Two more stories (if you’re interested)

Today I posted two more stories in the Deadlines for Writers website, and you can read them if you are interested. One is called A Tense Relationship and the other Friday Lunch With Sam. 2 Both are very short because the word count — sticking to it is a feature of the site — was only 750.

If you have any comments — if, but, as usual, I’m not holding my breath — please make them.

As always what a reader thinks is ‘wrong’ with a story, where a reader thinks a story doesn’t work if far more helpful than ‘that was just fab! Utterly, brilliant!’ You can tell me that if you like, but I won’t believe you and will lose some respect for you into the bargain.

So, beware!

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What do Edward Gibbon, tomatoes and peanuts, paedophiles, Ernest Hemingway and bullshit have in common? Nothing. They just all feature in today’s 1,000 words (well, actually 1,499, but let’s not quibble, eh? It’s spring

One thing which puzzles me a little about writing fiction is the widespread use of the ‘first-person narrator’. I say ‘puzzled’, but it really doesn’t puzzle me as such. I see it more as technique many writers resort to (‘to which writers resort’ Ed) because, in a sense, it is ‘easier’. I know that because I have also adopted it in one or two of the comparatively few short stories I’ve written (as, of course, does Hemingway in his first two novels, which is pertinent to this entry).

For those of us with, to put it bluntly, the gift of the gab, that is those of us who can apparently bullshit at the drop of a hat, the ‘first-person narrator’ is a god-send. It becomes almost like day-dreaming, you get those day-dreams down on paper and your laughing. Well, I admit it’s not quite that easy, but if you want to get away from the ‘universal narrator who is all-seeing, all-knowing and a total pain in the butt, ‘first-person narration’ is the obvious way to go. But, as I say, I, at least, regard it as something of a cop-out.

As for ‘getting it all down on paper’, I should write ‘on paper’ as everything is now digitised. And the emergence of word-processing software is, for me at least, another god-send. I re-write a hell of a lot, and the prospect of writing, even a short short story, on a typewriter, then having to re-write it again and again as you revise it for however many times you want to do so to get it as you want is not a happy one.

Yet that’s what writers did until computers came along. In fact, take it back even further, to the late 18th and 19th centuries: writers wrote by hand and each subsequent draft was also handwritten. I suspect, though, that they weren’t too fussed either and all the scribbling must have been a pain (‘Another d-mn'd thick, square book! Always, scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon’, the Duke of Gloucester, King George III’s brother, is said to have told the historian when he was presented with the latest volume of Gibbons’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by the writer, right).

I also suspect that, just as I believe the ‘writing’ pretty much always first takes place in the mind, those writers who had to write by hand spent a great deal more time actually thinking about what they were going to write. I mean you don’t want to get several thousand words down on paper, only to realise somewhere down the line you had fucked up (or, more politely, taken a wrong turn and written yourself into a corner).

Here might be a good point to mention Anthony Trollope’s novel Lady Anna. I haven’t read an extraordinary amount of Trollope, but I have read some, and it can be pleasant and entertaining reading. But Lady Anna was odd: it didn’t flow as it might (and as the prose I like should) and was oddly disjointed, even occasionally a little dull. A little later I discovered why that might have been: Trollope wrote the novel on board the ship on his long voyage to Australia to visit his son.

He was in the habit of writing, more or less strictly, 1,000 words every day, and once that had been done, he simply knocked off for, I suppose a glass of claret. Furthermore, he didn’t bother re-reading what he had previously read before getting down to that day’s 1,000 words, which might account not just for the oddly disjointed nature, but all manner of, often dull, repetition. Bet you didn’t know that, but to be fair, nor did I until I found out. But where was I? Oh, yes, ‘first-person narration’.

Perhaps I’m being more than a tad purist when I say that as far as I am concerned there should be ‘a reason’ why some bod is tell her or his story, and it would follow that reason would be an intricate part of the story. So, for example, in Lolita, the paedophile Humber Humbert has written a memoir by way of ‘explaining’ and possibly even trying to ‘justify’ what he did, including the usual bull from paedos that he was somehow ‘led on’ by Dolores Haze. After completing the memoir, Humbert dies of a heart attack and the memoir is then given up for publication by a psychologist.

