The Spoons That Are My Ears!

I have been busy putting together yet another collection. All this story gathering is starting to become excessive; I have put together far too many books already this year. I don't expect them all to appear in the near future; some of them may have to wait for years or they may never appear at all. Who knows?

But this collection is something I have been working on for a long time. It's a set of microfictions, exactly one hundred of them, called Flash in the Pantheon. These ultra-short stories span almost my entire writing career; the earliest dates from 1989 and the most recent was completed a few days ago. First I put them in strict chronological order, then I decided that random order was better. Now it's time to stop tinkering and leave them alone.

There are many kinds of microfiction: the 50 word 'mini-saga', the suggestive '69er', the 100 word 'drabble'. All have one thing in common: they impose a creative fetter on the author. Poets who work with strict metre and rhyming schemes are no strangers to creative fetters, but prose writers rarely use them; and yet, by limiting the chaos of almost infinite choice, they can be highly beneficial as aids to invention and originality. Paradoxically, words in cages can be more free. The above photo shows a less symbolic cage, with me inside. I don't know if the metaphor is fully transferrable, however...

My favourite microfiction of all time was written by John Barth. It can be found on my Gloomy Seahorse site here. Something this ingenious is extremely difficult to match. My own approach to the microfiction question is often to link many together; each one should work alone but the sum should also be a complete epic in miniature. The recent anthology Blind Swimmer features one of my efforts in this vein, a story entitled 'The Talkative Star'. It's the kind of fiction I most enjoy writing, namely Calvinoesque whimsy; but in Britain this seems to be a minority taste and it takes a special editor to appreciate that what seems lighthearted may also be profound.

Fortunately, David Rix of Eibonvale Press is exactly that sort of editor, a gloriously eccentric individual who runs a gloriously eccentric independent publishing house that creates books that don't look like any other books from any other press. The theme of Blind Swimmer is 'creativity in isolation', one of the best themes I have been offered by any editor. I chose to write about our sun, because the sun itself is one of the most creative forces in one of the deepest isolations imaginable, but I made him sentient.

The Victorian monster that appears in my previous blog entry is the last in the series. All six together comprise my first self-illustrated story. I have an abiding affection for tales that utilise images as an essential complement to the text, in the manner of certain Donald Barthelme stories, and I have written and published a few examples of this form in recent years; but never before have I done the drawings myself. I hope that ‘Monsters of the Victorian Age’ will appear in a future book; but in the meantime the finished piece is available online here.

Speaking of the great Donald Barthelme reminds me that I have cited him as one of the spiritual godfathers of ‘Romanti-Cynicism’ in the Afterword of a new collection I’ve just put together: a showcase of romanti-cynical stories from the past seventeen or so years. But what is romanti-cynicism? It’s a literary movement I founded when I was younger. Romanti-Cynical fictions simultaneously take themselves very seriously and mock themselves; they have one foot in sober existentialism, one in ironic satire, one in progressive science fiction, one in nostalgic utopian fancies, one in magic, one in naivety, one in cunning, one in fable, one in rationality... with the crucial point being that the total number of these feet is always startlingly greater than feasible. Even a millipede couldn’t manage so many!

My showcase volume is entitled Link Arms with Toads! and I submitted it to a publisher two days ago; so I can’t yet be sure it will ever see the light of day. “Link Arms with Toads!” is the motto of the Romanti-Cynical Movement. What does it mean exactly? I’d like to say that I’ve forgotten or that I never really knew, but the truth is simple enough: whether you are a ghost, a robot or just an apeman, you can always link arms with toads!

Bruce Sterling isn’t a romanti-cynical author; but he’s a tremendous writer all the same. A genius, in fact! My interview with him for La Stampa is now available in English. Here it is. This version is actually longer than the one in Italian.

What else? I think I ought to mention that there's a book-launch and reading at the British Library, London, on October 28th in aid of the "Read for READ" charity anthology. READ International is a charity devoted to increasing literacy by shipping free books to Africa. So far they have shipped nearly 1,000,000 books. They are publishing an anthology to raise money for the charity. This anthology contains the winners of a short-story competition held earlier this year, and also a few guest stories by a handful of invited writers. It's a cause I believe in, and I'm in the book with two stories, one written specially for the charity; so I may be going to the reading if I can drum up the cash for a visit to ultra-expensive London. The British Library is one of the finest venues for a book-launch in the world; and if you happen to be in the area at the time, I definitely recommend going to this event! Click here for more details.

Chimney Monsters

Chimney monsters keep the Empire happy. Chimney monsters keep the Empire warm. They dine on chopped wood and black stones and never complain. Without chimney monsters where would we be? Not here, not here! Chimney monsters keep stuck sweeps for pets. Chimney monsters call a spade a shovel. Black, blistered and riveted they cough all day; roaring and hissing they glow all night. Chimney monsters share our air. They jut their horns but not their chins. If chimney monsters went away, the Queen would fall and break. The Empire too. Even the smallest chimney monster is grate. Remember that!

I have finished The Coandă Effect at last! One month it took me from beginning to end. It's a Corto Maltese adventure featuring physics, ghosts, pirates, bandits, submarines, bicycles, hats, icebergs, vermouth, the Second Balkans War of 1913, duels, cobwebs and a Finnish villain so dastardly that even I am shocked by his antics! This novella turned out to be slightly longer than I originally anticipated, 24,000 words in total. I'll correct it tomorrow (there are always mistakes) and send it to my publisher on Friday.

Here's a short film Adele made of her artworks with background music by underrated prog-rockers, Camel.

