I recently applied for a job, and part of the application was that I had to write 500 words on a book that I have recently read. I chose Waterland by Graham Swift, and here's what I wrote. It definitely isn't the best 500 words I've ever written, and in retrospect I probably shouldn't have chosen it: it's a very dense novel and I don't think I did a great job of unpicking it. I was planning to write about Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, which I also finished recently, and had a lot to say about, but I gave my copy to a friend and prefer to write these things having taken at least a cursory look through first.
Nonetheless, here is what I wrote.
First published in 1983, Waterland holds the enviable position of being both remarkably ‘of its time’ and yet sufficiently fluent, evocative and wonderful that those of this current generation still read it. It is a beautiful book: equally tragic and humorous, knowing and repressed, its multiple cadences are perfectly pitched.
Waterland is set in the East Anglian Fens, and its watery prose matches the surroundings. It is a quintessentially English novel too, with repressed characters failing to deal with the grief left by the war. Family is a major theme of the novel: not too dissimilar in style to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Waterland is a family saga, history and tragedy in one, told with a gripping grace and urgency.
The novel begins with, and revolves around, young Tom Crick (a beautiful fairytale name). His mother has died, his father has come home, emotionally damaged by the war, and his older brother, Dick, ‘cannot read or white. He is not even good at putting together a sentence’. Tom, with his intelligence and charm, is the only member of the family able to communicate with those outside it. The family is submerged in a history it cannot escape, drowning not waving. Swift spends a good portion of the first half of the novel describing the family’s ancestors, who have always lived in this part of the world: location is an incredibly important element to the novel. The family trade of old was brewing: appropriate, then, for the Fens location, for the intoxicating richness of the prose, and bleakly satirised when a beer bottle is identified as a murder weapon.
But, as we all must and do, Tom Crick ages. The timeframe of the novel shifts throughout between the young Tom, and, thirty years later, Tom as history teacher in a South London school, with a fragile wife. They cannot have children, which leads her to a drastic course of action: stealing an unattended baby from a supermarket. This action not only precipitates some of Tom’s anxieties on a personal level - forced retirement, marriage crises - but mirrors the larger themes of the novel. Reproduction: a wonderful chapter, both serious and eccentric, on the biology of eel reproduction provides a scintillating volta for the novel, and complements another of the novel’s major concerns, human sexuality.
The novel is unavoidably fatalistic: Swift’s question throughout is, essentially, how can we overcome our history? That’s a huge question, and while Swift may never actually answer it, he does skillfully distill it: the great crisis of ‘history’ is transformed, via the minutiae and tediums and dramas of Crick’s life, into a series of smaller, yet no less important, considerations. And this is why the book is so wonderful, and why Swift is so talented: it is impossible to read this book and come away less empathetic, less experienced or less curious about the world around us, and how that world came to be.
Isn't this a beautiful image? I think it deserves a few more internet pixels, despite the millions of internet pixels already dedicated to it. I'm uploading it today, of all days, as I'm right now spending a happy afternoon in the British Library, working on a piece about this image, and Marilyn Monroe and James Joyce, and what sort of interesting things might be going on in this image, and why it's such an enduring image, and why people go on about it so much. Evidently, from the syntax of that sentence, I'm very much in the thinking and reading section of my project. But let it be known that this is something that I'm working on. The photograph was taken by Eve Arnold. At the time, Marilyn was filming The Misfits. And here are a few words from Arnold about the image:
We worked on a beach on Long Island…I asked her what she was reading when I went to pick her up (I was trying to get an idea of how she spent her time). She she kept Ulysses in her car and had been reading it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to herself to try to make sense of it–but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it consecutively. When we stopped at a local playground to photograph she got out the book and started to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I photographed her. And here's what Jeanette Winterson thinks, and I'm inclined to agree: This is so sexy, precisely because it’s Marilyn reading James Joyce’sUlysses. She doesn’t have to pose, we don’t even need to see her face, what comes off the photo is absolute concentration, and nothing is sexier than absolute concentration. There she is, the goddess, not needing to please her audience or her man, just living inside the book. The vulnerability is there, but also something we don’t often see in the blonde bombshell; a sense of belonging to herself. It’s not some playboy combination of brains and boobs that is so perfect about this picture; it is that reading is always a private act, is intimate, is lover’s talk, is a place of whispers and sighs, unregulated and usually unobserved. We are the voyeurs, it’s true, but what we’re spying on is not a moment of body, but a moment of mind. For once, we’re not being asked to look at Marilyn, we’re being given a chance to look inside her.
