EPISODE 29: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR, SOMEWHAT FLIGHTILY, CONSIDERS THE PLIGHT OF THE AGED, COMPLAINS ABOUT HAVING TO GO UPSTAIRS TO SCAN STUFF, PRAISES REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY AND LOUIS DE BERNIERES, REFLECTS ON THE NATURE OF HISTORY AND THE BREAK-UP OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND SPECULATES ON THE COMING REVOLUTION.

Welcome to the weekly update, 1,000 words of, my blog about a revitalised writer trying to establish a career in ‘the prime of his life’ (cf Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter).

This week I wrote more of my piece, ‘Old People Are Us’ and as much as I think it is morally wrong to depress people, it is hard to be sanguine about the prospects for many of us in the near future, particular those of us whose living resilience will be rewarded by poverty, chronic illness, Alzheimer’s and a longtime dying – the price we are presently paying for lowering infant mortality rates, clean water and medical advances. I can only assume, and here is the hope, that in the future these diseases of old age will also be cured and death delayed even longer. Quite what happens when we all get to 150, or have the option of living forever, well that’s a topic for another day.

While writing the above, I elevated my mood by scanning in the first 100 pages of an old novel of mine. This is not as simple a process as it sounds, mainly because the scanner is upstairs because there isn’t enough room to house it in my tiny study. This OCR software is quite amazing and for me it is miraculous that I can take something bashed out on a typewriter 20 years ago and, given enough time to cope with my technological slownesses, turn it into a real book without having to retype it and without having to acquire a publisher and agent. I know that it is extremely unlikely that any of my children would have turned my writings into posthumous books but now, as long as I live to finish the project, I should be able to leave at least 3 proper readable novels on a shelf somewhere which it so happens is really all I have ever wanted to do with my life. In the meantime there are a few hundred more runs up the stairs, placings on the scanner (hopefully the right way around), runs back down to the stairs, pressings on the ‘Scan’ ‘Read’ ‘Save’ ‘Save As’ ‘Select All’ ‘Copy’ ‘Paste’ ‘Close’ buttons, satisfying self-congratulatory readings and botherings to put everything back in the right order, to go.

This week someone read my already printed novel and said how much they liked it. It is that easy to become my friend for life. Unlike Chris the publisher, Mr Soon, who still hasn’t got back to me.  Don’t these people have sensitive egos? And why say soon if you don’t mean it? What? Me? Well yes, there maybe one of two people out there still wondering why I didn’t turn up when I said I would.

Another of my subjects this week has been the death system (yeah I know, some people have all the fun), and how it works and doesn’t. Last Sunday I witnessed, took part in by being there, Glastonbury’s Remembrance Sunday celebrations and mightily impressed I was. In the days gone by, I paid scant respect to these gatherings, thinking them to be militaristic and jingoistic and indeed have never thought to wear a poppy. Thesedays I see it all quite differently and didn’t even bother grumbling to myself about the young uniformed, the fodder of the future. What I saw was a magickal ceremony, complete with regalia, drums and music, bringing the populace together in a ceremonial act of remembrance of the dead. (Or at least some of the dead.) When we, the crowd, all joined in to promised that ‘we would remember’ the fallen, I felt I was helping honour a contract made with my grandparent’s parents when their country told them, ‘You have to go off and get killed for the benefit of your society. We can’t really do much to protect you but we promise you will not be forgotten.’ It was a profoundly moving moment.

For someone, like myself, who is planning putting on a Day of the Dead this was an excellent exemplar for it had all the right ingredients, not least the participation of the onlookers. I was encouraged.

On the other hand, I have just been rereading de Bernieres ‘Birds Without Wings’ which describes the break-up of the Ottoman Empire before the First World War. (In my opinion this novel is the equal of ‘War and Peace’ and is the best English novel going.) I always loved history at school and no doubt dealt with the collapsing of european empires. I remember being particularly excited by the Russian Revolution. Like Tolstoy, de Bernieres describes both the actual carnage of war and the historical process which is based so much on accidents and individual vainglories. What would have happened if King Alex hadn’t been bitten by a barbary ape or Ataturk had had a slightly different temperament of it Lloyd George hadn’t been a fool? One slight change and millions may have been saved. So it goes. From this prospective, some of the sentiment and nobility of remembrance falls away and all that is left is the usual testament to what happens when we treat each other as different.

