Prison, murder, fork-lift trucks, whisky and milk.

The more eventful life gets, the less time available to blog about the events. This tension is at the heart of blogging: running a well-crafted and frequently updated blog is best suited to a mildly depressed person who hasn't left their  house for a month.

I, as you can probably tell from the long silence, have been cheerful, and out of the house.

Since last I posted, I have been in Her Majesty's Prison, Birmingham,  performed at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk,  passed a few days in a Buddhist retreat centre in Cavan, met up with old friends in Tipperary, Galway, Dublin, Bray, Kildare, London, and Berlin, had interesting conversations with cocaine smugglers, drunken novelists, monks, and marine biologists. I have been awarded a Monaghan GAA medal, been photographed lying on the pavement in front of the GPO on O'Connell Street, and invited to write articles, kiss strangers, and play football. I have peered into the bulk storage tank of a milking parlour, been handed a large Celtic Cross in a Leitrim pub (made by a senior IRA member while interned in the Curragh during World War Two, out of matchsticks taken from the floor of that pub and sent to him by his mother), and fed home-made treacle bread.

I have passed through shrine rooms, paddling pools and X-ray machines. I have looked up Damon Albarn's nose. I have chatted with the delightful James Franco (Harry Osborn in the Spiderman films). I have failed to answer several hundred emails. I have stagedived at  three readings. I have read, written, and edited. I've had an article published. I have had a novel reprinted. I have been reviewed, interviewed, and body searched. I have lost my temper. I have brushed my teeth.

I have officially launched a novel in Filthy McNasties pub in Islington, signed hardbacks all day in a warehouse in Littlehampton, and tried to track down mysterious parcels that were sent to me in Berlin while I was away, and returned by Deutsch Post to their mysterious senders.

I have gone speeding in the tallest forklift truck in the world. 

I have drunk strong whisky (Laphroaig quarter cask, 48% alcohol by volume when bottled, barrier filtered, single Islay malt), and used strong language. I've drunk milk, and spoken mildly.

I have picked a fantasy football team, and read the poetry of Matthew Sweeney, and of T. S. Eliot, and of Dr. Seuss.

Friends of mine have married, sold cattle, broken their noses, and given evidence in murder trials. 

I have slept (but not enough, not enough) in tents, five star hotels and fields. On couches, floors, beds,  futons, and grass.

I've watched the Atlantic advance up the beaches of Salthill, and liquidity retreat from the markets of the world. 

I'll try to post something about some of it sometime but the future is arriving faster than I can process the past. 

Galway Advertiser reviews Jude: Level 1! Wild celebrations in Gough apartment! Neighbours call police!

Well, if you've ever lived in Galway, as I did for twenty years, this is THE BIG ONE. Oh, the Irish Times is all very well, the Washington Post has its charms, the New York Times... (hmmm, let's not go there, girlfriend...), the Observer is good and well, and the Guardian is very nice... but the Galway Advertiser review is the one that has you holding your breath. Everyone that you know, everyone you will casually bump into for the next month, will have read it.

And the Galway Advertiser verdict is in on Jude: Level 1... and it's good!

Here's how it starts:

"Jude: Level 1, the hilarious new novel by Julian Gough, is a tour de farce, a comic chronicle of the history of the Irish psyche which takes the reader from the middle of the 20th century to the post-Celtic Tiger ennui of today, at breakneck speed. "

I may well be sticking that on the back of the next edition. Very happy. Very proud. I can safely show my face in Galway at the Arts Festival (I'm reading there on the 24th of July).

Read the rest here....

Me Waffling On At The Eleventh Hour

If any of you would like to avoid hearing me waffling on yet again about how great me and my book are, then don't tune into The Eleventh Hour tonight at 11pm on Ireland's RTÉ Radio 1. Páraic Breathnach,
Páraic Breathnach... a leather-skirt wearing monster of a man from Connemara, will be interrogating me for twenty or thirty minutes, at the end of which I hope he will give me the sound thrashing I deserve.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/theeleventhhour/

No doubt the whole distasteful event will be archived by RTÉ, in a spirit of public service, and made available for the discouragement of others. 

American Gods, and London literary novelists

I just read a book review, in Saturday's enjoyable and infuriating  Guardian Review, which throws some interesting light on what's wrong with the modern literary novel, and with modern literary criticism, and with the modern literary ghetto. (A ghetto that doesn't know it's a ghetto: a ghetto that thinks it is the world.)

