There have been so many twists and turns in this everyday story of booktrade folk that I have grown weary of even thinking about it, let alone saying anything here. But it seems, subject, no doubt, to the whims of the gods, that HMV (owners of the UK bookselling chain Waterstone's) are at last about to buy Ottakar's (a smaller chain). Reuters have the story (link from booktrade.info).
There are those who feel that this is a thoroughly bad thing for writers and publishers, in that it will reduce competition on the UK high street, and create an entity even more powerful than the present Waterstone's, i.e. one which can bully the publishers to an even geater extent than is the case today.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
The wisdom of Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly is a publisher and general computer guru whose thinking about the interaction of the internet and publishing has been recommended here more than once. On 18 May 2005, for instance, I referred to his 2002 essay, in which he made a number of telling points: the most notable, to my mind, being that 'Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.' And again, on 28 February 2006, I referred to Tim O'Reilly's definition of Web 2.0.
Now, thanks to John Sundman, I have been pointed to some other most interesting material. On O'Reilly Radar, for instance, you can find the results of an analysis undertaken by O'Reilly Research. It's a longish article, and calls for some concentration, plus a study of the comments and discussion afterwards.
My interpretation of the data is that the internet creates a much more level playing field for writers and publishers than does the high-street bookstore. In other words, making books available online -- in one form or another, whether complete texts or samples -- enables readers to find, and perhaps buy, such books much more readily than does the average madhouse which currently masquerades under the name bookshop.
Here on this blog we tend, perhaps, to concentrate on fiction, which may lead us to overlook the fact that most books are non-fiction of one type or another. In my opinion, non-fiction writers are going to find that Web 2.0 is really good news. And not only in terms of sales: as Lynne Scanlon has pointed out, a book can provide benefits other than simply through royalties; and the better known that book is, the greater the benefits.
John Sundman also led me to another piece by Tim O'Reilly, this time entitled Publisher, be very, very afraid? Actually this is a quote from the New York Times headline in reference to Kevin Kelly's recent article Scan this book. Kelly's article included, among other things, an argument in favour of a universal, free digital library that would be available to everyone, even 'elderly people in Peru'.
Scan this book, published 14 May 2006, got a cool reception in some quarters, notably from Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly. Nelson was alarmed by Kelly's comment that the original purpose of copyright was as an incentive to keep a creator working, whereas the 1998 congressional extension of copyright 'now exist[s] primarily to protect a threatened business model.' And among some of those who commented on Sara Nelson's editorial, the Kelly piece seems to have engendered abject terror. The idea that present copyright laws might not be in the best public interest upset a few people (but not me -- see my comments on the Nelson article at the PW site).
Well, Tim O'Reilly's point is that much of this alarm at Kelly's ideas is misplaced. 'There is,' he says, 'a lot to learn in the new world, but the biggest fear that publishers should be thinking about is the fear that they will be displaced by new publishers who are better at mastering the [changed] rules of business than they are.'
As with the first O'Reilly essay, this one has some enlightening comments attached to it. There is the parent, for instance, whose teenage daughter has built up a small but international online audience for her music. And there is the thinker who proposes the following thesis: 'The entire publication industry, all media, will be reduced to four businesses -- retail, reviewers, librarians, and content creators.' (O'Reilly disagrees.)
As for the copyright issues raised by the Kelly article: well, I am in favour of observance of the law. However, as Macaulay pointed out, in the House of Commons in 1841, bad laws are ignored and flouted. And if copyright law, or certain aspects of it, comes to be seen as a barrier to the public interest, something is going to have to give. Compromises are going to have to be made.
And, of course, before you get too panicky about that, remember O'Reilly's main point. The smart thing to do is not to stand there wringing your hands, but to figure out a way to make the new technology work to your advantage.
One of O'Reilly's commenters says this:
Now, thanks to John Sundman, I have been pointed to some other most interesting material. On O'Reilly Radar, for instance, you can find the results of an analysis undertaken by O'Reilly Research. It's a longish article, and calls for some concentration, plus a study of the comments and discussion afterwards.
My interpretation of the data is that the internet creates a much more level playing field for writers and publishers than does the high-street bookstore. In other words, making books available online -- in one form or another, whether complete texts or samples -- enables readers to find, and perhaps buy, such books much more readily than does the average madhouse which currently masquerades under the name bookshop.
Here on this blog we tend, perhaps, to concentrate on fiction, which may lead us to overlook the fact that most books are non-fiction of one type or another. In my opinion, non-fiction writers are going to find that Web 2.0 is really good news. And not only in terms of sales: as Lynne Scanlon has pointed out, a book can provide benefits other than simply through royalties; and the better known that book is, the greater the benefits.
John Sundman also led me to another piece by Tim O'Reilly, this time entitled Publisher, be very, very afraid? Actually this is a quote from the New York Times headline in reference to Kevin Kelly's recent article Scan this book. Kelly's article included, among other things, an argument in favour of a universal, free digital library that would be available to everyone, even 'elderly people in Peru'.
Scan this book, published 14 May 2006, got a cool reception in some quarters, notably from Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly. Nelson was alarmed by Kelly's comment that the original purpose of copyright was as an incentive to keep a creator working, whereas the 1998 congressional extension of copyright 'now exist[s] primarily to protect a threatened business model.' And among some of those who commented on Sara Nelson's editorial, the Kelly piece seems to have engendered abject terror. The idea that present copyright laws might not be in the best public interest upset a few people (but not me -- see my comments on the Nelson article at the PW site).
Well, Tim O'Reilly's point is that much of this alarm at Kelly's ideas is misplaced. 'There is,' he says, 'a lot to learn in the new world, but the biggest fear that publishers should be thinking about is the fear that they will be displaced by new publishers who are better at mastering the [changed] rules of business than they are.'
As with the first O'Reilly essay, this one has some enlightening comments attached to it. There is the parent, for instance, whose teenage daughter has built up a small but international online audience for her music. And there is the thinker who proposes the following thesis: 'The entire publication industry, all media, will be reduced to four businesses -- retail, reviewers, librarians, and content creators.' (O'Reilly disagrees.)
As for the copyright issues raised by the Kelly article: well, I am in favour of observance of the law. However, as Macaulay pointed out, in the House of Commons in 1841, bad laws are ignored and flouted. And if copyright law, or certain aspects of it, comes to be seen as a barrier to the public interest, something is going to have to give. Compromises are going to have to be made.
And, of course, before you get too panicky about that, remember O'Reilly's main point. The smart thing to do is not to stand there wringing your hands, but to figure out a way to make the new technology work to your advantage.
One of O'Reilly's commenters says this:
Consider Michael Tiemann's "Metcalf's law" economic analysis of FLOSS -- very relevant, I think, to your own view of Web 2.0: "The value of a network is proportionate to the square of the number of users." The potential value, therefore, of the cross-linked, universally annotatable library is vast. Is copyright law enough to lead us to resist that potential value? I would think not -- rather, the assumption of such a library should be a dominant factor in planning for the next few years. (I say that copyright law is not strong enough here because it is unenforcable beyond a certain boundary and, if rivals outside of that boundary begin to realize the value of the hyper-participatory-library, those inside the boundary will have no choice but to adapt by emulation.)I don't know whether this stuff interests you at all, but if you're a publisher you really ought to wrestle with it, whether you find it interesting or not; and, if you're a writer, all the more so. The comments on this second O'Reilly piece are, by the way, several times longer than the original article itself, and will take you some time to absorb.
I heard it on the grapevine
A couple of yesterday's papers (e.g. the Financial Times) carried small reports, based on an Audible.co.uk press release, to the effect that:
The world's first audio-only novel will be launched this week in a sign that the surge in demand for downloadable books is set to provide a new medium for budding authors and performers.
Sex on Legs, a 75,000-word novel written and read by Brian Luff, will be available for download on audible.co.uk despite Mr Luff, a London-based comedian, having no contract with a traditional book publisher. Audible, the US company that dominates the audiobook market, is the company behind the popular Ricky Gervais podcasts.
You can read more about it on Audible itself. You have to pay for Sex on Legs, of course. This ain't no freebie.
More ado about nothing new
On Monday we noted that the Sunday Times was attempting to claim credit for exposing a book-trade scandal (retailers charge publishers for display space et cetera) when in fact the 'scandal', if such there be, was known about at least five years ago.
On Monday the ST's sister paper, the Times, rehashed the story: Secret of fees that make a bestseller. And yesterday, also in the Times, the columnist Libby Purves took a third bite at it: Reader, you're a right dimwit.
So much so fairly standard operating procedure, I suppose, at least in the newspaper world. And there's no real need to read any of it. But it's worth noting that Libby Purves repeats the statement which I do not believe to be true, namely that it was the Sunday Times which first broke this story in 2001. If the Times staff repeat it a few more times it will become established fact.
However, it seemed to me that Libby Purves did make one good point. Here it is:
On Monday the ST's sister paper, the Times, rehashed the story: Secret of fees that make a bestseller. And yesterday, also in the Times, the columnist Libby Purves took a third bite at it: Reader, you're a right dimwit.
So much so fairly standard operating procedure, I suppose, at least in the newspaper world. And there's no real need to read any of it. But it's worth noting that Libby Purves repeats the statement which I do not believe to be true, namely that it was the Sunday Times which first broke this story in 2001. If the Times staff repeat it a few more times it will become established fact.
However, it seemed to me that Libby Purves did make one good point. Here it is:
You would think that, knowing how skewed the trade has become, book page editors would question the status quo as journalists do in every other area. You would think that their mission was to seek out interesting new books while scornfully ignoring hype-fests. There is little evidence of this, except in some odd and praiseworthy corners. Journalists like to feel they are up there with the “buzz”, even if the buzz is largely artificial. Where reviews do diverge from the well-trodden track of the week’s “key” books, it is often only into a cosy circuit of settling old scores, or bigging up friends who will soon return the favour. This is often undeclared, which shocks the strait-laced American media (read the New York Times arts ethical policy online, boys, and hang your heads).Hear, hear.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Ain't it awful?
Oh, dearie, dearie me. Things is not what they was. Wind back the clock. Tell me it ain't so.
In the Observer (link from booktrade.info) Robert McCrum laments... well, laments something or other. Has the novel lost its way? he asks. Novelists now become celebrities and they get lots of money. But, in the rush to cash in, 'quality control has plummeted and the British novel has suffered.'
Well, bless his old heart, this article is mostly a load of cobblers, and I don't really know why I bothered to read it. But since I did, here are a few comments.
Malcolm Bradbury, McCrum tells us, defined the literary novel as a difficult book that nobody wants to read. I rather like that. Anyway, according to McCrum, round about 1969, when the Booker prize was first established, the (British, literary) novel was more or less dead, being overtaken in prestige and popularity by the New Journalism (as expounded by Tom Wolfe) and the theatre (in the shape of David Hare). Then along came Salman Rushdie and injected new blood into the novel's system.
Following Rushdie, it soon became clear that, if you won the Booker, you could become a famous millionaire. And everyone wanted a piece of that, so they all got busy. Result: rubbish. McCrum quotes Tom Maschler, 'veteran cheerleader for the prize', as acknowledging that 'some of the [shortlisted] novels have been such very strange choices that it is really very difficult to make sense of them.'
McCrum also tosses in a reference to blogging, which, he says, 'has enfranchised a new group of wannabes, creating the sensations of authorship (with none of the pain).' Well, speak for yourself, sunshine. I take a few pains over mine.
And then he lists 20 'all-time great Booker winners', plus ten runners-up. Of these 30 books, I have read one with great enjoyment. That's Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters. I don't think Fingersmith is a literary novel at all: I think it got on the Booker list by accident, like Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Fingersmith is a piece of neo-Victorian porno-lesbian melodrama, and bloody good with it.
As for the other books on McCrum's list, I sort of read Possession, by A.S. Byatt, because that's also Victorian, but I found it hard going. And I tried to read Last Orders, by Graham Swift, because he apparently went to the same college as me. But I only stuck it for about ten minutes. After which I decided that it would be more fun to go outside and put my hand in the lawnmower blades before they had quite finished turning. I saw the movie versions of a couple of others, though. Does that count?
As usual with such learned and literary chaps, McCrum twitters on about the state of the novel, totally ignoring the novel as read and loved by ordinary people: the ones who read crime, romance, science fiction, and mainstream books by the likes of Jilly Cooper and Joanna Trollope.
Now, I have no objection whatever to people writing, publishing, and reading literary novels. If they enjoy them, lucky them. But what really gets up my nose is the sheer bloody arrogance of those who speak of 'the novel' when they really mean just a particularly narrow type of literary fiction. There are other sorts of books, you know, and I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that literary novels are, in any significant way, superior to any other kind.
Those who, over the past few decades, have celebrated the death of snobbery in England were, I fear, a tad premature. Snobbery of the most objectionable kind is alive and well and living in Bloomsbury.
In the Observer (link from booktrade.info) Robert McCrum laments... well, laments something or other. Has the novel lost its way? he asks. Novelists now become celebrities and they get lots of money. But, in the rush to cash in, 'quality control has plummeted and the British novel has suffered.'
Well, bless his old heart, this article is mostly a load of cobblers, and I don't really know why I bothered to read it. But since I did, here are a few comments.
Malcolm Bradbury, McCrum tells us, defined the literary novel as a difficult book that nobody wants to read. I rather like that. Anyway, according to McCrum, round about 1969, when the Booker prize was first established, the (British, literary) novel was more or less dead, being overtaken in prestige and popularity by the New Journalism (as expounded by Tom Wolfe) and the theatre (in the shape of David Hare). Then along came Salman Rushdie and injected new blood into the novel's system.
Following Rushdie, it soon became clear that, if you won the Booker, you could become a famous millionaire. And everyone wanted a piece of that, so they all got busy. Result: rubbish. McCrum quotes Tom Maschler, 'veteran cheerleader for the prize', as acknowledging that 'some of the [shortlisted] novels have been such very strange choices that it is really very difficult to make sense of them.'
McCrum also tosses in a reference to blogging, which, he says, 'has enfranchised a new group of wannabes, creating the sensations of authorship (with none of the pain).' Well, speak for yourself, sunshine. I take a few pains over mine.
And then he lists 20 'all-time great Booker winners', plus ten runners-up. Of these 30 books, I have read one with great enjoyment. That's Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters. I don't think Fingersmith is a literary novel at all: I think it got on the Booker list by accident, like Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Fingersmith is a piece of neo-Victorian porno-lesbian melodrama, and bloody good with it.
As for the other books on McCrum's list, I sort of read Possession, by A.S. Byatt, because that's also Victorian, but I found it hard going. And I tried to read Last Orders, by Graham Swift, because he apparently went to the same college as me. But I only stuck it for about ten minutes. After which I decided that it would be more fun to go outside and put my hand in the lawnmower blades before they had quite finished turning. I saw the movie versions of a couple of others, though. Does that count?
As usual with such learned and literary chaps, McCrum twitters on about the state of the novel, totally ignoring the novel as read and loved by ordinary people: the ones who read crime, romance, science fiction, and mainstream books by the likes of Jilly Cooper and Joanna Trollope.
Now, I have no objection whatever to people writing, publishing, and reading literary novels. If they enjoy them, lucky them. But what really gets up my nose is the sheer bloody arrogance of those who speak of 'the novel' when they really mean just a particularly narrow type of literary fiction. There are other sorts of books, you know, and I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that literary novels are, in any significant way, superior to any other kind.
Those who, over the past few decades, have celebrated the death of snobbery in England were, I fear, a tad premature. Snobbery of the most objectionable kind is alive and well and living in Bloomsbury.
Lost? Or just confused....
A few years ago -- well, perhaps 20 or 30 -- a British TV company did a bit of research and found that those who watched the silver screen often couldn't tell the difference between re-enactments of events and actual events, caught on film.
In other words, when questioned about a TV documentary which had included some acted-out versions of events which had never been filmed live (perhaps the arrest of some spies, say), the viewers often thought that they had been watching the real thing. Fact and fiction can easily get blurred in the minds of those who are watching TV while they eat their tea. Which is one reason, I suppose, why you now see little labels at the top of your screen saying Re-enactment, or Reconstruction, or words to that effect.
It's getting to be a bit similar in the book world. I say that because Gary Troup, it seems, has written a novel.
Gary Troup, who he?
Gary Troup, he a fictional character in Lost, that's who he. And Lost is a made-up TV story. It ain't true, OK? But that doesn't stop the Hanso Corporation taking full-page ads in the American press to object to the way in which they are portrayed in Gary's novel. And it doesn't stop our Gary having a web site of his own either.
And it doesn't stop people speculating on how the internet might be used to attract readers to a whole new interactive fiction/fact thingummy-whatsit, and all like that. And before long you'll be telling me it's Tuesday, when I know perfectly well we're still in May. Unless, of course, you happen to be reading this in June.
And why does the clock at the Hanso Foundation change to OB:EY whenever it hits 15:04, or 15:08, or 23:15? That's what I want to know.
Answers to all these imponderables may be found in the Scotsman (link from booktrade.info). Or perhaps not.
In other words, when questioned about a TV documentary which had included some acted-out versions of events which had never been filmed live (perhaps the arrest of some spies, say), the viewers often thought that they had been watching the real thing. Fact and fiction can easily get blurred in the minds of those who are watching TV while they eat their tea. Which is one reason, I suppose, why you now see little labels at the top of your screen saying Re-enactment, or Reconstruction, or words to that effect.
It's getting to be a bit similar in the book world. I say that because Gary Troup, it seems, has written a novel.
Gary Troup, who he?
Gary Troup, he a fictional character in Lost, that's who he. And Lost is a made-up TV story. It ain't true, OK? But that doesn't stop the Hanso Corporation taking full-page ads in the American press to object to the way in which they are portrayed in Gary's novel. And it doesn't stop our Gary having a web site of his own either.
And it doesn't stop people speculating on how the internet might be used to attract readers to a whole new interactive fiction/fact thingummy-whatsit, and all like that. And before long you'll be telling me it's Tuesday, when I know perfectly well we're still in May. Unless, of course, you happen to be reading this in June.
And why does the clock at the Hanso Foundation change to OB:EY whenever it hits 15:04, or 15:08, or 23:15? That's what I want to know.
Answers to all these imponderables may be found in the Scotsman (link from booktrade.info). Or perhaps not.
Charles J Shields: Mockingbird
Today, 30 May 2006 (unless I mistake me), is publication day for Charles J Shields's biography of Harper Lee. Its full title is Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee.
Harper Lee (and not everyone will know this because they aren't all as old as we are) is the (female) author of a novel called To Kill a Mockingbird. First published in 1960, her book was a big seller and a big critical success (winning the Pulitzer). It has gone on being both ever since. The 1962 movie, starring Gregory Peck, didn't do it any harm either.
Here's part of the synopsis of the book on Amazon.com:
Most other people did take to it, however. It was the right book in the right place at the right time.
So 'right' was it that, for whatever reason, Harper Lee has never written (or at least published) anything else. She came close, once or twice, but it has never happened. So far.
This, then, is the woman who is the subject of Charles J Shields's biography. He got no help whatever, it seems, from the lady in question: Harper Lee stopped giving interviews in 1965; but he did interview some 600 other people.
I have a horrid suspicion that one of the reasons why Mockingbird has continued to sell is that it is on the reading lists of many a US (and probably UK) Eng Lit course. That is a circumstance which, for a writer, is better than a pension; it's a neat trick to pull off, but I have absolutely no advice on how to do it. As I say, right book, right time, right place. I'm not sure you can plan for that.
Meanwhile you can read Shields's book and try to figure it out.
Harper Lee (and not everyone will know this because they aren't all as old as we are) is the (female) author of a novel called To Kill a Mockingbird. First published in 1960, her book was a big seller and a big critical success (winning the Pulitzer). It has gone on being both ever since. The 1962 movie, starring Gregory Peck, didn't do it any harm either.
Here's part of the synopsis of the book on Amazon.com:
Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.That tells you enough, I think. It's about growing up (as everyone does, somewhere), and it's about the race issue in the deep south; and it's about justice. Some forty-plus years have passed since I read it, but I seem to remember finding it just a bit too politically correct for my taste (though we didn't use that expression then), and a bit too cutesy and twee. I never took to it.
Most other people did take to it, however. It was the right book in the right place at the right time.
So 'right' was it that, for whatever reason, Harper Lee has never written (or at least published) anything else. She came close, once or twice, but it has never happened. So far.
This, then, is the woman who is the subject of Charles J Shields's biography. He got no help whatever, it seems, from the lady in question: Harper Lee stopped giving interviews in 1965; but he did interview some 600 other people.
I have a horrid suspicion that one of the reasons why Mockingbird has continued to sell is that it is on the reading lists of many a US (and probably UK) Eng Lit course. That is a circumstance which, for a writer, is better than a pension; it's a neat trick to pull off, but I have absolutely no advice on how to do it. As I say, right book, right time, right place. I'm not sure you can plan for that.
Meanwhile you can read Shields's book and try to figure it out.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Bungs in Britain
Yesterday's Sunday Times did a little bit of work on quite an old story, and, in the true tradition of journalism, claimed that its report was new and exclusive.
'£50,000 to get a book on recommended list' said the headline. And the text which followed revealed how WH Smith (Britain's biggest bookseller) is 'demanding payments of £50,000 a week from publishers to get books on its supposedly impartial list of "recommended" reads in the run-up to Christmas this year.'
The story continues:
Well we've known all this for some time. The Sunday Times claims that it was the first to expose the schemes five years ago, but I've always believed that it was an anonymous article in the Spectator which first blew the whistle.
Now, however, publishers feel that the whole thing is getting out of hand. As well they might, if the prices quoted are correct.
The Sunday Times followed up this story with an editorial, if you please.
This whole question of bungs for books has been discussed on the GOB before. More than once. And the last time, in response to my rather tetchy comments, Nicholas Clee (a former editor of the Bookseller and himself a regular writer for the Times), kindly gave us details of how the deals are really struck. Here's what he said:
'£50,000 to get a book on recommended list' said the headline. And the text which followed revealed how WH Smith (Britain's biggest bookseller) is 'demanding payments of £50,000 a week from publishers to get books on its supposedly impartial list of "recommended" reads in the run-up to Christmas this year.'
The story continues:
And so on.The WH Smith scheme is the most expensive in a range of confidential deals being operated by retailers to promote lists that consumers believe are based on independent assessments of a book’s quality.
No authors appear on recommended lists unless their publishers pay the fees, and those refusing to pay may not even find their titles stocked.
Other big booksellers which charge for places on schemes such as 'book of the week' or 'recommended' are Waterstone’s and Borders, which owns Books Etc.
The most expensive is WH Smith’s 'adult gold' scheme, which is currently being presented to publishers who are expected to pay £50,000 a week per book for a place.
This guarantees a prominent position in the store’s 542 high street shops and inclusion in catalogues and other advertising. For the critical four-week Christmas sales period, it would cost a publisher at least £200,000 per book.
Well we've known all this for some time. The Sunday Times claims that it was the first to expose the schemes five years ago, but I've always believed that it was an anonymous article in the Spectator which first blew the whistle.
Now, however, publishers feel that the whole thing is getting out of hand. As well they might, if the prices quoted are correct.
The Sunday Times followed up this story with an editorial, if you please.
Well, actually, chums, you're five years behind the Spectator, and you've got some of the details wrong.Most of us have the impression that titles placed prominently on display have been put there on merit. A book chosen as the week’s best read must surely be good or it would not have been selected by such a seemingly agreeable shop...
When you see a Waterstone’s book of the week, bear in mind that the publisher will have paid £10,000 for the privilege. Inclusion in three-for-two or other promotional schemes also involves money changing hands. There is nothing wrong in this if the shops are open about it. But customers are fooled because they believe that the titles come with the bookseller’s unbiased recommendation. Usually they do not. When record companies bribed DJs to plug records, didn’t they call it 'payola'?
In the meantime we are happy to have brought the culprits to book.
This whole question of bungs for books has been discussed on the GOB before. More than once. And the last time, in response to my rather tetchy comments, Nicholas Clee (a former editor of the Bookseller and himself a regular writer for the Times), kindly gave us details of how the deals are really struck. Here's what he said:
The reason people make a fuss about co-op promotions [between publishers and retailers] now is that they cost more, and are more visible. The principle is not new. The bookseller chooses the books; it goes to the publisher; the publisher pays.
It has been suggested that Waterstone's and co promote books only because publishers will pay for them. At the same time, one reads that Scott Pack is making the choices that determine what will be on the bestseller lists.
The latter assertion is a caricature, but is closer to the truth than the one about publishers simply having to get out their cheque books to buy space. Waterstone's, Ottakars, Borders and co choose the books they want to promote. These books tend to be the ones they think their customers will want, and they tend to be ones that publishers are prepared to back. I've heard of no instance of a publisher's buying space that a bookseller would not have given without financial incentive.
Trainspotting
Times change, eh?
This utterly banal and entirely unoriginal thought popped into my head as a result of a visit, on Saturday afternoon last, to the Theatre Royal, Bath, to see a stage adaptation of Irvine Walsh's novel Trainspotting.
Trainspotting was the author's first novel, and you can find an exhaustive discussion and description of it on Wikipedia. First published in 1993, the novel was both a literary success (longlisted for the Booker) and a popular hit.
There are two main points to be made about the novel here. First, parts of it were written in a phonetic version of English as spoken with an extreme Scottish accent. This form of speech is technically, I suppose, a dialect rather than a separate language, and for a scholarly discussion of it you should again dip into Wikipedia. But you should know that speech in this style is pretty difficult to follow, either in written or spoken form, unless you were born north of the border.
Second, you should know that the book deals with a group of young Scottish low-lifes, drug addicts, layabouts, psychopaths, and general no-goods, with associated shocking events. Well, potentially shocking.
The book was turned into a film, in 1996, but that need not detain us here. And earlier, in 1994, Harry Gibson had done an adaptation of it for the theatre. One succinct description of his play version sums it up as follows: a 'bleak , black, tragically funny tale of a wasted generation destroyed not by madness but by heroin.'
It is a new touring version of this play that Mrs GOB and I saw on Saturday afternoon, at the odd time of 4.00 pm. Presumably the producers hoped, by putting on the matinee performance at that hour, rather than the usual 2.30, to attract a younger type of audience. And in that they succeeded: Mrs GOB noted that the audience included quite a number of young women in pairs (for company, I think, rather than because of any lesbian relationship), and a number of young men who had made only irregular, and not recent, visits to the shower room.
The play features a flexible set, easily converted to represent quite a number of locations, and five actors sufficed to cover considerably more than five characters.
There are several things to be said about the play (in case you're thinking of seeing it). The first is that, as with the novel, the language is so Scottish as to be more or less incomprehensible unless you're used to it. The second is that it is unrelentingly filthy. I could recognise about three words in ten, on average, and two of those words were usually fuck and cunt. If there was an adjective employed other than fucking, during the entire evening, I missed it. And cunt was used as an all-purpose noun, meaning man, woman, friend, enemy, idiot, bright boy, and so forth. All the other four-letter words made their appearance at regular intervals.
Since the play is about a bunch of drug addicts, we got plenty of on-stage shooting up, with all the usual paraphernalia: belt round the arm to raise a vein, candle, spoon, and so forth. We had some nudity: at one point a junkie came on stage naked, failed to find a vein in any normal part of his body, and in the end injected himself in his penis.
Then we had some set pieces:
There was the one at the start, where the main character describes how he woke up in a strange bed, not knowing where he was, and discovered, to use his terms, that he had shat himself, puked up, and also, for good measure, soaked the bed in piss. The character then embarked on an account of how he gathered together the soiled sheets, set off to try to get them clean, but only succeeded (if I followed the story correctly) in showering his girl friend's parents with the contents.
Another set piece occurred (again I am assuming that I followed the drift of the story correctly), when a girl who was working as a waitress in a restaurant took offence at the manners of someone she was serving, and found an opportunity to mix the contents of her thoroughly soaked tampon with the customer's food. Another disliked customer was served profiteroles. the chocolate sauce on which had been liberally dosed with 'shite'.
There was a third story (just by way of example -- there were others) when one character described how he obtained some opium suppositories to dampen down the side-effects of his various drug-related aches and pains. Overtaken by a sudden and absolutely catastrophic attack of diarrhoea (copiously acted out), the young man eventually realised that he had unwittingly disposed of his two opium suppositories in the toilet bowl. Fortunately he had not yet flushed his prizes away, so he got down on his hands and knees, and groped about, up to his shoulder in shit (amusingly splattering the front rows of the audience as he did so), until he eventually found what he wanted. Then he shoved them back up his arse again.
Now... However appalling these stories may sound -- and they certainly are appalling -- they were performed on stage by some very skilled young actors who managed to make them funny. Even to me. And sitting behind me were some middle-aged women, of Scottish descent, who could clearly follow every word, and who cackled away like mad things.
A middle-aged couple sitting next to us did not return after the interval, but Mrs GOB and I are made of sterner stuff. We had found it just a tad tedious, frankly, being bombarded with this endless stream of obscenity, simulated sex, pregnant women being kneed in the stomach (and also shagged from behind in the toilet, a process graphically referred to as putting one's cock in the baby's mouth), junkies' babies being found dead, and so forth. But we had hopes that act two might be better.
It was. Considerably. Aided by some outstanding acting, the characters began to assume a curious kind of stature which somehow made them tragic and impressive. And, while I couldn't say that I had a very clear idea of what happened to them in the end, one felt somehow moved to have made their acquaintance. On the whole I was quite glad to have seen the play.
Which brings me back to my first point.
Times change, eh?
You won't remember, and you probably won't care, but censorship of stage plays was not abandoned in the UK until 1968, when I was nearly thirty years old. Prior to that date, every British play performed in a public theatre had to meet with the Lord Chamberlain's approval. And it is absolutely inconceivable that the Lord Chamberlain would ever have allowed even one mention of words such as fuck and cunt. Totally inconceivable. In the first production of Waiting for Godot, the word fart was found unacceptable, and belch had to be substituted. Homosexuality could not be mentioned on stage, and neither could Jesus. Anything remotely smutty, religious, or political, was banned.
So, in the 1960s, Trainspotting would never have got off the ground. The language, the nudity, the occasional blasphemy, the simulated sex, and the drug taking, all of these would have rendered it impossible of production.
Compare that with today. I have just re-read the review of this play which appeared last week in my local paper, the Wiltshire Times. This, you should understand, is a strictly regional newspaper devoted to reports of weddings, accounts of meetings of the Townswomen's guild and the like, and the local football scores. Short of something exciting, such as a stolen car, 'Dog cuts paw on canal bank' will be a front-page story.
What did this paper make of Trainspotting?
Well for a start the review said nothing about the language or the nudity. True, it did refer to a 'rollercoaster ride of drug-induced highs and unsettling lows', and 'black humour, with detours into tragedy and despair'. But there was no hint that you might get a short training course in how to use heroin, that you might hear some fairly revolting stories about getting your own back on rude customers, or, indeed, that you might see anything on stage which might perhaps cause any shock or offence. Not a whisper to the effect that this play might be anything out of the ordinary, or that it might provide a theatrical experience rather different from that of, say, Private Lives.
And who wrote this review? One Amy Watkins.
Well, all I can say is, she must be young.
This utterly banal and entirely unoriginal thought popped into my head as a result of a visit, on Saturday afternoon last, to the Theatre Royal, Bath, to see a stage adaptation of Irvine Walsh's novel Trainspotting.
Trainspotting was the author's first novel, and you can find an exhaustive discussion and description of it on Wikipedia. First published in 1993, the novel was both a literary success (longlisted for the Booker) and a popular hit.
There are two main points to be made about the novel here. First, parts of it were written in a phonetic version of English as spoken with an extreme Scottish accent. This form of speech is technically, I suppose, a dialect rather than a separate language, and for a scholarly discussion of it you should again dip into Wikipedia. But you should know that speech in this style is pretty difficult to follow, either in written or spoken form, unless you were born north of the border.
Second, you should know that the book deals with a group of young Scottish low-lifes, drug addicts, layabouts, psychopaths, and general no-goods, with associated shocking events. Well, potentially shocking.
The book was turned into a film, in 1996, but that need not detain us here. And earlier, in 1994, Harry Gibson had done an adaptation of it for the theatre. One succinct description of his play version sums it up as follows: a 'bleak , black, tragically funny tale of a wasted generation destroyed not by madness but by heroin.'
It is a new touring version of this play that Mrs GOB and I saw on Saturday afternoon, at the odd time of 4.00 pm. Presumably the producers hoped, by putting on the matinee performance at that hour, rather than the usual 2.30, to attract a younger type of audience. And in that they succeeded: Mrs GOB noted that the audience included quite a number of young women in pairs (for company, I think, rather than because of any lesbian relationship), and a number of young men who had made only irregular, and not recent, visits to the shower room.
The play features a flexible set, easily converted to represent quite a number of locations, and five actors sufficed to cover considerably more than five characters.
There are several things to be said about the play (in case you're thinking of seeing it). The first is that, as with the novel, the language is so Scottish as to be more or less incomprehensible unless you're used to it. The second is that it is unrelentingly filthy. I could recognise about three words in ten, on average, and two of those words were usually fuck and cunt. If there was an adjective employed other than fucking, during the entire evening, I missed it. And cunt was used as an all-purpose noun, meaning man, woman, friend, enemy, idiot, bright boy, and so forth. All the other four-letter words made their appearance at regular intervals.
Since the play is about a bunch of drug addicts, we got plenty of on-stage shooting up, with all the usual paraphernalia: belt round the arm to raise a vein, candle, spoon, and so forth. We had some nudity: at one point a junkie came on stage naked, failed to find a vein in any normal part of his body, and in the end injected himself in his penis.
Then we had some set pieces:
There was the one at the start, where the main character describes how he woke up in a strange bed, not knowing where he was, and discovered, to use his terms, that he had shat himself, puked up, and also, for good measure, soaked the bed in piss. The character then embarked on an account of how he gathered together the soiled sheets, set off to try to get them clean, but only succeeded (if I followed the story correctly) in showering his girl friend's parents with the contents.
Another set piece occurred (again I am assuming that I followed the drift of the story correctly), when a girl who was working as a waitress in a restaurant took offence at the manners of someone she was serving, and found an opportunity to mix the contents of her thoroughly soaked tampon with the customer's food. Another disliked customer was served profiteroles. the chocolate sauce on which had been liberally dosed with 'shite'.
There was a third story (just by way of example -- there were others) when one character described how he obtained some opium suppositories to dampen down the side-effects of his various drug-related aches and pains. Overtaken by a sudden and absolutely catastrophic attack of diarrhoea (copiously acted out), the young man eventually realised that he had unwittingly disposed of his two opium suppositories in the toilet bowl. Fortunately he had not yet flushed his prizes away, so he got down on his hands and knees, and groped about, up to his shoulder in shit (amusingly splattering the front rows of the audience as he did so), until he eventually found what he wanted. Then he shoved them back up his arse again.
Now... However appalling these stories may sound -- and they certainly are appalling -- they were performed on stage by some very skilled young actors who managed to make them funny. Even to me. And sitting behind me were some middle-aged women, of Scottish descent, who could clearly follow every word, and who cackled away like mad things.
A middle-aged couple sitting next to us did not return after the interval, but Mrs GOB and I are made of sterner stuff. We had found it just a tad tedious, frankly, being bombarded with this endless stream of obscenity, simulated sex, pregnant women being kneed in the stomach (and also shagged from behind in the toilet, a process graphically referred to as putting one's cock in the baby's mouth), junkies' babies being found dead, and so forth. But we had hopes that act two might be better.
It was. Considerably. Aided by some outstanding acting, the characters began to assume a curious kind of stature which somehow made them tragic and impressive. And, while I couldn't say that I had a very clear idea of what happened to them in the end, one felt somehow moved to have made their acquaintance. On the whole I was quite glad to have seen the play.
Which brings me back to my first point.
Times change, eh?
You won't remember, and you probably won't care, but censorship of stage plays was not abandoned in the UK until 1968, when I was nearly thirty years old. Prior to that date, every British play performed in a public theatre had to meet with the Lord Chamberlain's approval. And it is absolutely inconceivable that the Lord Chamberlain would ever have allowed even one mention of words such as fuck and cunt. Totally inconceivable. In the first production of Waiting for Godot, the word fart was found unacceptable, and belch had to be substituted. Homosexuality could not be mentioned on stage, and neither could Jesus. Anything remotely smutty, religious, or political, was banned.
So, in the 1960s, Trainspotting would never have got off the ground. The language, the nudity, the occasional blasphemy, the simulated sex, and the drug taking, all of these would have rendered it impossible of production.
Compare that with today. I have just re-read the review of this play which appeared last week in my local paper, the Wiltshire Times. This, you should understand, is a strictly regional newspaper devoted to reports of weddings, accounts of meetings of the Townswomen's guild and the like, and the local football scores. Short of something exciting, such as a stolen car, 'Dog cuts paw on canal bank' will be a front-page story.
What did this paper make of Trainspotting?
Well for a start the review said nothing about the language or the nudity. True, it did refer to a 'rollercoaster ride of drug-induced highs and unsettling lows', and 'black humour, with detours into tragedy and despair'. But there was no hint that you might get a short training course in how to use heroin, that you might hear some fairly revolting stories about getting your own back on rude customers, or, indeed, that you might see anything on stage which might perhaps cause any shock or offence. Not a whisper to the effect that this play might be anything out of the ordinary, or that it might provide a theatrical experience rather different from that of, say, Private Lives.
And who wrote this review? One Amy Watkins.
Well, all I can say is, she must be young.
Friday, May 26, 2006
End of the week
Here are a few stories and links which didn't fit in anywhere else this week.
Scoopt
Scoopt is a web site for photographers, especially those who carry a camera everywhere with the intention of taking a picture if anything happens that ought to be in the newspapers. Judging by some of the featured images, more or less anyone can take a newsworthy picture if they happen to have a camera in the right place at the right time. So Scoopt is an excellent idea, and although the 50/50 split of the income may look steep, I don't think that's out of line compared with other picture agencies. And in any case, if they have the contacts, they can sell where you couldn't even get in the door, so 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
Scoopt may, I understand, be going to launch an initiative connected with text. So keep looking. You might get rich and famous.
Thinking of running a bookshop?
Once upon a time, it was not completely ridiculous to imagine that, after retiring from a job in industry or the civil service, you might buy a small bookshop somewhere, and run that until you got really decrepit.
Well, you could still do that. But you're going to need a lot more courage, capital, and know-how than you once did.
For a good indication of the difficulties, read the Guardian's special two-part report on independent bookshops. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Oprah
I read a blog a few days ago which said -- perhaps ironically -- that the announcement that Oprah Winfrey is to write a book about weight control was the story of the week. I beg to differ. It isn't a story at all. It's a complete non-event.
What this news does do, of course, is encapsulate the modern book trade in a couple of paragraphs. And, if you must read how Oprah has come to add (allegedly) a further $12 million plus to her vast fortune, the Guardian has some details. Of a sort. Pretty sloppy and superficial if you ask me.
Screenwriters' Festival
If you live in the UK, and you're interested in writing for TV or the screen (a more than usually foolish set of writing ambitions) then you probably should take a look at the programme for the International Screenwriters' Festival. One day of the programme is specifically devoted to new writers.
Sorry, but it makes me tired and depressed just to think about it. All that eager, optimistic youth assembled in one place. And 99.9% of it due to be bitterly frustrated and disappointed. At least if you write fiction you can publish your own.
Vin Doctor's Auntie lists
Vin Doctor is a writer who specialises in lists. Lists which he refers to as Auntie lists. Apparently it's a long story. Anyway, he's in search of an agent or publisher, so if you are one of those you might, just conceivably, wish to go take a look and see if there's a book there, because Vin thinks there is.
I have to say that this stuff is definitely not for me, but then I'm English and old. If I was 17 and American I would doubtless feel quite different. The Auntie lists reportedly appear on the Points in Case web site, which is clearly aimed at that audience. And it is, when all is said and done, a big audience.
Biroco
Joel Biroco kindly wrote to tell me that he has read On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile and thought it was excellent, and he didn't even mention his own web site; he just added a link at the bottom of his email. Such modesty, I thought, deserves a reward, so I clicked on it.
Well, I have more than once mentioned here that the problem for writers is that, compared with musicians, it's very hard to make people go Wow! So, for what it's worth, I take my hat of to Joel's Biroco.com for making me go Wow!
The Wow! results mainly, I have to say, from the visual impact of the site rather than the content. And Wow! won't necessarily be everyone's reaction, because we all have our own taste in these things. But the Biroco web site strikes me as being one of the most beautifully designed that I have ever come across. It is just so elegant, and admirably suited to its content.
Once you get into this web site you discover that it deals with matters philosophical, occult, and perhaps religious, depending on your definition. The occult is a highly complex field, with a huge literature of its own, into which I have never dipped more than a toe. But there is enough on this site to give you a taste of what it involves. For a sample, download issue 14 of Kaos.
If you do get hooked on this stuff, it will take you for ever to read about it; you will come across, just by way of example, Dr Dee, Aleister Crowley, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and a thousand other extraordinary offshoots. The Wikipedia entry on Occultism is a good place to start.
In addition to Biroco.com's basic content, it also features what is becoming a regular problem in life nowadays, i.e. an attempt to close down a web site which contains material that some people object to. In this case, which involved issue 14 of Kaos, the pathetically feeble ISP concerned was the British firm BT. Well, if you know BT you could hardly expect anything else really. Needless to say, Joel Biroco and his associates were able to work around BT.
There's a whole lot more, including an essay on web design featuring our old friend the Golden Section. All in all, this is, in every way, one of the most impressive web sites that I've ever seen. Though I have serious reservations about the bits in white text on a black background.
Robert Littell interview
Ali Karim pointed me to his lengthy interview with the espionage novelist Robert Littell. When I reviewed Littell's Legends, in July last year, I not only made the point that the book was about as good as you could ever reasonably expect a novel to be, but also that the author was a bit niggardly with the personal details. Well, thanks to Ali Karim we now know a great deal more about him.
The interview is a bit long to read onscreen, but you can print it out without difficulty: 25 pages. I'm glad that I did, because I found it a rewarding read, not merely in what it says about books and publishing, but in what this very well informed and much travelled man has to say about the history of the last 50 years. If you click on no other link from the GOB this week, I suggest that your time will be well spent in clicking on this one.
You looking at me?
Should you ever have cause to visit this fair isle of England, from somewhere overseas, you may, perchance, happen upon one of our beautifully mannered and incomparably educated young people -- a tattooed, acne-ridden, and denim-clad youth who scowls at you and mutters in barely comprehensible tones: You looking at me or chewing a brick?
If greeted in this time-honoured manner, you may, just conceivably, wonder what the fuck he is on about. In which case, dear Readers, hasten ye to the Urban dictionary, where all these quaint English expressions are translated for you.
In this case, what he means is: pretty soon you're getting a broken jaw, either because you're looking at me in a manner which I do not appreciate, or because you're chewing a brick.
Quite simple really. Of course, by the time you've logged on and worked it all out, the meaning of the young man's question may have become all too clear to you via a practical demonstration. But I can do nothing about that. Sorry.
Thanks to my daughter-in-law for this explication and link.
How the book business actually works, I
Book Expo America, as I believe I mentioned last week, is roughly the American equivalent of the Frankfurt and London book fairs. It is an occasion when anyone who's anyone in the book world gathers together in one place to do business and, er, other things.
Not everyone finds it a rewarding experience. In particular, authors can find it a bit daunting, as Booksquare explains (link from Galleycat). Independent publishers may also discover that they are up against some formidable, not to say incestuous, opposition. And this may lead to a distressing degree of cynicism. Witness this statement from Jennifer Nix (link from Maud Newton):
Private Eye this week reports that there have been 12 positive reviews of Nicholas Coleridge's novel A Much-Married Man in the British press.
Of these, 4 appeared in magazines published by Nicholas Coleridge (he is managing director of Conde Nast); 3 were written for newspapers by former or current employees of Nicholas Coleridge; 2 were written by personal friends of Nicholas Coleridge; there were 0 negative reviews.
For an account of the Conde Nast connections, see the Observer's article of 19 December 2004.
Yet another attempt to silence criticism
On Monday we noted the attempt of lawyers Carter Ruck to silence criticism of their actions; and, in reference to Biroco, above, we noted an attempt to close down a site completely, when someone considered that it contained material contrary to their interests. Now there's a case involving AbsoluteWrite.
Well, I am a long way from believing that online writers should be allowed to say anything they wish -- whether true, reasonable, and sane or not -- but fortunately it is now the case that those who have truth and common sense as their allies are normally able to circumvent such attempts at censorship, albeit at the expense of time and money.
For a neat summary of what this new instance is all about, go to E.J. Knapp's blog, Only on Sunday. AbsoluteWrite, who have been the object of 'agent' Barbara Bauer's ire, are seeking a new home.
Miss Snark is hopping mad about this too, and you sure as hell wouldn't want to annoy her. In fact she's written about Barbara Bauer twice: the first time to say that she didn't like what the lady was up to, and the second time to give chapter and verse as to why she thinks the lady is a scam artist.
Words of wisdom
M J Rose is the writer who first recognised the power of the internet, and used it to make herself... well, not a household name, exactly, but certainly a published author with a decent track record. And on her blog Buzz, Balls & Hype (25 May), she has a short piece by her old high-school friend Elizabeth Benedict. Elizabeth writes about writers' ambitions, and refers to:
Fed up with everyone criticising publishers? Tired of gloom and doom? Want to hear someone stick up for the book business, which is, after all, populated by nice people? In that case nip over to Sara Gran's blog -- she has just the thing to perk you up. (Thanks to Maxine Clarke for the link.)
Backstory
In addition to Buzz, Balls & Hype (mentioned above), M J Rose also runs Backstory, a site on which authors tell (usually) how they came to write their masterpiece and give it a gentle plug. M J recently handed over the day-to-day running of this blog to Jessica, who has more time available, and hence there is more new material on it, more often.
Sara Nelson on copyright
Sara Nelson, editor of US trade journal Publishers Weekly, offers a weekly editorial. This week's argues that copyright is a good thing and that it should last a hell of a long time.
Well, up to a point, Lady Copper. I have posted a partly dissenting comment, but most people seem to agree with her.
Scoopt
Scoopt is a web site for photographers, especially those who carry a camera everywhere with the intention of taking a picture if anything happens that ought to be in the newspapers. Judging by some of the featured images, more or less anyone can take a newsworthy picture if they happen to have a camera in the right place at the right time. So Scoopt is an excellent idea, and although the 50/50 split of the income may look steep, I don't think that's out of line compared with other picture agencies. And in any case, if they have the contacts, they can sell where you couldn't even get in the door, so 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
Scoopt may, I understand, be going to launch an initiative connected with text. So keep looking. You might get rich and famous.
Thinking of running a bookshop?
Once upon a time, it was not completely ridiculous to imagine that, after retiring from a job in industry or the civil service, you might buy a small bookshop somewhere, and run that until you got really decrepit.
Well, you could still do that. But you're going to need a lot more courage, capital, and know-how than you once did.
For a good indication of the difficulties, read the Guardian's special two-part report on independent bookshops. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Oprah
I read a blog a few days ago which said -- perhaps ironically -- that the announcement that Oprah Winfrey is to write a book about weight control was the story of the week. I beg to differ. It isn't a story at all. It's a complete non-event.
What this news does do, of course, is encapsulate the modern book trade in a couple of paragraphs. And, if you must read how Oprah has come to add (allegedly) a further $12 million plus to her vast fortune, the Guardian has some details. Of a sort. Pretty sloppy and superficial if you ask me.
Screenwriters' Festival
If you live in the UK, and you're interested in writing for TV or the screen (a more than usually foolish set of writing ambitions) then you probably should take a look at the programme for the International Screenwriters' Festival. One day of the programme is specifically devoted to new writers.
Sorry, but it makes me tired and depressed just to think about it. All that eager, optimistic youth assembled in one place. And 99.9% of it due to be bitterly frustrated and disappointed. At least if you write fiction you can publish your own.
Vin Doctor's Auntie lists
Vin Doctor is a writer who specialises in lists. Lists which he refers to as Auntie lists. Apparently it's a long story. Anyway, he's in search of an agent or publisher, so if you are one of those you might, just conceivably, wish to go take a look and see if there's a book there, because Vin thinks there is.
I have to say that this stuff is definitely not for me, but then I'm English and old. If I was 17 and American I would doubtless feel quite different. The Auntie lists reportedly appear on the Points in Case web site, which is clearly aimed at that audience. And it is, when all is said and done, a big audience.
Biroco
Joel Biroco kindly wrote to tell me that he has read On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile and thought it was excellent, and he didn't even mention his own web site; he just added a link at the bottom of his email. Such modesty, I thought, deserves a reward, so I clicked on it.
Well, I have more than once mentioned here that the problem for writers is that, compared with musicians, it's very hard to make people go Wow! So, for what it's worth, I take my hat of to Joel's Biroco.com for making me go Wow!
The Wow! results mainly, I have to say, from the visual impact of the site rather than the content. And Wow! won't necessarily be everyone's reaction, because we all have our own taste in these things. But the Biroco web site strikes me as being one of the most beautifully designed that I have ever come across. It is just so elegant, and admirably suited to its content.
Once you get into this web site you discover that it deals with matters philosophical, occult, and perhaps religious, depending on your definition. The occult is a highly complex field, with a huge literature of its own, into which I have never dipped more than a toe. But there is enough on this site to give you a taste of what it involves. For a sample, download issue 14 of Kaos.
If you do get hooked on this stuff, it will take you for ever to read about it; you will come across, just by way of example, Dr Dee, Aleister Crowley, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and a thousand other extraordinary offshoots. The Wikipedia entry on Occultism is a good place to start.
In addition to Biroco.com's basic content, it also features what is becoming a regular problem in life nowadays, i.e. an attempt to close down a web site which contains material that some people object to. In this case, which involved issue 14 of Kaos, the pathetically feeble ISP concerned was the British firm BT. Well, if you know BT you could hardly expect anything else really. Needless to say, Joel Biroco and his associates were able to work around BT.
There's a whole lot more, including an essay on web design featuring our old friend the Golden Section. All in all, this is, in every way, one of the most impressive web sites that I've ever seen. Though I have serious reservations about the bits in white text on a black background.
Robert Littell interview
Ali Karim pointed me to his lengthy interview with the espionage novelist Robert Littell. When I reviewed Littell's Legends, in July last year, I not only made the point that the book was about as good as you could ever reasonably expect a novel to be, but also that the author was a bit niggardly with the personal details. Well, thanks to Ali Karim we now know a great deal more about him.
The interview is a bit long to read onscreen, but you can print it out without difficulty: 25 pages. I'm glad that I did, because I found it a rewarding read, not merely in what it says about books and publishing, but in what this very well informed and much travelled man has to say about the history of the last 50 years. If you click on no other link from the GOB this week, I suggest that your time will be well spent in clicking on this one.
You looking at me?
Should you ever have cause to visit this fair isle of England, from somewhere overseas, you may, perchance, happen upon one of our beautifully mannered and incomparably educated young people -- a tattooed, acne-ridden, and denim-clad youth who scowls at you and mutters in barely comprehensible tones: You looking at me or chewing a brick?
If greeted in this time-honoured manner, you may, just conceivably, wonder what the fuck he is on about. In which case, dear Readers, hasten ye to the Urban dictionary, where all these quaint English expressions are translated for you.
In this case, what he means is: pretty soon you're getting a broken jaw, either because you're looking at me in a manner which I do not appreciate, or because you're chewing a brick.
Quite simple really. Of course, by the time you've logged on and worked it all out, the meaning of the young man's question may have become all too clear to you via a practical demonstration. But I can do nothing about that. Sorry.
Thanks to my daughter-in-law for this explication and link.
How the book business actually works, I
Book Expo America, as I believe I mentioned last week, is roughly the American equivalent of the Frankfurt and London book fairs. It is an occasion when anyone who's anyone in the book world gathers together in one place to do business and, er, other things.
Not everyone finds it a rewarding experience. In particular, authors can find it a bit daunting, as Booksquare explains (link from Galleycat). Independent publishers may also discover that they are up against some formidable, not to say incestuous, opposition. And this may lead to a distressing degree of cynicism. Witness this statement from Jennifer Nix (link from Maud Newton):
Book Expo, however, is primarily a ridiculous display of fawning and ass-kissing, a giant corporate junket courtesy of the massive marketing budgets at the Big Houses. It's the yearly gathering where corporate newspaper and magazine reporters wander through thousands of booths, like so many rock stars, saying and writing glowing items about their corporate-publisher-siblings' books. This process is facilitated by perky and usually blond publicists. Independent publishers are meant to pay the pricey admission just to watch, to stand on the sidelines and not get too familiar with the reporters and reviewers, because really, darling... if their books were any good at all, the Big Houses would have inked those deals.How the book business actually works, II
Private Eye this week reports that there have been 12 positive reviews of Nicholas Coleridge's novel A Much-Married Man in the British press.
Of these, 4 appeared in magazines published by Nicholas Coleridge (he is managing director of Conde Nast); 3 were written for newspapers by former or current employees of Nicholas Coleridge; 2 were written by personal friends of Nicholas Coleridge; there were 0 negative reviews.
For an account of the Conde Nast connections, see the Observer's article of 19 December 2004.
Yet another attempt to silence criticism
On Monday we noted the attempt of lawyers Carter Ruck to silence criticism of their actions; and, in reference to Biroco, above, we noted an attempt to close down a site completely, when someone considered that it contained material contrary to their interests. Now there's a case involving AbsoluteWrite.
Well, I am a long way from believing that online writers should be allowed to say anything they wish -- whether true, reasonable, and sane or not -- but fortunately it is now the case that those who have truth and common sense as their allies are normally able to circumvent such attempts at censorship, albeit at the expense of time and money.
For a neat summary of what this new instance is all about, go to E.J. Knapp's blog, Only on Sunday. AbsoluteWrite, who have been the object of 'agent' Barbara Bauer's ire, are seeking a new home.
Miss Snark is hopping mad about this too, and you sure as hell wouldn't want to annoy her. In fact she's written about Barbara Bauer twice: the first time to say that she didn't like what the lady was up to, and the second time to give chapter and verse as to why she thinks the lady is a scam artist.
Words of wisdom
M J Rose is the writer who first recognised the power of the internet, and used it to make herself... well, not a household name, exactly, but certainly a published author with a decent track record. And on her blog Buzz, Balls & Hype (25 May), she has a short piece by her old high-school friend Elizabeth Benedict. Elizabeth writes about writers' ambitions, and refers to:
...that Big Fantasy that makes our pulses quicken: When I find myself slipping into the clutches of it, I remember the wise, cautionary words of Andrea Eagan, a dear friend -- to me and many writers -- who died at 51, in 1993. She was a wonderful journalist and a founder of the National Writers Union in the 1980s. I remember saying dreamily to her and her actor husband Richard, "When my ship comes in..." They interrupted me fast: "Forget about the ship. It will be a series of small dinghies that'll come your way."Be nice
Fed up with everyone criticising publishers? Tired of gloom and doom? Want to hear someone stick up for the book business, which is, after all, populated by nice people? In that case nip over to Sara Gran's blog -- she has just the thing to perk you up. (Thanks to Maxine Clarke for the link.)
Backstory
In addition to Buzz, Balls & Hype (mentioned above), M J Rose also runs Backstory, a site on which authors tell (usually) how they came to write their masterpiece and give it a gentle plug. M J recently handed over the day-to-day running of this blog to Jessica, who has more time available, and hence there is more new material on it, more often.
Sara Nelson on copyright
Sara Nelson, editor of US trade journal Publishers Weekly, offers a weekly editorial. This week's argues that copyright is a good thing and that it should last a hell of a long time.
Well, up to a point, Lady Copper. I have posted a partly dissenting comment, but most people seem to agree with her.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Predicting the future of the book trade
Publishers Lunch reports that, at Book Expo America last week, there was a general sense that change is in the air. That being the case, I thought it might be worth taking a look at the form that change might take -- at least as far as the book business is concerned.
Predicting the future is, as noted here not so long ago, a hazardous business. And nothing demonstrates this more clearly than looking back at past forecasts.
A few days ago I was poking around a junk shop and came across a book published in 1991 in the US and in 1992 in the UK. Title: The Great Reckoning: how the world will change in the depression of the 1990s. The authors were James Dale Davidson and (Lord) William Rees-Mogg.
Davidson is (or was then) a former writer for the Wall Street Journal, and a principal of Strategic Advisors Corporation in Baltimore. Rees-Mogg (still around) is a former editor of the Times, and is therefore as well informed and well connected as any man in England. Between them these two were as well placed as anyone reasonably could be to sniff the wind and decide how things were going.
