Liars and poets

Would I tell you a lie?

I went last night to the launch of George Szirtes' collected poems, a reading at the Savile Club on Brook Street followed by dinner in the very grand chandelier-hung dining room.

At the reading George asserted that novelists were liars and poets told the truth.

He then read a marvellous poem called and about esprit d'escalier, the French phrase for the brilliant rejoinder you only think about when you are going down the stairs leaving the conversation. In his poem he is on the top deck of a bus when he speaks aloud that I-wish-I'd-thought-of-that-at-the-time remark, and realises that the man sitting behind him is doing the same thing, and looking out of the window of the bus the whole street is full of people saying aloud what they wish they had said.

During the Q&A after the reading, I resigned myself to asking a question about the influence on his work of living in East Anglia for many years , and waited until dinner to refer to the remarkable event in which everyone on the street and on the bus was suddenly saying aloud their esprit d'escalier which he could not have invented not being a lying novelist. George had the good grace to burst out laughing. At this point we were joined, in a case of dinner musical chairs, by the poet Ruth Fainlight, who is married to the novelist Alan Sillitoe (happy 80th, Alan).

I have nothing at all against anyone saying that the novelist is a liar, since this is demonstrably true, but I could not quite understand how in the case of the poet, his imagination produces truth and in the case of the novelist, lies.

George maintained that the poet is solipsistic, always writing about himself and his attempt to understand why a cup is a cup and not, say, a saucer. When a novelist tells lies, he is asking the reader to willingly suspend his disbelief, to believe that the lies are true; he invents cups that aren't there. When the poet lies, the lie is obviously a metaphor, and is not to be taken for reality, it's a vehicle to say something else. The novelist, however, is trying to hoodwink you into believing that there is a cup, saucer, entire dinner service, real and actual.

But by this time we had eaten some very good duck with mashed potatoes and drunk a lot of wine and I went home. I hope George himself will be along in a minute to sort things out further.

UPDATE
and there he is in the comments, below and at greater and very interesting length, at his place

The living hell that is a writer's life

My friend Imran Ahmad depicts the terrible things that await the unwitting young person who embarks on a career in literature

My weekend re-reading

The masters of the universe - where are they now?

Judy!

I wan to draw your attention to a new book by a dear friend of mine, Susie Boyt's My Judy Garland Life which is currently running through a series of rave reviews this weekend.

Susie is the daughter of Lucien Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. She is always fabulous company, but in this work which is not quite memoir and not quite biography she traces the life of a lonely child who first heard Judy Garland sing Over the Rainbow and found a friend. It's a book about being a fan, and it's a book about feelings. Here's the first review:

This book is a bit insane. It is too much. It is well over the rainbow. It is embarrassing. At the same time it is a brilliant analysis of embarrassment; it suggests that such strength of feeling is maybe something “to be prized”. What a self-deprecating, funny, moving, entertaining read it is, a mad love letter (“I inhale her and exhale her”) from Susie Boyt to Judy Garland, who “created a whole new theatrical idiom in which glamour and frankness nudge and jostle unabashedly”. Its unabashedness is its delight, and a large part of its moral courage.

It conjures up a hopeless openness of empathy, presents its readers with a sensitivity which, by its nature, can't not be damaged, then radiates cowardly-lion bravery. It makes for a new kind of memoir, one that finds a way to insert, philosophically and emotionally, between the plain words “my” and “life”, the everyday pathos, bathos and surreality of being alive in the modern, celebrity-glutted, couldn't-care-less Western world. . . .

This book, though, is stark naked. It wears its vulnerability like a birthday suit, and does so for all of us, in a spirit of born celebration. Can cynicism really be so simply out-argued? Can a book really be so analytical and high-kicking, so fragile and defiant at the same time? An insecure, anguished, megalomaniac, voracious, truly altruistic piece of modern thought, this wonderfully clever book gives its whole self, flings its arms out in a rainy street like a wonderful diva. Brava.

And did I mention she writes a weekly column about clothes among other things in the Financial Times?