The review is by Kamila Shamsie (author of Broken Verses, a literary novel, published by Bloomsbury). It is of The Opposite House, by Helen Oyeyemi  (also a literary novel, also published by Bloomsbury... but that incestuous connection isn't the main problem, thought it does reveal a lot about the tiny size of the British literary pond).

This is the first line of the review: "The Opposite House is not the first novel to suggest that migration is a condition, not an event; but it may be the first to contend that the condition afflicts no one so profoundly as the gods." 

Now, I couldn't quite believe that was her opening claim. But it was.  She really thought that her stablemate at Bloomsbury was probably "the first to contend" that migration "afflicts no one so profoundly as the gods". And editors and sub-editors had let this stand.

Which means that nobody involved in the whole process was aware that Neil Gaiman had spent nearly six hundred pages, in his novel American Gods (which is not "literary", nor published by Bloomsbury), writing about nothing but how migration profoundly afflicts the gods.

Now, American Gods is not an obscure book: It is recent (published in 2001). It was immensely successful (a New York Times bestseller in both hardback and paperback, a best-seller all over the world). It was very, very widely reviewed (my current paperback edition contains four densely-packed pages of rave reviews, which range from the Washington Post through William Gibson to The Independent).  And it has won about as many awards as a book can win. It lifted not only both of the biggest science fiction awards (the fan-voted Hugo, and the writer-voted Nebula), but also the main horror award (the Bram Stoker Award), as well as the Locus Award for best fantasy novel. A novel by a British writer, set firmly in modern America, it crossed genre boundaries. It found a huge readership.  It could not have made a bigger splash.

But American Gods is not a "literary novel", so it is perfectly acceptable for a literary novelist, reviewing a literary novel which is (among other things) trying to do the same thing as American Gods (but years later, on a much smaller scale), to totally fail to mention it. Not only fail to mention it, but to claim that the idea may well have just been invented by her fellow Bloomsbury novelist.

I  don't mean to pick on Kamila Shamsie by pointing this out. The fault is in the literary culture, it's certainly not Shamsie's. Her review is a perfectly honourable and fair-minded review from inside the literary tradition.  Anyone that the Guardian was likely to ask to review  The Opposite House would have done pretty much the same. And if Kamila Shamsie hadn't boldly said "but it may be the first to contend that the condition afflicts no one so profoundly as the gods," she wouldn't have revealed the limits of her reading (always a brave and dangerous thing for a writer to do). Most current literary reviewers are just as limited in their reading. (And most SF reviewers are also stuck in their ghetto: and most crime reviewers: but they at least know they live in a ghetto, and that what they read is a genre. The problem with the literary novel is that it is becoming a genre again, and doesn't know it...)

I am discussing Kamila Shamsie's single, revealing line in such depth, not because it is unusual, but because it exposes something absolutely typical. Literary novels are reviewed only in terms of other literary novels, by people who do not read outside that ghetto, and who are quite unaware of how tiny a world they inhabit. (Though surely a London-based, literary novelist, published by Bloomsbury, who finds themselves reviewing a London-based, literary novelist, who is published by Bloomsbury, must start to get the vague feeling that their world is shrinking alarmingly.)

If you don't know either book: Helen Oyeyemi's book (set in the modern world), in dealing with a troubled modern woman also deals with the Yoruba gods, including Yemaya, "who", according to the review, "has travelled with her believers to different parts of the world, including Cuba.." One of the most powerful sections in American Gods deals with exactly those Yoruba gods, coming with their believers to the Caribbean islands. But then, Gaiman's American Gods tries to deal with pretty much all the ancient gods, struggling to survive, as belief in them dies, in the modern Americas.

American Gods is an epic attempt by a British writer to write the great American Novel. It isn't perfect (a perfect novel is an oxymoron), but it blows almost everything in the literary pages of the Guardian Review out of the green water and high into the blue sky.

Helen Oyeyemi may well have written a wonderful book, I don't know.  Kamila Shamsie may well be a thoughtful reviewer, and a fine literary novelist in her own right, I don't know.  But a review of The Opposite House should at least mention American Gods. The contrast would be useful, interesting, revealing. An intimate story, in contrast with an epic. A woman's story, in contrast with a man's. But two books by ambitious writers, dealing with the same idea; displaced gods, struggling to adapt in our modern world. You can't  ignore the writer who did it first, just because he wasn't published by Bloomsbury.