Overall that makes sense. But what about, for example — chosen because I have read them comparatively recently, the ‘first-person narrators’ of Hemingways The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms? Why exactly did Jake Barnes and Frederic Henry tell their stories? Well, I know why: because Hemingway is almost always writing about himself (he does seem to have been extraordinarily self-centred in the literal meaning of the word, as well as its usual meaning) and those to main characters were more or less proxies for him. I suggest a better writer would have gone the extra mile and given her or his first-person narration context, as Nabokov did in Lolita. It could be anything, bloody anything, but whatever is was would serve as a frame for the narrative voice.

Another point to make is the element of sequence in a first-person narration (which, as I point out) usually hang about in mid-air for not much of a good reason. Say I went to the local Chinese restaurant for a meal and halfway through a cook burst out from the kitchen fleeing another cook with a meat cleaver and trying to chop the first cook in half. I meet you the following day and tell you all about it (and by the way, the murder did not take place as the manager and his son managed to pin down the second cook, who immediately burst into tears. It seems he had just had news from back home in Shanghai that his father had been killed in a car crash and took exception to a dismissive remark the first cook made. Thought I might tell you in case you were getting worried).

‘Jim,’ I say (and you are Jim, obviously, although that most probably is not your name, but it will have to do for you as part of this example), ‘guess what happened last night! We saw a Chinese cook trying to kill his mate with a meat cleaver!’ I might then carry on and give more details, but by bit, filling in the story which you (Jim) has a nosey fucker want to get.

What I would not do is nab you and say: ‘Well, it was towards evening on a dull day when my partner, who is eight months pregnant, got it into her head that she wanted — no, needed! — a plate of sweet and sour pork. Naturally, I agreed that we shouldn’t just get a takeaway Chinese meal, but actually go for a sit-down as we hadn’t done so for a while. Well, as we were looking though the menu and considering whether to have starters . . .’ That is not going to happen. But that is pretty much always what happens in first-person narratives.

Here’s another good example where it works: Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier. One point of the novel is that the narrator is ‘unreliable’ — very modern and even more modern as Ford was one of the first to do that kind of thing. And not only does he tell his story, he tells different versions of it and his mendacity is crucial to the novel. Thus the ‘first person narration’ works.

Thought I’d get that off my chest. And as, elsewhere, I have promised my self to write every day (to stay in the swing of it all) I have now done my duty:

To come: why peanuts really jack me off, masquerading as ‘nuts’. And no they are not ‘a legume’ — you read that recently didn’t you. They are, in fact, a fruit! And along those lines, tomatoes are not ‘a fruit’ as you also read in that ‘interesting’ piece in the Daily Mail/Readers Digest/the White Canyon Bugle/New York Times kiddies’s section or wherever else you get your ‘knowledge’: they are — hold on to your hats! — actually ‘a nut’. Bet you didn’t know that, either. And neither did I until I made it up just a few moments ago. Bullshit? You bet and then some!

PS Here’s another interesting ‘fact’: an astonishing 87 per cent of people who could be bothered to fill in the questionnaire, in fact, have a full 33 per cent less knowledge that they assumed. Stick that in your pipe!

For once, an entry more personal than usual

I had a horrific night from Sunday to Monday, acid reflux again, and I slept for about 40 minutes all night, in something like five-minute naps. If you’ve ever had it you know not just how painful but how irritating it can be: there is no way you can get comfortable. You lie down, you sit up, you lie on your right, then on your left and on and on. Was on God’s telephone all night, too, and as I hadn’t eaten much, I was soon just retching, retching, retching.

I think I know what caused it: sorting out the house and various other things I cleared out my dad’s wine cellar and took home a bottle of Gewürztraminer which I opened on Sunday afternoon for a barbecue at my daughter’s. Uncorking it, the cork broke and where it broke there was a lot of red disfigurement. The small remnant of the cork dropped into the wine, but I sniffed the wine and it did not seem off.

