philipparees

Case for the Prosecution- First Charge

Trial of Involution-An Odyssey
(Continues from previous hearing)

Judge Taylor Coleridge Wikimedia Commons

All rise….

Judge (to Jurors)
To make your deliberations easier we will take the Charges one at a time. The prosecution will present its evidence and witnesses, and the Defence will be given the opportunity for cross examination. After each Charge has been dealt with you will be given time for deliberation. We hope that you (the public Jurors) will make notes on questions and inconsistencies. The verdict on all charges will be the last duty asked of you, and terminate this trial. I would remind you it s the responsibility of the prosecution to make its case. The innocence of Odyssey is presumed until proved otherwise. The Prosecution will now present evidence for the first Charge/

(To refresh your memories Odyssey is held to ‘have persuaded the Author to write a deluded hypothesis in order to humiliate her, knowing she would bear the responsibility of Odyssey’s heedless suggestions.’)

PROS Thank you m’lud. Since the charge relates to the intrinsic value of the Odyssey we will commence by examining its skeletal origins as The Theory of Involution originally written in 1970 because this proposed much of the essential thesis from a scientific standpoint. Its merits in its current form as Odyssey will be examined separately.

I call the first witness. Professor Sir Alister Hardy.

Professor Hardy You were Professor of Zoology at Oxford for many years. You had the opportunity to see this work at an early stage in its, shall we say, evolution in 1970? How did the Author contact you?

Prof H. We met a conference on Nature Man and God. I met the author briefly and on hearing about her manuscript offered to evaluate it.

PROS Very generous of you. Since the Author was entirely unknown, I am surprised you had the time.

Prof H. Well, I was by then semi -retired.

PROS And what were your conclusions?

Prof H Frankly it was, how can I put this politely? Baloney from start to finish.

PROS It had no value whatever?

Prof H. Well I remember she put forward an interesting hypothesis about incremental interiorisation- dreadful word- she suggested that evolution had been due to the laying down of memory, which accounted for the seeming progress of evolution, and its convergence to Man. It was dangerously suggestive of Lamarkian process but others had said similar things so that alone did not rule it out.

PROS Please clarify the perils of Lamarkianism for the Court.

Prof. H. In its simplest form Lamarkian inheritance suggests that an organism’s experience can be conveyed to its offspring. Soviet Russia implemented this belief in their catastrophic apportioning of roles permitted different sections of the population, steel workers would improve in strength, farmers in stamina etc. We know of no way in which that improvement happens organically. What Involution was proposing was exactly that, the changing of the genetic blueprint, so as to afford advantage entirely due to the life experience of the parent. It is gibberish.

PROS And dangerous, you said, why dangerous?

Prof H. Dangerous to the Author. It would never be taken seriously, certainly not then anyway.

PROS Yet you admitted it was ‘interesting’: What was wrong with the scientific A Theory of Involution’ paper outlining it?

Prof H. It purported to be a scientific study. But there was no proof and could be no proof. So it was not scientific. I am a scientist. I look for evidence.

PROS How did you convey this to the Author? Presumably it checked any intentions she had to publish?

Prof H I told her to go away and undertake research that would either substantiate her hypothesis or refute it. She was very young, there was plenty of time ahead of her.

PROS Was it her youth that influenced your opinion? Or the valuelessness of the work?

Prof H. A little of both. You cannot go about with wild suppositions, unless you can support them with evidence, especially not so young. It is simply not done, or wise.

PROS Had she been an older and experienced researcher, rather than a 29 year old inexperienced layman, you would have looked more kindly on the Theory of Involution?

Prof. H. I might have taken it more seriously had it come from a colleague, whose erudition I respected, but I doubt even then I would have entertained the hypothesis without compelling evidence.

PROS To clarify Professor. How material was this hypothesis of incremental memory surviving individual death to the paper as a whole? If that was eliminated what remained?

Prof H. Virtually nothing. It was the spine of the work. Not only did she claim it accounted for the acceleration of evolution and its convergence to Man, but her belief was that science was simply the recovery of this encoded memory! Ludicrous!

PROS. I do see it would undermine science , or hole it below the waterline. It would rather suggest that science was being puppeteered by something ‘beyond’ .Is that why you referred to it as dangerous?

Prof H. No. Science is well able to defend itself from such absurdity.

PROS. Finally, Professor for the clarity of the Court. The work had no merit whatever, beyond an interesting, wild and unproven hypothesis?

Prof. H. That is indeed my opinion.

PROS No further questions.

Barrister for the Defense.

Professor Hardy I have the opinion letter you wrote to the Author. It runs to three pages of close script. For a busy man engaged, even part time, in his own work, would that be the usual reaction to something of no value whatever?

Prof H. Well I like to be thorough. I had given the work close attention.

DEF Let me quote a few phrases: ‘It may be a work of genius as many people consider de Chardin’s Phenomenon of Man, or the ‘book of the century’. I do not share that view. I consider de Chardin a great saint…his book is in no way a scientific book. I feel the same about yours. Not exactly valueless if compared to de Chardin is it Professor?

To continue ‘I dislike your statement that evolution proceeds through the oscillation between fission and fusion. Dislike as a scientist? Does not all cellular interaction include both fission and fusion? ‘

‘I find your remarks far too glib and quite unacceptable… What might be good Journalism in a Sunday paper is quite out of place…I strongly object to ‘random mutation snaking through the watchful eye of natural selection’. This is biological jibberish…I cannot like your arguments about consciousness and I particularly dislike your diagrammatic representation of it…’Again ‘dislike’ without saying why. ‘I must say this is not at all ‘my cup of tea’
You ended by saying ‘You ask my advice about publication. I am bound to say “Don’t. I would advise you to wait at least ten years and master some more biology before you attempt to go into print…you may yet produce something worthwhile…..”

That is a small sample of three pages.I cannot conceive of a greater diatribe designed to annihilate a young author. It is not what I, or I imagine others, expect of the lucid, detached views of a scientist. Something got your goat, for an Oxford man to use such intemperate language!
Turning to another, and possibly related matter Professor.

You had already published a book called The Living Stream, and another called The Divine Flame in which you postulated something akin to a ‘group mind’ in a species, ‘a psychic blueprint between the members of a species’. Could you prove the existence of a group mind Professor?

Prof H. Well it was one among a number of aspects I supposed could explain certain things. I laid no great weight upon it.

DEF You mistake my reasons for highlighting it. You were prepared to entertain the existence of some form of communication you could not prove, and for which you had no evidence. How does that differ from the Theory of Involution, proposing much the same?

Prof H. I had years of deep contemplation from which such conjectures arose. I recognised that science did not yet have all the answers, least of all to the religious or spiritual.

DEF In much the same way as The Theory of Involution did. You also had just (in 1969) created an Institute for the Study of Religious Experience’ had you not? Is religious experience provable Professor?

Prof H. One alone is not, a great many looked at may be. That was my intention, to collect and examine the many instances, a scientific approach, if I may say so.

DEF So as a scientist, you were taking quite a risk embarking on a sphere of interest outside the usual realms of science?

Prof H. Yes, Put like that I was, which is why I waited until my retirement to fully engage with it.

DEF Ah I see, The ‘get tenure before you talk of consciousness’. That is well known in the United States. In 1979 you went on to publish a further book, The Spiritual Nature of Man in which I quote there is ‘No dualistic split between soul and body, between matter and mind, between life and non-life…all phenomena are natural…our newer style of evolution is Lamarkian’ This comes very close to The Theory of Involution does it not, which proposes that the progressive interiorisation creates a field of consciousness in which both mind and matter communicate and survive throughout the biosphere?

I put it to you Professor that the ten years you suggested the Author should wait before seeking to go to print, was the ten years you required to publish your own account of much the same thing? It was also a very great advantage to you that your work was awarded the Templeton Prize, a million dollars was not to be risked by encouraging an unknown young author, in a position to publish first.

