Jonathan Chamberlain's Blog, page 4

Lazy Days

I went up to London a couple of days ago with the intention of seeing the Hockney exhibition. There was a queue about 50 yards long and when I enquired how long it would take was told "Two and a half hours." My respect for art is great but not to the extent of giving myself varicose veins while I shuffle forwards at a rate of 20 yards an hour. I turned immediately and returned to the street. Now just across from the Academy where the Hockney exhibition is/was (for this is its last week) there is the building housing that great emporium of food Fortnum and Mason's and this was a thing I had never seen before (and it was a matter of some delight) probably because I tend to walk on the other side of the road, but the facade of the building is covered with heraldic animals in vivid colours -unicorns and lions, dragons and I don't know what  - and they have been let loose for the day from their dreary existence decorating heraldic signs and they are prancing and jumping in an ecstacy of play up the front of the building. This alone was certainly worth a Hockney. Then not many minutes later as I started to get lost in Soho (always a pleasant thing  to do) I saw this blue plaque: http://thestateofthenationuk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/jacob-von-hogflume.html

There! That too added to the joy of the day. And then, later, I was admitted to the Lucian Freud exhibition with little fuss. 30 seconds to buy the ticket, 80 minutes of loitering in central London before I could make my allotted entry. Time to saunter around Blackwell's and buy the book, a book that probably would not have come to my attention if I hadn't gone to Blackwell's (this is what I do when I go up to London). In this case it was Best European Stories 2012 – or something like that. As always it goes on to a pile with the other books I fully intend reading and waits…and waits…and waits.

But back to Lucian Freud. There was lots of what I came to refer (to myself) as 'slabs of flesh' – incredibly well done, incredibly uninteresting. There were all these incredibly ugly sexual parts – so that I worried about the two or three children who were there hoping they wouldn't be put off for life. But I did admire the feet, the crumpled linen, the floorboards.

And, yes, of course, there were one or two exciting moments. There was a self-portrait that was quite extraordinary, seeming to grow out of the seething frothing waves of the wall behind him. There was another self-portrait that had the smudged nose that seemed to honor Francis Bacon, and in that gesture an admittance of who was the greater painter. Bacon is big and Freud is small. I speak of their vision. And there amongst everything else a photograph of Freud painting the queen. No, not Hockney, though that was there too. I should of course have written the Queen. There she was seated, smiling, alert, attractive and there was Freud painting a miniature painting (For Chrissakes man! is this an intricate insult?) of the Queen with an almost bestial muscularity about the face. Quite bizarre.

And now I am a long way behind. I have books lined up to be discussed: Forster on the novel; Kundera on the novel; Conrad's Nigger of the Narcissus (discovered today and bought because again there is that linkage that seems to be bedevilling this enterprise (but which I am enjoying – enjoying both the enterprise and the linkings) along with eight or so books that I have bought for less than a tenner.) and a Stephen Fry and the Oxford book of … We'll get to them soon enough

The Third Policeman (2)

Here is the way the book starts:

"Not everyone knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade: but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured for himself out of a hollow iron bar."

No shilly-shallying around then. And crucially no bumbling, likeable, ineffectual heroes. And is John Divney somehow a transmogrified 'John the Divine'? – and if names are significant what about Phillip Mathers? I can't think of anything – a name plucked out of the blue? Then what about Policeman Pluck himself who appears later on? Enough!

Here is the first paragraph of a novel that has come down to us as a comic masterpiece – does that not surprise you? And there is a humour in this book – but not a humour that will often make you laugh, though you will often find yourself smiling and nodding. And it seems to me that we can divide books, labelled 'humorous' into two classes – there are those where the humour is the core of the book (the books of P.G.Wodehouse would be a good example) and there are those where the humour is a coating to a darker enterprise (Catch 22 for example). The Dalkey Archive belongs, I think, to the former while The Third Policeman is very firmly in the camp of the latter.

And of course there is that Policeman who goes around puncturing bicycle tires in the name of the Atomic theory (which we read as the Molecular theory in The Dalkey Archive) and about which I will say no more except to say that this alone is worth reading the book for.

