Three more long entries for my Hemingway bollocks to keep you from killing each other . . .

Here you go, another three entries for you to ignore, but please, do so gently.

These entries consist of just over 12,000 words in total and I didn’t knock them off in one rainy afternoon, so treat them genetly.

Here they are. Comments welcome (I have to say that, just to keep my spirits up).

There’s 1929-1930 — Part I,

1929-1930 — Part II and

— wait for it — 1929-1930 — Part III.

Shalom and salam — pretty much the same word, but for Christ’s don’t tell the Jews or Arabs that.

Roll up, roll up and stroke my ego even more! Oh and Quark Xpress and Indesign aren’t the only players in town

Roll up, roll up and stroke me ego even more! Oh and Quark Xpress and Indesign aren’t the only players in towns

Busy little bee that I am, yesterday I published my second volume of poems/verse on Amazon. It is a collection of all the more recent pieces I have written. You can find it here. If you think you might be interested, you can find the first volume here.

Go on, spend a dime or two. Short arms, deep pockets? Never an attractive trait in man, woman or beast. Treat yourself. Push the boat out. Summon up that Santa spirit. Go for it. Live dangerously.

Oh, what the hell.

. . .

A few weeks ago, I wrote about commercial publishing, vanity publishing and doing it yourself. I think I also wrote that ‘vanity publishing’ is a tad unkind as a description of doin it yourself. You simply might not want to try your luck at having some commercial publisher taking you up. You might just want — as I do and my friend and former colleagues Tully Potter did — a few nicely printed and bound copies of your book to give to family and friends. It is a collection of verse for children and is called The Lockdown Poems.

So using Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is a godsend: it costs you nothing. You only pay if and when you order discounted ‘author’s copies’. The two books of poems I am plugging cost just £1.70/$2.26/€2 each, just the cost of printing. Try buying a cappuccino or a latte for that sum. And if someone else buys a copy, they pay. Here is a link to the KDP website if you want to chance your arm.

However, as I said a few weeks ago, not everyone might want to format/prepare their manuscript for printing, or feel capable of doing so. For the books I had printed (i.e. published) myself and for Tully I used Indesign. A friend, Ben Le Vay who has about a dozen commercially published books to his name (his publisher is Brandt and, for example there is this on British railways and this about British eccentricities, also uses KDP for some projects. He also used Indesign at work but told me the other day I saw him for lunch that he used Microsoft Word for his latest book, about the invasion of Pearl Harbor. This was self-published).

KDP is really not difficult to use and is open to everyone (and as I pointed out, a great many of the online shysters who will publish your book also use — at no cost to themselves — KDP, but don’t tell you and you will pay through the nose).

I also recently offered to do the formatting work for anyone who would like to have copies of ‘their book’ printed by KDP. But I shall not charge the earth, just charge by the hour for whatever work I am asked to do.

With a view to possibly getting such work, I have started a new KDP identity call St Breward Press (which is what I used for Tully’s book) and if you would like me to do that work formatting your manuscript for you, please get in touch with me via the form above on the right  and I shall send you more details and you can tell me what you want.

. . .

The once reigning piece of software, Quark Xpress, is also still available, but Indesign has taken top spot for the simple reason that it is not half as expensive as Quark (though sadly if you want to use either, you now have to take out a ‘subscription’ which is the new model for flogging software and in my view something of a rip-off).

Quark shot themselves in the foot: for many years it was the only sophisticated software versatile, capable enough and with sufficient features to use to publish newspapers and magazines. It was used around the world, but because it was the only software then available, it charged through the bloody nose, and then some.

The Daily Mail, where I (and Tully and Ben) used to work as a sub-editors) ditched Quark several years ago. This was for several reasons: cost was one and because it was using Apple Macs and wanted to switch to Windows and needed software which would integrate with its other Windows software. I then began using Indesign.

Eventually, Adobe (of Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator etc) which then sold Pagemaker (and which in the mid-1990s Quark was hammering and sales were dropping), turned down an offer to sell up to Quark and decided to come up with its own desktop publishing software and started developing Indesign. Since then it has never looked back. Moral: don’t get greedy.

NB Another excellent piece of desktop publishing software is Affinity Publisher. It works very much the same as do Quark Xpress and Indesign (and it can open Indesign files which have been saved in a certain format).

But it has one, for me distinct, drawback: the working area is cramped and the tool palettes encroach to much. In Indesign it isn’t and they don’t.

But it is a true bargain if you are on a budget and want excellent software. An annual Adobe subscription will cost you £239.64. And — annual — you pay that some again a year later. But it is still cheaper than Quark which charges £358/$474/€423.

Affinity Publisher costs just £47.99/$63.56/€56.56, and it is yours for life. (I bought it several years ago when you could still buy it outright. You might find a legacy copy on eBay, but don’t hold your breath as there don’t seem to be many of them around.)

Don’t be put off by such a low price — it is not a cheap and nasty piece of kit. Most of what you can do in Indesign — and 9/10 users will be need just a few of its features, so make that all of what you can do in Indesign — can by done by Publisher. But, as I say, its workspace is cramped.

Take a look a these screenshots. The respective working areas are marked out in red:

Adobe Indesign

Affinity Publisher

The Publisher workspace might not look that much smaller, but believe me it is just a tad too small. And the tools’ palette really need not be that big. Making it smaller would allow the workspace to be bigger. 

Ironically, Affinity began as a small firm called Serif producing inexpensive software for Windows machines. That software wasn’t bad, but with Publisher, Photo and Designer — the counterparts of Adobe’s Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator — there has been a qualitative leap forward and they can stand tall beside the Adobe versions.

Professionals might disagree, but in my experience for what many of us want to do — and frankly what we can do — the Affinity software certainly does the work. The main point about subscriptions is that I should imagine many companies can afford to take one out for Adobe (and Quark’s) products because the cost is tax-deductible.

Volume three of a fab, fab, fab collection of my stories now available in print — good Lord and just in time for Christmas! Apparently, the Queen has already ordered 50 copies to be distributed as festive gifts at Buck House, London. Oh, and beware shysters — there’s a lot of them about and apparently double-vaccines, boosters, voodoo cockerels and mouthing MAGA bullshit is not protection at all against them. You were warned

Just published — on Amazon KDP, so sadly no bona fide commercial publisher involved yet (and a very wistful ‘yet’ at that) — my third collection of short stories. If you are interested, you can check it out here (and perhaps even buy a copy).

I’ve written about ‘vanity’ publishing before (and that was the old-fashioned, rather unkind though not always unfair, term for ‘self-publishing’ in the past), and I’m sure I’ve mentioned Amazon KDP (and Lulu.com who I used before Amazon).

Amazon will print your book to a very high standard and at a very good price — each book is printed as and when it is bought, which keeps costs down and the printing costs are part of the price you specify. So don’t be taken in by any of the many shysters who will charge you a fortune to do an exceptionally simple task.

There are one or two other ‘print-on-demand services, but very few — and I think all those are in the US — will do it as cheaply as Amazon. And as far as I can tell, all the UK-based firms simply have it done through Amazon themselves. As always, caveat emptor.

Many might ask you to ‘submit your manuscript to be considered for publication’ and, of course, it will always pass muster. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except for the very steep prices they will charge you for ‘publishing’ your novel, memoirs, autobiography, guide to Shanghai brothels, guide to blind sheepdogs in Cumbria or whatever other delight you have spent years writing, only to find no bloody commercial publisher is in the slightest bit interested.

To be fair to myself, I haven’t even started trying to get a commercial publisher interested in my short stories, because, to be blunt, they wouldn’t be interested. Everyone and his hamster writes short stories these days, but more to the point short stories do not sell.

I did, briefly and some years ago, try to find an agent — in the belief that if an agent thought your work would sell, which is what it is all about, they would put in the work. And if they thought it would not, they would not waste your time or theirs — with a view to getting my novel published. I could raise no interest whatsoever though I only tried three. BTW you can check it out, then ignore it here.

