tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14922195396185855742024-03-05T21:55:03.009-08:00Is that your name or do you live there?Friend to dragon, companion of owls. Novelist. Would like to hear from agents and publishers. Would also like a million pounds. Life's unfair like that. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12582019171368736838noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1492219539618585574.post-87971338691131346932015-03-14T09:09:00.000-07:002015-03-14T09:10:03.376-07:00I was Mark Watson's Double<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJKVYKQiOBdqI6xYBALtrluTqFJzD7OdYZ3PoE4ri8NkjbX0D-zBdHfBs9_sXAWvkkXHOkkdteYXveb8sb3RIAbV2PoBFgbM2Ah4xS97op99_qDTpvwKa1lB2LnS97Xtf3jAh_xJ1qWtgu/s1600/doubles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJKVYKQiOBdqI6xYBALtrluTqFJzD7OdYZ3PoE4ri8NkjbX0D-zBdHfBs9_sXAWvkkXHOkkdteYXveb8sb3RIAbV2PoBFgbM2Ah4xS97op99_qDTpvwKa1lB2LnS97Xtf3jAh_xJ1qWtgu/s1600/doubles.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-e8e492e5-1907-6a14-6d29-053bc87f6243" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was first mistaken for Mark Watson at a party around 2005. A fellow guest accosted me, full of excitement, and told me that I’d performed well on Mock the Week the previous night. I foolishly explained that I had never appeared on the show, after which her interest waned fast. Over the next couple of years this happened a few more times. There would be the same rush of Watson-prompted attention followed by subsequent disappointment and scorn. What’s more, my own parents began to tell me that there was “a boy on the telly” who looked just like me, hinting that they would take comfort during periods when I wasn’t getting in touch a lot by watching his regular appearances. Here, it seemed, was a Better Me, dutiful in showing up in their front room, conversationally amusing; rarely, if ever, asking them for money. My mum could happily read his fiction without flinching at the rude bits. He was, it appeared, published, just like I hoped to be. My feelings became ambiguous. Of course, there was a basic facial solidarity, the obvious empathy and compassion one has to have for someone hampered with my physiognomy. But did he have to be so good at stuff? (I remain unsure if it is okay to take an interest in someone because they look just like you or if it is, in a very small way, exactly how racism started).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I finally met my doppelganger (oh, who I am I kidding? I am his doppelganger and so it shall ever be) at a show in Leicester Square. Once he had got past the initial fear and trembling (remember I’d had years to prepare myself), I could tell he planned to make use of this coincidence. He is, after all, a professional silly person and having an exact replica was too good an opportunity for him to miss. Like controversial politico Saddam Hussein, he would make good use of a double. Consequently I got the call to take part in his 25 hour show for Comic Relief. This involved me (unsuccessfully) pitching a novel to his editor, signing copies of his own novels in Waterstones (this with more success) and going to the opticians to pick up his prescription (at which point the role of humorous lookalike blends, perhaps permanently, with that of dogsbody). After which my facesake has often been in touch with life-advice, literary encouragement and occasional free-of-charge witticisms. He is, I must report, a thoroughly good egg. And so when I was called out of retirement for a 27 hour show, I reported for duty with eagerness. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mark warned me before the show there were numerous comedy tasks in store for me over the stretch of the show. I might, for example, have to go to Bristol for dinner with his parents. If this was the game, then I ought to take his kids to the park or visit Ikea with his wife (it is possible that, as a celebrity, Mark doesn’t go to Ikea but I felt like his audience should be able to relate to the tasks). As a hardened veteran of the long form shows I felt like I could handle this. However, as a hardened etc I also knew that many of these ideas get forgotten in the course of the show and so it wasn’t a great surprise when approximately none of them came about. Instead my tasks for this show included:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being awake</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mooching onstage now and again. Not as much as the actual funny people but slightly more than the rest of us groundlings</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">taking over Mark’s Twitter and hassling his celebrity friends to get them to come down. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">trying and failing to secure a taser, Jarvis Cocker and a live goat</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="line-height: 14.7200002670288px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a hardened blah blah I am in the position to give advice to young lookalikes hoping for the life changing position of comedian’s double. Here are some valuable tips culled from harsh experience.</span></div>
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<br />
