Wanna end it? Either way

Here’s the prologue to a story about the possibility of love, stripped bare, its resolution not the issue.

A 46-year-old single woman and a 23-year-old man have a social relationship: they attend classical music events together. That’s it. How this occurred is not explained. The age difference is never referred to and seems unremarkable.

But the woman feels age will become a factor and end their friendship. And that this can be held at bay provided there is no hint of physical attraction. On her own behalf she decides to suppress this happening. Optimistically, you may say.

They have attended a concert consisting of Beethoven late quartets, music of great intensity. The performance – by the Takacs – has been profound and both are moved. Reflecting on what she has heard the woman realises her friend’s presence has enhanced the experience.

He questions her self-absorption and she explains, partially. Unable to utter “physical attraction” she reluctantly opts for “fallen in love”. His face remains emotionless and he asks her to elaborate.

She says she spent time and money in the hair salon this morning. She’d done this before other concerts and never thought twice. However, this time she’d examined herself in the salon mirror and the music reminded her (“rather smugly, I must confess”) she’d thought her appearance would surely meet his approval.

“So love demands approval?” he says.

“It was a step in the wrong direction,” she says firmly.

As I say, this is just a précis. The full account of this bit would swell from 300 words to 1500 words, at least, and the characters would, I hope, take on life. And yes, I have an ending in mind. But does this situation deserve an ending?

"Could do better"

Subsequent to previous post, Avus asked for written examples that suggest my writing has improved during the last 60 years..

Intermittent diary, Bingley office, Bradford and District Newspapers. Aged 18 -20.

● Journalism is a badly organised business. A good deal of the day I sit in idleness, yet am often working until 10 at night. If I tell this to a non-journalist, he or she says “Ah, but you enjoy your job.”

Do I? Doesn’t anybody else like theirs?

Faults: “business” is unnecessary. “am working” is ugly. Second sentence could be reduced by half.  Ending with personal pronoun is flabby

● Calling on Mrs X for a par (ie, info for short news story) I perceived the light of triumph in her eyes. Apparently Y (the X’s bean-pole daughter) had seen me at the local cinema with M (my first ever girl-friend). Mrs X’s attitude seemed to be that she had scored a personal triumph over me. While the light was still in Mrs X’s eyes, Y came in and took up the assault. I could say nothing and had to leave the house seething with rage.

The Xs are typical Bingley Methodists and constitute a good deal of the reason why Bingley, its environs and its inhabitants, get me down. I shall always remember them by the following words of Mrs X, referring to a Methodist minister who, with an invalid wife and a speech impediment, had given his life to Methodism (I think) and had fallen ill.

Mrs X’s comment was that he (the minister) had been lying ill for some months now and while they were not getting anything out of him they were still having to pay him.

Faults. “triumph” is repeated, weakening a good anecdote.. Difficult for reader to make out what “took up the assault” means. Grates my teeth: “by the following words of”. Very windy passage: “… and constitute a good deal, etc, etc…” 

● On Weds, Thurs, Friday and Sat mornings I have been to the doctor about an enormous boil on my thigh and I have been having to make up time (ie, visiting regular news sources) afterwards. I became detached about the boil and apart from the pain I watched everything that went on. The latter three mornings I received penicillin injections, one by Leslie, two by Mitchell. Leslie slides the needle into my arm gently while M. drops it in and, if it bounces, drops it again.

Faults: Clumsy list to begin with. I’m ashamed of “have been having” - suggesting I never read what I’d written. “Detached” is poorly chosen, thus “apart from the pain” becomes vague. I am, however, quite proud of the final sentence.

Q&A as a way of life (Updated)

I was eleven when my father first asked what I wanted to be. "A reporter," I said. My answer was instinctive, I had no real idea what being a reporter meant. Except it didn't depend on being good at what was taught at school.

I didn't count English (language and literature) since that was like being good at eating or breathing. How would I function otherwise?

Apart from Spotlight and All the President's Men movies tend to show reporters as low-life pests, shouting nonsense as someone is bundled into a police car. The truth is less noisy and more obvious. Most newspaper and magazine articles are based on asking questions and transcribing the answers. What could be easier?

Let's elaborate. Time available is usually limited. The interviewee may be reluctant. He/she may not like you. The subject may be obscure so you begin by asking questions about a void. What then is a fruitful answer and what is mere boiler-plate? An unexpected answer may force you to change your strategy. It is highly desirable you don't reveal your ignorance. These difficulties are heightened if you're a clever-clogs like me and are interviewing a monoglot French person.

Even wholly co-operative interviews require mental agility. The unco-operative ones are more like a duel. I enjoyed interviewing and miss it now. Obviously a lifetime of interviewing is unlikely to produce a congenial social animal. VR may confirm this. The price I paid.

Why then? Because revelation is addictive. When two dim facts coalesce to become a clear new fact. The slow but rewarding way understanding develops over an hour’s chat. Because being informed is better than being uninformed.

Aahh. The blank notebook, the coffee cup pushed to one side, the tentative first question, the sign that points: Somewhere.

FANCY BEING INTERVIEWED?
Share My Garden comments (see below) "You could always interview some bloggers." Then goes on to list some alarming - almost certainly tongue-in-cheek - posers.

Don't worry, I wouldn't be asking those questions. But if anyone's up for being Skype-interviewed on a mutually agreed neutral subject, and getting to read the resultant piece before it's posted, I'm willing to discuss a game-plan. Neutral doesn't mean uninteresting, by the way.

MY FAVOURITE?
Many were non-Brits, especially Swedes. But here's my favourite Brit 

(Note: Britain includes Scotland, for those  who are puzzled)

It's simple, it's not

I scan my most recent posts and wring my hands in despair (uh-uh, cliché). The themes - and the way they are expressed - are more complex than I would wish. Why isn't simplicity more accessible? In fact simplicity is far harder than using lots of words. And there are musical parallels to support this.

