Neil Hanson's Blog, page 2
July 27, 2014
Millennials
A tip of the hat to Amanda Foreman in today’s Sunday Times for unearthing this quotation by a US college professor about his students: “Indulged, petted and uncontrolled at home… [they arrive at college] with an undisciplined mind and uncultivated heart, yet with exalted ideas of personal dignity and a scowling contempt for lawful authority and wholesome restraint.” I know many academics who would raise their eyes to heaven and acknowledge the truth of his words… were it not for the fact that the quotation dates from 1855!
July 21, 2014
Royal Literary Fund
Thanks to the largesse of the estates of A.A. Milne, Somerset Maugham, et al, the Royal Literary Fund probably supports more living writers than many large publishers. It has just launched a website - http://www.rlfconsultants.co.uk - extolling the virtues of its Consultant Fellows (of whom I am one). One of its additional features (coming soon...) will be streamable or downloadable audio of a few us explaining why we write. Here's the contribution I've just recorded (reproduced here in glorious black and white):
I write because when I was ten years old, my English teacher laughed out loud at a joke I wrote.
I write because my Dad once told me 'There's no money in that'.
I write because he was right; a bank statement with "OD" appearing on every line has just landed on my door-mat.
I write because it sure beats stacking shelves in Tescos.
I write because though some writers take ten showers a day, I find I can manage perfectly well with seven.
I write because everyone's got a book in them and I want to get all mine published before the rush starts.
I write because I took my retirement between the ages of twenty and thirty when I could really get the most out of it.
I write because I need a displacement activity as a respite from my displacement activities.
I write because I can't draw, sing or play a musical instrument.
I write because, like Writer's Block, it's all in the mind.
I write because it's taken me places I could never have imagined when I was young.
I write because - in every sense - it's all I can do.
I write because when I was ten years old, my English teacher laughed out loud at a joke I wrote.
I write because my Dad once told me 'There's no money in that'.
I write because he was right; a bank statement with "OD" appearing on every line has just landed on my door-mat.
I write because it sure beats stacking shelves in Tescos.
I write because though some writers take ten showers a day, I find I can manage perfectly well with seven.
I write because everyone's got a book in them and I want to get all mine published before the rush starts.
I write because I took my retirement between the ages of twenty and thirty when I could really get the most out of it.
I write because I need a displacement activity as a respite from my displacement activities.
I write because I can't draw, sing or play a musical instrument.
I write because, like Writer's Block, it's all in the mind.
I write because it's taken me places I could never have imagined when I was young.
I write because - in every sense - it's all I can do.
July 9, 2014
ALCSoholics
Stand by for a tune on the world’s smallest violin: There’s cheerful news for authors this week in a survey by ALCS aka The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society - the body that disburses writers’ Public Lending Right money (the fraction of a pence we get every time someone borrows one of our books from a library). The survey reveals that the median annual income of UK professional authors in 2013 was £11,000. That’s less than the minimum wage and a drop of 29% since 2005. The number of printed books sold - as opposed to ebooks - also dropped by almost 10% in the course of the year and the number of independent booksellers in the UK fell below 1000 for the first time.
The survey also disclosed that just 11.5% of those who call themselves ‘professional authors’ earn the majority of their income from writing, compared to 40% eight years ago. As Will Self commented in The Guardian, ‘You’ve always been able to comfortably house the British literary writers who can earn all their living from books in a single room - that room used to be a reception one, now it’s a back bedroom.’
For those of us earning above the median income (whoopee!), things are even worse. From my experience, publisher’s advances for everything except celebrity books or TV-tie ins are about 50% less than they were five years ago and that doesn’t just apply to my own books (sob) but to all the other authors I’ve spoken to recently.
We’ve no more right to be immune to recessions than plumbers, shopworkers or any other trades of course, but in my more cheerful moments, it does make me wonder if the decline in publishing is becoming terminal. Whistling in the dark, we’ve all reminded each other for years that “There’ll always be a market for good stories, whatever the medium,” but what if all the short attention span public really wants in the future is more amusing kittens on Instagram or Snapchat, or a few more celebs who spell their names with “Ks”?
