Trendy But Casual

Mystery, Manners, Mississippi

August this year was a strange month for me – two surgeries, a lot of lying around, interviews via Skype, a ceremony at the Town Hall, my first children’s book published, a new – fake – blog (Everybody Needs Two or Three Friends), and a trip to Wales. (Wales is a strange country: let’s admit it.) The months in my life, like the days of the week, can blur sometimes, especially when I’m not leaving the house much, and my day is structured around reading, writing, and gorging on episodes of BREAKING BAD.

Much of the first week of September was spent reading Donna Tartt’s new novel, The Goldfinch, in preparation for interviewing her for the Listener. I loved the book, and I loved talking to her – perhaps because I’m such a shut-in right now, and miss conversation. (You can talk all you like to the mothers in TODDLERS AND TIARAS, but really, they’re not listening.)  So poor DT had to listen to my Leontine Price anecdote, and discuss the McDonald’s in Grenada, Mississippi, just off the I-55.

Reading the novel got me very excited about writing again, about the possibilities of story and setting in my own novel. And talking to DT about the notion of mystery sent me back to Flannery O’Connor’s essays in Mystery and Manners. I think I’m going to get my students this year to read “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” at least:

“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions. It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object that they actually see. But the world of the fiction writer is full of matter, and this is what the beginning fiction writers are very loath to create. They are concerned primarily with unfleshed ideas and emotions. They are apt to be reformers and want to write not because they are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion. They are conscious of problems, not of people, of questions and issues, not of the texture of existence, of case histories and of everything that has a sociological smack, instead of with all those concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position on earth.”

At the end of the essay, she also talks about what writing classes can and can’t do:

“[So] many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.”

This is the hard thing to explain to some students – and clients, and people who ask you to read their manuscript and give them honest feedback. (FYI: what this latter group really want is your agent’s phone number and a fast track to the Pulitzer or Booker: anything approaching honest feedback will displease or outrage them and they will dismiss it as evidence of your jealousy, profoundly limited imagination, and overly commercial – or overly literary – frame of reference.)

I think that in order to write a story – short or long – that transcends competence, you need talent, a story to tell, and enough grasp of the possibilities of language and technique to get the story onto the page in a way that is true to your vision of it. And that’s the key thing: you need some kind of vision. Other readers – teachers, editors, classmates, etc – can help you identify weaknesses and maybe even help fix them. But we can’t supply the vision for your novel or story. Nobody else knows the path through your own particular wilderness. That’s the challenge of art: looking around, learning from other’s examples and experiences, and then forging ahead.

Sometimes people talk to me about their manuscripts, complaining about conflicting advice they’ve been given, and throwing up their hands in despair about working out the best way forward. But that’s the thing about writing – about creating any art, I would imagine. Finding the way is the thing.

As readers of this blog know, I like puzzles – jigsaws, crosswords. I like to hold up the cracker/hat ritual at Christmas by trying to guess the answers to the stupid riddles. (They’re just puns: we can all do it!) Writing fiction is the most interesting puzzle of all to me, because there aren’t clear parameters or start/end-points. It took me several years to work out how best to tell the story in Rangatira: I think it came about when I saw the date “1886” on a photograph of Paratene Te Manu, read about the eruption of Mount Tarawera that same year, and remembered the conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. There are hundreds of ways to tell the same story. At some point, you have to pick one that excites you, one that cracks the story open for you and leads you somewhere unknown and intriguing.

I’ve read lots of competent manuscripts written by people who are deeply frustrated by rejections – from writing programmes, agents, publishers. The thing is, there are a lot of great manuscripts that get rejected too. Even published great books may be rejected by the majority of readers (not to mention reviewers, if the book gets reviewed at all); the writers may remain obscure to the world at large. Other people may not like you, or get you. There are so many writers, and so many books. Don’t do it to get love or acclaim or prizes or money. And don’t pretend, like the mothers on TODDLERS AND TIARAS, that you’re doing it because it’s just a lot of fun, fun, fun.  

Time for a story update:

196: ‘Territory’ by David Leavitt (1982)

197: ‘Oil Field Vignettes’ by Jim Thompson (1929)

198: ‘Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip’ by Charles Bukowski (1944)

199: ‘April in Paris’ by Ursula Le Guin (1962)

200: ‘The State of Grace’ by Harold Brodkey (1954)

201: ‘The Geranium’ by Flannery O’Connor (1946)

202: ‘The Debutante’s Return’ by Jay McInerney (2008)

203: ‘A Day in the Open’ by Jane Bowles (1945)

204: ‘Tam-O’-Shanter’ by Donna Tartt (1993)

205: ‘Housebreaking’ by Sarah Frisch (2012)

206: ‘Yellow Woman’ by Leslie Marmon Silko (1974)

207: ‘The Use of Force’ by William Carlos Williams (1938)

208: ‘Happy Endings’ by Margaret Atwood (1983)

209: ‘My Life with the Wave’ by Octavio Paz (1949)

