An explanation . . . and let’s hear it for the Sun wot woz

For two days I had adapted my main blog title pic to wish everyone a Happy New Year for 2023. Well, I wish I hadn’t, although it’s not as grave as it was an hour or two ago.

This morning I decided to replace the adapted picture with the original. The trouble was I couldn’t find the original. I seemed think I knew where it was, but . . .

What the hell, I thought, just stick another piccy there instead. Well, that’s what I have done, and in the 13 years since I have been running this blog, it will be perhaps the fourth or fifth time I have replaced the picture. But the trouble is I do it so rarely, I have to learn afresh how to do it.

I still don’t really know, but I have finally managed it and pretty much replicated what was there before. That doesn’t matter very much, except that somehow I had introduced elements which were bloody awful – for example, the dateline at the top and the ‘labels’ at the bottom suddenly had a black background, as in tabloid speak a WOB – white on black.

And I didn’t want it. (Actually, for some reason it was not black but a very, very, very dark blue, so more or less black. But who’s counting?)

For example, here’s headline which actually appeared in the Sun (the ‘soaraway Sun!’) a decade or two ago when the Sun was still a cracking tabloid which made you laugh and smile every day, not the piss-poor imitation of a tabloid it has become.

The story was about ‘research’ which had come the Sun’s way – it’s amazing the kind of research newspapers can dig up – that drinking alcohol has a deleterious effect on the size of your todger. Who knows, it might even be true.

But anyway, panic now over and the appearance of this blog is pretty much back to acceptable.

Pip, pip.

NB I have texted a former colleague who used to work for the Sun about the the headline and whether the spelling is correct, but the message is taking and age to go (I am on an iPhone, he’s seems to be on Android) so I’ll go with the spelling above for now.

Welcome to the Age of Dunces (and hold on to your hats!) Note to both Putin and Xi: remember this from Talleyrand – C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute

A few years ago, I posted my ‘New Year’s Message’. Well, if it’s good enough for the sodding Pope, the then Queen (she croaked last year), our Presidents, Prime Ministers, CEOs and the chap in charge of the car pool at the depot, it’s good enough for me. So I shall do it again, but I shan’t give you the usual blather (well, try not to) as there will be enough of that for the next 365 days.

Yes, ‘things will be tough’, but then when weren’t they? And let’s face it, not only will they be far tougher for some than others but, crucially, one man’s ‘tough’ is another man’s ‘well, aren’t some the lucky ones?’

Years ago when lived in London, I went to the theatre once or twice, and at Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square I saw Six Degrees Of Separation, an entertaining enough play. I mention it because I seemed to remember one line which sums up well the discrepancy in our many different lives.

But as it turns out, I don’t. I’ve just looked up the script of the play and can’t find the line or variations of it anywhere. But it’s still a good line, and my memory of it runs like this: a character complains of ‘living on the breadline’, to which another character replies

We’re all on the breadline but start from a different base.

Quite.

Just as for some ‘a tragedy’ is leaving the house without their smartphone - horror! - or possibly even worse, discovering just as they are leaving that they have forgotten to charge it overnight!, for others tragedy is rather closer to what might be described as ‘true tragedy’.

For many in Ukraine, their lives are in some ways tragic: they were attacked without cause by Russia and the onslaught continues, and there seems no end to it. What makes it all the worse is that if - if - Putin’s spurious ‘justification’ - that he is ‘protecting’ Russia and that, anyway, Ukraine is an ‘artificial state’ and, in fact, part of Russia - held any water, he is still on a hiding to nothing.

At present his ‘military operation’ has been so piss-poor that tens of thousands of Russian troops have been killed, he has not gained any territory and what support he might have had from men and women living in the Donetsk area will vanishing as they see their homes and communities reduced to rubble and many have been murdered.

Even if by some fluke his troops do manage to ‘conquer’ Ukraine, how on earth does Putin think Russia can hold on to it? That he knows he is on to a loser is obvious from the hints he’s making about ‘peace’ talks. He is trying to spin the situation into it seeming that the Ukrainians are unwilling to negotiate and a barrier to a ceasefire and ‘peace’. Well, not quite, Vlad laddie.

Definite demands from Ukraine, the sine qua non of all negotiation, will be that all Russian troops are withdrawn from all Ukrainian territory and that Russia makes full reparation for the damage it has caused and - though quite who do you make ‘reparation’ for human life? - for the deaths it has been responsible for.

