On Reading Old Goriot

DURING

Initial thoughts - the key to being a great lover is taking your time. The French are renowned as great lovers. Hence, they take their time. Balzac takes his time, at least a writing. So far I have had descriptions of the miserable quarter where the boarding house is. Of the outside of the boarding house, even down to the fact that the windows on theground floor have metal grilles over them. I have been on a tour of the garden, and spent some timein the shade of the lime trees that grow at the far end. I have loitered in the sitting room, and then moved through to the dining room, where I meet my first living character - the cat, who seems friendly enough. Then I am subjected to brief biographies of the denizens of the boarding house, before the redoubtable Widow What's-her-name shuffles in.

By this point, I am becoming aware of two things. First, I am finding this already dreary. Perhaps this is down to the baleful influence of Samuel Beckett. I am reading OG concurrently with a mammoth bio of Beckett, and I remember he had a low opinion of Balzac ("But still I keep reading" he grumbled). I'll dig up the appropriate quotes. But Balzac takes so long. At least five pages in, and nothing has blown up, no-one has died, hit another character, slept with another character or even said a word.

Second, Balzac keeps popping into his own narrative to make arch comments, e.g.

That word drama has been somewhat discredited of late; it has been overworked and twisted to strange uses in these days of dolorous literature; but it must do service again here, not because this story is dramatic in the restricted sense of the word, but because some tears may perhaps be shed intra et extra muros before it is over.

That was paragraph two. Then, in paragraph three:

And you, too, will do the like; you who with this book in your white hand will sink back among the cushions of your armchair, and say to yourself, “Perhaps this may amuse me.” You will read the story of Old Goriot’s secret woes, and, dining thereafter with an unspoiled appetite, will lay the blame of your insensibility upon the writer, and accuse him of exaggeration, of writing romances. Ah! once for all, this drama is neither a fiction nor a romance! All is true,—so true, that everyone can discern the elements of the tragedy in his own house, perhaps in his own heart.

Which just rankles, frankly. I know we should be impressed by this post-modern ironic wah wah wah bollocks but I find it annoying. Can't he just settle down and tell his story. It was still going on when I gave up reading for the night. For some reason, I have developed a dislike of books that are self-concious in this manner. It gives the whole affair a very studied atmosphere, like our characters are little mannequins that Blazac has set up for our entertainment - inspite of the disclaimer just quoted.

AFTER

With a bit of reflection, I am pleased to report that I have hated Balzac all my life.

Previously, I hated him because I spent many years under the impression that he was really a she, and when I discovered the truth I had the distinct feeling that I had been tricked. I hadn't read any of the trickster's books until now, but now I can say I hate Balzac with authority.

I found the book very annoying. I have grumbled about the prolonged opening sequence, and a couple of replies ago I reported that I thought things were finally starting to move. This was when Rastignac goes to visit his cousin and starts to untangle the story of Goriot and his daughters.

After that, however, things rapidly fall to pieces. Rastignac is a bore, and his lady friends are more unlikable when they are being nice than when they are being vile. Goriot seems a fool and (shame on me) as I waded through his dying monologue I only wanted Rastignac to throttle him.

The only character that seems intermittently interesting is Vautrin/Collin, but his sudden exposure seems preposterous. The book has the sentimentality, absurdity and melodrama of Dickens boiled down into concentrated form, with the great bits of Dickens sorely missing. I know the book is meant to fit into a sequence and I should already be intimately aquainted with all these characters and goings on, but, since reading this book has been so miserable, why should I spend more time finding out about them?

(An aside - the only thing that makes me at all inclined to try and like this book is the fact that I share a surname with one of the baddies. Nice to learn what a cad my Frenchie cousin was!)

Also in need of throttling was M. Balzac himslef, as he can't write a straightforward sentence with out making some (meant to be funny, I suppose) reference to Greek mythology, or passing some sanctinonious judgement on a character. I hate that sort of authorial intrusion - how can there be meaningful suspense if the author is butting-in every five lines to tell you what a stinker so-and-so is?

The blurb of my edition claimed that Balzac laid the foundations for Zola and Flaubert. This may be true, but we should remember that foundations are usually buried, for good reason.

23,836

... at close of business tonight. So it is going right down to the wire.

