This is the time of year when my friend Kent and I have one of our more predictable rows.  For a number of years now, he has chosen to wear a white poppy as a way of expressing his pacifism and whilst, of course, I respect his view, the fact that I don’t agree with it is the cause of… well, conflict. 

A feature of the life-cycle of papaver rhoeas, the so-called field poppy, is the fact that it can lay dormant for decades in undisturbed soil, requiring the impact of a spade, a plough… or an 8” Howitzer shell.  Considering that some estimates put the number of shells of all sizes fired in World War I at well in excess of 1,000,000,000, it seems hardly surprising that sudden efflorescence of field poppies occurred on a grand scale and it was this that caught the imaginations of combatants throughout the Western Front.  Life from destruction; hope; resurrection.  A recognition that the horror would not go on forever.

It’s unsurprising that the Royal British Legion chose it as their symbol of remembrance in 1921.  The white poppy, however, did not turn up until 1933 as a rallying symbol for peace by the Women’s Co-operative Guild.  It was too close to the conflict for this well-meaning gesture to be appreciated by the veterans who, rightly or wrongly, viewed it as an affront to the sacrifices made by themselves and their comrades.  Valiant efforts were made on both sides to reconcile the differences; the wearing of both colours at Remembrance Day events was tried, as was the laying of wreaths of both red and white poppies but sadly, this particular conflict remained unresolved.  Waters were muddied further when many of those on the political left, proponents of the white poppy, realised that opposing fascism with pacifism was a bit of a non-starter and signed up for the International Brigades instead.  The eventual onslaught of Nazi Germany put paid to any lingering doubt that peace was any sort of option and left and right fought side by side for the next six years.

Since 1945, war has become something almost ubiquitous and it has been very difficult for the Peace Pledge Union – the organisation producing white poppies at present - to gain a great deal of popular support.  There is, and probably will be for many years to come, a knee-jerk reaction which kicks a choking cloud of abuse upon those who would wear one; which is why the nest of vipers that is the British press is waiting with bated breath to see what colour Jeremy Corbyn will wear at the Cenotaph this year.

 Like all the traps that becoming an Establishment figure has laid before Corbyn, this one has its roots in convention, tradition and history and is certainly not as simplistic as the tabloids would have their readers believe and I could cite my own attitude as illustration.  I have long been a student of the 1914-18 conflict and, like many such, no longer view the war as perhaps the general populace might, that is, merely the sacrifice of youth on the altar of hubris.   It was, of course, that but not “merely” that.  Space prevents a detailed analysis of why the war had to be fought but suffice it to say that to tell a veteran of that conflict that his sacrifice had been in vain would have been, (and was for many of them), the most egregious insult. And what purpose is served by insulting veterans of conflict?

Whatever our views on warfare, there can be little doubt that those at the sharp-end know more about it than most.  Traditionally, our front-line soldiers have been drawn from what might loosely be termed, the working classes.  Unlike the career officers who command them, the enlisted soldier is often there as a result of high unemployment (not a co-incidence) or lack of education (again, possibly, not a co-incidence).  In other words, whatever we may think of them, they are not the ones to blame.  And if veterans might be offended by the wearing of a white poppy, then perhaps it behoves us to swallow a little pride and put a lid on our self-righteousness for a few days.

As a staunch supporter of the Labour leader, my view is that, since the matter can and will be blown out of all proportion by the press, the wisest course of action would be to “render unto Caesar”, as it were.
His supporters are not likely to withdraw because of it but those not yet convinced – and we need them, of course – might. 

As a footnote, has anyone seen those sparkly poppies?  What the boiling hell do the people wearing them think they are doing?   Whatever it may be, a poppy is most definitely not a decorative accessory!

This morning’s discussion on “The Big Questions” (BBC) got me thinking about the First World War.  This is no great achievement since I would imagine that not a day goes by without my thinking of that awful conflict.  The Big Question at issue was “Is Britain a better place today because of the First World War?” and, as you can imagine, the discussion was “lively”.  Strong arguments were made on both sides, and both sides appeared to me to have arguments of equal merit but I have to say that, interesting though the discussion was, no point was made that hasn’t at one time or another crossed my mind.  In that respect, it was a little frustrating.