Last Friday it was my birthday. I climbed to Mumbles lighthouse for the first time in my life. Also I was unexpectedly asked to interview the great SF author Bruce Sterling for the Italian national newspaper, La Stampa. The deadline was very tight but I did it in time! The interview has just gone online here. The English version should hopefully be available soon. I was delighted with Bruce Sterling's answers: he's an enormously clever but utterly unpretentious man and the messages embedded in his brilliant writing are genuinely important.

Today I found a fossilised stone! I'm fairly sure it dates from the Silurian Period (between 440 and 395 million years ago). I have used inductive reasoning to reconstruct its final moments. It appears that a prehistoric scissors became snagged in the finger branches of a hand tree; its cries attracted the stone, which then got stuck in the sand; the struggles of the stone attracted a predatory piece of paper, which trapped itself under the stone. All three perished together. The scissors and paper in this photograph are models (the originals decayed before petrification was possible) but the stone is genuine. Fossilised stones are incredibly rare! Note that the paper is covered with practice attempts at perfecting my new signature: this only deepens the mystery!

It's a well-known fact that scissors, stones and pieces of paper form a self-contained food chain. But a system of this nature with only three elements is inherently unstable. So here's an improved set-up, also entirely self-contained, that features five elements. Biodiversity is of vital importance! This schematic, incidentally, was drawn by a fellow named Anthony Lewis: he acts in this film as a bald jazz-singer. The two extra elements are: Dynamite and Raincloud. As can be seen, the Rock blunts the Scissors but it also smashes the Raincloud; the Scissors cuts Paper but it also severs the fuse of the stick of Dynamite; the Dynamite blows the Rock to pieces but it also disperses the Raincloud with shockwaves; the Raincloud rusts the Scissors but it also makes the Paper soggy; and the Paper still smothers the Rock but now it also becomes a letter of complaint to the authorities about the owner of the Dynamite, who is subsequently arrested.

For more silliness about stones check out my Postmodern Mariner blog...

Wordplay. For a long time I have been amused by the British distrust of it. But even though I say 'British' it would be more accurate to specify 'English', as the Celtic Nations don't share the same attitude. English readers and critics... Ah! They seem to regard wordplay with a soul-wrenching horror. The use of homonyms, mondegreens, pataphors, lipograms, palindromes and even alliteration can reduce them to quivering lumps of unhappy protoplasm. And as for puns... perish the thought!

However, the English are experts at putting on a brave face. They certainly aren't softies and they know how to convincingly disguise fear as exasperation. When they encounter a pun in a text, they don't hide behind the sofa but grit their teeth, roll their eyes and utter one of three following words, almost as a protective formula: "Groan!", "Ouch!", "Argh!" Once the final echoes of the chosen utterance have faded, they enter a period of refusing to take the remainder of the text seriously. No matter how profound the themes, how original the style, the text has become a bitter thing in their eyes, an ordeal, a slough of despond. For the English reader, the pun is an unforgivable solecism.

I am an author who enjoys wordplay and therefore I frequently encounter this attitude among English reviewers and critics. My own view is that wordgames are a bonus to the major elements of a work of fiction, the sidedish or pickle to the main feast, so to speak, and should not be confused with the main course. Surely it is generous of a writer to provide this bonus rather than simply presenting a plain ungarnished meal? It's rarely perceived that way. The English critic will seize instantly on the sidedish and examine it almost exclusively, insisting that it somehow stands for the true feast. This is bizarre.

I once ended a story with the sentence, "It was a killer peruke from Wigan." A silly, throwaway line. The story in question was one in which I had reversed all the conventions of orthodox ghost tales: the main point was to experiment and subvert the form with a playful application of logic. I added that final line as an afterthought, as a wink or gherkin. One reviewer insisted on using it as conclusive proof that jokes were the entire point of my story. I had made it easier for him to ignore the fact that the piece was actually about ontology. Perhaps he didn't know what ontology was and thus was grateful I had provided him with an escape route.

Readers and critics in other countries don't suffer from the wordplay-phobia of their English counterparts. I used to believe that one of the reasons I am more highly regarded as an 'ideas writer' outside England is because in translation my works are shorn of the distractions of my wordplay; but in fact many of my translators make great efforts to replace my untranslatable puns with puns of equal value in their own language. In one Russian anthology every single example of wordplay in my contribution had its own explanatory footnote. I was deeply touched by that dedication.

One of the reasons that wordgames (especially puns) are disparaged by English critics is because there's an assumption that the most respected English-language writers of the past avoided them entirely and only employed sober language. But in fact it was the mid-level authors (Henry James, John Galsworthy, Jane Austen, etc) who adopted that approach; the truly great masters relished the use of wordplay. I need only casually mention Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare. As for the modern masters: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Flann O'Brien, Gilbert Sorrentino, Vladimir Nabokov and Donald Barthelme, among many others, have all proved themselves adepts at convoluted wordplay.

So what books would I recommend as the finest repositories of wordplay that I've encountered? What are my top five volumes in this category? Well, to make such a selection I first must ensure that the works are entertaining not only for their wordplay. The wordplay mustn't be the main point, but a bonus; yet it must be a bonus good enough to carry the other essential qualities without interfering with them. So then. What do we have? In reverse order, I suggest:

(5) Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss,
(4) Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel by Julián Ríos,
(3) Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau,
(2) Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian,
(1) Infante's Inferno by G. Cabrera Infante.

(1) Jukka-Petteri Halme

And the two runners-up are:

(2) Luísa Ferreira
(3) Mads Pedersen

Jukka will be the main villain. Luísa and Mads will also be villains but slightly less dastardly. Either they will be in the employ of Jukka, or else they will be rivals to him. Another fellow by the name of Tom Alaerts has already secured a place in the novella by prior arrangement: he will be a pirate. Thanks to everyone who entered! Further details of the selection procedure including a full list of entrants can be found on one of my other blogs, here.