Obiter Dicta

Monday, October 24, 2011

This week I shall be considering precisely what I’m going to talk about at the Edinburgh Writers’ Club whenI judge their poetry competition next month. I’m expected to give them something of an address before I announce any results.

I shall have to curb my natural tendency to lay about me when I discuss their work, I fancy. I did point out to their President, when I accepted the gig, that my reputation as poetry critic for the (now  sadly defunct) Scottish literary magazine, Cencrastus, was that of a harsh judge. I did say, too, that I have not had a collection of poetry published in the last 8 years (although I have one ready), so she might not really want old Obsolete Sarky Drawers around the tender sensibilities of her writers.

Heres’s an example, one of the few I could find after all the years. It’s actually praising the work of Alan Spence. Kind of.

His book of poetry, Glasgow Zen, irritated me. It irritated me because he made me like it, and I am primed to sneer at mock-Oriental woofle. Too many Western writers think a mystical message (“Only in darkness can one see the light”) and Willow Pattern imagery make them wise and exotic. I should have known. Spence is far better than that.

I will, of course, encourage and exhort rather than excoriate this time. Its important to encourage people to write. I am, I have to say, not convinced that writing – or, more accurately, the ability to write creatively – is something that can be taught. But exemplars can be held up and tips can be given, I suppose. I’ve just never read many tips by other writers that work for me. You have to work it out for yourself, as the prophet Brian said.  The most important thing – and I’ll say this to them – is to find your own voice. However long that takes.

I wonder how they’ll react to my judgements. I know that, any time I’ve entered a literary competition, (not often), I’ve felt the slow cigarette-burn of disappointment at not winning. How could the judges be so obtuse as to discard my masterpiece and give the palm to that heap of ordure? People’s tastes are bizarre. I often think. I have no doubt that my victims will think the same of my preferences.

What will I be looking for? I’ll know it when I find it. Best not to preconceive any ideas. I’ll hope to find something with a genuinely original spark, whether that be turn of phrase, imagery or whatever. And, with the writer’s permission, I’ll blog the winner.

*

On a related topic, if more grandly related - I was gratified to see Julian Barnes win the Booker for ‘The Sense of an Ending’. Despite the reservations of some of my followers among the Twitterati, I think it’s a fine work. As I’ve written earlier, I think the ending is truly magnificent. Shocking. Full of despair. Tragic, in the proper sense of the word, not only for itself, but for how it impacts upon the character and self-awareness of Tony. It has some insightful things to say about aging and the process of memory too. I would urge all those who have not already done so to read it now.

I am reading ‘The Sisters Brothers’ now. I enjoyed the first half immensely. Wry and funny. I like the character of the narrator, Eli Sisters, and much of the dialogue. But, as I go on, I am finding it increasingly less appealing. Now it just seems like the middle of a spaghetti Western. I think it could have done with some judicious editing, to be truthful.

And now to draft some ideas for my address.

I really should do some of my own writing too. I will, sure I will. Even if Ali phones and suggests going to the pub, I’ll work instead.

Won’t I?

See you next week. Till then, think of the world.

Obiter Dicta

Monday, October 17, 2011.

Returned on Friday from  my week in Bath. Not my week in the bath, fragrant though some may think me, but in beautiful, Georgian, Gainsborough-Sheridan-and-Austen Aquae Sulis whose water, according to Sam Weller, has "a very strong flavour o' warm flat irons."  And not only the water in the spa – which I didn’t visit on this occasion. The tap water tastes of old feet too. Tip – drink bottled water. The local aqua is too sulis for my palate.

I got there via Bristol, which is not a lovely city. Forgive me, Bristolians, I am prepared to believe that there may be beautiful sections of it. They just don’t include the centre. The Bristol blitz did you no favours. Beirut on the Avon. Although, to be scrupulously fair, I did see a massively impressive church, which might or might not have been called St. Mary Redcliffe.

To get to Bristol, I had to fly. I am not alone in my fear of flying, I know, but I may well be alone in my detestation of it as a combination of simultaneously the most terrifying, and yet the most skull-crushingly tedious, experience known to haunt the soul of sensitive man. Can anything be more dull, irritating or fatuous than an airport? I looked around me as I queued at the Departure gate  at 7.30 that morning and thought to myself, ‘If I have to die this morning, do I really want these people to be the ones I go through my last agonies with? These laptop lapdogs? These irksome yelps who have to be on their mobile phones at all times, to impress upon us lesser mortals: I AM IMPORTANT. (No, you’re not, mate. You’re a paid lackey like the rest of us. Nobody’s asking you if they should sell Rio Tinto Zinc; or whether you will change your flight, head instead to Damascus and make sure a peace agreement is signed. They’re telling you to get your arse in gear and get those invoices up to Head Office at once.) Better than that, though, I had a whistler right behind me. Not a painter of moody impressionistic night scenes, either. One of those fatheads who whistle snatches of melody at random intervals, as a substitute for thinking. It’s always guys, I’ve noticed. Women are rarely that irritating. I turned round and gave him the glare once or twice. But these folk never twig. He whistled on. And on and on. Oh, the temptation to push his  teeth down his throat and say, ‘Whistle now, ya bastard! Give us a few staves of the Minute Waltz, why don’t you.’

(You can maybe tell by now that I was a little stressed.)

