Books, Glorious Books!

 

As this first week of March slips away, a week when we usually celebrate World Book Day - this year on 4th - I finally got back to a little bit of writing. Other than some entries in my journal, and the day job, I have actively avoided any kind of writing, especially creative writing, and including this blog. But I couldn't resist it. Reading tends to make me reach for my pen, and, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is something in which I wanted to indulge what snippets of spare time I have.

A browse through the internet and especially my own social media showed the usual flurry of activity for World Book Day. Despite the drawbacks of the pandemic and the lockdown which is still only slowly lifting, it did my weary soul a good deal of good to see kids heading for school dressed up as their favourite characters and many of them with the associated book in their bags. 

What I did find rather churlish was some snarky comments on social media, from somewhat sour adults mostly, decrying the youngsters for dressing up as characters from films, notably as Harry Potter and his many chums. What is their issue? Maybe these are people who, aware of their own shortcomings in the literary department, are all too quick to criticise others. As a mother of six who has spent most of her life skint and bringing the kids up on a hard-earned shoestring, Harry Potter was a glorious relief; throw a length of black cloth over their shoulders, borrow Grandma's specs, hand each a twig from the garden and voila, World Book Day dressing up sorted.

The Harry Potter films, like many others that are based on books, like Matilda and Four Children and It, are wonderful examples of skillful storytelling. They have a narrative with pace and drama, with humour and darkness, with flights of fantasy and yet are believable. They touch human themes such as bullying, lack of self-confidence, courage, fear, the search for love, and, most importantly, of the struggle between good and evil. Why would immersing yourself in the movies be anything other than a superb way of helping kids explore narrative, character development, dialogue, scene construction and so much more. Let's bear in mind that scripts are written, and that scriptwriting is as much a form of writing as a Jacobean tome. Consider the tight dialogue of Pulp Fiction, or Casablanca, or Taxi Driver or One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest...I could go on and on. All hail those scriptwriters - what talent, and what art!

And if the kids haven't read those books yet, they probably will. And they will probably read more. The work their teachers put into World Book Day will often bear fruit, if not immediately, then often in years to come. Don't knock it. Far better to immerse yourself in a good movie and the story it tells than in scrolling and trolling.

But back to books. Bookshops have had a pretty hard time over the past decade or two, especially with the advent of Amazon and other commercial problems like the general demise of the High Street. Not least in Gib, where I still mourn for the loss of even the small book shops we had. And yet, when the world closed in on itself in the face of Covid19 and locked down, our isolation was assuaged by books and by reading. Online sales have soared. Booksellers found themselves working harder than ever to get orders of print books out to their customers and their customers were now from all over the world, and not just those from the nearby streets. Readers turned to e-books but found renewed pleasure in print books. With more time on their hands through furlough schemes, many people turned to old classics...you know, the ones where they watched the movie and now thought they'd try the original in book form.

I set out this year to read more Gibraltarian writers, to immerse myself in Gibraltarian literature and try to understand it a little. I might love reading - would love to read all day everyday if I could - but sadly I need to earn a crust and the day job takes exactly that, all darned day. But I have manage to read some, starting with Gooseman, by Mark Sanchez. 

What a great start to my reading year. Brilliant. Funny. Dark. Shocking. And he tackles some great themes, like mental health and racism and Brexit and how the Brits treat their former colonials, and how we, the former colonials, still try to be their lap dogs. Also, as a Gibraltarian and with the novel set partly in Gibraltar and partly in London with the odd llanito comment thrown in, I found there was a familiarity about the characters and the places that drew me in straight away. More than that, there is an almost intangible Gibraltarian quality about the book. Perhaps it's the rhythm of the sentences, or perhaps it's that there is a sense that the lead character, Johann Guzman, is laughing at himself at times, just like we, in Gibraltar, readily laugh at ourselves too.

I've also got through a Giselle Green - also Gibraltarian in my eyes even if she has lived in UK for many years. She writes beautiful stories that touch on some of our deepest emotions. The Girl you Forgot speaks about memory and about relationships and about truth. Some parts of it are almost lyrical and yet it flows and undulates as do the hills of England where Giselle lives. It is a satisfying and emotional journey of a story.

