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Big Game Hunting in the Second Hand Bookshop

(This is a post from the literaturenetwork back in July 2009. The piece questions some of the things we have lost in the Internet age, a question that drives my PhD research. If I was to write this article today it would be aggressively political. Second hand bookshops are being driven out of business through the combined assault of Amazon and high-street charity shops. While this can easily be ascribed to the march of 'technological progress', the endangered status of the second hand bookshop touches on some very important political issues – for example, fair taxation, local shopping and the importance and financing of art. I've not written that article and probably won't so here's the original…)

The Internet is wonderful thing. So wonderful that it’s easy to forget how much fun buying books in the real world can be.

I love buying things on-line. No matter how strange or obscure the item I want, there always seems to be someone selling it. The most interesting thing I’ve bought recently is a mid-nineties guide to British second hand book shops. This book, by the mysterious Driffield, is long out of date: most of the shops listed that I remember from 15 years back are no more. The guide would likely be little use in navigating present-day second hand bookshops (although I sometimes day-dream about trying).

Instead it reads like a strange volume of speculative fiction, perhaps something Jeff Vandermeer might have devised – maybe drif’s guides are the first examples of paperpunk. Driffield himself has also appeared as a literary character, notably appearing and disappearing in Iain Sinclair’s books (for example, ‘White Chapell, Scarlet Tracings’ and City of Disappearances respectively). He was described by Iain Sinclair as “the punning diarist to a dying book trade”.

Driffield’s guides are full of acronyms (FARTS – Follows you around recommending the stock; GOB – Grand old bore ; KEENON – Keen on stocking if they could get it) and strange obsessions – the link between vegetarian restaurants and book shops, tales of skulduggery and multi-page rants about ‘British Fail’. One edition even claimed Guilford did not exist. Driffield’s frustrations are written up as epic adventure, with wonderful sketches of shops, such as the one where he “discovered how to cure thrush with carrots.”

Reading Drif’s guides and remembering long-lost bookshops brought back the fun I had trawling bookshops as a teenager. I’d sneak away from school and search through basements and shops for treasures, maybe a Michael Moorcock book I’d not seen before or recent hardbacks I couldn’t afford to buy new. I kept a list of the books I wanted to find and was always thrilled when I could cross one off. Looking for books was almost as much fun as reading them – more so when the book failed to meet my expectations.

Buying books in the 21st century is different. Amazon astutely saw that books could be bought without the buyer handling the product and their empire has grown, sweeping away physical bookshops. Over the years Amazon has added more features, one of the most interesting being Amazon Marketplace, which offers new and second hand books from sellers worldwide. Readers can search hundreds, maybe thousands of bookshops with a single web request and cheap copies of out of print books can arrive within days. This, and similar services, have made buying second hand books incredibly easy.

But something has been lost. When ordering books from Amazon, my only communication with the seller is to leave a comment on the feedback page. In real-world bookshops I came to know some of the sellers, and could spend ages chatting while deciding which paperbacks to buy and which I’d risk leaving for next time. And, of course, in real bookshops I’d occasionally find books I’d never expected, the sort of random associations and serendipity you can’t build into recommendation engines.

I’ve not been out trawling second hand bookshops for a long time now. For a start I have less free time: it’s easy to skip school but harder to play truant from a job. The sheer efficiency of Amazon marketplaces has seduced me from the secondhand bookshop. Sometimes I wish I had less money and more time, because then I’d be trawling second-hand bookshops again.

According to Driffield “Book dealing is a form of big-game hunting.” There is more to books than words and I miss questing for books. Borges said that heaven would be a library. I disagree. For me heaven would be an endless, dusty, second hand book-shop.

The Six Perils of Writing Workshops

(Another post from the Literature Network. This was originally published in November 2009 and it was these ideas that led me to start Not for the Faint Hearted)

Writing workshops help make writers. But are they always constructive?

Imagine if driving was taught by something like writing workshops. Each session, a group of learners would watch a colleague try a manoeuvre. Afterwards they would take turns to say what they felt went right and what went wrong, with occasional input from an instructor. It would be chaos, and not in a good way. As the New Yorker declared, in a review of Mark McGurl’s history of creative writing programmes and American fiction, The Programme Era, “[workshops are based] on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem”

The workshop is one of the most popular ways of learning writing. Members of the group take turns submitting work which their peers respond to. Most academic workshops are facilitated by a tutor, but there are many successful workshops without a senior figure.