In short, a swift check on the net of how many ‘publishers’ there are who will help you publish our novel — and you will carry all the costs, of course, though they couch it as you ‘contributing’ to the costs — shows that all of them are pretty expensive to bloody expensive (though it is up to you how you spend your money).

It can cost you anything between £700 and £2,000 to use their services, and all you will get is about ten copies. Print-on-demand costs might be cheaper, but what with shipping etc, not a great deal. Always do your research.

Remember, all they do is format your manuscript for printing — which does not take long at all (I used Indesign) — then upload a pdf of the formatted manuscript to Amazon KDP. They might also offer your extra services such as designing your cover, editing your manuscript, ‘marketing’ your book, and it is up to you whether you choose to use them.

Some even tell you they will get your book ‘reviewed in the national press’. Bollocks. Here in Britain the nationals get enough books from bona fide commercial publishers to bother considering someone’s memoirs of dear Aunt Jane who baked the most delightful cakes.

I can’t speak for other countries, though I’m certain the large-circulation papers would not be interested. However, local press, radio and TV might be, because they always need ‘copy’ to fill their papers and programmes — but you can get in touch with them yourself and don’t have to pay some shyster to do it.

Personally I cannot think such editing will be up to scratch, and if your manuscript needs editing, it cannot have been that good in the first place and you would be none the wiser as to how good or bad the editing was.

Oh, and many make a point of saying ‘they will get your book listed on Amazon’ — but that happens as a matter of course with all the books printed by Amazon KDP. (I’ve not looked at Lulu.com for many years and don’t know what promises they make but are not one of these ‘self-publishing’ shysters. They are just a little dearer than Amazon by my no means much at all.

To put the shysters’ charges into perspective, the 100-page slim volume of short stories I am plugging here has a nominal price, listed on Amazon, of £6. Of that the printing costs just £1.70. Furthermore, you, the author/originator, can buy ‘author’s copies’ at cost, i.e. in my case £1.70.

So those ten copies your ‘publisher’ gives you as part of the £700 to £2,000 ‘service’ cost her/him only £17! As always caveat emptor.

Admittedly, a little work is required to format the manuscript (though then saving it as a pdf takes about ten seconds each time) which is what they will do, but only about an hour or two (depending on the complexity of the manuscript.

For example, earlier this year I published a volume of colour photographs on Amazon KDP — as a trial run to see whether it was any more complex with a colour interior and it isn’t — and what with getting the colour right 

etc, that did take a little longer (though it was still done in Indesign).

Just last week I ’published’ — that is I formatted and had printed — a slim volume of verse for children called the The Lockdown Poems by a friend and former Daily Mail colleague and although it did take a number of days, the actual work involved was minimal.

But that ‘number of days’ is a tad misleading: every time there was a change, a new illustration was added, a detail changed here and there etc, I insisted on sending Mr Potter (my friend) a new pdf for his scrutiny and approval (to

make sure if there were any cock-ups, they were not mine). And as emails were not answered immediately, and he made several changes and made several tweaks (as did I, on the monochrome — posh word for black and white — piccies in Photoshop, the whole operation did ‘last’ a few days. But the work I did (and it wasn’t ‘work’ as I enjoyed doing it) was — in total — just a few hours.

. . . 

In fact, having written all the above, I might as well offer to do the same for anyone reading this, though I would charge an hourly rate, though it would not total sodding £2,000 or whatever they think they can get away with).

I shall stress: if you know your way around Adobe Indesign, Quark Xpress, Affinity Designer or Microsoft Publisher (which I’ve not used, though) or any other desktop publishing software, you can do everything yourself, and thus it would not cost you a penny.

My offer is for those who feel a bit daunted by the ‘formatting’ and rather doubt whether they could do it or simply can’t be arsed. If that is you, get in touch. With such work vaguely in mind, I have opened a second Amazon KDP account under the name St Breward Press.

Note: you would supply a manuscript as Word doc (and any illustrations as pngs rather than jpegs) and would be emailed a pdf to check at every stage to that the final decision to ‘publish’ — have printed by Amazon KDP — is yours and noting any errors and literals etc are your responsible (although I would correct them according to your instructions.

A day after posting:

To see what’s what, I’ve just uploaded and am having printed by Lulu.com two copies of the third volume of short stories. The process is extremely simple (and all I had to do was slightly reformat my 5in x 8in volume to the 5.5in x 8.5in size Lulu offer (the closest to the original). Lulu do exactly the same as Amazon KDP but are a little more expensive: I’ve ordered two copies at $3.39 (£2.55 at December 1 exchange rate) each and with shipping ($6.41) that is costing me $13.19. Amazon copies were just £1.70.

More stories and poems (if you are interested)

More poems (bottom two rows are the latest) here and more stories (the bottom two rows).

Is it just an old codger resorting to type, or are things perhaps getting a little hairy? I hope it’s the former. I fear it might be the latter. But never mind, at least the free West is getting its beauty sleep

It’s almost a commonplace that was we grow older and are usually less adaptable to change, we become more reactionary. Perhaps. There is some truth in the view that when young folk ‘settle down’, have to start paying real taxes, face monthly bills and have children, they often abandon their ideals, or at least water down, and that explanation makes sense.

To be blunt when the oddly artificial world of our salad days is left behind and we face the daily chore of going to work — though it is not necessarily from Monday to Friday or from 7/8/9am to 5pm — and what it entails, life can lose some of that marvellous sparkle it had when we were teenagers (in between the bouts of woe and doom, of course) and everything was possible. But that early change in life is not a mirror image of what happens to many later on when their teeth become loose and their hearing begins to go.

Later on, as we hit 50 or 55 and find ourselves slowly being edged to the periphery of existence and consequence, our once central role in matters and affairs of the world (or village) being taken over by younger versions of ourselves, we might well begin to see the world in a different light. Ten years on, perhaps after we retire and lose the ‘structure’ employment gave us and feel somewhat cast adrift, a certain disenchantment might well creep in, though most of use are apt to blame everything and everyone about us rather than accept it is the prism through which we view the world which might be the cause.

Yes, I am speaking personally, but I’ve talked about the ‘effects’ of retirement with others who have also professionally called it a day, and it seems that what I experienced and am still experiencing is common: somehow you seem to be something of a spare part, hoping you might be needed, but realising you could well not be that lucky; and we who have called it a day and have discussed it all, also agree that until you retire, you won’t know what the hell I am talking about. But that isn’t what this entry is about.

Obviously, we all react to growing older in different ways, but there will certainly be things we have in common. And, I suggest, for many one of the things we have in common is a sinking feeling that ‘it’s all going to the dogs’, a conviction which is closely tied in with viewing the past through distinctly rose-tinted specs.

I mention that because, being conscious that I, too, am equally as liable to suffer from that possible tendency, I want to try to ensure I don’t adopt it. I don’t like it and I can’t respect it. I want to try — and trying is all I can do — to retain as long as I can a balanced, proportionate outlook on life, the world and current affairs. I want to try to evaluate developments in the world with as neutral an eye as. Yet now I have made that point and considering developments here, there and everywhere, I am bound to confess that I do not things are looking too bright.

. . .

I don’t doubt that over the past 71 years of my life — 72 years on November 21 — when men and women heard the news on the radio and TV and read their newspapers, there seemed much to feel bleak about. Just five years after World War II ended, ‘the West’ faced another war, in Korea (no doubt billed to a gullible public on both sides as ‘a battle between freedom and tyranny’. Decide for yourselves who were battling for freedom in the face of encroaching tyranny.)

Later, for the Brits, came the insurgencies in what were then still its ‘colonies’, in Kenya and Malaya and elsewhere. France almost had a civil war over Algeria, and the ‘certainties’ of post-war 1950s America were wholly disrupted in the 1960s by the — then young — ‘boomer’ generation and the national divisions caused by the Vietnam War. And on it went.