210: ‘An Act of Vengeance’ by Isabel Allende (1990)

211: ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ by Angela Carter (1979)

212: ‘La Sainte-Vierge’ by Daphne Du Maurier (1959)

213: ‘Charisma’ by James Salter (2013)

214: ‘The Country of the Blind’ by H. G. Wells (1904)

215: ‘The Sailor-Boy’s Tale’ by Isak Dinesen (1942)

216: ‘This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen’ by Tadeus Borowski (publ. 1967)

217: ‘The Assistant Producer’ by Vladimir Nabokov (1943)

218: ‘The Overcoat’ by Gina Berriault (1991)

219: ‘Where the Tides Ebb and Flow’ by Lord Dunsany (1910)

220: ‘Boys’ by Rick Moody (2000)

221: ‘Tell the Truth’ by Nicholasa Mohr (1975)

222: ‘Mines’ by Susan Straight (2003)

223: ‘Guests of the Nation’ by Frank O’Connor (1954)

224: ‘The Chrysanthemums’ by John Steinbeck (1938)

225: ‘Meet the President’ by Zadie Smith (2013)

The usual rules apply, by the way – only stories that are new to me, and no repeated authors. Of late I’ve been leaning a little hard on a few anthologies. Though I’m chafing at my own restrictions, I feel honour-bound to stick with them (at this late stage, as Kath and Kim would say).

I’m also worried that my home-bound recuperation means TMiddy is spending too much quality time in my presence. He’s starting asking me things like: “Did you know that Chad Lowe is Rob Lowe’s brother? Did you know that Zooey Deschanel has a sister?” Normally, his points of reference are Scientific American and the TLS. I may be a destructive influence on his mental development.

Please visit my alter-ego, Jane Shore, over at Everybody Needs Two or Three Friends. And please remember that it’s satire, and an invented character, and American spelling. The opinions expressed are not mine, or those of any normal person. For example, I would never get inspiration for a wedding from Paula Abdul (her marriage #2), even if autumn is my favourite season.

David Sedaris is a Good Guy

One of my former students, Eddie Brennan, sent me this story today. Eddie was on the postgrad (MLitt) program I set up in Stirling, and is a very accomplished comedic writer. David Sedaris is one of his big heroes and influences, so recently Eddie went to hear him read at the festival in Edinburgh.

Eddie reports:

"I met David Sedaris again on Saturday and had an amazing ten-minute chat with him before his show. We were talking about the MLitt and he was really interested in it so I gave him one of my stories, Poseidon. Would you believe it, he shook my hand and thanked me for it! 

It's the last story in my dissertation and suitably crude and silly. I told him it was a sort of homage to one of his stories called Big Boy. 'Oh! That sounds fun,' he said, laughing. 'Seriously, I'll read that later.' That was 40 minutes before the show.

After his reading he always holds a Q&A session with the fans. Someone asked him if he'd learned any new interesting Edinburgh words this time in Scotland. Sedaris keeps a little notepad in his shirt pocket and he pulled it out. I nearly wet my pants when he consulted it and said, 'Yes I have. I just learned the word "jobbie!" That's a turd, right?' Jobbie was in the second line of my story! Isn't that just amazing! 

Then, when I read how he signed my book, he had written, 'Eddie, we meet again, author.' How cool is it when your hero is just actually so decent, so down to earth and so worthy of being your hero?"

I like David Sedaris.

Some new posts up on Everybody Needs Two or Three Friends, y'all. I'm much more assiduous over there.

 

Halfway

There are towns called Halfway all over the place - for example, one just south of Sheffield, another near Llandovery in Wales, where our good friends the Keyser/Devlins live. Living in a town called Halfway might feel like living in limbo - as in limbus, the edge of hell, etc, rather than the bendy-backed Trinidadian dance.

A digression: our family went on holiday to Fiji in 1975, and the best night of all (in my nine-year-old opinion) was the evening during a boat trip through the Yasawa islands, when we all rowed ashore for a barbeque, sing-song and limbo contest.

This is my sister, me, and my brother on that holiday. We all look pretty much the same now.

We've halfway through the year - more than halfway, if July 2nd is the midpoint. That means I'm halfway through my reading project for this year, a short story a day. Unwittingly I've duplicated one author - Steven Millhauser. My story #143 was his 'Thirteen Wives' from a recent New Yorker, forgetting that I'd read his 1998 story ‘The Visit’ as #61. So I've replaced it with 'Miriam' by Truman Capote, his first published story; it appeared in Mademoiselle in June 1945, not long before his 21st birthday.

