About this Blog
About Richard Beard
I figured out the software by translating a very short book by Andre Maurois, now available under the Translation tag above. This means I can move on to whatever else is on my mind. If I run out of ideas, the next pre-computer age blog I plan to translate is another very short book, this one by Henry Miller, also in French, entitled I’m No More of an Idiot Than Anybody Else.
|
 Not one or the other At last. Christmas has gone away. Now that the advertising has died down, it might be a good time to say something reasonable about the Kindle, or at least more measured than their own trumpet-blowing that was everywhere during the gift-giving season. ‘Think of a book. Sixty seconds later you can be reading it.’ Possibly, but there’s another step in between. You have to hand over some money.
Instead of getting annoyed by this separation between source and consumer (‘Think of a cow. An hour later you can be eating it.’) the advertising made me think of a much older campaign, for razors, which provides an excellent analogy for the contest between books and e-readers.
Despite what the techies would have us believe, this is not the same battle as CD’s vs Ipods, with only one winner. The nature of the exchange is different, simply because I can’t transfer the books on my shelf into the Kindle. I can’t read what I already own, or not electronically, without buying it again. I don’t think I want to do that.
So it’s not the same ring, not the same fight. The contest is more like Gillette vs Braun, and the ad I remember was shown on television probably in the early eighties. Three handsome young men are on holiday. For the purposes of the ad, there is a line of wash-basins outside on the beach. Exotic golden light reflects from bare (hairless) chests, and collectively the men decide that now is the time for a shave. All three of them rub their stubble, and exude a competitive smugness. They eye each other up.
The first man, wielding an expensive-looking electric razor with a cable, saunters towards the row of basins. Horror! There’s no electrical socket. HIs life crumbles around him; the other two smirk.
The second man approaches the row of basins wielding his shaving foam and trusty safety razor. He turns the tap. Double horror! There is no water! The gurgle of the empty pipes accompanies the ruin of his hopes.
The third man has a battery-operated electric razor. He doesn’t even approach the basins. He stays where he is and shaves, looking into the sunset, the alpha male forever after.
Here’s my point: Gillette did not collapse with the invention of the electric razor, even though it can be used on exotic foreign beaches where there’s no electricity or water. In fact, according to Marketing magazine, nine million of the UK’s 15.9 million wetshavers use Gillette. Despite the fact that a Braun is undoubtedly easier to use on a train.
The Braun has its moments, just as the Kindle will. But a razor still gives a better shave, just as a book gives a better read – it’s more reliable and the batteries don’t run out. The two formats can exist side-by-side. I own a razor AND a Braun. When the Kindle improves (I tried one before Christmas and the Fisher-Price buttons put me off) then I may well end up with one, possibly as a present that occasionally comes in useful when travelling.
But as far as analogies go, here’s the killer: Braun and Gillette are both owned by Procter and Gamble. P & G don’t care how you shave – they get your money either way. The same is true for the Amazon Kindle. And for writers.
 While stocks last I’ve always understood that one of the key revolutions of the internet is to allow small but disparate voices to join together to make a louder noise than would otherwise be possible.
I like public libraries. This is a quiet like, but it is one shared by hundreds of thousands of people across the country. We will probably not be marching on Milbank anytime soon, but I’d like my quiet voice to be heard, and perhaps to join with other quiet voices elsewhere.
I spent Friday in the British Library at St Pancras, where I read some nineteenth century books about political arrangements in first-century Rome. Later, back at my computer, I received a circular email from the BL chief executive.
It was about the public sector spending review settlement, more commonly known as ‘the cuts’. After a 3% cut in 2010/11, the library has already made savings in the areas of acquisitions, preservation, and routine maintenance. The cuts now mean a further reduction in spending of 15% over four years, while the annual capital budget has been halved. This means that by 2014/15 the British Library will be funded at the lowest level since its creation in 1972.
This is Britain’s flagship library, a symbol of what we mean by civilisation. Our national library will acquire fewer books, will be less able to look after the documents it already has, and will skimp on door hinges and light-fittings and escalators that work. There will be ‘reductions in staffing numbers’.
If these cuts fail to have the desired effect on the wider economy, or if the banks need another bail-out, then the British Library is already projecting further measures such as closing the Library one or more days a week and charging for Reader Passes.