There will certainly be pressure on Ukraine and her president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ‘compromise’ to ensure the war ends as soon as possible, but it is almost impossible to see how Ukraine might ‘compromise’: the demands outlined above are surely the very, very least Russia must comply with.

But this is politics: the West has been surprisingly supportive of Ukraine and after Putin shut off supplies of the gas Russia supplies Europe with, energy bills have shot up. So far there has been little dissent, but there is some dissent.

Why, some right-wing politicos in Europe and, crucially, the US are asking, are we making this sacrifice? Well, actually the answer is obvious but, ironically, cannot be articulated: we are doing our very best to limit Russia’s power and influence and given the thuggish nature of its leaders in the past, both immediate and distant, that seems like a sensible objective.

The problem is we can’t spell out that objective because that would play right into Putin’s hands: he contends that the US and the West are ‘out to get Russia, to destroy the country’.

That his contention doesn’t hold water for a second is neither here nor there: all he need to is convince the Russian people those are the West’s intentions and they will gather behind him to support him. Perception is all.

‘His contention doesn’t hold water?’ I hear you asking. How do you work that out? Well, it is remarkably straightforward. The age of empires has long passed.

And even in that age the objective was not to hold land and ‘be boss’ just to hold land and ‘be boss’: the whole point was to ensure access to the resources of those lands - cheaply - and, latterly, to turn them into ‘markets’ for goods produced by the relevant imperial power.

Certainly, there were some imperialists who were dazzled by the ‘prestige’ of ‘being the boss’, but such folk were - in the eyes of business and commerce - simpletons. A comparatively recent example would be Germany Kaiser Wilhelm II: arguably he had both a chip on his shoulder and wasn’t very bright.

He was certainly thought by some to have a certain ‘quick’ intelligence but in may book he is a prime example of how ‘intelligent’ people are often quite stupid.

When evaluating someone’s ‘intelligence’ - at the end of the day a concept so vague as to mean little - it might help if we took a far broader view of their personality and behaviour and the results of their actions. Seen that way Wilhelm II was rather thick.

Envious of the British empire ‘ruled’ by his grandmother Queen Victoria and then his cousin King Edward VII, he believed Germany should also have an empire and set about trying to acquire one in East Africa and South-West Africa. He didn’t get very far.

One of Germany’s main strengths was its deeply cynical but very effective chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Yet Bismarck was also a pragmatist: he certainly wanted Germany to thrive and sit at the top table but only if the price was right. He was against starting wars simply for the sake of starting wars and gaining ‘prestige’. Wilhelm II was.

Bismarck lasted for 12 years after Wilhelm II’s accession as Kaiser, but was finally forced to resign. Arguably, that’s when - in 1890 - the process leading to World War I (‘The Great War’) which began 24 years later began. Bismarck would not have let it happen (though by then he would have been 99 and most probably would long have been dead).

. . .

Humankind has been said to be distinguished not by its ability to ‘be rational’ but by its tendency often to ‘behave irrationally’. Putin has certainly behaved irrationally by invading Ukraine (and is now paying the price). And his contention that the West is out to destroy Russia - which I’m not too sure he even believes himself - is also irrational.

The US and the West want stability and that is what the people of its nations want it to provide. I would bet my bottom rouble that is also what the vast majority of Russians want: a quiet, peaceful life.

The US and the West are not interested in acquiring territory. All they want to acquire is more markets and the various missteps of history have shown us that in the 21st century peace and stability ensure that markets grow. Wars don't (except for the Daddy Warbucks of all nationalities).

Ideally we would want a Russia that is prosperous enough to buy all the shite we want to sell it. And frankly who cares whether Russia is a ‘liberal democracy’ with ‘free and fair elections’ or run by a corrupt thug? However, what business does care about is ‘the rule of law’, but this is purely of pragmatic reasons not ethical ones.

‘The rule of law’ and a decent justice system (though there is more to the rule of law than just its justice system) will make it safer to invest in Russia and do business there. And if there is contractual disagreement, a civil court system business can trust is worth its weight in gold. And Russia most certainly does not have that.

But what Russia did have, however flawed it seems in the eyes of the West (which, er, is certainly not perfect) is preferable to the situation there is now. Frankly, Putin doesn’t need to fear the US and the West are out to ‘destroy Russia’. He is doing a fine job all on his own.

As for his gripe that Nato is expanding, well by invading Ukraine and tacitly threatening its other neighbouring countries, the bright little spark has ensured exactly that is now happening with several previously neutral countries knocking on the door and asking to be let in. Clever Putin, once suspected of being ‘a master strategist’, is another example how ‘intelligent’ people can often be remarkably stupid. The first Dunce’s Cap to you, Mr Putin.