A literary culture that can't connect these dots has serious nerve-damage.


 

First reviews are in!

Well, the first reviews of Jude: Level 1 are in, and it isn't even officially published till Monday (July 2nd, 2007). A great review in the Guardian. No, not that Guardian. You're obviously not from Tipperary. Let me start again.

The Nenagh Guardian has scooped the world!

Unfortunately I can't link to the review, because the Nenagh Guardian (or to use its full, historic title, "The Nenagh Guardian or Tipperary (North Riding) and Ormond Advertiser, incorporating the Nenagh News and the Tipperary Vindicator"), hasn't updated its website lately. But it was a good review, trust me, my mother read it out to me down the phone.

Meanwhile, in cyberspace, the first review is also in, and it's a doozy. A lot of people had pre-ordered Jude: Level 1 on Amazon. Now, Amazon, being Efficient and Modern and Devoted to Customer Service, sent out the pre-ordered copies as soon as the books arrived in the warehouse, way ahead of the publication date. Thus I have my first five star review on Amazon.co.uk, from the delightful Peter Kettle. (He has also just sent me one of the most charming emails I've ever received.) It is such a splendid review, I am going to quote it in full here, and then go to bed and dream happy dreams:

"What happens when you cross Douglas Adams with Sam Beckett?", 29 Jun 2007 By Peter Kettle (Sussex, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"If you're one of those people who skip to the end of reviews for a sound bite I'll be kind and start with one: Jude: Level 1 is that rare thing, a novel that's funny and beautifully written.

For those who like a bit more meat in a review I'd say this is funny, stimulating, vividly exciting, and brilliantly written without a single boring cliche in sight. It's got a bit of Douglas Adams in it, and a smattering of Flann O'Brien. A small portion of it got minced up with Beckett, enough to get you imagining some great Irish heavy drinker like Jack McGowran. His fruity voice would be exactly right for this story of serial demolitions. McGowran would probably embroider the whole mad story into the creamy top of his Guinness. How often do you come across a writer who can make humour deep? Joyce of course, Beckett certainly, but it's pretty thin after that. Nutbeam's party in Annie Proulx's fab `The Shipping News' gets close to the same feeling, so if you enjoyed that one you'll go for this one.

Okay, who the hell am I to say this? I'm just a painter scratching a living who happens to be a fan of reading. I'm also keen on exploding buildings, and this novel manages to destroy lots of them. It also runs circles around those everyday Oirish accounts of hard times, famines and gangsters. Despite having several orphans in it the story doesn't for one moment get syrupy, and every time an orphan gets killed you'll laugh.

I shall be rooting for the next bits of this story on the net. I'll be ordering the hardback as soon as I can. It's a cheerful book with a skewed logic of its own, and I hope it becomes a major prizewinner. I want to see it issued as a film; as a range of kitchen utensils; and most of all in a signed limited edition, bound in the skin of the Salmon of Knowledge. You'll just have to read it to find out what the hell I'm talking about."

-Peter Kettle

Hurrah! Hurrah! And now I'm off to bed.

Geneva reading, hardbacks, other news...

Some nice comments on the Loudness War piece over on my myspace page (from Debbie Lear and Michael Knight), so I will return to that subject soon, and tell the True Tale of Toasted Heretic's Part in That Great Battle.

Meanwhile, this post is terse and businesslike. The novel comes out in two weeks, so here's some last-minute news:

I'm reading in Geneva this coming Monday (18th of July 2007). Do tell any Swiss friends who might be in the neighbourhood. More info from the Geneva Literary Aid Society.

And we're bringing out a hardback of Jude: Level 1. Probably a limited edition, probably signed (by me). It should arrive in the shops around the same time as the paperback. More news on that soon. Everything's gone to press now, so it's starting to feel real. My copy of the hardback is in the post. I'll put the new, finished cover up on the website as soon as it arrives. I'm told it's only gorgeous.

It looks like I'll be doing a few readings over the summer, in Geneva, Galway, Dromineer, and several in the UK (including a damn good music festival) which will be confirmed very soon. More on those once they're definite...

Some radio stuff is being firmed up, both English and Irish, also some press and magazine stuff... more when the dates are nailed down. Subscribe to the RSS feed, if you're keen to hear it all as it's announced...

