Random House UK and ASDA (a UK supermarket) have announced a prize for saga writers. What they are looking for is 'a writer who combines superb storytelling, unforgettable characters and a vivid sense of time and place.'
All you have to do is submit 4000 words, or roughly 2 chapters, along with a synopsis for the rest of the book and ideas for other novels. The closing date is December 2005 and submissions will be judged by a panel including the editorial team at RH's Arrow imprint, author Rosie Harris, and Toby Bourne of ASDA (he stacks shelves in the Leighton Buzzard branch). The winner will be announced in January 2006 and the book will then be published in 2007 by Arrow; it will be available in ASDA stores nationwide. ASDA have promised to support the book with major space in-store and a feature in ASDA magazine. (God, there's fame for you.)
So, all you have to do is plan a series of books, plot one in detail, write the first couple of chapters, and send it in. Next weekend should do it, with time out to go to the pub and the church as well. For this competition you don't even have to pay an entry fee (well the press release doesn't mention one, anyway) and the last time a major competition for wannabe novelists was held there were only 46,000 entries.
Who says writers have a tough time? There are opportunities all over the place if you look for them.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Rupert Thomson: The Insult
I cannot now remember when and where I first heard about Rupert Thomson's 1996 novel The Insult, but while I was reading it I noticed that Maud Newton is a big fan, so it was probably from her. Anyway, I have now read said book, and a strange one it is too.
For the first 25o pages of this book, the story is narrated in the first person by Martin Blom. He begins by telling us how, while visiting the supermarket one Thursday evening, he is hit in the head by a bullet. As a result he is blinded, and he is told by a surgeon that the injury is irreversible; he is blind for life.
So far so orthodox, perhaps. But then something odd happens. Martin Blom discovers that his vision has returned. He can see. But there is one peculiarity about his power of sight. He can only see at night -- in the dark.
And we proceed from there, following Blom as he investigates this and that -- mostly a young woman who has disappeared.
When part two of the book begins, on page 261, the story continues in the first person. But we suddenly discover that we have a new narrator. And we come close to having an entirely separate novel, though we gradually discover that the characters and stories overlap. And part two tells us a very dark story indeed; powerful, though.
The dust jacket copy warns us that Rupert Thomson is one of the strangest voices in contemporary fiction. And they ain't kidding. This book is seriously weird. I mean like it is way the hell over there, man.
For a start, I wonder where we are located. The characters all have foreign names: Blom, Visser, Munck, and so forth: so we are hardly in England. And the city where much of the action takes place, where is that? It has numbered districts, a bit like Paris. The country is said to have a President, and it features mountains, but it is never identified for us. Perhaps it exists in a parallel universe, which is the true location of all fiction.
Overall, this book generates a curiously hypnotic grip on the reader. I was going to say that it is not the type of book that I would normally have much time for, because it is published by Bloomsbury, and with the exception of ole Harry their stuff is usually a bit highbrow for me. But when I come to think about it, I'm damned if I know what type of book this is. Is it literary, scifi, fantasy, pyschothriller, or what? Pass. But it held my attention throughout.
Thomson, it seems, has a new book just out: Divided Kingdoms. You can read an interview with him in the Independent online. He has also written books prior to The Insult. However, having read one I can't say that I am in any hurry to read another. I found his work to be curiously unsettling. It made me nervous.
For the first 25o pages of this book, the story is narrated in the first person by Martin Blom. He begins by telling us how, while visiting the supermarket one Thursday evening, he is hit in the head by a bullet. As a result he is blinded, and he is told by a surgeon that the injury is irreversible; he is blind for life.
So far so orthodox, perhaps. But then something odd happens. Martin Blom discovers that his vision has returned. He can see. But there is one peculiarity about his power of sight. He can only see at night -- in the dark.
And we proceed from there, following Blom as he investigates this and that -- mostly a young woman who has disappeared.
When part two of the book begins, on page 261, the story continues in the first person. But we suddenly discover that we have a new narrator. And we come close to having an entirely separate novel, though we gradually discover that the characters and stories overlap. And part two tells us a very dark story indeed; powerful, though.
The dust jacket copy warns us that Rupert Thomson is one of the strangest voices in contemporary fiction. And they ain't kidding. This book is seriously weird. I mean like it is way the hell over there, man.
For a start, I wonder where we are located. The characters all have foreign names: Blom, Visser, Munck, and so forth: so we are hardly in England. And the city where much of the action takes place, where is that? It has numbered districts, a bit like Paris. The country is said to have a President, and it features mountains, but it is never identified for us. Perhaps it exists in a parallel universe, which is the true location of all fiction.
Overall, this book generates a curiously hypnotic grip on the reader. I was going to say that it is not the type of book that I would normally have much time for, because it is published by Bloomsbury, and with the exception of ole Harry their stuff is usually a bit highbrow for me. But when I come to think about it, I'm damned if I know what type of book this is. Is it literary, scifi, fantasy, pyschothriller, or what? Pass. But it held my attention throughout.
Thomson, it seems, has a new book just out: Divided Kingdoms. You can read an interview with him in the Independent online. He has also written books prior to The Insult. However, having read one I can't say that I am in any hurry to read another. I found his work to be curiously unsettling. It made me nervous.
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith
It's a bit late to mention it, for those of you who live in the UK, but the BBC has just finished broadcasting a three-part adaptation of Sarah Waters's novel Fingersmith.
Fingersmith is set in the nineteenth-century, which seems to be Waters's favourite era, and the plot concerns, as usual with Victorian novels, who gets the money. Also as usual, at any rate with Waters, there is a lesbian love story involved.