Today is July 13th, the 195th day of the year. Here's the list from 161-195:

161: ‘A City of the Living, A City of the Dead’ by Nadine Gordimer (1982)

162: ‘The Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight in Heaven’ by Sherman Alexie (1993)

163: ‘L Is For Lovers’ by Mary Lavin (1943)

164: ‘A Summer Day’ by Jean Stafford (1948)

165: ‘Two Kinds’ by Amy Tan (1989)

166: ‘The Place of Its Quietude’ by Luisa Valenzuela (1988)

167: ‘Migration’ by Ray French (2010)

168: ‘The Moths’ by Helena Maria Viramontes (1985)

169: ‘Night Women’ by Edwidge Danticat (1991)

170: ‘From A to Z’ by Susan Glaspell (1909)

171: ‘The Music Box’ by Malachi Whitaker (1929)

172: ‘Zelig’ by Benjamin Rosenblatt (1915)

173: ‘Loser’ by Val Mulkerns (1978)

174: ‘The Other Woman’ by Sherwood Anderson (1920)

175: ‘The Triangle’ by James Stephens (1913)

176: ‘The Dark Arts’ by Ben Marcus (2013)

177: ‘A Protagonist’s Nemesis’ by Lydia Mischkuling (2009)

178: ‘Malcontent’s Monologue’ by Daniel Batliner (2012)

179: ‘The Indian Uprising’ by Donald Barthelme (1968)

180: ‘Distant View of a Minaret’ by Alifa Rifaat (1983)

181: ‘Before the Breakip’ by Balla (2005)

182: ‘Bettering Myself ‘ by Ottessa Moshfegh (2013)

183: ‘Sold’ by Wendell Berry (2011)

184: ‘Young Goodman Brown’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1835)

185: ‘The Smallest Woman in the World’ by Clarice Lispector (1960)

186: ‘The Management of Grief’ by Bharati Mukherjee (1988)

187: ‘Wilshire Bus’ by Hisaye Yamamoto (1950)

188: ‘The Accident’ by Gao Xingjian (1983)

189: ‘The Santosbrazzi Killer’ by Heidi Julavits (2009)

190: ‘Cherry’ by Su Tong (1996)

191: ‘Wunderkind’ by Carson McCullers (1936)

192: ‘The Vengeance of Nitocris’ by Tennessee Williams (1928)

193: ‘Because of the Waters of the Flood’ by Mark Helprin (1969)

194: ‘Mademoiselle Claude’ by Henry Miller (1931)

195: ‘The Daring Young Men on the Flying Trapeze’ by William Saroyan (1933)

 

I'm still trying to range in time and geography, and not to repeat authors, or to read stories I've read before. The 1994 anthology First Fiction is proving very useful. Of course, it's easy to read off-piste - when I have a new George Saunders collection in hand, say, I'm not going to stop at one story - but for this project I can only count one per author. Also, I've become obsessive about finding the original publication date. One story I read last week - 'Snapshot' by Akos Kertesz - I haven't included because I can't locate its original publication date anywhere. I found the story in Present Continuous, an anthology of contemporary Hungarian fiction from 1985, but I don't think it was published there for the first time.

Yes, I've turned reading a short story into a way of wasting time doing 'research.'

My lovely Tulane colleague Barry Ahearn has recommended 'The Walls of Avila' by Evan S. Connell. (I've only read Connell's nonfiction - specifically Son of the Morning Star, which incited a GAC obsession that included a trip to West Point to see his grave.) Any other recommendations, especially of stories in translation, would be welcome. I still have five months of story-reading to go. Next month, when I'll be laid up for weeks after a foot operation, I'm also embarking on reading as many English novels as possible. It'll be my very own Festival of Britain.

 

It's Not About You

I need to write some sort of extended article or essay on the various uses of second-person narrative in fiction. (Yes, I really need to!) Maybe after I finish writing this novel - novels pay better than rants on point of view. But yesterday I was moved to write to the Comments editor of the Guardian about a piece on second-person in that day's paper. Though it pains me, here's the link to it.

The writer of the piece (Iowans: remember how Marilynne Robinson used the word "piece" when she didn't want to concede something was a story?) is mainly talking about blogs, but gives various examples from fiction and seems to suggest that the 'internet' is culprit for the use of second-person in stories and novels. Much as I love to blame the internet for its many crimes - like me knowing anything at all about the Kardashian family, or students being able to contact me at weekends and to address me as "hey" - I don't really think we can add use of the second-person to its list. Can't we just go back to the good old days when everyone blamed Lorrie Moore?

Anyway, here's what I wrote to the editor, for filing in the Guardian's bin:

Dear Comment Editor,

Morven Crumlish in today's paper (Saturday 6 July 2013) is making a very basic error: misreading second-person fiction. The "you" in a second-person story by, say, Junot Diaz is not supposed to be you-the-reader. It's a narrator who's talking about him- or herself, but in a way that suggests alienation from the events described, or emotional/ironic distance.

When Diaz was asked why he'd chosen second-person for his story 'Miss Lola' - published in the New Yorker last year - he explained: 'I really needed distance from this story. Every time I wrote in the first person it was just too close. Tried third person, but that flopped as well. Second person ended up being the only way to get through. I guess I wanted my narrator to be “in” the story, but also to be able to comment on his younger self a little.'