Only two weeks to go, holy guacamole...

Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke

I've spent too long lately in the mirrored underworld of the literary blogs. (Too long = more than an hour a day for more than three days.)  So, to restore myself to health, I have been reading Rob Long's Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke. Whenever the idiocy of Literatureland seems too much to bear, a quick trip to Hollywoodland reminds you that it could be infinitely worse.

 
Rob Long wrote a bunch of episodes of Cheers. Towards the end, he executive-produced some, too. And, with his writing and producing partner, Dan Staley, he went on to write and produce a bunch of other TV stuff that (like almost everything ever done by anyone ever) wasn't as ludicrously successful as Cheers.

In the post-Cheers comedown he also wrote Conversations With My Agent, a grim classic that pretty much explains itself. Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke is the followup. Both are funny, have hidden emotional depths, and will help you a lot if you ever, God forbid, find yourself writing for television or the movies in Hollywood.

Here's Rob Long on pitching versus writing. This is as good an explanation as I've ever read of what's wrong with the entire development process in Hollywood:

 

"Most writers prefer to pitch an idea before they write it, but in our experience, this leads to difficulty.

    The whole point of writing a treatment – or, better yet, writing an entire script – is that there’s very little confusion left about what, exactly, the show will be about and who, exactly, the star or stars of the show will be, and what, precisely, is or is not funny about it.

But when you pitch a show, you pitch into the wide blue sky. You pitch the general idea, the concept – whatever that means – and you naturally smooth the sharp edges and tailor the pitch to the involuntary reactive facial muscles on the face of the highest ranking decision-maker in the room. It’s almost impossible not to. A pitch is like a performance by a raggedy subway clown. He just wants you to love him and toss him some change.

    So the network hears what it wants to hear: that your show will be perfect for an actor they have a deal with; that it will concentrate on family life, snugly fitting into an open 8.30 PM slot; that its point of view will be single people, or urban dwellers, or blue collar, or married with childrens, or whomever the target audience is for that network, on that night, that week.

But you go back to your office, mysteriously forgetting the shabby desperation of your pitch. You start writing the idea that was in your head before you started talking to the impassive face of the network executive, before he or she started grinning slightly, before the first laugh, before you made the sale.

And in the ensuing weeks – and sometimes months – between the sale of the script based on the pitch (which usually takes place in October or November) and the actual writing and delivery of the finished draft (sometime in January or even early February), the difference between what they bought and what you sold becomes enormous.”

Intolerable writing conditions

The worst thing about success is that it is intensely boring to read about. As I lie about the house here in Berlin, sipping champagne from the slipper of Kate Moss, while scratching that difficult-to-reach itch in the small of my back with the stiletto heel of Heidi Klum, I am in agony, LITERAL EXISTENTIAL AGONY, wondering what to blog about. "Tell me again your fascinating Theories of the Comedy, Julian," whispers Heidi in my ear, and I swat her away with her own discarded... what on earth is that thing? So tiny, how does she... Dammit, I am trying to Think.

How can a man be expected to write under these intolerable conditions?  How I yearn for the good old days, when I was homeless, my belly rumbling, writing Jude by flickering candlelight, in a cardboard box, under a bridge.

Wish I'd never won the bloody  National Short Story Prize.

The Sound Of One God Laughing

As I just mentioned in the news section, my long essay on comedy and the novel is in the current, May, issue of Prospect magazine, in All Good Newsagents. You can read it free here. (And you can read a lot of people arguing about it in the Guardian here.)

The essay sums up a lot of my thoughts on the state of the modern literary novel, and on the state of Western Culture. (That's "state" in the rather Irish sense of, "God, would you look at the state of Western Culture, hey Ted? Has it drink taken, or what?")

And given that the essay is about four and a half thousand words long, I think that's enough to be getting on with for today. Class dismissed! Go on out and play in the yard.

National Short Story Prize 2007

Er... I won.

I will post more when I have adjusted to this new and very strange reality, and gotten all this pesky tickertape out of my hair, and found my knickers, and worked out what city I am currently in, and what my name is, and why I am in bed with A S Byatt, Hanif Kureishi, and the Swedish women's volleyball team.

How To Push Art Down A Pipe

What an interesting week. Elizabeth Baines has been writing very well about the National Short Story Prize, and the controversy over the postponed broadcast of Hanif Kureishi's shortlisted story, in her fine blog, The Tart of Fiction / Fictionbitch.