Flying didn’t alleviate it. I had a window seat (hate them; have no desire to see clouds or the land that far below me). The other seats were taken up by two callow younglings from Fife, on their way to study grease-monkery at some poly in Bristol. They talked about cars the whole flight. When they weren’t flicking through ‘Nuts’ magazine. At one point, I did seriously consider leaning over from reading ‘The Sense of an Ending’ and whispering, ‘If you’re that desperate for a wank, there are far better magazines available.’ I didn’t, of course. I’m too much of  a gentleman.

A ten minute train journey from Bristol brought me to the city of Bath, its golden buildings of Bath stone shimmering, even though the morning was grey. The guest house I stayed in, the Dorian, was quiet and refined, with taped cello music. Just the ticket for a boy like me!

The actual recording of the audio book of The Locked Ward was fun. And interesting. Just me and my text on a lectern between two reading lights in a dark studio. I was booked in for four days but completed it in three. Don’t know if that’s good or not. My producer, a lovely guy called David Bell, something of an aging hippy like myself, was very complimentary and said that I was ‘very professional’ in my attitude to fluffs. Just stopped, took a breath and started from the fuck-up point. It annoyed me whenever I did it, so I tried to keep such screw-ups to a minimum. Always worse after lunch for some reason. (And no, it wasn’t a liquid one.)

Interesting that everyone else there to read that week was an actor. They thought it deuced rum that I was reading my own book. They were all very engaging people, and very pleasant towards the wee Scottish interloper but they did give me something of a complex, briefly. There they all were, E-N-U-N-C-I-A-T-I-N-G; and INTONING; and inflecting like fuckers, while I read my wee book in  my gravelly West Lothian accent. I did, I think, read with some expression. But I always hate to hear my voice on playback. A voice an octave lower than a coo’s. David was very nice and said that it was ‘rich’. Besides, he liked what he called my ‘broad Scots’.  Oh no, David! If you think I’m broad Scots, you should visit the boozer on a Friday night. In comparison to these guys, I modulate like Alvar Liddell.

Anyway, my voice is what it is. One can only be oneself, so long as one always endeavours to be the best self one can. And, if nothing else, my rich tones are there for the descendants!

The rest of my stay in bath was enjoyable. I do love the city. And I bought a copy of Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘The Bees’. Ah, man! I never thought I’d see a poet overtake Seamus Heaney in my estimation as the finest poet of the times. But Ms. Duffy has. I’ve always liked her stuff, to be sure, from my first reading of ‘Standing Female Nude’. But she has grown and developed and progressed so much that I’d now give her the palm. After having wrested it from the hands of famous Seamus, of course. Like I tweeted when I got back: She’s the Poet Laureate, she’s Scottish, she’s female and she’s gay. About as good as it gets after centuries of middle-class English males. Do yourself a favour and read ‘The Bees’. The poem Last Post, written after the last survivors of World War I died, is a stunning achievement. The notion of time run backwards is not a new one, but what she does with it will break your heart. A genius takes existing techniques and makes them her own.

Whilst languishing in my lonely little guest house bed in Bath, I read Julian Barnes’s ‘The Sense of an Ending’ on my Kindle. (Hey! Mr. Gizmo, or what?) Oh, you have to read that too. If it doesn’t win the Booker, it’ll be a travesty. It starts off like a rites of passage romance. Ends up with the biff of a Greek tragedy. Mightily impressive.

And now my typing finger has the bends after so much work in so short a space of time. I’m off to immerse it in an iced vodka and pomegranate juice.

Here’s to the next time. (And buy The Locked Ward, in all its various guises, when it comes oot!)

Toujours gai.

Obiter Dicta

Wednesday, October 5^th, 2011

I write this on the centenary of the birth of the funniest man ever to put pen to paper: Brian O’ Nolan, more widely known in the literary community as Flann O’Brien, author, and/or Myles na gCopaleen, columnist for the Irish Times. Actually, to call him funny might detract a little from his worth as a writer because, as we all know, to be funny does not equate with literary ability. Or so the received wisdom goes. It’s drivel, of course. ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ is an astonishing literary achievement, resonant and thought-provoking. ‘The Third Policeman’ is  a novel of mystery and enchantment, as well as a weird whodunnit. The fact remains that they are both extremely funny, too.

His column in the Irish Times, ‘The Cruiskeen Lawn’, written under the name of Myles na gCopaleen, and published widely now in various collections, is full of writing that actually and genuinely makes me laugh out loud. That’s not a feat easily achieved. Some of the first volume of Clive James’s ‘Unreliable Memoirs’ did it too, but precious few others have. Recurring features like The Brother, The Plain People of Ireland, and Keats and Chapman, are greeted with the same pleasure one reserves for old friends. His excoriation of Bores and Cliches is brilliant. Oh yes, I can take a lot of Mr. O’Brien/ na gCopaleen.

You can keep your PG Wodehouse. He’s good; funny enough. But couldn’t lace O’Brien’s boots. I can only read so much of Wodehouse at a time before the woofling, chortling toodloo-ery of it all gets under my skin. I never feel that with O’Brien. Read him.

As for my own writing, I have worked on ‘Grand Guignol’ all week. It has now more than doubled in size and threatens to do even more. I will let it have its head; see where it takes me. I’m conscious too of having undertaken to write a story called ‘Gogl Mogl’ in competition with my Twitter amigo, Roman Tsivkin. Before the end of this month! Next week’s trip to Bath should afford me the time to let ideas simmer. is excoriatiuon of BofresH(I have one or two). And then maybe I can just write it on my return.

Because of Bath, there will be no posting next week. But I hope to have several good anecdotes (and a fine audio book) to tell you about, the week after that.

Till then - May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.