The survey also disclosed that just 11.5% of those who call themselves ‘professional authors’ earn the majority of their income from writing, compared to 40% eight years ago. As Will Self commented in The Guardian, ‘You’ve always been able to comfortably house the British literary writers who can earn all their living from books in a single room - that room used to be a reception one, now it’s a back bedroom.’
For those of us earning above the median income (whoopee!), things are even worse. From my experience, publisher’s advances for everything except celebrity books or TV-tie ins are about 50% less than they were five years ago and that doesn’t just apply to my own books (sob) but to all the other authors I’ve spoken to recently.
We’ve no more right to be immune to recessions than plumbers, shopworkers or any other trades of course, but in my more cheerful moments, it does make me wonder if the decline in publishing is becoming terminal. Whistling in the dark, we’ve all reminded each other for years that “There’ll always be a market for good stories, whatever the medium,” but what if all the short attention span public really wants in the future is more amusing kittens on Instagram or Snapchat, or a few more celebs who spell their names with “Ks”?
ALCSoholics
Stand by for a tune on the world’s smallest violin: There’s cheerful news for authors this week in a survey by ALCS aka The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society - the body that disburses writers’ Public Lending Right money (the fraction of a pence we get every time someone borrows one of our books from a library). The survey reveals that the median annual income of UK professional authors in 2013 was £11,000. That’s less than the minimum wage and a drop of 29% since 2005. The number of printed books sold - as opposed to ebooks - also dropped by almost 10% in the course of the year and the number of independent booksellers in the UK fell below 1000 for the first time.
The survey also disclosed that just 11.5% of those who call themselves ‘professional authors’ earn the majority of their income from writing, compared to 40% eight years ago. As Will Self commented in The Guardian, ‘You’ve always been able to comfortably house the British literary writers who can earn all their living from books in a single room - that room used to be a reception one, now it’s a back bedroom.’
For those of us earning above the median income (whoopee!), things are even worse. From my experience, publisher’s advances for everything except celebrity books or TV-tie ins are about 50% less than they were five years ago and that doesn’t just apply to my own books (sob) but to all the other authors I’ve spoken to recently.
We’ve no more right to be immune to recessions than plumbers, shopworkers or any other trades of course, but in my more cheerful moments, it does make me wonder if the decline in publishing is becoming terminal. Whistling in the dark, we’ve all reminded each other for years that “There’ll always be a market for good stories, whatever the medium,” but what if all the short attention span public really wants in the future is more amusing kittens on Instagram or Snapchat, or a few more celebs who spell their names with “Ks”?
The survey also disclosed that just 11.5% of those who call themselves ‘professional authors’ earn the majority of their income from writing, compared to 40% eight years ago. As Will Self commented in The Guardian, ‘You’ve always been able to comfortably house the British literary writers who can earn all their living from books in a single room - that room used to be a reception one, now it’s a back bedroom.’
For those of us earning above the median income (whoopee!), things are even worse. From my experience, publisher’s advances for everything except celebrity books or TV-tie ins are about 50% less than they were five years ago and that doesn’t just apply to my own books (sob) but to all the other authors I’ve spoken to recently.
We’ve no more right to be immune to recessions than plumbers, shopworkers or any other trades of course, but in my more cheerful moments, it does make me wonder if the decline in publishing is becoming terminal. Whistling in the dark, we’ve all reminded each other for years that “There’ll always be a market for good stories, whatever the medium,” but what if all the short attention span public really wants in the future is more amusing kittens on Instagram or Snapchat, or a few more celebs who spell their names with “Ks”?
June 18, 2014
Bliar, Bliar, Pants on Fire
No surprise that Tony Bliar should claim this week that the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq in 2003 had played no part in the country’s current disintegration. Britain’s very own neo-con - a man willing to apologise for the slave trade that ended over a century before his birth - has never shown a similar inclination to accept responsibility for things that actually happened on his watch. However Bliar isn’t the only former British Prime Minister with blood on his hands over Iraq. Another even more famous one, bears ultimate responsibility for its ethnic and religious hatreds.