As she was talking about me in one of her posts, I felt moved to respond. I'll copy my rather lengthy comment to her in here, as it follows on fairly directly from my last post...

Hi Elizabeth,

I'm glad you liked my comments on the problems of pushing highly individual works of art down distribution channels designed to handle a standard product.

I have very recent experience of the process, having had my shortlisted story ("The Orphan and the Mob") cut to fit the BBC's thirty minute slot.

Not having read the small-print, I hadn't realised the BBC were going to cut my story until they'd already abridged it and recorded it. The deed was done with no input from me whatsoever. And as you say, when you take out bits of a short story, it isn't the same story any more. A story is about the arrangement of parts, about particular rhythms and resonances, and all of that is totally altered when bits are cut out.

In my case, they removed all the swearing and a lot of the biological detail. Jokes were shortened. (Three variations on a comic riff would be cut back to one, so there was no sense of a riff at all).

So what they broadcast wasn't my story. It was something else.

But... but... but... having been through the process... and having been furious at first... I have come round to another way of looking at it.

Because the finished broadcast was superb. It wasn't my story, but it was great radio. At my suggestion they had cast Conor Lovett, the finest Beckett actor of his generation, as the 18-year old Jude. The BBC had started by auditioning 18 and 20 year olds straight out of drama school. When I reacted with horror, and suggested Conor Lovett, they auditioned him and loved him and cast him. Trust me, the lack of ego required to do that, and the sensitivity to the writer's suggestions, would never occur in, say, the film industry.

And the abridgement was, in its way, terrific. It was sensitive to the rhythms of the piece, and when it changed them, as it did, it managed to find new rhythms that worked. Usually slightly faster, more staccato ones, because of the cuts, but that gave it an energy which a linear medium like radio needs.

They took out some of my favorite Irish swearing ("Ardcrony ballocks!") and all mentions of urethral sphincters (and the original had a lot of them), but I can understand that, at three thirty in the afternoon, if the BBC broadcast my story intact, it would probably not get its charter renewed. Do you really want the playgrounds of England to resound to cries of "Ardcrony ballocks!" I think not.

And much of the cutting made it work better for radio. You can't pretend a short story is best transferred intact to radio. It isn't. My story ended with a purely visual sequence, where Jude, as he leaves the burning orphanage, hears the scratched orphanage single clearly for the first time. We read his uncomprehending and phonetic version of the lyrics,

"Some...
Where...
Oh...
Werther...
Aon...
Bo..."

and we realise (but he does not) that it's "Somewhere over the rainbow..."

Well all that just cannot be done on the radio. The bilingual puns ("Aon bo" is the Irish for "One cow") and all the rest only exist as words on paper. They've got to go.

But this is radio: And what they replaced all the description with was simply this: the song itself, rising over Jude's final words (which are, unknown to Jude, from the Wizard of Oz, and from Yeats' "Leda and the Swan", and which work fine on the radio.)

And with Conor Lovett's truly extraordinary delivery, and Judy Garland's actual voice, I think the BBC created a moment that was better, more emotionally powerful, than my original. I really did feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck, and along my legs, no kidding.

And that is why, even though the BBC cut off my ballocks and removed my urethral sphincter, I think they should have their charter renewed. They can't win, trying to broadcast tough art in daytime slots. But they do as good a job as anyone could, and the alternative isn't a Nirvana of great art broadcast uncut to millions at lunchtime. It's no art broadcast at all.

A bit of me would like everyone, everywhere, to hear all of it, at all hours. But that's a child's wish. Everyone everywhere doesn't want to hear it, urethral sphincters and all.

And the original story still exists on the page for all of those who do.

And my mum rang me after the broadcast to tell me how much she'd enjoyed it. Which was a result.

I think it's still up on the Radio 4 website, at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_reading.shtml

Press the button for Tuesday. It'll be up till Tuesday 24th of April, after that I don't know.

Anyway, great blog Elizabeth. Keep it up, and best of luck,

-Julian Gough

www.juliangough.com
www.myspace.com/juliangough

A Vision of Ireland came out of Dev's Hole!