Prof H I could not know I would be awarded the prize. That was years later. You are not suggesting….?

DEF What I am speculating upon, (since speculation is apparently allowed with sufficient evidence Professor), is that you had just embarked upon a new field, almost entirely your own- you are called God’s Biologist are you not?- and needed that newly created collection (by others) to provide the evidence for a thesis which The Theory of Involution had already usurped. You were outraged that a unknown young woman had made the imaginative leap you imagined was yours, and yours alone. Unlike Darwin, faced with Wallace doing much same for his Origin of Species, you were not gracious. Your letter to the Author, and indeed your testimony before this court, was mean spirited, and determined to discourage any further publication of a work before you had collared the glory…

Prof H Outrageous suggestion. I protest most emphatically…

DEF No further questions.

All rise.

The Trial of Involution-An Odyssey. Opening Day

The Trial of Involution-An Odyssey. Opening the Case for the Prosecution.

Judge. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury. The Court thanks you for your time and for what will, I am afraid, be a trial lasting several weeks. This is not a trivial case but one which will have a bearing on many other cases in which books subject their Authors to unwarranted pressures, if not seeming torture. In this age of abundant plenitude and a surfeit of books of all qualities and values it behoves this Court to bring a test trial to examination. The essence of our examination will focus upon the following principal questions:

Firstly. How can an Author evaluate the claims made upon her by a Book? Or decide whether the Book in question has a value that justifies not only its creation, but the prolonged energy, time and money required to bring it to birth. (There are attendant issues: Who decides? What Author? What Qualifications?)

Secondly: In the surfeit of books, to what extent is public and professional opinion relevant to the Author undertaking the incubation and research necessary. In short: Can the claims of a Book for serious consideration be separated from the Public to which it is addressed. (Again: Who decides? How evaluate? What about timing?)

I put it to you that the reasons Involution-An Odyssey (for future reference we will shorten to ‘Odyssey’) is a fitting test case is because it lies at the extremes, both in the strength of its claims upon the Author’s life, an entire life, and secondly because of its claims to have written a new World view on the Nature of Science. If the latter is borne out ( and it is a matter yet to be decided by the Court) then the former is explained, perhaps nullified. In short it is the intersection between its value and its demands that is in the microscope of this Court’s analysis. The same would be true of any book.

I make this context explicit so that you are assured that what might seem at first glance to be the trial of an unborn child ( and the analogy is apposite) will have relevant guidelines for other Authors and other books, even fictional works. Society, on the whole expects parents of children to be fit, self-sufficient and responsible, and children to be healthy and disciplined. Although the Odyssey claims to be non-fiction, that too is to be debated. It is certainly creative non-fiction and may turn out to be self-aggrandising fantasy. Its wider relevance is therefore apparent. Odyssey is an ideal candidate to act as a lens by which to examine issues relevant to all books.

Let us Proceed. Will the Odyssey in the dock please stand while the Prosecution reads the clauses of the Indictment.

That you have persuaded the Author to write a deluded hypothesis in order to humiliate her, knowing she would bear the responsibility of your heedless suggestions. How do you plead?
Odyssey: Not guilty. I do not believe her or myself deluded. As to humiliation I do not believe that can be laid at my door, though I acknowledge it has happened .

That you acted without deliberation, or discernment in harnessing the Author to a lifelong service and made promises of reward that you have not fulfilled. How do you plead?
Odyssey: I plead guilty to the harnessing, but not to the ‘without deliberation or discernment’ I believe I acted with both. As to the accusation of reward, I made no such promises.

That you failed to evaluate your claims in terms of bad timing, and inappropriate language upon the Author before enlisting her service. How do you plead?
Odyssey: Not guilty. Both timing and language were the responsibility of the Author. I accept that I approved the language and would have changed the timing were it in my gift to do so.

That you initiated your inspiration without any invitation, and in a manner that no Author could refuse. In short you subjugated her without thought to her welfare or that of her family or circumstances. How do you plead?
Odyssey: Not guilty. I have an alibi for the Inspiration. I was not present.

Finally, That at no time since your publication have you made any efforts to modify or adapt to assist your Author to argue your hypotheses, or in fact to assist her in any way. How do you plead?
Odyssey: Guilty in the main, but I would ask the Court to take into consideration my willingness to appear before it, in mitigation.

Judge. The Clark will duly note the mitigation.
The Court will adjourn and at the next appearance the Prosecution will open the case and call witnesses.

All rise….

Symphonic Prose? Bah! Humbug!

‘Symphonic Prose? Bah! Humbug!

For the few faithful followers this post is a culmination of the few recent, and will not surprise you. For anybody new it might be a good place to make an entrance.

[ Quick Head’s Up, just on the off chance anybody is thinking of buying the ‘Humbug’ Involution-An Odyssey is selling in the print first edition at Amazon.co.uk for £5.54. (OH DEAR AMAZON has restored their profit- As you were…)

**I am Refusing the Reputation** (Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

This tired Author does not intend to use a slasher, but a pair of sharp clippers to make a hole in the hedge. She is mostly tired of hiding behind ‘Be Nice’. Never been much good at nice. ‘Nice is for rice-pudding and nothing else- not even the weather’ her Oxford trained English teacher said. And she has never forgotten that. Her door is always open, her table capacious; tea is served in bone china mugs, but never set upon a saucer. Many things have contributed to this considered decision. Mostly the need to write, and amuse herself since camouflage and rabbits in hats get nowhere.

Let me clear the ground before this start-again re-build. Not that there is much to clear since she has a virgin field of indifference on which to stake out new foundations. It will be a spare glass structure, easily assembled, transparent, reflecting light.

A Catalogue of Failure (why a criminal prosecution is now the only course.)

The Book’s author innocently undertook what was believed to be the responsibility of representing her demanding client. This was in spite of all impediments ( no alibi’s, no rational reasons, outrageous and conspicuous non-conformity.) First she attempted to forge progress by polite deference to the accepted norms of web conduct. Don’t sell; Engage. She did make every effort; writing biographical material, hopefully of interest about a different South Africa from the one so reviled; she illustrated it with the African Quilt, several family portraits of pain pricked labour ( and the mastery of photographing, cutting and scanning). She offered interviews,interviewed, wrote guest posts and reposted things of congruent interest. About as useful as suggesting you might ‘like’ this rather lovely and irrelevant image. You might, but so what. For all we know it might contain a call to jihad, and that elegant script describes the charms of the 72 virgins in the manner of fifty shades…

She read many blogs and left ‘remember me?’ comments, and has enjoyed new friends and a small and dedicated following of half a dozen other writers, whose company comforts, with each exposure of their friendly photographs. They wave to each other weekly, but have no time for a quick coffee in Starbucks. She took detours, reviewing at length and her reviews are quoted on the backs of other people’s books. Instead of waving the allegedly ‘difficult’, ‘demanding’ two books she offered short stories at Narrative here and here. Soon a commissioned audio reading of one of Narrative’s ‘Top Five Stories of the Year’ will be on their site, and nobody will have the 40 minutes to spare to listen to a story about the Platteland in the fifties. .

Playing Hard to ‘Get’- Not Clever.

It seems she has seen the light. Detours may be pleasant but we all need to get to the point. The mistake she made was to plead guilty. She pleaded guilty to the charge of ‘demanding’, and tried to obscure the charge by waving other flags, serving lighter dishes of passing distraction. In the hope of building up appetites for something meatier.

Look ma, I can be frivolous, I can souffle a satire, puree a pastiche: You think I can’t tell a joke? Watch me. Involution tells a lot of jokes, but who would believe a rare and recent reader who reads it at the gym and snorts audibly ( she ‘gets’ it- it IS frivolous) or a generous reviewer, Ashen Venema, who said ‘ I find myself laughing out loud at the wit and humour breaking through’. It has been labelled ‘demanding’ and people all say ‘no thanks’ to demanding. An unfair allegation when there are much worse crimes it has committed.