Instead of pointing out that more than 50% of the electorate voted against making these kind of drastic cuts, I think it’s worth asking George Osbourne or David Cameron when they last used a public library in earnest – borrowing a book, or slipping in to read the paper. Either answer is depressing. If so long ago that they can’t remember, then they know nothing of what the country stands to lose. If it was recently, then they know and don’t care.
I suspect, as I think we all suspect, that the answer is more likely to be the former than the latter. This is the Tory way. We could ask them when they last played tennis on a municipal court or attended a drop-in music session laid on by the local council – photo-ops for political advantage don’t count.
They think they know what they’re doing. They tell us they have no choice. And soon, when the libraries close, the people they claim to lead will be less likely to share what I learned in the library on Friday. The Romans, too, thought that with all their learning, their philosophy and poets and religions, that civilisation could never again go backwards. That’s what they said before a thousand years of the Dark Ages – we’ve come far enough, the world can’t go backwards now.
From I’m No More of an Idiot than Anyone Else
 Tropic of Cancer in Russian, I think I was almost forty years old when I arrived in France. I knew three or four words – oui, non, Bonjour, Excusez-moi – and that’s all. I never studied French at school. I chose to take four years of German instead. So I had to learn French quickly. I did this in the street, at the cinema, while popping out for the shopping. Everything I heard was new and novel, everything was a headache. Children used to mock me for my grammatical mistakes or my pronunciation. In restaurants, instead of saying ‘I’ve finished’ I used to say ‘I have expired,’ and so on.
Eventually, after two years of this, Anais Nin found me a teacher, a charming old man, well-educated and very friendly, who was called M.Lantelme. (He didn’t know one word of English, fortunately). I had already begun to read French books. I remember my reading sessions at the Liberty cafe, near the Montparnasse cemetery, with the first French book I read – Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars. Of course I made use of a French-English dictionary. A bit later I dared to try reading Journey to the End of the Night by Celine. That, however, was another pair of sleeves.
I remember my meetings with M.Lantelme during this period. ‘How could I have the temerity to read someone like Celine when I hadn’t read Voltaire or Balzac?’
Ah, Celine was one of life’s big experiences. Yet again I recognised that it’s not necessary to understand every word an author writes, but to share his soul. I was fascinated by Celine. Some years later I re-read him, this time in English. It wasn’t the same. Celine is untranslatable.
Inspired by my enthusiasm for Celine, I tried to explain him to my teacher. M.Lantelme was, however, stubborn. Nothing could convince him that an author who wrote using that kind of language deserved to be read. (At this time Tropic of Cancer existed only in manuscript. Otherwise he’d have been able to find an affinity between Celine and myself.) Despite my admiration for Celine, I never met him (not even during the period I lived in Clichy).
This is a transcript of an interview with Marie Rennard’s website Melting Pot that will appear in French only. It will read excellently in French, because Marie is an excellent translator, but this is the interview in its original form. I love reading French, but don’t want to write it. Vive la difference.
 I'm all for it Françoise Sagan disait qu’on naissait écrivain, ou romancier, mais qu’on ne pouvait le devenir. Etes-vous d’accord avec cette idée ?
I hope not. The idea that anyone is born to anything, unchangeably, is both frightening and reminiscent of the beliefs of my old friend from Dry Bones, John Calvin. Francoise Sagan and John Calvin. Now there’s an unexpected match.
Quels sont vos écrivains (ou livres) préférés, et pourquoi ?
I’m a big fan of Georges Perec, especially La Vie Mode d’Emploi. For me, this is the greatest European novel since the end of the second world war, or, if you prefer, the greatest modern European novel. One of its growing virtues is that it seems prescient – making sense of information overload by creating stories. This is a skill that we all increasingly need in everyday life.
Comment s’organise la construction intellectuelle d’un roman comme Le porteur d’os, à la fois créatif et basé sur des personnages réels ?
At some stage, the writer has to believe that there is no difference between the invented and the real. As in the Bible, which is historically as convincing a text as any. It’s one challenge to make a novel out of anything – that’s the traditional creative act. Like Perec, I’m trying to make novels out of everything.
Comment vous est venue l’idée d’exploiter le thème des reliques dans le porteur d’os ?