In the latter stages of the First World War, the defeats inflicted on Turkish forces by T.E. Lawrence - “Lawrence of Arabia” - and his army of Arab irregulars hastened the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence had recruited some of his Arab allies from what is now Syria with the promise of independence at the end of the war but it was never a promise that “perfidious Albion” had any intention of keeping; that region had already been promised to France as part of the Great Power carve-up of conquered territories.
At the war’s end, Britain also controlled other swathes of oil-rich, strategically important former Ottoman territories in the Middle East and in true Empire-style, at once took steps to formalise that control. One evening in 1921, T. E. Lawrence and Britain’s then Colonial Secretary, a certain Winston Churchill, sat down to dinner with a small group of advisers. Before the end of that evening, they had drawn the boundaries of an entirely new kingdom, created out of these former Ottoman territories.
The Ottomans had ruled the area as three quasi-independent provinces - a Kurdish province in the north, a Sunni one in the centre and a Shia province in the south. Despite a warning from an American missionary that ‘You are flying in the face of four millennia of history’, Churchill and Lawrence in their wisdom - if that is really the appropriate word here - decided to combine these three semi-independent regions into a single new kingdom. Then, to add insult to injury, they imported a puppet ruler from Transjordan who had no connection with the region whatsoever, to be the new kingdom’s first ruler.
Unsurprisingly some of the inhabitants took up arms against this British-imposed fait accompli, and perhaps equally unsurprisingly, were then ruthlessly suppressed by British forces using bombers, armoured cars and machine guns against tribesmen often armed with little more than antique hunting rifles.
Ibn Saud, the most powerful of the tribal leaders in the region we now call Saudi Arabia, had territorial ambitions of his own in the region, and also took up arms against the British but was then pacified - bought off - with the gift of two-thirds of the territory of the genuinely ancient kingdom of Kuwait. That particular piece of history may help to explain Saudi Arabia’s willingness to underwrite almost the entire cost of the first Gulf War in 1991 for, had Saddam Hussein's annexation of Kuwait been allowed to succeed, his next step would surely have been to attempt to reclaim those lost Kuwaiti territories, now some of the principal oil-producing regions of Saudi Arabia.
I’m sure I don’t have to spell out the name of the new kingdom that Churchill and Lawrence had ‘designed over dinner’ in Lawrence’s famous phrase, nor the consequences of that experiment with regime change for the country itself, for Britain and for the world at large ever since. What they created and what by turns, Britain, the region’s puppet “kings”, its military dictator, Saddam Hussein, and more recently a regime installed and preserved through military power of an Anglo-American occupying army, is now apparently falling apart.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history...
In the latter stages of the First World War, the defeats inflicted on Turkish forces by T.E. Lawrence - “Lawrence of Arabia” - and his army of Arab irregulars hastened the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence had recruited some of his Arab allies from what is now Syria with the promise of independence at the end of the war but it was never a promise that “perfidious Albion” had any intention of keeping; that region had already been promised to France as part of the Great Power carve-up of conquered territories.
At the war’s end, Britain also controlled other swathes of oil-rich, strategically important former Ottoman territories in the Middle East and in true Empire-style, at once took steps to formalise that control. One evening in 1921, T. E. Lawrence and Britain’s then Colonial Secretary, a certain Winston Churchill, sat down to dinner with a small group of advisers. Before the end of that evening, they had drawn the boundaries of an entirely new kingdom, created out of these former Ottoman territories.
The Ottomans had ruled the area as three quasi-independent provinces - a Kurdish province in the north, a Sunni one in the centre and a Shia province in the south. Despite a warning from an American missionary that ‘You are flying in the face of four millennia of history’, Churchill and Lawrence in their wisdom - if that is really the appropriate word here - decided to combine these three semi-independent regions into a single new kingdom. Then, to add insult to injury, they imported a puppet ruler from Transjordan who had no connection with the region whatsoever, to be the new kingdom’s first ruler.
