My favourite parts are Nabokov twitching and looking around while Trilling offers his ‘theory’ on Lolita, and Nabokov’s view of his ‘monument’ at the end.
A baboon of genius
Nabokov discusses Lolita with Lionel Trilling (and Pierre Berton). Enjoyable amounts of steam from their marvellous cups of tea. Part 2 to follow shortly.
The feeling that (literary) life is elsewhere
William H. Gass as painted by Philip Guston
I was going to write (in a somewhat gushing manner) about how much I enjoyed William H. Gass’s piece on Katherine Anne Porter in the latest issue of Harper’s. Not because I have any particular interest in Porter (so perfect is my ignorance, I had never even heard of her), or that learning about her life and writing created the desire to read her books, letters and reviews, an impulse that was accompanied by a kind of anticipatory pleasure, as if her books were some new kind of fruit.
My enjoyment stemmed from neither of these, nor the satisfaction of knowing this was one less thing I knew nothing about (and for me, it is never terrible to become aware of yet another empty, dark space where the flame of my knowledge is but a lighter held aloft. On the contrary, I find it profoundly reassuring. This meager effort is usually sufficient to make me feel let off the hook (of not-knowing) so completely that it is wholly unecessary to make any futher effort). What made the piece an utter joy was simply Gass’s performance: his erudition; the grace of his prose; his metafictional tics.
On Porter’s marriage to John Koontz:
The pair moved but packed their problems with their pajamas. One one occasion husband thew wife down stairs, ‘breaking her right ankle and severely injuring her knee’. On another, he beat her with unconscious with a hairbrush. The view one has of men and marriage from the foot of such a fall, or from an instrument that should only pursue fashion or caresses, tends to be as permanent as Adam’s; nevertheless Porter tried to save her marriage by converting to Catholicism, a move I find mystifying, though I was never consulted.
On praise for Porter as ‘an excellent stylist’:
This praise is well meant, but it is also removed as quickly as it is offered. For most critics, the presence of “style” requires assurance that there is also “substance”. Style is wrapping paper and ribbon, scented tag and loving inscription. If you are careful, the tissue can be reused for a birthday or another Christmas. My aunt ironed such paper as she fancied and stored it like linen napkins in folded flat stacks beneath her bed.
Whilst this no doubt seems like ‘flashiness’ or ‘showing-off” to some- those who prefer their reviewers sober, staid, so absent from the discussion as to seem like critical ghosts -to me it is the brilliance of a man, who at the age of 82, could not be more playful.
The article is only available to subscribers (which, believe me, is very cheap, even for those outside the U.S.- with it comes access to the entire Harper’s archive) but I can provide a pdf on request.
Having spent all this time and effort on the gush, I don’t have sufficient negativity left to write about what this post was intended to be, namely a moan/rant about the feeling that the UK has an impoverished literary culture, with few decent magazines and (as people seem to virtually crow) that there is no market or demand for or interest in short stories, unless they are by people whose long stories (i.e. novels) are already beloved. Happily, this can bring us back to Gass (and curtail my slatternly tears):
Although O’Connor, Welty, and Porter obliged us by writing novels, it is for short stories they are generally remembered, in which more polish for small surfaces is routinely expected, whereas Tolstoy, Faulkner, and Stein- well, they are moving mountains, and it doesn’t matter if they leave a small mess here and there like great chefs in their kitchens. Does it?
Aye Write!
The Aye Write! Book Festival is Glasgow’s version of (or answer to) the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the main differences between the two being that Aye Write! lasts for just over a week, and has a greater emphasis on local authors. Notwithstanding this, it gets some big names too: this year Alan Bennett, Robert Fisk, and Graham Swift are all attending. Oh, and so am I. And some people I know. It takes place in the Mitchell Library, which has some lovely high-ceilinged, wood-paneled rooms which it would be a pleasure to read in. We, however, will be in the café on Tuesday, March 10th, from 9-10.30 p.m.
This year’s delusion
Apart from my perennial delusions (some of which involve a book-deal), I like to have a foolish notion to kick around during the year. Last year’s involved getting a job in the fabled (and sometimes fabulous) Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris. Some of the major components of this delusion: a short working week; access to luncheon vouchers; the chance to generally swan around the low-numbered arrondissements. Impressively (if only to my mind), I did apply for a vacancy that actually existed. Less impressively, I failed to get it.
In a slight variation on this theme, I have, after visiting Berlin, resolved to live there by the end of the year. Naturally I have plans on how to achieve this. In my head, they sound great. In the meantime I shall goad myself with the following pictures taken during my recent sojourn. All images by Mr Ryan van Winkle (ryanvanwinkle.com), in the sense that he pressed the button.
Various sites of worship
Probably not thinking
Mr. Dirk Markham wearing a found shirt
The author, pictured with Death on her lunch-break.
The Creeping Bent Organisation
The LRB
I am begining to think that The London Review of Books is pretty much the only place (in the UK) to find an actual book review. By which I mean a piece of writing that engages with the way in which a book is constructed, how it achieves its aims (or fails to), what it means in the context of other, similar works- in short, whether the book is good (or not) and why.