Humbert Hernandez' El Agente Aleman was just perfect for grey winter days; it cheered me up no end. The stories are so funny in places, I laughed out loud, which was disconcerting to passers by as I perched on a low wall waiting for my cab to work one morning (some of us would have loved to lock down fully but couldn't). These stories are told in our tongue, the language of my early childhood in the old town of Gibraltar and are populated by people that are recognisable, although dwindling in numbers as they age and pass on, just as the patio culture of the middle of last century is dwindling and disappearing into apartment block living. But Hernandez has kept those stories alive, and those characters live on, at least in these fictional works.

I've also managed a thriller and am currently making my way through Greek myths in Stephen Fry's Mythos. Next up on my e-reader is a Joanne Harris, Peaches for M. le Cure, and on my bedside table is a Mary Chiappe novel, Shaking the Dandelions.

As for my writing? It's simmering. I've sketched out some ideas, pottered with some research. Oh, and I've just signed a publishing contract no less. But more about that in another post. For now, I am wallowing in books, glorious books, and always wanting more!

A reader does a writer make

The Joys of Reading

I've always been a firm believer that reading is an essential prerequisite for writing. It's through reading that you absorb ways of expressing yourself in words, that you develop the sense of plot, of character development, of setting, mood, tone, style, genre...

Yet, of course, reading is so much more than this. It provides an opening to new worlds, to new experiences, to new learning. It sheds light on the obscure. It stretches the imagination and it teaches us to see the world from someone else's perspective. Learning to read, becoming literate, is not just a means for children to pass some exams and prove themselves. It is a pathway to empathy, an enhancement of thinking, a means of relaxing and of escaping the stresses of everyday life.

This past year has been tougher than usual for most of us. I have personally struggled with writing. Writing, in particular fiction or poetry, means digging deep into your emotions, exposing thoughts and fears and feelings that, in times of greater anxiety, you might prefer to keep safely locked away. This year, I have spent more time reading than writing. I have felt the need to escape my own thoughts and find fresh landscapes in the thoughts of others.

At first I was worried about this. My pen was dry, my notebooks blank, my laptop forbidding, a symbol of the more unpleasant drudgery of work rather than inviting creativity. I fretted that I should use lockdown, as many seemed to be doing, to practice writing, to find ways of improving. Maybe even to start the novel I keep saying I'm going to write and never get round to. Then, as the year progressed, I realised that there were enough things to fret about rather than how productive I am. Staying healthy, earning enough to live on, keeping in close touch with all those family members living away from Gibraltar whom I don't see anywhere near enough, getting through new regulations and restrictions, shutting out the negativity and spillage of hatred and ignorance and confusion from social media...all these things were enough to deal with this year.

Instead, I turned to my favourite way of destressing, decompressing and of opening up my mind to new ideas: reading. These are my five favourite reads of this year (in no particular order):

                                                  The Strawberry Thief on Amazon

The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris

This is the fourth novel by Joanne Harris following the life of Vianne Rocher whose story she began with Chocolat. It is a story full of mystery and mysticism, about conflict and acceptance within families and between members of a tight-knit community. It is about change and how we fear change, how change challenges and how it might be accepted. Change is something that has blasted through this year of the pandemic, with one crisis after another besetting the world, and the challenges that we face will bring about changes in how we live, certainly in the short term and probably in the longer term too. This was a novel full of beautiful, resonant writing. It was thought-provoking and it was calming. Change, after all, is always inevitable.        

                                                   Testament of Youth on Amazon

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain.

I have been meaning to read this since the late seventies when I was taking O-Level history, and my history teacher recommended it as background reading for our studies on the First World War. I wish I'd read it sooner and I may well dip into it again. Vera Brittain lived the war, was heartbroken by the war and was made by the war. A wonderful insight into that period, and in particular into how the war and the times affected women and the struggle of women to be heard and taken seriously, their battle for equality. This too, was incredibly well-written, memories crafted into an absorbing tale. And it touched on the pandemic that was then as devastating to human life as was the war itself, the Spanish Flu, something that seemed close to home this year.

