moby dick in manhattan

Tall Tales tomorrow. It will be excellent. Must. Finish. Warhorses.

Links:

This, by Joanna Kavenna, interested me for obvious reasons. It reminded me of the all-time great New Yorker article Moby Dick in Manhattan (not for squeamish writers).

Three dimensional sculpture/painting sort of things. Octopuses! Etc.

In case you didn't see the hilarious and awful thing about a driver who boasted on twitter about knocking down a cyclist.

this and that

For a dreamy 36 hours over the weekend it looked as if my mystery virus might actually turn out to have been malaria, but no such luck. We are back to tests and different smashing doctors proving to their satisfaction that apart from being ill, I'm very well indeed. It is like the world's most boring episode of House except that no one has suggested Lupus and I don't get new life-threatening symptoms every fifteen minutes.

Anyway, tabs, mostly via twitter, sorry they're not being credited:

- The guy who stole thousands of objects from the V&A to furnish his council flat.

- The funniest book review I can remember reading, and funnier even than the Dan Brown thing everyone including me has been loving this week. (Not just funny.)

- White House security is racist (gloopy journalese but shocking).

- Who would kill a monk seal?

Get Back Steve!

Virus in fourth week. Stupid virus.

I have listened to almost everything on iPlayer. I even cracked after 18 months of cold turkey and tried The Archers. I'm not that sick, it turns out.

One thing I have really been enjoying, as usual, is Paul Temple. In case you don't listen to much radio drama, Temple was a radio hero for decades in the middle 20th century, and he's a nonsensical posh sleuth who gets described as 'the famous author and amateur detective' in that way where no one really questions whether being 'a famous amateur detective' was ever a thing, which it wasn't.

The stories are all very alike. They are ridiculously intricate. There's an average of more than a death per episode and no one takes them that badly. Usually, Paul shouts at his wife Steve (plucky, clever, great actress, spends too much on clothes, has an 'intuition' once ever few episodes which Paul chuckles about) to 'stay away, I don't want you to see this'. This is even though half the deaths end with an obscure half-clue uttered with the final breath and it would be useful if someone were there to hear. Four people per series are killed after arranging to meet Temple to reveal with villain's name. Everyone bumps into everyone else in London as if it as a tiny village. If a spectacular necklace is stolen, it's the sort of crime that Paul and the police know that can only be committed by 'one man in all England'. Everyone has an accent, for clarity. Policemen tend to be Welsh and Scots. In this series, Harry Worth is a German.

On the other hand, they are well-written, line to line. They are ridiculous but they totally inhabit their ridiculousness, and so that's fine. And they are well-performed. And the period snatches you get are great. On one hand this is a couple laughing about the servant problem with respect to what to get your servant for Christmas. On a much more fun hand, the head of Scotland Yard, Sir Graeme, turned up to talk to Paul when he was in the bath. Paul invited him in and they chatted away, completely comfortably. It wasn't played for laughs. These guys had been in public schools and wars. They weren't worried by seeing each other naked. It was my favourite bit.

Anyway, I am bloody bored of being ill.

gay sports news

Long-term readers will be avid to know what I think of the fact that finally an active sportsman in one of America's major leagues (Jason Collins, NBA), has come out.

It's obvious what I think, and what everyone should think, which is thank goodness and it's a pity that it's a thing. I'm sorry it's a hassle for whoever was the first to do it, I can see why that's been putting gay sportsmen off more than any fear that people will be unaccepting, but it's basically great news.

My favourite tweet about it has someone, I'm not outing him, praising Collins for his 'modest and noble heroism'. Dude. The fact someone's done something excellent does not mean he embodies all the virtues. And never, ever take sportsmen at face value when they tell you they are being modest, or humble. I mean, pretty much by definition.

For instance, from Collins's piece in Sports Illustrated:

On the court I graciously accept one label sometimes bestowed on me: "the pro's pro." I got that handle because of my fearlessness and my commitment to my teammates.

read this book

I never review fiction, so this isn't a review. I'm just saying that Mountains of the Moon by IJ Kay is absolutely sensational. It came out in January 2012, so it has had plenty of time to gather word of mouth, get on prize lists, all these things. It absolutely staggers me that it hasn't.

It didn't get longlisted for the Booker or Orange Prizes. It's not worth worrying too desperately about prizes if you're a writer, but longlisting this book (which is sensational) would have got it in front of more people, and it utterly should be. And however subjective prizes are, surely, surely, this book...

Oh, I don't know. I think pretty much the single most important thing to be aware of when you start writing is that some books will be worse than yours and do better, and that some books will be better than yours and do worse, and that all you can do is make your books as good as you can. IJ Kay has done that.