But one of the things it confirmed for me was my own tendency to side with the iconoclast.

I grew up in the sixties and was most decidedly against nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War and all forms of autocratic government, sham democracies, corporate capitalism and injustice: I still am.  Had anyone asked me, I would also have said that I was a pacifist but I wasn’t: not really.  Anti-war?  Of course.  Pro peace?  Naturally.  Willing to turn the other cheek; to stand idly by and watch others suffer?  Absolutely and most decidedly, not.

I had some difficulty in reconciling these two sides of my character throughout my early adult life.  It seemed that the more culture I absorbed, the more I sympathised with the notion that peace was all-important: from Siegfried Sassoon to Jim Kirk – warriors both – my influences taught me that rational discussion, compromise and the repression of ego were the things that would make the world a better place.  Unfortunately,   the more history I studied, the more apparent it became to me that this is fine so long as others think the same way.  I recall that Kirk, when push came to shove, would resort to the legendary two-handed slam on the neck of some costumed stunt-man and even Sassoon performed his job of blowing up German trenches and their occupants with a great deal more relish than readers of his poetry might have imagined.

Pacifism was an ideal that was diminishing in life’s rear-view mirror with every passing day.  Add to this a growing understanding that the world-view of people of the past was perhaps not quite the same as those of the 1970s  and I could quite confidently deride as naive the assertion of Michael Foot (a politician for whom I have a long standing admiration) that he was an “inveterate peacemonger” .  Indeed, I began to realise that popular culture has always endowed historical figures – famed or otherwise – with the sensibilities of the era in which their stories were written.  One of the reasons that we find ourselves censoring, bowdlerising or even banning those works that contain words and ideas we now deem offensive.

I saw “Oh What A Lovely War” and seethed with anger at the waste of life and the cavalier attitudes of the ruling class; I admired “Dr Strangelove”, “M.A.S.H.”, “Catch 22”, “Slaughterhouse 5” and “Born on the Fourth of July”.  I bought into it and so did a lot of people;  many of whom, I’m willing to bet, are part of the “No Glory” group, which opposes the Tory government’s desire to capitalise on the 100 year anniversary of the start of the Great War and, as they would have it, “reclaim” it from the “peacemongers”.  In this, I applaud them.  Turning commemoration into celebration is as immoral as it is distasteful and I await with interest the calls for “thanksgiving” ceremonies come 2018.  However, there is a danger that they overstate their case and come across as… well… naïve.  And worse, they hold, I believe, the majority view.  It is a view that has been formed by decades of seeing the conflict as a huge waste of life and potential: it wasn’t.  It was an expenditure of life and potential – a view, which I may attempt to justify in a later post.

And ironically, it wasn’t merely poppies, which the violence and carnage caused to bloom in Flanders’ fields.  Broadcast along with them, were the seeds that would germinate into the anti-war sensibilities that characterise much of the thinking that “No Glory” reflects today.

Finally got round to writing something for the weblog.  I could make all sorts of excuses but it all comes down to lack of time: or rather wishing to devote more time to other things.  It doesn’t mean I’ve got nothing to say but I find myself posting my opinions on Facebook rather than on here.  I suppose the reason is that one can get an instant response and in this soundbite world, that somehow seems more gratifying.  I know that some people write screeds on Facebook but I don’t think that’s what it's for and so I very seldom read and almost never write long posts.

So why am I blathering on about this?  Well, I have a thought.  It concerns the use of language and the way an ill-constructed soundbite phrase can influence people in ways that the speaker/writer did not intend.  Of course, some soundbites are very carefully constructed and repeated ad nauseam to try to influence people’s views and I lay before you the well-worn term “hardworking families” which the Tories have been intoning almost as a catechism at every opportunity (although it's paling a little as commentators point out that no matter how hard families work, they never seem to get anywhere).

A throwaway term I heard on the radio the other day had me pondering the importance of word placement.  Reference was made to a “young homeless man” and I wondered why the speaker had not chosen to his adjectives in that particular order.  Why was the subject not a “homeless young man”? This would have been technically correct but what the speaker was putting across (possibly not even intentionally) was the idea that “homeless man” is a thing.  The semiotic impact of the term is unmistakable:  A young homeless man is someone in a shop doorway; a beggar; a dog in a string; a beard; ragged.  A homeless young man is not necessarily any of these things.  Hearing the phrase does not have an immediate semiotic effect upon us.  We may see a young chap fresh out of university or in his first job, searching the classified for a bed-sit; walking along a street alternately peering at door numbers and perusing a paper on which is written an address.  The phrase does not signify.

