What a phrase, eh? Volume II. Enough having fun with blogs, and background research, and James Bond moment with new characters in life; time to get back to the very serious business of writing. I've kept my fingers supple, kept the writing muscle limber, put (as my trainer at the gym used to say) 'the miles in my legs'. Now there's a thing. Is that why writing and running complement each other so well - each word a step, each step an exploration of a thought? It would be good to ask that question of Richard Long.
And that was a shameless digression. Back to Volume II.
Volume II is there, but now I look at it with proper close attention, it seems to be corralled behind a fence. It has a title (and we all know how essential that is), Volume II will be called The Dead Men, but I need to build a gate, I need to build a way in.
The trick that works most often for me in finding that way in is to forget I'm writing a book, but rather to view an opening or otherwise tricky or with-a-lot-riding-on-it scene as if I were directing a film. Where would I put my camera? Whose eye would my camera be? What would it shoot, to start with? Close-up? Panning out? Or zoom down in, from high above?
I see Volume II starting with a child's fingers, scrabbling to loosen something from the rubble of a fallen wall. I can feel the shards of mortar, and chunks of pulverised brick and stone. There's a little grass growing near the fingers - this wall fell some time ago. There are shadows round the fingers, the edge of a skirt and petticoat in frame, shadows beneath, around her feet - sun in the sky. The child is female, a little girl, and something sparkles there in the dirt, that's what she after. Something sparkling, and coloured - gold, red, green -
An embroidered ribbon round a cuff. She pulls the cuff. The sleeve comes up. The bony arm and hand within it, too. We don't see her reaction - we're left thinking, maybe this has happened too many times before for her to have one. What happens instead is there's a shout - another child's voice, but older, male, her brother, and the little girl stands up, we see her whole, for the first time, and looks at where her brother is pointing - and the whole world changes for them both.
I write to music. Cue John Lennon, 'Here comes old flat-top.'
There. I didn't know any of that was going to prove the way in. Now I will write it (and post it), and see where the camera goes next.
Books, words and writing - and everything in-between
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
WRITE, SO
A fellow writer set me a challenge: 'Blog me the genesis of your book. Where did it come from, and where were you when it did?'
I was in a town called Nordlingen. This is Nordlingen, in the district of Donau-Ries, in Bavaria.
Pretty, huh? Note the almost faultlessly preserved within-the-town-walls circular shape. The view below is also Nordlingen. Note the almost too-perfectly-preserved buildings. There is a reason for this. Not, for once, in this part of Germany, that the whole place was flattened by the RAF in 1944, and lovingly rebuilt after, no. Everything you see in Nordlingen is absolutely genuinely genuine. Nordlingen is a true Thirty-Years-War survivor, and what you see here is close enough to what the last soldiers saw, when they marched out in 1648, for any such soldier to be still able to find his way around the town today. Blindfold, if need be.
The reason for which, is, Nordlingen gambled, in the Thirty Years War, and lost. When the war ended (in 1648), Nordlingen was left with such a heap of debt it took it two centuries (TWO CENTURIES!!!) to pay it off. The Age of Reason passed it by - there was no money in Nordlingen to pay to replace those geometric C16th facades with neo-Classical porches and stoops, because Nordlingen was still paying off the amount it had to borrow to stop General Tilly burning the place to the ground. The Age of the Railways arrived, 100 years later - no, Nordlingen had no money for that either, still paying off its debts from when the Swedish juggernaut heaved into town, in Tilly's defeated wake. The world moved on. Nordlingen, beggared beyond belief, was left behind.
