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.

Purely anecdotes and musings - you've been warned

"I am looking for a book," she would say. "You're in a bookshop, so there's no need to announce it," I would not say. "The cover is white and it was over there last week," one hand circling the shop. Or, "It's about a boy and his mother, and she dies, and so he must go on a journey that will prove the strength of his will." "Bambi!" I would almost say.

Something about working in a bookshop convinces you that you are smarter than those you serve. (You know the kind - the Philosophy major, who reads Nietzsche behind the counter (wherein is tucked a copy of the latest tacky thriller), with one eyebrow permanently raised above the rim of his glasses and his lips pursed.) But something about shopping in a bookshop convinces you that are smarter than those who serve you. (Hence the stereotyped description above - in two years I never worked with one of those.)

A bookshop is a battle of psyches and some inappropriate, redirected rage, with author's names for ammunition and books lining the walls for atmosphere. A little too much? Ok, I grant you that. The books don't just line the walls; they are arranged inside the room on bookshelves and piles on the floor. One more? They are the pretence for opening the battle field to the public.

Ok, I think this bantering is out of my system (remember that I was a bookseller and am a bookbuyer and that books are my religion. And hence awarded certain liberties).

The premise is, however, sadly true. Imagine this at 15.00 on a Saturday afternoon in one of the busiest malls in the country when you have been standing since 08.00 and the aircon is broken and one of the other staff is off sick: One moron customer instructing you not very nicely about how to press 'tab' to get to the next field, because he is in a hurry. (Now remember that as a feminist, I am very prickly about men treating me as though I am stupid.) Rage. Pure rage.

Or the woman who asked if I liked to read and then recommended I read Dan Brown. (I'm sorry if that offends any Brown fan (but not really). I'm sure his books are great 'sorbet' reads - reads that have no function except to cleanse your emotional scars before the next book - and paperweights, but they are not going to dance with the orbit on which I wobble.) So take your paperweight and leave said orbit.

These sound trivial, but they are the incidents I remember. Like the two women I served as a waitress one day, who were really nice even though I fudged their really simple order and told me I looked like Julianne Moore, and didn't leave a great tip (the last few rands were counted out in bronze coins), but who I remember 9 years later for being really genuinely nice when I was tired and my calves ached and I felt like I looked like Golem and I was really really lost.

What prompted this ramble was a bookbuying expedition. I stood in the amorphous queue (the one with no people in but the spot at which one of the sellers was looking at the time) clutching my tome to my chest. I do not just buy. I plan, forage, identify, continue to forage, identify more, compare, contemplate and usually decide I don't need said item after all, because homeless children wander my street without such things.

Buying tomes is clearly a big event for me. (Pun...)

This seller continued to look at the spot in which I was standing and perspiring with some vague idea that a security guard would stop me and tell me to stop being frivolous. One second, two seconds, three... The snotty-nosed boy then looked at me, arched his eyebrow above his glasses and put the book he had been reading on the counter. He turned and walked away.

Another girl rushed up to the next counter and beckoned me on. She kept looking at his back, not reprovingly, but adoringly, probably because he is a Philosophy major and speaks Latin or ancient Greek or something. So I got my tome and she served a customer without once looking at her (an achievement) and he is still a prat.

There's no great revelation here, if that's what you're looking for. Just a woman musing out loud (musing out binary silence... screen buzzing... key tapping...?) and concluding: that most social interactions - brief and anonymous, or enduring and intimate - are battlefields; that at different times we fill different roles - prat, admirer, tome-buyer; and that maybe the roles you fill or have filled, shift in hindsight.

And maybe I just lost my touch with the grand-sounding ending - The Point you love so much. Bear with me. I'm sure I'll be able to dredge it up again.