Writer's Block

Dark Ages

It takes little imagination to work out that we are entering another Dark Age. Modern scholars will tell you that ‘Dark Ages’ is a deeply unfashionable concept and that those times were actually rather jolly.

They were a period of religious fundamentalism and mass illiteracy. Popular knowledge of the Classics was minimal and every elderly woman with a cat had a good chance of being murdered as a witch. To me that is decidedly dark. Today we live in a time of religious fundamentalism and mass illiteracy. Popular knowledge of the Classics is minimal and every benevolent old man who pats a small boy on the head is considered a rampaging paedophile. The similarities are obvious.

‘Mass illiteracy?’ you say. ‘Everybody can read and write‘. Not really, we have a massive illiteracy problem. Not so much in the sense that people cannot read or write at all, but having such low skills that their ability to read simple text is compromised. In the US 14 percent of the population are functionally illiterate and this rises to over 60 percent of those in prison. Matters are slightly better in the UK, but not a lot. Check out any English language forum on the internet. They are not for the faint hearted but they do illustrate my point. How many times do you see wrongly spelt words? How often do you see confusion between ‘there’, ‘their’, and ‘they’re’? Punctuation seems to be an unknown skill.

‘Don’t be too hard on them. Not everybody is educated,’ I hear you say. Hold on a minute; everybody is educated. Since 1880 there has been compulsory education in the UK. A child leaving school today has had 13 years to learn the difference between ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’. In 13 years many did not achieve even this, and spelling is often a disaster area. We are getting into a situation where teachers cannot teach spelling because nobody taught them. The Dark Ages did not happen overnight, it was a slow process. It took generations to lose the skills which were once taken for granted. But I think we are going to wake up one morning and realise where we are.

Competitions

I do not advise new writers - or any writers - to enter competitions, except for their own amusement. The idea of an unknown writer winning a major competition and being pursued by publishers with open cheque books is a seductive one. Believe me - it won’t happen.

.Competitions very in size. Big competitions equal big prizes. Small competitions equal a copy of the magazine running it, or maybe £15 prize money if you are lucky. It is not impossible that you will win a small competition, not too many people enter. But the publicity value is minimal, although it will certainly cheer you up a bit.

Big competitions are worth winning. The prizes are large and they do have publicity value. Which is why they have many thousands of entries. The standard of these can be very high. There are competition specialists out there who do nothing else but write for competitions. These people are good - very good. A new writer is unlikely to beat them. I once looked at the maths regarding a big competition and reckoned, on average, the judges spent ten seconds reading each entry. You had better have a good first line.

What with all this and the often exorbitant cost of entry you will be better off sending your work directly to publishers or magazines.

Sadly there are those who do not take their own advice. Last week I came across a competition for a humorous poem which was free to enter. We can do that I thought, and amused myself by writing one with my wife Robyn, who is a better poet than I am. Giggling all the way to the post box I sent it off. But, having committed the mistake of entering a competition at all, I committed another mistake by not checking on past winners to see what the judges liked. On my return I had a look, to find that they favoured elegant parodies of Byron’s Don Juan and work of that nature.

Our poem began, Jimmy was a sailor boy and Sally was a tart. Oh dear.

Bo

It is sad when a language ceases to exist. There have been many that have vanished and the latest is Bo. This was the language of the Bo people who lived on India’s Andaman Islands. It is said that Bo had been spoken for 65,000 years, or 70.000 years depending on which report you read. How do they know that? Archaeology may show that the Bo people existed for 65000 years give or take a bit, but for all we know they may have changed their language on a regular basis. Looks like a sloppy press release to me. Anyway, Boa Sr, the last Bo speaker, died recently surrounded by anthropologists eager to record the last ever words in Bo. She looked a feisty old lady, so I do hope they were ‘Push Off’.

It must have been hard being the last Bo speaker. Women’s eternal complaint that they have nobody to talk to was, in Boa Sr’s case, literally true. We are sorry to see the last of her and the Bo people.