I first became interested in Sylvia Plath while I was studying Ted Hughes during sixth form. A small group of us got together over the upper sixth autumn term, and took extra classes. The classes (and occasionally the fellow students) were pretty horrific, symptomatic as they were of a pushy, aggressive syllabus and school that didn’t really give two hoots for installing a love of poetry in us but instead just cared that we should be able to impress the dons and the deans at our upcoming university interviews. Our after school classes often felt like scenes from The History Boys - the endless stuffing us with tidbits of knowledge to impress the scholars on the most anodyne of levels. A bit like this:
Anyway, I digress. We were sat reading Ted Hughes one November evening. We looked at Birthday Letters. Birthday Letters is a collection that Hughes wrote about his relationship with Plath, from the first time he ever saw her photograph, to his feelings about her death. In his poem, ‘The Earthenware Head’, Ted accuses Sylvia:
‘You ransacked Thesaurus in your poem about it’
(The ‘your poem’ is Plath’s own poem, ‘The lady and the earthenware head’, to which this poem is Hughes’ response.)
This line jumped out at me immediately. First, the awkwardness of it. Secondly, and more importantly, it was one of the first lines of Great Poetry TM that ever really made sense to me. You know this idea that great literature is that which jumps off the page and into your mind, expressing already something so clear, so perfect, that no intellectual filtration is required? Well reading this line was one of the first times I ever felt that way. Sadly I still don’t have a huge amount of time for poetry - when done well, it is outstanding - yet it is so often done badly, to my mind. But I have plenty of time for Plath, because of her crystal clear expression, combined with - despite? - the sophisticated complexity of her thought.
I also love the accusatory tone of the line. You, grafting your little poem, he seems to be saying. You’re not the effortless poet you’ve gone down in history as: you’re a human and you need help and reference books too, and you have to slog like the rest of us. But at the same time, it’s an admission of her wonderful writing and her ability to pick exactly the right words, clauses, phrases to make her meaning. ‘Make’ it - poetry doesn’t always spring from nowhere and arrive on the page in a perfect series of metaphors and rhymes - it is hard, hard work.
Sylvia, had she not killed herself aged 30, would have turned 80 this month (October 2012) - something I only learnt when reading Stylist’s feature on her. I have tried to find other mainstream UK publications that ran anything on Plath this month, but with no luck. Which is a sad thing, but cheers to Stylist for being a lone voice nonetheless. (I have commented before on these very pages about how much I like Stylists’s book pages...and here’s my evidence!)
I liked that, unlike many articles about Plath - indeed, unlike this one - the author waited until the second paragraph at least to talk about Hughes. Sure, you can still read Hughes without needing to read Plath, but I don’t think you can read Plath without knowing something, at least, of her relationship with Hughes. I’m sure most people are familiar with their story, but for those who aren’t: Brilliant Young Things meet at Cambridge - fall madly in love - write poetry to each other endlessly - get married - a few years go by - he starts an affair - she leaves and moves away - she moves back - she kills herself - he marries the woman he had an affair with - she later kills herself, too - he becomes public hate figure, a reputation that, to me, he has never really been able to shake off. (Here is a good piece on the death of his second wife.)
The article trots through Plath steroetypes rather in the style of my previous sentence, but one paragraph did especially catch my eye though:
In 2001, Professor James C Kaufman did indeed find a link – naming it the ‘Sylvia Plath effect’. He conducted a study of 1,629 writers, which revealed that poets and in particular, female poets, are more likely to exhibit symptoms of mental illness. In a second study of 520 high-profile American women, he again found that poets were more likely to have mental disorders than women of other professions such as journalists, politicians and actresses. “I think the same things that make people sensitive to problems in their life can also give people the kind of life insight that leads to being more creative,” says Professor Kaufman. “So the same factors that were ultimately personally harmful to Plath may have enriched her poetry.” For much of her life, Plath was able to balance depression and creativity, though there was clearly a connection between her periods of great productivity and her darkest hours.
It is very rare to find this sort of evidence-based research in women’s magazines, or literary papers. Although the research is very old, I’m glad to see it feature at all. And I think it adds a certain weight to what otherwise risks being a piece of quite flimsy journalism. Stereotypes around female poets - that they are mad, bad, angry wimmin - abound, and while I definitely disagree with that crude characterisation, it’s good at least to see that some people out there are willing to acknowledge in a non-sensationalist way the relationship between mental illness and creativity. It is the glamourisation of this link between mental illness and creativity that is crass. The cracks may be necessary to let the light in, but let's not pretend the cracks are craic.
The elevation of Plath as Crazy Woman Supreme really annoys me: I find it belittling. Her work is stronger than her subsequent sterotyping. And although I’m glad to Kaufman for having done the work he has, even just giving his findings the name ‘the Plath effect’ perpetuates the myth that Plath is The Be All And End All of mad female poets. Which leads us to a situation like this one:
Person 1: Name a mad female poet.
person 2: Plath.
