by Daniel Hahn
‘I am fearful of making contact with my piano. If I was to touch it with my hands as you are touching that glass, my fingers would become damp and I’d feel nauseous.’
‘Yet, if the piano has a different morality from your own, it can speak on your behalf. That is what art is for.’
We conversed in this way for a while and I suggested she make an alliance with the cook who would help her escape from the palace if she could find a way of removing the obstacle of the piano. I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes it was dawn and I glimpsed her standing by the edge of the lake. At first I thought she might throw her body into the deep dark water to end her torment. And then she stretched her arms above her head, slowly, lightly, so as not to break the piano inside her but enough to open her chest and feel the piano move. She started to speak. I heard her voice as I have never heard it before. It was deep and it was hard and it was clear as glass.
I made my way to the edge of the lake. When I was standing by her side she was still speaking.
‘Tomas, the question is not how am I going to live without my piano, it is how am I going to live without you. I have wanted to keep you by my side at all times but now that I have spoken I know you will leave.’
It is true that when love is spoken out loud it can sometimes be the end or the beginning it is a circle like breath and time and the horizon which is not a straight line. We make our phantoms in every century and if encouraged it is possible they can speak for us but it is better if we can speak for ourselves. I am a traitor to love but an honourable physician.
When my carriage pulled up outside the palace gates at dawn, I told her I would be leaving for Naples.
The Anthology Massacre
Rhidian Brook
This morning I posted twelve manuscripts, at a cost of £165, to the finest publishers in the land. If it’s a large amount to spend on postage, it’s a small price to pay to change the literary landscape. For with Rocinante I believe I have achieved a kind of perfection that contemporary practitioners of the long form can only dream of achieving: a work lofty in subject matter, novel in plot, elegant in language, clever in construction, entertaining in its episodes. Academics, booksellers, reviewers, librarians and curriculum-setters will undoubtedly have to invent an entirely new category for The Work. Sending them second-class left me with enough to purchase a nice bottle of wine with which to celebrate The Launch. It was a mid-priced Rioja (naturalmente!), reduced from £12 to £6, and its dusty tang temporarily transported me to Spain, where I spent many months capturing the tastes, sounds and smells that give the work the veracity that all fine art requires, that textural detail that separates the real writer from the phoney. Making a horse my narrator was a challenge (I spent a day sniffing dung in Toledo and believe me, it does not smell the same in Spain). Sustaining that voice over 1,837 pages of double-spaced A4 took dedication, but once I had put myself in his four shoes I was off. I believe the great man himself would enjoy my equine take on his most famous work and he’d probably be annoyed for not thinking of it first. Not that it is homage (I hear myself telling Jim McGuff on Book Worm). I have been scrupulous in avoiding pastiche and parody – two literary forms I detest – and focused on creating a work that stands in a green field of its own.
A mile from here, a noisier if less-significant launch is taking place in the Shard’s hubristically named Zenith Skybar, where the phonies of the contemporary literary order have gathered and, like aristocrats of the ancien régime, will be gorging on cheese and wine paid for by the ‘King of Letters’, AC Carruthers, completely unaware that their world is about to fall in. Yes, this country’s ‘twelve finest writers’ are tonight congratulating themselves on the launch of their dubiously conceived and pretentiously named The Anthology, a collection of short stories celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the death of Cervantes, who will no doubt be turning in his recently located unmarked grave. I have visited the Shard many times and I can safely say that it is a fitting venue for such a self-congratulatory event. We live in a world of endless up-puffery, where the most ordinary mediocrities – footballers, video artists, AC Carruthers – are declared ‘genius’ and then put on pedestals, from which unearned elevated positions they look down and assume they’ve done something that sets them above the rest of us. I can see them now, getting giddy on the view and their collective back-slappery: AC Carruthers in his signature white linen suit and panama, a look as studied and dated as his fungal prose, telling everyone that The Anthology was his idea. Declan Magee, who is thought to have some magical facility for storytelling by dint of being Irish. Vikram Bat adopting the faux wisdom and cod humility of the successful outsider. Brianny de Havilland (there because of her overwrought and over-praised second novel When The Sun (a title that inevitably leads a reader to ask: ‘When the sun what?’)). She’ll be trying oh-so-hard not to show how excited she is to be among such company. Especially when that company includes her mentor, Esther Speranza, who described When The Sun as ‘a soaring triumph’ and whose own ‘artistic freedom’ led her to do away with punctuation, an affectation that renders it impossible to read her work without wanting to kill yourself – or her.