Cornish springs to mind when one thinks of dead languages. Latin is, of course, a more obvious choice, but it seems to be getting along quite nicely, despite being thought deeply elitist to learn it at school. Classical Greek is losing ground due to difficulties with texting . Cornish is not really a dead language as it never died out. As fast as native speakers died revivalists began speaking it again. Now Cornish is flourishing in a modest sort of way with a few thousand speakers. It is even appearing on road signs, showing that the Cornish are as determined to confuse visitors as the Welsh.

Cornish language revival seems terribly jolly. A sure way of telling if a tradition is really alive is to look at the faces of people doing it. Look at 19th century photographs of genuine folk singers or folk dancers. They are all miserable, ‘Dang me, having to turn out an’ prance around in the rain when oi could be in the Hare and Badger. That’s the last time I’m doin’ it.’ So they gave up. Then along came the enthusiasts, usually middle class school teachers with an interest in local history. So folk singing, folk dancing and, in our case Cornish, became fun. A Cornish Bible is even being prepared. The Cornish are on a roll.

Should languages be revived? Presumably they die out because those who speak them die out, or find a better way of communicating. There is nothing wrong with keeping dead languages alive. Everybody needs a hobby.

My new novel is moving along again after a hiatus of several months when I (literally) lost the plot. I hope I can keep going this time.

Degradation

Major projects have cycles in their lives. The cycle begins with a ceremony marking handover of the completed building. Here the client, architect and builder stop arguing about time and cost over-runs and spend a couple of hours eating dodgy sandwiches and congratulating themselves on a job well done. Shortly afterwards the client moves in and decides he should change a few things - notwithstanding having agreed to do them a few months previously. He has long thought of his architect as an airy-fairy idiot who should have been a hairdresser, so he leaves him out of the loop and employs a local builder he finds in the Yellow Pages. For a few years the changes do not make much difference to the use and appearance of the building. But slowly the constant drip has an effect and the once fine interior begins to look more and more like a Local Authority Job Centre. If the building is lucky somebody then realises its worth and a restoration project is put in hand to bring it back to its former splendour. If it is not lucky the building is declared unfit for purpose and pulled down. The Royal Festival Hall and St Pancras Station were both lucky and are now once more a delight to visit.

Which brings us to the British Library. The present building was completed in 1997, so it is at the beginning of the degradation process. But it has started. The coffee shop, as designed, had a delightful mural running the length of the seating area. It featured quotations from great authors in various styles of calligraphy. Somebody had thought long and hard about the design and it was much appreciated by all who saw it. Sadly not quite all, because it is now covered with white painted chipboard, stuck or screwed back onto the delightful mural. Just right to pin posters onto, and quite wrong from every other aspect one can possibly think of.

There are minor matters - new poorly designed portable signs, for example - but the worry is always the trashing of the fabric of a building. Let us hope that at the appropriate stage in the degradation cycle the poor old British Library is rescued from its users, like the Royal Festival Hall and St Pancras Station, by someone who values a fine building.

Peaceful Contemplation

I suspect this is the first time in history in which public libraries have not been places of quiet and contemplation. Today mothers, with minimal parenting skills, are allowed to let their children run riot by right. Readers researching their PhD on Mediaeval toothpicks, or even just reading the newspapers may as well take their books to the nearest playgroup, which is probably a lot quieter.

Time was when those who coughed too loudly, or maybe snored too loudly, where chastised by the librarian. Miss Jones, 50 years old, thin, bespectacled and terrifying, would never let anyone get away with anything, and quite right too. But the contempt for other library users by mothers of the great god Child - which might be appropriately known as WaWa - is based on the knowledge that nobody has the courage to throw them out.

The only answer is separate libraries for children. Maybe along with a few token books the new libraries could serve coffee. I suggest they are called Starbucks.