I pitched up in Nordlingen in 1998. I was in company with my mate Joyce Hackett, she of the award-winning Disturbance of the Inner Ear, which I most heartily recommend to you, and Cara, one of the loveliest mutts I have ever had the pleasure to know. For Cara's evening walk, we walked Nordlingen's still-intact town walls. Watchtower to watchtower. We had supper at the Sun Inn, whose vistor's book kicks off in 1450. In the morning, we walked around the town, barely able to believe we hadn't suffered some time-slip overnight. Want to know what wattle and daub walls feel like? Run your fingertips along this. Want to understand how doomed you would feel, watching an army advance toward you, trapped within your little walled town? Lean out of watchtower, half-close your eyes, and in your imagination, fill that plain beyond with the rise and fall of marching troops, advancing on you like a sea. Want to know what it would sound like, hearing your own footsteps pounding down an alley so narrow that your shoulders barely fit between the walls, as you run for your life? Here you go. Be my guest.
I already had, in my head, the first dozen or so characters of my novel. I knew they all somehow related, I knew they fitted into the same jigsaw, but it was only in Nordlingen that I began to see how. This is Yosha, the Jewish merchant. This is the world he trades with, but can never belong to. This is Mungo Sant, the Scottish privateer. This is the world he trades with, but will never trust. And this here - this is my hero, Jack. He stands here, in Nordlingen, the terror of everything he sees; and here in his head are his scars, his griefs, his losses. Here is his story. This is what made him as he is. One man. Thirty years of war.
Pretty, huh? Note the almost faultlessly preserved within-the-town-walls circular shape. The view below is also Nordlingen. Note the almost too-perfectly-preserved buildings. There is a reason for this. Not, for once, in this part of Germany, that the whole place was flattened by the RAF in 1944, and lovingly rebuilt after, no. Everything you see in Nordlingen is absolutely genuinely genuine. Nordlingen is a true Thirty-Years-War survivor, and what you see here is close enough to what the last soldiers saw, when they marched out in 1648, for any such soldier to be still able to find his way around the town today. Blindfold, if need be.
The reason for which, is, Nordlingen gambled, in the Thirty Years War, and lost. When the war ended (in 1648), Nordlingen was left with such a heap of debt it took it two centuries (TWO CENTURIES!!!) to pay it off. The Age of Reason passed it by - there was no money in Nordlingen to pay to replace those geometric C16th facades with neo-Classical porches and stoops, because Nordlingen was still paying off the amount it had to borrow to stop General Tilly burning the place to the ground. The Age of the Railways arrived, 100 years later - no, Nordlingen had no money for that either, still paying off its debts from when the Swedish juggernaut heaved into town, in Tilly's defeated wake. The world moved on. Nordlingen, beggared beyond belief, was left behind.
I pitched up in Nordlingen in 1998. I was in company with my mate Joyce Hackett, she of the award-winning Disturbance of the Inner Ear, which I most heartily recommend to you, and Cara, one of the loveliest mutts I have ever had the pleasure to know. For Cara's evening walk, we walked Nordlingen's still-intact town walls. Watchtower to watchtower. We had supper at the Sun Inn, whose vistor's book kicks off in 1450. In the morning, we walked around the town, barely able to believe we hadn't suffered some time-slip overnight. Want to know what wattle and daub walls feel like? Run your fingertips along this. Want to understand how doomed you would feel, watching an army advance toward you, trapped within your little walled town? Lean out of watchtower, half-close your eyes, and in your imagination, fill that plain beyond with the rise and fall of marching troops, advancing on you like a sea. Want to know what it would sound like, hearing your own footsteps pounding down an alley so narrow that your shoulders barely fit between the walls, as you run for your life? Here you go. Be my guest.
I already had, in my head, the first dozen or so characters of my novel. I knew they all somehow related, I knew they fitted into the same jigsaw, but it was only in Nordlingen that I began to see how. This is Yosha, the Jewish merchant. This is the world he trades with, but can never belong to. This is Mungo Sant, the Scottish privateer. This is the world he trades with, but will never trust. And this here - this is my hero, Jack. He stands here, in Nordlingen, the terror of everything he sees; and here in his head are his scars, his griefs, his losses. Here is his story. This is what made him as he is. One man. Thirty years of war.
