Five Years On

I am pleased that it's Simon Armitage that has written a poem about the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. He's unlikely to be portentious, or puffing his own agenda. I saw part of one of the many documentaries on the anniversary last night, and it still has the power to inflict troubling dreams on one. I felt at the time, as did one person on that footage, that this was the start of "a war", that anything could now happen. That "anything" has happened, I guess, but though there has been a range of terrorist attacks since, most notably in London, it has been anything but "orchestrated" - which was what was most chilling about 9/11. Being in shock at the first plane, and then seeing the second... this was clearly not random chance. Where I was working at the time, the initial response of a couple of my colleagues was "serves them right, American had it coming to them," singularly lacking compassion, because of their own anti-Americanism. I was reminded of this last night, watching the television - that nobody had that coming to them, and who, after all, was the "them?" The courage of the New York firefighters on that day, as well, seems of an entirely different order than the "courage" of a suicide bomber. As a writer, 9/11 and the events surrounding it, aren't my subject, and as we see the "anything" turning into the polarising wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I'm becoming more reticent about having an opinion on any of this. There's no simple opinion. I can make a judgement - say, that the Israeli bombing of Lebanon was wrong - but that's all it is. I'm still, vaguely, troublingly, more on the side of the American and British governments, than I am on the side of Muhammad Atta and others. I'm not sure I'm yet ready to have Martin Amis get into a terrorist's head. His recent work would imply he was the last person I'd want to be taking on that job; yet, the key to Amis's best subject was always a very personalised view of wider catastrophe. I've felt that since the passing of the Cold War, and particularly of an underlying worry about Nuclear catastrophe, (he seemed to need this "cloud" above his characters' perfect heads, to enable his satire to work), he's been fumbling for a subject strong enough for his talents. The war on terror, I guess, could well be it. He joins quite a crew -: Jonathan Safran Foer, Ian McEwan, Helen Fielding, Michael Cunningham, Iain Banks, John Updike, Jay McInerney and Monica Ali, have all written books touched, if only mildly, by this "new world." There will no doubt be a Terror Lit. 101 on American Literature courses in the near future. This week there will be no escaping the memories of 9/11, and remembrance seems the appropriate response. The geopolitics can wait for another time.

O! Walt...Michael's here

I thought Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" was one of the better novels of recent years. I read it after seeing the film, actually, and enjoyed both. The book was far more explicit in the comparison's between the stories, than the film. His new book "Specimen Days" takes two of the methods he uses in "The Hours," - the portmanteau novel, and a literary precursor, here it's Walt Whitman - to write a very different book. Like David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" this is a series of (long) short stories loosely connected. Here, the connections are in two ways - 3 characters, a boy, a young man, a young woman - reappear in 3 different New Yorks, the 19th century, the present, and somewhere in the future; and in each story, Walt Whitman's poetry plays an important part. It's a complex novel, and the edition I've got, has an interview with Cunningham, which helps explain what many may see as a quite a "rash" experiment. I'd agree with that - this is a novelist overreaching; and I guess a readers' view of the whole novel will depend a little on whether you agree with the underlying thesis. However, the three stories in themselves have much to recommend them, particularly the 19th century opener, "In the Machine," which is a sustained, "historical" story of some power. The "detective" novella that follows, and the "science fiction" of the last part are perhaps less successful, mainly I think, because of having to carry the weight of expectation of this being a novel. Whereas "Cloud Atlas" was as flippant as Douglas Adams in its "connections", this is a little on the portentous side. However, it's fascinating seeing New York across 3 centuries, and, like in "The Hours", Cunningham writes brilliantly about women. Even the female alien of the final story is a wonderful character study. Saying any more would take away from some of the novel's inventiveness, and I'd recommend the book - albeit cautiously. It's interesting that a number of literary writers are flirting with science fiction at the moment, however, with both Cunningham and Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" they're almost treating science fiction as a "costume drama" - so that even though they're set in the future, they're actually using the conventions of classic sci-fi; for Ishiguro's John Wyndham-isms, Cunningham seems to have read Heinlein.

Narrative Theories

It was a bank holiday yesterday, and suffering a little from a late rainy night in Stockport (it's glamorous I know), watching Puressence, I ended up watching 3 films. All of them in very different ways were masterclasses in narrative. First up, on Five, was The Spirit of St. Louis, Billy Wilder's James Stewart helmed biopic of Charles Lingbergh. Told using a variety of flashback devices (Citizen Kane's influence perhaps?) the main part of the movie was the flight itself - one man in a tiny plane for 33 hours. It's a tribute to Wilder and Stewart that they made this so gripping. It could easily be recreated as a one man show at next year's Edinburgh. There's the real drama, even knowing he makes it, of how he can stay awake, keep the plane in the air, and then there's Stewart's voiceover, reliving his flying career, and for part of the journey, talking to a fly. A consummate piece of popular film making; that's almost existential in its methods. The New York-Paris trip was one of exploration and endurance. Film is often good at the first, less so at the second. The recent Touching the Void seemed a remarkable example of the latter, but I was impressed to see a much earlier film doing it so well. Having been drawn to Lindbergh after reading about his fictional version in Roth's Plot Against America, these real life stories deserve a telling as good as this one. Later, I watched Ridley Scott's Alien. I've recently got the boxed set and want to watch them all. In this first film - the Director's Cut - I'd forgotten much of the detail. I think its a near perfect piece of storytelling; so much that is important is hidden only to be revealed later - the role of Ash, the company's plant on the ship in particular. The details - calling the ship Nostromo, the ship's cat Jones - are signifiers of many a sea-faring journey. Obviously there's not the same suspense of seeing it for the first time, but instead I got a chance to marvel at the pacing, tension and story development. Only a couple of things seemed wrong - the first time the Alien appears on the ship it's already grown to full size - and I can't understand why Ripley tries to forestall the ship's destruction when she's actually seen the alien. There's none of the bond between Ripley and the alien that is so fascinating in the later films, but in a sense that doesn't matter, all of the possibilities are there - Ripley immediately understanding that this is something so bad that it has to be destroyed. The evening's 3rd film was Spike Lee's 25th Hour, a more recent movie, with Ed Norton as a busted drug dealer with a day of freedom before a 7 year sentence starts. There's a share of flashbacks, but intriguely its a day where nothing actually happens - in that Norton's character is resigned to his fate, and unable to do a thing about it. He distrusts his girlfriend, protects his father, and fights with his friends. As always with Lee, whose films are almost always better their profile would imply, there's an ensemble cast, talking to each other, and it's in this dialogue that most of the character building takes place. Three films then, very different, and all, I think, great narratives, even from the slimmest of controlled premises. Actually that's the one thing they've got in common, all are in "real time" (hence the flashbacks in two of them), and are in situations to have to be resolved by the end of the film. If you want to write a story that would make good cinema then this is one way of doing it, but more than that, most of us do get our narratives from film as well as books. I know quite a few writers who like the movies, but primarily as entertainment - I've always seen them as a good place to pick up tips on writing stories.

Betjeman's Centenary

It is unusual for the BBC to notice poetry, never mind make a big event out of it; but I guess Betjeman was one of their own. I just saw Laurence Llewellyn Bowen described as a "Betjeman enthusiast", which probably says more than anything I could. It would be churlish to say much about a poet whose appeal has always baffled me, and at least, with his long broadcasting career, its not just "talking heads" but Betjeman himself who gets to speak, which is as it should be. And, to be fair, Betjeman seems to be the patron poet of Englishness, so that had he not existed we'd have had to make him up. I can't remember if I mentioned before that I'd stopped editing Lamport Court New Writing, leaving it in the capable hands of Neil Campbell. I'm pleased to announce that issue 7 is out this week, and will be on sale at the Cornerhouse and the independent book market in St. Anne's square next Saturday.

All in a Day's Work

Having failed dismally to write anything of my novella yesterday, I was surprised that, sitting down to it this morning, I was able to complete the first draft. I did that most pleasing of things, "got to the end." The story is told. The plot and character decisions are all made. What remains is the rewriting, improving the grammar, getting rid of inconsistencies, explaining what needs explaining, and removing that which is over explanatory. I've written enough to know that this piece doesn't need any kind of major surgery. All the plot decisions, I'm happy with - in any novel there's endless other turnings you can take, and yet when the idea is fundamentally sound, then it becomes clear where the internal logic takes you. I'm not sure why I'm sharing all this! This blog was originally meant to be about "the creative process" but became, inevitably, more about the literary "world", in one way or another. Yet, a blog's a diary, a writers' diary, and it's these "first drafts of (personal) history" that are worth capturing. So, I've spent 4 days writing the "difficult" 3rd section of the novella; which is around 10,000 words, so though quantity isn't the point, it's a pleasing return on my time spent - a quarter of them were written, apparently with ease, this morning. It was Cyril Connolly who said that writers drink because they have to have something to do in the afternoons. I've written at all times of the day; but getting something done before noon is particularly pleasing. I have to find something to do in the afternoon that's all! I guess when I start a "piece" I'm unusual in that I don't have a plot to work from or synopsis; what I have is an "essence", an idea of what I'm trying to get across. Over time, that can change, and I guess, this novella which began as a man facing a midlife crisis, and it being about his inability to change his life, became change through the destructive; though he's the last person to realise that's what he's doing. It's both a common theme (surely he's Hamlet?) and an unusual one for me; much of my fiction is circular, it is about the consequence of actions, and is often redemptive - this piece, though not all depressing, is anything but redemptive. It's the stranger walking off into the distance having survived whatever disaster's happened. One inspiration for it was Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" - too much criticism of the movie is concentrated on the rape scene - what interests me about the film, is the unusual way with narrative - it is Dustin Hoffman's character who is, in many ways, defending a dead end, not for any principle, but just because that's what a man has to do. You want him to walk away from his pyrrhic stand - it's King Harold at Stamford Bridge, not realising the real battle is a few hundred miles south, at Hastings, it's Othello killing Desdemona only to satisfy a dignity that has lost all meaning.In a small way, that's what I'm trying to replicate in this novella; how a contemporary man with everything apparently perfect in life, has to make his own pyrrhic stand. I chose a "barbecue" as his breaking point, partly because of the cliche of men fighting to master a barbecue, but also because it seemed the only thing "real" for a life dominated by a bureaucratic/electronic world.

