Alice Munro wins Man Booker International Prize

From the Independent:

Short story author Alice Munro was announced as the winner of the third Man Booker International Prize today.

The award, worth £60,000, is given every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage.

It is handed out to a living author who can be from any nationality and who has published fiction either originally in English, or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.

The prize was first awarded to Ismail Kadare, from Albania, in 2005, and then to Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe in 2007.

Munro, 77, who lives in Canada, said: "I am totally amazed and delighted."

It's interesting to see that Scotland's James Kelman was on the list - the only British writer who featured. Kelman is a writer I've previously endorsed, but on reading You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free, I'm having to reassess my opinion. It was that disappointing. Others have raved about his latest novel, Keiron Smith Boy, which I have not read.

Carpingly, I'd note that neither of the two previous winners, Kadare or Achebe, have impressed me. I read one novel of Kadare's - really a squence of short stroies linked to the hsitory of Kosovo - and while it impressed me at first on looking abck at it it seemed very wordy and hollow. Achebe I have multiple problems with. First of all, the one novel of his that I have read, Anthills of the Savanah, I disliked intensely. Secondly, his comments on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness suggest he's either something of a fool, or a knave more interested in establishing his reputation.

So perhaps the Man Booker International is a bit of a booby prize. I'm not very familiar with Munro's work, but I've always been vaguely sure she's a good writer, and probably worthy of winning something or other. So good on her.

55,190

That's me for the month.

Most of the 15K written this month was on Traces. As I said earlier, this was not what I was expecting at all. And I can't work out how I did it, as I've moved the plot forward about two inches.

I had a big brainstorm as I typed, and just put my thoughts and ideas about where to go next into Donna's head. Which cheered her up, and made me feel that All Is Not Lost.

Interesting

Rafael Escalona, singer/composer: born Patillal, Colombia 27 May 1927; died Bogotá, Colombia 13 May 2009.

The singer and composer Rafael Escalona was a national icon in his native Colombia, known as "el maestro" of vallenato folk music from the northern Caribbean coast. His ballads, sung to the traditional backing of European accordion, African-style caja, or bongo drum, and Native Indian bamboo guacharaca percussion, inspired many internationally known Latino singers, including Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan and his fellow Colombians Shakira and Carlos Vives. Escalona also made a lasting impression on another compatriot (and close friend), Gabriel García Márquez. The author mentioned Escalona as a resident of the fictional town of Macondo in his Nobel Prize-winning novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and said that Escalona, and his music, had been an inspiration for the book.

"In a way, the novel is a 400-page vallenato," García Márquez once said, comparing Escalona's blend of true story and the fantastical with his own "magical realism". Towards the end of the book, García Márquez wrote: "In the last open saloon... an accordion group was playing the songs of Rafael Escalona, the bishop's nephew, heir to the secrets of Francisco el Hombre." The latter figure (Francisco the Man), a legend in vallenato music, was said to have been a musician who beat the devil in a duel of accordions.

(Read full obituary)

Only saw this in the Independent today, coincidentally it is Escalona's birthday.

4708 ...

Creeping towards the target. I've switched back to Scratches for the last few nights. Forcing the narrative to a point where I can introduce some new characters, potential suspects. So I've get to write about them tommorrow. Things happen when new people walk through doors (whether or not they are carrying a gun) so hoopefully this will get the narrative moving.

With Traces, I've got nerves. I'm about to intoduce a character that is significant, and who has been referred to many times before. ANd I'm scared of making it either too dramatic or too anti-climactic. Ach well, we'll see how it goes when I get the hankering to pick up that story again ...

7272

... is the number of words I need to write before the end of the month to hit my target of 55,000 words. Most of the words written this month have been on Traces, whih I wasn't expecting. Scratches is stalled - I want to make some revisions, which will open up a few more plot possibilities. traces, on the other hand, is in the 'open phase' - my investigatior is on site and talking to people, and I haven't started to close in on the solution, so there is lots to write about. True, a lot of it is flab - I took 500 words to get her from the foot of a short driveway tot he door of a house, andother 500 to get her into the living room, and tonight's 500 was the start of a conversation. But it feels good - much better than the misbegotten bar sequence I worte last week. It will need to be slimmed down, but that's not important at this stage. Interesting ideas and comments are finding there way intot he narrative, which is what this is all about.