Person 1: Name a mad female poet
person 3: Oh, er, I’ve heard of Plath? I’ll say Plath. Yes, Plath.
So the story perpetuates itself at the cost of learning more about the topic (Kaufman studied 520 ‘high-profile’ American women, and yet we can only name....one) and at the same time, belittles Plath’s story to generic narrative.
(Yes, this is just a close-up of a section of the above image....but isn't it great?)
In 2001 the film Sylvia was released. Sylvia was played by Gwneth Paltrow, one of my favourite actressses, and Ted by Daniel Craig. Could a hotter couple grace our screens or our pages? I think not. I adore this film, but sadly my response is a minority one: the generally-quite-reliable Rotten tomatoes gives it just 37%, and it was slated by critics. I really do not know why. To me, the film is beautifully shot, and perfectly-paced. The opening scenes are among the films best, for their verve, brightness and charm, and they remind me of the very first poem in Birthday Letters, ‘Fulbright Scholars’.
Fulbright Scholars
Where was it, in the Strand? A display
Of news items, in photographs.
For some reason I noticed it.
A picture of that year’s intake
Of Fulbright Scholars. Just arriving -
Or arrived. Or some of them.
Were you among them? I studied it.
Not too minutely, wondering
Which of them I might meet.
I remember that thought. Not
Your face. No doubt I scanned particularly
The girls. Maybe I noticed you.
Maybe I weighed you up, feeling unlikely.
Noted your long hair, loose waves -
Your Veronica Lake bang. Not what it hid.
It would appear blond. And your grin.
Your exaggerated American
Grin for the cameras, the judges, the strangers, the frighteners.
Then I forgot. Yet I remember
The picture : the Fulbright Scholars.
With their luggage? It seems unlikely.
Could they have come as a team? That’s as I remember.
From a stall near Charing Cross Station.
It was the first fresh peach I had ever tasted.
I could hardly believe how delicious.
At twenty-five I was dumbfounded afresh
By my ignorance of the simplest things.
There are so many things about this poem I love. I love his description of her smile - the most wonderful smile in literature, of that I have no doubt: the smile that launched a thousand agonies, too, sadly. This scene is a clever inversion of the traditional ‘boy meets girl’ formula - instead, it becomes ‘boy can anticipate only one thing for his future - the girl’: the line is the moment, but the sensation is the future, only the future. The moment, for all its profundity, slips away in recognition of the amazing future that is soon to begin.
The peach image is beautiful: so refreshing and lively, that I can feel my lips sink into the fleshy fruit as I type this. And I love the final lines: ‘at 25 I was dumbfounded afresh by my ignorance of the simplest things’. I think of that line frequently - being a young, easily dumbfoundable sort of girl - but I think it’s a line that can resonate with anyone, at any age - as the best poetry does.
I spent Sunday morning curled up on a sofa in Brixton. It was a delightful morning, not least because my companion and I watched Sunday Kitchen on the telly. We watched as baffled hosts Tim and Simon were guided through this year's Turner Prize entries, which include these gems:
Infinite building blocks and Henry Moore-esque sculptures of giant faeces create a conversation between order and the absurd and the recurrence of abandoned, fenced spaces gives a sense of confinement and dissolution. The delicacy implied by the graphite pencil on paper and the magnitude of the works, however, is pleasing and provides friendly respite from the puzzling ambiguity of the project. Text from here. What made the morning more delightful still was Philip Hensher's wonderful piece on handwriting, in the Observer. In this article, PH assesses the cultural and emotional significance of handwriting. He also includes some examples of famous people's writing. Can you guess who the writing below belongs to? [Answer at bottom of this entry.]
The article is a wonderful, beautiful piece of writing, but sadly confirmed my suspicion that PH has a book coming out soon. Of course, it'll probably be a lovely book, if the article is anything to go by, but it's sad that so often content in national newspapers is just rehashed press releases/edited extracts from books. Sad. But a rant for another time. I've long been interested in what handwriting can, supposedly, suggest about you: this became a particular interest of mine after studying Victorian fiction, and detective fiction especially, where handwriting is really important to the development of the plot, and the likelihood of finding the criminal. For many years I had large, swirly, childish handwriting. Then, at university, sitting in lectures for hours a week, it became smaller - I'm sure the speed at which you write affects size of the characters. Then I got an office job, and pretty much gave up handwriting. My handwriting is affected by how frequently I write (if I don't write for a few days, I do notice the initial messiness) and what materials I use. I write for more beautifully in a fountain pen. That might sound arrogant, but I have been complimented on it, and I think it's nice to read. I keep a diary and love to see how my writing changes depending on what pen I'm using, or whether I'm happy or sad, or rushed or relaxed. Seeing how handwriting changes over the years is also fascinating. I don't really have anything to add to Hensher's piece: I thought it was just lovely. In particular, these final few paragraphs are brilliant.