Another thing that this novel shares with The Dalkey Archive is a character called de Selby. But while both de Selbys are odd people in the extreme, they aren't really the same. In The Third Policeman de Selby is only referred to as a great, misunderstood, often commented upon savant who has odd perceptions of the world, the universe and everything. He considers night, for example, to be an 'occlusion of black air' that falls regularly. De Selby appears to encapsulate all the madness of philosophy from Xeno onwards (the Xeno who said an arrow would never reach its target or the hare pass the tortoise) – and Flann O'Brien has great fun with this figure, mocking him with hyper respect.

But I want to show you something of the man's genius as a writer. In this scene the narrator has gone to the now-dead Mathers' house to get a box that has been hidden under the floor boards:

"…the match suddenly flickered and went out and the handle of the box, which I had lifted up about an inch slid heavily off my finger. Without stopping to light another match I thrust my hand bodily into the opening and just when it should be closing about the box something happened. I cannot hope to describe what it was but it had frightened me very much long before I had understood it even slightly. It was some change which came upon me or upon the room, indescribably subtle, yet momentous, ineffable. It was as if the daylight had changed with unnatural suddenness, as if the temperature of the evening had altered greatly in an instant or as if the air had become twice as rare or twice as dense as it had been in the winking of an eye…"

So, some form of magical transformation has occurred and the nameless narrator now finds himself in a new normality. It is only at the back of the book in a post-script in which Flann O'Brien is writing to William Saroyan (the strange serendipitous linkings that are affecting this enterprise) that he explains that this transformation is one where the narrator has gone from the world of the living to the world of the dead (killed by a mine or a bomb of some sort presumably) – but so subtly is this done that you don't know it. So he appears to continue being alive but suddenly he is aware that he has a soul (who he calls 'Joe') and the rest of the story is a sojourn in a strange kind of Hell. It is the seamlessness of this transition that is so wonderfully achieved so when, as I did, you go back to re-read it, you see how perfectly it was done so that you had read it and understood it, but really had not understood it. There is a lot of that quality running through this book.

http://amzn.to/FWknAd

The Third Policeman

I was slightly delayed by a question that came across my bows, a question posed by American writer, Warren Adler – a question he appears to pose at regular intervals as I have found references to it dating back ten years. The question is this: What makes a literary novel a literay novel? You can find his discussion at the Huffington Post by doing the usual searches. All I will say is that I disagree with his answer. It is not about the use of fancy or poetical constructions. It is more fundamental than that. In my opinion, what makes a literary novel is the fact that we are aware of a narrator behind the narration – behind any narrator who appears to be narrating. What makes a novel literary is that there is the sense of the play of a mind behind the telling of the story. This is why Stephen King is not literary – although he is very good at what he does – because his writing is highly efficiently enslaved to the action and the emotional effects he wants to create in the reader.

With Flann O'Brien that sense of play is very much in the forefront of all his books – and in fact it is what redeems The Dalkey Archive, which is funny but is not 'great' in any sense. But with The Third Policeman we are dealing with a very different beast.

In truth, and this is the answer to the question posed a few blogs back, this is not a particularly 'funny' book (The Dalkey Archive is funnier – we are more likely to smile or laugh while reading it (as good a definition of funny as any!)). But The Third Policeman is infinitely greater as a literary construction. Although it has its cultic following, I think even among them it is misrepresented simply as an odd, funny book. I think this is a misreading. For me The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's great work (certainly greater than 'At Swim Two Birds'). And the only writer with whom we can compare him is Becket.

There is a very strong parallel with Becket at the beginning. We have a nameless narrator narrating endless details without giving us the sense of a context or a situation. For me, if I dive into any of Becket's works, Watt or Malone Dies for example, I luxuriate in the flow of his sentences for about three pages and then my mind revolts and I cannot read any more. In the Third Policeman we nearly get there but, crucially, not quite. There is here more of a narrative flow, a sense of movement, that carries us along. The Third Policeman is a brooding surreal work, mesmerisingly playful but not dizzyingly so – it is not trying to impress us with its virtuosity as At Swim Two Birds so clearly is. But there is a strong sense of friction at the level of the sentence so we cannot read it as easily as The Dalkey Archive but we know that we will do ourselves a great disservice if we don't persevere.