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember, the other people onstage have been trained, or at least shown aptitude, in being funny. You might think yourself the wag of your social circle but when you are sharing stage space with Jennifer Saunders it is good manners to pipe down.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Staying awake isn’t as hard as you’d think. Some sort of adrenal upsurge keeps you going for most of it. The difficulty is the week after, tackled below</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long form shows, in the words of Mark, “radically alter your relationship with time”. If I was sitting down for a comedy show I knew would last 8 hours I might feel a little fidgety. You hear there’s 8 hours left of a long show and you feel slightly sorry it’s almost over</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long form shows also “radically alter your relationship with Mark Watson”. A cultish devotion takes over the audience by sometime around 9am. Chanting is known to take place. The word “goats” acquires a significance it always lacked in the outside world.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long forms shows “radically alter your relationship with goats”</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lots of people you fancied off the telly in the 90s will show up. Just so you’re warned.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just cos you look exactly like the person everyone has come to see, ain’t nobody going to ask for your autograph. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="line-height: 14.7200002670288px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As for the after-effects of the show it is probably best to take some time off work. A week has gone by and my sleep patterns are only just back to normal. For a few days I was unusually sensitive to slights, as though I’d shed a protective layer. I found I could no longer get any writing done. While proud of taking part, a nagging fear of not having done so properly sets in. I know from speaking to other participants that a weird feeling of having not done our respective silly tasks as well as we might haunts us all. The real world can seem less focused, stripped of the heightened reality of the show. Perhaps, we think, it would be best not to do one again. Perhaps, we decide, we should give our poor brains and our bodies a rest. We settle down to our routines, our everyday jobs, our relationships, our own non-Watson based creative endeavours. The years pass. And then one day we get the call again. 29 hours. 48? We should be able to manage. We can do this, one last time.</span></div>
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(<i>You can still donate to my efforts at http://my.rednoseday.com/sponsor/robpalk )</i><br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12582019171368736838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1492219539618585574.post-61833419189879784712014-11-20T14:59:00.001-08:002014-11-20T16:08:28.087-08:00Punks in Parliament: Pussy Riot in Portcullis House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Here are some things that the Henry Jackson Society are interested
in: A strong military, the “promotion” of liberal democracy if necessary by the
use of said military, “two cheers” for capitalism. And here are some things they aren't: radical feminism, punk rock, grass-roots
anarchism, Judith Butler, conceptual art. But the world of politics can
sometimes resemble an especially tipsy game of spin-the-bottle and tonight the
HJS pay host to Pussy Riot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">To enter Portcullis House you have to put your belt and
wallet in a tray and walk through a metal detecting doorway. The airport mood
continues once you’re in. With its pot plants, beige walls and the air of bored
expectancy that comes with being an adjunct to the action, it is a little like
a duty free lounge with the ads for wristwatches replaced by portraits of
Margaret Beckett. Up the stairs and inside one of the meeting rooms, the HJS
event on Russia is about to begin. By now it is standing room only –it may be
that this is always the way with the Society’s events but it might just be celebrity
exerting its gravitational drag. Three chairs at the front have “reserved for
Pussy Riot” notices placed on them. The audience do not, at first glance, look
very punk rock. The floor is unspeckled with gob, faces are unpierced and no
one seems to be taking amphetamine sulphate. Tweets from the event mention a
coalition of leftists, dissidents, capitalists and MPs but if you had to guess
you’d put the latter two in the majority. There are an awful lot of men in
suits here, sleekly barbered, comfortable with proximity to power. Women wear unshowily
expensive looking dresses. Scarily fresh faced HJS members welcome us with
leaflets and smiles. They look like adolescent cult members except with realistic
hopes of one day running cults of their very own. It is hard to imagine joining
such a group at 22, but then some people save their infantile leftism for their
actual infancy and hit ambitious maturity at sixteen. One day they will write
op-eds calling for transformative violence –they may even order the violence
themselves- but for now they smile winningly, usher and take photographs. Several
people look like how you imagine a spad to look. You see someone you think you
recognise but then realise you’re recalling a character from the Thick of It.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The host for the event is Chris Bryant MP, a man whose every
movement screams that he was once a left-leaning vicar. He has the body
language of someone perpetually accepting another cup of tea. It feels a little
odd, even now, to see a Labour MP in this company, although not as odd as
seeing Pussy Riot. From early bipartisanship HJS has, if wonderfully
named ex-member Dr. Marco Attila Hoare is to be believed, declined into a very right
wing sect indeed. The chief controversy –and the comings and goings of HJS members rival
Pussy Riots’ for complexity- is the appointment of Douglas Murray as Associate
Director. Mr. Murray began his career very young, as the author of a biography
that sympathetically charted Lord Alfred Douglas’ descent from lovely and
promising boy to froth-chopped reactionary. (I mention this without comment).