Unsurprisingly some of the inhabitants took up arms against this British-imposed fait accompli, and perhaps equally unsurprisingly, were then ruthlessly suppressed by British forces using bombers, armoured cars and machine guns against tribesmen often armed with little more than antique hunting rifles.
Ibn Saud, the most powerful of the tribal leaders in the region we now call Saudi Arabia, had territorial ambitions of his own in the region, and also took up arms against the British but was then pacified - bought off - with the gift of two-thirds of the territory of the genuinely ancient kingdom of Kuwait. That particular piece of history may help to explain Saudi Arabia’s willingness to underwrite almost the entire cost of the first Gulf War in 1991 for, had Saddam Hussein's annexation of Kuwait been allowed to succeed, his next step would surely have been to attempt to reclaim those lost Kuwaiti territories, now some of the principal oil-producing regions of Saudi Arabia.
I’m sure I don’t have to spell out the name of the new kingdom that Churchill and Lawrence had ‘designed over dinner’ in Lawrence’s famous phrase, nor the consequences of that experiment with regime change for the country itself, for Britain and for the world at large ever since. What they created and what by turns, Britain, the region’s puppet “kings”, its military dictator, Saddam Hussein, and more recently a regime installed and preserved through military power of an Anglo-American occupying army, is now apparently falling apart.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history...
May 2, 2014
Doing A Turn
I’m “doing a turn” at the Dales Festival of Food and Drink - http://www.dalesfestivaloffood.org - in Leyburn, in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales on Saturday, promoting The Inn at the Top. I’ve done a few similar country shows before and they’re always an interesting experience. The first issue is a sartorial one. I normally try to cut a bit of a sartorial dash - slick jacket, white shirt, silver cufflinks, etc, but a tweed jacket - with or without the Dales farmer ‘s traditional baler twine accessories - seems to be pretty much de rigeur and the temperature in Yorkshire in very early May probably makes it a very sensible choice.
Footwear is more tricky. To use the horse-racing terminology, the going at country shows at any time of year and especially in Spring can vary from “good to soft” all the way through to “bottomless” and the passage of hundreds of pairs of feet does nothing to improve it. If you wear your country footwear of choice - brogues, estate agent boots, or whatever - you may find yourself floundering calf-deep in the mire, and then having to make a mud-encrusted, slipping and slithering grand entrance into the marquee where the “Speaker’s Corner” podium is sited. On the other hand, a pair of wellies, while eminently practical, doesn’t really set off a sharp suit the same way...
The size of audience is always weather-dependent. The perfect weather from the speaker’s point of view would be a beautiful, sun-drenched morning to draw as many people as possible to the show. That should be followed by a sudden, savage thunderstorm about ten minutes before I’m due to go on, to drive everyone into the shelter of the marquee, followed by a continuing downpour to keep them trapped there while I do my “turn” and sign a few books afterwards.
There’s a Q&A at the end too, so I’m confidently expecting to have my “townie’s” lack of knowledge of farming and sheep breeds mercilessly exposed by a succession of local experts.
The marquee is known as “The Richard Whiteley Pavilion” in memory of the former Yorkshire Television and “Countdown” presenter. My fondest memory of Richard is a dinner party at his house where after the meal, he suggested we play that silly parlour game where everyone writes the name of a celebrity on a Post-It note and sticks it on their neighbour’s forehead. You then take turns at guessing who you are supposed to be. I made my choice and stuck the name on my neighbour’s forehead and as I looked around the table, I discovered that we had all made the identical choice: all eight people, including Richard Whiteley himself, were sitting there with “Richard Whiteley” on their forehead!
Footwear is more tricky. To use the horse-racing terminology, the going at country shows at any time of year and especially in Spring can vary from “good to soft” all the way through to “bottomless” and the passage of hundreds of pairs of feet does nothing to improve it. If you wear your country footwear of choice - brogues, estate agent boots, or whatever - you may find yourself floundering calf-deep in the mire, and then having to make a mud-encrusted, slipping and slithering grand entrance into the marquee where the “Speaker’s Corner” podium is sited. On the other hand, a pair of wellies, while eminently practical, doesn’t really set off a sharp suit the same way...