                                               Queenie on Amazon

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

I loved this book and I loved Queenie. What a great character and what a real, down-to-earth voice she has. The book is about Queenie, a young woman not in a particularly good place in her life at the start, and how she negotiates what life has to throw at her. It speaks fearlessly about friendship, race, love and what it means to be a young single black woman negotiating life in the city. It is witty and it is wise and it is fierce. A great read, Queenie was critically acclaimed, with Carty-Williams the first black and female writer to win Book of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards. I love stepping out of my life and into the lives of characters in a book and Queenie was totally absorbing.

                                                 The Forty Rules of Love on Amazon

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

This was a beautiful, lyrical book with two tantalising parallel narratives. I picked it up as a winter read to get me through February, which I tend to find a dull and dreary month at the best of times, not least as the world seemed to be plunging into a maelstrom of pandemic, misinformation and crisis. The story interweaves Ella's search for love with the poet Rumi's quest for spiritual enlightenment through his friendship with Sufi mystic Shams of Tabriz who expounds the philosophy through his forty rules of love. The story is told in a series of first person narratives by several different characters and is an enthralling exploration of faith and love.

                                                         

                                                              Solitude House on Amazon

Solitude House by M G Sanchez

This was delightfully dark and a perfect story to read in the lead up to Halloween. Set in Gibraltar and told from the point of view of a self-confessed misanthrope and a misogynistic womaniser, Dr Seracino is the perfect anti-hero, a loathsome protagonist you can't help but like. In following Seracino's descent into an alcohol-soaked retirement to a lonely house hidden in the depths of the upper rock, Sanchez leads us in a journey through the Gibraltar of the eighties and nineties with sharply observed details tinged with his characteristic dry humour. The novel deals with the duality of human nature: Seracino is supposed to care, but is self-absorbed and misanthropic; he lives in a tight-knit society and yet he craves solitude; he achieves solitude and yet is invaded by ghosts. Sanchez explores psychosis and superstition through the character of Seracino, and, not least for me as a Gibraltarian, he also explores Gibraltar through the eyes of a non-Gibraltarian. He looks into Gibraltar as he looks outwards from inside Seracino. A terrific read at the tail end of a dark year which has exposed both the best and the worst of Gibraltar.

As a writer, I am an avid reader, and I'm looking forward to a good read over Christmas. Any recommendations?

Escaping reality through fiction

The Arts helping to get through lockdown

If there's one thing that having to stay at home for most of the day every day during the coronavirus pandemic seems to be achieving is a resurgence of popular interest in the arts. While we are all avidly using technology to  substitute our usual habits of socialising, it is the arts that so many of us have turned to. Whether we have tuned in to streaming of music concerts, theatrical performances, the ballet, or virtual tours of museums and galleries, it is the arts that are offering some form of solace, that are helping us to reach inside ourselves as individuals and find ways of both escapism and explanation. 

We need to include literature and writing in this. There has been a surge in book sales across the world as one country after another went into lockdown, with stores reporting a sudden increase in the numbers of sales of physical books while shops remained open. After the lockdown, booksellers that are able to deliver or post books are doing so at a surprisingly high rate, while it is expected that the sale of e-books will also surge. The more intrepid book clubs have set up Zoom meetings so that book lovers can continue their exchanges on their 'book of the month'. Literature is one of the arts that is helping people get through this.

The joy of reading

Reading, of course, is a great way of keeping the mind active and distracted from the worries of what is an extremely difficult situation, one where we are each united with the rest of the world in our anxieties about sickness, survival, our families, our personal finances, the unsettling nature of change and not knowing when all this will end. 

That list goes nowhere to scratch the surface of those whose personal situations are extremely difficult: those with mental illnesses who cannot access easily their usual support systems; those in abusive relationships; those who simply have not got the money to feed their families; those with mobility difficulties who cannot get about their own home without help...the list could go on and on. What about those in war situations? What about those in refugee camps? What about those who live in poverty with no access to washing facilities - so much for those 20 seconds humming 'happy birthday'! And those who live in overcrowded conditions - no social distancing for them even if sick with the virus! 

