Words fail me

Words fail me so often.  It's why I often turn to music. But then, also to image.

There’s a theory that people filter the world through a dominant sense. That, while most of us use all our senses, there tends to be one which comes more naturally, which elbows the others for first place. So we are generally visual, auditory or kinaesthetic in the way we relate to the world.  I first came across this concept when I was taking some post-grad linguistics courses and looking at how our primary sense mode affects learning language. And, on that score I’m highly visual.  I need to see words, as well as hear them.  When I was at junior school we learned French purely by listening to it. I was rubbish.  When we went up to senior school we shifted to learning the old-fashioned way, with books. I flew. Schools could do well by finding out how their pupils perceive the world and adapting learning programmes for them – it would save a lot of heartache.

Anyhow. It’s probably why I dislike the phone so much. I can’t rely on visual clues.  And I hate audio-books with a passion. 

Adrian, on the other hand, is purely auditory. He often barely notices how things and people look. The visual is totally unimportant to him.  He’ll happily listen to spoken word for hours.

Sight is sensual to me. When I write (fiction) I see the scenes playing out as if I were at the cinema. A beautiful image will stop me clean in my tracks, take my breath away – as much as a piece of music, or a single chord, or a note (with all its over and undertones). As much as a a touch, a sensation (affecting not just the place touched but vibrating through body and space); as much as a taste (with all its various subtleties and innuendos). Yeah, I guess I feel all the senses pretty acutely.

But images. I grab them, I hoard them, I sink into them. I have journal upon journal brimming with images, all carefully cut out and pasted.  And every time I write a book I have a mood board, a treasure map of images on the wall in front of me. It’s not so much about how the actual people and places look (because I know that, clear as day, in my mind - I don't need other representations) but about the mood, the feel, the atmosphere of the book.  One of the comments from the editor at HarperCollins who looked at Walker struck home. She talked about a novel having a ‘palette’ and that some of the colours of Walker’s palette didn’t ring true.  And she was right.  I had taken on board early advice from Philip Hensher about the book and included garish day-glo colours into what was always a book of moss and slate, green and grey.  I hadn’t followed my visual eye.  Needless to say, I took out the imposters.

A short while ago I discovered Pinterest. Thanks to Zoe. And oh my! This was what I had been craving. A place to squirrel away all the stunning images I find as I wander the web.  So, if you want to see some of the visual inspiration for my book Walker, take a look here.  If you want to see what was playing in my mind when I wrote my beloved Samael, look here.  Right now I’m back to working on Tanit, the sequel to Samael. It’s proving a tough one to write – but then true love never runs smooth, eh?  And the third one is coming together in images, even if the words are a long way away.

It's a place of dreams. Of beauty and pain. Of other worlds. 

So, yes, I like Pinterest, I really do. Sure, you can follow and be followed, but there isn’t the whole ‘in your face’ thing of other social media. And it seems like their policies are sound and they are (for now, at least) pretty human.  There’s no advertising.  And the Pin button grabs the URL of the place where you find the image, so the artist or photographer gets credit.  As an image resource it’s incredible. Because so far it has tended to appeal to those of a visual bent (the place is crammed with artists, photographers, fashion bods, architects, designers and so on), you don’t get anywhere near the tacky crap you get from the usual Google image search. In fact, sometimes, it’s almost sweetly naïve – for example, tap in ‘lust’ and you get a whole pile of images of shoes and sofas!  


But is it useful? Said a friend. 'Do we really need another form of social media?'  Well. I suppose it depends what you want to do with it. Could you use it as another of marketing for your 'product', she asked. Sure. I see people selling stuff there - jewellery, design, art. But really, use your imagination. If you're, say, a holiday letting business, you could entice with images, not just of the property but of the lifestyle surrounding it.  It's a god's gift if you want to seduce, entrance, attract those with a strong visual sense. Hence all the 'lust' - people make wishlists on Pinterest. And I bet they buy. 