Many were persuaded we were only that far from all-out nuclear war and some bright spark dreamed up the notion of the Doomsday Clock, though arguably in such terms the world is now a far more dangerous place and running even further out of time: in the 1960s and 1970s only France, Britain, the US and the then USSR had nuclear weapons. Now India, Pakistan, China and Israel also have them. As for that insufferably melodramatic Doomsday Clock’ the cause of the demise of humankind has since shifted via AIDS to global warming.

If you want melodrama — and it seems a huge number of us do — fuck off and watch your favourite soap. To paraphrase P. T. Barnum or H. L. Mencken (or whoever else claims to have originated the quote I am about to paraphrase) ‘No one ever went broke scaring the living shit out of Joe Public’ (and certainly no newspaper. Note to younger readers: when you have time, look up what newspapers were).

. . .

Bearing all that in mind, are the dangers we now face from a far stronger, richer and more determined China led by a man who is to all extents and purposes a dictator; and the dangers we face from Russia, not as strong and rich as

China, but also under the leadership of a cynical and determined — and very bright — quasi-dictator, as well as dangers posed by an increasingly nationalistic India any worse than those faced by our parent’s generation all those years ago? Are they?

Well, I’m inclined to suggest that no, they are not. But I must add that there is more than a certain nonsense in believing ‘dangers’ and ‘the dangers we face’ can somehow be graded and qualified. I know the foreign offices of governments and their backroom spooks have to do just that — grade and qualify ‘dangers’ — for practical reasons of formulating policy; but seen in a certain way, it doesn’t really make much sense: a danger is a danger. And we know from how World War I came about and was well underway in a matter of months that nothing much is neatly predictable.

As I write there seem to be two distinct dangers facing the world. One is in eastern Europe where Putin has amassed around 100,000 troops on the border between Russia and Ukraine, which might or might not be used to

invade Ukraine. A little further north the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko has — this sounds ridiculous, though is anything but — amassed several thousand migrants’ which he wants to pour into Poland.

I heard on the news earlier on that ads were put in the media of various countries where many folk are looking for a better – ‘stress-freer’? — life selling flights and visas to Belarus with a view to entering the EU. There was an enthusiastic response, it seems, though the reality was that once they arrived in Minsk, they are loaded into lorries and driven to the Polish border where they are now stuck in sub-zero temperatures. Sounds like an urban myth to me, though is was ‘on the radio’. And stranger things have happened at see.

In the Far East, China’s dictator — no one has yet used the word, but it is the only realistic one to use as far as I am concerned — Xi Jinping has made if very clear that an invasion of Taiwan will take place sooner rather than later. The big question to be asked about both these situations is: how will the West react? Will it get involved? Or will it cave in?

Before I write anything more, I must candidly admit that I have no idea which reaction would be appropriate or wise. Really I don’t. It is Hobson’s Choice, and I’m not going to claim the role of Joe Wiseacre and lay down the law of what ‘Western governments’ should do.

Putin will be encouraged that when, again to be blunt, he invaded and annexed The Crimea, part of Ukraine, the West did fuck all and he was allowed to get way with it. If we are dealing in Brownie points, one Brownie point to Vladimir and none to the West.

Putin might now be calculating that if he invades Ukraine and annexes part of the country’s east, the West will again do nothing. (His excuse might be that the east of Ukraine, which has had a small-scale war for several years now, has many ethnic Russians and they need the protection of Mother Russia.) 

Certainly, we will condemn such an ‘international outrage’ in the strongest possible terms, if not even stronger (subs please check if that is possible), and we will ‘impose sanctions’ and place punitive tariffs on the import of vodka and all those delightful little dolls which fit inside each other after you unscrew the head of the bigger one (for details contact the FSB). But Russia will know we are cack-handed wankers. We need their gas more than we need to stick to our increasingly tawdry principles. Welcome to the ‘global world’.

China has long insisted the Taiwan is not a sovereign state as Taiwan itself insists, but is still one of its provinces (a point lawyers could argue about for weeks on end, of course). China recently got away with imposing its totalitarian will on Hong Kong (where you can now be locked up for a very long time for in any way being critical of China) and Xi Jingping believes he can do the same with Taiwan. He’s probably right.

On paper the US has insisted it will somehow protect Taiwan’s sovereignty — but it has been careful not to specify quite how. More to the point, though Taiwan would most certainly defend itself and it has quite strong armed forces, it is doubtful to that it could do so for long. However, what is crucial is how the US would — will — react. And how other nations in the locality who will also be pretty pissed off with China’s increasingly bullying behaviour will react.

. . .

These two dangers are compounded by unrelated but still pertinent developments in the UK, the US and Europe. In the UK our prime minister is a useless twat who even himself admits he’s not ‘a details man’. He is also losing his support in Parliament and could well be gone by the middle of next year, for a number of reasons, though none 

of which are relevant to the above. The Opposition Labour party — I use the word ‘Opposition’ purely in its technical sense in as far it is about as effective as an Opposition was a chocolate teapot — is equally as useless and the point is that at present the UK has exceptionally weak leadership and political clout.

The same problem faces the US. After the four years of chaotic, insane and damaging leadership by Donald Trump, Joe Biden is proving to be distinctly underwhelming. Germany at present has no government and various parties are horse-trading to form a governing coalition.

France is on the brink of a presidential election, one which might well see a far-right figure gain the presidency (though, to be frank, that is less likely than not given that such a development will be fought tooth and nail, though that would not rule out civil strife in France — well, Paris — which might prove equally as unhelpful).

On balance, of course, the picture is no bleaker than it has at any point in the past 50, 100 or 1,000 years. The difference and possibly a pertinent factor is the ‘global nature’ of world economies. Disruption elsewhere might well have led to shortages ‘at home’, but the sophistication of many of our economic practices — I’m thinking of the ‘just in time’ supply of parts — means some aspects of our economies could then — can then — grind to a halt far sooner than later.

An added complication is the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, which is also ‘global’ (NB I keep sticking that word in quotes because it has become something of a buzzword and I hate buzzwords and being seen to use them.) Sooner or later we will pay the bills accrued in one way or another dealing with it. Just how is that going to pan out?

Let me reiterate my initial point: the above has been written but a lad who won’t even see 70 again so please bear that in mind. Such folk — old crocks such as me — are apt to look on the dark side of life as a matter of course. But in the above I have tried to be less ‘ageist’ and more neutral. Things ain’t looking grand. The question is: is that just how I see them or are, finally, things really not looking too grand?

Answers please on a postcard. And if you can’t be bothered, just fuck off and watch your favourite soaps instead. At least they have no consequences.

Talk of bloody long hauls! But now got this more or less last part done. Might even qualify for some kind of compensation. Keep your fingers crossed

I’ve finally finished a pretty long entry for the Hemingway bollocks which I hope will be the last such long piece. Still to come are a couple more potted blogs covering the old fraud’s last 20 years, then a general tidying up exercise.

If you want to read any of the entries (the total is almost 15,000 long, so I’ve split it into six parts), you can find them here.

If not, fuck off. I mean so say! A lad does his utmost for the intellectual life of the planet, more or less works his fingers to the bone but is treated in a very cavalier fashion along the lines of ‘stuff your Hemingway bollocks, did you really think we are interested? Really? Moron.’

For those with a more charitable heart who feel compassion is in short supply and why not spread a little of it, here are the links. 

The snooty rest of you, up your kilt!

 

Caveat lector — Part I: Enter academia

Caveat lector — Part II: ‘Proving’ the artistry

Caveat lector — Part III: The von Däniken way

Caveat lector — Part IV: Intellectual overkill

Caveat lector — Part V: The Rorschach effect

Caveat lector — Part VI: William of Occam writes

PS As every world-beating, award-winning, cutting-edge blog is immeasurably improved by pictures and illustrations, who am I to buck the trend.

