"On becoming a novelist" (1983)

Came home from work and read this book, considered a classic, by novelist John Gardner, who once taught Carver. A couple of passages really stood out for me. If I were to choose one of them, it would be this (the other one was about choosing to study science over literature, which he had some interesting thoughts on).

"Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or incivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections); obstinacy and a tendency towards churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know to be true); childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes); remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness; impulsiveness and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good. Not all writers have exactly these same virtues, of course. Occasionally one finds one who is not abnormally improvident."

"Boxer, Beetle"

Just finished this excellent book; reminiscent of Michael Chabon, I think, as well as Twelve Bar Blues (here's my review). I didn't much like any of the characters though their psychology was brilliantly rendered; eugenicist as repressed homosexual; bruiser who doesn't pay much attention to such things; free will versus determinism and all that jazz. Two digressions (language and architecture) as well as flitting between two times. I want to trace what came from where; the ideas are dazzling, and inspiring. Also completed Stephen King's On Writing, working my way through SF periodicals (or trying to, I'm guessing a lot of them are well past their golden age). Completed a couple of half ideas, Guardian Angela and Bobby Rodriguez which I guess are "flash fiction"; I don't have the heart to go back and fill them out. Wrote another quick story called "Carver beats the devil".

To read....

So I've been on a bit of an Amazon spree recently and I thought I'd upload this photo because I'm feeling slightly smug about it. I've got two weeks off coming up and I want to plough through this lot; have three pre-orders waiting in the wings and three more I'd like to read (including something by Jon Stone who I saw recently, but anyway). I think I should make headway with this lot first.

Oceans, The Deep, Coolth

A random week, but interesting. Had pieces published on Gwyn Prins' piece on A/C from the 1990s, one of the best papers I've read in ages; something on oceanography, again based on a scientific work which was as good as anything I've read, and a nice TV review.

Read The Big Sleep, some literature for something else I'm working on, finally London Orbital, (he loves the words "liminal", "plash", and "Italianate"); an ex-girlfriend's name cropped up in the acknowledgments, which was scary) and have started Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio's "Stories", within which the Joyce Carol Oates vignette blew my mind. A really tight, imaginative, visually clever narrative which was over in 15 pages. Not sure what I think of the Sinclair book, really, there's no real depth to it which is fair enough considering the ground he covers, but it's a very dense proposition. I guess it'll grow.

Harold Chapman

One of those rare pieces, speaking to an artist at the end of their career, which is really quite moving (the last time I think I felt this, really, was when meeting Liv Ullman at Karlovy Vary in 2005). Harold Chapman photographed all the Beats in Paris. I went to his home in Kent and spent a lovely couple of hours with him. His wife was taking photos silently throughout. The quote that really blew me away was this:

"I look back at those days in Paris as the happiest in my life. I discovered you could live frugally with very little and it didn't affect whether or not you were happy. All the worries people have about the rent, or the income tax, or insurance, had gone. Youth, of course, sees the world in different eyes. I am old, I can't see it the way they see it. But there are ways of existing quite cheaply."

I was really moved by that, for some reason. He has a lovely voice; I'd have loved to have uploaded an audio track of the interview. Anyway, as soon as he'd said that, my mouth dropped open. I finished the interview, pressed stop on the dictaphone. I looked up, and then his wife's camera just went "click", and she smiled. This is what she took:

I finally got around to reading my friend Jennie's excellent Costa-nominated novel, Inside the Whale, and Mr Satoshi by Jonathan Lee, which is brilliantly-well written. Am now reading Of Men and Monsters, a 1960s science-fiction book, and quickly worked through Laura Barton's first book, which is scarily-well written.

London lit mags

I wrote a piece on new London literary mags, vastly helped out by Pen Pusher's editor Anna Goodall, who came into the office and revealed herself to be a brilliantly cool and intelligent character. Have been going to a few of the salons in recent weeks and they're always a lot of fun.

I wrote a work blog about some of the short stories I've been enjoying recently and had some interesting suggestions.

Glastonbury 2010

Was in two minds about going to cover this, but I was glad that I went. I started off with a preview, then did coverage of the first night, Gorillaz's performance then a final night review, and finally an arts spread which I wrote between 7pm and 1am on Sunday night. We got caught in traffic on the way back; but I hope they let me do it again. I needed to blow of steam on Saturday night, and didn't go to bed, which made the following day quite challenging. I met some nice people who I'm still in contact with (including Vashti, whose brothers are Tom Baxter and Charlie Winston; she's an amazing character).