The TV drama was, I thought, extremely well done. And for the time being, at least, you can see the BBC's page on it here. The acting, as is almost invariably the case in British drama, was first class, and those of you who live in foreign parts might care to look out for for this serial, because it will no doubt be sold overseas in due course.
The plot is fiendish complicated, and the TV adaptor, Peter Ransley, did a good job of making it all reasonably clear. Of course, as one reviewer said, you do have to concentrate; and it helps, no doubt, if you catch every word of the dialogue, which my clapped-out ears do not.
The novel itself I read over a year ago, and enjoyed it, though I found it rather long. (As I have said before, and will doubtless have cause to say again, the majority of books are too long these days. It must be something they put in the water.)
Should you wish to sample the book, there is a sizeable chunk of it provided by courtesy of the Guardian. Having read the extract myself, this morning, it seems to me to be quite beautiful and sensitive writing (and those are not descriptive terms that I use very often), by someone who knows exactly what she is doing. I might even be tempted to read the book again. And I don't do that often, either.
Should you seek to know more, the best place to start is Sarah's publisher's page on her.
Fingersmith is set in the nineteenth-century, which seems to be Waters's favourite era, and the plot concerns, as usual with Victorian novels, who gets the money. Also as usual, at any rate with Waters, there is a lesbian love story involved.
The TV drama was, I thought, extremely well done. And for the time being, at least, you can see the BBC's page on it here. The acting, as is almost invariably the case in British drama, was first class, and those of you who live in foreign parts might care to look out for for this serial, because it will no doubt be sold overseas in due course.
The plot is fiendish complicated, and the TV adaptor, Peter Ransley, did a good job of making it all reasonably clear. Of course, as one reviewer said, you do have to concentrate; and it helps, no doubt, if you catch every word of the dialogue, which my clapped-out ears do not.
The novel itself I read over a year ago, and enjoyed it, though I found it rather long. (As I have said before, and will doubtless have cause to say again, the majority of books are too long these days. It must be something they put in the water.)
Should you wish to sample the book, there is a sizeable chunk of it provided by courtesy of the Guardian. Having read the extract myself, this morning, it seems to me to be quite beautiful and sensitive writing (and those are not descriptive terms that I use very often), by someone who knows exactly what she is doing. I might even be tempted to read the book again. And I don't do that often, either.
Should you seek to know more, the best place to start is Sarah's publisher's page on her.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Recycling characters from the past
The Book Babes have an article about the use of fictional characters in modern novels, claiming that the US spring lists are 'larded with novels that appropriate famous fictional characters, not to mention a few from real life.'
Well now, let's differentiate between the two variations on the theme. Using characters from real life in a novel is one thing; using fictional characters is quite another. But in either case, caution, I would suggest, is strongly advised.
First, using real-life characters. I have done this myself, quite a bit. For example, I have written two crime novels cum thrillers under the pen-name Patrick Read.
In The Suppression of Vice, the main character is the real-life nineteenth-century poet, Algernon Swinburne. Once upon a time Swinburne was a household name, but he isn't any longer because, by and large, people don't read poetry. Many of the other characters in Vice are, or were, also real people.
In Beautiful Lady, the principal characters are my own creations, but many of the people that my heroine deals with along the way were famous in their day: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joe Kennedy being the chief of them.
(By the way, should you wish to buy either of these books, they are available from Amazon.com as well as Amazon.co.uk.)
There are, I would suggest a number of problems connected with the use of real-life characters in a novel. In the first place, one has to be aware that real people who are still alive may not like what you say about them and may, conceivably, sue. Suing for libel is much easier in the UK than in the USA, but either way you would not want it to happen.
Dead people, on the other hand, cannot sue. And neither (as I understand it) can anyone sue on their behalf, though you have to be careful that you do not imply that villainy is passed on from father to son.
There is, however, a further problem which is best described as a problem of conscience. The dead may not be able to harass you with writs, but are you entitled to portray them as double-dyed villains, despite the fact that they can't hire a lawyer? I suggest not.
In Beautiful Lady I was painfully aware of this problem, because the real-life characters whom I have mentioned above were far from saints. Fortunately I had already planned the book as a story within a story. The novel which you eventually read is a novel which is, allegedly, written by one of the fictional characters, and the internal novelist, so to speak, justifies his approach as follows.
'Isn't it a bit unethical,' one character asks the internal novelist, 'to malign those who aren't here to defend themselves?'
The internal novelist's response is as follows: 'Malign? You think I malign them? Jesus Christ, George, you seem to have lost whatever marbles you ever had.' And he goes on to suggest that the real-life characters were, in fact, much blacker than he paints them.
In other words, my own considered practice was never to portray my real-life characters as doing anything which was any more immoral or illegal than the acts which history tells us they were certainly guilty of. So, if you should ever read Beautiful Lady, and feel that I am being, perhaps, a little harsh on some of these people, just remember that they were all far bigger sinners and crooks than I say they were. And if you think I was rude, you should see what some other writers -- both historians and novelists -- have said about them.
As for the use of fictional characters from the past in novels written in the present day -- well, the Book Babes would have us believe that this is a comparatively new trend, though they date its origins to 1966.
New or not, it does seem to have become a popular practice in the past few years, and here again I have done a bit of it myself. My novel Scrooge and the Widow of Pewsey, written under the pen-name Anne Moore, is (unsurprisingly) a continuation of the life story of Ebenezer Scrooge, who first appeared in Charles Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol. And I also wrote a stage play, Hook in Bath, which features the lovely Captain Hook from Peter Pan.
Here again, I strongly advise caution before you rush ahead and write a novel all about your favourite fictional character. The complicating factor is, of course, copyright.
I say 'of course', but in my experience many writers have only the vaguest grasp of the principles of copyright, and even less grasp of the complexities of copyright law. In England, at least, the law is far from simple.