Tonight didn't promise much. I thought I would struggle to find anything to write, because I'm a bit coonfused about plot and how to move things along. So I sent my investigator to the bar, and there things are happening. I'm not sure why, but it is working. I've managed to get some key information in, and I've introduced a couple of characters who will be significant. So it is working out, in its own strange way.

Update

Big push on Scratches - managed to get it to 15,000 words, which is the target for the month. NOT the best writing I've ever done, but there were a couple of interesting ideas stumbled upon in the mad rush. ANd now I get to forget about it, utterly, for a few days. By the time I come back to it, hopefully, these vague half-ideas wil have coalesced into something more tangible. Or not, in which case I'll just blunder on.

Talking of blundering, I managed to get Traces to 21,000. I'll be able to focus on Traces for the rest of them onth, which might or might not be a good thing, because I'm at an odd part of the story. I don't know if I'll be able to push it up to 25,000 before the end of the month, but I'll give it a go. The plot is getting a bit stodgy and I'm struggling to find ways to work suspects and other key characters into the story, without them sticking out too much.

Away from me, Satan!

Pushed Traces to 20,044 tonight - I've been desperate to pass that magical 20K milestone. Scrathes up to 13,000. Which means I should be able to achieve thmy goal, at a paltry 700 words a night on each, if I can only keep turning up to write.

The problem being that as I get closer to a target, I lose the will power to push myself on to reach it. A little demon whispers, "You've done really well to get thus far, what does it matter if you miss it by a couple of thousand waords, you could have done it if you wanted to, and you know it, that's what is important. So take the next couple of nights off, rest and recharge and come back in May ready to raise Hell. Or at least write lots."

Only, writing lots is the opposite of what the demon is trying to get me to do. The deomon doesn't like words and hates it when I type them. He knows the more days spent not writing, the less likelihood there is of there being any more serious writing, ever.

So go and bug Wilbur Smith or Jeffrey Archer, demon, and stop them writing. Make the world a better place by stopping them publishing any moe of their rubbishy novels.

That isn't part of your plan, either, is it?

Catch up

A thousand words last night on Scratches, a thousand words tonight on both. And the stuff I wrote tonight for Scratches was really quite cool - a nice idea, and I think I carried it off pretty well. Though I'm hyped with coffee and cookies and too raddled to know.

And I've finally moved Traces from the intro sequence to the actual proper story. Whic is good, because I was getting very mired in that intro and not at all sure how I was going to get myself out. So in the end I just announced that Donna was off to solve the mystery, and the Hell with motivation. I can patch that later, if need be. Though there's plenty of motivation for her to get on with it.

Word counts are Traces 19,294 and Scratches 12,401. Still not looking good for the 25K / 15K target, but a couple more good nights and I'll be close enough to allow myself a little victory dance.

DVD review -King Lear (1999)

King Lear (1999). D: Brian Blessed. Starring Brian Blessed, Phillipa Peake.

This was very disappointing.

King Lear is a play that I am not overly familiar with, unlike MacBeth and Hamlet. Once you become intimate with a Shakespeare play you have preconceptions about how it should be done - settings, what the characters look like, staging delivery of key lines. Once that happens, any stage of film version - or even audio adaptation - becomes a gauging of how well your ideal is met, or how effectively it is challenged. For what it is worth, I'm inclined to be kind towards anyone brave enough to take on Shakespeare, particulary the 'big' plays. I liked Mike Mundell's Hamlet inspite of its flaws, for example.

I have read the King Lear, studied it in a half-hearted manner and watched the poor BBC adaptation starring Laurence Olivier, but that's it. I was able to watch this film version with out too many pre-conceptions about how it should be done.

I did have some hopes for this adaptation. Blessed is credited as the director of the sparky witchy scences in the otherwise lamentable MacBeth from the same production company. And, of course, he's an actor, whereas Jason Connery - bluntly - isn't. And Lear is one of the roles you can imagine suiting Blessed's 'gift' for ... um ... hyperbole.

But it all goes wrong, and quickly too.

First of all, technically, the film is inept. I don't know how much of the visual problems can be blamed on the transfer to DVD but I suspect they originate more in the original recording. The production looks like it was captured on someone's mobile phone. It is murky and digitised. Blessed also proves inept at calling the shots, with clumsy cutting and distracting camera movements or editing. A cinema verite or nouvelle vague Shakespeare might be an interesting project, but here it looks suspiciously like incompetence.