Salty Hill

A glowing review of Tobias Hill's new collection in the Guardian yesterday, his first for a number of years, and interestingly, though he is published by Faber for his fiction, his poetry, once with the defunct OUP, is now published by Salt, possibly yet more proof of that press's increased standing and profile. I met him some years ago, at a fiction reading in Manchester, and even then he was saying how he'd like to return to poetry at some point - his fiction career was just taking off - and he gave the example of Margaret Atwood, whose success in novels, he reckoned, had been a loss to Canada's poetry scene.

Round-up

Fans of Gwendoline Riley can see a write-up of her next novel, Joshua Spassky, which sounds like a Wim Wenders movie in the making, due next May. Not for the first time, one gasps at the lead time for novels these days. It's not the writing or the printing, its the marketing schedule that dominates, so you can get a ghostwritten Frank Lampard biography weeks after the World Cup, with a last chapter hastily added, but a new novel, by a promising young author? They only ever release them in the spring. There's still time to apply for the New Writing Partnership's writing bursary. I was interested to see the 9 shortlisted writers for its mentoring scheme, at least partly because, rarely, it gives you a chance to read their work. I liked Linda Black's prose poem "My mother is trapped in a jar of ginger." I came across a good list of poetry magazines at the Scottish Poetry Library, whilst looking out the address of the Shop, for a friend who lives in Ireland, where its based, as is impressively comprehensive "blog"/lit zine Dogmatika. Still waiting for Manchester Literature festival's website to go live, but see there's a blog for one small strand of it The Burgess Project. Burgess never wrote that much about Manchester in his fiction, so much of it that was international, but his autobiography is a virtual A-Z of the pre-war city. I'm umming and ahhing about whether I can send anything to Succour magazine for its next issue, temptingly "The Obscene". Not for the first time, a theme has given me a writer's block. Unfortunately like too many magazines, its word limit - 2500 words - is too low for the best of my work. Good to read one of Togara Muzanenhemo's poems, at Todd Swift's blog, from his new Carcanet collection. We published Togara's poems in Lamport Court, and a long poetic story appeared in the last issue. Meant to mention a couple of things: Manchester independent book market on 1st September, and the polka-dot attired new anthology of women's writing from Crocus called "Bitch Lit." I finished reading my second long-ish novel in a week (after "Brick Lane") with Sara Paretsky's "Guardian Angel", she's the one crime writer I really like. As she's gone on, you get more of V.I. Warshawski's life - and this is her strength. When people question why "genre" novels don't get more literary kudos, I guess, even with a writer this good, it's because they are formulaic. Warshawski - a female Chicago Private Investigator - starts investigating a couple of minor issues for friends or neighbours, in this case an old lady going into hospital, and a friend of a neighbour disappearing, and from this stumbles on something that comes close to getting her killed - leading, inevitably, to a web of corruption that goes to the very top of Chicago's white collar establishment. It's great stuff, but it is formulaic - and though I think this was one of the best in terms of the writing, and the "human" stuff, the plot was a little slapdash. I guess making white collar crime (Enron etc) interesting is probably the toughest job for a contemporary crime writer.

End Game

I'm coming to the end of the novella I began writing a year or more ago. I think I've one last section to write, before I go onto the rewrites. Not that rewriting should take that much, since I've been doing that as I've gone along. For once I had a story with quite a rigid structure and therefore the main issues I had were about tone and voice. There were also a couple of issues I had to decide which relate, I guess, to reader's expectations. I've often written in the "localised third person" almost following the main character round like an invisible camera crew. It can work well, but it can also restrict, if you're not careful. The most famous example is probably "Crime and Punishment." The problem I face is that even though it's 3rd person, the concentration on one character's perspective and thoughts mean that it can become quite insular - and you'd have to be a far better writer than I am, to make a pure train of thoughts interesting. I write to tell a story, as much as any higher aims, and making sure that story has enough concrete detail, and that the cast of characters is controlled, has been the difficult thing in writing this novella. Sensibly, I think, I've brought back some of those characters introduced earlier in the story, to play a pivotal part in the final scene. It's a contrivance in some ways - but necessary. In something of this length - I figure it will end up as around 25,000 words - there's little room for anything other than brief character sketches except for the main character, and his (offstage) wife. She's even more difficult, in some ways, because it's her absence during the week that the story takes place, which creates the story, and I've thought long and hard whether she should remain an offstage presence. But this is fiction, not drama (although I've imagined it in my head as a 3-act piece), and so I think she has to appear. She's already there - in voice on the telephone, and so is an existing character in the novel, albeit disembodied; she's not then a Godot, or an offstage comic sitcom spouse. The novella is funny in parts, but it also has a fair share of action. This morning, I found myself writing what I hope is a realistic fight scene, with 2 male duos up against each other. It struck me, writing this scene, how it's not just about the main character's actions, but that the whole story is about masculinity; and, more than that, how men define themselves in terms of their self worth. At various stages in the story, the main character is defined by his workplace, by his possessions, by his "perfect" marriage, by his attractiveness to other women, by him being able to take his drink, by him having a one-night stand, by him being in control of situations, and finally, I guess, by him being able to use his fists. None of these, in the end, will be enough, and it's almost like in the week when his wife's away, the character goes through a series of "tests" to see what kind of man he really is. The ending, which I've yet to write, will hopefully answer that. Given this, it will be interesting to see, when it's complete, what both male and female readers think of it. I don't think of myself as a particular macho writer, yet I choose these subjects.

Born Yesterday

I enjoyed reading Helen Rumbelow's piece in the Times quoting from Larkin's "Born Yesterday," a poem written for the birth of Kingsley Amis's daughter Sally. Is it harder for girls to be anything other than "ordinary"? I'm sitting here listening to Joni Mitchell's wonderful live album "Miles of Aisles" and Mitchell is one - along with Patti Smith - who convinces in the idea of female genius; and genius in a very particular way: that of the genius individual, whose single-minded view of the world is what stands out, time and time again. Larkin wishes that Sally "may be ordinary; have, like other women an average of talents...in fact, may you be dull." (it's in "The Less Deceived"). As always with Larkin, I think you have to be careful not to take him entirely at face value. I think, rather than being a slight on women, this is Larkin envying, not the fact of being "ordinary", but that it is (or was) allowable. He spent much of his life being asked to provide more than he felt he could ever provide, and probably loved the thought of low expectation. But as Rumbelow says, he wouldn't have wrote that poem about Kingsley's son Martin, no way. Of course, as every year's exam results prove, expectations keep getting higher. It would be facile to wonder why the early 70s might give us Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, Anne Waldman, Adrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood, and wonder where their equivalent's might be today. Facile, because you may as well ask where's the new David Bowie? (instead, we get Russell Brand and Pete Doherty).

Class Reaction

Writer Elizabeth Baines, in her response to my "Brick Lane" review below, wonders about my reference to Zadie Smith's "middle class conventions." It's long been my contention that class remains at the heart of British fiction, is responsible for most of its failings and some of its successes; and that writers simply cannot ignore it, or by their choices of settings and characters are reinforcing it. This is not just as simplistic as a London-based media writing of and for itself; you see it in unapologetically working class prose from David Peace or Irvine Welsh. What I'm still waiting for, and if anyone can supply a name I'd be surprised, but will investigate, is a British writer who can observe and comment on class in this country in a dispassionate way. You get a societal novel like Alan Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty" and its fascination is almost entirely with the rich. An arriviste outsider might be the commentator on their lives, but he is also participant, and, in Hollinghurst at least, intoxicated by that life. In Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love" the terrifying balloon accident at its start brings together people from different walks of life, yet McEwan can't these days handle characters unless they are Cabinet Ministers (at the top, in "Amsterdam") or criminals (his last 3 contemporary novels.) This is a rarified cast. Zadie Smith was praised, rightly, for "White Teeth", but, wrongly in my opinion, for it being primarily about London's melting pot; the awfully middle class white family, though butt of many of her jokes, were also the place that you felt she was writing from. As I've written about "On Beauty," she has little interest in the working class street poet, and for more in the internal politics of a patrician university. Whereas Fitzgerald wrote that the "rich are different", Hemingway's riposte, "yes, they've got more money" is perhaps the approach I'd like from a British writer. And, of course, the middle England, of car boot sales, and package holidays, and working in middle management - a world I think William Hague was far more emblematic of than Blair, Cameron or Brown - is unwritten. American writers as varied as Bellow, Updike, Wolfe and Roth have managed to write about the real country that they see before them - the British - mostly the English - still hanker for Iris Murdoch's country house intrigue; or a Sunday supplement lifestyle. I think we have to give up on the A-List writers like Smith and McEwan being able to write with any kind of classlessness these days; anymore than Oasis were able to write songs about aspiration once they'd made the jetset. The downside of all this for the reader is that whilst I might go to McEwan for an accurate portrayal of a top surgeon's life and practice (as in "Saturday"), I won't go there for any real insight into life in this country here and now. Yesterday, I went to Hay-on-Wye for the first time. I can't find the link, but I think it was George Saunders who did an irreverent diary for the Guardian recently about his recent visit there. During the festival at least, a particular London-based literati class visits en masse, which he amusingly detailed; but it was more a mixed bag on Sunday; walkers there for the afternoon, foreign tourists, even book loving fathers with their literate daughters ("Would you like it, dear?" he said, picking up a boxset of Tennyson for £100, "Not really, I only like one poem", she replied). I'll go again, though not particularly for the books. Betwixt and between the vast warehouses of overstocks, and old novels; and the antiquarian specialists; I found a few gems, but not the book nirvana I'd hoped for. It's a little like Charing Cross Road, for that; I'll find more of my kind of books elsewhere, and at keener prices. Though looking through so many books, one does occasionally wonder "Why?" The Poetry Bookshop was worth many hours, (and probably many more pounds) of my money, though they didn't have the two books I was looking for. I saw books I'd never seen before which is part of the pleasure. I came back laden with Cummings, Pirandello, Aylett, Creeley, Marvell and Ashbery; a good midfield in anyone's book.

