Got work to do . . . Plus yet another plug (you guys really are slow on the uptake. Bet most of you are foreign)

One reason I want to get this Hemingway project completed, done and dusted — and actually ‘completing’ it was one of the main reasons for starting it, learning discipline, patience, endurance, clearer thinking — is because I want to get on with one or two other projects (and which will not be quite as easy). And I am getting no younger.

That Hemingway is at the centre of this project is, ironically, irrelevant. I don’t much enjoy the writing (though he did write several very good short stories, The Killers and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, not being among them in my view).

I think his — small — gift was for short story writing and most certainly not for novels which strike me as nothing but mediocre Boys’ Own adventure potboilers. Brett Ashley has a modicum of oomph, but that drippy Catherine Barkley is not even two-dimensional.

And, furthermore, from what I have learned of the man over these past few years — yes, it’s now been that sodding long! — he and I would not have got on, not for two seconds. Hemingway was ‘larger than life’ and proof if proof were needed that the phrase is simply code for ’a complete pain in the arse’.

I am one of those who acknowledges that we all have our good traits and our less pleasant traits, but more to the point just one or two bad traits can play havoc with quite a few good traits. Put another way, one bad trait can negate ten good traits.

I am undoubtedly rather less aware of my own bad traits than others are, but I am aware of some: and — time for Mr Smug to show his cheery face — I don’t believe I am irredeemably awful. (Apostates, please leave a comment below, then fuck off.)

Anyway to get back on the straight and narrow and try to meander a little less, I’m keen to finish this project so I can get on with what I should really be doing. Oh, and bugger any thoughts of ‘being published’, just getting it done and proving to myself that I am not just another incarnation of Joe Bullshit will be fine by me. Honestly.

That is one of the few benefits of growing older (and far less visible to attractive women — sad but true): you tend have fewer illusions.

Along those lines, I came across a rule-of-thumb statistic several years ago which is always worth remembering and I don’t doubt essentially true: for every 1,000 novels that are written, one is published; for every 1,001 novels that are published, one sells a little. And to that one might add: for every 10,001 novels talked about, planned, dreamed up and I don’t know what, 100 are started and just one is completed.

I write all this — and only now am I getting around to what kicked it off in the first place — because this walking minority report has come across something which has again touched upon what puzzles, not to say, baffles me.

Earlier today, wanting to read a piece by Hemingway biographer Jeffery Meyers that appeared in the Times Literary Supplement six years ago, I took out a digital subscription to the TLS, and decided to get my money’s worth and mosey around, using the search term ‘Hemingway’. There was not a great deal, but I did come across this.

First of all, I am put off by the, often obligatory, reference to ‘genius’. Worse, Gertrude Stein looses even more points by proclaiming herself to be a ‘genius’. Now, Yanks reading that might not be too upset, but we Brits are a little more particular in such matters (‘particular’ being the Brit word for ‘uptight’): the upshot is, you don’t do it.

If someone else wants to proclaim you as ‘a genius’ fair enough but watch your arse though no harm is done. If someone declares her or himself as a genius — no more sherry and Bath Olivers for you, good chap, now on your bike!

I have never read anything by Stein and certainly not her 1,000-word opus The Making Of Americans, but that got me to thinking: has anyone? I have come across excerpts of it, and I wasn’t encouraged to seek out any more excerpts. But then, let’s face it, I might well be a philistine. More to the point, what ‘should’ novels be about?

To talk about that we must get past the first hurdle, the — to my mind spurious — distinction between ‘literature’ and every other piece of fiction that is published. Should we distinguish? Well, no, we shouldn’t.

Those who champion ‘literature’ might like to think that ‘literature’ is marked out by writing that deals with the ‘higher’ things in life and existence, ‘the human condition’ and all that, and ‘every other piece of fiction’ doesn’t (although, sometimes it does, but let’s not quibble). But, but in fact, surely what is pertinent here is how well something it done. I seem to be retreading my last blog entry here, but what the hell. It’s all ‘literature’!

The distinguishing factors are that somehow some books appeal to us on a different level to a workaday thrillers or chic lit or whatever your bag might be. And who is not to say that even such ‘downmarket’ writing might not have more subtle undercurrents?

But having said that, it would be almost impossible to lay down qualifications. For example, a year or two ago I read Saturday by one Ian McEwan, a literary writer who has more sodding awards than you can shake a stick at (and I reviewed it here). And as far as I was concerned it was shite. Quite awful. Yet McEwan is — or possibly now ‘was’ — one of the big noises in the British literary scene, hence the awards.