Iain Banks / Iain M Banks

Iain Banks and Iain M Bans are one and the same. The presence of the 'M' indicates the work in question is science-fiction, its absence contemporary fiction set in the real world, more-or-less. Both names belong to a hirsute Scottish author who at one time seemed to promise great things but who now barely barely registers with me any more.

I've read a lot of Banks's work over the years - I'm shocked at how much. He might be lazy, but he's certainly busy, producing work of little notice, while resting on the laurels he earned in the 80s and early 90s. A shame to see how he seems to have settled for prolific mediocrity

Here are potted reviews of what I've read of what he wrote. As noted above, I've pretty much stopped reading Banks and I'm scared to re-read his older stuff in case it spoils it, so I might be a bit vague on detail. I've respected Banks's decision to distingush his sci-fi from his mainstream work, and the order within these categories is, I think, chronological.

As Iain M Banks:

• Consider Phlebas - Good. A shameless space opera set in the Culture universe. This was Banks in his grand phase, his titanic imagination working over time. Good characters, human and machine, cunning plot and grand settings. **
• The Player of Games - Another very good thing, though I discern a totalitarian streak in the Culture novels that I find a bit uncomfortable. Okay, maybe the Culture is run by super-intelligent computers, but aren't they just behaving like a bunch of neo-cons intent on 'regime change'? Still, put aside the philisophical navel-gazing, and it's terrific story. **
• Use of Weapons - Probably his best work as either Iain Banks or Iain M Banks. A mammoth space adventure, following one man's quest for redemption. Nicely structured forwards-backwards narrative, a terrific main character, a stonker of a twist and then (because when Banks was good he was really, really good) an second stonker just to leave you seeing a galaxy load of stars. ***
• The State of the Art - So-so short stories. Some good, some mediocre. No stars
• Against a Dark Background - Interesting sci-fi, set in a non-Culture environment. Much more restrained than previous sci-fi outings, and bleak on a galactic rather than an individual scale. I think I remember that the conclusion is weak, but it is still a good effort and worth reading. *
• Feersum Endjinn - Banks's attempt to be Anthony Burgess is interesting more than successful, but still just about hangs together. *
• Excession - A worthy Culture novel, with interesting and well realized machine characters. Banks was still trying at this stage, still challenging himself. *
• Look to Windward - Not bad in itself, but a definte diminishing of scope and ambition. Returning to The Wasteland for his title signals the triumph of the repetitive and lazy over the original and exciting. No star
• The Algebraist - Tediously long and convoluted tale that leads nowhere. Stale space opera with a long, drawn out quest segment. No star

As Iain Banks:

• The Wasp Factory - Strange little gothic tale. Yes, we all loved it when we read it when we were too young to know better. Take my advice and preserve it as a cherished memory, don't re-read it. Oh, and don't make the mistake I made of looking at the last page to see how many pages there are. Rather spoils it. *
• Walking On Glass - Deeply odd multi-narrative tale that doesn't really work for me on any level. I suspect he was trying to imitate Alan Garner's fabulous Red Shift, and failed absolutely. Yes, 'tis very strange, but strangeness in itself doesn't make for a worthwhile read. No star
• The Bridge - Like The Wasp Factory, on first encounter this many-stranded tale is stranfggely fascinating and I loved it at first. From a more mature standpoint, it strikes me as contrived, pretentious, show-offy and silly. Very studenty, which is probably why it is so beloved by students, but now it seems arid and smug. Just like Walking On Glass seemed suspiciously like Red Shift, The Bridge reminds me too much of Alastair Gray's mad and brilliant 1982, Janine. *
• Espedaire Street - The big disappointment of my re-reading of Banks. I enjoyed this maudalin tale of prog-rock excess when I read it the first time. I recall re-reading it with pleasure, but another visit proved one too many. It no longer seemed convincing, either as a chronicle of rock'n'roll excess, or as a tale of Davey Weir's personal salvation. And the idea of a sort of Scottish Pink Floyd taking the world by storm is less credible than Banks' more esoteric sci-fi imaginings. No star
• The Crow Road - The start of Banks' strange fixation on family sagas. Nothing much of interest here. THat is to say, nothing overtly bad, but nothing that makes me want to jump up and down and say "You've got to read this!" No star
• Whit - In effect, another family saga and very undistingushed. Very high 'Why bother?' quotient. You could perhaps justify reading this or The Crow Road, but I wouldn't recommend both. No star
• Complicity - I hoped this signalled Banks turning the tide in his battle against mediocrity, but it turned out to his last stand. I enjoyed Complicity. Clunky, obvious and flawed, but the sustained rage and disgust - at pretty much everything from Bon Jovi to Margaret Thatcher - made it enjoyable. Helps if you were fascinated by the Civilisation computer games in the 1990s. **
• Dead Air - Banks sinks into utter irrelevance. Writing about something as shocking and relevant as the terrorist attacks of September the 11th, he botches it, settling for an irrelevant and indulgent story about a banal prat mouthing off and getting himself into petty trouble. Unsuccessful on every level. No star

