Excited to hear that the Greek theatre company Without Reason are preparing for a November production of a play adapted from my novel Requiem, to be performed in Athens in November. Since I readily admit to getting ideas from artists in all sorts of media, I'm thrilled whenever others get some inspiration from mine. The theatre company have promised me a flight ticket for the performance, so I'll be brushing up on my Greek. Since the Greek I speak so badly is a dialect from the wilds of western Crete, and one which in the mouth of an Englishman provokes much hilarity in Athens, it might not help; but anything which might give me a clue as to what my books are actually all about is going to be welcome.
Though the priests might not like the play when it is performed. When Requiem was first published in Greece it did attract some virulent mail from the old black-robes, who derided the book as blasphemous. I felt quite swell-headed about this for a week or two. It did after all allow me to set down my chair at the table of the magnificent Kazantzakis, famously excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox church for similar reasons. Not that I've been excommunicated yet, but if Without Reason are as wonderful and controversial as they sound, then there is still time.
Meanwhile I'm about a third of the way through the new novel. I say a third of the way through, and if it is standard length that would be the case, though this one has the feel of something rather longer. I hope that doesn't just mean that I'm losing control of it: some of the minor characters are asking for more attention, and that way madness and a sloppy novel lies. (I've never gone along with the old canard of the self-serving author who proclaims characters so hot with the breath of life that they simply take over; in which the author is merely a vessel; a conduit, darling; a channel for a greater force. Quack!) No, no. Crack the whip. But on the other hand if there is a particular energy there you want to use it. We will see.
Went to a meeting of the National Academy of Writing, to which I've been appointed as a patron recently. This institution has been set up in the UK under the leadership of Melvyn Bragg to settle yet another literary hoax: namely the notion that writing cannot be taught. Somehow - and you probably have to blame the Romantic movement for this - writers have been allowed to perpetuate the nonsense that writing, above music, ballet, theatre and all other temporal arts, is somehow so exquisite, mysterious and dainty an artform that only those specially called may don the cassock and perform the rites. Keats, that famous liar, claimed that only that which is written spontaneously is worthy of the name of poetry. His minutely re-drafted manuscripts caught him out, but still in this country the myth prevails. You just can't trust writers talking about writing. The self-mythologising process is innate. The quackery runs too deep. (Readers inside the UK will know that underlying this are the convoluted mechanisms of the British social class system - another thing explaining why the notion is not respected elsewhere in the world.)
So, delighted to be approached and keen to support the idea of a British Academy I went along to a meeting at… the House of Lords. Gosh. What message is this sending out I wonder? Though it must seem sensible now that Melvyn Bragg has been made a Lord, to take advantage of parliamentary facilities. And what a thoroughly nice bunch of people were there on the night, plus a couple of poets who didn't understand that not all writing income comes from the Arts Council. There it was among a glittering assembly that I heard Frederick Forsythe had declined to become a patron of the Academy. 'Writing,' he had intoned, 'is like sex. You're either good at it or you're not.' To which one of the women writers present had retorted, 'Oh fuck off Freddie, hasn't anyone ever said a bit a harder and a bit faster?'
Makes you want to cheer, doesn't it?
Though I did, while being escorted out of their Lordship's House, cast my gaze through the crack of a door in which some kind of sitting was going on late into the night. The room was obscurely shadowed; a very masculine and vinegary looking assembly of dinner-jackets inside was waited on by maids in starched aprons and footmen in white gloves; and it all looked so much like something from the recent BBC production of Titus Groan that I did entertain nervous thoughts about this country of mine. A liveried footman caught me looking. He closed the door on me, delicately but with the sour authority of those who attend on the rich and powerful.
Other writing matters: Smoking Poppy is on target for an Autumn publication both in the UK and the US. Black Dust, too, a chapbook from Subterranean Press is in the can and slated for spring publication.
I'm one of the judges this for this year's World Fantasy Awards, and the books have been arriving in breathtaking numbers. There really is some great stuff in this crowded field, but the best thing about being a judge is the rampant vindictiveness I intend to exercise in my arbitrary dispensations. In this way I will be able to exact a small but satisfying revenge on publishers who might have displeased me; editors who may have slighted me; writers who are simply better than I am at this game; others whose countenance I like not. You get the idea. Years of tiny professional grudges saved up for just this purpose. Insults, real or imagined, laid to rest. Wrongs righted.
On the other hand this may be one of those opportunities to rise above these things, dammit.
What else can I tell you of This Writer's Life? Oh yes. I mean, it's not all beer and skittles. The other day I ordered one of those assemble-yourself bunk beds for my daughter's room. Damned if the thing didn't arrive in a long thin box. The postman could almost have got it through the letterflap. Spent the next two days fighting the thing into shape, identifying units, chasing down rogue screws. Talk about mysterious and unguessable artforms and mystical callings. They should have a National Academy for Self-Assembly Furniture Suckers. Writing a novel is child's play compared to putting one of these mantraps together, and after two days I had a throbbing purple palm and was in urgent need of psychological counselling. I probably saved myself about ten quid by doing it this way. I'd like to see that fucking Keats put a bunk-bed together.
Next week I'm off to Brussels for the International Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Festival, Imaginaire 2001 on 10-11 March 2001. The festival is organised by the magazine Phenix, specialising in SF and Fantasy, the Maison du Livre, a cultural centre based in the center of Brussels and the 19th Brussels International Festival of Fantasy, Thriller and Science Fiction Films. If you see me I'll probably be tying my shoelaces, but with difficulty given my purple palm. (By the way, I had an extraordinary amount of email on the subject of shoelaces after my last log! And thank you for the gift of mocassins, whoever sent them.). If you're at the Brussels event, please don't pass by without saying hello.
