Doris Lessing, 1919-2013

A dull yellow (impersonating gold) trade paperback, in library-grade plastic and accompanying Dewy-decimal-system label on the spine. This was when I first met Ms Doris Lessing. (Disclaimer: it was not The Grass is Singing, because a BA degree is an overdose in colonial and post-colonial fiction. Even Gabriel Garcia Marquez is tainted by my grand nemesis The Heart of Darkness - Mr Achebe, while I'm with you about the layers upon layers - no, actually, just one deep layer - of racism, it is also one deeper layer of boring.)

The Golden Notebook. My first handshake with Ms Lessing. Not literally. Read above, please. Read the title. Focus!

I was about 20, in my gap year between one degree and the next, naively contemplating the theme of my adult life (naively because, as you know, dear reader, that theme snaps at your heels, accuses you, does back flips and takes your spot on the couch endlessly - right? Or is this just me?).

In brief (this book is anything but brief), the novel is comprised of five, different coloured (not literally, fool) notebooks and a binding story set in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman named Anna Wulf, living in London. (For those who know Ms Lessing's own story or have the power to Google, the plot(s) resonate.)

The book was written in 1962. We could ascribe the politics of the novel to the time - and this probably didn't hurt sales - but these themes could be traced back to the novel of the singing grass and Ms Lessing's liberal but tempered temperament. The themes (of both novels) include feminism and socialism (loaded terms, but that's why there's Wikipedia (again, encyclopaedia is spelt with an 'a', open source dorks).

Even as a teenager, perhaps even a tot, I have gravitated toward these liberal movements - I shudder as I type 'liberal' - literature tells me liberals are too impassioned to be rational, misguided and unfocused, appealing to human nature rather than the greed, envy, lust and basic selfishness that natural selection rewards. Trust me, I went to a politicised university and have seen two riots. Wait, now I'm a voyeuristic, liberalesque pseudo-intellectual. Still, call me a liberal and I will... moderate your comment. You.

The novel stalks the measure of the terms - from the perspective of the times, obviously; I later learnt more about the revolutions before and after (and no I'm not talking about #Occupy-a-park) - setting my principles in some sort of shape, like water in an ice block (just way more haphazard). Feminism was the one that immediately appealed to me. Given that a comment about women drivers is still enough to incite me to violence - or wait, my favourite "She's a smart cookie." Do I look like a gingerbread woman?

Today, when I think about the novel, some shadow of the experience of reading projects on the back of my head. Of sitting on a forest-green couch in a room painted yellow. Of the view from a kitchen window of a London street. The aura of importance that being involved in grand ideas provokes. Of a mother and her children, with the realisation that a child is a separate being to her. Of gritted teeth as a man, of common mind, tells a woman what feminism means.

None of these are necessarily written in the book - but they are what I see when when I think of it. They are a set of first dates with the world around ideas I thought were mine. A world which the mass media do not quite grasp.

Ms Lessing passed away about two months ago. The literary world is reeling. AS Byatt and Margaret Atwood have written tributes to her. Did you know she won the Nobel Prize for Literature five years ago? Did you know she had the same effect on me as touching a bell as it swings? Why is the whole world not reeling?

I had ordered two of her novels online and they were delivered the day before she passed: Mara and Dann and The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. Predictably (for me) they are dystopian novels, predictably (for her) written to explore political and social issues. Reading them feels like a ritual honouring her and her effect on me. What else will she teach me? What other ideas will she help me shape?

Doris Lessing was one of the greats, unassuming but influential. This post is my tribute to her and acknowledgement of her influence on me. And an assuaging of my guilt. I confess I have undervalued the author over the last few years. Read my archives and she doesn't appear, except as a passing reference. As often happens, it has taken her death and the reeling of my world to make me appreciate Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook.

Footnote: Stay posted (har!) for reviews of Mara and Dann and its sequel. I will try to keep the soppy to a minimum.

Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales

A review on Amazon compares the author's style with Murakami (of course, because all Japanese authors sound the same - future reviewers, if you compare me with Lauren Beukes, I will stop writing forever, I promise you) with the "shadow of Borges" (you may compare me with Borges - please do) and the "macabre of EA Poe" (indifferent). My brain started to salivate. It's why we indirectly pay the production costs, in the millions, of horror movies: the desire to reassure ourselves we are immortal. Or something. Freud explains it better.

I say 'we' but I don't. I don't watch horror movies and I certainly don't pay the production costs. I usually don't read horror or crime or true crime or thriller novels either. (I wish I could say I don't judge people who do these things, I don't like to lie. So I'll keep quiet.) Intentional and 'intimate' violence revolts me, real or fake. By intimate, I mean in a person's physical space; not guns etc. I am desensitised to that - Hollywood cheers as I stand in line to watch an action movie.

Just hearing or reading a description of violence makes me dizzy and pale. Sometimes I can feel pain in the same place - I'm imagining a rugby injury I saw once, where the player's fibula broke, the bottom half slicing the skin. My left leg pounds and the blood rushes from my cheeks. (Doing a final edit and again - except this time my throat tastes like bile.) Yep. I am going to need a first aider home to treat any accident-prone children (all children are accident-prone; I'll just train them to do it themselves). I'll cower in the corner, hands over ears, thanks.

Sometimes, they slip such violence into literature. Usually authors choose to represent more serious trauma with silence (see previous post on Toni Morrison - but only when you're done here). I think this a good idea. And not because it has a purpose. Nope. In this context, I won't argue whether shock or absence conveys trauma better. Just keep it to yourself. Bury it. Shoot it into the solar system in a space rocket (everyone's doing it these days - including a company whose rocket failed to launch three times before it did. When do I get to say I told you so?).

Murakami does it in both Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, in prolonged scenes of excruciating violence. (How does the human mind imagine this stuff?! My own mind revolts when I try. I don't try often, don't worry, but sometimes people make me want to be able to. Instead I read.) The violence isn't gratuitous though, so I can sit through it for the literature.

Then there's Michel Houellebecq. Atomised is a mosaic of violence and porn that would be considered good literature by a psychopath with mother issues. There is no distinguishable plot, except for the happenings that lead to violence and porn. He is meant to be A Grand Author, by said psychopaths, so I persevered. Actually, no, I can't even justify it. I protest the dogearing of pages, bending of spines or *cringe* writing and highlighting in books; another type of violence. But I would happily pulp my copy myself, except I don't like to touch it.

Recalculating route. Spoiler alert!

People die. In every story. There are eleven. By story three, you expect it, beginning each new paragraph tentatively. The author doesn't describe the actual murder, and hides other relevant details, but reveals enough to make me dizzy and pale. Or maybe this is how I see the stories after reading The Story that inspired this post. No, I really don't think so, but maybe.

Tools of torture. There is a whole story devoted to these tools, which are in a dedicated museum. (A museum?!) The guide says they collect implements that have been used. Yep. How do you verify that? Andthemindisoffandawayflyingoutfrontfollowedby... Implied violence does not reassure me of my own immortality, Mr Freud and Ms Ogawa. (I don't need to be reassured, right?) They convince me that I am a cuckoo in a cuckoo's nest; that I am a normal person in a herd of psychopaths. I ask again - how do you imagine these things? Ms Ogawa has a ball with these implements, so perhaps we should ask her.

Don't get me wrong - the violence is not gratuitous and the stories are good (even though they are character sketches more than stories). I wouldn't quite compare her with Murakami and definitely not Borges (but still indifferent to Poe). Further than that, I can't comment. This cuckoo spends too much time cowering at the beginning of each paragraph, sentence, word...