The plain fact is that, if you want to make use of a fictional character, you had better make damn sure that the book(s) in which that character appears are out of copyright. It's no good saying airily, Oh that book was published in the nineteenth century -- it's bound to be out of copyright. Tain't that simple. Would that it were.
This is not the place to touch on all the complexities. Suffice it to say that copyright in relation to Algernon Swinburne, for example, a man whom I have already mentioned, is far from straightforward. First you have to decide/discover whether a particular poem by Algernon is in or out of copyright. And that will depend (I speak from memory rather than from an open law book) on whether the poem has ever been published, and if so when.
If you discover that a poem (or whatever) is in copyright, then you have to find out who owns the copyright. In my experience, letters of enquiry about copyright, which are sent to publishers or agents, can take up to six months, and several promptings, to elicit a reply. And, to continue using Swinburne as an example, it can turn out that no one knows the answer to your query.
At one point, about 10 years ago, when I was trying to clarify a point in relation to the Swinburne copyrights, I discovered that the publishing firm which had for years claimed ownership of the copyright, and had collected royalties on that basis, had suddenly developed doubts about the matter, based on an interpretation of the 1911 copyright act. So the situation was as clear as mud.
As it so happens, I was able, by the simple expedient of making two phone calls, to shed some light on the matter myself. But to set out the situation on paper occupied several pages.
It is also worth making the point, I think, that there is little purpose in using a fictional character unless that character is famous. And if the character is famous, and is in copyright, the copyright owners are going to want to charge you one hell of a lot of money for letting you proceed.
Some years ago I wrote a couple of TV scripts for Sheldon Reynolds, who then owned, effectively, the Conan Doyle copyright, and thus controlled the use of the character Sherlock Holmes. Reynolds had made a lot of many from licensing the use of Holmes, and at that time, 1979, the great detective was about to go out of copyright. Fortunately (for Reynolds) the UK and European laws were changed, extending the period of copyright. If you want to read all about the dog-fight for control of the Sherlock Holmes cash flow, you can find an account of it here.
The point is, of course, that some of these classic copyrights are worth not just small fortunes, but large ones. If you are the grandson, or whatever, of a famous writer from the first half of the twentieth century, you could be benefiting from tens of thousands of pounds/dollars worth of income every year. This is particularly true of those authors whose works are compulsory reading on US college Eng. Lit. courses. In some cases it's hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars. Per year.
People who have got used to that sort of moolah rolling in, without having to lift a finger for it, are reluctant to give it up. (See, for instance, the shenanigans over public readings from the work of James Joyce.) So they employ some high-powered fancy-pants lawyers to dream up ways and means of keeping the copyright alive.
This practice is particularly popular among the big-time companies which own big names. If you want an example, read about how the Disney company spent a lot of money on 'campaign contributions' and succeeded in extending the life of their money-spinner, the lovable Mickey Mouse.
Such, it seems, are the procedures through which fair numbers of our fellow citizens earn themselves a crust.
Well now, let's differentiate between the two variations on the theme. Using characters from real life in a novel is one thing; using fictional characters is quite another. But in either case, caution, I would suggest, is strongly advised.
First, using real-life characters. I have done this myself, quite a bit. For example, I have written two crime novels cum thrillers under the pen-name Patrick Read.
In The Suppression of Vice, the main character is the real-life nineteenth-century poet, Algernon Swinburne. Once upon a time Swinburne was a household name, but he isn't any longer because, by and large, people don't read poetry. Many of the other characters in Vice are, or were, also real people.
In Beautiful Lady, the principal characters are my own creations, but many of the people that my heroine deals with along the way were famous in their day: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joe Kennedy being the chief of them.
(By the way, should you wish to buy either of these books, they are available from Amazon.com as well as Amazon.co.uk.)
There are, I would suggest a number of problems connected with the use of real-life characters in a novel. In the first place, one has to be aware that real people who are still alive may not like what you say about them and may, conceivably, sue. Suing for libel is much easier in the UK than in the USA, but either way you would not want it to happen.
Dead people, on the other hand, cannot sue. And neither (as I understand it) can anyone sue on their behalf, though you have to be careful that you do not imply that villainy is passed on from father to son.
There is, however, a further problem which is best described as a problem of conscience. The dead may not be able to harass you with writs, but are you entitled to portray them as double-dyed villains, despite the fact that they can't hire a lawyer? I suggest not.
In Beautiful Lady I was painfully aware of this problem, because the real-life characters whom I have mentioned above were far from saints. Fortunately I had already planned the book as a story within a story. The novel which you eventually read is a novel which is, allegedly, written by one of the fictional characters, and the internal novelist, so to speak, justifies his approach as follows.
'Isn't it a bit unethical,' one character asks the internal novelist, 'to malign those who aren't here to defend themselves?'
The internal novelist's response is as follows: 'Malign? You think I malign them? Jesus Christ, George, you seem to have lost whatever marbles you ever had.' And he goes on to suggest that the real-life characters were, in fact, much blacker than he paints them.
In other words, my own considered practice was never to portray my real-life characters as doing anything which was any more immoral or illegal than the acts which history tells us they were certainly guilty of. So, if you should ever read Beautiful Lady, and feel that I am being, perhaps, a little harsh on some of these people, just remember that they were all far bigger sinners and crooks than I say they were. And if you think I was rude, you should see what some other writers -- both historians and novelists -- have said about them.
As for the use of fictional characters from the past in novels written in the present day -- well, the Book Babes would have us believe that this is a comparatively new trend, though they date its origins to 1966.
New or not, it does seem to have become a popular practice in the past few years, and here again I have done a bit of it myself. My novel Scrooge and the Widow of Pewsey, written under the pen-name Anne Moore, is (unsurprisingly) a continuation of the life story of Ebenezer Scrooge, who first appeared in Charles Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol. And I also wrote a stage play, Hook in Bath, which features the lovely Captain Hook from Peter Pan.