We all take on roles which define us at any given time.  I may be a driver but within seconds I can become a pedestrian, a shopper, a customer, a client, a passenger.  TV news when interviewing people, likes to categorise:  A weary-looking interviewee is named: Jim Bloggs (subtitle) FLOOD VICTIM;  Janet Smith (subtitle) POST OFFICE USER;  Lucy Jones (subtitle) PATIENT.  Most of us, however, don't keep our labels and nor are we identified by them.  But some of us are.

How easily a simple thing like adjectival order can unleash our prejudices.  Perhaps if we all listen more carefully, we might not jump to so many conclusions.

I think Clint Eastwood is one of the greatest film directors of his generation. “Unforgiven” is not only his masterpiece, it is, more importantly, one of my top ten favourite films of all time (and he starred in one of the others).  So watching his notorious “Empty Chair” interview with Barack Obama was a particularly unsettling experience for me even though his weird brand of right-wing libertarian politics was already familiar.  However, nothing he could say or do would ever diminish for me the level of his cinematic achievement.  In other words: his politics doesn’t really concern me when it comes to his art.  Likewise, Sam Raimi, James Woods and, from the world of music, Alice Cooper, whose shows remain one of the best-value tickets you’ll ever purchase.   Neil Young, of course, came out for Reagan but then I think a lot of Democrats did and that never impinged on my admiration for him.  As for arch-libertarian, Frank Zappa (for whose music my admiration knows no bounds),  he could have come out as a Nazi and I could have tolerated that for a burst of “G-Spot Tornado” and chorus of “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama”.

And arguably my favourite writer, Patrick O’Brian was a staunch supporter of the UK Conservative Party and numbered some of Margaret Thatcher’s ministers amongst his friends and that has not diminished in any way for me, the power of his work.

This isn’t true for everyone, however.  Kelsey Grammer’s political views have utterly ruined for me the great writing that “Frazier” offered and I’m still smarting over the fact that in spite of my vociferous support for her work over the years (against, I might add, legions of naysayers) Tracy Emin came out as a Tory.

But  isn’t it gratifying when artists in all endeavours (and whose work one despises) turns out to be of an opposing political persuasion?  Frederick Forsyth is one who springs to mind for me, along with the execrable Gary Barlow and the unutterably dire, Julian Fellowes.

By now, I fully expect to have lost a number of readers: and this is precisely my point. For there will be many for whom my observations will represent a crossing of the line.  For them (for you?), the people I mention may well have had their reputations enhanced by the fact that they are of the Right and you will feel nothing but contempt for some of the more left-leaning practitioners of the arts.

But will you admit it?  And should I?

The other day, I found myself becoming angrier and angrier at some of the things I was reading in the press and I became aware that this was causing me to post more and more left-leaning links on Facebook and in other forums.  Not only this, I found myself getting involved in discussions and arguments with people who, frankly, were unlikely to be swayed by any of my arguments.  All I seemed to be doing was alienating a constituency who might hitherto have been prepared to give my work a try. Hence this little article.

There are many artists, writers and performers whose political allegiances (if they exist at all), they prefer to keep to themselves.  As a result, they can appeal to those of whatever persuasion and are never in fear of losing readers/listeners/viewers because of politics.  Should that be the stance of all artists?

I think not.  A writer’s work is always going to be influenced by politics, even if they are apolitical.  Their thoughts on the mores of their time are always going to filter through their work.  My own books do demonstrate something of a left-leaning tendency, even if only in passing and reflect I hope, a socially liberal view of the world, in which the pompous are pricked; the wicked, punished; the innocent, occasionally victimised; and the powerful, brought low.

And if you’re wondering how a hit-man can have a social conscience, then I invite you to read “The Rothko Room” and find out.  (See what I did there?)

As for my own dilemma: well, I believe that we must be true to ourselves and that those who come out one any side of the political argument should be respected for doing so.  For some of us, it is a vital part of who we are and if our readers can get over that, then that would be one more affirmation that our work was valued for what it is rather than for who created it.