She tried so hard not to ‘sell’ and thereby passed over the only thing that might engage- the substance of ‘Involution’. It is easy peasy to read, but just uses a new idiom. Do you refuse to visit France because you don’t speak French? You master enough, find the loo, order from a Carte Blanche, and enjoy the markets. Since nobody has been privy to what it is about almost nobody has opened it. Why should they? It has been given a forbidding title which was due to listening to another ‘ Knowledgeable Authority’ saying ‘With Non-fiction you must say what it is on the tin’. She stupidly listened to him and changed the original ‘Come Full Circle’ (King Lear- a suitable mentor for a geriatric- and equally the essential message and invitation to the work)- to Involution –An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God. Can you imagine an unknown scientist, an unknown poet, persuading anyone to take a punt on that? Instead it was once coming along like this…

That image is W.H.M.Turner and a ship in a storm ( that is what Mankind is) and the book wrote an inscription to thank him for showing the transition from representation towards modern abstraction. Turner was en route to quantum theory by dissolving the image in light. Soul is ever correcting Reason’s omissions.

May I hang a new and glittering prize?
I’ll call a midget trumpet to our joust…
Is Turner not a name to turn up light?
His palette drenched in light and naked else;
Steam, steel and galleons in its spray all melt…
A painter poet with a brush dissolved
In liquid light his citadels emerge,
Carthage or the Ship of Ulysses
Loom from the mists of London’s grey
Evanescent vapours, sodden skies…
A waking dream? Or is it bloodbath day?
His guillotine, the sun, still deeper draws
Unblinking worlds into its drowning eye.

There, was that so difficult? ( You would rather read the endnote about his ‘umble background, his diminutive stature and his illegitimate children? It’s there if you think it will make any difference to understanding his importance? That is ordinary prose for you.)

Listening to Authorities, obeying orders and conventions, has achieved precisely niente. The academic fraternity don’t take it seriously ( who writes science in ‘symphonic prose’ Per-lease! Can’t be serious) and the non academics assume it is not for them. She seems to have achieved the appellation of a dinosaur, who imagines that people might want to read ‘literature’! She never called it that, nor thought of it that way, but was firmly pinioned by a friend who said ‘Stop writing for immortality. You are the only thing that survives’.

I don’t know whether he considered that if we all survive (immortally) then a book suggesting we have collectively shaped the world into which we are reborn (and knowing that might give an incentive to shape it differently) might have some lasting value? Before ending up next time round as refugees in tents on the Syrian border?

And finally… This weekend Jo Robinson drew attention to the piracy of her books, and we found that Amazon was selling the print copy of Involution below the price Amazon has to pay for it. We have invited any prevaricating reader to jump for a book that costs less than it did to print (keep it in mint condition and sell it when all copies have been sold on EBay) (see at the top for quick link before Amazon realises!) .And there we were hoping that a modest bump in sales in December was due to Christmas and presents and proper readers, instead of a minor siding on its journey to the Oxfam shop.

Finally, finally, we were enlightened. Engaged by an extract taken from Roz Morris’s book on ‘plotting a novel’ in which she drew attention to the tendency of fiction authors to fail to see the plot potential of their characters hiding ‘in full view’. Well that did it. The principal character of this Author’s life, The Book, the authoritarian maiden aunt, who never let up on forced labour, and ignored the black ringed eyes, will now take centre stage. We, the Author and I intend to put ‘her’ on trial since she has deceived us for half a century, kept a slave in an attic, and needs to answer a few questions. The Author has now escaped her curfews, and intends to bring charges. The Book may have given amusing self-deprecating speeches blaming the Author for her crimes, pulled faces at the audiences and stuck out her tongue at Darwin; she can now do some proper work and face Prosecution.

She can come ‘out’ and take the stand. I shall be working for the Prosecution and I will call the Author as Chief Witness since she has a lot of incriminating evidence. Any volunteers for the Jury should express an interest. No qualifications are required, not even reading ‘The Book’.

I am Reviewing the Situation

I am Reviewing the Situation….

Fagin Moody Googlepic20 — Reviewing the Situation

‘Lethargy, that toothless crone
Skims perpetual indifference
From the cream of richer care…’ (From A Shadow in Yucatan)

When I want to know what I think or feel I write a poem. It’s my personal pendulum. It takes five minutes and then I sit down with the inescapable and try to decide what should be done. The poem that follows is far from my best, neither subtle nor ambivalent. But this post is to reveal the multi-dimensions of the creative process and what feeds in. I intend to un-peel without editing, corrections or censorship. The Editor within will be ignored. She has never done me any good. I am determining my future so be forgiving, please. We’ll start with the conversation with my subconscious- never able to obfuscate…

Coming to Terms -(You have only yourself to blame)

‘It is the latest newest insight
You dream your own existence,
You shape your everyday,
No fault accrues to others
For your malignancy.’

‘Until yesterday I harboured hope
Hope would soon deliver
Hope would celebrate
I had but to stand ready to catch
The flowered coronet

The leap to opportunity
The harnessing of stallions
The flying mares of surf

Last night I gently smothered hope
Blocked her future breathing
Closed her eyes with copper coin; Removed
From her hand, the close-clutched quill
Laid belief in a bassinet.’

‘Of indifference you’d forged a Charter
Of rejection a lipsticked rent
You defied all attempts to trim the sails
Of time or confidence. Took life
Like a bull at gate.’

‘Am I just tired of bruising encounter
The shrug and politesse?
Exchange paid up, or forward
In tips or lists or kisses
The ‘likes’ bestowed on pages

Suffice to keep us moving
The cliff face of despairing
Steepens with every step.’

‘You have smacked hard against the reckoning;
That walking itself is the journey,
Loneliness never diminished
By singing in a chorus
Or beating a common drum.’

‘I don’t remember choosing
The noose of solitude, or
Ideas above my station, or
A love affair with words.
I accepted your single servitude
To fashion gifts in kind.

I have wrung out a new philosophy
(Mostly saline soaked)
Scratched graffiti on the sidings
When wit offered me a wink
Impromptu painted posters
(Vivid, dripping wet…)

Nobody is listening’
‘What made you think they would?’

Strand One. Pretty close to despair.

Brief context:

I acknowledge that I came at the self publishing world backwards; no platform, no fellowship, no facility with IT, no community, nor a group of colleagues, a lifelong solitary so very few friends. The main book I felt was important ( Involution-An Odyssey) was the longest autobiography ever written. It began on the Serengeti plains circa 3 million years ago ( if not earlier) and ended with what the Russians were doing the day before yesterday. Yes also acknowledged as mad. (See Chris Graham’s kind guested post ‘Are You Mad?’)

The Authorpreneur. If anyone can come up with a less attractive concept or word I’d be glad to hear it.

Since then two years have been spent in catch up, site designed, blogging nearly consistent, daily hour or more reading others and commenting, I have been interviewed written articles and been the subject of a generous near obituary by Brian George. A lesser book published ( to offer a small easier introduction) and a loyal and warm community of ? six or eight followers that consistently help retweet and comment. There are (apparently) over 800 ‘followers’ and less than a handful leave their avatars when (or if) they darken the door. I am not whinging, it is clear that (as the poem declared ab initio) it is MY FAULT. I just am laying down the ingedients.

I have cast about for diversions ( short stories, and interviews) to get away from me and my bleedin books and if anything readers are falling away. It is clear I am failing at greater velocity. I gave it a last shove by letting a professional enthusiast SEO my site, and today I got a tweet from a psychotherapist ‘Not very modest is it?’ Well I have been modest for forty five years. I have never publicised the plagiarist who savaged the first draft but went on to write something pretty similar four years later and land the Templeton Prize (A nice clean million). Nor rebuked the esteemed Fellow of All Souls who asked for a priority sight of the manuscript ‘in hard copy’ and four months and fifty pounds later said ‘unfortunately I will not have time to read your work’. Modesty has been a ill serving wench.