I used to read the Saturday Guardian and The Observer religiously, but the space devoted to books has shrunk, as the ‘cultural analysis’ of reality TV and footballer’s wives has grown (and if an utter disinterest in this sort of thing makes me an elitist, I shall willingly march to the scaffold). Now the majority of book reviews seem to consist of little more than a plot synopsis followed by some vacuous phrase intended for the back cover.
Lest this post consist entirely of griping, here are some extracts from the November 20th edition (I am always a few months behind, as even the pieces on the history of sweaters seem to compel my attention).
From Michael Wood’s piece on Kafka’s Office Writings:
‘We might think of Kafka’s response to his friend Max Brod’s question about hope and whether there was any outside the world as we know it. “Plenty of hope,” Kafka said. “But not for us.”
‘The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy heaven. This is beyond doubt, but doesn’t prove anything against heaven, since heaven means, precisely, the impossibility of crows.’
From Elif Batuman’s review of Philosophy in Turbulent Times by Elisabeth Roudinesco:
‘Helene was a Russian Jewish emigree, a Resistance fighter (unlike Althusser, who spent the war in a prison camp), eight years older than her husband, and not beautiful. By the time she got married all her closest friends had been killed by the Nazis. Her parents had died long, slow deaths from cancer before she was 14; the family doctor, her only friend at this time, betrayed her by abusing her sexually and eventually forcing her to euthanise her own parents with morphine injections. Life with Althusser was never easy either. In his manic periods, the philosopher compulsively seduced younger, more attractive women and brought them home to ‘show’ his wife. The actual murder took place when he was giving Helene a “neck massage”- on the front of her neck. The great Marxist pressed “his thumbs into the hollow at the top of Helene’s breastbone and then, still pressing, slowly moved them both… up towards her ears,” squeezing so hard that he felt pain in his forearms. He noticed this pain before he noticed his wife’s glazed and protruding tongue.’
‘For the most part, Roudinesco leaves the obscurities of Deleuze and Guattari unplumbed- “Be the pink panther,” said the two authors, “And may your loves be like the wasp and the orchid, the cat and the baboon.”‘
There are also many fine quotes in the piece from Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, a work I think I should like to have close at hand:
‘NOVELS: Pervert the masses.
GYMNASTICS: One can never do enough. Wears children out.
HYGIENE: Must always be maintained. Prevents illnesses, except when it causes them.
In closing (and fairness) I should acknowledge the possibility that The Times Literary Supplement (and maybe, perhaps, The Literary Review) sometimes have decent reviews. However, I am yet to be convinced of this.
The LRB is available in WH Smiths, and most decent newsagents, but your best bet really is to subscribe (£20 quid for 6 months (12 issues), £34 for the year).
Absent writers #2
Nice piece from The Guardian about Salinger’s absence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jan/01/jd-salinger
The cover is from an early paperback edition, before Salinger became successful enough to be able to stipulate there be no images on his books. There have been some fairly ghastly interpretations of this rule- to the point where one wonders if the graphics department were saying fine, alright, now lie in this bed.
Generally, however, the designs have been clean and cohesive, with the one on the left being the current template. Given that this post, like the one preceding it, is little more than a piece of enthusiasm, I suppose it’s appropriate to urge anyone who’s only read The Catcher in the Rye to check out the other books, which offer a series of interconnected stories about a family of genius children, who are all quite broken and charming, and as adults struggle to deal with the suicide of Seymour, the eldest child. These are strange, tightly crafted books, that often veer into mystical territory, while never losing a sense of fun.
OK, I need to finish this post, that last sentence sounded too much like a blurb.
Inherent Vice
There aren’t many authors left with even a whiff of mystique (witness poor Cormac McCarthy on Oprah). Everyone has been interviewed and photographed to the point where their work is almost the shadow of their biography. With the exception of J.D. Salinger, who we must assume to be still living, despite most evidence to the contrary (the last thing he published was Hapworth in 1965), the only other living writer of mystery is Thomas Pynchon, about whom almost nothing is known except that he is male, American, white, married, and in his seventies. He is the author of such universes-in-book-form as Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and forthcoming in August 2009, Inherent Vice, which promises to be a neo-noir detective story with shades of the psychedelic.
Pynchon is reportedly neither pathologically shy, nor a misanthrope. He just doesn’t seem willing to take part in the commodification of his work, which is wholly commendable, though perhaps no longer possible in today’s publishing climate (says he, somewhat defensively, as he types his blog). There’s an extract (probably the beginning) in the Penguin Press Summer 2009 catalogue.
Why should you care? Because Pynchon writes beautiful prose. Because he explores the tangled ways in which our present mess (by which I mean the state of things since World War I) emerged, solidified, occasionally slackened, then tightened once again. It is about the modern world that you and I, for all our sins, are temporarily stuck in.
Happy New Year. Perhaps.
Brief interview with geese
Publishing Scotland have posted an interview with myself and Angus Woodward about Stolen Stories.