So why (oh why) am I reading this book? Why did my brain salivate? While some people get their kicks from violent movies, I get mine from dark and tragic literature, a taste I don't satisfy often, for the same reason we only drink coffee before 17.00. That's what I thought I was downloading: dark and tragic. A lesson in reading the blurb - and downloading a sample. On the upside, if there was someone I wanted to hurt in my mind's eye, they are very very dead. Very.

Read the book for us and let this cuckoo know what it's like. It's time for you to do some work around here, you!

Clash of the... sequential displays of information

Haruki Murakami: if you have read one of his books, you will understand the cat

Lists. The internet enjoys lists. The editor in me throws up a red light: 'the internet' is an inanimate repository; it cannot enjoy anything, much less walk, talk or create memes. It's shorthand, you pedant - the author is dead, the reader has gone AWOL and the medium itself is becoming AI, apparently. Bulb in red light broken, there are lists of troll names, swimming pool shapes and someone's favourite malls in Bangalore. Lists are content developers' way of filling space and users' way of sharing of themselves without having to worry about grammar or spelling.

My point (not the Point): please read to the bottom before you judge. You, discreetly coughing into hand ... before you judge which of the above this post is. I prefer you AWOL.

My favourite books
1. People's Act of Love, James Meek
2. Seizure of Power, Czeslaw Milosz
3. Possession, AS Byatt
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

My favourite authors
1. AS Byatt
2. Hilary Mantel
3. Truman Capote
4. Haruki Murakami
5. Virginia Woolf
[Reserve]Peter Hoeg

AS Byatt, with The Children's Book

Both lists are in order of 'favourite'. If I were better at HTML, I would put the list in two columns so you could compare easily (the reader is lazy and AWOL). Then I would also have to do fancy footwork to make sure the columns hold, like pottery - and who has time for that? The only point that correlates is 4, Murakami. The only other author on both lists is AS Byatt. If you had asked me the same question three years ago, only Byatt, Rushdie and Woolf would recur.

Interestingly (to me at least), I read People's Act of Love many years ago, but for all those years, I was terrified of it. I vowed never to lend it out or recommend it. Upon which, I promptly lent it out. Luckily the person never finished it. So it's a late addition, based on a friend's willingness to dive into the abyss with me and reread it. See the many, surprisingly popular posts, bottom right. Not now!

The obvious point is that tastes change. Also (does this really need to be said?) experiences along the way help change said tastes. I think I would have hated Murakami five years ago (with the same passion I hate Michel Hollebeque and Aryan Kaganoff. No, actually, not possible, but a lot).

Czeslaw Milosz

My favourite authors are richly symbolic. Even The Seizure of Power, which is a political and historical novel, about the presence of Russian soldiers in Poland after the First World War. (Regular readers may remember the main character is me - he verbalises the things I cannot, precisely as I would if I could!) Byatt, Murakami and Rushdie... Enough said. This symbolism extends wonderful, core-gripping themes throughout the novels, but makes the novel accessible (to those who don't understand the illuminatingly empty terms such as trope, palimpsest and simulacrum).

They meet (and define) my criteria for good literature - my good, not literary good - who has time for that? Every one of these books is 'contained' - the only loose ends are the ones that trail from the symbols. They are not 'and-they-all-live-happily-ever-after' novels (although the Murakami could be classed as a happy ending; I found it distressing, which is good evidence it was happy). There are no weddings, only funerals - in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, there are only funerals.

Truman Capote, being suitably dramatic

Reading down the lists to flesh out the Point (no, no, keep reading, I know exactly where we're going. Exactly. Exactly.) I want to add notes on why I favourite these books, when I read them, the context in which I read them, how they settled afterwards and why you should favourite them too. But who has time for that? (Except on Goodreads. There's a link up to your left. Finish reading first!)

I just realised, I have ignored non-fiction. I don't often read non-fiction, but there were a few goodies in the pile of boredom - I can't think of a replacement description. I won't list them, because I don't have enough titles and because (don't swear at me! It's unlady/gentleman-like) it's not rankable (stop! I warned you). I live a life of fiction - I mean, imagination - I mean, in my own head - these all sound like committable offences. Ok, fine, I'll list them. (See what I did there? I snuck in a third list and you're complicit.)

• The Emperor of Scent, Chandler Burr
• The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederik Engels
• The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
• How Proust can Change your Life, Alain de Botton

This paragraph and the next contains sharing but has no link with the previous or next, so you can skip it. Each of these books traces my often frantic attempts to deal with a condition that hadn't been diagnosed yet. Only one dates after my diagnosis (not by me, myself, because this dreamer could think of something way more interesting) and I haven't listed the book, but another by the same author. Why? Because although it made me feel I am not alone, in the real world I am.

Virginia Woolf

The remaining titles were straws to clutch, taught me strategies I could use, even if not entirely healthy ones. They worked at the time. Unfortunately none of these strategies included becoming an olfactory genius and luckily I didn't find myself a soapbox (although read Trotsky too and you will be tempted to teach the Occupy-ers a thing or two about revolution). Done. You can bin the tissues.

Like those all those needy writers before me, the ones I snubbed in the introduction, who really cannot spell or construct a sentence or even use a comma correctly, while I can, I wanted to understand more about Now Self, thinking I knew my Old Self. (I also wanted you to know, because I could have just written this in my journal.) Now I realise I can't know either, because both selves are rolling around, picking up moss (har!) and insects and dirt, and getting chipped and incised as they do. (I'm assuming this is a forest, because of, you know, the moss and dirt, and because I live I life of fiction and forests are the home of myth.)

The assumptions I am making are ones I knew before. I have become more political - no, more revolutionary. Or, more appropriately, I have been able to verbalise my refusal to accept things the way they are. (Just because there are homeless people at intersections, doesn't mean they must or should be there, or that we know their stories. How can a democratic nation, that vows to accept all lifestyles, within reason, not accept or even find out the potential of a people that blanket the nation?! Rant to be continued, when you least expect it.)

Hilary Mantel

After all this, I am going to confess, they are the books I wish I had written. Except the non-fiction. If I ever do that, it's an attempt to win the Nobel. Keep your friends close... and... you know the rest. (A 'no' and 'yes' volleyball game is being staged in my mind. Ok, I concede, the answer is the net, not the teams. Which, yes, is a foul.) Enough about this!

Do you forgive me for my lists? They were useful, no? I found them useful. In consolidating the things I knew about myself. At least, this was an interesting post to write. Again, I found it interesting. I do wonder though, about the nature of posting these lists on the internet. Have I shared too much? To a faceless audience (by which I don't mean robots). This is a blog and not a formal forum. And I own this piece of land (no, Blogger lets me use it gratis. But I haven't been evicted for excessive... sharing yet).

Peter Hoeg

There are some fairly ridiculous things being posted about the growth of the internet in the long-term (seriously, has anyone even looked at a typical growth chart since they were in Grade 10, or even then?). Apparently, we're going to wear clothes made of laser sensors, and have catalogues of every damn thing, down to swimming pools and our own daily movements (exciting, huh?). I'm not worried though, about future AI ... AIers .... reading my 'sensitive' information. Unless they develop the skills of reading metaphor and sarcasm.

Best start reading these books before the robots use them to refuel themselves (oil ran out yonks ago and I'm suspicious of more things running on air and electricity). If you're reading this and I'm already deceased (and you're wearing clothes made of lasers (haha sorry for you)), hide copies of these books quickly. You'll thank me.

A Beautiful Mind

Sometimes, meaning is hidden in what isn't there. You've heard this vague explanation before. I've heard it. Usually from a pretentious sot. Sorry, sirs and ma'ams and doctors and such. But most of what you spew (at least a plantation's worth) means as much as a politician's apology speech. Although, that in itself proves the original premise. ... So what is hidden in a premise about what isn't there? Would there be something there if we weren't here to read it? Folks, I'm bored by the laziness of that last question. You?

