Oh, and I bailed on Nanowrimo on Day 1

I can't be a Data Capturer, but neither can I do this

Again I wonder: Is publishing really the right place for a bibliophile to be? There are all these stories out there about people in corporate jobs who long to do something more meaningful and other stories about people who feel grateful to be doing something they love. But they mean something they love, on their terms. And those of you in the land of corporate greed, consider how you would feel if you had to bring something you love as you might love a child into that environment. Would your life be more meaningful? Or would the thing you love have less meaning? And what if you were surrounded by people whose only real qualification for the job that they are doing is that they like to read or that they studied literature. Ah, literature. You might appreciate beautiful gardens, but that doesn't mean you can plant and sustain one yourself. You might appreciate great photography, but can you really be Pieter Hugo?

I can't be a Data Capturer because it wouldn't take long before I'd wonder off from data-caturing land and find something more stimulating to do. So what's the problem with the job I have? Apart from the fact that I feel like a vet having to cut up the carcass of her favourite pony for dog food: I have patience, but not enough of it to outlast the type of incompetence of the type of person who would demand human sacrifices and pyramid-esque monuments if they had been born with that type of authority. Except that this person would demand that the pyramid be built upside down and the sacrifices take place in its shadow and suspended two metres from the ground without support because it meets some obscure sense of aesthetic. Next she'll be asking me to print on blotting paper, or perhaps buy an ancient press from a museum and typeset the pages myself, or delete every punctuation mark and every serif because it ruins the zen of the page.

My favourite ghost stories

I use the word 'ghost' in the title of this post as shorthand for Gothic. I love Gothic literature - the good stuff, not the penny 'orribles. The stories in which the ghost or monster is a metaphor for some social or individual repression (conscious on the part of the author, not accidental). In which the ghost leads you into some larger conspiracy with each step and ultimately, sometimes, to some kind of enlightenment, or at the least revelation.

So, here goes:

• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. (Disclaimer: I adore James as I do EM Forster, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf and most of the Modernists. I assert that I am a Modernist trapped in a Post-Modernist's frame of reference, which is a ghost story in itself.) The Turn of the Screw is the story on which the movie The Others was based, although the movie takes the plot and its sub-text in a different, more existential (more Post-modern) direction. James' version shows the preoccupations of the time, in which people were searching for transcendence and finding only traces of it in nature, human interaction and even human psychology. Also touching on the dichotomy of male and female, and sexuality. There is so much written about hysteria that I won't even touch on it here. Let me just say that this book made me a little jumpy.
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The same issues that haunt James' story haunt this novel. Bronte's symbolism is rich and its sexual metaphors far juicier. However, unlike James' story, this mystery is solved. But even this solution brings in more questions, about the role of women in a household and in relation to men. Again, there is so much written about the Madwoman in the Attic that I won't go into it here. But once you have read Jane Eyre, read the Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, a post-colonial novel that unpicks the psyche of the Woman. Then consider, by comparison, whether Bronte's novel is proto-feminist, or perhaps not. That's my ghost here.
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Even if you haven't read the novel, you must have heard of Heathcliff and Katherine and their violent love. They spend their lives haunting each other in various forms: torturing each other, being tortured by memories and what-ifs, and finally a literal haunting in a setting that seems conducive to these kinds of things. Their longing for each other is so extreme that it seems almost to take on physical form. Wuthering Heights is an ancestor to Twilight and self-destructive/abusive relationships. But, in the former, there is meat that Twilight lacks and that lingers with you.
• Other Rooms Other Voices by Truman Capote. Mr Capote is my latest find, and I wonder what took me so long. His writing is always haunted by something, perhaps a mocking voice, a cynicism that is without the failed idealism that most cynics have. In this novel, a young boy whose mother has died is sent to live with his father, who no one knew was still alive. The boy is filled with hope at all his dreams coming true. However, all he finds are the ghosts, physical and metaphysical, that anyone must face if they are to mature, evolve. This is a coming-of-age novel that rings with the uneasy truths of Catcher in the Rye. There is a theory about the presence of the orphan in the great coming-of-age stories: Cinderella, Snow White, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Portrait of a Lady. We all as children had the fantasy about being orphans and the steerers of our own ships. Perhaps there was some greater truth here than just an interesting psychological fact: perhaps our parents do have to die in order for us to grow up.
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. Ok, I know I keep going on about this novel, but it is great and I did warn you that I was lost in it. (To be precise, I am lost in a cornfield with a dog in front of me and a fire raging behind me.) There are a few ghosts in this novel, apart from the obvious one (the boy's father). There is a second ghost, of a farmer, who haunts a shed that Edgar is cleaning out and who tells a love story - two, actually. Then there is the ghost that Edgar becomes and who returns home to exact vengeance. There are the ghosts of the conflict between the Sawtelle brothers, a man named Henry, who is the ghost of his own life, and a dog named Forte.

I think five is a good number at which to stop, although I could go on (Frankenstein, Dracula...). These are some of the ghosts that haunt me, and believe me, it's crowded in here.