For those of you who haven’t got into this whole point-and-click thing (which makes your presence on this site particularly impressive), the text follows:
1. Firstly, tell us about where the idea for a collection of stolen stories came from – could it be said that it was in itself ‘stolen’ from somewhere?
NH: Actually, this is the one aspect of the project that was not stolen. The idea came about as a result of a discussion during a creative writing seminar about the kind of events that readers find implausible. One woman said that some of the most dramatic and interesting events she knew of were so utterly unbelievable that they could not be included in fiction. To support this she told a story involving a shark and a baby, which, to be fair, did sound like preposterous nonsense. She swore, however, that this ridiculous tragedy had in fact happened to friends of hers. After a somewhat shocked silence, during which we contemplated the awful loss of young life, the utter, terrible waste of it all, I asked if she had any plans to turn this into a story. “No,” she said, then did not say, “But go ahead. Feel free.”
And so I wrote the story. Over the next few months I heard other anecdotes from writers, some of which was too good to pass up. What made them seem like stolen stories was not that they were events from other’s lives, but that they came from other writers- you can draw your own conclusions about my personal set of ethics from this. Anyway, my original intention was to write a whole bunch of these, but after a few I got sidetracked by the birth of my first child (who I will never, ever take swimming in anything but a pool). And so we made this anthology instead, which, if nothing else, will save me having to add even more people to my list of blocked senders.
2. Stolen Stories is a celebration of the ‘stealing’ of anecdotes or overheard conversations that just demand to be told but many writers resent the implication that their work has to be based on real life, and seem to get especially fed up with critics looking for autobiographical evidence in the writing. Why do you think the ‘stealing’ aspect of creativity is sometimes treated as a guilty secret?
NH: I think the reason so many writers resent critics looking for autobiographical scraps is that the whole sorry enterprise of ‘biography as criticism’ is, to my mind, an incredibly lazy way of looking at a writer’s work, the implication being that the primary motivation of the author for writing is merely to recapitulate the details of his or her life. Whilst many of us are shameless egoists, I would suggest that most writers have somewhat grander aims than this, whether we manage to achieve them or not. Whilst a given work will inevitably contain elements drawn from a writer’s own life, a knowledge of these is rarely a shortcut to understanding. In most cases, if the story or novel is any good, these elements will have been so transformed, so integrated into the narrative and its characters, that their resemblance to the details of the author’s life might as well be coincidental.
I’m not sure that the ‘stealing’ aspect of creativity is a guilty secret. It’s just not something we talk about. Not because we’re ashamed. Or guilty. And not because we want to try to believe in the romantic notion of The Artist Who Creates Something From the Depths of His Soul As If He Were As God. No, I’m sure the reason we don’t talk about ‘stealing’ is that all of us are so fully conversant with the notion that an artist’s oeuvre is of necessity a synthesis of all he or she has experienced that to even raise the topic of ‘theft’ would seem not only naïve and foolish, but also incredibly gauche.
AW: We also receive a lot of signals whose message is “writers shouldn’t steal.” Publishers who fear litigation (i.e., all publishers) insert disclaimers along the lines of, “Nothing in this novel is based on anything or anyone anywhere, and if you think the girl in the purple skirt on p. 87 is you, you need therapy.” And all writers have met people who have said, “I’ve got to tell you this–and you can use it in your book if you want to…,” the premise being that we would only “use” the parts of their lives for which they’ve granted permission. And we don’t feel like saying, “Well, I’m not going to use that, but I am going to use some of the details of your marriage to that foreign guy with the iffy reputation.”
3. The book opens with Picasso’s observation ‘Bad artists copy, good artists steal’. Where do you draw the line between copying and stealing?
NH: t’s a difficult line to draw. You need a very fine pencil. Either a high ‘H’ or better yet, one of those technical pencils.
AW: That thin gray line would demarcate the difference between servile replication and bold appropriation.
4. Many of the book’s contributors are from overseas but now based in Scotland. Do you think the Scots provide particularly rich pickings when it comes to quotable conversations or memorable turns of phrase? Any anecdotes you’ve come across recently that you know will have to make it into print at some point?
NH: No, I do not think the Scots provide particularly rich pickings. No more than the Fore of New Guinea, or the pig people of Borneo. I must however confess a liking for the ‘We’ll pay for it later’ attitude with which good weather is greeted. It suggests a worldview based not on the moment, whatever its transitory pleasures.
One reason so many of the contributors are now based in Scotland is that most of the people in their native lands have surely acquired the good sense to tell them as little as possible.
Yes, I’ve heard some good anecdotes. Currently my favourite is the one about some poor, brave souls who tried to interest the reading public in a volume of short stories by writers they had mostly not heard of.
AW: I have been tempted to steal a story that was itself stolen by its teller. A co-worker came into my friend’s office and confided to her that he and his wife had never had sex. Before leaving, he swore her to secrecy. Then she told me, and swore me to secrecy. His name was Nathan.
5. The book aims to explore the ethics of taking moments of private life and turning them into public spectacle. What, if any, conclusions did you come to?