As you can tell from the title of their book, Davidson and Rees-Mogg took the view that times were going to be hard in the 1990s. And evidently a lot of people were keen to read what they had to say, because the UK edition was reprinted five times.
I bought the book because I wanted to know what these two experts had to say about the impact of home computing in particular. It was in 1991 that I first acquired a primitive word processor, and shortly afterwards I got an office computer with a connection to the internet. But before we get into that, let's see how the two crystal-ball gazers got on with their more general socio-economic and political predictions.
Here are a few predictions which they got right, or mostly right:
I was particularly interested to hear what Davidson and Rees-Mogg had to say about this, because of my personal circumstances. I am actually rather proud of my own foresight in this area, although it didn't do me or anyone else the slightest good. I have absolutely no background in science, having undergone the traditional British, highly specialised, form of arts education. But because I worked in a university I began to hear about developments in computing long before the average layman.
I was secretary, for instance, to a university computing committee, which was discussing ethernet connections and IBM clones many, many years ago. And as soon as I began to hear about the internet, and what it could do -- and even more so when I first became able to get on to it, which again was long before the average layman -- I understood instinctively that it was going to change everything. I didn't know how, and I certainly didn't predict lots of the wonders that we have today, but that it constituted a complete revolution I had no doubt whatever. And I was slightly ahead of most in that respect.
So what did Davidson and Rees-Mogg make of it?
Well, for a start, you will search the index of their 1991 book in vain for the word internet. And ditto email. But the authors did take the view that the computer-based information revolution constituted the third great revolution in human life, and they considered that it entailed an entirely new principle of human control over nature.
They were particularly intrigued by the possible development of nanotechnology, and they feared that the human will might be made to conform with the will of those who controlled that technology -- which is interesting, because that was a central concern of John Sundman's novel Acts of the Apostles, reviewed yesterday. But by and large Davidson and Rees-Mogg didn't have a clue about what we all now take for granted, namely broadband connections, email, online buying, and blogs. Not to mention all the ten thousand other uses of computers to enhance the capabilities of machines and services.
In other words, the lesson I draw from the Davidson/Rees Mogg book, which was written only about 16 years ago, is that it is well nigh impossible to make meaningful future forecasts. If, in 1990 or so, when they were gathering together their conclusions, these two could not even imagine the impact of digital developments, the rest of us have little chance.
None of which stops us trying, of course. And for what it's worth, Publishers Lunch carried some reports, as did many other blogs, of what the 'experts' at Book Expo America were thinking.
It was noted, for instance, that Microsoft have started inviting publishers to submit titles for scanning and indexing; this operation goes under the name of Windows Live Search/Windows Live. And it appears to be another version, shall we say, of the Google Print project, which has caused so much discussion and anxiety.
My guess: at the end of the next 15 years or so, we shall see the establishment of at least one online library which will give massive access to knowledge, in book form, on a scale hardly imagined so far -- even in the nightmares of the Authors Guild and similar organisations, which seems to regard the prospect as something similar to the return of the Black Death.
Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, told the assembled troops that the book business remains stuck in an old paradigm. Change will come, and resistance is futile. 'Everything I know about business and technology after 25 years tells me that businesses that resist technology inevitably fail.'
On a personal note, Fiorina referred to her own forthcoming book Tough Choices and commented that the time involved in writing a book and getting it into circulation is 'quite stunning.' And she added that it was 'horrifying' that she had to keep dealing with marked-up 'physical pieces of paper when I did the book electronically.'
Poor old Carly. She was probably dealing with people who've only just got to grips with email. (And yesterday I recommended to a friend that he should approach a leading UK agent, only to find that said agent's web site stated firmly that he does not -- absolutely not -- accept electronic submissions or email enquiries.)
The AP reporter at BEA, Hillel Italie, said that attendees fell into three groups: those anxious for change, those who accept it, and those who resist. John Updike was among the resisters, referring to the 'grisly scenario' of electronic books.
Chris Anderson was at the BEA, talking about the long tail. Perhaps more interesting now, since we already know a lot about the long tail, was his idea that beta testing of material through online drafts, presented for public comment, is essential if you are to polish a (non-fiction) book to the point where it will be a success.
Away from the BEA, Lynne Scanlon has some scathing (as usual) things to say about the present mind-set of publishers and makes some predictions of her own. E.g.
Predicting the future is, as noted here not so long ago, a hazardous business. And nothing demonstrates this more clearly than looking back at past forecasts.
A few days ago I was poking around a junk shop and came across a book published in 1991 in the US and in 1992 in the UK. Title: The Great Reckoning: how the world will change in the depression of the 1990s. The authors were James Dale Davidson and (Lord) William Rees-Mogg.
Davidson is (or was then) a former writer for the Wall Street Journal, and a principal of Strategic Advisors Corporation in Baltimore. Rees-Mogg (still around) is a former editor of the Times, and is therefore as well informed and well connected as any man in England. Between them these two were as well placed as anyone reasonably could be to sniff the wind and decide how things were going.
As you can tell from the title of their book, Davidson and Rees-Mogg took the view that times were going to be hard in the 1990s. And evidently a lot of people were keen to read what they had to say, because the UK edition was reprinted five times.
I bought the book because I wanted to know what these two experts had to say about the impact of home computing in particular. It was in 1991 that I first acquired a primitive word processor, and shortly afterwards I got an office computer with a connection to the internet. But before we get into that, let's see how the two crystal-ball gazers got on with their more general socio-economic and political predictions.
Here are a few predictions which they got right, or mostly right:
- Taxes will skyrocket.
- Islam will replace Marxism as the main challenge in ideology.
- Multinational countries, including the Soviet Union, will break apart.
- The decade will see the first lowered prices since the 1930s.
- There will be a property collapse including a fall in the value of the average American home by two thirds.
- Drug use will be widely decriminalised.
- There will be a major migration away from big cities.
- There will be a repudiation of secular consumerism.
- Unprecedented numbers of government employees will be fired.
- Retirement will be postponed or even revoked for most people.
- Terrorists or small nations will get nuclear weapons.
I was particularly interested to hear what Davidson and Rees-Mogg had to say about this, because of my personal circumstances. I am actually rather proud of my own foresight in this area, although it didn't do me or anyone else the slightest good. I have absolutely no background in science, having undergone the traditional British, highly specialised, form of arts education. But because I worked in a university I began to hear about developments in computing long before the average layman.
I was secretary, for instance, to a university computing committee, which was discussing ethernet connections and IBM clones many, many years ago. And as soon as I began to hear about the internet, and what it could do -- and even more so when I first became able to get on to it, which again was long before the average layman -- I understood instinctively that it was going to change everything. I didn't know how, and I certainly didn't predict lots of the wonders that we have today, but that it constituted a complete revolution I had no doubt whatever. And I was slightly ahead of most in that respect.
So what did Davidson and Rees-Mogg make of it?
Well, for a start, you will search the index of their 1991 book in vain for the word internet. And ditto email. But the authors did take the view that the computer-based information revolution constituted the third great revolution in human life, and they considered that it entailed an entirely new principle of human control over nature.
They were particularly intrigued by the possible development of nanotechnology, and they feared that the human will might be made to conform with the will of those who controlled that technology -- which is interesting, because that was a central concern of John Sundman's novel Acts of the Apostles, reviewed yesterday. But by and large Davidson and Rees-Mogg didn't have a clue about what we all now take for granted, namely broadband connections, email, online buying, and blogs. Not to mention all the ten thousand other uses of computers to enhance the capabilities of machines and services.
In other words, the lesson I draw from the Davidson/Rees Mogg book, which was written only about 16 years ago, is that it is well nigh impossible to make meaningful future forecasts. If, in 1990 or so, when they were gathering together their conclusions, these two could not even imagine the impact of digital developments, the rest of us have little chance.
None of which stops us trying, of course. And for what it's worth, Publishers Lunch carried some reports, as did many other blogs, of what the 'experts' at Book Expo America were thinking.
It was noted, for instance, that Microsoft have started inviting publishers to submit titles for scanning and indexing; this operation goes under the name of Windows Live Search/Windows Live. And it appears to be another version, shall we say, of the Google Print project, which has caused so much discussion and anxiety.
My guess: at the end of the next 15 years or so, we shall see the establishment of at least one online library which will give massive access to knowledge, in book form, on a scale hardly imagined so far -- even in the nightmares of the Authors Guild and similar organisations, which seems to regard the prospect as something similar to the return of the Black Death.
Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, told the assembled troops that the book business remains stuck in an old paradigm. Change will come, and resistance is futile. 'Everything I know about business and technology after 25 years tells me that businesses that resist technology inevitably fail.'
On a personal note, Fiorina referred to her own forthcoming book Tough Choices and commented that the time involved in writing a book and getting it into circulation is 'quite stunning.' And she added that it was 'horrifying' that she had to keep dealing with marked-up 'physical pieces of paper when I did the book electronically.'
Poor old Carly. She was probably dealing with people who've only just got to grips with email. (And yesterday I recommended to a friend that he should approach a leading UK agent, only to find that said agent's web site stated firmly that he does not -- absolutely not -- accept electronic submissions or email enquiries.)
The AP reporter at BEA, Hillel Italie, said that attendees fell into three groups: those anxious for change, those who accept it, and those who resist. John Updike was among the resisters, referring to the 'grisly scenario' of electronic books.
Chris Anderson was at the BEA, talking about the long tail. Perhaps more interesting now, since we already know a lot about the long tail, was his idea that beta testing of material through online drafts, presented for public comment, is essential if you are to polish a (non-fiction) book to the point where it will be a success.
Away from the BEA, Lynne Scanlon has some scathing (as usual) things to say about the present mind-set of publishers and makes some predictions of her own. E.g.
- For the world at large, the digital Universal Library [as envisaged by Google, Microsoft, and others] will rescue long-neglected, long-lost, and long-forgotten books: that's good.
- As a result of the impending business-model implosion, the inflexible, traditional publishing industry will be sidelined: that's their personal problem.
- Authors will now have the opportunity to capitalize on having written a book, rather than being forced to rely exclusively on paltry royalties: that will be reward enough, and those rewards can be enormous.
- As free online publishing spreads and The Universal Library grows, the author who writes a book with the primary goal of selling tens of thousands of copies is going to find a smaller and smaller paying audience. But writing books has its rewards, even if not one copy of the book is sold.
- Perhaps ignoring the traditional publishing companies as they skip merrily along their own well-trod path to who knows where is the best approach.
- Self-publish right now online, and reap some of those rewards that are just out there ready to be discovered.
Well that's bold, and brave. And so here's my own (entirely useless) prediction for today:
- The book business will change, in ways which cannot now be foreseen. And when they do, we shall look back and see that they were obvious, and inevitable. If only we'd been paying attention.
G. K. Chesterton: The Club of Queer Trades
It was an English crime writer (Reginald Hill perhaps?) who made the point, a good many years ago, that if you spend half an hour or more wandering round a dusty old secondhand-book shop, it is only polite to leave clutching at least a battered paperback. Which is how I came to acquire a copy of G.K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades.
I was going to say that Chesterton is largely forgotten these days, but then I thought I'd better have a look to see if he is still in print, and I typed his name into Amazon. Result: 970 listings! His bestselling book being the Man Who Was Thursday. And The Club of Queer Trades comes in at no. 9, being republished by Dover in 1988.
OK, so he's not as forgotten as I thought. But actually that's not very surprising, when you think about it, because he's really very good.
As usual, Wikipedia provides a handy summary of his life, complete with the standard photo. Well, not quite standard, but all the images of him that you see, on the backs of books and so forth, seem to show him as a fat old man, rather grumpy in appearance. But in reality he must surely have been a good-humoured fellow, because it is said that his writings 'consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour'.
Born in 1874, Chesterton died in 1936. He wrote some 80 books, several hundred poems, about 200 short stories, 4,000 essays, and a stage play. Prolific, in other words. He was also a bit of a 'character' as we used to say in England. He was notoriously absent-minded, usually thinking about his next book, and on one occasion he sent his wife a telegram saying: 'Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?'
The Club of Queer Trades was first published in 1905, when Chesterton was about thirty, and the paperback that I bought was a Penguin edition of 1946. It's a short book, consisting, in effect, of six linked stories.
Within a very few pages you realise that you are in the hands of a master. The writing is witty, clever, and fun. The central pillar of the book is an absurd conceit: that there should exist, somewhere in London, a club which is made up of solely of men who have invented the method by which they make their living. Theirs must be an entirely new trade, not a mere variation on an existing business; and it must be a genuine source of sufficient income to support its inventor.
Hence we come to hear about (among others) the Professional Detainers. Suppose, for example, you wish to have dinner alone with a lady, but you know that she has invited two other gentlemen to dinner also. What could be more convenient than to hire two professional detainers, who will guarantee to detain, by entirely painless means, and without violence, the two other gentlemen whose presence is not desired.
And so on. Obviously, the whole book is based upon this flight of fancy, and credibility is not one of its strong features. But that doesn't matter, because it is obvious from the beginning that the book is simply an entertainment.
Despite its age, I found this book well worth the small sum that I paid for it.
As in the case of many another famous writer of the past, Chesterton fans have formed various societies and web sites to publicise the subject of their admiration. We have the American Chesterton Society; Gilbert, a magazine devoted to Chesterton's ideas, such as traditional morality and Christian orthodoxy; and Chesterton and Friends, a blog about the man and his works.
I was going to say that Chesterton is largely forgotten these days, but then I thought I'd better have a look to see if he is still in print, and I typed his name into Amazon. Result: 970 listings! His bestselling book being the Man Who Was Thursday. And The Club of Queer Trades comes in at no. 9, being republished by Dover in 1988.
OK, so he's not as forgotten as I thought. But actually that's not very surprising, when you think about it, because he's really very good.
As usual, Wikipedia provides a handy summary of his life, complete with the standard photo. Well, not quite standard, but all the images of him that you see, on the backs of books and so forth, seem to show him as a fat old man, rather grumpy in appearance. But in reality he must surely have been a good-humoured fellow, because it is said that his writings 'consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour'.
Born in 1874, Chesterton died in 1936. He wrote some 80 books, several hundred poems, about 200 short stories, 4,000 essays, and a stage play. Prolific, in other words. He was also a bit of a 'character' as we used to say in England. He was notoriously absent-minded, usually thinking about his next book, and on one occasion he sent his wife a telegram saying: 'Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?'
The Club of Queer Trades was first published in 1905, when Chesterton was about thirty, and the paperback that I bought was a Penguin edition of 1946. It's a short book, consisting, in effect, of six linked stories.
Within a very few pages you realise that you are in the hands of a master. The writing is witty, clever, and fun. The central pillar of the book is an absurd conceit: that there should exist, somewhere in London, a club which is made up of solely of men who have invented the method by which they make their living. Theirs must be an entirely new trade, not a mere variation on an existing business; and it must be a genuine source of sufficient income to support its inventor.
Hence we come to hear about (among others) the Professional Detainers. Suppose, for example, you wish to have dinner alone with a lady, but you know that she has invited two other gentlemen to dinner also. What could be more convenient than to hire two professional detainers, who will guarantee to detain, by entirely painless means, and without violence, the two other gentlemen whose presence is not desired.
And so on. Obviously, the whole book is based upon this flight of fancy, and credibility is not one of its strong features. But that doesn't matter, because it is obvious from the beginning that the book is simply an entertainment.
Despite its age, I found this book well worth the small sum that I paid for it.
As in the case of many another famous writer of the past, Chesterton fans have formed various societies and web sites to publicise the subject of their admiration. We have the American Chesterton Society; Gilbert, a magazine devoted to Chesterton's ideas, such as traditional morality and Christian orthodoxy; and Chesterton and Friends, a blog about the man and his works.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Say what you mean
Today's (London) Times provides a useful example of how a statement can mean something quite other than what it appears to mean.
A headline reads as follows:
Please note that I make no comment here on the rights and wrongs of the case. I am simply commenting on the terminology involved.
Of course, as far as UK readers are concerned, there is nothing remotely new about hearing that a life sentence actually means a limited term. We're well used to that.
We're also used to that fact that, particularly in England, you always have to decode what people say to you. A senior civil servant once said to me: 'You have to remember that I come from a culture in which to say "I'm afraid I can't quite agree with you on that" means "I shall fight to the death to prevent you achieving your aims".'
And, I believe, the same is true of some other cultures. A friend of mine was trying to do business in Japan, and was really very encouraged by what his Japanese counterparts were saying to him. At least he was until a more experienced hand took him on one said and said, 'That means No.'
All of that having been said, it seems that there are some circumstances in which the Brits are, at last, beginning to feel it necessary to speak in plain English. Elsewhere in the Times this morning, we have an article by Alice Miles headed 'The madness of King Tony'.
In the course of this article, Ms Miles says:
A headline reads as follows:
Train graffiti paedophile gang are jailed for lifeOK so far? Right. The report then goes on to say this:
Three paedophiles who were caught after a journalist replied to an obscene advert on a train lavatory door were jailed for life yesterday.Right... Now then. You've read it, and you understand it. But hold. Lower down we get this:
Trevor Haddock, 55, the ringleader, who has been sexually abusing children for at least 20 years, will not be eligible for parole for at least 12 years. Ian Jones, 43, and Derek Moody, 44, were also given life sentences and will serve at least ten and four years respectively.So. It seems that, in England, 'jailed for life' doesn't mean what it appears to mean. It means that you could be back on the streets in four years.
Please note that I make no comment here on the rights and wrongs of the case. I am simply commenting on the terminology involved.
Of course, as far as UK readers are concerned, there is nothing remotely new about hearing that a life sentence actually means a limited term. We're well used to that.
We're also used to that fact that, particularly in England, you always have to decode what people say to you. A senior civil servant once said to me: 'You have to remember that I come from a culture in which to say "I'm afraid I can't quite agree with you on that" means "I shall fight to the death to prevent you achieving your aims".'
And, I believe, the same is true of some other cultures. A friend of mine was trying to do business in Japan, and was really very encouraged by what his Japanese counterparts were saying to him. At least he was until a more experienced hand took him on one said and said, 'That means No.'
All of that having been said, it seems that there are some circumstances in which the Brits are, at last, beginning to feel it necessary to speak in plain English. Elsewhere in the Times this morning, we have an article by Alice Miles headed 'The madness of King Tony'.
In the course of this article, Ms Miles says:
I am a latecomer to the 'Blair is mad' theory, but I am beginning to see what it’s all about.... The Prime Minister sounds barking mad.... The Prime Minister has gone quite mad.'Is that plain enough for you?
John F.X. Sundman: Acts of the Apostles
On 1 May of this year I mentioned the name of John F.X. Sundman, and said that I had read chapter 1 of his Acts of the Apostles online. I then took the liberty of suggesting how that first chapter might have been improved.
Well, I hereby apologise. In fact I grovel. I have now bought, with my own money, a copy of the entire book, and I'm glad I did. Having read it, I can tell you that this is a deeply impressive novel, especially as it seems to have been the author's first, and I can assure you that John Sundman needs no advice from me, or from anyone else, on how to construct an effective book.
I see from John's wetmachine web site that the print version of Acts of the Apostles was self-published, and that it won the Writers Digest National Self-published Book award in 2001. I'm not surprised.
If you want to categorise this novel, I would have to call it a science-fiction thriller. John is a very experienced software man, having been at one time the chair of the software development architecture team of Sun Microsystems, and he has won a couple of awards in the IT field. So it is obvious that he understands the digital world and has a good insight into other recent developments, e.g. in biotechnology. Furthermore, he can write. (In the acknowledgements he says that Joe Regal, the literary agent, taught him.) This is nearly always a formidable combination.
I am reluctant to go into too much detail on the plot. It's complicated, and plot summaries are always unsatisfactory. Let's just say that this novel is set in the mid 1990s, and that it concerns the use and abuse of technology. There are good guys and bad guys. One reader has said that the book is actually about Kaczynsky's Postulate: that technology and freedom cannot be reconciled. In this case, one group tries to advance technology -- specifically, nanotechnology -- in ways which will more or less eliminate freedom.
I have sometimes expressed the view that writers really shouldn't worry about how their work will be viewed in the future. Just making the bloody book work in the present is enough of a problem for most people. However, I have the very definite feeling that this is a book which will be read in 50 or 100 years from now, in the way that we now read books such as The War of the Worlds, 1984, and Brave New World. People will look at it and say -- see, that is what they were worried about at the end of the twentieth century. How quaint! Alternatively, they may read it and say How prescient! Let's hope it's the former.
From a reader's point of view there are a few difficulties. The principal characters are nearly all young and involved in IT or science, and it is sometimes an effort to keep track of who is who. But as you get to know them better this becomes less of a problem.
At page 218 I made the following note: This is a book that gets better as it goes along. It's only when you read a book like this that you realise what a feeble, runty thing the average thriller is.
And a few pages later: This is a rare fusion of science and, in the broadest sense, literature. It isn't commercial in the sense that Neal Stephenson is commercial (though even he has never had a big fat hit), but it's quality stuff.
As you stick with this book, it begins to be moving, in addition to gripping. And the ending is ironic, amusing, and sad. It's a formidable achievement.
This is a long book, in terms of wordage, and I would have been a more comfortable reader, visually, if the font had been larger and there had been fewer lines on the page. But then, of course, the page count, and the cost, would have gone up.
Not that it's terribly relevant, but is it my imagination, or is there, on page 305, an echo of James Joyce's short story The Dead? David Daiches, a professor of English at Cambridge in my time, once described the last paragraph of The Dead (in a lecture that I attended) as perhaps the best written piece of prose in the English language. Or words to that effect.
Acts of the Apostles isn't in that class. But it will do for now.
Oh, and by the way: the wetmachine web site contains an account of how Acts of the Apostles came to be written. A cautionary tale if ever there was one. Perhaps you'd better read it before you embark on your own long-planned masterpiece.
Well, I hereby apologise. In fact I grovel. I have now bought, with my own money, a copy of the entire book, and I'm glad I did. Having read it, I can tell you that this is a deeply impressive novel, especially as it seems to have been the author's first, and I can assure you that John Sundman needs no advice from me, or from anyone else, on how to construct an effective book.
I see from John's wetmachine web site that the print version of Acts of the Apostles was self-published, and that it won the Writers Digest National Self-published Book award in 2001. I'm not surprised.
If you want to categorise this novel, I would have to call it a science-fiction thriller. John is a very experienced software man, having been at one time the chair of the software development architecture team of Sun Microsystems, and he has won a couple of awards in the IT field. So it is obvious that he understands the digital world and has a good insight into other recent developments, e.g. in biotechnology. Furthermore, he can write. (In the acknowledgements he says that Joe Regal, the literary agent, taught him.) This is nearly always a formidable combination.
I am reluctant to go into too much detail on the plot. It's complicated, and plot summaries are always unsatisfactory. Let's just say that this novel is set in the mid 1990s, and that it concerns the use and abuse of technology. There are good guys and bad guys. One reader has said that the book is actually about Kaczynsky's Postulate: that technology and freedom cannot be reconciled. In this case, one group tries to advance technology -- specifically, nanotechnology -- in ways which will more or less eliminate freedom.
I have sometimes expressed the view that writers really shouldn't worry about how their work will be viewed in the future. Just making the bloody book work in the present is enough of a problem for most people. However, I have the very definite feeling that this is a book which will be read in 50 or 100 years from now, in the way that we now read books such as The War of the Worlds, 1984, and Brave New World. People will look at it and say -- see, that is what they were worried about at the end of the twentieth century. How quaint! Alternatively, they may read it and say How prescient! Let's hope it's the former.
From a reader's point of view there are a few difficulties. The principal characters are nearly all young and involved in IT or science, and it is sometimes an effort to keep track of who is who. But as you get to know them better this becomes less of a problem.
At page 218 I made the following note: This is a book that gets better as it goes along. It's only when you read a book like this that you realise what a feeble, runty thing the average thriller is.
And a few pages later: This is a rare fusion of science and, in the broadest sense, literature. It isn't commercial in the sense that Neal Stephenson is commercial (though even he has never had a big fat hit), but it's quality stuff.
As you stick with this book, it begins to be moving, in addition to gripping. And the ending is ironic, amusing, and sad. It's a formidable achievement.
This is a long book, in terms of wordage, and I would have been a more comfortable reader, visually, if the font had been larger and there had been fewer lines on the page. But then, of course, the page count, and the cost, would have gone up.
Not that it's terribly relevant, but is it my imagination, or is there, on page 305, an echo of James Joyce's short story The Dead? David Daiches, a professor of English at Cambridge in my time, once described the last paragraph of The Dead (in a lecture that I attended) as perhaps the best written piece of prose in the English language. Or words to that effect.
Acts of the Apostles isn't in that class. But it will do for now.
Oh, and by the way: the wetmachine web site contains an account of how Acts of the Apostles came to be written. A cautionary tale if ever there was one. Perhaps you'd better read it before you embark on your own long-planned masterpiece.
Lulu enthusiasts
Following last Friday's mention of Lulu.com, a number of satisfied users of that company wrote in to say that they have no complaints, which I feel is a good sign. They also highlighted some interesting output.
Blogger Carla Nayland wrote as follows:
Then there's Ron Morgans. He used Lulu for his thriller Kill Chase. He says that it takes a while to get to grips with the systems, but it's easy to correct your printing mistakes until your work is perfect -- then publish.
Ron is a former Fleet Street picture editor and on his own web site has stories about, and links to, some further info on famous press photographers. I particularly like Terry Fincher's pic of a British soldier making an arrest in Aden in 1967. If he did it that way today fourteen editorials would be written about human rights.
Finally, Matt Bell and Josh Maday used Lulu to publish a small collection from their micro-fiction blog, Dancing On Fly Ash: One Hundred Word Stories. They published the book under a Creative Commons licence, and are offering it as a free download from their website in addition to selling the print edition. They did all the cover art and layout themsleves, and say that they couldn't be happier with the book. Sales have been excellent, though they don't sell the book through Lulu. Instead they just ordered a print run and then sold them on their website. This generated higher royalties and faster despatch.
Blogger Carla Nayland wrote as follows:
Carla's novel , by the way, runs to 572 pages.I recently put a book on Lulu [Ingeld's Daughter] and found it a remarkably painless process. You can make the same book available both as a printed copy (choice of several formats) and as a download if you wish. If you set the royalty to zero the download is automatically free and the printed copy is charged at Lulu's printing cost (a flat rate plus so much per page). This means that anyone who would like to read the item as a printed book or leaflet, instead of reading on screen or printing out a PDF, can buy a printed copy if they wish. Essentially they have the option of paying Lulu to print and ship a copy for them instead of printing it out themselves.
You can control as much or as little of the design as you choose. We designed our own front and back covers, but took Lulu's default layout for the contents, for example....Lulu doesn't charge the author anything up front (unless you want them to list the book on Amazon for you). They take 20% of whatever royalty you set, but if the royalty is zero or if their share would come to less then 20 cents, they waive it. I presume they must also have a profit margin built into their per-page printing costs.
Then there's Ron Morgans. He used Lulu for his thriller Kill Chase. He says that it takes a while to get to grips with the systems, but it's easy to correct your printing mistakes until your work is perfect -- then publish.
Ron is a former Fleet Street picture editor and on his own web site has stories about, and links to, some further info on famous press photographers. I particularly like Terry Fincher's pic of a British soldier making an arrest in Aden in 1967. If he did it that way today fourteen editorials would be written about human rights.
Finally, Matt Bell and Josh Maday used Lulu to publish a small collection from their micro-fiction blog, Dancing On Fly Ash: One Hundred Word Stories. They published the book under a Creative Commons licence, and are offering it as a free download from their website in addition to selling the print edition. They did all the cover art and layout themsleves, and say that they couldn't be happier with the book. Sales have been excellent, though they don't sell the book through Lulu. Instead they just ordered a print run and then sold them on their website. This generated higher royalties and faster despatch.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
More MNW
Macmillan New Writing, the imprint which specialises in first novels by as yet unknown writers, is publishing books at the rate of one a month. Here are some notes on a couple of recent ones, the first published in May, and the second due on 7 July. (The June book was reviewed here on 25 April.)
Edward Charles: In the Shadow of Lady Jane
Edward Charles has written a historical novel, set in the mid sixteenth century. This is a period of English history which, in my youth, I spent a great deal of time studying. The ruling family of that era were the Tudors, and two of the Tudor monarchs, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, have been rich sources of material for novelists and dramatists -- particularly the latter. Just to give a couple of examples, Charles Laughton made a famous Henry VIII movie in 1933, and Cate Blanchett was nominated for an Oscar for her 1988 performance as Elizabeth.
Unfortunately, because of my extensive studies of the Tudor period, I know rather more about them than is good for me. My considered opinion of the Tudor monarchs, and particularly the hatchet-men who did their dirty work for them, is that they were a nasty, vicious, unprincipled lot, with little to recommend them. So, as far as this reader is concerned, Edward Charles has set himself a difficult task.
In the Shadow of Lady Jane is told in the first person by a young man of relatively modest background who finds himself in the service of the Grey family. In 1553, Henry VIII's sickly son, Edward, finally died, at the age of sixteen. A brief attempt was then made to proclaim Lady Jane Grey as Queen, and she held on to that title for nine days; but she was soon overthrown, and Henry VIII's elder daughter, Mary, was recognised as the lawful sovereign.
In other words, these were dangerous times, and a young man had to have his wits about him if his head was to remain attached to his body. Several of those involved in the Lady Jane Grey conspiracy were beheaded.
Edward Charles has a good solid story to tell, weaving fiction with fact, and he does it well. The book is written in a reasonably modern style, and the author has avoided, for the most part, the prithees and mayhaps which litter the pages of most historical novels. I would expect this book to do well in the library market, but I don't expect to see it on the bestseller lists, either hardback or paperback.
Aliya Whiteley: Three Things About Me
The principal virtue of Three Things About Me is that, despite the title, it's quite different from the average first novel -- which is normally all about Me Me Me. And perhaps that's because this isn't the author's first novel: Aliya has her own web site, on which we learn that she is the author of Mean Mode Median, published by Bluechrome in 2004. (Having work published in the past does not rule you out as a potential MNW author.)
Three Things is about seven young(ish) hopefuls who are just starting a company training course which is designed to turn them into 'customer service representatives'. The man in charge of the course is Rob Church, whose boss warns him at the outset that the level of applicants is extremely poor.
Each chapter of the book is related from the viewpoint of one of the trainees, or Rob himself. This makes for quite a number of people to keep track of -- perhaps rather too many, but the reader gradually gets to know them.
I was just wondering if it was fair to describe the characters as losers when I noticed that that's exactly what the publisher's blurb says about them. 'Each of [Rob's] charges, with one exception, is a loser. As he works his way through the embarrassingly formulaic training set-pieces with never a doubt about the value of his corporate objectives, the awful reality of the appalling quality of the human material he has to work with becomes clear.'
And, er, that's about it. I can't classify this book for you -- not easily, anyway -- because I don't think it fits neatly into any particular genre. It certainly isn't science fiction, fantasy, crime, or romance. I wouldn't call it literary. Neither is it chick-lit. Or lad-lit. It's a piece of mainstream fiction about a group of (mostly) 20- and 30-somethings. And that is where it's readership lies: mainly female, I suspect, and among those who have had similar experiences, and probably wish they hadn't.
This is a perfectly competent novel, but, given the nature of the competition, and the MNW publicity budget, it is not, in my opinion, going to generate huge sales.
Edward Charles: In the Shadow of Lady Jane
Edward Charles has written a historical novel, set in the mid sixteenth century. This is a period of English history which, in my youth, I spent a great deal of time studying. The ruling family of that era were the Tudors, and two of the Tudor monarchs, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, have been rich sources of material for novelists and dramatists -- particularly the latter. Just to give a couple of examples, Charles Laughton made a famous Henry VIII movie in 1933, and Cate Blanchett was nominated for an Oscar for her 1988 performance as Elizabeth.
Unfortunately, because of my extensive studies of the Tudor period, I know rather more about them than is good for me. My considered opinion of the Tudor monarchs, and particularly the hatchet-men who did their dirty work for them, is that they were a nasty, vicious, unprincipled lot, with little to recommend them. So, as far as this reader is concerned, Edward Charles has set himself a difficult task.
In the Shadow of Lady Jane is told in the first person by a young man of relatively modest background who finds himself in the service of the Grey family. In 1553, Henry VIII's sickly son, Edward, finally died, at the age of sixteen. A brief attempt was then made to proclaim Lady Jane Grey as Queen, and she held on to that title for nine days; but she was soon overthrown, and Henry VIII's elder daughter, Mary, was recognised as the lawful sovereign.
In other words, these were dangerous times, and a young man had to have his wits about him if his head was to remain attached to his body. Several of those involved in the Lady Jane Grey conspiracy were beheaded.
Edward Charles has a good solid story to tell, weaving fiction with fact, and he does it well. The book is written in a reasonably modern style, and the author has avoided, for the most part, the prithees and mayhaps which litter the pages of most historical novels. I would expect this book to do well in the library market, but I don't expect to see it on the bestseller lists, either hardback or paperback.
Aliya Whiteley: Three Things About Me
The principal virtue of Three Things About Me is that, despite the title, it's quite different from the average first novel -- which is normally all about Me Me Me. And perhaps that's because this isn't the author's first novel: Aliya has her own web site, on which we learn that she is the author of Mean Mode Median, published by Bluechrome in 2004. (Having work published in the past does not rule you out as a potential MNW author.)
Three Things is about seven young(ish) hopefuls who are just starting a company training course which is designed to turn them into 'customer service representatives'. The man in charge of the course is Rob Church, whose boss warns him at the outset that the level of applicants is extremely poor.
Each chapter of the book is related from the viewpoint of one of the trainees, or Rob himself. This makes for quite a number of people to keep track of -- perhaps rather too many, but the reader gradually gets to know them.
I was just wondering if it was fair to describe the characters as losers when I noticed that that's exactly what the publisher's blurb says about them. 'Each of [Rob's] charges, with one exception, is a loser. As he works his way through the embarrassingly formulaic training set-pieces with never a doubt about the value of his corporate objectives, the awful reality of the appalling quality of the human material he has to work with becomes clear.'
And, er, that's about it. I can't classify this book for you -- not easily, anyway -- because I don't think it fits neatly into any particular genre. It certainly isn't science fiction, fantasy, crime, or romance. I wouldn't call it literary. Neither is it chick-lit. Or lad-lit. It's a piece of mainstream fiction about a group of (mostly) 20- and 30-somethings. And that is where it's readership lies: mainly female, I suspect, and among those who have had similar experiences, and probably wish they hadn't.
This is a perfectly competent novel, but, given the nature of the competition, and the MNW publicity budget, it is not, in my opinion, going to generate huge sales.
Geoff Ryman: Air
Every so often I come across a book that I ought, in principle, to like. But somehow I don't. And this is the way it was with Geoff Ryman's Air.
Air is a work of science fiction. Which means, oddly enough, that it has its feet on the ground. SF books do not, by and large, have the kind of pretensions which one has, regrettably, come to expect from literary works. And, furthermore, Air has won wide recognition as an excellent example of its genre: the book has won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; it was on the short list for the Nebula Award. Despite all that, I couldn't take to it.
The central character in the novel is Mae, a middle-aged woman who is living in Karzistan; her home is in 'the last village in the world to go online'. Here's the publisher's description of what happens:
Air is a work of science fiction. Which means, oddly enough, that it has its feet on the ground. SF books do not, by and large, have the kind of pretensions which one has, regrettably, come to expect from literary works. And, furthermore, Air has won wide recognition as an excellent example of its genre: the book has won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; it was on the short list for the Nebula Award. Despite all that, I couldn't take to it.
The central character in the novel is Mae, a middle-aged woman who is living in Karzistan; her home is in 'the last village in the world to go online'. Here's the publisher's description of what happens:
When the UN decides to test the radical new technology Air, Mae is boiling laundry and chatting with elderly Mrs Tung. The massive surge of Air energy swamps them, and when the test is finished, Mrs Tung is dead, and Mae has absorbed her 90 years of memories. Rocked by the unexpected deaths and disorientation, the UN delays fully implementing Air, but Mae sees at once that her way of life is ending. Half-mad, struggling with information overload, the resentment of much of the village, and a complex family situation, she works fiercely to learn what she needs to ride the tiger of change.In other words, what we have here is a thoughtful, intelligent, and well written novel about the impact of technology, and how to remain human though wired. Air is absolutely relevant to our age, and has nothing whatever wrong with it technically. It just turned out to be a novel that I didn't want to read.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Odds and ends
Friday and the weekend brought a great number of booky things to my attention, and, being easily bored, and definitely unemployable these days, I had nothing better to do than refer to them here. Please be aware, however, that although there is much here that is trivial and inconsequential, there are other things that aren't. A bit like life in general.
The Word Detective
My daughter-in-law pointed me to The Word Detective, a web site dealing in words and language. It discusses the kind of issue that Jeanette Winterson touched on in her Times column last week, such as giving up the goat. You can, if you wish, subscribe to the full service, for $15 a year I believe, but there's quite a lot of free info.
Just as a test, I looked up what the Word Detective has to say about gender-free pronouns (see the Epicene Epic). Somewhat to my surprise, I found a discourse which was both scholarly and amusing. The gist of it:
Now Homer is really cross
While I'm on the subject of obscure grammatical niceties, here's some detective work cum scholarly research that I did recently.
The Times, when borrowing from The Simpsons and quoting Homer's annoyed grunt, writes it as 'Doh!' As in Mary Ann Sieghart's column, 18 May: 'Two recent news items contend for my newly instituted Doh! prize.'
However, I was pretty sure that I had more than once seen this annoyed grunt written as D'oh! So I went looking. Sure enough, the official Simpson version is D'oh! See the learned article on Wikipedia, which gives the origin of the expression and shows two screenshots to confirm the spelling.
The Oxford Dictionary authorities have also recognised that this expression needs to be included. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, tenth edition, 2001, lists doh as an informal exclamation, 'used to comment on a foolish action', without any indication of its source. However, press reports from 2001 indicate that the new entry in the online version of the Oxford dictionary was definitely related to Homer. See, for instance, the CNN report, and the BBC report.
As a further however, however, if you do read those two press reports, which are presumably based on the same Oxford press release, you will see that the BBC spells the magic word D'oh!, while CNN spells it Doh! (As does the Times, mentioned above.)
I can't actually find an access point to the Oxford online service, which is available to subscribers only. And as this is clearly a major point of scholarship, I turned to that outstanding authority on the use of the English language in American newspapers, namely The Slot. Here I entered D'oh into the search facility, and found that the boss man, Bill Walsh himself, has used the expression. Which, coupled with the evidence of Simpson screen shots on Wikipedia, is good enough for me.
In the 1950s, the question of whether to use Hapsburg or Habsburg was considered a major test of scholarship. And I am now inclined to take the same view about D'oh! Variants are employed at your own peril.
It is clear, from the above, that both the Times and CNN have got this all wrong, and someone definitely ought to write and tell them so. But it won't be me because I'm far too busy to get involved in such trivial matters.
Computers have more sense than people -- in this case, a lot more
Mark Rayner -- author of The Mozart Net, in which Wolfgang Amadeus gets his sprouter snipped off (look, I just report this stuff, I don't make it up, OK?) -- has kindly pointed me to an article in The Onion.
The Onion reports how 'a courageous young notebook computer [based at Brandeis University] committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich's 227-page master's thesis.'
When you discover that Samoskevich's thesis was entitled A Hermeneutical Exploration Of Onomatopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia, you begin to understand the full horror of what the computer had to cope with, and its suicide becomes entirely understandable.
In recognition of this noble act, faculty and staff of the Brandeis English Department will gather at the Brandeis IT center Friday to honor the computer (a Dell Inspiron) with a Purple Hard Drive, an award which is traditionally given to computers that die at least 100 pages into a dangerously boring thesis.
Oh yes. All of which proves, as I said in the heading, that computers have a great deal more sense than humans.
If only, dear Readers, if only I could bring myself to believe that there aren't actually quite a lot of Eng Lit grad students who are working, right this minute, on theses which are at least twice as silly and twice as useless as Jill Samoskevich's, what a happy man I would be.
Nightcap Syndication
Tim Worstall is a blogger, economist and writer who is good enough to get articles in the Times now and then. He also edited 2005: Blogged, to which the GOB contributed, and is therefore by definition a Good Chap. (Sales so far 3,414, by the way. Not at all bad, in my view, but Tim seems disappointed.)
Tim is one of many who have remarked on the vagaries of getting reviews posted on Amazon, so he and some mates have decided to do something about it. The result, still in beta, is Nightcap Syndication.
Tim says this:
C E Petit, Esq., m'learned friend who runs the Scrivener's Error blog, tells me that he too has serious doubts about the NYT choice of the best novels of the last 25 years. Even more pertinently, he adds:
Oh, the perils of libel
Perusal of Scrivener's Error led me to notice his comments on a report on Miss Snark's blog. Seems there was some aggrieved party who published a book via AuthorHouse which seriously bad-mouthed his ex-wife, who was the romance writer Rebecca Brandewyne, no less. Brandewyne sued, and, not surprisingly in the described circumstances, won handsomely.
Moral: don't try to get your own back on an ex-wife, or anyone else, by writing a book. Not even if you disguise it as a novel. It could cost a great deal of money.
So far there are 37 comments on Miss Snark's piece.
Carter-Ruckery
Speaking of libel, as we just were, the name Carter-Ruck is one which will produce a shiver down the spine of most UK publishers and newspaper editors. The man himself, Peter Carter-Ruck, is safely dead now, but he was not much loved or admired when he was alive. He was a famous English libel lawyer, very quick with a writ, and the source of many a problem for those who write. A couple of years ago I wrote a review of his memoirs, and noted that even his obituarists (normally a very polite bunch) were brutally frank about his shortcomings.
Well, Carter-Ruck's firm continues under the famous name, and it continues, it seems, to be quick with a writ, particularly when defending its own name. On Mabatha News Network, Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher describes a case in which Carter-Ruck are taking objection to comments made on the internet.
Dr Bleher sees the Carter-Ruck action as over-sensitive and, moreover, as an attack on the freedom of speech -- one which, in principle, poses a threat to the internet.
Well, these issues are certainly worth thinking about. They are not simple, even in theory, and in practice are severely complicated by variations in the law from country to country. English law is particularly harsh in relation to libel, and this has given rise to a phenomenon known as libel tourism.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the latest case, highlighted by Dr Bleher, it is certainly true that those with enough money to pay for the likes of Carter-Ruck can make life very difficult for anyone who wishes to criticise them. As the investigative journalist Craig Unger remarked, 'They don't have to win, just tie you up in court forever.'
WanderingScribe doubters
My note last week about the WanderingScribe blog has attracted a number of commenters, some of whom are as doubtful about the enterprise as I was. And one person has gone so far as to set up a whole new blog -- The Truth about WanderingScribe --- which expresses, shall we say, severe reservations about the reliability and veracity of what is on offer.
A blog about a blog? Is this a first? Probably not, but I can't think of another one.
Golden Rule Jones
Golden Rule Jones, a book blogger of considerable age (in blog terms) and standing, has moved. The link on the blogroll has been changed, and he's now on Typepad. Mr Jones is English-born and Chicago-based, and he's still putting out some interesting stuff. Not surprising, considering that he once played Rugby for Leeds and had a verse play produced; not many people pull off that combination.
Scamhunters
Would you be surprised to hear that a woman who presents herself at various times as an agent and publisher is actually a convicted fugitive felon? What do you mean, No of course not? Have you no faith in human nature? Details on the Scamhunters blog; and a lot more on Absolutewrite.
The Captain's (b)log
The Word Detective
My daughter-in-law pointed me to The Word Detective, a web site dealing in words and language. It discusses the kind of issue that Jeanette Winterson touched on in her Times column last week, such as giving up the goat. You can, if you wish, subscribe to the full service, for $15 a year I believe, but there's quite a lot of free info.
Just as a test, I looked up what the Word Detective has to say about gender-free pronouns (see the Epicene Epic). Somewhat to my surprise, I found a discourse which was both scholarly and amusing. The gist of it:
To get that sort of thing on a regular basis, it might even be worth paying $15 a year."Every doctor should have their own pager" is correct.... Consider three points.
First, the use of the normally plural "their" to refer to a singular noun ("doctor" in this case) was common in English until the late 18th century. Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Anthony Trollope, Walt Whitman and George Bernard Shaw, among other literary luminaries, all used this construction. It was only when self-appointed Victorian grammar reformers decided very late in the game that English should be modeled on the structure of classical Latin that the "singular their" was banned.
Secondly, as explained by linguist Steven Pinker in his book "The Language Instinct" (HarperCollins, 1994), "doctor" and "their" in our sample sentence aren't really an antecedent noun and its pronoun -- they are a "quantifier" and a "bound variable," respectively, and don't have to agree in number. Pinker's explanation of the difference is lucid, fascinating, and much too long to go into here, so go buy the book. Yes, it's in paperback.
Lastly, there simply is no other solution acceptable to the vast numbers of people who actually speak the English language. The re-emergence of this use of "their" is natural, logical, and confuses no one. It is not sloppiness and it is not ignorance. It is a positive example of our language evolving to encompass a new social awareness, in this case the somewhat belated recognition that not everyone enjoys being referred to as "him."
Now Homer is really cross
While I'm on the subject of obscure grammatical niceties, here's some detective work cum scholarly research that I did recently.
The Times, when borrowing from The Simpsons and quoting Homer's annoyed grunt, writes it as 'Doh!' As in Mary Ann Sieghart's column, 18 May: 'Two recent news items contend for my newly instituted Doh! prize.'
However, I was pretty sure that I had more than once seen this annoyed grunt written as D'oh! So I went looking. Sure enough, the official Simpson version is D'oh! See the learned article on Wikipedia, which gives the origin of the expression and shows two screenshots to confirm the spelling.
The Oxford Dictionary authorities have also recognised that this expression needs to be included. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, tenth edition, 2001, lists doh as an informal exclamation, 'used to comment on a foolish action', without any indication of its source. However, press reports from 2001 indicate that the new entry in the online version of the Oxford dictionary was definitely related to Homer. See, for instance, the CNN report, and the BBC report.
As a further however, however, if you do read those two press reports, which are presumably based on the same Oxford press release, you will see that the BBC spells the magic word D'oh!, while CNN spells it Doh! (As does the Times, mentioned above.)
I can't actually find an access point to the Oxford online service, which is available to subscribers only. And as this is clearly a major point of scholarship, I turned to that outstanding authority on the use of the English language in American newspapers, namely The Slot. Here I entered D'oh into the search facility, and found that the boss man, Bill Walsh himself, has used the expression. Which, coupled with the evidence of Simpson screen shots on Wikipedia, is good enough for me.
In the 1950s, the question of whether to use Hapsburg or Habsburg was considered a major test of scholarship. And I am now inclined to take the same view about D'oh! Variants are employed at your own peril.
It is clear, from the above, that both the Times and CNN have got this all wrong, and someone definitely ought to write and tell them so. But it won't be me because I'm far too busy to get involved in such trivial matters.
Computers have more sense than people -- in this case, a lot more
Mark Rayner -- author of The Mozart Net, in which Wolfgang Amadeus gets his sprouter snipped off (look, I just report this stuff, I don't make it up, OK?) -- has kindly pointed me to an article in The Onion.
The Onion reports how 'a courageous young notebook computer [based at Brandeis University] committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich's 227-page master's thesis.'
When you discover that Samoskevich's thesis was entitled A Hermeneutical Exploration Of Onomatopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia, you begin to understand the full horror of what the computer had to cope with, and its suicide becomes entirely understandable.
In recognition of this noble act, faculty and staff of the Brandeis English Department will gather at the Brandeis IT center Friday to honor the computer (a Dell Inspiron) with a Purple Hard Drive, an award which is traditionally given to computers that die at least 100 pages into a dangerously boring thesis.
Oh yes. All of which proves, as I said in the heading, that computers have a great deal more sense than humans.
If only, dear Readers, if only I could bring myself to believe that there aren't actually quite a lot of Eng Lit grad students who are working, right this minute, on theses which are at least twice as silly and twice as useless as Jill Samoskevich's, what a happy man I would be.
Nightcap Syndication
Tim Worstall is a blogger, economist and writer who is good enough to get articles in the Times now and then. He also edited 2005: Blogged, to which the GOB contributed, and is therefore by definition a Good Chap. (Sales so far 3,414, by the way. Not at all bad, in my view, but Tim seems disappointed.)
Tim is one of many who have remarked on the vagaries of getting reviews posted on Amazon, so he and some mates have decided to do something about it. The result, still in beta, is Nightcap Syndication.
Tim says this:
More re those listsAnyone and everyone is free to submit a review on any subject or object they desire. Authors can (if they identify themselves) review their own works. We would very much like people to add in a link to Amazon (or anywhere else they desire) so that if someone does indeed purchase then the reviewer gains something. So we're asking that links go to the reviewer's commission account, not ours.
We don't expect people to necessarily write new reviews: something that has been posted elsewhere is fine. In fact, we assume that most entries on the site as a whole (reviews being only one part of it) will actually be blog posts from elsewhere that are simply cross posted. Links back to home blogs and all that sort of stuff very much encouraged.
C E Petit, Esq., m'learned friend who runs the Scrivener's Error blog, tells me that he too has serious doubts about the NYT choice of the best novels of the last 25 years. Even more pertinently, he adds:
I find it interesting that advances in the sciences and advances in the arts tend to be made not by the "avant garde," but by the classically trained artist (literature, film, music, painting, whatever) who brings the rigor and skills of classical training away from the constipation of the classical repertoire. In US letters, anyway, speculative fiction is getting more and more under-the-table influence on high-end literature, although both communities threaten to the death anyone who points that out.I agree with this diagnosis. And it has not gone unnoticed by others. Dave Langford, in his monthly Ansible newsletter, regularly points out that many writers, publishers, and critics, would rather have their right hand chopped off than admit that they have anything to do with science fiction. Consider, for instance, this nonsense, reported in Ansible 225:
Mariella Frostrup interviewed Joanne Harris of Chocolat fame on BBC Radio 4's Open Book, about the new Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition of Something Wicked This Way Comes [by Ray Bradbury]. Jimi Fallows reports: 'Harris kicked off by expressing regret that SWTWC was being printed under the fantasy label, as it is much closer in content to real fiction.... The fantastical element of Bradbury's work was discussed with much earnestness to protect his reputation as an author, culminating in this devastating aside from Frostrup: "Some people even refer to him as a science fiction author, however erroneous that may be." It's still available to listen on line, and well worth it for the particular emphasis of disdain that Mariella lavishes on the sf word.'Fortunately, there are honorable exceptions to this foolishness: and Margaret Atwood is definitely one.
Oh, the perils of libel
Perusal of Scrivener's Error led me to notice his comments on a report on Miss Snark's blog. Seems there was some aggrieved party who published a book via AuthorHouse which seriously bad-mouthed his ex-wife, who was the romance writer Rebecca Brandewyne, no less. Brandewyne sued, and, not surprisingly in the described circumstances, won handsomely.
Moral: don't try to get your own back on an ex-wife, or anyone else, by writing a book. Not even if you disguise it as a novel. It could cost a great deal of money.
So far there are 37 comments on Miss Snark's piece.
Carter-Ruckery
Speaking of libel, as we just were, the name Carter-Ruck is one which will produce a shiver down the spine of most UK publishers and newspaper editors. The man himself, Peter Carter-Ruck, is safely dead now, but he was not much loved or admired when he was alive. He was a famous English libel lawyer, very quick with a writ, and the source of many a problem for those who write. A couple of years ago I wrote a review of his memoirs, and noted that even his obituarists (normally a very polite bunch) were brutally frank about his shortcomings.
Well, Carter-Ruck's firm continues under the famous name, and it continues, it seems, to be quick with a writ, particularly when defending its own name. On Mabatha News Network, Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher describes a case in which Carter-Ruck are taking objection to comments made on the internet.
Dr Bleher sees the Carter-Ruck action as over-sensitive and, moreover, as an attack on the freedom of speech -- one which, in principle, poses a threat to the internet.
Well, these issues are certainly worth thinking about. They are not simple, even in theory, and in practice are severely complicated by variations in the law from country to country. English law is particularly harsh in relation to libel, and this has given rise to a phenomenon known as libel tourism.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the latest case, highlighted by Dr Bleher, it is certainly true that those with enough money to pay for the likes of Carter-Ruck can make life very difficult for anyone who wishes to criticise them. As the investigative journalist Craig Unger remarked, 'They don't have to win, just tie you up in court forever.'
WanderingScribe doubters
My note last week about the WanderingScribe blog has attracted a number of commenters, some of whom are as doubtful about the enterprise as I was. And one person has gone so far as to set up a whole new blog -- The Truth about WanderingScribe --- which expresses, shall we say, severe reservations about the reliability and veracity of what is on offer.
A blog about a blog? Is this a first? Probably not, but I can't think of another one.
Golden Rule Jones
Golden Rule Jones, a book blogger of considerable age (in blog terms) and standing, has moved. The link on the blogroll has been changed, and he's now on Typepad. Mr Jones is English-born and Chicago-based, and he's still putting out some interesting stuff. Not surprising, considering that he once played Rugby for Leeds and had a verse play produced; not many people pull off that combination.
Scamhunters
Would you be surprised to hear that a woman who presents herself at various times as an agent and publisher is actually a convicted fugitive felon? What do you mean, No of course not? Have you no faith in human nature? Details on the Scamhunters blog; and a lot more on Absolutewrite.
The Captain's (b)log
Captain Picard, of the Starship Enterprise, has been writing an online version of his log for over a year now, and I've only just noticed (link from Blogger Buzz). Quite how such an important online resource escaped my notice is a mystery. The latest entry reveals that a vital part of the engineering of the Enterprise has broken down: it's the laundry machine.
How the music industry got it all wrong
The fact that the music industry made just about every mistake that you could think of, when dealing with the internet phenomenon, is a point which has often been made. However, last Friday's BBC Money Programme produced a valuable half-hour summary of the whole sorry mess, complete with an update on how UK bands are finding fans without benefit of major companies in the middle. I for one found it enthralling.
You can read about the programme here, and the programme itself claimed that you would also be able to watch it online, but I can't discover how. You may be cleverer.
The only problem is, how can this knowledge/experience of what happened, and is happening, in the music business be transferred to the world of fiction? Or non-fiction, for that matter. T'ain't easy to see how it might happen, since the main problem is to produce something which makes listeners/readers go Wow! And making readers go Wow! just seems to be harder than doing it for listeners.
Friday, May 19, 2006
David Allen: Getting Things Done
David Allen's how-to book Getting Things Done addresses what might reasonably be called the key problem of our age. This problem goes by a variety of names: stress, pressure, overload; and it is, essentially, a general feeling of panic, dread, and loss of control which arises from the belief that we have too much to do and too little time to do it.
The sense of all-pervading pressure is something which these days is experienced from schooldays onwards. And I can testify, oddly enough, that it does not disappear even when you retire. Its effects are extremely damaging, and most of us will be able to think of someone whose health, mental or physical or both, has deteriorated under the strain. And so anyone who can offer a means of reducing that sense of stress is both providing a valuable social service and, potentially, is in possession of a valuable source of income.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Getting Things Done has sold well. First published (in the UK) in 2001, it has been reprinted nine times, which demonstrates that there are people out there who are desperate for help in organising their lives and in reducing that sense of pressure. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the book is not itself as well organised and helpful as it might be. Judging by the comments of those he has helped, on a personal basis, David Allen is something of a dab hand at seminars and one-to-one sessions. But he is not the world's best writer.
Briefly put, Allen's recipe for achieving peace of mind and a restored sense of control involves reviewing your entire life, both personal and professional, and writing down everything that you feel you need to do or hope to do. You then process these notes: in particular you decide on the desired outcome of any particular 'job to do', and on the next action that is needed to achieve whatever it is you need to do. And then you proceed from there. Allen claims that regular reference to these notes, plus the use of such obvious devices as a calendar (which in England we normally call a diary), a 'tickler' file, and so forth, will restore at least a semblance of calm; in many instances, he claims, his system greatly increases productivity.
Obviously my summary is a gross oversimplification of a 258-page book, but that's the gist of it. Allen argues that what is really destructive of mental and physical health is the dread that something has been overlooked and forgotten. And he believes that if everything that needs to be done is written down in the control system somewhere, where it can be regularly reviewed and, if necessary, action taken, then that dread is abated. The average individual, he believes, will find that they have 300 to 500 hours' worth of things to do even if the world stopped right now and nothing new was added. So obviously everything cannot be done at once. The trick is to dump some ideas, delegate or defer others, and pick out the priorities in what remains.