Canonical Jewish books

The ultimate guide to the books that every Jew needs to own. My choice

In which Margaret Atwood and I speak of many things

In all the various excitements, I neglected to mention that I had dinner with Margaret Atwood and her husband (and several 19-year-olds) on Saturday night. Despite the noise in the restaurant we managed to talk at some length about Margaret Laurence, Janet Frame, and even for a minute or two about the importance of clothes.

Second place in the Karachi Bonniest Baby Contest

Last week I commended to your attention the weepingly funny account of author Imran Ahmad's trip to the Edinburgh International Book festival where he met Gordon Brown, while dressed in shorts.

Yesterday afternoon, in the the authors' yurt in Edinburgh, a pleasant man in a linen suit came over to introduce himself to me. This was Imran Ahmad in person. He had been deluged with visits to his blog from The Thoughtful Dresser, more he said, than from all the other sites put together.

He pressed into my hand a signed copy of his book Unimagined: A Muslim Boy Meets the West, which I read on the plane coming home. Later he would persuade Salman Rushdie to take a signed copy off his hands. And has the photographic evidence to prove it.

I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed this book, particularly his account of how he was robbed of the title of Karachi's Bonniest Baby by political corruption and nepotism. Here he is, pictured on the cover, in the contest.

Look, just go and buy it. It's the story of a Pakistani Muslim Adrian Mole. What's not to like? Eh?

UPDATE

Imran has updated his account of Edinburgh:

On Sunday morning, a quiet chap wandered into the Writers’ Yurt. I could see that he had no Festival ID and obviously wasn’t supposed to be in here – maybe another wannabe writer?

The Festival staff were all very busy, so gallantly I stepped in to deal with this situation, with my characteristic sensitivity and tact.

I shared with him some advice on writing and getting published; I gave him a signed copy of my book (so that he would gain an appreciation of the standard of writing which has to be attained in order to get published); I let him have his photo taken with me; and then I gently nudged him out of the Writers’ Yurt.

Although I am a successful internationally-published writer, I’m always ready to help aspiring writers on their long journey to some form of publication.

PLEASE NOTE: The Writers’ Yurt is strictly for invited writers, authorised Festival staff and nominated guests only (all to be wearing Festival IDs, unlike this gentleman).

Here's another bit:

I returned to the Festival on the weekend of 23-24 August, taking a train up to Edinburgh on Friday night.



At Kings Cross, there was a huge crowd waiting to board the train, but I was quite relaxed. This being the last train to Edinburgh on the Friday evening before a holiday weekend, I wouldn’t even contemplate this journey without a reserved seat in First Class.



The crowd surged forward as soon as the platform number was revealed, and I still got caught up in the herd mentality – even though I knew I had a comfortable seat waiting for me. I boarded the train and began to arrange my stuff around my seat (suitcase in the luggage rack, jacket on the overhead shelf, food bag at my feet, book on the table etc).



A man in the next carriage was yelling into his mobile phone. An attractive woman seated at the next table smiled at me, as we both realised we could hear a phone conversation taking place so far away.



“… THERE ISN’T A SINGLE UNRESERVED SEAT! …”



He was moving towards me …



“… THIS IS A COMPLETE TYPICAL F--- ING FIASCO! …”



He came into my carriage … He was a thin man, with very short, dark hair and wearing jeans and a t-shirt …



“… MY TICKET? IT’S A STANDARD SAVER RETURN …”



He sat down in the reserved seat opposite me (although a Standard Saver Return would not entitle him to a seat in First Class).



“… WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO F---- ING DO? …”



An elegant Japanese couple stood hesitantly alongside me, conferring together and looking back and forth between their tickets and the seats opposite me.



“May I see?” I asked them, and examined their seat reservations. “Will,” I said to the man on the phone, “these visitors to our country are waiting to take their seats.”



Studiously not acknowledging that he had heard me, Will Self moved off down the carriage, back in the direction he had come from – still yelling into his phone.



Later during the journey, I was unable to overcome my curiosity. I made the hazardous journey into Standard Class and down the length of the train, to find out what had happened. The aisles and connecting areas were strewn with people on the floor: reading, talking, sleeping and (in some cases) drinking far too much.



Eventually, I found him. He had a seat and was furiously scribbling notes and using a purple highlighter in a copy of Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’.