And when we read the history of these two books a tragedy is revealed. At Swim Two Birds was published to some acclaim, but presumably sales were not great and so there was no automatic publication of a second novel. The Third Policeman was refused publication. Turned down flat. And so it lay in the bottom drawer as so many novels do (I've got three!). Why did he not persevere? He must have taken a long look in the mirror and decided that he did not wish to be an impoverished literary genius. Perhaps he preferred to be a clown, to entertain, for that is what he did for the next twenty years where he had a decent job and a weekly newspaper column on the side – and it has to be admitted his humour as it manifested itself in the column does not travel well. But then, now retired, he decides to salvage something of the earlier novel (the good bit) and wrap it up in a slighter work, which now that he is well known gets published. Celebrity beats quality any day of the week when it get to being published (he said sourly!). And then three years later he died. And then The Third Policeman was discovered and published to great acclaim.

But what if it had been published twenty years earlier and its genius recognised then? Ah what then? Might we not have had more great works of genius? The lost works of Flann O'Brien…that is what we have to mourn.

I have written too much right now. But tomorrow I'll look at some of the truly extraordinary elements of The Third Policeman.

The Dalkey Archive

The Dalkey Archive starts with the narrator, Mick, and his friend Hackett (interesting use of first name or surname to indicate degrees of intimacy with the reader – in fact throughout the novel we never discover Mick's surname) come across a man who has stubbed his toe. This man turns out to be an inventor by the name of  de Selby, who has among other things invented a means by which time is eliminated. He has also, we soon learn, developed the means by which all living things on the face of the earth can be eliminated and he is just waiting for the right time to carry out this great work.

The proof of his ability to eliminate time is established quickly enough when de Selby invites them to accompany him to an undersea cavern where they meet St Augustine (whose 'Dublin accent was unmistakable') who de Selby interrogates furiously. And this is surely one of the funniest sections of the whole book. Here is something of the flavour of it:

-          (de Selby) You admit you were a debauched and abandoned young man?

-          (St Augustine) For a pagan I wasn't the worst. Besides maybe it was the Irish in me.

-          The Irish in you?

-          Yes. My father's name was Patrick. And he was a proper gobshite.

-          Do you admit that the age or colour of the women didn't matter to you where the transaction in question was coition.

-          I'm not admitting anything. Please remember my eyesight was very poor….

-          Interesting that your father's name was Patrick. Is he a Saint?

-          That reminds me. You have a Professor Binchy in your university outfit in Dublin who says there were really two Saint Patricks

-          Why?

-          Two Saint Patricks? We have four of the buggers in our place and they'd make you sick with their shamrocks and shenanigans and bullshit.

The rest of the novel is a series of incidental pieces in which Mick sets out – with no great urgency it has to be said – to ensure that de Selby (who is above all a genial man – who just happens to be waiting for the right moment to destroy all human life and doesn't mind admitting it) fails in his task.

As the narration continues, we are acquainted (or if you have read The Third Policeman – re-acquainted) with Policeman Pluck and his obsession with bicycles and the molecular theory (and truly the book is worth reading for that alone – and I will not spoil the joke by re-describing it here). Mick also meets James Joyce who claims that he never wrote Ulysses but that it was a joke perpetrated on him by Sylvia Beach in Paris.

The Dalkey Archive is above all a light hearted vehicle for a bit of intellectual play. The dialogue is good, the Irishisms delightful, the insanity seductive and it plays by the rules of a certain kind of English (not American) novel in which the hero is a largely ineffectual, bumbling person whose heart is in the right place and there is a romantic element and all works out happily in the end.

The Third Policeman, however, is a very different beast and we will come to that next time…

Flann O’Brien, Me, James Joyce and Forty Foot Men

Forums are amazing places where conversations can continue over years. You post a question and only three years later you get a response – amazing. The question I found (where? who can say?) was this: which of these two books by Flann O’Brien was funnier: The Dalkey Archive or The Third Policeman? Good question and one close to my heart – and coincidentally I had at some time acquired 2nd hand copies of both books in the belief that I would one day wish to revisit them – And, coincidences being what they are, it was St Patrick’s Day and what better day to sit down and review the question. And a very interesting question it turned out to be.

