May 2009 - Posts
If you get the opportunity - Charity Shop, Car Boot Sale or ignore my usual advice and buy in it Border's - do read Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning. I love this book, funny, thought provoking, well written. What more can you want for a sunny afternoon, a glass of Pimm's, a deckchair and a 300 yard comfort zone between you and single parents with multiple screaming children. The title is good in itself. Buddhists are not supposed to take life. So how can you be a Buddhist fisherman? Well, you are not killing fish - you are saving fish from drowning, sadly you are always too late and they die just as you rescue them. Buddhists abhor waste, so a good Buddhist is obliged to sell the rescued fish in the market. Problem solved.
Amy Tan talks about Saving Fish from Drowning on Fora TV.
http://fora.tv/2006/11/07/Saving_Fish_From_Drowning
I see that Alice Munro has won the Man Booker. Great result, great writer. She is not from an ethnic minority or the victim of a deprived upbringing. She is a white Canadian. What on earth came over the judges?
The Horse Painters is done if not dusted. Proofs and cover are approved and it is now back with the publisher to produce the book. I have been trying to find people to say nice things about it for publicity purposes. One or two writers of similar books have said they will look at it. The great and the good are more difficult, but I have dropped a line to Lambeth Palace. The chap has to do something useful, so he may as well read my book.
The Horsepainters cover is finished and looks very good. We overcome the Ice Age copyright problem, so could reproduce a 35,000 year old painting without getting into trouble with the Trustees of the estate of the artist. I have been trying to get authors of similar books to say nice things about The Horsepainters for publicity purposes. Not easy - they are protected by Agents and Publishers from begging letters. So far I have had two hits out of about ten tries. These are people who have agreed to look at my book and may still not like it when they do. Of course the less important people are the more likely it is they will help. So the most helpful are the least useful. Catch 22 says it all.
I was going to write to Jean M Auel of The Clan of the Cave Bear fame. Then I found out she was 76 years old and had probably retired. Her book was so famous I thought she might think The Horsepainters useless anyway. I decided to read it to learn how to write prehistorical novels. Sadly I didn't get past the first few chapters as it was so badly written and cliche rich. Jean M Auel is of the Hammond Innes school of writing. But they do give the public what it wants.
I have just rediscovered Amy Tan. I'll keep you posted. She's good.
The Horse Painters is well on its way. I have proof read it twice then proofread it again and signed it off. That is a total of 120,000 words plus an awful lot of commas carefully examined. I'll still probably find a typo in the book, but a chap can only do so much. I'll blame it on the three editors who came before me. I have also been in discussion with the designer of the cover. We are using a reproduction of an Ice Age cave painting and my designer is worried about copyright. It is a very smooth and sophisticated award winning type cover. Maybe too smooth and sophisticated for nine year olds. I have also been approaching authors for endorsements. A couple have said they will look at the book when it is ready. The danger is they will read it and refuse an endorsement. If I can get a small name to write something nice about it I will try for a big name.
I have been reading Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein. I seldom give up on a book, apart from Hammond Innes and it served him right. But I gave up on page 38 of Tender Buttons. The following is an exert:
'CUCUMBER: Not a razor less, not a razor, ridiculous pudding, red and relet put in, rest in a slender go in selecting, rest in, rest in in white widening.'
We are told that it is abstract painting in words. 'Paintin' is paintin' and words is words,' say I.
I recommend Being Geniuses Together by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle. Despite its uninspired title it is a good read. It is about the amazing period in the 1920s when most of the great writers of the century were in Paris. Joyce, Stein, Pound, Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds and many more were all there. Not only writers were working together. Man Ray with his famous model and companion Kiki and artists like Brancusi and Derain were also in the group. They seem to have spent most of their time drinking, but Joyce managed to write Ulysses and Hemingway had the first of his books published. Robert McAlmon was the publisher of Hemingway, who repaid him by punching him on the jaw. No doubt it all helped with the Hemingway man of action and decision image. A remarkable number of the group died from tuberculosis or suicide, but we will never see its like again.
Horse Painters is on its way to publication at long last. I think I have returned the proofs to the publisher in the wrong format, but no doubt this will be sorted out. Probably.
We have a new Poet Laureate. That will be good news for Andrew Motion the previous one, who retires traumatised, having nearly given up poetry along the way. So how is a Poet Laureate chosen? The Prime Minister nominates successors and the Queen has to choose from a short list. So we have the government which scrapped the Royal Yacht Britannia out of spite choosing poets for the maximum embarrassment to the Royal Family. I can only conclude that Carol Ann Duffy was the most acceptable of a really terrible list. She is Scottish - of course - and also a *** single parent. Just the sort of person to appeal to Prince Phillip. She is the first woman, and by definition the first ***, to have held the post. Now I have no quarrel with her exotic private life, no doubt she has a deal with the tabloids to tell all, and good luck to her. She is in good company. The great British artist Eric Gill had unrepentant incestuous relationships with most of his family. He has some fine carvings in Westminster Cathedral, hugely embarrassing the church authorities now that they have bothered to read his biography. Caravaggio was excessively fond of young boys and produced some delightful paintings as a result. Who are Shakespeare's sonnets written for? Many people have asked, and some unusual answers have been found. So the only case at point is, how good is Carol Ann Duffy? Not bad, I would say, but I do hope she doesn't traumatise Prince Phillip and I wonder if she was really chosen by Simon Cowell.