Anxiety is rife, and reading is one way of freeing the mind from its grip, if only for short periods. Reading allows the mind to roam widely and freely - across the world, across time and space. Reading also keeps us away from the virtual reality that is social media with all its pressures, doom, gloom and 'fake news'.

In particular, reading fiction helps us to withdraw from the prison that our four walls have become and, where we are surrounded at close quarters by the rest of the family, gives as an opportunity for solitary thinking, a break where we can recharge our mental batteries. Equally, if we live alone, fiction introduces us and brings us into intimate contact with others in the safe space that is the mind. We can select books that take us to places we are unlikely ever to visit - outer space, for example, or 20,000 leagues under the sea - or that are light and bright and can transport us to a happier place than perhaps we find ourselves in at the moment. 

Writing in lockdown

So what about writing? It's not as if overnight any of us is going to write that novel that speaks of the themes of the deadly coronavirus, quarantine, isolation, death and suffering in all the various incarnations of these. Writing a novel takes time and, hopefully, we will long be out of this situation by the time our novels are ready to head for the printing press. If any of us writes one.

I guess that is why I have taken to short stories. Not that these are particularly easy to write - a good short story is its own literary masterpiece, and I am nowhere near skilled enough to write one of those. But at least with a short story I get a chance to delve into the world of a fictional character that I have created. I can let out whatever anxiety is lurking about at the time. I can let my mind work out sticky problems by relating these to fictional characters. I can exercise my imagination and simply ask, what if? The short story, like the poem, can take one theme, one person, add the question 'what if' and create a brief moment of escape for my readers. 

For me, it allows me to escape my own reality for a while, and then leaves me a sense of satisfaction that I think you only get when you've created something new, something that has never existed before, but because it is written, has a greater degree of permanence than any of us mere  humans might have. And if I get it right, with any luck, it connects with others. 

There are many themes that are arising for us during this lockdown. Isolation is one. Imprisonment is another. Loss of control of our lives is a third. Unexpected change is yet another. I am coming to really understand just how important a role in helping prisoners tap into their feelings and their creativity that writing has, and how great a contribution creative writing classes in prisons can make to help prisoners avoid re-offending in future. I think this is a theme I might come back to in another post.

Simply Stories

Today's Simply Stories contribution came from me asking the usual 'what if' and applying it to trying to see life from someone else's perspective. What if you loved music but because of a life-changing event, you were disengaged from making music and thought you'd never ever be yourself because you could not make music again? What if someone unexpected turned up and changed your mind? Quite a simple idea and a useful exercise in drafting a story. Find the link on the right hand side to 'All that Jazz' and see what you think. Then, have a go, write your own lockdown story and please, share it here by sending it through to me at my email address: 

jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk

Reading the plague to write its stories

Reading the Plague

To be a writer you have to be a reader first - words of advice from an author who kindly spent time with me some years ago encouraging me to take up the pen but to make sure that I always kept up with reading. And for once, the lockdown means I actually have some quality time for varied reading.

A quick trawl of the internet reveals a veritable tsunami of writing about coronavirus. A combination of predictions of doom and castigation of any human misdemeanour, a cluster of conspiracy theories, an avalanche of advice (much of it unfounded, unproven and utterly useless in the face of an illness that has no cure), a cry of horror at something that threatens humanity - not human life, because that is lost in its thousands daily, neglectfully cast aside and wantonly wasted by run-of-the-mill tyranny, rampant capitalism and ordinary human cruelty. The threat we fear is the threat to the comfortable sense of control that humans like to have over their lives, over the world, over nature. 

When terrified - because fear is the over-riding emotion every person seems to share with everyone else during times of plague - humanity turns to stories, to narratives that might provide some kind of explanation, that might help an understanding of the chaos that appears to have suddenly arrived in our midst. So we flick through social media, and scroll through our search engines, allowing the time we have left to trickle through our fingers while we grasp at the straws that are slung out across the ether by everyone else, who feels pretty much the same.