The setting and staging of the film is also disappointing. While we do get treated to shots of a castle exterior, most of the action takes place indoors and on a small scale, which emphsises the cheapness of the production. It's hard to understand why Lear gets so worked up about his daughters's cutting of his retinue, since he only seems to have about 10 knights with him at the best of times. There are irritating, unconnected druidic ceremonies cut into the action, which don't add anything and seem incongruous, as they don't match the rest of the play, which looks more dark age than pre-Roman. In fairness to Blessed, it should be noted that he does pull off one very good piece of staging, when Poor Tom makes his entrance during the storm.

All that would be irrelevant if the performances were good. You don't watch Shakespeare for the pretty pictures, you listen for the words. But Blessed plays Lear with uncharacteristic - and inappropriate - restraint. The failing king lacks majesty and authority, coming across as a grumpy hobbit. Hildegrade Niel's performance as the Fool is more annoying than amusing. The daughters are also weak - Phillipa Peake is unmemorable as Cordelia, which is fatal given she is off stage for the majority of the film.

There are, however, some good performances in amongst it all - Mark Burgess does well as Edgar, after a shakey start, and Jason Riddington is good as his vicious half-brother, Edmund. Robbert Whelan is a decent Gloucester. Best of all though, is Graham McTavish as Albany. His performance as Banquo was one of the few interesting things in MacBeth, and here he makes the most of a bigger role.

But it always comes back to Blessed, as Lear and as director. The nadir of the play is probably the storm sequence, when Blessed should let rip, both in acting and in staging, but instesad delivers his speeches on the heath in red tinged close up, drily. We don't get to see much storm at all, and the over all effect is, again, more of dypesia rather than catastrophe. It's very strange that we've spent decades wishing Blessed would tone it down, only to have him do it at the worst possible time.

It does get better as it progresses - though it must be noted, cruelly, that it is at its best when Blessed is not on screen - and there's a power to the action that it is very hard for even a bad production to utterly destroy. But I don't think, however, that's enough to recommend this version.

NO STAR

Toothless snail

I had the tooth pulled today, so I'm granting myself a night off.

Snail on speed

Traces to 18,249 - which looks like a mere 750 words advance on last night, but I must have rounded up SEVERELY yesterday, because I wrote a thousand words tonight.

And (FIREWORKS!) Scratches over 10,000 words.

And last night, after my progress report, I had a BLINDING INSPIRATION for Traces. Something I'd stuck in earlier, which might or might not have been significant, decided, suddenly, that it was going to be significant. Which is really cool.

Which means I need a sniffle under 7,000 words on Traces before the end of the month, and just under 5,000 for Scratches, if I'm to hit my targets. Could be close. If I get my Evil Tooth ripped out this week, it might mean I don't get there - I'm not much good at writing in severe pain, and I don't expect anything less than severe pain to follow said ripping out.

Oh well.

Snail's pace

Traces up to 17,500 and Scratches at 9,000. Which means I'll be struggling to make my (modest enough) targets for April.

Lots of excuses can be offerred. Dental pain. Exhaustion. Friends fro Europe who are only in country for a few days. Spouses who insist on having a social life and children demanding / deserve attention. The need to actually venture outside occasionally. Absurd things like accidentally flattening the car battery at night and - after having it jumped by a helpful taxi driver - having to drive round tonwn for ages when I was planning to be at home writing ... the way everything just becomes so much more interesting when the alternative is sitting down to write.

Also plot issues are starting to manifest themselves. As long as I don't look more than 500 words ahead a t a time, I'm okay, but if I do I'm struck with the screaming horrors and the dizzying realisation that I Have No Idea Where I AM Going With This. Well, not uite, but there's so many big gaps and questions and stuff, that it makes me nervous.

Also the urge to edit. I want to make some significantish changes to Traces - make the setting more compact, instead of having my investigator look into an out-of-town killing. It seems inappropriate that the first novel in what should be a long and very commercial series is set outside the main character's home town. Hmmm. It can all be done. Should it be done? SHould I do it now, or later? I'm not used to this. i'm used to the Hell-for-leather desperatino of Nano, where plot holes are simply ignored, if you have time to notice them at all.

Still, should get close to my targets, if I don't actualyl get there. Which isn't bad.