Literary fabulousness

I am doing a gig at the Edinburgh Book Festival next weekend (with Rose Tremain - too late, it's sold out!) and having dinner with Margaret Atwood on Saturday night, apparently.

This account by a writer attending the festival is the most amusing summing up I have ever read of the sheer glamour and pace of the literary life and the social whirl we all move in, hanging out with Mart and Phil and Salman and even Gordon. This is why Madonna and Sarah Ferguson started writing books, you know.

Readers' corner

I have just discovered an excellent new site, The Book Depository which will ship books worldwide for free. While its discounts aren't always quite as good as Amazon, because there are no shipping costs the price often works out the same (and they give you a price comparison). It's extremely useful for books not available in the US.

You'll find The Clothes On Their Backs there, though they don't seem yet to have a pre-order facility for The Thoughtful Dresser - and my limited posting at the moment is down to my rushing to meet the end of the month deadline for delivery of the MS of that book.

Booker Prize longlist

Man Booker 2008 longlist

The ‘Man Booker Dozen’ 2007

The longlist for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced on Tuesday 29 July 2008.

A biography and synopsis for each title will follow on shortly

• Aravind Adiga

  The White Tiger

  Atlantic

  read more »

• Gaynor Arnold

  Girl in a Blue Dress

  Tindal Street Press

  read more »

• Sebastian Barry

  The Secret Scripture

  Faber & Faber

  read more »

• John Berger

  From A to X

  Verso

  read more »

• Michelle de Kretser

  The Lost Dog

  Chatto & Windus

  read more »

• Amitav Ghosh

  Sea of Poppies

  John Murray

  read more »

• Linda Grant

  The Clothes on Their Backs

  Virago

  read more »

• Mohammed Hanif

  A Case of Exploding Mangoes

  Jonathan Cape

  read more »

• Philip Hensher

  The Northern Clemency

  Fourth Estate

  read more »

• Joseph O’Neill

  Netherland

  Fourth Estate

  read more »

• Salman Rushdie

  The Enchantress of Florence

  Jonathan Cape

  read more »

• Tom Rob Smith

  Child 44

  Simon & Schuster

  read more »

• Steve Toltz

  A Fraction of the Whole

  Hamish Hamilton

  read more »

Judith Krantz remembered

I'm researching a piece on the 30th anniversary of the publication of Judith Krantz's first novel, Scruples. Do any of you have any opinions about her, as a very early chick-lit writer?

Now here's a woman I'd like to go shopping with

Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl

Do you use shopping as a distraction?

Oh yes. I think writers use any kind of distraction possible.

Tell us your favourite shopping memory.

Wedding-dress shopping with my daughter. I'm a rather unwilling shopper, so she had to tell me where we were going for lunch to keep my spirits up. But it was a wonderful experience. I cried when I saw her in one of the dresses and she decided that had to be the one.

What is the best thing you've ever bought?

My trusty suitcase recently gave up on me and I got a new one from Louis Vuitton. I won't say the price, because it was more expensive than the clothes that go in it, but every time I see it I go "Ahhhh".

And the worst thing?

I got overexcited in the 80s, along with the rest of the country, and bought a patchwork velvet skirt with a jagged hem. I thought I looked like the cat's whiskers in it, until one day I saw myself in the mirror. I never wore it again.

Do you have any shopping tips?

If you buy something that costs £1,000 and wear it once, that's what it will have cost. If you wear it a hundred times, it works out at £10 per wear. That's a bargain.

Have you ever felt guilty about something you have bought?

I do like to fly first class. I used to feel bad about the money; now it's the environment. When you're on expenses, you get a taste for a lifestyle and then, tragically, it's very hard to go back.

What can't you get through the week without?

Clarins moisturiser. That's compulsory. And Cadbury's Fruit & Nut. I eat it in the evenings with a glass of wine. I get my five a day that way.

The greatest travel writer you've never read

I have been pretty shocked in the past week or so to discover how many otherwise well-read people have never heard of Norman Lewis, who is without a doubt the greatest post-war travel writer.

His biography, Semi-Invisible Man, by Julian Evans, has just been published to mark Lewis' cententary. I first discovered him in the late Eighties and devoured his seminal work, Naples '44, about his time, during the war, as part of the Allied army of Occupation of Southern Italy following the collapse of the fascist regime in the south. It is achingly funny and rich in insights into that marvellous, untidy, erotic city.