I heard Vince Cable put the boot into David Cameron’s immigration policy yesterday and wondered how Central Office would spin it. What they came up with was:

“…Vince is a member of the Government and supports Government policy.  The words he chooses to do that are up to him….”

I grit my teeth, ignore the appalling grammar and instead turn to the way in which Mr. Cable chose to express his support for the Government. 

ANDREW MARR:
The Prime Minister has seized upon this as one of the big things that he is fighting about. He’s made it very, very clear that he is personally behind this. He’s going into an argument with the Europeans, currently the Bulgarian president, I think. Can you actually stop this happening, the 75,000 cap?

VINCE CABLE:
I think it isn’t going to happen. Nick Clegg’s made it very clear he’s not going to allow it to happen. I think there’s a bigger picture here. We periodically get these immigration panics in the UK. I remember going back to Enoch Powell and “rivers of blood”, and all that. And if you go back a century, panics over Jewish immigrants coming from Eastern Europe. The responsibility of politicians, in this situation, when people are getting anxious, is to try to reassure them and give them facts, and not panic and resort to populist measures that do harm.

Well, there’s spin and there’s self-delusion and I think Central Office have crossed the line.   What they are saying, if I understand them, is that Cable is choosing to say the words, “…it isn’t going to happen…” but what he actually means is “…it is going to happen…” No wonder everyone is confused.

I might have expect someone supporting the Government’s policy on immigration to say something along the lines of, “…I support the Government’s policy…” and not “…The responsibility of politicians, in this situation, when people are getting anxious, is to try to reassure them and give them facts, and not panic and resort to populist measures that do harm…”

I suppose that just goes to show how much I know about the English language.

A couple of discoveries have impelled me to revisit the topic of literary fiction.  Incidentally, I trust you notice that I have forborne to flank the term with the accustomed quotation marks, thus indicating my open-mindedness in the matter of this genre (if I am allowed to use so debased a term).

I have had a number of encounters with writers who are of the opinion that I am simply uncultured, untutored or just plain dim because I fail to appreciate the grandeur of their prose.  Now, in the face of such an onslaught, only a fellow with the self-assurance of the self-deluded could fail to have experienced a modicum of concern lest the supposition be true. Therefore,  I admit there have been times when I have thought, to put it crudely, that “it must be me”.

One of these times was when I recently encountered the work of John Farris.  I am not so ashamed as some might think I ought to be by the fact that I had never heard of him until two weeks ago but I’ll admit to being rather surprised by his fame.  I’m given to understand that he is a popular writer of scary stories, whom some believe to be rather more literary in his style than others of his ilk.  For example, according to Amazon, Farris has been “…long a master of the literary thriller…” and Richard Matheson claimed that he had “…raised (sic) the terror genre into the realm of literature…”.  Whilst I agree that this is not a particularly significant accolade (Matheson gave us the marvellous sentence, “…Talbot’s toes whipped like pennants in a gale…”) it nevertheless points to the respect Farris enjoys amongst some writers.

It was when I encountered some of this “literature” that I began to realise that my antipathy towards a certain kind of pretentious writing might be difficult for some to understand.  For instance, amongst the turns of phrase Farris offers are such marvels as:  “…He watched the rise and fall of her breasts with blurred yearning…”  (I know: breasts again – cf last month’s blog)  I googled the term “blurred yearning” and turned up three genuine results; two of which post-date Farris and one of which pre-dates him.  That one, though, is from a poem where it makes even less sense.  And there was this wonderful thing, which is either an appalling translation of a website hoping to flog protein drinks or some kind of catch-all tagfest.

“The focus is that silky with less than unrivalled compose, lifting depressed albatross with blurred yearning overturn up muscle worry up and muscle growth. And if you penury to develop muscle throng, you're luxuriant to persuade to abuse up "more" protein, to not at worst vouchsafe the muscles you participate in at this quite two seconds but to fullness more.”