Brahms’ Wiegenlied (Cradle Song) seemed like a good simple warm-up song when I started lessons. I sing it in German but you'll know the tune. Here's Richard Stokes translation:

Good evening, good night,
Canopied with roses,
Bedecked with carnations,
Slip beneath the coverlet.
Tomorrow morning, if God wills,
You shall be woken again.

But think of the way we speak to babies. The words "Tomorrow morning" take a highish note but we must not disturb our listener. Keep it quiet, keep it simple.

This morning a neighbour is due for surgery. We've known him and his partner for several years; their generosity and friendliness during The Plague have brought us all closer. I wish him well but surely that's a given. I don't see it as necessary to say it, although I said something vaguely similar when he went into hospital (See the previous post, Such stuff). This time I'd rather make him smile reminiscently; entertain him with something new. "Best wishes" won't cut it.

I know he's up for it because he's done it himself in an email to me. In response I mentioned Bernard Hepton's brilliant performance as Toby Esterhazy in Smiley's People. My neighbour took up the thread in his reply.

Something like that. That reaches out to him as a thinking person but doesn’t have me showing off. Original but simple. It’s quite hard, you know.

Fear of nothingness

A person I know and admire asks "What shall I say?" faced with space to fill and only one real topic dominating the ether. I sympathise. As an ex-magazine editor that question lay at the heart of my job. More than once I idly wondered (I was good at that) what would happen if one month I put out a mag with twenty-five blank pages among the ads. The answer was depressingly obvious. On three occasions during 44-plus years, because of market forces, I was made redundant. The blank pages would have led to a fourth redundancy (and not because of market forces).

Actually I exaggerate (I was good at that, too). Subjects often cropped up, it merely remained to research them and write them. But there was one regular exception. As editor, I had an editor's page where I was free to say more or less what I wanted. And it was on that page I sought to create the magazine's "character" - a numinous project if ever there was one. Yet it worked. Within a tiny, nigglingly defined industrial circle I was sort of famous. What you read in Tone Deaf (and before that in Works Well) is me trying to get used to not being famous.

And there were times when the prospect of a blank space on the editor's page loomed horribly. I couldn't, of course, make do with 250 words on Wines I Have Liked or many more words on Women Who Have Turned Me Down, there were limitations. The cupboard was bare, I had to grit my teeth and – damnit! - think. No one ever said writing was easy.

To that friend I mention above I would say: when there’s nothing in the cupboard go ahead and invent.

As I’ve done here.

Tired words tire readers

Sentimentality and its close ally, nostalgia, are weaknesses of expression. The route to good working prose is via detachment. This doesn’t mean eschewing emotion, it means treating it sparingly. The analogy is tomato ketchup; over-use can discourage you from even touching a blood-boltered* hamburger, never mind eating it.

We may be moved by what we see or hear. The mistake is to concentrate on what’s churning inside us rather than the thing itself; in effect saying we are more important than that which moves us. Betraying that thing and putting ourselves at risk. For the expressions of emotion are full of over-worn words and concepts which have lost their ability to make a point.

Someone, perhaps talking about the Australian fires, said, “It’s impossible to describe.” Quite true. Then, sadly, went on to try, with predictable results.

I worry about “sentimental” (Appealing to, or resulting from, feeling rather than reason; having an excess of superficial sentiment.) Thomas Allen, singing Silent Witness, caused my throat to constrict. I got over this by singing SW myself.  Certainly, that physical reaction occurred but it was transient. The song endures but in a modified form, appealing to others in different ways.

Scenery is regularly corrupted by those viewing it. And these are people paid to communicate, often academics giving “tone” to a TV programme. One giveaway is the fallback “incredible” – primary definition: too extraordinary and improbable to be believed. It has milder secondary meanings but they merely confuse matters. Why not pause and look again. If you distrust your eyes and the readily available vocabulary dig up the 1972 TV series on art, Ways of Seeing, by John Berger (see  pic). It hasn’t dated.

I’m shouting down a well. I’m told it’s therapeutic.

*WS quote

Roots

In 1951, as a 16-year-old tea-boy on the Telegraph and Argus, a Bradford evening newspaper, I worked 5½ days a week, including all Saturday.

My work schedule was:

● Open the mail for the editorial department.
● Take morning orders for tea from either the reporters' or the sub-editors' rooms and distribute it (in the orderers' own mugs) appropriately.
● Visit Bradford's three courts - sometimes twice in a morning - and pick up handwritten copy from reporters.
● From midday onwards, make hourly visits to the print room to pick up copies of the latest edition of the newspaper and distribute them to about a dozen recipients in the building.
● Take afternoon orders for tea as above.

In between times I would...
● ...scour Bradford's tobacconists for "acceptable" brands of cigarettes for the sub-editors...
● ...infrequently take a bus to beg a photograph of some guy killed in a road accident or at work from his recently bereaved widow...
● ...pick up the Wool Prices, of which I wot nothing.

Every three weeks there was a nightmarish addition to this schedule in which - every half-hour during the afternoon - I would take teleprinted lists of jockeys at all the day’s horse race meetings and amend race programmes for the Late News box.

Unimaginative, surprisingly exhausting – sometimes impossible - work, you’d say. And you’d be right.

Irregularly, I ceased to be a tea-boy. After a hurried dinner at home I would bus to a Bradford suburb, watch half an amateur dramatic society play (no time for the rest), return to the late-night office, write a review. Not well; not all were published.

The key word was “write”.

It was what I’d always wanted to do.

Literary ton

Here are a hundred works of fiction (novels, poems, stage and TV plays) which have satisfied me at one time or another. Many were re-read or re-experienced. 

These items are not necessarily “the greatest” - whatever that means - since that would lead to arguments. Nor perhaps the profoundest (Otherwise I might have included Proust’s A la recherche..). Nor the best-written (How about W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz?) Nor even the most original (Say, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces?).

“When I say “satisfied” I mean works which have entertained me and left me with something to chew on. I took a nightmarish decision to restrict myself to one title per author (other than trilogies, tetralogies, etc).