A famous example from the (pre-internet!) 80s is Jay McInerney's BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY. The opening lines are: 'You are not the kind of guy who would be  at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge.'

We readers aren't supposed to think that WE are the person at a nightclub in NYC, taking vast amounts of cocaine and about to lose our job, etc. The second-person narrator is observing his own out-of-control life, unable to cope with the trauma he keeps hidden from readers for most of the book, the death of his mother.

Sure, Lorrie Moore - also famous for using the second-person before the internet 'inspired this shift in writing style' - employed it in a different way in her 1985 collection SELF-HELP: she told the Paris Review that she used 'the mock imperative of the second person' in part 'to satirize formally the idea of advice and a culture of advice.' But again, I don't think someone reading 'How to Be an Other Woman' (for example) will think it's about anyone but that character, Charlene, and her particular situation. Again, here's the opening: 'Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night. Like a detective movie. First, stand in front of Florsheim’s Fifty-seventh Street window, press your face close to the glass, watch the fake velvet Hummels inside revolving around the wing tips; some white shoes, like your father wears, are propped up with garlands on a small mound of chemical snow.'

When we read stories like this, we do not have, as Morven Crumlish contends, the 'understanding that you are in the same clique as the writer.' We don't have to relate to things we're reading, or identify with characters in a story or novel. As she points out, we should not only read 'content that speaks so directly and without conflict to your own experience.' But I doubt that Junot Diaz is expecting us to live the life of a Dominican-American young man, or that his (very wide) readership is part of his 'clique.' I doubt that Lorrie Moore cares whether the reader is a woman or has even been to New York. Most fiction writers want as many readers as possible, not just readers who happen to share an age, gender or geography with a particular character. Like much good fiction, these stories bristle with vivid and particular detail, bringing into focus worlds that may be very alien - in time, place, experience - to a reader.

I can't address the 'confessional journalism' to which Morven turns in her piece, but please reassure her about the second-person narrative in fiction: it's not all about us!

Best wishes,

Paula Morris
Fiction Writer-in-Residence,
University of Sheffield

Oh yes - I invoked the job title! This always works in Britain. When I taught in Scotland, I sent a job-titled email to the Edinburgh Lit Festival, asking to chair some sessions - based on my experience at chairing writers (like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Monica Ali, Tash Aw, Peter Ho Davies, Tea Abreht, Kate Grenville, etc) in other festivals - I received ... hmm, no reply at all.

 

Drinking, Writing, Reading, etc

TMiddy is in the first week of a month-long intensive CELTA course. It's strange to have him gone for the flat for so many hours every day. I find myself adopting a 50s housewifely persona - making him a pistachio and strawberry cake on Monday, getting up early today to wrap up a slice in greaseproof paper for him to take in his school bag. Planning the menus for the week and trekking off with a backpack to the supermarket so I can have his dinner ready - well, ready-ish - when he gets home every evening. I've even learned how to use the washing machine, which is apparently much simpler to operate than feared. If there's a spontaneous outbreak of ironing and dusting, I may have to go to the doctors.

When he rings me at the break, I ask him if the others are being nice to him, if people are sitting with him at lunchtime, what he bought at the station for his lunch. (A good housewife would make him his lunch: next week, I promise!) I tell him that I've been watching the ducks, the moorhen and the yellow wagtails out the window, as though he's been sent away to boarding school and needs updates about his pets.

In between bursts of domestic enthusiasm, I'm working on a novel. Can you guess where it's set?

Yes, you've guessed it. We've just returned from three hot days in Rome, revisiting some of the sites for the novel and getting obsessed with hooded crows.

And for Tikileaks followers, especially those who were SO concerned during my last trip to Rome that we were not properly hydrated, don't worry.

But now I must step away from the beer, and the baking, and write. Also read: here's an update on my one-story-a-day project.

141: ‘Sugar Baby’ by Chinua Achebe (1972)

142: ‘Abandoned Children of This Planet’ by Kenzaburo Oe (1996)

143: ‘Thirteen Wives’ by Steven Millhauser (2013)

144: ‘Sunday at Home’ by Stevie Smith (1949)

145: ‘My Wife is a White Russian’ by Rose Tremain (1984)

146: ‘The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street’ by Mavis Gallant (1963)

147: ‘Third Time Lucky’ by Rachel Ingalls (1986)

148: ‘Samson and Delilah’ by D. H. Lawrence (1916)

149: ‘The Wedding of Zeina’ by Ahdaf Soueif (1983)

150: ‘Camilla and the Horse’ by Christina Hesselholdt (2008)

151: ‘Mamasita’ by Jayne Anne Phillips (1975)

152: ‘How I Became a Holy Mother’ by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1976)

153: ‘Child’s Play’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard (1975)

154: ‘As A Wife Has A Cow: A Love Story’ by Gertrude Stein (1926)

155: ‘My Father, the Englishman and I’ by Nuruddin Farah (1997)

156: ‘The Time-Keeper’ by Elspeth Davie (1980)

157: ‘Amor Divino’ by Julia Alvarez (1997)

158: ‘The Passion of Marco Z—‘ by Anne Leaton (1976)

159: ‘Zoo Story’ by A. M. Homes (2013)

160: ‘The White Doll’ by K. Arnold Price (1985)

No repeated authors yet, but I'm starting to get nervous. Maybe by December I'll be reading flash fiction from Borneo. Recommendations are always welcome.