And on the subject of the revolution…is it coming? My good friend Butch, older than me by 4 years, has been up to visit the Occupy site at St. Paul’s. Suddenly instead of moaning about the revolution that didn’t happen back in the sixties, he, among others, is looking forward to its actual full-blown arrival following these initial skirmishes. He tells me that many there are aware of what I could call ‘The Ghandian Imperative,’ i.e. to be peaceful, and he himself is keen to push the idea of universality.  

Up until now I have paid scant attention to the ‘occupation’, partly because I couldn’t bear the endless succession of clerics on the radio and also because the idea of protesting against corporate greed seems a bit facile because the very nature of corporateness, and the whole caboodle of capitalism, is avaricious. This is a time, however, when the cracks in the system have opened up wide and it is self-imploding, taking with it any confidence in governments or markets to protect us from the fall out. If such is the case, if this is it, does the wise man try to shape the course of events or step back and watch the show like any good film audience, cheering the goodies, jeering the baddies, crying at the sad scenes, laughing at the jokes, moved to the core yet essentially untouched?

As Hamlet said, ‘to do or not to do?’

EPISODE 28: IN WHICH A CHRISTIAN IS BATED AND AN ISSUE IS PARTIALLY ADDRESSSED.

Welcome to my blog which means to chart the coming to success of an author in the prime of his life (his fifties). I would have started by saying you find me in the doldrums but where  I am is nothing like the accompanying picture.

Most of this week I've spent either writing an article called 'The Shameful Dying or Old People Are Us' or working on material for a website on social activism and dying, or thinking of ideas for the first Annual Glastonbury Day of the Dead. On my desk throughout has been a Guardian piece by a man, Theo Hobson, agonising over whether to become a priest. For some reason his article irritated me in the sense that I couldn't quite throw it away without commenting on it. Therefore I wrote to him:

Dear Theo Hobson,

Last week I read your piece in the Guardian and it has continued to irritate me – although I’m not entirely sure why. First, with respect, and in case it was a genuine question and you haven’t already heard the answer a thousand times, I can tell you that you certainly shouldn’t dismiss your doubts and, even more certainly, shouldn’t become a whatever it is you can’t quite get yourself to call it, a minister.

How can I be so certain when you are not?

Let us begin with god calling you. Or rather, as you say yourself, your thinking that god may be calling you. Put aside god’s poor calling powers (can’t god raise its voice a little?), and the fact that all are called but few are chosen, and examine what this call feels like, ‘muddled, messy, mixed of motive, full of questions marks’. Sit with these feelings, young man, (please say you are young, for why else the hubris?), feel them to their very fullness. These feelings are your inner thoughts which you are trying to suppress through action. They won’t go away until you’ve faced them, felt them.

Have you noticed this is all about you? What’s wrong with ministering? You don’t want to be dealing with people, just with ideas, so you’ll make a crap vicar. And what will you say to batty old ladies when they say god is calling them, it feels rather muddled and messy but they’ve decided to become vicars in your church?

Once upon a time I was involved in Hinduism in an era when a lot of westerners decided that god was calling them to be swamis, renunciants. Few of them remain as such. I’m reminded of a friend of mine who 40 years ago got his knickers into a twist about whether he should be a Hindu or a Christian. Sadly he’s never managed to unwind himself and only last week was on the phone wondering whether the solution would be to become a Buddhist.

While not questioning your infantile view of god as an entity that calls you, shall we discuss belief? Does it really matter if you don’t really believe what you profess to believe? Answer, yes. If I believe something literally that you believe metaphorically, or ‘quasi-factually’, then we are believing different things, describing different realities and our common ground is not common. Also, I may die for my beliefs, you won’t.

It seems you love ritual. It isn’t the meanings of the words that count, you infer but their ability as part of ritual to… (I’m not sure what you mean but I’ll ad lib here)… to elevate your spirit, to give you a taste, at least, of the experience of transcendence. With my catholic, Hindu, and new Age background, I’m quite in favour of a bit of ritual myself and have been to quite a few that engage all the senses before transcending them. I think you’ll find the liturgy best remains as incomprehensible as possible because it is the mind’s (left?) brain analytical meaning-parsing that you need to escape to experience wholeness. Bear in mind that human cultural traditions of ritual – and their essential tripartite nature – were often greatly assisted by entheogens (alcohols, somas, nectars, mushrooms etc.). Quite what you want of your ritual, I don’t know, but I recommend you try mushrooms with a Peruvian shaman and take LSD during a 7 day Indian chant, before settling on your preferred form.