I am reviewing my situation… I cannot pretend to have content except books. I cannot write books if all I am doing is loud-hailing. Nor can I return to writing books that I now know for certain will not be read ( unless I go on to devise other CONTENT- grammar tips, or recipes about which I know niente) That was why an interview with Viv Tuffnell expressed everything I wanted to say too. I hoped that would start a conversation, but it seems to be a conversation nobody wants to have for fear of suggesting failure. We must all pretend success, and success will come sidling in. To me success would be twenty readers a month, no, make that ten.

If Involution had not had pretty outstanding reviews by notable people, similarly from recognised professionals, charmed the few readers who have opened it on Amazon I would just have to shrug and accept it was no bleedin good. Or that it might be fairly good but is wrong for the age of Twitterati. Much the same holds true of the slimmer volume of Yucatan. Both have won prizes, so I may be a literary Okay writer that was never read.

So here’s the thing. Do I give up? Only readers validate the reason to write ( once the autobiography is out of the way- mine was the biography of every reader as well)? What remains? The daily Facebook update, the pointing finger, or a savage satire for Television on speed dating only the already married ( married to their own books natch), the self congratulatory world of Indie publishing where writers talk to other writers about how competitive our ‘products’ are.

I recently reviewed an outstanding book by Melissa Studdard entitled I Ate the Cosmos For Breakfast. She might just have saved my bacon because today she posted a poetry challenge called Changing Form, but which she suggested using a form used for other purposes to shape a poem so here is my recipe to book end a minor crisis of confidence.

Recipe for Social Media Etiquette

Firstly finely chop Content: Useful, Practical,
Sprinkle through sieve of sparse allocation
Arrange on a plate of snack separation
Drizzle with images, comic cut humour
Offer on frequent toasted smiling
Sweep links un-used to the composting bin.

Meanwhile…

Plan for the long haul picnic parade
Dress in cream whipped with the personal
Withdraw the moment a critic waves caution
Let irrelevance trail sweet bait to the books
Be spare with the chilli sharp word or the cynic
Bland is now new gourmet black

Take time to build a kissing collection
Distract with bullet list, opinion, new chatter
Answer agreement with approved thoughtfulness.
Post snapshots taken to seem spontaneous,
Keep drowning but never ever stop waving
Mostly keep on writing books.

Tired? You say. Well that is expected
The Marathon never was for the faint hearted
If you don’t believe enough to press forward
Why should we care in the deluge of options?
Shout softly, all obvious selling is vulgar
The trick is to camouflage, deceive in the dressing

The only game is skilled pretense.

An Editor flags with bright grammar ‘pointers…’
Novels peak out from the ‘how better’ guides
Runners are hooked with ‘let me help’ contracts
I’ll host your party, just relax.
Take a course, revitalize, pay in installments
We’ll get you there. Just keep the faith.

The Market is changing, it’s fish or it’s vegan,
Haiku or novella; the six word portrait
All serial books, (or post-its instead),
Less is more, the long form is passé
Help hopefuls re-shape, retreat and re-edit,
Ambition has a limitless pocket

Feast on almost certain failures
Above all, master encouragement.

How then cook a Cassoulet steeped in a lifetime?
Serve a fresh salad before it wilts?
Beat up a short story culled from the garden
All stages are set for immaculate timing
The play was billed as ‘Writers Reach Readers’
But all I found was ‘Talking Heads’.

Since I posted this I have had a letter from Narrative Magazine saying that a short story called ‘Nuisance Value’ is their Story of the Week. This was written at a similar point of despair, on behalf of the couple who inspired it. You can find it here. You might enjoy the bittersweet dish served cold! Maybe I’ll just write for myself, and blog for amusement and to hell with preneuring!

Looking for Lucas- A South African Short Story

Now for something completely different….

Looking for Lucas was a Finalist in the 2014 Rubery Short Story Prize and has been published it their Anthology, just out. I thought it would make a change for all my followers, especially the South Africans amongst you, since I remember things I suspect you are (luckily) too young to have known directly.I hope so anyway, though it will ring with the familiar. I intend to publish short stories this year to reflect the nuanced differences in Old and New World ways of being, doing and thinking. This is the first taste. Opinions welcome!

Looking for Lucas

The problem of Sou’Thefrica has always been black and white. I’m not talking about skin colour here. I’m talking about reputation. When it was governed by Whites it was labelled as black as sin; after Mandela, when the Blacks got to punch air it was pure as the driven… Nobody realises that it wasn’t ever all black and it sure as hell isn’t all white now.
I should know because I am a Black living in a White skin, an albino with a dusky complexion and krilletjie hair dusted with ash. So I fit nowhere which gives me a unique view on the matter. There was once hope, and in the darkening days hope was oil that lit fires, and kept laughter and penny-whistles alive. That was before I could write, or I couldn’t be telling you this.
Writing was the problem and I should have kept my ambitions under wraps, because ambition got me hooked. That day I swung out, that careless Sunday, Special Branch was there when I came through the gate. It wasn’t until I was walking in full light that I realized a car was cruising…by then it was too late.
‘Hey Kaapse, Kom hierdie. Waar gaan jy?’
No point running. The ‘Kaapse’ tells you why they noticed me. Wrong colour, wrong hair, wrong place. Not that I’m a coloured, but I was neither decently black, nor white enough for that sleeping white suburb. The driver was an ugly brute; the other a jackal grinning like he’d spotted the day’s sport.
‘Waar werk jy?’
‘Ah…ah…ah….’
‘Spitut out. Waar gaan jy?’
‘Mm…mm..mm…’ The driver raised his fist, but the other said ‘Hy’se stammerer. Hy kannie spraak’ and then he said ‘Can you write?’ and I stupidly nodded, so he gave me his note book and said ‘OK, write the answers’
‘Where are you going?’ So I wrote ‘To see mother. Day off’
‘Day off where?’ So I pointed down the road, and jabbed a left turn; lucky they didn’t make me go and show them. I haven’t got a mother.
‘So where do you sleep?’
‘Sss…sss…..Sophiatown’ I couldn’t write Sophiatown.
‘Where’s your pass?’ I patted my shirt to show I did not have a pass. The big nearly got out but the other one asked ‘How old are you?’ So I wrote a ‘14’ like I was really seven. That time they let me go. If I was fourteen I did not need a pass. They drove off, slowly. I was really seventeen but small and stick thin.
In fact the writing was why I was coming out of that gate. I was there for lessons. If you can’t speak then writing is another country. The people who lived there let me sleep in the back room and just being around them taught me other things, like chess and food I never knew existed, olives and those salty fish in a tin, anchovies. They were supposed to be a luxury, but salt you can get anytime.
I’ll tell you about that odd collection because they were like a tuning fork before any music. They showed what life might have been under improvisation; not black, not white, maybe not even special. Just everybody different. Max was just back from USA, an architect. With shaven black hair, his face carved in soap, straight nose, short lip, eyes like raisins, always moving; restless as a constipated cat. Something about him made me suppose he was clever, and boy, he certainly agreed with that. Minette, the only girl in the house used to tease him by beating him at chess. Another thing, he always wore white socks; I’d never seen American socks before.
Minette didn’t always sleep there because she was a student and not supposed to ‘fraternise’ with the lecturers. I never said. They were all from the University. She was nearer my age, maybe eighteen; best of all she liked to kwela on the grass after supper. Somebody once said ‘Honey. What’s in your blood? You dance like you got six toes!’ She laughed, and took my hand to dance again. But I was shy, so she dropped it. Her boyfriend Petrus taught Psychology and I couldn’t take to him. I don’t know why. I remember how he sat, one foot on top of the other, in case it got an idea to walk.

