Damascus
Introduction
Damascus, like X 20, is a constraint-based novel. True to OuLiPian optimism, the constraint generates the text.
In Damascus, every noun in the novel (with twelve exceptions) must come from the Times newspaper (London) of 1 November 1993. There are many excellent reasons for this.
It makes the book, by definition, a novel of its times. In Damascus there can be no noun, or basic linguistic building-block, which was not current and authentic to the day and time the novel describes.
True to experience, Hazel Burns and Spencer Kelly have to take life as they find it, meaning in this case the restricted possibilities offered by the nouns in one specific newspaper. All they can then do (all any of us can do) is construct a life by re-arranging the arbitrary ingredients we encounter.
The events that background their lives, at every age, are always taken from the one source newspaper. This also allows an exploration of how memories can be affected by the day on which we remember them. I also like this constraint because it seems democratic, and somehow universal. Anyone can take the same idea, even the same newspaper, but come up with a completely different story.
As for the exact date, 1 November 1993, this was the day on which the Maastricht treaty on European Union came into effect. From this date, all Britons officially became citizens of Europe.
The events described in the newspaper of 1 November are actually what happened the day before. I therefore had the idea that a book sourced entirely from these events could somehow qualify as the last British novel.
Finally, it’s worth saying that true to Perec’s vision of the OuLiPo, the originating constraints should, as far as possible, remain concealed. The novel should therefore read in an entirely conventional way.
Reviews
‘Damascus is utterly, optimistically charming.’
Los Angeles Times
‘A deft and charming novel … we credit Beard’s characters with their wisdom, and feel at the novel’s end that some strange mystery has been enacted for us.’
New York Times Book Review
‘A life-affirming, hope-giving profundity.’
Glasgow Herald
‘A book with a real difference, which dramatically poses, and answers, the question ‘How much can a life change in an instant?’
Irish Times
‘Damascus is an extraordinary and wonderful novel from one of the most exciting new writers in Britain.’
Spike
‘Mr Beard’s wackiness has a shrewd precision that makes it infectious’
New York Times
‘Magical realism meets the Maastricht Treaty: an unlikely scenario, but with ease and ingenuity this young British novelist builds from it a charming fiction.’
Boston Globe
X20
 
Introduction
I used to love cigarettes. Really love them. Lived for them. It wasn’t so much the tar and the nicotine; it was the addiction which was killing me.
Desire, risk, repression, denial. A story about a man giving up smoking offered access to all this and more. Influenced by the ideas of the OuLiPo, I wanted the novel to share the same patterns as the inside of a smoker’s mind. Even stranger, the mind of a smoker in the process of kicking the habit.
To achieve this, I devised an OuLiPian system of structural constraints which determine both the mood and the plot of the story.
The novel follows the first 20 days of Gregory Simpson’s attempt to give up cigarettes after smoking 20- a- day for ten years. Every time he craves a cigarette, he occupies his hands by writing something down instead. The first chapter, the first day, has twenty separate sections of writing.
As Gregory’s cravings decrease, so do the number of times he needs to write something down. On the second day, the second chapter, he only thinks of smoking nineteen times, and writes nineteen sections. On the third day, eighteen, and so on. By the twentieth day, the final chapter of the novel, Gregory only craves a cigarette once in the day, and has only one final section to write to complete his story of (not) smoking.
Because he only writes when he wants a cigarette, everything Gregory writes down has something to do with smoking. The novel therefore recounts the story of his smoking life, and cigarettes turn out to have featured centrally at every significant moment.
Throughout the book there’s also a number plot, designed around the fetish number 20.
The various structural constraints generate the text and form the novel, just as the constraint of nicotine addiction determines the life of a smoker (those snatched moments outside the office, the dilemma of time spent with children).
Oh, I should probably also mention that the story which emerges is full of love, intrigue, and excitement.
Reviews
‘A great idea, and almost flawlessly executed … beautifully achieved. One thinks, fancifully, of the construction of a cigarette itself, a unity composed of thousands of different strands.’
Guardian
‘Loaded with encyclopaedic detail on the history and iconography of smoking, this comic novel nevertheless aims at deep seriousness, and Beard’s writing can be breathtaking.’
Daily Telegraph
‘A play of wit and pain, a novel of ideas as a succession of comic and touching skits … contemplates the nature of human frontiers and the boundaries between ego and intimacy.’
Los Angeles Times
‘Delightful and strange, on one level a sardonic detective piece, on other levels an inquiry into the addictions and obsessions of love and life.’
Australia Bulletin
‘Unusually intelligent, funny and readable’
Sunday Times
‘Wonderful … an intelligent look at a prevalent dilemma and an engrossing story of the classic search for truth and meaning.’
San Diego Tribune
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About Me
About Richard Beard
I'm a novelist and non-fiction writer, and recently took up the post as Director of the National Academy of Writing. As time goes by I'm gradually transferring the material from the old site (stories, articles, squibs) into the categories tabbed aboved. There's information on each of my books, with summaries and reviews, and now that I'm permanently back in the country I'm available for events and readings. Email me using Contact, below right. I'll get back to you.
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