I’ve tried to avoid obvious titles where possible. Also pretentiousness. The list is roughly chronological and advances even more roughly towards titles which have influenced me most. The final ten continue to influence me to this day.

This list is in no way complete and should prove conclusively, to those who have been formally educated, that I haven’t been. It exceeds my 300-word limit by a country mile.

100. A. A. Milne. Now We are Six (Poems). With me on her knee my mother recited “Sir Brian had a battleaxe with great big knobs on,” several times. It became mine for life.

99. Kenneth Grahame. Wind in the Willows. Have you ever met such a well-defined quartet of main characters?

98. Arthur Ransome. We Didn’t Mean To Go to Sea. Nominally for teenagers, actually for latent adults.

97. H. Rider Haggard. Alan Quartermain. Colonialism red in tooth and claw. OK then, non-PC now.

96. Hugh Lofting. The Dr Doolittle sequence. Then and now it was the innocence.

95. Gladys Mitchell. The Rising of the Moon. Early “subversive” whodunnit: Christina is a brilliantly realised supporting character. I fell in love with her, me still pre-adolescent.

94. Rudyard Kipling. Jungle Book. Good story inextricably tangled up with the fact I was a Wolf Cub (they’re now called Cub Scouts) at the time I read it.

93. E. Nesbit. The Bastable Family. A group of Victorian children who must look after themselves for long periods. As with the Arthur Ransome book (above) its readership occupies the no-man’s-land between childhood and the dim perceptions of growing up.

92. C. S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters. Pro devil instructs apprentice devil how to corrupt the human race. It’s true, it’s great fun.

91. George Eliot. Scenes from Clerical Life. Preparation for the magnum opus, Middlemarch.

90. John Masefield. Cargoes (Poem). Why poetic rhythm matters, and sticks.

89. Tom Stoppard. Professional Foul (Play). Philosophy scrambled with soccer.

88. R. L. Stevenson. Kidnapped. Fast-clip adventure; super-memorable Alan Breck.

87. John Steinbeck. Cannery Row. Well-controlled folksiness in California.

86. Dorothy Sayers. Murder Must Advertise. Amateur detective, Peter Wimsey, issues a snob’s guide to high culture

85. Gerald Kersh. Prelude to a Certain Midnight. Gangsterism breaks out in London.

84. Henry Williamson. Dandelion Days. Leaden misery of schooldays transmuted to pure gold.

83. Stella Gibbons. Cold Comfort Farm. You’ll never long for the simple country life again.

82. William Blake. The Mental Traveller (Poem). “For the eye altering, alters all.”

81. Christopher Fry. The Lady’s not for Burning (Verse play). Hero wants to be hanged, heroine faces the stake. Yet it entertains.

80. P. G. Wodehouse. Very Good Jeeves. Class system turned upside down.

79. John Dryden. Fairest Isle (Poem/song.). “Sighs that blow the fire of love.”

78. John Lodwick. Stamp Me Mortal. Forgotten English novelist; forgotten plot; warm glow remembered.

77. T. S. Eliot. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (Verse collection). “McCavity! McCavity! He’s broken every human law, He breaks the law of gravity.”

76. Ian Sansom. A Young Wife’s Tale. Another forgotten English novelist/travel writer. Writes with great tenderness.

75. Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Ernest (Play/Movie). Archetypal comedy of manners; never bettered. Two well-brought-up young women at each other’s throats: X: “I call a spade a spade.” Y: “I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade.”

74. George Orwell. Coming up for air. Acutely depressing, physically decaying, overweight, lower-middle-class whinger views onset of WW2.

73. John Galsworthy. The Forsyte Saga. Everyone laughed at JG getting the Nobel Prize. Yet this family tale (several volumes, several generations) is sleekly told. A real page turner.

72. Edmond Rostand. Cyrano de Bergerac (Play). The big nose one. “Greater love hath no man...” yet gloriously told. Cyrano was the hero I wanted to be.

71. Sinclair Lewis. Babbit, Parodies the US conviction that life revolves round the act of selling things.

70. Aldous Huxley. Antic Hay. As funny as its title; pointless “lit” types lollygag in post-WW1 London.

69. Dylan Thomas. Under Milk Wood (Radio play). Welsh village exposed for all to see. Sample lines: Polly Garter: “Only babies grow in our garden.” Butcher Bynon: “... running down the street with a finger – not his own – in his mouth.”

68. Stendahl. The Red and the Black. Julian Sorel, something of a weak-need rogue but you gotta love him.

67. Oliver Goldsmith. She Stoops to Conquer (Play). Eighteenth-century heroine pretends to be lower-class to snag hero. I heard it first on radio; still terrific.

66. Ernest Hemingway. A Moveable Feast. Atypically un-hairychested prose; young couple enjoy life in 1920s Paris. Claims to be memoir but style is novelistic.

65. Isaac Asimov. I, Robot. Imagination at full-stretch. Compiles Three Laws of Robotics and explores them in this and other lively novels.

64. Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary. French provincial doctor’s wife fights rural boredom by overdosing on infidelity. Boy, does she regret it! Now somewhat out of favour for its anti-feminism.  

63. James Thurber. My Life and Hard Times. The one where JT’s mother believes removing a light bulb causes electricity to leak away.

62. Thomas Mann. Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. An exploration of immorality, but lighter in tone than, say, Joseph and his Brethren. Unfinished, not that you’d know.

61. Mark Twain. Critique on James Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Defects. Uses simple arithmetic to destroy JFC for ever and a day.

60. Albert Camus. The Plague. A testament to human goodness.

59. Robert Burns. My Luve is Like a Red Red Rose (Poem). “An’ I will love you still, my dear/Til a’ the seas gang dry.” Now I can sing it too.

58. Phillip Roth. Goodbye Columbus. Relentlessly hilarious yet critical account of growing up in a Jewish family. Especially hard on Jewish mommas. Portnoy’s Complaint had yet to arrive.

57. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations. Take just one detail: had there ever been a fictional heroine anything like Estella up to then?