Since this interesting start he has given qualified praise to the English
Defence League and called for a total end to Muslim immigration into Europe. Dr.
Hoare is a defender of the Muslims of Bosnia and a sympathiser with the Arab
Spring. A church broad enough to comfortably fit his views and Mr. Murray’s
would be about the size of the Pantheon. But if Chris Bryant feels tainted he
doesn’t show it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The first set of speakers comprises a journalist, an
opposition mayoral candidate and environmentalist, a European politician, an
anti-Putin businessman and the former Russian Prime Minister. Together they
make an eloquent case for a Magnitsky law, named for the murdered oppositionist
the event commemorates. This would prohibit Russians suspected of crimes
from entering the EU, banking within the EU or sending their offspring for
European private schools. About the semi-clad thug who runs Russia the room
seems in agreement. At the front, meanwhile, are Nadya and Masha. They are
tweeting or texting or, for all I know, playing Angry Birds. With their hair (green
rimmed and platinum respectively) and lipstick (deepest red) they are the
brightest things in the room, parakeets among pigeons. From the front we hear
of Putin’s expansionism, his convenient social bigotry, his environmental
destruction, his (successful as a glance at a typical Facebook wall shows)
propaganda outfits, his crimes up to and including murder. People begin
photographing the backs of Pussy Riot’s heads. Happily, someone mentions
Chechnya. Everyone agrees on Putin, if not, perhaps, on what on earth can or
should be done about him. Someone asks if he can be made to leave peacefully
and seems slightly saddened when told he maybe can.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When the initial talk is over, Geoffrey Robertson QC stands up. He has been attached to good
causes since the Oz trial, has an actorly manner and a face the same shade as the contents of a decent cellar. He is also, as you’d expect, a tremendous speaker. He summarises
the need for a Magnitsky law in about a minute of florid hand-sawing and gags.
“We should punish them through their children,” he says, biblically. “Stop them
going to our schools.” He sits back down- you feel he could have done this for
hours- and the two members of Pussy Riot head to the front desk, together with
Nadya’s husband. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“Do we sit behind the desk or on it? Or do we stand on it?” asks
Masha. But they sit behind the desk.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It’s been possible to wonder if, in the days since their
imprisonment, Pussy Riot have been declawed. What Putin couldn’t do to
them –shut them up, quell their commitment- looked like it might be done instead
by celebrity group hugs and the sudden love of Western figures not known to be
fans of, say, Crass. When Russian dissident artists come to the attention of
the Reader’s Digest mentality it can be at the expense of everything awkward in
their art. If there’s going to be a new Cold War, or, god help us, a hot one,
then we’re going to need a Pasternak (we might also need a Pollock, the better
to showcase our thriving and enviable weirdness). But in picking a dissident, one must always be cautious. When Solzhenitsyn was invited to
the US he promptly alienated his hosts with a rambling denunciation of the very
freedoms he was supposed to symbolise. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Pussy Riot don’t quite do this: they
seem exhausted and slightly bewildered. They complain about the microphones,
they fidget punkishly. Nadya decides to do an impression of Ali G. She has the
look of an overcoated nihilist student, the sort who spent the 1890s lobbing
bombs at as many crowned heads as she could. She is by a long way the most
charismatic person in this room and probably every other room too. Masha looks like
someone about to tell a very good joke. At the far end, next to Masha, Pyotr acts as translator. He looks like a smaller Ed Snowden,
only with a beard halfway between Lenin and Lennon. Chris Bryant does not know
who he is. The presence of Pussy Riot seems to have sent him straight back into
vicarhood. He makes bad jokes, he blusters. He asks them, inexplicably, if
Bunga Bunga parties are punk rock. For a moment we’re back on the Bill Grundy
show. But will Pussy Riot say something outrageous? Over the last few days
they’ve been hosted by Amnesty and the Guardian and taken a St. Petersburg
Hermitage’s worth of selfies. And now Masha and Pyotr seem to be getting on
each other’s nerves. She questions his translation, grabs the microphone off
him. They are possibly bemused. It must be odd to step out of prison and enter
this world instead. Still they are pleased at how anti-Putin we are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“We should say, we know a bit about American prisons,” says
Nadya. She speaks with the confident seriousness of someone utterly unhampered
by cowardice or doubt. “It’s good that you have these values but you know in
America someone from Occupy, Cecily McMillan, she was jailed. And you are right
to complain about what Putin does in Ukraine but he can point to what you did
in Iraq.” The applause that greets this statement fails to sweep the room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“We also don’t think you should have the European
Extradition treaty,” adds Masha, clutching the microphone. “We met Julian
Assange today and we want him to continue his work.” It is fair to say not many
present are admirers of Mr. Assange. Geoffrey Robertson lets out a solitary
whoop. A glance at Twitter shows Nadya and Masha flanking the former Russia
Today mainstay in his strange semi-exile. Next to them he looks even paler, his