Saturday, 7 May 2011
THE WRITER BIT, or LIFE VERSUS ART
I have this character - J, let's call them. I've lived with J a long, long time. I know what J wants, I know J's opinions, I can make a pretty good guess how J would react to just about anything life throws in J's path. I know J's secrets.We're tight.
I've spent a good deal of time crafting a plot for J, and I test new developments in this plot very carefully indeed. I know where J is going, and I excise without mercy anything that don't fit in with that. It's what J would want me to do.
Or so I thought.
I now have this new character in J's life. Came waltzing in without so much as a by-your-leave. Somewhere back there, despite all the care we've been taking, J 'n me, we must have left a door or a window open, a sentence without a stop, maybe, and all of a sudden we look up and there's this new shape in the room. No idea what they think they are doing there, and they, of course, are still so new it's probably an equal surprise to them.
We are going to call this new character M.
M seems to have come from another type of book entirely, which honestly could hardly be more different to the one he finds himself in now. Does this faze him? Not that I can see - nothing like as much as it has thrown me, that's for sure. You hear of this kind of thing happening, and in fact what you hear is that this is what it's all about, what you should be aiming for - the story reaching the kind of critical mass where it makes itself. Where, in effect, as a writer, you have come as close as you can to creating life - with all its whacky unpredictability, and its gleeful pooh-poohing of anything you might call plot for what you can only call the mash-up. Where this sort of curve-ball has been hurled at me, as reader, I've pooh-poohed it - oh, for goodness sake, I've said, how totally unbelievable. That would never happen.
There are words you write and now, apparently, there are words you eat. The writer, this writer, elbowed unceremoniously out of the way, too agog even to remember her nail-file, is now there as reader, and in the nicest place that life, or writing, can put you in: craning forward, all agog, asking 'What's going to happen next?'
I've spent a good deal of time crafting a plot for J, and I test new developments in this plot very carefully indeed. I know where J is going, and I excise without mercy anything that don't fit in with that. It's what J would want me to do.
Or so I thought.
I now have this new character in J's life. Came waltzing in without so much as a by-your-leave. Somewhere back there, despite all the care we've been taking, J 'n me, we must have left a door or a window open, a sentence without a stop, maybe, and all of a sudden we look up and there's this new shape in the room. No idea what they think they are doing there, and they, of course, are still so new it's probably an equal surprise to them.
We are going to call this new character M.
M seems to have come from another type of book entirely, which honestly could hardly be more different to the one he finds himself in now. Does this faze him? Not that I can see - nothing like as much as it has thrown me, that's for sure. You hear of this kind of thing happening, and in fact what you hear is that this is what it's all about, what you should be aiming for - the story reaching the kind of critical mass where it makes itself. Where, in effect, as a writer, you have come as close as you can to creating life - with all its whacky unpredictability, and its gleeful pooh-poohing of anything you might call plot for what you can only call the mash-up. Where this sort of curve-ball has been hurled at me, as reader, I've pooh-poohed it - oh, for goodness sake, I've said, how totally unbelievable. That would never happen.
There are words you write and now, apparently, there are words you eat. The writer, this writer, elbowed unceremoniously out of the way, too agog even to remember her nail-file, is now there as reader, and in the nicest place that life, or writing, can put you in: craning forward, all agog, asking 'What's going to happen next?'
Sunday, 1 May 2011
POSH TOTTY FAILS TO WRITE.COM
Damn it is so annoying. Where does it go? One minute you're steaming forward, all four engines thumping away and everything you come across is fuel, the next -
Run aground. Run dry.
It's real life, hurling itself into your path. It's the pram in the hall (or the pile in the in-tray). It's a fork in the road, and no bottle to spin, to help you out. It's a headcold. It's a trip.
People comment. Sometimes these are people whose opinions matter. It's a spur. It's a goad.
It's a bummer, the whole thing.
