The House of Writers
Page 5
Yours,
James
P.S. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To: James L. Horton
From: Derek Haffmann
Dear James,
I am pleased to hear you have accepted my proposition. I have no ideas for what this novel should contain. Please write an opening paragraph and send it to me and I will have my advisors look at it. Payment per chapter.
Yours,
Derek
To: Derek Haffmann
From: James L. Horton
Dear Derek,
I have spent the week deep in research for the composition of your opening paragraph. I studied Linlinger—what a marvellous hamlet! I had no idea Noel Edmunds committed suicide in the Novotel there! I had no idea the demand for swan ornaments was so strong as to fund a special rocket to Neptune! I had no idea the council had declared Linlinger the most innumerate hamlet in all ScotCall! I had no idea tramp-burning was a popular pastime there! I had no idea Paul Simon had dropped his plectrum in the local pond in 1978 causing the asphyxiation of a prize black swan for which he never paid a cent in recompense! I had no idea Linlinger was twined with Simferopol! I had no idea Linlinger was a Nazi base during WWII and the residents meet up to commemorate their role in crushing the Allied pigs! I also had a look at your personal website, Derek. I hope you don’t mind me saying this: you have the most adorable shoulders! The charming crinkles in your cheeks when you are smiling! The moonlight reflecting off your brylcreemed quiff! The immense manly gravitas in your stance! I have no interest in sexual matters—however, if requested, I would happily engage in intercourse with you! Anyway, let us proceed to the business! I have included the opening paragraph for your inspection. (OH GOD! I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING! I have told everyone including my mum who said not to raise hopes but she is a cynical cow at the best of times, Derek! Or is it Mr. Haffman? I’d better close this bracket!). Please please please let me know if this isn’t what you were looking for and I will take a hatchet to it right away! I will chop it into a million little pieces like the sow during the annual Linlinger sacrifice to Cthulhu!
Derek Haffman, MSP for Linlinger in West Region, ambled along the road exuding machismo. The top button on his shirt was undone and the two girls watching him from a bench swooned at the sight of his exposed hairs. A bus driver was distracted by Derek’s aura and forgot to stop at the planned stop, causing consternation among the passengers (soon appeased by a glance out the window at lovely Derek!).
Yours,
James
To: James L. Horton
From: Derek Haffmann
Dear James,
Thank you for sending your paragraph. I have no problems with this as an opening but I am forwarding it to those who can best advise me on ministerial and legal matters. There may be a delay of several months.
Yours,
Derek
To: Derek Haffmann
From: Alexander Thane
Dear Derek,
Drear drear, dear! Where on Graham’s shiny arse did you find this semi-literate hack? Round the back of Oddbins? I read the opening paragraph penned by our Nobel Laureate. Apart from the nix artistic merit (I’m no expert on books but this paragraph reeks like a skunk’s nappy) I can see several problems vis-à-vis your image within the party. Firstly, there is no way we can have you “exuding machismo.” As you know, the party has a strong feminist backing (i.e. those right-on harpies on the backbench looking for a cock to kick around) so this upfront show of manliness will not be received positively. The implication seems to be that via some primordial male scent (Lynx’s Puma range?) you attract women without even muttering the quietest invite to your hotel suite. Secondly, the current party code for dress is formal—an unbuttoned shirt is not acceptable. This James hack practically has your Paul Thomas Anderson hanging out your trousers. You know too that the sight of chest hair will be mocked in the ScotCall Sun and we have to avoid negative publicity about MSP appearance after that whole “yellow tie” debacle last month. Fire this Horton. From a cannon.