Not Pete Doherty

Since the first libertine was not, as younger viewers might think, Pete Doherty, I think we can welcome a new magazine devoted to liberating language - and, it's probably long overdue a magazine that was not afraid to mix songwriting with poetry. Anyway, The Libertine will be with us shortly. and with a Myspace showing of 906 friends already, its good to see that small presses are finding Myspace as much fun as bands. Issue 1's submission date is gone, and although first issue contents "Carol Ann Duffy waxes lyrical...Talking Lennon/McCartney, Mozart and Morrisey!" seems a little mainstream for my tastes, I look forward to reading it. I've a book here, (honestly, I didn't have to dig very far!) called "Sweet Nothings" - "an anthology of rock and roll in American poetry" and though part of me thinks this is a BAD THING, I also quite like bad things. For instance, its clear that any representative anthology of Manchester poetry should include Mark E. Smith, John Cooper Clarke and Morrissey; and if it widened to the North West then I'm sure you should also include Paul Simon's wistful "Homeward Bound" written at Widnes Station. Yet, its not always a good idea to mix poetry and music. Poets seem to age prematurely even when they're not actually that ancient. On the one hand you get a young-ish Paul Muldoon waxing lyrical about a number of his favourite albums (all, if I remember correctly, safe middle-of-the-road seventies rock and, er... "Parallel Lines") that will probably kill any mystique he ever had; on the other hand you get Clark Coolidge writing a little pamphlet called Neil Young. I guess I'd be surprised if any poet under 50 - say, Simon Armitage for instance - was as oblivious of pop music as a previous generation; yet just as it seems very few poets have much interest in novels, (except their own), they rarely have much interest in "pop music" either. Possibly a good thing, since an interest in Massive Attack or Prodigy would date your poem as much as a bubble perm or bell bottoms, but a shame as well, since "popular song" has found its way into poets as diverse as Eliot and Ashbery. Mention the ubiquitous Beatles or Dylan and you're probably okay, just a little dull.

Brick Lane

I've finally got round to reading "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali. I think it was the woman who picks Richard and Judy's book club saying it was her one "mistake" (mainly, I think because Ali wasn't particularly starry-eyed at such an accolade), that finally made me get round to it. I'd read the chapter in Granta's young novelists round up, and been impressed by Ali's surety of touch - no naive debutant here, but a fully formed writer - and having written about the recent upset concerning the book, and particular Germaine Greer's comments, I've at last found the time. I think it's a remarkably sustained work, a very well-written debut novel, which sets itself a formidable task - to write about a hidden part of society, but do it through humanely believable characters. Such a task, of course, was what the great Victorian novels excelled in. The Bangladeshi community of 21st Century Tower Hamlets is peeled open, like Eliot peeled open radical Jewish London in "Daniel Deronda". There are none of the middle class conventions that jump out from even a writer like Zadie Smith. The characters in "Brick Lane", from seamstress to doctor, are unable, unwilling, or unlikely to be able to step into the world around them. Brick Lane, just a step away from London's financial heartbeat, may as well be as isolated as the Brazilian slums of "City of God." What Ali does well, and I'd hope she continues to do, is to build detail-on-detail, quietly, unflashily, to build up a portrait that goes beyond what might initially appear stereotypes. In the arranged marriage of Nazneen and Chanu she takes a stock situation and adds to it, little by little until it's a feast of subtle characterisation. Chanu is a brilliant creation - a thwarted intellectual, a useless, but kind husband and father - whilst Nazneen - born in Bangladesh in 1967, married off at 16, is a child slowly having to become a woman. The isolation of this community is hardly believable, but women kept behind closed doors, and not being allowed or encouraged to work or speak, it becomes believable. Nazneen's growing confidence is incredibly slow coming - and if there's a major fault with the books, its in foregrounding so much post-1998, when clearly the brutal realities of the Thatcher years could so easily have destroyed such fragile characters. Ali reminds me a little of Doris Lessing, in having both a real concern for the minutiae of everyday (often female) life, and an intellectual's raised eyebrow at the wider picture. I can't think of many contemporary writers who would have the ability and confidence to mix the two, yet such a "societal" novel should be central to our fiction. She should be applauded in that sense, for not grounding the novel in the past, or - despite its lingering essense - in the foreign exoticism of the subcontinent. In "The Good Terrorist" Lessing piles up the details of a radical commune, and the inherent contradictions in such politics, and Ali, with a sharp eye for the satirical, without ever becoming the Kumars, likewise wheedles these out. The abysmal Mrs. Iqbal, a rapacious moneylender, could come out of a Dickens slum - and its a reminder of what the poor have to do to "get by." It's a long book, and although the forward tension is handled expertly, it sometimes fails to give justice to the major actions within the characters lives. If the domestic is in close focus, the bigger tragedies seem to lack emotional resonance, Nazneen's "trusting to fate" a little too easy an excuse. Even the awakening that occurs when the young radical Karim enters her life, is handled in soft focus. I had horrors of it turning into a Mills and Boon at this stage, but Ali never forgets where her characters are - what their limitations are. It's perhaps no coincidence that its female writers - like Lessing, like Eliot - and even E. Annie Proulx in "The Shipping News" - who come to mind when it comes to this portrayal of lives that are not easily turned around.

A Degree of Self Awareness

I was just returning from town, and couldn't help but notice the conversation behind me. A student was talking about his courses. "I'm doing Orton, Beckett and Pinter this year." His companion said something, that I didn't hear. Then: "Last year, I did the Victorian novel, but it really messed up all my grades. I got to the exam and just couldn't answer anything. I'd not read any of the books. I'd seen the film, or read a little bit - I tried, but I just couldn't read them. But it meant I failed that unit and it brought all my grades down. But this will be all right, because they're plays, and short." His tone of voice throughout was great, as if it was the fault of the Victorian literature course that he'd failed - that somehow he should have been able to pass it without actually reading the books. I was weirdly pleased. After all, you clearly still have to read the books to succeed at an English Literature degree. I doubt he'll find the playwrights any easier, even if he gets to the end. I'm not going to tut-tut his stupidity as a sign of this generation, since I remember a similar thing when I was studying for my English degree in 1988. I came out of an exam - usually something like American literature or Women Writers - and students were complaining how hard it was. "You see, I hadn't read any of the books," they said. I missed my share of lectures and seminars without any discernibly negative effect on my degree, but that's probably because I did read the books.

Booker Long List

Hot off the press, this year's Booker Longlist...

Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story (Faber & Faber)
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water (Doubleday)
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life (Bloomsbury)
Grenville, Kate The Secret River (Canongate)
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights (Jonathan Cape)
Lasdun, James Seven Lies (Jonathan Cape)
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge (Chatto & Windus)
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury)
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men (Viking)
Messud, Claire The Emperor’s Children (Picador)
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green (Sceptre)
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man (William Heineman)
O’Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me (Faber & Faber)
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack (Hamish Hamilton)
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk (Picador)
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel (Hamish Hamilton)
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch (Virago)

Not a year for "big hitters" then - Unsworth, Carey and the oft-overlooked Jacobson apart, not forgetting Nadine Gordimer, join winner 32 years ago, in 1974, something of a record? More recent listees include O'Hagan, Waters and Mitchell - as well as the well reviewed Jon McGregor - and following on from his recent short story prize, James Lasdun gets a look in. Another 2 nominations for Scotland's dynamic Canongate, as well, who won with "Life of Pi". No Tom McCarthy, or Irvine Welsh, so perhaps not the place to come for revolution. Not sure how many of the books are actually in the shops yet - the majority I'd guess. Most interesting inclusion is probably Robert Edric for "Gathering the Water", who'd have thought it? DJ Taylor for one, "Booker judges take note", he ended his recent review.