56. Anita Brookner. Hotel du Lac. The heart of a middle-aged single woman comforted only by lonely money.

55. Herman Melville. Moby Dick. Tough for many wouldbe well-reads. Because I gulped it down in a week I often feel unnatural among the intelligentsia. It’s about whales and whaling. The initial sentence is a wing-dinger, thereafter you have to concentrate.

54. Marcel Pagnol. Manon des Sources. Recipe: Take a handful of Provencal peasants and a shortage of water; mix well. Could break your heart.

53. G. B. Shaw. The Devil’s Disciple (Play/movie). Brits vs. Yanks in the War of Independence. As often with Shaw, the villain, General Burgoyne, gets the best lines. Not surprisingly he’s played by Laurence Olivier in the movie.

52. Eric Ambler. The Levanter. Much detail about a ceramics factory, yet it’s all germane to this polished thriller set in Syria.

51. Jane Austen. Persuasion. Family lacks money to maintain their life-style. Heroine, Ann Eliot, is 27 and thus – by our standards - only a few steps away from a care home. I like the realism.

50. Anthony Trollope. The Way We Live Now. AT wrote 47 novels. I read about thirty of them then gave up. This is by far the best. High finance and embezzlement.

49. Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five. Worm’s eye view of carpet bombing of Dresden.

48. Henry James. What Maisie Knew. Child’s view of adult behaviour. HJ’s masterpieces can be hard going (The style! The style!) but this is much shorter and goes down like slippery elm food. Didn’t know he had it in him.

47. Olivia Manning. The Balkan Trilogy. Recently married Brit couple, Guy and Harriet Pringle, escape the Nazis’ overflow of Europe by travelling south-east. Best thing: Guy’s dominance gradually wanes and it’s Harriet who shoulders the responsibilities.

46. Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita. Yes, I know. Pervy and all that. And yet this may be the wittiest novel ever written. Alas, uncomfortable for US citizens.

45. Anthony Burgess. The Malayan Trilogy. Three of his earliest, all of a piece, a great sense of place, even poignant. Later novels tended to be show-offs.

44. Walter Raleigh. I Wish I Loved the Human Race (Poem). It spits with weary disenchantment.

43. John Updike. The Poorhouse Fair. That someone so young (26 when he did so) could write so tellingly about being old!

42. Honoré de Balzac. Le Père Goriot. Father sacrifices himself, degrades himself, for the sake of his daughter. In Paris – where else?

41. Beatrix Potter. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. As parents, VR and I read/re-read aloud books to our babes-in-arms, force-feeding them words. We never tired of Peter “bursting his buttons”

40. Noel Coward. Present Laughter (Play). A very junior reporter, I first saw this done by amateurs. I was trying hard to be cynical but laughed my head off. Still do. It’s bomb-proof.

39. Joyce Carey (He’s a man, by the way.) The Horse’s Mouth. No one has written more persuasively about how it feels to slap paint on to canvas. Or about immediately-post-WW2 London.

38. J. B. Priestley. Angel Pavement. Huge compendium novel (they-re out of fashion these days), interweaving a handful of characters locally based in pre-war London. Priestley’s from my home town, Bradford, and I used to think him uppity. Not here, though.

37. Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. Proving that whatever Hollywood says gender incompatibility outweighs lerve and can prove fatal.

36. Hans Hellmut Kirst. Gunner Asch series. WW2 as seen by a low-ranking German infantryman who is more of a pain to Hitler than to the Allied forces. One of the war’s great survivors. Zestful and funny.

35. John Donne. To his Mistress Going to Bed (Poem). A perfect crutch for male adolescence. Sex without sentiment. What young man could not thrill to: “Licence my roving hands, and let them go”.

34. Malcom Bradbury. The History Man. Send-up of extreme left-wing lecturer in modern (ie, not Oxbridge) British university. Corruption from an unexpected  source. Unbelievable mental cruelty. One laughs uneasily.

33. Muriel Spark. The  Girls of Slender Means. Does more or less “what it says on the can” in sixties London. Beautifully selective English. Memorable line: “Fearful bad luck! Preggers! Wedding’s on Friday.”

32. John Osborne. Look Back in Anger (Play). Said to summarise the fifties – ie, “no causes worth dying for.” I preferred it for the language: Elderly woman referring to central character’s judgment on her: “He said I’d be a good blow-out for the worms.”

31. Ross Thomas. The Fourth Durango. But it could have been Chinaman’s Chance, Out on the Rim, Protocol for a Kidnapping, or a dozen others. Masterly thrillers, great dialogue, worldwide settings.

30. Joseph Heller. Catch 22. With every passing generation this novel helps re-establish the sheer madness of warfare. I saw it as a dark comedy; re-reading it revealed a far tougher – more intellectual – proposition than I remembered.

29. John le Carré. The Honourable Schoolboy. Possibly his longest novel; plenty of elbow-room for scuffling through the files where much of the drama is created.

28. Elmore Leonard. Cuba Libre. The US’s greatest dialoguist.  Turns his back on Detroit/Florida and opts for Cuba at outbreak of Spanish-American war. Smuggling horses, for goodness sake.

27. Salman Rushdie. Midnight’s Children. Published in 1981; said to exemplify magical realism, making it a difficult read. For my money a clear-sighted, well dramatised account of India’s partition and independence.

26. Robert B. Parker. The Judas Goat. Spenser, Boston private-eye, pursues a case in London. Terse, formulaic, somehow appealing. One of my guilty secrets.

25. Mary McCarthy. The Group. US best-seller for two years. Eight Vassar girls have sex in previously unheard-of detail. Moderately serious. Better than it sounds.

24. J. D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye. It’s all been said.

23. Hilaire Belloc. Tarantella (Poem). Better known for its first line: “Do you remember an inn, Miranda?” leading to “And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees.” Frisky, virtuosic rhyming from one who knows his trade.

22. Annie Proulx. The Shipping News. For me the hero is Newfoundland.

21. Barbara Trapido. Brother of the More Famous Jack. English family eccentricity in an assured debut novel that entertains you straight from the title.