Of course I’m not getting the christian bit. Has Christ revealed himself to you in some way or have you arrived in this confusion all by yourself? What is to be gained by calling yourself a christian and what on earth is liberal christianity? Liberal is a transient, culturally and time bound position in a mundane continuum world; it is Caesar’s world and has no connection with religious experience which, one supposes, is the cultic centre of christianity.

I’ll stop there; my itch is scratched.

Well almost.  or could you not decide that those apparently social interactions and duties are the ritualistic and cultic centre of christianity. You raise people up with your love - that would be your vocation. Was it the teachings, the ritual, or the presence of the man that made people follow jesus? Did he not uplift them first?

AVATAR

Co-incidentally, or perhaps not, and much more important to me and this journal than the picked upon Mr Hobson, is the removal of one of the foundation stones of my grand plan, to resume my own ‘ministry’ in the form of teaching the Avatar course. (I gave this a mention a few episodes ago, as no doubt you recall.) What I hadn’t reckoned on was discovering that the rules have changed and that the Avatar Masters (i.e the qualified teachers) are no longer able to teach the course on homeground (as was once the case) and instead have to take themselves and their prospective students to larger courses either in Holland or Florida. As my whole creation was ‘Avatar in Avalon’, this news was, as they say in Avatarland, a rather massive ‘secondary’. Being a good student I wrote to ‘them’ and reaffirmed my goal. It is a bit like if Mr Hobson got a louder shout from god which said, ‘Stay away, we don’t want you,’ and decided to be a vicar anyway.

The Avatar Course is a great collection of exercises that I’ve wanted to share with people ever since I came across them but MONEY! Why does Harry Palmer need so much goddam money?!!

Time’s up, I’ll be back to this.

EPISODE 27; IN WHICH THE AUTHOR CONTEMPLATES CHANCE AND ROAD ACCIDENTS AND ADDS TWO WEEKS OF A PILGRIMAGE TO INDIA 1976.

Welcome to my blog which this morning admits to being a little short of inspiration although it is already in a very different mood from half an hour ago when it woke up, made a cup of coffee and contemplated the current reality of uncertainty and lack of focus. Such contemplation being unhelpful to a good mood, I diverted myself by checking out the latest from Greece only to find a very local headline at the top of ‘Latest News’ list, ‘Several Killed in M5 Crash.’   

Officers said the crash, which happened close to junction 25 at about 20:30 GMT on Friday, led to "one massive fireball" at the scene. ‘Several’ people died and up to 35 were injured in the 27-vehicle crash on the M5 near Taunton, Somerset. Emergency crews said the cause of the crash was not clear, but there had been reports of heavy rain and fog.

About four hours before that accident took place, I was in Birmingham, returning my elder grandson to his parents. (By the way: does anyone else find that listening to stories while they drive, sends them to sleep? I had my first experience of stories, rather than radio, yesterday while listening to ‘Stormbreaker’ by Anthony Horrowitz. It wasn’t that the story was dull yet my eyes began to close and I had to open the window to wake myself up. Not something I’d do again.) Anyway, when my daughter’s husband returned from work I had a choice, either to leave straight away or stay on, see my daughter, have some dinner and then drive back to Somerset after the Friday night rush hours. Throughout the day I’d heard weather warnings about torrential rain in the South West and driving at night in rain isn’t my favourite thing, so I opted for heading for home but then as I sat in the car I thought I should change my mind and not leave so hurriedly. On the other hand it was still light, so I set off.

The M42 was slow but mostly moving. The M5 initially wasn’t so bad though unusually going at 80mph had me passing nearly everyone. Then the rain began and we came so the unlit miles so I mooched along in the slow lane. Around Bristol, where you have a wide choice of motorways to lose your way on in the fog, a crawl began and for a couple of minutes it was so impossible to see I would have pulled up if there had been anywhere to stop. As it was the overall journey took an extra hour. If I’d left two hours later, as I was thinking I should have done, I could have either been in the crash or delayed for six or seven hours.