Li'l Things

The Booker Prize longlist is announced tomorrow, with a month till the shortlist. The longlist, I think, is really a sop to all those big hitters who need to get mentioned in despatches for their latest novel, but probably don't need to win/be shortlisted. A literary titan who doesn't make the longlist might as well pack their bags and go home, I suppose. I've read 3 of last years shortlist, 3 to go - so it's going to be a push to do it before this year's shortlist. I was in Waterstones yesterday and almost got tempted by their 3 for 2 offer, mainly because I wanted to get Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days but it's discounted on Amazon anyhow, and finding the other 2 was going to be problematic. Also, returning tomorrow, an anti-Booker list, if you like, is the next edition of Scarecrow. Tom McCarthy's "Remainder" was finally reviewed in the Guardian yesterday, as was, long overdue, Chris McCabe's debut poetry collection, "The Hutton Report." Will our children remember what the Hutton report was? It's already receding in memory, like the Dreyfuss Affair, or Westland. Yet, elsewhere in that edition, Ruth Padel is another poet talking amongst themselves. Apparently a heckler in the house at the Ledbury Poetry Festival thinks all poetry should rhyme. There was a protest, apparently, from some traditionalists. Since, as she points out, this is an argument that goes back to Wordsworth, and beyond, you'd think the arguers would be treated like flat-earthers. I rhyme occasionally, usually in my lighter verse, it has to be said, and occasionally - as do many others - midline. It's a sad, inevitable fact, that almost without exception, a contemporary poet rhyming will either sound too lighthearted, or simply archaic. This bridge has too long had a river under it.

Start of...something

I'm off work for 3 weeks. People keep saying "where you going?" and I say "Didsbury." Hey, it's nice, I live here, it's got trees. And given that I couldn't even take my glaucoma medication on the plane with me it's probably a good job I didn't book a flight somewhere. So, although I will be going a few exciting places (Edinburgh festival maybe, York races, Stranger Son of W.B. at the Attic) I'm really "buying" creative time. The two things, I definitely want to do are finish my novella (last act's been waiting a while) and put together a self published collection of my short stories. I may keep you informed of progress! I've a new obsession though, and its classic house music - I've started putting together CDs of my house music vinyl from 86-94 and it's just ace. I've loads of this stuff - scarily loads! - at this moment listening to the sublime "Talking with Myself" Electribe 101 by making me ask the question: Why wasn't Billie Ray Martin the biggest star ever?

Helluva Band

God must be putting together a helluva band at the moment. This time a psychedelic one - so, following on from the sad death's of Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee, I read that Tony Ogden, ex-singer with Mancunian legends World of Twist has died aged 44. Definitely from the Syd Barrett school of one-shot genius, World of Twist's 3 classic singles, "The Storm/She's a Rainbow", "Sons of the Stage" and "Sweets" were as good as anything else that came out of Madchester - and if debut album "Quality Street" underperformed (it came out a little too late, if I remember rightly), it's still one I listen to with fondness. Then...nothing. I put together a compilation of Madchester music a couple of years ago, and it was the one-shots like Paris Angels and World of Twist which really stood out. I think the 12" single was the natural format for those bands - either that or the live concert - and having never seen them live, I'd love to hear a World of Twist live recording some time.

And...

I managed a couple of hours of DPercussion, Pipettes and Young Knives, before sloping off to less crowded places. A couple of hours later found myself in the Star and Garter (it was a friend's birthday) and in a nice touch the DJ played "Live and Let Live" and "Alone Again Or". Yesterday morning, I began writing a story, as promised called, "I Forget What 8 is For." I've done this before - take a line from a song and use it as a jumping off point for a story. At one point I was going to "do" a whole album, the Cure's "Pornography" with a story inspired by each of the eight songs. I got as far as the first track, choosing the line "In a High Building there is so much to do" which virtually wrote itself into a story! I've found the Violent Femmes line evocative, and vague enough for me to change the story as I go along. It's not "about" anything or anyone as yet, just a certain mood that I want to convey. It's like the things that happen in a story aren't actually that important, more that they're the outward show of what's going on in the character's lives. I felt that the more so, yesterday, being surrounded, sometimes overwhelmingly so, by so many people. The "going out" bit is the simple bit, the "whys" and "wherefores" are more complex. What I did notice, was that writing early yesterday morning, was cleansing in many ways. I felt light-headed, happy, afterwards. A reminder to write more often, not less.

Alone Again Or

Arthur Lee, singer and leader of Love has died aged 61, after a fight against Leukemia. When I was 15, I had a glossy Encyclopedia of rock, which was full of alluring images of album covers, with band names as mysterious as Captain Beefheart, or as simple as Love. The more I read about their classic "Forever Changes" the more I wanted to hear it. Song titles like "Andmoreagain" and "Alone Again Or" piqued my adolescent interest. When I heard that my current favourites, Aztec Camera sounded like them, that was it. I think I finally got it from the then wonderful Virgin on Bull Street in Birmingham. I liked it from the moment I put the needle to the record, though was perhaps surprised how light sounding it was. For "Forever Changes" despite a couple of rock-out guitar solos is an acoustic record. I still listen to it, that same much played copy from 1982, but also the remastered reissue. Arthur Lee's Love were more than one record to me, though. I love the simple beat-pop of their eponymous debut, and the tight psychedelic classics that form side 1 of "Da Capo" - even side 2's rambling blues "Revelations" - and both "Four Sail" and "Out Here" have some good songs on. But its "Forever Changes" that dominates. Sad, as Syd Barrett's recent death was, eulogies about his genius seem slightly overblown, but I've no doubt in declaring Lee a genius - only the Velvet Underground's debut matches "Forever Changes" as a consummate piece of art from that period. Bryan Maclean, his partner in the band, died a few years ago, but with Lee's passing, it does feel that the sixties is even further away. Of course he toured with a recreated Love over the last few years, even triumphantly replaying "Forever Changes" in its entirety, and, one hopes, received some of the acclaim the band always deserved. Poetry magazines these days can almost seem like obituary columns, and as that sixties generation moves on for one last trip, the music papers are beginning to have a similar feel. As always, though, there is the music.

Cyber Farmers Boys

No doubt when Chris Gribble left Manchester's literary scene for Norwich, as head of the New Writing Partnership, he thought it would be all combine harvesters and hayricks after cybercity Manchester, but no more, Norwich is now England's premier cybercity with wifi whenever you shit, shag and shave - as it turns on ('scuse the pun) the country's biggest wifi network. And it just cost over a mill, which might sound a lot, but given the amount of money the NWDA has spent on broadband projects over the last few years, its a bargain, and also takes a bit of the steam out of Manchester's Digital Challenge, which has free wifi for all as its opening gambit. 2nd only to Norwich hasn't got a good ring to it, really. As I mentioned last post,with Manchester's rarely free wifi, the Cornerhouse could be very full, very soon. If you want to bankrupt Rupert Murdoch this weekend, then take your chance, he's giving away the Godard Rolling Stones movie "Sympathy for the Devil" in the Sunday Times, which is £15.99 at the moment on Amazon. Buy as many copies as you can stand! Okay, his ABC figures will improve, but each copy sold costs him money. Luckily Tony Blair will be back in the country to pick up his copy, after his speaking at Murdoch's annual bash, and meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger. Anyone who thought this was Blair's holiday, interrupted by that unfortunate kerfuffle in the Lebanon, think again, he's only now going on holiday for three weeks. That's right we were PAYING him to meet Schwarzenegger and schmooze with the Digger.

Update

Free Wi-Fi access comes to Manchester, or at least, in the cafe at the Cornerhouse. Might be one for a future Manchester blog-meet. The news that Time Out might be coming to Manchester is both welcome and a bit "so what?" Welcome, because City Life is missed, a bit "so what?" because I've always found Time Out's cultural coverage middle-brow in the extreme. If you want to find a five star review of a Sarah Waters novel or a Zero 7 album here's the place. I'm pleased that its Dpercussion in Castlefield this Saturday - though it usually seems to rain! - and having missed the wondrous Pipettes when the played Life Cafe recently I'm looking forward to that most of all. I've been reading very little, and so been a bit slack on noticing good things even when they're under my nose. So, only just read this great little piece on Scarecrow, "Watching Him Fuck Her" by Janice Erlbaum. The voice just launches off the page from the first line, like a contemporary female Selby Jr.; she blogs as well. Everything I usually hate about writing of course, extreme lifestyle as extreme fiction, but in her case, well, she can actually write, and write funny. Not exactly sure where life ends, art begins, but "whatever." I seem a bit out of sorts today actually, keep coming back to things, head all over the place. Wednesday's are not my good days. First night in for ages just listening to music, which is good in itself. Current favourite listening pleasures are (1) Funhouse - the Stooges (2) Odyssey - Fischerspooner (3) a CD-R of late 80's house music tracks and mixes (inc. Bomb the Bass, One Dove, Future Sound of London, Kym Mazelle et al (4) The Trials of Occupanther - Midlake (5) Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes. (Message to self: need to write a story entitled "I Forgot What 8 is For.")

Things I won't do before I'm forty...

...or ever, for that matter - since today's the last ever Top of the Pops. That's one ambition (never even remotely attempted, so is that ambition, or pipe dream?) thwarted. Appearing on, say, Later With Jools Holland or MTV isn't quite the same somehow. There's been much nostalgia about TOTP in the papers. Favourite moments? New Model Army doing "No Rest (for the wicked)" with "Only Stupid Bastards Take Heroin" t-shirts, but with the BBC insisting on putting gaffa tape over "Astards". The Human League doing "The Sound of the Crowd", Blondie doing "Denis." It's been crap for years of course, and the BBC, as always, does it level best to destroy these institutions - just think of it shunting off Peel to a couple of late nights a week, or its utter hatred of Dr. Who for all those years. It seems unlikely that TOTP will get a Dr. Who style resurrection; but the Beeb has always treated it as a light entertainment show rather than a music show, and in the era of pop idol nobodies, and with the P.Diddy's and Shakira's of the world planning world domination country by country, according to record company marketing departments, its probably not got a remit anymore. Still, its sad. I don't think they ever invited New Model Army back.