Workshops are popular, not just because there are so many writers about, but because there are so few readers willing to respond to unpublished work. In a workshop a writer receives critiques in return for responses to the work of their critics. In an academic context, workshops are cost-effective, proving cheaper supervision than regular one-to-one tuition.

Writers can gain much from workshops. All writers have points in their development where the help of a literate audience is invaluable. But workshops need to be approached with care- they have their problems too:

Is your work suitable for workshopping? Workshops can be conservative. Unless members have very similar aims, they may respond negatively to work that makes them uncomfortable. Furthermore, workshops work best with short stories or episodic novels. Complicated structures or demanding works can suffer from being broken into digestible chunks, producing inappropriate feedback. What would a workshop make of Lolita or Naked Lunch?
Is your workshop sustainable? Workshops are prone to personality clashes. Good, hard-working groups do happen, but also I’ve heard horror stories of plaigiarists, toxic personalities and people who are outright crazy. Some groups work well, but the chemistry is fragile – workshop groups seem to be inherently unstable.
Do you have anything to say? In every workshop I’ve encountered, members are expected to comment on each piece, even when they have nothing to say. It’s hard to express indifference in a workshop and be valued as a useful member.
Do you lack motivation? Some people value workshops for the imposing deadlines. But do you really need other people waiting on your writing to provide a reason to do it? Who are you to drag other people into your neuroses? If you need a dozen people to stir you to writing, you could do better things with your time.
Do workshops tell the truth? Few people enjoy conflict in a social situation, which inclines workshops to encouraging and sensitive responses. It is easier to find limp praise than robust criticism in most groups. Think of every time you’ve not expressed your true feelings on some inept piece of writing, then ask how many times people have held back from giving you the truth. Is your workshop giving you the responses you need?
Are workshopped novels ever finished? My main problem with workshops is that they encourage people to produce works-in-progress. There’s no point asking for critical comment on finished pieces; but does your workshop encourage and support its members in going beyond handing in a few thousand words every few weeks? What are the aims of the group’s members?

I’ve had some great experiences with workshops. I’ve been privileged to work with some very talented people, made great friends and enriched my life. But I could also tell tales to make your tummy go cold with terror.

The main thing most writers gain from workshops is a social space. It’s an opportunity to talk about writing and habits with people who share those interests. But often workshops seem to work best as a book club where people are reading different books – a place to hang out and talk. I wouldn’t suggest anyone stops doing workshops – but work out what it is you want from them and whether they provide the best way of doing this. It might be more effective to spent your money and time on one-to-one tuition if you can find someone good enough.

Or maybe I just haven’t found the right workshop yet. Maybe there’s some secret ingredient I’ve not yet spotted. Are there workshops that have lasted for years without tears and tantrums?

How Many Readers Do You Need

(This is another of the Literature Network posts. It was written a few years back and introduced the idea of 1000 True Fans. That idea still seems as distant as ever – the Internet is a good place to access culture but doesn't offer easy ways to discover it. I still like the JK Rowling joke though)

How many true fans does a writer need? There’s a lot to be said for being famous for 15 people.

Every creative writing course hints: it could be you. They promise access to agents and the chance to break into the world of publishing. After years of perseverance, of writing in coffee shops and cold flats, your novel might be published and become huge. You too could be as big as JK Rowling.

The problem with this is that a lot of people put a lot of effort into making JK Rowling as successful as she is. Booksellers, marketers, merchandisers, film-makers, all labour in support of her books, to say nothing of the readers working their way through them. Even the people who don’t read her books put a lot of effort into saying they have no time to read stories about boy wizards.

Imagine what the world would be like if there were dozens of writers as successful as JK Rowling. The economy would have to be structured around them, and people would spend all their leisure time reading. The world only has room for one JK Rowling, and she’s already doing a good job of it.