After great delay, entirely on my part, my children’s book The Horse Painters has its very own website. http://www.the-horse-painters.com I am quite pleased with it, although Google seems to be determined to show advertisements about interior decorating. Something I have no control over.

Having finished the website I can speed up progress on my new novel about Alexandria. I had a rare Aha moment last week over the plot. So there is an incentive to get going again.

Omar Khayyam

The British Library has a fine exhibition at present on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, in the Fitzgerald version. First published in 1859 this was wildly popular in the 19C and early 20C and has never been out of print. The exhibition contains dozens of editions, tracing the history of the phenomena up to the present day.

It also has some remarkable examples of the bookbinders craft. The finest by far is a large book with a beautifully tooled leather cover, featuring Art Nouveau peacocks studded with semi-precious jewels. It has a remarkable history. This valuable book was taken by its owner to America in 1912. They sailed on the maiden voyage of a great Atlantic liner. The Titanic.

But all was not completely lost. In due course it was possible to recreate the book using the original design sketches and working drawings.

This time great care was taken. To avoid the hazards of fire, water and theft, which could have occurred in a library, it was kept in a bank vault in London. Safe at last - until World War 2 when the bank, together with its vault, was bombed.

This time the book was not completely destroyed. There were bits left. Things were getting better. And indeed they were, because we still had those design sketches and working drawings. So, in due course once again, the book was recreated. Rather a case of being on a roll, so why stop at two recreations. They had some of the jewels off the bombed cover as too. All went really well this time and the book is now safe in the British Library. Or is it?

Those of a Gothik turn of mind might say the book was not destroyed because the Titanic sank. The Titanic sank because of the book. The book was not destroyed because the bank was bombed, but the bank was bombed because of the book. So maybe the British Library should keep it elsewhere. Perhaps on a remote Scottish Island. And they must take really good care of those design sketches and working drawings.

The long delayed website for my children’s book The Horse Painters is beginning to build. All rather exciting in its way. I'll keep you posted.

Lost Library

At the beginning of the first century AD the father-in-law of Julius Caesar built one of the greatest villas in the ancient world. It was massive, as big as Blenheim Palace. It must have been a good life for those who inherited it, living in a magnificent building on the Bay of Naples. Or rather it was until 24 August 79 AD when Vesuvius exploded and buried the villa and some of its inhabitants under 100 ft of lava. It was then forgotten until 1738 when accidentally rediscovered. For the next 20 years historians dug tunnels into the site looking for and finding artefacts and sculpture of the highest quality. Sadly the fabric of the building was badly damaged, but this was the 18C and that was what they did. The historians also kept finding strange black lumps of material which they threw into the Bay of Naples along with the spoil from the excavation. It was not until 1752 that a library of 1800 rolls of papyrus was found and it was realised that the strange black lumps of material were priceless calcified papyrus. A pity they were now at the bottom of the Bay of Naples, but it was the 18C after all.

Attempts were made to unroll some of the 1800 scrolls without much success as they tended to fall to pieces. Fortunately what was left was preserved and today it has become possible to read them without unrolling, with the aid of multi-spectral imaging. Most have been found to be the writings of Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher.

This is where we get to the point. Would a villa owned by the descendants of a very cultivated man have a library containing just the works of Philodemus? Not in the view of Professors from Harvard, Oxford and London. They think there is another library in an unexcavated part of the building containing much, much more. If they are right it could easily have a mass of lost literature. We have lost a lot, Sophocles wrote 120 plays, we have 7. Euripides wrote 90 - we have 19. The list can go on and on. The discovery of an intact Classical library would be a revelation.

I will rejoice if the Professors are right, but do not forget the scrolls thrown into the Bay of Naples. If they did this for even just a few years they could easily have destroyed the villa’s one library and good old Philodemus might be the only survivor.

Anyway the Professors are trying to raise a lot of money to fund an excavation. They have just a few problems. There is a school built on top of one area they need to excavate. A thriving smallholding with glasshouses on another. Then, being Southern Italy, rumour has it that chaps in dodgy suits and dark glasses are very interested in the whole enterprise for their own reasons.

