bother letting me know these fictitious characters aren't real and my emotional pull towards their made up lives in made up situations is contrived.

Don't bother making no sense to confuse me into realising I was too 'into' what you've written.

Don't bother Alasdair Gray.

Don't bother Ian McEwan.

Whatever Joyce.

It's all about Alt Lit now.

This may be my most pretentious post yet.

So, I've been reading a lot of Alt Lit recently. And reading a lot about Alt Lit recently. What the fuck is Alt Lit?? Well, this kind of is.

As far as I can discern, the term is an abbreviation of 'Alternative Literature' with a deliberate nod towards computer lingo. On several different blogs this discussion has been raging recently, but the general consensus seems to be that it is fiction that utilises new social media as intrinsic to its form. The writers (such as Tao Lin, Marie Calloway) tend to be students or recent MFA graduates in their mid twenties. All have blogs. All publish stuff in chapbooks and on Facebook. Thank you Zuckerberg for creating a platform for a new medium of literature to spawn on. The style is brief, concerned with mundanity, cuteness and personal sadness. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest Calloway's Adrien Brody as a recent famous example.

Because it's so linked with social media, Alt Lit seems to also be very concerned with the writer, as apposed to the writing, in a very 21st Century Big Brother celebrity sort of way. Marie Calloway writes about a character called Marie Calloway having sex with older men who she's been chatting to on the internet. She posts pictures of her naked with semen on her face. People like me find it fascinating for some reason and spend their free time blogging about it. There's something a bit Jersey Shore about it all.

In some ways it's very direct. In others it's very pretentious. But then those at the forefront of a movement have always been considered pretentious trouble makers. Think establishment rockers like Dali, Van Gogh, Manet, Picasso, Joyce (again) etc etc. It's authentic to the writer as it comes directly from them, not through a publisher, resulting in more idiosyncrasies and more grammatical errors. It is essentially the literature of our time. Like it or not, you can't deny the contemporary-ness of it.

I have just spent the last few hours writing a short story called Crying, about a couple who meet at a party and then have a vague relationship solely through email. I am probably going to include it in my little e-collection of short stories I am self publishing next month. The likelihood is also that I will publish it here first. While Alt Lit in theme I am hoping it will be not be so concerned with form that personal connection will be forgone. The general gist of the collection is an emphasis on personal disconnection, mostly through media connections. There's a story told solely through dialogue on gay dating app Grindr. There's internet blind dating. There's language and cultural barriers that make connecting with another person difficult. My intent is never to overshadow the emotional intent of the story with the way it's told - not in that way, anyway. I want them to be true - because what is the point of fiction if it isn't true?

I still don't have a title. Ideas??!

MARIE CALLOWAY

Marie Calloway has become the sexual-celebrity-email-themed darling of the changing digital literary age. I mean, check it out, I'm totally blogging about her.

She's still super young and pretty.

She sort of made it big with this story:

ADRIEN BRODY

BY MARIE CALLOWAY

"hello.

i'm marie calloway.

thanks for your XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX blog and other writing. especially your essay on pornography called XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX. those things have really broadened my mind. (before was strict classical marxist.)

please look at my tumblr if you want."

I sent that email in March. He didn't respond for months so I felt a little embarrassed thinking he must have seen my email and ignored it.

But then I got this response in May:

"thanks for reading!

You can tell I don't check this email account very often, too lazy even to set up a forward - sorry for not responding sooner - I will start following you on tumblr - "

Read the rest HERE.

Then read this breakdown HERE. Also, THIS. And now THIS for a general overview.

Thoughts on this?

Pop Will Eat Literature.

Recently, I've been noticing how many musicians nick lines from literature.

I suppose it can add a certain weight and intertexuality in referencing certain well known passages. It can also, however, make the musician seem like a right proper idiot. 'I know about books - I read books! God, just because I'm sexy and can bend in half at the MTV Awards doesn't mean I don't read, Jeez.' You know? Like they're trying to prove it. Like in Bad Romance, where Lady Gaga (second verse) quotes the titles of three Hitchcock movies before the extraneous French segment (who knows fatal love patterns better than the French ....?!). Because she's like, so in touch with all art history and stuff.