The one who had taken me there and who taught me was Oscar. Now Oscar was the really clever one, with a nose like a bird’s beak, whip thin and fast as a lizard. I had noticed him walking with Lucas down Market Street, the two of them talking in Zulu, and laughing; man I mean really laughing. In those days you never saw a black and a white sharing a joke till laughing smacked a leg. Lucas was as black as a hole in the sky, and he and Oscar were real friends. They opened new doors for each another. Oscar would take Lucas into white clubs and parties dressed as a waiter, or standing in the theatre lobby as his chauffeur in uniform and cap. Lucas had to put on fancy dress; Oscar had to take his trendy clothes off.
In return Lucas took Oscar to Alexandra or ‘Back of the Moon’ the shebeen where Masakela played trumpet. Lucas was doring sharp; he worked as a reporter on Drum Magazine with ears sharper than a nagapie. Overhearing conversations gave him leads on what Chinaman shipped money, where were the latest safe-houses, and who was next. Drum was everyman’s latrine bible, always raided, always moving on, bio-degradable in every lean-to stench-house.

I never knew what Oscar was after. He fooled around, making things. His Zulu was home-farm Zulu, not learnt out of books. Put him behind a wall and you couldn’t tell he was white. Often he pretended deafness so as to catch black insults and black jokes like spiny cat-fish. Oscar and Lucas were one handy duo in those times, when whites and blacks were camped on opposite koppies waiting for a signal to start Blood River again. Chances to meet were street chances. That’s when I made my best move, and stopped those friends and asked if they could teach me to write.
‘Better come with us now’ they said. So I did. Me in the back, they drove to this house in Parktown, about as swank an area as Jo’burg sported. Only their house was an old tin-roofed box behind a high hedge. Probably built by a mining speculator who kept his half-cast kids out of sight; but now squashed between mansions with lawn sprinklers. It was my first home; maybe why those days still seem mostly sunshine. There were other reasons for sunshine, though.
Until I was forced to spoil it.

We knew the house was bugged, because Max had come from MIT which made him suspect. It wasn’t because of Lucas. Nobody knew about him. He crawled through the hedge over the neighbour’s compost-heap, a deaf-mute in the house, speaking only in the garden. I ran errands, even going to the swank Zoo Restaurant for wine when they ran out. They gave me money; the cook pocketed it, and wine was dumped in paper bags behind the rubbish bins. I can remember the cries of the monkeys and the hyenas trotting behind the wire while I waited for the lights to go out, so I could make it through the trees back onto the road. In its way that laughing house was an oasis in the desert of waiting. For what?

Oscar gave me lessons, and Lucas made me copy his reports, in case he was nabbed. After he reached the Editor’s office he would pay-phone three rings and then hang up. If he didn’t ring I was to take the copy myself. I only had to do it once, when he was held in Marshall Street for three days. Then he published photographs of his bunged up eyes which just made Special Branch more determined. A Pass infringement wasn’t enough. So they gave him enough rope and waited. For that reason Lucas never stayed over-night, just came for a bath, friendship and food.
Then I was caught again by the same two heavies.
‘Ok Kleurling. Game’s up. You still writing?’ They had me forced against the car, one with his knee in my balls. ‘Here’s what you do. If we let you stay, you write the names of everybody you see coming and going; times, dates…you put it everyday, under this stone. Leave any name off, and you are first for a big-time charge. No trial, no Judge, yus forever in Chook, OK?’. He pushed a notebook down my shirt front.
‘No excuses now. Who’s in the servant’s rooms?’
‘Nn…nn…nobody’
‘Yus! these whites do their own cleaning? In Parktown?’
‘Sometimes they can get help, not always’ I nodded.
As I left one kicked the back of my knee. ‘Jus our signature’ he said.
So I looked on books for new names. Mr Corbusier, Mr S. Freud, Frank Lloyd Wright, even Charles Darwin honoured us with visits and disappeared back into a library where they’d never be found. Instead they were now transferred to a priority list in Special Branch waiting to charge them. I knew it couldn’t last.

In the end the rope that nearly hanged Lucas was a US Scholarship, and some boaster published the news. Then he was really on the run. Special Branch raided Drum, and every reporter on it. Lucas tried to get to Durban to jump ship but every road was ringed, so he came back. We had to hide him until friends in Botswana could figure a way out. Oscar spoke only in Zulu on the telephone and trusted any interpreter to scramble it. Zulu was a forked tongue, the snake would bite.
They came during supper. We saw the torches coming through the gate. Oscar grabbed my hand and dragged me out the back, after saying to Minette ‘Delay as long as possible’ We ran across the dark yard to the servant rooms where Lucas was asleep. Oscar slapped him awake. ‘Get up, put on this apron’ He had unhooked a white apron from the kitchen door. ‘Get under that blanket and be unconscious’ he said to me, ‘lock behind us.’
So I wasn’t there to see the finale. I was under a sweaty blanket, shivering, until Special Branch splintered the door, and dragged me out.
‘Fock you Kleurling. You supposed to be on duty…’
They slammed me back against the wall and left swearing.
When I returned to the kitchen Lucas was quietly washing up, in the apron that covered his wide-boy cleverness and floured him to stupid servant. They never even noticed him. That night the summons from Botswana came.
Before going, Lucas woke Minette before the sun.
‘Come for a walk’ he said. ‘Let’s celebrate.’
They were crawling through the hedge when he saw me watching.
‘You’d better come too, you neither fish nor fowl…’
So the three of us walked through the sleeping streets; even dogs stayed quiet. We walked round Zoo Lake and sat on the ‘Whites Only’ bench. I remember Lucas writing with a stick in the water, a farewell to the fish. Just before we returned to the house he says to Minette
‘Do me a favour? Just sit with me on the pavement awhile…’
It seemed mad; a white with that very black in full view; and me, a useless lookout.
‘What for?’ asks Minette.
‘Because if I ever come back I won’t be able to do this. Never. When you are under sacking in Sophiatown you’ll do this everyday. Me, I will have pressed trousers, a clean handkerchief, a prisoner of a grand house…So, Madame, I grant you the freedom of the gutter, share with me my last chance to enjoy it…’

He’s not returned yet, even though he could now. Somehow I can’t see it. The country of compromise is now like every other, only shades of grey.

The Egotism of Expertise- Interior Conformity

The Egotism of Expertise. Sampling the luscious fruits of Self-Esteem

A few recent posts have been devoted to a collective wail about the impossibility of non-genre books ever being discovered in the goose step parade of all the others who polish their boots and take steps in synchrony with guidelines and expectations.

A sharp interruption from an unbelievably perceptive reader who posted a review of both my books and how they interconnected both in time and causally rather answered the wail of despair. He said…

‘all events are simultaneous, and the future can easily reach back to the present—which is, in any case, far longer than we would guess. In 1969, an Eye blinks above a beach on the southernmost tip of Florida; some 45 years later there is a book called Involution. Cues wait only to be understood as such. Our hearts must be open, and our ears must be gigantic’.

These ‘gigantic ears’ for connections have mitigated my misery, and I am jubilant that ONE reader is enough. I knew that; but feared never to discover him. Yet this post (planned for today) still has relevance. It moves from the collective tramp to the individual stamp and an examination of what limits any individual if tethered to any ‘authority’ -his own or that assigned to an institution. In short it is about ‘interiorised’ conformity.

It is a central plank of what all my work seeks to topple: Conformity being deadly to the spirit.

A commonplace promise to writers of non-fiction who might publish is that it ‘positions’ you as an expert, gives you ‘credibility’, enables you to compete with the other experts (like Tony Blair whose ‘expertise’ the Middle East will live with forever) who then are able to give ‘talks’ for a fortune. That may be true of those to whom life has bowled curved balls and who found ways to catch, deflect or detonate. Having had to think on their stumbling feet, they usually bring something new to the table; their creative management of life.

