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.
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.
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.
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.
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 naive 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.
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.
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 characters
went to Oxbridge- did this make me an autodidact? Was I any good and would it
make any difference if I was?
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?)
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.
Brilliant post Rob. I enjoyed the "fictional" and the non-fictional aspects of it. Where might one come across your book?
ReplyDeleteoh sorry, didn't see this. My book is looking for a publisher as we speak. I wouldn't hold your breath though
ReplyDelete