Ah-hah! Your boredom has propelled you unawares into my waiting... Point (I don't have real arms here, on my white and your grey screens, and the whole thing would be weird. Is weird).

Ah-hah! What is missing in the title A Beautiful Mind? That isn't rhetorical. It's time to work, you (pl.).

The movie is based on the book, this book we are stripping. So I'm going to assume the title fits the book better than the movie. > Yes, Dr? a pretentious sot is flashing hypertext at the blogger I'm going to interrupt your long and circular speech to agree with you: that you can't use words like 'better' to compare things like this. The title fits the movie in a different way. downloading app to delete hypertext 

'Different', it fits the book differently. (Where 'different' means better. I'm reviewing here, not writing a thesis! Or an apology speech.)

Ah-hah! Have you worked out my interpretation of the title as better applied to the book than the movie? The book is a biography of man who experiences severe psychotic episodes. Oh and by the way he is a brilliant mathematician, a bit like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, without the janitor-ing and without his good looks. Also without his endearing personality (on and off screen).

Aside on that note, Matt Damon casts the same light on Jason Bourne, where in the book he's a wild card. A card covered in blood and mud, and that growls like a creature in the dark.

John Nash is calculating and nasty, according to the book. Not a horrible person, mind. The author, Sylvia Nasar, treats the man with respect and seems almost surprised by what she finds. But (and this is my reading not hers) it is almost as though he is lopsided - his intelligence is a parasite (not a negative but biological term) sucking away at his sense of empathy.

Is this only my reading though? The stereotype of the 'mentally ill' (or 'creative'...) is of some lowborn character in a Greek myth, given the gifts of intelligence and creativity in return for... how to say this... emotions. (There is always a catch.) How romantic, right? Or Romantic? This myth is much easier to translate into a movie and scale the box office. Here's a vague comment: People tick different boxes on the same checklist and we can draw correlations but sometimes the correlations are just superficial and blinkered.

Ah-hah! That is just to wake you up. Diatribe over. That one at least.

Because you have been scribbling away at the answer, let's get to the Point. The title points to one part of the body: the mind; not 'soul' or physique or personality. Because we know what to expect, a tale of genius and 'madness', we don't notice that hiding place. There's another: 'beautiful'. Not usually a term we apply to the sparks within that wrinkled sponge knocking around in our skulls. Ideas, yes; emotions, yes; physique, definitely. Especially since you don't get much prettier than 'beautiful'.

But Nasar, an intelligent and experienced author (the book is 900-and-something pages long, in this size font, with footnotes), must have known what growling creatures live in the title. But she rarely invokes the Romantic myth, and when she dabbles with it, it's to see how it fits. The only section I suspect contains unfairly subjective judgements is the marriage between Nash and his first wife. She suggests their marriage rewarded them both with gifts of social acceptance: she is 'high-born' and he rising among the intellectual elite.

Then there are the opinions of the subjects themselves. Apparently the family withdrew their support for the book during the manuscript phase. Who wants to be described as calculating and nasty (my words) and a social climber? Even if the next breath you are brilliant. That's one of the hazards of biographies. Advice: rather don't authorise your biography, ever.

I called off one diatribe, but here is another. See it as intermission. As a writer, I struggle with the ethics of portraying other people. Even if I stitch on other limbs, I have appropriated something from that person. If a journalist takes a photo of you, she has to get your ok.  I don't, but does that give me the rights? You could argue in certain circumstances that a character constitutes libel. In this case (to refer to previous diatribe), lazy readers will jump straight into the stereotype while looking for the movie-like action.

I watched the movie before the book, which explains my surprise at the tone of the book. Measured, researched, considered and consciously objective. The life of John Nash is not Romantic; it is tragic, in the Aristotelian sense. It is not a story: if it is, it is deeply unsatisfying. And it uses the stereotypes of mental illness as shorthand. There are creatures here so stop looking! I enjoyed the movie, I cried, I can remember shots and scenes from it. But as bibliophiles before me have cried, it's not the book!

We are now Beginning our Descent

I will try to keep the lyrical references to People's Act of Love to a minimum. Although, search engines pick up terms that are repeated a certain number of times. Perhaps I should spell it incorrectly, too, to be safe? Sorry, Peoples Act of Love is the worst I can do. Don't push me. As you should have guessed, as the intelligent reader you are, We are now Beginning our Descent is written by the author of People's Act of Love, the author I wish to be and the book I wish I had written.

Lyricism done. Almost.

Right, I almost forgot: the author's name is James Meek. The photo on the inside back cover is a black and white head shot of said author with glasses and a widow's peak staring into the reader's nose. Pretentious. As befitting the author of a literary wonder (I could be referring to his other work, Drivetime. Unfortunately I'm not. I'm using up my rations fast).

I'm not the only one obsessed with said wonder. The first paragraph of his biography lists the awards that book has won. More importantly, he was (long-)listed the Booker Prize, which you may or may not know is The Award that would Define my Literary Career, long- or shortlisted, or just listed, perhaps in the same paragraph. (Short of the Nobel. Obviously.) Oh and translated into way more languages more than one person could logically speak.

In the second paragraph we get to the meaty bit. Meek was a journalist, one of that sadomasochistic breed called war reporters, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Which is the topic of the book. We are now Beginning our Descent is about a journalist stationed in Afghanistan soon after the World Trade Centre attacks. After a few pages, we realise that he is blind to many of his own feelings and suspect this will be a major plot device. You know, because of the author's subtle-ish focus on these blind spots. (Yes, that oxymoron is intentional.)

It just occurred to me: was Meek perhaps a cannibal or castrate in Siberia, or a very high and very drunk disaffected youth wandering around the United Kingdom? That's ridiculous. But, if we would have to choose one, it would be the least likely, being the former. But ridiculous. Right?

These reporters are not exactly stalking tanks (although at one point they direct one, but that's not quite the same), but they are driving to bomb sites to witness the destruction of people's lives. Coverage of which, it could be argued, is necessary to heighten people's awareness of the trauma of war. Or just redistributing the trauma. Because there's not enough of that to go around.

Anyway, as you can see, I have an Opinion about this. Which, to be honest, Meek does address briefly in his book. All muddled up in the journalists' own confused and camouflaged traumas.

That's it. We are now Beginning our Descent has this in common with People's Act of Love: My own reflection of the trauma implicit in the stories. Pinpoint reflection because I am not suggesting that anyone could understand - a sub-conscious understanding, because to know about something is not to understand - trauma like war without experiencing it. (Aside unlike the reader, the journalists choose to edge a bit closer, bringing us with them, in one of those repeating Russian-doll illusions.)

We are now Beginning our Descent is not on the scale of its towering sister, but I felt an echo of the shaking of my soul that it began. Perhaps if it had been longer, ideas rounded out or stretched more, one character in particular developed in terms of her strengths and not the flaws that made her dangerous (although, I grant you, this could be seen as another plot device, but is easily distorted into an anti-feminist statement).

Argh, almost every strength and every flaw in this novel can be justified by its themes! Meek is a very smart -manipulator - I mean, author. Events and characters are linked in a roiling mass of cause and effect. How neat! But not all of it sits right, opposite me, on the couch. I feel unsatisfied, because this mass can be mopped up into a pretty algorithm. Unsettling but ultimately pretty.

Ok, you and I both know it, I hate a satisfying novel. A novel should be tragic. Argh! And this one is! (To me.) But, here it is, it's predictable. Not the characters, but the novel. The symbolism maintained, tended like those ridiculous sculpted animal-shaped bushes. A handbook in extended metaphor and resolution. On the backs of the types of characters Meek now characteristically writes. (Should this be a flaw? Perhaps not, but I'm the reader and I don't know the man and my word rules around here.)