So I drank it, over the next four hours about three-quarters of the bottle. I must admit it wasn’t as pleasant as I expected a Gewürztraminer to be (and had been when I had previously had a glass or three). It had an oddly, out-of-character bland dimension to it. I did not, though, taste ‘off’.

The retching had made my chest really painful and what with also being super-tired, I stayed in bed, slept, read, slept and read a little more. And, to get to the point of this entry, I brooded (as one does when you are below par, which I most certainly was).

I have racked my brain for how I might improve things between myself and my wife. For a few weeks we got on well, in as far as the atmosphere was fine, mainly because I’d settled on a strict policy of keeping my mouth shut, not reacting and generally turning the other cheek. (I can be sarcastic, which doesn’t help, and I do have to watch my tongue. I read years ago that sarcasm can be a hurtful as physical violence. Something for you to ponder if you, too, tend to sarcasm.)

All that came to and end, however, while I was cleaning out the garage of the cottage I inherited, in which my daughter now lives. She and he husband need it to store stuff in and it was full of shite. (Getting there, by the way, will finish the job today, so I can get back to concluding this Hemingway bollocks, the irresolution of which has also been hanging over me.)

You see, my wife, has a tendency, a very marked tendency, to interfere, stick her oar in, insist you do things her way and other equally bloody awful traits. And I reacted. I couldn’t stop it. She also has to have the last word, though I long ago solved that one by deciding never to have the last word. It does put an end to the bickering but it can also irritate.

So there I was in bed, brooding, and wondering just how, how, how I might find some way to make peace, harmony and quiet the norm in this house rather than an occasional treat. And then I realised: I can’t. And the reason is my wife’s personality and character.

I realise that this will now come across as a neat, nasty and wholly unfair piece of character assassination, but that, honestly, is not what is intended. I have been wanting to write this entry, publicly, for many years but found I couldn’t. What I have found, though, is that articulating something, whether in speech or here in written word, can sometimes unlog a jam and, perhaps, that is what might happen now.

My wife’s family is strange. I suppose that might be said about every family, but if every family is strange, at least they are strange in greater or lesser ways. A little background might help.

My wife’s grandfather, Wesley after whom our son is named, grew up on the moor and only child. I know nothing about his parents or my wife’s grandmother. Wesley was a Methodist and a religious fanatic. I was told — and cannot verify this — that one day when after his son, Roy, my wife’s father was born, he believed he got a revelation from God instructing him to abstain from sex for the rest of his life. How his wife felt about God’s message I don’t know, but she died at 42.

At some point in the 1930s the farm where my wife grew up, another farm and two cottages (one of which I know live in) went up for sale for a comparatively low price. In fact, they were said to be a bargain. Wesley bought them and he, his wife and Roy moved down from the moor into the farm.

Wesley lived, it seems, for ever. I think he was 100 when he died about 15 years ago. After he retired he stayed on at the farm, I imagine as something of a brooding presence. That might seem on my part to be romantic speculation, but in fact it isn’t. His rapid Methodism was now really given rein, and he wrote letters to all and sundry denouncing people and their immoral behaviour.

The cottage in which I live is literally just a stone’s throw from the farm and a family called Saundery were living in it during the war. Just down the road, at Hengar Manor, was a large camp of American GIs and it seems Mrs Saundery liked to go down there and distribute here favours (whether for free or for money I don’t know). When Wesley found out — and nothing stays secret for long here in St Breward, a fact of life I deal with by not event trying to keep anything secret) — he evicted Mrs Saundery and her family. That can’t have been easy for them, especially during the war. Ruthless, was Wesley. And he did — forgive the cliche — rule the household with a rod of iron. No alcohol was allowed at all, worship and Sunday school for the children.

My sister-in-law, who also married into the family, tells me that when she went for Sunday lunch with the the family, there was complete silence. Not a word was spoken. And that silence has been adopted by my wife and other’s in the family. And boy is it disconcerting! She, too, has not got used to her husband (my wife’s brother) saying nothing for hours, sometimes days on end. And after 25 years of marriage I haven’t got used to it either. And nor do I!