I have no desire to be among such company but, were I there, I would clearly not be out of place. My intimate familiarity with the Spanish master (for whom I feel an affinity more deeply than any of the chancers quaffing cava in the thousand-foot finger) would be reason enough; but I am also more than a match for any of them when it comes to the short form. They resemble long-distance runners competing in a sprint event, wholly unsuited to the requirements of that most exacting medium; a medium for which I received one of the highest accolades, when my story – ‘Sirens In The Night’ – was runner-up at the Bideford Story Festival (a kind of Nobel of the shorter form), an achievement for which I received a cheque for £50 and the recognition of the literary world. For the judge that day was none other than publisher Stanley Wilson, spotter of nascent literary talent, whose encouraging words provided the catalyst I needed to grow Rocinante from humble seed to game-changing tome.
A few years after my breakthrough at Bideford, I met Stanley at a festival at which AC Carruthers was promoting his latest ‘already-optioned-for-film’ drivel. Stanley was patiently listening (as we all must) to the unnecessarily initialled Carruthers (isn’t Anthony Carruthers distinctive enough?). Carruthers was rocking on his heels with the confidence of a man with three million books sold and two Hollywood adaptations under his belt. Bullish with the warm – but free – Pinot and with a prestigious literary accolade of my own, I strolled up to them with the swagger of an equal.
ME: Stanley? (It felt natural to use his first name owing to the intimate connection we had already established at Bideford (for is not a man’s prose more revealing than his very person?).)
STANLEY: Yes… sorry… we’ve met?
ME: Donald Keyworth. Bideford. 2009. I was a winner and you were the judge. ‘Sirens In The Night.’
STANLEY: Ah yes. Bideford. Lovely festival. (Turning to AC.) Donald. You know the novelist Anthony Carruthers?
ME: I’m familiar with your oeuvre.
CARRUTHERS: (Clearly drunk.) You’ll get oeuvre it.
ME: (To Stanley.) I just wanted to thank you for encouraging me to write a novel.
CARRUTHERS: Not another one. Don’t encourage him, Stanley! There’s enough competition out there as it is.
ME: (Ignoring Carruthers.) It’s Don Quixote told from the point of view of his horse.
STANLEY: (Smiling, intrigued, beguiled even.)
CARRUTHERS: Didn’t Cervantes already do that? That dialogue between dogs.
ME: (To the drunk.) That was dogs. This is a horse. That was a short story. This is a novel. It’s… a little more ambitious. (To my potential future publisher.) I was hoping I might be able to send it to you. When it’s done.
STANLEY: (Reaching for and handing me his card.) Get in touch when it’s ready. By all means.
M
E: By all means, I will. I aim to have it ready for the four hundredth anniversary of the death of Cervantes. 2016.
CARRUTHERS: Didn’t the Bard cop it the same year?
STANLEY: He did.
ME: Perhaps we should do something to mark the moment. Some kind of tribute. Ask the country’s finest writers to submit a Cervantes-inspired story.
I’d be happy to contribute of course.
STANLEY: (Knowing look at Carruthers.) Interesting idea. Anthony?
CARRUTHERS: (Conspiratorially, to me.) Look… Mr…
ME: Keyworth.
CARRUTHERS: Want to know the best way to get published?
ME: …
CARRUTHERS: Take out the competition.
There have been more than the usual amount of sirens wailing this evening. But it’s not this that’s keeping me awake. No. It’s the thought of the literary bomb that is about to go off and the changed cultural topography created by its aftermath. In his Ars Poetica Horace said that a work should not be published until ten years after it has been completed; but he wasn’t living in an age dominated by competent, inoffensive novels with redemptive endings. I say give the people what they so desperately need. For too long the public have been held hostage by a dozen or so writers (we know who they are) who have monopolised accolades and attention and kept the rest of us at the gates asking for bread. But this is about to change. Sometimes it only takes one person – a Robespierre, a Martin Luther, a Martin Luther King – to turn over the existing order, and I don’t think it far-fetched to suggest that Donald Keyworth will be a name forever associated with the overthrow to come. As I lie here, pondering these things, the dissonant sounds of police car, helicopter, fire engine and ambulance are no longer a shrill Symphony of Emergency but a harmonious orchestra playing a coronation fanfare to the new King of Letters.