So here is a nice little piccy of one Vladimir Putin relaxing a little in the sun. And I do hope there are no mealy-mouthed ejits among you who begrudge Vlad a little me time.

I mean you might think I work bloody hard (I don’t, but you might think that), Vlad’s in a totally different league. This chap has got a country to look after! And he must make sure no one gets any big ideas about free and fair elections and any of that nonsense.

So cut him a little slack, will you, and admire those pecs.

Tripette to The Netherlands (which is very, very close)

Afternoon out at a town in the north of the Netherlands called Appingedam. Can’t really call it a ‘day out’ because it is close by, less than an hour’s drive away. After that my host — no names, no pack drill — who has lived or been based in Germany for more than 40 and is a tadette didactic, took us — our younger brother has joined us — to a kind of Dutch ‘new town’ called Blauwestad a few miles from Winschoten.

This really is a new town, being built on the banks of a new canal/lake called Oldambtmeer (the Dutch like doing things with water, according to the Germans turning it into a sliceable form and selling it as ‘a tomato). Appingedam was by far the more interesting, though not particularly interesting.

We wandered around the ‘old town’ with my sister pointing out house fronts, windows, gables, roofs and I don’t know what else to admire, but to be frank there’s only so much admiring I can do and I tend to flag after a while.

My fear is always that if I don’t demonstrate the required level of enthusiasm, I am ‘being difficult’, and ‘being difficult’ was a label hung around me early on in my life in my family, so situations like that demand some diplomacy. For all my ‘tactlessness’ (which I prefer to see as a dislike of being forced to dissemble) I can be and am far, far more diplomatic than a great many realise.

Certainly, the obvious point to make is that ‘diplomacy’ is essentially dissembling, but here I crave your goodwill and accept that there are subtle differences between the two, not least that ‘diplomacy’ in our private lives is intended to avoid bruising the feelings of others whereas dissembling is usually a great deal less admirable. But it was good to wander around and get some fresh air. I would like to see ‘old Dutch architecture, but there are I’m sure more interesting examples elsewhere in the country and I shall make a point of seeking them out in the future.

Blauwestad? Well, the first question is, what exactly it the point. It was not created to ‘provide more homes’ as the new houses — they are all new houses, though some a year or two less new than others — are not cheap and from what I saw through open blinds they all looked like the ‘second home’ refuge ‘in the country’ of professionals from Amsterdam, and Rotterdam (which are easily accessible just down the road).

Notably included in the house price was a berth for your own small but no inexpensive motorboat in the mini marina just yards from your front door. (My phone was low on juice, so I left it in the car to charge and didn’t take any pictures. I wish I had.) With no exaggeration the interiors might all have served as ads in interior design magazines. These were not ‘new homes from working class folk otherwise priced out of the market’. There also seemed to be few folk at home for a Sunday afternoon. Who knows what was going on.

Here are a few piccies from Appingedam, suitably dicked around with (the new phrase for ‘artistically processed’ if you haven’t yet guessed).

Good morning on this Sunny day in the far north-west of Germany, a clog's throw from the Dutch border

A few photos taken about 30 minutes ago (and which I’ve also posted on Facebook with the caption ‘This morning’s sun, 今天早上的太陽 in Chinese (it's always good to be prepared)’.

Here are a couple from about 100 years ago. Only just come across them:

Hilly Stuff


Fuck You

The Little Bugger


Let’s Split Up


Jesus Loves Bush

Hemingway bollocks: the end if in sight

I'm glad to report that I'm slowly getting to the end of the Hemingway bollocks. This last essay (last, I think and hope) is in some ways crucial and took a while to get started. I've so far written over 10,000 but there's not much more to say.

It's all about how academia is eternally in danger of disappearing up its own bum, yet 99 per cent of us are rather in awe to 'academics' and if they were to contradict us and declare that on occasion black really is white, few of us would feel confident disagreeing. Here are two prime pieces of apparent gobbledgook (or maybe I'm the dumbo). But once from 1950 they decided Hemingway 'was an artist', there was no going back. Here they are:

There was much more to [The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms], of course, than an act of personal exorcism, however complicated. For to destroy by embodying is also to create by arranging. The artist’s special blessing exists in an impu. lse to destroy an aspect of the thing he creates, and to render permanent what for him, in another and internal dimension, must be permanently destroyed.

That is from Carlos Baker in his book Hemingway: The Writer As Artist. This is from a woman called Hollis Robbins, written while she was teaching at Princeton. It is her commentary on a commentary be Jackques Derrida commenting on Sigmund Freud's comments about Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes:

[It is a] critique of criticism [and a] tale, teller, interpreter, and critical case study all in one . . . Yet if it is true that the tale’s very transparency is a critique of the desire to critique — or rather, the exhibitionistic desire to unveil publicly — Derrida’s privileging of the themes of analysis, truth, and unveiling in his (albeit brief) reading of The Emperor’s New Clothes provides evidence that the awareness of this desire does not reduce its influence. The desire to read The Emperor’s New Clothes as either a fantasy of critique or a new literary history critique of the fantasy of critique is symptomatic of our assumptions about what it means to be a reader-analyst.

If anyone can tell me what either piece means, or even might mean, get in touch.

A blog entry of songs I like (by others) is resurrected after I realised several had visited it but the songs could not be played, and now a few more songs, notably three versions of the same, great song (but not a version by the late Mr L Cohen of Quebec who co-wrote it)

I happened to be looking through the stats for the ‘ere blog and which posts had been recently viewed and came across one, post on August 23, 2017, which was a collection of notable singles. Then I noticed that the could no longer be played, so I decided to rectify that.

I realised that the method I had used — inserting a certain ‘audio’ code in the blog entry which referenced a file stored on the web – had broken down because the site where I had stored the files, a ‘Google site’, had been overhauled and retired by Google.

After a lot of faffing around trying to place the files elsewhere and getting nowhere, I decided simply to make brief ‘videos’ with the relevant songs as the soundtrack. In fact, there’s no video footage involved.

So I’ve resurrected that site and you can hear those tracks here (if you’ve got nothing better to do).

Given how, in the event, straightforward and simple that task turned out to be, I’ve added a few more songs. You might like them. They might not do much for you.

The first is an early Pink song I heard while in the gym at work. It’s Family Portrait and when I first heard it, it almost made me cry? My oldest child, now 25, had just been born and it immediately made me think of her and, more to the point, imagine it was she who was unhappy. Couldn’t take it. To this day the thought of any child — white, black, brown, green — who is unhappy, neglected abused can almost bring me to tears. Don’t know why (and the interesting thing is when does ‘the child’ become ‘the man/the woman’? Discuss. I’m buggered if I know.

Family Portrait by Pink

. . .

The next song is one of my favourite songs with some of the best lyrics I’ve heard in a song. It’s Everybody Knows, and this first version is by some guy called Peter Mulvey.

Everybody Knows by Peter Mulvey

The song is usually billed as ‘a Leonard Cohen’ song, but in fact he co-wrote it with the pianist and singer/songwriter Sharon Robinson. Here version comes after Mulvey’s and is a very different take, but very good.

I don’t like Leonard Cohen at all, and I don’t like his version of this song. Like pretty much everyone else I had and listened to his first album (called an ‘LP’ in those days) but finally got sick of him, the reverence with which he is treated, his voice and pretty much everything else about him.

Everybody Knows by Sharon Robinson

Finally, there is a version of the song by a Holly Figueora O’Reilly, of whom I also know nothing else. It, too, is different and it, too, is great. Give them all a whirl.

Everybody knows by Holly Figueora O’Reilly.

. . .

I’ve always liked ‘good’ lyrics, though quite obviously I must admit what one bod thinks are ‘good’ might not much appeal to another bod. But this song scores in every line. It also manages to be and ‘true’ (another dodgy word, of course) and pulls off that trick of at once being very serious but not in the slightest bit ponderous, weighty, pretentious. In fact, many lives are laugh-out-loud funny. No bugger every bothers to comment on my blog post (well, once in a month of Sundays), but I really would be interested in what others make of the lyrics.