skin the colour of unbaked pastry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“Putin knows the West won’t go to war with him,” says an
audience member.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“We don’t want an actual war,” says Nadya. It is possibly unfair to say that this disappoints people. Either Pussy Riot don’t
know their audience, or they do but haven’t abandoned their trollish
commitment to provocation. They don’t seem ready to be anyone’s toy
dissident. So what will they become? The title of the meeting
–Russia after Putin- might well apply to them. What happens to Pussy Riot when
Putin has gone? (two years according to one speaker). The untrained informality
that works to wonderfully disrupt the airless atmosphere of a conventional political gathering
could easily become mannered, Rottenish. Despite the carnival colourfulness
they are essentially serious –serious enough to go to jail- and committed to
prison reform, a field in which they might do a lot of good. They have their convictions, in
every sense of the word. How they fit this around being adored by Madonna and
by Chomsky, by Slavoj Zizek and by neoconservative
think tanks, remains to be seen. Their presence and charisma seem to be helping
but it is easy to imagine it getting in the way. What will happen when Putin
retires, to his dascha or the wrong end of a lamppost and Times op-eds and
liberal front benchers lose their newfound love of disruptive protest art? It
will be interesting to watch.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Right now they have flesh to press. Nadya stands,
upright and tiny in a scrum of looming middle aged men in suits while Masha
leans into a Dictaphone, talking softly about prisons.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12582019171368736838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1492219539618585574.post-55067409571854958252013-08-17T10:03:00.001-07:002013-08-18T01:52:57.442-07:00How I nearly Died and What I Did While I Was Doing That<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ok3SJIuFh-MpDw9qsqIrlUhdZTJqWpGdDM51BOXqWVx3FYCvXDbnnniV_G72GbK2tHC1_MTBlZQtOHdUF_jXfK4oGaSt1KuWXyKl1xMtM_o8lPUp-hUhFZZ8LmwhQGANPcOx-GzJY9um/s1600/brain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ok3SJIuFh-MpDw9qsqIrlUhdZTJqWpGdDM51BOXqWVx3FYCvXDbnnniV_G72GbK2tHC1_MTBlZQtOHdUF_jXfK4oGaSt1KuWXyKl1xMtM_o8lPUp-hUhFZZ8LmwhQGANPcOx-GzJY9um/s320/brain.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like
most people, I expect, I associate the British farce tradition with sudden brutal
reminders of mortality and death. Unlike most people I have some biographical
cause for this association. The other year, the morning after watching a pretty
good performance of Noises Off by Michael Frayn, I fell to my bathroom floor after
suffering a sudden massive brain haemorrhage. I did quite a lot of vomiting, as
you can imagine. Screaming was also involved and there was a longish period
where I thought I might be a Chinese peasant (I am not). For about a fortnight
I was in the tenuous middle ground between being alive and life's opposite. When I
finally got a correct diagnosis I was told that I had a blood clot the size of a
golf ball in my head. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This sort of news makes you quickly re-evaluate any opinions
you might have had about the relative smallness of golf balls. I had always previously looked on them as being
on the fiddly side. From now on I would view them with a proper respect. I was also
informed, in a frank way, that my brain was gearing up for having another go at
the whole haemorrhage project, with the intention of correcting the first one’s
failure to finish me off. Did I mention I couldn’t see? I couldn’t see, or not
much. The haemorrhage had squashed a good part of my visual cortex. Again, when
faced with this kind of news one quickly re-evaluates things. You remember the
game about what sort of hypothetical impairment would hinder you the least? Few
people opt for loss of vision but when made aware that a haemorrhage occurring a
few inches to the right or left might have wiped out your ability to walk, say,
or your memory, then losing, as I did, most of my peripheral vision strikes me
as relatively fortunate. In one of his (silly but anecdotally abundant) books
Oliver Sacks tells of someone who had a brain haemorrhage which, like mine,
affected the visual cortex, only with far greater impact. Not only could they
not see at all, the haemorrhage had erased any memory of having had seen. Like
I said, relatively fortunate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
immediate effect of all this, once the (exemplary and wonderful) NHS staff had
saved my life and sent me home, was a worrying one. I became a nicer person. I
like to think, in retrospect, it was some looming knowledge that my brain had
designs on me, but in the months leading up to the incident I was something
of a horror. Grumpy, morose, prone to small-scale tantrums and with a premature
fear of getting old, I was rarely mistaken for a joy to be around. And that
went, at least for a while. Nothing rids you of the fear of getting old like almost
dying young. After this, middle age, responsibility, senility itself, seem like
eagerly anticipated treats. I became benign, avuncular, appreciative of the
smaller pleasures (a decent book, a good cup of tea, the company of loved ones…
that sort of thing). I developed a childlike glee at the company of mammals, in
zoos and in the home. (My cat, it should be said, while ill-tempered enough,
was stalwart throughout this period). I treated my girlfriend, now my wife, with
the loving-kindness that was surely her due. Bedridden and blessed with a
new found aptitude for life, I chose for myself a task that would suck away at
all this fresh wisdom like a zombie with a straw. A task that would
render me, by the end of the year, an anxious self-torturing pain in the arse.