Here again, I strongly advise caution before you rush ahead and write a novel all about your favourite fictional character. The complicating factor is, of course, copyright.
I say 'of course', but in my experience many writers have only the vaguest grasp of the principles of copyright, and even less grasp of the complexities of copyright law. In England, at least, the law is far from simple.
The plain fact is that, if you want to make use of a fictional character, you had better make damn sure that the book(s) in which that character appears are out of copyright. It's no good saying airily, Oh that book was published in the nineteenth century -- it's bound to be out of copyright. Tain't that simple. Would that it were.
This is not the place to touch on all the complexities. Suffice it to say that copyright in relation to Algernon Swinburne, for example, a man whom I have already mentioned, is far from straightforward. First you have to decide/discover whether a particular poem by Algernon is in or out of copyright. And that will depend (I speak from memory rather than from an open law book) on whether the poem has ever been published, and if so when.
If you discover that a poem (or whatever) is in copyright, then you have to find out who owns the copyright. In my experience, letters of enquiry about copyright, which are sent to publishers or agents, can take up to six months, and several promptings, to elicit a reply. And, to continue using Swinburne as an example, it can turn out that no one knows the answer to your query.
At one point, about 10 years ago, when I was trying to clarify a point in relation to the Swinburne copyrights, I discovered that the publishing firm which had for years claimed ownership of the copyright, and had collected royalties on that basis, had suddenly developed doubts about the matter, based on an interpretation of the 1911 copyright act. So the situation was as clear as mud.
As it so happens, I was able, by the simple expedient of making two phone calls, to shed some light on the matter myself. But to set out the situation on paper occupied several pages.
It is also worth making the point, I think, that there is little purpose in using a fictional character unless that character is famous. And if the character is famous, and is in copyright, the copyright owners are going to want to charge you one hell of a lot of money for letting you proceed.
Some years ago I wrote a couple of TV scripts for Sheldon Reynolds, who then owned, effectively, the Conan Doyle copyright, and thus controlled the use of the character Sherlock Holmes. Reynolds had made a lot of many from licensing the use of Holmes, and at that time, 1979, the great detective was about to go out of copyright. Fortunately (for Reynolds) the UK and European laws were changed, extending the period of copyright. If you want to read all about the dog-fight for control of the Sherlock Holmes cash flow, you can find an account of it here.
The point is, of course, that some of these classic copyrights are worth not just small fortunes, but large ones. If you are the grandson, or whatever, of a famous writer from the first half of the twentieth century, you could be benefiting from tens of thousands of pounds/dollars worth of income every year. This is particularly true of those authors whose works are compulsory reading on US college Eng. Lit. courses. In some cases it's hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars. Per year.
People who have got used to that sort of moolah rolling in, without having to lift a finger for it, are reluctant to give it up. (See, for instance, the shenanigans over public readings from the work of James Joyce.) So they employ some high-powered fancy-pants lawyers to dream up ways and means of keeping the copyright alive.
This practice is particularly popular among the big-time companies which own big names. If you want an example, read about how the Disney company spent a lot of money on 'campaign contributions' and succeeded in extending the life of their money-spinner, the lovable Mickey Mouse.
Such, it seems, are the procedures through which fair numbers of our fellow citizens earn themselves a crust.
Wodehouse lives
My short piece about P.G. Wodehouse attracted more comment than any other single post on the GOB has ever done. So quite obviously the great man is still much admired, republished, and read. Though he is not, it would appear, much studied in universities. Well thank God for that, anyway.
One commenter points us towards what is apparently a Wodehouse-inspired spoof: Wake up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames (available from Amazon, either co.uk or com). The com site has more info than the uk, and the book certainly looks as if it might be fun.
One commenter points us towards what is apparently a Wodehouse-inspired spoof: Wake up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames (available from Amazon, either co.uk or com). The com site has more info than the uk, and the book certainly looks as if it might be fun.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Big boys beat you up
Mediachannel.org (via booktrade.info) has an article about the power of the big corporations, and what creative people can do about it. One answer, it seems (but not the only one), is to do your own thing. Which is precisely what I said in my recent essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile.
The mediachannel article deserves to be read in full, at the very least because it contains some extremely interesting data. Here are some samples, drawn from the US market:
The article also reveals that more than 10 million creations have been distributed using Creative Commons licenses. For example, the online record label Magnatune has 326 albums by 174 artists -- all using Creative Commons licenses. Artists can now directly build a royalty base and a loyalty base for future projects, allowing them to create their own cottage media industry without 'selling out' to corporate conglomerates. Director Robert Greenwald sold over 100,000 copies of the DVD of the movie Outfoxed through House Parties organised by MoveOn.org. (More on this way of proceeding can be found here.)
Another comment from mediachannel is that writers, in particular, are thoroughly displeased with the way the big corporations treat them. Here is what Pat Holt has to say:
The mediachannel article deserves to be read in full, at the very least because it contains some extremely interesting data. Here are some samples, drawn from the US market:
Just six firms dominate US book publishing. Two huge national retail chains sell 80% of books. Sales from independent booksellers dropped from 42% in 1992 to just 20% in 1998. Publishers give big advances to authors with a built-in audience, like Bill Clinton. Little is left for mid-list authors and new writers. If they are 'lucky' enough to be signed, most authors receive just 7-15% of royalties. Less than 1% of writers make more than $50k a year, just 6% of writers make a living as authors.The position is not much different anywhere else in the world.