ANSWER: Hitler. Apparently his writing style indicates his megalomaniacal psychopathy.
Yippee, it is National Poetry Day again. I'll use any excuse to post a poem by Auden, so here you go. Auden is my favourite poet, and this is easily one of my favourite poems of all time.
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
I have just been reading about Search Engine Optimization: the idea that to appear as high in the google search rankings as possible, one should use certain vocabulary in blog posts that will mirror what people are typing into google. So, I should include the words 'video blog Patrick Bateman' in here, just in case anyone wants to watch a video blog about....American Psycho. I have now done that, so please go ahead and watch my video, which is about my top five favourite characters in fiction.
Hello! I'm currently job hunting, and I'd ideally like to work in marketing. I've made this short video to explain my skills and experience, and I hope you like what you see!
It was a lovely evening. We arrived, had lovely wine (the staff are very friendly) and ate yummy sausage and mash (£5 a bowl, which you’re allowed to take up to the performance area with you). They play good music while you’re arriving, and the lighting is such that it’s pretty dark yet light up in the right places so that everyone looks beautiful and engaging. My sort of place.
First up was the MC, Charlie Dark, who is a lovely, lovely man with infectious enthusiasm. We did one of those cringey ice breaking things, but thankfully he doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of audience participation. That’s what I look for in a comedy host.
Poet 1 of the evening was Mr Mark Grist. Known by teenage boys throughout the land, apparently. He used to be a teacher before leaving the profession to be a full time poet. He’s on youtube here and here and here. He did some great poems - ‘‘The best of all the gingers’’ and a paean to childhood love Beth Builder stick in my mind especially.
Singer 1 of the evening was Josh Kumra and his videos can be seen here. At first I thought he was just a generic singer/songwriter but then he played his next single and I changed my mind. I was very impressed by his drummer doing backing falsetto vocals too. His bass player was good too. His single will be out in January.
Poet 2 of the evening was showstopper Simon Armitage. I’ve been a fan of his since the wonderful collection Kid. He was promoting his new book, Walking home: travels with a troubadour on the Penine Way , about walking, unsurprisingly, the Penine Way. He’s a wonderful reader: droll, confident, wry. He’s got great stage presence, and he’s very funny. A top chap. He mentioned one review that labelled him the Eeyore of Walking, to which Simon quipped ‘I didn’t think I was that happy’, and I don’t think it’s a brilliant comparison. He’s miserable but insightful, for sure. But Simon does it in a self-aware way, whereas Eeyore is a bit more self-centered. ANYWAY. A beautiful book, a wonderful chap. I was saddened only that he didn’t perform any poetry from Kid, which is an excellent collection.
1) brainpickings, which I mentioned in my last entry. It's a super cool blog. In her own words:
Book sorts will enjoy it for her frequent rumination on creativity, writing, how to be a better writer, what books to read, etc. What I especially like about brainpickings is the interdisciplinary aspect - she takes the best of the best to write about - whether that be books or not (but, of course, it frequently is books. amirite?). Today's lead article, for example, is about the successes/failures of Polaroid. Wonderful.
2) Goodreads Make an account, compare with your friends. Simple as. Great fun. You can sign in with facebook if you want to do that slightly creepy 'broadcast everything' thing. Now, internet reviewing has, quite rightly, got quite a bad press recently, thanks to the naughty behaviour of certain writers leaving positive reviews on their own books (on amazon) and negative reviews on their competitors' books. (If you want to read more about this, the wonderful whistle-blowing Jeremy Duns has no end of views on the issue.) But this site - it doesn't record what you BUY, but what you LIKE. Which is obviously the more important of the two. Here, I could go onto a rant about amazon's ''customers who liked X also looked at Y'' feature, but I won't, because it's only 7.54am and there's only so much anger a girl can take at this time in the morning. Goodreads' tagline is ''meet your next favourite book'' which is pretty sweet.
3) I know this is super obvious, but Guardian Books is easily the best newspaper section for books.
4) I am always impressed also by Stylist's book coverage. Two things:
i) The quality of content is great. It's not patronising at all, and they don't choose fluffy, silly books, thinking that's all women read. There's nothing wrong with putting a review of, say, Charles Perrault's fairy tales next to an advert for the Whistles sales, and thank god Stylist realises that. Dresses and books aren't mutually exclusive!
ii) On their website, they even have a tab for books right up at the top - it's not hidden under a 'culture' or 'lifestyle' section.