So, by conflating my decision with a random accident on the M5, I end-up feeling a little better than things than I did on waking. Like the character in ‘A Sense of Ending’, I think it is all about me when of course it isn’t. It’s about those poor people who did lose their lives, or become injured or traumatized, and those emergency services attending to a major accident while policing the Bridgewater Carnival and trying to stop the central town wall by the river from collapsing.

But life is so random is it not?  

*****

After writing the above, I continued with my day which primarily involved hosting a small party for two friends who are in the process of moving from India to San Francisco. Switching on the news tonight, I hear that the M5 crash has remained leading the news. Tom Hammill’s (name right?) description of what happened to him is extraordinary and humbling.

*****

Meanwhile, other friends have gone up to London this weekend to join the protests at St Paul’s which the BBC describe as being against capitalist greed. Put like that, it seems deliberately tamed and trivialized. It’s a shame that the stupid church has got involved though satisfying to see the Anglican implosion. Being against things, such as badness and greed, is all very well but the time will have to come soon when alternatives are proposed and adopted. For the time being, I suppose, the best action is to encourage the idea that the financial collapse of the capitalistic system is a good and necessary thing while trying to prevent some charismatic populist seizing power in the vacuum caused by the failure of the present systems.

*****

For those of you following the plot, of whom there is one at most (Hello Singapore!), I am an author trying to create an opening for myself. One hope has been the response of an e-publisher after reading the opening chapters of one of my novels. On the 1^st of September I sent him the completed manuscript which he promised to read ‘soon’. Two months later, not a whisper from him. Of course, the whole point of e-books is that I don’t really need a publisher because I could do it myself but this fellow had offered to do the PR and organize me so that having published I could make some sales.

Dream on, young man.

A second link in my chain of success was to be a return to teaching the Avatar Course. To this end, I decided to advertise on the Avatar Website. After a couple of weeks of not seeing my Ad appear, I received an email saying it is so long since I last ‘delivered’ a course that they (the organization) want me to serve an internship. Bollocks to that I think, so rather than actually say that I’ve had to pass the matter on to my inner American, Jack, who is better at handling these setbacks than I am.

Hi, I’m Jack, John’s unhindered self. What to do when feeling knocked back? Take five positive actions.

Go on then. Don’t just think about them, do them. What’s more, name them.

1. I will – this week – contact the woman who is contacting me about ‘internship’.

2. Um…

Meanwhile, here’s 1976 all over again.

PILGRIMAGE TO INDIA 1976

Monday 27th September

Writing this late in the evening and am tired and not able to adequately describe a mad day. Arose quite early and made good time to Montreux when I finally decided to take the freaky route rather than the ‘safe’ road via Zurich. On this trip I’m constantly reminded of the Aslan quote, ‘You never know what would have happened’. Anyway I got a lift from a loony Swiss guy who detoured to deliver some cookers (?) and have a meal in his caravan, plus wine and cognac. He took me to Martigny, the beginning of the mountain journey. Seemed quite possible that, mountains permitting, I’d get to Chur tomorrow. Becoming attached to the idea of seeing Dick and Estee which is maybe why I then got a lift to a small village called Saxone. There I got out of the car and was immediately apprehended by a Belgian guy called Joe. He seems quite young. He has been living in a free hut around here and wanted company to look for work or go to Geneva. Well I was keen on continuing my journey but the good lord doesn’t send these people just for me to ignore them. We went to the hut and at once were descended upon by a bunch of mad freaks – including a chinese chic called Dee who is taking my fancy. They have dominated the evening. Now Joe and I are having a beer before returning to the hut with another guy who stays there. I’m not really keen on staying here but I’ll spend a day looking for work before moving on. – 2 habits I’m trying to develop; 1, to say peace be with you every time a car passes me by and 2, to say a Hail Mary whenever I see a crucifix. THE DAY I WAS INTERRRUPTED AT SAXONE.