Well, I agree with the overall prescription. Such a system works. As it happens, I was doing 95% of what Allen recommends already, having developed my own system of control over the years. I have to say that my system -- which is very similar to my namesake's (though he is no relation) -- enabled me to complete (when I look back on it) a vast amount of work during my lifetime as an employee. On top of that, it enabled me to commit a small but regular amount of time to writing (see my essay on productivity). Furthermore, I still use the system today, in retirement, and Allen's book gave me some useful tips on how to refine my own arrangements.
I am unconvinced, however, that a panic-stricken middle manager, trying and failing to juggle commuting, family life, and ever-increasing demands on his time and energies from his employer, is going to find this book immediately helpful. He would have to read it twice, I feel, to get the hang of what Allen is on about. And even then I doubt whether everything would be entirely clear.
In my experience, few individuals are more in need of a good time-management and self-organisation system than those who are trying to write a book on top of everything else. And that is why I have stated, on this blog and elsewhere, over and over again, that writing is an activity which can seriously damage your health -- not to mention your relationships, your bank account, and your career prospects. It is not a burden to be taken on lightly, though many people plunge into it with cheerful abandon.
In dealing with that problem, Allen's book can certainly help. But in my view Getting Things Done would benefit from a complete rewrite, from the ground up. It should be shorter, crisper, clearer, and, curiously enough, more prescriptive. As it stands, Allen gives you leeway to decide for yourself, for example, whether your system should be paper-based or computer-based. And in the early stages that is not very helpful. The book is five years old now anyway, so a new version is overdue.
One book that Allen (or his new ghost writer) could study with advantage is Jean Marie Stine's Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books. Stine has edited over 50 self-help titles, including some big sellers such as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and Women Who Love Too Much, so she knows whereof she speaks. And just one glance at the mere layout of Stine's book will give one clue as to how Getting Things Done could be improved.
David Allen has a web site, which offers a variety of free stuff and also (naturally) stuff that you can buy. I'm afraid I didn't take to it at all.
Everything that Allen has to offer, in the book and on the web site, is potentially enormously valuable. And clearly he has converts and enthusiasts. But in my opinion he hasn't yet found the best way of getting his message across.
The sense of all-pervading pressure is something which these days is experienced from schooldays onwards. And I can testify, oddly enough, that it does not disappear even when you retire. Its effects are extremely damaging, and most of us will be able to think of someone whose health, mental or physical or both, has deteriorated under the strain. And so anyone who can offer a means of reducing that sense of stress is both providing a valuable social service and, potentially, is in possession of a valuable source of income.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Getting Things Done has sold well. First published (in the UK) in 2001, it has been reprinted nine times, which demonstrates that there are people out there who are desperate for help in organising their lives and in reducing that sense of pressure. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the book is not itself as well organised and helpful as it might be. Judging by the comments of those he has helped, on a personal basis, David Allen is something of a dab hand at seminars and one-to-one sessions. But he is not the world's best writer.
Briefly put, Allen's recipe for achieving peace of mind and a restored sense of control involves reviewing your entire life, both personal and professional, and writing down everything that you feel you need to do or hope to do. You then process these notes: in particular you decide on the desired outcome of any particular 'job to do', and on the next action that is needed to achieve whatever it is you need to do. And then you proceed from there. Allen claims that regular reference to these notes, plus the use of such obvious devices as a calendar (which in England we normally call a diary), a 'tickler' file, and so forth, will restore at least a semblance of calm; in many instances, he claims, his system greatly increases productivity.
Obviously my summary is a gross oversimplification of a 258-page book, but that's the gist of it. Allen argues that what is really destructive of mental and physical health is the dread that something has been overlooked and forgotten. And he believes that if everything that needs to be done is written down in the control system somewhere, where it can be regularly reviewed and, if necessary, action taken, then that dread is abated. The average individual, he believes, will find that they have 300 to 500 hours' worth of things to do even if the world stopped right now and nothing new was added. So obviously everything cannot be done at once. The trick is to dump some ideas, delegate or defer others, and pick out the priorities in what remains.
Well, I agree with the overall prescription. Such a system works. As it happens, I was doing 95% of what Allen recommends already, having developed my own system of control over the years. I have to say that my system -- which is very similar to my namesake's (though he is no relation) -- enabled me to complete (when I look back on it) a vast amount of work during my lifetime as an employee. On top of that, it enabled me to commit a small but regular amount of time to writing (see my essay on productivity). Furthermore, I still use the system today, in retirement, and Allen's book gave me some useful tips on how to refine my own arrangements.
I am unconvinced, however, that a panic-stricken middle manager, trying and failing to juggle commuting, family life, and ever-increasing demands on his time and energies from his employer, is going to find this book immediately helpful. He would have to read it twice, I feel, to get the hang of what Allen is on about. And even then I doubt whether everything would be entirely clear.
In my experience, few individuals are more in need of a good time-management and self-organisation system than those who are trying to write a book on top of everything else. And that is why I have stated, on this blog and elsewhere, over and over again, that writing is an activity which can seriously damage your health -- not to mention your relationships, your bank account, and your career prospects. It is not a burden to be taken on lightly, though many people plunge into it with cheerful abandon.
In dealing with that problem, Allen's book can certainly help. But in my view Getting Things Done would benefit from a complete rewrite, from the ground up. It should be shorter, crisper, clearer, and, curiously enough, more prescriptive. As it stands, Allen gives you leeway to decide for yourself, for example, whether your system should be paper-based or computer-based. And in the early stages that is not very helpful. The book is five years old now anyway, so a new version is overdue.
One book that Allen (or his new ghost writer) could study with advantage is Jean Marie Stine's Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books. Stine has edited over 50 self-help titles, including some big sellers such as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and Women Who Love Too Much, so she knows whereof she speaks. And just one glance at the mere layout of Stine's book will give one clue as to how Getting Things Done could be improved.
David Allen has a web site, which offers a variety of free stuff and also (naturally) stuff that you can buy. I'm afraid I didn't take to it at all.
Everything that Allen has to offer, in the book and on the web site, is potentially enormously valuable. And clearly he has converts and enthusiasts. But in my opinion he hasn't yet found the best way of getting his message across.
Lulu and CC
Say what? Well, Lulu.com is a site for self-publishers, and, in its own estimation, is currently the world's biggest print-on-demand service for books. And CC is shorthand for Creative Commons, which is an outfit doing some of the most clear-headed and valuable thinking about copyright issues. (This blog, for instance, is published under a CC licence, and if you scroll down until you reach the bottom of the right-hand column, and then click on the link which says Creative Commons licence, you can read all about it.)
CC has a blog, and the blog currently offers an interview with Stephen Fraser of Lulu. It provides a handy overview of what Lulu offers, and I for one learnt a few things from it.
First, it seems that you can create something via Lulu, such as an ebook, and publish it free. Now that I find interesting.
Why? Well, because oddly enough I've come to the conclusion that for some of my stuff it's almost a waste of time going to all the trouble (and expense) of preparing a print version, when the profit is negligible. Far easier, much quicker, and more effective, I've decided, is to give it away in ebook form.
Last year I published On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile as a freebie, and have no regrets. The object really is to find readers, and I'm likely to find more readers with free stuff than with something that costs £10. So that's one new thing I've learnt about Lulu. I don't suppose that using Lulu as a distributor is going to create vast interest, even with free stuff, and probably there are other web sites which offer a similar facility, but it's something to bear in mind.
Another useful development is that, as from this month, anything ordered from Lulu from an address in Europe will actually be printed and shipped from Europe.
By the way, Lulu can also be used to publish music, video, images, and software.
I have noticed that there are people who are deeply suspicious of Lulu. Well, by all means read the small print. And remember that they are a profit-making organisation. But it looks like a useful service to me.
CC has a blog, and the blog currently offers an interview with Stephen Fraser of Lulu. It provides a handy overview of what Lulu offers, and I for one learnt a few things from it.
First, it seems that you can create something via Lulu, such as an ebook, and publish it free. Now that I find interesting.
Why? Well, because oddly enough I've come to the conclusion that for some of my stuff it's almost a waste of time going to all the trouble (and expense) of preparing a print version, when the profit is negligible. Far easier, much quicker, and more effective, I've decided, is to give it away in ebook form.
Last year I published On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile as a freebie, and have no regrets. The object really is to find readers, and I'm likely to find more readers with free stuff than with something that costs £10. So that's one new thing I've learnt about Lulu. I don't suppose that using Lulu as a distributor is going to create vast interest, even with free stuff, and probably there are other web sites which offer a similar facility, but it's something to bear in mind.
Another useful development is that, as from this month, anything ordered from Lulu from an address in Europe will actually be printed and shipped from Europe.
By the way, Lulu can also be used to publish music, video, images, and software.
I have noticed that there are people who are deeply suspicious of Lulu. Well, by all means read the small print. And remember that they are a profit-making organisation. But it looks like a useful service to me.
Excerpt 35
Here is the last (hooray!) excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
What happened in the church
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I thought I would end this book by telling you what happened in the vestry, after Debbie and I were married.
When you get married in church, the bride and the groom and the witnesses have to go up into the vestry so that they can sign the register. That’s the book which is the official record of the marriage taking place.
So that’s what we did.
As I said before, I’m not really a religious man, even though I’m very fond of churches. But I thought Mr Redmond, the Vicar, did the service very well. And I found it made me a bit thoughtful. So when we went up into the vestry I was even quieter than usual.
What I was thinking about was this. I’d gradually got used to the idea of being HIV positive. Got used to the idea that it might kill me in the end. And I’d started to think of it as being a bit like having high blood pressure.
There are lots of people who take tablets for high blood pressure. And it can certainly kill you. No trouble at all about that. Even if you’re on the tablets you can still have a stroke or a heart attack. So that’s how I think about the HIV. I’m not really ill, but I have to watch myself a bit. And I have to remember that I’m not going to live for ever.
So that’s what I’d been thinking for some time. And as we went up into the vestry, I was wondering whether I’d been quite fair to Debbie. I mean I know she wanted to get married and so on. She was the one who asked me. But was it the right thing to do? Was I really the right man for her? Could I make her happy?
Those were the sort of things I was thinking. After all, I didn’t do very well with Carol. And she’s much happier now she’s found Pete.
Of course it was a bit late in the day to think of all that. And I admit that I am a bit slow at times. But that’s what I was thinking about.
Debbie doesn’t miss a thing and she soon noticed. ‘What’s the problem, Harry?’ she said. She said this quietly, while the others were busy talking, and Mr Redmond was getting things ready for us to sign.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I just want you to remember that this story can’t have a happy ending.’
She was not pleased with me. ‘Harry,’ she said. In that tone of voice which means Just watch it. And she put her hand on top of mine. ‘Let’s not worry about that now.’
‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late, you know. I don’t think all this is legal until you actually sign the register. So if you want to have another think about it…’
Debbie put her arm round my shoulders and gave me a hug.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. And now she wasn’t cross with me any more. Now she’d begun to understand what was worrying me. And she was concerned about putting me right. ‘It’s all right, Harry, really. I know what I’m doing. And so do you.’
But she could see I was still a bit troubled. The other people in the vestry could also see that we were talking about something serious, but they pretended not to notice.
Debbie thought for a minute, just looking at me. And then she said: ‘Look – you remember all those inscriptions you carved, on the end of the pews?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
I did remember. Mr Redmond had asked me to do some lettering on the ends of some of the pews. Odd bits of quotations from prayers and psalms and things. I’m not a real wood-carver – not a sculptor or anything like that. But I can do lettering, and I did those for him.
‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘What about them?’
‘Well, you remember the one that says Carpe Diem?’
‘Yes. What about it?’
‘Do you know what that means, Harry?’
‘Yes. I do. It’s Latin. It means enjoy the day.’
‘Exactly. Enjoy the day. That means enjoy this day, Harry. Your wedding day. And every other day…. None of us knows what will happen tomorrow – not you, not me, not Mr Redmond. Nobody. So the best you can do is forget about the past – don’t worry about the future – and deal with whatever today brings you. And try to enjoy it as best you can.’
She looked at me, and I did my best to feel pleased. But I still wasn’t quite convinced.
‘You may die of AIDS, Harry. That’s true. You might collapse next week. But on the other hand you might live for fifty years, what with all these new drugs and everything. I might get cancer from some supermarket grunge and die years before you do. We just don’t know. So we go through life as best we can. And we make each other as happy as we can.’
And then she leaned over and kissed me. And smiled.
So after that I signed the register and everybody gave a sort of quiet sigh of relief. And they all looked at each other and hoped I wouldn’t notice that they’d noticed.
Then we stood up to go.
At the end of the service, after you’ve signed the register and all that, the organ starts to play. The bride and groom come out of the vestry and walk down the chancel. And then you go up the central aisle, and go out of the church to wherever you’re going to go afterwards. And as you walk out you can see all your friends on either side of you. And they’re all taking pictures and smiling and talking.
As Debbie and I stood at the top of the steps, with the organ pounding away, she leaned over to me and spoke in my ear.
‘Smile, you miserable bugger,’ she said. ‘Or you can forget about the honeymoon.’
So of course I had to smile then. In fact she made me laugh. And we began to walk down the steps.
As we entered the central aisle, Con and his team were there to film us. And he had not just one film camera but two. And behind the two cameramen I could see Con himself, backing away like they were, and grinning like a loony from ear to ear. I’d never seen him so cheerful. And all our friends were taking photos, and flashes were going off left right and centre. And everyone was having a really good time. Including me.
I was having a good time too. I really was.
I felt a bit dizzy with all the excitement. I’d got over my little fit of the glums, and I’d realised that Debbie was talking sense. And as we walked down the central aisle, I remembered what she’d said about enjoying each day as it comes, and not worrying too much about the future. I knew perfectly well she was right.
And I remembered too about that carved inscription she’d reminded me of. That pew with Carpe Diem carved on it. I’d taken quite a lot of trouble over that one, making sure that I got it right. And I knew that the pew where I’d carved those words was up at the top of the aisle, on my side, to the left.
As we came level with that particular pew, I stopped nodding and smiling at all our friends. And it seemed to me that the world went quiet inside my head. It was if I’d gone a bit deaf.
I looked down at the words that I’d carved. I could see them sharp and clear. And as we went past that particular pew, I made up my mind that I would try to live my life that way from now on. I would do what Debbie said. Make the best of each day, for both of us. Not worry about the past, and not worry about the future.
I reached out my hand and gripped the pew hard as I went past.
What happened in the church
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I thought I would end this book by telling you what happened in the vestry, after Debbie and I were married.
When you get married in church, the bride and the groom and the witnesses have to go up into the vestry so that they can sign the register. That’s the book which is the official record of the marriage taking place.
So that’s what we did.
As I said before, I’m not really a religious man, even though I’m very fond of churches. But I thought Mr Redmond, the Vicar, did the service very well. And I found it made me a bit thoughtful. So when we went up into the vestry I was even quieter than usual.
What I was thinking about was this. I’d gradually got used to the idea of being HIV positive. Got used to the idea that it might kill me in the end. And I’d started to think of it as being a bit like having high blood pressure.
There are lots of people who take tablets for high blood pressure. And it can certainly kill you. No trouble at all about that. Even if you’re on the tablets you can still have a stroke or a heart attack. So that’s how I think about the HIV. I’m not really ill, but I have to watch myself a bit. And I have to remember that I’m not going to live for ever.
So that’s what I’d been thinking for some time. And as we went up into the vestry, I was wondering whether I’d been quite fair to Debbie. I mean I know she wanted to get married and so on. She was the one who asked me. But was it the right thing to do? Was I really the right man for her? Could I make her happy?
Those were the sort of things I was thinking. After all, I didn’t do very well with Carol. And she’s much happier now she’s found Pete.
Of course it was a bit late in the day to think of all that. And I admit that I am a bit slow at times. But that’s what I was thinking about.
Debbie doesn’t miss a thing and she soon noticed. ‘What’s the problem, Harry?’ she said. She said this quietly, while the others were busy talking, and Mr Redmond was getting things ready for us to sign.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I just want you to remember that this story can’t have a happy ending.’
She was not pleased with me. ‘Harry,’ she said. In that tone of voice which means Just watch it. And she put her hand on top of mine. ‘Let’s not worry about that now.’
‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late, you know. I don’t think all this is legal until you actually sign the register. So if you want to have another think about it…’
Debbie put her arm round my shoulders and gave me a hug.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. And now she wasn’t cross with me any more. Now she’d begun to understand what was worrying me. And she was concerned about putting me right. ‘It’s all right, Harry, really. I know what I’m doing. And so do you.’
But she could see I was still a bit troubled. The other people in the vestry could also see that we were talking about something serious, but they pretended not to notice.
Debbie thought for a minute, just looking at me. And then she said: ‘Look – you remember all those inscriptions you carved, on the end of the pews?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
I did remember. Mr Redmond had asked me to do some lettering on the ends of some of the pews. Odd bits of quotations from prayers and psalms and things. I’m not a real wood-carver – not a sculptor or anything like that. But I can do lettering, and I did those for him.
‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘What about them?’
‘Well, you remember the one that says Carpe Diem?’
‘Yes. What about it?’
‘Do you know what that means, Harry?’
‘Yes. I do. It’s Latin. It means enjoy the day.’
‘Exactly. Enjoy the day. That means enjoy this day, Harry. Your wedding day. And every other day…. None of us knows what will happen tomorrow – not you, not me, not Mr Redmond. Nobody. So the best you can do is forget about the past – don’t worry about the future – and deal with whatever today brings you. And try to enjoy it as best you can.’
She looked at me, and I did my best to feel pleased. But I still wasn’t quite convinced.
‘You may die of AIDS, Harry. That’s true. You might collapse next week. But on the other hand you might live for fifty years, what with all these new drugs and everything. I might get cancer from some supermarket grunge and die years before you do. We just don’t know. So we go through life as best we can. And we make each other as happy as we can.’
And then she leaned over and kissed me. And smiled.
So after that I signed the register and everybody gave a sort of quiet sigh of relief. And they all looked at each other and hoped I wouldn’t notice that they’d noticed.
Then we stood up to go.
At the end of the service, after you’ve signed the register and all that, the organ starts to play. The bride and groom come out of the vestry and walk down the chancel. And then you go up the central aisle, and go out of the church to wherever you’re going to go afterwards. And as you walk out you can see all your friends on either side of you. And they’re all taking pictures and smiling and talking.
As Debbie and I stood at the top of the steps, with the organ pounding away, she leaned over to me and spoke in my ear.
‘Smile, you miserable bugger,’ she said. ‘Or you can forget about the honeymoon.’
So of course I had to smile then. In fact she made me laugh. And we began to walk down the steps.
As we entered the central aisle, Con and his team were there to film us. And he had not just one film camera but two. And behind the two cameramen I could see Con himself, backing away like they were, and grinning like a loony from ear to ear. I’d never seen him so cheerful. And all our friends were taking photos, and flashes were going off left right and centre. And everyone was having a really good time. Including me.
I was having a good time too. I really was.
I felt a bit dizzy with all the excitement. I’d got over my little fit of the glums, and I’d realised that Debbie was talking sense. And as we walked down the central aisle, I remembered what she’d said about enjoying each day as it comes, and not worrying too much about the future. I knew perfectly well she was right.
And I remembered too about that carved inscription she’d reminded me of. That pew with Carpe Diem carved on it. I’d taken quite a lot of trouble over that one, making sure that I got it right. And I knew that the pew where I’d carved those words was up at the top of the aisle, on my side, to the left.
As we came level with that particular pew, I stopped nodding and smiling at all our friends. And it seemed to me that the world went quiet inside my head. It was if I’d gone a bit deaf.
I looked down at the words that I’d carved. I could see them sharp and clear. And as we went past that particular pew, I made up my mind that I would try to live my life that way from now on. I would do what Debbie said. Make the best of each day, for both of us. Not worry about the past, and not worry about the future.
I reached out my hand and gripped the pew hard as I went past.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
The Alternative Miss World
On Monday of this week we noted that the New York Times had run a piece about the best American novel of the last 25 years. We further noted that some bloggers were not too impressed by this exercise.
One who was less impressed than most was Beth Quittman, who writes Book of the Day. She decided to run an alternative Miss World competition. She wrote to a number of bloggers, the GOB included, and invited a different set of nominations, the results of which are beginning to come in.
When I received Bett's invitation to nominate, I scratched my head and wrote back as follows:
One who was less impressed than most was Beth Quittman, who writes Book of the Day. She decided to run an alternative Miss World competition. She wrote to a number of bloggers, the GOB included, and invited a different set of nominations, the results of which are beginning to come in.
When I received Bett's invitation to nominate, I scratched my head and wrote back as follows:
Within the last 25 years, can't think of anything much. Older than that:
Kurt Vonnegut -- The Sirens of Titan
Richard Condon -- The Manchurian Candidate
I might have added, if I'd thought a little longer:
John Rechy: City of Night
William Styron: Lie Down in Darknessor even
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (though I don't like it's self-pitying tone)
But they're all older than 25 too.
Well, this wasn't good enough for our Bett. 'C'mon,' she said, 'rack your brains.' So I did, and wrote back as follows:
OK, fair enough, I have done some work on this. I have looked on my bookshelves, to see what I've read and thought sufficiently highly of to want to keep. And, among recent American fiction, I can't find anything much. I have also looked at various online lists of 'contemporary classics' and again drawn a blank. I have found nothing that I actually want to vote for as 'the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years'.
Now this is strange, because when I first began serious reading (in the 1950s) I was strongly attracted to American fiction and read a great deal of it. But in recent times, apart from thrillers, science fiction, and the like, I have found very little work by American novelists that I actually want to read. There is also a great deal that I would willingly pay good money to avoid reading, such as anything that wins the present-day Pulitzer or any other prestigious literary prize.
What this means is that one of two things has happened. Either my intelligence, taste, and general sensibility have markedly declined over the years, or else American fiction has changed in its nature.
Naturally, I do not incline to the first explanation, and consider the second more likely.
What has happened in American fiction over the last fifty years (and exactly the same has occurred in British fiction, I hasten to add) is that the writers and publishers of fiction have split into two well-defined camps. One the one hand there is commercial fiction, which ordinary people read but which is not taken seriously by the mainstream media, let alone the intelligentsia; and on the other hand we have 'serious', or literary fiction, the writers and publishers of which have systematically decided to alienate the average reader. And they have succeeded beyond their most lavish expectations. No literary book today can hold its head up in polite society if it is read and genuinely enjoyed on any scale. Because then it becomes 'popular', lower class, disgusting, distasteful, and generally unclean. And Puritans don't like anything unclean.
The causes of this situation are many and various, but they all have to do with the growth of the formal study of English literature in schools and universities. The situation arises because a considerable number of persons of very ordinary intellect have set themselves up as judges of what is or is not a good book -- largely in order to give themselves nice comfortable jobs instead of working for a living -- and these self-appointed experts have been taken at their own evaluation by whole generations of parents and students, some of whom really ought to know better.
Result: nonsense. On the one hand, we have books which are virtually unreadable being given major honours, and, on the other hand, we have commercial fiction, which is often manufactured to fit a template and looks very much like it. In between, if you search long and hard, are the kind of books which used to be given the recognition which is due to story-telling of a high standard. Sometimes these books, if an author writes enough of them, achieve significant sales and some grudging respect: an English example is Terry Pratchett; but often they don't.
So, what can we take from all this?
I am still disinclined to name one particular novel as meeting your criterion -- the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years. Why? Because I would only feel comfortable in making such a nomination if I had willingly read the book two or three times. And although I much admire some recent thrillers, for example, I do not feel the urge to pick them up again.
The best I can do is point you in the direction of one writer who has already produced a solid corpus of work: Neal Stephenson.
Neal has been written about here more than once. He seems to me to embody some old-fashioned virtues. He is, first and foremost, a teller of tales. He is wonderfully well informed on matters scientific -- and I find it hard to imagine that a modern writer can manage without that background, because our society is now so heavily dependent upon science and technology. And he has a good feeling for character.
What Neal perhaps does not have, as yet, is the ability to generate really powerful emotion in the reader -- emotion of the kind which will stay in your memory and will cause you, over a period of time, to read the book again. But, dammit, who today does have that power? It's a rare accomplishment.
The whys and wherefores of blogging
Publishers Lunch informed me that the Arts Journal was acting as host to a blog 'in which a variety of traditional and nontraditional arts critics are debating the role and influence of critics in the web-driven world of infinite voices, ratings and tags.' This as a prelude to the Book Expo America (BEA), which is the US equivalent (roughly) of the Frankfurt or London book fairs and which runs, with some overlap, from 19-21 May.
One post on the Arts Journal blog which caught my eye deals with the question of why people bother to create blogs anyway. And it asks a question which, for many bloggers, is a key one: how can you make any money out of the damn thing?
Well, admittedly it's very difficult, and I for one have never made a penny out of mine -- not directly, anyway, and I can't say that I've noticed a dramatic effect on the sales of my various books. However, in my case, I am not too fussed about the money because I am retired.
So, if I'm not doing it for the money, why am I doing it? And I don't mind admitting that it's only recently that I figured it out. The answer is, it's a continuation of a lifetime preoccupation, namely education. And it combines very neatly with another lifetime occupation, namely writing.
Almost my entire working life was spent in education, either as a teacher or an administrator. So I was, in various capacities, an educator. I was also, at one point, an educationist, in the sense that I made a formal study of education, including a PhD. And I even wrote a book about education.
As far I'm concerned, therefore, the blog is just a natural extension of all that. It's an attempt to pass on knowledge of various sorts: knowledge about how to do things, and how not to do things. What to expect, particularly if you're a writer, and what not to expect. Information about books which are worth reading (imho) and also those which are not worth reading.
Of course you'd probably prefer not to know that I am interested in education, since most people have an aversion to being educated, in the formal sense. But we try, my sources and I, to make it as painless as possible.
One post on the Arts Journal blog which caught my eye deals with the question of why people bother to create blogs anyway. And it asks a question which, for many bloggers, is a key one: how can you make any money out of the damn thing?
Well, admittedly it's very difficult, and I for one have never made a penny out of mine -- not directly, anyway, and I can't say that I've noticed a dramatic effect on the sales of my various books. However, in my case, I am not too fussed about the money because I am retired.
So, if I'm not doing it for the money, why am I doing it? And I don't mind admitting that it's only recently that I figured it out. The answer is, it's a continuation of a lifetime preoccupation, namely education. And it combines very neatly with another lifetime occupation, namely writing.
Almost my entire working life was spent in education, either as a teacher or an administrator. So I was, in various capacities, an educator. I was also, at one point, an educationist, in the sense that I made a formal study of education, including a PhD. And I even wrote a book about education.
As far I'm concerned, therefore, the blog is just a natural extension of all that. It's an attempt to pass on knowledge of various sorts: knowledge about how to do things, and how not to do things. What to expect, particularly if you're a writer, and what not to expect. Information about books which are worth reading (imho) and also those which are not worth reading.
Of course you'd probably prefer not to know that I am interested in education, since most people have an aversion to being educated, in the formal sense. But we try, my sources and I, to make it as painless as possible.
Excerpt 34
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Debbie and I get married
Before I finish I want to tell you a little bit about what happened when Debbie and I got married.
As I said, Con arranged to do this TV show about us. Apparently Mr Patel approves of people getting married. Says it sets a good example to the young. So he was very keen on the show.
I was keen on it too. It seemed to me to make everything easier. Buying a house together and stuff like that. Debbie sold her flat, and I gave up my old place, and we have a new house now. Well, it’s new to us. It’s an old house, and one we both really like. And we’re gradually getting it fixed up the way we want it.
Every little part of the preparations for our wedding was filmed. I left it all to Debbie and co. – let them get on with it. But every discussion that Debbie had with anyone was filmed.
Until you’ve done it you wouldn’t believe the amount of work that goes into something simple like getting married. I noticed that the first time around.
Personally I just stand well back and let other people make the arrangements. I just turn up on the day. But you can’t help noticing that everyone else is running round like chickens with their heads cut off. Especially the women.
It’s the dresses that does it. And the shoes. That’s what seems to take up most of the time. The women have to get exactly the right colour for the dress. And then the shoes have to match. Most of the time you can’t see the shoes because they’re hidden by the dress. But that doesn’t seem to matter. They’ve got to be right.
Even Lisa went barmy because hers weren’t quite right. I think she had three pairs of shoes before we were finished. And Con did a whole half-hour programme on Lisa’s shoes. I couldn’t believe it.
My old friend Jack agreed to be my best man. Again. He did it at my first wedding too. He said he would do it for nothing this time, but if I was going to make a habit of it he would have to start charging a fee.
As for me, I had a new suit. Con said I ought to go to Savile Row. And Debbie said OK, so long as the show paid for it. So then Con ummed and ahed, and they kicked it around for about a week. And then Debbie lost patience and told Con she’d get me a suit from the local charity shop and Con gave in.
So we went up to Savile Row and I got measured. Twice, I recall. Actually I don’t think Con ever did pay the bill. He did a deal with the tailor instead. Con filmed them measuring me and the firm got some publicity. It’s called product placement. Con did a lot of that in the second series. We never used anything of our own, because it was all provided by the firms that make things.
The tailor was a very nice man. A Mr Grantley. Very famous apparently. A bit older than me. And when the suit was finished Con had me photographed in it for the Moon.
Of course, being the Moon we had to have some naked girls in it too, showing their bottoms. So there’s me in my best suit. And on my left two naked girls waving their bums at the cameras. And on my right, two other naked girls doing the same. And in the background Mr Grantley, grinning like a loony. Although he told me later that he soon stopped grinning when his wife saw the picture.
Not many people realised, but when Debbie heard what Con was going to do about the girls she said OK so long as she was in it. So she’s the second from the left. The one whose face you can’t quite see. And she’s the best bum of them all if you ask me.
That picture caused quite a stir. The Moon made it really big, spread over two pages. Tony down the pub bought a properly printed version of the picture and had it framed and put up in the gents’ loo in the pub. It was there for a week before someone nicked it. And it was screwed to the wall as well.
The thing that I liked best about the preparations for the wedding was that I saw a lot of Lisa. Because she was going to be a bridesmaid, naturally.
Debbie says that there are three of us in this marriage. Me, her and Lisa. And she reckons I love Lisa more than I love her. And it’s true I suppose. But I don’t think she really minds.
Once I knew that Debbie and I were going to get married I went to see Mr Redmond and asked him if there was any chance of getting married in church. And he rather surprised me by saying that he would do it. I thought he might at least have to ask the Bishop’s permission or something, because of me being divorced. But he said no, the decision was entirely his, and he would be glad to do it. So that made me feel good from the start.
We got married in the autumn. One of those really nice September days when it’s warm and sunny but not too hot.
We had a reception afterwards in the town hall. With a sit-down meal and speeches.
Everyone came. Lots of people. We had a bit of money to spend, what with the TV company being there and everything, so we invited all our friends. Carol and Pete and Lisa of course. Jack and Sarah. Tony from the pub. Even Mr Redmond and his wife came, and they don’t always.
Con and all his techies were there, of course. They were all working, in a way, but most of them managed to get plenty to eat and drink I noticed.
After the meal we had speeches. My speech was short. Debbie’s was longer, and made people laugh.
After the meal and the speeches we had a band and people could dance. And those that were that way inclined settled down to some serious drinking. Particularly Con.
I got a bit worried about Con. Once all the key parts of the filming were over he started in on the whisky. And I don’t think it’s really very good for him. After a certain amount he gets really depressed.
And that’s the way it was at our reception. Round about eleven o’clock that night, when Debbie and I were beginning to think about pushing off, Con wandered over to where I was sitting with a couple of pals and started rambling on about how wonderful it all was. And what a lucky bloke I was. And how happy he was for me.
He was well away, and the two people I’d been talking to sort of drifted away. I think he made them a bit nervous.
Con sat down beside me and rambled on a bit more. ‘You know what, Harry,’ he said. ‘When I dreamed up this programme of yours, I was asking myself a question. And the question was…’
He seemed to forget what the question was for a minute. But then he remembered.
‘The question was, Can a man who has some very serious faults find someone to love him.’ He nodded, as if he had convinced himself. ‘Yup, that was it. Can a man with some very serious faults… Very serious indeed, Harry. Can a man like that find someone to love him. That was the question, Harry. That really was the question.’
And then he put his head in his hands and started to cry. Sobbed like a baby.
I didn’t know what to do with him, so I just sat there and told him that everything was all right really. There wasn’t anything to worry about. No need to get upset.
So then Con started saying how he wished he had somebody to share his life with, and how he really envied me and Debbie, and how lucky we were. And how his life didn’t really mean anything. And a lot more like that.
I decided that it was time I poured him into a taxi, and fortunately there was a bouncer there from the TV company who’d come to the same conclusion. He took Con off my hands and took him back to his hotel.
I don’t really know what got into Con that night. Debbie says he was crying because really he’s a gay man at heart. Deep down inside. But he just can’t bring himself to admit it.
I don’t know about that. Con told me once that he lived with a girl a few years ago, but it only lasted six weeks. So I don’t know whether he’s gay or not. But I do think he’s a very lonely man, and I hope he finds someone to share his life with soon.
Debbie and I get married
Before I finish I want to tell you a little bit about what happened when Debbie and I got married.
As I said, Con arranged to do this TV show about us. Apparently Mr Patel approves of people getting married. Says it sets a good example to the young. So he was very keen on the show.
I was keen on it too. It seemed to me to make everything easier. Buying a house together and stuff like that. Debbie sold her flat, and I gave up my old place, and we have a new house now. Well, it’s new to us. It’s an old house, and one we both really like. And we’re gradually getting it fixed up the way we want it.
Every little part of the preparations for our wedding was filmed. I left it all to Debbie and co. – let them get on with it. But every discussion that Debbie had with anyone was filmed.
Until you’ve done it you wouldn’t believe the amount of work that goes into something simple like getting married. I noticed that the first time around.
Personally I just stand well back and let other people make the arrangements. I just turn up on the day. But you can’t help noticing that everyone else is running round like chickens with their heads cut off. Especially the women.
It’s the dresses that does it. And the shoes. That’s what seems to take up most of the time. The women have to get exactly the right colour for the dress. And then the shoes have to match. Most of the time you can’t see the shoes because they’re hidden by the dress. But that doesn’t seem to matter. They’ve got to be right.
Even Lisa went barmy because hers weren’t quite right. I think she had three pairs of shoes before we were finished. And Con did a whole half-hour programme on Lisa’s shoes. I couldn’t believe it.
My old friend Jack agreed to be my best man. Again. He did it at my first wedding too. He said he would do it for nothing this time, but if I was going to make a habit of it he would have to start charging a fee.
As for me, I had a new suit. Con said I ought to go to Savile Row. And Debbie said OK, so long as the show paid for it. So then Con ummed and ahed, and they kicked it around for about a week. And then Debbie lost patience and told Con she’d get me a suit from the local charity shop and Con gave in.
So we went up to Savile Row and I got measured. Twice, I recall. Actually I don’t think Con ever did pay the bill. He did a deal with the tailor instead. Con filmed them measuring me and the firm got some publicity. It’s called product placement. Con did a lot of that in the second series. We never used anything of our own, because it was all provided by the firms that make things.
The tailor was a very nice man. A Mr Grantley. Very famous apparently. A bit older than me. And when the suit was finished Con had me photographed in it for the Moon.
Of course, being the Moon we had to have some naked girls in it too, showing their bottoms. So there’s me in my best suit. And on my left two naked girls waving their bums at the cameras. And on my right, two other naked girls doing the same. And in the background Mr Grantley, grinning like a loony. Although he told me later that he soon stopped grinning when his wife saw the picture.
Not many people realised, but when Debbie heard what Con was going to do about the girls she said OK so long as she was in it. So she’s the second from the left. The one whose face you can’t quite see. And she’s the best bum of them all if you ask me.
That picture caused quite a stir. The Moon made it really big, spread over two pages. Tony down the pub bought a properly printed version of the picture and had it framed and put up in the gents’ loo in the pub. It was there for a week before someone nicked it. And it was screwed to the wall as well.
The thing that I liked best about the preparations for the wedding was that I saw a lot of Lisa. Because she was going to be a bridesmaid, naturally.
Debbie says that there are three of us in this marriage. Me, her and Lisa. And she reckons I love Lisa more than I love her. And it’s true I suppose. But I don’t think she really minds.
Once I knew that Debbie and I were going to get married I went to see Mr Redmond and asked him if there was any chance of getting married in church. And he rather surprised me by saying that he would do it. I thought he might at least have to ask the Bishop’s permission or something, because of me being divorced. But he said no, the decision was entirely his, and he would be glad to do it. So that made me feel good from the start.
We got married in the autumn. One of those really nice September days when it’s warm and sunny but not too hot.
We had a reception afterwards in the town hall. With a sit-down meal and speeches.
Everyone came. Lots of people. We had a bit of money to spend, what with the TV company being there and everything, so we invited all our friends. Carol and Pete and Lisa of course. Jack and Sarah. Tony from the pub. Even Mr Redmond and his wife came, and they don’t always.
Con and all his techies were there, of course. They were all working, in a way, but most of them managed to get plenty to eat and drink I noticed.
After the meal we had speeches. My speech was short. Debbie’s was longer, and made people laugh.
After the meal and the speeches we had a band and people could dance. And those that were that way inclined settled down to some serious drinking. Particularly Con.
I got a bit worried about Con. Once all the key parts of the filming were over he started in on the whisky. And I don’t think it’s really very good for him. After a certain amount he gets really depressed.
And that’s the way it was at our reception. Round about eleven o’clock that night, when Debbie and I were beginning to think about pushing off, Con wandered over to where I was sitting with a couple of pals and started rambling on about how wonderful it all was. And what a lucky bloke I was. And how happy he was for me.
He was well away, and the two people I’d been talking to sort of drifted away. I think he made them a bit nervous.
Con sat down beside me and rambled on a bit more. ‘You know what, Harry,’ he said. ‘When I dreamed up this programme of yours, I was asking myself a question. And the question was…’
He seemed to forget what the question was for a minute. But then he remembered.
‘The question was, Can a man who has some very serious faults find someone to love him.’ He nodded, as if he had convinced himself. ‘Yup, that was it. Can a man with some very serious faults… Very serious indeed, Harry. Can a man like that find someone to love him. That was the question, Harry. That really was the question.’
And then he put his head in his hands and started to cry. Sobbed like a baby.
I didn’t know what to do with him, so I just sat there and told him that everything was all right really. There wasn’t anything to worry about. No need to get upset.
So then Con started saying how he wished he had somebody to share his life with, and how he really envied me and Debbie, and how lucky we were. And how his life didn’t really mean anything. And a lot more like that.
I decided that it was time I poured him into a taxi, and fortunately there was a bouncer there from the TV company who’d come to the same conclusion. He took Con off my hands and took him back to his hotel.
I don’t really know what got into Con that night. Debbie says he was crying because really he’s a gay man at heart. Deep down inside. But he just can’t bring himself to admit it.
I don’t know about that. Con told me once that he lived with a girl a few years ago, but it only lasted six weeks. So I don’t know whether he’s gay or not. But I do think he’s a very lonely man, and I hope he finds someone to share his life with soon.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Midweek roundup
And still they come
Last week, in connection with books about codes in works of art, I mentioned that the public seems very happy to go on buying and reading books about subjects and themes which, to you and me, may seem to have been thoroughly worked out and worked over. Here are a couple more examples.
Publishers Lunch reports that Mitch Silver's debut thriller Provenance has been sold to Trish Todd at Touchstone Fireside, in a major deal, by Larry Kirshbaum at LJK Literary Management. The plot features a nonfiction manuscript by Ian Fleming which provides evidence that the Duke of Windsor was in a treasonous plot with Hitler.
Well, ahem, plenty of people have dealt with this before. In fiction there's my own novel Beautiful Lady. Jack Higgins did Thunder Point. And in nonfiction it's a fairly well known story: try King Pawn or Black Knight? by Gwynne Thomas (Mainstream, 1995).
And then there's the continued use of a fairly well known type of character, such as the Cockney charlady, the dumb blonde, or the streetwise private eye. The likeable conman is, in my view, a difficult character to portray, but that doesn't stop people doing it. Coming soon after Locke Lamora is Joseph Pittman's London Frog. (World English rights just sold to Tekno -- report also from Publishers Lunch.)
Tekno-Books, by the way, turns out to be a really interesting outfit. Here's a profile of the CEO, Martin Greenberg. As with 17th Street, this is not an operation which could run in quite the same way in the UK, because (in my view) the market is not big enough.
Mitzi again
If you aren't able to go to erotic writer Mitzi Szereto's week-long course on writing erotic fiction, on the Greek island of Skiathos, in September, a similar course (weekend only) is being offered in the Isle of Wight, UK, 25-27 June. Details on The Grange web site.
Tips from Paul Dorrell
Paul Dorrell, whose Living the Artist's Life was mentioned here a while back, has begun posting Friday Tips for Artists on his blog. And, since Paul is also a novelist, some of what he has to say is also relevant to writers.
Take, for instance, his piece about 'The guilt of selling your work'. It seems that art students are frequently taught (and, being nice girls and boys, tend to believe) that it is dirty, disgusting, and demeaning to even think about selling their paintings and sculptures. Selling things is commerce, and they are artists. Not surprisingly, these crackpot ideas get people into emotional and financial difficulties.
Paul says, and I believe him, that 'dealers like me encounter those artists on a regular basis--especially after they've reached their 30s or 40s, are broke, emotionally exhausted, and feeling like a failure on all fronts--even if their work is great. That is indeed tragic.'
The situation is often the same with writers. Virtually all writers tend to be madly ambitious for fame and fortune, but have absorbed the view -- usually after three or four years of studying Eng Lit at a prestigious university -- that the only worthwhile fiction is literary fiction of the most highbrow variety, and that writing anything which might acutally entertain the woman on the Clapham omnibus is dirty, disgusting, demeaning, and all like that. That b'ain'tn't true. And you shouldn't believe it.
Write a page for charity
I wasn't going to bother reading this story, but I'm glad I did.
The Guardian has an article (link from booktrade.info) about a man who's inviting people -- via ebay -- to buy the right to write a page in a novel. Seventeen pages have been written so far, and there are to be 250 all told. Details on Novel Twists.
Well, it all sounds very silly, until you find out that Phil McArthur, the man behind it, dreamed up the idea while having chemo treatment for cancer, and that the money generated from the page auctions goes to Macmillan Cancer Support. Macmillan, for the sake of non-UK readers, is a charity which has a high reputation for looking after terminal cancer sufferers.
Contributors are allowed to publish a little note about themselves at the foot of the page. Who knows, Jonny Geller might see what you've writ and sign you up! And Random House might give you a six-figure contract! And all like that.
Keeping up to date in crime
I used to make a determined effort to keep abreast of developments in the crime-fiction field, because most of my books have fitted into that genre somewhere, loosely speaking. But then in 1990 I attended the Bouchercon conference in London and realised that, despite my best efforts, there were scores, if not hundreds, of practising crime writers who were completely unknown to me. So after that I stopped trying too hard, and just read whatever I came across, or heard about, which looked as if it might be interesting.
I mention this because if you want to keep up with what's new in crime fiction, and hear from a few experts in the field, Galleycat has a useful essay for you, complete with links to other stuff.
Final word on the London Book Fair
Galleycat also has sensible things to say about the London Book Fair fiasco, mentioned here on Monday.
A short history of the short story
Oh my God. I don't think I'm strong enough, but I owe it to you to try.
Bookslut had a link to a short history of the short story, written by William Boyd, and foolishly I clicked on it. It turns out that Boyd's article is in Prospect, and Boyd is a judge of the so-called (UK) National Short Story Prize, about which I was less than thrilled when it was first announced.
Boyd's history is yet another version of the 'official' history of the short story, and doesn't seem to me to offer anything very new. There is a good deal about Chekhov, for instance. But he does tell us that many of the stories that he has been reading, in connection with the great Prize, are in Chekhovian mode; which is no surprise at all, given the nature of the thing.
If you have any strength left -- or indeed any will to remain living -- after wading through Boyd, you might like to compare and contrast what he has to say with what I had to say in March 2005, both about the 'official history' of the short story, and the unofficial or true history of same.
Meanwhile, just after I wrote the above, it was announced that the winner of the National Short Story Prize is James Lasdun, for An Anxious Man. The Guardian has the story (link from booktrade.info). According to the judges, the story has 'visceral resonance'. Which sounds painful.
The winning story is not available online, but it will be published in the June issue of Prospect, available in shops from 24 May. Queues will doubtless form.
Let's hear it for David Mitchell's publicist
I have the very definite feeling that I would not be entertained by reading David Mitchell's new novel Black Swan Green. I know nothing about the novel, or him either, but I just get the feeling that I wouldn't be interested. The whole enterprise smells lit'ry to me, and, as is well known, I am an ignorant philistine, ill equipped to wrestle with the finer works of our time.
One thing I do know, however, is that David Mitchell's publicist has done one hell of a job for him. You can hardly open a newspaper or turn a page without seeing another review, or an interview, or a profile, or whatever. And if my eyes glaze over, and I hastily move on to the cricket scores, or to check what time New Tricks is on, that's not the publicist's fault.
Samples: Telegraph; Newsday; Guardian; Bookpage; Bookseller; and, doubtless, a whole lot more.
Don't blame me department
I'm gonna stand well back from this one. I just report the facts, OK? (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
Over at Slate, Tyler Cowen has a provocative piece on independent bookshops. What are independent bookshops good for? he asks. And answers: Not much.
Look, I didn't say that, OK? A big boy did it and ran away.
Tyler Cowen, by the way, is a professor of economics at George Mason University, and is the author of Good and Plenty: the creative successes of American arts funding. And if he's writing about the benefits of funding the arts at the taxpayers' expense it's presumably a very short book.
Kids don't know they're born
Went round my local W H Smith yesterday afternoon, and it wasn't as painful an experience as I had thought it might be. And the one thing that occurred to me is that kids today are very well served with books. In fact, some of the kids' books on display looked a great deal more interesting than the stuff in the adult section. (Jokes about my second childhood by snailmail only, please.)
Take Angie Sage, for instance. She seems to have written, or done illustrations for, every publisher in town. Google her, and you get author pages for her from Bloomsbury, Penguin, Hodder Headline, and HarperCollins. At least.
The books of Angie's which caught my eye, however, were the Septimus Heap novels. These have their own fancy web site, complete with ducks that seem to go miaow. The first Heap book, Magyck, looked as if it might be pretty good too.
Then there's Louise Rennison, who has written a series of novels under the overall title The Confessions of Georgia Nicolson. These have different titles in the US, but the one I looked at was called Then he ate my boy entrancers.
Hmm. Think about that. Boy entrancers. And then he -- whoever he is --ate them. No, no, couldn't possibly be. Not in a respectable shop like W H Smith. Well, fairly respectable. Anyway, I reckon kids have a pretty good time figuring out what's going on here. The cover, by the way, promises that you will laugh your knickers off.
Louise lives in Brighton, which she says is the British San Francisco. Which made me think, for a minute or two, that she must be blind, but then I realised that she is also a stand-up comedian, with a one-woman show.
Louise's heroine, Georgia, also has her own web site.
The Stage
The other thing I noticed in W H Smith is that The Stage has had a make-over. Sometime since last summer, which is the last time I looked at it.
The Stage, for those who have never had the pleasure, is a sort of UK version Variety, only vastly inferior in every way and much more limited in its scope. Some 25 or more years ago, there were rumours that David Frost was going to buy it, and even then it was described in the press as a 'clapped out show-business weekly'.
Anyway, there it still is. New tabloid-style shape, slightly snazzier layouts, but still pretty dull. I bought a copy for old times's sake and sighed over les neiges d'antan. There are many pages of advertising, which must be the main source of revenue by the look of it, and many of the adverts are for 'drama schools' and the like.
The Stage has an online presence, which has also been spruced up considerably since I last looked at it. And it seems to include most of the paper content, which is very user-friendly of it. But that suggests that the paper version is bought mainly for the ads -- wannabes in desperate search of work.
Susan Swan on Casanova
Last September, Susan Swan's novel What Casanova Told Me was favourably reviewed here, and since then she's posted an essay about the great man on her web site. For all his vices, Casanova is certainly a figure who has captured the public attention for well over two hundred years.
Last week, in connection with books about codes in works of art, I mentioned that the public seems very happy to go on buying and reading books about subjects and themes which, to you and me, may seem to have been thoroughly worked out and worked over. Here are a couple more examples.
Publishers Lunch reports that Mitch Silver's debut thriller Provenance has been sold to Trish Todd at Touchstone Fireside, in a major deal, by Larry Kirshbaum at LJK Literary Management. The plot features a nonfiction manuscript by Ian Fleming which provides evidence that the Duke of Windsor was in a treasonous plot with Hitler.
Well, ahem, plenty of people have dealt with this before. In fiction there's my own novel Beautiful Lady. Jack Higgins did Thunder Point. And in nonfiction it's a fairly well known story: try King Pawn or Black Knight? by Gwynne Thomas (Mainstream, 1995).
And then there's the continued use of a fairly well known type of character, such as the Cockney charlady, the dumb blonde, or the streetwise private eye. The likeable conman is, in my view, a difficult character to portray, but that doesn't stop people doing it. Coming soon after Locke Lamora is Joseph Pittman's London Frog. (World English rights just sold to Tekno -- report also from Publishers Lunch.)
Tekno-Books, by the way, turns out to be a really interesting outfit. Here's a profile of the CEO, Martin Greenberg. As with 17th Street, this is not an operation which could run in quite the same way in the UK, because (in my view) the market is not big enough.
Mitzi again
If you aren't able to go to erotic writer Mitzi Szereto's week-long course on writing erotic fiction, on the Greek island of Skiathos, in September, a similar course (weekend only) is being offered in the Isle of Wight, UK, 25-27 June. Details on The Grange web site.
Tips from Paul Dorrell
Paul Dorrell, whose Living the Artist's Life was mentioned here a while back, has begun posting Friday Tips for Artists on his blog. And, since Paul is also a novelist, some of what he has to say is also relevant to writers.
Take, for instance, his piece about 'The guilt of selling your work'. It seems that art students are frequently taught (and, being nice girls and boys, tend to believe) that it is dirty, disgusting, and demeaning to even think about selling their paintings and sculptures. Selling things is commerce, and they are artists. Not surprisingly, these crackpot ideas get people into emotional and financial difficulties.
Paul says, and I believe him, that 'dealers like me encounter those artists on a regular basis--especially after they've reached their 30s or 40s, are broke, emotionally exhausted, and feeling like a failure on all fronts--even if their work is great. That is indeed tragic.'
The situation is often the same with writers. Virtually all writers tend to be madly ambitious for fame and fortune, but have absorbed the view -- usually after three or four years of studying Eng Lit at a prestigious university -- that the only worthwhile fiction is literary fiction of the most highbrow variety, and that writing anything which might acutally entertain the woman on the Clapham omnibus is dirty, disgusting, demeaning, and all like that. That b'ain'tn't true. And you shouldn't believe it.
Write a page for charity
I wasn't going to bother reading this story, but I'm glad I did.
The Guardian has an article (link from booktrade.info) about a man who's inviting people -- via ebay -- to buy the right to write a page in a novel. Seventeen pages have been written so far, and there are to be 250 all told. Details on Novel Twists.
Well, it all sounds very silly, until you find out that Phil McArthur, the man behind it, dreamed up the idea while having chemo treatment for cancer, and that the money generated from the page auctions goes to Macmillan Cancer Support. Macmillan, for the sake of non-UK readers, is a charity which has a high reputation for looking after terminal cancer sufferers.
Contributors are allowed to publish a little note about themselves at the foot of the page. Who knows, Jonny Geller might see what you've writ and sign you up! And Random House might give you a six-figure contract! And all like that.
Keeping up to date in crime
I used to make a determined effort to keep abreast of developments in the crime-fiction field, because most of my books have fitted into that genre somewhere, loosely speaking. But then in 1990 I attended the Bouchercon conference in London and realised that, despite my best efforts, there were scores, if not hundreds, of practising crime writers who were completely unknown to me. So after that I stopped trying too hard, and just read whatever I came across, or heard about, which looked as if it might be interesting.
I mention this because if you want to keep up with what's new in crime fiction, and hear from a few experts in the field, Galleycat has a useful essay for you, complete with links to other stuff.
Final word on the London Book Fair
Galleycat also has sensible things to say about the London Book Fair fiasco, mentioned here on Monday.
In an age when Publishers Marketplace posts deals all year round, when blogs demystify the publishing industry and report news as it happens, and the Internet opens things up that much further - and when rights conferences such as BEA just lead everybody into a never ending bitch-and-moanfest - why is this all necessary? Granted, impressing upon the industry just how insanely big it is and how much more difficult it is to do business is an important lesson to learn every year, but is it all more trouble than it's worth?Probably. I haven't been to the LBF for about four years, and I don't feel that I've missed much, except the chance to say hello to a few people.
A short history of the short story
Oh my God. I don't think I'm strong enough, but I owe it to you to try.
Bookslut had a link to a short history of the short story, written by William Boyd, and foolishly I clicked on it. It turns out that Boyd's article is in Prospect, and Boyd is a judge of the so-called (UK) National Short Story Prize, about which I was less than thrilled when it was first announced.
Boyd's history is yet another version of the 'official' history of the short story, and doesn't seem to me to offer anything very new. There is a good deal about Chekhov, for instance. But he does tell us that many of the stories that he has been reading, in connection with the great Prize, are in Chekhovian mode; which is no surprise at all, given the nature of the thing.
If you have any strength left -- or indeed any will to remain living -- after wading through Boyd, you might like to compare and contrast what he has to say with what I had to say in March 2005, both about the 'official history' of the short story, and the unofficial or true history of same.
Meanwhile, just after I wrote the above, it was announced that the winner of the National Short Story Prize is James Lasdun, for An Anxious Man. The Guardian has the story (link from booktrade.info). According to the judges, the story has 'visceral resonance'. Which sounds painful.
The winning story is not available online, but it will be published in the June issue of Prospect, available in shops from 24 May. Queues will doubtless form.
Let's hear it for David Mitchell's publicist
I have the very definite feeling that I would not be entertained by reading David Mitchell's new novel Black Swan Green. I know nothing about the novel, or him either, but I just get the feeling that I wouldn't be interested. The whole enterprise smells lit'ry to me, and, as is well known, I am an ignorant philistine, ill equipped to wrestle with the finer works of our time.
One thing I do know, however, is that David Mitchell's publicist has done one hell of a job for him. You can hardly open a newspaper or turn a page without seeing another review, or an interview, or a profile, or whatever. And if my eyes glaze over, and I hastily move on to the cricket scores, or to check what time New Tricks is on, that's not the publicist's fault.
Samples: Telegraph; Newsday; Guardian; Bookpage; Bookseller; and, doubtless, a whole lot more.
Don't blame me department
I'm gonna stand well back from this one. I just report the facts, OK? (Link from Publishers Lunch.)
Over at Slate, Tyler Cowen has a provocative piece on independent bookshops. What are independent bookshops good for? he asks. And answers: Not much.
Look, I didn't say that, OK? A big boy did it and ran away.
Tyler Cowen, by the way, is a professor of economics at George Mason University, and is the author of Good and Plenty: the creative successes of American arts funding. And if he's writing about the benefits of funding the arts at the taxpayers' expense it's presumably a very short book.
Kids don't know they're born
Went round my local W H Smith yesterday afternoon, and it wasn't as painful an experience as I had thought it might be. And the one thing that occurred to me is that kids today are very well served with books. In fact, some of the kids' books on display looked a great deal more interesting than the stuff in the adult section. (Jokes about my second childhood by snailmail only, please.)
Take Angie Sage, for instance. She seems to have written, or done illustrations for, every publisher in town. Google her, and you get author pages for her from Bloomsbury, Penguin, Hodder Headline, and HarperCollins. At least.
The books of Angie's which caught my eye, however, were the Septimus Heap novels. These have their own fancy web site, complete with ducks that seem to go miaow. The first Heap book, Magyck, looked as if it might be pretty good too.
Then there's Louise Rennison, who has written a series of novels under the overall title The Confessions of Georgia Nicolson. These have different titles in the US, but the one I looked at was called Then he ate my boy entrancers.
Hmm. Think about that. Boy entrancers. And then he -- whoever he is --ate them. No, no, couldn't possibly be. Not in a respectable shop like W H Smith. Well, fairly respectable. Anyway, I reckon kids have a pretty good time figuring out what's going on here. The cover, by the way, promises that you will laugh your knickers off.
