Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected...

Meaningless

What is meaning? I have no idea. It's an abstract concept individual humans ascribe to things or people or ideas but it doesn't exist. In the same way love or hypnosis doesn't exist and yet we all believe in it - like it or not....Not, in my case.

I have given up writing my great second novel I ran out of things to say. I stare at the page and nothing happens after a couple of hours I shut it down and go watch some TV or drink some beer - or both - this has been going on for some months and I have no idea why - if I'd just kept scribbling it would be done by now and it's not like thousands of shit books aren't published and finished each year - so why not me....

Japan is confusing

I'm in Osaka in Japan. I'm here on an Arts Council funded project, part of a programme run by Unlimited - it's for disability led arts projects and I'm making a film/video installation.

Japan is a strange mix of the seemingly familiar mixed with the utterly foreign. For someone like me on the ASD spectrum you might expect it to create a higher than normal level of anxiety but it has had the opposite effect. Because I can understand nothing at all the normal pressures of trying to figure out what people mean and social conventions have fallen away, not entirely but enough for me to feel oddly calm and I walk around without knowing what is going on and unable to read all the signs and this is a good thing although it's mitigated by my support worker being here and he can speak and read Japanese - in a way it's given me a better understanding of those further along the spectrum than me. It has also presented me with rather a lot of culinary challenges.

I recommend a visit to Japan for everyone from the west.

Still breathing but not dancing...

Good Morning

It's actually afternoon, but somewhere it's the morning. So, I am flying to Japan next week which is causing me anxiety mind you what doesn't cause me anxiety. I even get anxious about the fact that I get anxious. Ridiculous.

The thing about anxiety is that it doesn't pay any regard to probability just possibility. So the sun will not go out tomorrow but that's not going to stop me from worrying about it now is it? The entire situation is foolish but the spiny urchin called anxiety; well, it don't care.

I've managed to get to to chapter 8 on my next novel - remarkable - this is the second novel the first is stalled on chapter 11. Now I have no idea why writing is such a painful experience it really shouldn't be but it damn well is - to paraphrase Hemmingway (who'd rather drink than write ) I just sit at my computer and bleed...

It's been a long lonely lonely time...

Hello

Almost a year has passed since I last posted a blog. In that time I lost a friend to death, failed to finish a novel, started another, made two films and was given an incorrect diagnoses by a psychiatrist - I'm still struggling with that one - trying to get any help with mental ill health in this country is like trying to get a smile out of Theresa May.

On the good news side I have an Arts Council grant to put on a one act play I have written. The venue is the Battersea Arts Centre in London. It's called 213 things about me". No, it's not about me. It's a monologue for one woman based on the tragic life of a dear lover who had Autism and committed suicide - but it does contain jokes for she was one of the funniest people I ever knew.

I am also going to Japan to make an experimental documentary with 3 disabled Japanese artists - I will be blogging about that over at "The Voice of the Unicorn" and also here.

As for writing, well I've managed this blog post ...so baby steps at the moment

Summer's lease hath all too short a date

I have been making a TV documentary, though not about this book - which is a shame as my investigative hackles are up. I suppose we will never really know but it probably is an early draft of a novel and as I read it it becomes quickly apparent that another hand significantly rearranged the story and the characters to come up with TKAM.

It's only really interesting as an historical example of a writers early failed manuscript. What is also of interest is the complete lack of the lyrical and descriptive writing that makes TKAM so delightful to read. I suppose we will never really know but I suspect Capote had a hand in the finished book. I'm in agreement with this article in the New Republic on this one.


http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122290/suspicious-story-behind-publication-go-set-watchman

I will publish a comprehensive review when I have finished reading this book.

It's been a long time... April is the cruelest month...

I have not blogged for an age. Sorry. I have and am busy making a documentary for British TV. It's a current affairs hour long film and involves lots of undercover filming in very difficult to access places and so, has been very time consuming. I thought I should float by and tell people that I am going to be blogging and reviewing a lot more after April is done. After all T. S. Eliot said:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

The book I am writing with Rosa Hoskins has been put back until next year and I am trying to figure out how and what to make into my next novel....April...Huh.

never let me go....

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I started this book full of anticipation and was quickly let down . The writing is good - technically - and it has that graduate of University of East Anglia creative writing feel to it but the content was tedious and the characters flat and simplistic. It's a romp around a public school dressed as some sort of dystopian epic. I can see why it was short listed for the Man Booker prize it has all the ingredients. Ishiguro is a good writer trapped in a world of middle class angst. To be completely honest I gave up after reading 75% of the book it was so boring - maybe it's me - my life bears no resemblance to the people he writes about and I don't engage with them, like Ian McEwan's Atonement or Amis's London Fields - I just don't care - write well - It's essential but please also write interesting.



View all my reviews

Something fishy about Harper Lee

The arrival of a previously unknown first version of the novel that became the inestimable "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee is a bit stinky. It seems unlikely in the extreme that she did not know of the books existence and if she had wanted to publish it she has had nearly 50 years to do so and didn't. She has had a stroke and her sister who guarded her estate recently died. How fortuitous then that this previously "missing" manuscript has come to light now.

"It's a gift" says the head of Harper Collins - yeah it sure is...

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

That's my thought on the subject at any rate

"Write more books"

Here's the latest review of my book from Amazon - I like this one

'Pavement: Thoughts of a Serial Killer' is a compelling read. It tells the story of a man who, through his struggles with life due to his disability and a dysfunctional, unhappy childhood that we are allowed only tiny glimpses of, feels himself excluded from society. Unemployed, he escapes from his dingy bedsit existence by walking the streets of London, finding solace in his obsession with the order of the paving stones of the pavements he treads, and catching glimpses of other lives through windows as he searches for himself in the reflections. He feels invisible, and this feeling leads him to find a way in which he can take action.... take revenge on the 'normal' world which he does not feel a part of and yet covets.

This novel is extremely well researched. The details draw us in... we are there in the here and now, walking with 'Smith' and seeing everything as he sees it. A few small clues tell us that this present is in fact a not so distant future, where we are ever more under the control and surveillance of the System. Yet Smith finds a way to rebel and, ultimately, to escape.

The author's gift for words allows him to get away with very graphic and lurid descriptions that from the pen of a less talented writer could be felt to be gratuitous, but here are always beautiful even as they are shocking and disturbing. The boundaries between dream and reality become more and more blurred, reflecting the state of mind of the protagonist, as the aftermath of his cold, logical and well thought through actions pervade his subconsciousness when he sleeps.

Despite the horror of the story, I didn't want this book to end. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Much better than American Psycho...

That' s a comment I received about my book Pavement.

He was right....guess you'll just have to read it and see.

Welcome to my nightmare - literally.