Lewis' 1950 book on Indo-China, A Dragon Apparent, was in the suitcase of every educated journalist during the Vietnam war.

His elegyy for Spain just before the arrival of mass tourism in the Fifities, Voices of the Old Sea, and not published until 1984, is one of the five or six books I cherish.

I once had a brief correspondence with Lewis. I wish I could find the letters.

So just go and read him. And if you already have, then Julian Evans will be doing an event at Daunt's Books on Marylebone High Street on Wednesday. I'll be going.

Notes from a muddy field

I spent an exhausting and scintillating weekend at the Hay on Wye literary festival. Had dinner with Albanian novelist, Ismail Kadare and his English translator, lunch with Don McCullin, the greatest living photojournalist, heard UCL don John Mullan deliver a riveting talk on why eighteenth and nineteenth century novelists preferred to publish their books anonymously or pseudonymously, saw John Irving's tattoo of a wrestling circle on his arm, was given a copy of the new right-wing magazine Standpoint, and observed festival fashion:

1. Mud. Field. Rain. Get out the Glastonbury kit

2. Droopy beige linen and pastel florals

3. 'I've walked all round the village and I can't seem to find Harvey Nicks.'

Enjoyed the perfect union of 1. and 3. effected by Lucy Yeomans, editor of Harpers Bazaar, who wore wellies and a Chanel 2.55.

It's not a love story

Ripped off from Norm, who spotted it first, this very telling insight from David Baddiel, about Jane Austen, summing up my disgust at the recent biopic (not to mention the increasingly Mills and Boonish quality of film adaptations of her work.

I first read Austen as a teenager, given Nothanger Abbey as an O level set text. I did not much enjoy it, unable to appreciate at such a young age, what Baddiel so effectively describes. I am not, like Norm, a Janeite, but Baddiel's assessment of her as the firs modernist, will take me back there, right now:

However, the great writer who has really been portrayed this way most frequently in recent times is one who hasn't yet been visited by the jaunty Gallifrean: Jane Austen. Both in the film Becoming Jane and the TV movie Miss Austen Regrets, Austen was depicted as a waspish cynical tomboy, clever with words if not so clever with men: a sort of Regency Sue Perkins. In the TV movie, there was a greater stab at complexity, as the character grew bitter with age - an Elizabeth Bennett who never nabs Mr Darcy - but in both there was, I would hazard, an incipient underlying sexism, based on the notion that Austen's work was underpinned by her own failures in love.

Because here's the thing about Jane Austen. She was a very great genius. She is possibly the greatest genius in the history of English literature, arguably greater than Shakespeare. And her achievement is not that much to do with love, although that was her subject matter. It's to do with technique. Before her there are three strands in English fiction: the somewhat mental, directly-reader-addressing semi-oral romps of Nashe and Sterne and Fielding; the sensationalist Gothic work of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe; and the romances of Eliza Haywood and Fanny Burney.

However great these writers are, none could be read now and considered modern. When Austen gets into her stride, which she does very quickly with Sense and Sensibility, suddenly, you have all the key modern realist devices: ironic narration; controlled point of view; structural unity; transparency of focus; ensemble characterisation; fixed arenas of time and place; and, most importantly, the giving-up of the fantastical in favour of a notion that art should represent life as it is actually lived in all its wonderful ordinariness. She is the first person, as John Updike put it: “to give the mundane its beautiful due”, and her work leads to Updike as much as it does to George Eliot.

I have no idea how a mainly home-educated rector's daughter came by all that, but I know that imagining her as a kind of acerbic spinster flattens out this genius. It becomes all about the subject matter and not at all about the huge creative advance her work represents.

Buchmendel updated

I have been judging a literary prize which has meant that I have had little time for personal reading, and much of what I was obliged to read for the prize was not at all good.

Last weekend at the Du Maurier Festival in Fowey, I shared a platform with the editor of Virago Modern Classics, to mark the list's thirtieth anniversary. She gave me some works unknown to me from that list and I have selected a passage from one of them over at Buchmendel.