This post doesn't really say anything useful, I now realise, except that this may or may not be a good book depending on your reading rules - again, this says nothing! Clearly I am not myself if words fail me like this. One last try: I enjoyed reading the book, the unveiling of various emotions and one scene in particular that bursts on you mid-novel, and I empathised with the main character. I feel an echo of existential crisis. But this is no People's Act of Love. And perhaps there never will be.

Until my own. ;)

The Bourne Identity

Coincidentally and before I begin (because what is an hour of blogging without the joy of making you suffer for my art), I started reading We are Now Beginning our Descent last night. It's written by James Meek, that Meek who rocked my world in People's Act of Love (no sighing!) and then whipped up some blinding dust with Drivetime. That Meek. Review pending so check back regularly. Please.

The main character describes his forthcoming novel (they're all interminably forthcoming, aren't they? It's like a separate genre) to a "socialist Scottish [and drunk] poet":

"It would subvert the genre by making America the enemy - not a group within America, but the American government, the American majority and the American way [yay, no Oxford comma!]. American characters would be portrayed as cliched, two-dimensional, ignorant caricatures, while their European counterparts would be wisecracking, genuine, courageous..."

And here, folks, you have an introduction that breaks all the rules. Consider it a prologue, an epilogue, maybe even epigraph. Or just a really bad introduction justified by literary terms that make it difficult for you to say so without looking stupid. Either way, I did it on purpose. Yep.

Onwards. To slide seamlessly into the book isolated in the title of this post: The Bourne Identity is not that novel. The book is a spy thriller (if you haven't watched the movies with Matt Damon 2.0 except better than the original), written in the 80s. America in the 80s was a mirror of the 2000's: run by a Bush, hostile towards the Middle East as suited them and proudly materialistic.

Or so says History.com. I dunno, I was only just born. All I remember is the fashion. *shudder* Best only resurrected as a memory.

In this example of  popular literature, the Middle East and Russia - sorry, Soviet Union - are noticeable only by their absence. The Vietnam War does feature, as the heinous crime it was, as does South America. You see, the enemy is 'Latin' and the protagonist recognises him only by his dark skin. (Apparently there are no other 'dark-skinned' people in Europe, at least not in the 80s.) So add subtle racism to the list.

The American government gets some left-wing *%$# thrown at it - the novel even satirises a meeting of the intelligence elite, but absolves them later through traitorous violence. The object of the tirade then shifts to a single American group and later a single American man. The Europeans...? Mostly deceitful, playing a game many centuries old, that Americans have no place interfering with.

And the real enemy? One man, manipulating a network of assassins, messengers and crude murderers. I always find this idea, like the Illuminati, fascinating. How? Just how? Maybe, to continue the theme, the man represents the fear of people, individuals, all around us. This man could be anyone. Although, as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. (This man, though, is not that man. He is objectively the personification of evil. Obviously. I mean, he's 'dark', right?)

I'm not perfect either, though: I am slipping into harsh reviewer mode, because destroying is easier than creating.

It is easy to see why the novel is popular. I confess I was caught up in the idea of Europe as the playground of spy games and the romance of two beautiful people, with imagining myself as this brilliant strategist whom others envy and whom these same others are afraid of. The action moves fluidly (though the plot is a bit more porous) and there are different types of action. All good. After all, escapism is the objective of a novel like this.

But, to slip back into reviewer mode, the other thing I cannot stomach is the portrayal of the female character. She is strong in one sense: she is an economist and her insight becomes crucial to Bourne's strategies. But she is also what literary snobs (like myself) call a 'Madonna figure'. (I have this image of Bourne clutched to her bosom like the prophesied child in the Pieta. Yikes. But that's essentially what the metaphor comes down to.)

She is supportive, fine; imagine her arm is slung across his back, his arm on her shoulders (as it is at one point. He recovers remarkably quickly). Creepily supportive; see above. She has Stockholm Syndrome; in the first portion of the novel, he spends a lot of time threatening and beating her with a gun to her head. She believes in his goodness; even though he spends a lot of time before the novel as a crazy, gun-toting mourner in the jungle. And she is beyond moral approach and naive; no evidence here except her patronising and whiney appeals to him to believe in himself.

But I am reading to much into it (pun!). I mean, this isn't We are Now Beginning our Descent. Although I am only 50 pages into it, I am caught up in the author's self-reflection, the meaningless of war and how we cope with trauma. The main characters are rounded out by what they don't say and why they say what they say, whether male or female (granted, the main character is male, so the perspective is slightly skewed). It isn't People's Act of Love, but so far, it's engaging and escapist.

(See, I'm not a total snob. Well, I am, but I can justify it.)

Who's afraid of Samuel Beckett?

Way back when (yes, it was a long time ago), I was an undergrad discovering (literally mining, it felt to me as it feels to every young'n) the works of great (and minor) authors who described parts of my world. Grand, twisted, confusing, unfair, ironic if irony were unstructured, but poetic. (See previous post.) Like medication wrapped in a plastic capsule, the world is easier to swallow when mangled into black typeface. That was when I rediscovered my desire to write.

Every great writer (I hope?) has to first be a bad writer. (I'm ready to fight for this illusion.) The assignment for that  month's creative writing workshop was to write a one-act play. So, I wondered why one might hate a colour. A colour is like a number - innocuous - but still, I do not like the number 7. Even numbers have a pattern (please, tell me you know what that is) and so do primes, but odd numbers in general?! Their only pattern is that they aren't evens!

Can you explain your own reactions to innocuous things? And I'm not referring to favourite colours, which are based on preference, aesthetic. I'm talking about a judgement on something that is by nature exempt from judgement. So, is my explanation above really an explanation? Or is it hidden within the black typeface?

Dear reader, the point is a-coming. Hang in there.

The protagonist of my play is afraid of the colour red, as above. She is in the queue of a bank (clearly not the red one) and breaking the rules of All Queues: talking to people around her, with no reason; commenting on their clothing; skipping places; revealing very intimate information; and questioning the rationale behind All Queues.

Her real motivation is to confront a man who she sees the vortex of every trauma in her life. But the plot of the play is not the plot of this post.

One of the other workshoppers (very knowledgeable but irritatingly so) was intrigued by the pattern of my characters, by the misanthropy and the tragic, self-deprecating humour. She recommended I read Watt by Samuel Beckett. I was racing on the adrenalin of inspiration and dutifully had to have that book. I ordered online and it arrived, in Russian-doll squares of cardboard and bubble-wrap.

The production specs tell you this is something different (though I could not have told you how at the time - please note this, cynics of the influence of an experience of a book). The cover is clouds of dark puce, which fold into the ghost of a man and his suitcase at a train station, facing down the tracks. The title is written in yellow caps in a stark and thin font, as is the name. The surname dwarfs everything. This is a writer of stature, it says.

The cover is matt laminated. (Expensive and a risk, because the film comes off at the corners after a while.) The paper is thicker than the usual 70 gsm and yellowed. (Thicker paper is again expensive and paper nowadays is often acid-free because acid yellows the paper.) The type and layout is old-school, and the design leaves wide margins at all four sides. (The typeface is a thick, calligraphic serif font, which takes more space than a modern, cleaner font, as do the margins. This means more pages and more expense.) The last two points suggest that this a reprinting of the original film - also suggested by the copyright date on the imprint page, which would need to be renewed with each edition.

Where on earth does one find a printing press that prints this outmoded format? None that I know of.