Yeah, I put up a board for my books but I have to say that wasn't really my main reason for joining.  I'm just head over heels in love...with images.  
But then again, I wonder. It's so personal. It's like revealing your soul. Far more than words. I dunno. This might be a short-lived love affair. But for now... it's rather beautiful. 

Anyhow.  How do you perceive the world? If you write, do you use image?  As well as words.  And what are the images that stop you in your tracks?  

Second thing

Second thing.  A skinny Amazon envelope. I hadn’t ordered anything.  I opened it, slowly, with a slight frown. Leonard Cohen’s new album. Old Ideas.  I didn’t even need to look at the note to know who it was from. ‘Lots of love, Horace.’  My oldest dearest friend, Jane.  Horace? Well, that’s another story.

What can I say? I love Leonard Cohen. Deeply. Passionately. Always have. Suspect I always will.

I love music, hate to be without it, but most of my musical loves wax and wane.  But Cohen has been a constant in my life since I was, what?  Eight or nine maybe?  My brother came home with Songs of Leonard Cohen one day and we all fell in love, instantly.  Well, not my father perhaps. 

There was always music in our house when I was a child. All sorts. Shedload of classical in the living room.  Meanwhile, up in our shared room, my teenage sister played singles obsessively as she shimmied from one love to another; a string of boyfriends breaking her heart (rarely) but mainly having theirs broken.  The soundtrack to all this longing: Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw, The Beatles, Marianne Faithfull, the Stones. Then she met a guitarist and it was all Hendrix and Clapton, Cream and Yes. And I danced behind, entranced. But throughout, Cohen’s mesmerising guitar and his poetry always plucked at our hearts.

Songs from a Room followed by Songs of Love and Hate. And I wasn’t even out of junior school. Nobody suggested it wasn’t suitable listening for a child. Was it?

Jane and I met in 1971 but we didn’t become friends until quite some years later. After the release of New Skin for the Old Ceremony for sure and in time to be appalled by the radical shift of Death of a Lady’s Man. What was he thinking?  He’d wanted a spare sparse sound for Songs of Leonard Cohen – yes, even more sparse than it already was. So how did he come to be seduced by Spector?  Apparently he (Cohen) called the end result ‘grotesque’. Yeah, right. It’s a shame as the songs themselves are beautiful – but the arrangements are overblown, barbaric. I tried listening again today – and couldn’t bear it. Had to find later arrangements on YouTube.

I took Leonard with me to college; played him in my tiny coffin-shaped attic room, letting his growl of a voice stream out over my balcony into the streets below. Listened to him as I looked across the houses into other people’s lives, the students and the prostitutes.  And went to see him live in Manchester, at the Apollo. My first ‘grown-up’ gig, the first time I’d seen people sit in their seats for a whole set. The first time I’d seen people strike matches or hold up lighters and sway to the music. The audience felt old too – middle-aged women, not students like me. I didn’t care – I still loved him.

He came back to London with me and was there, not played so often maybe, but still a friend for the dark nights of the soul, when the drink and drugs and clubbing didn’t take me far enough away from myself.

We weren’t such close companions during my time in America because, really, there were so many other, new sounds to hear and somehow he didn’t feel right in those big wide open spaces of sea and endless roads and desert and canyon and prairie. But then, every so often, I’d sit by the fire late at night and pull out an album and let his chords pull me back home.

And yes, back to London we went and by now people laughed. ‘Gloomy old Leonard Cohen’ they said. But no, no, no. Not gloomy. Not really. Just so beautiful. I didn’t buy any more albums though, not after the travesty of DoaLM.   My mother stayed faithful though – bought each and every one. But I wouldn’t listen. I stayed with the old.  Until, not so many years ago, when I heard Hallelujah and found myself in floods of tears.  Who the hell sang that, I wondered and found out it was Jeff Buckley. Raced out and bought more of his stuff only to find that, no, he hadn’t written it – the cheater – it was Leonard’s.  Well, of course it was.