Whatever the case, the term appears to me to be nonsensical but I mustn’t let that lead me to think that it’s just rubbish because, apparently, this type of conjoining of words is perfectly acceptable in some quarters.  I offer (from various sources),  

“…her sexually ambiguous Timex…”

“…swathed in stratagem…”

“…Spiers’s eyes popped extraneously from their sockets…”

Quoted in “Wretched Writing” Petras and Petras

And one more thing I noticed:  To me, this sentence “…He gravely touched her shoulder, tapping it twice, dropped his hand…” is not only clumsy, it is grammatically incorrect yet this sort of thing peppers Farris’ writing.  It also peppers the writing of lots of people whose work I have criticised.  Am I to take it that this is also acceptable? 

I am drawn to the conclusion that this is a species of writing certainly more common in, if not unique to American literature; however, I’m still not convinced that it’s good writing and I give thanks that I am not, as I had believed, alone.  For in my search to find out what it was that led some writers to believe that stringing unusual words together in unusual combinations automatically endows it with literary merit, I discovered that there is a respected group of naysayers, whose mission is to reveal that the Emperor’s dangly bits are on display.

Of these, I have chosen to begin with “The Readers’ Manifesto” by M.R. Myers, in which the author picks apart some of the ghastly prose that was infesting American literature at the turn of this century.  Needless to say, the work appears to be just as valid today.  I shall report back  presently.

Homophones can be a problem in a society that doesn’t read.  Some common  ones (which many of us will have seen) may be forgiven: compliment and complement are often confused and in a variety of permutations of meaning; although I’m less tolerant of principle and principal, whose meanings are so similar that confusing the two can have… implications.  “A principal I always adhere to…” could receive more raised eyebrows that the prepositional abuse might warrant.

One would hope that even were a writer to perpetrate such errors, a decent editor would pick them up so I was astounded when my wife showed me a line from a book, published by Pan Macmillan, whose author is a "widely acclaimed" writer with some fourteen books in print.  It reads (if memory serves),
"...the moonlight fell across her taught breasts..."

One wonders just what it was they were learning.

When I posted this on a well-known authors’ site, one comment was, “Typos will sometimes creep in”.  I responded that in my view, this was no typo but a severe misunderstanding of the word in question.  To mistake taught for taut is such an astonishing gaffe, one wonders that editor is still employed; perhaps he/she isn’t any longer but many others are.

I have seen, for example, references to “easedropping”, which I assume was what the writer/editor believed the word, “eavesdropping” to be; and a recent article in The Independent assured readers that a party was “held in a marquis on the lawn…”  Very accommodating of him. 

Whenever I notice an issue in my own work that has escaped the net, I am livid with myself and rush out a new edition immediately.  Mostly, they are missed commas or speech marks (although there was one severe grammatical faux pas that I can’t bring myself to admit to here!) Never have I got a word “wrong” in the way I’ve described and the prospect of paying for someone to edit my book and still be worried about gaffes would be too much to bear.

One of the cardinal rules for any individual who has ever tried to engage with the general public is: don’t google yourself.  Like those warnings against eavesdropping on private conversations lest we hear something about ourselves that we might not like, it is in many cases a rule honoured only in the breach.   But when you are trying to promote your work, it’s often necessary to find out what people are saying about you – good and bad. 

So far, the number of detractors has very small indeed and whilst I’m curious as to motive, I remain optimistic that their effect is minimal but, rest assured, they exist. But what gives me pause every time I look to see how my self-aggrandising contributions to various sites are being received, is a request I made about twenty months ago to a website called “Why Isn’t My Book Selling?”.

Now I can see what you’re thinking:  it would be something along the lines of, “What… the… hell…!!??  Are you... mental or what???” and I would have to own that, yes, you may have a point; but what I was looking for was some practical help that might get my story ("The Circling Song") noticed and, to be fair, there were a number of helpful points made – mostly concerning the cover, as it happens; but without wishing to denigrate the site (which I certainly am not: it is a laudable idea) I think that on the whole, it was a huge mistake.

For now, every time my story or me is googled, one of the early hits picked up by search engines is this:

Marvellous.  So, anyone searching for that intriguing First World War epistolary novella that everyone’s been talking about is going to come across this, frown and go back to whatever it was they were doing before the mad urge to search for the book overtook them.  They most certainly won’t be wondering, “Why is it that this book didn’t sell?  Is it so amazingly “out there” that I must read it immediately?”  No.  They will think that it didn’t sell because it was crap.