I'm getting carried away. You can ignore that entire paragraph if you like. My point is, this is a work of substance, immune to time. Remind you of any other author? Another author I am afraid to read? Yep, James Joyce and Beckett were friends - groan - friends!

As with Ulysses, I have not read Watt, ten years later. It sits comfortably on my bookshelf, between Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and Alexandra Fuller's The Legend of Colby Bryant, part of a section dedicated to books I will read next. (Next being a comfortably indeterminate word.) I have a reading eye larger than available leisure time, so this shelf grows like a creature from Aliens.

At least I have read 90 pages of Ulysses, set schedules and worn the cover a bit. Watt is pristine, which is why I can wax lyrical about its specs. I pick books to read depending on my mood. But when you are feeling dark and deep, does it make sense to read something equally or perhaps more dark? In those moods (in this mood) I pick something wherein the characters kill the fantastical bad... things... (projection intended), where the moral high ground is easy to identify and where I can fixate on seemingly indestructible things like direwolves and dragons.

But this is not the real reason, although whatever sense of self-preservation I have does revolt at the idea. You know my tired complaint, the one I can actually do something about, but am afraid to. I have not published. Yet. But there's another, less obvious one. I have not accomplished. This book reminds me of myself before I graduated into the big bad world (although I would argue I already a foot in the muck and felt the promising squelch).

My play was not very good, although it has some redeeming points, but I never wanted to be a playwright. I also have never really bothered with plot except as a coat hanger for my characters' baggage. Now here is a mentor for my characters, to help me make them great - standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. But I have to accept that, at first, they won't be. They won't be giantific - they will be dwarfish - subjectively dwarfish.

Will reading Watt help me feel more optimistic or less? Will I get farther than I have with Ulysses? (Will I understand more of it? Come'n, you didn't understand 95% of it either.) Will I remember how it felt to be so sure of success that I was prepared to fail? And will I finally find some balls and write the damn thing?! It may be a while before we find out, so hold on, kids.

My impossible life as Jane Eyre

Hello, old friend. Why don't you ever age? We look alike but I have two wrinkles now (I swear the one appeared the morning of my 30th birthday), frown wrinkles, only on one side, the left, like my smile. No, my smile isn't one-sided, jokester; you know what I mean, it's crooked. Unbalanced, lopsided, displaced? Huh, another two differences where we thought there was none. (The second being your obliviousness to nuance. Not yours, hers.) From congruence, to similarity, to a single acquaintance in common.

What am I talking about? Who are you talking to?

Oh, her... I forget she's there sometimes. It's a bit creepy the way she stands behind me, staring over my shoulder at what I haven't done, so I prefer to let her entertain herself. While she's at it, she really could lend a hand, but if she moved, maybe the illusion of symmetry will backflip to, well, what's like symmetry (har!) but with less in common? A straight line. Perhaps. I'm not convinced.

We'd be less alike. I've covered this. Moving on.

Dissatisfaction. We're Generation D. 'The sky's the limit,' say rolly-polly creatures of cute, dopey babies and fogged landscapes caged in black frames or in handwriting poised improbably in mid-air. 'Shoot the moon and bruise yourself against stars' (FYI stars are waaaaay further away than the moon, so I'd advise you go for one or the other). 'There's no such thing as impossible.' (Uh, yeah there is. Walking to the moon unaided, for one. At the very least, there's improbable. The moon elevator, for two.)

It's the Care Bears' fault. My first piece of evidence is the style of the memes above. My second piece of evidence is that I cannot identify another such set of liars in my life. Preschool teachers are the last to whisper such things while they wipe bottoms. The ones I have met, anyway. Ask one. Tell her her kids are 'cute', that they can scrawl honeyed sayings, that they are set to walk to the moon and/or shoot it. I heard her snort on word two.

The Care Bears could slide down rainbows (another impossible feat) and shoot glittered things from their chests. Apart from the fact they were talking bears, they talked in much higher voices than even a Spectacled Bear's growl. Third piece of evidence and slam that gavel, You.

I don't want to be purple or furry or live on a cloud (impossible). I would however like what I was promised: everything. On second thought (not really, because we've talked about this before, you and I. Just nod) literature has to shoulder some of the blame for those ridiculous memes. Alice in Wonderland, The Enchanted Wood, Nancy Drew and the Secret Seven... Possession, The People's Act of Love, As I Lay Dying...

Life is the sum total of the possible. The possible is, in my experience, either horrible or boring. I'm not looking for much: just some Aristotelian tragedy, Gothic martyrdom and a Shakespearean script. How am I supposed to be Jane Eyre without a mad woman in the attic and the burnt ruins of my love? (I could do without Mr Rochester, the ridiculous man. I'll take Jason Bourne.) Yeah, thanks, Care Bears. Since you predate reading, you can slide this all back up that rainbow.

Ok, so possible. I'm gonna go with boring - it's the yellow card. Other side. Yes. My novel and I are pretending we don't notice the other, like two acquaintances who can't remember each other's names. My career... perhaps we all feel like we have more to give than anyone wants? The ideas are flying from our ears and hovering near the ceiling, but hey, at least they have wings. The absence of a personal life here is the absence of a personal life.

Generation D. Ah, and here's some tragedy to chew on: we don't give up. (That 'd' is a bit of a stretch, I grant you.) Even now, my spirit is rallying, tripping the tragic martyr who never ages from the stage. Care Bears swoop in, bearing their burdens, and shoot glitter at the darkness. They swap the yellow card for a purple one, but they confiscate the script. I'm allowed the impossible, provided it isn't literary.

The Magic of Reality

"How we know what's really true." (We don't and nothing, she said, discombobulating? discorporealising? dematerialising!) But Philip Pullman says it's better than Bill Bryson's tome and Ricky Gervais says he knows enough science now to write his own book (the same book, I'd think, but maybe he can get the illustrations redone. Or just done. And insert some witticisms). I don't enjoy detective thrillers (that's what the blurb says it is), but I do enjoy popular science.

A popular science book is an odd choice for a plane ride when you're aweary and the airline has ignored your many pleas (ok, barbs) for help (ok, vengeance). My Kindle I had mislaid? misplaced? left on the hotel bed! I slept through the flight anyway.

The Magic of Reality is basically a much much (much) thinner A Short History of Nearly Everything, but it focuses on answering specific questions that a layman with a high school F in science might ask. Mostly because she has forgotten. Perhaps intentionally. "What is a rainbow?" was enlightening. (Har!) Also "What are things made of?" because it is about atoms. Atoms, people - person. Endlessly fascinating.

As a friend pointed out, this type of book will be bought by this type of reader. It's pitched at young people, to improve 'scientific literacy'. Only if your parents are scientists or you are failing science and have bought every study guide on your and the nearest continent (via Amazon.com obviously). Chances are you spend your nights hunched over something that steams or rattles, with a single study lamp that casts a halo of light around you. The equivalent of reading after bedtime under your bed covers.

There is one other reason you might read this book. The reason I have held off mentioning the author until now. (Was I sneaky enough? Or did you cotton on in paragraph 2? That's usually where it happens. Yep. Blogger Stats tells me so. No, not really. We're waiting for the pupil tracking implants. Not, not really.) It's one of the reasons I chose this book for my aweary, vengeance-d, Kindle-less flight. Richard Dawkins.

I hesitate here, wondering whether his name should begin a paragraph, have a whole paragraph to itself (room to stretch) or be hidden as it is. Should it even be on the cover of the book? Although endorsements from two other famous atheists would still be a giveaway.