Louise lives in Brighton, which she says is the British San Francisco. Which made me think, for a minute or two, that she must be blind, but then I realised that she is also a stand-up comedian, with a one-woman show.
Louise's heroine, Georgia, also has her own web site.
The Stage
The other thing I noticed in W H Smith is that The Stage has had a make-over. Sometime since last summer, which is the last time I looked at it.
The Stage, for those who have never had the pleasure, is a sort of UK version Variety, only vastly inferior in every way and much more limited in its scope. Some 25 or more years ago, there were rumours that David Frost was going to buy it, and even then it was described in the press as a 'clapped out show-business weekly'.
Anyway, there it still is. New tabloid-style shape, slightly snazzier layouts, but still pretty dull. I bought a copy for old times's sake and sighed over les neiges d'antan. There are many pages of advertising, which must be the main source of revenue by the look of it, and many of the adverts are for 'drama schools' and the like.
The Stage has an online presence, which has also been spruced up considerably since I last looked at it. And it seems to include most of the paper content, which is very user-friendly of it. But that suggests that the paper version is bought mainly for the ads -- wannabes in desperate search of work.
Susan Swan on Casanova
Last September, Susan Swan's novel What Casanova Told Me was favourably reviewed here, and since then she's posted an essay about the great man on her web site. For all his vices, Casanova is certainly a figure who has captured the public attention for well over two hundred years.
Excerpt 33
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Being famous
A lot of things happened to us after that. Most of them good. Fortunately.
Until I got a bit fed up with it I was interviewed by all sorts of people. From all over the world. Radio, TV, newspapers. You name it. But in the end I said I’d had enough and Con said OK. I think I’d done more than he expected anyway.
I got paid for most of those interviews by the way. That’s why I did it. All the money went into Lisa’s trust fund. We have this accountant now – Debbie reckoned the financial complications were all a bit beyond her – so this accountant has set it all up in what they call a tax-efficient vehicle. Sounds a bit like a cheap car to me, but that’s what they call it. I don’t pretend to understand it but Debbie says it’s as good as we can hope for. Lisa should do all right by the time she’s twenty-one.
Oh, and I got a new van out of it. The old one really was a bit clapped out.
Debbie got far more attention from the media than I did. For one thing she’s much more attractive to look at, and for another she knows what to say. Which is more than I do.
Debbie not only gets interviewed and photographed, she gets to do TV presenting. She only does things that she’s interested in. For instance, she did a series of shows about how to feed your kids. Concentrating on fruit and vegetables and cutting out the sweets. That sort of thing.
Mr Patel has taken a bit of a shine to Debbie. So Con says anyway. Not that Debbie has ever met him, or me either, but Con says you never do get to meet him. Not face to face. It’s all done on the phone. Anyway, Mr Patel likes Debbie, so his channel keeps finding her stuff to do. And she’s very good at it. She’s got an agent now. Someone who finds her other work and makes sure she gets paid properly.
Carol has done well out of all this nonsense too. As soon as people found out that she used to be married to me, her party bookings went up like nobody’s business. Actually I think she was dead scared that the opposite would happen. After all, perhaps people wouldn’t want to have someone in their home who’d once been married to Harry the Man with AIDS. But it turned out that they did. Everyone wants to meet her.
Carol not only does the parties, she does a talk. It’s called I Was Married to Harry. And she gives it to women’s institutes and conferences and stuff like that. I saw a tape of her doing it once, and she’s bloody good.
Funny that. Both my wives have had this gift of the gab. And she gets paid nice little fees too. It surprised me when she said how much she could earn.
I asked Lisa what she thought of her Mum going around giving speeches and things. So she smiled and said, ‘Well, you know Mum. Always planning something new.’ And she is too.
Another thing Carol and Lisa did together was an article in Hello magazine called Living with a Handicapped Child. Not that Lisa is handicapped really. Disabled is the right word. She was just born without one foot, and has a false one.
I was a bit worried that Lisa might be upset about being labelled handicapped. So in a roundabout way I asked her whether she minded. She just shrugged and said ‘I cried all the way to the bank.’
Now I wonder who taught her to think like that? Con, I shouldn’t wonder. And she’s only eight now. God knows what she’ll be like when she’s eighteen.
And then of course Con and Mr Patel decided that we would do another thirteen half-hour shows. This second series was called Harry and Debbie Get Married.
You wouldn’t think anyone could make thirteen shows out of two people getting married, would you? But they did. And you wouldn’t think anyone would bother to watch it either. But they did that too. Not as many as for the first show it’s true, but Con was well pleased with the numbers. The show was made last year, soon after the end of the first one, and it went out in the autumn.
Everybody else seemed to do well too. Mr Redmond at the church says that he’s getting lots more people visiting the church these days. And the money he gets in the collection boxes has gone up too. So he’s happy about that.
People come into the church hoping to find me there, apparently. And sometimes they do, because I still work there at least once a week. And I don’t mind having a chat with them now and then, and signing the odd autograph. And then I get back to work and they soon take the hint.
Tony down the pub reckons he owes me a few drinks too. Even now people wander in – people he’s never seen before – and ask if I’m likely to be in soon. For a while he wanted to give me a free drink whenever I went in there, because of the increased business. But I wasn’t having that. I prefer to pay my way.
And then there’s Con, of course. Con’s career has gone off like a bit of a rocket. Or so people tell me. He’s not complaining anyway. The last time I saw him he was off to a conference in Geneva. Something to do with television in the age of the celebrity. He was giving the keynote speech. Whatever that means.
Being famous
A lot of things happened to us after that. Most of them good. Fortunately.
Until I got a bit fed up with it I was interviewed by all sorts of people. From all over the world. Radio, TV, newspapers. You name it. But in the end I said I’d had enough and Con said OK. I think I’d done more than he expected anyway.
I got paid for most of those interviews by the way. That’s why I did it. All the money went into Lisa’s trust fund. We have this accountant now – Debbie reckoned the financial complications were all a bit beyond her – so this accountant has set it all up in what they call a tax-efficient vehicle. Sounds a bit like a cheap car to me, but that’s what they call it. I don’t pretend to understand it but Debbie says it’s as good as we can hope for. Lisa should do all right by the time she’s twenty-one.
Oh, and I got a new van out of it. The old one really was a bit clapped out.
Debbie got far more attention from the media than I did. For one thing she’s much more attractive to look at, and for another she knows what to say. Which is more than I do.
Debbie not only gets interviewed and photographed, she gets to do TV presenting. She only does things that she’s interested in. For instance, she did a series of shows about how to feed your kids. Concentrating on fruit and vegetables and cutting out the sweets. That sort of thing.
Mr Patel has taken a bit of a shine to Debbie. So Con says anyway. Not that Debbie has ever met him, or me either, but Con says you never do get to meet him. Not face to face. It’s all done on the phone. Anyway, Mr Patel likes Debbie, so his channel keeps finding her stuff to do. And she’s very good at it. She’s got an agent now. Someone who finds her other work and makes sure she gets paid properly.
Carol has done well out of all this nonsense too. As soon as people found out that she used to be married to me, her party bookings went up like nobody’s business. Actually I think she was dead scared that the opposite would happen. After all, perhaps people wouldn’t want to have someone in their home who’d once been married to Harry the Man with AIDS. But it turned out that they did. Everyone wants to meet her.
Carol not only does the parties, she does a talk. It’s called I Was Married to Harry. And she gives it to women’s institutes and conferences and stuff like that. I saw a tape of her doing it once, and she’s bloody good.
Funny that. Both my wives have had this gift of the gab. And she gets paid nice little fees too. It surprised me when she said how much she could earn.
I asked Lisa what she thought of her Mum going around giving speeches and things. So she smiled and said, ‘Well, you know Mum. Always planning something new.’ And she is too.
Another thing Carol and Lisa did together was an article in Hello magazine called Living with a Handicapped Child. Not that Lisa is handicapped really. Disabled is the right word. She was just born without one foot, and has a false one.
I was a bit worried that Lisa might be upset about being labelled handicapped. So in a roundabout way I asked her whether she minded. She just shrugged and said ‘I cried all the way to the bank.’
Now I wonder who taught her to think like that? Con, I shouldn’t wonder. And she’s only eight now. God knows what she’ll be like when she’s eighteen.
And then of course Con and Mr Patel decided that we would do another thirteen half-hour shows. This second series was called Harry and Debbie Get Married.
You wouldn’t think anyone could make thirteen shows out of two people getting married, would you? But they did. And you wouldn’t think anyone would bother to watch it either. But they did that too. Not as many as for the first show it’s true, but Con was well pleased with the numbers. The show was made last year, soon after the end of the first one, and it went out in the autumn.
Everybody else seemed to do well too. Mr Redmond at the church says that he’s getting lots more people visiting the church these days. And the money he gets in the collection boxes has gone up too. So he’s happy about that.
People come into the church hoping to find me there, apparently. And sometimes they do, because I still work there at least once a week. And I don’t mind having a chat with them now and then, and signing the odd autograph. And then I get back to work and they soon take the hint.
Tony down the pub reckons he owes me a few drinks too. Even now people wander in – people he’s never seen before – and ask if I’m likely to be in soon. For a while he wanted to give me a free drink whenever I went in there, because of the increased business. But I wasn’t having that. I prefer to pay my way.
And then there’s Con, of course. Con’s career has gone off like a bit of a rocket. Or so people tell me. He’s not complaining anyway. The last time I saw him he was off to a conference in Geneva. Something to do with television in the age of the celebrity. He was giving the keynote speech. Whatever that means.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Muriel Spark: The Finishing School
Dame Muriel Spark, who died recently after a fifty-year career as a novelist, published her last book in 2004, when she was in her late eighties. Its title was The Finishing School.
Like much of Spark's work, The Finishing School is short: 155 pages (themselves short), and by my calculation the book is well under 40,000 words. This I regard, by the way, as a virtue; I have argued in the past that most novels are too long.
The Finishing School describes a small, exclusive school for the teenaged children of very wealthy parents. It is run by Rowland, a man not yet thirty. Rowland has literary ambitions, and is writing a novel. Or trying to; it is not going at all well. Chris, a seventeen-year-old pupil at the school, is also writing a novel. His is going extremely well, and publishers are showing a marked interest in the output of one so young, so good-looking, and so talented.
The bulk of the novel describes how Rowland becomes increasingly jealous of Chris, to the point where it is feared that he may even be violent towards him. Chris, for his part, seems to feed off his teacher's jealousy.
And, er, that's about it, really. I'm not going to tell you how the story ends, but the ending contrives to be both funny and sad, which is a pretty neat trick, and it constitutes a fitting conclusion to a long and distinguished career. Along the way, The Finishing School may well provide some harmless amusement for anyone who has ever written a novel (or tried to), and anyone who reads novels on a regular basis. The comments and asides about writers, publishers, and 'literary experts' will doubtless ring a few bells and raise a few smiles.
There are only two other things to be said.
The first is relatively trivial.
The punctuation of this novel is decidedly odd, in places, as is the use of viewpoint, and it seems to me that one of two things probably occurred. Dame Muriel may, perhaps, have become a little careless as she grew older, and she may have lost the edge of her concentration, and possibly eyesight.
There is another possibility, however, which is that Dame Muriel realised that she was dealing with some pretty thin material, and decided that she needed to find some way to keep readers awake; so she threw in some punctuational and technical oddities to that end.
A similar thing happens, you may have noticed, in drama. Or perhaps you haven't noticed, unless you write scripts. But what often happens is that a writer writes a line which has a natural inflection to it. As in: Character A: Mary was late for school today. Character B: After what she drank last night, she would be!
You and I, speaking Character B's line, would say: She WOULD be. But not today's actors. Oh no. Today the actor would say (as I heard one do last night): She would BE.
God knows why they do this, but it happens all the time. Perhaps the actors and the directors of today have so little faith in writers that they feel obliged to hold the audience's attention with these weird inflections. But the next time you watch a TV drama, just count the number of instances. It's so commonplace that it's as if some rule book somewhere says that it's compulsory.
And perhaps, as I say, Dame Muriel adopted a similar device in her last novel. Putting commas where you least expect them; changing from one character's viewpoint to another, in the middle of a paragraph. She had certainly been around long enough, and had written enough novels, to be well aware of what she was up to.
The other point which has to be made is a rather sad one. But this blog is, after all, dedicated to telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about books and publishing, however painful that truth may sometimes be.
And the plain fact of the matter is this: If this book had not had the name of Dame Muriel Spark attached to it, it would never have seen the light of day outside of Lulu.com.
Suppose this book had been submitted to an agent or publisher by Freda Farnsbarns, an unpublished writer from Huddersfield -- what would have been the response? Well, for one thing it would have been regarded as too short, too slight, and, if anyone ever read more than four or five pages, slightly amateurish.
Dame Muriel has her own peculiar style in this book, as mentioned above, and it is easy to mistake it for a lack of technique and a failure to appreciate the finer points of viewpoint; not to mention punctuation.
So. With Dame Muriel on the cover of the book, it gets lots of plaudits. With Freda Farnsbarns on the front page of the typescript, no sale.
Now that isn't fair, is it? Of course it's not. But then, if anyone ever told you that life is fair, you were being grievously misled.
Like much of Spark's work, The Finishing School is short: 155 pages (themselves short), and by my calculation the book is well under 40,000 words. This I regard, by the way, as a virtue; I have argued in the past that most novels are too long.
The Finishing School describes a small, exclusive school for the teenaged children of very wealthy parents. It is run by Rowland, a man not yet thirty. Rowland has literary ambitions, and is writing a novel. Or trying to; it is not going at all well. Chris, a seventeen-year-old pupil at the school, is also writing a novel. His is going extremely well, and publishers are showing a marked interest in the output of one so young, so good-looking, and so talented.
The bulk of the novel describes how Rowland becomes increasingly jealous of Chris, to the point where it is feared that he may even be violent towards him. Chris, for his part, seems to feed off his teacher's jealousy.
And, er, that's about it, really. I'm not going to tell you how the story ends, but the ending contrives to be both funny and sad, which is a pretty neat trick, and it constitutes a fitting conclusion to a long and distinguished career. Along the way, The Finishing School may well provide some harmless amusement for anyone who has ever written a novel (or tried to), and anyone who reads novels on a regular basis. The comments and asides about writers, publishers, and 'literary experts' will doubtless ring a few bells and raise a few smiles.
There are only two other things to be said.
The first is relatively trivial.
The punctuation of this novel is decidedly odd, in places, as is the use of viewpoint, and it seems to me that one of two things probably occurred. Dame Muriel may, perhaps, have become a little careless as she grew older, and she may have lost the edge of her concentration, and possibly eyesight.
There is another possibility, however, which is that Dame Muriel realised that she was dealing with some pretty thin material, and decided that she needed to find some way to keep readers awake; so she threw in some punctuational and technical oddities to that end.
A similar thing happens, you may have noticed, in drama. Or perhaps you haven't noticed, unless you write scripts. But what often happens is that a writer writes a line which has a natural inflection to it. As in: Character A: Mary was late for school today. Character B: After what she drank last night, she would be!
You and I, speaking Character B's line, would say: She WOULD be. But not today's actors. Oh no. Today the actor would say (as I heard one do last night): She would BE.
God knows why they do this, but it happens all the time. Perhaps the actors and the directors of today have so little faith in writers that they feel obliged to hold the audience's attention with these weird inflections. But the next time you watch a TV drama, just count the number of instances. It's so commonplace that it's as if some rule book somewhere says that it's compulsory.
And perhaps, as I say, Dame Muriel adopted a similar device in her last novel. Putting commas where you least expect them; changing from one character's viewpoint to another, in the middle of a paragraph. She had certainly been around long enough, and had written enough novels, to be well aware of what she was up to.
The other point which has to be made is a rather sad one. But this blog is, after all, dedicated to telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about books and publishing, however painful that truth may sometimes be.
And the plain fact of the matter is this: If this book had not had the name of Dame Muriel Spark attached to it, it would never have seen the light of day outside of Lulu.com.
Suppose this book had been submitted to an agent or publisher by Freda Farnsbarns, an unpublished writer from Huddersfield -- what would have been the response? Well, for one thing it would have been regarded as too short, too slight, and, if anyone ever read more than four or five pages, slightly amateurish.
Dame Muriel has her own peculiar style in this book, as mentioned above, and it is easy to mistake it for a lack of technique and a failure to appreciate the finer points of viewpoint; not to mention punctuation.
So. With Dame Muriel on the cover of the book, it gets lots of plaudits. With Freda Farnsbarns on the front page of the typescript, no sale.
Now that isn't fair, is it? Of course it's not. But then, if anyone ever told you that life is fair, you were being grievously misled.
Excerpt 32
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
I get to hug Lisa and Debbie springs a surprise
The newspaper that was really cheesed off about me and Debbie was the Sun, which Con says is a big competitor for the Moon. Which I suppose is obvious really from the names.
What really made them mad, Con said, was they didn’t get any co-operation from him on the TV-show stories because Mr Patel hates their guts. So they made it all up instead.
The Sun did an interview with my ex-wife Carol. Or reckoned they did. ‘Harry was insatiable in bed,’ said blonde Carol, 33. ‘He was a four times a night man.’
Debbie says that makes me the same as Mr Blair. Though how she comes to know that I’m really not sure.
This wasn’t the first time the Sun had made stuff up about Carol and it really upset her. She rang me up in tears when she read it. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry.’ But it wasn’t her fault at all.
Anyway that story in the Sun was the reason why we all finally got to meet each other – Debbie and me and Carol and her new man Pete. We did it the same day as the Sun interview, because Carol was so upset.
Fortunately Carol and Pete don’t live very far away. Well, it’s not far if you want to make the journey. But it’s far enough for it to be an excuse if you don’t. But that day Carol really did want to come and see me, and I wasn’t about to turn her down.
I wasn’t sure if she would bring Lisa, to tell you the truth. And I wasn’t sure if Lisa would remember me. But of course she did.
Lisa was first out of the car when they drove up. It was one of those big 4x4 things. I could see her face in the back window, grinning at me and waving, even before it stopped. And then she ran up and gave me a big hug.
I cried, of course. I hadn’t put my arms round her for over two years and I sobbed like a baby. I’ve cried quite a bit since all this stuff started. But I never used to cry before.
The others all introduced themselves to each other and stood around chatting and pretending not to notice what a mess I was in. And then when I recovered a bit things got more or less back to normal.
We all had a cup of tea and Lisa showed me her bionic foot as she calls it. Quite a work of art that is, I can tell you. All on the National Health too. Which is just as well. Though I gather Pete makes a lot more money than I ever did.
Then we went out and had a meal. But not at The Garage. We went to my local.
Afterwards we all went back to my house and Lisa and I made the coffee. She’d never stopped talking all night, hadn’t Lisa, and when she got me on my own in the kitchen she got down to the real nitty-gritty.
‘Dad…’ she said. And when she says that you know something’s coming.
‘Yes, Lisa?’
‘Are you going to marry Debbie?’
‘Hmm,’ I said. After a minute. ‘I don’t really know, Lisa.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Yes. Very much.’
‘Why don’t you ask her then?’
‘Well.’ Another little think. ‘I think I’m a bit nervous about it, to tell you the truth. It might spoil things.’
‘Well,’ said Lisa, ‘I think you should. I don’t like to think of you all on your own. Mum and Pete are married.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’
So that gave me something to think about. But I didn’t actually do anything about it.
A couple of days after that there was the official presentation of my prize for the TV show. The bit where I actually got the million pounds. Or was supposed to have done.
Con said he didn’t want to have the presentation the day after the final episode because he wanted to milk the publicity for a bit longer. Well he did that all right. So it was a few days later.
When the time came we all had to go up to London. And Carol and Peter and Lisa came too. It was all done in the conference room at the TV company headquarters. Banks of cameras there were. Dozens of them. And microphones.
There had been some talk that Mr Patel might make the presentation himself. But at the last minute he decided not to. Someone told Debbie that he’s not too keen on shaking hands with people who are HIV positive. I don’t know about that, but I wasn’t bothered about meeting him anyway.
In the end the cheque was handed over by a girl called Nancy, who became a big star in one of Con’s other shows. She’d recently had her boobs done, and she made sure that everyone got a good look at them. Can’t say I fancied them myself. But everyone to their own thing.
The cheque was one of those big ones with one million pounds in large numbers on it. All faked, as usual. I never had been going to get a million pounds – not all in one lump anyway. And I didn’t then. I just had to stand there and smile while the cameras nearly blinded me with flashes.
At the end there was a question and answer thing. Most of the questions were aimed at Debbie, because by that time the press boys knew that they’d get better answers from her. And anyway she’s nicer to look at.
Some of the questions they ask are really amazing. How do you feel about winning a million pounds? I mean, what can you say? Disappointed?
As I say, most of the questions were for Debbie. And it wasn’t long before someone asked her the obvious.
‘Any chance of you two living together, Debbie?’
‘Living in sin?’ said Debbie. ‘Certainly not. My Mum would never forgive me.’
‘If you were to live together you’d have to get married then?’
‘Oh yes. Definitely.’
‘And is Harry going to do the decent thing and make an honest woman of you?’
‘Well,’ said Debbie. ‘Funny you should ask. As a matter of fact he is. Harry popped the question to me only last week. Went down on his knee and everything. It was very romantic.’
Pause….
‘And what did you say?’
‘I accepted him, of course.’
Well, this was all news to me. And it was big news to the press boys too. They all started shouting at once.
At the back of the room I saw Lisa’s mouth drop open. And then, when she realised what she’d heard, she started to jump up and down and cheer.
Carol cheered too. Which was nice.
I get to hug Lisa and Debbie springs a surprise
The newspaper that was really cheesed off about me and Debbie was the Sun, which Con says is a big competitor for the Moon. Which I suppose is obvious really from the names.
What really made them mad, Con said, was they didn’t get any co-operation from him on the TV-show stories because Mr Patel hates their guts. So they made it all up instead.
The Sun did an interview with my ex-wife Carol. Or reckoned they did. ‘Harry was insatiable in bed,’ said blonde Carol, 33. ‘He was a four times a night man.’
Debbie says that makes me the same as Mr Blair. Though how she comes to know that I’m really not sure.
This wasn’t the first time the Sun had made stuff up about Carol and it really upset her. She rang me up in tears when she read it. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry.’ But it wasn’t her fault at all.
Anyway that story in the Sun was the reason why we all finally got to meet each other – Debbie and me and Carol and her new man Pete. We did it the same day as the Sun interview, because Carol was so upset.
Fortunately Carol and Pete don’t live very far away. Well, it’s not far if you want to make the journey. But it’s far enough for it to be an excuse if you don’t. But that day Carol really did want to come and see me, and I wasn’t about to turn her down.
I wasn’t sure if she would bring Lisa, to tell you the truth. And I wasn’t sure if Lisa would remember me. But of course she did.
Lisa was first out of the car when they drove up. It was one of those big 4x4 things. I could see her face in the back window, grinning at me and waving, even before it stopped. And then she ran up and gave me a big hug.
I cried, of course. I hadn’t put my arms round her for over two years and I sobbed like a baby. I’ve cried quite a bit since all this stuff started. But I never used to cry before.
The others all introduced themselves to each other and stood around chatting and pretending not to notice what a mess I was in. And then when I recovered a bit things got more or less back to normal.
We all had a cup of tea and Lisa showed me her bionic foot as she calls it. Quite a work of art that is, I can tell you. All on the National Health too. Which is just as well. Though I gather Pete makes a lot more money than I ever did.
Then we went out and had a meal. But not at The Garage. We went to my local.
Afterwards we all went back to my house and Lisa and I made the coffee. She’d never stopped talking all night, hadn’t Lisa, and when she got me on my own in the kitchen she got down to the real nitty-gritty.
‘Dad…’ she said. And when she says that you know something’s coming.
‘Yes, Lisa?’
‘Are you going to marry Debbie?’
‘Hmm,’ I said. After a minute. ‘I don’t really know, Lisa.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Yes. Very much.’
‘Why don’t you ask her then?’
‘Well.’ Another little think. ‘I think I’m a bit nervous about it, to tell you the truth. It might spoil things.’
‘Well,’ said Lisa, ‘I think you should. I don’t like to think of you all on your own. Mum and Pete are married.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’
So that gave me something to think about. But I didn’t actually do anything about it.
A couple of days after that there was the official presentation of my prize for the TV show. The bit where I actually got the million pounds. Or was supposed to have done.
Con said he didn’t want to have the presentation the day after the final episode because he wanted to milk the publicity for a bit longer. Well he did that all right. So it was a few days later.
When the time came we all had to go up to London. And Carol and Peter and Lisa came too. It was all done in the conference room at the TV company headquarters. Banks of cameras there were. Dozens of them. And microphones.
There had been some talk that Mr Patel might make the presentation himself. But at the last minute he decided not to. Someone told Debbie that he’s not too keen on shaking hands with people who are HIV positive. I don’t know about that, but I wasn’t bothered about meeting him anyway.
In the end the cheque was handed over by a girl called Nancy, who became a big star in one of Con’s other shows. She’d recently had her boobs done, and she made sure that everyone got a good look at them. Can’t say I fancied them myself. But everyone to their own thing.
The cheque was one of those big ones with one million pounds in large numbers on it. All faked, as usual. I never had been going to get a million pounds – not all in one lump anyway. And I didn’t then. I just had to stand there and smile while the cameras nearly blinded me with flashes.
At the end there was a question and answer thing. Most of the questions were aimed at Debbie, because by that time the press boys knew that they’d get better answers from her. And anyway she’s nicer to look at.
Some of the questions they ask are really amazing. How do you feel about winning a million pounds? I mean, what can you say? Disappointed?
As I say, most of the questions were for Debbie. And it wasn’t long before someone asked her the obvious.
‘Any chance of you two living together, Debbie?’
‘Living in sin?’ said Debbie. ‘Certainly not. My Mum would never forgive me.’
‘If you were to live together you’d have to get married then?’
‘Oh yes. Definitely.’
‘And is Harry going to do the decent thing and make an honest woman of you?’
‘Well,’ said Debbie. ‘Funny you should ask. As a matter of fact he is. Harry popped the question to me only last week. Went down on his knee and everything. It was very romantic.’
Pause….
‘And what did you say?’
‘I accepted him, of course.’
Well, this was all news to me. And it was big news to the press boys too. They all started shouting at once.
At the back of the room I saw Lisa’s mouth drop open. And then, when she realised what she’d heard, she started to jump up and down and cheer.
Carol cheered too. Which was nice.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Something from the weekend
Is it my imagination, or are there more rows and ding-dongs going on than usual? Anyway, here are a few (usually bad-tempered) exchanges which have been going on in the last day or two.
London's next book fair
OK. So there's been a London book fair for a good few years, for agents and publishers to go sell a few rights, get drunk, and screw each other's socks off, as per usual. Last year it was moved, and people wanted it put back where it was before. Reed, the firm that moved it, said get used to it. Then the organisers of the Frankfurt book fair said that they would run a book fair in London that would be cheaper, more central, lots more parties, free cocaine, nice clean girls from the very best local brothels, and so forth. So then Reed said they would go back to the old place anyway. And the Frankfurt guys, who thought they had a deal with the Earl's Court/Olympia exhibition hall that Reed have now said they are going to be using again, are pissed.
Says Publishers Lunch:
London's next book fair
OK. So there's been a London book fair for a good few years, for agents and publishers to go sell a few rights, get drunk, and screw each other's socks off, as per usual. Last year it was moved, and people wanted it put back where it was before. Reed, the firm that moved it, said get used to it. Then the organisers of the Frankfurt book fair said that they would run a book fair in London that would be cheaper, more central, lots more parties, free cocaine, nice clean girls from the very best local brothels, and so forth. So then Reed said they would go back to the old place anyway. And the Frankfurt guys, who thought they had a deal with the Earl's Court/Olympia exhibition hall that Reed have now said they are going to be using again, are pissed.
Says Publishers Lunch:
Just days after Reed Exhibitions UK chief Alastair Gornall explained why Earl's Court was a bad venue for a book fair and urged the trade to trot out to Excel one more time, the organizers of the London Book Fair have done a complete turnaround--and apparently have screwed the folks at theFrankfurt Book Fair who inspired the change in the first place.And so it goes. Details, if you really must have them:
- Managing information (link from booktrade.info)
- London Book Fair announcement
- Publishing News
- Book Standard
Oh, and there'll be a whole lot more.
The ?best! novels of the last 25 years???
I really am going to have to give up reading all this shit, I really am. Anyway, it seems that the New York Times have consulted the good and the great, who have decided that the best American novel of the last 25 years is Toni Morrison's Beloved.
I really cannot be bothered with this. Especially when I find that one of the top dozen or so is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Anyone who thinks that Toole's book is one of the 'best' books of any period longer than three days, in a bad week, is just plain certifiable, and no two ways about it.
Jessa Crispin on Bookslut wasn't too impressed by the NYT; neither was M.A. Orthofer on the Literary Saloon. Or Galleycat. Well, as far as a newspaper is concerned, it all helps to fills up the white space between the adverts, doesn't it?
Mention of Toni Morrison reminds me of an incident which happened a good few years ago. And for which I accept no responsibility whatever. I simply relate the facts.
There I was, sitting in the senior common room, minding my own business and contemplating the state of nature, with the aid of a cup of coffee, when up hove a friend, with a gleeful expression on his face.
'Tell me,' he said, 'why did Toni Morrison win the Nobel prize for literature?' And he said it in the tone of voice that one uses to ask 'Why did the chicken cross the road?'
'I don't know,' I said, moving into straight-man mode. 'Why did Toni Morrison win the Nobel prize for literature?'
'Because she's black, female, and unreadable! An unbeatable combination!' And off my friend went, chortling happily to himself.
The whole NYT farrago of nonsense reminds me of a book which I wasn't even going to mention: The Test of Time -- subtitled What makes a Classic a Classic? and published by Waterstone's (with the aid of the Arts Council if you please, i.e. taxpayers' money) as a device to shift a few books.
Edited by Andrew Holgate and Honor Wilson-Fletcher, this book also sought the opinions of the good and great, who were asked various questions, such as What is your definition of a classic novel? They were also asked to nominate ten essential classic novels for the next 100 years, whatever that means, and to nominate up to ten books which they believed should never have been called classics.
Published in 1999, you may find a secondhand copy of this paperback in some charity shop or other (as I did), but I really wouldn't advise you to go looking for it. Not unless you wish to have the digestion of your dinner disturbed and your blood pressure raised. It's all waffle and piffle.
Steve Clackson takes flak
Steve Clackson, as mentioned here last week, posted some chapters from his novel Sand Storm on his blog, and found that they were not universally admired. Go to the May archives of the blog and scroll down and you will find masses and masses of comments.
There are even comments on the comments on other blogs. See Edward Champion, for instance.
Well, if nothing else, this procedure has certainly got Steve's book noticed. And now he has posted a few more chapters.
Google trends
OK, this one isn't controversial. Or bad tempered. Yet.
Google has developed a facility called Google Trends. (Link from Publishers Lunch.) You type in various terms and it draws you pictures, from which, according to the caveat at the bottom, you should be wary of drawing any conclusions.
Well, I tried a few multiple terms, as per the example, and couldn't get a lot of sense out of it. If you use single terms, such as books, you don't get much either. Except that in the case of books, the top city listed is Chennai, India. Which is what you would expect, really. (The world is flat, remember.)
Times books
Some weeks, I can go through the Books section of the Saturday Times in about three minutes flat, but last Saturday, for a change, there were some interesting things in it.
Jeanette Winterson, for instance, has a weekly column called Her Word, which must be a nice little earner. Pays a lot better per word than writing novels, I'll bet, though Jeanette is a considerable earner there too. Anyway, this week she's on about damp squids, and giving up the goat, and so forth. She wants other examples, but I'm not clever enough to think of any.
Then there's a review of Jilly Cooper's new book, which I don't want to read, thank you, though they're amiable enough. Jilly is a huge seller in the UK but doesn't do much, so far as I know, in the US. Anyway, somehow or other I got the impression that the new one was shorter than some of the others. So I checked the figures. It turns out to be 864 pages! Wicked, as I believe the young people say.
And finally, a well deserved success. About a year ago I reviewed, with some enthusiasm, Marina Lewycka's novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. At that point, the novel was not very well known. True, it had been shortlisted for the Orange prize, but I doubt whether that shifted many copies; and it had been the clear winner of the Wodehouse prize, for comic fiction, although I did not personally find it all that amusing; it has its dark side. And then later on, Tractors was longlisted for the Booker.
However... in what I take to be a clear result of word of mouth recommendation, rather than a consequence of any of the above, the paperback version of Marina's book has been a very substantial seller. The Times's top 50 bestsellers list shows it at number 8, with 16,536 sold last week alone, and it's been selling at that rate for a couple of months. Couldn't happen to a nicer lady, and it's all well deserved.
Elsewhere in the Times Books bit, there's an interview with Elmore Leonard, and if you haven't read one before he's worth a look.
And finally, the Hot Type column reports that two self-publishers are doing well, partly, it claims, because Waterstone's supported them; which suggests that the source of the info was a Waterstone's press release.
Jack Linley, writing as Jack Sheffield, has got a two-book deal with Transworld on the strength of his semi-autobiographical novel Teacher, Teacher! (Looks as if it might be fun.) And Imran Ahmad's Unimagined, which is an account of growing up Muslim, has been bought by Aurum Press.
So much for Saturday's paper. The Sunday Times has an interview with Gail Rebuck, who is described as 'the most powerful woman in British publishing'.
Business as usual
Just in case you found that story (above) about Jack Sheffield and Imran Ahmad sort of heart-warming and encouraging, here's one which will prove that nothing much has changed. Joel Rickett, in the Guardian, reports that Chantelle has got £350,000 out of Random House (boss lady Gail Rebuck, see above) for her 'life story'. She's 22.
Joel describes Chantelle as a "fake" celebrity, but that really won't do at all. True, she wasn't a celeb when she appeared in Big Brother, but she is now all right. However, he may have a better point when he quotes one of Chantelle's fans: 'I fink she shud def rite an ortobiogafy but i dont fink i wud reed it cuz i aint red a buk in me lyf! LOL reedin iz 4 geekz n sad ppl.
Which says it all, really. Have a nice day, geekz n sad ppl.
Excerpt 31
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
The final show
On the night when the final show in the television series was broadcast, Debbie and I went round to see our friends Jack and Sarah. They didn’t need to watch it go out on TV because we gave them a tape of it the night before.
Sarah made us a very nice meal and we watched something else while more or less the whole world was watching me and Debbie go at it.
As I said, I never did sit through the whole programme myself, but Jack and Sarah definitely did. They said they were a bit stunned by it actually.
What really amazed them was all that business about wiring me and Debbie up to machines which showed our blood pressure and pulse and whatnot. They said that gave you one hell of a picture of two people actually doing it.
And as for the end. That bit where all the usual things happen – rather messy things – they said that was completely unbelievable.
Apparently, to put it crudely, that camera they put up inside Debbie had these amazing pictures of the end of my knob going in and out. And when I climaxed, and sperm squirted out of the end, Jack and Sarah both went ‘Ughhhhh!’ at exactly the same moment.
They didn’t stop watching though.
Neither did anyone else. As I say, it feels as if everyone in the entire world watched that programme. And they all went ‘Ughhhh! How disgusting!’ at the end. Because they all thought it was pretty gross.
But everybody talked about nothing else for about the next three weeks.
Con said the viewing figures were enormous. But as usual he never told me what enormous meant.
The Moon went barmy too. The next morning there was a big black headline on the front page: HARRY SHAGS DEBBIE – LIVE!! And inside there were about fourteen pages of stuff, all about us. Including, needless to say, that famous shot of the end of my dick, just to prove that I did it without a condom.
I did read the Moon stuff I must admit. Here’s a bit:
Last night the first uncensored shag in television history was performed live and exclusive on the Asteroid channel.
Doing the dirty deed, without a care in the world, were Harry the Man with AIDS and his girlfriend Debbie.
Debbie risked her life last night not for the sake of money but because she had fallen in love with Harry. The lonely 40-year-old captured her heart…
And so on. Total cobblers from start to finish. By the time I’d finished reading it my mouth had dropped wide open and my eyes were very near popping out of my head.
You have to admire the bloke who wrote that story – he had one hell of an imagination. Just about the only things he got right were our names. And even they weren’t always spelt right.
Over the next few days everybody and his brother was asked what they thought about it. In the newspapers I mean. All the papers got in on the act.
Debbie showed me the Times. They had quotes from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi, some Muslim bloke, Fergie (the royal one), and a dozen others.
The Times even did an editorial on it. I didn’t really know what an editorial was until Con and Debbie explained it to me. Anyway the Times’s editorial was headed A Step Too Far. They thought Con had overdone it.
There was even talk about the TV channel and the Moon being prosecuted for obscenity, because they showed too many private bits of me and Debbie. Con would have loved that. When it was first mentioned he clasped his hands together and looked upwards and said ‘Oh yes Lord! Please let it happen!’
But it never did.
I don’t think I ever saw Con as happy as he was for the couple of days after that programme was shown. Absolutely revelled in it. Even he got interviewed by some of the press. They called him Mr Reality, and I think it did him a lot of good professionally.
‘Everybody loves a winner, Harry.’ That’s what Con told me. ‘Whatever they think of the show privately, they’re not going to knock it in public because it’s a big fat hit. And everybody loves a hit. No one’s going to turn their nose up at that. Mrs Whitehouse would have done of course. But Mrs Whitehouse is long since dead. Thank God.’
I thought that was a bit unkind. I remember Mrs Whitehouse. She was an old lady who campaigned for decency in television and films. I thought she was rather nice. Which Debbie says just goes to show. Though what it shows she didn’t say.
The final show
On the night when the final show in the television series was broadcast, Debbie and I went round to see our friends Jack and Sarah. They didn’t need to watch it go out on TV because we gave them a tape of it the night before.
Sarah made us a very nice meal and we watched something else while more or less the whole world was watching me and Debbie go at it.
As I said, I never did sit through the whole programme myself, but Jack and Sarah definitely did. They said they were a bit stunned by it actually.
What really amazed them was all that business about wiring me and Debbie up to machines which showed our blood pressure and pulse and whatnot. They said that gave you one hell of a picture of two people actually doing it.
And as for the end. That bit where all the usual things happen – rather messy things – they said that was completely unbelievable.
Apparently, to put it crudely, that camera they put up inside Debbie had these amazing pictures of the end of my knob going in and out. And when I climaxed, and sperm squirted out of the end, Jack and Sarah both went ‘Ughhhhh!’ at exactly the same moment.
They didn’t stop watching though.
Neither did anyone else. As I say, it feels as if everyone in the entire world watched that programme. And they all went ‘Ughhhh! How disgusting!’ at the end. Because they all thought it was pretty gross.
But everybody talked about nothing else for about the next three weeks.
Con said the viewing figures were enormous. But as usual he never told me what enormous meant.
The Moon went barmy too. The next morning there was a big black headline on the front page: HARRY SHAGS DEBBIE – LIVE!! And inside there were about fourteen pages of stuff, all about us. Including, needless to say, that famous shot of the end of my dick, just to prove that I did it without a condom.
I did read the Moon stuff I must admit. Here’s a bit:
Last night the first uncensored shag in television history was performed live and exclusive on the Asteroid channel.
Doing the dirty deed, without a care in the world, were Harry the Man with AIDS and his girlfriend Debbie.
Debbie risked her life last night not for the sake of money but because she had fallen in love with Harry. The lonely 40-year-old captured her heart…
And so on. Total cobblers from start to finish. By the time I’d finished reading it my mouth had dropped wide open and my eyes were very near popping out of my head.
You have to admire the bloke who wrote that story – he had one hell of an imagination. Just about the only things he got right were our names. And even they weren’t always spelt right.
Over the next few days everybody and his brother was asked what they thought about it. In the newspapers I mean. All the papers got in on the act.
Debbie showed me the Times. They had quotes from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi, some Muslim bloke, Fergie (the royal one), and a dozen others.
The Times even did an editorial on it. I didn’t really know what an editorial was until Con and Debbie explained it to me. Anyway the Times’s editorial was headed A Step Too Far. They thought Con had overdone it.
There was even talk about the TV channel and the Moon being prosecuted for obscenity, because they showed too many private bits of me and Debbie. Con would have loved that. When it was first mentioned he clasped his hands together and looked upwards and said ‘Oh yes Lord! Please let it happen!’
But it never did.
I don’t think I ever saw Con as happy as he was for the couple of days after that programme was shown. Absolutely revelled in it. Even he got interviewed by some of the press. They called him Mr Reality, and I think it did him a lot of good professionally.
‘Everybody loves a winner, Harry.’ That’s what Con told me. ‘Whatever they think of the show privately, they’re not going to knock it in public because it’s a big fat hit. And everybody loves a hit. No one’s going to turn their nose up at that. Mrs Whitehouse would have done of course. But Mrs Whitehouse is long since dead. Thank God.’
I thought that was a bit unkind. I remember Mrs Whitehouse. She was an old lady who campaigned for decency in television and films. I thought she was rather nice. Which Debbie says just goes to show. Though what it shows she didn’t say.
Friday, May 12, 2006
How stories change over time
Interesting, isn't it, how stories change over time. They get repeated in bars and cafes, and sometimes they appear in print, and sometimes people don't always remember the details precisely, and sometimes people embroider the story somewhat, to give it a better punch line.
If you've reached any age you will have heard stories in different versions. For example, only the other day I read a story in a Times obituary, a story which I first heard well over 40 years ago, attributed to someone else entirely. Briefly, the story is that a Cambridge academic attends a wedding and gives a speech. 'I am quite sure,' he says, 'that the bride and groom will be very happy together. I can say this with absolute confidence, because I've slept with both of them.'
This all comes to mind because today's Times has a short snippet in the People column about Elmore Leonard, who picked up the Cartier Diamond award. Elmore is quoted as follows: 'I got $90 for the film rights of 3:10 to Yuma . . . now they want to remake it with Tom Cruise, who wants to rewrite most of it. He’ll play the short bank robber.'
I wanted to refer to this quote under the general heading 'The riches that await us', or some such, but at first I couldn't find it in the Times online (though I now have). So I went a-googling, and came up with a slightly different story.
In 1993 Elmore was interviewed by Adam Sweeting for the Guardian. And there he says the following: 'I was 25... I sold everything I wrote. I didn't sell well - I got $90 for 3.10 To Yuma. I only got $5,000 for the movie, with Glenn Ford, but in the fifties that was OK.'
So, either Elmore changed the story for effect, or the Times reporter didn't quite get it down right, or whatever. Either way, there's a difference between $90 and $5000.
If you've reached any age you will have heard stories in different versions. For example, only the other day I read a story in a Times obituary, a story which I first heard well over 40 years ago, attributed to someone else entirely. Briefly, the story is that a Cambridge academic attends a wedding and gives a speech. 'I am quite sure,' he says, 'that the bride and groom will be very happy together. I can say this with absolute confidence, because I've slept with both of them.'
This all comes to mind because today's Times has a short snippet in the People column about Elmore Leonard, who picked up the Cartier Diamond award. Elmore is quoted as follows: 'I got $90 for the film rights of 3:10 to Yuma . . . now they want to remake it with Tom Cruise, who wants to rewrite most of it. He’ll play the short bank robber.'
I wanted to refer to this quote under the general heading 'The riches that await us', or some such, but at first I couldn't find it in the Times online (though I now have). So I went a-googling, and came up with a slightly different story.
In 1993 Elmore was interviewed by Adam Sweeting for the Guardian. And there he says the following: 'I was 25... I sold everything I wrote. I didn't sell well - I got $90 for 3.10 To Yuma. I only got $5,000 for the movie, with Glenn Ford, but in the fifties that was OK.'
So, either Elmore changed the story for effect, or the Times reporter didn't quite get it down right, or whatever. Either way, there's a difference between $90 and $5000.
Hmmm -- and hmmm again
Blogger Buzz, which describes itself as the official buzz from Blogger (which is the outfit that hosts this blog and probably 25 million others) has a piece about WanderingScribe.
WanderingScribe is a blog written by a woman who has been homeless in London for five months. She has a car, and has access to libraries where she can get online and write about herself, but that's about it.
If you want an introductory article which gives the background to this story, there is one on the BBC site, and plenty of comments have been added. The lady herself also offers links to a BBConline interview, a NY Times audio interview, and something with Le Monde.
Now. I have not ventured very far into WanderingScribe. For a variety of reasons. But my initial reaction, I am sorry to say, is one of deep suspicion. Especially when Blogger Buzz gives me the following quotation from the lady's recent posts:
Yes, I know. I am a hard, bitter, twisted and cynical old man. But that's what a lifetime in the book world gets you.
WanderingScribe is a blog written by a woman who has been homeless in London for five months. She has a car, and has access to libraries where she can get online and write about herself, but that's about it.
If you want an introductory article which gives the background to this story, there is one on the BBC site, and plenty of comments have been added. The lady herself also offers links to a BBConline interview, a NY Times audio interview, and something with Le Monde.
Now. I have not ventured very far into WanderingScribe. For a variety of reasons. But my initial reaction, I am sorry to say, is one of deep suspicion. Especially when Blogger Buzz gives me the following quotation from the lady's recent posts:
There have been meetings and it looks like there might be a publishing deal. Nothing is settled...and don't know what else to say for now, feel everything, and sometimes nothing, just walking around in a daze...my fingernails bitten down to the quick.Of course, WanderingScribe could easily be a genuine story. And it could just as easily not. And I am not entirely alone, I am relieved to find, in being somewhat sceptical. See the comments on the BBC article.
Yes, I know. I am a hard, bitter, twisted and cynical old man. But that's what a lifetime in the book world gets you.
Cody's closing
Clive Keeble is a bit like an old man whose friends keep dying. Every time a good independent bookshop closes, Clive gives a big sigh, puts on his black suit, and does the honourable thing by making sure that everyone knows.
This time it is at least a long way off. Not that that makes it any better. For 43 years, Cody's Books, in Berkeley, California, has served generations of UC Berkeley students from a position on the south side of campus. But it has been losing money for 15 years, and it can't go on. Details in the San Francisco Chronicle.
For an indication of what this means in human terms, see Anirvan Chatterjee's eulogy in the Bookfinder.com Journal.
I wonder if Cody's had competition from an official university bookshop. I mention that because, some twenty years ago, I visited an enormous university bookshop on the other side of America. In fact it was more like an aircraft hangar.
My first impressions were that this was the worst bookshop I had ever been in. The floor was bare concrete. The books -- which were virtually all textbooks -- were exactly as they were when sent out from the publishers' warehouse: they were packed in brown paper, standing on wooden pallets, line after line of them. The only attempt to display the book took the form of tearing open a package, taking one out, and putting it on the top of the pile.
Hmm, I said, very sniffily. This place could do with a good manager.
A few weeks later I had the opportunity to talk to the manager. And I discovered, of course, that in terms of sales per square foot, this was one of the most efficient bookshops in America. In those days (and, I dare say, now) American university teaching was heavily textbook orientated. Each lecturer would have one or more set books. Each week he would deal with one chapter of that book. And every student was obliged, if she wanted to pass the course, to have a copy of that book.
What this meant was that, at the start of each term, 20,000 students came into the bookshop, each of them needing to buy six, or ten, or whatever copies of a number of set books, none of which were cheap. All the bookshop had to do was make sure that there were sufficient copies of these, and take the money. No need for frills.
With competition like that, the small independents stood no chance.
This time it is at least a long way off. Not that that makes it any better. For 43 years, Cody's Books, in Berkeley, California, has served generations of UC Berkeley students from a position on the south side of campus. But it has been losing money for 15 years, and it can't go on. Details in the San Francisco Chronicle.
For an indication of what this means in human terms, see Anirvan Chatterjee's eulogy in the Bookfinder.com Journal.
I wonder if Cody's had competition from an official university bookshop. I mention that because, some twenty years ago, I visited an enormous university bookshop on the other side of America. In fact it was more like an aircraft hangar.
My first impressions were that this was the worst bookshop I had ever been in. The floor was bare concrete. The books -- which were virtually all textbooks -- were exactly as they were when sent out from the publishers' warehouse: they were packed in brown paper, standing on wooden pallets, line after line of them. The only attempt to display the book took the form of tearing open a package, taking one out, and putting it on the top of the pile.
Hmm, I said, very sniffily. This place could do with a good manager.
A few weeks later I had the opportunity to talk to the manager. And I discovered, of course, that in terms of sales per square foot, this was one of the most efficient bookshops in America. In those days (and, I dare say, now) American university teaching was heavily textbook orientated. Each lecturer would have one or more set books. Each week he would deal with one chapter of that book. And every student was obliged, if she wanted to pass the course, to have a copy of that book.
What this meant was that, at the start of each term, 20,000 students came into the bookshop, each of them needing to buy six, or ten, or whatever copies of a number of set books, none of which were cheap. All the bookshop had to do was make sure that there were sufficient copies of these, and take the money. No need for frills.
With competition like that, the small independents stood no chance.
Excerpt 30
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Con gets drunk
Later that night we all had dinner together. Con and the director and Debbie and me. We went to the same posh place as before. The Garage I called it, because of the Michelin business, but Con didn’t like that. He got quite shirty about it. The director thought it was funny.
We didn’t talk business while we were eating, but afterwards we moved over to the lounge and had our coffee in there. Con had some fancy sort of brandy, and he gave me one, but I wasn’t that keen.
Con had been celebrating all evening. He’d ordered several different kinds of wine with dinner, and I don’t think there was much left over. And he’d had a few before.
But why not? Everything had been a great success. There’d been lots of people who wanted to meet Harry the Man with AIDS, and they all had. And Debbie too, of course. All the blokes wanted to meet her.
What was more, Con knew by then that he had the final programme all in the can, as he called it. It was all over. No more filming. All he had to do was sit back and count the size of the audience. And the money of course.
While we were having our coffee Con started in on the amazing stuff he’d learnt during the afternoon. Apparently he’d had some of his staff going around with clipboards, asking people questions. Getting feedback he called it. And some of it was amazing. Or so he said.
‘You know what, Harry,’ he said. ‘Do you know what people say about you?’
I didn’t of course. I just waited for him to tell me.
‘We asked them lots of questions about you, Harry, to see how they really felt about you. And one of the questions was, Would you let Harry babysit for your kids? And you know what, Harry? You got an 83 per cent yes. More than three quarters of them say you’re the kind of man they would trust to babysit their kids. And there’s no higher compliment than that, Harry. Not in this day and age.’
Well, that was nice I thought. I felt quite pleased about that. As a matter of fact I used to do some babysitting when Lisa was younger. We were part of some sort of group – you sat for them they sat for you. That kind of thing.
‘Another thing,’ said Con. His speech was getting a bit slurred by now. ‘I’ve discovered the reason why you’re so popular.’
He looked at me with his serious face on. Actually he couldn’t do it very well. Not in his condition. ‘Yup,’ he said. And then he gave a little hiccup. ‘Yup. Right now, Harry, you’re the most popular man on TV.’
I didn’t believe that so I just laughed.
‘‘S’true,’ he said. ‘Fucking true mate.’ He waved some bits of paper at me. ‘Got the figures to prove it. printed out from a computer, so it must be right. And, what’s more, I’ve worked out the secret of your success.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. I was trying hard not to laugh, because Con hated it when you took the piss. ‘And what’s that?’
‘When you talk,’ he said carefully, ‘you speak in short sentences.’
‘Short sentences?’
‘Yes. When you talk. People like that. They can understand you, Harry. And that’s the secret of your success.’
I really did have to laugh at that. ‘Con,’ I said. ‘Short sentences aren’t a secret.’
Con thought about that for a minute. He was frowning, and as he was about nine-tenths pissed it took him some time to get a grip on what he did think. Then he waved a finger at me and smiled admiringly.
‘That’s what I mean, see Harry. You’re a fucking genius mate. Total fucking genius. Arche-fucking-typal, mate, that’s what you are.’
‘Arche what?’
Con concentrated. ‘Archetypal.’
‘Oh? And what’s that mean?’
‘Dunno,’ said Con. ‘But that’s what you are mate. Take it from me. Arche-fucking-typal.’
As I say, he was pissed.
Con gets drunk
Later that night we all had dinner together. Con and the director and Debbie and me. We went to the same posh place as before. The Garage I called it, because of the Michelin business, but Con didn’t like that. He got quite shirty about it. The director thought it was funny.
We didn’t talk business while we were eating, but afterwards we moved over to the lounge and had our coffee in there. Con had some fancy sort of brandy, and he gave me one, but I wasn’t that keen.
Con had been celebrating all evening. He’d ordered several different kinds of wine with dinner, and I don’t think there was much left over. And he’d had a few before.
But why not? Everything had been a great success. There’d been lots of people who wanted to meet Harry the Man with AIDS, and they all had. And Debbie too, of course. All the blokes wanted to meet her.
What was more, Con knew by then that he had the final programme all in the can, as he called it. It was all over. No more filming. All he had to do was sit back and count the size of the audience. And the money of course.
While we were having our coffee Con started in on the amazing stuff he’d learnt during the afternoon. Apparently he’d had some of his staff going around with clipboards, asking people questions. Getting feedback he called it. And some of it was amazing. Or so he said.
‘You know what, Harry,’ he said. ‘Do you know what people say about you?’
I didn’t of course. I just waited for him to tell me.
‘We asked them lots of questions about you, Harry, to see how they really felt about you. And one of the questions was, Would you let Harry babysit for your kids? And you know what, Harry? You got an 83 per cent yes. More than three quarters of them say you’re the kind of man they would trust to babysit their kids. And there’s no higher compliment than that, Harry. Not in this day and age.’
Well, that was nice I thought. I felt quite pleased about that. As a matter of fact I used to do some babysitting when Lisa was younger. We were part of some sort of group – you sat for them they sat for you. That kind of thing.
‘Another thing,’ said Con. His speech was getting a bit slurred by now. ‘I’ve discovered the reason why you’re so popular.’
He looked at me with his serious face on. Actually he couldn’t do it very well. Not in his condition. ‘Yup,’ he said. And then he gave a little hiccup. ‘Yup. Right now, Harry, you’re the most popular man on TV.’
I didn’t believe that so I just laughed.
‘‘S’true,’ he said. ‘Fucking true mate.’ He waved some bits of paper at me. ‘Got the figures to prove it. printed out from a computer, so it must be right. And, what’s more, I’ve worked out the secret of your success.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. I was trying hard not to laugh, because Con hated it when you took the piss. ‘And what’s that?’
‘When you talk,’ he said carefully, ‘you speak in short sentences.’
‘Short sentences?’
‘Yes. When you talk. People like that. They can understand you, Harry. And that’s the secret of your success.’
I really did have to laugh at that. ‘Con,’ I said. ‘Short sentences aren’t a secret.’
Con thought about that for a minute. He was frowning, and as he was about nine-tenths pissed it took him some time to get a grip on what he did think. Then he waved a finger at me and smiled admiringly.
‘That’s what I mean, see Harry. You’re a fucking genius mate. Total fucking genius. Arche-fucking-typal, mate, that’s what you are.’
‘Arche what?’
Con concentrated. ‘Archetypal.’
‘Oh? And what’s that mean?’
‘Dunno,’ said Con. ‘But that’s what you are mate. Take it from me. Arche-fucking-typal.’
As I say, he was pissed.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
The close study of madness
Here in England, the Booksellers Association has been having its annual conference. Publishing News has a number of reports of the proceedings, but the one that caught my eye was an account of the session featuring marketing consultants Alastair Giles and Stephen Butscher. You ought to read the whole thing, but the chief points are as follows:
- Present discounting is a form of madness. The trade lost £26.5 million on the last Harry Potter. (Presumablyy this means 'forfeited £26.5 million by giving large discounts on the official retail price'.)
- If you ignore Harry Potter, sales of hardback fiction are down 25% in the last five years.
- The tradition of pubishing hardback first, and only hardback, is crackers. We do it 'because that's the frame-set we work in, but it must be unprofitable madness.'
- Giles's proposal: do the mass-market paperback version first, alongside a more deluxe paperback version. Then, a few months later, or even simultaneously, offer a hardback collector's edition.
There were other interesting sessions at the conference too. The speech from the BA President, David Roche, is worth reading. And then there's Michelle Harrison, of the Henley Centre marketing consultancy: she sees the electronic book as a serious threat to paperbacks, but is not offering an opinion on the timescale.