NH: Our main conclusion was that there is absolutely no problem with this, so long as there’s no chance of meeting or speaking to any of the people who feature in your story. It’s also very important that if these are people you are likely to meet, that they in fact already hate you, and, in some cases, have already broken up with you.
We also came to the conclusion that what angers people most is not so much the act of making the private public, but that you have already spilled the best of the beans they were going to smear across the pages of their how-I-became-a-celebrity-despite-my-utter-lack-of-talent memoir. Even this, I guess, is forgivable if the bean-spilling is what turns them into a celebrity. Sadly, a short story anthology is somewhat less effective for this purpose than sleeping with someone who regularly appears on the cover of Heat or Yes! or whatever those dreadful magazines are called that I have to look at when I stand in the queue in Scotmid.
AW: I’ve concluded that it is better (okay, safer) to steal from strangers than friends, and better (nicer?) to steal from friends than family. Family want to have some control over who reads what and try to insert vocal disclaimers to everyone they know who might read the story. Friends want to talk about your theft every time they see you. Strangers never know the difference.
Deutschland uber alles
If you find yourself in Berlin or Bremen in early January (which, as we know, can happen quite easily. One Jagermeister too many and one can come to deep in the Tiergarten) I, and my good friend Ryan van Winkle (who plays Dr Johnson to my Boswell) will be giving a few readings.
The first, which will involve music (and thus may, at times, approach the status of a performance), will be at Sputnik-Kino in Berlin on Sunday4th January, from around 4p.m.
The second, in Bremen, is at the KIOTO/Lagerhaus, on Tuesday 6th January at 8 p.m. It’s the launch for the 25th issue of New Leaf magazine, in which I have an unfairly long short story called ‘The Sea, The Shore,’ which is not from a work-in-progress, but from a finished-but-unpublished novel, so there.
If you can think of anyone who lives in these places, and who doesn’t hate words, tell them to come along and I’ll buy them a weissbiere. Or something.
More fun at the fair
During the many seconds it took to find the image for ‘The Fun of the Fair’, I came across this picture. There are probably numerous volumes that collect such images, coffee-table books with titles like ‘Klan’s Playtime‘. If I end up teaching creative writing, this photo will be invaluable for one of those tepid exercises where, in a bid to further mislead the students, they are presented with random pictures and asked to scribble something that, when read out, the tutor will smile benignly at while saying, ‘Very good!’
Hmm. Perhaps the picture is a fake. The board that says ‘photo by B- (illegible)’ is really awfuly fishy. If the photo has been staged there may indeed be a beautiful book published by Taschen that collects similar Klan shots: in the fun house, on the dodgems, playing crazy golf.
I am going to click some buttons to try and find out.
The Fun of the Fair
We were getting off the Ferris wheel when Judy said,
“I think I was raped.”
“What? When?”
Things were going around in circles.
“I’m not sure. But I think I was.”
I waited for her to continue but she just looked at the wheel.
“Raped? By who?”
A balloon guy started walking towards us. Most of his balloons were red, but there were some white ones too.
“Look, I don’t know. I’m not sure. Maybe I wasn’t. Never mind.”
The balloon seller stopped and sat down. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and although it wasn’t quite a trick, I liked it anyway.
“Come on Joe, I’m tired,” she said.
We walked back to the car. On the way a boy was crying because he’d dropped his cotton candy. He was jumping up and down, pushing it into the mud. I gave the boy a buck and said to get another. He stopped crying and ran off. Judy yelled at him, Say thank you, but it was too late.
When we got to the car I let Judy drive. I figured it would take her mind off things. I didn’t know if she was angry with me or the guy that raped her. Not that it mattered. I’d seen her like that before. When she got mad, the best thing I could do was keep my big mouth shut.
I rolled the window down. It was a warm night and I could smell flowers. The streets were clean from the rain, the dust not really settled. Even though I had work next day, I wanted us to drive for hours, my head hanging out like you sometimes see dogs do. But Judy pulled over after the third set of lights. She turned off the motor and the crickets got loud.
“Mother fucker.”
“Who?”
“Bob.”
“Who’s Bob?”
“He was a friend of my Dad’s.”
“And he was the one who raped you?”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you didn’t. You said he might have.”
“Look Joe, if a woman says it’s rape, it is.”
“OK, alright. So he raped you. When was this?”
I tried to get comfortable.
“It was the summer before I went to college. I was working in a place just across the street from Dad. He used to come in after work, sometimes on his own, sometimes with Bob. They usually sat at the bar and talked about fishing, you know, lines and bait and shit. It was pretty boring. Are you listening?”
I said I was.
“You’d fucking better be. Gimme a cigarette.”
I fished one out the pack, thinking how much cooler it would have been to reach behind my ear. She lit it, took a deep drag, then blew the words out with the smoke.
“Dad said Bob’d been married twice but hadn’t learnt a thing. That the only thing he could commit to was a rod. And he was definitely one of those guys who looks and doesn’t mind if he gets caught. He was careful when Dad was there, but as soon as Dad went to the john, Bob had a good look. That summer was really hot, I usually wore a shirt and shorts.”