Richard Dawkins is a famous - infamous - scientist. Yes, scientist. Contrary to popular opinion, he is not a professional atheist. We don't have popes. And if we did, he already has a job. Writing. (He's written more books than Danielle Steele. Ok, not quite. But still.) Notice how this is the first thing we tackle? No review says: "Bill Bryson tackles a range of subjects with thoroughness, but the airy-fairy-I-feel-'energy'-in-the-landscape factor is annoying." (Which he did FYI. And I was annoyed FYI.)

But this is actually relevant. If you had been consistently challenged over something like this with the virility of someone who feels passionately about something (feels, folks), would you be defensive or would you brush it off? Not being a saint, I would do the former. I might actually start graffiting walls or wearing leather jackets or hanging out in the hipster part of town. (*&$@ I already live there.)

Or poking at my bullies from the pages of my book. With a tone. You know the one. The one with feelings behind. The Magic of Reality is a good book and it addresses some of the fallacies in the Bryson book. Even though the book covers things I have already read about, precisely because I enjoy this type of book, the explanations and metaphors have changed how I visualise the concepts, so they are easier to pull out and elucidate at any moment. He has also given me better ways of evading? excavating? elucidating! them.

However, the 'true' here is between science and myth as explanations for, well, the world. You guessed it, with specific digs at Christianity. Enlightening sometimes, but often bullying. The true I was looking for was objectivity and our subjective viewpoint - not our experience of the world as metaphor, but what we can assume to be objective when our viewpoints are subjective.

Like the light spectrum and colour pondering, about whether colour is perceived differently by different people. (Answer is no FYI.) Or the tree falling soundlessly in a forest pondering. (Yes.) The philosophy of science pondering. (Maybe. All of the above. Who knows.)

Looking at it, that's a tall order for a book aimed at teenagers. If Pullman got away with blatant criticisms of Christianity without a peep from people with feelings though...

Both these authors capture a youthful exuberance (more abundant than the petty digs, I promise) at the world and how it can be explained. Even when talking about some of the myths, you can almost see Dawkins bobbing up and down with excitement. And if he graffitis a few walls, it's because he is so excited about the jigsaw puzzle of the world and being able to describe it, that he cannot contain himself. Feelings, again. Like colourful parasites.

So perhaps I did get what I was looking for in this book. I wanted someone to help me draw the line between subjective and objective. Until then, I view the world with suspicion. Dawkins didn't give me a slice of chalk and ruler; he gave me a glimpse of what it is like to view the world with excitement instead.

World War Z

The book, not the movie. There's a book? There is a book. From the movie poster alone, I can tell they do not tell the same story. Well, ok, there are zombies (the book discourages this moniker, only partly tongue-in-cheek). But the story is definitely not told by Brad Pitt. (I can tell because of the accent.) And the story is in every other way almost completely different.

So, I haven't actually watched the movie. Everything in this post is anecdotal or based on Wikipedia (PS. open source geniuses, 'encyclopedia' is spelt 'encyclopaedia') or based on the movie poster with the remarkable visual illusion that we can see the curve of the earth.

The book is good. Read it. It sounds much better than the movie. It's a book, so it never is what it says it is. Or says it is about. The book is not really about zombies. To my mind, they don't feature except to propel the plot. The story is told entirely in transcripts collected by a man who works for the UN and never reveals where he was during the war. Like a professional researcher. (This isn't sarcasm or a plot hint. Researchers should really remain separate from their subject. Like anti-Jane Goodalls or -Pitts.)

This movie and its main character are just such easy bait.

Wait for it... Did you get it?

Because it is a report, World War Z is set after the zombies have been brought under control. (Hint: a zombie is by definition dead and therefore cannot be brought back to life. Gross. So yes, by massacring them.) The researcher travels around the world to meet key members of the resistance, who tell their stories, some about failures (most) and some about successes. The stories are technical, moving, military, esoteric, pathetic and disturbing.

Together they make a picture of how we behave in crises. Most of our behaviour is reactionary, I'm afraid. Some of it is a modern hubris, a belief that primordial threats guided by random desire can be destroyed by weapons and strategy, like night and the lightbulb (and a generator, obviously). Bravery is often pure instinct; but instinct is also reactionary.

Another common reaction is to blame. Most of the accusers are justified, but this is easy to say in hindsight. Again, reactionary.

It's easy to take the moral high ground in this story - become its saviour (my hint is: zombie's can't climb - get it?). I often take issue with dystopian novels, in that they assume the worst of human nature. Not all of us are going to start eating each other to prove our status in what is essentially the same world as our ancestors and animals live(d). You don't find tears running down their bones because they were hunted by lions and hyaena. That's life.

But you are at least one of these people (and no, not Brad Pitt, who from the sounds of it drags trouble behind him on a leash). The reactionaries. And, likely, a corpse.

If you protest (reactionary), consider that the novel contains hints of the HIV pandemic and racial segregation. How have you reacted when met with these 'wars'? Jumped to the front line? Sacrificed yourself? Found something else to blame? Hightailed it up a tree? (Smart.) This. Is. Life. There is some war right on your doorstep. Maybe this novel is about the worst of human nature.

Segregation was, predictably, the one I identified with the most, in both Israel and South Africa. Especially given my home town is point 0. We are introduced to the man who conceived the most effective strategy to end the war - and also the most horrific. He is a psychopath (not in the murderer sense, but in the clinical sense: he lacks emotions, which makes him a great strategist). He was also one of the architects of apartheid.

These facts alone - even without more back story - make me think twice. More times, in fact. I don't know. There is no right answer. This isn't even an issue of subjectivity. What justifies such brutality? The ends? The ends justifies the means? I can't endorse that. But do I want us (humanity) to live or die? I would have said I didn't care - this is life - but then why am I turning this around in my brain?

Again, take note that I have not watched the movie (although in a sense I have because I have watched other such things featuring other such headline names). Yet, I have a string of other jokes to tell and disjunctions to point out. But that is less interesting (?) than the conclusion of this movie and another, and their books. In I am Legend utopia follows in the wake of dystopia. So much work to be done blah pop another grape in my mouth.

This is life. Life doesn't award you some oasis in green and leafy parks, at the centre of which is the Fountain of Youth. (Fittingly mythical, but one that men with an eye on knighthood killed themselves to... not find.) Life (my life, at least) is philosophical crises, as well as physical ones. Some personal and some social. What is humanity? Where do you fit in? And what would you do to maintain your status quo? Is it worth maintaining?

PS. The definition of futility

The definition of futility

Stupidity or futility? Sometimes they're the same thing - but not synonyms. Maybe just cousins so far removed that the only have one gene in common anymore: ginger hair or astigmatism or bad taste in men. They never meet (in the dictionary) but they are unwittingly reunited here. Not by me.

No, they are being reunited by the most powerful book in English literature.

It's also long, but definitely not the longest. Agaat and Song of Fire and Ice, even in Kindle form, were weights that strained my thumb and index finger. Crime and Punishment literally bruised the web between those two fingers. Google is indecisive (personification intended, because none of us are responsible for our statements here, right) about the longest novels, and they all hurdle the 1 000 page mark as if this were the Olympics. On the podium are Proust, Ayn Rand, Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace. I genuinely think they haven't accounted for Ms Marlene van Niekerk.

Now I'm purposefully stringing you along, because I anticipate your doubt, your accusations of hubris, your dire prophesies, and your own stories about stupidity and futility.

Suspense cut like a ribbon around a statue: I am about to read all 4 000 pages of In Search of Lost Time by Michel Proust. Nah, not really. Ribbon still intact. The title is deceptive (I'm thinking dinosaurs here), but apparently a lot of nothing happens except a brief affair, perhaps unconsummated.

Now, really, scissors in hand and no glue. Ulysses by Joyce. Ribbon is taken up by wind and blown into the crowd. James Joyce. He deserves that Bond-esque calling card.