Hurling Bricks

I've not yet read "Brick Lane", Monica Ali's novel, but recently saw an interview with her. She is no doubt perplexed by the reaction of the Bangladeshi community of Brick Lane to its protests about filming there. On the one hand, one feels that its refreshing that at least one part of the world doesn't want to be in the movies, no matter what, but that idea soon palls. Ali is not an arriviste, but Bangladeshi, and, more importantly a writer who wants to write about contemporary Britain. Post 9/11 it seems that almost any artistic work that addresses our multicultural society comes under threat from some. It worries me. "Political correctness gone mad" is a neat Daily Mail term, but its about time that works of art are seen for what they are, given more protection than they currently get. The majority of contemporary writers hide in the past, or worse, in the middle classes, and one can only feel that will get worse. More informed comment on this from Baroque in Hackney. The most telling thing is, that like myself, she's a slight worry that we're not even supposed to be debating these things. Its not just Islam, its any religion now seems to be getting special protections. Many councils now have rules of conduct which state that your behaviour should respect not only people's race, gender and sexuality, but their religion. This would be fine, in itself, and like Baroque, I work with a wide range of community groups. What I also am, is secular, and believe we live in a secular society, and we're seeing more and more religious organisations/organisers (many of whom have problems with other people's gender and sexuality) wanting complicity in their own prejudices. I'm suddenly acutely aware that if you make any comments whatsoever about any religion, there's becoming a culture of suspicion. This, of course, does not just come from "multiculturalism", but with leaders both in the UK and America who are not afraid to use their own religion, and relationship with God, as justification and rhetoric - with policies being led by the religious interests or religious ideas (stem cell research in America, for instance, Religious Hatred bill here) - it creates a climate where, I have no doubt, should another fatwa be handed down on a living writer, they'd be very lucky to receive the grudging level of protection given to Rushdie. As Baroque pointed out, the voice that is silenced in all of this, is often female.

When did I lose interest in Brian Eno?

I've recently found myself getting irritated when I hear of something that Brian Eno's been up to. This is ridiculous, since he's one of my heros. When nobody else was buying his records or knew who he was, he seemed the most interesting artist in the world. I remember a Paul Morley show where he talked of the history of music as if Eno had been involved in every worthwhile bit of it, and in a way he had. Yet, at some point - probably after his 3rd or 4th U2 collaboration - he became the ubiquitous cultural commentator that he is today. And more than that, it seems if anyone wants to add a bit of artiness to a project he gets called in to add his bit. He curated meltdown, he had that exhibition of storage spaces in London, he's produced the new Paul Simon album (Paul bloody Simon!), and he's added humanitarian work - through War child and opposition to the Iraq war - to the long cv. Even now he casts a long shadow - I was thinking of his "long now" project at the Futuresonic event mentioned earlier. I think the problem is that in the past Eno was almost ridiculously interesting. Most of the projects were ones he generated himself that seemed to exist outside of the mainstream - and appeared totally perplexing to it. Yet now its as if he's called in to add a bit of Eno to anything that might warrant it. I was excited - still - to hear he'd written a soundtrack to a podcast of Michael Faber's "Fahrenheit Twins" story, but then, somehow I lost interest. Faber's a bit of an acquired taste, full of inventiveness, but you'll either love or hate his prose style. It strikes me, listening to it, that its an interesting idea, a mutual appreciation between writer and musician, but that I'm not sure there's much more to say on it. It works well - in the Guardian extract - and is perhaps a step beyond the usual audiobook. The story is quite a traditional narrative - atmospheric and descriptive - and in that sense the music can only be a backdrop, rather than integral. Reading about how it was put together, this is perhaps no surprise, but perhaps I'd expected more. I guess I want the Eno of past surprises. Also, it's clearly a commercial venture - the story was cropped to fit on a CD (and one has to admire any musician able to come up with a 70 minute piece as a backdrop of music). But its made me think (as Eno always does.) The audiobook podcast is something that is both nascent, but accessible. So perhaps I'm not irritated by Eno as much as remembering that one of Eno's aims, as I saw it, was to encourage others to work in these areas. That he's still the one being asked, is probably the problem. Part of the project, I think, was that people like me should lose interest in Brian Eno.

(And for the record: 5 great Eno moments -: "Baby's on Fire" live - from 1st June 1974 CD, "The True Wheel" from Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) - the band A Certain Ratio took their name from this song, "I Zimbra" - Talking Head's finest ethnofunk moment, "Miss Sarajevo" - from the Passengers project with U2, Warszawa - with Bowie from "Low".)

I, Conservationist (a poem)

The wonderful summer is with us at last –
though it comes bearing warnings.
The butterfly, for instance, is in peril
and I trust we’ll do enough to save it’s neck
before its too late.

I would grow wild buddleia for bees in my garden
and plant flowering honeysuckle for the butterfly,
but I’ve not a garden in my first floor flat.
Perhaps I can donate a small sum,
for retaining meadows across the counties.

Though come to think of it, I should save my cash
to build a windfarm and make my own power,
instead of relying on the nuclear option.
And then there’s the worry of saving for a pension,
and for the cost of my radiation cure.

Despite a country past, I’m stuck indoors,
with antihistamines and fridge-cooled water
to take me through the wilting day.
A common moth hovers outside my window,
and with twitching nose, I shut it out.

The Future is...niche

I seem to have overdosed on futurology by uber-geeks this week. First was Paul Caplan of the Mediatrust evangalising about new media made easy. His talk was invigorating, but since it was aimed at community groups, a couple of points are worth making. He said, "if I can use Wordpress anyone can...all it needs is a server with MySQL", which kind of seems a little extreme for any of us without a server or MySQL. (For the record, I've a "server", I guess, for my website, but it would cost me quite a bit more for the other bit.) A little hubristic I felt. And then I looked at his website - and God, when did he think that white print on a black background and a really small and very odd font was a good idea. Get accessible Paul! As always with such people they use a Mac, and have a bit of a blindspot about the 99% of the world that doesn't. Then, it was Futuresonic today, which is, I guess, where art and technology collide. It's always quite difficult to get a handle on. There's a bit of a private club sort of feel to this - a niche too far, so to speak - but it was interesting. Anyone visiting the 1830 warehouse at the Museum of Science and Industry over the next week will see some great "homemade" musical instruments. This quirky arts 'n' craft side of things is what endears me to Futuresonic. Masaki Fujihata's digital mapping was partly aweinspiring - a GPS stream made into a visual movie with photos/videos along the route - and partly banal - the content was mostless pointless, arbitrary. Yet its early days for this sort of thing; the "doing it" is enough for now. For lovers of Sebald and Sinclair, a must, methinks. Maria Stukoff was evaluating the conference on behalf of where I work, and will no doubt blog on it shortly. Matt Webb's futuregazing was all over the place, a maybe attached to another maybe, but invigorating. He posited the sci-fi staple of a "generation" spaceship where whole generations grow up on a long distance space ship on the way to somewhere - and how they might adapt to the space. I began reading Brian Aldiss's "Non Stop" (1958) recently, its a similar premise, so nothing new under that sun. A particular point though: the web - "the space" - we're now inhabiting is consuming. It has a Year Zero, beyond which everything seems less documented; and it is also consistently, constantly re-inventing itself so that there are no equivalent of internet Victorian terraces we could live in - they've all been torn down so that we can live cheek and jowl in our neighbourhood of Myspace and Blogger identical boxes. I'm too cynical (and too old) to be too obsessed with the cusp, the margin of the new - it seems that it hasn't alway furnished us with the same leaps of imagination that you find in Burroughs and Gysin for instance. Webb talked about "Second Life" - a virtual world - where, because second lifers don't have genitals, someone has invented genital underwear to put on their second lifer characters, and just as inevitable perhaps, someone else has started doing "upskirt" shots of secondlife characters. This is a maybe of a maybe of a maybe of a maybe which maybe a new record. What has this to do with literature? Nothing. And everything. Literature kind of invented the web (from Douglas Adam's Babel fish to Burrough's Interzone to "Slaughterhouse 5" to Jerry Cornelius) - and now its everywhere, can a book truly exist that doesn't reference it? Last week's Guardian summer short story selection was a treasure trove, but distinctly ancient in its references. I'd recommend everyone reads Colm Toibin's striking "A Summer Job". It's from a different world, but the emotional strangeness is strongly contemporary.

Mercury Rising

This year's Mercury Prize shortlist for best album of the year doesn't seem one of its best - despite all the talk about "best years for music ever" - the Arctic Monkeys aside, its a little lightweight. Not that I've heard enough new albums recently to be sure. No Primal Scream - but then its long ago been moving away from the venerable to the very recent - and no Sandi Thom or Lily Allen (like they need the publicity). I think its become a bit too music critic for its own good - you can't imagine a Spice Girl or even a Ms. Dynamite these days. My money's on either Muse as a potential "grower" taking a cult band mainstream - or Guillemots, as an only just out, but sure to get big this summer breakout hit. Interesting that very not-British Mark Lanegan makes it in collaboration with Isobel Campbell (perhaps Guns N Roses might have once been eligible, who knows?) and if you were wondering whether new albums from Razorlight, Snow Patrol were really as good as the reviews stated, none of them are to be seen. It's clearly an award for new music, even if its comeback-style such as Scritti Politti. There's usually at least one unexpected gem on the list - last year it was my introduction to the Go Team.