20. Anthony Powell. A Dance to the Music of Time (12 volumes). Ambitiously claimed as British equivalent of Proust’s A la Recherche... but more like a plot outline. Skims over Oxbridge-educated elite during four or five decades. Best bits: three titles covering WW2. Stodgy style initially hard to digest. Included here because of the creation of Widmerpool –  a literary one off.

19. Penelope Lively (Actually a Dame). The Road to Lichfield. Booker Prize finalist. Heavily domesticated, non-working. middle-aged wife goes in for a spot of adultery. Opens up a new form of eroticism for me.

18. Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn. Yes Minister (TV series). Uncomfortably true account of how UK is governed. Side-splittingly funny but should we now be laughing?

17. Elizabeth Jane Howard. The Cazalet Chronicles (Four volumes or, if you like, five). Best seller sequence. Home Counties, numerous, upper-middle-class family up to and including WW2. Characterisation is fine; much better are the details about leisure pursuits and ways of earning a living.

16. V. S. Naipaul. A House for Mr Biswas. I ignored this for ages. Shouldn’t have done. I’m ashamed.

15. Michel Butor. La Modification. Man leaves Paris, travels by train to Rome to his lover. Intends to say he has found a job in Rome, will leave his wife and family, will live with his lover. Gradually doubt, fear and cowardice intervene. All in the mind.

14. Romain Gary. Gros Calin. Man keeps python as pet in his Parisian apartment. Go on! Imagine! Bet what you come up with isn’t as funny as this book.

13. Paul Scott. The Raj Quartet. India during WW2. Uneasy co-existence for the Brits. Read all four in one burst and sweat along with a long list of characters.

12. Alan Bennett. The History Boys (Play). What constitutes a great teacher? Why might society find such a paragon unacceptable?

11. Len Deighton. Trio of Bernard Samson trilogies (Hook, Line, Sinker, etc). Inter alia, a spy-story writer whose compact, seemingly emotionless, tense yet witty style of writing has got better and better over the decades. A joy to read for his plots, his characterisation and his technique.

10. Colm Toibin. The Master. One of two novels (the other’s by David Lodge) centering on real-life Henry James’s humiliation when writing for the stage. Unexpected from Toibin, proof of his width

TOP TEN

9. Ford Madox Ford. Parade’s End tetralogy. Anthony Burgess rated FMF as the greatest British novelist of the twentieth century, so who am I dispute this judgment? These four novels centering on WW1 are about honour, obligation and “being a gentleman” in the old-fashioned sense of the word. I’d like to think that they provide a reference point for present-day Tories but that idea has been betrayed endlessly in the last four or five years.

8. Graham Greene. Our Man in Havana. How can a novel be simultaneously funny and dead serious? How can a Chief of Police in an authoritarian state be morally pure, or sort of? GG shows how.

7. Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist. But they’re all good. A simple recipe: take the common folk of Baltimore and their quotidian concerns, mix them up, out comes platinum. I’d like to be able to write like AT, better still, imagine like her.

6. Scott Fitzgerald. Great Gatsby. A short novel, so here’s a short verdict: blissfully elliptical.

5. Patrick O’Brian. The Aubrey/Maturin series (20 titles). Historical novels are written now about then (ie, the past). I’m not normally a fan but I’ve read this series at least three times. The language is then, the social mores are then, the politics is then, the two central characters are precisely of their time. There’s fun, stirring adventure, affection, tragedy, contemporary science.

4. Michael Frayn. Copenhagen (play). Two scientists, German, Danish, familiar with the uncertainty principle, talk glancingly about progress in atomic physics in 1941. It would bore the pants off you, wouldn’t it? Yeah. It ran for over 300 performances in London, same on Broadway.

3. Colette. Le Blé en Herbe. The most delicious male adolescent’s daydream ever written.

2. Evelyn Waugh. The Sword of Honour trilogy. Waugh on war. So he wasn’t just limited to the Catholic church and Britain’s toffs. Irony that could break your legs.

1. William Wordsworth. Composed upon Westminster Bridge (Poem.). A sonnet, of course, the only real poetry for me. A title that’s hardly a title. But the way it starts: “Earth has not anything to show more fair”. Ah! In other hands it would be either fustian or boiler-plate. For decades I ignored poetry until these fourteen lines spoke out to me: “Stop being a twerp.”

Unnumbered. James Joyce. Ulysses. Some twenty percent I don’t understand and probably never will. I can live with that. Two widely differing men inhabit the parts of Dublin they’re familiar with. Finally they meet. A woman who is both fiercely individual and yet all women reflects on her life. Of course it isn’t that simple. But it’s vivid and human, it shows what can be done with language, and the reference to The Odyssey is far from coincidental. Having read it more than once I’m both humbled and pumped up with pride. The story lingers in my mind, never far away. I took a photo of the Martello Tower (yes, that one), not something I usually bother about. I dare say I’ll look at it again some day. But it’s the words that reach out:

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”

The Kraken wakes

Suddenly the flood-gates opened. After more than a year of immobility and a growing lack of faith on my part, Rictangular Lenses leaped forward: 11,000 words in two months, homing in on halfway house at, say, 50,000 words. Here's the latest passage which - perhaps to reassure myself - I'm exposing to sunlight.

Alas, such exposures are often at odds. Readers want to know what's happening while I'm keen to know mainly how those happenings have been fashioned. Something of an indulgence, then. Especially since I've blown my 300-word limit for posts.

CHAPTER NINE

THE SENSE of luxury quickly palled but Lindsay pursed her lips, convinced her plans would eventually converge and everything would make sense. The limousine that had wafted them from Birmingham’s suburbs into deep, dark rural Oxfordshire was equipped with a sliding glass panel which isolated the chauffeur; despite this Greta Dane whispered. “I still don’t see why Gerald and Amber couldn’t come.”

Lindsay sighed. “It has to be private, just the two of us. It could even be embarrassing. If things work out we’ll arrange a celebration for all four. That will be up to you.”

“All so hole-in-the corner.”