The article also reveals that more than 10 million creations have been distributed using Creative Commons licenses. For example, the online record label Magnatune has 326 albums by 174 artists -- all using Creative Commons licenses. Artists can now directly build a royalty base and a loyalty base for future projects, allowing them to create their own cottage media industry without 'selling out' to corporate conglomerates. Director Robert Greenwald sold over 100,000 copies of the DVD of the movie Outfoxed through House Parties organised by MoveOn.org. (More on this way of proceeding can be found here.)
Another comment from mediachannel is that writers, in particular, are thoroughly displeased with the way the big corporations treat them. Here is what Pat Holt has to say:
Everywhere you look, authors have changed their approach. They don't depend on agents or editors any longer .... Today's savvy authors hire their own manuscript consultants and their own publicists. ....The reason is that the industry treats them like garbage - still patronizes them, condescends to them, dismisses them, doesn't read them, sends them out on exhausting tours if they're lucky, and dismisses them if the numbers don't work.Hmm. Once again, it is interesting to note that there are people out there who are much grumpier than I am.
Poetry month
Andrew O'Hara kindly drew my attention to an article about poetry which may be of interest.
Poetry is very definitely not my thing, but I do hear rumblings from time to time that all is not well in that arena. (Dan Schneider, for example, has been scathing about it.)
Anyway, in his article 'Against Poetry Month as Such', Charles Bernstein has a few things to say about how people want poetry to be nice and polite and easy to read; whereas, the chief virtue of poetry, in Charles's eyes, is that the good stuff ain't easy and nice and polite.
The article also has something to say about the deadly effects of commercial sponsorship. My own view is that such sponsorship is indeed counter-productive (usually), and state subsidy is even worse.
Poetry is very definitely not my thing, but I do hear rumblings from time to time that all is not well in that arena. (Dan Schneider, for example, has been scathing about it.)
Anyway, in his article 'Against Poetry Month as Such', Charles Bernstein has a few things to say about how people want poetry to be nice and polite and easy to read; whereas, the chief virtue of poetry, in Charles's eyes, is that the good stuff ain't easy and nice and polite.
The article also has something to say about the deadly effects of commercial sponsorship. My own view is that such sponsorship is indeed counter-productive (usually), and state subsidy is even worse.
Bedtime reading
Mrs GOB has been reading Life of Pi (without any prompting from me, I may add), but has commented (rather than complained) that it is much too exciting to be read last thing at night, in bed. She finds that she lies awake for half the night, worrying about that poor tiger.
The consequence is that she has had to restrict Pi to the daytime. In bed she has returned to Marcel Proust, who is not, apparently, over-stimulating.
The consequence is that she has had to restrict Pi to the daytime. In bed she has returned to Marcel Proust, who is not, apparently, over-stimulating.
Friday, April 08, 2005
P.G. Wodehouse: Mr Mulliner speaking
I wonder if anyone reads P.G. Wodehouse any longer? Apart from weirdos like me, that is. And was he ever respectable, in academic terms? I rather doubt it.
For them as don't know -- and there are always new generations coming along -- P.G. Wodehouse was once a very famous and successful English writer. Like a number of other illustrious names from the past (John Buchan, Margery Allingham) he has a Society of hard-core admirers, and you can find a useful biography on the Society's web site.
Born in 1881, Wodehouse gave up working in a bank in 1902, and from then on he had a string of successes both in the book world and in the theatre (his first play opened in New York in 1911). His speciality was humour, and he was enormously popular until the second world war. At that point Wodehouse had a little setback.
In 1940, Wodehouse and his family found themselves stuck in France when the German army invaded. They tried to get back to England but failed. When the Germans asked him to make some broadcasts to his fans in the neutral USA, Wodehouse ill-advisedly did so. These broadcasts were bitterly resented back in England, where he was regarded as a collaborator and traitor.
The result was that Wodehouse readers seldom raised their heads for a decade or two. However, by the 1960s I had several colleagues who were great fans, and public opinion gradually came round to the view that Wodehouse had been foolish rather than wicked. In 1975, he was knighted by the Queen, in recognition of his achievements, and he died a few months later at the age of 93.
Wodehouse produced a vast quantity of fiction. Like Terry Pratchett, he invented a universe of his own, based on England in the years from about 1900 to 1930. This was an England full of rich and idle people whose mostly misguided attempts to get married, avoid getting married, and so forth, could be made richly comic -- if you like that sort of thing.
The book of Wodehouse's which I have recently been reading consists of a number of short stories, as related by Mr Mulliner in the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest. Mr Mulliner has a seemingly inexhaustible number of nephews, nieces, and second cousins once removed. Each of these seems to get himself, or herself, into terrible scrapes.
The stories are even more absurd, and the characters even more dim-witted and clueless, than in the average Wodehouse work -- and that is saying a great deal. In one, for instance, there is a budding romance between a wealthy young man (Archibald) whose sole talent, after a very expensive education, is his ability to give a wonderful imitation of a chicken laying an egg. The target of his affections is an equally wealthy and intellectually challenged young woman (Aurelia) who has spent her entire lifetime searching for a man who can give such an excellent imitation of a chicken laying an egg.
And yet, and yet... All does not go smoothly. Archibald is led to believe that Aurelia is in search of a chap with far more highbrow interests than the noises generated by broody hens, and so, when challenged by Aurelia, denies that he has that very talent which he has spent so many years polishing, and which would in fact make him the object of her undying admiration. Aurelia therefore gives Archibald the brush-off. In due course, however, Archibald discovers his mistake, performs nobly as required, and is rewarded by Aurelia's promise of marriage.
'Do it again,' Aurelia sighs. Archibald does do it again. He does it four times, in fact. And no, it's not what you're thinking, you dirty beast. It was the chicken thing that he did. Five times in all, and truly excelled himself.
As you will have gathered, you have to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate Wodehouse.