The Man Who Was Thursday

"The most thrilling book I have ever read." This is one Kingsley Amis's endorsement of The Man Who Was Thursday. I'm sure it wasn't meant specifically as an endorsement at the time but those marketing b^$#@**$ will gobble anything and regurgitate it.

It worked though, because I bought the book. And read it too. And two days later, I'm not sure whether I enjoyed it or not. It definitely is not the most thrilling book I have ever read, although it is definitely one of the more bizarre. Reading the book so many years later, in light of the influence it has had on modern fiction, it's difficult not to find it staid and predictable. The story tells of a recently recruited but cunning detective who infiltrates a circle of anarchists, shortly before an assassination is due to take place. Hijinks ensue and the story devolves into a nightmare that ends in a bizarre rendering of the Last Supper. (No spoiler here, trust me.) There is some kind of moral here about anarchy and social order perpetuating each other, but quite honestly by this point I was too bored to thread it out.

It's not a bad book; it's just been done. That's not the fault of the book itself, only the fate of most revolutionary literature: to be outdone by their successors.

Having said this, the first paragraph is perfect - atmospheric, enticing, intriguing. I judge a book on three things: the first paragraph, the smell of the pages and the cover. Check it out on page 3 of Project Gutenberg and see what you think.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Ok, so I can't believe I'm about to endorse a book that appeared on Oprah, but they say that in an infinite universe everything that is possible will happen. This however will only happen once, no matter how infinite the universe and the odds.

I took The Story of Edgar Sawtelle with me when I went home to recover from a really difficult three months during which I lived alone in my office facing failure every day. Because what you do when you're recovering from your own deficiencies is read a 400-page book. Obviously.

It did help me to recover. Cathartically. By ripping a hole in my chest just above my heart and pouring in some kind of preservative acid. Which means basically that I'm walking, breathing, talking and eating, but that there's a part of me lost in that book and refusing to be unlost.

When a friend recommended this book to me, she described it as Hamlet with dogs. That's both the best and worst summary of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle ever. It is indeed a retelling of the tragedy and there are indeed dogs. But what you don't expect from this summary is that the story will have all the tragic power of Hamlet and that Ophelia's character is more tragic as a dog.

I'm not going to summarise the plot here, because if you've read or seen Hamlet you already know it and if you haven't you really should. And not the Sparknotes version.

Consensus is that Hamlet is a tragic hero, by virtue of being the protaganist of a tragedy and being both noble and sympathetic. Which leads us to his tragic flaw (both a condition and therefore of the label of 'tragic hero'). The heavy odds are on Hamlet's inability to act. But there is more to human psychology than this kind of clinical absolute. Everything we do is at best influenced and at worst determined by a myriad of motivations, few of which we consciously acknowledge. Your worst enemy is yourself and if you don't believe me, wait til the shadow part of yourself tries to kill you and then let's talk.

Author David Wroblewski gets this as much as Shakespeare does. He gives our tragic hero Edgar a disability that signifies his ancestor's inability to act - the boy is mute. A disability that suggests that Edgar is forced into inaction by the weight of his ancestor's reputation; stifled. Because he does try to act and is left with the guilt of something beyond his control. Or is he? Is his muteness in some way self-perpetuated? Some prophetic mark that ensures the prophecy will bear fruit.

This brings us to the argument of whether the tragic conclusion is the result of psychology or circumstance. Or both. Edgar is a child facing decisions that would bring an adult to their knees. Could he have acted differently? Could he have acted with better consequences? And here we stumble upon destiny.

I could go on for pages. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle walked me through my own sense of failure, is still walking me through it. I'm not coming out for a while, thank you very much. Now read the book.

I am going to be a Data Capturer

A bibliophile really has no place working in book publishing. I think it's like an animal lover working in a butchery. A book is a product in the world of book publishing. In my world, a book is an icon, in the religious sense. So, watching a book being made is like watching an animal being skinned and then carved up, or an icon being descrated. Even worse, I'm the one with the knife. I say things like "There's no time to make that right so leave it" and "Is it really worth the cost of making that change?"

So, I think I'm going to be a data capturer. I am not sure that this is a valid profession. But there is data, and it needs to be captured, so I'm assuming this is done by some semi-comatose person punching at a keyboard. I can do semi-comatose.

Fiction mocks me

Occasionally, when you work with words, you get to the point where you hate the little (and big, some of them) bastards. They infest every thought, every action, every dream, every moment. Usually they have question marks taped to their backsides and usually they are coated in your own self-doubt. They protest at the doors to sleep, determined to keep you on edge. In return, you pointedly ignore them, like child beggars posing on the other side of your car window.

They are making faces at me from the other side of the window. And I'm making faces back.

I haven't been able to read fiction in more two than two weeks. Unusual since I usually read at least a book a week. Scratch that, I did read some short stories this week. And some news. So, I haven't read any novels in about two weeks. I've started a few and I complained about each of them. It was only when I started complaining about my latest Murikami that I realised things had gone too far.