The size of audience is always weather-dependent. The perfect weather from the speaker’s point of view would be a beautiful, sun-drenched morning to draw as many people as possible to the show. That should be followed by a sudden, savage thunderstorm about ten minutes before I’m due to go on, to drive everyone into the shelter of the marquee, followed by a continuing downpour to keep them trapped there while I do my “turn” and sign a few books afterwards.
There’s a Q&A at the end too, so I’m confidently expecting to have my “townie’s” lack of knowledge of farming and sheep breeds mercilessly exposed by a succession of local experts.
The marquee is known as “The Richard Whiteley Pavilion” in memory of the former Yorkshire Television and “Countdown” presenter. My fondest memory of Richard is a dinner party at his house where after the meal, he suggested we play that silly parlour game where everyone writes the name of a celebrity on a Post-It note and sticks it on their neighbour’s forehead. You then take turns at guessing who you are supposed to be. I made my choice and stuck the name on my neighbour’s forehead and as I looked around the table, I discovered that we had all made the identical choice: all eight people, including Richard Whiteley himself, were sitting there with “Richard Whiteley” on their forehead!
April 25, 2014
Daytripper
Authors often travel a lot and like many people, I tend to use Tripadvisor http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ when looking for hotels or restaurants in unfamiliar places. I also post a few reviews from time to time. However, what bugs me about it - and I’d tell Tripadvisor direct if I could find a means to do so on their website - is that their overall ratings do not discriminate between reviews posted five minutes ago and five years ago. Admittedly, they appear in date order, most recent first, but I suspect most of us glance at the star percentages - excellent, very good, average, poor, terrible - and may get no further if those don’t look good. Yet, digging deeper, I sometimes find that the “terrible” reviews that nearly put me off had all been accumulated several years previously under a previous owner.
As we all know, the quality of hotels and, particularly, restaurants can change dramatically in a very short time. The chef throws a strop - or a razor sharp kitchen knife - and bales out; the hotel owner is caught in bed with the receptionist or, to avoid allegations of sexism, the barman; the maitre d’, after twenty years of being teeth-grittingly polite to ignoramuses, finally cracks and punches one of them; a brilliantly gifted new chef takes over from someone whose gourmet experience was confined to the kitchens at Strangeways; a new owner spends millions on refitting and updating a hotel and even does some staff training too; and Hey Presto! what was once a palace of delights becomes a chamber of horrors instead, or vice versa.
So my suggestion - are you listening Tripadvisor? - would be that all reviews more than twelve months old should be consigned to the dustbin of history and I might then feel a little more confident that my booking for a room for the night or a damn good dinner will leave me feeling five-star rather than no-star.
As we all know, the quality of hotels and, particularly, restaurants can change dramatically in a very short time. The chef throws a strop - or a razor sharp kitchen knife - and bales out; the hotel owner is caught in bed with the receptionist or, to avoid allegations of sexism, the barman; the maitre d’, after twenty years of being teeth-grittingly polite to ignoramuses, finally cracks and punches one of them; a brilliantly gifted new chef takes over from someone whose gourmet experience was confined to the kitchens at Strangeways; a new owner spends millions on refitting and updating a hotel and even does some staff training too; and Hey Presto! what was once a palace of delights becomes a chamber of horrors instead, or vice versa.
So my suggestion - are you listening Tripadvisor? - would be that all reviews more than twelve months old should be consigned to the dustbin of history and I might then feel a little more confident that my booking for a room for the night or a damn good dinner will leave me feeling five-star rather than no-star.
April 9, 2014
Good Bad Reviews
Ah reviews on Amazon, how much do you love them? Many are genuinely useful - reviews written by real people (apart from the ones by authors pretending to be someone else so they can either plug their book or trash their rivals) rather than log-rollers, suck-ups or spleen-filled and embittered critics... but then there are the others.
