William Peace's Blog, page 57

Award: Sable Shadow and The Presence

Sable Shadow and The Presence has been awarded runner-up in adult fiction at the London Book Festival, 2013.

Over 3,000 books were submitted to this contest, and there were about 130 books awarded honourable mention in fifteen categories.  Full details are available at http://londonbookfestival.com/portal/content.asp?contentid=606.

I decided to attend the awards ceremony which was held at the British Library in London.  There were about twenty-five people in attendance, half of whom were authors who came to collect their awards.  The event began at 7 pm with drinks, heavy hors d’oeuvres and mingling.  At 8 pm the ceremony began with an introduction by a representative of the festival, who then introduced each of the wining authors.

Thankfully, the acceptance speeches were (with one exception) mercifully brief, and we were all homeward bound at 9:15.

In my comments, I mentioned that my original idea for Sable Shadow and The Presence was to write a novel in the first person (which I had never done before), and that my key idea was that the central character would, as a child, hear voices which he did not recognise, and which he came to know as Sable Shadow (a representative of the devil) and The Presence (a representative of God).  I produced about three chapters and sent them to my friend, Peter, who is an avid reader of quality literature, and why says exactly what he thinks.  About three weeks later I got an email advising me that the work I had done was ‘boring’.  I had to admit that the book wasn’t fulfilling my expectations,either, so I put it aside, and in the meantime, I wrote The Iranian Scorpion.

But, after a year, I felt that the unfinished work deserved attention.  I had some additional thoughts: that Henry, the principal character would reveal the relationships (both good and bad) that exist in large corporations, and that he would begin to hold an existentialist’s view of the world.  (I think that Existentialism is wrongly thought of as anti-Christian.  In fact, I think it has much to recommend it as a way of understanding human life.  Besides, I had some concepts to add to the existentialist portfolio.)  So, I went back to work: re-writing much of the work I had done, and writing more.  The novel was finished, edited and published.  I gave Peter one of the first copies.  About three days later, I got an email from Peter in which he said he couldn’t put it down, that it was a fascinating book, and he thanked me for writing it.  I closed my talk by thanking Peter for his reviews – particularly the first, and thanking the Festival for selecting the novel.

Imagination

There is an article in the books section of Last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph which caught my attention.  It is written by Hanif Kureishi, who is a novelist and a teacher of writing.  He makes the basic point that to be a ‘good writer’ one should not concentrate on a study of such things as plot, perspective and dialogue; rather, one should give the imagination free rein.  He goes on to make the following specific points:

“The imagination rarely behaves well. It can be ignored and censored, but never entirely willed away.  Such a willing away would be a mistake because, unlike fantasy, which is inert and unchanging – in fantasy we tend to see the same things repeatedly – the imagination represents hope, rebirth and a new way of being.  If fantasy is a return of the familiar, you might say that an inspiration is a suddenly uncovered part of the self, something newly seen or understood.  Emerson, who tells us in ‘Compensation’ that ‘growth comes by shocks’, writes in another essay, ‘The best moments of life are those delicious awakenings of the higher powers.’

“One of my students said he read books in order to have ‘more ideas about life’. You’d have to say that the imagination is an essential faculty, and that it can be developed and followed.  It is as necessary as love, because without it we are trapped in the bleak polarities of either/or, in a North Korea of the mind, dead and empty, with not much to look at.  Without imagination we cannot reconceive what we know, or see far enough. The imagination, while struggling with inhibition, represents more thought and possibility; it is myriad, complex, liquid, wild and erotic.

“The imagination is not only an instrument of art.  We cannot delegate speculation to artists.  Or rather: whether we like it or not, we are all condemned to be artists. We are the creators and artists of our own lives, of the future and of the past – of whether, for instance, we view the past as a corpse, a resource or something else.  We are artists in the way we see, interpret and construct the world.  We are daily artists of play, conversation, walks, food, friendship, sex and love.  Every kiss, every piece of work or meal, every exchanged word and every heard thing – there are better ways of listening – has some art in it, or none.