I received this copy for my birthday and tried twice to read it. The first time, I confess, I understood nothing, except something about milk, a dog, and two poorer and wealthier college boys who are friends. I wanted to believe in this book. I want the anecdotal character of the man to be alive in his books. I believe in the Modernists, with an indefinable emotion best represented in the cave of Passage to India.

I am a Modernist born with Post-modern baggage.

The second time the milk, the dog and the relationship between the boys stood out. But more than that: I discovered a whole new way of using language. Scoff - I have done it myself. Don't justify the scoffing with Portrait of an Artist - I did too. But Ulysses...

I am trying to find you an example of the best of his prose, but it can't be extracted without being meaningless or trite. The story may jump in some places and delay in others, but every sentence is inseparable from the next. The sentences are short but tight: a design lecturer once told me that the best design is not the one with the most elements, but the one from which you have removed every element except the ones you need. That's Joyce. If he doesn't need a verb, preposition and so on, he doesn't use it.

So why did I stop re-reading? Joyce's may not be the longest book, but it is a weight even for the reader. By 90 pages I was exhausted. The denseness of the prose is its genius, but also the thing that turns the reader away, clutching the ribbon. Based on my last attempt, I think each chapter needs to be re-read to be understood on even the most superficial level of plot.

Ribbon blown away, like a plaster ripped off.

You have noticed the title again and are wondering whether I am prophesying my own failure. (After all I predicted your scoffing.) You know the saying: Stupidity is failing, and then using the same methods and expecting a different outcome. Or is it futility? Stupidity, futility - they're more closely related than their birth certificates indicate.

Because maybe the more you beat at a brick wall, the bricks begin to crack and crumble. Maybe one brick loosens enough for you to pull out, and your fingers toughen and once you've weakened the base, the rest crumbles too. It may take longer to pull down the Great Wall of China than it took to build. But did the job need to be done any faster? And I'm guessing that when builders had only completed a thousandth of the wall, someone commented about the job's futility.

This analogy, I realise now, describes the writer's efforts more than mine. Many people thought he was a profiteer and others tolerated him. I can compile some nasty reviews based on Portrait myself. But he trusted his instincts and wrote prose that would not change the needle on a balance scale. I suppose it's a bit like knowing there is treasure on the other side of the wall and that there is only one way to get there. Well, there are always more options, but reading Sparknotes defeats the object of the exercise.

I blame it on the bad coffee

'Print is dead!' said Nietzsche. 'YouTube killed the radio star,' said some band no one remembers. 'It's the end of the world as we know it,' said a social worker with a condition that makes him chronically sensitive to light.

Yes, I meant to bend those sayings to my will. To my will and my keyboard. To my will, my keyboard and the weight of the inter-space. We (not the royal we) are making a statement. Not an Occupy-esque statement (I really don't like to smell and I really really don't like smelling other people, and sometimes (tiny white lie), I really really really don't like people (definition: more than three within a hundred metres of me)) (also, since, I've already dropped a few brackets and one more set won't hurt, your time might be better spent helping families who have lost everything than getting smoke-bombed and rubber-bulleted in a park like a game of paintball).

So, not that kind. (I also don't play paintball.) Just a small one, the size of 'Terms and conditions' text, which you need glasses to read even if you have 20:20 vision. Not even a statement really, an observation. Hey, come back! I didn't mean it! (stage whisper I did, but in for a penny, in for a pound. And penny wise, pound foolish. Finder's keepers, too.)

Progress is inevitable, here and now - not necessary, but that's another discussion. Nietzsche has been foretelling the death of print for years (did you know that we use more paper now that we have computers? Think about it) and now we're told that print will survive in niche markets, but isn't creating communities one of the characteristics of the Internet, and why oh why are people sending this junk to me in daily newsletters?

Go do something, people. Go start a print business or an internet business or feed starving children. (Not you, them; although the latter would of course be very constructive.) I mean, really, things die every day. And sometimes they just change.

Why have you (and I) had to sit through this rampage (say the word with the French accent, just 'cos)? Because I feel guilty. I own a Kindle. My excuses are (because people question me often): a) I only download books I wouldn't buy in hardcopy, to stand on my shelves until I 'pass' and my grandchildren throw them at a second-hand book dealer, b) it is ideal to travel with (and I do travel), c) see above regarding progress and the annoying columnists my inbox harbours.

But really (and even though I still read and buy hardcopy books - I swear my books are staring at me), I like my Kindle. It's a bookshop I can carry around with me. Granted, sometimes the formatting is off and so is the editing, the bookmark function is not what you'd think, and I miss page numbers. But this bookshop is huge and it contains editions you can't find elsewhere and it's more affordable than hardcopy books. (Collusion of the ethical people who cut down trees at the pace of 50 football fields a day.)

There's just one leetle thing. I was sitting at an airport in a town (that I still have never found, meaning where are the buildings?!), on a work trip (remember I'm in publishing, so I read a lot of stuff), three hours early for my flight because Customs closes at 15.00. (I expected sniffer dogs and all they did was try to trick me so they could tell that my passport is real. So what do they do until 17.00? Do they have to refill the stamps? Recite the passport details from memory? Feed the dogs? Study how to be as miserable as possible?!)

Oh, and my laptop battery was dead. The last thing I wanted to do was read anything serious. As you can imagine, my Kindle library is very serious. Snort. No. The serious stuff is mostly the stuff I should read and mean to read but cringe from because I do not possess that kind of vocabulary and I'm embarrassed to tell Kindle that I need to look up a word. I have some very frivolous material in my library, but I wanted something short and about 3 steps on the trashy scale (the Kardashians being a 10).

Kindle Singles are the other wonderful thing about a Kindle. They are novellas, longer than a short story but short enough to read in one sitting. Perfect for my one sitting. My favourites are the serials: Positron and Wool. Not trashy enough. Some stuff on Obama, obesity, blah. Then 3rd-rung trashy, possibly 5th. I'm too embarrassed to tell you.

But to not tell you would really annoy you and then you'd leave and then I couldn't stage an Occupy with you smelly people, if I wanted to.

Ok... It's a single about a guy's experiences with dating, specifically online dating. I want to salvage my pride by saying I have never tried online dating, but honestly I think it takes guts. And perhaps some trusty friends on automatic dial who are very good at faking situations like a python in the lounge wrestling a cushion or a plague of chicken pox or burst water pipes or geysers or sewers.

He talks about some of the dates he's been on, which is amusing and which was all I was really there for. Trashy is code for wanting to laugh at or disdain or just judge other people. I just wanted to hear about his worst dates. He describes about five. He also talks you through creating an online profile. Aaaaaand I think that was it.

Remember when I said there was 'a leetle thing' (you should remember because I spelt it funny)? Normally I would not have read, nevermind paid for, a book or magazine or pamphlet like this. I was looking for something to soothe my tired eyes and brain. This single was amusing for roughly half an hour. But it wasn't soothing and then it was just annoying and I drank some coffee and worked using pen and paper and boarded the plane and slept and looked out of the window and wished I were home already.

(FYI people around this continent drink very bad coffee, including this town that I can't find, though I found the airport... 3 hours early. Very bad.)

Anyway, take me as a case in point. Here I sit, happily typing away, anything just anything that comes to mind, and then I post it and tweet the URL and people read it. Hopefully. (Can spambots read? Like AI-style?) No gatekeepers except the volatility of my laptop and internet connection. As an editor, I appreciate the need for mediators. As writer, I do not see why mediation is necessary. As a reader, I think I want buying trash to be a little bit more difficult, so that I come to my senses (however ragged) before I press 'Buy'.