Dead Air by Iain Banks

Dead Air was published in 2003 (1). I got excited about it, even though I had detected a falling off in Bank's output prior to that. Whit, The Crow Road and (as Iain M. Banks) the increasingly vapid sci-fi of Against A Dark Background, Look To Windward and Feersum Endjinn.

So Dead Air might not mark the exact point where Banks went bad (doesn't that trip nicely off the tongue?) but it is so remarkably bad that it deserves special mention - though it is hard to know where to start.

With that in mind, it makes sense to start at the beginning - right at the beginning, I mean, with the blurb:

A couple of ice cubes, first, then the apple that really started it all. A loft apartment in London's East End; cool but doomed, demolition and redevelopment slated for the following week. Ken Nott, devoutly contrarian leftish shock-jock attending a mid-week weddng lunch, starts dropping stuff off the roof towards the deserted car park a hundred feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac ... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartments remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Centre ...

Sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds pretty intriguing, in fact - decadence and disaster, the high of petty wilful destruction supplanted by horror in the face of wilful destruction on a grand scale. Well folks, this is about as good as it gets, and to be frank I already have problems. Yes, with the blurb.

The apple, for example. Is it mere coincidence, or is the apple (which ends up splattered) ment to symbolise, in some cool and metaphorical way, the splattering of New York, the BIG APPLE. Maybe I'm trying too hard here?

But there's more - what about our characters name: Ken Nott. In Scotland, 'ken' is slang for 'know.' 'Nott' = 'naught' = 'nothing.' So we have a character called 'Knows Nothing.' Banks, it seems, has decided to yoke 11th of September, 2001 up with that stalest of literary conceits, The Voyage Of Self Discovery. Next week: Nick Hornby uses the genocide in Rwanada to illustrate how one man comes to terms with his divorce.

I don't have a problem with his use of 11th of September, 2001, as the starting point of a novel. I don't expect that day to be pondered and discussed on sit-coms, but if you are writing a serious novel then it is okay to approach the big and terrible subjects. In fact, it is an obligation, especially if you're one of Britain's most ferocious novelists, intent on laying into the orthodoxy that it is okay to annihilate people as long as they are Arabs, and that Dubya is the defender of civilisation, then you might as well start at Ground Zero.

This isn't what Banks does, however. I was expecting something dark and terrible, exposing the hypocrisy of our leaders and our casual disregard for human lives other than our own - something akin to Complicity (an earlier novel by Banks that I still maintain is good), maybe featuring rightwing conspiracy, anthrax, asylum seekers and the realisation why all these civil rights curtailed after the 11th of September 2001 were important in the first place. I had hoped for RAGE – if the horror 11th of September, 2001, and all that has followed it, can't jolt Banks out of his lethargy, what can?

But we don't get any of this.

What we get is the uninteresting life (social and sexual) of Ken Nott. He hangs around with black people (who have comedy accents) so we ken Ken is cool. He has sex with many people, far more than his apparent charms would merit. Must be that irresistible Scottish accent ... Banks can't be arsed with a proper plot, so instead he throws together three different strands, hoping this will generate some sort of narrative suspense, so that when bad things start happening we are meant to be on tenterhooks, waiting to find out who is behind it all.