Tuesday September 28th September

Yet again endless dreams in the night. One in which I remet all my school acquaintances, a weird one in a park with some girls and worse, dreams about past events. All these dreams put me off sleeping. I don’t remember all the details but I woke-up feeling sad and it has stayed with me all day. At any moment I could cry. Has fucked my day completely. Hasn’t been a good day anyway. Joe and I went looking for work; my body was awful and was being dragged along. We did not find work and decided to leave this place which has only had a negative effect on me. (And is expensive, though I’m not supposed to worry about money.) Anyway we hitched then split up and hitched but I could not get a lift and I felt worse for being on the road so I have come back to the hut. Hoping that in the morning I will feel lighter. At the moment I have no strength for my journey and my pilgrimage seems short of holy places and me far from being a holy person.

THE DAY THAT WAS SPOILED BY A DREAMS.

Wednesday September 29th

After writing last night a guy came round with a chillum and address for work. Improved my spirits. Really like the hut and Olaf too as he got into Pilgrims Guide and began discussing it with his French friends. This morning I woke-up early and redid yesterday’s walk with a little more spirit despite a pain in my side. Felt I was being told to do it again. Still no work so, quite gratefully, I began to hitch away from Saxone. Had another lesson when I forgot my bag; fortunately the driver went in a circle and the bag was returned. Slowly made progress. Was actually picked-up by a girl! Then at about 3pm I was dropped off at a nowhere place around 180kms from Chur. The village was full of large crosses. I couldn’t help but ask for a lift all the way to Chur. Miraculously one came and I mean miraculously. From an English guy, all the way across high and misty mountains, then (raining?) after the blue glacier & the windscreen wipers wouldn’t work properly. Amazingly I wasn’t frightened. The guy was nice; we talked about Don Juan and impeccability. Arriving I met an unsurprised Dick and Estee. Much relieved to be here. THE DAY OF THE MIRACULOUS LIFT IN THE MOUNTAINS.

Thursday September 30th

Really very little. Had a bath, read Shardik, posted a postcard to R. Read all day long. THE DAY I READ SHARDIK.

Friday 1st October

So with the warmth and security of civilization I preoccupy myself with thinking about food and unobserved sneaking of extra pieces of bread. Dick and Estee away this evening. When I’d finally done with eating I attempted a little meditation and studied my Yoga lessons which should be tried daily if possible. Also read the bible which is full of interest. This evening recentred on my journey via a book by Geoffrey Moorhouse and a tv program on St Francis. Still worrying about money and shouldn’t be. THE DAY I CLEANED THE KITCHEN FLOOR IN PARPAN.

Saturday 2nd October

During the night was dreaming again, particularly remember a dream in which I was Clyde Barrow telling Lucy about Bonnie’s death. Lucy was appalled and saddened. She said Bonnie had been spoilt by her schooling (maybe nuns). The day that followed was slow and greedy. In the evening read an amazing book about Uri geller. THE DAY I READ ABOUT SPACEMEN.

Sunday 3rd October

Awoke in morning after a dream in which I’d had another epileptic fit. Also dreamed I was underwater in a frogman’s suit; water got in my eyes and I couldn’t get it out. Other long weird dreams. –Looks as if I may be here until Friday when maybe Dick can get me a lift into Austria. Not really a long lift but maybe the reading I’m doing here is significant. –Day of vibes with Estee’s mother grumbling about the house and Dick and Estee talking about going to England. On the walk to Vabella they argue and I just think how weird it is that people who say they love each other can spend so much time arguing and how sad it is that I’ve lost my family. DICK AND ESTE ARGUE ON A SUNDAY.

Monday 4th October

Begin to question my role here. To wash up and keep Este comfortable. That is satisfactory. The rest of the time I spend eating and reading as if I’d never heard of discipline or of a pilgrimage to India. This afternoon meditated awhile and later looked at the night sky searching for the Star of Love. Later in evening discovered I have to leave Friday or Saturday. It is good to be so directed though I’m wary of the immediate future & going back on the road. Then I realize whichever way I go is the right route. Can’t think of anything to put in capital letters.  GIVEN THE DATE OF DEPARTURE.