. . .

Another candidate for the Dunce’s Cap is one Xi Jinping. And he, too, is proving he has, to the surprise of many, feet of clay. Perhaps he first piece of stupidity was to get himself to be declared - more or less - ‘boss of China for life’ last October.

I have just spent a few minutes trying to establish what his official ‘job’ is now, but didn’t get far. Whether he is ‘boss of China’ by being head honcho of the Chinese Communist Party, as China’s president or chairman of the Central Military Commission is neither here nor there: Xi now calls the shots.

And China is not like, say, Britain where a ‘vote of no confidence’ might trigger the Prime Minister’s resignation. More so than before - and it might be argued that in the decades leading to Xi’s accession China has seen ‘a more liberal’ totalitarian state - Xi rules by fear. But 2023 might see him come unstuck, though I for one am not keeping my fingers crossed given the disruption that might cause.

Like pretty much everywhere else, if the people are content they are apt to give you no trouble. The students and idealists and revolutionaries might bang on about principles and free elections and I don’t know what else, but all other things being equal of folk have a reasonably trouble-free life - even if their neighbours don’t - they are apt not to rock the boat.

Xi’s stupidity consists of seemingly to ignore that simple truth. Whether or not covid originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, or not is also neither here nor there. Xi’s immediate response was for ‘zero-covid’ - a total lockdown.

What is crucial is that it wasn’t, for a while, the discontent of the locked-down people that was damaging but the impact it had on the economy. Some factories were either forced to shut or their workers were locked in at the factory and both worked and lived there.

The impact on the economy gradually became apparent, and then so did the people’s discontent so that a few weeks ago there were street protests. There are, it seems, quite a few street protests in Chinese and we in the West don’t much hear of them.

They were almost all a bout local issues and thus of little impact nationwide. But these protests were different: there were calls for Xi to go, and such public lèse-majesté was new. More than that, despite the stranglehold on the internet in China word got around fast.

What did stupid Xi do? Overnight he abolished all lockdown restrictions - and covid is now spreading like wildfire. The danger to the rest of the world, which broadly has conquered the pandemic, is that covid, and possibly new strains, will go global and we shall be back to square one. Yippee!

Stupid Xi is also demonstrating quite how inept - and irrational - he is by ratcheting up the tensions with Taiwan. This is a throwback to the ‘age of empires’. China has long insisted that Taiwan is not an independent state but a rogue province. Fair enough, and who cares, as long was the situation remains peaceful.

Xi, though, has a bee in his bonnet - think silly old Kaiser Wilhelm II - that Taiwan must be re-incorporated into China. And he has indicated that he intends doing so sooner rather than later. Why? Well, ask Xi. Who knows?

This is bad news all round, not just for that neck of the Far Eastern world (obviously seen from a narrow Western perspective - for China Europe is the Far Western world) but for all of us. If we think covid has damaged the global economy, consider what war between China and Taiwan will mean. And it might - or might not - involve the US.

Welcome to 2023 and what might be called the Age of Dunces.

Dreams (and dreaming, one of my favourite pastimes)

Several years ago, in December 2017 I think, my brother and I joined my sister and German brother-in-law and about 90 other Germans – well, at least three coachloads, although the coaches were all independent – for a week-long tour of Morocco.

It was very cheap, about €120 including flights from German (though I had to fly to Düsseldorf from London which added to my cost) and halfway through the trip it dawned on me why it was so cheap, though I should stress it was ‘cheap’ only in terms of the overall cost. The hotels we stayed in were certainly not cheap in any way. and breakfast and supper were included at every hotel.

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, however. First of all we spent in inordinate amount of time on the sodding coach, being driven – I can’t remember in which order – from Marrakesh to Rabat to Fes to Casablanca and these cities are quite a distance away.

Yes, we were shown the sights but the purpose of the trip, which I suspect was subsidised by the Moroccan Tourist Board, was for us to buy stuff. So along the way we visited silversmiths and other metal workers, a tanning factory and shop, some kind of herbal chemist’s shop and that kind of thing. 

Not a bad commercial idea, of course, and although I didn’t buy a sausage, I’m sure one or two Germans did. (I wrote several blog entries about it at the time which you can look up if you are interested.)