“I bet you looked hot,” I said.
She broke off, inhaled and held it. Then she blew it out and said,
“If you say another fucking word, I’ll break up with you right now, I swear.”
I said I was sorry.
“Yeah, sure.”
A police car approached and slowed. The officer leaned out.
“You folks alright there?”
“Yes officer.”
“Problems?”
“No, we’re just talking.”
“Alright, have a nice night guys.”
“You too officer.”
We watched the car glide off.
“One day, when Dad was out of town, Bob came in on his own. He drank beer when he was with my Dad but that day all he drank was rye. I treated him like any other customer, you know, smile, be nice, but not too much. He asked for twenty bucks of change and then disappeared. I forgot about him because this little guy named Mitch started hitting on me, but it was okay, it was almost funny. He kept trying to kiss my hand, saying all this crazy shit about how I was a princess that would one day be a queen.”
I reached out and stroked her hair; she didn’t seem to mind.
“Anyway, then Mitch starts giving me all this crap about how if I was in a tower he’d damn well climb up. And I got really mad, I knew what he was saying. I told him to leave it but he just kept on. Then the music began. It was definitely a Doors track, I don’t know which one. It was about a girl, it sounded weird. Bob came back, walking slow, just as the chorus kicked in and it was obvious he’d timed it, just so he could make some sort of entrance. I wasn’t impressed but Mitch got the hell out of there, so I was kind of grateful. Bob said, Just look at the old boy go, and I had to laugh. I thought he was going to keep talking but all he did was order. After that the music kept on, he must have put the twenty in. It was old stuff, but good, a lot of Stones and Elvis, some stuff that sounded British but wasn’t the Beatles. The whole time he just sat there, drinking, playing with a ring.”
She was looking straight ahead, maybe at the car in front, maybe at the lawns.
“Eventually the tunes ran out. The place was quiet, so I went over. He said how you doing kid? I asked if he wanted another, on the house, for all the music, and he said no, he’d had enough. He looked like he was about to leave, not that he was getting up or had his jacket on, he just seemed sort of ready. I asked how come he’d got divorced. He laughed, twisted his ring and said, Which one? I said either and he said, Well, alright. First time because I was dumb, the second because we both were.
I thought this was an asshole thing to say, so I asked how she was dumb. He told me how she always bought the wrong milk, every week, for two years, and how he got to thinking if a person can’t get something that simple right, the rest hasn’t a chance. And although this sounded stupid, it was kind of interesting. I didn’t know anyone else who’d been divorced, it was that sort of town. And he had one of those voices, the kind that are easy to hear, like on the radio.”
I saw a car approaching and was sure it was the police. But the car didn’t slow or stop, it just carried on.
“Then he stood up to go. He walked to his truck in a straight line, I guess he could really hold it. But he didn’t drive off right away. I could see him in the cab, sitting, smoking, his eyes shut. Then he rolled the window down. He flicked out the butt then drove away and if some guy hadn’t ordered, I’d have gone and stood on it, you know I hate that.
After that it got really busy. It was some guy’s birthday and they were playing games. I must have poured a hundred shots. Earl had to break up a fight after one of them said something to a Korean guy who seemed pretty nice.”
Judy always had a soft spot for them.
“I must have gotten out of there sometime after ten. Usually I didn’t mind walking, not if the weather was good. That night I just wanted to be home. So when I saw Bob sitting in his big red truck, my first thought was to catch a ride, and only when we’d been driving for a few minutes did I wonder why and when he’d driven back.
Bob asked if I went fishing and I said a bit, not much. I told him sometimes me and a few guys went to the lake by Denton’s farm. He said, You ever catch anything? and when I said No he said Really? Not even VD? Then he laughed and said I know a place where no one goes, the fish are so bored they want to be caught. If you want to go, it’s close. But you’d better tell me, that’s your turn off. And before I knew it I’d said yes and we were going past.”
I risked a question.
“I don’t know, maybe the ride had woken me up. Or perhaps it was like my Dad asking. I guess I wasn’t thinking.
We turned off the highway, down a small road that became a track. Branches brushed against the truck, I guess no one did go there. We stopped and then got out. He must have seen me shiver because he reached in the back. He brought out a rod, some bags, and then a sweater, a big old heavy thing that came down to my knees. It had a strange smell, like lots of things mixed together, aftershave and smoke, dust and maybe sweat. But it smelled alright, not dirty.
The path twisted left and then I saw the lake. There was a big moon and the water looked like it’d had a load of milk poured in. It was a good night for swimming, and if it was now I would. But I didn’t swim that well then, really, not at all, so I didn’t, and anyway, I guess there could have been all kinds of stuff.
I looked at the water while Bob went to get the boat. I wasn’t sure I wanted to but Bob said it was a nice night, we should. We pushed off and when the engine started it seemed way too loud. But then it settled down and we chugged on out towards the centre. When we got there he cut the motor and it seemed like all the insects were holding their breath.