I did take a trip, I was up in Northamptonshire, staying in this tiny cottage so overgrown with ivy and roses that the outside and the inside mix whenever you open a door or a window. Snails silver the doorstep, baby froglets look up at you from the kitchen floor. Roses poke their heads in through the drawing room window and drop petals on the carpet; a fledgling blackbird, yellow mouth agape with terror, must be collected like a palpitating dust-ball from the corner of the porch, and restored to the garden. And there were bees. Great fat black-befurred bees, as big as the top joint of your thumb, half-snoring, half droning their dodgem-ish way round the flowerheads on the creeper outside my bedroom window, and inevitably, bumbling their way in through the window as well. The noise the one made that did this was loud enough to wake me from my sleep. Bang against the glass, BANG against the glass, with the drone deepening in annoyance with every head-on collision between it and window-pane. What's a girl to do? But (barely more awake than the bee) stumble out of bed, locate latch and open the window.
Bee bangs against glass a few more times, does a pratfall to the edge of the frame, walks about a bit, no doubt going 'Ow, my bastard head' to itself, and then miraculously wakes up to the fact that there is no glass, no net curtain ahead of it, and that it's free.
One happy bee.
Writer in pyjamas, still half asleep herself, has thought. There, she thinks. That's what its like. The words are there, banging away at the front of your brain. You open the window - and they're gone.
Run aground. Run dry.
It's real life, hurling itself into your path. It's the pram in the hall (or the pile in the in-tray). It's a fork in the road, and no bottle to spin, to help you out. It's a headcold. It's a trip.
People comment. Sometimes these are people whose opinions matter. It's a spur. It's a goad.
It's a bummer, the whole thing.
I did take a trip, I was up in Northamptonshire, staying in this tiny cottage so overgrown with ivy and roses that the outside and the inside mix whenever you open a door or a window. Snails silver the doorstep, baby froglets look up at you from the kitchen floor. Roses poke their heads in through the drawing room window and drop petals on the carpet; a fledgling blackbird, yellow mouth agape with terror, must be collected like a palpitating dust-ball from the corner of the porch, and restored to the garden. And there were bees. Great fat black-befurred bees, as big as the top joint of your thumb, half-snoring, half droning their dodgem-ish way round the flowerheads on the creeper outside my bedroom window, and inevitably, bumbling their way in through the window as well. The noise the one made that did this was loud enough to wake me from my sleep. Bang against the glass, BANG against the glass, with the drone deepening in annoyance with every head-on collision between it and window-pane. What's a girl to do? But (barely more awake than the bee) stumble out of bed, locate latch and open the window.
Bee bangs against glass a few more times, does a pratfall to the edge of the frame, walks about a bit, no doubt going 'Ow, my bastard head' to itself, and then miraculously wakes up to the fact that there is no glass, no net curtain ahead of it, and that it's free.
One happy bee.
Writer in pyjamas, still half asleep herself, has thought. There, she thinks. That's what its like. The words are there, banging away at the front of your brain. You open the window - and they're gone.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
WRITING SHORT - THE FINISHED DISH:
COMPLIANCE
From: gabe@hnmail.com
To: lou@hlmail.com
Sent: Day 8 19:11:26
Subject: Compliance Testing - URGENT
Sent: Day 8 19:11:26
Subject: Compliance Testing - URGENT
Dear Lou
I've just been made aware of events today during compliance testing, and the situation we face as a result.
Under your supervision a substance SPECIFICALLY CONTRA-INDICATED FOR CONSUMPTION has been ingested and a large and dangerous predator has been, and apparently still is, roaming abroad in what was a controlled habitat, whose recent inhabitants are now nowhere to be found. They may be poisoned. They may be dead. Need I say more?
This is the most unbelievable mess. I need to know what you are doing to remedy it.