As I flip through the Amazon pages looking for books I need for my research ... or, I admit it, sometimes to check out how mine are selling ... I find myself stopping quite often at reviews so jaw-droppingly useless that you have to wonder why the people ever bothered to put them there in the first place. Here are a few of my favourites (names and other identifing details of reviewers removed to spare their blushes and keep the trolls at bay).
Margaret obviously thought long and hard before giving this one three stars, shame no one found it useful...
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
I chose this rating as I have not read the book. It was purchased as a christmas present. I do not know if the recipient liked it.
The next one’s approval rating is even lower:
0 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The product came well before the quoted delivery date. Packaging ensured the book arrived in pristine condition. The one thing I love about Amazon more than anything is that books arrive unsoiled, unlike in book shops where people thumb through them.
It prompted this rebuke from one irate reader:
You're supposed to use reviews to comment on the book. Potential purchasers are interested in the BOOK. If we want a glowing testimonial about Amazon we can ask for it. BTW One of the pleasures of second hand book shops is just what you describe as a problem. ie: the fact that real human beings may have thumbed through the books and loved them.
Here’s another really useful one:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bought this as it was the choice of the book club. Arrived quite quickly so I had plenty of time to read it.
And this one was refreshingly honest, the headline being the entire review:
3.0 out of 5 stars
But I Have Not Read It Yet
And finally here’s a true work of genius, bearing in mind that the review is actually of a book by Stephen Leather:
1 of 10 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Martina Cole used to write brill books, but same as her recent gangster type novels they are ALL the same and I fast forward the bit about daughter/wife/mothers etc so boring and seemed to be the same as her other books, still half WAY THROUGH IT, AND CANT FEEL THE NEED TO RUSH BACK TO READ THE NOVEL....I am sure Martina can do better as she has done previously!!!
Please feel free to send me (any choice examples you come across, maybe we’ll collect enough for a book - imagine the reviews for that!
As I flip through the Amazon pages looking for books I need for my research ... or, I admit it, sometimes to check out how mine are selling ... I find myself stopping quite often at reviews so jaw-droppingly useless that you have to wonder why the people ever bothered to put them there in the first place. Here are a few of my favourites (names and other identifing details of reviewers removed to spare their blushes and keep the trolls at bay).
Margaret obviously thought long and hard before giving this one three stars, shame no one found it useful...
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
I chose this rating as I have not read the book. It was purchased as a christmas present. I do not know if the recipient liked it.
The next one’s approval rating is even lower:
0 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The product came well before the quoted delivery date. Packaging ensured the book arrived in pristine condition. The one thing I love about Amazon more than anything is that books arrive unsoiled, unlike in book shops where people thumb through them.
It prompted this rebuke from one irate reader:
You're supposed to use reviews to comment on the book. Potential purchasers are interested in the BOOK. If we want a glowing testimonial about Amazon we can ask for it. BTW One of the pleasures of second hand book shops is just what you describe as a problem. ie: the fact that real human beings may have thumbed through the books and loved them.
Here’s another really useful one:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bought this as it was the choice of the book club. Arrived quite quickly so I had plenty of time to read it.
And this one was refreshingly honest, the headline being the entire review:
3.0 out of 5 stars
But I Have Not Read It Yet
And finally here’s a true work of genius, bearing in mind that the review is actually of a book by Stephen Leather:
1 of 10 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Martina Cole used to write brill books, but same as her recent gangster type novels they are ALL the same and I fast forward the bit about daughter/wife/mothers etc so boring and seemed to be the same as her other books, still half WAY THROUGH IT, AND CANT FEEL THE NEED TO RUSH BACK TO READ THE NOVEL....I am sure Martina can do better as she has done previously!!!
Please feel free to send me (any choice examples you come across, maybe we’ll collect enough for a book - imagine the reviews for that!
March 26, 2014
Salt
Last week, for the first time in years, I returned to my home town, a Victorian model village and Unesco World Heritage site. When I was growing up, the village - Saltaire - and its mill had both seen better days but, helped by the vision of the late, lamented Jonathan Silver, who bought the old mill and set up a gallery there to celebrate local favourite son, David Hockney, coupled with the serendipity of a satellite dish manufacturer establishing itself there just as the Sky TV boom really got under way, Saltaire is now a thriving place once more.