Things may take a little time.

Happy New Year

Christmas terrestrial TV viewing was mostly the same as usual. White Christmas, Dad’s Army, Queen’s Speech. Which was better than Z List celebrities, cooking programs and house hunting shows, which tax our brains for 51 weeks a year.

However there was one lapse in the dumbing down of TV. A production of La Boheme slipped through the net. This featured the wonderful Anna Netrebko as Mimi, whom I hope to see performing at the Royal Festival Hall in January.

It was brave of the programmers to feature an opera which should have a Health and Safety warning for manic depressives. But good for them and I hope the interview with the Director, about showing an opera in a slot which could have been used for a quiz show, was not too painful.

Another good viewing experience was to watch on DVD all 23 episodes of Jeeves and Wooster. I don’t know how many were actually written by P.G. Wodehouse, but they were all excellent. The costumes and scenery were delightful and the casting a small miracle. It made the 1930’s seem a highly desirable time to have lived. But only if you were healthy and possessed unlimited wealth. There was, of course, the little matter of being in a North Atlantic convoy dodging U Boats a few years later.

They sang - ‘There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance let’s face the music and dance,’ and they did.

Links

My Alexandria story is going slowly. It is all the fault of the links. There is no problem with the set piece events (probably) but they have to be joined together somehow, and these are the links. Of course the links have to be interesting, mildly dramatic even, or the reader will go off and read Tristram Shandy instead. So links are not easy to do. Or rather I find them difficult, which may not be the same thing at all. At one point I stopped altogether, but now I am proceeding at a stately snailike pace.

As you see Tristrum Shandy is still on my mind. That is proceeding as slowly as my Alexandria book. Partly because I read it on the bus and screaming children, giggling teenagers and Radio Cambridge make it rather difficult. The real problem though is sustaining interest in a book with minimal plot and where I have reached page 118 and the main character - Tristram Shandy himself - has still not been born. Having said all that the fact that I am still reading it at all is a tribute to Laurence Sterne, a remarkable author who has produced something unique. Do read it. I aim to finish it in time for the 2012 Oylmpics.

Having made a trip to the British Museum to see a small part of the Staffordshire Anglo Saxon treasure I am still excited by its historical value. From the damage done to the gold pieces you can see how whoever pinched them from fallen warriors did it in a hurry and legged it off as fast as he could run. As the treasure seems to have been buried and not recovered it looks like Fallen Warrior's mates caught with the thief shortly afterwards. As this is exactly what is described in Beowulf it is quite fascinating. But the pieces are so damaged they don't make much of a museum exhibit. So I don't mind them going to Birmingham rather than the British Museum after all.

Borders

It is a pity Borders has gone into administration. It was a lot better than some of the other big chains. The shops are still open at present and offering a 20 percent discount on all books, This leaves them a mere 40 percent mark up on the publisher’s trade price to booksellers, rather than the usual 60 percent. So the price of their books may well come down more within quite a short time. Anyway, it is worth checking out if you are buying books as Christmas presents.

It is a bad time for staff to be wondering about their jobs, just before Christmas, so the shop can use all the support it can get. For the moment Borders will continue trading while management looks for a buyer of the complete chain. It is hoped things will carry on as before. But Borders was losing money and it seems hardly a good investment. I suspect that a lot of shops will be sold, a lot of people will lose their jobs and just a few flagship stores will remain in big cities.

This is not a good time for bookshops. Online book stores make it easy to buy at home and a special trip to a bookshop could cost more than postage, so this is seldom a consideration. Borders does have an online book store, but it is not exactly Amazon and not the first choice if you buy online. Another advantage of buying online is comparing prices. I always check the price, plus postage, on Amazon, then compare it with the Book Depository which charges more for the book but does not charge postage. I doubt if anybody compares prices in bookshops. But it is cheaper to buy books in supermarkets and, although the subject matter is a little predictable and you'll never find Tristram Shandy, they sell a lot of books.