Regards
Alex
To: Derek Haffmann
From: Road Safety Board
Dear Mr. Haffmann
I hope this message finds you well. The opening paragraph of your novel as written by James L. Horton was forwarded to us by one of your researchers. After a unanimous vote the RSB have rendered this paragraph a Code 9.2 violation—unsafe for a general readership. Our objections are as follows. 1) The character in this paragraph “ambled across the road.” It is unsafe to amble across a road that contains buses as this poses a risk to motorists and pedestrians and this sort of carelessness could lead to copycat “ambling” and cause traffic accidents or deaths. The RSB cannot be held accountable for this behaviour. The character should walk briskly across the road after checking both ways to ensure a safe crossing. We suggest the passage should read: “Derek Haffman, MSP for Linlinger in West Region, walked briskly across the road after checking both ways to ensure a safe crossing.” 2) The “machismo” this character “exudes” is clearly a danger to pedestrians and drivers. The bus driver in particular misses one of his designated stops because of this “machismo,” and although no accidents occur in this story, the driver could have easily crashed the bus and hit a pedestrian. Again, the RSB cannot be held accountable for such dangerous and imitative behaviour. We have excised this detail from our above rewrite suggestion. Please contact us if you have further inquiries.
Regards,
Phil Cornwall
RSB Consultant
To: Derek Haffmann
From: Alexander Thane
Dear Derek,
You won’t believe this. Some quisling in our office (who I will be sacking the moment I unmask them—after inserting a kebab skewer up their rectum) has leaked all the emails about this novel of yours to the ScotCall Sun. Keep silent for now. Do not respond to any messages from wheedling hacks.
Alex
To: Derek Haffman
From: Kevin Williams
Derek! How’s it hanging in the Parliament? Read any good books lately? I have! It hooked me from the first sentence. I have a few questions about this book you are proposing about yourself. Questions like: how large is your ego exactly? Paying a hack to puff yourself up, must be quite a whopper. And how do you feel about distracting bus drivers with your sexual powers? You want all drivers to skip stops and cause traffic accidents? Are you planning to bottle this special aura that you have, or make it available on the NHS? I have emailed all the messages about this hilarious and embarrassing (for you) story as found in Alex’s inbox to everyone in the media! Everyone knows! The story is in the paper tomorrow. You might as well give us a reaction quote. (Don’t worry, I’ll buy a hardback when it comes out!)
Kisses, Kevin Williams
ScotCall Sun
To: James L. Horton
From: Derek Haffman
I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, A POX ON YOUR HOUSES!!! Do you have any idea what your stupid paragraph has done to my reputation? I asked you to EXERCISE CAUTION when writing about me, observing the proper parliamentary protocols, and you couldn’t even find it in your feeble scribbler’s fingers to take one single instruction due to the LUMP OF LINT BETWEEN YOUR EARS. Those twats at the ScotCall Sun are going to disassemble me tomorrow and it’s ALL OVER. You are being sued. I am going to sue you. You are being taken to the cleaners by me. I am suing you. Clear?
To: Derek Haffman
From: James L. Horton
Dear Mr. Derek Haffman MSP
I cannot even begin to apologise for the events that have occurred. When I wrote that paragraph I had no idea of the serious repercussions this would cause for your reputation. I had no idea it would fall into the hands of evildoers. I am utterly appalled. I have been close to suicide over the last few hours, turning this over and over in my head in perpetual torment. I have written this response over a hundred times trying to convey exactly the extent of the pain churning inside me, th
e wrenching agony I have felt knowing I have impacted you in such a devastating way and destroyed your life. I understood fully your intention to sue me, and please rest assured, you have my blessing to do so, and I will help you in any way with the procedure. I do not have many possessions, but if you would like the few trinkets I have and the clothes I am wearing, I will happily give them to you. I also suggest that I be flogged hard in public or set upon by dogs as part of the penance I will be paying you for the rest of my life. I beg you to be merciful with me, as I never never never intended to do you any harm when I wrote you that paragraph. I am crying all over the keyboard and my heart is split in two.
Yours miserably,
James Leonard Horton
Mhairi
2
WHEN I first met “General Manager” Marilyn Volt, I was impressed by her stamina and dedication. Two full marathons a day, muscles like tarmacadam, those tugged features. I soon twigged that she had serious mental health issues. She had convinced herself that invisible sponsors were backing her runs and that she was helping to raise funds to liberate people from the Scot-Call stranglehold or earning enough to help keep The House from falling apart. This is neither true nor amusing. The House was, when I arrived, in the process of sundering from the bottom up and atilt at a disconcerting angle. I set up a drug ring in the basement and advertised its whereabouts using my contacts. I called my dealer Mikkel in Denmark and asked him to smuggle over sacks of middling gear that I could sell at twice the price. This worked until I ran out of desperados willing to pay extra for middling. I hit upon an ingenious solution that saved The House from destruction. I paid the printers to “weave” powdered heroin into the paper of the books we printed. Whenever readers turned the pages of each book, heroin particles would waft up their noses, convincing them that each page was riveting due to the aesthetic merits of the literature at hand. I couldn’t do this with all the books—sometimes the H supplies dwindled and books went to print missing the vital ingredient—this led to disgruntled readers refusing to pay for their writers’ latest books due to a dip in their “artistry.”