Book production figures down
Bowker, a US firm which regularly monitors all things booky, has announced that book production in the US fell last year, quite dramatically, by 18,000. And the UK has now overtaken the US in terms of the number of English-language books published. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Downturns in US book production figures are rare: it has happened only 10 times in the last 50 years. In 2005 there were only 172,000 books published. However will Americans manage? Within the total there are, of course, all sorts of variations: university press output up, adult fiction down by over 10%, and so forth.
'In 2005, publishers were more cautious and disciplined when it came to their lists,' said Gary Aiello, chief operating officer of Bowker. 'We see that trend continuing in 2006. The price of paper has already gone up twice this year, and publishers, especially the small ones, will have to think very carefully about what to publish.'
The UK, by contrast, has long held the record for the largest number of books published per capita in any language, and now comfortably replaces the US as the publisher of the most books in English: 206,000 new books last year, which is 28% up.
Michael Cader, of Publishers Lunch, is typically blunt about the UK position. The massive rise in output is, he says, 'perfectly timed to meet the country's declining demand for anything but a small set of deeply-discounted titles.'
Downturns in US book production figures are rare: it has happened only 10 times in the last 50 years. In 2005 there were only 172,000 books published. However will Americans manage? Within the total there are, of course, all sorts of variations: university press output up, adult fiction down by over 10%, and so forth.
'In 2005, publishers were more cautious and disciplined when it came to their lists,' said Gary Aiello, chief operating officer of Bowker. 'We see that trend continuing in 2006. The price of paper has already gone up twice this year, and publishers, especially the small ones, will have to think very carefully about what to publish.'
The UK, by contrast, has long held the record for the largest number of books published per capita in any language, and now comfortably replaces the US as the publisher of the most books in English: 206,000 new books last year, which is 28% up.
Michael Cader, of Publishers Lunch, is typically blunt about the UK position. The massive rise in output is, he says, 'perfectly timed to meet the country's declining demand for anything but a small set of deeply-discounted titles.'
Hot pants
Video marketing
Over at the Book Standard, you can see three 30-second videos. These are made by 'hot new filmmakers' and are intended to whet your appetite for three new books from US Random House.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, all three videos look as if they were made on modest budgets -- in two of the cases, very modest -- and they seem to be aimed at, shall we say, the young market.
The first, advertising Richard Doetsch's The Thieves of Heaven, is an example of what I was talking about earlier this week, i.e. an idea which you and I might consider to be completely tapped out by now. In this case, it's two keys found in a small, heavily fortified room, just north of the Sistine Chapel.
The second video attempts to get us interested in a man who is 'a chaotic, knife-wielding alcoholic with a heroin problem who had spent half his life in prison and the other half on the streets.' An uphill task, at least as far as this potential reader is concerned. The book is Stuart -- a Life Backwards, by Alexander Masters.
And the third video, the most professional-looking, is in support of a hard-edged, pretty standard commercial thriller: Shadow Man, by Cody McFadyen. (The thumbnail of the cover, incidentally, makes the author's name very difficult to read, which I do not regard as a smart piece of design.)
Well, thanks, but I think I'll pass on all these. But then I'm probably not in the target audience.
Later: Speaking of videos, I had no sooner posted the above than I was sent a link to a video plugging The Aleijadinho Code (mentioned yesterday) -- or, to give it its proper title, O Codigo Aleijadinho, by Leandro Muller. Now this video I do like. It's another low-budget effort, but it works OK. And my man in Brazil tells me that film rights are being negotiated.
Dante online
Are you, perchance, a reader of Dante? Or are you studying him at school/university? If so, here is a useful link. Dante 2000 is 'an information system on the Complete Works of Dante full of original features. The system is an indispensable work tool for students and teachers. Scholars and academics can use the System as an indispensable work tool, thanks also to the possibility of finding Dante's sources and links to the works of "Coeval Authors". Moreover, in the chapter dedicated to Statistics, scholars will find some surprising results of research, conducted on totally new concepts, that looks at whether "Il Fiore" should be attributed to Dante or not.'
Well, whatever else this may be, it seems to be big and complicated.
New pic of Grumpy
Clive Keeble writes to say that he has a store mascot called Grumpy, who lives in the shop window during the daytime but has to be removed at night because he is valuable (naturally). What is more, he has a pal: Happy.
Indie honoured
Publishing News reports that Wenlock Books has been named Independent Bookshop of the Year in the British Book Awards (link also from Clive Keeble). This is a shop which has been attracting attention for some time: the Guardian had a piece on it last year. It's a bit different from your average W H Smith, and probably a shop which offers a few hints and tips to some others.
Predictions revisited
Predicting the future is a tricky business, and especially so when the internet allows us to look back, several years later, and see how you did. But you might, perhaps, spare a minute or two to consider a 1999 report on the US book trade, prepared by Richard Howorth for the independent bookstore members of the American Booksellers Association. (Link provided by Andy Laties in a comment on Tuesday's post about independents in the UK.)
The main message of the report, says Andy, is that 'in the early 90s when we underwent a similar explosion of illegitimate deals between publishers and big corporate retailers -- with concomitant deep deep discounts offered by these big retailers which helped drive thousands of indie bookshops under -- the longer term upshot over the next 5 years was a decrease in the number of books sold.'
Well, I had a look at Richard Howorth's report myself. I started out thinking that I would just give it a quick skim, but it soon grabs your attention. I would describe it as one of the finest pieces of non-fiction reportage that I have read in a long time: easy to read; to the point; well researched. And it tells a pretty terrible story of an industry that lost its way in the pursuit of the quick dollar.
Of course there is no shame in pursuing the dollar; or even the pound sterling. But, in doing so, it would be wise to give some thought to the longer term. If you only think three weeks ahead, and if you can break the law and get away with it, then all kinds of mischief can arise.
The passage which I liked best is this: 'Title diversity will continue to narrow until a revolution of some now unknown form... initiates a new cycle.' Not bad for 1999.
Waterstone's online
The Financial Times has more on the HMV/Waterstone's decision to build its own online bookselling service (mentioned here on Wednesday).
Apparently HMV are going to locate their online business offshore, for economy's sake. (The world is flat, remember.) The new website will 'embrace employee blogging, a dramatic reversal for the company that emerged last year as the first British company to sack an employee for blogging. Joe Gordon, 37, who worked for Waterstone's in Edinburgh for 11 years, was dismissed for personal commentary regarding his day-to-day life at the bookstore on his blog.'
However, Alan Giles, outgoing CEO of the company, said that HMV's new digital approach would not extend to rehiring Mr Gordon. There are limits, you know.
Peter Winkler's Precious Cargo
Peter Winkler has been a fairly regular commenter on the GOB, but despite that it has somehow escaped my notice that he has a blog. Anyway, there it is, entitled Precious Cargo, and it's been running a couple of years.
Peter's latest post deals with the question of whether media 'reviews' are as independent and objective as you might think. See also his earlier comments on the same topic.
Over at the Book Standard, you can see three 30-second videos. These are made by 'hot new filmmakers' and are intended to whet your appetite for three new books from US Random House.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, all three videos look as if they were made on modest budgets -- in two of the cases, very modest -- and they seem to be aimed at, shall we say, the young market.
The first, advertising Richard Doetsch's The Thieves of Heaven, is an example of what I was talking about earlier this week, i.e. an idea which you and I might consider to be completely tapped out by now. In this case, it's two keys found in a small, heavily fortified room, just north of the Sistine Chapel.
The second video attempts to get us interested in a man who is 'a chaotic, knife-wielding alcoholic with a heroin problem who had spent half his life in prison and the other half on the streets.' An uphill task, at least as far as this potential reader is concerned. The book is Stuart -- a Life Backwards, by Alexander Masters.
And the third video, the most professional-looking, is in support of a hard-edged, pretty standard commercial thriller: Shadow Man, by Cody McFadyen. (The thumbnail of the cover, incidentally, makes the author's name very difficult to read, which I do not regard as a smart piece of design.)
Well, thanks, but I think I'll pass on all these. But then I'm probably not in the target audience.
Later: Speaking of videos, I had no sooner posted the above than I was sent a link to a video plugging The Aleijadinho Code (mentioned yesterday) -- or, to give it its proper title, O Codigo Aleijadinho, by Leandro Muller. Now this video I do like. It's another low-budget effort, but it works OK. And my man in Brazil tells me that film rights are being negotiated.
Dante online
Are you, perchance, a reader of Dante? Or are you studying him at school/university? If so, here is a useful link. Dante 2000 is 'an information system on the Complete Works of Dante full of original features. The system is an indispensable work tool for students and teachers. Scholars and academics can use the System as an indispensable work tool, thanks also to the possibility of finding Dante's sources and links to the works of "Coeval Authors". Moreover, in the chapter dedicated to Statistics, scholars will find some surprising results of research, conducted on totally new concepts, that looks at whether "Il Fiore" should be attributed to Dante or not.'
Well, whatever else this may be, it seems to be big and complicated.
New pic of Grumpy
Clive Keeble writes to say that he has a store mascot called Grumpy, who lives in the shop window during the daytime but has to be removed at night because he is valuable (naturally). What is more, he has a pal: Happy.
Indie honoured
Publishing News reports that Wenlock Books has been named Independent Bookshop of the Year in the British Book Awards (link also from Clive Keeble). This is a shop which has been attracting attention for some time: the Guardian had a piece on it last year. It's a bit different from your average W H Smith, and probably a shop which offers a few hints and tips to some others.
Predictions revisited
Predicting the future is a tricky business, and especially so when the internet allows us to look back, several years later, and see how you did. But you might, perhaps, spare a minute or two to consider a 1999 report on the US book trade, prepared by Richard Howorth for the independent bookstore members of the American Booksellers Association. (Link provided by Andy Laties in a comment on Tuesday's post about independents in the UK.)
The main message of the report, says Andy, is that 'in the early 90s when we underwent a similar explosion of illegitimate deals between publishers and big corporate retailers -- with concomitant deep deep discounts offered by these big retailers which helped drive thousands of indie bookshops under -- the longer term upshot over the next 5 years was a decrease in the number of books sold.'
Well, I had a look at Richard Howorth's report myself. I started out thinking that I would just give it a quick skim, but it soon grabs your attention. I would describe it as one of the finest pieces of non-fiction reportage that I have read in a long time: easy to read; to the point; well researched. And it tells a pretty terrible story of an industry that lost its way in the pursuit of the quick dollar.
Of course there is no shame in pursuing the dollar; or even the pound sterling. But, in doing so, it would be wise to give some thought to the longer term. If you only think three weeks ahead, and if you can break the law and get away with it, then all kinds of mischief can arise.
The passage which I liked best is this: 'Title diversity will continue to narrow until a revolution of some now unknown form... initiates a new cycle.' Not bad for 1999.
Waterstone's online
The Financial Times has more on the HMV/Waterstone's decision to build its own online bookselling service (mentioned here on Wednesday).
Apparently HMV are going to locate their online business offshore, for economy's sake. (The world is flat, remember.) The new website will 'embrace employee blogging, a dramatic reversal for the company that emerged last year as the first British company to sack an employee for blogging. Joe Gordon, 37, who worked for Waterstone's in Edinburgh for 11 years, was dismissed for personal commentary regarding his day-to-day life at the bookstore on his blog.'
However, Alan Giles, outgoing CEO of the company, said that HMV's new digital approach would not extend to rehiring Mr Gordon. There are limits, you know.
Peter Winkler's Precious Cargo
Peter Winkler has been a fairly regular commenter on the GOB, but despite that it has somehow escaped my notice that he has a blog. Anyway, there it is, entitled Precious Cargo, and it's been running a couple of years.
Peter's latest post deals with the question of whether media 'reviews' are as independent and objective as you might think. See also his earlier comments on the same topic.
Excerpt 29
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Meeting the public
On the Saturday before the final show was broadcast, Con arranged for a sort of publicity stunt in our local town hall. ‘Come and meet Harry – the Man with AIDS.’ That’s what the Moon said. And amazingly enough masses of people did want to come.
They all had to get tickets in advance, and the tickets sold out in one day. Or so Con said. Actually the tickets were free, but they had to write in for them, and there were certainly plenty of people there. Quite a lot of kids among them.
It was an afternoon thing, and Debbie and I turned up at two o’clock. Con had a chauffeured car for us and everything. I practised my royal wave on the way through the town. Not quite as good as the Queen Mum, Debbie said, but passable.
When we got there the car park was full of people – they didn’t have tickets but they wanted to get in anyway. Unfortunately there wasn’t room. Not at first, anyway. But Con made sure they all got in eventually.
‘Fuck the fire regs,’ he said. ‘I’m not having any disappointed punters. Not on my watch.’
We had minders too. Debbie had one and so did I. They helped us to get into the hall and made sure that we weren’t too messed about by the crowds.
The place was absolutely heaving with people. Never seen anything like it. I was amazed, but Con said this was what happened when you had a hit TV show. Everybody wanted to meet you.
Con did a little speech at the start, and introduced us. Debbie had made me get a new suit, so I felt very smart. There was nothing wrong with the old one actually, but Debbie made out it was shabby. Good for another twenty years I reckon. And Debbie looked sensational. But then she always does.
I had a new haircut as well. Actually I had a special haircut before the filming started. Debbie saw to that. She took me to her hairdresser and they spent about an hour fussing over me. Didn’t look much different from my normal one if you ask me, but Debbie reckoned it was a great improvement.
Then there were speeches from me and Debbie. Mine was short. I just thanked everyone for turning up, and said I would make sure to talk to all of them. Debbie made them laugh. They loved her. Well, anyone would.
After that we did autographs. Debbie and I sat at tables and signed away like mad things. Con had given us a great pile of photographs of Debbie and me together, and we wrote our names on those.
You soon learn to be quick about it. And you smile. And say hello. I really enjoyed it funnily enough. Didn’t really expect to, but everybody was so friendly.
Then there was a bit of a bun fight. People could get cups of tea and cakes. And Debbie and I worked the crowd. That’s what she and Con called it. Working the crowd. You just wander around and talk to people. And there were various ushers as well as the two minders. They used to sort of lead us to people who were important. Or thought they were.
The only really important people as far as I was concerned were a little girl of about seven and her Mum.
I’d signed an autograph for the girl earlier on. She caught my eye because she reminded me of Lisa. Same sort of colouring, and same sort of age. I could see she wanted to speak to me, but the usher didn’t really give her a chance at the time. The queue was too long.
Anyway, while we were circulating I caught sight of the little girl again, so I made a particular point of going over to her. I talked to the Mum for a minute. Asked her whether she’d come far. That sort of thing.
Then the Mum said, ‘I think Jackie would like to ask you something.’
The little girl was quite shy, a bit too quiet to speak up on her own.
So I bent my knees and went down so that I was at about her level, and said a bit more to her. Asked her how old she was, that sort of thing. Where she went to school. She spoke very quietly and I could hardly hear her because of the background noise.
Jackie, that was her name. And then Jackie said, ‘Can I whisper?’
So I said of course, and I leaned forward.
And Jackie said, ‘My Daddy’s got AIDS.’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just said, ‘Has he?’
She nodded.
I pulled back a bit and looked at her. She looked so sad. It made me feel really bad for her.
‘And are you and Mummy looking after him?’
‘Yes.’
I’m not quite sure what I said after that. But I talked a bit more. Told her I was sure everything would be all right. And that the doctors can do a lot about AIDS these days. And then I gave her a big hug. Which Con had told me I wasn’t supposed to do. But I did it anyway.
And then I stood up. I was going to say something more to the Mum. But I think I must have been bending down a bit too long. When I stood up there was a sort of roaring in my ears, and the world all went out of focus. I think I might actually have fallen over if the minder hadn’t held me up.
‘You all right mate?’ he said.
I told him I was, but fortunately he knew better. He kept on holding me up for a minute.
Meanwhile all the noise and the uproar went on all around me, and I was out of it for a second or two. But then the blood went back into my brain, or whatever it was, and things began to be normal again.
I looked around for Jackie and her Mum, but they’d gone into the crowd. Either that or the minder had moved us away.
The minder really did move me then. He kind of dragged me to the side of the hall and sat me down on a chair. Fetched me a glass of water.
And then when I’d recovered a bit we went back and worked the crowd some more. But I was finished after that. Couldn’t concentrate. I just nodded and smiled and said Lovely to meet you. That kind of thing.
Afterwards I asked Con if he could find out who they were – Jackie and her Mum – so that I could keep in touch. And I believe he did try. But he never had any luck. They just turned up for that one afternoon, had a little chat with me, and then disappeared into the distance. I never saw them again.
Meeting the public
On the Saturday before the final show was broadcast, Con arranged for a sort of publicity stunt in our local town hall. ‘Come and meet Harry – the Man with AIDS.’ That’s what the Moon said. And amazingly enough masses of people did want to come.
They all had to get tickets in advance, and the tickets sold out in one day. Or so Con said. Actually the tickets were free, but they had to write in for them, and there were certainly plenty of people there. Quite a lot of kids among them.
It was an afternoon thing, and Debbie and I turned up at two o’clock. Con had a chauffeured car for us and everything. I practised my royal wave on the way through the town. Not quite as good as the Queen Mum, Debbie said, but passable.
When we got there the car park was full of people – they didn’t have tickets but they wanted to get in anyway. Unfortunately there wasn’t room. Not at first, anyway. But Con made sure they all got in eventually.
‘Fuck the fire regs,’ he said. ‘I’m not having any disappointed punters. Not on my watch.’
We had minders too. Debbie had one and so did I. They helped us to get into the hall and made sure that we weren’t too messed about by the crowds.
The place was absolutely heaving with people. Never seen anything like it. I was amazed, but Con said this was what happened when you had a hit TV show. Everybody wanted to meet you.
Con did a little speech at the start, and introduced us. Debbie had made me get a new suit, so I felt very smart. There was nothing wrong with the old one actually, but Debbie made out it was shabby. Good for another twenty years I reckon. And Debbie looked sensational. But then she always does.
I had a new haircut as well. Actually I had a special haircut before the filming started. Debbie saw to that. She took me to her hairdresser and they spent about an hour fussing over me. Didn’t look much different from my normal one if you ask me, but Debbie reckoned it was a great improvement.
Then there were speeches from me and Debbie. Mine was short. I just thanked everyone for turning up, and said I would make sure to talk to all of them. Debbie made them laugh. They loved her. Well, anyone would.
After that we did autographs. Debbie and I sat at tables and signed away like mad things. Con had given us a great pile of photographs of Debbie and me together, and we wrote our names on those.
You soon learn to be quick about it. And you smile. And say hello. I really enjoyed it funnily enough. Didn’t really expect to, but everybody was so friendly.
Then there was a bit of a bun fight. People could get cups of tea and cakes. And Debbie and I worked the crowd. That’s what she and Con called it. Working the crowd. You just wander around and talk to people. And there were various ushers as well as the two minders. They used to sort of lead us to people who were important. Or thought they were.
The only really important people as far as I was concerned were a little girl of about seven and her Mum.
I’d signed an autograph for the girl earlier on. She caught my eye because she reminded me of Lisa. Same sort of colouring, and same sort of age. I could see she wanted to speak to me, but the usher didn’t really give her a chance at the time. The queue was too long.
Anyway, while we were circulating I caught sight of the little girl again, so I made a particular point of going over to her. I talked to the Mum for a minute. Asked her whether she’d come far. That sort of thing.
Then the Mum said, ‘I think Jackie would like to ask you something.’
The little girl was quite shy, a bit too quiet to speak up on her own.
So I bent my knees and went down so that I was at about her level, and said a bit more to her. Asked her how old she was, that sort of thing. Where she went to school. She spoke very quietly and I could hardly hear her because of the background noise.
Jackie, that was her name. And then Jackie said, ‘Can I whisper?’
So I said of course, and I leaned forward.
And Jackie said, ‘My Daddy’s got AIDS.’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just said, ‘Has he?’
She nodded.
I pulled back a bit and looked at her. She looked so sad. It made me feel really bad for her.
‘And are you and Mummy looking after him?’
‘Yes.’
I’m not quite sure what I said after that. But I talked a bit more. Told her I was sure everything would be all right. And that the doctors can do a lot about AIDS these days. And then I gave her a big hug. Which Con had told me I wasn’t supposed to do. But I did it anyway.
And then I stood up. I was going to say something more to the Mum. But I think I must have been bending down a bit too long. When I stood up there was a sort of roaring in my ears, and the world all went out of focus. I think I might actually have fallen over if the minder hadn’t held me up.
‘You all right mate?’ he said.
I told him I was, but fortunately he knew better. He kept on holding me up for a minute.
Meanwhile all the noise and the uproar went on all around me, and I was out of it for a second or two. But then the blood went back into my brain, or whatever it was, and things began to be normal again.
I looked around for Jackie and her Mum, but they’d gone into the crowd. Either that or the minder had moved us away.
The minder really did move me then. He kind of dragged me to the side of the hall and sat me down on a chair. Fetched me a glass of water.
And then when I’d recovered a bit we went back and worked the crowd some more. But I was finished after that. Couldn’t concentrate. I just nodded and smiled and said Lovely to meet you. That kind of thing.
Afterwards I asked Con if he could find out who they were – Jackie and her Mum – so that I could keep in touch. And I believe he did try. But he never had any luck. They just turned up for that one afternoon, had a little chat with me, and then disappeared into the distance. I never saw them again.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
A virtual revolution?
Last Saturday's Daily Telegraph had an article on ebook technology, by Michael Fitzpatrick, which contained rather more new facts than is often the case with articles intended for the layman.
The article covers all the usual ground, such as the new Sony ebook reader. But Fitzpatrick also provides information about a similar initiative, the iLiad, which is made by a company called iRex. I hadn't heard of that before.
Fitzpatrick has been talking to some top names in major publishing, with slightly surprising results. Graham Bell, for example, head of publishing systems at HarperCollins, thinks that although the ebook revolution has failed so far, things may be about to change. So-called e-ink, which is at the heart of the Sony device, is what has changed his mind.
Fitzpatrick has also unearthed a Japanese success story that I hadn't come across before. Some three years ago, an author called Yoshi launched a 'mobile novel' by handing out leaflets to thousands of schoolgirls in downtown Tokyo. The novel was written in simple Japanese and was downloaded in 1,600-word instalments. Yoshi then took into account feedback from his readers. So far, his web site has had 20 million hits and the novel is now being made into a film.
Meanwhile, on a sort of related topic, Sara Nelson's editorial in the current Publishers Weekly describes how the power of half a dozen blogs turned a short, rapidly written book into a hot seller. Although, technically, it isn't even published yet.
The article covers all the usual ground, such as the new Sony ebook reader. But Fitzpatrick also provides information about a similar initiative, the iLiad, which is made by a company called iRex. I hadn't heard of that before.
Fitzpatrick has been talking to some top names in major publishing, with slightly surprising results. Graham Bell, for example, head of publishing systems at HarperCollins, thinks that although the ebook revolution has failed so far, things may be about to change. So-called e-ink, which is at the heart of the Sony device, is what has changed his mind.
Fitzpatrick has also unearthed a Japanese success story that I hadn't come across before. Some three years ago, an author called Yoshi launched a 'mobile novel' by handing out leaflets to thousands of schoolgirls in downtown Tokyo. The novel was written in simple Japanese and was downloaded in 1,600-word instalments. Yoshi then took into account feedback from his readers. So far, his web site has had 20 million hits and the novel is now being made into a film.
Meanwhile, on a sort of related topic, Sara Nelson's editorial in the current Publishers Weekly describes how the power of half a dozen blogs turned a short, rapidly written book into a hot seller. Although, technically, it isn't even published yet.
HMV and Waterstone's
Reuters reports a trading statement from the UK's HMV Group, which includes leading bookseller Waterstone's (link from Clive Keeble).
In January, the Group commented on the difficult sales trends in the UK, in the current financial year, and these trends have apparently persisted during the balance of the year. In HMV UK & Ireland, like-for-like sales in the final 16 weeks were down 11.4%, with Waterstone's down 5.6%.
Clive Keeble seems to find these figures encouraging, in that Waterstone's appear to have arrested their decline in sales. So, if I understand the situation correctly, business is not exactly booming, but things are not going down the tube at quite the rate they used to was. Makes you glad you aren't a bookseller, doesn't it?
The one really striking piece of news in the Reuter report, to my eyes at least, is the statement that Waterstone's is terminating its partnership with Amazon, and in the autumn of 2006 will launch its own online service -- a service which will 'reflect better the brand's specialist bookselling credentials.'
I find that very surprising. Are Waterstone's really going to build their own online service from the ground up? (A process which I would take to be enormously demanding in terms of capital and time.) Or are they going to link up with some other online presence? We shall see.
In January, the Group commented on the difficult sales trends in the UK, in the current financial year, and these trends have apparently persisted during the balance of the year. In HMV UK & Ireland, like-for-like sales in the final 16 weeks were down 11.4%, with Waterstone's down 5.6%.
Clive Keeble seems to find these figures encouraging, in that Waterstone's appear to have arrested their decline in sales. So, if I understand the situation correctly, business is not exactly booming, but things are not going down the tube at quite the rate they used to was. Makes you glad you aren't a bookseller, doesn't it?
The one really striking piece of news in the Reuter report, to my eyes at least, is the statement that Waterstone's is terminating its partnership with Amazon, and in the autumn of 2006 will launch its own online service -- a service which will 'reflect better the brand's specialist bookselling credentials.'
I find that very surprising. Are Waterstone's really going to build their own online service from the ground up? (A process which I would take to be enormously demanding in terms of capital and time.) Or are they going to link up with some other online presence? We shall see.
Hunger Mountain
Hunger Mountain, it turns out, is a literary journal, connected with the Vermont College of the Union Institute and University. Should you wish to take a look at the kind of stuff they publish, you can find very brief excerpts on the Hunger Mountain web site. These people aren't giving much away, it seems.
Well, literary journals are definitely not my scene, and I only noticed this one because I got an email advising me that Hunger Mountain are running a fund-raising auction on ebay. Various writers and booksellers have donated various items and you can bid for them: details here.
I read up on the relevant web pages because at first, with the Hunger Mountain business, I thought that this was a device to relieve third-world poverty or some such. But, as far as I can see, it isn't. It's just a device to raise funds to keep the journal going. You may be more interested in that than I am.
Well, literary journals are definitely not my scene, and I only noticed this one because I got an email advising me that Hunger Mountain are running a fund-raising auction on ebay. Various writers and booksellers have donated various items and you can bid for them: details here.
I read up on the relevant web pages because at first, with the Hunger Mountain business, I thought that this was a device to relieve third-world poverty or some such. But, as far as I can see, it isn't. It's just a device to raise funds to keep the journal going. You may be more interested in that than I am.
The next big thing?
I well remember, when I was a lad, that I held the view that when a thing has been done once, it's been... well, done. And that all repetitions and variations upon same, thereafter, are worthless ripoffs and of no interest whatever.
But then, as the years went by, I noticed that this was not the case with the public at large. The public at large did not, perhaps, monitor books, movies, and theatre with quite the same obsessive scrutiny as myself. And I noticed that it took some time for ideas, characters, situations, and the like to become familiar. Often something would turn out to be a big hit at a point when I, for one, had grown weary of that particular genre/idea/concept.
For example. Somewhere around 1980, the general idea of feminism had surely (I thought) penetrated so deep in the general consciousness that everyone was conscious of its main tenets. But what happened? Along came crime writer Sara Paretsky with a female private eye called V.I. Warshawski -- a lead character who had built into her, as far as I was concerned, every obvious feminist characteristic and cliche that you could think of, and then some.
And what was the critical and reader response? Answer, this whole concept was hailed as ground-breaking, original, exciting, new, and all like that. ('[Paretsky] has created a scrappy, entertaining, idiosyncratic fictional character who is a woman, so hooray for her!' San Jose Mercury-News.)
Not that I begrudged Sara Paretsky her success; but it did surprise me, because I had thought that the ideas built into her character would be regarded as stale and old hat. Furthermore, the idea of a female detective was hardly new. There had been many others, and in 1979 I myself had written a stage play about an elderly lady detective who turned out to be more Mike Hammer than Miss Marple.
I mention all this because while you and I, in our sophisticated ways, may imagine that the concept of a novel about codes in the art world is just so last year that no one in their right mind would read another one, much less write one or publish it. But I wonder. We have already seen that Javier Sierra had a huge hit in Spain with The Secret Supper, and now comes news of a similar sort of book in Brazil.
Today (10 May 2006) is the official publication date for Leandro Muller's The Aleijadinho Code (thanks to Lucas Martinho for the tip-off.) This is a novel in which 'the strange death of an arts professor takes an investigator to uncover a surprising plot involving history, art, scholars and a mystery that was never meant to be revealed.'
Aleijadinho, by the way, was a crippled sculptor, 1730-1814, who took 22 years to complete the 12 life-sized figures of Prophets which stand in front of the Basilica Bom Jesus de Matosinho in Congonhas, Minas Gerais.
Will this novel sell big in its native Brazil? The publisher claims that 'the book is causing a lot of talkback online. On message boards and forums all over the internet, Brazilians are discussing the book and its plot.' But then he would say that, wouldn't he? (Copyright Mandy Rice Davies.)
Will any English-speaking agents or publishers take the trouble to check out The Aleijadinho Code? Will the book work in translation? Will it get on to the NYT bestsellers list? Will we ever see the movie?
Whichever, you read it here first.
But then, as the years went by, I noticed that this was not the case with the public at large. The public at large did not, perhaps, monitor books, movies, and theatre with quite the same obsessive scrutiny as myself. And I noticed that it took some time for ideas, characters, situations, and the like to become familiar. Often something would turn out to be a big hit at a point when I, for one, had grown weary of that particular genre/idea/concept.
For example. Somewhere around 1980, the general idea of feminism had surely (I thought) penetrated so deep in the general consciousness that everyone was conscious of its main tenets. But what happened? Along came crime writer Sara Paretsky with a female private eye called V.I. Warshawski -- a lead character who had built into her, as far as I was concerned, every obvious feminist characteristic and cliche that you could think of, and then some.
And what was the critical and reader response? Answer, this whole concept was hailed as ground-breaking, original, exciting, new, and all like that. ('[Paretsky] has created a scrappy, entertaining, idiosyncratic fictional character who is a woman, so hooray for her!' San Jose Mercury-News.)
Not that I begrudged Sara Paretsky her success; but it did surprise me, because I had thought that the ideas built into her character would be regarded as stale and old hat. Furthermore, the idea of a female detective was hardly new. There had been many others, and in 1979 I myself had written a stage play about an elderly lady detective who turned out to be more Mike Hammer than Miss Marple.
I mention all this because while you and I, in our sophisticated ways, may imagine that the concept of a novel about codes in the art world is just so last year that no one in their right mind would read another one, much less write one or publish it. But I wonder. We have already seen that Javier Sierra had a huge hit in Spain with The Secret Supper, and now comes news of a similar sort of book in Brazil.
Today (10 May 2006) is the official publication date for Leandro Muller's The Aleijadinho Code (thanks to Lucas Martinho for the tip-off.) This is a novel in which 'the strange death of an arts professor takes an investigator to uncover a surprising plot involving history, art, scholars and a mystery that was never meant to be revealed.'
Aleijadinho, by the way, was a crippled sculptor, 1730-1814, who took 22 years to complete the 12 life-sized figures of Prophets which stand in front of the Basilica Bom Jesus de Matosinho in Congonhas, Minas Gerais.
Will this novel sell big in its native Brazil? The publisher claims that 'the book is causing a lot of talkback online. On message boards and forums all over the internet, Brazilians are discussing the book and its plot.' But then he would say that, wouldn't he? (Copyright Mandy Rice Davies.)
Will any English-speaking agents or publishers take the trouble to check out The Aleijadinho Code? Will the book work in translation? Will it get on to the NYT bestsellers list? Will we ever see the movie?
Whichever, you read it here first.
Excerpt 28
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
The unprotected shag
I found out afterwards that the techie boys were making bets on it. Was I going to be able to perform when it came to having sex in front of the cameras? Still, it wouldn’t have helped me if I had known what they were up to. I don’t suppose they’d have taken a bet from me.
The famous unprotected shag was supposed to be shown live. That was what all the advance publicity said. For weeks on end, on TV and in the Moon.
But of course Debbie and I having sex together wasn’t live at all. It was filmed two weeks in advance.
Con and Debbie discussed what they were going to do. All the details. They discussed a lot of stuff together. I left it to them.
Everybody else seemed to get very twitchy and nervous as the time got nearer. But I wasn’t bothered funnily enough. Once we’d sorted out the danger to Debbie I was OK about it. But I could see the techie boys looking at me sideways, and that amused me. I could see they were looking at me and thinking, Is he going to be able to do it? And that really made me laugh.
In the end it was decided that we would do it at Debbie’s flat. That was a more feminine sort of place, Con said. It would appeal more to the women viewers. Well there certainly wasn’t much to appeal to them at my place. It was clean and tidy, certainly. But that was about it. No flower arrangements or anything like that.
Before we started the actual sex scene, Debbie and I were interviewed. Separately.
The interviewing was done by the Moon’s agony aunt. She was one of the witnesses too. The witnesses were the people who swore blind that everything was done as per contract. Everything necessary for me to win the million pounds – so called.
I can’t remember all the questions, but here are a few of them. When I answered them I just said exactly what I thought. Debbie is a bit more careful than I am. She is more able to give them the answers they want. In my case I just give them honest answers, and stuff ‘em if they don’t like it.
Do you love Debbie, Harry?
I don’t know what love is.
You’ve been having protected sex with her for some time. What’s she like in bed?
I have no complaints.
Would you miss her if she went away?
Please. Don’t even talk about it. I used to think I was all right living on my own. And I don’t mind going for walks and going fishing on my own. But I’d really like to live with someone again.
Do you think Debbie would do that?
I don’t know. I haven’t dared ask her.
The agony aunt told me afterwards that she was going to ask Debbie the very same things. I don’t know what Debbie said. Someone told me that when she was asked if she loved me she said she was fond of me. And when she was asked what I was like in bed she said the quiet ones are always the best.
The other important question they asked her was why she was willing to risk her health by having unprotected sex with me. And apparently she said that she was only willing to do it because I was going to give the money to Lisa. If I’d been going to take the money myself she wouldn’t have been interested.
I could have found out exactly what Debbie said – about all these things – if I’d ever watched the programme but I never did. Couldn’t be bothered. I’d lived through it. And besides, I was more interested in what Debbie did than what she said on TV.
After the interviews the techies did a sequence with Debbie in her underwear. And the nude scenes of course. Required by the contract, as Con kept reminding us. That amused Debbie too, because she couldn’t have cared less about being nude. Any shyness she might have had as a girl went out the window when she worked for GLAPSTOW.
When they went on their various expeditions the GLAPSTOW lot all seem to have slept in one room, or one tent, as far as I can gather. Anyway, there wasn’t much privacy. And actually Debbie’s rather proud of her figure.
Con was more embarrassed than anyone when they did the nude scenes, and that gave us all a good laugh. He’s quite a shy man underneath all that bluster.
Then we did the sex bit. With the four witnesses in the room next door.
Con had told me that the witnesses were all going to be top-level doctors, but actually they were all TV personalities. A couple of them were doctors I think. The men. And one of them was a professor. The other two were the agony aunt who interviewed us, and another woman who was an expert on relationships.
It was this second woman who wittered on endlessly about how irresponsible and shocking this whole thing was. Getting a man with HIV to have unprotected intercourse with a woman for money was morally wrong, she said. Deeply shocking.
Con loved all that. ‘Good bit of controversy,’ he kept saying, rubbing his hands together. ‘Good bit of controversy. Never does any harm that doesn’t. And besides,’ he said, looking round to make sure that the woman wasn’t listening. ‘For all her bloody objections, she’s still turned up for her fee, hasn’t she?’
Con got Debbie to do her bit about how lots of things were more dangerous than having sex with me. He wouldn’t let her say anything about supermarket chicken, because apparently the supermarkets are big advertisers. But she was allowed to say that smoking was a lot more dangerous than sex with me, because nobody gives a tinker’s cuss what the tobacco companies think about anything. Apparently they’re a dead industry. Or so Con says.
Mind you, after Debbie had said her bit, one of the experts came on and said that Debbie was wrong. Unprotected sex with a person who has HIV is very dangerous indeed, he reckoned.
I watched them as they were interviewing our celebrity witnesses, and they were all as smooth as silk. You could tell they’d done a lot of that sort of thing. They never blinked an eye if Con wanted another take, and said the same thing word for word.
This particular one of them went on and on about how dangerous unprotected sex was. Don’t try this at home, he said. Con loved that. They were all asked if they would do it themselves – have unprotected sex with a person with HIV. And they all said they wouldn’t. Not even for a million quid. Con was as happy as a pig in you know what.
After we’d got all that done, there was a nurse and a doctor on hand to wire up me and Debbie to various machines. They stuck little patches on us to measure various things. The amount of sweat. Our pulse rate. Blood pressure. Stuff like that. Then they fed all the results into a computer and showed it on a screen.
It was a work of art that screen, I can tell you. They showed me the results afterwards.
And then of course Debbie and I had to perform.
Funnily enough we didn’t have any trouble at all. We’d shared a bottle of wine. Not because we needed it, but because there was a lot of hanging about that evening while the techies did the interviews and fixed the camera angles and stuff like that.
Actually there was no one in the bedroom when we got down to it. The cameras were all very discreet. And it was almost dark in the room. Con used infra-red I think it was called. Better effect, he said. But it looked a bit odd to me when I saw it played back on the monitors.
As far as Debbie and I were concerned it was just business as usual. She lives in a block of flats anyway, and so whenever we made love there was always someone in the room above us, or the room below. So having all these technicians and witnesses and whatnot in the next room didn’t mean a thing really.
Once I found myself in bed with Debbie, with the lights off and her up close to me, I can’t say I found it difficult at all. So the techies who bet against me lost.
In fact I forgot about all the other people while we were actually doing it, and when we’d finished and I’d sort of rolled over I was a bit surprised when the door opened and the nurse came in. She wanted to remove the camera that Debbie had had up inside her. Oh yes, they had one of those all right. Just like Debbie said they would. I couldn’t actually feel it, which was just as well, but it did the job. Con absolutely raved about the results.
Afterwards they did more interviews with Debbie and me and the witnesses. Getting their reaction and final thoughts. There was twice as much time to fill up as usual, because the final show in the series was going to be an hour rather than the usual thirty minutes.
While the nurse was fiddling around inside her Debbie looked over at me and smiled. ‘Any problems, Harry?’
‘None at all,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t mind doing it again. How about you?’
‘Funnily enough,’ she said, ‘I found it quite exciting. Perhaps we should do it for an audience more often.’
But we never did. It wasn’t really the most romantic night of our lives. It was just something we had to do.
Afterwards Debbie had various tests and took the medication that Dr Meadows had told us about. But it turned out that she never had caught HIV off me anyway.
Even today people still talk about that programme. They come up to me in pubs and that and ask me about it. And they really only want to know one thing. To put it crudely, what they want to know is, how did I manage to get it up with all those people watching?
Well, the answer to that is that sex has never been a problem for me. When we were teenagers there was a gang of about ten or twelve of us, boys and girls together. We went everywhere together for a year or two, and most of the boys had sex with all of the girls, and vice versa.
We always looked after the girls. We either used a condom or pulled out in time, so none of them ever got into trouble.
One of the girls had a Dad who made a bit more money than most, and he had a swimming pool in his back garden. And we all used to swim there in the nude. The Dad liked that. Used to film us with his camcorder. So that got rid of any shyness of mine.
As for Debbie, as I said, the GLAPSTOW lot used to live in tents and things on their expeditions. They would set up outdoor showers, that sort of thing. And while they didn’t actually go in for having sex in public, they might just as well have, Debbie says. Because there was no privacy at all, and almost everyone was at it one way or another. In sleeping bags and so forth. So she isn’t exactly a shrinking violet either.
The sex, of course, is one of the reasons why Debbie gave up on GLAPSTOW. She reckons there were two sorts of people who were allowed to join. One kind was starry-eyed girls, who know absolutely nothing about real life but think it’s cool to try to end global warming and all that. The other kind was men, and the men were either as dim as the girls or else they were in it for the sex. Debbie says it’s amazing what a bloke can get a girl to do if she thinks she’s saving the world.
And then of course Debbie found out about how the people at the top were siphoning off the money. That didn’t come out until a couple of years after she’d left, but it was big news when it did. Debbie never blew the whistle on them because she couldn’t prove any of it. But she knew it was happening. And when she realised that the whole thing was a sham, from the sex with the girls to the secret Swiss bank accounts, she called it a day and came home.
I’m very glad she did.
The unprotected shag
I found out afterwards that the techie boys were making bets on it. Was I going to be able to perform when it came to having sex in front of the cameras? Still, it wouldn’t have helped me if I had known what they were up to. I don’t suppose they’d have taken a bet from me.
The famous unprotected shag was supposed to be shown live. That was what all the advance publicity said. For weeks on end, on TV and in the Moon.
But of course Debbie and I having sex together wasn’t live at all. It was filmed two weeks in advance.
Con and Debbie discussed what they were going to do. All the details. They discussed a lot of stuff together. I left it to them.
Everybody else seemed to get very twitchy and nervous as the time got nearer. But I wasn’t bothered funnily enough. Once we’d sorted out the danger to Debbie I was OK about it. But I could see the techie boys looking at me sideways, and that amused me. I could see they were looking at me and thinking, Is he going to be able to do it? And that really made me laugh.
In the end it was decided that we would do it at Debbie’s flat. That was a more feminine sort of place, Con said. It would appeal more to the women viewers. Well there certainly wasn’t much to appeal to them at my place. It was clean and tidy, certainly. But that was about it. No flower arrangements or anything like that.
Before we started the actual sex scene, Debbie and I were interviewed. Separately.
The interviewing was done by the Moon’s agony aunt. She was one of the witnesses too. The witnesses were the people who swore blind that everything was done as per contract. Everything necessary for me to win the million pounds – so called.
I can’t remember all the questions, but here are a few of them. When I answered them I just said exactly what I thought. Debbie is a bit more careful than I am. She is more able to give them the answers they want. In my case I just give them honest answers, and stuff ‘em if they don’t like it.
Do you love Debbie, Harry?
I don’t know what love is.
You’ve been having protected sex with her for some time. What’s she like in bed?
I have no complaints.
Would you miss her if she went away?
Please. Don’t even talk about it. I used to think I was all right living on my own. And I don’t mind going for walks and going fishing on my own. But I’d really like to live with someone again.
Do you think Debbie would do that?
I don’t know. I haven’t dared ask her.
The agony aunt told me afterwards that she was going to ask Debbie the very same things. I don’t know what Debbie said. Someone told me that when she was asked if she loved me she said she was fond of me. And when she was asked what I was like in bed she said the quiet ones are always the best.
The other important question they asked her was why she was willing to risk her health by having unprotected sex with me. And apparently she said that she was only willing to do it because I was going to give the money to Lisa. If I’d been going to take the money myself she wouldn’t have been interested.
I could have found out exactly what Debbie said – about all these things – if I’d ever watched the programme but I never did. Couldn’t be bothered. I’d lived through it. And besides, I was more interested in what Debbie did than what she said on TV.
After the interviews the techies did a sequence with Debbie in her underwear. And the nude scenes of course. Required by the contract, as Con kept reminding us. That amused Debbie too, because she couldn’t have cared less about being nude. Any shyness she might have had as a girl went out the window when she worked for GLAPSTOW.
When they went on their various expeditions the GLAPSTOW lot all seem to have slept in one room, or one tent, as far as I can gather. Anyway, there wasn’t much privacy. And actually Debbie’s rather proud of her figure.
Con was more embarrassed than anyone when they did the nude scenes, and that gave us all a good laugh. He’s quite a shy man underneath all that bluster.
Then we did the sex bit. With the four witnesses in the room next door.
Con had told me that the witnesses were all going to be top-level doctors, but actually they were all TV personalities. A couple of them were doctors I think. The men. And one of them was a professor. The other two were the agony aunt who interviewed us, and another woman who was an expert on relationships.
It was this second woman who wittered on endlessly about how irresponsible and shocking this whole thing was. Getting a man with HIV to have unprotected intercourse with a woman for money was morally wrong, she said. Deeply shocking.
Con loved all that. ‘Good bit of controversy,’ he kept saying, rubbing his hands together. ‘Good bit of controversy. Never does any harm that doesn’t. And besides,’ he said, looking round to make sure that the woman wasn’t listening. ‘For all her bloody objections, she’s still turned up for her fee, hasn’t she?’
Con got Debbie to do her bit about how lots of things were more dangerous than having sex with me. He wouldn’t let her say anything about supermarket chicken, because apparently the supermarkets are big advertisers. But she was allowed to say that smoking was a lot more dangerous than sex with me, because nobody gives a tinker’s cuss what the tobacco companies think about anything. Apparently they’re a dead industry. Or so Con says.
Mind you, after Debbie had said her bit, one of the experts came on and said that Debbie was wrong. Unprotected sex with a person who has HIV is very dangerous indeed, he reckoned.
I watched them as they were interviewing our celebrity witnesses, and they were all as smooth as silk. You could tell they’d done a lot of that sort of thing. They never blinked an eye if Con wanted another take, and said the same thing word for word.
This particular one of them went on and on about how dangerous unprotected sex was. Don’t try this at home, he said. Con loved that. They were all asked if they would do it themselves – have unprotected sex with a person with HIV. And they all said they wouldn’t. Not even for a million quid. Con was as happy as a pig in you know what.
After we’d got all that done, there was a nurse and a doctor on hand to wire up me and Debbie to various machines. They stuck little patches on us to measure various things. The amount of sweat. Our pulse rate. Blood pressure. Stuff like that. Then they fed all the results into a computer and showed it on a screen.
It was a work of art that screen, I can tell you. They showed me the results afterwards.
And then of course Debbie and I had to perform.
Funnily enough we didn’t have any trouble at all. We’d shared a bottle of wine. Not because we needed it, but because there was a lot of hanging about that evening while the techies did the interviews and fixed the camera angles and stuff like that.
Actually there was no one in the bedroom when we got down to it. The cameras were all very discreet. And it was almost dark in the room. Con used infra-red I think it was called. Better effect, he said. But it looked a bit odd to me when I saw it played back on the monitors.
As far as Debbie and I were concerned it was just business as usual. She lives in a block of flats anyway, and so whenever we made love there was always someone in the room above us, or the room below. So having all these technicians and witnesses and whatnot in the next room didn’t mean a thing really.
Once I found myself in bed with Debbie, with the lights off and her up close to me, I can’t say I found it difficult at all. So the techies who bet against me lost.
In fact I forgot about all the other people while we were actually doing it, and when we’d finished and I’d sort of rolled over I was a bit surprised when the door opened and the nurse came in. She wanted to remove the camera that Debbie had had up inside her. Oh yes, they had one of those all right. Just like Debbie said they would. I couldn’t actually feel it, which was just as well, but it did the job. Con absolutely raved about the results.
Afterwards they did more interviews with Debbie and me and the witnesses. Getting their reaction and final thoughts. There was twice as much time to fill up as usual, because the final show in the series was going to be an hour rather than the usual thirty minutes.
While the nurse was fiddling around inside her Debbie looked over at me and smiled. ‘Any problems, Harry?’
‘None at all,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t mind doing it again. How about you?’
‘Funnily enough,’ she said, ‘I found it quite exciting. Perhaps we should do it for an audience more often.’
But we never did. It wasn’t really the most romantic night of our lives. It was just something we had to do.
Afterwards Debbie had various tests and took the medication that Dr Meadows had told us about. But it turned out that she never had caught HIV off me anyway.
Even today people still talk about that programme. They come up to me in pubs and that and ask me about it. And they really only want to know one thing. To put it crudely, what they want to know is, how did I manage to get it up with all those people watching?
Well, the answer to that is that sex has never been a problem for me. When we were teenagers there was a gang of about ten or twelve of us, boys and girls together. We went everywhere together for a year or two, and most of the boys had sex with all of the girls, and vice versa.
We always looked after the girls. We either used a condom or pulled out in time, so none of them ever got into trouble.
One of the girls had a Dad who made a bit more money than most, and he had a swimming pool in his back garden. And we all used to swim there in the nude. The Dad liked that. Used to film us with his camcorder. So that got rid of any shyness of mine.
As for Debbie, as I said, the GLAPSTOW lot used to live in tents and things on their expeditions. They would set up outdoor showers, that sort of thing. And while they didn’t actually go in for having sex in public, they might just as well have, Debbie says. Because there was no privacy at all, and almost everyone was at it one way or another. In sleeping bags and so forth. So she isn’t exactly a shrinking violet either.
The sex, of course, is one of the reasons why Debbie gave up on GLAPSTOW. She reckons there were two sorts of people who were allowed to join. One kind was starry-eyed girls, who know absolutely nothing about real life but think it’s cool to try to end global warming and all that. The other kind was men, and the men were either as dim as the girls or else they were in it for the sex. Debbie says it’s amazing what a bloke can get a girl to do if she thinks she’s saving the world.
And then of course Debbie found out about how the people at the top were siphoning off the money. That didn’t come out until a couple of years after she’d left, but it was big news when it did. Debbie never blew the whistle on them because she couldn’t prove any of it. But she knew it was happening. And when she realised that the whole thing was a sham, from the sex with the girls to the secret Swiss bank accounts, she called it a day and came home.
I’m very glad she did.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Virtual Theatre contest
Many writers are, understandably, somewhat dubious about writing competitions, on the grounds that they are devices for parting the gullible from their money. On the other hand, there are some contests which are reasonably well run, by (so far as one can tell) responsible people, and to enter one such may not necessarily be a foolish decision.
All of that being said, you might, if you are interested in writing for the theatre, care to take a look at the new play competition being run by the Virtual Theatre Project. And make your own mind up.
All of that being said, you might, if you are interested in writing for the theatre, care to take a look at the new play competition being run by the Virtual Theatre Project. And make your own mind up.
Hidden extras
Ah, dearie, dearie me. You set yourself up in business, trying to do something really useful, for a modest fee, and people just snipe at you.
Maud Newton had a go at the Booksurge publishing package, which includes an offer to get your book read and reviewed by a New York Times bestselling author -- a review which, you are promised, will yield a quote for your cover, and all for a mere $399. And what does Maud do? She makes snide remarks about it.
'Cost for someone to come over to your house, stand behind your desk chair, and press your fingertips to the keyboard to form words: negotiable,' says Maud. And she adds: 'Ass-wiping services not included.'
Now that's quite unnecessary, Maud. Go wash your mouth out, this instant.
Speaking for myself, I have often wondered, as I sit there, open-mouthed, re-reading the warm-hearted encomium which is splashed all over the cover of a book which I have just found to be unreadable, what the going rate for the job is. And now we know.
Maud Newton had a go at the Booksurge publishing package, which includes an offer to get your book read and reviewed by a New York Times bestselling author -- a review which, you are promised, will yield a quote for your cover, and all for a mere $399. And what does Maud do? She makes snide remarks about it.
'Cost for someone to come over to your house, stand behind your desk chair, and press your fingertips to the keyboard to form words: negotiable,' says Maud. And she adds: 'Ass-wiping services not included.'
Now that's quite unnecessary, Maud. Go wash your mouth out, this instant.
Speaking for myself, I have often wondered, as I sit there, open-mouthed, re-reading the warm-hearted encomium which is splashed all over the cover of a book which I have just found to be unreadable, what the going rate for the job is. And now we know.
Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy L Sayers: A Presumption of Death
In the 1930s and '40s, there were three British crime writers who could all put in a reasonable claim to the title Queen of Crime. They were Agatha Christie, Marjorie Allingham, and Dorothy L Sayers.
Of these three, the one who appeals most to me is Margery Allingham; and, as described in my post of 4 June 2004, I recently re-read the whole of her output, from start to finish, with a great deal of pleasure.
Agatha Christie, of course, outsold any of them (though Allingham and Sayers had the higher reputations in literary circles), and she continues to mint a small fortune even today. The copyrights of Agatha's output are now owned by Chorion, a company which, even as we speak, is devising new ways to package the old lady's extensive oeuvre. A mere ten days or so ago, I watched an extremely glossy two-hour version of The Sittaford Mystery, a Miss Marple story, on ITV. (The official Christie web site is therefore out of date in saying that the story has never been adapted for stage or or screen; and the new version can be bought on DVD, should you wish.) Judging by the ones that I've seen, most of the new TV versions of the old stories introduce some new motivations which would have been quite impossible in Agatha's day, such as incest and lesbianism.
For all its machinations, however, the Christie estate and now Chorion have steadfastly avoided licensing any new novels featuring the great Christie detectives, such as Miss Marple and Poirot. And the same is true of Allingham, although Margery's husband, Philip Youngman Carter, finished off a couple of her planned novels after her death.
But the same is not true of Dorothy L Sayers. In her case, the distinguished novelist Jill Paton Walsh was allowed/commissioned to complete the novel Thrones, Dominations, and she has also written a new novel which features Sayers's famous series detective, Lord Peter Wimsey: A Presumption of Death (2002).
Like Christie and Allingham, Sayers has a society dedicated to the preservation of her memory and the dissemination of information about her, and you can find a short biography of her there. Born in 1893, she died in 1957. A scholarly woman, and a Christian, she produced 14 volumes of novels and short stories with Lord Peter Wimsey as her detective. As his name suggests, Wimsey was very definitely a member of the aristocracy.
Jill Paton Walsh is perhaps chiefly famous for the fact that, when unable to find a mainstream publisher for her novel Knowledge of Angels, she published it herself. The book was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.
So much for the background to A Presumption of Death. And what of the story?
Well, for this book Walsh has moved on in time to 1940 -- when, as you may recall, there was a war on. Wimsey is now married, to another of Sayers's characters, the former Harriet Vane. Harriet has taken her young children to safety in the English countryside (cities being bombed at the time). Before long a murder is committed in this quiet English village, but Wimsey himself is abroad, on a secret mission for the Government, and so Harriet is at first obliged to investigate on her own.
Regular readers of the older whodunits, such as those produced by Christie, Allingham, and Sayers, will know what to expect. Essentially, the reader is required to accept a preposterous proposition, namely that a private individual would be able to out-think the police force, and indeed would be allowed and encouraged to participate in the official investigation of a murder. But, if one is to read more than a page or two of any one of a thousand examples of the genre, it is necessary to accept this device as a given. Once that is swallowed, the rest goes down easily.
As murder stories go, A Presumption of Death is very cosy and domestic indeed. So much so that at first I thought I would not be able to finish it. But therein lies Walsh's skill: she bluffs you a bit at first, and then you find that the writing and the characterisation have a harder edge than expected, and you stick with it.
It turns out that this novel is at least as much about life in wartime, and about family affairs, as it is about crime; and it's none the worse for that. Walsh has done her homework, and we learn some interesting facts, such as that, given a wartime shortage of shotgun ammunition, country people made their own lead pellets from melted-down piping. We also learn quite a lot about keeping pigs, both legally and illegally.
The second murder, when it occurs, is a bit far-fetched, but that really doesn't matter. By now the thoughtful reader will have realised that the murders are but a device for the revelation of character. This is not one of those John Dickson Carr-type novels, in which fiendish (and fundamentally incredible) devices are used to produce a dead man in a locked room, or whatever. This is a novel about people. And at the end, with little help from the poet Shelley, this manages to be a truly moving novel. That's no mean achievement, whodunit or no whodunit.
Of these three, the one who appeals most to me is Margery Allingham; and, as described in my post of 4 June 2004, I recently re-read the whole of her output, from start to finish, with a great deal of pleasure.
Agatha Christie, of course, outsold any of them (though Allingham and Sayers had the higher reputations in literary circles), and she continues to mint a small fortune even today. The copyrights of Agatha's output are now owned by Chorion, a company which, even as we speak, is devising new ways to package the old lady's extensive oeuvre. A mere ten days or so ago, I watched an extremely glossy two-hour version of The Sittaford Mystery, a Miss Marple story, on ITV. (The official Christie web site is therefore out of date in saying that the story has never been adapted for stage or or screen; and the new version can be bought on DVD, should you wish.) Judging by the ones that I've seen, most of the new TV versions of the old stories introduce some new motivations which would have been quite impossible in Agatha's day, such as incest and lesbianism.
For all its machinations, however, the Christie estate and now Chorion have steadfastly avoided licensing any new novels featuring the great Christie detectives, such as Miss Marple and Poirot. And the same is true of Allingham, although Margery's husband, Philip Youngman Carter, finished off a couple of her planned novels after her death.