Which I think is wonderful. I can only assume they must get the hits that way (ie they track the number of clicks that it takes a visitor to the site to reach their final destination, and have decided that it's best if they put a link for books in a very obvious place) and that's a great reflection on your average Stylist reader. Also, they once did a whole edition on books, which was great.
5) I could not admire this girl's tenacity any more than I already do. A Penguin a Week. And she's studying for a PhD in the meantime! I don't know where these people find the energy.
6) For smug, self-satisfied giggles, you could do worse than Better Book Titles. It's a good one. Here are some of my favourites:
See? Pretty funny.
7) I have only recently begun to look at this site - so behind the times - but Pinterest is delightful. The idea is that you have a 'board' onto which you 'pin' images that you like - rather like a traditional cork noticeboard. You can have several boards, all themed differently. This is what mine looks like:
I think it's a great idea, for it's own sake, but it also represents a good opportunity for marketing (or self-promotion) purposes. Lots of publishers have Pinterest accounts, but it seems pretty hard initially to get the loyalty going. But I think the slow-burn rewards are probably worth it. Anyway, I like that the pictures are pretty and you can theme it according to your likes. Mine isn't totally up to date - I've read more books in 2012 than are documented there, and even with that in mind, that's a fairly skewed portrait of my reading/aesthetic taste.
There we go. That's just a few. What are your favourites?
Hello! It's been a while since I've updated this blog. In that time: 1) I read the majority of a book by Elizabeth von Armin, called The Enchanted April. It is about four lovely ladies who spot an advertisement for a holiday villa in the Times. The ladies do not know each other, but head off together for a month. The opening chapters are delightful and it's impossible to read them without wanting to read further, but after a while the novel loses its shine. The characters are generally lovely, but it all just gets a bit too serious and self-conscious. That these are single women on holiday together is intensely interesting and important to the novel, but there's little depth to that idea. I'm sure I'll make my way back to it, but it started to drag and if reading isn't full of pleasure, then give up. 2) I read Brett Easton Ellis' Less than Zero, which I thought was pretty rubbish. I see that the banality and cold narrative is meant to reflect the characters' experiences, but that doesn't really make for an enjoyable novel. [I haven't gone into as much description for this book because (1) I'm meant to be doing something else right now anyway, and (2) I assume people know more about BEE already.] Stick to American Psycho, which is a wonderful, wonderful, brilliant novel. LTZ is little more than a (crap) first draft of American Psycho, really. 3) I also began reading a book about Morrissey, entitled Morrissey: the pageant of his bleeding heart. This is an academic book on Moz. It is a little dry and heavy at the moment but I hope it will pick up soon. My favourite Smiths book is Jonny Rogan's Morrissey/Marr: the Severed Alliance, which will take some beating. What is so good about the latter book is that he realises that Morrissey couldn't be Morrissey without Marr there too. It's like gin without tonic, fish without chips. The overwhelming evidence is that without Marr, Morrissey is pretty crap - does he deserve a book of his own? And if he does, then surely Marr deserves one of his own too? Anyway, I'll crack on and finish it and I suppose I'll be in a better place to offer an opinion then. 4) I left my job at Dorling Kindersley. So, if anyone wants to employ me (on a permanent/temp/freelance basis) do please send me an email: helenkatesaunders [at] googlemail [dot] com. 5) I've been working on James Joyce a bit. I'm not sure if a return to academia is for me, really, but it would be nice to publish on my favourite writer. So i'm immersing myself in his poetry and Exiles right now - it's nice to focus on a writer's less famous output. 6) I found the website Brain Pickings and spent a lot of time on it wishing I was a super hot talented writer.
1st September is a date that unfailingly evokes emotion in me: in fact, it is only just behind 25th December and 10th March (my birthday) for the emotional significance I attach to it. I'd wager that September is the real start of the new year. A friend sent me this a couple of years ago, and it rings true, no matter how many years its been since school:
"The first of September – sharpened pencils, fresh exercise books, new shiny textbooks. We learned it at school; September is a true beginning, far more than an arbitrary midnight in the darkest part of winter. September is the start of new ventures. It’s the same sort of optimism, of “this time we’ll do better” as new love, or the morning after the end of an illness when you wake up feeling well for the first time in what seems like a lifetime, and have sudden and intense respect for your own body. September is away-with-laziness. It is the time to work hard, to lay away stores for the winter, to do those things which, in the long summer days, we kept putting off. In September we understand that we cannot be lazy for ever – that we would not even want to. September is sharp, exciting, alive."