Mr Mulliner Speaking was the second volume of Mulliner stories, and it was first published in 1929. The stories themselves are timeless, as is Wodehouse's prose; he was renowned as an elegant stylist. But the date shows in the spelling: we have to-day, and to-morrow, whereas today we would omit the hyphens; we have sha'n't, which is technically correct, but today we have dropped one of the apostrophes; and we have week end for weekend; and so forth.
A further indication of period is the fact that Wodehouse quotes from Swinburne, another writer who was once a household name but is now forgotten. Except, as I say, by a few weirdos like me.
For them as don't know -- and there are always new generations coming along -- P.G. Wodehouse was once a very famous and successful English writer. Like a number of other illustrious names from the past (John Buchan, Margery Allingham) he has a Society of hard-core admirers, and you can find a useful biography on the Society's web site.
Born in 1881, Wodehouse gave up working in a bank in 1902, and from then on he had a string of successes both in the book world and in the theatre (his first play opened in New York in 1911). His speciality was humour, and he was enormously popular until the second world war. At that point Wodehouse had a little setback.
In 1940, Wodehouse and his family found themselves stuck in France when the German army invaded. They tried to get back to England but failed. When the Germans asked him to make some broadcasts to his fans in the neutral USA, Wodehouse ill-advisedly did so. These broadcasts were bitterly resented back in England, where he was regarded as a collaborator and traitor.
The result was that Wodehouse readers seldom raised their heads for a decade or two. However, by the 1960s I had several colleagues who were great fans, and public opinion gradually came round to the view that Wodehouse had been foolish rather than wicked. In 1975, he was knighted by the Queen, in recognition of his achievements, and he died a few months later at the age of 93.
Wodehouse produced a vast quantity of fiction. Like Terry Pratchett, he invented a universe of his own, based on England in the years from about 1900 to 1930. This was an England full of rich and idle people whose mostly misguided attempts to get married, avoid getting married, and so forth, could be made richly comic -- if you like that sort of thing.
The book of Wodehouse's which I have recently been reading consists of a number of short stories, as related by Mr Mulliner in the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest. Mr Mulliner has a seemingly inexhaustible number of nephews, nieces, and second cousins once removed. Each of these seems to get himself, or herself, into terrible scrapes.
The stories are even more absurd, and the characters even more dim-witted and clueless, than in the average Wodehouse work -- and that is saying a great deal. In one, for instance, there is a budding romance between a wealthy young man (Archibald) whose sole talent, after a very expensive education, is his ability to give a wonderful imitation of a chicken laying an egg. The target of his affections is an equally wealthy and intellectually challenged young woman (Aurelia) who has spent her entire lifetime searching for a man who can give such an excellent imitation of a chicken laying an egg.
And yet, and yet... All does not go smoothly. Archibald is led to believe that Aurelia is in search of a chap with far more highbrow interests than the noises generated by broody hens, and so, when challenged by Aurelia, denies that he has that very talent which he has spent so many years polishing, and which would in fact make him the object of her undying admiration. Aurelia therefore gives Archibald the brush-off. In due course, however, Archibald discovers his mistake, performs nobly as required, and is rewarded by Aurelia's promise of marriage.
'Do it again,' Aurelia sighs. Archibald does do it again. He does it four times, in fact. And no, it's not what you're thinking, you dirty beast. It was the chicken thing that he did. Five times in all, and truly excelled himself.
As you will have gathered, you have to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate Wodehouse.
Mr Mulliner Speaking was the second volume of Mulliner stories, and it was first published in 1929. The stories themselves are timeless, as is Wodehouse's prose; he was renowned as an elegant stylist. But the date shows in the spelling: we have to-day, and to-morrow, whereas today we would omit the hyphens; we have sha'n't, which is technically correct, but today we have dropped one of the apostrophes; and we have week end for weekend; and so forth.
A further indication of period is the fact that Wodehouse quotes from Swinburne, another writer who was once a household name but is now forgotten. Except, as I say, by a few weirdos like me.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Julian Fane: The Sodbury Crucifix
The Sodbury Crucifix (a novel) is a definite oddity, for a variety of reasons. We will start with consideration of the author, then the publisher, and finally the book.
The book's dust jacket tells us that Julian Fane became a full-time professional writer at the age of twenty, and The Sodbury Crucifix is his fortieth book. His first novel, Morning, was published in 1956 (when he was 29), and we are given some critics' assessments of it.
'The work of a literary artist, beautifully written,' said Harold Nicolson in The Observer. 'Seems to me to deserve to last for generations,' said John Betjeman in The Daily Telegraph. And both Nicolson and Betjeman were then big names, believe me. The New York Times Book Review was equally complimentary: 'Prose fiction of a rare, memorable, almost incomparable beauty.'
It so happens that I was around in 1956, when Morning came out, and was paying attention to the book world at the time. But despite the rave reviews, I can certainly tell you that Morning was not a well known book.
In the 1950s there were a number of new and young writing talents who did become famous, particularly towards the end of the decade: John Braine, Kingsley Amis, Colin Wilson, John Wain. One could easily name a dozen others.
If you Google any of the above names, with the titles of their famous books, you get hundreds, if not thousands, of links. But if you Google "Julian Fane" and the titles of his first book and his fortieth, you get just three results.
So, what we have here is a novelist who has been a full-time writer for about fifty years, has produced forty books, and was greeted on his first appearance with high praise. So how come I've never heard of him? (And neither, I suspect, have you.)
I can only guess at the answer. But after some detective work I think the answer is roughly as follows.