I chose to write a novel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Before
you dash in panic from the screen, I should stress that this wasn’t a
completely absurd choice. I had attempted twice before to get one
started, but abandoned them both due to laziness and the vague belief that no
one has anything useful to say until out of their twenties (I recognise that
this belief puts me at odds with the wider culture which tends to assert the
opposite). I had written scraps of stories and I had read a great deal of
literature which I was </span><span style="line-height: 24px;">naive</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> enough to think would help. Proust, I reminded
myself, had written much of his best stuff while prone. Homer, Joyce, Huxley
and Milton would all have needed help crossing the road but were none of them
slouches with a quill. (It was around this time I was awarded a white-stick by
the council. It was unnaturally short and made me look like a drunken Sooty).
Lying on my back, I set to work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
was determined not to address the issue of my illness in this work. (What’s
that, you say? I should? Well one day, perhaps). Instead I had chosen for a
theme the romantic lives of the conspiracy theorists. In my day job I’d had
various dealings with the differing movements and sects that make up the UK conspiracy
movement, such as it is, and found their differences and similarities
intriguing. I thought, that, allowing for some exaggeration, their shifting worldviews
could tell us something about life and about fiction, and the perils of confusing
the two. Characters and plots sprung up and reported for duty. I was enjoying
this. Free from the demands of readership, I could pretty much do as I liked.
The problems came later.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Flaubertian
perfectionism is maybe a little unfashionable nowadays, when the preferred
literary model is the confessional blog or opinion column, but I found I just
couldn’t give up on an urge to get the words right. Never mind my girlfriend’s argument
that this was what editors were for (there are still editors right? Like, four
or five, of them, somewhere). I was confident, if that is the right word, that
for my book to be even considered by a publisher there could not be a word out
of place. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had a brain haemorrhage,-maybe you
did and it worked wonders- but one thing it failed to do in my case was give my
vocabulary a boost. Instead one thinks through a gauze of befuddlement, a hangover made permanent. On more than one occasion my girlfriend returned home to
see me weeping over an adjective. My unedited prose had the power to make me
physically sick, like hearing your voice played back and hearing a nasal
shriek. And when, I was done torturing myself over word-orderings then the
extra-textual anxieties would kick in. Was my novel too anti-realist or was it
too wedded to realism? It was set in the North of England and this would surely
repel publishers? What publishers, anyway? The book game was surely over, was slowly
being replaced by downloadable vampire porn written by and for horny Baptists. I
didn’t go to Oxbridge –none of my <i>characters</i>
went to Oxbridge- did this make me an autodidact? Was I any good and would it
make any difference if I was?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reader,
you will be relieved to hear I passed through this phase. The book sits,
strange, on my computer, taunting me with the suspicion that it might be good. It
deals with a lot of things –conspiracies and fiction, love and the loss of
love. It has sentient cats, Men’s Right activists, astrologers, rationalists
and quite a lot about motorway service stations. While I can’t say every word
is perfect and in place, I can say with confidence that some of them are lovely
enough. I am perversely proud, in a sub-Oulippian way, that the word “conspiracy”
does not appear anywhere in the text. I think it’s rather funny, in parts. On
the whole I think you’ll like it. If you’re a publisher or an agent you might
want to get in touch (there are still four or five of you out there, right?) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite
vowing not to address my illness in the work, I find upon re-reading that the haemorrhage
has snuck its way onto the page. Two major plot points factor on characters
being hit painfully on the head. Characters experience the loss of beliefs or
relationships as small deaths, blurring their fixed and static selves, opening
themselves to the point where they become different, transformed beings. The
image of the mind as a struck, reverberating gong appears and reappears. More
to the point I realised, during the writing, that trauma, physical or
emotional, makes conspiracy theorists of us all. We force our minds down narrow
and circling tracks, too scared to leap towards the bumpy grasslands to the
side. We repeat, we fixate, we go over until we perfect. Eventually if you are
lucky you jump. My novel is about those who find they can’t. It is called The
Movement and I hope one day it will be read. My next one will be started in
full health, although I cannot promise how I’ll be by the time it’s finished.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12582019171368736838noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1492219539618585574.post-80152942242633959422013-05-02T14:46:00.001-07:002013-05-02T23:33:54.456-07:00On Being Made Anxious by Sheila Heti<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I am a re-drafter. Here is what I do on a writing day: I
sit and I get myself in a mess about sentences. I rock backwards and forwards,
I consult my thesaurus, I pace in circles tugging at my moulting hair. On more
than one occasion, my girlfriend has come home to find me weeping over the
correct placing of a comma, as if it were a tormenting pea hidden under my
mattress. And, when I reach the requisite number of pages, I print the whole
thing out and I start again. (It’s worth remembering that I’m not writing
Madame Bovary here. My novel features pornography-addicted cats, chiliastic
cults and a Men’s Rights activist called Furious Patrick. I am quite possibly putting
myself through hell for no good reason). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Still, Flaubert, I tell myself, would be on my side. Perfectionism
is time-warranted, proven to work even at the cost of sanity and good health.
Then the other day <a href="https://twitter.com/sheilaheti">Sheila Heti</a>, talking at the LRB shop, sweetly announced that
“oh, no one drafts anymore”. She was, she said, <i>no longer interested in style</i>. There was something vaguely illicit
about this, something <i>naughty</i>. My
girlfriend nudged me with an air of triumph -<i>see? Not everyone does this crazy shit-</i> as the author began to read an
excerpt from her autobiographical work. Hackles on alert, I waited for
sloppiness, for errors. And, obviously, there were a few if you were looking.
The odd word I might have removed, the odd phrase I would have struck a line
through. But the main thing was; it worked. It was direct, it felt true,
whatever true is, it was funny and naïve and open and fresh. A naivety that could
only be the result, I hoped, of deliberate agonised craft. Couldn’t it? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As she read on, I felt, with my rewrites, my struggled-over plots and my prematurely creased forehead, like Rick Wakeman, interrupted
in creating a triple gatefold, flugelhorn-heavy concept album by the sound of
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6GDdKrQ8EI">Pretty Vacant</a> crunching from the speakers. Instantly obsolete, a brontosaurus
lumbering through my paragraphs while sprightlier beasts leap on ahead. Now, if
I have a belief system it lies in a) making stuff up and b) rewriting it an
awful lot. And these beliefs are beginning to seem, well, a little bit old-hat.
Not quite pre-Copernican but getting there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A few words of caution. Ms Heti has told me via Twitter that she does redraft, just not in the laborious, faintly mad physical sense I described. Two,
even if she doesn’t, she speaks in naturally beautiful finished sentences. Not
everyone could dash out an autobiographical piece and make it read like hers (and her new book <i>did </i>take six years- she's not doing some Jack Kerouac spontaneous prose thing).