When I woke this morning the 7.10 train rumbled by, two dogs barked, and there was the usual susurrus of traffic; but I knew this would be no ordinary day. When I turned on the radio the newsreader was halfway through the following sentence: ‘The much-loved novelist was among twenty-three people so far known to have died in last night’s attack.’ I made my breakfast in the usual way: heating porridge soaked overnight in semi-skimmed milk and adding honey and banana (for us writers, routine is a sacred thing that not even catastrophic world events should interrupt). ‘It appears the terrorists targeted a book launch at which the cream of literature was gathered.’ Apart from the debatable claim (and clumsy metaphor) that this was literature’s cream, and leaving aside the question of whether you can gather cream, it soon became clear that the media (what, almost seven hours on?) were in a state of ignorance and confusion. With few facts to go on and no culprit(s) to blame, the commentators poured their speculative guff into the gaps, caught somewhere between hagiography and obituary. One reporter described Esther Speranza as the English Proust (a description obviously lifted from the dust jacket of her indigestible tome, Broken). It was just as he was declaring this to be ‘literature’s most grievous day’ that I decided to get a newspaper.
I ran to Rama News (yes, ran, despite Dr K’s explicit instruction to avoid overstimulation) and as I ran my future flashed before me with the force of prophecy: in it literature was saved by an unknown craftsman who for years had been working quietly on a masterpiece that rendered the loss of the nation’s supposedly finest writers in an alleged terrorist attack academic. I was so taken with this vision I walked right past Rama News. (I often run ahead of myself. It is, as Mother used to tell me, both my strength and weakness. I see more than there is: I take an acorn and see a forest; I make a bay from a grain of sand. Such is the burden of the poet.) Sanjay greeted me with his usual quip: ‘Decided to get up again, Don?’ I had no breath to reply with one of my customary witticisms. Instead I stared at the plastic dispensing tower containing the papers. All (except The Independent) carried the same shot of the Shard’s shattered top floor. And all were vying for the most memorable headline. The Mail: ‘Bloody Wednesday’ (serviceable). The Sun: ‘Shard Attack!’ (my favourite). The Guardian: ‘46 Feared Dead In London Terror Attack’ (groan). The Independent: ‘16.6.16’ (no photo and trying hard to establish a catchy date to summarise an atrocity. Bless.). The Telegraph: ‘Suspected Terrorist Attack On Shard’ (hasty). The Star: ‘Bastards!’ (assumptive use of plural). The Express: ‘London Blitzed’ (WW2 still sells).
‘What a terrible thing,’ Sanjay said, as I bought a copy of every paper. ‘What have those writers done to deserve such a thing?’
Not having a television, I took myself to the pub where they show the football. There, I found two men nursing pints and craning necks, watching the plasma screen that is suspended high in the corner of the saloon. Considering this was an attack on writers they hadn’t heard of who had written books they almost certainly hadn’t read, they were quite agitated. I stood just behind them, keeping my distance, and watched as the television ran a moving ticker tape at the bottom of the screen announcing the latest casualty figures. The larger, more threatening gentleman had a tattoo of Shakespeare on his forearm with the inscription, ‘To be or what?’ He was particularly exercised by the unfolding scene.
SHAKESPEARE: Towelhead cunts. (Given the presence of Vikram Bat at the party you can forgive people for thinking the strike might be religiously motivated. Bat made a name for himself less for his tedious, sing-song syntax and cod post-imperialist reflections, than for being crassly provocative by announcing that all religions including his own were ‘an evil which needed to be eradicated from this earth’. I suppose he’s now experienced what some people call ‘bad karma’.)
SHAKESPEARE’S MATE: They don’t know who did it, Jez. You can’t say that. No one’s claimed responsibility. (Responsibility is a funny choice of word for these acts. Why claim responsibility? Surely it would be more effective not to accept responsibility and thus keep everyone guessing?)