However, what caught my attention was neither that, nor the rash of restaurants, cafés and bars where there used to be junk shops, plumbers, and empty premises, but the public library. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this library was where the path that led to me becoming a writer began. I began haunting its shelves and book stacks when I was twelve or thirteen and set off home every time with an armful of books that I then devoured, often reading deep into the night by the light of a torch under the bedclothes.
I was a pretentious little twirp at the time - I know, so what’s changed? - so there’d always be something heavy duty on the outside of the stack under my arm as I left the library, just in case someone happened to notice (they never did, of course) that young Neil was taking home the new Samuel Beckett. But having got them home, I read them all. I was an omnivore, consuming not only literary giants like Beckett, Camus, Dickens and Lawrence, but other novels, non-fiction, poetry and plays of varying literary merits - everything, in short, up to and including the kitchen sink... for along with Evelyn Waugh and PG Wodehouse there was Sillitoe, Osborne and Storey. Alongside local heroes like JB Priestley I also discovered American literature and read Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passos and e e cummings.
I could do this because the library was well-funded and staffed by people with a genuine interest in, and often a passion for literature, who were delighted to find anyone - even a thirteen year old pretentious twirp - with whom they could share their enthusiasm.
The grand Victorian library building is still there though it’s no longer used as a library. In what might be a fitting comment on the times in which we live - o tempora, o mores, indeed - a new library was built a few years ago as part of a supermarket complex. There are books still among the DVDs and computer terminals, and I’m sure many staff - or those who have survived the rounds of local government cuts, anyway - are still book lovers, but the shelves no longer bulge with new books and great literature, and I wonder if any thirteen year old twirps today will find enough there to inspire them, as I was once inspired.
However, what caught my attention was neither that, nor the rash of restaurants, cafés and bars where there used to be junk shops, plumbers, and empty premises, but the public library. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this library was where the path that led to me becoming a writer began. I began haunting its shelves and book stacks when I was twelve or thirteen and set off home every time with an armful of books that I then devoured, often reading deep into the night by the light of a torch under the bedclothes.
I was a pretentious little twirp at the time - I know, so what’s changed? - so there’d always be something heavy duty on the outside of the stack under my arm as I left the library, just in case someone happened to notice (they never did, of course) that young Neil was taking home the new Samuel Beckett. But having got them home, I read them all. I was an omnivore, consuming not only literary giants like Beckett, Camus, Dickens and Lawrence, but other novels, non-fiction, poetry and plays of varying literary merits - everything, in short, up to and including the kitchen sink... for along with Evelyn Waugh and PG Wodehouse there was Sillitoe, Osborne and Storey. Alongside local heroes like JB Priestley I also discovered American literature and read Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passos and e e cummings.
I could do this because the library was well-funded and staffed by people with a genuine interest in, and often a passion for literature, who were delighted to find anyone - even a thirteen year old pretentious twirp - with whom they could share their enthusiasm.
The grand Victorian library building is still there though it’s no longer used as a library. In what might be a fitting comment on the times in which we live - o tempora, o mores, indeed - a new library was built a few years ago as part of a supermarket complex. There are books still among the DVDs and computer terminals, and I’m sure many staff - or those who have survived the rounds of local government cuts, anyway - are still book lovers, but the shelves no longer bulge with new books and great literature, and I wonder if any thirteen year old twirps today will find enough there to inspire them, as I was once inspired.
March 3, 2014
Kindle Mk. II
In the unlikely event that there is anyone out there who, for some unaccountable reason, has yet to purchase a copy of The Inn At The Top, March could be the month to do so, particularly if you are the proud possessor of a Kindle. Supermarket giant Sainsbury's are trying to boost their ebook sales and among other bargains, have The Inn at the Top on discount for the month at the bargain price of 99p (UK£0.99). Amazon.co.uk, as is their wont, have come close to matching that promotion, by offering it at £1.49. Feel free to fill your boots!