Naomi Alderman
On a far sadder note, here is Auden's poem, '1st September, 1939':
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Hello all Here's a great opportunity for future literary opinionators. You know the Guardian First book award.....well, here's the opportunity to be on a judging panel. See below.... the deadline is Sunday, so get on this quickish (sorry for the late notice, but I only just learnt about this recently myself). I urge the literary minded south Londoners among you to strongly consider this. Thanks x
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your interest in participating in one of the Guardian First Book Award judging groups. The award is now in its 14th year and Waterstones have been proud associates for eight of those years. Being the only British literary award to be judged by members of the public creates a unique and rewarding experience. Past winners of the award include Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer and Robert Macfarlane, who all received the award for their respective first books and then went on to become very prominent figures in the literary scene. This means that this year’s winner, whom you have the opportunity to help choose as a member of a judging group, may well become one of the best-known literary names of tomorrow.
This year there will be five Waterstones branches involved with the award: Bath, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh West End, Leeds and London Clapham. Each of these groups will be comprised of seven members of the public who will help select a shortlist of five titles from among a longlist of ten books drawn up by The Guardian.
•What will the seven members of the Clapham reading group have to do?
Read the 10 books! It is worth mentioning that the schedule is certainly not for the casual reader. Each member will be required to read 10 books in 8 weeks. Some of the books may contain over 500 pages and some fewer than 100. Even if you are an avid reader, it’s definitely a big undertaking and you need to be sure that you will be able to do it before committing to it. Despite all this, previous participants have described it as a hugely gratifying experience and, for dedicated readers, pure joy.
Attend 8 weekly meetings, where we will discuss the books (normally one per week, although due to the tight schedule, there will be two meetings where we will be discussing two). In the last meeting, we will rank the ten books that we have read and will pass our list to Stuart Broom (Waterstones Events Programmer), who will receive another four lists from each of the other four reading groups. Along with the votes of the Guardian First Book Award judging panel, a shortlist of five books will be drawn up. Stuart Broom will represent the views of all the reading groups at the final meeting of the panel of judges (who include Jeanette Winterson and Kate Summerscale) in November.
•What is the schedule for the Clapham reading group?
31st July – 12th August: Application forms available for collection from the Waterstones Clapham branch.
Sunday 12th August: Deadline for applications. The application forms can be handed in to the shop, scanned and e-mailed to claphamreadinggroup@gmail.com or posted to: Waterstones Clapham, 70 St John’s Road, London SW11 1PT. Whichever the method, please make sure that your application is with us by 12th August. Applications received after the deadline won’t be able to be considered for the selection process.
Applicants will be told if they’re successful by Friday 17th August. The selection of the seven members will be based solely on the answers given in the application form. The succesful candidates will be contacted by e-mail and will have to confirm their place in the reading group by Monday 20th August.
The longlist will be announced by The Guardian approximately a week after the reading group members have been contacted (Thursday 23rd or Friday 24th August) and the books will be dispatched by The Guardian to our branch around the same date. The seven members of the reading group will be contacted by phone as soon as the books are ready for collection from Waterstones Clapham. This is a rather tight turnaround period and members of the reading group are requested to collect the books from the branch as soon as possible after being contacted, in order to have time to read the first book before our meeting on Tuesday 28th August (see below). The ten books are provided gratis to all members of the reading groups by The Guardian.
Tuesday 28th August, 7pm: First meeting of the reading group. The meetings will always take place at 7pm on Tuesdays in the Clapham branch and will last approximately 1 ½ hours. The eight weekly meetings will be held on the following dates:
28th August
4th September
11th September
18th September
25th September
2nd October
9th October
16th October
The order in which we will read the ten books and the date on which each book will be discussed will be announced at a later date.
NOTE: Attendance to the meetings is essential. If you already know that there is one or more meetings that you can’t attend due to other commitments, please make this clear on your application form. Preference will be given to applicants who can commit to reading the ten books and attending the eight meetings.
Early December (date TBC): Book prize ceremony. The members of all the reading groups will be invited to attend the book prize evening, usually held at a grand London venue, where they will have the opportunity to meet the winner and the shortlisted authors, the judges and the members of the other reading groups. Every year it has been a very special evening and one which has become renowned in the literary calendar.
•What are we looking for?
Due to the nature of the Guardian First Book Award, members should have a diverse reading interest. The only genre which is not eligible for the award is children’s books, which means that the longlisted books can be drawn from any genre: for example, from fiction, history, music, popular science, biography, poetry – anything! Regardless of age, gender, previous experience etc. an open literary attitude is of paramount importance and members should be individuals who enjoy reading and feel comfortable discussing all sorts of books.
Here at Waterstones, we believe this is a wonderful chance for our customers - only 35 readers in the country are able to be part of the judging process! - and we really hope that all who get involved are sincerely able to make the commitment required to make the most of this opportunity.