I saw him live again, a few years ago, at the O2 stadium, the old Millennium Dome. Jane again. ‘Come and stay, I’ve got tickets for Leonard Cohen,’ she said.  In Manchester I’d been right near the front, close enough to watch his fingers flicker over the frets. But the only tickets left this time were pitched up so high I felt dizzy.  Incredible musicians. Amazing man.  He’d lost the lot by this point, been ripped off, gone bankrupt, had to sing for his supper once more.

Funny thing, I never knew much about his actual life. I don’t read biographies. I rarely read interviews. I don’t even really like music vids (except the most vague and atmospheric) as they colour the music for me. I like to make my own relationship with music; to weave my own stories around it.

And so here I am, all those years on, sitting in a cold room, once again, listening to Cohen. Today I have been through all his albums, one by one.  Some songs wash over me; some catch me in the throat, in the solar plexus, in the heart. Who needs words when you’ve got Cohen, eh?

Favourite album? The new one is growing on me.  Ah hell. Songs of Leonard Cohen has some of my all-time favourite songs.  It’s tight.  Between that and New Skin for the Old Ceremony. Both just plain agonisingly beautiful. Songs? We could be here a long time. Here are just two. One from the first, one from the last. Which would be my middle one? My second thing?  Ah, I wonder.  

The Zahir

Hope born of distress by Solange Noir

Anyhow, where we were?  What were the three things?  Well. Nothing dramatic really.

No mansions.

No big fat publishing deal for my Samael.

No great reveal from my husband.

Sorry, Ashen. J

First up was an email from my dear friend, my soul-sister, Soli.  She sent me an image.  She  knows that, while I am no artist, images sing to my soul. When I write I hear the words in images. As well as scent, of course.

And she said, ‘Read The Zahir.’

And first I thought Borges, a vague memory of a story. But then I realised she meant Paulo Coelho.  Oh, I thought.  I’d read a lot of his books many years back. I’d liked them but they hadn’t really ‘stuck’.  In fact, when I perused my shelves, I realised I’d given them all away.  And I’d stopped reading any new ones.  I think I felt he’d gone the way of so many ‘spiritual’ writers, believing his hype maybe? 

‘I think I’ve already read it,’ I said. And put it out of my mind.

Except it wouldn’t go.  So I Googled it.  A story about a man whose wife vanishes one day. He starts to obsess over their relationship, over her. She becomes the one unforgettable thing, the Zahir. And while he’s in the grip of the Zahir, he can achieve nothing, he cannot move forwards. So he seeks her.

It sounded atrocious.  And the reviews were…awful.  Yet, still, it resonated, of course it did, for, as you know, I have been in the grip of my own Zahir, a pilgrim on a strange, obsessive journey, a seeking, a hunt.  And Soli had been so sure.

I bought it.

Interesting book. Coelho says of his writing that he is effectively just the typist; that the stories just come through him. Or rather the protagonist in his book says that but, given he’s a barely fictionalised version of Coelho, it’s neither here or there.  He’s not a sympathetic character at all – arrogant and self-centred.  And the book doesn’t really hang together all too well. And some of his ‘lessons’ sound trite and pat. But still.  Not all. Not all at all. 

It’s a book about love. Not just personal love but the energy of Love and about how it needs to be allowed to flow through the world once more.  About an underground tribe of people who are spreading ideas of freedom, of change, encouraging the circulation of love.  Not soppy love but pure, hard as diamond, true Love. The love that comes out of war, out of looking death in the eye.  And, he says…’If just one person changes, the whole world changes.’ And it can. Think about the good old ‘butterfly effect’ – tiny tiny shifts can affect startling change. 

And I think again about love, here and now, on this day dedicated to ‘love’, that should be a celebration of wild hearts but all too often becomes all about trying to ‘fix’ love.  And you can’t fix love.

As Coelho says: ‘Love is untamed force, when we try to control it, it destroys us, when we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.’

And again. ‘The important things always stay. What we lose are the things we thought were important but which are, in fact, useless, like the false power we use to control the energy of love.’