Now, here’s the thing. I happen to have spent a number of years living almost exactly half way between James Joyce’s Martello Tower and the town of Dalkey just south of what Flann O’Brien endearingly – and mockingly to those with gaelic pretensions – calls Dunleary but which is more commonly spelt Dun Laoghaire (but sounded out as Flann has it). Flann was a native speaker of Gaelic and no mean linguist so he could not be lightly taken to task on such a question. Any critic would soon be made ashamed of their own ignorance. Now the distance between Dalkey and Joyce’s Martello Tower (for those who don’t know these so called Martello Towers I can do no better than to direct you to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martello_tower) which stands at a pleasant spot called Forty-foot. Now why that place is called Forty-foot I can’t say but there is at Forty-foot a quite remarkable ‘thing’ (the sort of thing that Flann O’Brien might have termed a ‘conundrum’) – namely a cleft in a rock that leads to a small enclosed space with a further cleft that drops into the sea. And this is a place where elderly men free of pubic hair (as I noticed more than once) come to do what in America is known as skinny dipping. And there are some who come religiously everyday with their little wooden board, 365 days a year (and 366 days on a leap year) and strip off and plunge into the water in the cleft and swim around a bit hidden from the site of the ladies and children on the nearby beach (who would of course be shocked to the marrow to see anything of the sort) and then they clamber out and – you’ve been waiting for this – they stand on the wooden boards while they dry off and get dressed because the stone is so bloody cold. And outside this spot, so that no-one of the female gender (as O’Brien might have put it) might be shocked, there is a sign, completely unpunctuated, that says: “Forty Foot Men Only”. This is the truth.

And while we’re standing in our minds next to Joyce’s Martello Tower (only two miles or so from Dalkey) I think this might be the time to argue that Joyce didn’t quite get the opening sentence of Ulysses right.  For many years I was convinced that the opening sentence of this wonderful book was: “Up jumped Buck Mulligan.” Short and all those wonderful ‘Uh’ sounds thrown together. So it was a bit of a shock to discover that the first sentence is really: “STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” Now of course jumping up may not have been the sort of thing that Buck Mulligan would do, and certainly not if he is carrying a bowl of lather with a open razor ready to do his morning shave on the parapet of the tower overlooking the file of men going in and out of the cleft in the rock below him – could he see more? But nevertheless, I think that could have been incorporated like this. “Up jumped Buck Mulligan. Sure, what a great morning it was. A shave was in order. Nothing better than to look down on the old fellas from the parapet of the tower. So, now progressing in a stately way, carrying a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed he made his way up the stairs.” I imagine the argument as to which beginning is best will go on long into the night.

But we were talking about Flann rather than James and Dalkey rather than Forty-foot.

I spent three  solitary, but not unhappy, years walking this stretch of the coast and I grew very fond of it. These were the years when, aged 10-13,  I was a student at a place called Castle Park just a step back from the shore at Bulloch Harbour. So naturally I have a certain nostalgia for the name ‘Dalkey’, and so when I picked up the book to read first, I noted that it had been copyrighted in 1964 (this is the sort of nerdy thing people like me do). Now, I know the tricks of writers. They will not copyright a book in the year it was finally completed. No, they will wait till the year it is published so that it will seem fresh and excitingly current. So it is very possible that Flann O’Brien and I passed on the streets sometime between 1959 and 1962 when I was a schoolboy in those parts. Or he would have heard the shouts of unruly boys playing rugby – I was the big fat loud one – behind the high wall that he was passing. At least it was possible. So, as I said, I have fond memories of that time and place and sat down first to read The Dalkey Diary.

“Dalkey is a little town maybe twelve miles south of Dublin, on the shore. It is an unlikely town, huddled, quiet, pretending to be asleep. Its streets are narrow, not quite self-evident as streets and with meetings that seem accidental. Small shops look closed but are open. Dalkey looks like an humble settlement which must, a traveller feels, be next door to some place of the first importance and distinction. And it is…”

And what is this place of the first importance? It is the Vico Road. And here is a brief view of that place, and a note that will be of interest

http://youtu.be/C5NIzFFzVDw

http://www.dun-laoghaire.com/nude_bathing.html

And I will continue this disquisition next time…

http://amzn.to/FWknAd

 

Flann O'Brien, Me, James Joyce and Forty Foot Men

Forums are amazing places where conversations can continue over years. You post a question and only three years later you get a response – amazing. The question I found (where? who can say?) was this: which of these two books by Flann O'Brien was funnier: The Dalkey Archive or The Third Policeman? Good question and one close to my heart – and coincidentally I had at sometime acquired 2nd hand copies of both books in the belief that I would one day wish to revisit them – And, coincidences being what they are, it was St Patrick's Day and what better day to sit down and review the question. And a very interesting question it turned out to be.