It's been a while, hasn't it? Apologies. I left Waterstones, and I got a job at a publisher in central London. Quite a big well known one, and I'll be there until mid-September (I started mid-June). Hurrah!
In the mean time, I've been trying to read Anna Karenina, but I've been finding it a bit dull. I did a straw poll among my lovely well-read friends and nobody thought much of it, so I've put it to one side for a bit.
Instead, I'm now reading James Meek's new (for September) book, The Heart Broke In. I only started it this morning: I've already gushed to a friend about it, and nearly missed my stop on the train home. That's a good start, then. I love his dark humour: not allowed to quote it until publication, but there are some fine observations about married life/cheating, and about sex, and about parents, and children, and fucking, and .....well - basically everything he turns his hand (pen) to. The two main characters (siblings) are both excellently written. I mean excellently. The girl, in particular - she's got the spunky character of a twenty-first century Jane Eyre or such. She's a trooper. The boy is despicably brilliant a la Patrick Melrose. These are first-day impressions, and as you can see, they're very good indeed!
Thank you, canongate, for publishing a super lovely book. I really can't wait to go to bed and start reading it again. The Heart Broke In will be a lead title this September - that means it'll be a huge title for Christmas. Remember the buzz about Franzen last Christmas? We're looking at that level of publicity interest, I think. Deservedly so!
...that I've finished working at the bookshop. It was great, it was amazing, it was absolutely essential experience for a bookish career, and it was essentially and unforgettably character-building too. But sadly it had to come to an end, for a number of reasons. I'm now unemployed, which is a bit of a scary feeling, but at least now I have the time to concentrate on finding a job that I will really, really love and be much better at. That's not to say that I wasn't good at bookselling - just that I think some people, upon finding a job that perfectly suits, will absolutely throw themselves into it - to the point that it becomes vocational. And I think I'm one of those people. Oh, to channel my enthusiasm into something I love! So, just to reiterate - unemployed, want job in publishing, would be great in publishing. Anyone?
I have just spent a very, very long time trying to write about the effects depression can have on your ability to read and write. It is, to me, indicative of my current state that I was unable to do this. So I deleted all that writing, and now I'm just going to state that over the last few months I've experienced the worst possible feelings in the world. I want to be able to write about it, but I can't. I need to be happy to write, which I think is different to most people who experience a link between unhappiness and creative endeavour (I just mistyped that slightly and the spellcheck came up with 'cretinous'....oh Freud, forgive me). In my experience, unhappiness leads to a total numbness of sensation, an absolute opacity that stops me thinking, feeling, reasoning, anything. And if you can't think, you can't write, not properly anyway. Because good thinking leads to good writing (and naff thinking to naff writing, similarly). That I am able to write all the above (which Lord - and I - knows is hardly the insight of genius) is at least, to me, ''a step in the right direction'' as the flyers at the doctor's say.
What I am able to do tonight is list the books I've read recently.
In March I read A Disaffection by James Kelman, which is a brilliant novel about a disaffected philosophy teacher. It is marvellous. Undoubtedly a 'hard' book, it is worth the effort and trouble. The comparisons with Beckett and Zola are justified. I have since given my copy to a friend of mine, himself a disaffected philosophy teacher. I also read about 80% of The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin. It's not worth it - very smug, very Oxford. I don't mind a decent Oxford novel, but I do mind the inane trotting out of naff cliches with no intelligent alteration. You'd never guess that EC was a good friend of Larkin (or you might, depending on what you think about Larkin). I also read The Elephant's Journey by Saramago, which is a beautiful, playful, warm and wise novel: if your favourite character doesn't end up being the elephant, you are dead inside. I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It is a perfect blend of seriousness, coyness, intelligence and insight. Saramago's use of punctuation can be a little alienating at first (in short, he doesn't actually use much at all) but do persevere - like Trainspotting that little bit of effort in the opening pages will make all the difference. On the basis that it is a good colleague's favourite novel, I also read Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. It is a cheap and silly and delightful novel about a New York socialite. Read it on Hampstead Heath in the unseasonably clement weather. I'm currently trying to finish The Ladies' Paradise by Zola - he says such interesting things about shopping, women, consumption, clothes - but he does so in such a laborious and long-winded way. Paid by the page - no surprises! In an attempt at rehabilitation (see first paragraph) I am also reading Cold Comfort Farm and trying to channel my inner Flora Poste. With reasonable success, so far.
Generally I think the majority of publishers do a brilliant job. People like Amanda Hocking might not think so, but I think there's a lot to be said for providing professional criticism, marketing, and the rest. As crunchycat put it so well on the Guardian books blog the other day (a propos of the article announcing J K Rowling's new books for adults):
So there's the necessary summary about why we still need publishers.