Love (as in romantic love) is beautiful, blissful, entrancing.  It can also be torment, agony, anguish and pain.  And love changes. From moment to moment.  From nano-second to nano-second. You cannot put it in aspic, you cannot chain it, you cannot say it must be like this, just like this, forever and ever. Amen. Some loves stay, some don’t. Most change, transform, shift.  For better or for worse.  And you have to ride that, you have to let it flow.

But, of course, our human loves are only the faintest shadow of the great big huge LOVE that lies beyond.  And that Love does not change or shift or change in any way. 

Open your heart wide wide open. Truly, it’s the only way to live. 

And then, I read Borges again... and this is how it ends...

"According to Idealist doctrine the verbs “to live” and “to dream” are rigorously synonymous; as for me, thousands of appearances will become one; a very complex dream into a simple one. Others will dream that I am mad, while I dream of the Zahir. When every person on earth thinks, day and night, of the Zahir, which will be dream and which reality, the earth or the Zahir?

In the deserted hours of the night I am still able to walk through the streets. Dawn often surprises me upon a bench in the Plaza Garay, thinking (or trying to think) about that passage in the Asrar Nama where it is said that the Zahir is the shadow of the Rose and the rending of the Veil. I link that pronouncement to this fact: In order to lose themselves in God, the Sufis repeat their own name or the ninety-nine names of God until the names mean nothing anymore. I long to travel that path.

Perhaps I will succeed in wearing away the Zahir by thinking and re-thinking about it; perhaps behind the coin is God."

I hate...

I don’t hate much. I’m pretty equable most of the time. But right now two things are really pissing me off. Thing One: Muppets. Sorry, don’t get them. Maybe I’ve not met the good ones but Kermit and Miss Piggy are just plain…irritating. I want to light matches to their fur. It’s not the puppet thing. Truly.  I like Mongrels. Actually I like it quite a lot. Probably more than I should. I started watching it thanks to James who,  come to think about it, probably shouldn’t be watching it at all. Anyway.

Thing Two. Valentine’s Day. I spent last VD ensconced in a spa, dodging canoodling couples in the steam room and being the only person eating solo in the candlelit and balloon-festooned dining room. Frankly I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.  I still wince at anything red and heart-shaped.

I abhor stiff scentless red roses. I don’t eat chocolates.  I don’t drink champagne. I can’t abide balloons. Why is it that Valentine’s infantalises normally sensible adults?  I’m all for indulging one’s childlike sense of fun but that doesn’t extend to going gooey over heart-shaped balloons. Balloons?  It’s not a fecking children’s birthday party for feck’s sake!  And soft toys – that’s the other one. Big pastel-coloured teddy bears clutching hearts with ‘I WUV U’. WTF? And the baby language – snugly wuggly baby waby possum blossom?

It’s not some middle-aged cynical thing either. I dreaded it way back when I was a teenager. In fact, the one time I managed to have a sort of boyfriend when I was at school, I ditched him the week before because I couldn’t bear the thought of it.  The certainty of disappointment. Not that he wouldn’t do or buy anything for it, but that it would be…dutiful.

 

And it’s not that I’m not a romantic. Far from it. It’s just that I can’t bear the commercial, fake, anodyne bastardisation of love.  As if love can be bought with a ready-made card and a token present. Or, even worse, the need to prove love with something expensive and ‘precious’.  The eating out in restaurants bits? Garn.  Something just smug and self-satisfied or dutiful and sad. Not to mention over-priced. 

If you like it, great. Go for it. Good luck to you. But me, I don’t feel love needs one special day out of a year. I don’t feel love needs to be put on show. I feel lovers should surprise one another with spontaneous affection/passion/preferably both or with seriously thoughtful, heartful tokens (not costly, but from the gut, heart, soul).  Whenever I’ve been out on Valentine’s Day (night) it’s all felt rather…sad somehow.  So many people going through the motions; doing what is expected; proclaiming to the world ‘I’m in a couple’ like it’s a badge of honour, a sign of belonging. It’s like cats spraying or dogs pissing - marking out their territory.  Should you really need to do that? 