I didn’t go to the relics, the relics came to me. I was wandering around the Cimetiere des Rois in Geneva, and very gradually began to realise that I knew many of the names on the tombstones. This wasn’t a delusion. I did know the names, because so many famous people retire to Switzerland and die into the graveyards of that beautiful country. Then I started thinking about the influence of the dead, and the influence on us all of our particular heros (dead and alive), and from that point onwards the novel becomes a work of research and creative synthesis.
Qu’est-ce qui a guidé votre choix des personnages ? (Thomas à Becket, Burton, Jung, Chaplin…)
Becket is the most famous English relic (though not kept in Geneva, or not all of him). As for the others, they’re buried in Switzerland.
Le roman oscille entre questions existentielles, spiritualité et loufoque : quelle est la part nécessaire de loufoquerie et de spiritualité dans une existence ?
For me, whatever the existential question, materialism isn’t the answer.
Pourquoi, alors que l’essentiel des détails du roman sont authentiques (anecdotes relatives aux personnages exploités, situation géographique etc) d’autres, pourtant mineurs, sont ils délibérément falsifiés (comme par exemple le lieu de sépulture de Zamenhof ?) Le plaisir de piéger le lecteur, ou l’envie de le voir s’atteler à des recherches personnelles sur les personnages évoqués ?
Vous écrivez, dans le roman, que l’Angleterre est toujours plus loin qu’on ne croit. Qu’est-ce qui selon vous constitue la part la plus inaccessible de l’Angleterre pour les non-anglais ?
That’s a good question. Like all nations (even France, especially France) England is constantly engaged in an identity crisis. It’s tempting to say that the European part of the English identity is the least accessible, at least to Europeans, because our idea of Europe is shaped by being English. Not to mention the relationship with the United Kingdom, and with Great Britain, with the Commonwealth and the Empire, with history and the sorry football team. Maybe one of the ways in which a united Europe works, as an idea, is that all nations can wilfully simplify their sense of identity by buying into a generalised idea of Europe.
Vous êtes Directeur de la National Academy of Creative Writing. Peut-on enseigner l’art d’écrire, ou, plus exactement, la créativité ?
I can help writers with some basic geographical aids – compass, milometer, bathyscope. But no more metaphors. The answer is yes. Both writing and creativity. I think you can. Yes.
 look left When Clint Eastwood’s film Invictus opened in the UK earlier this year , I was asked to review the rugby angle for the Daily Telegraph. The results, in my opinion, were not pretty. I go on, at some length, to describe why the Invictus rugby action is about as believable as a Brian Moore apology.
However, I was cleaning up my office this week and came across the press notes. A PR person handed me these (while offering me a beer) when I went to the screening at the Warner HQ in London. I stuffed the notes in my case and promptly forgot them. For anyone not familiar with these documents, I have 32 single-spaced A4 pages explaining that Mandela and Eastwood are what any sane person would call a half-decent tag team. And apartheid was a hell of a bad thing.
When I saw the film it was my job to report on whether the rugby action worked. The answer is no. Now I know why.
Gulp. I wrote this:
“I can see just enough to make out that Springbok fly-half Joel Stransky is having a bad day with the boot. He can’t punt a rugby ball, and his incompetence is so striking (in a Test Match, Brian!) that I want to see immediate replays of his flawed technique.’
 look right In the press notes I come across this:
“Scott Eastwood, another rugby novice, played the role of Springbok member Joel Stransky, who was responsible for all of the points scored by the team in the World Cup Final.”
Scott is Clint’s son. He had to be the number 10.
Having said that, Clint started off with the right idea about rugby: ‘It’s a very tough game, and the guys who play it are a special breed of cat.’
Right on, daddio. Which is what Scott might have muttered, head-wound bleeding, as he emerged from the bottom of a ruck wondering why not Westerns?
The notes contained one other interesting piece of information. Now that synthetic shirts have taken over the game, the 1995 South Africa jerseys had to be ‘specially knitted’ in cotton. However, the Springbok logo of today faces in the opposite direction from the logo of 1995. Cock-up or carefully considered decision? Will we ever know?
|
About Me
About Richard Beard
I'm a novelist and non-fiction writer, and Director of The National Academy of Writing in London. As time goes by I'm gradually transferring the material from the old site (stories, articles, squibs) into the categories tabbed above. 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. I'll get back to you.
|
Recent Comments