Not so those who amass, bit-by-bit the facts or experiences from which to distil this alleged ‘expertise’, the dogged and methodical, and frequently uninteresting accumulation in some ‘arena’. I call this second grade ‘expertise’. Most especially in the competitive bull ring of academia ( more about that anon) whereby ‘my collection’ ( better distilled than ‘yours’) must trump, through vehemence, debate and prickly defence. This I call the egotism of expertise, and its capacity for jealousy and sustained antipathy runs through the history of science from Plato’s expropriation of Parmenides, through Newton v Leibniz and flows on now with Dawkins and Polkinghorne, Lennox and Dennett, and even turned into a tedious running bet by Sheldrake and Wolpert. Twigs of irrelevance feeding a fire to warm the egotistical.

Why are ideas deemed to ‘belong’ to anybody?

When
The world is all enfolded mind…

All speaks to all, as grass when broadcast
Appears first in green bubbles where the hedge gives shade,
Joined later by struggling drier seed, it makes the sward
Full velvet by joining fescue hands.
New crystals grown in Montreal create copies in Peru…
Once born, existence is assured elsewhere and far away…
A dragonfly may initiate monsoon in Kathmandu
By struggling in Tennessee to open iridescent wings.

If two people, with the same ‘facts’ available, interpret them differently to draw different conclusions, the facts will not decide, each has its opposing one; belief determines the interpretation, the ‘nose’ or ‘appetite’ for conclusions. I am not referring to experience but why is this factual ‘expertise’ so trumpeted when it answers no questions?

Precluding Experience in Favour of Testable Hypotheses ( the smell of a rose?)

One of the central filters blocking advances in science is the preclusion of any experience that cannot be measured, repeated or validated; which is why so many unsung geniuses went to their graves before their contribution was acknowledged. They experienced what had yet to be substantiated, but egotism dismissed their unorthodoxy; ridiculed until enough accumulation of supportive facts toppled the opposition. By that time their originality had often been expropriated by someone else.

Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to Watson and Crick’s DNA modelling was quietly buried (it is now being acknowledged; she is safely dead). Science, the so-called objective, rational pursuit of truth, is pretty untruthful when egotism is given its head, and in Oxbridge circles it is accepted as the game. Supervisors publish students’ work, and take the plaudits and the prizes.

I have many stories to tell because I never derived an idea. It derived me. Unfortunately it did not ensure letters after my name first, so there was never any moderation to contempt. The experience described in my interview (with Alexander Zoltai) came uninvited, and destroyed my world. So I can hardly claim ‘expertise’, although if I now have a field of ‘expertise’ it lay in the study of those similarly afflicted, with an idea too big for boots’ conformity and without the necessary credentials to argue their idea or even the right to hold it. They were the beads strung on the rosary of science.

Galileo Facing the Roman Inquisition- Banti

There is a glorious disparity,
The paradox whereby the caravan
Was led by travellers, uniquely unafraid
To find established emperors had no clothes.
They dragged all cheering, jeering men behind
To gather up and measure what fell short
Below the turning spokes; securing paltry spoils
Of disputation and the fashioning of hats
From small distinctions, narrow ribbons of reward,
Proving them mistaken, finding brighter claim…
(Perfecting with triumphant diadem
What was, in general, adequate au fond)

Dipping a toe in the shark infested waters?

In a previous post on symphonic prose I attempted to explain the principal reason behind using it, the appeal to the intuitive heart rather than the didactic left brain. My encounters with the ‘jeering men’ had played a part certainly, not by inculcating fear but the recognition that egotistic intellect precludes understanding of anything meaningful. That certainly came first, and of it I have woven a whole hypothesis about the separation of intellect from consciousness. Science has arrived at objective ‘materialism’ through intellect, and divisive intellect alone.

But ‘for the avoidance of doubt’ I would also say that the Involution ‘played’ its tunes on the harp strings in my mind. Unlike logically argued prose, which demands chronological structure ( of language itself- grammar is ‘frog marched by time’) this ‘playing’ was multidimensional; I could listen to the strands by heeding them individually. In that sense I think Involution wrote itself ‘through’ me. I do not mean to suggest I was ‘channelling’, or that like Mohammed I had Gabriel on side. It wasn’t quite that easy. Rather that, having experienced the ‘all’ was rather like removing a central stone of a beaver’s dam in a fast flowing river, the sticks carefully intertwined were loosened, and in the flow catapulted into the current of understanding. Everything flowed towards the sea.

Jumping in to Deeper Flowing Waters

Having tried six variants of ordinary prose this sense of being pulled by the current was incredibly liberating; I just let it take me where it listeth. This has some penalties, inasmuch as when you claim to be writing science, nobody wants the irrelevant. Tight argument is usually expected. Censoring the river was not an option. It took bye-ways and flowed into small cul-de-sacs, and spiralled in eddies, and slowed with sluggish intervals. It seemed arrogant to imagine I could select from the weight of water which rivulets I would allow or prohibit.

Besides, this was a journey and I wanted a reader (if I ever found one) to take it with me and to feel the coldness, the pull, and a sense of destination, not a contrived subterfuge to camouflage a polemic. The reader who was mentioned above, seems to have jumped in and let it flow round him, and what he heard was multi-instrumental music. Was ever ‘symphonic prose’ better rewarded? Although I believe that Involution as a hypothesis does sing a better song about creation, (and has much evidence to support it), I am phobic about proselytization, or evangelical certainty. As a theory it will be refined, because its story is all about hypotheses replaced by bigger and better ones, but the first journey into unknown land is always the most vivid.

Behind us will come other minds
Recasting all in oak…
Filling its gaps with detailed plate
A stanchion bridge to stand.
I do enjoin you, just enjoy
The flowing river below…
The sway, the pendulum that swings…
You will not lose sight of land
Nor yet the constant sight of sea
Reminding you of Turner’s brush, it seems to come and go…

The Meaningless Didactic: Avoiding Bruises.

But there was another reason, to write for those who did not call themselves ‘seekers’ or ‘scientists’. That decision had been born with bruises I touched on in previous posts, particularly my encounter with the evangelical Epiphany Philosophers in Cambridge, who cheerfully tore it (and me) to shreds. They straddled the ‘spiritual /scientific divide’ but with the waspish competitive ruthlessness of academia. I had been through something close to hell, had to borrow the train fare to accept their invitation to present the theory, but nothing moderated their savage mockery. I sat at the focal point of an oval inquisition, and bloodied to silence, could scarcely rise when it was done.

Intellectual cut-and-thrust and demolition is the nature of such expertise.

That brings me to the essence of this post, the egotism of expertise, the blinkered and narrow lenses through which all those who deem themselves knowledgeable preclude new ideas, require credentials they respect (Oxbridge or Ivy League natch) before they heed reluctantly, if at all.

The Wrong Kinds of Consistency?

Involution as a thesis traces this very process through recorded history, and how the maverick emissaries of genius (on which all of scientific progress has rested) all shared the symptoms of certainty and obsessive stubborn adherence, yet even that consistency never budged the refusal to the new. ( Brave new ideas are sensitive/To antigen attack from the body politic).Which was why Arthur Koestler warned me that although Involution was worth expanding, it would be unlikely to find a publisher. That was in 1970.

In 2013 it still could not find a publisher. Not even with a letter of Introduction from Laszlo to his own publisher. A notable academic Director for a spiritual organisation refused initially to even accept a copy. His reason? That I had taken the ‘shameful liberty’ of claiming that Koestler had supported it.’ My dear girl, if that was true it would have been published. People say kind things in letters they will not stand up to say in public’ ( He knew nothing about my encounter with Koestler, but assumed because I was unknown, I could be dismissed with unfounded accusations and contempt. I was ‘shamefully inventing’ what Koestler was not alive to deny!)