Anonymous declarations of tormented passion, on the other hand?  Now those I do get.  I’ve always felt that Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be for the neat cosy couples, for domestic love, but for insecure, unhitched, unbridled, unsaddled, unstirruped (any more riding adjectives?) lust and longing. Is there anything more delicious than the frisson of an unknown admirer?  My father never understood this. Bless him, he’d send me Valentine Day cards with ‘Guess who?’ written on them in his very distinctive script. I loved him for it (he knew how the girls at school would sneeringly ask, ‘And how many did you get?’) but I craved mystery, suspense, not knowing. I wanted imagination, for feck’s sake!  

Did I get it? No. Not really.  Maybe that’s why I’ve got such a downer on the whole thing. Maybe I’m lamenting a youth in which I didn’t get the hopeless gesture; the beautiful poem; the gut-wrenching love song; the hand-made card…that nobody took me on a midnight picnic or swimming in a moonlit lake or blindfolded me and…

Or maybe I’m just odd. 

‘Can we agree not to do Valentine cards this year?’ I said to Adrian this morning.  I would hasten to add that I had bought him two packs of socks from Tesco earlier in the week and presented them to him with a wry, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, darling.’ 

‘Are you sure?’ he said, his eyes first registering alarm (that he’d clearly forgotten) and then lighting up at the realisation that he wouldn’t have to race down surreptitiously to the shop.

‘Absolutely. You know I hate it.’

‘Well yes, but that’s what men are supposed to say, not women.’

I frowned, with a slight growl. ‘Are you saying I’m a man?’

‘No way, fella,’ he replied. 

Three things...

Three things eh?  I typed that last line and thought about it. Three. Not one, not two, not four, not seven.  Three. Tree. Trois. Tre. Tres. Trzy. Tri. Tris. Drei and so on and so third.  Okay, so there are variations on Kolm too but hey…

Three is the first – first odd prime, first Fermat prime, first Mersenne prime (what’s a Mersenne prime?). It’s the first lucky prime. It’s a triangle. It’s the fifth Fibonacci number and the third that is unique.

In gematria the number three is represented by the Hebrew letter gimel symbolising a person in motion; the running of the rich to the poor, the full to the empty. Gimel derives from gemul, the giving of reward as well as punishment. Freedom of choice. The run and return of the soul between its divine source and its physical abode. The expansion and contraction of Infinite Light in the process of Creation. A camel, a bridge, benevolence. Weaning – becoming independent.

And I pondered and wandered further looking at three in anatomy, in chemistry, in biology, in physics, in anthropology, in music, in art, in astronomy. Three spatial dimensions (or so they say we perceive).  Religion, of course. The trinity triangulating through so many faiths. Dante’s Divine Comedy in homage – three parts, thirty-three cantos, written in terza rima (a combination of tercets).  Damnit, I learned (modern) Italian in order to be able to read this in its original (medieval) Italian. And I never got to Paradiso. L

But, hey, the third time’s the charm.  If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. The Power of Three. But then again, ‘The third light’ (three lights from one match and *bang*, you’re dead. Bad luck comes in threes. 

Ah, whatever. On the count of three…

Three colours. Three evils. The Three Stooges. Three of a kind. Where three dreams cross.  Three blind mice. Three little pigs. Three witches. Three wishes.

And at that point I got dizzy with words and looked for images. Put in three things to Google and, my, so many threes…

And it seems like everyone thinks three different things are important:

Sincerity. Hard work. Compassion. Or, slight variation: Sincerity. Hard work. Commitment.

Hope. Peace. Honesty.

Love. Family & friends. Kindness.

Time. Words. Opportunity.

Love. Friends. Self-confidence.

Success. Dreams. Fortune.

Chalk. Hairspray. Athletic type.  Huh??

What do you think? If you had three words by which to live your life, what would they be?