Tuesday 5th October

Reading Zen & the Art Of and thinking of leaving, realize that maybe I should be deeply thinking about something. But I’m not. I’m neither high nor low or anything really. An elderly woman, a Rosicrucian, visited today. Took it as a sign of sorts, a reminder of my search, but the search is so indefinable that I can’t even tell when I’m searching and when I’m not. What am I searching for? The ‘I’. How do I know when I’ve found him? That I don’t know. Maybe when the voice that says the affirmations at the beginning of the book is not just the voice of Dominic saying the voice. Yes, that must be the ‘I’ I am looking for, to merge with the one who is already there. And maybe I’m looking for the I that knows what ‘God is love on cavalry means. And I’m searching to know the I that loves all. I suppose that apart from keeping to my five basic rules there is nothing else I can do but go to India and pray that the rest is revealed to me. In the evening had a smoke. It does help. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE.

Wednesday 6th October

First thing in the morning, beginning to think again. Never know whether I should be thinking or not. Maybe if you think you should, think deeply and when you’re not thinking you shouldn’t think at all. Siting still my head is catching up with me. Pirsig, Krishnamurti and maybe Don Juan as well seem to say you can’t and shouldn’t be trying to, conquer fear. Climbing one mountain makes the next no easier to climb. The aim is to live with the fear, to carry on regardless.

Today I got my arse and did something. In fact, ironically, I climbed a mountain, even reaching the snow though I wasn’t trying to. Fantastic sun and trees and snow capped mountains. In words, cliched, in reality, perfect. And the rushing shouting streams reminding me of seeing electricity in my trips with Dana. Soon I came down. I get freaked out when I get too high up, fear of sudden mists. Down and back to Pirsig who climbed down his mountain. I hadn’t really followed his thought but at the end I felt depressed so maybe thinking isn’t to be recommended. – a tool of the moment but not a ‘way’. – Later went to Varbelle with Este. Really pleased that my body is working at all after the last few days. THE DAY I REACHED THE SNOW AND THE MOUNTAINS

Thursday 7th October

Returned to my arse though Estee was unwell and there was a certain amount to do with the children. I’m not very good with Lucas really, impatient and maybe slightly rough which would be ok if it were a role but it isn’t a role. Children cut through any veneer of love & patience and they demand, require and receive only the real self. Or is that untrue? The ‘real’ self? Can’t say anything these days. All this talk about ‘thought’ and ‘thinking’ and I forget my theory that what we normally call thinking is only a stammer. Pure thought is direct and with few words. – In the evening decided to sleep out as a test of the weather which is hot in the day and clear at night. Came out at 11 p.m. lasted until 5a.m. Not a lot of sleep; too uncomfortable though not cold until the morning. The moon was full, or just about. Around the moon were coloured lights, yellow, purple, green –half a rainbow. Couldn’t stare too long because I  was too cold with my head out of the sleeping-bag. Didn’t ‘get off’ on the experience but maybe it said something that I could actually forswear a little comfort. Had thought this was my last day but Dick and Este seemed quite keen on my waiting for the lift on Saturday. CHOOSING TO SLEEP OUT IN PARPAN.

Friday 8th October

PARPAN

 Have really enjoyed the views of Papon this year, skies, mountains, trees frequently harmonising. Dick and Estie went for their dancing evening in Chur. I pigged myself, lazed and took to bed. Reread my Yogananda lessons. Sent a birthday card to Yasmi. What can I out in capital letters? A VERY LAZY AND MOST ENJOYABLE DAY IN PARPAN.

Saturday 9th October

Don Juan following me around. First Dick showed me one of the books and then an Austrian with five children gave me a beautiful lift to Innsbruck and talked about Don Juan on the way. Am in Innsbruck this evening, eating soup and bread paid for me by the money he gave me, 200 schillings. He was a nice man, very much into what I’m doing though I did try to explain what a hopeless case I was. Am now worrying about the night out to follow. Took only a few minutes to feel homesick for Dick and Estee. They’ve been so good to me. Even packed me off with boiled eggs and carrots. Also Dick put some hosepipe on my bag which makes it a lot easier to carry. Thankyou, thankyou. Then Dick’s friend took me across the border, then two short lifts brought me to 140ks to Innsbruck. A long wait, began to feel cold, then this superb lift complete with Beatles music. Back on the road with the tears, fears, changes and frantic prayers that I bring to it. Am not keen on this sleeping out trip but can’t comment until the morning. My first night alone (except for 2 in warm Papon) since I left England.. – Later, tried to hitch further and met a german guy who gave me a smoke before moving on, then made up my bed by the side of the road and went to sleep. –In future change socks before sleeping.