. . .

Off to Germany tomorrow for a month, though not flying out till Tuesdays. Staying with my brother in London who is also going. Wonder what all the covid restrictions will make of the journey.

Two more short stories if you are interested (and a word from my probation officer who otherwise so rarely gets a mention here . . . )

Two more stories if you are interested, as usual ones submitted to Deadlines For Writers. You can read those stories here:

Fathers And Sons and A Noble American Family, Or The Law Of Success. 

The Hemingway bollocks (now almost it's official title) is coming on, though slowly, and I'm in sight of the completion. I'm still enjoying it (oddly enough) and I'm looking forward to the final job once everything is written to turn it onto a book and publish it on Amazon.

NB If you want you can read more short stories in two slim volumes I’ve already published, imaginatively entitled Volume One and Volume Two. It’s best not to run the risk of confusing folk with fancy-schmancy ‘literary’ titles.

Keep it simple, best advice my probation officer ever gave, although he wasn’t too chuffed when I followed his advice and tried to rob a Bond Street jewellers by lobbing a brick through the window and intended to rely on a push-bike to get away. I didn’t of course (get away, that is).

Now that I’ve inserted an image, I notice the copy if falling a little short and as I don’t much like leaving it like that, I feel obliged to add more to fill the space. So this is it, me filling the space, writing of nothing of any consequence at all (so what’s new? Ed) and simply hoping that I can drool on aimlessly for a few more lines without most of you becoming exasperated (‘What the fuck’s he on about now!) closing this page and heading off to the blog written by Marylou from Savannah, who wants to tell you all about her collection of dolls and teddy bears and a story about them which made it into the pages of The Savannah Tribune a month or two ago when she turned 70. Well done, Marylou!

Well, I think that should be enough garbage to fill the rest of the space.

Pip, pip.

Here's a song you might like . . .

Completed track this afternoon (which makes it sounds it’s been weeks in the making — it hasn’t, just an hour or two here and there over three days) and I rather like it (well, I would, wouldn’t I?) I do a lot of recording, but although I get many ideas for songs, it’s the singing which defeats me.

Quite apart from being self-conscious (even when I am sitting in my ‘shed’ alone with no one to hear me) I can never get it as I want. It’s a question of finding the right key into which your voice will fit. Well, I reckon I’ve found it here. Give it a listen and (thought some bloody hope) leave a comment with your thoughts.

It’s not particularly original — well, not at all original — but as the saying goes ‘it’s not the joke but the way you tell it’. (There are plenty of great songs which have been ruined by totally shite versions, for example Leon Russell’s Song For You.) Anyway, here it is. It's called Six In The Morning . . .

A few tracks for your discerning listening . . .

I thought I might post these here, too. Not particularly tidy, but then I'm not looking for a rock career.

1 I Fucked It

2 Ain't It Sad That He Won't Be Your Boyfriend

3 Cigarette Girl (I Think I'm In Love)

4 Daylight And Dawn

5 Covid 20

6 What The Fuck's This Gotta Do With Me?

That last one could to with editing, i.e. making a little tighter and shorter.

If you do listen to them and feel like it, give me your opinion. It’s like everything else - if you’ve written something, produced something or whatever, it’s never really complete until there’s a reader/view/listener. Anyway, that’s what I think. Actually, do me a favour and listen to to the lot, if only just the once. While writing this, I'm listening to them again (which I don't otherwise do) and it's been hard to choose which ones to post. Decisions, decisions, eh?

Just add this one, which I'm just listening to (and also like)

7 Goodbye

PS I can't resist this hoping you'll listen to this one, too

8 Jojo's On A Promise

Bloody August! But then it all tails off into why I am not nostalgic about reporting on (and later subbing the results of) local flower festivals. It’s all yours

More than 40 years ago the Irish novelist Edna O’Brien published August Is A Wicked Month. I haven’t read it, but I’ve always remembered its rather memorable title. It sums up for me that August is not, if these things are possible or jus simply make sense, my favourite month by any stretch. But I don’t know why.

I’ve never much liked August and quite often feel out of sorts for its full four weeks, and only perk up with the beginning of September. It helps that I like the autumn season (fall season) but that is not the reason. In fact there is no reason: I have long — and I mean long – always dislike August. But as I say, I don’t know why. I think it might have to do with August, however, hot (and remember that I live in the United Kingdom where are whether is very inconsistent and seems to follow no pattern) being often the tail end of summer.

We look forward to spring, summer and autumn, but August heralds that summer is slowly over. I’ve admitted that I like autumn, but that autumn is on its way doesn’t much mitigate that summer is ending. Here in Britain we are so unaccustomed to consistently good weather, which is one of the reasons — the other is far cheaper booze — that every year millions pack their bags and head of to the Med countries. 

We do get periods of sunny weather, but a mark of how irregular they are is the fact that we always talk about them. I doubt whether Greeks, Italians and Spanish spend part of their time commenting ‘well, isn’t it lovely weather!’

Today is August 12, the ‘Glorious 12th’ when Brits with more money than sense are legally allowed to take to Scottish grouse moors and try to kill as many birds as they can. More to the point, we have now had 11 days in August and all 11 have been pitiful as far as the weather is concerned: overcast, very wet sometimes, quite wet at others, grey, damp, even a bit chilly.

To make matters worse this ‘bad weather’ comes on the heels of some rather hot weather a few weeks ago. I always feel wistful in August. Maybe its the light. Light can create many moods. But I really don’t know why.

Writing this, I can think of one particular August which was decidedly strange. It was the August of 1969. I had just completed my first year at Dundee University and had failed all my first year exams, for the obvious reason that throughout the year (of three semesters) I attended perhaps five or six lectures at most and did very little, if not any, of the work I was expected to do.

At Dundee in those days — the late Sixties, when I was enrolled in the Department of Arts and Social Sciences, ‘social sciences’ being the flavour of the decade, in our ‘foundation year’ — we studied five subjects: Psychology, Political Science, History, Economics and ‘Methodology’ (a kind of precursor to philosophy). My problem was simple, straightforward. We had what were called ‘resits’ at the end of summer and if I did not pass a certain number (I think it was four of the five subjects), I was out on my arse.

But let me be honest: it wasn’t that I was desperate for a university education (totally free in those days here in the UK, with ‘travel expenses’ also payable if you could fiddle them which I could) so that I could make my way in the world with my head held high and forge a grand career for myself in some field or other. It was far simpler than that: if I didn’t make it into second year, I would lose my grant and have to — Jesus, the horror! — work.

The task was straightforward: make sure you get that bloody grant! So once the summer term ended, I did not go home or to stay with a friend (although we then lived in Paris, the atmosphere at home was not very good — the previous Christmas had been awful — so I didn’t fancy that, anyway) but remained in Dundee and set to work learning the curricula of all five subjects on my own. That’s when I discovered, although I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, that I can be quite disciplined and if I put my mind to something I can get it done.

But Dundee became a strange town in August. None of my friends and acquaintances remained, the university more or less shut down (although I believe the Students’ Union remained open with a skeleton staff as other students, mainly post-grads I think also remained in Dundee for the recess) and it was just odd. Dundee is a lot further north to where I now live, 573 miles north of where I am now in the far South-West of Britain, and the light was very different. In mid-summer the sky was always light to the north and in mid-winter daylight didn’t last long. And in August the light made me feel even more wistful than usual. But I carried on, took my ‘resits’, passed four out of five of them (I failed Psychology, but was able to take it again at Christmas — still necessary to ensure my university ‘career’ continued — and did pass).

That’s August. I never much like it and it is something of a relief when September comes around.