What a Poetry Magazine Needs to do to Survive

If you haven't seen it, the estimable Michael Schmidt writes about PN Review being 30 years old, and how it lasted so long. In truth, not the most illuminating of articles. Like a lot of the poetry scene it seems to be tilting at windmills that only other branches of the poetry scene can see. "Anglo-American and European modernisms and their legacies are to be valued and taken to heart, and the postmodern condition is not to be seen as inescapable" is his conclusion at the magazine's value and agenda, and I can't disagree with that, but mainly because I don't really know what he means by it! His comment on Poetry Review, which "might be thought (erroneously, it seems to me) to have a duty to be a magazine of record" sets up an argument that I'm not sure anyone's making - that in the brackets he repudiates, though I like the idea of a "history of taste" seen through its varied editors. Poetry Review is sometimes the Newcastle United of poetry magazines, never sure whether it wants a dour traditionalist keeping the dressing room in line - and never winning anything - or a risktaking libero who'll upset the directors - and never win anything. All I can say, is that if you ever come across PN Review you'll come away with something, and the new website looks good. 30 years for any literary endeavour is worth celebrating, though I can't help think that whilst PN Review was opening its doors, a number of "poets" - Mark E. Smith, Pete Shelley, Howard Devoto etc. - were watching the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. Recent magazines are not really mentioned; and so many have fallen by the wayside over the last few years, from an exhausted Angel Exhaust, through Prop and Brando's Hat, through Thumbscrew, that it's hard to see without London Magazine-Ambit-Agenda-PN Review-Poetry Review there'd even be a poetry magazine scene. Yet, the Rialto still goes about its own quiet businesses, and smaller, more locally based zines proliferate. Best place to start is the Poetry Library - currently closed for refurbishment, but still there in cyberspace. Is it just me, or has the gloss worn off poetry a little? I don't see quite the same "hype", and that's probably for the best. But since the surfeit of millennial anthologies there's been nothing for the casual or interested reader to use as a roadmap through contemporary poetry.

Old? No way

I watched an interview on BBC News 24 "HardTalk" last night with Patti Smith. I saw her in concert a couple of years ago, and although the set was predominantly her later career - she had a 16 year break from music to bring up her children - her voice and presence were remarkable. I first heard "Horses" at University in 1985, and its a great album, obviously, but more than that, despite her being linked with the punk/new wave scene, its clearly more than that; and owes quite a lot to some of the progressive/art rock tendencies of the early 70s (note her involvement with Blue Oyster Cult!) That run of albums - with "Wave" "Easter" and "Radio Ethiopia" formed part one of the career - but part 2 has also got value, there's great songs on all of her subsequent albums, and the 2-CD best of a few years ago made a good attempt at summarising the career. Although still an activist, she's also still an artist - and, though it was a bit oblique what she plans - its less likely to be music than art, writing etc. Her identification with romantic heroes such as Blake and Rimbaud is well known. I read a biography by Victor Bockris, which emphasised that the New York scene that she was on in the early 70s, centred round the St. Marks' Poetry Project, was as likely to have George Harrison and John Lennon dropping in, alongside readings by Smith and others. The Factory was in full flow of course, and she was a close friend with Robert Mapplethorpe (who took the iconic photo for the "Horses" cover.) You had great energy from the second wave of the New York School, people like Anne Waldman; Ginsberg was still writing, and very public; and its a period that is ripe for re-assessment, the equivalent, clearly of other high water marks of artistic highs, such as the "beats" and "Bloomsbury's." Moreover, that moment when the biggest band in the world - the Beatles - had split, but were intimately involved in the avant garde, in the openended artistic scene in New York, sees a rare confluence between music, literature, visual arts and film.

Mixed Feelings

As a subscriber to the deceased Zembla Magazine, like Bookworld, I began receiving strange letters from solicitors about its untimely demise, with debts of £400,000, and being a creditor of one, Simon Finch Books. That can't be the same Simon Finch who has just paid £2.8 million for Shakespeare's first folio, can it?

Spam Poem

I hope Tony Trehy creator of the Bury Text Festival might like this one,

Spam Poem#1 (Stanley Stephenson)

I am Stanley Stephenson
to deemphasize
Amelia postmark from,
go burglarproof
go do dragonfly Amelia
then conclude go
showroom downturn
this bourbaki. can,
why baboon deemphasize
go me comport Amelia
the entice the garland
shakespearian this
pole Amelia
that aries can
afar from sleigh.
transvestite that this
Amelia from budge me
shakespearian bourbaki
drove that bergen.

I fear that J.H. Prynne might be out of a job. Those last 3 lines get me every time. "Amelia from budge me shakespearian bourbaki drove that bergen" has anyone ever said it better? (More soon.)

Keep up to date

In the absence of City Life, various websites can help you keep up to date on activity in the North West.

Anyone missing City Life's literary listings should keep up to date with the fine, clean lines of Literature North West.

If you want to check out the wide range of publishers and publications in the region - or are starting one yourself - then try its sister site Publishing North West. Who says publishing is a London thing?

For film and related activity you can have a look at the Northern Film Network's informative blog, and I'd recommend subscribing to their very useful email newsletter.

To whet your appetite for the autumn, the first Manchester Literature Festival will be with us in October. The website and brochure are coming soon.

And for all things Mancunian worth reminding people of the Manchester Blogger's Aggregator and for more blogs than you can shake a piece of hypertext at, Manchizzle's blogroll.

Not Manchester based, but anyone who caught poetry boy band Aisle 16 last year - and anyone who likes a bit of humour in their verse - should try and catch Luke Wright at this year's Edinburgh festival.

O! To Be...Postmodern

So this is what we do, innit? We go to a literary do on th' evening and can't wait to leave so we can get home an' file our copy. Here goes then. Names have been psychologicallly morphed to protect the innocent (and hey, they won't come up in a Google search) -: So it was Crispian Rizzle's leaving thang where we all gathered at the Copa Cobana bar at the bottomend of the Fifthways Building down in the Northend Quarter. Fuck, I arrived too late for canapes, and first stunner I saw was blogmeister extraordianaire Catriona Delf where we cut to the quick and talked about the footcha, inc. Bloggers meet at Rubbish in a few wks. Sure I'm up to it. I blog! I am! Then she had to go talk to someone and I needed a break. Caught Rizzle's eye, but he was being surrounded by friends all night. At bar, bumped into Pa Rage, doyenne of Mancunian publishers, SemiColon Press, and he was his usual self, albeit a little drunker by this stage. You never know whether to talk serious or silly wit' da Pa, because he's always checking his options, and I'm only glad I aint got anything on his slush pile at the mo' that we can avoid talking about. He asks me, as everyone does, how the magazine, Lemming Bridge, is doing, but I have to inform them I'm no longer editor. You can see the shock! Advert Catcher has jumped from the Lemming Bridge, but alas it's so. Then as I try and grab a few words with Dee Lumley - who is Crispian's right-hand-woman on the festival, and she's deep in converse with top art poet Walmart Welsteve. I always shake Walmart's hand and have the same conversation with him - kind of about has he written anything lately? I don't mean it in a bad way, and its become a joke between us, I think. Walmart's sticking with his ouvre, Thursday night at Stans if you're interested in hearing the latest interpretation. Then there's old stalwart from back-in-the-days of Stonewart's readings, Walmart Ice, sporting a dapper 'tache. We have non-lit connections so we talk about this and that. But everyone's always got someone else to talk to. So I'm there with the guy who I met at the Burton Anthony reading, who is there with Dilly Storm from the library. And we huddle like non-speaking guests at a Tourette's conference, giggling quietly at the "fucks" and "buggers." Hey, it's a motley crue, that's for sure, and no Tommy Lee! Just time to catch a few spoken words with Zara Spake Thunustra, who runs the spoken word night and works with Welsteve at Lontob college. I tell her "not to worry" because she always seems to.. I leave quickly to go home and write my blog, which was my whole parasitical take on th' evening, though I have been known to be "fond of a drink". Kind of think Crispian Rizzle will slam dunk Norwich when he get's there, there's my boy. Wot a bloomin' sendoff! Zinedine Zidane!

Shine on You Crazy Diamond

Sad to say, Syd Barrett is dead at 60.

Lonely Rebellions

One of my lonelier rebellions is against bad avant garde writing. Cult publishers, blogs and magazines seem to have no quality control whatsoever when it comes to particular writers, writing and subjects. Transgressive sex makes transgressive writing, seems to be the mantra, when really, it can just be S&M Mills and Boon. I am grateful, therefore, to 3AM Magazine for providing an extract of some of the worst writing I've ever read. Stephen Barber has all the right credentials of course; he's an academic, usually a signifier of limited literary merit; in digital and media arts; which adds a certain certainty to it; and, here's the killer has been described as the most "dangerous man in Britain" by the Independent. Given such credentials, it would be a near miracle if he wrote anything good at all, but this extract from "Tokyo Sodom" is numbingly bad. It's almost pointless to quote from it, since every line is a gem. Like an ethics professor with Tourette's he can only interrupt the S&M Mills and Boon of his porn movie fuckfest, to spout, verbatim, chunks of geopolitics. His banality can describe breasts as "Mount Fuji-like", and his erudition can include mid-sex dialogue such as "In the Second World War, (the Slovakians) were the only nation in Europe that actually paid the Nazis to take our Jews away to Auschwitz! 20,000 of them,at the cost of 50 crowns per deportation." Though I did enjoy the choice Slovakian insults. Well-heeled academics write trash for money most of the time, but we don't have to pretend there's the remotest thing interesting about fiction this bad.