“To survive successfully in the world requires great capability.  To be bold and original is difficult labour; it can seem impossible, because we have histories and characters that become fixed identities.  We are made before we know it; we are held back by who we are made into.  Not only that, we are inhabited by destructive, chattering devils who want less than the best for us. . . .  There is nothing as dangerous as safety, keeping us from reinvention and re-creation.  Imaginative work can seem destructive, and might annihilate that which we are most attached to.

“Naturally, if we can do this, we pay for our pleasures in guilt.  However, in the end, misery and despair are more expensive, and make us ill.  Let madness be our guide, not our destination.

“Aspiring writer who wish to be taught plot, structure and narrative are not mistaken, but following the rules produces only obedience and mediocrity.  Great writing and great ideas are strange: their sorcery and magic are more like dreaming with intent than they are like descriptions of the world.  Daily art makes and remakes the world, giving it meaning and substance. . . . The imagination creates reality rather than imitates it.  There is no interesting consensus about the way the world is.  In the end, there is nothing more out there but what we make of it, and whether we make more or less of it is a daily question about how we want to live and who we want to be.”

I think this is a brilliant essay about the role of imagination in writing and in life.  For more about identity, how it is formed and shapes our lives, I refer the reader to Sable Shadow and The Presence.

Review: The Shadow of the Crescent Moon

The Shadow of the Crescent Moon is the first novel by Fatima Bhutto, who is the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former President and Prime Minister of Pakistan, whose sister was Benazir Bhutto.  Fatima Bhutto graduated from Columbia University in 2004.  She lives in Karachi, and is a freelance writer.  Interestingly, her website does not mention this book.  Instead, it mentions three other books.  Judging by one article on her website, she seems to be a political radical.

The Shadow of the Crescent Moon is an interesting novel, relatively brief and quite intense.  It is set in the tribal region of northwest Pakistan and involves three brothers who are preparing to celebrate Eid, the Muslim feast at the end of Ramadan.  The oldest son has decided to leave his childhood sweetheart and go into business away from his home town of Mir Ali.  The middle son has become a doctor in Mir Ali and the youngest has joined his brother’s sweetheart as an insurgent.  In the novel, Mir Ali is the focal point for the armed struggle between Pakistan’s army and local people who crave their own freedom.

Fatima Bhutto does a very good job describing the culture, the issues, the people and the setting.  One gets the sense of a long-running, life-and-death struggle in the northwest of Pakistan.  It is clear that the author’s sentiments are with the insurgents.

I found the novel frustrating in the sense that it lacks focus.  There is an insurgent plot to kill a minister, and the story seems to be headed to a climax there, but the novel ends in uncertainty.  Was he killed?  Who killed him?  Or if not, why not?  There is some uncertainty as to who the insurgents are.  Some are Taliban; some are ordinary people.  What is the relationship between them?  The Pakistani government is clearly an evil influence, but in a book like this which is somewhat polemical, it would be a redeeming feature to hint more broadly at what the government should do differently (other than bringing in local conscripts).  There are also some religious issues: notably Sunnis vs. Shiites, but there are problems for Christians and Hindus, as well.  How do these issues fit into the over-arching themes of justice and freedom?

Ms. Bhutto’s writing in quite engaging.  Occasionally, there is a too long sentence which requires a second reading to gain understanding.  And, like all ‘young, modern authors’ she likes to use unconventional words rather than the conventional.  Mostly, this works well, but there is the occasional grating which disturbs the flow.  The characterisation of the two older brothers, the female sweetheart and the Pakistani colonel are all clear and intriguing.  The character of the youngest brother – the insurgent – is somewhat opaque.  We can understand why the two older brothers do what they do, but what – apart from his father’s lectures – motivates this brother to be an insurgent?

An interesting book and a particularly interesting author. I’m sure we’ll hear more from her!

“Literary Misery Index”

An article under the headline “Reading between the lines: novels are so last decade” appeared in today’s Daily Telegraph.  It said that the ‘literary misery index’ has demonstrated that  novels reflect accurately the economic hardship of the decade prior to their publication.