Also, if anyone knows a great deal about the goddess Minerva, please get in touch. TMiddy is no help this month - he's too busy putting on his business trousers and setting out each day to learn things. When he gets home each night, he looks at the noticeboard to see what I'm cooking for dinner. Next week, he says, he wants menu approval.

Packing, and Playing with Dolls

 

We’re packing up in preparation for the move from Glasgow to Sheffield, interspersed with showing prospective tenants around the flat and obsessive readings of the IKEA catalogue. Also, on Friday evening, we went to see the film ARGO, which I enjoyed very much. (And the setting inspired me to read a particular short story on Saturday - #54 in the list.)

The story-reading goes on, of course, despite all the distractions.

Story #49: ‘Pornography’ by Ian McEwan (1978)

Story #50: ‘Starring Gary Cooper’ by William Gay (2013)

Story #51: ‘Angel Baby Blues’ by Wanda Coleman (1987)

Story #52: ‘Only the Dead Know Brooklyn’ by Thomas Wolfe (1935)

Story #53: ‘The Pedestrian’ by Ray Bradbury (1953)

Story #54: ‘Tehran Calling’ by Nam Le (2008)

Story #55: “Grand Froid’ by Paul Emond (2011)

Today we were sorting through tubs and boxes, and packing things to take down to Sheffield this week when I go down for work. Of course, while TMiddy laboured and cleaned and packed, I was concerned with the most important things.

There was a short interruption so I could do some remedial hair-brushing (of  dolls’ hair, not my own), and a bout of dressing-up.

 

These dresses were made for my dolls by my great-aunt, Auntie Violet, sometime in 1980, when I was fourteen. The white dress was made with scraps from my sister’s wedding dress; the pink dress was made with leftover pieces from my own bridesmaid dress.

Those dresses that Auntie made, and the clothes my grandmother made seven or so years earlier for my then-new Barbie, are among my most treasured things. I was so delighted to get these, and conscious – even then – of how much time and care had gone into them. What I didn’t realize, I think, was the love that went into them as well.

If you’re wondering why I was still playing with dolls when I was fourteen, you should know that I continued for some years after that. I should never have given them up.

Casual Colonialism

It’s been a long time since I lived in the UK. I left in December 1993, eight and a bit years after arriving in the misleadingly sunny September of 1985. 

In 1985 Thatcher was Prime Minister; by 1993 John Major had taken her place, and I arrived back in 2010 to the joy that is Cameron's Tory/Lib-Dem coalition. (I missed the Blair and Brown years altogether.) When I left, SURPRISE SURPRISE and NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY were still on TV. My fondest memory of SURPRISE SURPRISE is Cilla Black singing and marching her way through ‘In the Navy’ on board an actual ship. Sadly, this is not available on YouTube, though at least we can still see/hear the wonder that was the closing credits.

But I digress. Things change, things stay the same. One thing I had forgotten about: the casual colonialism. In the US, I got out of the habit of experiencing this. When Americans find out you’re from New Zealand, they are various things – delighted, curious, intrigued, envious. Sometimes they are confused, and think that you might have said Venezuela. But mostly they are positive. I heard the words ‘I love your accent’ at least once a week. (This was good, because nobody else anywhere – including anywhere in New Zealand – loves my accent.)

The casual colonialism isn’t as bad here in the UK as it used to be, but this is relative. It’s like saying service in Britain isn’t so bad these days either, or it hasn’t rained that much in Glasgow this week. An example: arriving in the mail recently, a copy of Scotland in Trust magazine. We get this as members of the National Trust. (The National Trust for Scotland, to be precise, because Scotland has to be separate and different. It has to contend with casual colonialism issues of its own.)

In the ‘From the Archive’ section there’s a black-and-white photograph of a kapa haka group standing in a walled garden. The headline reads: ‘Maori dance at Pittmedden 1978.’ Pitmedden Garden is a National Trust property in Aberdeenshire.

Don Currie, author of the short article, describes what we can see in the photo – the fountain, the yew trees, the audience, the ‘dancers’ who had just appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. He makes specific mention of the two guitar players standing behind the group. These guys, both young, wear shirts, blazers, and what people used to call slacks. The ‘elaborate attire’ of the other performers, notes Currie, stands out against the formality of the garden, ‘and even the musicians’ jackets and wide-collared shirts.’ Clearly, he deduces, ‘Maori culture did not go untouched by Seventies fashion.’