Even so her mother had had her hair styled and tinted for the event. Her full evening dress may not have been new but Lindsay had never seen it before. Other changes were more organic. Greta’s neck had retracted most of its cords and her face was fuller, no longer strained. Best of all, despite a tendency to complain, her tone of voice had dropped half an octave. Had become more... What? Motherly?

“I have no secrets from Gerald,” Greta said primly.

Lindsay had sworn to control herself throughout this early awkward part of the evening but perhaps being submissive could be overdone.

“Mother, do you still see me as your daughter?”

And it was as if Greta’s face had retreated months, perhaps years. Back into embitterment. She remained a silent passenger in the vehicle and a degree of ease only returned when an acolyte handed her out and acted as escort into the converted Georgian manor-house.

Softly glowing lighting within the hallway flattered her and Lindsay took her hand. “Let’s enjoy ourselves,” Lindsay said and Greta’s fingers tightened.

A genial sommelier offered Greta the loan of his gold-framed grannie glasses when Greta worried – sotto voce – about the type size on the menu. The glasses struck an appropriate note, friendly and lacking fuss. Greta accepted but held the folded frame as if for lorgnettes; to have hooked them round her ears might have been over-familiar.

“Champagne?” Lindsay suggested.

“Goodness!” said Greta, since luxury was re-asserting itself. A table-cloth, thick as the Queen’s coronation robe, covered a circular table for two, privily pushed into a niche away from the centre of the dining room. For Lindsay had explained to the restaurant that things “would be said”. Lindsay, spying from her niche, looked out into the glittering concourse and listened to the sounds of people with money enjoying themselves. This was a very expensive restaurant. The talk was clear yet at moderate volume. Strangely it was non-assertive. But then people with money – out for an evening’s dining – could afford not to be competitive here. Their credit cards would do that in a hushed, very British way, offstage and handled by minions.

Gently urged by Lindsay Greta – never an over-enthusiastic eater – chose stratospherically priced turbot and the champagne did the rest. Mother and daughter relaxed into each other’s space, smiled and broke off occasionally for private memories. Once Greta touched Lindsay’s wrist.

Coffee was served but ignored. Lindsay had prepared for this moment.

“Mother, my professional life has changed. Profoundly.”

“So I can see."

Unblocked... perhaps

I swore I'd never post about writer's block. Yet writers are snotty about themselves, believing that everything they do - or don't do - is fascinating. And I have pretensions as you all know.

But, heck, it's been a long time. I started my fifth novel, Rictangular Lenses, in early September 2016. Reached 25,000 words, uncertain steps became a shuffle, a crawl, a mouldering body picked to its skeleton on a desert sand dune. At 33,000 words progress stopped. A year went past.

I could have junked RL but 33,000 words represent a third of the way there. My baby, even though it was on a switched-off ventilator. Suffering a bad attack of mixed metaphors

Here's the situation: In the remaining 66,000 words Events A, B, C, D will happen. I see them, if vaguely. It's the paths that link those events that worry me. They must be original, unexpected and lively - the products of my imagination. But my imagination had taken an unfashionable walk and was now in an ashram, trying to get a mobile signal.

Last week my imagination - wearing flip-flops and a tee-shirt with a Camus quote - returned to Herefordshire. The word count's now 40,000. Here are some new words:

In the sparsely populated business class section of the London flight she turned down several offers of splits of champagne. Tried to sleep but couldn’t. At Heathrow customs, wearied and stiff, she was directed to a side counter there to open her suitcase and expose a pile of unlaundered lingerie. With her mind closed down in self-protection she passed through the Arrivals gate and only sheer luck enabled her to spot Gerald Lovelace, now her stepfather....

But the block could return. Novels are a fool’s business.

Hay at its peak

We've been going to Hay Festival since 2003. Yesterday was my best day ever.

Something of his Art: Walking to Lubeck with J. S. Bach. Horatio Clare. Retracing a 250-mile walk the young JS Bach - full of his genius - made to visit the then star of German organ music, Dietrich Buxtehude. A fusion of physical exercise, reflections on nature, on the mind of one of the world's greatest composers and on modern Germany.

Infinite Powers: The Story of Calculus. Steven Strogatz. Calculus is a mathematical method of grasping curves; the basis of understanding our modern world. In physicist, Richard Feynman's, words: the language God speaks. Too tough for you? Strogatz, Cornell professor of mathematics, simplified it wondrously, even for this uneducated dumbo. Best of all he answered the question: Why?

The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker. A reworking of Homer's Iliad by one of Britain's calmly brilliant authors. Feminism for all of us.

Chaucer: A European Life. Marion Turner. Yeah, he wrote Canterbury Tales and tends be known as the Father of English Literature. Usually pictured as bearded, wearing an old man's smock. But he had a life too in London, France and Italy. Sold wine, acted as a diplomat (perhaps as a spy), turned English into a vivid means of communication. Oxford professor, Turner, reveals the wider Geoffrey.

(See pic) Between my booking Simon Armitage ("will be reading his stuff") and my seeing him, he became Britain's Poet Laureate. His session, packed to the rafters, turned into a wildly enthusiastic love-in. Used his flat West Riding accent (he was born - and lives - 12 miles from where I was born) as a frame for the slyest of good humours. Emotionally moving but in a modern way. New collection: Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic. A very English occasion

Fancy yourself at fiction?

You can’t run out of blog subjects but you may risk repetition. So - today - nothing about swimming, ski-ing, life in the USA (a veritable encyclopaedia), singing lessons, journalism or corporeal decay. But what about a cry for help?

A short story idea has been buzzing round my head. A 47-year-old single woman, X, has, against her own inclinations, decided to use an online dating service. I see her physically because she existed in real-life fifty years ago. Thus she fits scenes I have in mind. Other than her appearance X bears no resemblance to the woman in my past whom I knew only glancingly.

Here's the kicker. The story ends as X leaves her London flat for the rendezvous. This may annoy some readers, as I know from past experience. What happens next? they ask. My reply: If you care enough to ask then I've done my job. Raising reader sympathy for a fictional character is a worthwhile goal in itself.