So in the face of this endless stream of words, how can we best select what we read to obtain information, inspiration and, possibly, solace?

Solace in Stories

We, as a species, function intellectually through stories. We understand the world through narratives that exhibit patterns that our brains can pick out, recognise and to which we respond almost instinctively. Once we learn to read, to assimilate written information and assess this subliminally, and in particular once we soak ourselves in fiction reading, we simply can't stop. 

And once we join in the writing of those narratives, we can't stop that either. So I've put together a list of some of the writing I've enjoyed reading these past few days of staying home. I hope some of the ideas of further reading helps relieve any of my readers who might be bored, and inspire some fellow-writers to add to the welter of words storming through our world right now.

"Reading is an infection, a burrowing into the brain: books contaminate, metaphorically, and even microbiologically...But, of course, books are also a salve and a consolation." A short excerpt from Jill Lepore's article in The New Yorker of 30th March 2020, "What our contagion fables are really about" which takes a stroll through the literature of plague and touches on some of the fears humankind experiences through plague - in the face of so much progress, plague, pestilence, pandemic represent dramatic regress.

What our contagion fables are really about

Pandemics spare no person, no culture, no community. Poets have written about disease in so many ways, in all of humanity's languages. In Night Visitor, the medieval Iraqui-Syrian poet, al-Mutannabi, wrote an ode to fever:

"For she does not pay her visits save under cover of darkness,

I freely offered her my linen and my pillows,

But she refused them, and spent the night in my bones.

My skin is too contracted to contain both my breath and her,

So she relaxes it with all sorts of sickness.

When she leaves me, she washes me

As though we had retired apart for some forbidden action.

It is as though the morning drives her away,

And her lachrymal ducts are flooded in their four channels.

I watch for her time without desire,

Yet with the watchfulness of the eager lover."

(al-Mutannabi  (915-965))

For an interesting look at 1400 years of Middle Eastern writing about plagues and contagion, try this article by Mustapha Abu Seineh of 27 March 2020 in the Middle East Eye:

Plague and Poetry: How Middle East authors have written about disease

And here, in the Library of Economics and Liberty, Sarah Skwire offers some pandemic reading to help you through whatever hours of boredom that might be plaguing your lockdown:

Five Books about plagues and pandemics and five books to make you feel better

Personally, I'm opting for complete escapism and disappearing into some fantasy world or other, maybe Tolkein, perhaps Pratchett or possibly Pullman, or Rowling, or even a re-run of Moorcock...

Writing and literature - is there a class issue? Discuss

Is there? Here are my thoughts.

There was a time when only the rich or people wealthy enough could read. They would receive education and only a very small number of the poor might be fortunate enough to be taught to read, through charities or religious groups. And, of course, the working classes would often be far too busy earning a living to have time to read, and they would not be able to afford books.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the start of the education of the masses, and suddenly books became readily available, lending libraries proliferated and most importantly, working people were able to access schools, and eventually universities. Literature for the many blossomed. The joy of reading became a part of everyday life for all people. The learning that literature brings, the opening of minds became an unstoppable force.

But there are barriers. Books cost money, even online versions - as do the devices needed for reading these. With most countries experiencing an increasing divide between rich and poor, affecting access to education as much as anything else, the love and development of literature may be wavering for the poorer in our society. And writing, as with many other artistic disciplines suffers when fewer people have the time and space to be creative.

If you have to work to live, then the time you have available to write is so limited. There are of course, many stories of successful authors overcoming difficult circumstances and publishing great works. But they are few and far between. To write successfully, some basic ingredients are physical space, mental space and time. For many, especially working parents - or working single parents in particular - finding the time to write when you are not so tired that you can't think, is a luxury that many of us simply cannot afford. There must be many wonderful works of literature that we are missing out on for the sake of so many writers not having enough money to live on to write.

Of course, it's not just about the sitting down and writing part of it. There's the isolation unless you happen to be in some kind of support group. There's learning the skills - we never imagine that an artist will simply start to plop paint on canvas without first learning some basic techniques, nor do we expect the pianist to start playing a concerto without first having a few lessons and learning the scales. But lessons for writers - at least in Gibraltar - are non-existent. Students - young people who go away to university - can take creative writing degrees. There are some who don't go away to study because while they might be great writers, they might not be equipped with three A levels. Nor might their families be able to supplement the maintenance grant to help them live abroad while they study.