Now, here's the thing. I happen to have spent a number of years living almost exactly half way between James Joyce's Martello Tower and the town of Dalkey just south of what Flann O'Brien endearingly – and mockingly to those with gaelic pretensions – calls Dunleary but which is more commonly spelt Dun Laoghaire (but sounded out as Flann has it). Flann was a native speaker of Gaelic and no mean linguist so he could not be lightly taken to task on such a question. Any critic would soon be made ashamed of their own ignorance. Now the distance between Dalkey and Joyce's Martello Tower (for those who don't know these so called Martello Towers I can do no better than to direct you to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martello_tower) which stands at a pleasant spot called Forty-foot. Now why that place is called Forty-foot I can't say but there is at Forty-foot a quite remarkable 'thing' (the sort of thing that Flann O'Brien might have termed a 'conundrum') – namely a cleft in a rock that leads to a small enclosed space with a further cleft that drops into the sea. And this is a place where elderly men free of pubic hair (as I noticed more than once) come to do what in America is known as skinny dipping. And there are some who come religiously everyday with their little wooden board, 365 days a year (and 366 days on a leap year) and strip off and plunge into the water in the cleft and swim around a bit hidden from the site of the ladies and children on the nearby beach (who would of course be shocked to the marrow to see anything of the sort) and then they clamber out and – you've been waiting for this – they stand on the wooden boards while they dry off and get dressed because the stone is so bloody cold. And outside this spot, so that no-one of the female gender (as O'Brien might have put it) might be shocked, there is a sign, completely unpunctuated, that says: "Forty Foot Men Only". This is the truth.

And while we're standing in our minds next to Joyce's Martello Tower (only two miles or so from Dalkey) I think this might be the time to argue that Joyce didn't quite get the opening sentence of Ulysses right.  For many years I was convinced that the opening sentence of this wonderful book was: "Up jumped Buck Mulligan." Short and all those wonderful 'Uh' sounds thrown together. So it was a bit of a shock to discover that the first sentence is really: "STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." Now of course jumping up may not have been the sort of thing that Buck Mulligan would do, and certainly not if he is carrying a bowl of lather with a open razor ready to do his morning shave on the parapet of the tower overlooking the file of men going in and out of the cleft in the rock below him – could he see more? But nevertheless, I think that could have been incorporated like this. "Up jumped Buck Mulligan. Sure, what a great morning it was. A shave was in order. Nothing better than to look down on the old fellas from the parapet of the tower. So, now progressing in a stately way, carrying a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed he made his way up the stairs." I imagine the argument as to which beginning is best will go on long into the night.

But we were talking about Flann rather than James and Dalkey rather than Forty-foot.

I spent three  solitary, but not unhappy, years walking this stretch of the coast and I grew very fond of it. These were the years when, aged 10-13,  I was a student at a place called Castle Park just a step back from the shore at Bulloch Harbour. So naturally I have a certain nostalgia for the name 'Dalkey', and so when I picked up the book to read first, I noted that it had been copyrighted in 1964 (this is the sort of nerdy thing people like me do). Now, I know the tricks of writers. They will not copyright a book in the year it was finally completed. No, they will wait till the year it is published so that it will seem fresh and excitingly current. So it is very possible that Flann O'Brien and I passed on the streets sometime between 1959 and 1962 when I was a schoolboy in those parts. Or he would have heard the shouts of unruly boys playing rugby – I was the big fat loud one – behind the high wall that he was passing. At least it was possible. So, as I said, I have fond memories of that time and place and sat down first to read The Dalkey Diary.

"Dalkey is a little town maybe twelve miles south of Dublin, on the shore. It is an unlikely town, huddled, quiet, pretending to be asleep. Its streets are narrow, not quite self-evident as streets and with meetings that seem accidental. Small shops look closed but are open. Dalkey looks like an humble settlement which must, a traveller feels, be next door to some place of the first importance and distinction. And it is…"

And what is this place of the first importance? It is the Vico Road. And here is a brief view of that place, and a note that will be of interest

http://youtu.be/C5NIzFFzVDw

http://www.dun-laoghaire.com/nude_bathing.html

And I will continue this disquisition next time…

Ooops!!! Time for my Madonna story.

Did the link not go to my sex tape? Tut tut!  Oh well, maybe it's just as well. You never know what the repercussions might have been. But since I do wish to boost the numbers visiting my site, perhaps I should dust off a memory or two. So here is my Madonna story.