My university ‘career’ was not otherwise distinguished and in many ways I had a lot of luck. I had originally applied to study philosophy, though not really having much idea what philosophy was. At school I took A-level chemistry and came across the concepts of ‘entropy’ and ‘enthalpy’ and was taken, as one often is at 17, with how we can discuss ‘concepts’, that is what doesn’t actually exist. I eventually linked the idea of ‘discussing concepts’ to philosophy and thought I might find out a bit more of what philosophy was.

In the school library I found a book on Greek philosophy and started reading it, only immediately to be discouraged when in the preface the author (this was in 1967 and the book was at least 50 years old) warned that

no one could begin to understand Greek philosophy without a full understanding of the the Greek lyre and the kind of music it produced. ‘That’s me out of the window, then’ I thought and returned the book.

In my second year I took English, Philosophy and German. Then, at the end of that year I applied for a the four-year Honours course in English and Philosophy rather than the three-year Ordinary degree course on the pragmatic grounds that it would mean an extra year of free money and postponing the dread business of earning a living a little.

The problem was that it was made very clear to us that selection for the Honours course were rigorous and that certainly not everyone was accepted. I was not hopeful, but I kept my head down.

Then, I can’t remember when or why, we were asked to fill in a form as to what we would be doing in our third year. I wrote down ‘Honours in English and Philosophy’ — and didn’t hear another thing. I had somehow greased into the Honours course, though how I don’t know. I was certainly not a model student.

I enjoyed Philosophy and contributed a great deal (though I don’t remember going to many lectures but I was rather more reliable attending tutorials and seminars — I enjoyed them. English? It was all too much — though they would certainly deny it — akin to learning by rote: ‘Fielding’s Tom Jones is a faux-epic something or other’. Note and repeat when asked. What it actually meant I had not a clue, though, relax, I do now.

I might as well finish this account as I’ve now started although it has little to do with August and what a wicked month it is. In my third and fourth years there were no end-of-term exams (another plus point in my book) and the first time I was called to account as in my finals. I’ve mentioned them at length and what happened in an entry I wrote (you can find it here) when I learned that a Professor Neil Copper had died. But the upshot was that I produced dismal papers for the English department but (I was told) did quite well in my philosophy papers.

Thus although the English department wanted to fail me, the Philosophy department insisted I should get some recognition. I was not awarded an Honours degree but the compromise was that I should get an Ordinary.

In hindsight, my degree was pretty pointless. In those days ‘graduates’ were viewed with suspicion in the newspaper industry, and almost all reporters were school-leavers who had wanted to ‘break into journalism’ (a bloody silly phrase dreamed up to add spurious glamour to an otherwise bog-standard job) from a very early age. And in those days, sub-editors had all once worked as reporters and were not, as increasingly now, recruited directly into the job.

NB There’s only one thing more miserable than spending three days at the local flower festival digging up ‘stories’ and collating ‘results’ than subbing those bloody results. In those days it meant going through the goddam lot and marking them in up in the appropriate style — bold, italic, roman, 12pt, 14pt, this font or that or whatever — for the compositors to set in print. You didn’t and don’t need a degree for that and non-graduates, then the vast majority, thought we graduates would immediately go for glory.

No my degree has been of little use to me, though four buckshee years of living off the taxpayer is not to be sneered at. And that as a much to do with August as nothing else.

Pip, pip.

You’ve never read Proust? What never? Ever?

The following is in response to a comment left on my previous post by a Michael P Bowles who asked me, in view of my views on Hemingway, what I thought of Marcel Proust. I trust he doesn’t mind me leaving it as an entry, but as it is already public (as my published response . . .) Oh, and what with writing ‘essays for my Hemingway blog, this blog has had less attention, and I’ve very conscious of that.

I’ve never read Proust, whether in French (I don’t speak and thus don’t read French) or English. The only French novels I’ve read have all been English translations. And as far as translations are concerned, I now tread a little more carefully.

I am half-English and half-German, and my German mother spoke only German with me when I was very young and young. When I was nine, we moved to Berlin because of my father’s job, and I and my older brother were immediately sent to German schools. So now in addition to understanding German as well as English, I learned to speak German, and eventually became bi-lingual.

A few years ago, I read - in German - Der Untertan by Heinrich Mann. It is a sharp satire on hypocrisy and provincial life in Wilhelmine Germany and it is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. I was living in London at the time and wondered just how well the humour had travelled to Britain.

So I went to a local Pan bookshop and dug out Man Of Straw (the title of the English translation). I looked up different passages, and they were as flat as a pancake if no a great deal flatter. The nuances, the subtleties, the satire and the humour had simply gone missing.

That was when I realised that ideally we should read an author in her or his original language. But, of course, for many if not most that just isn’t possible. I would even venture to suggest that folk who have learned a country’s language and speak it well, but are not necessarily as familiar with its culture as a native, might miss not just a little but quite a bit.

For example (and I shan’t go into too much detail), there is a line in Der Untertan where the main character, Diederich, who has discovered he has made his girlfriend pregnant, ends the relationship (on the grounds that he couldn’t marry a woman who had pre-marital sex). But he is nevertheless heartbroken and returns home and (writes Mann) ‘und am Abend spielte er Schubert’ (‘and that night he played Schubert’).

In context that is a laugh-out-loud line, funny as hell. In English? What the fuck is pfg powell talking about? Jesus! Funny? Those Krauts just don’t have a sense of humour!

Actually, they do have a sense of humour, and a very good one (though you can find as many humourless gits in Germany as in Britain (I married one. though she is not German). But it’s a different kind of humour. (Perhaps a 

good indication of how these things don’t necessarily work as we expect is that ‘ironisch’ in German is more ‘sardonic’ than ‘ironic’.

I later did the same with one other book I was reading, though it was not a satire: Ungeduld des Herzens by Stefan Zweig becomes Beware Of Pity in its English translation (and though that English title does more or less ‘sum up’ one theme of the novel, it is nowhere near as sharp as Ungeduld des Herzens, The Heart’s Impatience/Impatience Of The Heart/An Impatient Heart/take your pick - works far better in German.)

That novel, too, suffered in translation because various subtle, but telling details did not carry over. Shame really, though no translator can be blamed. (I once did a lot of translating for a friend who was writing a biography of the violinist Adolf Busch, translating all kinds of things into English - letters, feature articles, reviews, documents - and there is always a trade-off of some kind. Perfection is - as usual - impossible.

So, no, I don’t have a view on Proust because I haven’t read any Proust.

One last point: one major point I make in my Hemingway ‘essays’ is that unlike in mathematics (say), in ‘the arts’, specifically ‘literature’ all judgments, views, analyses etc are not subjective and, even more to the point, there can be no objective however much academics and critics might like to persuade us otherwise.

For your info (as I have not much else to write about at the moment. Fuck covid)

I recently joined the Hemingway Society as a means of getting access to the articles which are carried bi-annually in the Hemingway Review.

These articles are pretty much what you might expect, academia indulging itself (though why not?) on topics that would and will never interest the man on the Clapham omnibus and are only interesting to those who are fully believe Hemingway ‘was one of the 20th century’s greatest writers and are interested in minutiae. Having said that, some are — judging by their titles, I have only read three or four — more attractive than others, but my main point stands.

As a member, I was invited to attend a ‘webinar’ over Zoom, over four Fridays. The third will be tomorrow, but as you will see from what I write below, they are pretty much from my point of view a waste of time. But I shall still tune in tomorrow and next Friday.

Below is a ‘letter’ I emailed to a young Scottish academic (Juliet Conway) who moderated the first webinar. I thought I might post that here.

St Breward, July 27, 2021.

Dear Juliet,

As this is a long email, I have also attached it as a Word doc, which you might choose to print out and thus find easier to read. I have also cc-d Suzanne del Gizzo.

I first considered emailing you a few days ago, but dithered because of where I stand on the notion of Hemingway as ‘one of the 20th century’s greatest writers’. You can yourself gauge my view from the title of the project on which I’ve been working.