There are thousands of people studying creative writing and none of them are going to be as big as JK Rowling. Few of them will even be as big as Ann Quin or BS Johnson. So a more interesting question is the smallest number of readers a writer needs.

Kevin Kelly, editor of wired magazine, gave an interesting economic answer. He suggested that artists could build a successful career with “1000 true fans“, willing to buy anything they produced. So, assuming an average UK wage of around £24,000, Kelly would suggest an artist could make a living from 2000 people paying them £12 a year, after costs.

It’s a provocative idea, but there are problems. Kelly wrote a follow-up article where he admitted there were few real-world examples of such artists, and that the demands of maintaining true fans was too onerous for many. Science-fiction author John Scalzi has also responded, outlining a number of other issues. Finding a 1,000 true fans is more difficult than it sounds – how many artists are you that committed to?

There’s something to be said for people with far less than 1,000 true fans. In 1991, the artist Momus wrote a famous essay, Pop Stars? Nein Danke riffing on Andy Warhol’s famous statement, in which Momus claimed that in the future “everyone will be famous for fifteen people“. Momus looked forward to a world where, instead of stars on the scale of Elvis or Madonna, there were tens of thousands of smaller stars, “a state of fabulous confusion, exploding into fragments“.

In Momus’s world, aided by technology, you could find the artist that’s just right for you, someone that moves you and fourteen other people, while leaving most other people cold. Such artists would have a small but dedicated audience. When journalist and activist Danny O’Brien asked ‘how many people do you need to be famous for?’, he suggested that if “One person in every town in Britain likes your dumb online comic, that’s enough to keep you in beers all year.”

The Internet allows microcelebrities. Rather than reading one-size-fits-all star writers, we could pick the writer that’s perfect for us, someone who shares the exact same strange obsessions as we do. Whether this works with novels, which require a huge commitment to read, let alone write, is questionable. But I bet it would work with short stories and poetry. Somewhere in the world there are probably dozens of writers who would move me as much as my favourite novelists. The trick is to find them.

And there’s nothing wrong with being famous for fifteen people. JK Rowling was once less famous that that. Finding those 15 true fans is the first step towards millions of true fans, and is far better than none.

7 Tips for being a Great Writer

(This is another literature network post that has been offline since the site disappeared. It's my favourite of the pieces and received some very mixed responses, which I quite liked. Some people thought I was joking, others thought I was serious. I'm still not certain either way)

More non-fiction books are sold about writing than any other subject, except for cooking and relationships. Most of these guides say the same thing – page after page of level-headed advice like ‘show don’t tell’, ‘write what you know’ and ‘find your voice’. They’re all encouraging, suggesting you can’t make yourself a literary genius but anyone can become a decent writer.

No how-to-write book would ever claim that you’ve got it or you haven’t. People are more interested in supportive encouragement. The appetite for guides like The Artist’s Way is massive. You see the same thing on the web, with thousands upon thousands of pages listing numbered tips on how to write. Follow all these guides and anyone can become a competent writer.

But I’m bored. I’m tired of stories with perfect point-of-view, clever use of theme and anorexic pared-down prose. I crave more. I want people to strive for greatness, even if ninety-nine-in-a-hundred fail. I want to read great books, not good ones, and there aren’t enough great books.

Nobody has written the how-to-write guide I want to see (although one friend used Ted Morgan’s Literary Outlaw as a template, with disastrous but compelling results). Life is too short for me to write my ideal writing guide, but here are the top seven tips I’d like aspiring writers to follow.