I rather liked this quote that popped up as I wandered. ‘There are only three things you need to let go of: judging, controlling, and being right.’ Hugh Prather.

And I wondered about my three words. What would they be?

And I came back again to the bible quote from Corinthians (1; 13:13) – yeah, those threes again, huh?

“For there are these three things that endure: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.”

By the way, historians reckon that, in many early societies, they just gave up counting after two. They went, ‘One, two…er, lots, many’.  So..who knows? Maybe not just three things. J

And, while I was writing this, three songs (of course) on my iPod (and, b the way, I never cheat...not with this, not with most things.)  Except...damnit...they're not on YouTube...apart from this one.  So just the one then.

The locked door...

You know how you can try, try, try so so so hard? But that everything you touch falls to dust?  And then you just brush yourself down and shake off the negativity and think, hey, okay, so let’s try something else?  And then - oh joy!  - it seems like maybe things will swing your way, maybe just once…but then…they don’t.  Well, that really.  On all kind of levels.  But then it’s a tough time for a lot of people right now.  Testing times maybe. Whole load of shit going down for so many people I know. So who am I to moan?  I just take it on the chin. Or, at least, I try. 

This last year (hmm, longer now, isn’t it?) I’ve been trusting. Just figuring that there may be a reason for all this…turmoil… For all this destruction. For all this failure. For the brick walls I crash into, time and time again. For all the faces turned away. For all the doors slammed in my face. When I met Nicki in Taunton I said to her, ‘It’s not that I don’t try. I don’t think you can just sit back and expect the universe to bring you everything on a plate. You have to make an effort, to buy the lottery ticket, if you like.  And so I have to figure the universe has a plan for me.’

Well, that was what I said, but did I/do I really believe it?  Cos there does come a point when you think the universe (or whatever else you like to call it – God, your higher consciousness, Fate, pure bad luck?) is just being bloody-minded. We like to think it’s got a higher plan for us but maybe we really are just lab rats or maybe it’s just all just totally random. And if there is a plan maybe it's a scary plan? 

Anyhow, when I can’t go out into the world, I shrug my shoulders and go within; I wander through other planes, into other dimensions. As you do. 

Except… Lately I haven’t been able to do even that.  It’s like the doors to the other realms have been shut firmly, decisively, in my face.  Yup, I’ll confess it – right now I can’t meditate to stillness; can’t journey on the drum, on the heartbeat; can’t chant and lose my mind in Om; can’t barely even breathe (consciously) sometimes.  Crap huh?  The river turned its back on me. The oak tree bent aside. The moon mocked. The sun hid behind shadows. iPod oracle just played the same songs, over and over – laughing at me. Even the pseudo Beagle went silent on me. 

Lost.  So lost. 

And then I was sent. Three things. 

New Adult? A genre too far?

Recently on Twitter, I saw a young writer I know asking for recommendations for ‘new adult’ books.  New adult? WTF?  And that was pretty much what I said to Becca. She told me not to be snippy (and I said I wasn’t; I was just deeply puzzled) and she sent me some links.  St Martin’s Press are doing it, she said.  So I took a look.

St Martin’s Press reckon this is a new, ‘previously unidentified’ genre and go on to explain that, ‘New Adult is about young adulthood, when you are an adult but have not established your life as one (career, family, what-have-you)’.

Apparently it’s all about ‘transition’; about ‘coming of age’, about people who, while legally ‘adult’, are still finding their way.  According to blogger Cally Jackson ‘The protagonists in these books are too mature to be considered YA protagonists, but they’re not worldly enough to be considered Adult protagonists.  They’re too old for YA but not old enough for Adult fiction. So where do they fit?’

It seems to be chiming a chord.  Blogger Jessica Lawlor laments the lack of these adult inbetween novels. ‘While I love YA books and adult books, I can’t help but feel like an entire demographic is missing,’ she says. ‘I’ve yet to come across a really great book about someone in their 20′s dealing with the issues twenty-somethings deal with; their first couple of years out of college, starting their first real jobs, finding an apartment, dealing with issues of drifting friendships, relationships starting to get serious…the list goes on and on.’

