Mark Haddon's Blog, page 26

novel no. 3

it probably generates bad voodoo even to say so but a third novel seems to be underway. it feels like push-starting a train. then again it always does.

     

don't eat kit kat

kit kats are to get fairtrade certification. i don't know which is more depressing, that nestlé should have pulled off such a pr coup, or that the fairtrade foundation should have handed it to them on a plate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/07/fairtrade-kit-kat

1.5 million children die every year around the world because they are not breastfed. nestlé aggressively market breastmilk substitutes. the world health assembly has marketing requirements to protect breastfeeding and...

i'm not on facebook

i've just stumbled on this. some people (including, i assume, the person posting in finnish) realise it's not my page. others assume they're leaving messages for me. in which case... sorry for the lack of response.

polar bear tag cloud

 

http://tagcrowd.com/

4 lovely things

stuff that's been making me happy recently...

shamefully I’ve never read a biography of jane austen before. I can’t imagine there is one better than this, or will be, unless a cache of new documents come to light. astonishingly, claire tomalin manages to make jane austen’s story engrossing and moving despite the fact that her life is largely a hole in a huge tapestry of busy sibling and cousins and uncles, of banking and naval expeditions church appointments, of fortunes won and lost, big...

two memoirs

a strange book but not quite strange enough. a fictional memoir by j m coetzee about the recently deceased novelist 'j m coetzee' whose main failings (coolness, dryness, distance) mirror what are sometimes perceived (by those who think he has failings) to be the main failings of the real j m coetzee. it feels like an attempt to expiate that failing in the catholic manner. but it doesn't quite work, anymore than confessing to being a habitual liar makes one honest. indeed, the coolness, the...

polar bears

for anyone who wonders what i've been writing recently...

http://www.donmarwarehouse.com/pl109.html

on every count i couldn't be more pleased. i've been trying to write a play for years. naively i assumed that, having written radio plays and screenplays and won a few prizes for both, writing for the stage wouldn't be that difficult. i was wrong. it's bloody hard. i've written a great deal of rubbish en route and wondered often whether the attempt itself was foolish. to have written a play...

voting for fascists

for anyone outside the uk who doesn’t know about the bnp leader john griffin being invited onto question time:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/23/nick-griffin-bnp-question-time

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/21/bbc-bnp-mark-thompson

i don't think any event in recent domestic british politics has given rise to such heated and complex debate. should the leader of a fascist party have been allowed prime air-time? (i feel too strongly to trust my own opinion about this)...

even the dogs

so, just one entry after saying i hardly ever give quotes i read an advance proof of jon mcgregor's third novel even the dogs. absolutely brilliant. a story about a group of homeless drug-users and alcoholics that makes them seem real and warm and deeply empathetic despite being fuck-ups on a variety of levels. and told in a way that's both experimental and (for me at least) unputtdownable, which is a pretty rare combination. exactly what a novel should do. not published till early next...