The planet has been almost destroyed by expertise, over-populated, deforested, over-heated and at war. God save us from too much respect for expertise, expropriation of ideas, exclusive paths to truth, either religious or scientific.

Now, vehemence spent, I promise to shut up!

(Images reproduced under Wikimedia Commons Licences)

Returning Your Call- The Creation Answers Back?

Reality Defines Itself ( it’s in the habit of coughing loudly when you think you have it all sewn up)

I did not intend to post today. But we have all( perhaps) been rudely interrupted in our collective wailing. The time a reader speaks, and times his entrance perfectly. Lest you misunderstand ( and for those who came late to the discussion) I will simply summarize so that you can pick up the thread.

We, a group of writers ( who write un-commercial books) were making a mountain out of a mountain. The welter, the scrabble, the noise, the heartlessness and the impossibility of finding the odd reader who would value what we write. None of us expect to be mobbed or recognised in the street, no paparazzi called for, just a slim chance of ‘cutting through’.

All of a sardine a perfect reader is netted, and he is called George like the future King: that’s his second name and he writes an article in Mythos Media about my ‘never to be discovered books’.(sniff sniff)

Not so much never to be discovered; more leaving no stone unturned, no quote unquoted, no link unobserved between them and no value undisclosed. So that’s me done. Thy servant can depart in peace according to his final word. Just came to kneel at confession and say Sorry Sir, I occasionally forget that time is not only on Your side but under Your control and you have tripped me up.

We all know that pride comes before a fall, only we seldom expect to fall UP, and be seen clearly from below.

Here is a link and the start of the post.

On Listening to the Call: From “A Shadow in Yucatan” to “Involution: An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God”

Posted by Brian George

Brian George

“I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in creation’s dawn.”—John Muir
__

Philippa Rees has recently published a new edition of her book A Shadow in Yucatan. Many reviewers have already taken note of the near-hallucinatory verbal richness of this free verse novella, whose style contains echoes of such writers as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath, and Dylan Thomas, while, at the same time, remaining very vividly the author’s own. “The monocle of light, now focused, flames her hair,/ it lifts, it falls, it curves, it conceals…/ Her open nectar-mouth, now shaded, breathes.” Among her other activities, Philippa is a cellist, and this play of echoes within echoes is what you will often find in a piece of classical music, so that, in listening to Tchaikovsky’sThird Symphony, for example, you can hear Haydn—the disjunctive trickster!—on one side and Stravinsky on the other, in what you had first assumed to be a kind of new and improved Mendelssohn. Yucatan could productively be read, several times over, with only such formal concerns in mind. I am coming somewhat belatedly to the book, however, after wrestling with Philippa’s magisterial opus Involution: An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God, and so I am going to approach it from a different angle. I hope to show how the challenges faced by Stephanie, the protagonist of A Shadow in Yucatan, recapitulate, on an intimate scale, the more supernatural ones faced by Philippa on a beach on the southernmost tip of Florida; at the same time, they prefigure Philippa’s decades-long struggle to give form to her vision. In one moment, prompted by an accident, the whole of a person’s life can change. If a question is posed, does this mean that one has to answer?

Defining the Gulf: The Debate: Writers seeking Readers. At what Cost? To Both?

Following the Author’s Guild Debate between Joe Konrath and Matthew Yglesias against Scott Turow and Franklin Foer on how much of a friend Amazon was to writers this post would seem timely:

A Writer Redefines the Gulf. (Biographically)

Interview with somewhat dispirited author, Vivienne Tuffnell ( Author of The Bet, Square Peg, Accidental Emeralds, Strangers and Pilgrims, Away with the Fairies and The Wild Hunt and other short stories;)

This interview was stimulated by Vivienne Tuffnell’s recent posts. The Loss of the Joy expressed her recent (and perhaps current) despair and traced its origins to the act of publishing. Following the publishing betrayal by someone she believed would help, and through the necessity of shouldering all the marketing speak, as well as its underlying (and mostly unquestioned) precepts she seems to have reached a psychological ‘Road Closed Pending Repairs’ sign.

Gems Disappearing. The Black and White of Liberty (image Viv Tuffnell)

Deeper than Exhaustion: Defining what a free-for-all does to the ‘Original.’

It lies much deeper than exhaustion. The loss of belief she sums up as ‘the culture itself has been subtly damaged over the years so that commerce rather than creativity is the gold standard of what is of worth to us’

At my last count this post had had about 25 comments of empathy from fellow writers. Spurred by that huge response I suggested exploring the issues from the experiences of one individual, her hopes, beliefs and experiences, and disillusionment. What may be done?

Recovering Belief: Keeping Unorthodox Writers writing: How?

On the basis of what that indicates this interview was structured, if only to recover her memory of the joy she once had, and perhaps to harness the growing community of fellow writers dispirited by that ‘gold standard’ of commerce and the sense that if you are not commercially successful, you must be irrelevant (or conceited!) or unwilling to work, or to shout.

Viv, Can you recall what first stimulated your writing? The circumstances, but also the nature of the impulse? In short, why write? When did it begin?

Back in the late 60s and into the 70s my father travelled to America on numerous occasions for work. I have no idea how long he was away as time is very different for a small child, but his return was always accompanied by gifts of things that seemed alien and exciting. Britain as I grew up was not that far removed from rationing so America and all it contained seemed exotic and advanced. He usually brought back Superman comics (wish we’d kept them!) and he also discovered Star Trek before it arrived on British television. My brother and I used to play Superman games and one of the things about Clark Kent was that he was a journalist and he wrote. Dad foolishly allowed me to use his typewriter, and though at this stage I could neither read nor write, I used to bash away at the keys in the belief that somehow the story I had in my head would appear on the page. I think I saw that the power of words was as much a superpower as the power of flight.

My brother, who is three years older than me, was a writer by the time he started school. We’ve always had a difficult relationship but as a small child I worshipped him. So in some way it was inevitable that I too would write. I wrote some poetry at school and used to make up stories during play. I began writing what would now be termed fan fiction of my favourite sci-fi writer, Hugh Walters, and it turned into my first novel, begun when I was ten and finished when I was eleven. I destroyed it aged fourteen, setting fire to it in an upturned bin lid.

Did you believe in a unique vision or ‘take’ ‘mission’ or ‘belief’ that you wanted to convey. Can you define what that was?

At that time, no. As much as anything, I wanted to write what I wanted to read. By the time I was about fourteen I had resolved that I would be a writer. I asked a teacher I trusted to read a novel I’d written and after a few weeks, he asked to see me to talk to me about it. I won’t go into great detail but the talk we had changed me completely as a writer. He said, “I don’t see you as a writer of detective fiction or mysteries. You’re capable of something a lot more. There’s something else for you, but I don’t know what.”

While some might be offended about his dismissing of a whole genre in that way, I did and do see his point. The immediate effect of his words was for me to open up to exploring a greater variety of literature. Long term, it contributed to a growing feeling of having a kind of a destiny. I know it sounds corny but it did. The intervening years refined this feeling and though I fought hard to try and get books accepted by mainstream publishers, I was thwarted. I came very close to a contract several times and even had an agent. But then it always fell apart at the last. The decision to self publish came hard to me. I’d had definite ideas of who I was and I confess that like many, I had conflated the concept of self-publishing with that of the old model of vanity publishing.

Discovering Path and Purpose.

The blog itself came out of a six week sabbatical from my normal activities, late in 2008, where I withdrew from all my previous online activities and spent much time in thought, meditation and prayer. I needed a change in direction; I felt I’d got lost and had wandered away from my path. I’d been bashing my head against publishers’ walls and it was driving me to despair. So I began to blog and in doing so, a new world opened up. It was via someone I met through blogging that I first began the process of publishing a book. Though the book is good, the association didn’t end well. With hindsight, for me the realisation that I’d made a terrible mistake came when my associate said in passing about the book being ‘just a product’. This was entirely counter to all our previous conversations, and was the first pebble in a landslide that almost destroyed me.

