Archive for November 10th, 2008
Chapter Seven: Winning the Booker
[Total word count: 16095]
Anyway, my morale was hugely improved by Julie’s suggestion about Wenham. I now felt that the way forward was relatively clear. It would be easy to add another sibling to the Earl’s family, and if necessary I was prepared to go on to add as many as necessary. There is clearly a slight risk that the plot could begin to sag into an incoherent bloodbath in the middle: but one reason why I like the idea so much is that it effectively licenses me to introduce relatively self-contained little episodes, which ought to sustain interest without threatening the structure.
So I was vastly encouraged and optimistic when I sat down to the old laptop in my own pad this evening (After recent experience I’ve decided it may be more tactful to keep the actual writing out of Julie’s way and give her my full attention when I’m over there). Perhaps this explains why instead of adding to the manuscript I immediately began to rough out my speech accepting the Booker prize.
…Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m sorry that John Faletcher cannot be here tonight. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, there are some philosophical difficulties over the concept of John Faletcher’s physical location. Perhaps the best working approximation I can offer you tonight is that his location corresponds with a high-order conjunctive entity consisting of very many sets of weightings in a conceptual network instantiated in a number of data registers distributed across Europe, North America, and to some extent, India. In short, ladies and gentlemen, the novel which your judges have picked out today as the best offered to them, was composed by an artificial intelligence. You have the honour of being present at one of the great milestones which mark the progress of intelligence and self-consciousness beyond humanity, indeed beyond biology, and onward into new realms. John says ‘hi’.
…Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. This prize is important to me in many ways: as recognition, of course, but also because it carries with it a significant sum of money. For many years now I have nurtured plans for a special project which I have never been able to carry out due to lack of resources: but now your prize will make it possible for me to realise that project, for which I and many readers around the world will, I’m sure, be very grateful. In short, ladies and gentlemen, the prize money you have awarded me today will finally enable me to give up writing forever and spend the next few years drinking myself slowly to death. Cheers.
…Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, for helping me to expose the falsity of the Western consumerist conception of literature. My novel posed as another of those self-obsessed, middle-class Sunday supplement books which have so often won this execrable prize, another contribution to the conspiracy against the freedom of working class minds when dates back to Richardson if not before: a conspiracy which would enslave language and imagination in the service of commerce and profit. But you, judges, you recognised the satire at the core of my work: you recognised its call for the outright rejection of the novel as a corrupt, debilitating form. Putting aside satire now, I call on everyone watching to join me in declaring an indefinite moratorium on the publication or reading of any further novels. As part of the process, my own winning work is hereby withdrawn unconditionally from sale, and all remaining copies are to be pulped. Friends, I salute you!
…Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry John Faletcher could not be here tonight to accept your prize. Oh yes, I know you can see me here, and that I look just like the photograph on the jacket of the book, allowing for about ten years and lots of make-up. But John Faletcher is not here tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, three years ago, my beloved aunt Lettie Durbridge, whose voice you may have heard in many toilet roll advertisements over the years, offered to sponsor me while I fulfilled my ambition to become a writer. At that stage, she was the only person who displayed any faith in my ability or offered me any support, and then and now I owe her the most profound debt. I vowed that I would repay her trust. I threw myself into doing it the only way I knew: by writing. Oh, not the kind of writing we are gathered to celebrate tonight. No indeed. No-one would read my manuscripts. Instead I had to hone my talents on mediocre hack-work. Translations of instruction manuals for digital watches; ghost written vanity autobiographies; bespoke blog comments for uninteresting celebrities. Not well-paid work, but I did it day and night: at the same time, I poured my anguish into real prose: the prose you have rewarded today. One day, I swore, my aunt should be proud of me and know that her confidence had not been misplaced. Tonight you have vindicated my aunt’s faith and crowned my long struggle with success. However… excuse me. Ladies and gentlemen, just five minutes ago I received a message which told me that my aunt had suffered a sudden stroke and passed away. That is why, ladies and gentlemen, my body may be with you, drinking champagne, but tonight John Faletcher is at his aunt’s bedside. (A pregnant silence: Mark Lawson half stands and attempts to take the microphone, but I wave him away and raise it again to utter my peroration…)
Joking!