I mention it because on one night during the trip I had a very vivid dream which I realised would, could and, one day I hope will, become a long story. I dream pretty much every night and look forward to dreaming. Every now and then, although not at all regularly, I get an ‘anxiety dream’, which usually involves me being back at work and meeting all kinds of complications that I can never sort out or facing some kind of deadline which I know I cannot meet. But they are rare and almost always my dreams are entertaining, to me at least.

They are always lucid and vivid, but equally almost always they dissipate like smoke from a fire very, very soon. One moment after waking up you can remember the dream, then in a matter of milliseconds just parts of it, then snippets of it, then almost nothing at all and within a minute it is almost all gone. All I have left is one or possibly two mental images which, if I am lucky (though that is rare), are associated with some kind of ‘theme’ or idea which can help me at least try to piece the dream back together. I never can.

There are exceptions, however, and one night on that trip to Morocco I had a dream of which I could remember, if not all of the dream, the ‘salient’ point, the ‘theme’ or the idea underlying it which held it all together. And once you have that, well, you can – of could – at a later date simply build on it, making up stuff to ‘fit’ which is in keeping with the overall theme.

Last night I had another, and with a bit of luck I can remember the ‘theme’ of that as well.

. . .

In the past few years my reading has mainly been non-fiction and, because of this Hemingway bollocks I’ve become entangled with, about the old fraud himself. Note to purists and po-faced folk: I am not seriously suggesting Hemingway was a complete fraud and certainly not consciously. But he did break the Twelfth Commandment by believing his own bullshit. (‘Thou Shalt Not Believeth Thine Own Bullshit. And the Eleventh Commandment? ‘Thou Shalt Not Get Caught. Ever.’)

But having now completed all that I intend to write, the slog carries. The reason is that I realised I must now pretty much rewrite it all if I’m going to get it printed up to get rid of duplication – unavoidable if you are compiling a website of many pages in that no one will read the lot and certainly not in sequence.

I have read several other books, however, including some fiction, but I also read book reviews in the Sunday papers, or did at last when I still bought the rags, now I read them online.

It seems, to me at least, that the range of ‘subject matter’ considered suitable for ‘serious literature’ is very narrow indeed: if it’s not eco-dystopia warning about the disaster which awaits humanity if we don’t all immediately turn our radiators down a notch or two, or growing up Gay in The Gorbals (pretty much a genre in its own right, though it need not necessarily be the Gorbals but can be anywhere) there seems little else to write about or rather little else those who are ‘passionate about literature’ are prepared to take seriously.

Also getting a look-in, however, are by virtue of that condescending way we Brits have made our own – and apparently still unable to forget our ‘imperial past’ – are novels by ‘our ethnics’, that is men and women who are native to the many countries in the once ‘British Empire’ and which many Brits still feel are beholden to us. That they have always been able to stand on their own two feet and could teach us more than just a thing or two doesn’t occur to many in Old Blighty.

The trouble is that I am neither gay nor grew up in the Gorbals, and I find the continual agonising over ‘global warming’ and warnings that ‘we must do something now’ faintly ridiculous and oddly patronising – if you are not by now aware of what is happening to global climate patterns and the alleged reasons for it, you are either brain-dead or physically dead.

So any stories I might write will most certainly not be choosing to follow the well-trod paths of so many other bloody writers. And – though I shall no here be outlining how – some time ago I decided that the writing I want to do will essentially be of a different kind to stories.

I would find it difficult to outline it (and would be riding for a fall if I did try) but it is less along the lines of what you are writing about and more how you are writing. That seems – granted, in my exceptionally limited experience – to be oddly neglected. I suppose in some ways the principle echoes the knowledge that ‘nothing dates faster than this year’s fashion’.

. . .

Anyway, I had another such useful dream (and it was two nights ago now as I have only just returned to writing this entry. And I think I can remember the ‘theme’. Next thing: sodding get done! The best and only advice to give a would-be writer

As I was saying (or not at the case might be*)

First things first: that asterisk above (*). You might think the phrase is ‘as the case may be’ but from what I know of English - and I don’t claim it to be an awful lot - the phrase is conditional as in ‘it might be or there again it might not’. At least that’s how I read it, so I suggest it should be ‘might’. But as I’ve already confessed, my knowledge of English grammar/syntax or whatever it is - and not even knowing the right word is a case in point - is limited to such and extent that I have no choice but to be humble. Also, I’m not too fond of pedants.