Now, though, I can see that it liberated me. It woke me up to the forgotten feeling and belief in a form of destiny, and that what I wrote did not fit into being mere products. Yes, they are entertaining and can be read solely for that, but there is much more below the surface.

I get the impression from your blog that essentially you still believe that your original reasons remain intact. It is the gulf between expressing those truly and creatively and the erosion of the world that values books, or your kind of books. So essentially your despair lies in the so called ‘market’ and in its maelstrom the impossibility of finding readers. Is that the nub of it?

I think it’s a big part of it, for sure.

If it is, would it be fair to suggest that it is the loneliness of being unwilling to compromise? You don’t want to write for the prevailing market. I don’t either, in fact I would not know how to, so is the essence of this problem the very uniqueness you want to write about? Could you define why that is so difficult? Is it simply too much surrounding noise? Or something else?

Over Defined: Repetitive and Safe.

The prevailing market is founded on the very stale essence of what has already sold. It’s thrice chewed, and therefore pap. That’s not to say there’s nothing good or worth reading but the essence of much of it is tired and jaded. Some of the most famous and excellent authors have found that writing the same story over and over again is what their fans clamour for, and if they diverge from a tried and true formula there are howls of protest from readers and publishers alike. Many people who read do so for entertainment (which is fine) and what entertains is rarely challenging. But that awareness of the prevailing tastes seeps into the unconscious and sours the path to the soul-writing. Like beer siphoned through a dirty pipe, it taints the taste.

The world of indie publishing seems to believe it offers limitless liberty. I am far from sure that it is limitless. I get the impression that there are unspoken limits simply in the structures, languages, genres, categories, SEO searches, through which each book has to tunnel. Unless the work conforms to some, if not many, of these it will never surface. Do you have a view on these round holes? And how they exclude you?

The Metamorphoses of Self-publishing: From Grub to thick-skinned Grub?

At the very start, I think indie publishing did have almost endless scope. However, a process of morphic resonance (if I may use the term) took place and it all started to crystallise the old forms of publishing with the same strictures on format, genre, voice, and a focus on being “as good as traditional publishing” because things would need to be meticulously edited and typo-free. It has become bogged down in the details of aping the existing respectable face of publishing. It would take a gargantuan expenditure of energy now to liberate it from this set-in-stone format.

On a personal level, these round holes are inevitable. They’re there because they’re the iceberg-tips of what readers believe they want: more of the same they’ve already enjoyed. Vendors such as Amazon seek to provide a product for customers, so therefore they’ll use the evidence of what has already sold well. To some extent, I’ve not been entirely excluded because some of my work masquerades as close enough to various genres to past muster. This is solely accidental. I’ve never been able to write for a market or I’d probably have managed to break into the publishing business twenty years ago. I don’t believe in giving people what they want; I’d rather give them what they need. The two seldom combine.

Going back to the despair and the prevailing belief that only sales and readers validate the effort of writing ( one needs two hands to clap), and particularly after the first book has proved one can actually write and publish, it strikes me that you are not contented in simply writing a blog ( which clearly does attract a great many readers) so what more do you convey in the creative poetry and fiction that the blog cannot satisfy: ie the Heineken essence?

The Inner Life of a Story

The cathartic process of living a story cannot be done in miniature (unless you are in essence a highly-experienced Zen master or similar.) The process of reading a longer narrative has an effect that shorter works do not. In addition, the inner life of a story, of characters and events is a real thing, that exists in the non-physical realm. The process of accessing this realm is not done lightly or casually but you are led into it by narrative and held there by the power of that realm until released at story’s end.

On a tangential issue: Is that ‘essence’ the intimacy of being truly ‘seen’? I.e. Offering the reader the deepest ‘you’. If so, is the clamour of the competing market actually selling something different; stories for entertainment; plots for diversion; sci-fi for bright ideas and satire for criticism, rather than the perfume of a passing soul? Is the perceived ‘compromise’ of packaging the soul in ways that conform to broader entertainment, a betrayal? I don’t mean to suggest that the ‘soul’ needs to take the reins but that it may not find sex or violence, or the triumph of evil easy to live with. These all seem somewhere required.Does that contribute to the despair do you think?

The Perfume of a Passing Soul

Yes. One of the things my spiritual director sometimes used to say about my writing is that he caught my fragrance from a particular piece. That’s why negative reviews can be excruciating. I’ve not had many, but the first really excoriating one left me in bits (albeit briefly). You sit there whimpering,” but, but, but!” before you realise that you cannot remonstrate. It comes down to this: the reader did not connect and rejected the perfume of that passing soul. It is what it is.

People talk about writers needing to toughen up and grow a thicker skin. All I have done over the last ten years or so (probably a lifetime, really) is lose those skins that are a barrier to real feeling, and to become more sensitive to the passing fragrances around me. It’s why trying to read a book like American Psycho left me physically sick and unwell for days; I caught a stench of death that was like that of a battlefield in summer.

I felt the same about Chesil Beach, which was highly acclaimed. It seemed to take pleasure from eviscerating the characters he’d created; slowly, tortuously.

Ultimately, is writing the way in which we confront out existential loneliness, and are readers who ‘get’ and share that, now the substitutes for lovers? Is the internet an appropriate place in which to find ‘lovers’? Is that incongruity a contributing factor? The privacy of a book store never penetrated lies somewhere in this lament?

Chivalry and Chaste Love: What the Writer Reveals (and seeks)

I believe it is about unity of souls. In a normal life-time before the internet, most of us found very few people with whom we connected deeply and intimately. The impression I have gained is that people often married someone for the sake of marrying, rather than because they were true soul kin. The only time I can think of in history when this need for another form of deep intimacy was talked about was the time of the troubadours, where a form of chivalric and chaste love was very fashionable and was at the core of much art, poetry, mystical and philosophical writing. We live in an era of sexual freedom but we are like children in a sweetie shop and gorge until we sicken. The unity of souls is something entirely other than the unity of bodies, but it’s generally only in sexual relationships that this deep connection has happened.

If that is so, are the methods of self promotion, shouting, endless photographs et al a form of prostitution ‘au fond’. We want to be ‘seen’ for what we are, not what we appear to be? Or for who else is putting their name to our bandwagon?

To paraphrase Isobel, a character in several of my novels, if it is, it probably only counts as manual relief. It’s probably more akin to a profile on a dating site. You put up what you hope is a pleasing image and a tester of your fragrance when you are seeking a soul-mate. It’s a tiny beacon in the darkness. I gather a greater majority of people make new relationships through the internet, more than other methods of connecting with new flames. The kind of sites used varies. Some are intended solely for carnal, short-lived encounters; others are focused more on friendship with the possibility of a deeper relationship.

Solutions?

Finally. Do you have any ideas which might bridge this gulf between the ‘authentic’ and the ‘market’.

I do. But they’re essentially metaphysical at present rather than practical strategies that can easily be summed up in a short manifesto.

Thank you for the candour of this very clarifying Interview Viv. Much to think about for a great many writers, feeling as you do, to a greater or lesser extent. We all deal with it in different ways, some break and some bend. One of the ironies is that as self-published authors we took on the mountain to escape the gatekeepers, only to face different ones down the line! This was exposed in a recent debate about the role of Amazon held by the Author’s Guild in which the vested interests of the commercial giant persuaded the audience that (long-term) Amazon was ‘not the author’s friend’. The winner of that debate ended by addressing Amazon thus “You’re dealing with precious cargo. Don’t abuse your power. Be good stewards of word and thought.”

The full report of that debate can be found by clicking here

Viv’s Author Page on Amazon is here

Her Twitter handle is Vivienne Tuffnell (@guineapig66) on Twitter

Her very interesting blog Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking is here
http://zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com

Her Facebook Author Page is here

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