I watched Bob bait the hook. When he handed it to me I realized that it was the only rod. He said, I’ve fished here plenty times, I’ll let you have the pleasure. Then I cast off and made a real mess of it. Bob didn’t say anything, he just took the rod and reeled the line back in. Then he gave it back to me and said, Let me show you. He put his hands on mine and they were large and smelled of soap. He raised my hands to one side then flicked my wrist quickly and I felt the line and my hands flow forward. I watched the hook sink in and wondered if the sleeping fish would notice. He moved his hands to my shoulders. I didn’t flinch or tell him not to. I guess I wanted to be touched, maybe just held and if he was there and wanted to, well, that was OK.”
I took my hand from her neck and hung it out the window. A cool breeze was starting and I remember thinking there’d be rain by morning.
“He kept them there a while, and although I thought I felt a few tugs, nothing really happened. Then his hands moved to my hips and he said I was pretty.”
I felt a yawn begin but got to it in time.
“He shifted to get closer and the boat began to rock, not much but enough to make me scared. I didn’t know what to do, my hands were busy with the rod. He started kissing me and then his hands were between my legs and tugging at my shorts. He pushed me down into the bottom of the boat, but not in a rough way. I told him I didn’t want to but then he was on top of me. He held my hands tightly. It didn’t take long.”
Outside the wind picked up a little, not much but enough to make me wish I’d brought a jacket.
“Afterwards I lay there looking at the stars. I don’t think I knew what had happened. It had been that way with my boyfriend too. We’d been making out in the woods and then he’d been on top even though we’d agreed to wait. I think until a few years ago I thought that was just how things were. And on the drive back Bob acted like nothing had happened. He asked when I was going to Buffalo, if I knew people there. When he stopped outside our house he said, See you around. I got out and then he nodded and drove off.
When I got in my mom and brother were asleep. I took a shower and went to bed. And when I woke up next morning I told myself that it was just a dream or didn’t matter.”
Judy started the engine.
“Didn’t you tell anyone?”
She shook her head.
“He and Dad had a falling out and then we moved away. Last week my mom told me he’d died a few years back, lung cancer she said. I guess I hadn’t thought about him much until then.”
I rolled the windows up and we started the rest of the drive back. I wondered what I was supposed to say. I had a few ideas, but in the end I figured that I wasn’t supposed to say anything. She’d just wanted me to listen.
When we got in we watched TV and then went to bed. I was horny, but also nervous, like it was our first time. I lay next to her, wanting to touch her but not knowing if I should. In the end she put her hands between my legs. When we’d finished I lay awake for a long time, not just thinking about Bob but about all kinds of stuff. And a few weeks later I started seeing one of the secretaries.
-first published in Stand Vol. 8 (2)
Stolen Stories readings
Details of the first round of readings (all Edinburgh and Glasgow) can be found at the Forest website:
http://www.theforest.org.uk/submit/stolen-stories/
At some point early next year there’ll be readings in London, Oxford and elsewhere.
The book is also now available on Amazon, priced 5.99, plus postage.
Stolen Stories introduction
Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.
—Pablo Picasso
Fiction is, by definition, that which is ‘made up’. Unlike biography, reportage, or booklets that purport to explain how to assemble your washing machine, fiction makes few claims to ‘truth’, not even the limited variety present in these genres. Which begs a couple of questions— how does a writer ‘make up’ something? and what is the relationship between this construction and the truth? —the first of which we’ll try to answer, the second of which we’ll try to ignore.
When we, as writers, begin a story, most of us do so with an event, image, or psychological question we wish to explore. Sometimes there is only a title (‘Richard and His Excellent Bears’), a first line (‘Melanie refused to discuss her penchant for being inverted’), sometimes a last (‘And with that the boy entered the deep, dark, dripping tunnel that led to the mine of adulthood’). All the above could be placed under the heading ‘An Idea’. These are what people ask us about after we have given a reading. They march, totter or are pushed to the mike, then after clearing their throats, croak, “Where do your ideas come from?” Usually we offer the same response given by Henry James in his 1908 preface to The Portrait of a Lady.
As for the origin of one’s wind-blown germs… who shall say where they come from. We have to go too far back, too far behind, to say. Isn’t it all we can say that they come from every quarter of heaven, that they are there at almost any turn of the road? They accumulate, and we are always picking them over, selecting among them. They are the breath of life— by which I mean that life, in its own way, breathes them upon us. They are so, in a manner prescribed and imposed—floated into our minds by the current of life.
Whilst this is enjoyably grand (not to say suitably mystifying), James’ response, like our talk of first lines and images, is a form of evasion. To say that ideas come from ‘every quarter of heaven’ is little better than saying they come from the faeries, our ‘collective unconscious’, or a tiny green shoulder weasel that whispers ideas only we can hear.