Now on to more trivial matters. This blog entry must be classed under ‘non-specific inconsequential shite’ in that I am killing time. And one way of killing time might be to wow you guys and gals with a little bollocks. ‘Why am I killing time’ do I hear you ask? Well, it’s a longish story but as I am killing time, that might be no bad thing. Obviously, YOU might not be killing time and have better things to do than read these ramblings. In that case maybe you should scoot of an do those ‘more important’ things and come back here to read this rubbish when you are more inclined not to get irritated by inconsequential shite. That’s clear enough, surely?

It’s like this: I’ve just come back from a month in Germany at my sister’s (see blog entries passim). I took with me my Macbooks - or better one of my Macbooks, but I shan’t elucidate at this point - because I wanted to get on and get finished my Hemingway bollocks, but also because I wanted to watch English Premier League and Champions League football on NowTV (Sky) and BT Sports, which courtesy of a VPN is possible when you are abroad. However, the bloody think conked out on me with a few days to go.

So what did I do? Why, I went to the local Mediamarkt and bought a notebook, though I should stress that it was to get on with my writing more than watching the football as I can do that on my iPad. I wasn’t being quite as extravagant as it might seem because I bought a small, 11in Lenovo notebook, and Ideapad 1 which pretty much fitted the bill: it came (as I discovered) with a full year’s subscription to Microsoft 365.

More than that, I only paid €119, and the price was apparently reduced from €279. Well, I’ve since learned I should take that ‘reduction’ with a pinch of sale. Those €199 worked out at £178, but when I later looked up what that model would have cost me at PCWorld, it was sodding £99. That didn’t much cheer me up, except of course that buying it there and then in Germany meant that I had the use of it there and then.

Had I waited to buy it at PCWorld I wouldn’t have had it ‘there and then’ which would have defeated the whole point of getting one. Also, I wouldn’t have bought one once I was back in Britain, anyway, because I’ve got a sufficient number of laptops knocking around I can use. But ‘sshh’ on the point.

Obviously the keyboard is German by my initial plan was to bluetooth up the small keyboard I use with my iPad (and I’m writing this entry on that iPad with that keyboard now). However, while setting it up, I discovered that the keyboard and be programmed for different languages. Thus although the physical layout is German (thus with Ä, Ö and Ü keys and, unhelpfullyt the Z key where the Y key should be etc, once I had got the notebook to ‘be’ and English keyboard an, crucially, because I’ve taught myself to touch-type, it all worked out quite well. 

Well, not quite. The system can also be programmed to be English, but no all of it. Then I discovered, looking up Lenovo Recovery Media on the Lenovo support website that I can download a fully English version of Windows 11, install it and except for the bloody Kraut physical layout, the notebook is British.

The only thing is that downloading what I need, then creating a USB recovery stick is taking a LOT of time. I signed up and downloaded all I needed this morning, only to find that the USB stick I intended to use, at 14Gb, was too small. So off I went to buy a 32Gb stick (and did not opt for one at £34 one shop offered but went to a Robert Dyas and found a very good one for just £7.99 - these things matter). Back at my notebook I then discovered that there was no longer a trace of what I had downloaded.

After an abortive ‘help’ chat with some jerk at Lenovo, I then went to download it again, only to find there was no longer enough room on the notebook’s 64Gb SSD - because although I couldn’t find it, what I had downloaded was still there. To cut a very long and increasingly very tedious story as short as possible, I finally sorted out the space problem, download it all again, and am no in the process of ‘creating the USB recovery stick. THAT involves the notebook transferring al the files it needs - around sodding 30Gb! - to the stick. 

So, here I am in a Starbucks round the corner from my brother’s flat killing time.

Happy?

Done and sodding dusted: goodbye Hemingway! Well, up to a point

I am very pleased to say — very pleased! — that the web version of my sodding Hemingway bollocks is now completed. I have just posted the final two ‘chapters/essays’.

Here they are, In Sum - Part I: Something of a curate’s egg and In Sum — Part II: At the end of the day it’s each to his own.

The next phase is to turn it into a book so that I can get it printed up by Kindle Direct Publishing but that is more the kind of pissing round with laptops and publishing software etc I enjoy.

The ultimate irony of doing this Hemingway crap is that my reason for doing it had bugger all to do with Hemingway or his work or anything like that. It’s just that I decided to write a blog post about what a great writer he wasn’t after reading The Sun Also Rises and all the claims made for it, and it evolved.

My sole motivation was to ‘do a project’, and crucially to do it properly, not cut corners and to finish it. Well, now I have.