Hollywood

Reading David Thompson's intriguing history/polemic of Hollywood, "The Whole Equation." It's not just the Fitzgerald quote of the title (from "The Last Tycoon") but Thompson's clearly a Fitzgerald obsessive, which is great. Already I get the sense - a few chapters in - that Hollywood has lost it, will no longer keep our collective pulse raising, and yet...it still might. There's a few more novels about Hollywood than rock music; and I'd guess there's a whole raft of novels that owe something to the grammar and the glamour of film. (David Foster Wallace might say its television that influences his generation of writers, but he's American - growing up in Britain in the '70s there wasn't really enough television to influence a writer; and the BBC, despite its legendary remit to entertain, educate and inform, never touched on the wider vocabularies that I was discovering through literature, music and movies. Only Channel 4's arrival provided that stimuli.) Somewhere I've a book about poetry and the movies, (American movies), and I guess it mentions the D.W. Griffiths' short "The Lonedale Operator" which John Ashbery paraphrases in an early prose poem. It strikes me that this was the same technique - a film from memory - that Fiona Banner was so successful with in her writing-on-the-wall pieces such as "Hunt for Red October." Interestingly, around the time that I was at my most Ashbery-esque, I wrote a poem called "How I came to Love the 20th Century", which mentions Griffiths' epic "Birth of a Nation", without, I'm sure, having been aware of "The Lonedale Operator." Thompson makes much of the Griffiths' films economic as well as cinematic connotations. That the Griffiths' film was based on the novel "The Klansman" and may have led to further lynchings in the year after its release, is one of the great embarassment's of American movies. But we're not yet at Hollywood at this point - and Hollywood - and the Californian light, so memorable an image for Hockney's swimming pools (another reference I used in my poetry), is the central subject of the book.' You read the dates in the book, and you realise how young an art form cinema is, and he compares and contrasts the films being made in the first quarter of the century with the literature, the music, the art. This mass medium had yet to find its vocabulary. I think it does, later, and does with the power of a symphony, or a great novel. I'm reminded by the Manchizzle, that George Clinton comes to Manchester next week. He of course produced and co-starred on the Red Hot Chilli Peppers' early highlight "Hollywood", and I guess for any non-initiates a good starting point in all things Clinton would be a Parliament compilation, or even Bootsy Collins' "Back in the day" compilation. "The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership" can be recommended unadvisedly as well, if you can find it.

It's a flap, jack

In the ten years since the IRA bomb, much has been made of the city centre's regeneration; and perhaps not enough of what's lost as a result. In a city like Manchester, messy, unplanned - you get the unexpected amidst the chain stores. Little by little, we regenerate away. The last jack has been flapped, the last pancake flipped, the Dutch Pancake House is no more. Despite not having changed either its menu or its window display for the 24 years of its existence on the corner of Oxford Street, somehow it survived all that the city and it's fashions could throw at it. It would have been almost new when I first came to the city; yet I can't imagine it ever was fashionable. I only went once - you'd be unlikely to go twice - and had a savoury pancake followed by a sweet pancake. I always imagined it must have been a front organisation for some Dutch Cosa Nostra, and, like the VIP adult cinema club a little further down the road, I've never actually seen anyone come in or out. (Though I did once see an ambulance outside apparently taking care of an overindulged punter - the adult cinema, that is, not the Dutch Pancake House. )

England's Glory

Sunday night. Post-England game. Feel like writing terse sentences a la James Elroy or David Peace. The typical England under adversity fight after the team were down to ten men is undeniably valiant, but makes you wonder why it always has to get to that point? Ah, football, mirror to a nation's soul. The links on the side of this page have expanded a little, so I'm going to try and rationalise - more categories so you know what you're looking for - but also I'm tempted to get rid of any that are not paying their way (e.g. are not being updated.) Susan Tranter dropped by the site to point me in the direction of Encompass Culture, and her blog on it. Its the British Council, which always seems to treat literature as being a bit more important than the Arts Council ever does. Perhaps because internationally at least, we're still the land of "Dickens and Shakespeare" (and probably Rowling, but I'll let that pass.) Though its annual new writing anthologies - number 14 is just out, just published by Granta - are an often uneasy mix of the new, the worthy and the popular. Perhaps necessarily so, though I've not found them essential for quite a few years, but a useful starting point, I guess, for a snapshot of contemporary writing. I think David Mitchell got his first break in one, a few years back, so they've something of a talent spotter role to play. The latest one contains eleven "novel extracts", a format that seems pointless to me, though we've all had cause to provide an extract for something or other over time. I usually cheat and call them short stories, which brings me neatly to my new, long-delayed task, of putting a few of my older stories online. I'm starting those that have had some kind of public life - either been published or otherwise disseminated. Our premature World Cup exit will at least let us get to the beach before the Germans and the Sunday Papers are full of their holiday reading, which always makes me imagine that there is a "holiday season" with everyone going off to the French Riviera for the summer, like they do in "Tender is the Night." Perhaps Robert McCrum does. Who knows? My time off work tends to be spent frantically catching up with my own, oft-neglected writing. Those for whom neither "New Writing 14" or the Richard and Judy booklist provide summer solace, might be thinking of a social disease to take on holiday rather than bring back from there, such as H.P. Tinker.

In Praise of Serious Art

In his introduction to the "Portable Faulkner", Malcolm Cowley makes the point that it is not Faulkner's individual novels which are the masterpiece, but parts thereof, and, most of all, the entire sequence of Yoknapatawpha county stories and novels. Having just finished Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" I'm tempted to say the same thing about his Newark, New Jersey. Since "American Pastoral" - but not excluding what went before - Roth's subjects have widened to the whole of American living memory whilst focussing on his own experience, his family, the Jewish community, and Newark. "The Plot Against America" has its faults - is in parts brilliant - and adds yet another dimension to Roth's American pastoral. An alternate history of America during the 2nd World War, delaying America's entry into that war; siding with Hitler, with a pro-Hitler president imagined in the election of aviation pioneer Lindbergh; but told against the backdrop of one family - the Roths - and the memories of the 9 year old younger son, Philip. This mixture of the political and the personal has characterised much of his recent work. His phenomenal unfolding sentences are still here; albeit curtailed somewhat in the voice of a child. Yet it is the view of the child - seeing things only partially, which lets the horror unwind. If an adult's role is to keep the true horrors of the world from their children, then in times of terror, doubly so. Yet that same child is here manipulative, part of the "cause", as well as the victim of "effect." The poor, decent Roth family are connected by birth and marriage to the city's Jewish aristocracy, who consider themselves American first, Jewish second - and therefore immune to the historical terrors afflicting their forefathers. This is not an alternate history in the manner of "The Man in the High Castle" or "SSGB", but a "what if" certain small things changed - and how that will affect everyone. It doesn't seem coincidental that it is post-9/11 - that "small thing" had it not happened, would have altered several histories; but how much, its too early to show. There are longeurs; to the 9 year old (and perhaps the elderly) Roth everything has equal importance, equal value. Whereas the glovemaking episode in "American Pastoral" was a masterly aside, here the asides sometimes feel a little force, a little unedited. Here, Roth is a nostalgist, like DeLillo in "Underworld", Scorsese in "Goodfellas" or Woody Allen, fascinated by the detail. It's a thin line. Yet, the "stamp collection" that means so much to the young Philip means much less to us. The "Winchell riots" section, where America's own Kristallnacht is underway sees a different writing - the clipped newspaper tautness of James Elroy's "American Tabloid" - interesting that Elroy's brutally effective reportage should find such a welcome home as a Philip Roth novel. Perhaps there's a limit to what Roth can envisage in an America that has gone to pot, (and I'm talking George W. Bush's America here), but which is still the promised land - and the allegory is occasionally a little heavy - for Roth still thinks America is good, and that Americans are good, and that the cancer of Nazism, though able to take a localised hold on this reimagined America, can never spread to the whole patient. Again, the second world war, from this perspective is reimagined through the terrible prism of the Holocaust; yet its hard to imagine what would have happened to a valiant Britain left to fight alone? It is worth recalling, that the second world war wasn't just a Jewish tragedy. Yet in all of this, despite some caveats, the force of this novel is that it makes you think - and in doing so reduces so many other writers to mere entertainers. Yet Roth also entertains, and adds another vital chapter to his expanding Americna pastoral. Coincidentally, or not, in between reading "The Plot Against America" I went to see "The Wind that Shakes the Barley", Ken Loach's latest excellent film about the Irish Free State. Like his Spanish Civil War dramatisation "Land and Freedom", this personalises a conflict that can easily become unimaginable. Yet it is even denser and bleaker than that earlier film. Loach doesn't shirk on the intensity, and the first hour of the movie is intense. Not that it lets off the tension much. Again, it is in the aftermath of the movie that you feel its accumulated power. Loach doesn't explain or lecture, he merely attempts to show - and in doing so, makes you think. In the 10th Anniversary of the largest ever bomb to go off in mainland Britain, here in Manchester, its a reminder that the roots of that explosion go back - in Sebastian Barry's phrase - a long, long way.

More (or less)

I meant to mention James Davies's poems "Two Fat Boys" - a long sequence, funny, controlled, irreverant, minimalist - of which a number are in the latest edition of Scarecrow. Also that Transmission's ever more professional looking publication is up to issue 5. Interviews with A. L. Kennedy and Toby Litt are professional rather than revelatory, though I hadn't realised that Litt's books are alphabetical, "Adventures in Capitalism", "Beatniks", "Corpsing..." etc - somehow I felt a little disturbed by this, not sure why. (And I'm someone who loved the double L's of the Go Betweens albums - Send me a LuLLaby, TaLLulah, Spring HiLL Fair etc. - Grant Mclennan's untimely death recently was a genuine loss.)