The main items in ‘the current of life’ are people, who, as characters, are usually the main parts of a story. So a better question may be, ‘Where do characters and their actions come from?’ James suggests that ‘life’ gives them to us, but comes closer to the truth when he speaks of ‘picking them over, selecting among them’. Our ‘made up’ characters and events are thus not so much given as taken from life. The writer’s task is to select those parts of life he or she feels can be satisfactorily assembled into something as pleasing as a washing machine that not only makes one’s clothes smell mother-laundered, but also never leaks in a manner that seems downright sorrowful. These range from the individual detail— a pencil-drawn eyebrow, the heft of a breast —to a particular face or way of speaking— pedantic, hectoring, a boiled sweet in the mouth —up to a sketch of a person remarkable in its verisimilitude: one that captures the manner in which they laugh, dress, breathe, eat and fall down stairs[1].
None of this can be avoided. Writers are, after all, not God. We cannot create something from nothing. We are also not all-seeing: the majority of us are probably no more observant than average; certainly no more than policemen, pimps, or psychiatrists. When one considers the daily life of most writers—sitting in a room, perhaps the kitchen, often alone for most of the day —it becomes clear that the sphere from which most of us draw our ‘wind-blown germs’ is fairly limited. Those events and people that interest us most are often drawn from family, friends or colleagues[2], perhaps because we think we understand why ten-year-old Adam throws stones at dogs, why our friend has yet to cheat on her husband, why Polly works so late, so often, what she is avoiding at home. It may be that given our emotional connection to these people, their stories have a greater resonance for us, that they seem more deserving of being written, or at least included in our narratives. It is certainly easier than devising the inner lives of people who do not quite exist.
Which brings us to the nub of all this. For whilst there is nothing inherently problematic about placing one’s girlfriend’s nose in a story, fitting it, as it were, on another woman’s face—not unless said nose is so malformed it resembles a whelk more than an organ of scent, such an inclusion calling further attention to an already sensitive matter—it is an altogether more fraught endeavour to place your actual girlfriend in a story, even under another name, with auburn hair rather than brown, but still with the same issues about your relationship, such as, for instance, her fear you’ll leave for her someone with a shapelier nose. Although it might be an excellent story, one of your best, it will cause her great suffering[3]. Amongst the many accusations she might later hurl as the two of you stand in the kitchen, you pressed against the washing machine, she leaning against the wall with the spice rack, the main point she might return to, as her hand sweeps the sage to the floor, would be that it was her nose and that you had no right to just take it and put it in a story for fucking strangers to gawp at. And though it was only a nose, for God’s sake (and a horrible, mollusc-like one at that), by no means the most intimate detail you could have borrowed—not her baby-talk during sex; the way she snored like a vagrant; her habit of opening her mouth to show you the food she’d chewed—you would have to concede she had a point. You had taken, you had stolen something that did not belong to you.
Later, much later, after she had moved out, you might begin to question this notion. Although a person clearly ‘owns’ their own nose, can they be said to have the same rights of ownership when it comes to things they have said or done, especially if you were also present? What about your rights? After all, these were things you saw and heard. Surely that gives you the right to use them? But regardless of whether a person can truly ‘own’ their words, deeds and thoughts — in the way you still ‘own’ that Captain Beefheart record she took, even if you said it was a present—what is far more germane is that people feel they do. And it is they, rather than any abstract ethical or legal code, who matter. They are, after all— pace James —the proverbial hands that feed us.
The main issue is thus one of permission. This is the difference between borrowing and theft (at least when it comes to records). There is nothing to stop a writer from asking their partner, their colleague, or the girl on the no. 47 bus telling a long and impressively detailed account of what she did with a Cypriot waiter on Mykonos if they mind themselves or their actions being included in a work of fiction. Nothing, I suspect, except the prospect of being told ‘no’ (and several other things besides[4]). Ideally, these people would instantly contract some baffling perceptual disorder unknown to clinical science, rendering them physically unable to read any story in which they or their actions appeared. Given the likelihood of this scenario, most writers instead pile wigs and sweaters on the people in question, change their sex, nationality, and religion, or even split them into two or more characters, especially if they are writing something that shows the person (or their nose) in an unfavourable light. This, of course, does not always succeed. Some people are surprisingly acute at spotting themselves in fiction.
The other, somewhat safer option is to portray the person in a manner unlikely to cause offense. Many of the stories in this anthology portray their subjects in a sympathetic manner, though this by no means guarantees a favourable reception, the most common accusation being ‘that-isn’t-how-it-was’. There are, however, several stories in the anthology (‘Applesauce’, for example) that gleefully announce their lack of shame at what amounts to a violation of trust, of telling a story those involved might prefer not to be shared.
We wish we’d been sent more stories like that.
Malice aside, perhaps what is most important is not a story’s provenance, but how its author deals with the ‘stolen’ material. We were sent (and rejected) many stories that did little more than reproduce anecdotes, some of which were so enjoyable—children whose glass eyes fall out; women who publicly insult each other’s genitalia on a London bus; a man who claims to have ‘built’ the robot known (to the rest of us) as Naomi Campbell —we believe we could be forgiven for making a further volume of doubly stolen stories, if only because some of the ‘wind-blown germs’ we inhale seem to demand they be allowed to burgeon into a sickness (even when its prognosis is likely to be terminal[5]).