What's this got to do with older books? some of you might, perfectly legitimately, enquire. My answer? You shouldn't judge a book by its covers. And while you're mulling over that gnomic statement, I will carry on.

I was quietly having a drink one evening in a pub in Central, Hong Kong. It was The Jockey, if I remember rightly – a pub of no distinction whatsoever, except that it was convenient for the ferry that I had to catch to get back to the island I lived on. I used to work evenings but between leaving work and catching the ferry there was an awkward hour to fill, which I generally spent at the Jockey reading a book over a pint because at that time of the evening – 9.30 onwards – it was pleasanttly 'dead'.

On the evening in question I was the only person in this quite large bar, quietly sipping my lager, when, at around ten, the door swung open and in marched a crowd of suits, escorting, if that's the word, a young woman with what can only be described as a blond afro, wearing a glittering sunset blue ankle length dress. Collectively they cased the joint. Then the young lady marched across the pub and sat herself down  on a stool at the small circular table less than ten foot from my own, directly facing me. The suits – fifteen or more – stood behind her like the tail feathers of a peacock in mourning.

So there I was sipping my lager, reading my book and looking forward to getting on a ferry and there she was sitting ten feet away from me, staring at me. When I looked over all the men collectively smiled at me encouragingly, invitingly. It was clear to me that there was a joke a-foot and that I was the butt of it. I recognised one of the suits as a man in the film trade but who this blonde was I had no idea.

Anyway, the situation was intolerable – I was unaccustomed to being ogled by someone I took to be a superstar (what could I say to her? Sorry, I didn't catch the name? Madonna? Shake of the head. And what do you do Madonna?) – so I supped up my drink, folded my book away, ran my fingers through my golden locks, stood up, swirled the strap of my bag over my shoulder and headed for the door. I was half-way there when I heard her say, slowly, with her strong American accent, so that the words hovered in the air, mocking me: "Oh dear, I think we've scared him off!"

Was it coincidence but Madonna and Sean Penn were in Hong Kong making the film Shanghai Express – and it was known that they were having marital tiffs. Looking back, as I do from time to time, it is with enormous relief that I had the good sense to skedaddle. I am sure if Madonna could see me now she too would heave a sense of relief. Did I really once fancy that…? She would think.  Let us leave the utterance there unfinished. Time is cruel.

Sex tape

Authors will do anything to get their books published. They'll even make a sex tape – Like me. Here's the link: http://amzn.to/FWknAd

Oscar (Wilde) and Peter (Ackroyd)

And carrying on the book/blog dialogue I now come to a novel that is organised as a personal blog – The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde by Peter Ackroyd.

OK. Here it is. Peter Ackroyd was born in the same years as I was. The same year as Martin Amis. So there we are: The Great, the famous and… me.

We won't talk (much!) about young Amis – it's not that I'm jealous (Really I'm not – not very!) but the truth is that I haven't yet read an Amis novel that I enjoyed. There have been bits and pieces that have been clever (good) but there have been other pieces that have been clever-clever (not so good). I don't believe he would be so well admired if he had not been so well connected.  It's true that for many years I absolutely refused to touch anything by Amis but once, finding a collection of articles and book reviews (The something Inferno I seem to remember the title went – just checked, memory is good: 'The Moronic Inferno' is the title) I found myself dipping into the book and not just enjoying what I was reading but being pretty damn impressed too. So, that's Martin out of the way, my genuflections done.

Peter Ackroyd is a different matter. He is a heavyweight in every sense. And his obsession is with London. I once tried his novel Hawksmoor but didn't get on with it at all – too Gothic, too fantastical. But his Last Testament of Oscar Wilde is a different matter altogether.

First of all it requires an extraordinary courage and, yes,  enormous intellectual confidence, to consider telling Oscar Wilde's story from his own internal perspective. Consider what that means.

Oscar was a genius – so you have to portray a character that has the thoughts of a genius (who else but a genius would consider it?)

Oscar was a master of the epigram so you have to be master of that form too. It must spring naturally from the mental peregrinations of the character. Here is one – original to Oscar or to Ackroyd I couldn't tell you : "Some people drink to forget. I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and discover what I know." Me too.

Oscar was well read in Latin and Greek – so you too have to show off knowledge of Latin and Greek literature.

Oscar was well read in the literature of his times and of the generations earlier than his – so must you be too.