DON JUAN FOLLOWS ME TO AUSTRIA.

Sunday 10th October

Wake-up cold (but not shivering), very damp with the sleeping-bag wet with due. Fortunately it is sunny and after a while I dry out. Took a while to get a lift and then it began, six lifts to Salzburg. I met up with yet another german guy after he’d hitched a lift from a coach. Shared a smoke and chocolate icecreams bought with schillings. Stuck for a lift he suggested we walk the last few kilometres to the border. Was a funny walk. Still had hopes of seeing Salzburg on a Sunday. Reaching the border we found a park full of lorries stuck because they weren’t allowed in Austria on a Sunday. Wouldn't have thought much about it if I hadn't seen three lorries together with ‘Istanbul’ written on them. With prompting from the German guy I went to see if I could get a lift to Greece. Not much success for a while. ‘Please god’, I say at the back of my mind, ‘not my will but yours’ and then a Scots guy hails me. He’s off to Iran via Bulgaria. Pity, I say, I’ve no visa and no injections. It’ll be all-right he says so I agree to give it a go. We don’t move at all because of border hassles and I get cramp in both legs before falling asleep. MIRACLE IN SALZBURG

EPISODE 26; IN WHICH THE STRUGGLING AUTHOR SLAGS OFF HIS BETTERS

Welcome to my blog which will be surprised to see you.

I’ve been reading some of the Booker Short List, three so far. I’m not a generous critic, nor a fair one; that’s what envy does to you.

On Wednesday I read the winning novel, Julian Barnes’s ‘A Sense of Ending’ as my grandson constructed lego Star War figures and occasionally threatened to imprison me. (At one point we had a fulsome discussion about whether the word ‘imprison’ could apply to venues that weren’t prisons or whether using that verb meant that wherever the imprisoning takes place then becomes a prison.) In view of my responsibility at the time and of the interruptions, I am willing to admit I may have missed some essential elements of the story for which I apologize to all concerned. I shall reread it, for it is very short, before publishing this response.

The first two books I read, Snowdrops and Half-Blood Blues, had been about people, places and characters that I have no personal knowledge of or, outside of the novel, any particular interest in. ‘A Sense of Ending’ is a very different proposition for the main character is about my age, has lived in times and places I know and is reflecting on issues I often reflect upon. Because of these things, together with its brevity and its essentially dull plot, this book reads more like a series of meditations and reflections rather than a novel.

All three books are first person narratives by people who have done some wrong that they are now reflecting on. The fact that I didn’t like any of these characters isn’t because of the actions they took but because of the sort of people they seem to be anyway, trudgers who write themselves off and then both glamorize and loathe those that don’t.

Reviewing a book is much harder than I expected. Especially one by an author as well-respected as Julian Barnes. If I’d never heard of him, I’d think this the work of a man who had missed out on life, apart perhaps from one evening by the River Severn. But obviously the character in the story is not the author but someone invented by Julian to express something. What and why, I haven’t worked out.

Rather than review the book as such, it is some of the statements in it and attitudes expressed that I will respond to.

Undoubtedly one theme is how we reconstruct past events, history. ‘History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.’  This statement is made by the adolescent Adrian.

The book is adolescent all the way through because the narrator never grows up. But thinks he does. Maybe that is why I found the book both annoying and provocative. Throughout the book there is the inference that adolescent emotions are more powerful, more consuming, than adult ones. This is not my experience. And I’m saying that despite being a teenager who twice tried to kill himself and, much like Adrian in the book, believed in the application of thought to life and hated the English way of not being serious about being serious. None of this begins to compare to the emotional profundities of child-rearing or, for that matter, of ever nearing towards the end. No wonder this guy was divorced, no wonder he’s still dumb enough to think there’s two kinds of women; he’s emotionally stunted.

Or is that the point?

Maybe it is. I’m quite away of how much of my character was formed by and is still stuck in adolescence. Maybe it is the mirror I don’t like.

The author does generalise. ‘…This may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old we invent different pasts for others.’

No. On both counts.

Here’s another one. “We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but we were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things than facing them.”

Again, not me. Maybe if capitalism continues to wobble, more like this narrator will emerge from the woodwork of employment with their ‘mea culpas’. Too fucking late, mate.