And the damn tooth is coming out this week, I hope. Maybe things will seem different once I'm not doped up to the eyeballs.

Literary Geek

This has been doing the rounds on facebook. Here are my answers.

1) What author do you own the most books by?
Depends on if you include embarrassing stuff from my past, in which case probably Alaistair MacLean or Sven Hassell. If I'm allowed to exclude such horrors, probably Joseph Conrad. Because I'm like that.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Hmmm. Two copies of Nostromo (Conrad, of course), can't think of any others.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Only a little bit. To enthused by the thrill of this quiz to be pedantic. Might even drop an apostrophe or mis-spell something, I'm so excited. My life is very sad.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Marina from Shakespeare's Pericles, because it is such a lovely name. I'd love anyone called Marina, even if they looked like Fungus the Bogeyman. Unless they voted Tory, of course. Some things are Not Acceptable.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
Probably Nostromo again, Sorry to be so dull.

6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
Crikey, you don't ask for much, do you? Only 15 years ... um, I remember reading a book called Grimble a lot while I was in primary 5 or 6. A quick internet blast reveals it was written by Clement Freud, who died just the other day. Oh, the humanity!

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Oh, now you're asking for it. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Or Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maughan. Or Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. Or An AMerican Tragedy, by Threodore Dreiser. Which, unfortunately, happens to be the book I'm reading just now, and I still have about 600 pages to go.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
I had a shit year for books in 2008, absolutely shit. The Death of a President, by William Manchester, abotuthe shooting of JFK, or The North West Passage by George Malcolm Thompson, are the stand outs in an otherwise mediocre selection.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Summer Lightening, by PG Wodehouse, because every needs to be a little bit happier.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Oh, blimey, you expect me to be able to make a sensible recommendation? I buy books from library sales and second hand stores, I don't know nuffink about modern living writers. Gore Vidal, maybe. Is he still alive? That would piss off the shade of Norman Mailer.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
I'd love to see John Sayles film Nostromo, because he's one of the few directors that might do it properly. Of course, he'd need a budget of a trillion dollars (Hey, Barak, can you sling some of that stimulus package in Sayles's direction?) and he'd probably rather make a film about Guatemalan lesbian basket weavers, anyway. Oh, or something with lots of lurid sex in it. Because I'm that venal.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Nostromo, because it would probably be hopelessly ruined. Yes, I'm aware of the BBC adaptation from a few years back. Lets not talk about it.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I really want to think of an amusing answer to this, but can't.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
The Seventh Scroll by Wilbur Smith. My brain still hasn't forgiven me.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Translated Accounts by James Kelman. My brain still hasn't forgiven me for that, either.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Pericles.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
The French by a nose. The Russians might have sneaked it, but for the samovars. They are forever doing things with Samovars, and I'm not entirely sure what one is. I imagine a furry animal, similar to a small domesticated bear, though they appear to produce tea, so maybe it is a species of useful insect, like the honey-bee.

18) Roth or Updike?
Who are these upstarts? One of them has a pulse, and the other one did until recently. I want not truck with such things.

Which - reading between the lines - means I haven't read enough enough to form an opinion. Which, reading even further between the lines, means I haven't read anything, by either. Oh, the guilty pleasures of public literary humiliation.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Haven't read either, due to them costing money and stuff.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare of course. And Milton.

21) Austen or Eliot?
Humph. See below.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Austen and Eliot. Only did Pride and Prejudice last year. Almost read Silas Marner as well, but my courage failed me.

23) What is your favourite novel?
Nostromo. Or The Brothers Karamazov. Or Sentimental Education. Or The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

24) Play?
Julius Ceasar. Or Amadeus, if only to stop me sounding like such a bloody Conrad-Shakespeare-Conrad-Shakespeare bore.

25) Poem?
MacPherson's Rant by James MacPherson.

26) Essay?
Inside The Whale, by George Orwell. Or On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth by William Hazlitt.

27) Short story?
Oh, bloody Hell, you've only gone and given me another chance to mention Conrad again. "Youth,' probably. Or 'Falk,' because it has cannibalism. You can't go wrong with cannibalism.

28) Work of nonfiction?
Probably Trotsky's autobiography. I am serious.