Julian Fane's first book probably belonged to a tradition which, in 1956, was about to die. That tradition involved writing novels which were admired as much for their style as for anything else; they were aimed at the book-reading and book-buying public of the 1930s, i.e. the wealthy, cultured, discerning, and well educated. Such books dealt with the lives of upper-class people and seldom concerned themselves with anything sordid or controversial. And Morning was published by John Murray, an old and well-respected literary firm: Byron's original publisher, in fact.
Elegant, graceful books of the kind that Morning evidently was were still being written and published in 1956. But they were not of much interest to the new book-reading public, and certainly of very little interest to the newspapers. And when John Braine's book Room at the Top appeared, in March 1957, everything changed.
Room at the Top was about an ambitious young man who did not come from a wealthy upper-class family, and he did not live in an old manor house with five acres of garden. He was a working-class lad from the north of England, blunt, plain-spoken, down to earth, and dead keen to get on in the world. His story involves adultery, ruthlessness, and greed. The newspapers loved all that, and they made Braine famous.
Julian Fane, I strongly suspect, could not compete with that sort of thing, and almost certainly didn't want to. I also suspect that he had private means -- i.e. he did not have to depend on his writing income to keep body and soul together. He was, in short, a gentleman amateur. Thus he was able to go on writing elegant and graceful books without, it would seem, ever making much impression on the public consciousness.
Well, there is nothing to be ashamed of in being a gentleman amateur. Over the past three hundred years or so, such men have produced some of our greatest art and science: think of Byron, already mentioned, and Darwin.
So now let us consider the publisher of The Sodbury Crucifix.
The firm concerned is the Book Guild. And what do we know about the Book Guild? Well, it's no great secret: the Book Guild does about 80 books a year and is one of those firms which makes most of its money from authors (or companies) who have written a respectable book, can't find a mainstream publisher, and are willing to pay for publication. Which is not to say that the Book Guild will publish just anything: far from it; they are looking for workmanlike, professional-standard books, but books which no big publisher is going to regard as sexy.
The Book Guild's present web site is not as informative as it has been in the past, but when I've looked at it previously the books have seemed to be exactly what you would expect: solid, worthy stuff without many commercial prospects. If you want a subsidy publisher (perhaps a more accurate term, in this instance, than vanity publisher) then the Book Guild will do you a Rolls Royce job; and no doubt for a top-end fee. But there's no law against making money in publishing, even if it sometimes feels that way.
The Book Guild's list of current titles show six by Julian Fane, so that's where he's been in the past few years.
As for his other publishers: he started, as I say, with John Murray and has had books published by Constable, another highly respectable, old-established firm (now merged with Robinson). Constable also published Fane's Collected Works between 1997 and 2001 -- in five volumes. But the dust jacket of The Sodbury Crucifix tells us that for some years Fane was a partner in St George's Press, an enterprise which published 45 titles over 22 years and was then voluntarily wound up. An Amazon search suggests that quite a few of these 45 were written by Fane himself.
In addition to novels, it seems that Fane has produced various memoirs and accounts of his literary friends. One example is Best Friends : memories of Rachel and David Cecil, Cynthia Asquith, L. P. Hartley, and some others (1990).
Incidentally -- and I really don't understand this at all -- but St George's Press (allegedly wound up in 1969) is listed as co-publisher, with Hamish Hamilton, of How We Are Hungry, a collection of work by Dave Eggers, no less. Publication date 31 March 2005.
And now, at last, we come to The Sodbury Crucifix.
Let me say at once that I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it, with certain caveats. And we will dispose of the caveats first.
A book which quotes, on the dust jacket, a number of reviewers saying that the author produces outstanding prose, inevitably arouses certain expectations in the reader. And I am therefore obliged to say that I was not wonderfully impressed by the prose. For one thing, the author has a nasty habit of separating sentences with a comma, when a semi-colon would be far more appropriate. But perhaps, as he approaches 80, the author's eyesight is not what it was. The book is also a quiet, thoughtful, undramatic and unsensational story. So if you're expecting to be shocked you will be out of luck.
The book is set in England, in the present day, and the story, in essence, is circular. It reminds me of a book called (as I remember) The Memoirs of a Two-Guinea Watch, which I read when I was about ten. I can find no trace of any such book, on Google or in the bibliographies, so my memory may be at fault. But the story was simple enough. It was narrated by a watch, which originally belonged to a gentleman, was stolen, and then passed from hand to hand. The story was thus episodic, introducing the reader to a variety of characters, good and bad, young and old, et cetera.
The Sodbury Crucifix does exactly the same thing. A small bejewelled crucifix is found in a pond, and it passes from hand to hand, sometimes being sold, sometimes being given away. Each individual to whom the crucifix belongs has a series of experiences; these range from disastrous to highly beneficial; and the question is raised as to whether the crucifix brings with it good luck, bad luck, or absolutely no luck at all.
At the end the crucifix is returned to the church from which it was stolen.
This is precisely the kind of story that an amateur writer might come up with, but it is told with the skill of a professional. Furthermore, it's an enjoyable and interesting story, perceptive and moving -- so long as you aren't expecting something entirely different.
The book's dust jacket tells us that Julian Fane became a full-time professional writer at the age of twenty, and The Sodbury Crucifix is his fortieth book. His first novel, Morning, was published in 1956 (when he was 29), and we are given some critics' assessments of it.
'The work of a literary artist, beautifully written,' said Harold Nicolson in The Observer. 'Seems to me to deserve to last for generations,' said John Betjeman in The Daily Telegraph. And both Nicolson and Betjeman were then big names, believe me. The New York Times Book Review was equally complimentary: 'Prose fiction of a rare, memorable, almost incomparable beauty.'
It so happens that I was around in 1956, when Morning came out, and was paying attention to the book world at the time. But despite the rave reviews, I can certainly tell you that Morning was not a well known book.