Rereading the book, I see that the narrator admits he’s a boring tosser. At the same time he’s eulogizing his friend for his suicide which wasn’t the intellectual choice that Tony was assuming it to be. This is why he can write rubbish like this:” When you are in your twenties, even if you’re confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become.”

Once more, not for me.

“Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”  Which is all very well if you’re a privileged middle-class boy who never had to grow-up but for most of the world there isn’t even the luxury of disappointment.

I do recognize the narrator’s experience of memory, of how much we experience ourselves as not being able to recall things, only to be staggered by a sudden memory in which tiny details are remembered. My dreams have shown me that somewhere in my brain everything is recorded. It is frightening actually because I’d hate to find the memories taking over, especially as there is no part of the past I’d like to go back to – for more than a few moments – and none I could bear to be stuck in. There’s a Paul Simon song, Bookends, with the lines

Preserve your memories

They’re all that’s left you.

How dark is that! And darker, perhaps, for this book which shows the unreliability and phantasmorgoric nature of memory. If all you have are your memories and they turn out to be false…then you have nothing.

“You get towards the end of life – no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong.”

Okay, it’s a story, the guy can say anything he likes and I don’t have to respond but he does write ‘you’ and often refers to ‘we’ (i.e. other 60s children of a male middle-class persuasion) so…the idea that there is an end to the likelihood of change in that life is delusion, the same comfortable delusion he has always had. Anything can happen at any time and unless he’s very lucky the biggest challenges are still ahead. As for that long moment of pause in which he asks, what else have I done wrong, well, in my experience most people are asking themselves that every day of their lives. (The answer of course is nothing but that’s another thing altogether.)

Does the fact that the book got into my head and make me think mean it was good? No. Would I recommend this book to anyone else? No, because I couldn’t see what good it could do them.

I have now read, and will add, my daughter’s review of the book which unhindered by a) authorial envy b) taking it all personally c) being like me and the narrator, a male middle-class boy brought up in single-sex schools in the 60s, is much fairer, clearer (yep, the narrator is dense; yep, Veronica was normal) and to the point than mine.

Of course you can ignore that remark if you’re a prospective employer reading with a view to snapping up my talent.

If I don’t hear from that publisher soon I’ll be every bit as miserable as this book was.


My Daughter's Review
I loved this book, it reminded me of Brideshead Revisited (Evelen
Waugh) or The Liar (Stephen Fry) in atmosphere. It had a sort of classic school story feel to it (I always loved The Chalet school when I was young). It had a nice peaceful pace. I thought it was brilliantly well written.
I found it a bit predictable; Adrian arrives they all have crushes on him; he goes to Oxford. The first suicide is followed by another suicide (with a certain predictability). The mother’s strange foray made it almost inevitable that somebody was going to sleep with her. I must admit I expected it to be the protagonist.
The predictableness of the suicide was interesting, I’ve been thinking about suicide (generically) most of the people who I know who have committed suicide were linked to other people who committed suicide. I was listening to the Freakonomics podcast on suicide, which talked about copy-cat suicides. It also talked about suicide as a rational action; I found myself trying to do a cost-benefit analysis on Adrian’s suicide. I couldn’t quite work out when he committed suicide, before or after the baby was born?
That there was some relationship with the special needs group was also obvious and I found myself thinking that the protagonist was being extraordinarily dense. I thought the ‘knowingness’ of Margaret was irritating.
In terms of the questions- I didn’t think there was anything wrong with Veronica. When we first meet her she is simply a young girl at college who is enjoying a relationship that is as new or alien to her as to him. They are both just playing at it. She seems to be marginally more confident than him but not extremely so, I thought he projected a lot onto her.
She didn’t seem to go out with Adrian till after they split up and given how dull the main protagonist was it seemed reasonable. It had also been set up- he was the catch, the cool one. She was supposed to want to date him before she met him.
Later she clearly acted oddly, but who wouldn’t? Her mother had stolen her boyfriend (presumably splitting up the family) and got her pregnant before killing himself. Our protagonist then turned up, stalked her and then started going on about it, whilst apparently being really thick.
I thought he was neither hero nor anti-hero but narrator. The drama had all happened elsewhere and he was telling their story. He just seemed to think it was all about him.
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