29) Who is your favourite writer?
Are you thick or something? Joe Conrad. Or Bill Shakespeare

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Noam Chomsky. I try to read his stuff, and I think I probably agree with most of it, but I can't abide the way he has to include the phrase 'the racist discourse of American imperialism' in every third sentence he writes.

31) What is your desert island book?
An Act of Terror by Andre Brink. Not because I want to read it, but because I could throw it in the ocean and walk across it to the mainland.

32) And... what are you reading right now?
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.
The Marxists by C. Wright Mills.
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes (officially - though I haven't even looked at it in about four months)
The Bible (KJV) - (The poor brute is envying the comparative attention lavished on Don Quixote)

The Sea by John Banville

The Sea is a curious little book.

This might seem a peculiar statement to anyone who has read it, for on the surface, it is very simple. An elderly man, one Max Morden (morbid, moribund - geddit?), revisits the dingy little town where he grew up, recalling his relationship with an odd family that holidayed there, and the recent death of his wife.

On my first reading, I found the novel disappointing. I am a Banville fan. I've read several of his books, and this has given me a sense for what he is about. Compared to his past work The Sea seemed weak at first encounter. I imagine that readers drawn to him for the first time, perhaps seduced by the MAN Booker prize award, will be deeply perplexed as to what is going on.

Banville's books seem to be connected in a loose sequence, and this is the latest installment. Though the main characters all have different names, they are all very similar, progressively aging males. They share an interest in art criticism, though not as creators themselves. This is significant, I feel. These people are all fascinated by the creation of artifice. They are not to be taken at face value. Also, there is always something dark and terrible lurking int he past, usually not identified or explained. In Banville's novels, the gaps and silences are often more important than the words.

And while we're talking about the words, all these protagonists speak with very similar voices. Some people find Banville's dense language off-putting. I've read enough of his work to say - I THINK - that this stuffy, affected tone is a deliberate ploy on his part, not merely him being monotonous. His characters use language as a shield or a disguise - often shielding themselves as much from themselves as from the outside. But when Max faces up to his grief in The Sea, he expresses it in short and brutally obscene spurts of grief. It is shocking and effective, and a few short sentences leave the preceeding pages of finally wrought words hollow and artifical, just as - again, I THINK - banville intended.

So, what of the book itself? On my first reading, I fell for Max's - or Banville's - trick. The whole novel is an exercise in misdirection, as Max tries to focus our attention, and his, on the long dead past. Don't be fooled by him. His grief is raw and deeply felt, but hidden under a miasma of postures and fine words.

Overall, a very effective, subtle novel. It may not be rewarding on a first reading, or to those unfamiliar with Banville's work, but it is worth getting to know.

**

The Daughters of Cain by Colin Dexter

The Daughters of Cain, by Colin Dexter, is one of the Inspector Morse series. Now, I've always had a liking for Morse, without actually having read any of the books. This was, I suspect, because the much-missed John Thaw played Morse in the TV adaptations, and John Thaw was fantastic.

Stretching that logic a bit too far for my own good, I reasoned that because Thaw played Morse, and Thaw was fantastic, there must be something inherently worthy about the books. After all, on the TV screen, Morse seemed interesting. Surely the books would prove, if not as good, at least not bad?

Not so. The Daughters of Cain is a dull, unconvincing book. It doesn't really count as a murder mystery as there is very little mystery around the murder - the title is a bit of a give away for a start. It is rather stupid, I think, to indicate the identity of the killers in the title. If Conan Doyle had named The Hound of the Baskervilles something like Stapleton's Murderous Scheme Involving a Phosperescent Hound, a similar effect would have been achieved.

Random bits of information are thrown about - one character alludes to a rape or attempted rape, but nothing more is made of it. It looks like Dexter forgot about it. There is a somewhat clever bit of 'how it was done'-ery, but as the 'who done it' and the 'why done it' had ceased to be mysterious long before that, this isn't enough to save the book. And it was only somewhat clever, as I said.

The biggest disappointment, however, was the handling of Morse. Morse, without John Thaw's brooding avuncularity, is simply an old fart. He lacks charm or charisma. Worse, Dexter seems convinced he has created a fascinating character, and makes another character fall wildly in love with Morse - even though she is a twenty something whore and he is a rather pathetic old sod. Yes, she falls in love with him, not the other way around. Sad, and unconvincing, and it blows away whatever final scraps of credibilty the story might have had.