But the same is not true of Dorothy L Sayers. In her case, the distinguished novelist Jill Paton Walsh was allowed/commissioned to complete the novel Thrones, Dominations, and she has also written a new novel which features Sayers's famous series detective, Lord Peter Wimsey: A Presumption of Death (2002).
Like Christie and Allingham, Sayers has a society dedicated to the preservation of her memory and the dissemination of information about her, and you can find a short biography of her there. Born in 1893, she died in 1957. A scholarly woman, and a Christian, she produced 14 volumes of novels and short stories with Lord Peter Wimsey as her detective. As his name suggests, Wimsey was very definitely a member of the aristocracy.
Jill Paton Walsh is perhaps chiefly famous for the fact that, when unable to find a mainstream publisher for her novel Knowledge of Angels, she published it herself. The book was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.
So much for the background to A Presumption of Death. And what of the story?
Well, for this book Walsh has moved on in time to 1940 -- when, as you may recall, there was a war on. Wimsey is now married, to another of Sayers's characters, the former Harriet Vane. Harriet has taken her young children to safety in the English countryside (cities being bombed at the time). Before long a murder is committed in this quiet English village, but Wimsey himself is abroad, on a secret mission for the Government, and so Harriet is at first obliged to investigate on her own.
Regular readers of the older whodunits, such as those produced by Christie, Allingham, and Sayers, will know what to expect. Essentially, the reader is required to accept a preposterous proposition, namely that a private individual would be able to out-think the police force, and indeed would be allowed and encouraged to participate in the official investigation of a murder. But, if one is to read more than a page or two of any one of a thousand examples of the genre, it is necessary to accept this device as a given. Once that is swallowed, the rest goes down easily.
As murder stories go, A Presumption of Death is very cosy and domestic indeed. So much so that at first I thought I would not be able to finish it. But therein lies Walsh's skill: she bluffs you a bit at first, and then you find that the writing and the characterisation have a harder edge than expected, and you stick with it.
It turns out that this novel is at least as much about life in wartime, and about family affairs, as it is about crime; and it's none the worse for that. Walsh has done her homework, and we learn some interesting facts, such as that, given a wartime shortage of shotgun ammunition, country people made their own lead pellets from melted-down piping. We also learn quite a lot about keeping pigs, both legally and illegally.
The second murder, when it occurs, is a bit far-fetched, but that really doesn't matter. By now the thoughtful reader will have realised that the murders are but a device for the revelation of character. This is not one of those John Dickson Carr-type novels, in which fiendish (and fundamentally incredible) devices are used to produce a dead man in a locked room, or whatever. This is a novel about people. And at the end, with little help from the poet Shelley, this manages to be a truly moving novel. That's no mean achievement, whodunit or no whodunit.
Independent bookshops fall prey to cut prices
Not unnaturally, the small independent booksellers of this world (e.g. Clive Keeble) get steaming mad when the likes of me provide a link to an online bookseller and forget to mention that you can, of course, order the book in question from your local small guy and get it just as quickly.
The results are plain for all to see. But if you want the painful details, the Observer has an article by David Smith, describing the closure of several small independent firms (link from booktrade.info).
As for why such shops are closing: it seems to be mainly a question of price. The UK supermarkets are able to slice huge sums off the nominal price of a book. And, if you want to compare online prices, you can go to FetchBook.info and get a quick rundown of the various options. Currently, for instance (ignoring postage), the cheapest place to buy How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous is a third-party trader working through Amazon.co.uk.
Please note one slight oddity about the FetchBook site. Once you have got your list of prices, you will see that the Store Rating column offers a number of reviews. So, for instance, Amazon.co.uk Market has 8 reviews. These reviews, and their associated star ratings, you will soon discover, relate only to the supplier, and not the book. More to the point, they relate only to specific traders working through, e.g. Amazon.co.uk. So Amazon.co.uk Market gets both five star reviews and half-a-star bitter complaints. And both are no doubt true, depending on who you're dealing with.
The results are plain for all to see. But if you want the painful details, the Observer has an article by David Smith, describing the closure of several small independent firms (link from booktrade.info).
As for why such shops are closing: it seems to be mainly a question of price. The UK supermarkets are able to slice huge sums off the nominal price of a book. And, if you want to compare online prices, you can go to FetchBook.info and get a quick rundown of the various options. Currently, for instance (ignoring postage), the cheapest place to buy How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous is a third-party trader working through Amazon.co.uk.
Please note one slight oddity about the FetchBook site. Once you have got your list of prices, you will see that the Store Rating column offers a number of reviews. So, for instance, Amazon.co.uk Market has 8 reviews. These reviews, and their associated star ratings, you will soon discover, relate only to the supplier, and not the book. More to the point, they relate only to specific traders working through, e.g. Amazon.co.uk. So Amazon.co.uk Market gets both five star reviews and half-a-star bitter complaints. And both are no doubt true, depending on who you're dealing with.
The powers that be
New York magazine features a short piece which purports to name the current movers and shakers in the book world. There are only seven names listed, and the choice, as usual in these things, is bizarre. But then they have to fill up the white space with something. (Link from the Literary Saloon.)
Fair enough?
We noted yesterday that Frankfurt was, so to speak, coming to London, in the shape of a book fair to rival the established London Book Fair. And if you want a brief description of what the various fairs are all about, and the pros and cons of the existing situation, Sam Edenborough provides one in the Guardian.
PS added later. According to Publishers Lunch, the CEO of Reed Exhibitions UK (who organise the LBF), made an official coment on the situation. He defended the decision to move the LBF from Earl's Court (fairly central) to Excel (way out), adding 'The London Book Fair is here to stay. We strongly recommend that all of our clients give The London Book Fair one more chance to demonstrate that our exciting vision is achievable at Excel -- anything else would, in our opinion, be a retrograde step.'
As of the time of this post, there is still no official comment on the LBF web site.
Publishers Lunch also spoke to Thomas Minkus, press officer for Frankfurt, and Frankfurt is reportedly overwhelmed by expressions of interest after Friday's announcement. Minkus added: 'I don't think there will be two book fairs in London next year.... It wouldn't be good for anyone,' but clearly he's thinking it's Reed that will have to give away. He expects that the next few months will see the two rivals fighting to sign up publishers and agents.
PS added later. According to Publishers Lunch, the CEO of Reed Exhibitions UK (who organise the LBF), made an official coment on the situation. He defended the decision to move the LBF from Earl's Court (fairly central) to Excel (way out), adding 'The London Book Fair is here to stay. We strongly recommend that all of our clients give The London Book Fair one more chance to demonstrate that our exciting vision is achievable at Excel -- anything else would, in our opinion, be a retrograde step.'
As of the time of this post, there is still no official comment on the LBF web site.
Publishers Lunch also spoke to Thomas Minkus, press officer for Frankfurt, and Frankfurt is reportedly overwhelmed by expressions of interest after Friday's announcement. Minkus added: 'I don't think there will be two book fairs in London next year.... It wouldn't be good for anyone,' but clearly he's thinking it's Reed that will have to give away. He expects that the next few months will see the two rivals fighting to sign up publishers and agents.
Excerpt 27
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Mr Redmond prays for me
Once Debbie and I had made up our minds what to do, I told Mr Redmond. It seemed only fair, since he’d been so helpful to me. I told him when he came into the church to see me, the next day.
He nodded when I’d finished. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m pleased you worked it all out in your head, Harry. It was obviously very important that you should.’
He paused for a minute. And then he said: ‘Harry, would you mind if I prayed for you?’
‘Well no,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’ Mr Redmond knows that I don’t go to church myself, and I’m not much of a believer if it comes to that. But I had no objection to him praying for me. I thought it was a very friendly thing for him to do.
At the time I thought he meant he would remember me in his prayers at night, but it turned that wasn’t quite what he meant.
‘I think it’s only fair to tell you, Harry, that I’m doing this for my own sake as much as for yours. I don’t know why, Harry, but I feel very bad about the way I’ve treated you.’
I couldn’t understand that. ‘But you’ve always treated me very well,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘Well, maybe that’s the way it looks to you, Harry. But that’s not the way I feel inside. It was when you told me about being HIV positive, Harry. It’s taken me quite some time to come to terms with that. I feel I may have misjudged you, and I’d like to pray for forgiveness. And I’d like to ask God to help you in your endeavours too.’
I still didn’t understand, but I told him I would feel very pleased if he did pray for me.
‘What I’d like to do, Harry, if you don’t mind, is have you sit in a pew, facing the altar, and then I’ll come round behind you.’
So that’s what I did. I sat down in a pew, and he stood in the pew behind. And then he put his hands on my shoulders, right beside my neck.
And after a moment he began to pray out loud.
I love the sound of words in a church. Especially when they’re spoken by someone with the right kind of voice. Not all vicars do have the right voice. Some of them are too high-pitched for my taste. A bit too pale very often. Too much like a choir boy. But Mr Redmond has what I call a proper voice. It’s confident and clear. Not a very deep voice but obviously a man’s voice. I don’t go to church, as I’ve said, only to weddings and funerals. Never have. But I do like the sound of words.
And so when Mr Redmond began to speak, I didn’t so much listen to the words as listen to the sound. And I closed my eyes because I find it easier to listen that way.
‘Lord,’ said Mr Redmond, ‘I ask you to help this thy faithful servant Harry, and to grant that…’
I don’t remember any more. But I remember the words going on for some time. Very calm and resonant they were. He didn’t speak loudly, but I’m sure you could have heard him all over the church.
And as he spoke I could feel a tremendous sense of warmth in his hands. It seemed to spread out from my shoulders and go all over my body. I found it very calming. It made me feel relaxed and not worried any more.
In fact it made me so relaxed that I didn’t really notice when Mr Redmond stopped. But I think I remember him walking away. I could hear the little clicks that his heels made on the stone floor.
There was nobody else in the church at the time. Just him and me. And that was just as well really. Because after I’d been left alone I suddenly began to cry. I sobbed like a baby. Not noisily, but quietly. I just held my head in my hands and sobbed.
I don’t know how long that went on for. But after I recovered I felt a lot better. About everything.
Mr Redmond prays for me
Once Debbie and I had made up our minds what to do, I told Mr Redmond. It seemed only fair, since he’d been so helpful to me. I told him when he came into the church to see me, the next day.
He nodded when I’d finished. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m pleased you worked it all out in your head, Harry. It was obviously very important that you should.’
He paused for a minute. And then he said: ‘Harry, would you mind if I prayed for you?’
‘Well no,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’ Mr Redmond knows that I don’t go to church myself, and I’m not much of a believer if it comes to that. But I had no objection to him praying for me. I thought it was a very friendly thing for him to do.
At the time I thought he meant he would remember me in his prayers at night, but it turned that wasn’t quite what he meant.
‘I think it’s only fair to tell you, Harry, that I’m doing this for my own sake as much as for yours. I don’t know why, Harry, but I feel very bad about the way I’ve treated you.’
I couldn’t understand that. ‘But you’ve always treated me very well,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘Well, maybe that’s the way it looks to you, Harry. But that’s not the way I feel inside. It was when you told me about being HIV positive, Harry. It’s taken me quite some time to come to terms with that. I feel I may have misjudged you, and I’d like to pray for forgiveness. And I’d like to ask God to help you in your endeavours too.’
I still didn’t understand, but I told him I would feel very pleased if he did pray for me.
‘What I’d like to do, Harry, if you don’t mind, is have you sit in a pew, facing the altar, and then I’ll come round behind you.’
So that’s what I did. I sat down in a pew, and he stood in the pew behind. And then he put his hands on my shoulders, right beside my neck.
And after a moment he began to pray out loud.
I love the sound of words in a church. Especially when they’re spoken by someone with the right kind of voice. Not all vicars do have the right voice. Some of them are too high-pitched for my taste. A bit too pale very often. Too much like a choir boy. But Mr Redmond has what I call a proper voice. It’s confident and clear. Not a very deep voice but obviously a man’s voice. I don’t go to church, as I’ve said, only to weddings and funerals. Never have. But I do like the sound of words.
And so when Mr Redmond began to speak, I didn’t so much listen to the words as listen to the sound. And I closed my eyes because I find it easier to listen that way.
‘Lord,’ said Mr Redmond, ‘I ask you to help this thy faithful servant Harry, and to grant that…’
I don’t remember any more. But I remember the words going on for some time. Very calm and resonant they were. He didn’t speak loudly, but I’m sure you could have heard him all over the church.
And as he spoke I could feel a tremendous sense of warmth in his hands. It seemed to spread out from my shoulders and go all over my body. I found it very calming. It made me feel relaxed and not worried any more.
In fact it made me so relaxed that I didn’t really notice when Mr Redmond stopped. But I think I remember him walking away. I could hear the little clicks that his heels made on the stone floor.
There was nobody else in the church at the time. Just him and me. And that was just as well really. Because after I’d been left alone I suddenly began to cry. I sobbed like a baby. Not noisily, but quietly. I just held my head in my hands and sobbed.
I don’t know how long that went on for. But after I recovered I felt a lot better. About everything.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Weekend roundup
Sand Storm
Steve Clackson has posted the Prologue and first two chapters of his novel Sand Storm on his blog. So you can have a test drive before you buy.
Match Made in Heaven
Bob Mitchell is attracting attention with his first novel Match Made in Heaven, published in the US by Kensington on 6 May. Kirkus reviews have given it a starred review.
The basic story is: 50-year-old Elliott seems likely to die and prays for an extension of life. And God agrees, provided Elliott can win 18 holes of golf. And it turns out that Elliott has to play the likes of Freud, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Babe Ruth, and all like that.
Clearly not for me but the American market seems to like that kind of thing.
Pocket Book Guide
Running a small press? Or published your own book? Fancy a punt (which means a bet, in England)? If you do, there's an insert which goes in the Radio Times (which is still the quaint old name for the BBC's program schedule for the week, including all the non-BBC TV channels). It's called Pocket Book Guide, and it features synopses (advertorials) of up-and-coming book releases. Though it could just as easily feature previously published books.
Of course you have to pay: a minimum of £649. And you will have to work out how many books you need to sell to cover that cost. But theoretically these little boxes of info reach a very large audience at less than £1 per thousand, based on circulation, or about 30p a thousand based on readers.
Details: email the account manager, Alex Powell: alex.powell at bbc.co.uk.
Fewer than?
Last week I mentioned that Bookscan data reveal that 93% of books sell less than 1,000 copies. And I got ticked off by one commenter, who told me that I should have said 'fewer than'.
Well, nobody ever taught me that as a child, so I went looking. Bill Walsh, author of Lapsing into a Comma, has nothing to say on the matter, so far as I can see, but the third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage does. The pedants' rule is: you say 'fewer than' when referring to a countable amount, e.g. books, biscuits; and 'less than' when it's a non-countable noun, as in 'less power'.
Well, there you go. A trivial offence, I feel, but I shall try (and probably fail) to remember.
A dirty weekend with Mitzi Szereto
Actually it's a whole week. Mitzi Szereto, the established number-one authority on how to write erotic fiction, is running a week-long residential creative-writing course on the Greek island of Skiathos, 9-15 September 2006. And all for a mere $795. A single room costs extra, oddly enough. Don't quite follow that. Anyway, for further info, go to Zoe Artemis. And try not to get jammed in the doorway.
Fish Publishing
Over at Fish Publishing, the winners of the 2006 One-page Prize have been announced. The winner gets 1,000 euros.
Fish have also launched three new summer competitions. There is a new Short Histories Prize, and also a Historical One-Page Prize. Both of these are being run in conjunction with the Historical Novel Society. Finally, there is a prize being offered in conjunction with the UK's Crime Writers Association, the Fish-Knife Award.
Interestingly, entries to these competitions must be submitted online.
Should you happen to be in Ireland in early July, Fish Publishing has events in the West Cork Literary Festival, 2-7 July. John Banville is among those attending said festival, but I'm sure you won't let that put you off.
Frankfurt in London
The Frankfurt Book Fair, held annually in October, has for many years been a major event in the lives of publishers and literary agents from all over the world. Representatives of all leading firms tend to gather in Frankfurt and sell each other the rights in various books. The fair does not usually have much to offer to authors, and by and large the general public are not admitted.
A similar but slightly less prestigious rights fair, the London Book Fair (LBF), has been held in London in March each year. However, some attendees in 2006 were less than thrilled with the way in which LBF was organised. The proceedings were moved to a new location in East London which was not universally popular.
Well, now the organisers of Frankfurt have announced that they will be running a kind of 'Frankfurt in London', beginning in April 2007 (Monday 16th to Wednesday 18th). Their press release has details. (Link from booktrade.info.) The name of the event is to be The Book Fair Earl's Court.
The press release points out that this initiative has been launched 'after approaches were made to the Frankfurt Book Fair by UK publishers and agents asking them to support a venue in central London.' The organisers seem committed to making this a regular event.
Quite where this leaves the organisers of LBF is anyone's guess. But as of now, they are still intending to hold an LBF from 5-7 March in 2007.
Galleycat has comments.
Science-fiction awards
Geoff Ryman has won the 2006 Arthur C Clarke award for best novel with Air. He was previously the winner in 1990 for The Child Garden. The prize is a cheque for £2006, appropriately enough. Air has also won the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Award for Best Novel; and the Sunburst and Tiptree awards too.
Meanwhile the Nebula awards were handed out in Arizona a couple of days ago. Full details and picture courtesy of Locus online. Kelly Link, spoken of here on 24 April 2006, won two prizes, a feat rarely achieved, and Harlan Ellison was hailed as a Grand Master. Harlan was interviewed, 1 May, by the Arizona Republic. This link also from Locus online, which is a rich source of data on science-fiction awards and the genre generally.
Seconded
Here's a para from Dave Langford's always interesting Ansible, a monthly newsletter relating to science fiction.
The Locus page mentioned above has a link to questions that are being asked about the veracity of yet another set of memoirs. This time the book is Jack Williamson's Wonder's Child. The publisher (reportedly) defends the author as follows:
WH Smith prospers
Steve Clackson has posted the Prologue and first two chapters of his novel Sand Storm on his blog. So you can have a test drive before you buy.
Match Made in Heaven
Bob Mitchell is attracting attention with his first novel Match Made in Heaven, published in the US by Kensington on 6 May. Kirkus reviews have given it a starred review.
The basic story is: 50-year-old Elliott seems likely to die and prays for an extension of life. And God agrees, provided Elliott can win 18 holes of golf. And it turns out that Elliott has to play the likes of Freud, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Babe Ruth, and all like that.
Clearly not for me but the American market seems to like that kind of thing.
Pocket Book Guide
Running a small press? Or published your own book? Fancy a punt (which means a bet, in England)? If you do, there's an insert which goes in the Radio Times (which is still the quaint old name for the BBC's program schedule for the week, including all the non-BBC TV channels). It's called Pocket Book Guide, and it features synopses (advertorials) of up-and-coming book releases. Though it could just as easily feature previously published books.
Of course you have to pay: a minimum of £649. And you will have to work out how many books you need to sell to cover that cost. But theoretically these little boxes of info reach a very large audience at less than £1 per thousand, based on circulation, or about 30p a thousand based on readers.
Details: email the account manager, Alex Powell: alex.powell at bbc.co.uk.
Fewer than?
Last week I mentioned that Bookscan data reveal that 93% of books sell less than 1,000 copies. And I got ticked off by one commenter, who told me that I should have said 'fewer than'.
Well, nobody ever taught me that as a child, so I went looking. Bill Walsh, author of Lapsing into a Comma, has nothing to say on the matter, so far as I can see, but the third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage does. The pedants' rule is: you say 'fewer than' when referring to a countable amount, e.g. books, biscuits; and 'less than' when it's a non-countable noun, as in 'less power'.
Well, there you go. A trivial offence, I feel, but I shall try (and probably fail) to remember.
A dirty weekend with Mitzi Szereto
Actually it's a whole week. Mitzi Szereto, the established number-one authority on how to write erotic fiction, is running a week-long residential creative-writing course on the Greek island of Skiathos, 9-15 September 2006. And all for a mere $795. A single room costs extra, oddly enough. Don't quite follow that. Anyway, for further info, go to Zoe Artemis. And try not to get jammed in the doorway.
Fish Publishing
Over at Fish Publishing, the winners of the 2006 One-page Prize have been announced. The winner gets 1,000 euros.
Fish have also launched three new summer competitions. There is a new Short Histories Prize, and also a Historical One-Page Prize. Both of these are being run in conjunction with the Historical Novel Society. Finally, there is a prize being offered in conjunction with the UK's Crime Writers Association, the Fish-Knife Award.
Interestingly, entries to these competitions must be submitted online.
Should you happen to be in Ireland in early July, Fish Publishing has events in the West Cork Literary Festival, 2-7 July. John Banville is among those attending said festival, but I'm sure you won't let that put you off.
Frankfurt in London
The Frankfurt Book Fair, held annually in October, has for many years been a major event in the lives of publishers and literary agents from all over the world. Representatives of all leading firms tend to gather in Frankfurt and sell each other the rights in various books. The fair does not usually have much to offer to authors, and by and large the general public are not admitted.
A similar but slightly less prestigious rights fair, the London Book Fair (LBF), has been held in London in March each year. However, some attendees in 2006 were less than thrilled with the way in which LBF was organised. The proceedings were moved to a new location in East London which was not universally popular.
Well, now the organisers of Frankfurt have announced that they will be running a kind of 'Frankfurt in London', beginning in April 2007 (Monday 16th to Wednesday 18th). Their press release has details. (Link from booktrade.info.) The name of the event is to be The Book Fair Earl's Court.
The press release points out that this initiative has been launched 'after approaches were made to the Frankfurt Book Fair by UK publishers and agents asking them to support a venue in central London.' The organisers seem committed to making this a regular event.
Quite where this leaves the organisers of LBF is anyone's guess. But as of now, they are still intending to hold an LBF from 5-7 March in 2007.
Galleycat has comments.
Science-fiction awards
Geoff Ryman has won the 2006 Arthur C Clarke award for best novel with Air. He was previously the winner in 1990 for The Child Garden. The prize is a cheque for £2006, appropriately enough. Air has also won the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Award for Best Novel; and the Sunburst and Tiptree awards too.
Meanwhile the Nebula awards were handed out in Arizona a couple of days ago. Full details and picture courtesy of Locus online. Kelly Link, spoken of here on 24 April 2006, won two prizes, a feat rarely achieved, and Harlan Ellison was hailed as a Grand Master. Harlan was interviewed, 1 May, by the Arizona Republic. This link also from Locus online, which is a rich source of data on science-fiction awards and the genre generally.
Seconded
Here's a para from Dave Langford's always interesting Ansible, a monthly newsletter relating to science fiction.
Hardcover Theatre of Minneapolis adapts works that are safely in the public domain. Their latest, opening this month, is Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars (1912; book version 1917). But the very rich Burroughs estate has a cunning plan. The character John Carter was trademarked for a 1950s comic, and though this trademark was specific to the comic, the estate wants $1,000. (Minneapolis Star Tribune). Ansible suggests that Hardcover should play safe by changing the hero's name to John PublicDomainYouGreedyBastards.Now I'm really confused
The Locus page mentioned above has a link to questions that are being asked about the veracity of yet another set of memoirs. This time the book is Jack Williamson's Wonder's Child. The publisher (reportedly) defends the author as follows:
Jack Williamson -- or Hymie Merkowitz, if you must -- may have invented several of the less-important details of his personal life. That's just the inborn nature of fiction writers. They like to embroider on reality. But regardless of whether he ever really held a professorship or not -- and the jury is still out on that charge -- he nonetheless wrote all the marvelous classic stories we've all loved for so long. Unless he didn't. We're looking into that.And before you get too exercised about this one, just make sure that you notice the date of the report.
WH Smith prospers
Time was, and not so long ago, when W H Smith (perhaps the UK's biggest bookseller) looked to be dying on its feet, and Kate Swann was appointed to sort it out. I was not optimistic about her chances, and said so (25 November 2004). However, the girl done good, it seems. The Retail Bulletin reports that, in terms of online sales at least, W H Smith is doing well. (Link from booktrade.info.)
Excerpt 26
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Finding a way forward
The next thing that happened was that I had what Mr Redmond tells me is called a moral crisis. I just call it not knowing what to do.
Actually I did know what to do. Or what I didn’t want to do. What I didn’t want to do was have unprotected sex with Debbie, because I was frightened of giving her the HIV virus. And I didn’t want that.
So I worried about it. For a long time.
I began to realise why the whole show wasn’t filmed in advance. It was so that I would feel under pressure to do things Con’s way – so that I would feel I didn’t have any choice about the unprotected shag, as Con called it.
The fact that the programme was rolling along, week after week, meant that it was much harder for me to give up halfway through.
Pressure. That’s what they call it, and that’s what it feels like. I felt as if I was carrying a great big weight around.
But the fact is, you see, I did have a choice about what to do. And I didn’t want to do anything that might damage Debbie’s health.
Debbie kept saying Don’t worry, Harry, it’ll be OK. She told me about supermarket chicken again. And about how horse riding is dangerous. And motor racing. And how people do these things anyway. Not to mention smoking, which is pretty much guaranteed to kill you, far as I can see.
But I still didn’t want to do it.
Other people were thinking about all this too. And they were just as worried as I was.
Debbie’s Dad rang me and asked me about it. He said he and Debbie’s Mum hadn’t really understood what was involved at first. But now they did understand and he was worried about it. He asked me to think hard about the consequences for Debbie. So, naturally, I told him I was thinking hard. And I wasn’t happy either.
Then the newspapers started. I suppose Con got them all on to it. First it was the Moon, and then all the others. People wrote columns about ‘Harry’s moral dilemma’. I learnt a lot of new words. Long ones. For a bit. Then I stopped reading the newspapers, even when people showed them to me.
A bishop did a sermon about it. He seemed to think that Harry – the man with AIDS was the end of civilisation. According to him the whole world was going to hell in a handcart, and if I had unprotected sex with Debbie that would be the last straw. Getting people to risk their lives for money was fundamentally immoral, he reckoned. It ought to be stopped.
The newspapers loved the bishop. And the telly people did too. All sorts of radio and TV programmes did bits about it. I never heard any of them of course, but people used to tell me.
‘Should this programme be banned?’ That was the favourite line. They went on about it for days on end. And most of them thought it should. Or that’s what they said.
Con reckoned all these newspaper and radio shows and so forth didn’t really mean it – when they said it ought to be banned. If our programme went off the air, Con said, they’d all be sick as parrots. Because Harry and Debbie were a really hot topic. Should he shag her or not?
Everybody I knew got pestered by reporters at one time or another. Debbie was approached six times in one day. But she was good at saying nothing while being nice to them. She gave them all a lovely smile and a wave.
‘Hello, boys,’ she would say. And she would talk to them – nice crisp little bits – and say absolutely nothing. Con raved about her technique.
People knocked at my door. They even came to see me while I was working in the church, which was a nuisance. Con had to get me a minder for a few days. Even then you could see them in the distance, taking photos through those long lenses.
Con told me later that he got press cuttings from all over the world. More languages than he could count, he said.
To show you how bad it was, the reporters even went to see my ex-wife, Carol. And when she told them, politely, that she had no opinion about me and Debbie one way or the other, they made it all up.
The Sun ran an interview with her – or what they said was an interview. She was supposed to have said that she was worried sick for poor Debbie. But actually she never said a single word. Just walked straight past them.
Carol rang me up when that happened. She didn’t want me to think that she really had spoken to the press.
Well, as a matter of fact I hadn’t even seen the article at the time, but I could well believe that it was a load of old cobblers. I was used to it by then.
That was the first time Carol and I had spoken for a couple of years or more. Nearly three I think. So a bit of good came out of bad, because she was quite sympathetic. We had a long chat that night. She said she was glad to hear that I’d found someone else, and I said I was glad things were working out OK for her. So that was a good thing.
Anyway, none of that publicity helped. It had its good side and its bad side, but it didn’t make me any less worried about the risk to Debbie. And it didn’t tell me how I could do what Con wanted, which was do the deed live on TV, win the million pounds, and still make sure that Debbie was OK. That was something I had to work out for myself.
So, one day I told Con straight out that I’d been thinking about it for a long time, and I really wasn’t willing to do the unprotected sex bit. Too risky.
To be fair to him Con took it quite well. I expected him to spend a day and a half trying to convince me that I was wrong. Because he’s very good at that. Half an hour with Con, and you’d swear that your Granny’s black cat was the colour of snow. But he didn’t. He just went a bit pale and said he was sorry about that, but he could understand my position.
I’d told Debbie first, before Con. And she had another go at persuading me. Said that it ought to be her decision really, not mine. Said she’d always understood the risk, right from day one, and if she was happy with it I ought to be too.
But I wouldn’t have it.
Anyway, one thing Debbie did suggest to me was that I should go and see Mr Redmond. She said that he seemed to be a sensible sort of chap. And he wasn’t involved at all. He had nothing to gain or lose, whether we did or we didn’t. And after she’d pushed me a bit, that’s what I did.
I’d already made up my mind by that time, so I didn’t go looking for advice. And I wouldn’t have got any anyway, because Vicars like Mr Redmond don’t give you advice. They just help you to think things through.
So I went to see Mr Redmond at the vicarage. It was a frosty evening I remember. Had to drive carefully.
I told him flat out that I now realised I’d been a complete fool. I understood nothing about TV programmes when I got into this business. And if I had understood what it was all like I would never have bothered.
Mr Redmond was very patient. He got me to go through everything with him. Got me to tell him all the facts. About what the telly company wanted. What exactly I had to do to win the million pounds. What the risks and the dangers were. All that sort of thing. I think he knew a lot of it already, but he was helping me to sort things out in my mind. And he made notes on a bit of paper. Drew diagrams. Things for, and things against.
It turned out that talking to Mr Redmond was a really smart move. Because when he asked me all those questions I realised there were lots of things I still didn’t know. And some of those were things I ought to know before I made a final decision, or way or another.
Mr Redmond helped me to write out a list of questions. Things I still needed to find out. It turned out there were quite a lot of them.
So then Debbie and I started talking to people.
The main person we went to see was Dr Meadows at the clinic in Bristol. After all he’s the expert on HIV.
Dr Meadows reminded us that there are lots of couples in the world where one of the partners is HIV positive. And he said they all have to work out some way of having sexual relations without endangering the person who still hasn’t got the virus.
He told us all sorts of useful things. Like the risks of becoming pregnant and having a baby even if you’re perfectly healthy, and don’t have HIV. Nothing is completely safe, he reckoned, when all is said and done. So we began to see it all a bit more clearly. Got some perspective on it.
Dr Meadows also told us that people who work in hospitals, or the police force, that sort of job, they sometimes find themselves in a situation where they’ve been pricked by a junkie’s needle or something like that. Something that makes them think they might have been exposed to HIV. And there are things you can do apparently – medicines you can take, if you act straightaway. And these treatments are really successful if you’re quick enough.
That was news to me and Debbie. He also told us that, even if you don’t use a condom, there are now some creams that the woman can use to try to kill off the virus. They aren’t quite as successful as the medicines that nurses and police officers take, when they think they’re at risk. But they’re better than nothing.
So, one way and another, Debbie and I began to feel a bit more comfortable about our life together. Well I did, anyway. Debbie said she was always comfortable with it, but I think she must have felt happier deep inside.
So then Debbie began to suggest to me that there might be a way forward. She said she was really touched that I didn’t want to put her at risk. But she was also very keen that I should win the million pounds. After I’d gone to all this trouble so far, she said, it would be a damned shame if we gave up now.
Well I thought so too, but I wasn’t bothered about the money.
What Debbie suggested was that we should tell Con that we would go ahead and have the unprotected sex, without a condom. But she would use the cream which was supposed to kill the virus. And she would also have a course of treatment afterwards which would kill off the virus if by any chance there was any in her system.
It took me a little while to get all that into my head. But I had to admit it made a lot of sense. I still wasn’t happy. But Debbie said it seemed likely a pretty good compromise in the circumstances.
So we went to see Con. One evening.
I let Debbie do the talking. She was very clever. As you would expect.
What Debbie did was tell Con how we were going to proceed. She didn’t ask him to approve or anything. She just told him that was this was way it was going to be. Unprotected sex, as per contract. But a protective cream, and treatment afterwards.
I sat and watched Con. And although he’s a pretty good poker player, I could see his face change as she talked.
Which was not surprising when you come to think about it. For a few days Con had been walking about thinking that his wonderful TV show was about to end up with a zero audience. And now Debbie was showing him a way to get what he wanted. No wonder he cheered up a bit.
‘So,’ said Debbie, when she’d finished explaining it all. ‘That’s the way it’s going to be, Con, as far as we’re concerned. So are you in, Con, or out?’
Con grinned. ‘I’m in,’ he said. ‘No problem. Where do I sign?’
‘OK,’ said Debbie. ‘So now we have to think about these expert observers that you’re going to bring in. The ones who are going to swear on a stack of bibles that Harry and I are having unprotected sex to win the million quid. What are you going to tell them?’
‘Not going to tell them anything,’ said Con. ‘None of their fucking business. Unless they ask, of course. Which they certainly ought to. They ought to have qualms about the whole bloody thing. But if they do ask I shall tell them what we’ve just agreed. Namely that the contract calls for unprotected sex, which is clearly defined as sexual intercourse with out a condom. Page fifty-three. And that’s all they have to testify to. I will explain, if necessary, that you and Harry will be taking other steps to minimise the risk. But that’s what any couple would do when one of the two is HIV positive. And there’ll be a confidentiality clause of course. In the experts’ contract. So if any of our experts ever want to work on TV again they’ll keep their mouths shut.’
‘Good.’ Debbie got up to go, before Con could dream up something else to bother us with. ‘Do you need to clear that with Mr Patel, Con?’
Con grinned again. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ll burden Mr Patel with the small print, Debbie.’
And that was that. Debbie and I went home and opened a bottle of wine.
It was all a bit of a fiddle in my opinion. Nothing was quite what it seemed. But then, as I told you before, everything on TV is faked.
Finding a way forward
The next thing that happened was that I had what Mr Redmond tells me is called a moral crisis. I just call it not knowing what to do.
Actually I did know what to do. Or what I didn’t want to do. What I didn’t want to do was have unprotected sex with Debbie, because I was frightened of giving her the HIV virus. And I didn’t want that.
So I worried about it. For a long time.
I began to realise why the whole show wasn’t filmed in advance. It was so that I would feel under pressure to do things Con’s way – so that I would feel I didn’t have any choice about the unprotected shag, as Con called it.
The fact that the programme was rolling along, week after week, meant that it was much harder for me to give up halfway through.
Pressure. That’s what they call it, and that’s what it feels like. I felt as if I was carrying a great big weight around.
But the fact is, you see, I did have a choice about what to do. And I didn’t want to do anything that might damage Debbie’s health.
Debbie kept saying Don’t worry, Harry, it’ll be OK. She told me about supermarket chicken again. And about how horse riding is dangerous. And motor racing. And how people do these things anyway. Not to mention smoking, which is pretty much guaranteed to kill you, far as I can see.
But I still didn’t want to do it.
Other people were thinking about all this too. And they were just as worried as I was.
Debbie’s Dad rang me and asked me about it. He said he and Debbie’s Mum hadn’t really understood what was involved at first. But now they did understand and he was worried about it. He asked me to think hard about the consequences for Debbie. So, naturally, I told him I was thinking hard. And I wasn’t happy either.
Then the newspapers started. I suppose Con got them all on to it. First it was the Moon, and then all the others. People wrote columns about ‘Harry’s moral dilemma’. I learnt a lot of new words. Long ones. For a bit. Then I stopped reading the newspapers, even when people showed them to me.
A bishop did a sermon about it. He seemed to think that Harry – the man with AIDS was the end of civilisation. According to him the whole world was going to hell in a handcart, and if I had unprotected sex with Debbie that would be the last straw. Getting people to risk their lives for money was fundamentally immoral, he reckoned. It ought to be stopped.
The newspapers loved the bishop. And the telly people did too. All sorts of radio and TV programmes did bits about it. I never heard any of them of course, but people used to tell me.
‘Should this programme be banned?’ That was the favourite line. They went on about it for days on end. And most of them thought it should. Or that’s what they said.
Con reckoned all these newspaper and radio shows and so forth didn’t really mean it – when they said it ought to be banned. If our programme went off the air, Con said, they’d all be sick as parrots. Because Harry and Debbie were a really hot topic. Should he shag her or not?
Everybody I knew got pestered by reporters at one time or another. Debbie was approached six times in one day. But she was good at saying nothing while being nice to them. She gave them all a lovely smile and a wave.
‘Hello, boys,’ she would say. And she would talk to them – nice crisp little bits – and say absolutely nothing. Con raved about her technique.
People knocked at my door. They even came to see me while I was working in the church, which was a nuisance. Con had to get me a minder for a few days. Even then you could see them in the distance, taking photos through those long lenses.
Con told me later that he got press cuttings from all over the world. More languages than he could count, he said.
To show you how bad it was, the reporters even went to see my ex-wife, Carol. And when she told them, politely, that she had no opinion about me and Debbie one way or the other, they made it all up.
The Sun ran an interview with her – or what they said was an interview. She was supposed to have said that she was worried sick for poor Debbie. But actually she never said a single word. Just walked straight past them.
Carol rang me up when that happened. She didn’t want me to think that she really had spoken to the press.
Well, as a matter of fact I hadn’t even seen the article at the time, but I could well believe that it was a load of old cobblers. I was used to it by then.
That was the first time Carol and I had spoken for a couple of years or more. Nearly three I think. So a bit of good came out of bad, because she was quite sympathetic. We had a long chat that night. She said she was glad to hear that I’d found someone else, and I said I was glad things were working out OK for her. So that was a good thing.
Anyway, none of that publicity helped. It had its good side and its bad side, but it didn’t make me any less worried about the risk to Debbie. And it didn’t tell me how I could do what Con wanted, which was do the deed live on TV, win the million pounds, and still make sure that Debbie was OK. That was something I had to work out for myself.
So, one day I told Con straight out that I’d been thinking about it for a long time, and I really wasn’t willing to do the unprotected sex bit. Too risky.
To be fair to him Con took it quite well. I expected him to spend a day and a half trying to convince me that I was wrong. Because he’s very good at that. Half an hour with Con, and you’d swear that your Granny’s black cat was the colour of snow. But he didn’t. He just went a bit pale and said he was sorry about that, but he could understand my position.
I’d told Debbie first, before Con. And she had another go at persuading me. Said that it ought to be her decision really, not mine. Said she’d always understood the risk, right from day one, and if she was happy with it I ought to be too.
But I wouldn’t have it.
Anyway, one thing Debbie did suggest to me was that I should go and see Mr Redmond. She said that he seemed to be a sensible sort of chap. And he wasn’t involved at all. He had nothing to gain or lose, whether we did or we didn’t. And after she’d pushed me a bit, that’s what I did.
I’d already made up my mind by that time, so I didn’t go looking for advice. And I wouldn’t have got any anyway, because Vicars like Mr Redmond don’t give you advice. They just help you to think things through.
So I went to see Mr Redmond at the vicarage. It was a frosty evening I remember. Had to drive carefully.
I told him flat out that I now realised I’d been a complete fool. I understood nothing about TV programmes when I got into this business. And if I had understood what it was all like I would never have bothered.
Mr Redmond was very patient. He got me to go through everything with him. Got me to tell him all the facts. About what the telly company wanted. What exactly I had to do to win the million pounds. What the risks and the dangers were. All that sort of thing. I think he knew a lot of it already, but he was helping me to sort things out in my mind. And he made notes on a bit of paper. Drew diagrams. Things for, and things against.
It turned out that talking to Mr Redmond was a really smart move. Because when he asked me all those questions I realised there were lots of things I still didn’t know. And some of those were things I ought to know before I made a final decision, or way or another.
Mr Redmond helped me to write out a list of questions. Things I still needed to find out. It turned out there were quite a lot of them.
So then Debbie and I started talking to people.
The main person we went to see was Dr Meadows at the clinic in Bristol. After all he’s the expert on HIV.
Dr Meadows reminded us that there are lots of couples in the world where one of the partners is HIV positive. And he said they all have to work out some way of having sexual relations without endangering the person who still hasn’t got the virus.
He told us all sorts of useful things. Like the risks of becoming pregnant and having a baby even if you’re perfectly healthy, and don’t have HIV. Nothing is completely safe, he reckoned, when all is said and done. So we began to see it all a bit more clearly. Got some perspective on it.
Dr Meadows also told us that people who work in hospitals, or the police force, that sort of job, they sometimes find themselves in a situation where they’ve been pricked by a junkie’s needle or something like that. Something that makes them think they might have been exposed to HIV. And there are things you can do apparently – medicines you can take, if you act straightaway. And these treatments are really successful if you’re quick enough.
That was news to me and Debbie. He also told us that, even if you don’t use a condom, there are now some creams that the woman can use to try to kill off the virus. They aren’t quite as successful as the medicines that nurses and police officers take, when they think they’re at risk. But they’re better than nothing.
So, one way and another, Debbie and I began to feel a bit more comfortable about our life together. Well I did, anyway. Debbie said she was always comfortable with it, but I think she must have felt happier deep inside.
So then Debbie began to suggest to me that there might be a way forward. She said she was really touched that I didn’t want to put her at risk. But she was also very keen that I should win the million pounds. After I’d gone to all this trouble so far, she said, it would be a damned shame if we gave up now.
Well I thought so too, but I wasn’t bothered about the money.
What Debbie suggested was that we should tell Con that we would go ahead and have the unprotected sex, without a condom. But she would use the cream which was supposed to kill the virus. And she would also have a course of treatment afterwards which would kill off the virus if by any chance there was any in her system.
It took me a little while to get all that into my head. But I had to admit it made a lot of sense. I still wasn’t happy. But Debbie said it seemed likely a pretty good compromise in the circumstances.
So we went to see Con. One evening.
I let Debbie do the talking. She was very clever. As you would expect.
What Debbie did was tell Con how we were going to proceed. She didn’t ask him to approve or anything. She just told him that was this was way it was going to be. Unprotected sex, as per contract. But a protective cream, and treatment afterwards.
I sat and watched Con. And although he’s a pretty good poker player, I could see his face change as she talked.
Which was not surprising when you come to think about it. For a few days Con had been walking about thinking that his wonderful TV show was about to end up with a zero audience. And now Debbie was showing him a way to get what he wanted. No wonder he cheered up a bit.
‘So,’ said Debbie, when she’d finished explaining it all. ‘That’s the way it’s going to be, Con, as far as we’re concerned. So are you in, Con, or out?’
Con grinned. ‘I’m in,’ he said. ‘No problem. Where do I sign?’
‘OK,’ said Debbie. ‘So now we have to think about these expert observers that you’re going to bring in. The ones who are going to swear on a stack of bibles that Harry and I are having unprotected sex to win the million quid. What are you going to tell them?’
‘Not going to tell them anything,’ said Con. ‘None of their fucking business. Unless they ask, of course. Which they certainly ought to. They ought to have qualms about the whole bloody thing. But if they do ask I shall tell them what we’ve just agreed. Namely that the contract calls for unprotected sex, which is clearly defined as sexual intercourse with out a condom. Page fifty-three. And that’s all they have to testify to. I will explain, if necessary, that you and Harry will be taking other steps to minimise the risk. But that’s what any couple would do when one of the two is HIV positive. And there’ll be a confidentiality clause of course. In the experts’ contract. So if any of our experts ever want to work on TV again they’ll keep their mouths shut.’
‘Good.’ Debbie got up to go, before Con could dream up something else to bother us with. ‘Do you need to clear that with Mr Patel, Con?’
Con grinned again. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ll burden Mr Patel with the small print, Debbie.’
And that was that. Debbie and I went home and opened a bottle of wine.
It was all a bit of a fiddle in my opinion. Nothing was quite what it seemed. But then, as I told you before, everything on TV is faked.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Da Vinci disaster: Baigent and Leigh can't pay
Well, you and I never did believe the nonsense about the Da Vinci case being all a put-up job, financed by Random House (or the movie company) to gain free publicity. And now there is further evidence which must surely render that theory unbelievable to all except full-time conspiracy theorists.
At the end of the case, Baigent and Leigh (who sued Random House and lost) were ordered by the Judge to pay 85% of Random House's legal costs, which were estimated at £1.3 million. Now it seems that they have applied for more time to pay even the first instalment of £350,000, which is due today. And on top of that they also have their own legal bills to pay. Going to court in England is an expensive business, and it can cost you serious money even if you win, never mind lose.
The Judge is unimpressed by Baigent and Leigh. He said that they 'want money to spend without making any attempt to pay off their liabilities.' He told Baigent and Leigh's lawyer that 'Your clients have a liability to pay costs following a very expensive piece of litigation. If they cannot pay, they can be made bankrupt.'
So now they're in worse trouble than ever. They have to produce full details of their assets, income, and liabilities. Baigent also has to explain some fancy manoeuvres involving the transfer of his home into his wife's name.
The BBC has the story; link from booktrade.info.
What did I say right at the beginning? On 24 September 2004 I said that Baigent and Leigh's chances were close to zero. And I repeated that opinion when the court case actually started. What is more, I said that the third author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was making a smart move when he declined to join his co-authors in court.
My guess is, I said, on 1 March 2006, that the third author, Henry Lincoln, had a think about the situation, noted the vagaries of English law, and the prodigiously high cost of trying to rectify wrongs through same, and said to his friends something like this:
'Well guys, if you want to pay the enormous school fees (£25,000 a year nowadays) for the numerous children of several already more than comfortably placed English lawyers, feel free. But include me out.'
Thus proving that he is just about the only sensible person in the whole business. The only rational explanation for Baigent and Leigh's action is that they assumed that Random House would settle out of court, and pay them some money, rather than run the risk of having the good name of their golden goose (Dan Brown) besmirched in court. Baigent and Leigh gambled, and lost. And whatever may be the case with gambling debts, legal debts certainly are enforceable at law.
At the end of the case, Baigent and Leigh (who sued Random House and lost) were ordered by the Judge to pay 85% of Random House's legal costs, which were estimated at £1.3 million. Now it seems that they have applied for more time to pay even the first instalment of £350,000, which is due today. And on top of that they also have their own legal bills to pay. Going to court in England is an expensive business, and it can cost you serious money even if you win, never mind lose.
The Judge is unimpressed by Baigent and Leigh. He said that they 'want money to spend without making any attempt to pay off their liabilities.' He told Baigent and Leigh's lawyer that 'Your clients have a liability to pay costs following a very expensive piece of litigation. If they cannot pay, they can be made bankrupt.'
So now they're in worse trouble than ever. They have to produce full details of their assets, income, and liabilities. Baigent also has to explain some fancy manoeuvres involving the transfer of his home into his wife's name.
The BBC has the story; link from booktrade.info.
What did I say right at the beginning? On 24 September 2004 I said that Baigent and Leigh's chances were close to zero. And I repeated that opinion when the court case actually started. What is more, I said that the third author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was making a smart move when he declined to join his co-authors in court.
My guess is, I said, on 1 March 2006, that the third author, Henry Lincoln, had a think about the situation, noted the vagaries of English law, and the prodigiously high cost of trying to rectify wrongs through same, and said to his friends something like this:
'Well guys, if you want to pay the enormous school fees (£25,000 a year nowadays) for the numerous children of several already more than comfortably placed English lawyers, feel free. But include me out.'
Thus proving that he is just about the only sensible person in the whole business. The only rational explanation for Baigent and Leigh's action is that they assumed that Random House would settle out of court, and pay them some money, rather than run the risk of having the good name of their golden goose (Dan Brown) besmirched in court. Baigent and Leigh gambled, and lost. And whatever may be the case with gambling debts, legal debts certainly are enforceable at law.
Book packaging in the UK
Way, way back, at the start of the Kaavya business, I made a comment to the effect that I didn’t think there was a UK equivalent of the US 17th Street book-packaging company.
The company structure is complicated, but 17th Street seems to be a subsidiary of Alloy Entertainment, a company which has other embodiments and alliances as well: e.g. 360 Youth. Alloy is certainly involved in the development of TV Shows (e.g. Roswell High) and films (e.g. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants).
What 17th Street does, basically, is manufacture books -- textually speaking -- according to a template which is decided in association with a publisher. Lizzie Skurnick gave a good description of the process in an interview with the Harvard Independent.
A writer may come into the packager's office with an idea for a series of books. The packager polishes it all up and sells, let’s say, the first six of the series to a publisher. If these do well, the publisher may order twelve more, but will require changes. The characters must move to Hollywood. Or they must become time travellers. Or whatever. Additional writers are then recruited to manufacture these further books, and they are published at one a month. Such a series can go on more or less for ever.
According to a claim on the 360 Youth web site, Alloy Entertainment is smart enough at the packaging business to have had three books at one time in the New York Times children's bestsellers list: You're the One that I Want by Cecily von Ziegesar, Blonde Ambition by Zoey Dean, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. (Anne Brashares? Who does she share with?) Anyway, back to the point: in 2005, 17 of Alloy's books reached the NYT bestseller lists.
This process sounds, even from the outside, to be somewhat industrial and impersonal. And we have at least two accounts of how things can go wrong, at least from the viewpoint of some participants. John Barlow wrote it up in Slate, and the New York Observer has an article by Sheelah Kolhatkar (link from Galleycat).
In my original comment, I said that I didn't know of any UK equivalent to this kind of operation; and I suggested that, for one thing, the UK market is not really big enough to support mass-market series of this kind.
Well, it’s a bit late in the day, but I thought I had better have a look and see what UK book packagers actually have to say for themselves. And I used as the basis of my research the 2006 edition of The Writer’s Handbook.
What I discovered is that the book-packaging business is alive and well in the UK, but I seem to have been right when I suggested that fiction is not really a major interest. The Writer’s Handbook lists nearly forty firms. These vary in size from one-man/woman businesses to firms with a claimed turnover of £10 million a year.
Nearly all of these firms deal in non-fiction, often illustrated, and often aimed at children. Judging by the evidence here, there can be relatively few children’s books published in the UK which are not produced by packagers. And, when you think about it, I suppose that figures. Such books require a wide range of expertise and skills, involving writers, illustrators, photographers, designers, and so forth. It makes perfect sense for publishers to buy such a product ready made, rather than have to faff about putting it all together themselves.
Nearly all the UK book packaging firms say firmly that they do not deal in fiction. And I could find only one which specialises in fiction: this is Working Partners Ltd., dealing in ‘quality mass-market children’s fiction for leading children’s publishers’. The firm has a list of clients including all the big names, and the range goes from ‘first chapter books to young adult.'
The really interesting thing, however, is that Working Partners are intending to expand into a new area. ‘In 2006 Working Partners Two was formed to develop book ideas and to establish a network of writers to emulate the children’s success in the arena of adult fiction.’
If you’re interested, the Working Partners site has a page for writers, and you can download a form to fill in so that they can decide if they’re interested in you.
Hmm. Intriguing. A case of Watch this space, perhaps.
The company structure is complicated, but 17th Street seems to be a subsidiary of Alloy Entertainment, a company which has other embodiments and alliances as well: e.g. 360 Youth. Alloy is certainly involved in the development of TV Shows (e.g. Roswell High) and films (e.g. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants).
What 17th Street does, basically, is manufacture books -- textually speaking -- according to a template which is decided in association with a publisher. Lizzie Skurnick gave a good description of the process in an interview with the Harvard Independent.
A writer may come into the packager's office with an idea for a series of books. The packager polishes it all up and sells, let’s say, the first six of the series to a publisher. If these do well, the publisher may order twelve more, but will require changes. The characters must move to Hollywood. Or they must become time travellers. Or whatever. Additional writers are then recruited to manufacture these further books, and they are published at one a month. Such a series can go on more or less for ever.
According to a claim on the 360 Youth web site, Alloy Entertainment is smart enough at the packaging business to have had three books at one time in the New York Times children's bestsellers list: You're the One that I Want by Cecily von Ziegesar, Blonde Ambition by Zoey Dean, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. (Anne Brashares? Who does she share with?) Anyway, back to the point: in 2005, 17 of Alloy's books reached the NYT bestseller lists.
This process sounds, even from the outside, to be somewhat industrial and impersonal. And we have at least two accounts of how things can go wrong, at least from the viewpoint of some participants. John Barlow wrote it up in Slate, and the New York Observer has an article by Sheelah Kolhatkar (link from Galleycat).
In my original comment, I said that I didn't know of any UK equivalent to this kind of operation; and I suggested that, for one thing, the UK market is not really big enough to support mass-market series of this kind.
Well, it’s a bit late in the day, but I thought I had better have a look and see what UK book packagers actually have to say for themselves. And I used as the basis of my research the 2006 edition of The Writer’s Handbook.
What I discovered is that the book-packaging business is alive and well in the UK, but I seem to have been right when I suggested that fiction is not really a major interest. The Writer’s Handbook lists nearly forty firms. These vary in size from one-man/woman businesses to firms with a claimed turnover of £10 million a year.
Nearly all of these firms deal in non-fiction, often illustrated, and often aimed at children. Judging by the evidence here, there can be relatively few children’s books published in the UK which are not produced by packagers. And, when you think about it, I suppose that figures. Such books require a wide range of expertise and skills, involving writers, illustrators, photographers, designers, and so forth. It makes perfect sense for publishers to buy such a product ready made, rather than have to faff about putting it all together themselves.
Nearly all the UK book packaging firms say firmly that they do not deal in fiction. And I could find only one which specialises in fiction: this is Working Partners Ltd., dealing in ‘quality mass-market children’s fiction for leading children’s publishers’. The firm has a list of clients including all the big names, and the range goes from ‘first chapter books to young adult.'
The really interesting thing, however, is that Working Partners are intending to expand into a new area. ‘In 2006 Working Partners Two was formed to develop book ideas and to establish a network of writers to emulate the children’s success in the arena of adult fiction.’
If you’re interested, the Working Partners site has a page for writers, and you can download a form to fill in so that they can decide if they’re interested in you.
Hmm. Intriguing. A case of Watch this space, perhaps.
Excerpt 25
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Kiss and make up time
I think I have a lot to thank the techie boys for that night. They were the ones who pulled Con and me apart. They were the ones who got Debbie to come round and get my head straight. And they were the ones who really enjoyed it when Debbie gave Con a piece of her mind.
When she arrived it took Debbie a few minutes to find out what was going on and why I wasn’t saying anything to anybody. But once she found out she was not pleased.
One of the techies told me later that he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years as when he stood there and watched when Debbie let fly. He had to try to keep a straight face, he said, because Con was his boss, but she really gave it to him.
I told you before that Debbie could dish it out for minutes on end, without repeating herself, and that’s what she did that night. Apparently she made Con go white, and nobody else had done that in years, they said. Not even Mr Patel.
I didn’t hear much of what Debbie said, to tell you the truth. Well I heard it – it was loud enough – but it kind of passed over me. I was just sitting there with my head in my hands. Couldn’t say a thing.
It was while she was letting fly that I realised that Debbie was really very special to me. She stood beside me with her hand on my shoulder and told Con exactly what kind of an arsehole he was. In detail. And in technicolour, the boys said.
Meanwhile the director was trying to gets the stills emailed off, and thinking about editing the fight between Con and me, and also making a tape of what Debbie said to Con. Because those little cameras were still there. And the wheels were still turning, recording everything.
I gather that tape of Debbie yelling at Con went the rounds in the next few months. Everybody in the business saw it. And not just in Con’s TV company either. They showed it at conferences and things. ‘How not to handle the client’ it was called. Everyone enjoyed it no end – except Con. I gather he did try to look as if he took it in good part. But he didn’t really like it at all.
After she’d finished with Con, Debbie took me home and gave me a drink and we had a bit of a chat. And a hug. I liked that bit.
I still wasn’t saying much at all, and I felt very tired, so eventually she put me to bed. She stayed with me until she was sure I was asleep.
As you would expect, Debbie was very kind to me. And very patient. And that made it worse in a way, because now I was even more sure I didn’t want to hurt her. I worried more than ever. Not that particular night, because I was too tired to think about anything. But later.
Anyway I suppose Con won in the end. He got his story, good copy and all. The TV boys got one hell of a sequence. Or so they said. And eventually I got over it. More or less.
The next night Debbie and Con decided that we’d better all have a meeting to sort things out. They didn’t say so at the time, but I think between the two of them they thought I was about to have a nervous breakdown or something. Maybe they were right. Anyway we went out to dinner to try to get things on the rails again.
There were four us there. Me, Debbie, Con, and the director. Vern I think his name was. Though there was more than one director on the show at various times.
We went to a posh place which has a Michelin star or something. Not worth driving a long way for in my opinion, but I wasn’t going to argue. Suit and tie sort of place. Con paid so I wasn’t bothered.
