Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "background"
Background to Heresy
I cannot offer an unbiased review of my own work, so I’ll try to “add value” with some background.
This was a classic “manuscript left in a drawer” for decades. It wasn’t even one of my drawers. Recently, an old friend came over to visit from England and brought this and another one I’d forgotten I’d ever written. It seemed a bit dated, but there was a spark there, so I rewrote it into its present form. Among other things, I relabelled it from “Cod’s Roe” and clothed it in the fashionable historic present.
I inserted the expression “arithmetical democracy”, although I first heard it later, from the mouth of Alvaro Cunhal, head of Portugal’s Communists, who used it disparagingly to explain why his party should run the country even though relatively few people voted for it. I guess he favoured the kind of “emotional democracy” practised in “Heresy”, not that it would have got him into power anyway.
My story is a child of its time, though the the notion of diet replacing politics as the focus of identity was ahead of its time. In Italy, where I’m living today, the infusion of technology into politics has become fashionable, and politics are becoming ever more emotional.
Back in 1971, I was an out-of-work new graduate. One day, I went to the unemployment office to sign on, and they offered me a job there. I took it like a shot. In “Heresy”, I have a little fun with the strange rituals of bureaucratic life, above all the idea that conformity and orthodoxy are the supreme virtues.
All in all, I think “Heresy” is humorous, thought-provoking and short enough to be well worth the time you’ll spend reading it. Let me give it five stars to encourage the young writer I was then.
This was a classic “manuscript left in a drawer” for decades. It wasn’t even one of my drawers. Recently, an old friend came over to visit from England and brought this and another one I’d forgotten I’d ever written. It seemed a bit dated, but there was a spark there, so I rewrote it into its present form. Among other things, I relabelled it from “Cod’s Roe” and clothed it in the fashionable historic present.
I inserted the expression “arithmetical democracy”, although I first heard it later, from the mouth of Alvaro Cunhal, head of Portugal’s Communists, who used it disparagingly to explain why his party should run the country even though relatively few people voted for it. I guess he favoured the kind of “emotional democracy” practised in “Heresy”, not that it would have got him into power anyway.
My story is a child of its time, though the the notion of diet replacing politics as the focus of identity was ahead of its time. In Italy, where I’m living today, the infusion of technology into politics has become fashionable, and politics are becoming ever more emotional.
Back in 1971, I was an out-of-work new graduate. One day, I went to the unemployment office to sign on, and they offered me a job there. I took it like a shot. In “Heresy”, I have a little fun with the strange rituals of bureaucratic life, above all the idea that conformity and orthodoxy are the supreme virtues.
All in all, I think “Heresy” is humorous, thought-provoking and short enough to be well worth the time you’ll spend reading it. Let me give it five stars to encourage the young writer I was then.