I am well aware of the cosy underlying nexus which drives the literary industry: in no particular order, writers want to be read and so need a publisher; publishers want to sell books and so need writers they think will sell; to sell they must indulge in the below deck marketing of being mentioned in the Books pages of publications and on the Books programmes of radio and TV; those Books pages and programmes need ‘copy/subject matter’, so they are only too glad to play ball with the publishers (one back scratching the others); then it comes back to the writer: the astute scribbler will get to know what kind of book the publishers want to sell and will supply it.

Those who don’t deliver the particular ‘saleable goods’ can frankly go hang.

I don’t read any ‘new writers’. Quite apart from having most of my reading time taken up with stuff about Hemingway, my view is that there are too many books which have stood the test of time which I might enjoy before I start dicking around with ‘modern literature’ (or that phoney old, oxymoronic standby, a ‘new classic’, though hats off to the cynic in the marketing department who first dreamed up that one).

Do really want to read ‘an important new novel’ outlining how the world is heading to eco-disaster? Or how family life is awful / fantastic? Or growing up gay in an Amish/mining/black community? Granted, the proof of the pudding is always in the eating or to put another way ‘it’s not the joke but the way you tell it’, and we should always be ready to be surprised by a new talent. But . . .

That might go some way to explaining why — sour grapes notwithstanding, obviously — I am not holding my breath about ‘getting a publisher’.

I realise I have meandered a little too much in this entry, but — well, tough titties. But I shall end by yet again plugging — for the umpteenth time a rather promising novel (which happens to be by me. Oh, and always remember never to judge a book by its cover, quite literally in this case.

It’s called Love: A Fiction, you can find it here and if by some fluke someone in publishing or even with a tenuous connection to publishing reads this, do yourself a favour and check it out. You might, if nothing else, at least find it is an enjoyable read — no eco disaster, no gay character, not family trauma, nothing.

Oh, and even if you are too tight-fisted to buy it but noted my comments on the literary industry merry-go-round, you could at least — it will cost you nothing — check out this short story.

Pip, pip.

‘Passionate about literature’ and ‘you want to investigate the human condition’? Well, sod off — you’re barred from this blog. There are no rules and don’t fall for anyone’s schtick that there are

This entry is, in fact, just a trial run of something I want to include in my ‘Hemingway bollocks’ because I find I am able to clarify my thoughts better in conversation and writing than I do in thinking.

So it might be best to clarify them here first and sound like a fool in these pages rather than later in the bollocks itself.

Note to astute readers: you will, I’m sure, already be aware that self-deprecation is rarely as honest as it purports to be, and all too often flies under a very false flag. In fact, it has nothing to do with modesty but is usually just a form of self-defence. If ‘I can belittle myself first’, that will rather take the wind out of your sails if you try to belittle me. 

The bonus when resorting to self-deprecation is that the less astute readers — which, let’s be frank is most of you — will be suckered into thinking it is also an admirable demonstration of modesty. Oh, and my reference to ‘astute readers’ is another ploy: flattery. Flattery almost always works a treat.

For some reason all the above has made me think of one of the sayings by Francois de La Rochefoucauld (left) which seems to me to be obscurely related:

‘A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice’.

And that is very, very true. I have a line which I have actually used, although it was for my own amusement to see if it would work rather than to win some advantage. It goes like this:

'I often use flattery to try to win people over, but I suspect you’re a little too bright to fall for that kind of thing.'

And yes, it worked, and it even works if whoever you are talking to is aware of what you are up to. ‘Ah,’ they tell themselves, ‘but then I spotted that a mile off and didn’t fall for it’. They might not then consciously follow up with ‘and clever me’, but they will certainly feel just a little proud with their small triumph. So: result!

But back to what I wanted to write about.

One problem with my way of writing my ‘bollocks’ — now a series of essays on their own website (which I have plugged incessantly, but shall do so again) and which I shall also have printed up courtesy of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing — is that while I am reading and writing, I think up things ‘I want to say’ at some point.

But long ago I decided not to make a note of them simply because when I did jot down short notes, I never bloody read them. The only useful notes I do read are along the lines of ‘good quote in [author] pxx’.

My view is that if I thought it once, it will occur to me again, and if it doesn’t well, it couldn’t have been much of a thought in the first place.

My ‘bollocks’ (and I must find the courage to drop the quote marks and stand tall and proud) is drawing to a close as far as the writing is concerned (i.e. I shall have to go through the whole thing and revise it).

I am now completing a section of the ‘potted biography’ covering 1945 to Hemingway’s suicide in 1961, and then it is time to write the ‘conclusion’. One of the many points I shall make is that reactions to Hemingway and subsequent judgments are invariably subjective and cannot be anything but.

I have already written an essay on that topic — specifically that no number of subjective judgments, however much they agree with each other, will equate to an objective judgment. And though many might superficially agree with me, they are essentially behaving as though they do add up to objective judgment.