Perhaps the pop star knows their lyrics will never beat the great wordsmiths of by-gone eras. Perhaps they just read it and liked it and became inspired by it/stole it.

Anyway, here's some I've noticed of late:

1) '... Light of my life, fire of my loins, be a good baby, do what I want.' - Off To The Races (allegedly) by Lana Del Rey.

Originally from the first paragraph of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov:

'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.'

It is interesting to note that on the special edition of Del Rey's Born To Die album there is a bonus track actually entitled Lolita. She's such a fierce betch.

(My favourite comment on this clip so far is: SHE HAS MORE VOICES THAN THE EXORCIST! ... Youtubers can be so cruel.)

2) 'Girls can wear jeans, And cut their hair short, Wear shirts and boots, 'Cause it's OK to be a boy, But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, 'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading, But secretly you'd love to know what it's like, Wouldn't you, What it feels like for a girl.' - What It Feels Like For a Girl by Madge.

Basically completely ripped from a monologue in Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden, as spoken by incestuous seventeen-year-old sister Julie, to our narrator Jack, her fifteen year-old-brother, who she later has sex with. In the film, this line is spoken by Charlotte Gainsbourg, taking us to the inevitable next step of Madonna nicking it to make another point. It's a good point though.

3) 'Heathcliff, don't you know that it's me - it's Cathy! - I've come on home - oooohhhhh let my in at your window!'

Need I say any more?

(This next one's well controversial)

4) Killing An Arab, entire song (and incidentally also first single), by The Cure.

In the words of Robert Smith, this song, 'was a short poetic attempt at condensing my impression of the key moments in L'Etranger by Albert Camus.'

I love this book. I like very much that it has blossomed into music. Although, perhaps they could have chosen a different title ... ? [DISCUSS]

5) To The Lighthouse by Patrick Wolf.

Patrick likes to let people know he reads a lot and isn't just some dumb pop tart. To The Lighthouse not only takes it's name from the Virginia Woolf novel of the same name but also references Virgil in the line, 'Great, great minds against themselves conspire.' Apt given the Woolf shout out. He's a clever bloke - and he knows it. And now we know it. OH GOD!

I'm sure this list is potentially exhaustive. But this is the end for now. I'm off to shit my pants at Harry Potter and The Woman In Black. Another literary adaption. When will things just stick to their own medium for once?

Come, let us be friends for once, the Earth shall be left to no one.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about imagined identity in fiction and art. It is partly because I am working on a piece of writing that shifts between narrators who at first despise one another, before reluctantly or unexpectedly forming bonds. I have also been writing articles and wondering/worrying who I am writing as; what is my voice; who is the narrator of this information; is there a narrator at all or is this merely information appearing from the ether? I have also been reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith and marveling at her ability and braveness at writing so in depth about people who she is not. She is a mixed race female of Jamaican/British decent, yet she writes expansively (and provocatively!) about middle aged Bengali men, teenagers, young wives, white middle class geneticists and British gentry - all with incredible honesty, warmth and irony.

I have just read that director Rupert Goold is working on a theatrical, multi-media version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis to be performed in Kensington Gardens, London, in May. He is planning to make it less-posh, less-period and 'less-Enid-Blyton-like.' He likens its status from his own childhood to something of Shakespearean proportions with an internal message that, like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, can be re-imagined in various other settings (Romeo + Juliet?!).

It's hard to imagine seeing through someone else's eyes...

Having grown up with the books and the very lovable BBC dramatisation of the first four of the Narnia series, I agree with him. I am excited to see what he will do: make it contemporary, make the religious allegory more/less obvious or relate it to some more modern issue/s. I hope it will be good and bring a new audience to the book. I do not, as many critics and readers are sure to feel, that an interpretation in anyway damages the original. The original endures unscathed regardless of emulation - and I think it is always interesting to hear another point of view.

However it has made me worry in one respect.

