Who Will Give a Fig for Figes?

The recent "squalid little story" as Robert Service put it, of the writer Orlando Figes paying lawyers to silence other writers who had alleged someone was rubbishing his rivals' work on Amazon – before he then first blamed his wife then admitted he was the culprit – is a very nasty one and will have ruined his reputation for good.  Obviously anyone who takes an anonymous Amazon review seriously has got problems that they need to address for themselves but the case does highlight two things (a) writers should conduct their intellectual disputes with each other in the fresh air of print and not in the courtroom and (b) anonymous blogging (something that mystifies me) has no intellectual validity in serious criticism of books: someone who is too cowardly even to stand by their own words cannot expect to be taken seriously by anyone.

This reminds me of a review (not anonymous) that appeared on Amazon in 1999 when my life of Andrew Marvell was published.  It wasn't vindictive, just vaguely sneering, and contrasted with the very pleasing reviews the book received generally.  Since no other Amazon review ever appeared this slab of disparagement has stood on the site for eleven years to confront anyone thinking of buying the book and will, no doubt, remain there across the "deserts of vast eternity".  At the time, I entered the name of the self-appointed reviewer into a search box and up popped a long, laudatory review of his own book – written by himself.  Now why didn't I think of that?

My fault in this instance was to have written a book about a 17th Century poet without seeking permission from the relevant academic 17th Cent. Lit. trade guilds and annoying an ambitious would-be media don on the rise by writing the book he wanted to be commissioned to write.  I am always amused by academics who sneer haughtily at the general Grub Street author then go running as fast as their little legs will carry them into the nearest TV studio or literary festival tent if there is the slightest chance of being on the telly.

We're the Tops – Well, Near the Bottom, Actually

You may have noticed a small logo that has appeared in the top right-hand corner of this page announcing that this blog is (just!) one of the 100 top Uk and Ireland literary blogs at No 91.

Some years ago I read an article suggesting that there were so many literary prizes and awards that you had to try pretty hard to avoid securing one.  Having never won a literary prize (though I was once on a shortlist of six for the Marsh Biography Prize alongside weighty literati like Roy Hattersley) I assure you that it is easier than people claim to avoid winning anything.  So let's throw our hats in the air to Wikio (whomsoever they be) for this unexpected garland.

It makes me feel I should be blogging more regularly.  I have, like many literary bloggers, been flagging a bit recently so let this be a wake-up call.

A Postscript on Literary Elections


I am currently reading V.S. Naipaul's 1958 novel The Suffrage of Elvira  and it is a wonderfully witty story about an election in Trinidad circa 1950.  Much more fun than page after page in the Sunday papers dribbling on about whether X looked better on TV than Y. Having not long ago read his first novel, The Mystic Masseur (1957) I have become a great fan of Naipaul's early work.

Literature and the Election

Yesterday in the park I walked past the Labour MP who will be expecting me to vote for him on 6th May and he beamed at all passers-by with a universal, impersonal smirk.  Why am I so indifferent to this election?  Why does my heart sink at the preparations for "the TV debate" – a stage-managed process which I will certainly not be watching?  And will there be more features in the Guardian Review embodying novel ways of rounding up the usual suspects (Pullman etc) to offer their valuable contribution as "writers" to the understanding of a process which Dickens (see picture) dealt with more appropriately in The Pickwick Papers? 


I am not 'cynical about politics' or trying to dodge my civic duty.  I shall 'exercise my vote'.  But the spectacle of the issues that matter being daily evaded by all sides does not help the digestion.

Summer is y-comen in

Well, spring at any rate, as these wood anemone in the Welsh Marches seem to show.  How much more interesting than the British election campaign.

The Luxury of Art

A clutch of letters in The Guardian has appeared on "the battle between arts and science" – a phoney war surely?  Many of us are the victims of a British educational system that created, around the age of 14, a division into arts and sciences that has been intellectually damaging and, of course, it is scandalous for artistic and literary people to be ignorant of science – or of anything else for that matter.  Although the queasy spectacle of watching Ian McEwan writing about brain surgery in Saturday could in itself constitute an argument for writers not attempting to mug up on science, clearly art and science are fundamental aspects of human knowledge and shouldn't be set against each other.

But one of the Guardian letter writers, Iain Morgan, Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Glasgow, insists that science is necessary, not to further knowledge, but because "without science and technology our country will lag behind others". Moreover – and this is his killer conclusion – "only by science and technology generating inventions and wealth can we afford the luxury of art".  Why do I find this such a miserable conclusion?

Because art is not "a luxury", a by-product of wealth-creation.  Art simply exists, it is. Art is fundamental, necessary, needs no justification, is the element in which sentient, intelligent human beings move like fish in a stream.  It is not a by-product or an incidental consequence of anything. Given the current state of British universities where money-making is the summum bonum, I suppose it is not surprising that such ideas as that of the Prof. flourish.

The Literature Sector: Production Values

The following appears in the latest newsletter of the Welsh Academi. Comment, I think, is superfluous:

"Creative & Cultural Skills is inviting the literature sector to contribute to a new plan to develop the skills needs of the industry. The Literature Blueprint will be a workforce development plan for literature in the UK. It will analyse the skills needs of the literature sector and propose key actions in response.
The plan is focused on creative writers and those who support them. They would like to hear a range of views from the sector, from writers across different disciplines to writers’ networks and anyone who works to support the development of the literature sector. The plan will be UK-wide.
Tom Bewick, Group Chief Executive, Creative & Cultural Skills, said: “The UK is rightly proud of its literature sector, which encompasses a range of working practices and business models. To ensure the continued success of the sector in a time of intense technological and economic change, we need to focus now on developing those skills that will be needed in the future.”
Antonia Byatt, Director, Literature Strategy at Arts Council England, said: “We are delighted to have been partners with Creative & Cultural Skills in developing the Literature Blueprint. To ensure that everybody can access high-quality literature experiences, both now and in the future, is at the heart of our work, and the development of skills is vital in this aim.”

Paweł Huelle: Mercedes-Benz

Scanning the shelves of bookshops in Paris or Athens or Madrid it is always interesting to see what gets translated, what is considered canonical, from the UK.  And in the same way various random factors conspire to deliver certain foreign titles to us.  Is Orhan Pamuk the most important Turkish writer, for example?  The Nobel committee seems to think so.  I am reading another novel by Paweł Huelle, having enjoyed his Castorp, and this time it is an absorbing tale, Mercedes-Benz, of a man who takes driving lessons in the city of Gdansk (where Huelle comes from) with a crazy instructor, Miss Ciwle, just after the collapse of communism.  It's a lively, witty tale, juxtaposing, through the medium of the motor vehicle, three Polish generations: the pre-war brief period of independence, the communist years, and the new era of post-communist liberation.   The narrator is based on Huelle himself (that's his dad in this picture) and the stories he recounts as he drives around Gdansk with Miss Ciwle are addressed to the Czech master Bohamil Hrabal to whom this book is a kind of hommage. I have no idea how Huelle is seen in Poland but this translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones certainly glides along with the smoothness of a Mercedes and even someone like me who is about as far from being a petrol-head as it is possible to be can enjoy the ride. Recommended.