September 2007 - Posts
As we know the teaching of Creative Writing in the USA is light years ahead of the UK. I exclude the University of East Anglia from this, as former students include Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro and two Booker Prize winners rather shows they are doing something right. No doubt there are also other good programmes out there, but they are not immediately obvious. What caused me to consider these matters was seeing an American University reading list for MFA (Master of Fine Arts) students. The required list was of 13 books; having staggered through these students had to read 5 books chosen from a longer list and agreed with their Professor. Then, blinking out into the daylight they had to polish off an additional 2 books. After that there was the little matter of seminars, workshops and assignments. Respect!
More respect for William Faulkner. I am reading 'Light in August.' The plotting is so clever I'm taking notes.
In September we have the countdown to Christmas. Good old 'Dimdima' magazine has asked me to write a Christmas story. Paralysis is setting in, I don't do Christmas stories, if I had my way I wouldn't do Christmas either. But I told the editor I would be delighted (as one does) and considering how nice she is I really must produce something. All I can think of at present is a tale about a miser, two ghosts and a chap called Bob. But maybe it has been done already. The deadline is 10 October.
I have finished reading 'Horse Painters' aloud and I am giving it a few final tweaks, adding the odd metaphor if I can think of one. At present I am reading William Faulkner's 'Light in August', much of the enjoyment lies in seeing if the metaphors per page reach double figures. Despite that, or maybe because of it, I am enjoying the book.
The A.N. Wilson talk was the best for a long time, even the questions were moderately sensible. He was plugging his book 'Winnie and Wolf' (Man Booker Prize 2007, failed). It is a fictional account of the relationship between Winnie Wagner and Adolf Hitler, who was an honorary uncle to her children and maybe her lover. I must read it, but not until it becomes a paperback and sells on Amazon for 1p. A highlight of the talk, given in the Old Bishop's Palace, windows open on a warm autumn evening, was the noisy affray featuring the local white trash in the street below. It added a delightful town and gown element to the proceedings.
I am doing a little course on writing technique, thus delaying Horse Painters for a few weeks. It seems worth doing in case I have missed something vital. Meanwhile reading the manuscript aloud to improve the flow continues. It does a bit.
Literary pubs just happen. Put a writer and a pub together and you have a literary pub, but some are more literary than others. The Fitzroy tavern just north of London's Soho is one such. Here Dylan Thomas would give away poems written on beer mats to passing pretty girls. They would, doubtless, have said 'Get 'im' and thrown them in the gutter. A bad move, as fifty years later they could have sold them at a New York auction house for the gross national product of a small country and secured themselves a prosperous old age. Virginia Wolf, George Bernard Shaw and Augustus John also drank there. One hopes not all at once, as the clash of egos would have done much damage.
Just round the corner is The Marquis of Granby, another Dylan Thomas haunt (different girls, different beer mats), also that of T.S. Elliot and George Orwell. Not far off is The Wheatsheaf where Dylan Thomas met his wife Caitlin. Going south into Soho you will find The Coach and Horses where Jeffrey Bernard was often unwell and by the time you get there you will probably be unwell yourself.
I can reveal, as tabloid newspapers say when they have picked up a slow news item on CNN, the Man Booker shortlist. Nichola Barker, Anne Enright, Mohsin Hamid, Lloyd Jones, Ian McEwan, Indra Sinha.
So Ian McEwan is still there, maybe the six to one favorite will make it.