Several writers (ex-smackheads) noticed and I had to deal with begging requests from those hoping to have their pages sprinkled with extra helpings of Big H—to turn them into instant bestsellers. After taking a few hundred backhanders, I decided to put a stop to this abuse of the scheme. I could only wrangle so much heroin from my Danish cartels at a time, and I had to be fair to each department. (Excessive H abuse had wiped out the experimental fiction department and precipitated their exile from the building—I didn’t have the heart to tell them this). I had saved The House from going under, taxing the writers’ profits to conduct crucial repairs on the building. As “General Manager,” Marilyn keeps morale ticking over—writing her annual reports (each of them a fiction since she has no idea what happens upstairs—she kips on the ground floor in a sleeping bag). So when I arrived at The House, I was hired as a general housekeeper and became self-titled Queen Momma of the building. Aside from running the drug operation, this entails making sure the other staff members—janitors, food-servers, and so on—are content with their mostly tedious lives. These people who aren’t chained to desks and have innocuous blue-collar occupations seem to me the most free. I made a home for myself on the roof, paying a simpleton named Gerald (more on him later) to construct a small cottage overlooking the wastelands of Crarsix. If I tilt my head heavenwards on summer nights, I can glimpse a rogue star through the carcinogenic layers of toxic silt, and my heart is almost happy.
A Better Life
2
HAVING survived the stock-dump fields, I emerged onto the roads where the ScotCall buses prowled. I hadn’t expected the barbed wire laid over the ditches—it was my intention to crouch there when the buses appeared. I had nowhere to lurk when the first bus came and the two operatives approached. I made it five minutes along the road before the bus stopped five paces before me and the operatives leapt out with their plastered smiles and blank clipboards, launching straight into their smarm-drenched spiels. “Howdy, traveller! Don’t you think a Better Life awaits you in the ScotCall compound? We offer our phone operatives a secure package and opportunities to explore the range of things available etc. . . .” I decided to attack. I could see the bald one making a move to cup my arm and the blonde one ditto. I took the bat and swung for the bald one’s shiny head. I brained him on the occiput and delivered repeated blows to his forehead until he was dead. I had to remember it wasn’t a person I was killing but a ScotCall vessel who would never think an original thought ever again and so was dead inside anyway.
The blonde one sprinted for the bus which sped off in panic. I improvised a solution. I changed into the ScotCall shirt and tie that the dead thing was wearing and headed along the road faking a cool exterior, despite the natural terror I felt at facing the Scot-Call cops when the helicopter or whatever descended from above to airlift me to whatever ScotCall rehabilitation prison centre existed in the bowels of their compound. A police car was on the scene in two minutes and despite my nervousness I kept up the façade. “Reports of a psycho with a baseball bat resisting ScotCall assistance?” he asked without the slightest glint of suspicion. “Yes officer!” I beamed. “I managed to overpower the thug and pulp his cranium. He is on the ground back there, hopefully feeling jolly remorseful for his actions!” The officer volunteered to drive me back to the ScotCall HQ, straight into the beckoning digits of the enemy. Since I had no reason to be lurking on the road four miles away, I agreed. I was to be delivered into a position of power in ScotCall with the one hope that I might be able to bluff my way to freedom, if I could think up a single convincing reason to go outside.
The policeman escorted me to the same compound where I worked before as a phone operator being lashed by malfeasant bugs. I used the dead thing’s pass to gain access to the building and reported to the manager for duties. The man who had witnessed me bashing in the head of his partner was there. He failed to notice that I had a different face. I had gained access and was wearing the proper outfit. This seemed to be enough for him.