Many stories, particularly traditional plays such as Shakespeare, the Brontes, Dickens and so on, are perpetually reinvented in order to 'snare' a new generation of onlookers. Invariably directors, producers and designers end up pandering to the imagined tastes of the preferred absorbent quota (usually the teenage audience). This happens by referencing pop or urban culture and making all the characters wear Nike high-tops. I have no problem with this in theory, but in practice I think it is culturally detrimental to our young people if this is to happen to most of historical literature. Who is to say a fifteen-year-old boy from Hackney can't imagine and sympathise with the fears of Danish king invented by a dead bloke with a tash from Stratford? Are we not underestimating the strength of our species' 'blind' ability to empathise, to love?

I mean, sure, I love Clueless as much as the next guy. Who doesn't love epic, Jane Austin-tinted dialogue like, 'You're a virgin who can't drive,' 'That was way harsh, Ty.' But I would be insulted if the director thought that I would not understand the original inspiration (Emma) and needed Alicia Silverstone to make the essence of the story blindingly obvious and in clothes I too could purchase at any high street shop (should I wish to dress in drag and do the hula...).

This is not our life - but isn't that why it's interesting?

This talk below, given at TED International by Turkish writer Elif Shafak, epitomises my concern. She suggests that creative writing tutors alter their syllabus slightly, by asking that students don't necessarily write what they know, but what they can imagine. Less I Think Therefore I Am, more, I Feel Therefore I Am Free.

When I was a child and I read (or rather, listened to on story tape!) to C.S. Lewis' Narnia stories, I had no idea why the hell the characters called each other a 'brick' or really what they were going on about in general. While I am English, their world, even before they stepped through the wardrobe, was alien and exciting to me. And that is why I loved it. It was also why I loved the Arabian Night stories, the tales of the Brothers Grimm, and so on - for precisely the opposite reason that so many stories are 'modernised': because they were not about me, because they taught me about another world, a view through somebody else's eyes.

I agree with Shafak that fiction that does not alter your perspective is bad fiction. It's bad art really - if it teaches and tells you nothing you do not already know, what's the point in it at all? I can't wait to see Goold's production, to see how he has interpreted it's core values, but I think it is naive and insulting to modern audiences to imagine that the original is too far a stretch of the imagination - because that is exactly what it should be stretching, unless all we want to see are mirrors in the form of fiction, film, theatre and art. There are places for our own stories - as they are important - but there should always be room for the stories of others.

Here Shafak, much more articulately than me, voices her similar concerns:

(Apologies if I've posted this video before - but perhaps it is worth reiterating.
Also, in juxtaposition to the point of this post - don't these three ladies all look strikingly similar??! ACCIDENTAL IRONY!)

If I was an Editor...

Some ideas, while inoffensively unoriginal in concept, just don't need to be reproduced.
Do you want fries with that?

It is probably true to say that no idea is completely original; that most plots or characters are at least partially lifted from elsewhere. This we anticipate as readers, listeners, viewers etc. In fact, there is even the idea that there are really only seven kinds of stories that can ever be told (the Journey and Return, Tragedy, Comedy and so on). But regardless of this, I think I am at liberty now, being a fairly expansive reader, to say that some kinds of stories just need to stop being written.

And so here is my not-so-definitive-list of what those stories (the ones that should just stop being told!) should consist of. If I was an editor at a publishing house, novels consisting of any of the following would be going straight into the recycling. (I may be a snob, but I'm not a deliberate polluter.):


1. BEING TOTALLY OR SUBSTANTIALLY SET IN VENICE.

Ian McEwan, Thomas Mann, Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, Evelyn Waugh - leave it out, yeah? We get it. You're beguiled by the dichotomous beauty/ creepy other worldliness of this city. At least Calvino had the politeness to at least try and disguise that he's chatting on about bloody Venice the whole time.

Pick another city - what's wrong with Manchester, England's very own 'Venice of the North?' Just as romantic/ creepily Gothic. Canal Street for example?!


2. TWINS. ONE OF WHICH HAS MYSTERIOUSLY DIED BEFORE THE START OF THE NOVEL.

Don't get me wrong, I am a hugely nostalgic fan of Jonathan Creek. But if I pick up one more book in Waterstones with a back cover that reads, 'When successful, happy Betty begins receiving cryptic letters signed from her deceased twin Hetty, her life is thrown into turmoil and her husband, happy, attentive, attractive, successful human-rights lawyer husband Mark, begins to wonder: is his wife really who she has been saying she is since they both said I do?'