Out of absentia

The sound that my computer was making a few weeks ago turned out to be terminal, but I'm now back up and running, and wondering what it is I should be blogging about. It's not just been my computer that's been malfunctioning; it's looking like my job might not outlast the year and I've some family health concerns. But those are the travails of life - not the stuff of this blog. The world has been taken over by world cup fever, though I feel it has lessened a little with each England performance. We live in a hyped up world where it is the "before" rather than the during or after that is critical. I'm tempted to turn back to my nascent football novel, but fear it will be another world cup before I get that anywhere near completion. Last night's Verberate was a night of prose and song, with writers from Pulp.Net - I've read some good stories on the site, but I was a bit underwhelmed by last night's readers. The prose was somewhat in that reductionist vein that has been a little in the ascendant since "All Hail the New Puritans." Like English fiction needs to narrow its linguistic horizons! They read well, and there was nothing particular wrong with it, but nothing to grab one either. Tariq Mahmood's "young adults" allegory - about the Iraq war, was the most interesting, yet ruined somewhat by his insisting on having a political Q&A afterwards. The story was strong enough not to require explication, I thought. In a political vein, I'm reading "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth. I've been a great fan since the astounding "American Pastoral", but part of me wonders if we're suffering from Neil Young syndrome, where every new work is hailed as a masterpiece even before the paint has dried. Like "The Human Stain" and "I Married a Communist" the writing is almost too raw in being dragged from real life, and though the momentum, as always with Roth, is astonishingly controlled, like his unwinding sentences, I've struggled a little with the intimacy of it all. Being voiced by a nine-year old (one of my pet hates) probably hasn't helped; I'm appreciating it rather than particularly enjoying it. But I shouldn't comment whilst still eating the meal, should I? - it's rude to talk with your mouth full!

Oranges, lemons

3rd time lucky for Zadie Smith with "On Beauty" winning the Orange prize for fiction. It might sometimes seems that I'm not a fan of her writing, that would be unfair, their are few contemporary novelists I've avidly read their first 3 books. Whilst I like, sometimes love, her writing, I've drawn short of thinking them the masterpieces that the media insists on, that's all. I think, and hope she'll write a great book one of these days, but I don't think she has as yet. I find competitors Ali Smith and Sarah Walters not to my taste, though I'll no doubt persevere when I get the chance. My problem with "On Beauty" when I reviewed it on this blog, was how in love it is with the middle class collegiate life of its characters, rather than the characters themselves. Nobody in the book, except for the young black street poet, suffers from their errors, so its a strange kind of morality. The middle class may well be fearful of it all being taken away, and it may be unlikely that it ever will be (read a novel like Michael Bracewell's "The Conclave" or Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" for that), but it just strikes me as an odd preoccupation of a novelist. Perhaps I just like a bit more angst. I do like the sunshine, but it doesn't really like me - so I missed Dave Maass's leavetaking on Monday through hayfever; and getting caught in today's stifling heat led to a migraine that made me miss C.P. Lee's book launch at Urbis, for "I Swear I was There", about the legendary free trade hall, where I was also hoping to meet up with my old DJ partner Rupa Huq, who was up to promote her cultural studies book "Beyond Subculture". Next week sees the latest Transmission launch, as well as Michael Symons Roberts reading at the MMU. Tomorrow you can escape from the sun for the first of a series of student readings from MMU students at the Central Library.

6-6-6 not a formation I''d recommend

My Lulu.com "first collection" has been sat at "fulfilling" status for about 3 weeks - and I was beginning to worry about this whole print-on-demand type thing, but I got an email today saying it's dispatched. So, once it's done, it's out. I was expecting other delays for some reason. 3 weeks is okay. It comes from the US so that's longer, and this is for one copy not many. I guess I was just impatient!

Ah, so that's it

Lured by a glossy Baddiel/Skinner World Cup Wallchart, I picked up the Times rather than the Guardian today. It's book pages is comparable in quality, and at least you get a breather from David Lodge and Julian Barnes; and there was this interesting article by Helen Rumblelow. First, thanks for highlighting that Allan Ginsberg would have been 80 today, and that "Howl" is 50 this year. She asks the very apposite question: "what would he make of today’s young generation of literary talent?" And provides a considered answer: "I can’t help but think he would be disappointed." Ginsberg and Kerouac, she continues, wrote as adults, but too many of today's feted writers "write as teenagers, looking back through the rear window of the school bus." She's put a finger on why I find myself frustrated with so much contemporary writing. Struggling with my own prolonged adolescence (look, I've just a reissue of the first Violent Femmes album playing in the background), the last thing, I think, I want from my writers, is nostalgia for a 60s, 70s or 80s childhood. And as someone who writes, I realise I got writing that out of my system quite early on thank you. I'd like to write - and read - about adulthood, for my generation, and there's precious little of it out there. Perhaps with us all expecting to live to 80+ there's still plenty of time - but I don't know - the beats were clearly avoiding the prescripted life; and therefore had little nostalgia from where they'd come from, far more interested in where they were going. What begins as a criticism from Rumblelow becomes less grudging as she concludes the article - its the urgency of teenage life that appeals to the contemporary writer. I'm not so sure. I noticed how many of the novels on my MA were not only first person narratives, but also from relatively inarticulate characters - the teenager, the drug addict, the mental patient. It was like Holden Caulfield was the only literary role model allowed. As Mark E. Smith wrote in "It's a curse", "balti and vimto and spangles were always crap, regardless of the look back bores." Just time to remind you - and me - that Mark Lawson's interviewing Philip Roth on BBC4 tonight at 7. So much for watching Dr. Who! BBC get your demographics sorted.

Various Things (inc. Booker Prize Expt #3)

I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let You Go." Its a strange book, almost terrible, but redeemed by its ending. Science fiction can be a mainstream writer's achilles heel: neither McEwan's "Child in Time" or Amis's "Time's Arrow" (which uses a sci-fi technique I guess) are among their more satisfying work. Ishiguro's previous novel set in an unnamed place, "The Unconsoled" was a stylistic triumph, if not, ultimately that satisfying a novel, and "Never Let You Go" suffers both in comparison to that and his other work. It's probably giving nothing away now to say its about "clones" which information - though not trailed in the book, was trailed in all the publicity. Yet he's made some curious decisions. It takes place in the current time, "the war" it refers to surely the 2nd world war, and in this way its both a parallel world to the one we know, and one that is clearly ours. References to cassette tapes, Walkmans and other things are necessary for the plot, but highlight the difficulty of a world that remains deliberately un-imagined and underwritten. You could get away with this in a short story, but not in a novel. The main characters are seen growing up, first in a mix between public school and children's home; then in remote chalets; before being placed in the homes and hospitals which are their destinies. This cloistered environments are the only way for Ishiguro to give us both the inner lives of his characters - all told in one consistent, but dated voice - and to keep them away from the difficulties of the real world. Had he set it in the future there would have been a whole different set of imaginative problems; by setting it in post-war England leading up to the present, he can attempt to give his character's a "normal" life. They are normal children then normal adults. They are allowed - even encouraged - to have sex but cannot be allowed to form relationships. The novel is repetitive, boring, and annoying, yet, the clear aim is to humanise the characters, and in this, I think, he succeeds, so that at the end of the book, he has created a very genuine sense of sympathy. The "care" he always has shown for his characters in previous books is still here. He's always the most humane of writers, and this novel would have made a powerful short, or novella. Yet at length its contradictions, and the choices that he makes, seem to be lifted from the fifties sci-fi of a writer like John Wyndham, without any updating. Covering the same subject in "Cloud Atlas" David Mitchell achieves so much more, does it so much better, but without managing the same empathy. So this is, in the end, a mediocre book, with a good heart. Seems that the Bank Holiday gave everyone time to ruminate on Robert McCrum's article last week in the Observer. I can't really get worked up about it either way - because since then I've been busy with the story I talked about in my last post. I've spent the morning taking it apart, and putting it back together, and hopefully its a lot sharper in the new version, though I'm pleased that the story itself required little change, just the bagginess of the writing in my first-cut.

Storyplaces

A story comes from different places at the same time. It seems it also requires space and time. It is my 4th day off work, being a long weekend, and only this morning have I managed to both shut out the clutter in my head and the clutter in my life (this weekend: the faultering computer) to tentatively write a few words. I began a story a couple of weeks ago called, initially at least, "The Invitee." Its a story that relates well to the Robert McCrum article I mentioned below, since its essentially about modern celebrity, identity, and literary insecurity. I've often thought one of the main themes of my fiction is "doubt" and this story, as it painfully works itself alive, is full of different levels of "doubt." Yet I realise, now that I'm writing it, and trying to fix its coordinates in my head (I rarely write a synopsis), that I'm pulling on longheld ideas for a longer piece, perhaps around the same subject. Maybe this is the first tentative stab at an idea that I've been brewing for a decade at least? Yet I've got to keep things in perspective. Its a 3,000 word story tops, with a clear arc to it, but one that requires careful handling. I'm writing a story about absences - the absence of a guest at dinner; the absence of success in the case of one character; and finally the absence of integrity. I have to get through this one: and soon - my own absence is increasingly the "art" itself rather than (like this post) the talking about it. I've read a little as well, but my concentration is poor at best. I'm trying to finish the "least completed" of my recent stories: and once I've done that maybe I'll find a key to unlock the nearly there ones. More than anything, I think I need a concentration of time writing fiction - even if not a "long piece", perhaps several short ones, locking together at some point.