Hmm.  So we need another genre, yet another subsection to slot books into? I had a quick Google and, yes, it seems that new adult fiction, also known as ‘post-adolescent literature’ (oh my!) really is starting to happen. Wikipedia says:

‘This category is intended to be marketed to post-adolescents and young-adults ages 14 to 35. This age group is considered to be the lucrative 'cross-over' category of young-adult titles that appeal to both the young-adult market and to an adult audience.’

I don’t know about you, but the word that sprang out there was ‘lucrative’. How desperate are publishers becoming? I know it’s tough out there but… Do we honestly need another brand of ‘youth’ writing?  And up to age 35?? Oh, come on!  In fact, targeting anyone over 16 is pushing it, as far as I’m concerned.

When I was 16 I was reading Dostoevsky, Hesse, Hardy, Goethe, DH Lawrence (and no, not just the dirty bits in Lady Chatterley), Le Carre, Susan Howatch and so on and so forth.  I was being a pretentious little shit and lapping up Gide, Maupassant, Balzac and Mauriac in French and Lorca and Valle Inclan in Spanish (yeah for fun – at school it was all Moliere, Racine and Corneille).  And yes, I used to write letters to my best friend in Latin but hey… you know what I’m saying. If someone had suggested I read books for ‘new adults’, I’d have given the mother and father of all eyerolls. 

When I left university, I devoured modern literature as fast as I could.  I wanted to catch up; I was just seriously turned on by people who caressed, shocked, beguiled with words – Peter Carey, Ian McEwan, Russell Hoban, Patrick White, Knut Hamsun, Lawrence Durrell, Mervyn Peake, Italo Calvino, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Fowles, Angela Carter, Milan Kundera, William Golding…the list goes on and on.  I wanted to read about everyone and everything - about old people, young people, people in all kinds of places and all kinds of situations. I was living my wild twenty-something life - the last thing I wanted was to read about how other people just like me were living theirs. Shit no.

Okay, so I loved literature, I adored words.  Maybe I’m being a crashing lit-snob here?  Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe we need to help ‘young people’ (yup, even those 35-year old babes) get into reading?

But, but, but… isn’t it just a bit, condescending? Are modern ‘young people’ so lamentably poorly educated and unimaginative that they can only read books written especially for them, with characters their own age, going through their precise ‘life transitions’?  Where does that leave the rest of us?  Are they going to come up with a genre just for me and my ilk – neurotic middle-aged women living in gloom and penury in the countryside?  Neurotoruralpremenopausal lit?  Seriously, where would it end?  No, let’s not go there.

Since when did books have to be shoe-horned into such precise categories?  At this rate, all books will end being written like Mills & Boon – to a precise, paragraph by paragraph, formula. Literature by numbers. Are we getting to the point where a writer of ‘adult’ fiction won’t be able to employ a child POV or that of a ‘new adult’ (up to age 35 – sorry, still blinking wildly at that). 

Though, hang about, there is a bright side to this.  If a 35 year old is a new adult, that makes me…?  Probably not even middle-aged.  Positively sinfully youthful in fact. 

Anyhow, what do you reckon? Am I being a miserable old bag?  While you're pondering how to say 'yes' without being unutterably rude, I'll leave you with a short suggested reading list for ‘new adults’…fabulous books that felt absolutely no need whatsoever for a special category. Bet not one of them would make a ‘new adult’ list from a modern publisher.

 

Catcher in the Rye – J D Salinger

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

The Secret History – Donna Tartt

The Magus – John Fowles

The Group – Mary McCarthy

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (and Jane Eyre by Charlotte)

All Jane Austen and a shedload of Hardy

I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith

Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber

The Alexandria Quartet – Lawrence Durrell

Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake

Bet I missed loads, huh?  What would you put on the list? 

And, on re-reading, I find myself arguing with myself (again)...just a bit. But, no...let's leave it like this.  Tell me what you think.