It's enough to make you want to cut your own identical twin in half with a buzz saw.


3: ANY RICH PEOPLE IN LONDON IN THE 20'S THAT WAS NOT ACTUALLY WRITTEN IN THE 20'S.

I imagine some novelists (seemingly predominantly blonde, middle-class, mid thirties-forties English women - OH, I said it!), think this was a romantic time full of ripping fun in motor cars and cloche hats, where one never had to worry about anything more than when was the more scandalous moment to break off one's engagement.

But these are the writers who, if I met without knowing their work, I would be smile at, and then walk away. I advice you to do the same to these novels. After all, you know Lady Ruth will end up marrying the handsome journalist AND inherit the forgotten fortune anyway, so why strain your eyes?


4: SEX SCENES ATTEMPTING MERELY TO BE SEXY.

I don't know about you, but the sex I've had, even when bordering on pretty fucking awesome, has had it's awkward and funny moments. I'm not saying there is no room in literature to offer your reader a subtle boner on the morning train, but really, if you're going to go as far as analyze sex enough to put it in writing, at least be honest about it. What about the thwacking sound? The moments of repositioning? The problem of wiping it up afterwards??

A violent antidote for anyone who wishes to write a Racy-Steamy-Novel, would be Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, the most excruciatingly awkward and protracted sex scene in literature. Amazing.


5: A HAUNTED HOUSE, JUST MOVED INTO BY THE PROTAGONIST, WHICH IS ACTUALLY A METAPHOR FOR THAT PROTAGONIST'S PAST.

Just. Don't. Write. These.

They. Suck. The. Biggest. Literary. Dicks.


6: HORSES.

Unless it's a children's book or you're Cormac McCarthy. Horse books are going in my remainder pile (later to be disposed of responsibly and ecologically). I don't care if there is an unspoken bond between Man and Beast through which Man articulates (silently!) emotions that he cannot share with his family or troublesome girlfriend.

Because it'll only end up like this:

That's Harry Potter ..... creeeeeppyyyyy!
(Hey! - was this set in Venice??)

incredible first novels.

Over the past year I have been reading mostly first novels. Part of this is to pick up tips. Part of it is pander to my vanity by finding evident faults and smugly congratulating myself for not making them (now that I have read them). But the biggest part is to see who got what published first and how did their career and writing go afterwards.

Thus I have compiled a brief and mostly uninformative list of some I liked and learned from. And also a few book covers:


1: WHITE TEETH


Nearly finished. An epic and incredible debut from super star British novelist Zadie Smith, written when she was in her early 20's. Fuck me - how can she possibly be so brave, inventive, intelligent, witty, confident and knowledgeable to have written this? I'm not even going to go in to the plot, because it basically encompasses everything that has happened in and to do with Britain over the past 200 years. Abso-fucking-brilliant.

Career path: super successful novelist and broadcaster. And she deserves it. She's really good. But as a writer, she scares the crap out of me.


2: PIGEON ENGLISH


Recently one of the three first novels to be short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2011, Pigeon English is a startling debut with an original and endearing voice and heart. Told through the eyes of 11 year old Harrison Opoku, a kid who has recently moved from Ghana with his mother to the ninth floor of a block of inner city flats in London, I was pretty much gripped from the start. When a local kid is killed in gang warfare, Harri decides to investigate. But in doing so he begins to endanger himself and his mother despite her best efforts to protect him in their precarious position in a rough new society. Please don't tell me how it ends. I already love it so much. I particularly love that Stephen Kelman has utilised first person narration in order to tell us something about that very narrator - unlike some first novels, COUGH! Remainder by Tom McCarthy. Mother-licking, stupid-rambling, pointless use of narrative voice writers...

Career path: overcoming the fear that the second novel won't be as good. I'm sure it will, mate (although, of course, the responsibility lies with you. So no pressure).