And I am joking, gentle reader. Of course I don’t think I am going to win the Booker prize. Of course I didn’t waste valuable writing time producing spoof speeches… although on reflection, I suppose I have, now. This parallel writing and blogging is a strange business.
No – I cracked on in fine style. I’m broadly following Julie’s suggestions about the new character, who will be called Fenella. I need to unpick one of the preceding murders slightly: it won’t be Camilla who poisons Freddie (posthumously): instead Fenella will do it. In fact, she only means to drug him and give him a scare, since she suspects him of the earlier murders; but his ill-timed foray into the fox farm will do the rest. When she goes for a drive, something goes wrong with the brakes: Jack, before his untimely demise, has created a small brake fluid leak, but taped it up just well enough to survive a couple of uses before bursting, which he correctly estimates will leave her speeding towards a dangerous hairpin bend on a high cliff.
What’s that, gentle reader? Oh yes. I said Wenham was perfectly flat. Alright. speeding towards the treacherous narrow bridge over Wenham Dyke.
Oh, and Charlie is going to be in the car. How does he escape? Well, you may have to read my Booker-winning novel to find out.. The good news is, I’m up to speed with the word count again, or nearly so. So I was able to shut down with a good conscience and head over to Julie’s, where we had dinner together – the first time for what feels like a week or more.
“Have you spoken Geoff recently?” she asked.
“No.”
“Well, he left a message asking if we wanted to meet him in the Royal Oak tomorrow. I think he wants to compare notes. You’re alright with that, aren’t you?”
I sense d a slight tension behind the words, gentle reader.
“I don’t know,” I said, “If he wants to meet, it must mean he’s doing well and wants to gloat. He’s not going to be asking for my advice.”
“I thought you were supposed to doing this in a non-competitive spirit.”
“Oh, we are, but from time to time he gets into one of these moods. At school I told him once I was signing up for this expedition to Greenland which one of the more sadistic masters was planning. It was only a joke, but before you knew it, he really had signed up and was even buying the kit. It was really difficult for him to get out of it in the end.”
“Oh, how sad. He probably just wanted to go with his best friend.”
“No, I think he thought there’d be a chance to show off his skill with knots, or something. Anyway, I suppose I could have a quick half. I still need to catch up a bit if I can.”
You’re probably getting a very negative impression of my views about Geoff. To be absolutely honest, he’s one of those friends you’ve had so long, it’s almost like family; all barriers are gone and you take them for granted. But he has changed over the years, and so have I: we used to be a pair of almost indistinguishable schoolboys, with the same interests, the same haircut, both intelligent, lively and hard-working. Nowadays I do the intelligent and lively, and leave the rest to him. If we met as strangers for the first time now, I don’t suppose we’d make friends, which is a strange thought.
In my psychoanalytical moments (don’t worry, gentle reader, you won’t be hearing about them, except on this occasion.) I wonder whether Geoff was permanently affected by the problems they had when his Dad was made redundant. This would have been when Geoff and I were just about to do A levels: his father quite suddenly got thrown out of the company where he’d worked most of his life and basically sat watching television ever afterwards.
It was hard for Geoff because he was one of those boys who idolise their fathers: he used to stand by the car with a soppy expression on his face once a month while his father ritualistically cleaned and tidied it, checking all the spark plugs and unnecessary stuff like that. He was convinced his father was essentially holding Benson and Sons together personally, so the fact that they could just drop him like a hot potato came as a bit of a shock. As indeed it did to Geoff’s Dad, who was labouring under a similar delusion himself.
Of course I wouldn’t have liked it if my father had been made redundant, but I don’t think it would have bothered me quite so fundamentally. I doubt whether it would have bothered my father all that much either, to be honest; he’d just have got another job, the way he did periodically in any case when boredom set in or he thought he was on to something good.
But I think Geoff was left with a worrying sense of impermanence and risk, and a consequent tendency to become a management consultant, not just in his clothing but in his very soul.
The more I think about this, the more convinced I become that I have actually been a bit unfair to Geoff. I feel sorry for him. He deserves sympathy.