Um, what? There's a glimmer here of patronising smugness that – to give the writer the benefit of the doubt – was probably unintentional. Why would anyone Maori living in New Zealand in 1978 – let alone gadding about the world – be ‘untouched’ by the fashion of the day? Without the startling evidence of this photograph, would we readers of Scotland in Trust assume that, back home in the Land of Exotica, Maori walk around wearing piupiu, busily untangling poi or lowering kete of food into hot pools?

Earlier this month I was reminded of how a colonial notion of distance – cultural and physical – persists here. Robert McCrum’s column on books in the Observer mentioned the attention-seeking remarks made by VS Naipaul about female writers (it's all 'feminine tosh', apparently'), and cited the reaction by New Zealand writer – and Booker Prize winner – Keri Hulme. Hulme lives, McCrum advises, ‘amid sheep and fisher folk’ on New Zealand’s South Island. In other words, in some fairy-tale land, a place of yokels and delightful simplicity. (Try asking someone on the West Coast to point you in the direction of some ‘fisher folk’ and see what they have to say.)

According to McCrum, not only is Hulme buried deep in a Tolkienesque idyll, she ‘has been silent for decades.’ This news will surprise many New Zealanders. Is this the silent Keri Hulme who actively comments (sometimes under the moniker Islander) on literary blogs like the late, lamented Leaf Salon, and the lively forum managed by the indefatigable Bookman Beattie? Is this silent Keri Hulme the writer who was published in Landfall last year? The Keri Hulme who was the fiction advisor to the Montana Prize judges the year my first novel won a prize? The Keri Hulme who has edited a Huia Short Stories anthology, and this year is serving once again as a judge in their Pikihuia writing competition?

Hulme herself was unimpressed by the label ‘silent’ and told Bookman Beattie exactly what she thought here.

I suppose what McCrum is really saying is this: Here in London we haven’t heard anything from Keri Hulme for decades, so she MUST be silent. Whatever she’s up to in the distant colonies – ‘noises off,’ as it were – doesn’t count.

The patronising swipes don't stop there. Hulme, McCrum says, ‘told her New Zealand audience …’ – hang on, which audience? Is she the Queen of New Zealand, perhaps? Do we all assemble, amid the sheep and the fisher folk, at a weekly audience? Or perhaps she was speaking to a physical audience at some kind of festival event in New Zealand. No. Actually, she was commenting online on a blog post by Bookman Beattie. I guess McCrum doesn’t want to mention the source, or give a context for the discussion.

In her comment, Hulme calls Naipaul ‘a misogynist prick.’ This permits more smug colonialism from McCrum. ‘The language of literary criticism,’ he observes, ‘clearly has a different register in the Antipodes.’

This might be a more useful observation if Hulme had been engaging in literary criticism – say, writing a long essay on Naipaul for the New York Review of Books. But she was commenting online, responding to a blog post. Anyone reading various online Guardian/Observer articles will soon discover that the ‘language of literary criticism’ in online comments is pretty much the same all over the world. Here’s a selection from Guardian and Observer readers on the topic of Naipaul: he is a ‘total tool’, a ‘silly old fart’, a ‘mega-misogynist’, an ‘old git’, a ‘wife beating’ writer, an ‘oaf’, ‘a prize berk’, and a ‘sexist a**hole.’

A Guardian online article a few years ago posed the question: ‘is VS Naipaul simply the grumpiest, most conceited writer alive?’ In a print article about literary prizes in the Guardian earlier this month, writer and critic Bidisha alleged that a ‘man does a s**t in a potty and it is called a work of genius; a woman produces a work of genius and it's treated like a s**t in a potty.’ (You can read the whole feature here.) Gee, the language of literary criticism clearly has a different register in the UK, doesn’t it?

This is what I mean by casual colonialism: dismissive, smug, and a little patronising, with no sense that one’s own ignorance and/or parochialism might be informing an interpretation – of a picture, of remarks, of another culture, of another part of the world. It’s amazing to me that it still exists here.

This week, when I'm not puzzling over such absurdities, I'm thinking of two of my family members who are in strange places right now - strange to them, at any rate. My mother is in hospital in Auckland, and my niece has just arrived in Paris, where she'll be spending the next two months. I hope my mother will be able to come home soon. I hope my niece has the most wonderful, wonderful time.

Frank Cottrell Boyce: 20 Questions

This is the first in a new series of mini-interviews, in which I ask twenty conceived-in-haste questions of some extremely generous famous person.

Frank Cottrell Boyce is an acclaimed screenwriter and dramatist. He wrote seven of Michael Winterbottom's films, including BUTTERFLY KISS, WELCOME TO SARAJEVO,  THE CLAIM, and 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE.  Other screenplays include PANDAEMONIUM (directed by Julien Temple); HILARY AND JACKIE (Anand Tucker; the screenplay was nominated for a BAFTA); REVENGERS TRAGEDY (Alex Cox); and MILLIONS (Danny Boyle.) 