Gabe
From: lou@hlmail.com
To: gabe@hnmail.com
Sent: Day 8 20:23:08
Subject: RE: Compliance Testing
Sent: Day 8 20:23:08
Subject: RE: Compliance Testing
Gabe -
Sorry for delay; bit busy out here. We do indeed have a situation! :-) But I'm sure you remember, the purpose of today's events (all of which were cleared at our last meeting), was simply to TEST individual compliance to environmental guidelines. The guidelines were yours, and were tested as agreed.
I can only agree with your summing-up of the state of affairs on your property, but these events took place under my observation, not my supervision. I don't have authority here, I'm simply the sublicensed provider of the services set out in the tender document.
You know how I am with detail!
Thanks and best
Lou
From: gabe@hnmail.com
To: lou@hlmail.com
Sent: Day 8 21:34:08
Subject: One question
Sent: Day 8 21:34:08
Subject: One question
Lou -
WHERE IS THE F*CKING SNAKE?
From: lou@hlmail.com
To: gabe@hnmail.com
Sent: Day 8 21:40:41
Subject: One answer
Sent: Day 8 21:40:41
Subject: One answer
It's a cold-blooded reptile, the sun has set, so I imagine it is asleep.
From: gabe@hnmail.com
To: lou@hlmail.com
Sent: Day 8 21:43:17
Subject: WHERE IS IT F*CKING ASLEEP??????
Sent: Day 8 21:43:17
Subject: WHERE IS IT F*CKING ASLEEP??????
From: lou@hlmail.com
To: gabe@hnmail.com
Sent: Day 8 21:45:33
Subject: IN THE TREE
Sent: Day 8 21:45:33
Subject: IN THE TREE
From: gabe@hnmail.com
To: lou@hlmail.com
Sent: Day 8 22:21:16
Subject: Start again?
Sent: Day 8 22:21:16
Subject: Start again?
Dear Lou
The snake appears to have suffered nothing worse than a bit of bruising, but it's citing its terms of employment and refusing to answer any questions. And I don't have time to argue – with it or with you. I need hardly set out for you the consequences if the garden is not restored to its original state complete with both inhabitants by dawn. Remember the dinosaurs, and the row after that?
We have to find them and we have to find them now. Please help!
Gabe
PS: I apologise for my tone before. I have been under a great deal of strain and overwork for the last week.
PPS: We also still have to locate the remains of the apple.
*
- Lou? Lou, are you there? You're breaking up.
- ….somewhere near Pishon, Gabe. I'm seeing a lot of onyx-stone.
- Is there any sign?
- ….something. Hold on -
- Lou? Lou?
- Sorry mate, no joy. It was one of those – what did the Boss call the stripey things?
- The stripey things? The big stripey things or the small stripey things?
- Smallish. Whiff a bit.
- Skunk.
- Skunk, huh? And the big?
- Zebra.
- Skunk and zebra. You gotta hand it to him. I mean, the invention!
- So it was a skunk?
- Nah. Zebra. You know, I loved the dinosaurs.
- I know you did, Lou. But right now -
- I mean, their singing! The colours of their fur! They were the Boss's best. But I said right from the start, they were totally over-engineered. Any creature that specialised is going to have a problem coping with change. And I think compliance testing proved me right on that one, too.
- It did Lou, it did. That's why he's trying something different. Something simple and undemanding. We just have to find them, Lou, that's all -
- Yeah, I worry about them.
- You worry about them? Here? You worry about them here? In Paradise?
- Yeah. I mean they're so – they're so puny. Half the other stuff out here could have them for lunch. And if I can be blunt -
- Go ahead, Lou.
- I mean, they don't look good. They have those bits that wobble. They don't even match. And they're a bit – you know – witless, somehow. The way they just wander about, pointing and smiling, and being obedient... I dunno. It looks like there's something missing, to me.
- Lou -
- I mean, is there a plan? Is there a point to them? D'you think there is?
- Lou -
- Because if there were, it might be useful to know. It might be good to know. It might be nice to be trusted -
- Lou?
- …............
- Lou?
- …...........