By that stage Debbie had got me on a special diet for people who are HIV positive. Mostly vegetables and fresh fruit and organic stuff. Not a lot of meat. She would put fruit and veg through a juicer and get me to drink it. It took a bit of getting used to but I wouldn’t be without it now. The diet was not too different from what I’d been eating already, as a matter of fact. But it was better quality. And better prepared when she did it than when I cooked for myself.
So, what with our healthy diet we weren’t too thrilled by all this fancy French nosh, but we didn’t make a fuss about it.
Personally I’ve never found it easy to eat and think and talk, all at the same time. But apparently this is the way they do business in TV. So I let Con do the talking and I just listened.
He told me about hearing from my ex-wife Carol. ‘I’ve asked her to let you see Lisa, Harry,’ he said. As if it was some sort of great announcement. He was hoping to get me on his side, I suppose. ‘It seems silly not to let you have access, when you’re on TV every week and all the schoolkids will be talking about you.’
Schoolkids, I thought? What sort of schoolkids are allowed to watch a programme like that? But I discovered later that Con was right.
‘She’s thinking about it, Harry. Your Carol I mean. Thinking about giving you access. She’s not an unreasonable woman, you know, Harry. Not when you get to know her. She’s sharp too. Did you know she’s into the party business?’
I didn’t know. What sort of party business?
‘Yes, she started a couple of years ago, when they moved away. Started doing these evening parties for ladies, selling ‘em lingerie and a few naughty extras at the end when they’ve all had a couple of glasses of sherry. Sex aids and videos and that. She’s very good at it. After eighteen months they made her a regional manager. Got her own team of girls now, Harry. So you’ve got a smart one there, you know.’ Then he realised who was listening. ‘Not as smart as your Debbie,’ he added, giving her a look. ‘But then very few are.’
In return Debbie gave him one of those thin smiles that aren’t really smiles. A don’t-bullshit-me kind of look. Debbie wasn’t at all impressed with Con. She knew what he was up to.
‘I don’t want Lisa in the show,’ I reminded him. ‘Nor Carol neither if it comes to that.’
‘No, right, no, of course not. No one’s suggesting that,’ said Con. ‘We’re all agreed on that. No contest. Carol doesn’t want Lisa in the show either, Harry. Got to protect the kid, we’re all agreed on that. But we’re beginning to think that we might be able to show you meeting her in the distance, perhaps. Eh? In the last reel. Giving her a hug, Harry. Too far away to see her face of course. Got to protect her privacy. How would you feel about that, Harry? Giving her a hug and that.’
I put my knife and fork down.
Con really was too much for me at times.
How would I feel about it? That was what he asked. How would I feel about hugging my own daughter?
I just shook my head. I hadn’t hugged Lisa for two years or more. Hadn’t really seen her for two years. Except in the distance. And then only once. And Con was stupid enough to ask me how I would feel about it.
I didn’t say anything. Just let it pass. But I stopped eating and I stopped listening.
I wondered what Con would say if I told him that I often spoke to Lisa. Not for real. Just in my head. What would he say if I told him that I had imaginary phone conversations with her?
Well I could imagine his reaction.
‘Con,’ I would say. ‘I spoke to Lisa again last night. Same as I do every night. ‘
And Con would frown and say, ‘What do you mean you spoke to Lisa last night?’
‘I phoned her.’
And then he would look puzzled again and think hard. And then he would say, ‘Harry, you didn’t phone Lisa last night. I’ve seen the phone records, mate. I know her number. I know every number you’ve rung in the last two years. And you never even speak to Carol. Much less Lisa. You haven’t rung that number in over two years.’
And I would say, ‘No, Con. I didn’t mean I spoke to Lisa for real. But I speak to her in my head. Every night, before she goes to bed.’
And Con would think about that for a bit. And then he would say, ‘Harry…. If you speak to Lisa in your head, I should keep that story to yourself if I was you. Otherwise people might think you was a bit strange. Know what I mean? That’s not something that would create a good image, Harry, that isn’t.’
And I would smile and say, ‘Yes, Con. I know what you mean when you say people might think I was a bit strange. And they would think I was even weirder if they knew that I still talk to my dead brother.’
And Con would go a bit pale. Not as pale as he went when Debbie told him what she thought of him, but pale enough. And then he would think of something soothing to say. Something that would make me think he was sympathetic.
Or did he really say something like that in real life? To tell you the truth I honestly can’t remember.
‘You know what you are, Harry?’ he would say. Or perhaps did say. ‘You’re an old softy, Harry. Here was me thinking you were as hard as nails, and you’re really an old sentimentalist. But keep that stuff about Lisa and your brother just between ourselves, OK? That’s a private matter old son. No need to burden the world with all that.’
And I said that I would. I would keep it a private matter. After all, we wouldn’t want to go around creating the wrong impression, now would we?
Kiss and make up time
I think I have a lot to thank the techie boys for that night. They were the ones who pulled Con and me apart. They were the ones who got Debbie to come round and get my head straight. And they were the ones who really enjoyed it when Debbie gave Con a piece of her mind.
When she arrived it took Debbie a few minutes to find out what was going on and why I wasn’t saying anything to anybody. But once she found out she was not pleased.
One of the techies told me later that he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years as when he stood there and watched when Debbie let fly. He had to try to keep a straight face, he said, because Con was his boss, but she really gave it to him.
I told you before that Debbie could dish it out for minutes on end, without repeating herself, and that’s what she did that night. Apparently she made Con go white, and nobody else had done that in years, they said. Not even Mr Patel.
I didn’t hear much of what Debbie said, to tell you the truth. Well I heard it – it was loud enough – but it kind of passed over me. I was just sitting there with my head in my hands. Couldn’t say a thing.
It was while she was letting fly that I realised that Debbie was really very special to me. She stood beside me with her hand on my shoulder and told Con exactly what kind of an arsehole he was. In detail. And in technicolour, the boys said.
Meanwhile the director was trying to gets the stills emailed off, and thinking about editing the fight between Con and me, and also making a tape of what Debbie said to Con. Because those little cameras were still there. And the wheels were still turning, recording everything.
I gather that tape of Debbie yelling at Con went the rounds in the next few months. Everybody in the business saw it. And not just in Con’s TV company either. They showed it at conferences and things. ‘How not to handle the client’ it was called. Everyone enjoyed it no end – except Con. I gather he did try to look as if he took it in good part. But he didn’t really like it at all.
After she’d finished with Con, Debbie took me home and gave me a drink and we had a bit of a chat. And a hug. I liked that bit.
I still wasn’t saying much at all, and I felt very tired, so eventually she put me to bed. She stayed with me until she was sure I was asleep.
As you would expect, Debbie was very kind to me. And very patient. And that made it worse in a way, because now I was even more sure I didn’t want to hurt her. I worried more than ever. Not that particular night, because I was too tired to think about anything. But later.
Anyway I suppose Con won in the end. He got his story, good copy and all. The TV boys got one hell of a sequence. Or so they said. And eventually I got over it. More or less.
The next night Debbie and Con decided that we’d better all have a meeting to sort things out. They didn’t say so at the time, but I think between the two of them they thought I was about to have a nervous breakdown or something. Maybe they were right. Anyway we went out to dinner to try to get things on the rails again.
There were four us there. Me, Debbie, Con, and the director. Vern I think his name was. Though there was more than one director on the show at various times.
We went to a posh place which has a Michelin star or something. Not worth driving a long way for in my opinion, but I wasn’t going to argue. Suit and tie sort of place. Con paid so I wasn’t bothered.
By that stage Debbie had got me on a special diet for people who are HIV positive. Mostly vegetables and fresh fruit and organic stuff. Not a lot of meat. She would put fruit and veg through a juicer and get me to drink it. It took a bit of getting used to but I wouldn’t be without it now. The diet was not too different from what I’d been eating already, as a matter of fact. But it was better quality. And better prepared when she did it than when I cooked for myself.
So, what with our healthy diet we weren’t too thrilled by all this fancy French nosh, but we didn’t make a fuss about it.
Personally I’ve never found it easy to eat and think and talk, all at the same time. But apparently this is the way they do business in TV. So I let Con do the talking and I just listened.
He told me about hearing from my ex-wife Carol. ‘I’ve asked her to let you see Lisa, Harry,’ he said. As if it was some sort of great announcement. He was hoping to get me on his side, I suppose. ‘It seems silly not to let you have access, when you’re on TV every week and all the schoolkids will be talking about you.’
Schoolkids, I thought? What sort of schoolkids are allowed to watch a programme like that? But I discovered later that Con was right.
‘She’s thinking about it, Harry. Your Carol I mean. Thinking about giving you access. She’s not an unreasonable woman, you know, Harry. Not when you get to know her. She’s sharp too. Did you know she’s into the party business?’
I didn’t know. What sort of party business?
‘Yes, she started a couple of years ago, when they moved away. Started doing these evening parties for ladies, selling ‘em lingerie and a few naughty extras at the end when they’ve all had a couple of glasses of sherry. Sex aids and videos and that. She’s very good at it. After eighteen months they made her a regional manager. Got her own team of girls now, Harry. So you’ve got a smart one there, you know.’ Then he realised who was listening. ‘Not as smart as your Debbie,’ he added, giving her a look. ‘But then very few are.’
In return Debbie gave him one of those thin smiles that aren’t really smiles. A don’t-bullshit-me kind of look. Debbie wasn’t at all impressed with Con. She knew what he was up to.
‘I don’t want Lisa in the show,’ I reminded him. ‘Nor Carol neither if it comes to that.’
‘No, right, no, of course not. No one’s suggesting that,’ said Con. ‘We’re all agreed on that. No contest. Carol doesn’t want Lisa in the show either, Harry. Got to protect the kid, we’re all agreed on that. But we’re beginning to think that we might be able to show you meeting her in the distance, perhaps. Eh? In the last reel. Giving her a hug, Harry. Too far away to see her face of course. Got to protect her privacy. How would you feel about that, Harry? Giving her a hug and that.’
I put my knife and fork down.
Con really was too much for me at times.
How would I feel about it? That was what he asked. How would I feel about hugging my own daughter?
I just shook my head. I hadn’t hugged Lisa for two years or more. Hadn’t really seen her for two years. Except in the distance. And then only once. And Con was stupid enough to ask me how I would feel about it.
I didn’t say anything. Just let it pass. But I stopped eating and I stopped listening.
I wondered what Con would say if I told him that I often spoke to Lisa. Not for real. Just in my head. What would he say if I told him that I had imaginary phone conversations with her?
Well I could imagine his reaction.
‘Con,’ I would say. ‘I spoke to Lisa again last night. Same as I do every night. ‘
And Con would frown and say, ‘What do you mean you spoke to Lisa last night?’
‘I phoned her.’
And then he would look puzzled again and think hard. And then he would say, ‘Harry, you didn’t phone Lisa last night. I’ve seen the phone records, mate. I know her number. I know every number you’ve rung in the last two years. And you never even speak to Carol. Much less Lisa. You haven’t rung that number in over two years.’
And I would say, ‘No, Con. I didn’t mean I spoke to Lisa for real. But I speak to her in my head. Every night, before she goes to bed.’
And Con would think about that for a bit. And then he would say, ‘Harry…. If you speak to Lisa in your head, I should keep that story to yourself if I was you. Otherwise people might think you was a bit strange. Know what I mean? That’s not something that would create a good image, Harry, that isn’t.’
And I would smile and say, ‘Yes, Con. I know what you mean when you say people might think I was a bit strange. And they would think I was even weirder if they knew that I still talk to my dead brother.’
And Con would go a bit pale. Not as pale as he went when Debbie told him what she thought of him, but pale enough. And then he would think of something soothing to say. Something that would make me think he was sympathetic.
Or did he really say something like that in real life? To tell you the truth I honestly can’t remember.
‘You know what you are, Harry?’ he would say. Or perhaps did say. ‘You’re an old softy, Harry. Here was me thinking you were as hard as nails, and you’re really an old sentimentalist. But keep that stuff about Lisa and your brother just between ourselves, OK? That’s a private matter old son. No need to burden the world with all that.’
And I said that I would. I would keep it a private matter. After all, we wouldn’t want to go around creating the wrong impression, now would we?
Thursday, May 04, 2006
To War with Whitaker
To War with Whitaker is an absolute gem. It is certainly the best memoir that I've read since Gore Vidal's Palimpsest, and that was six or seven years ago. And it has the great virtue of being an actual diary, written at the time -- it is not an account of events half-remembered after n years.
Widely reviewed, and very popular when it first appeared (in 1994), the 1995 paperback edition of To War with Whitaker was reprinted six times that year, and twice in 1996.
I am telling you all this because I want to make sure that you know how good To War with Whitaker is before I give you further details of it, details which may perhaps put some of you off. The book's subtitle is The wartime diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly, 1939-45. And, if you're thinking that you could not possibly be interested in a book about events which happened such a long time ago, and especially one written by a member of the British aristocracy, I urge you to think again.
Yes, I suppose this book will be of most interest to people who, like me, are English and are old enough to remember the second world war. But the basic themes are surely universal. The book involves, for one thing, a married couple who are absolutely devoted to each other (a not entirely dead concept, one hopes, even today). It is a story of courage, loyalty, and determination: of lives risked, and of lives lost. And, for the feminists among you, it is an object lesson in how to make progress in what was then even more of a man's world than it is today.
From here on in I shall refer to the author of this memoir as Ranfurly, and to her husband as Dan, because that is how she speaks of him.
Dan was actually Thomas Daniel Knox, sixth Earl of Ranfurly. And so when he married, in January 1939, his wife became, formally, the Countess. They were both aged twenty-five. Dan was, incidentally, the nearest living descendant of William Penn.
In late August 1939, Ranfurly and Dan were on holiday in Scotland. And then, on 3 September, they heard that Great Britain was at war with Germany. Dan was sent a telegram saying that he must immediately report for military service.
By aristocratic standards, the Ranfurlys were not, it seems, particularly well off. But they did have a cook-butler, whose name was Whitaker. And when Dan got the call to join the army, he asked Whitaker if he would like to go with him.
'To the war, my Lord?' said Whitaker. 'Very good, my Lord.'
This was a brave move on Whitaker's part. He was not young; he was short, and fat; and he wore glasses. But in 1939 the British army was not too fussy about who volunteered, so he was taken into the ranks; though at first they couldn't find a uniform to fit him, and he had to parade in a blue pinstripe suit.
Dan now became a junior officer in a regiment known as the Notts Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. And Ranfurly, newly married, quickly decided that she was not going to stay at home and knit socks for soldiers. Wherever Dan went, she would go too. And she did go, despite repeated attempts by the army to ship her back home. Most of the time, Whitaker also contrived to be where his peacetime employers were.
While Dan's regiment was training in England, Ranfurly had little trouble in staying in touch with her husband. But when the regiment was posted overseas, it was much harder. With bizarre logic, the army decided that the wives of regular army officers could accompany their husbands on service abroad. But the wives of officers who had simply joined because of the war could not. Typically, Ranfurly ignored this rule.
Dan's regiment took him to the Middle East, where in due course he became a Desert Rat, fighting the war in the North African desert. By March 1940 Ranfurly had followed him, and throughout the war years she remained in that area.
Ranfurly had earned her own living from the age of seventeen, beginning in the War Office typing pool, which is about as far down the pecking order as you can get. In any event, she had typing and secretarial skills, and this was her strength. Both the civilian and military British authorities in the Middle East were desperate for trained secretaries, and so Ranfurly was able to get jobs.
She held a succession of appointments, in each case serving as secretary cum PA to a very senior officer. In each post she rapidly made herself indispensable.
First, however, she had to avoid being sent back home. The army bureaucracy made repeated attempts to ship Ranfurly back to England, regarding her as an 'illegal wife'. On one occasion, in the autumn of 1940, she found herself forced to board the Empress of Britain, a liner which was going back to England.
When the ship called in at Cape Town, Ranfurly got off. Being broke, she borrowed some money from a friendly bank manager and flew back to Cairo. Her friend Toby, another army wife, stayed on board the Empress of Britain because she wanted to go home to her children. The ship was later sunk by enemy action and Toby was killed; she thus became the first of many of Ranfurly's friends who would not survive the war.
Eventually the bureaucratic attempts to force Ranfurly to go home were ended by General Wavell. Faced with yet another peremptory demand to send Ranfurly packing, he wrote back as follows: 'This lady has outmanoeuvred every General in the Middle East and I do not myself intend to enter the arena.'
On 15 April 1941, Ranfurly suffered a disaster. She got a telegram to say that Dan had been reported missing in action; he was believed to be a prisoner of war. In fact, Dan had been on night patrol in the desert, accompanying a couple of Generals, and they had been ambushed by Italian troops who took them prisoner. Dan would spend the next three years in prison in Italy. Ranfurly was eventually able to write to him, but letters took months in each direction. Dan eventually escaped, and in 1944 he and his wife were reunited.
While Dan was imprisoned, Ranfurly consoled herself with work. At various times during the war years she worked for the Special Operations Executive; for the civil authorities in Palestine (then under British control); and for a long period she was with General Jumbo Wilson, who was British Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East, and was based in Cairo. Typically, the formal terms of employment in each of these jobs was a twelve hour day, seven days a week. There was, after all, a war being fought.
Although she is far too modest to say so in her diaries, it is obvious that Ranfurly soon became one of General Jumbo's key aides: she was virtually the only woman, and the only civilian, on his staff. She had secretarial skills, yes. But she had far more. She was tall, slim, and of striking appearance; she had social standing. She could converse in French and German. A spook called Abercrombie ('That's as good a name as any') taught her how to use a pistol so that she could hit a playing card from some distance; he also taught her to use a machine gun . Ranfurly saw every signal that came into or went out of the military HQ office; and she became the depository of many confidences and secrets.
Throughout Ranfurly's diaries we constantly find the names of everyone, politician or soldier, who played a key part in the war. Sooner or later anyone and everyone came to see General Jumbo: Churchill, Eden, Eisenhower, Montgomery, and a thousand others. Most of these men seem to have taken Ranfurly out to lunch or dinner. And why should they not? She knew at least as much about the war as any of them; they picked her brains, and she picked theirs.
On 24 November 1943, for example, Ranfurly lunched with the King of Greece and Colonel 'Wild Bill' Donovan, the head of the American equivalent of the SOE. They discussed Generalissimo Chiang Kai Chek. On 16 September 1944 she dined with three Polish officers, General Anders, General Bouciewicz, and Major Lubienski. Conversation was in French. The Germans were at that time hacking their way through the suburbs of Warsaw, and all three men had wives and children in the city; their mood was gloomy.
On another occasion, Ranfurly found herself at a dinner seated on the left of General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces. Eisenhower spent the whole meal talking to the woman on his right, who was his English secretary, Kay Somersby. (And we know why, now, don't we? They were having an affair.) When Ranfurly did try to engage him in conversation, he bit her head off.
The next day, Eisenhower realised that he had been rude and invited Ranfurly to have dinner with him on a one-to-one basis. She politely pleaded a previous engagement.
Please remember, however, that a woman who had started her working life in the War Office typing pool was not likely to be a snob. And Ranfurly wasn't. She was happy to meet distinguished visitors as an equal, but she also took the trouble to talk to the ordinary soldiers, and the local people. And they gave her, she noted, very different reports of the war from those which came from the top brass.
When she could, Ranfurly visited the wounded in hospital, although she was nauseated by the smell of rotting flesh (no antibiotics in those days). She wrote letters for the men who were too ill to write for themselves, and she noted that they never spoke of anything but victory.
In 1944, when she was in Naples, Ranfurly had an Indo-Chinaman as a house servant. She persuaded him to tell her his life story, which he did, half in English and half in French; she took it down in shorthand and later incorporated it into her diary. As a young man, Lonj had been forcibly removed from his home village by the French, who at that time controlled the Cambodia/Laos/Vietnam area. He was transported halfway across the world, almost starved, suffered great hardship, and eventually, tossed about like a piece of wood on the sea, he found himself as the servant of a great British general. In Italy.
'Lonj, are you happy here?' Ranfurly asked.
'Sufficiently, Madame la Comtesse,' he replied, with great politeness. 'But you will understand that I cannot enjoy myself till the war is over and I return to Thien Hoa where my family await me.'
Ranfurly herself was luckier. She was reunited with Dan before the war ended, and they both survived.
There are many passages in To War with Whitaker which I found moving: in fact some of them were deeply upsetting, and I have been thinking about why that should be. I have decided that it's because there was a three-year period in my early childhood when I never saw my father, because he was serving in India with the British army. And also, even as a child, I was aware that there were many who went off to war and never came back.
There is, however, one key passage in Ranfurly's diaries which I shall not forget. It was written on 16 February 1943. On that day Ranfurly travelled from Baghdad to Cairo, and when she arrived she found Whitaker waiting for her. He had bad news. Pat Hore-Ruthven, who had been Dan's best man at the wedding, had died of wounds. Two other close friends were missing.
'My Lady,' said Whitaker, 'you'll have to write and tell all this to his Lordship. I don't envy you writing the letter or him reading it. Please tell him we're going to win this war and that you and I will stick together until it ends -- come what may. Tell him that the likes of me will never surrender.'
Nor did they.
Widely reviewed, and very popular when it first appeared (in 1994), the 1995 paperback edition of To War with Whitaker was reprinted six times that year, and twice in 1996.
I am telling you all this because I want to make sure that you know how good To War with Whitaker is before I give you further details of it, details which may perhaps put some of you off. The book's subtitle is The wartime diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly, 1939-45. And, if you're thinking that you could not possibly be interested in a book about events which happened such a long time ago, and especially one written by a member of the British aristocracy, I urge you to think again.
Yes, I suppose this book will be of most interest to people who, like me, are English and are old enough to remember the second world war. But the basic themes are surely universal. The book involves, for one thing, a married couple who are absolutely devoted to each other (a not entirely dead concept, one hopes, even today). It is a story of courage, loyalty, and determination: of lives risked, and of lives lost. And, for the feminists among you, it is an object lesson in how to make progress in what was then even more of a man's world than it is today.
From here on in I shall refer to the author of this memoir as Ranfurly, and to her husband as Dan, because that is how she speaks of him.
Dan was actually Thomas Daniel Knox, sixth Earl of Ranfurly. And so when he married, in January 1939, his wife became, formally, the Countess. They were both aged twenty-five. Dan was, incidentally, the nearest living descendant of William Penn.
In late August 1939, Ranfurly and Dan were on holiday in Scotland. And then, on 3 September, they heard that Great Britain was at war with Germany. Dan was sent a telegram saying that he must immediately report for military service.
By aristocratic standards, the Ranfurlys were not, it seems, particularly well off. But they did have a cook-butler, whose name was Whitaker. And when Dan got the call to join the army, he asked Whitaker if he would like to go with him.
'To the war, my Lord?' said Whitaker. 'Very good, my Lord.'
This was a brave move on Whitaker's part. He was not young; he was short, and fat; and he wore glasses. But in 1939 the British army was not too fussy about who volunteered, so he was taken into the ranks; though at first they couldn't find a uniform to fit him, and he had to parade in a blue pinstripe suit.
Dan now became a junior officer in a regiment known as the Notts Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. And Ranfurly, newly married, quickly decided that she was not going to stay at home and knit socks for soldiers. Wherever Dan went, she would go too. And she did go, despite repeated attempts by the army to ship her back home. Most of the time, Whitaker also contrived to be where his peacetime employers were.
While Dan's regiment was training in England, Ranfurly had little trouble in staying in touch with her husband. But when the regiment was posted overseas, it was much harder. With bizarre logic, the army decided that the wives of regular army officers could accompany their husbands on service abroad. But the wives of officers who had simply joined because of the war could not. Typically, Ranfurly ignored this rule.
Dan's regiment took him to the Middle East, where in due course he became a Desert Rat, fighting the war in the North African desert. By March 1940 Ranfurly had followed him, and throughout the war years she remained in that area.
Ranfurly had earned her own living from the age of seventeen, beginning in the War Office typing pool, which is about as far down the pecking order as you can get. In any event, she had typing and secretarial skills, and this was her strength. Both the civilian and military British authorities in the Middle East were desperate for trained secretaries, and so Ranfurly was able to get jobs.
She held a succession of appointments, in each case serving as secretary cum PA to a very senior officer. In each post she rapidly made herself indispensable.
First, however, she had to avoid being sent back home. The army bureaucracy made repeated attempts to ship Ranfurly back to England, regarding her as an 'illegal wife'. On one occasion, in the autumn of 1940, she found herself forced to board the Empress of Britain, a liner which was going back to England.
When the ship called in at Cape Town, Ranfurly got off. Being broke, she borrowed some money from a friendly bank manager and flew back to Cairo. Her friend Toby, another army wife, stayed on board the Empress of Britain because she wanted to go home to her children. The ship was later sunk by enemy action and Toby was killed; she thus became the first of many of Ranfurly's friends who would not survive the war.
Eventually the bureaucratic attempts to force Ranfurly to go home were ended by General Wavell. Faced with yet another peremptory demand to send Ranfurly packing, he wrote back as follows: 'This lady has outmanoeuvred every General in the Middle East and I do not myself intend to enter the arena.'
On 15 April 1941, Ranfurly suffered a disaster. She got a telegram to say that Dan had been reported missing in action; he was believed to be a prisoner of war. In fact, Dan had been on night patrol in the desert, accompanying a couple of Generals, and they had been ambushed by Italian troops who took them prisoner. Dan would spend the next three years in prison in Italy. Ranfurly was eventually able to write to him, but letters took months in each direction. Dan eventually escaped, and in 1944 he and his wife were reunited.
While Dan was imprisoned, Ranfurly consoled herself with work. At various times during the war years she worked for the Special Operations Executive; for the civil authorities in Palestine (then under British control); and for a long period she was with General Jumbo Wilson, who was British Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East, and was based in Cairo. Typically, the formal terms of employment in each of these jobs was a twelve hour day, seven days a week. There was, after all, a war being fought.
Although she is far too modest to say so in her diaries, it is obvious that Ranfurly soon became one of General Jumbo's key aides: she was virtually the only woman, and the only civilian, on his staff. She had secretarial skills, yes. But she had far more. She was tall, slim, and of striking appearance; she had social standing. She could converse in French and German. A spook called Abercrombie ('That's as good a name as any') taught her how to use a pistol so that she could hit a playing card from some distance; he also taught her to use a machine gun . Ranfurly saw every signal that came into or went out of the military HQ office; and she became the depository of many confidences and secrets.
Throughout Ranfurly's diaries we constantly find the names of everyone, politician or soldier, who played a key part in the war. Sooner or later anyone and everyone came to see General Jumbo: Churchill, Eden, Eisenhower, Montgomery, and a thousand others. Most of these men seem to have taken Ranfurly out to lunch or dinner. And why should they not? She knew at least as much about the war as any of them; they picked her brains, and she picked theirs.
On 24 November 1943, for example, Ranfurly lunched with the King of Greece and Colonel 'Wild Bill' Donovan, the head of the American equivalent of the SOE. They discussed Generalissimo Chiang Kai Chek. On 16 September 1944 she dined with three Polish officers, General Anders, General Bouciewicz, and Major Lubienski. Conversation was in French. The Germans were at that time hacking their way through the suburbs of Warsaw, and all three men had wives and children in the city; their mood was gloomy.
On another occasion, Ranfurly found herself at a dinner seated on the left of General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces. Eisenhower spent the whole meal talking to the woman on his right, who was his English secretary, Kay Somersby. (And we know why, now, don't we? They were having an affair.) When Ranfurly did try to engage him in conversation, he bit her head off.
The next day, Eisenhower realised that he had been rude and invited Ranfurly to have dinner with him on a one-to-one basis. She politely pleaded a previous engagement.
Please remember, however, that a woman who had started her working life in the War Office typing pool was not likely to be a snob. And Ranfurly wasn't. She was happy to meet distinguished visitors as an equal, but she also took the trouble to talk to the ordinary soldiers, and the local people. And they gave her, she noted, very different reports of the war from those which came from the top brass.
When she could, Ranfurly visited the wounded in hospital, although she was nauseated by the smell of rotting flesh (no antibiotics in those days). She wrote letters for the men who were too ill to write for themselves, and she noted that they never spoke of anything but victory.
In 1944, when she was in Naples, Ranfurly had an Indo-Chinaman as a house servant. She persuaded him to tell her his life story, which he did, half in English and half in French; she took it down in shorthand and later incorporated it into her diary. As a young man, Lonj had been forcibly removed from his home village by the French, who at that time controlled the Cambodia/Laos/Vietnam area. He was transported halfway across the world, almost starved, suffered great hardship, and eventually, tossed about like a piece of wood on the sea, he found himself as the servant of a great British general. In Italy.
'Lonj, are you happy here?' Ranfurly asked.
'Sufficiently, Madame la Comtesse,' he replied, with great politeness. 'But you will understand that I cannot enjoy myself till the war is over and I return to Thien Hoa where my family await me.'
Ranfurly herself was luckier. She was reunited with Dan before the war ended, and they both survived.
There are many passages in To War with Whitaker which I found moving: in fact some of them were deeply upsetting, and I have been thinking about why that should be. I have decided that it's because there was a three-year period in my early childhood when I never saw my father, because he was serving in India with the British army. And also, even as a child, I was aware that there were many who went off to war and never came back.
There is, however, one key passage in Ranfurly's diaries which I shall not forget. It was written on 16 February 1943. On that day Ranfurly travelled from Baghdad to Cairo, and when she arrived she found Whitaker waiting for her. He had bad news. Pat Hore-Ruthven, who had been Dan's best man at the wedding, had died of wounds. Two other close friends were missing.
'My Lady,' said Whitaker, 'you'll have to write and tell all this to his Lordship. I don't envy you writing the letter or him reading it. Please tell him we're going to win this war and that you and I will stick together until it ends -- come what may. Tell him that the likes of me will never surrender.'
Nor did they.
Excerpt 24
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
I try to kill Con
I came home from work one evening and found that Con had been into the house. That annoyed me for a start, because he seemed to think he owned the place. He used to walk in and out without knocking.
And then there was this note from him. On the kitchen table. I recognised the handwriting. So I opened it, and this is what it said:
Harry –
Mr Patel thinks the programme is getting a bit dull. He wants us to interview your little girl – Lisa – for the night of the final shag. I think it would be a good idea if we had her watch it and then ask her what she thinks. Could you let me know her address and phone number.
Con
Well, of course I should have realised what Con was up to. I was all wound up by this time, and he knew it. I was worried sick about Debbie getting HIV off me. I was afraid that I’d got myself into a mess and I didn’t know how to get out of it. But perhaps Con hadn’t realised just how upset I was. Because I tend to keep these things to myself.
Anyway, when I read that note I think I went a little bit crazy. I hate to think what I looked like. I could find out if I wanted to, because it’s all on film. Or tape. Or computer. Whatever they use, it’s recorded.
They tell me I snarled with rage. People reckon I frightened the life out of them. Because it was all shown later, you see, on the programme. I never saw it myself. Didn’t care to. But it feels as if everyone else in the world has seen it. People still talk to me about it, even now.
Apparently I stood there for a moment, muttering under my breath and snarling. Then I went out to my toolbox, in the hall, and picked up a hammer. Ballpeen hammer actually, if you want to be technical about it. And then I went out to look for Con. Looking as if I was going to do him some serious damage. Which as a matter of fact I was.
It was that stuff about Lisa that got me going. You can say anything you like about me and I shan’t mind a bit. But you mess with my Lisa and you’ll be in big trouble.
I knew where Con was living, of course. Just around the corner. And while I wouldn’t normally have gone into his house without ringing the bell, this time I did.
I went into that house, hammer in hand, and found Con in the kitchen. He looked a bit shocked when he turned round and saw me. Perhaps he realised that he’d gone a bit too far.
Before he had time to say anything I grabbed him by the shoulder, whirled him around, and slammed him back against the wall. Then I raised the hammer high up in the air and started to give it a swing.
People say that it looks as if I have every intention of bashing Con’s brains in. And to tell you the truth, I had. But just at that moment one of the technicians yelled out ‘Harry!’
And I stopped. Just for a moment. Then I decided I wanted to hit him anyway.
It turned out that Con had three technicians in the house that night. He thought he might need them, and he was right.
Two of them grabbed me. They couldn’t do anything else, except hold me. I was too strong for them. But they could at least stop me from doing him in.
There was a lot of shouting and yelling, mainly from the techies. They were yelling my ear, probably telling me to let go of Con and stop trying to kill him. But I never heard a thing. I was too busy trying to get a good swing with my right arm. And with my left arm I was doing a pretty good job of choking him. He was going a funny colour.
After a bit the three technicians began to get through to me. I could hear them jabbering away, but at first I wasn’t taking any notice.
For once Con wasn’t saying anything. Because of my arm on his throat. And when I finally did let him go he more or less collapsed on the floor. He was making a hoarse gasping noise, trying to catch his breath. And I suppose I should have knelt down and helped him. But I didn’t. I was just fighting this powerful urge to kick his head in.
Eventually, as I say, the techies persuaded me to let go of Con and let go of the hammer. They were very nice about it really, but I think they were as shocked as anyone.
They told me later that Con scuttled off upstairs pretty quick. They reckon he had to change his trousers, but I can’t say I noticed.
After the techies had persuaded me to let Con go, they sat me down at the kitchen table. They took the hammer away and hid it. Though I did get it back in the end.
And then it all went a bit quiet. There were three of them there, and I think they all realised that Con had gone just a bit too far. You can only push a man up to a certain point, and after that he’s not responsible for his own actions. And that was me. That night.
So they made me a cup of tea. Seemed the best thing to do at the time. But I never drank it.
The director, the one who normally took charge, he sat down opposite me and talked to me. Very calmly and sensibly. I can tell you that. But I can’t tell you a word of what he said, because my mind was going round in a whirl.
Some time later – after maybe half an hour – Con came back and apologised. Which was pretty good of him really. In the circumstances. Or maybe he just thought that if he didn’t apologise he wouldn’t have a show any longer. And the show must go on, after all. So Con says.
Anyway, he sat down opposite me, and he started talking too.
I didn’t listen. I just sat there with my head in my hands. I couldn’t hear a thing.
It was all going round and round in my brain. Con had promised me that Lisa would be left alone. She wouldn’t be used in the programme. And now this…. I couldn’t get that out of my head. My lovely Lisa, being dragged into this sordid, stupid TV show. It was driving me mad.
Of course it was all nonsense. From start to finish. I realised that in the end. Con had no intention of getting Lisa into the show. But it did take quite a while for that to sink in.
Maybe Mr Patel really did tell Con that the show was getting a bit dull. I don’t know. Or maybe Con just thought so himself. Because say what you like, Con does know his business.
Anyway, what he’d done, he’d dreamed up this scheme which would ‘get me going’, as he put it. Apparently I was a bit too calm for his taste. A bit too laid back. Nothing seemed to bother me. It all bounced off, Con said. So he wanted to generate some kind of reaction. Some sort of ‘human interest’.
Con’s way of getting a reaction out of me was his note. He didn’t really mean the note, he told me. He had no intention – he said – of getting Lisa to watch the final shag. Not really. That was just something he’d said to get a reaction out of me.
Well he did get a reaction. I very near bashed his brains in.
It was all on tape, as I told you. Because his house and my house were both full of cameras. Little ones, high on the wall, where you wouldn’t notice them. So there was film of me reading the note in my house. Film of me in the hall, picking up the hammer. Then there was me coming round the corner, looking as if I meant business. And film of me in Con’s house grabbing him by the shoulder and very nearly spreading him all over the wall.
One of the techies told me later that he rather wished I had done for Con. Said he felt a bit sorry he’d stopped me, really. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke than Con, he said. But I think that’s a bit hard. Con was just doing his job, after all.
And it was all great copy. Apparently. That’s what Con said. Once he’d got his bounce back. Which took him some time, I can tell you. He wasn’t right till the next day, and even then he kept a careful eye on me.
Once they thought it was safe to leave me alone with him, the technicians got busy processing what they’d got. The director sat down at the computer and went through the tape and selected some frames to use as still photos. Then they emailed them off to the Moon.
Next morning the Moon had me on the front page. ‘HARRY GOES APE!’ it said. ‘Is the pressure finally getting to Harry the Man with AIDS? Last night he attacked one of the show’s executives with a hammer and had to be forcibly restrained…’
And beside the headline there was this picture of me with the hammer held high in the air. Looking like a complete loony, wide-eyed and everything. And Con looking shit-scared. As well he might have done. And then there were several smaller pictures of the techie boys struggling with me. Three of them. And not exactly winning, by the look of it either.
There were pages and pages of this in the Moon. Great copy, Con said.
After a while I quite got to like that front-page picture, though I wasn’t too pleased with it at the time.
All of that happened on a Wednesday. And the techie boys used the film in the Thursday night’s programme. Which took a bit of doing, according to the director. But they managed it.
That bit of film caused quite a stir. Apparently the ratings shot up as a result. So you see what I mean about Con knowing his job. Even if it did nearly cost him his life.
People who knew me well thought the attack was a fake, because they couldn’t imagine me ever doing such a thing. But funnily enough it was just about the only real thing in the whole series. That and Con’s famous unprotected shag, of course. But that came later.
I try to kill Con
I came home from work one evening and found that Con had been into the house. That annoyed me for a start, because he seemed to think he owned the place. He used to walk in and out without knocking.
And then there was this note from him. On the kitchen table. I recognised the handwriting. So I opened it, and this is what it said:
Harry –
Mr Patel thinks the programme is getting a bit dull. He wants us to interview your little girl – Lisa – for the night of the final shag. I think it would be a good idea if we had her watch it and then ask her what she thinks. Could you let me know her address and phone number.
Con
Well, of course I should have realised what Con was up to. I was all wound up by this time, and he knew it. I was worried sick about Debbie getting HIV off me. I was afraid that I’d got myself into a mess and I didn’t know how to get out of it. But perhaps Con hadn’t realised just how upset I was. Because I tend to keep these things to myself.
Anyway, when I read that note I think I went a little bit crazy. I hate to think what I looked like. I could find out if I wanted to, because it’s all on film. Or tape. Or computer. Whatever they use, it’s recorded.
They tell me I snarled with rage. People reckon I frightened the life out of them. Because it was all shown later, you see, on the programme. I never saw it myself. Didn’t care to. But it feels as if everyone else in the world has seen it. People still talk to me about it, even now.
Apparently I stood there for a moment, muttering under my breath and snarling. Then I went out to my toolbox, in the hall, and picked up a hammer. Ballpeen hammer actually, if you want to be technical about it. And then I went out to look for Con. Looking as if I was going to do him some serious damage. Which as a matter of fact I was.
It was that stuff about Lisa that got me going. You can say anything you like about me and I shan’t mind a bit. But you mess with my Lisa and you’ll be in big trouble.
I knew where Con was living, of course. Just around the corner. And while I wouldn’t normally have gone into his house without ringing the bell, this time I did.
I went into that house, hammer in hand, and found Con in the kitchen. He looked a bit shocked when he turned round and saw me. Perhaps he realised that he’d gone a bit too far.
Before he had time to say anything I grabbed him by the shoulder, whirled him around, and slammed him back against the wall. Then I raised the hammer high up in the air and started to give it a swing.
People say that it looks as if I have every intention of bashing Con’s brains in. And to tell you the truth, I had. But just at that moment one of the technicians yelled out ‘Harry!’
And I stopped. Just for a moment. Then I decided I wanted to hit him anyway.
It turned out that Con had three technicians in the house that night. He thought he might need them, and he was right.
Two of them grabbed me. They couldn’t do anything else, except hold me. I was too strong for them. But they could at least stop me from doing him in.
There was a lot of shouting and yelling, mainly from the techies. They were yelling my ear, probably telling me to let go of Con and stop trying to kill him. But I never heard a thing. I was too busy trying to get a good swing with my right arm. And with my left arm I was doing a pretty good job of choking him. He was going a funny colour.
After a bit the three technicians began to get through to me. I could hear them jabbering away, but at first I wasn’t taking any notice.
For once Con wasn’t saying anything. Because of my arm on his throat. And when I finally did let him go he more or less collapsed on the floor. He was making a hoarse gasping noise, trying to catch his breath. And I suppose I should have knelt down and helped him. But I didn’t. I was just fighting this powerful urge to kick his head in.
Eventually, as I say, the techies persuaded me to let go of Con and let go of the hammer. They were very nice about it really, but I think they were as shocked as anyone.
They told me later that Con scuttled off upstairs pretty quick. They reckon he had to change his trousers, but I can’t say I noticed.
After the techies had persuaded me to let Con go, they sat me down at the kitchen table. They took the hammer away and hid it. Though I did get it back in the end.
And then it all went a bit quiet. There were three of them there, and I think they all realised that Con had gone just a bit too far. You can only push a man up to a certain point, and after that he’s not responsible for his own actions. And that was me. That night.
So they made me a cup of tea. Seemed the best thing to do at the time. But I never drank it.
The director, the one who normally took charge, he sat down opposite me and talked to me. Very calmly and sensibly. I can tell you that. But I can’t tell you a word of what he said, because my mind was going round in a whirl.
Some time later – after maybe half an hour – Con came back and apologised. Which was pretty good of him really. In the circumstances. Or maybe he just thought that if he didn’t apologise he wouldn’t have a show any longer. And the show must go on, after all. So Con says.
Anyway, he sat down opposite me, and he started talking too.
I didn’t listen. I just sat there with my head in my hands. I couldn’t hear a thing.
It was all going round and round in my brain. Con had promised me that Lisa would be left alone. She wouldn’t be used in the programme. And now this…. I couldn’t get that out of my head. My lovely Lisa, being dragged into this sordid, stupid TV show. It was driving me mad.
Of course it was all nonsense. From start to finish. I realised that in the end. Con had no intention of getting Lisa into the show. But it did take quite a while for that to sink in.
Maybe Mr Patel really did tell Con that the show was getting a bit dull. I don’t know. Or maybe Con just thought so himself. Because say what you like, Con does know his business.
Anyway, what he’d done, he’d dreamed up this scheme which would ‘get me going’, as he put it. Apparently I was a bit too calm for his taste. A bit too laid back. Nothing seemed to bother me. It all bounced off, Con said. So he wanted to generate some kind of reaction. Some sort of ‘human interest’.
Con’s way of getting a reaction out of me was his note. He didn’t really mean the note, he told me. He had no intention – he said – of getting Lisa to watch the final shag. Not really. That was just something he’d said to get a reaction out of me.
Well he did get a reaction. I very near bashed his brains in.
It was all on tape, as I told you. Because his house and my house were both full of cameras. Little ones, high on the wall, where you wouldn’t notice them. So there was film of me reading the note in my house. Film of me in the hall, picking up the hammer. Then there was me coming round the corner, looking as if I meant business. And film of me in Con’s house grabbing him by the shoulder and very nearly spreading him all over the wall.
One of the techies told me later that he rather wished I had done for Con. Said he felt a bit sorry he’d stopped me, really. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke than Con, he said. But I think that’s a bit hard. Con was just doing his job, after all.
And it was all great copy. Apparently. That’s what Con said. Once he’d got his bounce back. Which took him some time, I can tell you. He wasn’t right till the next day, and even then he kept a careful eye on me.
Once they thought it was safe to leave me alone with him, the technicians got busy processing what they’d got. The director sat down at the computer and went through the tape and selected some frames to use as still photos. Then they emailed them off to the Moon.
Next morning the Moon had me on the front page. ‘HARRY GOES APE!’ it said. ‘Is the pressure finally getting to Harry the Man with AIDS? Last night he attacked one of the show’s executives with a hammer and had to be forcibly restrained…’
And beside the headline there was this picture of me with the hammer held high in the air. Looking like a complete loony, wide-eyed and everything. And Con looking shit-scared. As well he might have done. And then there were several smaller pictures of the techie boys struggling with me. Three of them. And not exactly winning, by the look of it either.
There were pages and pages of this in the Moon. Great copy, Con said.
After a while I quite got to like that front-page picture, though I wasn’t too pleased with it at the time.
All of that happened on a Wednesday. And the techie boys used the film in the Thursday night’s programme. Which took a bit of doing, according to the director. But they managed it.
That bit of film caused quite a stir. Apparently the ratings shot up as a result. So you see what I mean about Con knowing his job. Even if it did nearly cost him his life.
People who knew me well thought the attack was a fake, because they couldn’t imagine me ever doing such a thing. But funnily enough it was just about the only real thing in the whole series. That and Con’s famous unprotected shag, of course. But that came later.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Sara Nelson touches a nerve
About fifteen months ago, the moribund US book-trade journal Publishers Weekly was given a new editor, in an attempt to breathe some life into it. Sara Nelson was appointed.
Prior to her appointment, Nelson was known as a book reviewer and book-world commentator for the New York Post and the New York Observer. And she seems to have had some success in turning PW (as she has effectively rebranded it) into something worth reading.
Each week, Nelson writes a short opinion piece which can be read online, though it isn't particularly easy to find. You go to the main PW page, click on the 'Browse Publishers Weekly' drop-down menu, and then click on 'Sara Nelson'.
There is a now a facility to comment on the editor's views -- a facility somewhat improved, I gather, through the suggestions of Lynne Scanlon -- but on many a week few readers have had much to say. This week, however, Sara Nelson has really touched a raw nerve, generating a deluge of contributions which will take you some time to wade through.
Nelson's column (no pun intended for Brits) for this week is headed 'Kaavyat Emptor?' In it, Nelson offers a few opinions about the general state of publishing today and the role of book packagers in particular.
Her chief points are that it has been recognised for decades that publishing has been 'commercialised' (presumably from some imagined virgin state in which it was pure, holy, and devoted to the search for 'great novels'). But the Kaavya episode reveals that matters have gone a stage further. Now editors 'don't have time' to edit. They are no longer concerned with finding promising writers. What they want now is exploitable, fashionable, glamorous young people (often women) who can act as the chat-show front person for a product which has actually been bolted together in smoky back rooms by old men with warts. I paraphrase somewhat, but that's the gist of it.
Now one has to remember, of course, that every day there are new people coming on to the publishing scene. Young graduates who are starting their first job. Naive young authors, still green enough to think that they can become famous writers. And so forth. And for such beginners there may be enlightenment in what Sara Nelson has to say. But to anyone who has been around for twenty years or so, and paying attention, Nelson's latest column is a statement of the blindingly obvious.
But look what happens. Read the voluminous comments. It will take you some time even to scan them. And they fall. broadly speaking, into two camps.
First, believe it or not, there are those around who still imagine -- still, after all these years -- that there was once a golden age of publishing, in which highly literate, exquisitely sensitive men and women devoted themselves to the pursuit of great art. And the grateful public bought everything that was offered to them and placed it admiringly in a prominent place in their home. The authors of such deeply impressive volumes were honoured with fame, fortune, and an unlimited supply of admirers of whichever gender took their fancy (and sometimes, extraordinarily enough, that was both of them). And, judging by the comments on Sara Nelson's latest, there are still people on the book scene who imagine that if only we do this and do that, everything can go back the way it was. The old King will be restored to his throne, and the Vulgar Revolution will be o'erthrown.
The second broad group of commenters are those who work in, or have experience of, various book-packaging companies, and choose to defend the role of such companies in the modern publishing industry.
Well, as is often the case, it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
My own take on the position is as follows. And I am speaking here, for simplicity, of fiction only.
Yes, once upon a time there were lots of small publishing firms whose editors were interested only in finding good books -- a term which was defined as being the kind of book which they themselves enjoyed. Forty years ago, in the UK, it was possible to break even on a novel by selling about 2,000 copies; and you could usually shift that number to the library market. So the average book would more or less pay its way, and the occasional surprise hit would keep the firm in business. Nobody got rich, but writers could be kept going for half a dozen books or so while their promise was converted into achievement.
That business has been dead -- totally and completely six feet under -- for at least twenty years. The library market has virtually vanished, and all the small firms have been bought up and incorporated into half a dozen big (by publishing standards) firms which are themselves tiny subsidiaries of much bigger (and often foreign-owned) companies -- companies which expect their small publishing sections to make substantial profits. Not publish literature, but make profits.
And from the perspective of the current owners of publishing firms, the problem with publishing is that it is pathetically unsatisfactory as a profit-generating business. (There is lots more about this in my essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile). Every serious businessman who has ever looked closely at book publishing, and particularly fiction publishing, has given a snort of derision and hastily passed on.
For those who continue to work in big-time commercial publishing, however, the demands of the job are very simple. You have to sell books.
In this world, it makes perfect sense for a publisher to use book-packaging firms. But, as with choosing your dentist, you need to choose someone who knows what they're doing. And the whole problem with the Kaavya affair is that we now know that the people involved didn't actually do it very well. Unlike many a book-packaging project, this was a high-profile one, bound to attract a lot of attention. And when you know, in advance, that you're going to be very closely looked at, you'd better make sure that your hair is washed and your shoes polished.
For the writer who takes the trouble to study the facts (and there's no excuse nowadays, because the internet is bursting with data), the position is quite unambiguous. It is futile to imagine that you are going to be able to make a career out of writing fiction which is 'personal', 'literary', 'fine art' or describable by any other term which means doing your own thing the way you want to do it. If you want to write and be published by the firms which have the power to generate any more than small change for you, you have to do things their way. And good luck to you. It probably isn't any more painful than working for an advertising agency or TV. Approached in the right way, it might even be fun.
If you want to please yourself, follow your own instincts, and write whatever inspires you, feel free. And when you've finished the book, there are lots of small presses and thousands of other ways to seek readers for it. But, if you wish to avoid being carried away by the men in white coats, do not kid yourself that possession of an MFA will somehow transport you back to 1950. Max Perkins, he dead, as I believe someone once said.
P.S. If you want to know more about small presses and how they fit in with the long-tail concept, see the article by Stacy Perman in BusinessWeek Online -- link from booktrade.info, as is the next one.
P.P.S. Poor old Kaavya. I can't help feeling a bit sorry for the kid, really. She's only a teenager. And now, on the general basis that it's so much easier to kick someone when they're already down, Little Brown have announced that they are never going to publish a revised version of her novel; neither are they going to do the second novel which was called for by the contract. (Remember what I've always said about these big-money contracts? If you read the small print there is never as much money there as people would have you believe.)
Prior to her appointment, Nelson was known as a book reviewer and book-world commentator for the New York Post and the New York Observer. And she seems to have had some success in turning PW (as she has effectively rebranded it) into something worth reading.
Each week, Nelson writes a short opinion piece which can be read online, though it isn't particularly easy to find. You go to the main PW page, click on the 'Browse Publishers Weekly' drop-down menu, and then click on 'Sara Nelson'.
There is a now a facility to comment on the editor's views -- a facility somewhat improved, I gather, through the suggestions of Lynne Scanlon -- but on many a week few readers have had much to say. This week, however, Sara Nelson has really touched a raw nerve, generating a deluge of contributions which will take you some time to wade through.
Nelson's column (no pun intended for Brits) for this week is headed 'Kaavyat Emptor?' In it, Nelson offers a few opinions about the general state of publishing today and the role of book packagers in particular.
Her chief points are that it has been recognised for decades that publishing has been 'commercialised' (presumably from some imagined virgin state in which it was pure, holy, and devoted to the search for 'great novels'). But the Kaavya episode reveals that matters have gone a stage further. Now editors 'don't have time' to edit. They are no longer concerned with finding promising writers. What they want now is exploitable, fashionable, glamorous young people (often women) who can act as the chat-show front person for a product which has actually been bolted together in smoky back rooms by old men with warts. I paraphrase somewhat, but that's the gist of it.
Now one has to remember, of course, that every day there are new people coming on to the publishing scene. Young graduates who are starting their first job. Naive young authors, still green enough to think that they can become famous writers. And so forth. And for such beginners there may be enlightenment in what Sara Nelson has to say. But to anyone who has been around for twenty years or so, and paying attention, Nelson's latest column is a statement of the blindingly obvious.
But look what happens. Read the voluminous comments. It will take you some time even to scan them. And they fall. broadly speaking, into two camps.
First, believe it or not, there are those around who still imagine -- still, after all these years -- that there was once a golden age of publishing, in which highly literate, exquisitely sensitive men and women devoted themselves to the pursuit of great art. And the grateful public bought everything that was offered to them and placed it admiringly in a prominent place in their home. The authors of such deeply impressive volumes were honoured with fame, fortune, and an unlimited supply of admirers of whichever gender took their fancy (and sometimes, extraordinarily enough, that was both of them). And, judging by the comments on Sara Nelson's latest, there are still people on the book scene who imagine that if only we do this and do that, everything can go back the way it was. The old King will be restored to his throne, and the Vulgar Revolution will be o'erthrown.
The second broad group of commenters are those who work in, or have experience of, various book-packaging companies, and choose to defend the role of such companies in the modern publishing industry.
Well, as is often the case, it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
My own take on the position is as follows. And I am speaking here, for simplicity, of fiction only.
Yes, once upon a time there were lots of small publishing firms whose editors were interested only in finding good books -- a term which was defined as being the kind of book which they themselves enjoyed. Forty years ago, in the UK, it was possible to break even on a novel by selling about 2,000 copies; and you could usually shift that number to the library market. So the average book would more or less pay its way, and the occasional surprise hit would keep the firm in business. Nobody got rich, but writers could be kept going for half a dozen books or so while their promise was converted into achievement.
That business has been dead -- totally and completely six feet under -- for at least twenty years. The library market has virtually vanished, and all the small firms have been bought up and incorporated into half a dozen big (by publishing standards) firms which are themselves tiny subsidiaries of much bigger (and often foreign-owned) companies -- companies which expect their small publishing sections to make substantial profits. Not publish literature, but make profits.
And from the perspective of the current owners of publishing firms, the problem with publishing is that it is pathetically unsatisfactory as a profit-generating business. (There is lots more about this in my essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile). Every serious businessman who has ever looked closely at book publishing, and particularly fiction publishing, has given a snort of derision and hastily passed on.
For those who continue to work in big-time commercial publishing, however, the demands of the job are very simple. You have to sell books.
In this world, it makes perfect sense for a publisher to use book-packaging firms. But, as with choosing your dentist, you need to choose someone who knows what they're doing. And the whole problem with the Kaavya affair is that we now know that the people involved didn't actually do it very well. Unlike many a book-packaging project, this was a high-profile one, bound to attract a lot of attention. And when you know, in advance, that you're going to be very closely looked at, you'd better make sure that your hair is washed and your shoes polished.
For the writer who takes the trouble to study the facts (and there's no excuse nowadays, because the internet is bursting with data), the position is quite unambiguous. It is futile to imagine that you are going to be able to make a career out of writing fiction which is 'personal', 'literary', 'fine art' or describable by any other term which means doing your own thing the way you want to do it. If you want to write and be published by the firms which have the power to generate any more than small change for you, you have to do things their way. And good luck to you. It probably isn't any more painful than working for an advertising agency or TV. Approached in the right way, it might even be fun.
If you want to please yourself, follow your own instincts, and write whatever inspires you, feel free. And when you've finished the book, there are lots of small presses and thousands of other ways to seek readers for it. But, if you wish to avoid being carried away by the men in white coats, do not kid yourself that possession of an MFA will somehow transport you back to 1950. Max Perkins, he dead, as I believe someone once said.
P.S. If you want to know more about small presses and how they fit in with the long-tail concept, see the article by Stacy Perman in BusinessWeek Online -- link from booktrade.info, as is the next one.
P.P.S. Poor old Kaavya. I can't help feeling a bit sorry for the kid, really. She's only a teenager. And now, on the general basis that it's so much easier to kick someone when they're already down, Little Brown have announced that they are never going to publish a revised version of her novel; neither are they going to do the second novel which was called for by the contract. (Remember what I've always said about these big-money contracts? If you read the small print there is never as much money there as people would have you believe.)
Excerpt 23
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
I start to get worried
AIDS is something that worries people. But it also attracts them. They want to know about it. How dangerous is it? Can you catch it off a lavatory seat? Will Harry screw Debbie and give her AIDS? That’s what people were wondering.
Our programme was shown every week, at 9.30 on Thursday evenings. On the Asteroid channel. Home of the stars. So they said.
I never did know how many people really watched it. Whenever I asked Con for a number he would say ‘It’s in the millions, Harry,’ or something vague like that. If we’re being honest it probably wasn’t all that many. People tell me that it’s a pretty small channel. So half the country probably never even heard of the show. But round our way everybody watched it.
The Moon gave it a big plug, of course. They would. It was one of Mr Patel’s shows, and Mr Patel owned the Moon. So every Thursday there was something to encourage people to watch. And every Friday there was something else, about the night before.