I was definitely too hard on the BBC in my last post. I've only just listened to their version of "The Orphan and the Mob" (as opposed to reading the text of their version), and it works incredibly well as radio. I do mourn some of the stuff they cut out, but they  jam-packed an entire half hour, which is twice their usual length for short stories, and if I were to put anything back I'd just have to take something else out. So, damn good job done by the abridger. Conor Lovett is so good I nearly cried with happiness. Perfect deadpan comic delivery throughout, and then a stunning, restrained, emotional finish that really thumps you in the heart and changes the way you feel about all the previous laughter. So subtle, and so powerful.

Given that it had to go out at 3.30 in the afternoon, they left it as strong as they probably could get away with. I wish they hadn't cut so many Tipperary placenames, but I will die a happy man having heard the line "A Vision of Ireland came out of Dev's Hole!" broadcast on the BBC in daylight.

 Meanwhile, the fact that the BBC have postponed Hanif Kureishi's story is becoming news. I have tremendous sympathy for both sides there. They're both right, given their different situations. Like a fox trying to eat a rabbit, and a rabbit trying to escape a fox, you can understand both, but they can't afford to understand each other.

Nenagh Man On Radio

Just to remind you, on Tuesday the 17th of April 2007, at 3.30pm, the British Broadcasting Corporation will broadcast their cleaned-up version of Julian Gough's "The Orphan And The Mob" on Radio 4. The magnificent Conor Lovett will be reading it. The reading will be available online for the week after the broadcast, from the BBC Radio 4 website.

I should warn you that this is a BBC daytime edit of my story, so you will be shocked and appalled by the lack of bad language or biological detail. Personally I think it's not the same story without lines like "Ardcroney ballocks!", and lots of stuff concerning urethral sphincters under intense pressure. But at least 60% of my story is being broadcast (albeit with its ballocks cut off and urethral sphincter removed), unlike Hanif Kureishi's "Weddings and Beheadings", which the BBC have just pulled. His story is about a guy who's forced to film beheadings. The BBC had a journalist, Alan Johnston, kidnapped in Gaza last month, and a group has just claimed to have beheaded him, so one can understand the BBC's reluctance to broadcast Kureishi's story this week, whether or not you sympathise with that reluctance.

It's great that the BBC are trying to bring attention to the best modern writing by sponsoring this prize, but it does make you wonder how good a fit it is if daytime BBC can't broadcast half of it. I don't know how much they've had to cut from the other stories, but I get the feeling this is proving a more challenging year for them than last year (the first year of the National Short Story Prize) when the stories were by people like William Trevor and Rose Tremain.

Pets Win Prizes

The shortlist for the National Short Story Prize has been announced by the BBC. My story, "The Orphan and the Mob", is on it. This is rather exciting, as it is, according to the Guardian, "the world's richest short story prize". The five shortlisted stories will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 over the next week, and then published in a small book by Grove/Atlantic.

I strongly recommend you listen to the radio version of "The Orphan and the Mob", as it has been recorded by Conor Lovett, the greatest Beckett actor of his generation, and my favourite stage actor. (And, for you uncultured oafs who spurn our glorious theatre, he was also in The Mainland episode of Father Ted.) It goes out on Radio 4, at 3.30pm, Tuesday 17th of April (2007). I'm sure it'll be streamed live, and archived later, so neither space nor time can stop you supping at the deep well of Conor Lovett's genius. (If you ever get the chance, go see him do Molloy, or even better, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable. It's just him, directed by Judy Hegarty, and it's the best thing I've ever seen in a theatre.)

This is the shortlist:

Hanif Kureishi - Weddings and Beheadings

Jackie Kay - How To Get Away with Suicide

Julian Gough - The Orphan and The Mob.

David Almond- Slog's Dad

Jonathan Falla - The Morena

The judges are Mark Lawson, Monica Ali, AS Byatt, Di Speirs of the BBC and Alex Linklater of Prospect magazine.

First prize is fifteen grand. Second is three grand.

The winner will be announced on the 23rd of April.

Holy Guacamole

Holy guacamole, is it that long since I posted? When I look at what Jesus achieved over the past week, and then at what I have achieved... well, it's humbling.

I have been fairly fully occupied, though, wrestling with a metaphorical octopus. Over the past few years, as I wrote Jude, I spent a lot of time thinking about the modern novel, and, more specifically, about the comic novel. I decided I should write an essay on the subject, to come out around the time Jude would be published. An apologia pro vita comedia. Well, an explanation of what the hell I'd been doing all those years. Or maybe more an explanation of the thinking behind whatever the hell it was I'd been doing...