I am sociable, gregarious, chatty, indiscreet, at meals at home we were always chatting, latterly as my older brother and I became teenagers about less trivial matters. And I miss conversation. When I visit my sister in Germany, it’s just the same: the company talks! And I find it exceedingly odd that people don’t. Well, in my wife’s case, I do believe the atmosphere in which she grew up shaped her character. But that’s all fine and well, but she isn’t just someone I am talking about, but the woman I share this house with. And I am fed up! That’s what I was brooding about.

I have long thought of moving out, especially now that neither of our children is dependent on me. It would be easy as I inherited my stepmother’s cottage (where my daughter is living for the moment — she lives there rent-free on the assumption that the money she and her husband are saving will go, they say that’s the plan, on buying their own home. I suspect it won’t be that simple, though, but I shan’t go into details here).

What is stopping me — I could always find somewhere nearby to rent — is that I don’t much like living on my own. I got very lonely in London in the early 1990s when I had just turned 40 and believe me that kind of loneliness can almost become physical. And it is well known that loneliness is widespread. 

The second reason is that if I moved out, my wife would be fucked: I pay all the bills, every last one. She doesn’t have a job as such and over the years worked for her younger brother on the farm and latterly for her sister-in-law in the B&B business. But she has fallen out with both of them, though I suspect more her brother than her sister-in-law. But then falling and and feuding with others in the family is common.

For many years about 15 years ago there was a terrible split down the middle (which I kept well out of), and in the proudest tradition of the Kremlin individuals — it was then her father and older brother — were erased from existence. I’m not easily shocked, but at the time my jaw dropped at how it all proceeded. Just how to you deal with that kind of mindset. I’m buggered if I know.

So there you have it. I think I’m obliged to admit that I’m no saint, but I can honestly say that sharp tongue and all, I get on — and far, far, far prefer getting on — with people than not. And as for being no saint, I doubt whether many grand faults would be laid at my door. Possibly they could, but off-hand I can’t think of any.

Right, now I shall publish this. It was going to go on my ‘secret’ blog, but what they hell, stand up and be honest. Other men and women might find themselves in my position and by proclaiming my problem maybe they will be helped a little with insight. And maybe they have some good advice to give me.

Pip, pip.

Later . . .

I was going to add something which occurred to me yesterday while ill in bed — well, sort of ‘ill’ in that I was recovering and catching up on a lost night’s sleep, but since then something else might offer itself to be mentioned. But first things first.

When I consider my own situation, I’m bound to be honest and admit that apart from being half of an appalling marriage, I’m perhaps luckier than many. When I hear, especially now in lockdown, of the situation some find themselves in, I do realise — cliche alert — that one must be thankful for small mercies.

OK, I’ve had two heart attacks, the first on May 2, 2006, and the second on November 15, 2018. But apart from that, I believe my health is better than not, and not many can say that.

That second heart attack, I suspect, might have been avoided had I not smoked so many cigars after that first heart attack. I kidded myself on, as we do, that ‘it’s safer than smoking cigarettes because I don’t inhale’. Well, no you don’t really inhale as such, not like you do with cigarettes, though simply by the way you smoke cigars (by the way I smoked cigars, not the passive tense), some smoke gets into your lungs.

More to the point, the nicotine in the cigar does get into your blood — through the membranes in your nose rather than your lungs — and nicotine thickens the blood, and otherwise your blood is saturated with carbon monoxide and your oxygen levels drop (writes Dr Eustace Knowall, physician to the stars, i.e. supplies them with prescription drugs and had only been struck off twice).

Apart from my health, I consider myself luckier than some in other ways. OK, you might want to live in a city — ‘He who is tired of London, is also tired of boring, self-important, self-regarding farts like Samuel Johnson’ — but I don’t. I grew up in the countryside for the first nine years of my life and far prefer it.