I make the point that ‘the arts’ cannot be compared to ‘the sciences’ — that (super-clever mathematicians notwithstanding, I’ll say cautiously) 2 + 2 = 4, and it would be a certain kind of nonsense to ‘have an opinion’ on whether that is true or not. Yet the arts industry de facto behave as though there is a kind of copper-bottomed ‘this is / this is not’ element to their thinking and judgments.

In that sense all the bods who staff literature departments of schools, colleges and universities acquire an odd kind of ‘we are the experts’ status, almost like the high priests in some religions.

They might — they probably will — deny it and affect a faux modesty, and insist that they are just regular chaps like you and I, but don’t fall for that schtick: they think they are right and — as with my apostasy on Ernest Hemingway, ‘greatest American author of the 20th century of this parish’ — others are wrong or mad. 

I’ll just throw this in for good measure: I metaphorically run a mile if and when I hear someone declare him or herself ‘passionate about literature’. Really? Fuck off.

Moving on a little, my ‘conclusion’ will not just highlight how — I shall contend — your, my and everyone else’s judgment on this or that writer, poem, painter and composer is essentially and wholly subjective, but that there is also the not-so-slight problem of ‘relativism’ to cloud the issue.

I must confess that what I ‘know’ about ‘relativism’ in the philosophically academic sense is tiny. But I am a firm believer that all ‘philosophical problems’ are at the core simple. The one I always quote is, in moral philosophy, the ‘is / ought’ gap.

Seen from another angle, that ‘is / ought gap’ is the essential difference between ‘prescriptive’ and ‘descriptive’ rules, i.e. at what point and on whose authority does the observation that ‘we have been doing it this way for some time’ become the instruction ‘this is how we should be doing it (because we have been doing it this way for some time)’?

Very many eminent philosopher have broken their hears and souls trying to crack that one and none has succeeded. More to the point none will succeed. (It was all a little easier when many still believed in and acknowledged the ultimate authority of ‘God’, but then he died about 300 years ago and it all went tits up. The most recent attempt to bridge the ‘is / ought’ gap is when we insist on the immutable existence of ‘fundamental human rights’.

Nice try, but no cigar, although I should swiftly point out that I am slandering the philosophical attempts to make those rights immutable, not the acceptance by many, not least me, that every man jack and jill on Earth has the right to be treated with dignity.

In the early 20th century a gang of ‘thinkers’ who were regarded as (or called themselves, I don’t know which) ‘logical positivists’ and were known as the Vienna Circle (great gang of lads, right) and who were rather keen on mathematics, did suggest that ‘reality’ might be reduced to and understood better as — well, whatever it was they were reducing it to and understanding it better as.

Because as far as I’m concerned ‘philosophy’ is firmly in the woolly, fluffy arts camp and has no place among the hard-nosed toughs of science, in that sense it was another attempt to equate ‘the arts’ with the science, to insist that there was a mechanistic dimension to ‘art’, one which might allow ‘objectivity’ and ‘objective’ judgments.

That is partly what I want to suggest in my ‘conclusion’, though at not too great a length as I have already written an essay on it.

I then want to follow that up with the suggestion that each story, novel, poem, painting and piece of music should be — that bloody word ‘should’ again, damn! — evaluated and judgment hermetically. In practical terms that might be difficult, but I do think each work should be judged in and of itself.

Further to the question of subjectivity is the — in one way more obvious question — of what we actually ‘like’ and ‘dislike’. With the best will in the world that, too, might have a bearing on our judgment of a piece of prose or poetry.

For example, I have a preference for what I am tempted to call ‘well-written prose’, but that immediately begs the question ‘so what is and is not well-written?’ And now you have just opened another can of worms.

One analogy that occurred to me when reading some Hemingway story or other was that it was like stumbling through a newly-ploughed field. It wasn’t easy to read.

That is, and cannot be, a fundamental objection, of course, because a writer is doing — one assumes — 1,001 other things when she or he writes. And who says writing should be ‘easy’?

Joyce’s Ulysses is said to be a ‘great work of art’, but is it ‘easy to read’. Well, I — who can admit to having read quite literally every word of the book, but further admit it was just the once and that I probably never shall again — can confirm Ulysses is not ‘easy to read’.

(And by the by, there has even been the serious suggestion from people more qualified to make such suggestions than I that ‘Joyce could certainly have done with an editor’). I’ve also attempted Faulkner and did not like it enough to persevere, although that was some years ago and I might have matured enough intellectually to try a second attempt. But the ease or difficulty with which one can read an author can’t, I think, be the main yardstick by which a work is judged.

One such measure would, though, be: how well has this author managed to achieve what she or he set out to achieve. But then we are again opening a can of worms, our second or third can of worms (I’ve lost count).