So, plotless. Poorly written as well. When he can be bothered, Banks can write prose that seems to have a physical impact. Complicity, a similarly badly plotted, clunky thriller, was partially redeemed by the sheer fury that Banks vented through its pages. In Dead Air, the prose is just flabby and dull. There are two big scenes towards the end that are meant to thrill, but it is very hard to feel bothered. Banks rambles, he ambles. He can't resist making chortlesome asides and wry comments that drain any tension that describing someone in mortal danger might have had. He even has the cheek to steal from his own earlier books: he takes time out from his narrative to explain that the process of holding onto the edge of a wall and lowering yourself to the full extent of your arms before letting go is called 'dreeping' in colloquial Scots - very informative, but he had imparted the same information in Espedair Street. Likewise, he describes the 'Not Proven' verdict, unique to Scottish Law, in almost exactly the same manner as in Whit.

Credit where credit's due, however. Once, just once, Banks shows us a bit of the old magic. To save anyone else the chore of sifting through the whole book for it dross, I reproduce the offending material here. I expect it to be excised from future editions, leaving us with absolutely unmitigated crap:

... there was a reliable-sources statistic that Phil discovered the other day; that every twenty-four hours about thirty-four thousand children die in the world from the effects of poverty; from malnutrition and disease, basically. Thirty-four thousand, from a world, from a world-society, that could feed and clothe and treat them all, with a workably different allocation of resources. Meanwhile, the latest estimate is that two thousand eight hundred people died in the twin towers, so its like that image, that ghastly grey-billowing, double-barrelled fall, repeated twelve times every single fucking day; twenty-four towers, one per hour, throughout each day and night. Full of children.

And that's it. That really is it.

All of which has lead me to speculate: is Banks up to something? At times the book is so awful that I think it has to be deliberate. In some mad, incomprehensible way, is Banks actually trying to insult his readers, and the sentimentality and veneration already built up around 11th of September, 2001. Is he teach a lesson to those how bought the book because of the shiver of horror that date inspires, trying to punish them for their unseemly interest in the catastrophe?

Or following the logic of his diatribe, above, is 11th of September, 2001 only worth a crap book, whereas the 34,000 children might be worth something better? Is Banks really that spectacularly bonkers? It is tasteless to use the 11th of September, 2001 to give you shitty book an air of gravitas and urgency. How much more so how much more so to make your book deliberately shitty and irrelevant, to confound the reader's ghoulish interest in the tragedy?

If Banks is trying some sort of moral conjuring here, then he fails, managing to do a disservice to both the victims of 11th of September, 2001 and the thousands upon thousands who die everyday through our indifference. But surely, he isn't trying to do that. I must be mad to even think it. Please someone, tell me I am mad.

NO STAR

1 - I wrote this a while back, 2005, I think. I get a bit pretentious towards the end, but, oh well, there's plenty of ire in there and I can't be bothered editing out the guff to make myself look better than I really am.

Plugging away, plugging away

Traces is up to 28,500, precisely. Scratches is at 17,138. That makes a combined total of 45,638, which means I'm less than 10,000 words away from the May target of 55,000 words.

It's been ups and downs. I've written one scene for Traces that I knew was going wrong as I wrote it. Tough balancing act between making Donna get drunk and sentimental and making it readable - especially since I'm writing in the first person, present tense. And the scene went on far too long - even though I usually write far more than is needed for each sequence, even by the standard of what has gone before, this sequence is excessive. It sprawls over ten or so pages, about twice the length of previous chapters. I'll need to take the chainsaw to it. But it did serve its purpose - a hole slew of characters introduced and the foundations for sunbsequent scenes and relationships laid.

Oh, and I may have decided who the killer is. Given that I've previously written a murder-mystery that didn't actually include any murder, or mystery, and another where there were plenty of murders, but where the key character wasn't introduced until the scene where he was unmasked, having a killer in mind at 30,000 words is a huge step forward for me ...

May

Aiming to reach a combined total of 55,000 words by the end of the month. So that means adding 15,000 to waht I already have from April.

I've written 3,000 words over the last three nights, so it is very manageable, but I'm starting to get plot stagnation. I need some structure. An idea of who is the murderer in either story would be a positive thing.

25,066

Made it. Traces to 25,000 words, Scratches to 15,000. I'd like to thank my parents, my wife, Tom Waits ...

A couple of nights off needed, to recharge and to let the plot mature a bit. Traces, in particular, is going no-where fast and the last few thousand words have included a lot of filler - not 'character-reads-the-telephone-book' bad, but stuff that's definitely had more words lavished on it than is strictly necessary.