Yes, I know you can’t get your hair done in the next hour or so and Iranian delis are at a premium (the nearest to us here in St Breward, North Cornwall, is in Caen, and careful how you say that. OK, there are several in London, but frankly they are not as good).

Financially, I’m certainly not rich, but I get a generous state pension, the small house in Brum brings in a small, but useful sum, each month (when I’m not faced with, as over these past 18 months, having a new boiler fitted and then a whole new bathroom suite), and we manage — though as I pointed out above I pay all the bills, every last one — to live within that small income. Life is not expensive out here in the wilds of Cornwall away from the bright lights of Bodmin, Camelford and Wadebridge.

The thing is: I miss conversation and companionship, an essence of a good relationship. Boy, do I miss it! There’s a world of difference sitting out in the sun of an early evening sipping a glass of something and sitting out in the sun of an early evening sipping a glass of something with someone you like, respect, find interesting and can easily chat with and in whose company you relax, relax, relax. Boy, do I miss it. However, at this point I really am obliged to sound a good warning that — new cliche alert — the other man’s/woman’s grass is always greener.

That brings me on to the second point: I am most probably viewing the situation through my own sanctity. But am I really that great?

Well, obviously I don’t know. I can sincerely say that far more often than not I get on with people and with those who I might not much like, I still choose to be polite and diplomatic and hope they don’t cotton on that I think they are pretentious, dull fucks (or getting as close to that state as dammit).

Only others could and can give you a honest account of my character, faults, flaws, virtues and drawbacks, but as there’s is no one I can at present quickly put you in touch with, tough titties.

As for my wife, well, one thing I distinctly remember was the evening of February 20, 1996, a Tuesday. I, my brother-in-law Andrews the younger brother of above) and someone else, who I can’t offhand recall, were having a very quiet and very limited stag night at The Old Inn up the road.

In the pub, I bumped into one Jeff Hollister, who was already five sheets to the wind. Jeff, who lives just down the road, when told that the following morning I was marrying CF, merely said something along the lines of ‘bloody good luck with that’. I know what he meant.

One last time: I’m 71, 72 on November 21 — is there still a true love out there for me? Does that sound pathetic? Yes? Oh well.

PS to the previous entry: three very enjoyable pieces of music (though, perhaps, not to everyone’s taste) by Stockhausen, Schoenberg and Webern

In a previous post I spoke about ‘abstraction’ in music, painting and — possibly — writing. Just now, to make my point about how some of us, including me, ‘don’t like / understand music, but absolutely love the sound it makes’, I appened three videos of performances of music by Stockhausen, Schoenberg and Webern. Rather than go through what I previously wrote in summary form why not, dear reader, get your finger out and, if you are interested, read that entry here. Here are the three pieces again:

NB I was told a great anecdote about Stockhausen which might be apocryphal or it might be true. He was once rehearsing an orchestra in a new piece and informed one player he did not want him (or her) to come in with his/her part until he/she felt she was in communion with the music of the the universe.

 

‘But, Herr Stockhausen,’ the player asked, ‘how will I know when I'm in communion with the music of the the universe?’

‘I shall tell you,’ said Stockhausen. 

Here is a Stockhausen piece:

The Schoenberg:

And finally the Webern: 

PS Not quite ‘abstract’ but equally as engaging. Pressure point by Duncan Lamont (new to me, too, but there you go). Just looked him up: he died two years ago at the age of 87. You can find more about him here. If I were a better guitarist and formed a band, this is the kind of music I should like to play.

Here’s a favourite of mine, Kiss That Whispers, by Dave Fiuczinski’s Headless Torsos. I might have posted this before, but as Sam Goldwyn said ‘If the like it once, they’ll love it twice’.

I actually used it in a short video I made (with my then very unsophisticated mobile phone) at an student art exhibition I went to with a friend at which his son had work on display. Here it is:

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More piccies to delight small minds (and large ones if you have one)

All these images are nothing put dicking around with Photoshop, manipulating snaps I took. I like them as I like a lot of abstract stuff, whether images or music, but they have no meaning at all. All they are is random images. You might like them in some way or not.

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