Oscar was living in Paris and knew it well, with all its literary, political and scandalous goings on – so you must too.

And there is the technology too – the state of lighting, transport and so on.

Think of that task – and of course you must not be aware of what is to come – the impending future – not even hint at it.

It is an extraordinary task. And Ackroyd delivers perfectly. If you can find this book read it. Oscar is at the end of his tether when the book opens, stranded penniless in Paris after the great scandal with Lord Alfred Douglas. Day by day there is a new entry in his blog-log-diary. He reviews his past, he struggles with his present. And it is sad, and there are early references to the wallpaper and…so it goes. Ackroyd cleverly avoids being obvious.

My edition is the abacus paperback (abacus? How calculating! I know abacuses: the fingers that flick the wooden beads back and forth in their rows as they add up the bill. And it is the sound – clack-clack as the fingers negligently fire them back and forth – who on earth thought the abacus was something to name a publishing company after?) The back cover has some reviews and testimonials – 'a pastiche of the highest quality' says an anonymous critic of The Listener. A pastiche? This is not a pastiche. This is the truth.

Have you noticed, as I have, that when people accuse you of some vice, it is a near certainty that they themselves are more guilty of that they accuse you of. By inverting this law, we can see that the names of things are chosen to hide the truth (which is the opposite) – With this key our media can be renamed thus: The Times (The Stolid Past); The Guardian (The Intractably Complacent); The Observer (The Posturer); The Telegraph (The Snail); The Spectator (The Blatherer); The New Statesman (The Old Fogey).

If you have better suggestions do let me know.

Abrazos

 

Jonathan Chamberlain is author of Dreams of Gold, the comic novel of the London 2012 Olympics

http://amzn.to/FO7iz0

#blog versus #novel

So Murasaki Shikibu, author of the world's first novel and Sei Shonagon, author of the first surviving blog knew each other and did not get on.

Writing a novel and writing a blog require completely different character traits. One requires a contentedness with solitude, a mind that plays with itself – the other requires a slightly flighty mind that is constantly seeking to engage with others. "If one has to sample each interesting thing that comes along, people are bound to regard one as frivolous." Murasaki comments, just a touch sourly. Self-restraint comes at a price too, dear lady, and of the two Sei Shonagon is the more modern, the more immediate, the more true.

[True? Real. Authentic. At the end of all our days we will be asked by the Gatekeeper: "What did you do in your life that was true and authentic, that leaves behind a residue of you, the person as you really are, that helps enhance our understanding of what it means to be alive?" – You think he won't? Or that you won't ask this of yourself?]

As a novelist starting out, with some trepidation, on the blog trail, I am very aware of this friction. I have long had the belief that "those that talk about it don't write about it; and those that write about it don't talk about it." I have a number of friends who talk great books over a pint or two – but do they go and do the writing? Nope. It requires too much solitude, too much bloody-minded perseverance, or perhaps simply, a different set of character traits. As a book writer myself, my concern is that I may not have enough blather in me to keep readers interested in a continuing blog. There, I've said it. I've laid my frailties on the line.

Mulling this over,  I see the front cover of the book has folded back revealing the name of a previous author, presumably the first owner of this particular book when it was brand new "Catherine Neale August 1976" – 1976? Yes, that was the first year when my own life really began to take off. The year I moved to Cheung Chau island in what was then the British colony of Hong Kong (though they preferred the word 'territory' – it seemed less imperial). I lived on that island 25 years, the best, most intense years of my life. That is where I …but I have written about this elsewhere (Wordjazz for Stevie).  Let's just say there was love, birth and death.

So Catherine Neale? Where are you now? There was a time you were so proud of ownership that you put your name on this book – and then, sometime later, it broke loose and went floating on the waves of the second hand book market. Did you downsize? Feel bored? Die? Are you one of the 62 Catherine Neales in the 192 online telephone directory? One of the numerous, but uncountable, Facebook Catherine Neales? With a little perseverance I might very well be able to reach out and close the circle of connectedness. What might I tell you? I am now reading a book you once thought important enough, possessive enough, to put your name on the fly leaf. How significant is that?

Perhaps she is my age, perhaps she is lonely, perhaps our souls are on a karmic journey, perhaps this is how the Gods work?

I am beginning to see the attraction of the blog form – random thoughts and ideas seep through relentlessly.