NO STARS

Double Whammy

Knocked a thousand words out of both Traces and Scratches tonight, which makes me feel very pleased with myslef. That puts the word count for Traces at 15,500 words, and Scratches at 6,400 words.

Which means I'm still well behind on my word count for the month, but there was always heaps of 'holiday' time scheduled. I just didn't plan on using it all up at the start of the month, with mooning about in Taupo and writhing about in agony from my festering tooth.

I'm finding writing two narratives very helpful, as it spurs me on to try to meet my targets. I usually find that I can write one story pretty easily (usually Scratches) and this gives me the impetus to try to hit the target on the other story as well. There's nothing worse than lookingat the dreaded blank page and thinking, "What the hell am I going to write?" when you're struggling with a yarn ... but by giving myself a choice of what to write about, I can either build up some momentum by writing the one I'm finding easier first, which means I can carry on with the next one, or I can dangle the carrot in front of me as I plod through the 'difficult' one first of all, thinking, "If only I can get through this, I'll get to have fuuuuun again ..."

Working so far, at any rate. I imagine it'll backfire at some point, but until then, it's going well.

The joys of old books

At a second-hand book sale I found a 1944 Penguin edition of Conrad's 'Twixt land and Sea, a collection of three short stories, comprising 'A Smile of Fortune,' 'The Secret Sharer' and 'Freya of the Seven Isles.'

The book itself is absolutely gorgeous, one of those old orange penguins with the white band across the middle. The spine advises this is number 447 in the series. The book proudly declares it price to have been Ninepence. That's Ninepence, mind you, not nine pence or 9p or even the old fashioned 9d.

Even better, on the back, where nowadays you'd get a misleadingly enticing blurb, there is a charming advertisment for Greys (sic) Cigarettes, described as "Just honest to goodness tobacco." This is accompanied by a picture of a military type in one of those gigantic bearskin helments worn by the likes of the Coldstream guards. It is noticeable that he is not smoking tobacco, honest or otherwise.

Inside the front cover is an advert for "Service shoes by Lotus - specialists in regulation footwear." Inside the back cover is an advert for Mars Bars - "Nothing but the finest ingredients is good enough for Mars." We are warned, however, that "Zoning now restricts Mars to the Southern Counties. So here's hoping for a quick victory - and plenty of Mars for everyone - everywhere." Beat the Hun so the free world can enjoy Mars Bars once again ... And one of the leafs at the back carries a promotion for Cadbury's.

Given that this book cost me nothing, effectively ("Take this box, fill it with as many books as you like for $5.") the amount of pleasure I've gained simply from caressing its battered cover and smiling at its quaint adverts (a practice that needs to be revived) is positively indecent.

There goes April

Amazing how time passes when you aren't doing anything cuseful with it. I've been busy Not Writing for the first ten days of the month. First, I had monstrous tooth ache. My dentist has gleefully informed me I've an abssess on the nerve and the only option is to rip the tooth out. I've been swallowing a patchwork of drugs to keep the pain under control untilt he oral surgeons return from holiday. Meanwhile, an old friend is In Country, and since I hadn't seen him for about ten years, and he has never met my children, it was essential to catch up with him. So I haven't really been thinking too much about writing, and now we're a third of the way through the month and tonight is the first night I've written anything 1,000 words on Scratches, 500 words on Traces.

On the plus side, I've had a beast of an idea for ANOTHER story, completely seperate from the two above. I'll keep it in reserve in case I get stuck on either of them. It would be a children's novel, and set in a not-too-distant future. The title and the first line came to me in a bit of a blinding flash type thing while I was mowing the lawn. I spent the next half hour repeating them over and over to myself, lest I forget them. Pretty securely lodged in my head now.

Just amazing how ideas come blasting in, once you start writing.

Traces - 14,574
Scratches - 5,362

The Seventh Scroll by Wilbur Smith

Unless I do something really stupid, like read another book by Patricia Cornwell , then Wilbur Smith's The Seventh Scroll is going to be my worst read of the year (1). In fact, I can only think of two books I have disliked to the same degree - Melvyn Bragg's Credo and Iris Murdoch's The Bell. Wilbur Smith being compared to Iris Murdoch? Truly, strange bedfellows.