“The frequency with which downbeat words appear in more than five million books by authors including George Orwell, Graham Green and John Steinbeck was found too reflect economic conditions in Britain and America.

“Researchers  compared how frequently “mood” words from six categories – anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise – were used, and created the index by subtracting the number of sad words from the number of happy words.  Some periods, such as the 1980′s were clearly marked by literary misery.

“The lead author of the study, Professor Alex Bentley from the University of Bristol, said: ‘When we looked at millions of books published in English every year and looked for a specific category of words denoting unhappiness, we found that those words in aggregate averaged the authors’ economic experiences over the past decade.  It looked like Western economic history, but just shifted forward by a decade.  It makes sense if you think about authors who wrote sad books, like Steinbeck, that their choice of words would have reflected the economic conditions.  In other words, global economics is part of the shared emotional experience of the 20th century.’

“Co-author Dr Alberto Acerbi added: ‘Economic misery coincides with the First World War, the aftermath of the Great Depression and the energy crisis.  But in each case, the literary response lags by about a decade.’  Professor Bentley said: ‘Perhaps this ‘decade effect’ reflects the gap between childhood, when strong memories are formed and early adulthood, when authors may begin writing books.’

“The study, published online by Plos One, also found the same correlation in German novels.”

As I think about this study, it seems to make some sense.  The mood of an author will certainly be coloured by his/her experience of the world.  I’m not so convinced that the cause of the effect is just economic.  What about the effects of major wars – like the First and Second World Wars?  And what about the effect of the socio/political situation?  Would authors writing after the Stalinist period in Russia have a more pessimistic slant than those writing today?  And what about the ten year time lag?  To me it doesn’t seem right to correlate the ten year time lag to the period between childhood and authorship.  For most authors it is more like twenty years, and in my case it’s a lot more than twenty!  Perhaps the time lag has more to do with the aggregate effect of human memory: memories older than ten years begin to fade in importance, and memories younger than ten years haven’t taken their full effect.

What do you think?

 

Review: Stoner

Stoner, a novel by John Williams, was copyrighted by the author in 1965, and was first published in the UK in 1973.  As the copy I have was published by Vintage in the UK, I can’t tell when the novel was first published, but a safe bet would be in the mid-60′s in the US.

John Williams was born in Clarksville, Texas in 1922.  During the Second World War, he served in the US Air Force in China, Burma and India.  His first novel, Nothing but the Night, was published in 1948, and his second, Butcher’s Crossing, was published in 1960.  His last novel, Augustus, was published in 1972.  Williams received a Ph.D from the University of Missouri and he taught literature and the craft of writing for thirty years at the University of Denver.  He died in 1994 in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

It would be fair to say that Williams is not a well-known author, but Stoner has recently attracted significant favourable reviews.  For example, Julian Barnes of the Guardian says, “It is one of those purely sad and sadly pure novels that deserves to be rediscovered.”

Tom Hanks writes in Time Magazine: “It is simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher.  But it is one of the most fascinating things that you’ve ever come across.”

The New York Times says: “Few stories this sad could be so secretly triumphant, or so exhilarating.  Williams brings to Stoner’s fate a quality of attention, a rare empathy that shows us why this unassuming life was worth living.”

I think I read that an employee of a major book seller (was it Waterstones?) rediscovered the novel, and praised it to the point where it became the chain’s book of the year.  I decided I had to get a copy.

Having now read it, I can tell you that I agree with the above reviews.  Moreover the writing is beautiful and captivating.  It is clear, clever and without unnecessary embellishment.  It is a novel that makes one reflect on life in general and one’s own life.

Those of you who have read my reviews will know that I tend to be critical of particular developments that occur without reason.  As someone who was educated in the sciences, I believe that for every effect there is a cause, and I’m not content unless a major effect has a cause that is identified (or at least hinted at); I become sceptical, and I begin to question the author’s attention.