 

Photo: © Macmillan Children's Books

Frank was born in Liverpool, and still lives and works in Northwest England. The father of seven children, he's recently turned his hand to children's books, including Millions, which won the 2004 Carnegie Medal; Framed; and Cosmic.

Because I am a slavish fan of his work – obsessed, in particular, with 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE – and because (surprise!) one of my screenwriting classes is studying his writing this semester, I asked him for an interview. He kindly agreed to answer the following questions, via email, on March 4, 2010.

PM: Before you were writing for film, you were a television writer, writing for Coronation Street and Brookside. What did you do when you first graduated from university, and how did you get into writing? Your career in film always seems to be presented as a straight line beginning with Living Marxism, followed by radio plays.

FCB: I was writing all the time at university – putting on my own plays with a group of friends. I started selling bits and bobs to the radio and to comedians, which is how I got the soap opera gig.  The stuff about Living Marxism is daft. It was just a favour and it had no career impact. They put it up on Wikipedia and I can’t be bothered working out how to take it down.

PM: I read that two films that had a big impact on you were THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE and GREGORY’S GIRL What engaged/attracted you?

FCB: Well, GREGORY’S GIRL was set on a big, pleasantly dull housing estate and in a big comprehensive state school and I swear it was like looking in a mirror. 

I’d never seen my life on film before.  Until then I was imagining you could only be a writer if you went to fight in the Spanish Civil War or shot big game or something. It never occurred to me that my kind of life could be material till then.

And THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE was just this great, swaggering call to arms. I just watched it till my eyes dropped out. It didn’t make me want to make films. It made me want to rule the world.

PM: In an interview on your TV drama, GOD ON TRIAL, you said: “People start to write because they think they can change the world for the better. In the end, you find that it’s hard enough to make your writing better.” Why did you start to write?

FCB: Actually because when I was eleven my teacher read a piece I wrote out to the class and I was at the back of the class when she read it. And everyone laughed and it was just delicious getting laughs without stepping into the limelight.  One of my favourite ever days. Thank you, Sister Mary Paul.

PM: Would you talk about the differences in writing drama for TV and film – and also about the demands of writing for shows like Coronation St, where you’re part of a large team?

FCB: You’re part of a team when you write a movie, of course, even if you’re the only writer. Directors, producers, even (goddamnit) actors get their say. TV drama is very dialogue-driven, which film shouldn’t be. It’s also, in a strange way, not plot-driven because the world of the show has to stay intact. If Homer wins the lottery, he has to lose the money by the end of the episode.

I guess the big difference is that you have to invent the world of the film, whereas the world already exists on TV – you can go and visit it before you start. You don’t have that gut-chilling feeling that it’s all melting to nothing as you work on it.

PM: Your first film was FORGET ABOUT ME (1990) – also your first collaboration with Michael Winterbottom. You were both working in television: what made you decide to work together on a film?

FCB: We were only working in TV because we wanted to make films. There was no stable British film industry to employ us. Michael in particular just talked in movies.

PM: You wrote a spec script for him: what was it about?

FCB: It was about stealing cars to order and it was based on the story of someone I went to school with but the true story was mixed up with ideas we nicked from that genius movie PEPE LE MOKO (1937).

PM: I read that an adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy was the first idea you ever pitched to MW – and that only later did it became a film about making a film. What attracted you to the novel in the first place? It took such a long time to get the film made – how do you sustain a project that stretches out over so many years?

FCB: My wife and I had just had our first baby and it seemed to me that this book – which has a scary intellectual reputation – was the most tender, moving thing, a story about a man trying to imagine and create a perfect world for his son. It was so long ago – home video cameras were just getting fashionable and I thought it would be great to do is as a kind of home-birth video diary. It’s the only novel I know that goes into so much detail about babies and labour and that was my life at the time.

I didn’t sustain the project. I just kept teasing and pleading with MW about it and occasionally writing little bits. It was hard to write, in that the idea became so obvious to me that I could barely write it down – it seemed so obvious.

PM: You've collaborated with Michael Winterbottom, Alex Cox, and Danny Boyle, among others. Is it important for writers to be able to adapt to different styles of working?

FCB: I know I’m versatile but I’m not sure that versatility is a great quality in a screenwriter – it’s a bit like gymnastic ability in a waiter. It would be nice to see it for a few minutes but basically you want him to shut up and give you the food.

All of those people you mentioned are more or less collaborative. The most collaborative and open by miles was Danny, which is just part of his general courtesy and amazing good manners. These are qualities that bring out the best in people around him. He’s one of those people you want to impress.

PM: In WELCOME TO SARAJEVO, you were adapting a non-fiction book. Would you talk a little about the challenges of adapting someone else’s work?  What are your first steps?

FCB: I think you find that the thing in there that you identify with most clearly and you use that like Theseus’ ball of cotton to guide you through the labyrinth.

PM: You’ve described the script for this film as “rough and ready” – does that mean you wrote it quickly?