Narrative tension will depend on the conflict between who X is and what she is about to do.

Time is slightly out of step. X is considering wearing outmoded dangle earrings. Somewhat cumbersome, in heavy silver, they are the last material link with her late mother who experienced an unhappy marriage. To do this X must first have her ears pierced and is apprehensive, despite reassurances.

I want to write this story. But should I do so? As I see things it demands some pretensions on my part about the inner nature of being a woman.

In four out of my five novels women are central and this was intentional. But in almost all my forty-plus short stories men dominate the plots. I’m not sure why.

A real pro

Tone Deaf strives for originality. Original subjects are hard to come by but the old war-horses (singing, writing, life in the USA, wine, sexual desperation in youth, speaking French, faking it in journalism, etc) can be given a new set of clothes by polishing up the style or the approach. Thus, not just singing but rehearsing while travelling on buses, not just writing but pretending I'm Shakespeare.

Tell the truth I've never tried either of these two possibilities so I'm already in profit today. Whoopee! Could be I'm gee-ed up by the prospect of a singing lesson in 2½ hours’ time.

My wife, VR, likes to be original too but doesn’t have a blog. Which means her innovations arrive with a bang.

Coupla days ago we're in Tesco and VR's rootling through the bargain shelf. I'm mildly outraged when she comes away with two tiny "tails" of fillet beef. The cost of these fragments is about £7 and I can't see that as money well spent. But then I can't see as far ahead as VR.

There's an event imminent; now look at those fillet "tails". Individual Beef Wellingtons with our initials emblazoned! That's original!

Which causes me to reflect. Some years ago I sat down to a plateful of spag. bol., a staple when there's just the two of us. But this one's different, more piquant. Seems VR decided - off the cuff - to chuck in a few chilli flakes. Now I wouldn't want spag. bol. any other way.

Ice cream is a dull dessert but not when it's scattered with raisins marinaded in dark rum. Much more grown-up and another simple VR modification. Grandson Ian christens it Rumraisin.

Any fule can tweak words. Tweaking food needs expertise and the effects are more beneficial.

Unrecyclable

 

 Is life merely preparation for writing novels? The jury's out.

 

I was shabby as a young reporter, thinking it went with the territory. My trousers tore in the crotch and I was forced to buy a replacement immediately. In measuring my inside leg, the sales assistant accidentally allowed his hand to slide up through the torn fabric, embarrassing us both. I'm not sure I was able to report this to my mother.

Ripened with age and towing a cart labelled "Useful fictional material bought and sold" I now see different potential in this glancing contact - a Damascene moment when the male character finally accepts his gayness. I have written about gays, sympathetically I hope but probably not convincingly, and the torn trousers still hang in my memory banks. Perhaps the symbolism is a bit too pat.

Reality is often just too real for fiction. I am not sure the argument I overheard between one senior company manager of old German stock ("You damned kike!") and another who was a Jew ("Lousy Nazi.") could ever be used in a novel. Rather too raw, I suspect.

Years ago I thought I supported feminism but an incisive, aristocratic young woman proved me wrong. She toyed with me publicly, bathing me in humiliation. Sweat gathers on the back of my neck as I recall this, but the effect was beneficial. My feminism is more plausible these days and I have learned to keep my mouth shut more often. However in trying to integrate this into a story I'm sure my self-consciousness would show through.

I was once given a great opportunity with a famous publication and I mucked it up. No one criticised, there was only silence. Could I make that work? Hmmm.

The best raw material grows arms, legs and a face over time. Evolves in fact.

Raw material

Ever found yourself in a literary desert, lacking things to say? Why not write about the desert?

I'd hardly sifted a handful of sand when my attention was seized. My first-floor study overlooks an uncultivated mini-park where people unleash their dogs. A woman - immediately attractive even at a hundred metres – walks purposefully. Ah yes, plastic bag of dog poo in hand, trash bin in sight.

By attractive I don’t mean pretty; interesting in a pleasing way. Face obscured by the high collar of a blue “puffer” anorak. Mid-length blonde hair artfully scattered. Tight-fitting jodphurs. I ignored her dog and am ashamed I didn’t notice its owner's footwear. She walked sleekly like a catwalk model, legs close together: following her own imaginary tightrope.

So what have we got? It was earlyish so she was no lie-abed. Socially conscientious given the poo-bag. Probably monied since no one buys jodphurs and wears them as jeans. A graceful mover who stopped occasionally to observe her dog and others.

Not enough to launch a novel, though it has happened. Perhaps the younger sister of the leading male or female character; a moral force augmented by her uncaring attitude towards her own looks. Irritated when patronised. Does drudgery jobs (eg, walking the dog) so she can be alone with her thoughts. Will be going on to the stables for a long session in the saddle, her true delight.

Of course, there’s always the desert. Dog-poo lady might well be good there. Silent, self-reliant, controlling a camel well. Looking terrific in a black and white keffiyeh. Careful, I mustn’t patronise.

Write of passage

For years my blog comments and profile have been decorated by a thumbnail of Blake's water-colour of Nebuchadnezzar. Proclaiming that I'm old and unbecoming, you see. Except the detail was so tiny I doubt anyone would have recognised the connection. Or cared.

I chose Old Neb because old age absolved me of any suggestion of boasting - a very English concept, that. Brits do boast but only sneakily: "Ah, you were educated at Harvard! I fear I'm nothing but an auto-didact." One reason why Brits are disliked the world over. Especially by Australians.

Occasionally - very occasionally - I'm visited by moments of clarity. I am old, it's true, but I'm other things too. Surely it was time to retire Old Neb. But God forbid I replace him with some image which suggested I'm handsome, clever, well-regarded, charitable, patient or kind-hearted because that would be un-English. Something neutral then.