Ironically, that project began life simply as ‘a project’, any old project really, the undertaking of which was its purpose, but would also allow me to learn more intellectual discipline and other such skills, not least how fully to complete a task which was not necessarily straightforward. Hemingway just happened to be the, more or less random, subject that came along; but as I read more about him and got deeper into it all, the project expanded and expanded. It has now been three years in operation (and there was even a false start).

I’ve finally decided to write to you and try to pick your brains — my question is at the end of this letter — in view of my reading on Hemingway and his work (and of course his work itself ), as well as my membership of the Hemingway Society; and, most pertinently, my experience of the first two of the planned four webinars (of which you moderated the first).

Why am I writing to you rather than any of the other academics who have so far taken part? Well, many years ago, I was at Dundee University, nominally ‘reading’ English and philosophy (and at that age most certainly not equipped in any way to take a university course — university was where we middle-class white chaps ended up unless we were thicker than shit).

I am not Scottish, but while at Dundee I gained a great deal of respect for a certain Scottish independence of mind and scepticism, and I reasoned that as a Scot you might share those traits; and that brings me to my experience of the webinars (so far) and to report a certain disappointment I felt while listening to them.

I was the attendee who in a comment, and rather tactlessly, described the proceedings as somehow akin to a ‘Britney Spears convention’; and although that might be taken as nothing more than an uncalled-for throwaway remark, it does, curiously, hit the nail on the head.

In view of my project, I was hoping for — indeed expecting — rather more intellectual cut and thrust, more of a debate, differing points of view, more of an edge, more disagreement, less (as I said last week in second, possibly equally tactless, comment) ‘campfire cosiness’.

I don’t doubt I’d been a tad naive: the Hemingway Society is, after all, a group of like-minded folk who all — I assume all — accept that Hemingway was ‘one of our greatest writers’: so why would apostates such as me not signed up to the creed bother joining (although I did do so, but for practical reasons)? Why did I expect to find a partial dissenter or two among the Society’s ranks attending the webinars?

Yet I did, and I hoped there would be less uncritical consensus and rather more incisive comment, that even some who were more persuaded of his talents than I still had a doubt or two in this regard or that. But none of it. The ‘disagreements’ seem to me to be of the order of whether ‘Papa’ preferred his coffee black or white, in a mug or cup. (I recall from last Friday something about a ‘yellow house’.)

Here’s an example of the kind of thing that distresses me a little: my next (and I hope penultimate) ‘essay’ is about ‘literary interpretation’; and it will not just address the analysis of Hemingway’s work I have so far read, but such academic analysis in general. (NB Not only does the word ‘essay’ make me self-conscious, but when re-reading those I have so far written, I am aware of their many flaws. As for how they might be read with academic eyes, I try not to think of it. When they all are completed, they will revised mercilessly.)

To be clearer on my view of ‘literary interpretation’: such exegesis of Hemingway’s work or that of any other writer (and I have just read and re-read Carlos Baker’s chapter on Hemingway’s short stories) is, essentially and like it or not, opinion and supposition, no more. It is neither ‘right’ nor ‘wrong’. It is not — because it cannot be — in the same class of thinking as dealing in mathematics and science: you cannot ‘have an opinion’ of whether two and two is four as you can have an opinion on the symbolism — alleged or otherwise — in Hemingway’s work. Yet all too often such interpretations are, tacitly, treated as equally copper-bottomed.

Their exponents, women and men such as Beegel, Baker, Daiker, Eby, Atkins, Moddelmog and Young and the rest are treated as the ‘experts’, the guides; and when you are a youngster in your third or fourth year of high school or studying English literature at undergraduate level, unsure of yourself and not just intellectually, you are apt to

 

follow their guidance. You are likely to accept almost wholesale ‘what you are taught’; and you will be reluctant openly to disagree, not least for fear of jeopardising your grades.

Yes, I know a great deal is made these days of trying to get students ‘to think for themselves’, but this cynic is inclined to dismiss that claim as a certain kind of liberal window dressing. For as always in life in every sphere, the orthodoxy will rule.

Were a student to suggest, honestly and not intending simply to be contrary, that A Very Short Story is essentially little else but an adolescent and nasty makeweight revenge tale signifying very little, or asking just what is the point of Mr and Mrs Elliot, ‘teacher/tutor’ might well conclude she or he ‘hadn’t yet understood them’.

Don’t get me wrong: I am certainly not dismissing all of Hemingway’s work (I especially like Soldier’s Home), although I agree with Dorothy Parker and others that he was a better short story writer than novelist; but I am baffled that all his work is somehow thought to be ‘of genius’. Yet that is the orthodoxy: it reminds me of Matthew Bruccoli’s astute line that ‘Everything [Hemingway] did [from 1929 on], everything he wrote, became important because he was Ernest Hemingway’.

It goes deeper: over time these ‘authoritative’ interpretations ‘of Hemingway’s art’ became the certainties, and, insanely, it is now increasingly up to the apostates to ‘prove them wrong’.

I’m sure you are familiar with Virginia Woolf’s Essay on Criticism as part of her review of Men Without Women. In it she wrote: ‘[Critics] have neither wigs nor outriders. They differ in no way from other people if one sees them in the flesh. Yet these insignificant fellow creatures have only to shut themselves up in a room, dip a pen in the ink, and call themselves ‘we’, for the rest of us to believe that they are somehow exalted, inspired, infallible.’

Substitute ‘academics’ for ‘critics’, and the same holds true. And Woolf’s observation might illuminate the dilemma of the high school and college student and the ‘lay’ reader: no one is inclined to disagree and become a tall poppy.

The title of my project is straightforward and expresses the essence of my interest — ‘The Hemingway Enigma: how did a middling writer come to achieve such global literary fame?’

In fairness the woman and man must — and must always — be distinguished from her or his work. We now know that the sculptor Eric Gill was an incestuous paedophile, but does that have any bearing upon how much his work engages and interests us, pleases us aesthetically and is valued? This question has been asked about Gill and others, and my answer is always: no, none at all.

So put aside, for now, the main factors which helped Hemingway achieve that global status — the subtle but continual self-promotion, the ambitious young man’s networking, the competitive and driven ambition.

Put aside, for now, the incongruity that the man who from an early age was more inclined to lie about his past and experience ostentatiously and noisily championed ‘the truth’; put aside, for now, that this man could — in all seriousness — suggest that ‘a writer creating fiction’ was synonymous with ‘lying’ and that ‘all writers were liars’: why do the ‘experts’ and the ‘guides’ still insist he was ‘a great writer’? On what do they base that continuing verdict?

Are they unaware that the literary and artistic quality of his work — for some of us not bad, but not great either — declined, gradually but inexorably, over the last 30 years of his life? Even the two exceptions among that body of work — For Whom The Bell Tolls and The Old Man And The Sea — were not without reasoned and pertinent criticism. Can anyone ‘grown-up’ really take seriously the ‘love affair’ between Jordan and Maria? It is strikingly far more like the fantasy of a teenage boy.

How do the Hemingway champions explain that ‘one of America’s greatest writers’ and a man who prided himself on his journalistic training and professionalism turned out 120,000 words of copy for a feature when Life initially asked him for a 10,000 (later, at his request, bumped up to 30,000 word)? As a, now retired, print journalist, I know that ‘sticking to the brief’ is the essence of professionalism.

How do they explain that the writer who claimed he revised, revised and revised obsessively could allow one critic in a review of Death In Afternoon to write that Hemingway was ‘guilty of the grievous sin of writing sentences which have to be read two or three times before the meaning is clear’? Or that another reviwer, by no means maliciously, observed that one sentence in Green Hills Of Africa ran to 46 lines and that the result is ‘a kind of etymological gas that is just bad writing’? The question is simple: just how conscientiously did Hemingway revise? How ‘professional’ was he?