There are three effects in Stoner which for me are presented without cause.  First, Stoner becomes an instructor in literature at a major university.  He is an only child, without self-awareness, or any particular ambition, without childhood friends, growing up on a farm, who goes to university to study agricultural science.  He’s likeable enough, but he does not interact much with others.  In fact, when his literature professor asks him a question in class, he is unable to summon the resources to answer.  We are, in effect, asked to believe that he became a teacher because the same professor told him that that was his destiny.  Based on what?  Most university instructors I have known are outspoken extroverts.  Once Stoner becomes an instructor, I can accept that, over time, he develops the skills to become quite a good instructor.

The second point has to do with Stoner’s wife Edith, whom he takes in marriage based on a fleeting attraction.  This turns out to be a disastrous mistake.  Edith has unpredictable swings in mood and behaviour which are not hinted at when Stoner first meets her.  She seems like a shy girl, but she becomes a nemesis, a witch.  He behaviour is so erratic and so irrational that I found myself doubting her as a character.  Could not Williams not have hinted at a psychological defect or at a strategy which Edith was following.  As a result, I lost interest in trying to understand the relationship between Stoner and his wife.  For me, she was just a “problem”.

The third point has to do with the relationship between Stoner and Katherine Driscoll, a young instructor with whom he has an affair.  I can understand how they could fall in love, but what I don’t understand is how their physical relationship could (apparently) begin so smoothly.  Stoner had no sexual experience before he met his wife, and with her it was disastrous.  Katherine has little experience, and it wasn’t very pleasing.  How could these two sexual misfits behave like practiced lovers immediately?  Give them time, author!

The above tend to be my personal reservations, and they don’t motivate me not to recommend Stoner.  It is a rare and captivating novel.

The Character: Morton Stickler

Morton Stickler appears toward the end of Sable Shadow and The Presence.  Formerly a non-executive director of United Carbide, he stages a board room coup and becomes chief executive of this very large (fictional) corporation.  He persuades the board that the strategy of the current CEO – to make gradual changes that will improve the profitability of the corporation – is short-changing the shareholders.  He proposes a different strategy: sell off large chunks of the business and buy more profitable pieces.

The reader will almost instantly dislike Morton Stickler.  He seems totally self-absorbed, dismissive of others to the point of rudeness, and totally convinced that his way is the only way.  He is going to prove that not only could he make a huge fortune in venture capital, but that he is also a brilliant executive.  He uses very simple business models that were developed by management consultants to gain new clients.  He does not like people who disagree with him.

Are there really people like Morton Stickler loose in the world of big business?  In my experience, the answer is ‘yes’.  I have to say that I never knew a CEO who had all of Morton’s negative characteristics, but there were some I knew who, if one selected their individual bad characteristics, could be combined into Morton Stickler.

But this then prompts two questions: how does someone like Morton Stickler get to become CEO of a big corporation like United Carbide?  And, once ‘the powers that be’ find out what he is really like, why don’t they get rid of him?  The partial answer to both questions is that there is a dysfunctional board: a board which is cliquish, composed of prima donnas, who have little management experience, and who do not see themselves as servants of the shareholders.  Boards like this may be relatively rare nowadays, but they weren’t so rare a generation ago.  Board members could be very impressed by a guy like Morton.  He’s confident, he’s made tens of millions, and he promises to make them all look like heroes.  When things go wrong, a guy like Morton can find ways to cover up or divert attention from his failings.  And, perhaps interestingly, guys like Morton may just be lucky, or paradoxically, their harsh medicine is just what the business needs.

In any case, Henry, the key character in Sable Shadow and The Presence falls foul of Morton, and he is fired.  But he is fired in circumstances which make the loss of his job – important as it was – seem trivial.  We don’t learn what happened to Morton, except that he (and United Carbide) had to pay Henry for wrongful dismissal and slander.  Did they pay him enough?  Perhaps the test of ‘enough’ is that in his new identity, it isn’t a topic of concern for Henry, much as he may have disliked Morton when he worked for him.

Is Surveillance Undemocratic?