Instead, I've been reading non-fiction, specifically biographies, personal finance and business books. Also a book about overcoming writer's block. Also some maths, nutrition, architecture... I have a craving to learn everything. I consume words, but in a more obsessive way than when my obsession was trained on fiction. Every moment of every day needs to be devoted to gathering information. I get tired, but then I hit my second, third, fourth wind for the day. I have been working since this morning; yet here I am, scouring my shelves for something else to consume.

It's like finding yourself wanting to adopt an orphanage full of child beggars, who don't speak the same language as you. You want them in your life because you don't understand them. (Which is not a helpful metaphor because sane people do not feel this desire for the other.)

I'm not complaining, but I find this a little sinister. What was the catalyst for this switch? Will I ever return to fiction? Can knowledge replace art and beauty? I suppose this is what I asked for; I complained about the world not living up to the promise of fiction and now here I am, rejecting the Marilyn Monroe beauty for some barefaced Plain Jane.

And, yes, I'm still a little angry.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Every so often (usually when something has gone wrong), I do a little rendition of Audrey Hepburne in the final scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's: one hand clutched to my chest and the other stretched out in front of me, swaying slightly, I yell "Cat? Cat!" with a faraway look in my eyes. With the swaying and all, I probably look drunk, and so no one really gets it. What I am trying to say is that I feel pummelled by life and to try to settle the world beneath me I sometimes act in cryptic ways. In future, perhaps it's best just to say that. Or even to not act unusually.

I like Breakfast at Tiffany's. But something about that final scene has always bothered me. Burrowing into Gregory Peck's arms seems as much of a reaction of fear as her other behaviours. Holly Golightly hasn't decided to trust the man; she's just using him. One day soon, I imagine, she's going to up and leave the man for some exotic white beach where she'll find some other man who wants to tame the wild thing.

All of this is clearer in the book. Miss Golightly is not the soft, fragile, damaged thing she is as Miss Hepburne; she's a mean-ass wildcat, vindicative, snobbish, deeply cynical. She is not soft and fragile, though she might be damaged. But she is damaged by nature, not by circumstance. She sees too much, feels too much, understands too much. She's smart. And not incidentally, like Miss Hepburne.

At the end of the book, there is no sobbing in Mr Peck's arms and Cat stays lost. Lost from Miss Golightly that is, because he finds himself a home, hopefully one where he has a name. The moral is that Miss Golightly and Cat did belong to each other; she just couldn't see it. But by the same token, she never belonged to Mr Peck. He was just another man who wandered in and then out of her life. He wanted to tame her, like the others, not to have each belong to the other. So she leaves him. And she leaves New York.

Someone once told me that the short story represents the ephemeral nature of relationships (I'm not sure if this is a necessary qualification but here goes) in New York. I agree with this - to a point. Because there is a true moment of self-awareness in the short story; one that shows up the last scene of the movie as fluff, as more of the same. Miss Golightly realises that although most relationships are ephemeral, some are more solid. Sometimes, two people really can belong to each other. We're all searching for that, I think, and that is when we accept ephemeral relationships as more solid ones. The movie perpetuates that very mistake.

Both endings, seen in this light, are bitter-sweet, for inverse reasons. Each throws the other into relief. They belong together.

Cat's Eye

While The Hour I First Believed threatened my faith in literature - well, contemporary literature at least - Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood restored it. My first foray into Atwood was the apocalyptic Oryx and Crake, followed by The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale. None of these really gripped me, yet I was intrigued by the way the author handled her language, a bit like an animal-wrangler might handle her latest pet - adoring but always cautious.

Cat's Eye is about a painter named Elaine Risley preparing for a restrospective of her work in her hometown of Toronto, Canada. Her reflections about the development of her work fuse together with her musings about the ways in which the city has and has not changed, until she is walking the path of her memory to confront old monsters. But there is more, so much more, that Elaine has (wilfully) forgotten and that she refuses to resurrect in her present tense. Something that is made clear and given ringing resonance by the narration of Elaine-as-a-pre-teen, which dominates much of the first two-thirds of the novel.

The plot may sound like that of the latest made-for-TV-in-time-for-Christmas flick, but Atwood's mastery of her craft saves the novel from ever reading like one. Metaphors are draped across the novel, invoked when needed and left to rest when not. No detail is superfluous, but this detail is never overwhelming. It carries you to the conclusions you are meant to reach, while letting you think you walked there yourself.

I finished the novel late last night and woke up this morning chewing on the phrase: "An eye for an eye." While Wally Lamb plays paintball target practice with a similar theme, missing more than he hit, Atwood is like a doctor drawing blood. I will be chewing on this one for a while, I think.

Disclaimer: I can't find an image of the cover of the specific edition that I read, which features the face of a middle-aged woman in shadow, with her chin in one hand. None of the other covers that I can find capture the magic of this novel, so I am choosing not to include a cover image.