Where to start with The Seventh Scroll? First things: its length. Size isn't everything, but when we're talking about truly, reprehensibly bad writing, dull plotting and cardboard characters, then size suddenly becomes very important. The Seventh Scroll has a lot of size, a harrowing 486 pages. Bricks are smaller, and more readable.

You know when you read a book, and you bounce down the first page, all Bambi enthusiasm, waiting to get hooked in, to become fascinated by the characters or the sweep of the story or the intracy of the plot or the way that the writer batters new stuff out of the English language? That is what I was like with this book. I thought I should read something by Wilbur Smith, as I've been snottily turning up my nose at his books for years. Fair play compelled me to see if my high brow derision was merited - Hell's bells, I am alimp wristed liberal and believe in all hose fine principles like innocent until proven guilty. I was doing this man wrong by prejudging him. I also have a lemming-like streak, which I mentioned before in relation to Patricia Cornwell, that makes me make intermittently misguided reading choices in an attempt to bond with the common folk. Never, ever again. Until I read The Da Vinci Code, at least.

But, anyway, about the bloody book. All right, so it is big. The plot and the characters are hopeless. Rider Haggard did this sort of thing 10,000 times better, long, long ago. Save yourself the ordeal and re-read King Solomon's Mines. It is shorter and better.

Briefly: Royan, half English, half Egyptian and very hot, survives a savage assault that leaves her elderly Arabic husband dead. they were working on an archaelogical project relating to the mysterious seventh scroll, which might locate the lost tomb of Pharaoh Momose. She seeks help from a dashing English adventurer type, and together they locate the tomb in the face of opposition from the nefarious types - the ringleader is of course German - Hell bent on their destruction.

None of this would be terribly bad if it wasn't so drabbly written. I think it was about page 6 or 7 that warning bells started ringing, when the elderly Duraid is murdered. It was just horribly flat, badly paced, lacking tension. I was suddenly struck by a longing to read an Haggardian adventure story writen by Ian MacEwan. Think how much fun that would be. Or pretty much anything else. But not, never, another word by Wilbur Smith.

Never the less, I ploughed on. Royan flees Egypt and enlists the help of the aforementioned adventurer. He is - get this - an authentic English aristocrat, complete with double barrelled name (Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper. Not Quentin, you understand, but Quenton) who delights in shooting game birds and rare antelope but still styles himself a 'conservationist' - which means that he winces at the thought of cutting down ancient trees but doesn't actually not cut them down. Sir Nick is a gentleman, which means he doesn't shag Royan, though she does allow him to get to to fool around a little bit more than is ladylike, which is probably down to her hot Arab blood. Everyone else is at it, of course, especially the black characters, who are portrayed various as foolish, lazy, stupid, drunk or horny. And there is an evil Russian as well, who we know is evil because he debases his woman. And the aforementioned evil German mastermind, who is also, naturally, sexually deviant.

Crude, offensive stereotypes aside (did I forget the sleazy, untrustworthy Arab?), the novel is very badly written. Characters talk - and think - in fully, uncontracted, non-colloquial language, no matter how grim the circumstances. Since Smith has already got plenty of words he should have been merciful and spared us a few by allowing his characters to say "Don't" instead of "Do not." I am sure Roayn and Nick were very well raised, but surely even they would have used the odd contraction especially when fleeing for their lives for the umpteenth time?

There is one almost-good joke in the book. Wilbur Smith puts himself in it as a character, referred to as a writer of books redolent with sex and violence. As a passing wink this might have worked, but he decides to hammer home the point by repeating it several times, perhaps feeling his readers are too thick to get it. More likely, they are simply comatose.

Beneath the smug author photograph inside the dust jacket, I am told that Smith dedicated his last 20 novels to his wife Danielle. If they are all of this quality, then she should be insulted.

NO STARS

1 - The year in question was actually 2005. This review was posted on an MSN book review group, that has since been deleted. It is reproduced here because I'm very fond of the gleeful viciousness of it. God, I hate that book.

Goals for April

Pretty straightforward:

Traces to 25K, meaning 11,000 words need to be added.
Scratches to 15K, again, meaning about 11,000 words.

Not very ambitious targets - 500 words on each, every night for about three weeks. But manageable, and if reached, both books should be well established, and hopefully not turning into nanosludge.

Oh, and I'm taking tonight off.