The reporter started conducting one of those awful eyewitness interviews with a woman who actually said: ‘There was this enormous bang and I thought: OMG, it’s a bomb!’
I left just as a hapless reporter started quoting from Vikram Bat’s portentous and frankly plagiaristic novel, All Our Houses: ‘Will not our words grow like flowers from these ashes?’ (Not yours, Vikram, not yours.)
Although my manuscripts will have arrived at the publishers’ today I must try and be patient. They are unsolicited. (I have forgone the use of an agent after Batstone Buckley Butler rejected Rocinante: ‘Dear Mr Keyworth, Thank you for sending us the manuscript for your novel Rocinante’s Revenge. We admire your ambition but it is not one for us. The current climate is not favourable for publishing novels of this length’, etc.) Most of the publishers will be a little distracted. Eleven of the twelve have lost a prized author in what the media are disappointingly deciding to call Bloody Wednesday. (A shame. It deserved a better moniker. Something like ‘The Anthology Massacre’ would have been more fitting, I think.) But publishers shouldn’t be too downhearted. Sudden, dramatic death can lead to increased sales. The Anthology is No. 2 on Amazon, kept from the No. 1 slot by Florence Peters’ book on cooking everything in butter. Works of the recently deceased writers make up positions 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 55, 60, 78, 90 and 240. Proving that ‘The soldier shows to greater advantage dead in battle than alive in flight.’
Esther Speranza got the first obituary. In homage to her, the obituary was written without punctuation. As with her novels, I gave up reading halfway through. Carruthers was given half the culture section in the Sunday Times, which used the unfortunate phrase ‘body of work’. Thoughtless, given what an explosion does to the body. And it was only a matter of time before some buffoon had to describe the bombing as ‘Literature’s Munich’. A terrible analogy. Writers are hardly team players and tend to show murderous envy towards their fellow practitioners. See Cranson’s demolition of Carruthers’ last novel in the LRB, which I can recall word for word: ‘With his every sentence straining for greatness Carruthers see
ms to be suffering from a particularly chronic form of literary piles: his prose purple, bulbous, irritating.’ There were three more obits: William Woolwich, the spy writer who thought his work should be on the school curriculum, got an indulgent 82 lines. McGee (140 lines!) was described as ‘a voice of a generation’. (Not mine.) Even that God-bothering token Welshman, Rhidian Brook, got 50 lines. I watched a Late Show discussion in which they tried (and failed) to assess ‘the loss to literature’. It was full of Churchillian phrases à la ‘We shall not see their like’, etc. The presenter did manage to introduce some light into the darkness by asking who might fill the vacuum created by Bloody Wednesday. Who indeed? It is laughable (and I have laughed out loud several times) watching the media failing to give this event the perspective it needs. The facts: forty-three people have died, among them twelve writers of debatable reputation. But no, they give us: ‘The Day The Words Stood Still’.
How long should you give a publisher when they (a) have recently lost their most prized author? And (b) have a masterpiece by a new author in their in tray? Having both things occur at the same time must be unprecedented so it is hard to know. But I’m getting twitchy. They are now saying the incident was ‘An attack on’ – variously – ‘Western values’, ‘London’, ‘Democracy’, and ‘Everything That Is Good’, but they clearly have no idea who carried it out. When asked who they think is responsible, the Chief of Police said: ‘We are exploring all avenues but, rest assured, we will find the people who did this.’
The words (the ones that matter) have not stood still! Today – at the keen-to-see-me time of 5.56 a.m. – an email pinged into my inbox from Stanley Morris himself! ‘Dear Mr Keyworth, thank you for the manuscript. I would like to discuss it with you. I have a number of memorial services to attend but I am free Thursday. Does 11 a.m. at my office suit? Yours, Stanley Morrison.’ A quick check of my diary revealed that, apart from a morning session with Dr K, I was free. My reply was concision itself: ‘Dear Stanley. I will be there. If there is anything I can bring (apart from hope), let me know. DQK.’ (The Q of my middle name suddenly appearing in my sign-off was unexpected but looked somehow more authorial.)