FCB: I’m not sure now. I really threw myself at it, I remember that. We were very keen to get it made fast because the war was still happening and the situation  was far from stable. It’s strange to think now but what we wanted was Western military intervention – something that’s been very discredited since Iraq.  

PM: The Variety review of this film said this was "clearly a movie by British filmmakers, in which much is left unsaid and unshown.” Do you think of your writing in that way – that there’s a difference in approach because you’re British? (And beyond that – because you’re a Northerner?)

FCB: I guess that’s a Northern thing. I hate hearing people in films talk about their feelings. Not least because it’s a wasted opportunity to find something true and funny or moving. No one ever really fights about their marriage explicitly, do they? It’s always about who puts the bins out.

PM: You’re not bound by received wisdom on how to write a screenplay – ie you’re not obsessed with strictures on the three-act structure. You played with point of view in HILARY AND JACKIE, for example, showing us events again from a different perspective; you admitted other perspectives into WELCOME TO SARAJEVO. And 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE disrupts and subverts its own narrative, with direct addresses to the audience and discussions of different versions of the story. You’re willing to explore different stories within the same film – that seems to be one of the hallmarks of your style. How do you counter the pressure to follow “rules”?

FCB: Well, one thing is that by writing about real people and events you have a court of appeal, don’t you.  You can say, I’m afraid this lady’s life never did have a third act.

I love playing with structures and shapes.  I don’t think three acts is the only game in town.  But it is a good game and there’s nothing wrong with the three acts.  What I really hate is that idea of characters who grow and learn and hug and whose lives all look like therapy journeys.

PM: I read this quote from you: “If you’re making a generic film, you generally know what the ending is going to be: the crime will be solved, the lovers will kiss, the sequel will be suggested. But if you’re writing away from the formula it’s a lot harder to set up the ending. If you can come up with something in the last few minutes that makes the audience see the whole film in a new light, you’re onto a winner.” Is that what you’re doing – writing “away from the formula”?

FCB: Yes, absolutely.  

PM: Re: 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE: was your original “in” to this material the time and the place, the music, or the story of Tony Wilson?

FCB: I think Michael was keen to make a film about the music and musicians. But it was clear from the first that Tony was actually much more romantic and rebellious than any of the musos. By and large musos have rebellious youths and then go off and use the money to collect classic cars or something, like retired dentists. Tony was still restless, still searching, still gloriously wrong.

PM: When you were interviewing all the people involved in the story, did your original focus drastically change? What different approaches did you try with such a sprawling story? Did you always plan to have the character of Tony Wilson address the camera directly?

FCB: Honestly from the first meeting. He just talked so much! He was unstoppable. It was part of his generosity. I thought quite consciously – Tony is Tristram Shandy. He’s got all these plans and opinions and they’re all wrong but he won’t stop talking about them. Really 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE was my first shot at adapting Tristram Shandy.

PM: You write (acclaimed) novels for children; you write for theatre and TV and radio and film. How do you balance multiple projects going at once? How does your approach to writing a screenplay differ from writing a novel?

FCB: I don’t balance them. It’s chaotic, plate-spinning, headache-y.  Novels are hard because you’ve got to have total faith in yourself and no one is going to reassure you till you’ve finished. You start getting feedback from your screenplay before you start writing. With a book, you’re on your own.

PM:  You move between different genres in an admirably fluent way. How have you resisted getting pigeonholed as a writer?

FCB: No one ever offered me a hole to pigeon myself into.

PM: Are there screenplays – or particular writers – you really like?

FCB: I really admire all the usual suspects – Pixar people,  Billy Wilder,  Izzy Diamond, Ben Hecht. I think one of the best "screenwriters" around is Paul Greengrass,  though I’m not sure what physical form the script has. Yes, tons of people. I get all fired up about movies about once every two months.

PM: Are you especially proud or fond of one of your own screenplays?

FCB: I love 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE because it's got so much swagger. I love MILLIONS because it was such a joy working with Danny, and because he got me writing for children, which is when I finally found something I was good at. I'm also fierce proud of a TV play I did, GOD ON TRIAL. But I think MILLIONS above all, because it was like coming home.

PM: What is a typical day for FCB?

FCB: There isn’t one. Not since becoming a children’s writer. You get asked to do such mad things. I went to Bristol today to judge a rocket-launching competition. The day before I was in Walton jail doing a reading group with prisoners. I’m working on a radio documentary. It’s all too unfocussed and a big mess. Don’t do it.

Frank's produced screenplays to date are:

FORGET ABOUT ME (1990)

BUTTERFLY KISS (1995)

SAINT-EX (1996)

WELCOME TO SARAJEVO (1997)

HILARY AND JACKIE (1998)

PANDAEMONIUM (2000)

THE CLAIM (2001)

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE (2002)

REVENGERS TRAGEDY (2002)

CODE 46 (2003)

MILLIONS (2004)

A COCK AND BULL STORY (2006)

GROW YOUR OWN (2007)