Well, it isn’t crap, as it happens, but it is different; unusual; strange; hard to categorise; indeed all those things that the publishing world hates and this, I’d like to think, is why my books don’t seem to do as well as others. 

I have to come to terms with the simple fact that my books are not ones that most people want to read.

When I wrote my first novel, “Head Count”, my aim was to produce a story that I would enjoy: a good yarn of the kind that seemed to me were not being written any more: unpretentious, exciting and fun but at the same time, intelligent and literate. When I put it on Authonomy to gauge opinion, the first comment I got stated, “This could be Literary Fiction…”  Ooh, goody, thought I: appreciation.  My pleasure was short-lived.  It was not long before I realized that “Head Count” fell between two stools:  Not accessible enough to be an airport thriller and too much fun to be taken seriously.* 

Now, you’d like to think I learnt my lesson but sadly, no; for my second offering, “The Circling Song”, very well received by all who have read it, remains, as we have discovered, stumbling, lost and running low on provisions through the foothills of obscurity.   

With “The Rothko Room”, I threw caution to the winds and went as far as I could go with short sentences, short chapters and short words and whilst the jury is still very much out, I would not be surprised to discover that I’ve failed abysmally once more.

It may be that I’m not good at self-promotion: I’m not.  It may be that I don’t write in a simple, populist style:  I don’t.  But it may be that the sorts of stories I enjoy are the sorts of stories that just don’t get written any more.  What I fear I have yet to learn is what the boiling hell do I do about it?

* I also readily admit that the book needs a revision in terms of dialogue layout.  I was trying to make it as cheap as possible and this led to a certain... I believe the technical term is, "squishing too much text into too small a space".

Oh God!  I’m sympathising with Godfrey Bloom.  The hapless Bloom is the UKIP M.E.P. who has scandalised the country, not by the use of the term “Bongo-Bongo Land” to describe the Third World, nor by his assertion that Britain ought not to be sending financial aid there; nor, it should be said, by the fact that he appears to see nothing wrong with producing a UKIP conference brochure whose cover bears the images of several score of face not one of which bears pigmentation other than a rather insipid and sickly beige.  No, Bloom has brought scorn upon himself by using the word “sluts” to describe a group of women.
Some context:  Bloom had earlier made a comment that women should spend more time cleaning behind the fridge (yes, this is looking more and more like I should leave him to his fate) and was questioned on this by one of his own supporters, a woman, at a fringe meeting, who said that she had never cleaned behind her fridge either.  When the vexed question of behind-fridge cleaning was put to the floor, all the women, with one voice, exclaimed that they had never cleaned behind their fridge either.
At this, Bloom “joked”,
“I’m surrounded by sluts!”
There was some laughter but the general consensus, soon expressed, was that he had gone too far this time.
The word, “slut”, it would appear, is now a word that has come to mean what we used to call “loose” and its former use, to mean less than houseproud, has fallen into disuse so that people have taken him to have meant that he was surrounded by women of dubious morals and not merely dirty cows.
Now in this, I feel he has been unjustly pilloried.  As an old fool, Bloom cannot be expected to have kept abreast of all the changes to the language since he first crawled from under his rock.  I’m convinced that he meant his remark to be taken as a comment on the cleaning abilities of his audience rather than their morals.  The word was not uncommonly used in this manner, when I was a lad along with its male equivalent, "sloven".  Occasionally, you would hear the word "slattern" - which I've always believed is related to "slut" and which means "to slop" and from which, of course, we get "sloppy".  An interesting etymology has it derived from Old Norse, "to slap", which may or may not find echoes in the modern, "slapper" (which I had always believed was a reference to being over made-up or covered in "slap".
Now you might say, “So what? The upshot is that Bloom got what he deserved” and in many ways, I’d have to agree.  However, there is such a thing as justice and a person ought to be tried for the crime they committed rather than the crime we wish they’d committed.  Bloom is guilty of having been educated over fifty years ago and of being a buffoon.  The hypocritical outrage of Nigel Farage has been a wonder to behold but his desire to ditch a former comrade so speedily should tell the electorate that UKIP are learning fast and that’s something I’m rather pleased about, to tell the truth.  They are the best chance we’ve had in many years of splitting the Tory vote and for that, I wish them all the luck in the world.