Three, she said later on that she has, in fact, rediscovered fiction and can’t
be placed naturally in any anti-making-things-up camp. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Still, it’s fair to say that in recent years the literary
world (or the very narrow part of it known to English speakers) has experienced
a loss of faith, both in literary stylishness and in the novel itself. A lot of
writers find they no longer can sign up to the making-things-up and
then-making-them-read-well project. Off the top of my head (in the new spirit
of instantaneity) there’s David Shields calling for us to make it <a href="http://davidshields.com/">essayistic</a>,
make it a memoir, make it true. There’s Zadie Smith <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/?pagination=false">worrying</a> if Tom McCarthy’s
Spartan modernism is actually where it’s at. There’s Ian McEwan <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/16/ian-mcewan-faith-fiction-falters">falling</a> out of
love with the novel, Will Self’s <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/03/will-self-modernism-and-me">anxiety</a> about the fictive conventions he’s
used in most of his work, Karl Knausgard setting out to write his whole life. There’s been the critical backlash against the
confident excesses of the 80s Granta generation, with their wars against
clichés and their unfashionable belief in the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy"> value</a> of stories. Clearly I’m
conflating different arguments and examples here (you can be pro or anti
literariness without being pro or anti fiction and many or most of those I mention would see themselves as revitalising not getting rid of novels), but you sense the general
trend. If these discussions end in unconvincing affirmations of the need for
fresh fictions, these tend to have an <i>arriere garde </i>feel to them. Resolute defenders of stylish
novels can have a Fustian, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wood_(critic)">High Anglican</a>, quality, as though holding out
against the barbarians, half-revelling in the dying of a form. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I can think of a few reasons why the novel looks in
trouble although obviously I’d be grateful for more. The Granta novel of the
turn of the decade, with its ever-expanding cast-lists and forced desert-suited
cosmopolitanism <i>had</i> become a silly
thing, well worthy of a backlash. Critical theory has now reached the point
that even novelists read it, with the sometimes paralysing results you might
expect. TV shows have annexed a great deal of what used to be the turf of the
novel (how many fat sagas has The Wire rendered instantly unnecessary?) When
the book itself is under threat, then the future of the novel is hardly to be
taken for granted. Technology has made patient Flaubertian redrafting seem
oddly affected, like baking your own bread. Davids Foster-Wallace and Eggers
have led to a new cult of sincerity. “Literariness” may even be subliminally
associated with male power, with patriarch connoisseurs like Amis and Bloom. Time
is short and if you have something to say, there’s the temptation to get on and
say it with the minimum of artifice. Jot it down, upload it, make it sincere.
Make it true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s also quite possible that the novel has had a good
run and is going the way of verse drama and music hall to be replaced by quick-scribbled
autobiographies, instantly available online. Intriguing as many of the attempts
to forge new forms are (I definitely look forward to reading Heti’s <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Should-Person-Sheila-Heti/dp/1846557542/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367530946&sr=8-1&keywords=sheilA+heti">book</a>), I
find myself hoping otherwise; that in the end they end up lending fresh
strength to, rather than replacing, the novel itself. If the novel has survived
so long, it is surely because of the sponginess of the form, its ability to
borrow from its rivals. Although this may just be my own feeble affirmation of
faith. Certainly if the novel is to survive it will need serious thinking about
what it can do. It will need hard work. It may even need a lot of re-drafting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12582019171368736838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1492219539618585574.post-366304303249546742013-04-21T12:17:00.000-07:002013-04-23T15:27:05.783-07:00The Other Side of Orwell<br />
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_quS78wmzM6XV89j54V5yPgfcenOJAn-_TXD7kG3ZG8sEfDXmzlkVixkFeGuPl_hNrmXwPwQTPAGgdzSYNEvzuhy4ktB37vehTBXgvmVSNjWFRHUYME5EWnZ7oUEHFTteuoL22mOF0fTP/s1600/5ca9787a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_quS78wmzM6XV89j54V5yPgfcenOJAn-_TXD7kG3ZG8sEfDXmzlkVixkFeGuPl_hNrmXwPwQTPAGgdzSYNEvzuhy4ktB37vehTBXgvmVSNjWFRHUYME5EWnZ7oUEHFTteuoL22mOF0fTP/s320/5ca9787a.jpg" width="230" /></a></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve been reading the large <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Essays-Everymans-Library-classics-George/dp/1857152425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366571509&sr=8-1&keywords=everyman+orwell">Everyman</a> edition
of Orwell’s Essays and discovering how instrumental the shorter Penguin version
has been in fixing the idea of Orwell beloved of a certain sort of English
leftist (and, I should say, by myself). The Penguin Orwell is right about
everything. On the rare occasions he gets things wrong, he at least
does so in quixotic, admirably wrong, so that you wish that he'd been right. He
takes the correct and decent Labour reformist view on British Imperialism, the
Spanish Civil War, the struggle against fascism and the Soviet Union, in that