The Underwood typewriter symbolically marks the moment when I ceased to be schoolboy (occasionally flogged for bad handwriting) and joined a trade where what I wrote had to be legible. I wish I'd had time to learn touch-typing but speedy writing was another necessity and I simply banged away with a varying number of fingers. Later I was to acquire my own portable (a Remington Rand) which lasted until the invention of the word processor, but I always had a soft-spot for the Underwood, one of several battered machines in the Telegraph & Argus reporters' room.

It had a unique springy action which was gentle on my fingers. Also an upper-frequency chatter, certainly soprano perhaps even treble.

It also whispered to me: "You've grown up."

Analysis

 

Although I enjoyed my 44 years as a journalist (bar two years of disloyal service) I was in the wrong job. I cared more about writing style than news.

Fiction is my raison d’etre but without precluding blogposts and progressively longer blogcomments. In everything I write I strive to be original or to package necessary banalities in an original way. The desire to write is never absent, even in oral conversation; my spoken sentences may be structured and over-elaborate and, to the annoyance of those listening, I often break off to issue an improved version.

Being original isn't necessarily an asset. An "original" note to someone bereaved may lack sympathy. Even worse, the seeming lack of sympathy may be intentional, trying to say something different.

In the Tesco café this morning I listened to a two-year-old girl shouting loudly. Surprised by the depth and richness of her voice; it sounded almost trained. A paradox to be included in some fictional passage as yet unconceived. Or perhaps not.

When I say I must write and that I relish this impulse, I mean I love the progress of writing. Being able to see the next ten words clearly, and to envisage - more vaguely - the shape of the sentence that follows. To live simultaneously in the present and the future.

When the piece is finished I return to the start relishing the conviction that stuff must be cut, rendering what remains as more efficient. Sometimes whole sentences. Does this mean I write inefficiently? Perhaps. But not if the stuff removed may be regarded as scaffolding, holding things together during assembly, then discarded.

Writing stays me in old age, unlike skiing and distance swimming. Dying will have started when I can no longer write – a health barometer and a compass.

Easy going

The Cherry mechanical keyboard, above, represents an act of pure indulgence. It replaces a perfectly good membrane unit - recently cleaned! - which cost almost two-thirds less. It offers two barely justifiable advantages: a longer, more positive key-stroke with a noisier, clackety action.

In my lifetime I've typed millions of words and intend to type millions more. Only my toothbush is a more intimate companion than my keyboard. Its businesslike rattle is indirect yet audible proof of a brain doing what brains do. It is the sound of work, my kind of work, both reassuring and pre-emptive. If I were a dentist I'd buy a decent drill, the Cherry is my equivalent.

I jab the keys and their descent is abruptly arrested. I sense this dissipation of energy and it comforts me. Saws rasp, mowers drone, kettles sing and things get done. I'm getting this post done.

The surface of the keys is slightly rough, perhaps promoting a better link with my finger-tips. Certainly I type more confidently.

And more quickly. On a roll the clacks become continuous and this, I suppose, is a measure of my efficiency. Necromantic yet familiar labels - Caps lock, Scroll lock, PgDn - emerge and disappear beneath my flying fingers and I know I'm at home.

I type therefore I am. I type to say I am. I type for the sheer novelty of it. I am not a roomful of monkeys.

Lying's harder

Non-fiction's so much easier than fiction - it is, after all, stuff that's happened, it doesn't need imagining. 11,122 words in about 15 days. Sorry, only of interest to me and 16 gerontocrats not resident in SE England.

Opening Bars
A late-life adventure
Roderick Robinson

Intro: What this book is not; possibly unique given my age. Classical. Singing not instrumental.

Ch. 1. My first lesson.

Ch. 2. Aims and expectations. The pleasures. The hard stuff and the easy stuff. Personal taste. Sentimentality. Duets.
 
Ch. 3. The score.

Ch. 4. Unexpected difficulties.

Ch. 5. The tools: keyboard, YouTube, buying scores, Musecore, TV masterclasses.

Ch. 6. The teacher: the intangible essentials. Gender. Sing with smile. Stop singing piece that has become a burden. Ways of encouragement. Language. V description.

Ch. 7. The teacher: the method. The complexities of warm-up. The rainbow. Terminal consonants. The technicalities (limited because of age; identification of voice). Choice of new pieces. Ability to recognise what new pieces offer. Examples of new pieces analysed.

Ch. 8. Homework; using computer (dangers); varying practice; choosing one’s additional songs (simple, narrow range to develop tone and expression).

Ch. 9. Measuring one’s own progress, inc. listening to performances differently.

Ch. 10. Talking to other singers. Joining choir?

Ch. 11. Beginner, me? Not exactly. Familiarity with music. Enthusiasm. Ability to be moved

Back to twin tracks

Late last November I started a fifth novel wondering - aged eighty - whether I'd finish it. I knew its clunky title, Hardship Hope, would need replacing.

In January, suddenly, I took my first singing lesson. The subsequent elation - endlessly documented - caused Hardship Hope to be sidelined at only 18,000 words. It was hard concentrating on mere words with Sarastro's bass lines running between my ears.

One aim has always been to sing a duet with a soprano. This requires preparation of a different order, as much technical as musical. I accept this and am "buckling down". In a more balanced state of mind I've resumed the novel.

I realised the title's dullness had held me back; it made the MS seem dull. The novel's now called Rictangular Glasses (the misspelling is intentional) and suddenly I have 23,805 words. A corner has been turned, a new chapter begun. The scene's no longer North Birmingham but a hotel in Mauritius:

Astonishing, given the heat, the number of orders for curry soup although she was fairly sure she knew the answer to that one. Today was Wednesday half-way through most bookings and many diners, bored senseless by the blandness of the so-called international cuisine, were probably desperate – as Lindsay had been – for food with any kind of zip. Even at this distance the disenchantment was palpable: cutlery immobilised above plates that offered nothing in the way of stimulation. Another half an hour and she could hop on her bike and meet Shakeel at the Magnetisme for some real food.

That done and I'm ready to tease out the musical sense of: "And all I meant to doo-oo..." with its A-sharp and B-natural, signifying a minor key and (for me) a non-intuitive passage. Renaissance Man in miniature.