Well, I suppose in one sense these things are never quite finished, but as far as I am concerned I have fulfilled my self-imposed task and doing that was the whole point of the exercise.

New book review, Hemingway's rather silly novel To Have And Have Not. Bet you don't know whether I like it or not. Guess.

 Here it is.

New book review, Mary Dearborn's biog of Hemingway

 You can find it here.

The queen of England is dead, but then rather a lot of other people also died yesterday

A date to remember: September 9, 2022, the day a 96-year-old woman died in Britain. It was not unexpected given her age. She was Mrs Sarah Coady, of 83, Tosson Terrace, Heaton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear in the north-east of England.

She lived to a grand old age, did Sarah and she will be missed by her two sons Terry and Jim and her daughter Joan, her grandchildren Wayne, Kevin, Anthony, Louise, Meg and Liz. She will not be missed by ‘the nation’ and ‘the nation’ will not mark her passing with 12 days of mourning.

There will be no wall-to-wall coverage on TV and radio of her life and death and the newspapers will not carry page upon page of photographs of her, young and old. Finally, there will be no longwinded analysis wherever you care to look in the media of what Sarah’s death means for ‘the nation’ and what the future holds for her extended family. The reason is that ‘the nation’ did not know Sarah Coady.

If all that sounds a little sour — I’m obviously obliquely commenting on the death of the queen of England and there is, as far as I know, no Sarah Coady who once lived in Tosson Terrace (though I did, 43 years ago, at no. 105) — it’s because I am more than a little bemused by what is happening in Britain as I write and shall be happening for the next 12 days (though I did read Charles — sorry, Your Majesty Charles III — has ruled, as only a ‘king’ can rule, that there will be seven days of mourning after the funeral and that isn’t for a week or two yet).

I am sincerely trying to work out my lack of ‘grief’. I had and have nothing against Liz Windsor or any of her family. On the other hand I can’t get my head around the idea of ‘kings’ and ‘queens’ ‘ruling’ us their ‘subjects’. I’m nobody’s bloody subject.

Yet all my Facebook friends except one, my guitar tutor who is one of the saner men I know, has apparently gone to pieces over the queen’s death. But why? Did they really ‘love’ Brenda as they do their partners, children and family? I would be destroyed if anything happened to either of my children (one now 26 and the other 23 and off gallivanting around South America), but that is it.

For the media, of course, it is a grand opportunity to print or broadcast the dead queen’s life story (as though it had changed since the last ten times her life story was documented), print loads and loads of piccies we have all seen before, gush, gush, gush about the poor woman, but crucially a poor woman none of us knew.

From what I hear Elizabeth Windsor was an intelligent woman of character who was diplomatically talented in that she had to steer clear of politics and who furthermore had a gift for mimicry and could be very funny. And I admire her for that. But did I ‘love my queen’? No, I did not. Am I heartbroken that she has died (at 96, fancy! None of us saw that coming)? No, I am not.

Is there something wrong with me? Am I, in fact, saying what others also think but believe it best not to do so publicly?

Answers please on a postcard to the usual address.

If by some chance you are bored . . .

Another five pages of this Hemingway crap posted if you are interested, five parts covering the final 16 years of his life. Almost 20,000 words, so someone had better sodding read it. You can find the the new pages here:

1945-1961 — Part I: Fourth marriage, more writing, public profiles and ever growing fame

1945-1961 — Part II: Health declines, Hemingway falls in love and his new novel is mauled by the critics

1945-1961 — Part III: Fighting off the academics and redeeming his reputation a little

1945-1961 — Part IV: Cheating death in Africa, the winning the Nobel Prize and entering his anecdotage

1945-1961 — Part V: Surviving a ‘dangerous summer’ but the end comes fast

NB By the way, there’s a little told about Edward Gibbon. I might have recounted it here before, but what the hell. I went to look up the exact ‘noble’ involved and the circumstances and came across the tale in another blog. So I have shamelessly copied his or her account and as my penance I will leave a link to it here.

He or she writes:

Edward Gibbon approached the Duke of Gloucester and presented him with a copy of the newly published second volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

Gloucester had received the first with warmth and it only seemed right, thought Gibbon, that he should get part two. In Gibbon’s day these people were your celebrity endorsements. 

To Gibbon's dismay, the Duke took the book, smiled brightly, and placing it on the table said, ‘Another damned thick heavy book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr Gibbon?’

And everyone laughed, but not Edward Gibbon because he'd just thrown five years of his life into bringing that second volume to birth.

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.