Don’t write every day – write when inspired: there’s a macho cult about writing every day, grinding out work whether you want to or not. Instead you should only write when inspired. If you’re not inspired, don’t chain yourself to a keyboard: get into the world and get inspired.
Read narrowly: most how-to books say writers should be voracious readers. It’s far better to read carefully. Get under the skin of great books. Hunter S. Thompson retyped A Farewell to Arms to learn how it worked. You’re better off reading a few books well than piling through thousands of books that have nothing to say to you.
Write what you know: Imagination is a wonderful thing, but admit it – you too get a frisson from someone like Hemingway, Conrad or Burroughs, who lived one step away from what they were writing. However, writing what you know is boring if you work in an office, so make sure you’re living a life worth writing about. Your literary biographers will thank you.
Shun writing workshops. Writing workshops are about consensus, about removing the difficult bits from potential works of genius. Imagine William S. Burroughs submitting to years of workshops and removing the strangeness and obscenity from Naked Lunch. Another reason to avoid workshops is that other writers will be less impressed by your creativity than civilians. It’s more fun to stand out from the crowd rather than hide in the midst of one.
Quit your job: Most writing books warn against quitting your job. Dream all you like, they say, but writing won’t make you rich. Your aspirations for greatness should override such petty caution. You may end up in poverty, but you’re not going to make a work of genius wasting your days in an office.
Drink. Alcohol is a killer and nobody wants to end their days like Hancock in Sydney. But think of all the exciting writers who liked a tipple (Fleming, Hunter S. Thompson, Hemingway). There are probably lots of writers who don’t drink, but the fact I can’t name any shows you how unexciting sobriety is. As a bonus, if you’re having trouble with tip 5 then week-night drinking will help you leave your job.
Be extreme. I don’t suggest being precious about your writing (as Chesterton said, “the artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs”) but you must slip loose the chains of modern life. Eccentricity and genius may be two different things, but non-geniuses can fool some people with cultivated eccentricity. Adopt peculiar restrictions on clothes or food; develop obscure phobias or hatreds, whatever it takes to make yourself memorable. People love to retell stories about Burroughs and the Beats – and Chesterton certainly wasn’t above courting attention.

These tips aren’t an easy way out. Following them will likely lead to years of poverty and hangovers. But greatness has its price, and you owe it to the world.

13: The Art of the Unseen

Imagine if the first live gig you saw was the Flaming Lips. You might think that every performance would be as rich and spectacular as that and be sorely disappointed to find out most bands just shuffle about a bit on stage. Or if the first superhero comic you read was Watchmen: you'd imagine that they would all be that good (spoiler: not even close).

Back in 1997 I went to see the Sensation exhibition. It was the first big gallery show I'd seen and it blew my mind. It was a publicity-baiting show, featuring works like Marcus Harvey's Myra (removed after vandalism before our visit), Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, whose A Thousand Years was amazing. The work was playful and fun and left me excited about art.

The problem is that I've compared every subsequent exhibition to my memories of Sensation and few shows have come close. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with me or with art but I was certainly disappointed.

The Hayward Gallery's Invisible show has finally lived up to my expectations. The theme of the show was Art about the Unseen. I thought it might would be an austere show, appealing to the part of me that is currently ploughing through books of philosophy. Instead it was accessible and entertaining. People were laughing, enjoying the art and the games it played.

Early in the exhibition there is a piece by the Art and Language group that consists of an air-conditioned room. Patrons responded with amusement. What does one do when faced with what is, essentially, a cooled room? For me the piece also raised a lot of questions. How does one transport a work like the air conditioning? Does one have to pay royalites? Customs fees?

I've already written about my favourite piece, Tom Friedman's incredible 1000 Hour Stare, but there were many other highlights. Another Friedman piece, Curse, consisted of a spherical space above a pillar that was cursed by a witch. Again, the piece raises questions – how was the piece moved to the Hayward and did the curse come with it? Did it have to be cursed again in the new location? What do I think a curse actually is?

Many of the works provoked a direct response. Roman Ondak's work More Silent than Ever, was a space which the label claimed contained a listening device. My friend and I read the sign and immediately stopped talking, the suggestion of this device enough to silence us, even though we couldn't be sure the device was present or if anyone was listening to our gallery-chatter.

The invisible works could also be moving. Later in the exhibition there was another room, similar to the air conditioning one. The machines here were humidifiers. Our first response was amusement until we read the label. Teresa Margolles is an artist who "works with the physical traces of death" and her piece Aire/Air used water that has washed the bodies of unidentified murder victims prior to autopsy. The piece's label stated blankly "The water vapour is harmless" which seemed against the spirit of the piece. It was strange to inhale this water vapour knowing its history.