Harry – the Man with AIDS. Some people liked it. Some people didn’t. Some couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
When the programme started, a few people rang me up and wanted me to do work for them. Carpentry, that is. But I usually apologised and said I was booked for months. Which wasn’t far wrong actually. But really I wanted to stick with my old circle of customers. And besides, I had plenty to do in the church.
One person cancelled me. I was due to do a job in a nearby village, and the bloke rang me up and said he didn’t want me to come after all. Had to think of his daughter, he said.
Well, I could have told him that I thought of my daughter every day. All day, sometimes. But it would have been a waste of breath. I just thanked him for letting me know, and told him there were no hard feelings.
After about the second week of the show I turned up at the pub one night, to watch the darts match, and the place was packed. Half of them wanted my autograph. Strange.
I found out later that after the show had been running for a week or two, my ex-wife Carol got in touch with Con. She’d seen some of the publicity in the Moon, and she’d watched one of the early shows, so she somehow tracked him down. I didn’t know about it at the time. Con didn’t tell me.
What happened was, Carol rang up Con and wanted to know when I got AIDS – as she put it. Did she need to get tested?
Well, I suppose I should have realised that would worry her. But I knew when I got the HIV virus, and it was long after Carol and me got divorced. So I suppose I took it for granted that everyone else knew too.
Debbie had realised that Carol would be worried. Because she’s better at thinking things out than I am. And she had talked to Con about it. Suggested he should get in touch with Carol before the show started. That sort of thing. But I don’t think he did.
Anyway, Debbie didn’t tell me that she’d spoken to Con either. So as I say I was in the dark until later. But between the two of them they do seem to have put Carol’s mind at ease. Con’s good at that. Good at talking to people.
Carol also seems to have asked all the obvious questions. The first show said that if I won a million it was all going to go to my daughter Lisa. So Carol wanted to know if that was really true. All that sort of thing.
Carol is no sort of a fool, and although she’s interested in money she’s not stupid enough to think that it grows on trees. But she was a bit worried about the publicity. Sooner or later, she thought, one of the other newspapers might take an interest and come around wanting to talk to Lisa. And Carol was worried about that. Thought it would be bad for her.
Well, you see, here again these are all things that I should have thought of. If I’d been clever enough. If I hadn’t been sort of numb from thinking that I had HIV and that I was going to die pretty soon. But there you are. All I can say is that I made the best decisions I could at the time. I was very green. And ignorant. And a bit stupid. But I did what I thought was best.
It seems that Con was able to keep Carol happy about all those things too. He assured her that the TV company had no intention of dragging Lisa into the programme. And once Carol made contact with him he seems to have kept in touch.
There were going to be thirteen shows in all. Each of them half an hour. Actually it was more like twenty-three minutes by the time you allowed for the adverts. And there were lots of adverts. Mr Patel runs an advertising agency. So Con says.
What with the adverts and so forth, there was really very little in the programme. And I thought it was pretty darn dull. I wouldn’t have sat and watched it if it was about someone else. But people did.
I began to realise why the whole of it wasn’t filmed in advance. It was because Con wanted to put me under pressure. It was beginning to become clear to me that the whole point of the thing was what Con referred to as the unprotected shag. He’s pretty crude at times, is Con.
That was what everyone was thinking about. The unprotected bit. Risking somebody’s life. Debbie’s, that is.
I suppose it’s pretty obvious, but one of the requirements of Debbie’s contract was that she should not be HIV positive herself. So Con got her tested by Dr Meadows, and of course she wasn’t. If she had been, there would have been no programme.
As the weeks passed I began to worry about this more and more. Debbie and I discussed it. Con and I discussed it.
‘Don’t worry, Harry,’ Debbie would say. ‘You just close your eyes and think of England and leave the tricky stuff to Con and me.’
But I remembered well enough what Con had told me fairly early on. We couldn’t fake the unprotected shag.
What that meant was that Debbie and I had to have sexual intercourse, with the cameras watching, and without me wearing a condom. Which meant that Debbie ran a risk of catching the HIV virus off me.
I suppose I ought to tell you now, just in case you don’t realise, but by this time Debbie and I were sleeping together every night. And having sex every night. But always taking sensible precautions. And it was the not taking precautions bit that was bothering me. It got to the point where I couldn’t eat properly, and that’s not like me.
I wasn’t worried about the programme filming us having sex. I’ve never worried about sex. It’s important to me, I’ve never pretended otherwise. And if people want to watch, for one reason or another, then as far as I’m concerned they’re welcome. Doesn’t appeal to me, watching other people, but everyone to their own thing.
No, it was the risk that worried me. I tried not to bang on about it, because that’s boring. But it began to nag away, all the time, at the back of my mind. It had gone from being How do I find a woman willing to have sex with me, to How can I do it without giving Debbie HIV?
From time to time Con would mention – just casually, dropping it into the conversation – that he had persuaded Dr this or Professor that to act as one of the experts who would verify that Debbie and I were actually doing what we claimed to be doing. And that there wasn’t any faking. So I knew the way his mind was working. And I would worry a little bit more.
‘We have to have experts, you know, Harry,’ Con would say. ‘Otherwise it could be just anyone’s dick inside any old woman.’
He was definitely a bit crude at times was Con.
‘Expert witnesses, Harry, that’s the name of the game. People of standing. People whose word will be believed. People who can swear on a stack of bibles that you and Debbie have done the deed without protection. So that you qualify for the big pile of moolah, as per our promise. That’s what the show is all about, Harry. Can Harry, the man with AIDS, persuade a woman to have unprotected sex with him? If so, he wins a million quid. And that’s what it’s all about.’
I would nod and say nothing.
And so, as the weeks passed, we continued filming. Always working a few weeks ahead.
Everything, as I’ve told you, was faked. We pretended it was real. We pretended it was filmed while it actually happened. But it never was. We were faking everything.
Well, actually I tell a lie. There was one thing that wasn’t faked. And that was the night I lost my temper with Con and very nearly killed him.
I start to get worried
AIDS is something that worries people. But it also attracts them. They want to know about it. How dangerous is it? Can you catch it off a lavatory seat? Will Harry screw Debbie and give her AIDS? That’s what people were wondering.
Our programme was shown every week, at 9.30 on Thursday evenings. On the Asteroid channel. Home of the stars. So they said.
I never did know how many people really watched it. Whenever I asked Con for a number he would say ‘It’s in the millions, Harry,’ or something vague like that. If we’re being honest it probably wasn’t all that many. People tell me that it’s a pretty small channel. So half the country probably never even heard of the show. But round our way everybody watched it.
The Moon gave it a big plug, of course. They would. It was one of Mr Patel’s shows, and Mr Patel owned the Moon. So every Thursday there was something to encourage people to watch. And every Friday there was something else, about the night before.
Harry – the Man with AIDS. Some people liked it. Some people didn’t. Some couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
When the programme started, a few people rang me up and wanted me to do work for them. Carpentry, that is. But I usually apologised and said I was booked for months. Which wasn’t far wrong actually. But really I wanted to stick with my old circle of customers. And besides, I had plenty to do in the church.
One person cancelled me. I was due to do a job in a nearby village, and the bloke rang me up and said he didn’t want me to come after all. Had to think of his daughter, he said.
Well, I could have told him that I thought of my daughter every day. All day, sometimes. But it would have been a waste of breath. I just thanked him for letting me know, and told him there were no hard feelings.
After about the second week of the show I turned up at the pub one night, to watch the darts match, and the place was packed. Half of them wanted my autograph. Strange.
I found out later that after the show had been running for a week or two, my ex-wife Carol got in touch with Con. She’d seen some of the publicity in the Moon, and she’d watched one of the early shows, so she somehow tracked him down. I didn’t know about it at the time. Con didn’t tell me.
What happened was, Carol rang up Con and wanted to know when I got AIDS – as she put it. Did she need to get tested?
Well, I suppose I should have realised that would worry her. But I knew when I got the HIV virus, and it was long after Carol and me got divorced. So I suppose I took it for granted that everyone else knew too.
Debbie had realised that Carol would be worried. Because she’s better at thinking things out than I am. And she had talked to Con about it. Suggested he should get in touch with Carol before the show started. That sort of thing. But I don’t think he did.
Anyway, Debbie didn’t tell me that she’d spoken to Con either. So as I say I was in the dark until later. But between the two of them they do seem to have put Carol’s mind at ease. Con’s good at that. Good at talking to people.
Carol also seems to have asked all the obvious questions. The first show said that if I won a million it was all going to go to my daughter Lisa. So Carol wanted to know if that was really true. All that sort of thing.
Carol is no sort of a fool, and although she’s interested in money she’s not stupid enough to think that it grows on trees. But she was a bit worried about the publicity. Sooner or later, she thought, one of the other newspapers might take an interest and come around wanting to talk to Lisa. And Carol was worried about that. Thought it would be bad for her.
Well, you see, here again these are all things that I should have thought of. If I’d been clever enough. If I hadn’t been sort of numb from thinking that I had HIV and that I was going to die pretty soon. But there you are. All I can say is that I made the best decisions I could at the time. I was very green. And ignorant. And a bit stupid. But I did what I thought was best.
It seems that Con was able to keep Carol happy about all those things too. He assured her that the TV company had no intention of dragging Lisa into the programme. And once Carol made contact with him he seems to have kept in touch.
There were going to be thirteen shows in all. Each of them half an hour. Actually it was more like twenty-three minutes by the time you allowed for the adverts. And there were lots of adverts. Mr Patel runs an advertising agency. So Con says.
What with the adverts and so forth, there was really very little in the programme. And I thought it was pretty darn dull. I wouldn’t have sat and watched it if it was about someone else. But people did.
I began to realise why the whole of it wasn’t filmed in advance. It was because Con wanted to put me under pressure. It was beginning to become clear to me that the whole point of the thing was what Con referred to as the unprotected shag. He’s pretty crude at times, is Con.
That was what everyone was thinking about. The unprotected bit. Risking somebody’s life. Debbie’s, that is.
I suppose it’s pretty obvious, but one of the requirements of Debbie’s contract was that she should not be HIV positive herself. So Con got her tested by Dr Meadows, and of course she wasn’t. If she had been, there would have been no programme.
As the weeks passed I began to worry about this more and more. Debbie and I discussed it. Con and I discussed it.
‘Don’t worry, Harry,’ Debbie would say. ‘You just close your eyes and think of England and leave the tricky stuff to Con and me.’
But I remembered well enough what Con had told me fairly early on. We couldn’t fake the unprotected shag.
What that meant was that Debbie and I had to have sexual intercourse, with the cameras watching, and without me wearing a condom. Which meant that Debbie ran a risk of catching the HIV virus off me.
I suppose I ought to tell you now, just in case you don’t realise, but by this time Debbie and I were sleeping together every night. And having sex every night. But always taking sensible precautions. And it was the not taking precautions bit that was bothering me. It got to the point where I couldn’t eat properly, and that’s not like me.
I wasn’t worried about the programme filming us having sex. I’ve never worried about sex. It’s important to me, I’ve never pretended otherwise. And if people want to watch, for one reason or another, then as far as I’m concerned they’re welcome. Doesn’t appeal to me, watching other people, but everyone to their own thing.
No, it was the risk that worried me. I tried not to bang on about it, because that’s boring. But it began to nag away, all the time, at the back of my mind. It had gone from being How do I find a woman willing to have sex with me, to How can I do it without giving Debbie HIV?
From time to time Con would mention – just casually, dropping it into the conversation – that he had persuaded Dr this or Professor that to act as one of the experts who would verify that Debbie and I were actually doing what we claimed to be doing. And that there wasn’t any faking. So I knew the way his mind was working. And I would worry a little bit more.
‘We have to have experts, you know, Harry,’ Con would say. ‘Otherwise it could be just anyone’s dick inside any old woman.’
He was definitely a bit crude at times was Con.
‘Expert witnesses, Harry, that’s the name of the game. People of standing. People whose word will be believed. People who can swear on a stack of bibles that you and Debbie have done the deed without protection. So that you qualify for the big pile of moolah, as per our promise. That’s what the show is all about, Harry. Can Harry, the man with AIDS, persuade a woman to have unprotected sex with him? If so, he wins a million quid. And that’s what it’s all about.’
I would nod and say nothing.
And so, as the weeks passed, we continued filming. Always working a few weeks ahead.
Everything, as I’ve told you, was faked. We pretended it was real. We pretended it was filmed while it actually happened. But it never was. We were faking everything.
Well, actually I tell a lie. There was one thing that wasn’t faked. And that was the night I lost my temper with Con and very nearly killed him.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Odds and ends
New site for young people
Inside a Dog is a new web site about books, aimed specifically at young people. You can read and write reviews, answer quizzes, read interviews, et cetera. Australian based but doubtless universal in appeal.
More misery
We noted a while back (in connection with Skye Rogers's book Drink Me) that the British bestseller list currently features a number of books in which children are revealed as having had a thoroughly miserable time through abuse of one sort or another. Now comes news of another book of the same type which will doubtless be heavily marketed.
Publishers Lunch reports that Duncan Fairhurst's Our Little Secret has been sold to Hodder & Stoughton for a sum in pounds which converts to over $400,000. Agent is David Riding at MBA Literary Agents. The (non-fiction)book tells the story of a young man who, having been subjected to abuse for many years by his father, eventually finds the courage to stand up and succeeds in getting his father jailed for rape and sexual abuse.
Well, somebody's buying these things.
John Sundman
Prompted by yesterday's Long Tail piece, John Sundman, also mentioned yesterday, writes to say that most of his sales come from (a) his website (b) personal appearances (at computer shows and similar), and (c) Amazon.
'Now that I have a third book coming out, demand is picking up for my first two again. One of the nice things about being your own publisher is that you can keep books available as long as you want. When Acts first came out and was getting a lot of notice in the geekoid world, I used to get a lot of individual orders from bookstores--sometimes fifty a month. That was gratifying, for it meant that the buyer had gone to a lot of trouble to seek out my book. But as I've said, "success" is a relative term. I'm not going to quit the day job anytime soon.'
The Long Tail revisited
Lots of comments appeared on yesterday's Long Tail piece, including an interesting one from Adam Powell, who has opened (with a friend) a bookshop specifically to deal in long-tail books. Take a look at their website.
Also on that subject, one of Andy Laties's comments reminds us of a statistic which I noticed last year, but don't think I ever mentioned here. It's a bit of a heart-stopper.
BOOKSCAN SHOWS THAT 93% OF ALL BOOKS SELL LESS THAN 1,000 COPIES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Crumbs. And if that's true in the US market....
Lynne Scanlon interviews Ron Hogan
On the Publishing Contrarian (30 April), Lynne Scanlon talks to Ron Hogan, who is one half of Galleycat, a book blog which, as I remarked a while back, is now essential reading if you want to keep up with the US publishing scene.
Inside a Dog is a new web site about books, aimed specifically at young people. You can read and write reviews, answer quizzes, read interviews, et cetera. Australian based but doubtless universal in appeal.
More misery
We noted a while back (in connection with Skye Rogers's book Drink Me) that the British bestseller list currently features a number of books in which children are revealed as having had a thoroughly miserable time through abuse of one sort or another. Now comes news of another book of the same type which will doubtless be heavily marketed.
Publishers Lunch reports that Duncan Fairhurst's Our Little Secret has been sold to Hodder & Stoughton for a sum in pounds which converts to over $400,000. Agent is David Riding at MBA Literary Agents. The (non-fiction)book tells the story of a young man who, having been subjected to abuse for many years by his father, eventually finds the courage to stand up and succeeds in getting his father jailed for rape and sexual abuse.
Well, somebody's buying these things.
John Sundman
Prompted by yesterday's Long Tail piece, John Sundman, also mentioned yesterday, writes to say that most of his sales come from (a) his website (b) personal appearances (at computer shows and similar), and (c) Amazon.
'Now that I have a third book coming out, demand is picking up for my first two again. One of the nice things about being your own publisher is that you can keep books available as long as you want. When Acts first came out and was getting a lot of notice in the geekoid world, I used to get a lot of individual orders from bookstores--sometimes fifty a month. That was gratifying, for it meant that the buyer had gone to a lot of trouble to seek out my book. But as I've said, "success" is a relative term. I'm not going to quit the day job anytime soon.'
The Long Tail revisited
Lots of comments appeared on yesterday's Long Tail piece, including an interesting one from Adam Powell, who has opened (with a friend) a bookshop specifically to deal in long-tail books. Take a look at their website.
Also on that subject, one of Andy Laties's comments reminds us of a statistic which I noticed last year, but don't think I ever mentioned here. It's a bit of a heart-stopper.
Jim King, senior v-p and general manager of Nielsen BookScan, noted that 93% of all ISBNs of books whose sales were tracked by the company during 2004 sold less than 1,000 units.... During 2004, 7% of ISBNs accounted for 87% of sales, prompting King to suggest that in 2004 the old 80/20 rule of 80% of sales coming from 20% of titles had become a 90/10 rule.Now there, if you will forgive me for rubbing it in, is a statement which surely deserves to be printed out in large letters and stuck on the wall all over the house. It will console you when things go wrong, either when your book is rejected or it appears and 'doesn't do very well'.
BOOKSCAN SHOWS THAT 93% OF ALL BOOKS SELL LESS THAN 1,000 COPIES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Crumbs. And if that's true in the US market....
Lynne Scanlon interviews Ron Hogan
On the Publishing Contrarian (30 April), Lynne Scanlon talks to Ron Hogan, who is one half of Galleycat, a book blog which, as I remarked a while back, is now essential reading if you want to keep up with the US publishing scene.
Excerpt 22
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
Filming the show
A few days later we began filming.
Well, I say filming. That’s because they looked like film cameras to me. But actually they didn’t have film in. In fact, as I understand it, they didn’t even have tape in. They had little computers. But that’s about all I know.
What happens is, they point the camera at you, you do what the director tells you, and then, as often as not, you do it again. Until he’s satisfied. Con usually stands around in the background.
It was all faked, of course. We learnt that pretty quick. Practically everything that people ever saw in the show was actually filmed again, after it happened. Either that or it was set up in advance so that Con knew exactly where everyone would be standing, what they would be saying, and so on.
The usual director was a man called Paul. On the whole I got on better with Paul than with Con. He didn’t take everything so seriously. You could have a laugh with him – mostly about Con.
It was Paul who told me how much money was involved in a show like this. He gave me a breakdown one evening in the pub. Wrote it all out on the back of a copy of the Moon. I really should have kept it but I didn’t.
Anyway, according to Paul, a show like Harry – the Man with AIDS is amazingly cheap to make. You need a small crew to do the filming. You use real places – you don’t have to build special sets. You use ordinary people, and most of them don’t have to be paid. And you don’t even need anyone to write a script. The actors just say what they say in real life.
Apparently it takes quite a lot of skill to edit a show like ours. Editing means stitching together all the bits and pieces. That takes quite a lot of talent, Paul reckons. But after that you’ve got a programme.
The first showing of the programme on the Asteroid channel ought to clear its cost plus a bit more. But if the show catches on – if people like the format, as it’s called – then you can license the show all over the world. Do it in fifty countries. And you get a slice of the profits from each show.
No wonder Con and Mr Patel are so keen on these things.
The plot, such as it was, was this. It began with me telling how I used to go to this massage parlour. (Which had closed by then so nobody got upset.) We didn’t use Dora Cartwright’s real name, by the way.
Then there was me going to the clinic and getting tested. Because I was ‘worried’. Con decided not to have Dora telling me that I might be HIV, like she did in real life. He said that being warned didn’t project quite the right image somehow.
Then there was me reading an advert in the press, from a TV company looking for people who have AIDS. Which I never did of course. (And I don’t have AIDS.) Nothing was said about Con wiring the TV clinic and watching people in the middle of highly confidential interviews.
Next, me ringing up the TV company and asking what this show involving a man with AIDS was all about. Then me being invited to London for an interview.
Huh! Talk about fiction. In this bit I wasn’t seen talking to Con. Oh no. I was talking to some dolly bird who was very sympathetic. And the camera spent a lot of time looking at her rather than me. Quite a lot of time looking at her tits, actually.
So then I talked to my friend the Vicar about going on the show. Asked him whether I should or not.
Funnily enough Mr Redmond didn’t seem to mind doing a bit of acting. That was because me and Debbie had had a chat with him before the TV people ever got near him. We made sure that he knew enough to ask for a great deal of money for any sort of co-operation at all. Debbie told him how to do that.
‘Get cash,’ she told him. And he did. Used oncers. It all went into church funds of course.
Con grumbled like nobody’s business. ‘What are Vicars coming to?’ he wanted to know. ‘No wonder the Church of England is in trouble.’
The truth was, Debbie and I were the ones in trouble. We had to try not to laugh whenever Con complained about the Vicar driving a hard bargain.
We told Tony in the pub to do the same thing. Con grumbled for days about all these country yokels that wanted the earth just to give you the time of day. Anyone in a big city would do it gladly for nothing, he said. Just for the publicity. I didn’t believe a word of it.
What then? Oh yes, me signing the contract. That bit looked like the Germans signing the surrender documents in 1945.
And then we got down to the nitty-gritty. The cameras showed me beginning to look for a sexual partner. And surprise surprise, there was this lovely girl I spotted in the street one day. Very pretty. Drives a bright red fancy sports car and sprays me with mud as she drives past. (We had to use a hosepipe and a bucket of good topsoil to make that mud.)
And so on. You get the idea. Load of old cobblers from start to finish. The only good thing about it was that once filming started Debbie and I began to see some money. But ours wasn’t in cash. We got cheques.
What with all this filming going on, in and around the town, and the occasional reminder about the programme being printed in the Moon, people were beginning to talk. In fact half of them talked about nothing else.
They all wanted to know when it was going to be on the telly. That, and whether they would be in it. For some reason they all wanted to be in it. Con could have charged money for that if he’d had any brains.
‘Not long,’ Con always used to say, whenever he was asked when the show would start. ‘It won’t be long now.’ And he smiled because he loved all that. Loved the idea that people wanted to watch his baby.
Harry – the Man with AIDS. It was Con’s brainchild. The idea that was going to make him rich.
‘Got myself a percentage, Harry,’ he would say. ‘Strictly between you and me. Cut myself a nice little deal on this one. And that isn’t easy with Mr Patel, believe me.’
I did believe him. I also believed that watching the show would be a complete waste of time. But that didn’t stop people doing it. Once it started.
Filming the show
A few days later we began filming.
Well, I say filming. That’s because they looked like film cameras to me. But actually they didn’t have film in. In fact, as I understand it, they didn’t even have tape in. They had little computers. But that’s about all I know.
What happens is, they point the camera at you, you do what the director tells you, and then, as often as not, you do it again. Until he’s satisfied. Con usually stands around in the background.
It was all faked, of course. We learnt that pretty quick. Practically everything that people ever saw in the show was actually filmed again, after it happened. Either that or it was set up in advance so that Con knew exactly where everyone would be standing, what they would be saying, and so on.
The usual director was a man called Paul. On the whole I got on better with Paul than with Con. He didn’t take everything so seriously. You could have a laugh with him – mostly about Con.
It was Paul who told me how much money was involved in a show like this. He gave me a breakdown one evening in the pub. Wrote it all out on the back of a copy of the Moon. I really should have kept it but I didn’t.
Anyway, according to Paul, a show like Harry – the Man with AIDS is amazingly cheap to make. You need a small crew to do the filming. You use real places – you don’t have to build special sets. You use ordinary people, and most of them don’t have to be paid. And you don’t even need anyone to write a script. The actors just say what they say in real life.
Apparently it takes quite a lot of skill to edit a show like ours. Editing means stitching together all the bits and pieces. That takes quite a lot of talent, Paul reckons. But after that you’ve got a programme.
The first showing of the programme on the Asteroid channel ought to clear its cost plus a bit more. But if the show catches on – if people like the format, as it’s called – then you can license the show all over the world. Do it in fifty countries. And you get a slice of the profits from each show.
No wonder Con and Mr Patel are so keen on these things.
The plot, such as it was, was this. It began with me telling how I used to go to this massage parlour. (Which had closed by then so nobody got upset.) We didn’t use Dora Cartwright’s real name, by the way.
Then there was me going to the clinic and getting tested. Because I was ‘worried’. Con decided not to have Dora telling me that I might be HIV, like she did in real life. He said that being warned didn’t project quite the right image somehow.
Then there was me reading an advert in the press, from a TV company looking for people who have AIDS. Which I never did of course. (And I don’t have AIDS.) Nothing was said about Con wiring the TV clinic and watching people in the middle of highly confidential interviews.
Next, me ringing up the TV company and asking what this show involving a man with AIDS was all about. Then me being invited to London for an interview.
Huh! Talk about fiction. In this bit I wasn’t seen talking to Con. Oh no. I was talking to some dolly bird who was very sympathetic. And the camera spent a lot of time looking at her rather than me. Quite a lot of time looking at her tits, actually.
So then I talked to my friend the Vicar about going on the show. Asked him whether I should or not.
Funnily enough Mr Redmond didn’t seem to mind doing a bit of acting. That was because me and Debbie had had a chat with him before the TV people ever got near him. We made sure that he knew enough to ask for a great deal of money for any sort of co-operation at all. Debbie told him how to do that.
‘Get cash,’ she told him. And he did. Used oncers. It all went into church funds of course.
Con grumbled like nobody’s business. ‘What are Vicars coming to?’ he wanted to know. ‘No wonder the Church of England is in trouble.’
The truth was, Debbie and I were the ones in trouble. We had to try not to laugh whenever Con complained about the Vicar driving a hard bargain.
We told Tony in the pub to do the same thing. Con grumbled for days about all these country yokels that wanted the earth just to give you the time of day. Anyone in a big city would do it gladly for nothing, he said. Just for the publicity. I didn’t believe a word of it.
What then? Oh yes, me signing the contract. That bit looked like the Germans signing the surrender documents in 1945.
And then we got down to the nitty-gritty. The cameras showed me beginning to look for a sexual partner. And surprise surprise, there was this lovely girl I spotted in the street one day. Very pretty. Drives a bright red fancy sports car and sprays me with mud as she drives past. (We had to use a hosepipe and a bucket of good topsoil to make that mud.)
And so on. You get the idea. Load of old cobblers from start to finish. The only good thing about it was that once filming started Debbie and I began to see some money. But ours wasn’t in cash. We got cheques.
What with all this filming going on, in and around the town, and the occasional reminder about the programme being printed in the Moon, people were beginning to talk. In fact half of them talked about nothing else.
They all wanted to know when it was going to be on the telly. That, and whether they would be in it. For some reason they all wanted to be in it. Con could have charged money for that if he’d had any brains.
‘Not long,’ Con always used to say, whenever he was asked when the show would start. ‘It won’t be long now.’ And he smiled because he loved all that. Loved the idea that people wanted to watch his baby.
Harry – the Man with AIDS. It was Con’s brainchild. The idea that was going to make him rich.
‘Got myself a percentage, Harry,’ he would say. ‘Strictly between you and me. Cut myself a nice little deal on this one. And that isn’t easy with Mr Patel, believe me.’
I did believe him. I also believed that watching the show would be a complete waste of time. But that didn’t stop people doing it. Once it started.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Long tail coming
The concept of the long tail, and its relevance to the book world, has been discussed here before. Several times, but notably on 13 July 2005. On that occasion I defined the long tail as follows:
I have recently been re-reading Jason Epstein's famous (but not sufficiently widely read) book from 2001, Book Business. That re-reading, plus being reminded about the forthcoming Long Tail book, plus writing about EminemsRevenge (see below), prompts me to make the following observations.
I am normally cautious about all forecasts of impending change: cautious in the sense that I think that forecasts of both the speed and extent of change tend to be over-estimated.
For example, it's only about 25 years ago since home videotape recorders began to be widespread. And at the time you could find plenty of 'experts' who predicted that the film industry as we knew it would disappear. Cinemas would close, and so forth. Didn't quite happen that way.
However, it occurs to me that the book trade as a whole, may, just conceivably, be under-estimating the extent and speed of changes which may shortly be upon us.
Consider, for example, the growth of digital photography. I was interested in digital photography well over ten years ago, before the average man in the street had ever heard of it. Then, when I finally got a copy of Photoshop 3 (?c. 1999), I began to make enquiries as to how one might print out a digital image, after one had tweaked it to one's heart's content in Photoshop. And I discovered that it was extremely difficult to find any firm or organisation which had a machine which could handle the job. Those firms that did offer such a service tended to be concentrated in Soho, and charged a small fortune for each print.
Within a year or two of that, Epson came up with a printer which would allow me, in my own home, to make a print which was every bit as impressive as a colour photograph printed in the traditional wet darkroom. And within a year or two after that, even a small town like Trowbridge, near me (population maybe 20,000), had suddenly acquired three commercial machines which would produce prints from your digital files, for relatively small amounts of money, more or less instanteously. Two were in big firms' shops: Boots and Tescos. But one machine was based in a small one-man business. He got as many customers as did the big guys.
So here was a huge change in techniques and mind-set which came about if not overnight, then at least in a very short time.
Even in 2001, Jason Epstein was suggesting that, before long, bookshops would have a digital machine in a back room which would be able to print out, in a few minutes, a paperback copy of any book that the firm happened to have on file. And the file catalogue could be more or less infinite in size. This facility would, of course, would make the mom-and-pop store just as effective as, say, the newly merged Wottakars; at least as far as many books were concerned. If you insisted on a hardback copy of a heavily illustrated coffee-table book, you might have to go to a more traditional supplier and wait until a copy arrived from the distributor. But for the average book: No problem, madam, please have a cup of our complimentary coffee and it will be ready in fifteen minutes.
Yes, much of the new long-tail niche business will be powered by the internet. That is how customers will hear about their niche books (or even the smash-hit worldwide sellers); and much ordering will be done online, with the book being sent by post.
But, suppose you work in a city, and there is a new-fangled digital bookshop on your route to the office. The night before, you phone in, or email in, your order, and pick it up as you walk past. The shop may or may not carry inventory. It may be a whopping big Wottakars, but it could just as easily be your local newsagent, with a machine in the back -- just as some of them have photo machines now.
Given what we now know about the extraordinarily rapid growth of digital photography, it seems to me that this change in the book world could come about a great deal sooner than is often suspected. Could, I say, not necessarily will.
And if and when this change does occur, it will transform the book world for every participant. Some will prosper, and some will go bust. Small independent booksellers may get a new lease of life. But the most remarkable change, at least in my estimation, will be that experienced by the EminemsRevenges (see below) of this world.
Once, those who wrote experimental works such as Jew Girl would stand no chance whatever of getting their books published. But now they can do it themselves; and they can tell people about it through the internet; and a few will even take some notice. In the long-tail digital era (for want of a better expression), the 20 people in the world (or the 200, or 2,000 et cetera) who are actually interested in this peculiar book that they have heard about, can order a copy tonight and pick it up from their newsagent when they buy their morning paper.
In such a world, the pro-am writer (see On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile for details of that concept), will come into her own; and she will find her maximum potential audience, however large or small that may be.
The long-tail idea has no doubt been around a while, but it has also been known for some time that Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, has been working on a book about the subject. Said book is now scheduled for publication in July by Hyperion (US) and Random House (UK). The Amazon UK entry gives more detail than the .com at present:In brief, the long tail is a term used to describe a feature of statistical distributions when illustrated in the form of a graph. For instance, there are a few words which are used very often -- the word 'the' being an example -- and a very large number of words which are used very seldom -- words such as 'disintermediation'. If you plot a graph showing this kind of distribution you get a sharp peak on the left of the graph and a long flattish line tailing off to the right. This is the 'long tail' (aka heavy tail, power-law tail, or Pareto tail). See our old friend Wikipedia for details.
Whether you can visualise this picture or not, all you need to remember is that in publishing there are a small number of individual titles which sell in huge numbers, perhaps a million copies each; and there are also a large number of individual titles (approaching 200,000 a year in the US) which sell in small numbers, perhaps a few hundred copies each.
The "long tail" refers to the hundreds of thousands of products that are not number one bestsellers i.e. all those products that form a line that tails off down any company's sales graph. But in the digital and on-line world, these products are booming precisely because they are not constrained by the demands of a physical retail space. In the autumn of 2004 Chris Anderson identified this trend in "Wired Magazine" and called it "the long tail". The term has since caught fire in tech and media circles. He says that in an era of almost limitless choice, many consumers will gravitate toward the most popular mass-market items, but just as many will move toward items that only a few, niche-market people want.... In this new digital era, the long tail is a new and powerful force.OK so now you get the idea. And Michael Cader, of Publishers Lunch, has read an advance copy of The Long Tail and has some quotes to offer:
The market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is already a third the size of the existing market -- and what's more, it's growing quickly....Now -- enough of quoting others. Time for something that might loosely be called original thinking.
Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for non-commercial content. Then, as demand shifts towards the niches, the economics of providing them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries -- and the culture -- for decades to come.
Consumers must be given ways to find niches that suit their particular needs and interests. A range of tools and techniques -- from recommendations to rankings -- are effective at doing this. These "filters" can drive demand down the Tail.
I have recently been re-reading Jason Epstein's famous (but not sufficiently widely read) book from 2001, Book Business. That re-reading, plus being reminded about the forthcoming Long Tail book, plus writing about EminemsRevenge (see below), prompts me to make the following observations.
I am normally cautious about all forecasts of impending change: cautious in the sense that I think that forecasts of both the speed and extent of change tend to be over-estimated.
For example, it's only about 25 years ago since home videotape recorders began to be widespread. And at the time you could find plenty of 'experts' who predicted that the film industry as we knew it would disappear. Cinemas would close, and so forth. Didn't quite happen that way.
However, it occurs to me that the book trade as a whole, may, just conceivably, be under-estimating the extent and speed of changes which may shortly be upon us.
Consider, for example, the growth of digital photography. I was interested in digital photography well over ten years ago, before the average man in the street had ever heard of it. Then, when I finally got a copy of Photoshop 3 (?c. 1999), I began to make enquiries as to how one might print out a digital image, after one had tweaked it to one's heart's content in Photoshop. And I discovered that it was extremely difficult to find any firm or organisation which had a machine which could handle the job. Those firms that did offer such a service tended to be concentrated in Soho, and charged a small fortune for each print.
Within a year or two of that, Epson came up with a printer which would allow me, in my own home, to make a print which was every bit as impressive as a colour photograph printed in the traditional wet darkroom. And within a year or two after that, even a small town like Trowbridge, near me (population maybe 20,000), had suddenly acquired three commercial machines which would produce prints from your digital files, for relatively small amounts of money, more or less instanteously. Two were in big firms' shops: Boots and Tescos. But one machine was based in a small one-man business. He got as many customers as did the big guys.
So here was a huge change in techniques and mind-set which came about if not overnight, then at least in a very short time.
Even in 2001, Jason Epstein was suggesting that, before long, bookshops would have a digital machine in a back room which would be able to print out, in a few minutes, a paperback copy of any book that the firm happened to have on file. And the file catalogue could be more or less infinite in size. This facility would, of course, would make the mom-and-pop store just as effective as, say, the newly merged Wottakars; at least as far as many books were concerned. If you insisted on a hardback copy of a heavily illustrated coffee-table book, you might have to go to a more traditional supplier and wait until a copy arrived from the distributor. But for the average book: No problem, madam, please have a cup of our complimentary coffee and it will be ready in fifteen minutes.
Yes, much of the new long-tail niche business will be powered by the internet. That is how customers will hear about their niche books (or even the smash-hit worldwide sellers); and much ordering will be done online, with the book being sent by post.
But, suppose you work in a city, and there is a new-fangled digital bookshop on your route to the office. The night before, you phone in, or email in, your order, and pick it up as you walk past. The shop may or may not carry inventory. It may be a whopping big Wottakars, but it could just as easily be your local newsagent, with a machine in the back -- just as some of them have photo machines now.
Given what we now know about the extraordinarily rapid growth of digital photography, it seems to me that this change in the book world could come about a great deal sooner than is often suspected. Could, I say, not necessarily will.
And if and when this change does occur, it will transform the book world for every participant. Some will prosper, and some will go bust. Small independent booksellers may get a new lease of life. But the most remarkable change, at least in my estimation, will be that experienced by the EminemsRevenges (see below) of this world.
Once, those who wrote experimental works such as Jew Girl would stand no chance whatever of getting their books published. But now they can do it themselves; and they can tell people about it through the internet; and a few will even take some notice. In the long-tail digital era (for want of a better expression), the 20 people in the world (or the 200, or 2,000 et cetera) who are actually interested in this peculiar book that they have heard about, can order a copy tonight and pick it up from their newsagent when they buy their morning paper.
In such a world, the pro-am writer (see On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile for details of that concept), will come into her own; and she will find her maximum potential audience, however large or small that may be.
EminemsRevenge: Jew Girl
You may recall that Lynne Scanlon's recent survey of readers led to the conclusion that few people ever go anywhere near publishers such as Lulu.com in search of books to read. However, there are some new and emerging talents who are using such facilities to get their work into print. And some of it is certainly worth examination. Whatever else, such writers form a marked contrast to the stuff which makes book-world headlines either online or in the mainstream media.
One such talent is a writer who calls himself EminemsRevenge. He is the author of Jew Girl, issued through Lulu.com last year.
Biographical details for EminemsRevenge are hard to come by, but he appears to describe himself as an 'Internet bad boy... who many consider to be the Howard Stern and Dave Chappelle of blogging.' He has a blog of his own, which I find just a tad difficult to get to grips with, but that's because I am old and barely know who the original Eminem is. He also has a web site -- ditto. But, if I read the signs correctly, ER is a black gentleman who was originally based in New York.
Now for his novel Jew Girl. Well, the title alone is provocative, shall we say. Edgy. To my mind, a bit dangerous, given what one knows about some of the past history of New York and the not always happy relationships between Afro-Americans and Jews. But then you would expect, or hope, that young (or new) talent would be willing to take a few risks.
You get the chance to dip into this book, both on Lulu and on Amazon.com, and the Amazon info is actually a lot better than that on Lulu. Amazon is the place to go to get a good feel for this book.
We learn, for instance, that 'the book pays homage to the forward thinking teacher who inspired him [the author] to read both Joyce and D.H. Lawrence and look outside the box of conventional thinking. This teacher built on a foundation created from information about Judaism shared with an inquisitive pre-adolescent EminemsRevenge by his next door neighbor, a rabbi cop, in the Rockaway peninsula of NYC.'
And you don't have to read very far in the offered extract before the Joycean influence becomes obvious.
Well, I must say I was quite impressed. There is some wit here, a considerable grasp of several languages, and a willingness to play with words which is reminiscent of John Lennon's prose (remember In His Own Write?). I didn't actually feel inclined to read the whole of Jew Girl, but I was interested to see what the man is up to. There is a talent here, I think, and if it's not entirely to my taste then so what?
Amazon offers a number of reader comments, and there are more on Lulu, and also here. Take a look, and see what you think. You might be surprised.
One such talent is a writer who calls himself EminemsRevenge. He is the author of Jew Girl, issued through Lulu.com last year.
Biographical details for EminemsRevenge are hard to come by, but he appears to describe himself as an 'Internet bad boy... who many consider to be the Howard Stern and Dave Chappelle of blogging.' He has a blog of his own, which I find just a tad difficult to get to grips with, but that's because I am old and barely know who the original Eminem is. He also has a web site -- ditto. But, if I read the signs correctly, ER is a black gentleman who was originally based in New York.
Now for his novel Jew Girl. Well, the title alone is provocative, shall we say. Edgy. To my mind, a bit dangerous, given what one knows about some of the past history of New York and the not always happy relationships between Afro-Americans and Jews. But then you would expect, or hope, that young (or new) talent would be willing to take a few risks.
You get the chance to dip into this book, both on Lulu and on Amazon.com, and the Amazon info is actually a lot better than that on Lulu. Amazon is the place to go to get a good feel for this book.
We learn, for instance, that 'the book pays homage to the forward thinking teacher who inspired him [the author] to read both Joyce and D.H. Lawrence and look outside the box of conventional thinking. This teacher built on a foundation created from information about Judaism shared with an inquisitive pre-adolescent EminemsRevenge by his next door neighbor, a rabbi cop, in the Rockaway peninsula of NYC.'
And you don't have to read very far in the offered extract before the Joycean influence becomes obvious.
Well, I must say I was quite impressed. There is some wit here, a considerable grasp of several languages, and a willingness to play with words which is reminiscent of John Lennon's prose (remember In His Own Write?). I didn't actually feel inclined to read the whole of Jew Girl, but I was interested to see what the man is up to. There is a talent here, I think, and if it's not entirely to my taste then so what?
Amazon offers a number of reader comments, and there are more on Lulu, and also here. Take a look, and see what you think. You might be surprised.
Weekend round-up
Word Pangs
The memory is not what it was. I find that I have hitherto recommended you to visit Word Pangs, which is a highly entertaining blog; and indeed it's on my blogroll. But it's well worth mentioning again. Word Pangs often features quotations which are relevant to the writer's situation and the book trade in general. And some of them are mine.
Nothing new in plagiarism
In case you missed James Morrison's comment on the Kaavya phenomenon, it's worth following his link: the page which appears is a little hard to read (in my browser at any rate) but will provide some harmless amusement to those who ever struggled to read Chaucer.
Tip: if you're really interested, note that this web page is a jpg. Right click it, use Save as to put it on your hard disc, open a photoediting program, open the jpg, and enlarge it a bit. At 100% it reads just fine.
And, although it's a bit of lighthearted fun, it is also relevant to the plagiarism discussion.
Rathwell extract
An extract from Richard Rathwell's Red the Nile, Blue the Hills has been posted on the Blue Orange blog. The book is carried by wholesaler Bertrams so should be available from most bookshops.
How to become a grown-up on the web
On the Creative Commons blog, in an interview with Mike Linksvayer, John Sundman describes how he finally grew up in terms of his attitude to the web.
At first, round about 1999/2000, John posted parts of his novels on the web, to advertise them, and was paranoid about anyone getting hold of the entire text for free. Then he realised that the average novelist's biggest problem is not having his books ripped off -- it is the fact that no one in the world either knows or cares about what he's done. And so from then on John posted his stuff in its entirety, as free PDFs. Result? Well, if not happiness, at least a degree of satisfaction with the result.
PS. Does John's 1999/2000 attitude remind you of anyone? Hint: think about the big fat commercial publishers, with their elaborate DRMs and their warnings plastered all over any free PDFs that they do distribute, e.g. to the odd (very odd) blogger like me. As if anybody in their right mind would voluntarily pass on the PDF of a Michael Cunningham novel anyway.
If you want to read any of John Sundman's books, go to his wetmachine site. He is described as a 'gonzo SF novelist', by the way. Whatever that is.
I've just read chapter 1 of Acts of the Apostles, and it is clearly the work of a man who knows what he's doing. But I have a comment (which you will have come across before on this blog but will probably have forgotten): All information for the reader is best conveyed in the course of a scene; a scene in which human beings address each other, and in which an emotional and intellectual interchange takes place. That way the reader is much more quickly involved in the story than if you just tell her things with your author's hat on.
Towards the end of Acts of the Apostles chapter one, we do get a scene, and things improve no end. I will probably read the rest.
McCrum on Friday and Pack
In the Observer yesterday, Robert McCrum made encouraging noises about the IT revolution and how it affects traditional publishing. Of which, no doubt, more on this blog later.
Fiction factory
If you have somehow escaped hearing about how James Patterson's fiction factory operates, the Guardian today gives you a description (link from booktrade.info).
The memory is not what it was. I find that I have hitherto recommended you to visit Word Pangs, which is a highly entertaining blog; and indeed it's on my blogroll. But it's well worth mentioning again. Word Pangs often features quotations which are relevant to the writer's situation and the book trade in general. And some of them are mine.
Nothing new in plagiarism
In case you missed James Morrison's comment on the Kaavya phenomenon, it's worth following his link: the page which appears is a little hard to read (in my browser at any rate) but will provide some harmless amusement to those who ever struggled to read Chaucer.
Tip: if you're really interested, note that this web page is a jpg. Right click it, use Save as to put it on your hard disc, open a photoediting program, open the jpg, and enlarge it a bit. At 100% it reads just fine.
And, although it's a bit of lighthearted fun, it is also relevant to the plagiarism discussion.
Rathwell extract
An extract from Richard Rathwell's Red the Nile, Blue the Hills has been posted on the Blue Orange blog. The book is carried by wholesaler Bertrams so should be available from most bookshops.
How to become a grown-up on the web
On the Creative Commons blog, in an interview with Mike Linksvayer, John Sundman describes how he finally grew up in terms of his attitude to the web.
At first, round about 1999/2000, John posted parts of his novels on the web, to advertise them, and was paranoid about anyone getting hold of the entire text for free. Then he realised that the average novelist's biggest problem is not having his books ripped off -- it is the fact that no one in the world either knows or cares about what he's done. And so from then on John posted his stuff in its entirety, as free PDFs. Result? Well, if not happiness, at least a degree of satisfaction with the result.
PS. Does John's 1999/2000 attitude remind you of anyone? Hint: think about the big fat commercial publishers, with their elaborate DRMs and their warnings plastered all over any free PDFs that they do distribute, e.g. to the odd (very odd) blogger like me. As if anybody in their right mind would voluntarily pass on the PDF of a Michael Cunningham novel anyway.
If you want to read any of John Sundman's books, go to his wetmachine site. He is described as a 'gonzo SF novelist', by the way. Whatever that is.
I've just read chapter 1 of Acts of the Apostles, and it is clearly the work of a man who knows what he's doing. But I have a comment (which you will have come across before on this blog but will probably have forgotten): All information for the reader is best conveyed in the course of a scene; a scene in which human beings address each other, and in which an emotional and intellectual interchange takes place. That way the reader is much more quickly involved in the story than if you just tell her things with your author's hat on.
Towards the end of Acts of the Apostles chapter one, we do get a scene, and things improve no end. I will probably read the rest.
McCrum on Friday and Pack
In the Observer yesterday, Robert McCrum made encouraging noises about the IT revolution and how it affects traditional publishing. Of which, no doubt, more on this blog later.
Fiction factory
If you have somehow escaped hearing about how James Patterson's fiction factory operates, the Guardian today gives you a description (link from booktrade.info).
Excerpt 21
Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.
I get to be famous
It was when stuff started appearing in the newspapers that people really paid attention. And the first of the papers, of course, was the Moon.
Con reckons that the Moon makes the Sun look like – to use his words – a fucking light bulb. He tends to swear a bit does Con. And he exaggerates. So I don’t really know how popular the Moon is compared with the Sun. But Con could tell you. He could tell you how many copies it sold last Thursday.
Anyway, the thing is, Mr Patel owns the Moon. And he also seems to own the TV show, despite it being what Debbie calls a hundred-pound company. And he certainly owns Asteroid TV, which is the channel that shows our programme. The channel of the stars, Asteroid call themselves. Which always make Debbie and me laugh.
The big thing about the Moon is their regular feature on page three, showing some nude girl bending over and showing off her bum. Practically everybody I’ve ever known in the building trade buys it for that. But they also publish lots of stories about TV. Especially, funnily enough, if they’re programmes shown on the Asteroid channel.
About a week before the first episode of our show, the front page of the Moon had a picture of me. I was absolutely staggered when Con showed it to me.
‘Here you are, mate,’ he said. And he was grinning like a loony. He never does things by halves. ‘What do you think of that then?’
I took one look and staggered back a bit. It made my heart beat a lot faster when I first saw it, I can tell you that much. It was quite a shock.
At first I didn’t know what to think of it. Then I took a closer look, and I tried to read the story as if it was about someone else.
When I was a boy, newspapers used to have news on the front page. But nowadays they print any old rubbish. Especially in the Moon. So there I was. Big picture. ‘Harry – the man with AIDS,’ it said. ‘Would you go to bed with this man?’
Oh it was a work of art, that front page. Con was tickled pink with it. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he kept saying. ‘Bloody marvellous, Harry. Say what you like about Mr Patel, he has one hell of a nose for a story.’
Actually I didn’t want to say anything about Mr Patel. And it didn’t look like much of a story to me. More of a question. And a pretty silly one at that. ‘Would you go to bed with this man?’
I know it’s a niggly thing to say, but when that story appeared I didn’t have AIDS. And I don’t have AIDS now. But as soon as I saw that front-page picture I knew it was a waste of breath trying to tell anyone.
For those who were interested, the story continued on page five. And what it said there was that I was a man with a mission. ‘Can Harry win a million pounds for the girl of his dreams – actually, folks, that’s his lovely daughter Lisa. All Harry has to do is persuade a beautiful woman to go to bed with him. Live. On TV. And if he does, he wins a million pounds for Lisa. There’s only one snag, girls. Harry has AIDS. Would you go to bed with him?’
Charming.
There was lots more. On another page there was a piece about how the programme was starting next week, and how it was going to be the TV sensation of the century. And endless reams of other crap. I didn’t bother to read more than a few lines of it. I just laughed.
‘Con,’ I said. ‘You cannot be serious.’
But he was serious. Con thinks that kind of thing is very serious. And he looked a bit put out because I was laughing at it.
‘It’s great stuff, Harry,’ he told me. Ticking me off for mocking it. ‘Fabulous bloody journalism, this is, mate. You don’t know coz you’re just a layman. But to the professional this is textbook stuff. Sells copies like hot fucking fruit cakes on a bank holiday Monday, Harry. Say what you like about Mr Patel, this bloke knows his business.’
I started to walk away and do something more useful, but he followed me.
‘He’s a hands-on bloody boss, you know, Harry – Mr Patel. Goes down to the newsroom and sets the front page himself sometimes. Touch of bloody genius this is, mate. You mark my words.’
And he went on and on. About how the launch of the Moon was a textbook example of how to start a new paper. And a lot more like that. He could rabbit for England, Con could. Especially about what he calls the media.
The thing is, though, up to that point the story about me and Debbie being on a TV show had all been hot air. Debbie and I had gone round telling everyone, as I’ve said. And that was a three-day wonder. People talked about it – more to each other than to us. But as far as most of them were concerned it was just a rumour. There was no proof that it was actually happening, and some of them flat out didn’t believe it. But as soon as that story appeared in the Moon – well, then everything changed.
The first time I noticed a difference was when I went to work at the church, and I bumped into the Vicar, Mr Redmond. In the afternoon it was. By then someone had shown him the Moon. I don’t suppose he buys it every day.
He looked serious too. ‘Well, Harry,’ he said, ‘one thing is for certain. Your life will never be the same again.’ And he shook my hand and wished me the very best of luck.
I also noticed a change when I went in the pub. It was about seven o’clock in the evening. Too early to be crowded, but a few people in. And as soon as I went in the door it all went quiet.
Tony, the landlord, had been leaning over the bar chatting to a friend. When he saw me he suddenly stood up and stopped talking, as if he’d been discussing me. Which, I realised later, he had. But then they all suddenly started to pretend that nothing had happened, and started talking to each other again. A bit louder than necessary.
All except one man. I know him by sight but I don’t know his name. He put his drink down, only half finished, and walked out.
Tony watched him go. Then he asked me if I wanted the usual, and I said Yes please. ‘Don’t you worry about him, Harry,’ he said, nodding towards the door that this man had gone out of. ‘He always was a bit of an arsehole.’
After a while all the pub regulars got used to me being famous and I started being a normal bloke again. Or as normal as you ever can be when you’ve been on the front page of the Moon and everyone thinks you’ve got AIDS.
I get to be famous
It was when stuff started appearing in the newspapers that people really paid attention. And the first of the papers, of course, was the Moon.
Con reckons that the Moon makes the Sun look like – to use his words – a fucking light bulb. He tends to swear a bit does Con. And he exaggerates. So I don’t really know how popular the Moon is compared with the Sun. But Con could tell you. He could tell you how many copies it sold last Thursday.
Anyway, the thing is, Mr Patel owns the Moon. And he also seems to own the TV show, despite it being what Debbie calls a hundred-pound company. And he certainly owns Asteroid TV, which is the channel that shows our programme. The channel of the stars, Asteroid call themselves. Which always make Debbie and me laugh.
The big thing about the Moon is their regular feature on page three, showing some nude girl bending over and showing off her bum. Practically everybody I’ve ever known in the building trade buys it for that. But they also publish lots of stories about TV. Especially, funnily enough, if they’re programmes shown on the Asteroid channel.
About a week before the first episode of our show, the front page of the Moon had a picture of me. I was absolutely staggered when Con showed it to me.
‘Here you are, mate,’ he said. And he was grinning like a loony. He never does things by halves. ‘What do you think of that then?’
I took one look and staggered back a bit. It made my heart beat a lot faster when I first saw it, I can tell you that much. It was quite a shock.
At first I didn’t know what to think of it. Then I took a closer look, and I tried to read the story as if it was about someone else.
When I was a boy, newspapers used to have news on the front page. But nowadays they print any old rubbish. Especially in the Moon. So there I was. Big picture. ‘Harry – the man with AIDS,’ it said. ‘Would you go to bed with this man?’
Oh it was a work of art, that front page. Con was tickled pink with it. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he kept saying. ‘Bloody marvellous, Harry. Say what you like about Mr Patel, he has one hell of a nose for a story.’
Actually I didn’t want to say anything about Mr Patel. And it didn’t look like much of a story to me. More of a question. And a pretty silly one at that. ‘Would you go to bed with this man?’
I know it’s a niggly thing to say, but when that story appeared I didn’t have AIDS. And I don’t have AIDS now. But as soon as I saw that front-page picture I knew it was a waste of breath trying to tell anyone.
For those who were interested, the story continued on page five. And what it said there was that I was a man with a mission. ‘Can Harry win a million pounds for the girl of his dreams – actually, folks, that’s his lovely daughter Lisa. All Harry has to do is persuade a beautiful woman to go to bed with him. Live. On TV. And if he does, he wins a million pounds for Lisa. There’s only one snag, girls. Harry has AIDS. Would you go to bed with him?’
Charming.
There was lots more. On another page there was a piece about how the programme was starting next week, and how it was going to be the TV sensation of the century. And endless reams of other crap. I didn’t bother to read more than a few lines of it. I just laughed.
‘Con,’ I said. ‘You cannot be serious.’
But he was serious. Con thinks that kind of thing is very serious. And he looked a bit put out because I was laughing at it.
‘It’s great stuff, Harry,’ he told me. Ticking me off for mocking it. ‘Fabulous bloody journalism, this is, mate. You don’t know coz you’re just a layman. But to the professional this is textbook stuff. Sells copies like hot fucking fruit cakes on a bank holiday Monday, Harry. Say what you like about Mr Patel, this bloke knows his business.’
I started to walk away and do something more useful, but he followed me.
‘He’s a hands-on bloody boss, you know, Harry – Mr Patel. Goes down to the newsroom and sets the front page himself sometimes. Touch of bloody genius this is, mate. You mark my words.’
And he went on and on. About how the launch of the Moon was a textbook example of how to start a new paper. And a lot more like that. He could rabbit for England, Con could. Especially about what he calls the media.
The thing is, though, up to that point the story about me and Debbie being on a TV show had all been hot air. Debbie and I had gone round telling everyone, as I’ve said. And that was a three-day wonder. People talked about it – more to each other than to us. But as far as most of them were concerned it was just a rumour. There was no proof that it was actually happening, and some of them flat out didn’t believe it. But as soon as that story appeared in the Moon – well, then everything changed.
The first time I noticed a difference was when I went to work at the church, and I bumped into the Vicar, Mr Redmond. In the afternoon it was. By then someone had shown him the Moon. I don’t suppose he buys it every day.
He looked serious too. ‘Well, Harry,’ he said, ‘one thing is for certain. Your life will never be the same again.’ And he shook my hand and wished me the very best of luck.
I also noticed a change when I went in the pub. It was about seven o’clock in the evening. Too early to be crowded, but a few people in. And as soon as I went in the door it all went quiet.
Tony, the landlord, had been leaning over the bar chatting to a friend. When he saw me he suddenly stood up and stopped talking, as if he’d been discussing me. Which, I realised later, he had. But then they all suddenly started to pretend that nothing had happened, and started talking to each other again. A bit louder than necessary.
All except one man. I know him by sight but I don’t know his name. He put his drink down, only half finished, and walked out.
Tony watched him go. Then he asked me if I wanted the usual, and I said Yes please. ‘Don’t you worry about him, Harry,’ he said, nodding towards the door that this man had gone out of. ‘He always was a bit of an arsehole.’
After a while all the pub regulars got used to me being famous and I started being a normal bloke again. Or as normal as you ever can be when you’ve been on the front page of the Moon and everyone thinks you’ve got AIDS.
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