In the 1950s there were a number of new and young writing talents who did become famous, particularly towards the end of the decade: John Braine, Kingsley Amis, Colin Wilson, John Wain. One could easily name a dozen others.
If you Google any of the above names, with the titles of their famous books, you get hundreds, if not thousands, of links. But if you Google "Julian Fane" and the titles of his first book and his fortieth, you get just three results.
So, what we have here is a novelist who has been a full-time writer for about fifty years, has produced forty books, and was greeted on his first appearance with high praise. So how come I've never heard of him? (And neither, I suspect, have you.)
I can only guess at the answer. But after some detective work I think the answer is roughly as follows.
Julian Fane's first book probably belonged to a tradition which, in 1956, was about to die. That tradition involved writing novels which were admired as much for their style as for anything else; they were aimed at the book-reading and book-buying public of the 1930s, i.e. the wealthy, cultured, discerning, and well educated. Such books dealt with the lives of upper-class people and seldom concerned themselves with anything sordid or controversial. And Morning was published by John Murray, an old and well-respected literary firm: Byron's original publisher, in fact.
Elegant, graceful books of the kind that Morning evidently was were still being written and published in 1956. But they were not of much interest to the new book-reading public, and certainly of very little interest to the newspapers. And when John Braine's book Room at the Top appeared, in March 1957, everything changed.
Room at the Top was about an ambitious young man who did not come from a wealthy upper-class family, and he did not live in an old manor house with five acres of garden. He was a working-class lad from the north of England, blunt, plain-spoken, down to earth, and dead keen to get on in the world. His story involves adultery, ruthlessness, and greed. The newspapers loved all that, and they made Braine famous.
Julian Fane, I strongly suspect, could not compete with that sort of thing, and almost certainly didn't want to. I also suspect that he had private means -- i.e. he did not have to depend on his writing income to keep body and soul together. He was, in short, a gentleman amateur. Thus he was able to go on writing elegant and graceful books without, it would seem, ever making much impression on the public consciousness.
Well, there is nothing to be ashamed of in being a gentleman amateur. Over the past three hundred years or so, such men have produced some of our greatest art and science: think of Byron, already mentioned, and Darwin.
So now let us consider the publisher of The Sodbury Crucifix.
The firm concerned is the Book Guild. And what do we know about the Book Guild? Well, it's no great secret: the Book Guild does about 80 books a year and is one of those firms which makes most of its money from authors (or companies) who have written a respectable book, can't find a mainstream publisher, and are willing to pay for publication. Which is not to say that the Book Guild will publish just anything: far from it; they are looking for workmanlike, professional-standard books, but books which no big publisher is going to regard as sexy.
The Book Guild's present web site is not as informative as it has been in the past, but when I've looked at it previously the books have seemed to be exactly what you would expect: solid, worthy stuff without many commercial prospects. If you want a subsidy publisher (perhaps a more accurate term, in this instance, than vanity publisher) then the Book Guild will do you a Rolls Royce job; and no doubt for a top-end fee. But there's no law against making money in publishing, even if it sometimes feels that way.
The Book Guild's list of current titles show six by Julian Fane, so that's where he's been in the past few years.
As for his other publishers: he started, as I say, with John Murray and has had books published by Constable, another highly respectable, old-established firm (now merged with Robinson). Constable also published Fane's Collected Works between 1997 and 2001 -- in five volumes. But the dust jacket of The Sodbury Crucifix tells us that for some years Fane was a partner in St George's Press, an enterprise which published 45 titles over 22 years and was then voluntarily wound up. An Amazon search suggests that quite a few of these 45 were written by Fane himself.
In addition to novels, it seems that Fane has produced various memoirs and accounts of his literary friends. One example is Best Friends : memories of Rachel and David Cecil, Cynthia Asquith, L. P. Hartley, and some others (1990).
Incidentally -- and I really don't understand this at all -- but St George's Press (allegedly wound up in 1969) is listed as co-publisher, with Hamish Hamilton, of How We Are Hungry, a collection of work by Dave Eggers, no less. Publication date 31 March 2005.
And now, at last, we come to The Sodbury Crucifix.
Let me say at once that I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it, with certain caveats. And we will dispose of the caveats first.
A book which quotes, on the dust jacket, a number of reviewers saying that the author produces outstanding prose, inevitably arouses certain expectations in the reader. And I am therefore obliged to say that I was not wonderfully impressed by the prose. For one thing, the author has a nasty habit of separating sentences with a comma, when a semi-colon would be far more appropriate. But perhaps, as he approaches 80, the author's eyesight is not what it was. The book is also a quiet, thoughtful, undramatic and unsensational story. So if you're expecting to be shocked you will be out of luck.
The book is set in England, in the present day, and the story, in essence, is circular. It reminds me of a book called (as I remember) The Memoirs of a Two-Guinea Watch, which I read when I was about ten. I can find no trace of any such book, on Google or in the bibliographies, so my memory may be at fault. But the story was simple enough. It was narrated by a watch, which originally belonged to a gentleman, was stolen, and then passed from hand to hand. The story was thus episodic, introducing the reader to a variety of characters, good and bad, young and old, et cetera.
The Sodbury Crucifix does exactly the same thing. A small bejewelled crucifix is found in a pond, and it passes from hand to hand, sometimes being sold, sometimes being given away. Each individual to whom the crucifix belongs has a series of experiences; these range from disastrous to highly beneficial; and the question is raised as to whether the crucifix brings with it good luck, bad luck, or absolutely no luck at all.
At the end the crucifix is returned to the church from which it was stolen.
This is precisely the kind of story that an amateur writer might come up with, but it is told with the skill of a professional. Furthermore, it's an enjoyable and interesting story, perceptive and moving -- so long as you aren't expecting something entirely different.
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