I could give other examples — the ‘big book’ (which, drastically edited, became Islands In The Stream) that he could not complete in 15 years’, or that the one-time writer of ‘fibrous and athletic, colloquial and fresh, hard and clean’ prose became so distressingly prolix that he produced a full 2,000 pages for what was eventually cut by nine-tenths to become The Garden Of Eden. (Just how can the novel be seen as ‘Hemingway’s work)?

Why are the Hemingway faithful still in thrall to, and respectful of, Hemingway’s ‘theory of omission’ when years ago Paul Smith pointed out that had Hemingway told his friends in Paris about it (at the time he mentioned it only to Fitzgerald, in a letter), they ‘would have seen it as a version of the commonplace that the structures of literature, like the sentences of the language, imply more than they state and make us feel more than we know’? As for the readers, for several centuries we have experienced it as ‘reading between the lines’; but it was not, as Hemingway convinced himself, his own ‘discovery’.

Yet Hemingway’s loyal champions do explain it all away and rationalise the list of such incongruities with the argument that boils down to the almost insultingly simplistic ‘but this was Ernest Hemingway, one of the 20th century’s greatest writers’.

I was born and raised a Roman Catholic, but have long declared UDI and no longer have any truck with the official church line which tried to fob off a faithful baffled by doctrines such as ‘the Trinity’ and ‘transubstantiation’ as being ‘mysteries’ which ‘only God’s grace will allow us to understand’. Something similar seems, unwittingly, to be going on with Ernest Hemingway.

Has no one not wondered why — despite Hemingway’s ostentatious and studied anti-intellectualism and apparent view that talk about art was airy-fairy nonsense — he, who, Baker insists, tackled ‘difficult problems’ and ‘experimented’, did not now and then discuss technique, theory, his experiments and such with like-minded women and men? If he did, there is no record of it.

When he did seem to be ‘discussing’ writing, he simply laid down the law, which is to say his law. (‘All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know’? Sorry, but that’s little more than guff to dazzle the teens.) Is it not as obvious to the Hemingway faithful as to the rest of us that there is no such thing as ‘the’ truth, that there is an infinite number of ‘truths’, ranging from the personal and subjective truths to the scientific and forensic; and that in fiction any number of ‘truths’ can be posited?

Is it not as obvious to them that such bargain-basement metaphysics as something being ‘truer than true’ is simply jejune sentiment which should impress no one older than 19? What does it mean? It’s about as profound as a Britney Spears pop lyric.

Have the Hemingway champions not considered these and other questions? Apparently not. Apparently it is us, the apostates, the non-believers, who are at fault in that we still don’t ‘get’ Hemingway. That’s why I was so disappointed with the webinars. Where was the incisive cut and thrust which can make debate a real pleasure?

So here is my question to you, Juliet. Apart from wanting to make the above points and, I dearly hope, elicit a response to them from you, this is why I am writing: are there any academics, equally respected as the Hemingway champions, who are more inclined to share my scepticism and acknowledge the essence of the enigma I describe?

I am not talking of anyone of the ilk of a certain Richard Bradford, whose biography of Hemingway was quite bizarre and irrationally hostile, but women and men who have considered the matter and find they can’t disagree with me. If there are, I would dearly like you to pass on their names so that I can read some of their work, if it exists.

Sorry for going on so long, but I’ve been feeling guilty that my tactlessness risked spoiling the party for the past two Fridays and, apart from anything else, I wanted to say so.

With my best wishes for the rest of the week,

Patrick Powell (no longer in Dundee but now in deepest, darkest North Cornwall).

PS Since writing almost all of the above, I’ve come across the podcast by Suzanne which discusses A Very Short Story which I shall now go and listen to with interest.

I am also considering flying out to Wyoming and Montana next July to attend a society conference, though not because I’m going soft on the man, but I’ve always wanted to visit Montana (after reading a ‘cowboy’ story called The Man From Montana when I was about six), have a good break, take in a visit to friends in Philadelphia, attend such a conference.  (For that reason I also attended a Conservative Party conference in Blackpool years ago, which raised a few eyebrows. My reasons were not orthodox, though: I went because I wanted to to attend a party conference (any might have done) and to visit Blackpool (which for many in Britain was for long a byword of a certain kind of holiday. Perhaps I even wrote a blog about it. I’ll check).

I’ve done various costings on the basis of a ten-day stay and it won’t — in my world — be cheap. But it will be a one-off. I’m toying with the idea of trying to get one or two publications interested in a feature, to be written once I return.

In which I touch upon a son’s disrespect for the 5th Commandment, the weather, the importance of ‘a glass of something’ and the Last Days, but please don’t be alarmed by the biblical references. (Biblical! Capital B! ED)

Sitting outside our cottage in the garden just now on one of those rare days of warmth and sunshine we are granted by the good Lord here in Old Blighty, I recalled a conversation I had with my son W. a few days ago. It was the same set-up: I was sitting in the garden with a glass of something to hand and it was sunny, though with the one main difference that it was hot. Very hot, in fact, but not too hot.

Courtesy of ‘global warming’ – actually ‘climate change’ is now the more modern and more correct term to use, and apparently the problem is getting so serious in some English counties, Hampshire, I believe and Derbyshire and Cumbria you can now be fined for calling it ‘global warming’. It has to be ‘climate change’, so that we are all signed up to sing from the same hymn sheet. Wasn’t it Archbishop William Laud who observed quite wisely . . . (No it wasn’t and get on with it! Ed) — courtesy of ‘climate change’ we had been basking in very hot weather for several days. Well, comparatively very hot here in Britain, where the Met Office designates ‘a sunny day’ by how many queues of more than 10ft long form outside My Whippy vans in designated seaside resorts.

Today is not at all hot, but what we middle-class white folk have been taught to call ‘very pleasant’, and if we are in the company of someone who went to the right school, we are encouraged to describe the day as ‘very pleasant indeed’, to ensure they know that we, too went, to the right school. But as I was saying. . .

The other day I was also sitting outside (reading up on more guff about that old fraud Ernest Hemingway, but that’s not relevant, I just want to assure you I wasn’t frittering my time away) and the spot I have chosen was just outside my son’s downstairs bedroom, which was once the utility room, that is where we had our chest freeze, washing machine, my desk and computer and whatever crap we couldn’t stash elsewhere. (It’s a lot nicer now.) At that spot is a wooden table and a solid wooden chair I treated myself to, to use on just such occasions as these). Anyway . . .

After some minutes I went inside to get something from the kitchen (no doubt to top up my glass of something, ouzo and Pernod are my current tipple) and my son, who bedroom (that is the former utility room is next to the kitchen asked me: ‘Where you talking to yourself, Dad?’ Well, as it happens I was. As it happens I do that quite a bit, usually imaginary conversation I have with people.

‘That’s odd,’ he said.

‘No, it isn’t,’ I replied. ‘I was daydreaming.’

Well, I was, and I do daydream quite bit (and have always done so which led to an awful lot of trouble at work when I was not concentrating one what I was reading).

‘It’s still odd,’ he said. And that’s how we left it. Trying to persuade someone that daydreaming ‘is not odd’ (even if it involves having imaginary conversations) is rather more pointless than trying to persuade someone who is convinced the Moon is made of cheese or that aliens built the pyramids that it isn’t and they didn’t. My advice in that situation is to cut your losses and shut up and go and top up your glass of something.

Here are the inside of my shed (pictured below, and I have to say more comfortable than the small corner of the utility room I was granted), the table outside my son’s room where I sit (also pictured), and — as a bonus, a snap I took by mistake but which I quite like (the one that doesn’t look like the inside of a man cave or an outdoor wooden table. You'll spot it, hard to miss). I’ve added copies of all three piccies in black and white for those souls who still like to call radios ‘the wireless’ and think the internet and ‘streaming’ are indubitably signs of the Last Days.

Pip, pip.

Incidentally, my son has in the past also accused my of being ‘theatrical’. I took exception to that, but let the matter rest at the time when we established he didn’t mean the word as code for ‘gay’.