The exhibition's final piece was a participatory one, Jeppe Hein's Invisible Labyrinth. The work was set in a large empty space. Visitors put on a headset with an infrared receiver and set off to walk through the labyrinth, the headset buzzing when one hit a 'wall'. It was strange to watch people navigate this space, their steps faltering despite there being no visible obstruction. When I tried I finally found myself stuck, unable to remember the way out yet resistant to the idea of simply walking through the 'walls'.

One of the most interesting works was From New York to San Francisco to… by Bethan Huws. The name refers to the manner in which people in exhibitions "tend to pass from one work to the next, as if the artworks were little islands, and the seas – white wall/concrete floors in between – go unnoticed. They pass from New York to San Francisco to…, so to speak, without noticing the surroundings". The work consisted of an actor moving among the gallery patrons "in such a way as to make the visible artworks disappear". Who was the actor? It might be anyone. What if it was my friend? Or could it even be me?

As the show's curator wrote "Whether visible or not, art ultimately comes to life in our memories and in our conversations with others…" I was excited to see a show of conceptual art that was as much fun as this, so that my memories of it are worth recounting. It's good to regain the feeling that contemporary art can be exciting, creative and moving.

12: Graffiti at the Beatles Ashram

This is another post that has been languishing in my drafts folder – back in March, I visited the ‘Beatles ashram‘ in Rishikesh, where the Fab Four had stayed in 1968. The atmosphere of the ruins was strange and creepy. Throughout the complex, people had left messages and paintings, some photos of which are below. Click on the images if you want to see larger versions.

Given the England’s grim, rainy Summer this year, I wish I was back in Rishikesh.

11: Thousand Hour Stare

On Saturday, at the Hayward Gallery's Invisible show, I saw one of the most incredible works of art I've ever seen.

'Invisible' displayed works of art dealing with the unseen. Tom Friedman's 1000 hour stare was hung in a room with several works, all of which were blank white sheets of paper of different dimensions. I once read about an imaginary exhibition of red squares that would draw attention to their subtle differences. This room did something similar with what appeared to be (and was sometimes physically indistinguishable from) empty sheets of paper.

Out of the works on show, the one that moved me most was Friedman's. The information for the work described the medium as "Stare on paper" with dimensions of 82.6 x 82.6. It had been carried out between 1992 and 1997.

The work is part of a series of works Friedman carried out on 'the invisible'. His work, A Curse, also in the show, is a spherical space above a pillar that has been cursed by a witch. According to Friedman, "one's knowledge of the history behind something affects one's thinking about that thing." Does this knowledge transform empty space, or a blank sheet of paper?

A thousand hours is a long time to spend doing anything. Had the labour Friedman put into staring at this paper changed it? Unless the handling and storage of the paper over the five years of the work had changed or damaged it, a scientist could not distinguish between this work of art and another blank sheet. If I took the work from the wall, put it into a pile of similarly sized paper, it would be lost forever, all that work wasted. In what way had Friedman changed this one particular piece of paper?

And then there was the claim that Friedman had actually had performed that magical thousand hours of staring at this sheet. To put things on crass economic terms, was this sheet now worth a thousand hours of an artist's time? If I hired someone to reproduce it, paying minimum wages for every hour of their time, it would cost £6080. Yet the resulting 'work' would still be little different to any other piece of paper.

Or maybe Friedman was lying. The artist explicitly decided not to document the process, because of the tension that added to the work. Was he lying or not? Did it matter to me or not?

I stared at the work myself, trying to puzzle it out. Which raised the question of how the stares of the passing visitors affected the work. If I stared at it too long, maybe came back day after day, would I taint it in some way? Would my stare somehow be mixed in with Friedman's?

I'm certainly no expert in art theory, but I found 1000 Hour Stare provocative and approachable. It raised obvious questions and was also, in its own way, very moving. There was something incredible about the thought of the artist coming back to this blank sheet day after day. Or that he might have lied to me. All this, from what appeared to be a blank sheet of paper. Whether Friedman had put a thousand hours into the work or not, he had done something magical, transforming the empty paper into 'art'.

10: Do you want to read a story?

Last week I wrote about my stockpile of stories and how it was time I did something with them. So I've printed out some copies of one of them, Tales of the Occupation. If you'd like me to post you one, leave your address in a comment (don't worry, I won't publish it). I bought some stamps the other day, and will send copies until the stamps run out.