This means, then, that writing and literature continues to some extent to hold a place of greater value in households of more affluent economic means. There's a whole raft of social and economic theories about this including nurture, habit, role modelling and so on. But essentially, there are more barriers to entering the literary world if you are working class or poor than if you are middle class or rich. That's not to say that working class people can't overcome these, but barriers that limit entry to one of our essential arts empoverish our culture.

Take our celebrated annual literary festival. A littering of Gibraltarian writers - thank goodness, positive role modelling for youngsters (if they can take time off school or work to attend the talks) if they can afford the ticket prices. I've totted up that if I, as an adult, want to see all of the  Gibraltarian writers, it will cost me around £84 if I include those talking about Gibraltar or other Gibraltarian writers. I'd like to see more well-known writers too so if I attended several more, then I would need to fork out over £100. Ouch. No can do.

So as a Gibraltarian who loves literature, I already feel a bit excluded from this event. Attending it in previous years, with great circumspection and counting of coins, I have been astounded at the plummy English accents, the twinsets and pearls, the way that the scruffier classes shuffle about uncomfortably in venues that perhaps give off a false grandeur - the University, the Garrison Library, the Convent - and the chatter on having lunch in Soto the next day. Well removed from the rookeries of our Upper Town where wildly intelligent and creative writers may well be lurking but with a sense of exclusion from the upper crust ambience of the Gib Lit Fest. 

There are some good things in our literary festival if you can access it and feel at ease. But it is growing increasingly exclusive, an occasion for all the wealthy ex pats from the Costa trying to keep a finger in the English (it's largely about the English) intellectual frame, or their families, a chance to 'do' the former colony and still circulate among their own. And while in reality it may not be quite as extreme a picture as I'm painting, if you attend this year, please take note. I know I'm not the only one who has observed this because of the many conversations I have had with others attending. Even the Brits notice. This year, there's a couple of Lords (both Tories) - figures of politics if not of literature at its most sublime - appearing, along with a chef, the Green Goddess (a true icon of get your butt moving literature) a couple of professors, historians, journalists, a poet or two and some novelists. 

Gibunco Gibraltar International Literary Festival 2019

The benefits of the festival being several, including filling some hotel rooms and restaurant tables, I would not dream of it not taking place. But it looks to me like Gibraltar is just another venue in a circuit of similar events. I really am not sure what value it has culturally at all, what it does to develop our own literary talent. Do our books sell to the visitors that attend? The festival bookshop, after all, is the only physical book shop stocking new titles in Gibraltar.

In Gibraltar, we cannot expect to generate a body of our own literature - and I'm just talking about written works worth reading, let alone great or superior works which last well beyond a single generation - if we do not ensure that writing and reading is accessible to everyone in our society, that being an author is something realistic that anyone can aspire to become. We are a nation of story tellers - that much is clear if you happen to wander to Casemates for a late breakfast and tune in to the many conversations held over coffee and churros. So where are the stories? And the poems? There are some authors: Mary Chiappe and Sam Benady, Mark Sanchez, Humbert Hernandez, Giordano Durante, Rebecca Faller, Gabriel Moreno among a few others. But are these household names? And are they recognisable outside of Gibraltar? I know Mark Sanchez is making inroads in the world of academia outside of Gibraltar, and Gabriel Moreno and Jonathan Teuma are known in at least UK and Spain, but unless Gibraltar really fosters literary talent at home - and that means opening up writing as an art form and nurturing it far more than we do, then we will always lie in the shadows of our former colonial masters, masters of a class system devised to keep the natives in their place and away from those of 'better breeding': the class system at its worst.

So is writing and literature a class issue? This is by no means a top-grade essay; I would need to try much harder to achieve that. But I have made my point: yes it is, and in Gibraltar with the way we continue to lap at overseas talent and avoid growing our own, literature is as much a class issue as anywhere else.