That said, working in a bookshop has shown me some of the things publishers are lacking, or are still refusing to do:
1. If you're going to do a series, please number the books or at the very least provide a clear running order at the start of the book. It might be clear to you that Port Mortuary is Patricia Cornwell's most recent book, but not everyone know this. The problem becomes compounded when an author releases a gazillion titles a year and readers just can't keep up (James Patterson) or when an author releases multiple series (a particularly common problem in crime and genre fiction). Despite the buzz over recent years, very few people actually know the running order to the Jo Nesbo and Steig Larsson titles. I still have to check Edward St Aubyn, especially as Some Hope is the name of an individual title of the Melrosiad, and the name of a trilogy - which itself isn't the complete collection, so that's a bit confusing for readers, too. This might sound like a small irritation but actually, publishers, it loses you sales. If someone can tell instantly that the book they are holding in their hand is the sequel to the on their bedside cabinet - they buy it, right away. If they can't, they fanny about and decide to go home and re-read the previous one. I see this happen all the time. It takes very little to number the spines/provide a running order, yet it is so useful for reader and bookseller!
Honourable mention to Harper here, because their series of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels have (a) really lovely jacket designs and (b) the date of each book (e.g. 'December 1803' or '1805') on the spine and the front cover, so you can work out from the dates the order (assuming you have all the books, which most of his fans will). It's not hard and it is pretty.
The jacket designers at Harper Collins: not just pretty faces!
2. Please don't release white hardbacks. I have no doubt that the sales of Julianna Baggot's Pure, recently released, have suffered because half of the release run is comprised of white hardbacks. Really? Who buys white stuff? It just gets dirty! See also: There But For The by Ali Smith, and Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift, both released in white hardback format in 2011 (though glad to report that the paperback of GS came out this week - get to a bookshop, now!). Both brilliant books, and generally well received - but of course no-one wanted to buy them because of course it'll get damaged in handbags/dirty on the tube/coffee-stained etc. Now, I realise that publishers do still have to release hardbacks - I'm not calling for the end of the hardback. But, that said, please can everyone stop thinking that James Daunt is a messiah and that his view on hardbacks (in short: it's essential to have beautiful books in the age of the e-book, and hardbacks are beautiful) are what the entire reading and book-buying public thinks too. Because it's not. People like cheap paperbacks they can chuck in their bag or show their friends in the pub, not something that requires archivist gloves to read. Whilst I object to the excessive number of hardbacks on the market, I do understand why they're there. But for the love of God, why must they be white?!
The general exception to this point would be the hardback release of Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending.
This was a perfect size (admittedly, when the text is only 150 or so pages it's hard to get it wrong) and the perfect price (£12.99). The off-white cover and dark pages meant less worry about ruining it. A brilliant example of a physically beautiful book.
NB: I should point out that the edition pictured is - I'm pretty sure - a first edition. JB won the David Cohen prize many months before even being nominated for the Booker, and the earlier editions laud this earlier nomination. The later editions had white pages with white edges, not white pages with black edges, but I think my point still stands. Also, given the vast quantities of this book sold, there will be thousands of people with the first/second editions. Including me!
3. Please think about adding extra book-only content. If I can buy something on a kindle for 99p or pay £8 for the privilege of it taking up space in my house, I think I deserve more for my money, some tacit acknowledgement of supporting bookshops and traditional formats. I know margins are tight enough as they are, but adding extra content can potentially be very easy to do. Some publishers, especially those who've had book group-friendly titles, are cottoning onto this. Some books now have, for example, suggested reading group exercises, or author profiles in the back, with decent interviews. This is the sort of clever publishing I like. Cheap to produce, but you'd not know it to read it - yet adds a little something extra to the Kindle/generic e-reader version. Something to remind you why you buy books.
4. This is less based on my experience with buyers, and more on my own personal irritations, but please don't ever fool yourself that 'Berlin, 1939' or 'Vienna, 1913' or 'London, 1979' qualifies as decent blurb. It's really bloody irritating. Argh! Does it really add so much to the story? Do you have to be so crass with it? 'Berlin 1939' = horrific war time story, families coming apart, mustn't forget the love story though. 'Vienna 1913' = pre-WW1 whirligig. 'London 1979' = hedonism. Yes, we all get this! Please make your blurb a bit more interesting. Nothing turns me off quicker. It's ridiculous to think you offer up something genuinely exciting and new in such a hackneyed phrase, so don't even try.
The above list will no doubt grow. When I go back to work tomorrow I'll no doubt spot a million other things to add here. That said, if anyone does want to give me a job....