3: BONJOUR TRISTESSE


Francoise Sagan wins the prize for the best first novel written by a teenager. Or just any novel written by a teenager. What the hell was I doing when she was writing this? Probably drunk in a car park somewhere singing a mixture of Sum 41 and Britney Spears songs.... Published when Sagan was like 18 or something, Bonjour Tristesse chats on about an adolescent girl in the south of France whose dad has a lot of sex without consequence and (of course) the inevitable consequences of this. Cutting and insightful with is brevity of prosaic style and sharp observations of human relationships and frailties, this novella might make you want to run down to a beach in high wasted slacks and have it off with some Parisian floozie. It was a controversial hit when it was first published in 1954 and it still retains its truth today. I love this book.

Career path: After dropping out of her studies at the Sorbonne to write this, Sagan went on to write many other novels, plays and short stories, all primarily about disillusioned Bourgeois characters. I wonder where she got her inspiration from?? She died in 2004 a very successful writer.


4: DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON


This is by far my favourite Orwell novel. And I've read a few. Obviously the Big Two. But this I prefer. Perhaps because the other two are pretty much enduringly ubiquitous in our culture still ('THIS IS DAVINA! PLEASE DO NOT SWEAR!'). Basically, George goes mad for poverty and wanders around these two cities hanging out with tramps and the under-paid in search of the true dichotomy of society's strata. He was trying to teach himself to write with this book and this alone should be of interest to any young writers. He was also like, freaking young, early 20's again. Freaking genius literary kids. His famous no nonsense style is evident here and it is probably still as interesting and (almost) as relevant today. Go on, put down 1984 and give it a try.

Career path: basically transformed the way we think about society, the world, the individual verses the collective (Kafka-style!), politics, memory, privacy - AND PHONE HACKING??


5: THE CATCHER IN THE RYE


You know the drill: rich kid is pissed off and runs away from private school to New York and pisses off friends and strangers, usually while drunk, before ending up in some kind of youth rehabilitative home. Shit - SPOILER ALERT! That's the plot, but the beauty is in the insightful use of first person narration to explore the way teenage Holden just doesn't get it, and continues to act like a capricious little shit to everyone he loves, excepting his sister, who he keeps insisting to the reader, that we will like. Many people hate it because they read it when they were teenagers and, I suspect, felt it cut too close to the bone. I however, read it last year, and love it for its honesty.

Career path: Wrote some other novels that were nowhere near as successful. Keep meaning to read them, like everybody else.


Been there, read that. Now if only I could get the T-shirt...

Image courtesy of Doing It For The Thrill.

MAGICAL REALISM - whassat all about, then?

I have just for the third time recently replaced back on the shelves, between Okri and Rushdie, 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My problem, as ever, is this: What's it all about?

Is there something wrong with me, I ponder neurotically, splaying the pages of Midnight's Children wide in search of some hidden meaning, that until now, has eluded my philistine, unimaginative brain? Why shouldn't a cloud of butterflies surround the woman you love - particularly if you live in literature?? It's a metaphor. And are metaphors after all, not the prerequisite of literature? If it happened in a movie it would be ridiculous, cliche, absurd. But when you do not actually see it A.K.A in writing, then it is more of a hint, a suggestion, an abstraction of an idea that leads to an image IN YOUR MIND.

I am certainly no fact-obsessed purist. I do not solely want to read diary entries, memoirs, travel literature and GASP!, shocking celerity reveals passed off as writing. I'm not the person who says, 'I just can't get into it knowing it's not real.'

Literature is, in many ways, the freest artistic genre. You are not confined by limitations as with many other mediums (the painter and the size of the canvas, the colour of the pigments; the photographer and the constant problems with light and composition - even the weather.). (Martin Amis said as much last week at the Hay Festival, incidentally). Thus you can inject it with endless amounts of imagination. In theory, I'm very much in favour of Magical Realism. I'm all for concept taking over from the specifics of the physical world. One of my favourite novels, Brave New World, does just this - set predominately in a dystopean future version of the UK, actuality is somewhat sidelined by concept; which is the point of the fable-like tale really. Within fantasy we glimpse fable, then moral dilemma, a warning and truth.

All three of the novelists I have mentioned that have recently come under the (mystical) umbrella of Magical Realism have spurned the term. Ben Okri prefers to see his work as 'dream-logic' narrative, stating, 'I grew up in a tradition where there are simply more dimensions to reality ... nobody has an absolute reality.'