Tales of the Occupation is a short story (~1000 words) written around 2007. I think only one person has read this so far. I wouldn't claim it's a life-changing story, but it's the sort of thing I'd like to read, blending Brighton with a Lord Dunsany-style vision of the Arabian Nights. It also has a political inspiration, but that should probably be left to speak for itself. The quote at the start is taken from Dunsany's A Tale of London. Dunsany at his best is an incredible short story writer and unjustly overlooked nowadays.

I've wanted to experiment with sending out stories by post before but never got beyond the idea or the initial announcement. This time I have the stamps and envelopes and print-outs all ready to go, so it will definitely happen.

9: Indian Museums and bad taxidermy

India contains some wonderful museums, from the massive ones in cities like Kolkata or Delhi to those in smaller towns.

The Haveli Musuem in Udaipur contains puppets, restored rooms, and the world's largest turban. The turban has been designed so that, viewed from different angles, it is tied like different types of turban:

There were also a couple of rooms filled with polystyrene models:

Kolkata's Indian Museum is my favourite museum in India so far. It took me half an hour to find someone to give me a camera permit, but I persisted because I had to take some photographs. It was the most atmospheric museum I've ever been in, with rows of wooden cases filled with exhibits.

Dad spotted the exhibit below, the Tools of a Field Geologist.

Among them was a 'stuffed bird'. I have no idea why a geologist would need a stuffed bird.

Most Indian Museums contain taxidermy. Some of it is excellent, but there are the occasional examples that don't look entirely life-like:

8: Will Self vs Creative Writing

Via a tweet from @piratemoon I found a fascinating interview with Will Self. As the final question, Self is asked "What do you feel a writer should use his twenties for?" His reply is strident:

"Just read a lot of books. I certainly did, and still do. Do anything, really. Anything which brings you into contact with the world. The big crisis for literature today is creative writing [courses], which is ludicrous at every level. It’s like these cunts like Cameron, who have never done anything but be a politician. And there isn’t a market for these creative writing graduates’ in most cases mediocre lucubrations. You are educating people to be writers who can’t make a living, who will go on to teach more writers who can’t make a living."

It's a great end to an interview but Self's rant has an interesting contradiction, claiming that creative writing is a "crisis for literature" while "there isn’t a market for these creative writing graduates". I think the crisis produced by creative writing courses is mostly confined to the field of creative writing courses. I've spoken about this a little in other blog posts (see, for example Creative Writing is a Pyramid Scheme). Literature seems able to take or leave the ouput of creative writing courses which is why there is no market for them.

Do I regret the creative writing courses I've attended (the CCE Certificate and MA in Creative and Critical Writing at Sussex)? While the professed promises and aims of both courses may be questionable, they have been very worthwhile experiences. Will Self questions the idea of "educating people to be writers who can’t make a living", but this assumes that employment/profit is the only reason to study something. While CCE (in particular their novel-writing stream) made little movement beyond the link between writing and 'success', there should be more to creative writing than publishing.

The Creative and Critical Writing MA frequently questioned the idea of Creative Writing. The course is not to everyone's taste, but I found it exciting and refreshing. How does writing relate to the publishing industry? To people's lives? This was a course that had some very big questions to ask rather than focusing on how one writes a best-selling literary novel. Why not question the meaning of life? Why not read incredibly difficult poetry?

There is a second apparent contradiction in the Will Self interview. "Just read lots of books… [Do] Anything which brings you into contact with the world". How does fiction relate to the real world? The two are not neccessarily in contradiction, although Self's comment here doesn't consider that; but fiction is an important part of many people's real world. Julian Barnes wrote an essay in the guardian about his life as a bibliophile, the ending of which is worth quoting:

The American writer and dilettante Logan Pearsall Smith once said: "Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading." When I first came across this, I thought it witty… The distinction is false… When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.

Without wishing to sound self-helpy about it, creative writing should be lead its students to become better readers living richer lives. Creative writing offers an opportunity to deepen one's experience of life, regardless of publishing success – education should be about more than vocation. The Oxford philosopher, John Alexander Smith, apparently opened a 1914 lecture course with the following words: "Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – if you work hard and diligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education."