But however enjoyable or compelling the anecdote, what ultimately mattered to us during selection was how it had been transformed. How something overheard in a bar had been expanded into a structured narrative that did not merely tell you what happened, but gave you ways to think about it you did not expect; a piece of writing which, through its control of event and language, might affect you in some lasting manner— in short, how it had been made into a story[6].
Before we began putting this anthology together, few of us had doubted the ethics of appropriating from others’ lives, probably because we never gave it much thought. A good story is all that matters, as journalists may still say. But in the end, if you write enough stories, someone will eventually say J’accuse. They will stand in your kitchen and ask by what right you took something private, something shared, and turned it into a story. They may be crying. So may you. But as you stare at their face, their unbelievable nose, you will realise that they will stand there as long as it takes. That they deserve— and you may need —some kind of answer to this.
[1] Booming; badly; from their diaphragm; messily; with grace.
[2] Even Henry James, who had a remarkably wide circle of acquaintance—in London during the winter of 1878-9, he admitted to accepting 107 invitations—based many of his heroines on his cousin Minny Temple (e.g. Daisy Miller, Isabel Archer, and Milly Theale).
[3] Whilst this is probably not among most writers’ higher aspirations for their work, revenge as a guiding motive cannot be entirely discounted (cf. Philip Roth’s I Married a Communist; Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar).
[4]Though let’s face it, how many writers are going to take ‘no’ for an answer? It is as rhetorical a question as, “Do you mind if I have the last scone?” Or, “Do you mind if I take another breath of air?”
[5]The question of why we are sometimes compelled to use a person, event or nose is one that warrants further study. We would like to think that this urge, while not entirely philanthropic, is at least as public-spirited as the donation of one of those benches with a memorial nameplate. That we only use such material because we believe that its inclusion is fundamental to the world-improving quality of our work. We would not like to think of it as a piece of arch-selfishness, one wholly typical of us and our deceitful, treacherous, spiteful, self-centred and thoroughly writerly ways.
[6]The other main reason we rejected stories was that they took the ‘stolen’ theme as an excuse to make free with the writings of already-famous authors. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this—William Burroughs used to write ‘GETS’ in the margins of books, when he felt something was Good Enough To Steal—if you’re going to tinker with the canon, it needs to be done not only outstandingly well (e.g. J.M. Coetzee’s Foe or Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea) but also with a better legal defence than we would be able to muster.
Stolen Stories
Stolen Stories is a new anthology of fiction that I co-edited and wrote the introduction for. This is the back cover blurb, that hopefully explains the concept of the book (or is, alternatively, so mystifying, so great an enigma, that you positively have to buy the book, just so you can know).
“Never, ever trust a writer. One minute you’re pouring your heart out in the pub: the tale of you and him, or you and her; the tears, the anguish, the pain. Next thing you know, it’s all over the papers: the hilarious and best-selling tale of some twit who resembles you in every way except they have black hair and better taste in music. But this is what writers do: they steal, they take, they lie. And there is no shame in this. Quite the opposite. In order to celebrate this fact, we have compiled an anthology of the finest ‘stolen’ stories, a collection of 16 tales from both established and emerging thieves, all of whom have been forced to confess the source of their thefts.”
The anthology is published by Forest Publications, and for those not residing in Edinburgh, or Glasgow (where we’ll be having our initial readings and launches) it can be ordered from Wordpower Books, price £5.99.
http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/stolen-stories-I9780955645617/
Andrew Marvell
As part of the Scottish Poetry Library’s ‘Reading Room’ series, I make some horribly personal disclosures, and also offer, somewhat belatedly, a few half-thoughts on Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’.
China article
My Edinburgh Review piece on the riots in Xinjiang has been picked up by Eurozine, a site that brings together social and political articles from various magazines and journals.
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-08-12-holdstock-en.html
At the end of the piece I wrote that there have been ‘few [recent] reported incidents of protest, violent or otherwise’.
This is no longer the case:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/11/terrorism.china http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080812/ap_on_re_as/china_violence
As far I can tell, it is unclear who is committing these acts. Whilst they are probably motivated by separatism, the extent to which (if any) they are Islamist, remains to be determined.
Stand
My story ‘The Fun of the Fair’ is in the new issue of Stand (Vol 8:2). This is a story that I first submitted to them almost 3 years ago. Even by the protracted standards of literary magazines, this is an impressively long time. But it is a nice magazine, with a good history, so it’s only been faintly excruciating to wait. If your library is excellent, and poetry-minded, they may have a copy.
Otherwise, you can get a copy from them direct at http://www.people.vcu.edu/~dlatane/stand-maga/
Surprisingly, it is not in the Native American issue (Vol 8:1) presently billed as the current issue.
And so, finally
Well, I’m going to try and get this site active. At least sporadically. Sort of.
I’m going to be reading at a few places in August- At the Edinburgh Book festival on August 12th, at 3.40, in the Bookshop. And in the Book Fringe at Wordpower on August 18th at 2.15. Along with Ryan van Winkle, a fine poet and friend, and Kapka Kassabova, whose excellent memoir has just received a great review in the Guardian.
More to follow on publications.
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Nick Holdstock 