If, as I suggest, a work should be judged hermetically and we do not resort to external ‘evidence’, the question is then ‘can know what an author intended to do?’ If, once have persuaded ourselves we do know, we might be able to judge whether the intention was realised.

On the other hand how can we be sure we know ‘what the writer intended’? For example Hemingway wrote his long short story Big Two-Hearted River in 1925/6, but it wasn’t until several decades later, it seems, that he declared he intended it to portray the mental healing of a young man who had returned from war.

That has now become the standard exegesis, but I suggest you wouldn’t pick up on that (as I didn’t) simply by reading the story.

Here, perhaps, an example from the real world might help. I have before written about the website Deadline For Writers (which I have found very helpful in getting me off my arse and actually writing fiction).

In the past three years I have submitted 51 short stories and 42 pieces of verse and every now and then others who are members comment on a story or poem. And what they ‘see’ in the piece, what they think I am trying to convey and what a piece ‘means’ to them are quite often something different to what I thought my story ‘was about’.

So here’s the question: I would assume it is axiomatic that when we create art (and I hold that ‘art’ is a ‘process’, an ‘undertaking’, an ‘activity’, not some vague metaphysical property that some pieces have and others do not have), we are doing so consciously.

The ‘art’ — in whatever medium — consists of ‘conceiving’ (perhaps in the process even and often re-conceiving and altering the original conception), then ‘realising’ that conception, giving it ‘form’ (in the case of sound and music that meant metaphorically).

When we come to judge the ‘worth’ of that piece, we might depend on how successful think the author of it (or artist or composer) has been in ‘realising’ a conception. Even Hemingway might be thought to agree with that suggestions.

Although he was responding in the 1930s to pressure from the Left to make his writing more ‘engaged’ and ‘socially relevant’ he said: ‘There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.’ (Oscar Wilde took a similar view on ‘good art’ and ‘bad art’, but I can’t offhand come up with any ready quote from the man.)

None of what I write here is or intended to be ‘hard and fast’. There are far too many bods — not least sodding ‘Papa’ himself (and, Lord, is that nickname absurd) — laying down the law on this, that and t’other. As far as I am concerned what works, works and what doesn’t doesn’t (and laws were made to be broken, although having said that, this old codger has finally learned the wisdom of learning to walk before trying to run).

Furthermore, something, some way of ‘creating’ might work for some but not for others, so what is the point of becoming dogmatic and didactic?

Hemingway was dogmatic and didactic, though and sincerely thought he was one of the world’s best writers. Something he said, which I have only recently come across, gives — me at — least a little more insight into his thinking. It was in a letter he sent to his editor at Scribner’s Max Perkins:

It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

Well, no, Ernie, dear heart, that’s nonsense bordering on total bollocks. If nothing else, trying your hand at ‘creating’, call it what you will, is the last free place in the world. It is a very wild west and there are no laws. You might not find anyone in the least bit interested by what you have ‘created’, but that’s not the point: do what you want to do.

Obviously, it also depends on what your goal is: if ‘earning a living and making money’ is your goal, there certainly are ‘law of prose writing’ but they are dependent on the industry to which you intend to sell our soul.

If you want to serve the crime-writing readers and become a big noise in the crime-writing fraternity, go for it, but remember to do it their way. If you want to woo slushy romance readers, mug up on An Idiot’s Guide To Writing Slushy Romans.

If ‘examining the human condition’ and ‘creating serious art’ is your bag (and you don’t mind making no money but will settle for drinking acidic, lukewarm white wine with folk who are ‘passionate about literature’) mug up on An Idiot’s Guide To Writing Serious Literature.

There seem to be as many different kinds of writing as there are writers, as many different reasons for writing as there are writers and there are no ‘law of prose’ writing.

If one were talking about writing as ‘communication’ — which, though, we are not — there could be might be law, more of a rule: make yourself bloody understood! If you fail to make yourself understood, you haven’t communicated, have you.

In fact, in a broader sense that is true even if you are trying to convey — as in communicate — something a little more complex than the time of the next train to London. If you do manage to ‘communicate’ what you were trying to communicate, then you are succeeding. But if you don’t . . . (and don’t fool yourself).

At this point I am obliged to draw attention to what I wrote about those who read a story or poem of mine and who ‘saw’ something different (and which I had no idea was there): that’s another good reason for why it’s best for writers never to discuss their work.

A writer not discussing ‘their work’ might piss off their publisher (if they are lucky enough to have one), but that is a small price to pay for preserving readers’ illusions. And what is ‘art’ after all but one huge illusion?

I mean if you have read this blog entry so far and have come to the conclusion that I am ‘a great writer in the making’, I would be a moron to persuade you you’re wrong. If that’s your illusion . . .