 
So anyway, I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to boil several years of thought down into a little pot of message. And it's now finished. At one point, when the fifth draft was nine thousand words long, I had glum visions of the thirtieth draft being a million words long, but I finally tamed it. So, five thousand words on comedy and the novel coming up shortly, if that tickles your mickle. Working title: "The Sound Of One God Laughing."

Stay! online! for! retail! details! ... I think I know when and where it'll be published but everything is change, as Heraclitus said in disappointment after robbing the wrong bank, so I won't post the print publication date and place till I'm absolutely sure.

(And no, I can't publish it here, yet. Later, maybe, but for now nice men are paying my rent for the right to print it first.) 

Jean Baudrillard is dead

This blog is turning into an obituary column. Interesting.

Anyway,  Jean Baudrillard, the French explorer of hyper-reality, died yesterday (Tuesday March 6th, 2007), in Paris, France, aged 77. He'd been ill for ages.

Jean Baudrillard, like many Frenchmen, was a poet pretending to be a scientist.

There are two main theories of Baudrillard:

One is that he was a great and original thinker who described the modern world as it really is.

The other is that he was a tremendous French bullshitter, high on his own supply, using words which he failed to define, in a style that imitated science without understanding it, and whose work made no sense.

Both theories are correct. 

 Jean Baudrillard is famous for:

1) Inspiring the makers of The Matrix films. Baudrillard later said they didn't understand his ideas at all.

2) Writing the essay "The Gulf War did not take place".  (Almost all criticism of which has been written by people who have not read the original essay, thus proving quite a few of his points about the nature of reality, in an age saturated with far too much information to process. And yes, I have read it.).

 As I have no opinions or beliefs, I neither endorse nor reject him, nor any of his ideas, nor indeed any of my own comments on his ideas, as laid out above. But he was a big influence on Jude, and it's a pity he'll never read it now.

Robert Anton Wilson reduced to an essence

Last entry, I recommended some books by the late Robert Anton Wilson. But who the hell has time to read books? CERTAINLY NOT ME. This is the Inter-Web-Cyber-Net, baby. We are Futuristic, Highly Stressed, and Time-Starved. Our Hair Is Falling Out. So here's the vital essence of all the books of Robert Anton Wilson, condensed, filtered, distorted and traduced through my consciousness, with added Faulty Memory Mangling:

We don't experience the world. We experience tiny, tiny hints and glimpses of incredibly limited and local aspects of the world. And even those hints are viewed down a Reality Tunnel of prejudgements (evolutionary, cultural and personal) that blocks out most of what we're potentially capable of seeing and hearing. Our Reality Tunnel tries, in particular, to block out any information that would conflict with our view of the world.

This has consequences. For example, a US, Yale-educated, Protestant, neo-conservative female politician sees a different world to the world seen by, say, an Iraqi, Karbala-educated, Shiite, conservative male cleric. They live in different realities. Their private universes are quite different. And communication between those private universes is difficult, because each has a set of unspoken assumptions that the other does not share. (Wittgenstein would say that, when they talk, they are playing different language games: many of the words they use have quite different meanings in each language game, therefore communication is not really happening. A guy is playing tennis against a guy playing golf.)

If they don’t even realise that they are not really communicating when they speak, that they are neither understanding nor being understood; well, the misunderstanding can get very messy very fast.

(Wilson would also say that all that I have written is essentially meaningless, because I'm using big abstract words ["conservative" "Protestant" “male”] that don't map onto specific things or actions in the real [objective, outside-us, difficult-to-know] world. And I'm using the "is' of identity ["He is black" "I am rich" “She is crazy”], and such statements are never true.)

Given that all beliefs are based on faulty and inadequate information, we should not give too much weight to them. In particular, we should not mess other people around, or kill them, on the basis of our beliefs.

We should question all beliefs, including our own belief in questions.

And given that we are prone to look at life through an ever-narrowing tunnel, it’s good to try to see the world through other people’s reality tunnels now and then. Read a newspaper from the other end of the political spectrum to your own. If you’re pro-life, browse a pro-choice website, and vice versa. Check out a different religion occasionally. Read some economics. Sit up a tree and pretend to be a bird. People’s (radically different) world-views work for them. There’s often something useful there, that you can use to broaden your tunnel, to see a little more of this astonishing universe.

But don’t fall in love with any world-view. Even Robert Anton Wilson’s.