Fair enough. I'll buy that. But I still couldn't finish The Famished Road. I wonder if an exceptionally inspiring English Lit teacher could explain something I am obviously not getting, and persuade me to look at it differently. As for now, I do not feel like the 'magical' aspects of the 'realism' add anything. If anything, they cloak the humanity of the stories and make them into something untouchable and almost laughable, like fairytales.

After getting so perilously close to the end of 100 Years of Solitude, I remarked to a friend that, 'I loved the irony of it all. I mean - the families' concerns are so petty.' To which I was greeted with a stoney face and the remark that, 'It's not meant to be ironic. You are actually supposed to care about the dirt-eating girl and the ever-decreasing size of the colonel.' But then, I am English and it was originally written in Spanish. And English is a horribly ironic language.

(If you consider yourself such a teacher as mentioned here, please get in touch by the way.)

This post is full of naked women, no?

If we go to the other end of the literary Cool Spectrum, we find ourselves surrounded by goblins and dragons and reading Terry Pratchett. I do not like his books - the humour seems infantile and nerdy to say the least - but I like the brashness with which he condemns Magical Realism, saying that it is, 'like a polite way of saying you write fantasy and is more acceptable to certain people ... who, on the whole, do not care that much.'

Ultimate Magical Nerdom - Terry Pratchett.

Unsurprisingly, the term was originally coined by an art critic. Franz Roh first used the phrase in 1925 to describe a painterly offshoot of Surrealism known also as The New Objectivity. But it was later that it became adopted by several prevalent European writers in Buenos Aires (and with the publication of Jorge Luis Borges' Historia Universal de la Infamia in 1935) that Latin American Magical Realism really took off.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez clearly follows in this tradition - characters eating dirt, coming back from the dead, obviously I've mentioned the butterflies - but I still just don't get it. What extra element does it bring to the prose? To me, (I have yet to find a Magical Realist novel that thrills me or that I cannot put down) this genre, while, admittedly forced upon its writers at least in name, is something I just can't understand as interesting. Perhaps if it was done in a different way - could Virginia Woolf's Orlando be considered a Magical Realist novel?? - from what I have read, then all the disparate pieces of real life Argentina and fantastical spirit world of the elders could be brought together in a powerful, evocative, relevant work of prose.

As it is, I feel like Magical Realism is a bit like the Hitcher going nu-rave in Series Three of The Mighty Boosh - opposing elements 'combining to make something not quite as good as either.'


Maybe we should all just watch this entertaining Surrealist-style film featuring a young, pre-Female Eunuch Germaine Greer and ponder the conundrum??

If you strongly disagree, please leave a comment. I would love to be swayed. Also, any reading suggestions, anyone?

William Wei by Amie Barrodale.

This is the best short story I have read in a while. Compelling, original, funny and painful.
The rest is over at The Paris Review.

"I once brought a girl home because I liked her shoes. That was the only thing I noticed about her. I live in a really small apartment. A lot of my clothes end up piled on my mattress or draped over the open door of the microwave. I guess the girl with the pink high heels woke up in the middle of the night and didn’t remember where she was. She went out naked in the hall and closed the door behind her. She said that she had asked me, and I told her that was the way to the bathroom, to go out the front door. I don’t remember doing that. I remember I woke up with the cops in my house, asking me if I knew this girl. I said of course, she was the girl with the pink high heels. They thought that was really funny. After that, I didn’t drink for about five months. I was mostly celibate, except for my upstairs neighbor, until she moved away. She was this Indian girl. She liked to do it from behind, in this one position. That was the only thing she wanted to do. The other things were boring, she said. When I went to the shower, she got up on all fours to masturbate."

what I read this year (an annotated list)

I just love lists right now. Some of these books I still have yet to finish or, in the case of If On A winter's Night A Traveler, have given up on yet keep by my bed 'just in case.'


Regarding the Pain of Others - Susan Sontag. So amazing. Just read it. It made me think differently about the entirety of the media, not just war photography and images of graphic violence, but everything we experience on a daily basis.