Having said all that I do like bookshops, particularly if they have a coffee shop as well. So it is a great pity we could be losing a good one. Do go to Borders and buy something when you are next in town. You just might give the staff a happy Christmas.

Bollards

We are used to public buildings being named after benefactors. We have Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Museum, the Bodleian Library and many more. It is in appreciation of the benefactor’s gift to the Nation, University, maybe the town where they were born or made their money, that the buildings are so named. But somehow a proposal to rename the Cambridge University Library after the highest bid from a benefactor just seems tacky. If this is not a tabloid silly season story I feel it should be resisted.

To put the matter in context, the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge are not famous for their financial nous. A few years ago an outbreak of hubris left them in dire need of a good accountant. But, to be fair, they have spent a lot of money extending the University Library and, contrary to expectations, they employed a good architect with excellent results. They could be forgiven for wanting to replenish the University Chest with all speed. Sadly the Vodaphone University Library, or even the *** University Library lacks gravitas and could result in unseemly literary pranks.

I suggest the University takes the money, erects a discrete plaque in appreciation of the donor’s generosity and gives the company CEO an honorary degree. Then Vodaphone, ***, or whoever comes out top, can let their PR Department get to work.

Another strange thing has happened to the University Library. A line of bollards outside the entrance have become bronze books. One can imagine the Librarian explaining the brief to the sculptor, ‘Library. Books. Geddit?’

I notice that the spines of the books are blank. A minimum amount of imagination would have added the titles of books in the library. But no matter, being bollards they will probably be demolished by a reversing lorry anyway.

Magazines

I enjoy reading literary magazines. They inform, entertain and make the bus journey slightly less traumatic. Some help with writing and others point you towards new books and maybe help you discover old ones. I have three favourites. TLS (Times Literary Supplement) is a weekly newspaper and never fails to come up with something interesting. It extensively reviews fiction and non fiction old and new plus occasional pieces on the visual arts. One of my favourite regular features is the letters page, famous for its literary spats. The TLS will not tell you how to write, but it will tell you an awful lot about writers. The articles are long. There is something joyful, in this age of sound bites and minimal attention spans, to be able to read two whole pages about the same thing. Even if you only buy it occasionally the TLS is well worth having. You can get it from some branches of W.H. Smith or look for it in your local library. Do not confuse the TLS with the TES, beloved of schoolteachers. The best monthly by far is Poets and Writers. This is a grand and famous American magazine. It specialises in interviews with writers, but has many in depth reviews and comments. It is slightly more geared towards the learner writer than the TLS, but on a very high level. There are numerous advertisements for courses and workshops, some on-line, some International. So the Brits are not entirely left out. You may be able to order this through Borders. It has a website, which lets you read part of it online. You can also take out a yearly subscription. The website will tell you how A British equivalent to Poets and Writers is the strangely named Mslexia , written for women by women. I can see no reason for literary discrimination against men, either with respect to magazines or awards. After all women do rather well on a level playing field anyway. But dear old fashioned feminist Mslexia graciously allows itself to be sold to men, so why worry. It is similar in content to Poets and Writers with advertised courses and workshops mostly British based. You can subscribe to Mslexia or buy it in Borders. So that is three of the best, I do hope you try them.