- Lou! LOU!
- Oh Gabe. Oh Gabe, you should be here. You should see this.
- You've FOUND them?
- Yeah, they're here. Safe and sound. Asleep on the river bank. Wrapped right around each other. Oh, it's sweet.
- Asleep?
- Yeah, right out. Oh, it's special.
- Is – is it the rib thing? Is it that again?
- It's not the rib-thing Gabe, can't be. Ribs all present and correct. So I'll just bring them back, yeah? Back to the tree?
- Back to the tree is fine. Back to the tree is perfect. I can't believe it. Oh, Lou -
- Yes Gabe?
- The apple. Is there any sign of the apple?
- No sign.
- Nothing?
- Nothing. Not even a pip. Oh come on. He'll never notice. All's well that ends well, eh?
- I guess so Lou. So long as they're safe -
- They're fine. Bit flushed-looking maybe, but otherwise right as rain. In fact they look good. Better. Forget the apple, Gabe. I mean – who'll ever care about that?
******************
Sunday, 27 March 2011
WRITING SHORT
If you were to click on the Mighty Tieton link to the right (and I heartily encourage you so to do), you will eventually find this guy - Ed Marquand, publishing supremo of Ed Marquand Books and all-round Thoroughly Good Thing. I receive this from Ed, on Friday:
'Subject: I need a short story. Quick!
Jacky:
We are trying something totally cool here that involves a new way to publish short fiction. I am looking for short stories of no more than 750 words for an experimental form of publishing we are trying out at Marquand Books and Paper Hammer. Stories should be tightly written, wry, and amusing. For now, I am looking for pieces related to food or meals, beer, wine, or cocktails, romantic seduction, memory, or missed opportunity, but feel free to contribute others. If you are game send to edm@marquand.com
Got something????'
750 words, thinks I. Now that's a challenge, to begin with. I do not naturally pack lite, nor write short. Short is tough. Short takes time, and planning, and here I am with a deadline from a friend (which are always the worst sort), and I have neither words, time, nor plan - but the challenge is growing more irresistible by the minute.
I am going to have to Write Short. It's like being asked to rustle up supper for 6, at no notice, from whatever you have in the store cupboard. So what do I? What do I have in my head?
I have a lot of annoying stuff about tenders and compliance that has been overshadowing everything at work like a sunspot for the last weeks. I have Lent, and various thoughts on abstinence, and spontaneity, and impulse, and are these good things or are they bad, and the difference between what you're meant to do, and what you want to do, and how the latter always somehow finds a way, and what that says about the human spirit, and why are we hard-wired that way when it causes so much trouble, or does that in fact suggest there is a great organising principle here, and that what will happen was always going to anyway. And I have an apple. A very fine apple. A Braeburn. Big, crisp, cold, and as finely marbled as Kobe beef.
You start to cook. I have a sense already, because of the apple, of a setting way, way back at the very beginning if things, but when all the questions above nonetheless already existed; so because of that, and the whole 750-words thing, I want something snappy as a format, and writing in the form of emails, and the setting, would contrast nicely. Then it begins to feel as if I've done enough with the email-thing; that 750 words (now growing up past 800) will seems much bigger if split in the middle - two acts, not just a sketch. So we have an email-format for the first half, and a conversation on mobile phones or walkie-talkies for the 2nd. Both completely anachronistic, but that's the point - the issues I want to explore in my now-900-words have always existed, regardless of medium, or indeed, of time or space. I have two main characters, and now they have their own voices, and points of view, and a big, big problem to solve. And now I'm writing against both deadline and word-limit, so this is like a race where you don't rush up to the finishing line; it rushes closer and closer to you, and it is interesting, this, it's a great challenge, terrific discipline, it's really put me in the zone, and I just have to tweak the ending, I just have to get another twist in there -
- and that's it. Finished. Done.
And when I know what Ed has in mind to do with it, with his blessing, I will post it here.