There is an article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph as follows:

“More than 500 of the world’s leading authors have condemned the scale of state surveillance, warning that spy agencies are undermining democracy.  In a statement the writers from 81 different countries, including British authors Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Irvine Welsh, and Martin Amis, call for an international charter enshrining digital rights.  The authors warn that the extent of surveillance has undermined people’s right to “remain unobserved and unmolested” in their communications.

“This fundamental right has been rendered null and void through abuse of technological developments by states and corporations for mass surveillance purposes,” it says.

“A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy.  To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as well as in real space. . . . Surveillance is theft.  . . . . This data is not public property.  It belongs to us.  When it is used to predict our behaviour, we are robbed of something else – the principle of free will crucial to democratic liberty.”

The statement comes after eight of the biggest technical companies formed an alliance to call on Barack Obama, the American president to reform surveillance laws.  Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Yahoo have united to form a group called Reform Government Surveillance, marking the first time competing companies have presented a united front.

From what I have read about Reform Government Surveillance, it seems to make a lot of sense.  But I have major reservations about the language used by the authors in their statement.

Reform Government Surveillance seeks five areas of reform:

1. The government should codify sensible limits on surveillance, limiting surveillance to known users and eliminating bulk surveillance.

2. Executive powers should be subject to strong checks and balances.

3. Government should be transparent: it should allow companies to report demands for data and it should promptly disclose the data publicly.

4. Governments should not restrict the international flow of data.

5. Legal conflicts between different government jurisdictions should be eliminated.

I have no problem with these five reforms, but, for example, where do people get the right to “remain unobserved and unmolested in their communications”?  If we speak publicly, we give up the right to be private and unobserved.  Just ask any celebrity who’s made a mistake on Twitter (or any other public place for that matter): are they unobserved?  No!  Are they unmolested?  They may not feel like it.  Hasn’t the person who wrote this statement for the authors heard of libel or slander laws?

“A person under surveillance is not longer free.”  Strictly speaking, this is true, but does it pass the ‘so what?’ test?  Where in the US Constitution or in the Declaration of Independence is there mention of ‘freedom from surveillance’ (or observation).  No civilized society can function without its citizens being able to observe the behaviour of others.  For a starter, we would have no witnesses in court.

“Surveillance is theft” . . . and when it happens, “we are robbed . . . of the principle of free will”.  There is a leap of logic in here somewhere.  It sounds a little like the existentialist concept of ‘Other’, but even the existentialists believed in free will.

You may have read about the trial currently underway in London of two Islamic terrorists who are on trial for murdering and trying to butcher a UK soldier in the street.  One was a Christian who converted to Islam.  In his defence (he denies murder, but admits killing the soldier) he said that he is a ‘soldier’ (he never served in the military), and that Allah told him to kill a soldier in revenge for all the Muslims who have been killed.  Can we afford, as a society, to overlook the behaviour of people like that?  I don’t think so.  I agree with the eight technical companies, but not with my fellow authors.

By the way, if I had been the prosecutor in the above trial, I would have asked the defendant two questions:

One: did he ever consider the possibility, as a religious person who believes in God and knows about the devious, lying devil, that it was the devil, not God, who gave him the instruction?

Two: has he studied the Qur’an sufficiently to understand, as most Muslims do, that to kill someone is a major sin?

 

 

 

Giveaway!

I will make three, free copies of my latest novel, Sable Shadow and The Presence, available to readers who agree to post a review of 100 words or more on this blog.  Please leave me your name and address.  First come, first served!

The synopsis of Sable Shadow and The Presence is as follows:  This is a fictional autobiographical novel of Henry Lawson, who at a young age hears strange voices which, at first, he does not recognise.  He attributes one voice to ‘Sable Shadow’, a confidant of the devil, and the other to The Presence, a representative of God.

 In high school, Henry is introduced to the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, and he begins to see life in existential terms, while not infringing on his rudimentary Christian beliefs.

 Upon Henry’s entry into the world of business, he receives guidance from Sable Shadow; this advances him to a high corporate level.  With his career nearly at its peak, he suffers a series of devastating tragedies.  He feels tormented and attempts suicide.  With the help of his wife, and a psychiatrist with whom he engages in existential dialogue, he constructs a successful, new Identity.