PS. Here's the link. I judge myself more than you ever can.

You've got nothing to lose

"You've got nothing to lose." I used this one on myself a couple of months ago (a pep talk is not counted as talking to myself). Although not entirely true (do self-esteem, hope and happiness count as nothing?) it is very comforting. (After all, lots of things that are comforting aren't true. Fat-free yoghurt that is still yoghurt, pure English, democracy...) And if I didn't lose nothing, if I had lost everything - gained everything - gained nothing... Read between the lines, please. What would I have done?

Cliffhanger.

No, that's not what I would have done - how do you cliffhang? There is a lack of suspense-building, you. And here I had thought we had bonded. Is that how you cliffhang? By bonding yourself to a rock?

You always get what you want anyway: I would probably have run from Cape Town to Cairo, in order to cross the Suez and get to Siberia. That's as far as I could go. I have bad circulation. Also, wolves.

The same applies to my novel. In the amount of overtime I work, I could probably have written a novel, perhaps two, and my premature memoirs (you should really have done something interesting first). And when I come home, I have been researching and compiling a proposal for... a research grant? the greatest piece of literature ever? a novella? short story? preface? Nope. To line someone else's pockets.

I'm sure it's not lost on you that I'm blogging instead of writing. (Although I count this as a half hour of writing a week.)

I have a hypothesis.

HYPOTHESIS
Success is more frightening than failure.1
1 Erratum: sometimes2 more frightening
2 Smart, right?

METHOD
A. Review the above two anecdotes.3
3 Anecdotes are admissible because I say so and because else this blog post has already ended. Which would be disappointing. And definitely not a full half hour.
B. Consider a goal of your own and whether you have intentionally but sub-consciously scuppered it.

OBSERVATIONS

• Failure is sometimes4 the easier option. You know what to expect (worldwide anarchy) and you don't have to try so hard. To fail, simply stop doing.5

4 Smart, right?

5 It's in the dictionary. 'S true 's Bob.

• Success is difficult because then what? What do you do, how and for how long? Do you deserve it? Do other people think you deserve it? If you fudge it now, you have everything to lose. And so on goes your racing mind. Which would be so poignant if you were a racing driver. Be a racing driver. Who reads blogs. About books. Nevermind. Just befriend one.
• Sometimes that everything is your life. Like the racing driver. If he did nothing, he would die in a fiery wreck.

CONCLUSION
Success is sometimes more frightening than failure.

We seem to have drifted from Siberia to someplace over some ocean (I'm not very good at Geography). Or Astronomy apparently.

See, this blog post was meant to circle in on itself: fear of success is in our (completely independent and feral) minds. So is fear of failure. But in the case of Mr Racing Driver, fear of failure is necessary for success. Or at least, the absence of the concept of failure (replaced by the fear of Murphy's Law). Now instead of maneuvering this ship (it's a flying ship, a dirigible) (no, not the Hindenberg!) around the world to land gently where it first took off (seriously, there is no hydrogen on this thing! And no you can't have any helium - I don't care if you need it to survive this flight!), I have flown this thing into the Bermuda Triangle.

Oh look, there's Amelia Earhart!

Either Mr Racing Driver is an exception, or I should stick to specifics. In this specific instance, writing the rest of my novel is, well, frightening. If I don't write it, I simply carry on as I do now, towing regret and the question of what if? behind me. (This Hindenberg carries hydrogen.) I may not lose anything, but I gain a burden. And if I do write it, what's the worst that happen? (I knew it as I typed it. Look out for that blog post.) I knew my choice was to try before I typed it. Sometimes you need to look it in the eye first and then jump off that cliff.

Is that what cliffhanger means?

Hilary Mantel

Is anyone else tired of Post-Modernism? Hands? These novels about themselves and literature, all tied together and around each other, doing coordinated backflips, while reciting (and understanding every intertextual reference of) The Wasteland. Like performance artists tying string around themselves and calling it art (true story). Being a child of this monster, I include my writer self here. (But definitely not any seedling of an artist self.)

The other day it occurred to me that cynicism is a passion/belief/hope with grill marks. Like a child who watches his father choke on a chicken bone and... won't eat chicken. No, actually, that doesn't work: he'd become a chicken-murdering crazy man. Well, now it works but it's a little weird.

I must be back in form because My Point has gone a-wondering.

Post-Modernism is a bore, so now what? Retreat to the classics? No! - I mean, you could, the classics are classics for a reason. But what if I told you that someone did something different? That said something had a plot, characters and not a single zombie/dragon/vampire in sight? That this book would graft to your fingers until you were done? Keep you up on a 'school night'? Dose its cynicism by pointing out ourselves in every character?

I imposed myself upon Ms Hilary Mantel with the novella called Eight Months on Ghazzah Street. It is the story of a husband and wife who are relocated to the Middle East by Mr's company. They live in a compound but, still, cultural clash and this starts to look like A Passage to India. Oh but no. (I'm going to stop here and write the spoiler at the end.)

The next party she hosted was at the museum: in the French Revolution room. I never imagined I would empathise with those revolutionaries (good) turned murderers (do I need to say bad?). Nevermind that most heinous of murderers Robespierre. No, not so much empathise as host their voices in lodgings in the outer suburbs of my brain.

Yes, It was One of Those - the kind that takes something of you with it when you put it down. Albeit a teensy bit too long. See end for spoiler.

Then she hosted a party in the Tudor room. I don't like the Tudors' story. I get it: Katherine good, Anne bad, Henry - we're ambivalent about him. He murdered how many wives and split the Catholic church, but hey, he was spoilt - like an overripe plum. C'mon, this is a large reasonably sized kinda tiny bigger-than-Mars planet (is it? I really have no idea) - surely there is more history than just this.

But I trust my friend so I attend. Also, out of loyalty. She'd be devastated if I didn't arrive. And there's a dress in my cupboard that I never wear. (Focusing, focusing...)

Wolf Hall features no zombies (the dead people stay dead) or dragons, and definitely no vampires. It is all of the above and a tome, but definitely not even a teensy bit too long. The language, the details, the character portrait, everything is concise, propelling you along, so that you miss the movement when you stop. The protagonist is Thomas Cromwell, most beloved of men, so Henry VIII's crazy is a comfortable arm's length away.

At no point does this tome obviously glance down at its navel, even though it might casually establish the existence of its bellybutton every so often.

Spoiler time. (Tea will be served shortly.) The title and first page(s) of Hilary Mantel's books never refer to the book you are holding but to events beyond the story. Wolf Hall is the subject of Mantel's next book, Bring up the Bodies. This title refers to the death of all (what, million or so?) of Henry's wives.

I copped on after I had finished reading Eight Months and flipped back to check something. It took about half an hour to establish that the discrepancy at the end is intentional. People say 'it blew my mind'. That's silly. It didn't. Because when something blows your mind, you do a Decartes and try to reverse engineer the concept of 'knowing'. This didn't. But it impressed me.

Your hands are still up? Because you're tired of Post-Modernism or you have a question? No, I won't tell you the secret to Eight Months. No, I don't really know Ms Mantel and I only stalk electronically. Like a normal person. What does the cynicism steak have to do with this?

We have seen histories like the Tudors' waft past us, even in our own lifetimes. They are usually bloody, doomed and misguided. We consume the images of the first two from news media, almost literally like zombies or vampires. How often do we give a thought as to how a human being, with the same needs and desires as us, gets there? How often do we wonder what would take us there, as more than an academic exercise? How often do we wonder whether we are already there?

Ms Mantel doesn't plonk us in the viewing room of a museum in evening gowns and tuxes - she asks us to help arrange the displays. Ok, so she is Post-Modern and she has a navel, but this time I don't mind.