Tess

I have triumphantly reached the end of ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles‘. Tess is not high on my list of annoying women in fiction, but she is on it. Her achievement in making the wrong decision, every time she makes a decision at all, surely deserves recognition. My list is a small way of showing my appreciation. Tess’s finest hour was, of course, the revelation she made on her wedding night. One of the great acts of idiocy in literature, to be long cherished for its cringe making quality. This turned the wedding night, for her new husband, into a night he would never forget. An interesting thing for me came out of reading this book. Now I know why I gave up on Thomas Hardy for forty years after reading ‘Jude the Obscure’. With a sigh of relief I then read ‘The Bell’ by Iris Murdoch- not to be confused with the world’s second most depressing book, ‘The Bell Jar’. ‘The Bell’ is rather good in a rambling sort of way. To my great joy it has no annoying women and although it reads like a short story expanded into a novel it trots along quite nicely. I don’t know if it has ever been done as a TV play, but it would suit the BBC admirably. It is set in a large country house in Gloucestershire in the 1950s. Perfect BBC territory. The ever erudite Iris Murdoch explores the nature of religion, sex and human nature, together with glowing descriptions of the countryside. Too glowing at times - does oilseed rape really flower in September, would a goldcrest really enter a trap on the ground? It happens in ‘The Bell’. In my edition there is an introduction by A.S. Byatt quite as erudite as the writing of Iris Murdoch. These two formidable women knew each other. I would have loved to have heard a conversation between them. Sadly, although I have heard A.S. Byatt speak I will never hear Iris Murdoch. We do have some recordings. One of the best is a conversation with Bryan Magee which can be enjoyed on YouTube. Check it out. http://tinyurl.com/q9gp4g

Cambridge Library

Rejoice, the Cambridge City Library is up and running. Which only goes to show that most buildings finish one day, even if they are 16 months late, £100,000 over budget and counting. Now libraries are about books, but it is nice if the building lifts the spirits as well. Of the big libraries the British Library does just that, the Cambridge University Library has gravitas in spades, even the Bibliotheque nationale de France is impressive in a Blade Runner sort of way. Of course, these are big league and Cambridge Central Library is not, but the principal is still there. So let us visit our new library. If we start on the ground floor we find that the old entrance will now become a much needed retail outlet. The new library is accessed by an escalator leading to the first floor. It is not immediately obvious how people in wheelchairs reach the library. No doubt there is a lift, if they can find it. Having entered the building we find it is in the Design and Build Cheapo style of architecture. There seems a curious shortage of books, which suggests there are more to come, or that the old library is just being housed in a larger space. To reach the upper floors there is an escalator. If you want to go down again you are in ‘find the exit’ mode. There is a staircase hidden in a corner, but no down escalator. I am sure there is a lift. Somewhere. There are plenty of sitting areas and the café looked reasonable in a hospital outpatients sort of way. I understand that the food and drink is excellent value. There is also a very promising film archive that I didn’t have time to visit. Now this may seem over critical, but the library has cost a lot of money. Too much money it seems. I am delighted that Cambridge of all cities has a new library even if it took the lifetime of a Galapagos tortoise to build. But wouldn’t it have been good if it looked and worked just a little bit better?

Cheer Up

I was reading on the rather good Abebooks website their list of top ten depressing books. The list is: 1. The Road, 2. The Bell Jar, 3. Jude the Obscure, 4. 1984, 5. Atlas Shrugged, 6. The Grapes of Wrath, 7. Night, 8. On the Beach, 9. The Bluest Eye, 10. Lord of the Flies. I have not read all of them but of those I have read Jude the Obscure beats The Bell Jar by a short head for first and second. Jude the Obscure, as well as traumatising me at the time, put me off reading any more Thomas Hardy for forty years. Coincidentally I am at present breaking the habit of a lifetime and reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It is partly to see if Tess, beloved by teenage girls, can join my own top ten list of most annoying women in fiction. This is headed by Anna Karenina and followed closely by Madame Bovary. I have reached page 200 and so far Tess seems to be a rather boring little person without the capacity to bring about the fury that my top two can raise so effortlessly. Thomas Hardy is said to have fallen in love with Tess in a Pygmalion sort of way. So maybe I am being rather hard on her at present. A book which isn’t in the list is La Fin de Cheri. The Cheri books are very fine, but I found them depressing just because I cared about what happened to the characters. Being French they are very philosophical and true to life. If you don’t know about Colette’s life Google her. The mind boggles.