 The novel follows Henry’s growing and selective acceptance of existentialism, and his efforts to make it a personal guide to living rather than a series of abstractions.

The novel has philosophical, psychological and theological dimensions, but it is firmly set in the every-day world of good and evil, triumph and tragedy.

I will extend this same offer to my other four novels: Fishing in Foreign Seas, Sin and Contrition, Efraim’s Eye, and The Iranian Scorpion.   Information about these novels can be found at my website: www.williampeace.net.

Each reader will be limited to one book until a review on the previous book is posted.

Review: Blue Is the Warmest Color

My wife and I saw Blue Is the Warmest Color last Friday night.  You may have read that this is the movie with the extended, explicit lesbian love scenes (it carries an 18 rating in the UK).

As I reflected on the film later, it occurs to me that the task of a director, together with those of the actors, are analogous to that of a writer.  In both cases, the artists are striving to tell a story in a way that has unique and special meaning for the audience.  In this respect, Blue is extraordinarily successful: the directing and the acting have an extremely strong effect on the audience.  One cannot help but feel, and sympathise completely with the characters.  The story, itself, provides a firm foundation; it is based on a novel by Julie Maroh: a fifteen-year-old girl of modest circumstances falls in love with an older, middle class, intellectual artist.  But it is the fiery passions of the two characters that make the picture really memorable.  It is the direction of Abdellatif Kechiche, and the acting of Adèle Exarchopoulos (as Adèle, the student) and Léa Seydoux (as Emma, the artist) which give the film its memorable power.  Whatever else you may have heard about this film, in my opinion it is worth seeing just to marvel at the acting and the direction.  (I think it is shameful that after the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival there was a rather public falling out amongst the actresses and the director.)

This is not to say that the film does not have its flaws.  It’s running time is three hours and seven minutes, and while it is largely successful in carrying its emotional energy that long, I think it would have been more effective had it been edited more rigorously.  At the same time, I felt that a little more attention should have been given to the loneliness which Adèle feels later in the relationship.  She cheats on Emma with a male colleague, and says that she was lonely.  It’s believable, but we were given no evidence of it.  While the average viewer will understand, almost at the outset, that this is a relationship which has no basis in shared values, experiences or goals, it is this lack of shared identity which makes the failure of the relationship so tragic.  The emphasis in the film is on the dramatic break-up.  But it is not the break-up, itself which is the tragedy; it is the causes of the break-up that are tragic.

So, what about the explicit sex scenes?  One of the scenes lasts seven minutes.  Some reviewers have commented that the sex scenes should have been shorter.  In my opinion, the scenes are not erotic.  (While the actresses are fully nude, there were no female genitalia visible.)  There were two absolutely gorgeous female bodies, and the passionate lust was almost palpable!  I read that the author, Julie Maroh, said that the scenes would strike a lesbian audience as ‘ridiculous’.  Maybe so, but for me, they made the point that these women are deeply in love.

If you have a chance, I think that Blue Is the Warmest Color is a film worth seeing.

Comments: Sable Shadow and The Presence

I have received this review from a friend who, two years ago, saw an earlier draft of Sable Shadow and The Presence.  At the time, he told me it was “boring”.  Needless to say, I have worked hard on it since.

Congratulations Bill! an outstanding achievement! I couldn’t put it down, meals no meals, I swallowed the book in two days. Your prose has become self assured.  You dominate it, rather  than being dominated by it. The research, as ever, is superb, and also completely open to being understood by the layman. 

I drank in the corporate politics, and the acquisition of Nano made me ”homesick” for my General Foods’ period in France. You have certainly managed to recreate life as it is lived – even to the pertinent introduction of the meta-physical element – though a bit wobbly in spots, it stands solid, protected by Sartre.

I like it (the meta-physical element) and feel close to it – I guess that’s one of the reasons why I think it such a  remarkable creation.  Your progressive development of style, skills and plot makes my mouth water for the goodies to come.  Thank you from me, but really from all your readers.