The Farewell, Author! Conference
2
FIRST to arrive, a frenetic Adam Thirlwell. One of the youngest at the conference, at 68, Adam retained his frazzled appearance, his eye luggage weighing in heavy, his intellectual Pete Doherty vibe still apparent. “People have been calling me an upstart for the last four decades because I published a first novel aged 24. Like I’m some perpetual prepubescent scamp having his hair ruffled by the wise-ass elders,” he said the moment he entered. “Hello Adam,” I said. “My last novel Economics, published two years ago, still came with patronising caveats like ‘Adam is the adolescent eager to appear smarter-than-thou’ and ‘the look-at-me-sir flash of his prose is endearing but childish.’ I’m almost 70! These dicks! I’ve skipped the mature artist and elder statesman phase. I will be buried an up-and-coming brat.” He knocked back two colas and lurched towards the back freezers where various prawns were dancing the cancan. Next entered the fighting fit Invernesian Ali Smith whose brio remained undimmed despite her long-awaited masterpiece The The The The The The The The The, a book containing a record number of uses of the definite article over its 1900 pages, began in 2020, having been lost forever in the technological meltdown. “I am maintaining a stoic outlook on the situation. In the Great Pantheon there are innumerable examples of lost masterworks, from Sappho to Perec. I am working on a novel instead about the disappearance of the masterpiece called A A A A A A A A A, because ‘a’ is the indefinite article, and suggests a series of impossible beginnings in attempting to reconstruct what is lost,” she said the minute she entered. “Hello Ali,” I said. “I look to novels like Christine Brooke-Rose’s tale of homeless dropouts Next, written without the verb ‘to have,’ where the constraint is integral to the intellectual and emotional core of the novel. There are no definite articles in my latest novel because there is no novel except a series of fragmented stuttered utte
rances from a work that with each day becomes little more than the spirit of a lost masterpiece.” And she went to brood by the broken biscuits, sucking on a custard cream. Next, Dave Eggers. His publishing house, having folded in 2018, left Eggers nursing a depression from which he failed to recover, penning a painful memoir, A Heartbroken Genius of Staggering Woes, which fast became a classic in the genre, keeping Eggers a millionaire, if not bringing him relief. “People say to me, Dave man, you got those riches, you can have four almond croissants for breakfast and only eat one of them, you can drive a Bentley around the hood flinging hundreddollar bills at the peasants, you can sing Shirley Temple’s loudest hits in the shower literally all afternoon without a tax man banging at your door demanding overdue cash due to you bunking off work and being fired and having no money, you can form your own publishing house that prints whimsical fiction about social issues and the dark underside of American families in misleadingly beautiful hardcover quarterlies, you can keep a unisex harem in your gazebo meeting the sexual needs of male and female visitors on a 24/7 basis, and I say to them, come on guys, it doesn’t matter if I can order nine fudge sundaes from the most expensive pâtisserie in Europe and fling them at Chris Ware’s miserable face, or import nine Ugandan rhinos and put them in a poorly choreographed home production of Stomp, or record an album of Half Man Half Biscuit covers with the reanimated corpses of David Bowie and Lionel Richie on backing vocals, or take a private flight to any of the world’s most breathtaking places with any number of supermodel girlfriends and drink nothing but champagne the whole time, if the brain is firing frowns, no-no-neurons, then no amount of cash-fuelled mirthmakers will lift Dave from his fragile funk,” Dave said after I offered him a cola. “I am looking forward to tonight, let me tell you.” Next to arrive, a nervous Zadie Smith, who had suffered at being dubbed a scenester, a constant on the literary stage, in the hippest anthologies and publishing ventures. “People accused me of being the axis of hip, or the acme of hip ... more like the acne of hip,” she said. Her last novel, Endwesters, was a searing satire on the re-rise of Islamophobia in the West End of London following the brief violence of an extremist Islam sect, received in the papers as “issue-tainment” and latching on to current affairs. “Complete arsecake. I have never cleaved to the zeitgeist. I write about people and their people problems. I am not some rabid trendlicker.” She approached the chocolate and ate a piece, assuming herself to be one of the four éminences grises. I hadn’t the heart to disabuse her.