The Poetics - Aristotle. The original theatrical and literary critique. Acute and generally succinct, but in the hindsight of so much media criticism it is hard to find anything you haven't already thought. And maybe it could do with a few jokes?

Remainder - Tom McCarthy (of Man-Booker C fame). Hated it. Good concept (freakishly similar to the ideas behind Synecdoche, New York), but rendered in the dullest way with the most boring language. Why do writers think EVERY story needs to be told in first person?? How much am I actually learning about this narrator?

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Poignant, funny and brilliant. Masterful language and in depth character analysis of seemingly all the inhabitants of the thirties hickville town struggling with racial inequality. READ THIS BOOK.

On Writing - Stephen King. Like, whatever Stephen King. I fucking hate your novels. I love the TV adaptations and perhaps I might even have loved this autobiographical take on the art of being a contemporary writer. Yes, I think I did. Unexpected. Very insightful and of course easy to read. It gave me a new respect for Mr Beady-eyed-killer-car-psychic-psycho-school-girl-King.

The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera. As you might imagine, a more theoretically infused book with intentions towards profundity. It's more of a deconstruction of the modern European novel. Interesting ideas, particularly around the 'celebrity author' - Kundera believing that all writers should remain anonymous so that their life does not become confused with their work.

The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson. Hated the first fifty pages. Basically felt like I didn't 'get it' in terms of the comedy, which is certainly very deliberate. Yet Jacobson's intellect turn what could be corny puns into amusing satirical takes on people that you somehow recognize. Fair enough Man-Booker judges of last year.

The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy. I was waiting for the narration to become in some way ironic, yet, like Britney Spear's new song, no such self awareness appears to exist. Dull and melodramatic. I can't say i feel inclined to spend the next five months thumbing through War and Peace.

don't judge this book by it's cover.
The cover is the best bit.

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguru. Never Let Me Read Another Book By This Dude. It's like watching 24 hours Big Brother. All the unimportant bits seem to have been left in. Reputedly not his best book, it has still recently been made into a film with a gorgeous young British cast.

In a Strange Room - Damon Galgut. Shortlisted for the Man-Booker Prize last year (missing out to Howard). A perceptively told tale of a guy who has no definition in his life and pretty much just follows people round the world trying to find meaning. Written in three parts, the first two flow together well in their detached yet cutting style and brevity of prose. The last part, following the narrator years later, seems arbitrary and badly edited. I think this is why it didn't win.

On The Road - Jack Kerouac. Famously the voice of the Beat Generation. Really interesting and original style of prose, which Kerouac worked on tirelessly and sweatily. According to his wife he would type so veraciously that he would sweat through five shirts a day. Despite the 'crazy dumb-saint of the mind' style the meandering characters and lack of plot made me get two thirds through and uncertain if finishing it would really be worth anything.

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon. Still roaming through this 902 page epic of post modernism. The style is the opposite of the Hemmingway-ian brevity that I generally favor, looping around itself in great metaphors so extended as to encompass whole pages, but utterly compelling. Following an American captain in London at the end of World War II, a secret plot unfolds through the ruined streets somehow involving the H-bomb. Already compared to Moby Dick and Ulysses in terms of literary epicness.

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino. Fuck you, Calvino. And fuck your little imaginary cities too. This is basically only good if you have never heard of modernism or post modernism. It is so hideously self aware it makes Dogville look naive. I think I'll watch Britney instead.

The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch. Amazing. To begin with I was sceptical that I wouldn't be very interested by an old woman writing as an old man who has moved to a small coastal town to reminisce about his old loves. However, Murdoch is a master (mistress??) of language in a way that I almost feel can never exist again, language having altered so much in so short a period of time. But perhaps it only appears this way because it is slightly antiquated. So surprisingly gripping, humorous, true and in many ways cruel, certainly in its bland cruelness that exists within its narrator. This cruelness is also very true, and makes it brilliant. I love you Iris.

Definitely added in a couple of pre-Christmas ones and missed out a few. But you get a rough kind of picture. Looking back over this list makes me realise how terrifyingly opinionated I am. Please feel free to disagree with me in the comments box.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN READING RECENTLY???