Monday, 21 March 2011
FUEL
If you're producing words, you need to nourish yourself on words. You need a good-quality diet with plenty of variety, just enough roughage, and no pre-processed pap. Don't read rubbish; if it hasn't got you by the end of page 1 - if it hasn't even got a feeler into you, to get you turning to page 2 - put it down. Be ruthless. There are too many good books out there to waste time on the bad ones. Rubbish in, rubbish out.
And you need a lot of words to fuel you. When finishing The Fires of Grace I was on the equivalent of 5,000 calories a day. Three novels a week - more, many more, if you count the ones I started, and that failed to get a feeler into me. This gets expensive. The solution? The charity shop.
Where I live in London, there are 5 charity shops within a bookmark of me (my 'burgh specialises in florists, undertakers, and charity shops. Connection? Discuss). It's like having 5 circulating libraries just up the road. I take them the rubbish; I come back with diamonds. The latest of which is Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, the best of which, so far, has been D.J. Taylor's Kept.
Who is D.J. Taylor? I have no idea. His jacket photograph makes him look younger than me, which is annoying; the puffs from other writers on the jacket are a bit cut-and-paste, or a bit show-offily opaque. But I liked the jacket which his publishers, Chatto, had gone to the trouble of creating for him, he passed the page 1 test, he came home with me. And he's enthralling. Elegant, stylish, economical, unexpected in every and in every good way. He cost me £1.50. No expensive advertisting camopaign shoved him my way, he is just a glorious example of book-serendipity. He simply found his way into my hand.
Now, of that £1.50, I am well aware that D.J. Taylor, who apparently has three children to raise, will not see a cent. I have done other good things by buying his book - saved paper, raised money for those who need it far more than either he or me - but Deej, in real terms, gets nothing out of this than my grateful thanks, and the tiny recommendation I can offer here. Except that -
I began by calling this posting 'Fuel'. There is, out there, and at the same time in all our heads, a great virtual universe, a parallel reality, a mighty and invisible engine both made and fuelled by writers' words, and readers' reactions to them. It is perhaps the only true perpetual-motion machine ever created. It's going on out there right now. You're fuelling it as you read this.
Pass the word on.
And you need a lot of words to fuel you. When finishing The Fires of Grace I was on the equivalent of 5,000 calories a day. Three novels a week - more, many more, if you count the ones I started, and that failed to get a feeler into me. This gets expensive. The solution? The charity shop.
Where I live in London, there are 5 charity shops within a bookmark of me (my 'burgh specialises in florists, undertakers, and charity shops. Connection? Discuss). It's like having 5 circulating libraries just up the road. I take them the rubbish; I come back with diamonds. The latest of which is Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, the best of which, so far, has been D.J. Taylor's Kept.
Who is D.J. Taylor? I have no idea. His jacket photograph makes him look younger than me, which is annoying; the puffs from other writers on the jacket are a bit cut-and-paste, or a bit show-offily opaque. But I liked the jacket which his publishers, Chatto, had gone to the trouble of creating for him, he passed the page 1 test, he came home with me. And he's enthralling. Elegant, stylish, economical, unexpected in every and in every good way. He cost me £1.50. No expensive advertisting camopaign shoved him my way, he is just a glorious example of book-serendipity. He simply found his way into my hand.
Now, of that £1.50, I am well aware that D.J. Taylor, who apparently has three children to raise, will not see a cent. I have done other good things by buying his book - saved paper, raised money for those who need it far more than either he or me - but Deej, in real terms, gets nothing out of this than my grateful thanks, and the tiny recommendation I can offer here. Except that -
I began by calling this posting 'Fuel'. There is, out there, and at the same time in all our heads, a great virtual universe, a parallel reality, a mighty and invisible engine both made and fuelled by writers' words, and readers' reactions to them. It is perhaps the only true perpetual-motion machine ever created. It's going on out there right now. You're fuelling it as you read this.
Pass the word on.
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