order and with the emphasis, in the Penguin, on the last two.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Everyman Orwell is a stranger writer, closer to the
Marxist left, more open to crankish enthusiasms (he comes close to
recommending <a href="http://orwell.ru/library/articles/words/english/e_words">Esperanto</a> in
an essay that also shows him to have a more flexible view on language than he’s
often credited for), and much more obsessed with Catholicism – to the extent of
denying that Catholics can write decent novels (when Waugh and Greene were in
their respective primes). He is also wrong about things. He insists until very
late in the day that fighting Nazism will only lead to British Fascism, an
opinion he went on to mock in exactly the same cocksure tone he used in making
it. He is <a href="http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19440519.html">unconcerned</a> about
the bombardment of civilians, on the strange grounds that civilians call the
loudest for war anyway, a theme he returns to repeatedly. He recycles material,
often for use in entirely different arguments. He is more flawed and more
interesting than the saintly radical-patriot of the Penguin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite all these changes, the familiar pleasures of reading
Orwell are all here. We have the entertaining and sometimes unfair swipes at
the proto-Guardian gang of pacifists, middle class liberals and high minded
fellow travellers whose descendants still litter the English scene. We
have the analytic enthusiasm for "late-capitalist" (he uses this
expression) flotsam –junk shops, penny dreadfuls and “good-bad books”- that
make Orwell the nearest Britain has come to Walter Benjamin. We have a morally
driven worldview that never loses sight of the ordinary and the everyday. And
we have a test, that of returning, repeatedly, to the defence of the underdog,
of making sure that one is always on the victim’s side. It is a test that those
of us who consciously write "after Orwell" should set ourselves more
often.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12582019171368736838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1492219539618585574.post-58915531227081585132013-04-20T01:41:00.000-07:002013-04-21T14:35:38.187-07:00In Defence of Book Snobbery<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Matt Haig, a novelist and Twitter personage, recently posted a list of <i><a href="http://www.booktrust.org.uk/writing/online-writer-in-residence/blog/558/">30 Things to Tell a Book-Snob</a></i>, to general delight. The consensus was that this was one in the eye for the highbrows, viewed as turtle-necked Martin Amis enthusiasts with thin lips and sneers of cold command. While I applaud much of what Matt says –about the weird privileging of realism and the way literary fiction pretends to itself it isn’t another genre- something about it bothered me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />My first concern is that Matt’s list –ostensibly anti-snob- seems to have a problem with pretension Now for me, the act of consciously making art is always going to be a pretentious one. Shakespeare, who Matt approvingly cites, would probably have stayed a glove-maker if he hadn’t had the pretension to do otherwise. Matt and I are both Northern writers, and have probably inherited that area’s distrust of the Affected and “Fancy”. But as artists will be called pretentious even if they write like Tony Parsons they may as well embrace it. Would you rather be Oasis, grimly clinging to the mundane, or a dazzling butterfly like David Bowie? Pretension is what art is all about.<br /><br />A fear –of fanciness, of the highbrow- infects the whole list, despite its many good points. So we are told approvingly that Shakespeare “didn’t go to university”, as if Shakespeare were a bluff Richard Branson type rather than one of the most complex and genuinely snobbish writers in English. We are told that Matt’s attempt at being “highbrow” was unsuccessful as though this were a general rule. There is much talk of magic and wonder and how “many of the greatest writers were children’s writers.” The overall tendency seems to be to that a book should be easily understood by almost anyone who picks it up, and engage the same parts of the mind as a conjuring show. We are told that walls are tyrannous, which seems unfair to the vital role they play in keeping us dry and warm. As an example of the universal artwork, Matt gives us the roof of the Sistine Chapel, which we are told every human being would have the same reaction to. Every human being apart from iconoclastic Protestants, Salafist Muslims and atheists, presumably.<br /><br />I can’t help feeling this list confuses snobbery, which we can all oppose, with judgement, which we shouldn’t. As readers, unless we are entirely indiscriminate, we form value judgements and preferences, we make decisions. Is this snobbery? Only if we let it be. But to like everything is equivalent to liking nothing.<br /><br />My main gripe with the list though is that I am unclear who it is targeting. The polo-necked Harold Blooms of this world are a dying breed. I am at the stage of trying to sell a novel myself and thus far no agents have asked me to make it more wilfully un-commercial and complex, less plot driven and “universal”. The non-snobs won- they teamed up with post-modern relativism and market forces and they kicked the highbrows out of town. Richard and Judy triumphed and TS Eliot’s boys took a hell of a kicking. We live in an age where Booker Prize judges calls for <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/06/man-booker-prize-shortlist">zippily</a> accessible “thumping-good-reads”, where preferring James Joyce to JK Rowling is a mark of snobbery and where Kindles let everyone read porn on the tube. In kicking the book snob, Matt’s list kicks a strawman when he’s down.</span></div>
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