Seriously, read Mountains of the Moon.

I'm not going to say anything more about it. I don't read reviews because they're full of spoilers. But I couldn't put it down. My wife couldn't put it down. The other two people I know who have read it couldn't put it down.

NB. It is published by my publisher; I was given a copy by the book's agent, who I happen to know. I'm given lots of books; my publisher publishes lots of books. I've never done this for any of them.

mystery item

My mum, as frequently pointed out by everyone, is amazing. Also a bit mental.

When I was a student (basically: all of the nineties) she would periodically come and see me. She would always bring a care package. This would be a plastic bag containing a collection of (in student terms) pricy groceries, like olive oil, coffee, posh dark chocolate and Alpen. Always, in addition, there would be a mystery item of some kind, that she thought might be useful. Which usually meant something that she had a spare spare of because she thought she might need a spare, and then discovered she already had a spare, and she didn't need two spares. Thus: horseradish, mint sauce, mango chutney, etc. Once in a while, the mystery item would be something a bit crazier. Suede protector. An electric tape-measure. Fingerless gloves.

This was bloody great. In my last couple of years, I played a lot of hockey. She and dad came to every home match. I spent two years in unimaginable oily, Alpenish luxury.

I also got a lot of mystery items. Especially mango chutney. My mother has a gene that means she can't tell if she has mango chutney in the fridge, and which causes her to buy spares at an incredible rate. The gene also means she can't tell if she gave her son some mango chutney two weeks ago.

As a student, I actually didn't need much mango chutney. By the end of those two years, I had eaten the chocolate and Alpen, but I had a cupboard full of mango chutney, and then another cupboard full of horseradish, cranberry relish and mint sauce. (I didn't often do roasts.)

Since the nineties, not a lot has changed. Partly because my financial situation didn't improve for a long time, and partly because my mother is a creature of habit. But I see her less than twice every three weeks (sadly) and I sometimes do roasts, so the build up is less frightening.

But once in a while, the mystery item, still, is a proper left-field zinger. Yesterday's was, I think, the all-time Top of the Pops.

(It was on offer.)

spellbound

I couldn't agree more than I do with Stefan Fatsis in this article about the muddle-headed plan to make the kids doing America's batty spelling bee learn definitions as well as learning to spell.

Spelling contests are about spelling. They're pure. They're not about reality television or self-improvement. And learning to be good at them does teach really useful skills - commitment, crucially. Learning definitions for all the words you can learn to spell is impossible. It will make the words on in the spelling bee less interesting. And a load of other things.

pirates! the wild west!

Did you know that concerted international efforts have finally started to deal with the Somalia piracy situation? Great! You can sail your massive yacht around Africa in peace.

Except you can't. Because piracy is booming on the other side of the continent, off Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana. How do I know this? Because I read Ship Management International. Why do I read this? Because it reviewed The Dazzle. Did SMI review Bring Up the Bodies? I doubt it. Who's laughing now, Hilary Mantel?

(You are.)

1. Ok, a new TLS is out so I have transcribed the review and the link is over on the right. My explanation for guiltily doing this is that I don't think a single person would subscribe to the TLS in order to see it, and if I didn't do this, no one would ever read the review, and for obvious reasons, I would prefer people did. I am sorry if that seems shallow. If it makes me seem less shallow, I would prefer it if you read The Dazzle.

2. Tall Tales was smashing last night. We had a last minute drop out for projectile-vomiting reasons, but we have a very deep bench and Matthew Parker stepped through two months in time. The next one is going to be on May 23rd rather than May 30th for reasons of my spending the week of the 30th at Hay.

I told a story which people didn't realise was more than half true. That's the problem with the truth being stranger than fiction.

3. Some fiend borrowed my copy of The Pyrates ages ago and I don't know where it is. Why are people such fiends?

4. Following up from the incredible story about Buzz Bissinger spending half a million dollars on Gucci, Gwen Knapp writes about having Buzz as a boss.

full

As in 'I am really full, I shouldn't have had that second helping of lunch, but I'm playing hockey later and it's probably going to be really cold.'

Apart from that, I mainly working out what the hell I am going to do at Tall Tales tomorrow and rewriting bits of Farm! after last week's triumphant production at Mayfield Primary School. I loved all of it, but Rocky and Apollo were particularly magic, and Boxer was very funny, and we had the world's most adorable The Knackerman.

Sample question from one of the cast: 'Why did you cut the first half of The Knackerman's song?'
Me: 'Because we were worried your parents might find it scary.'
Her: (Disappointed but understanding) 'Ohhhhh!'

None of this means anything to you, which is a pity, but maybe we'll get it into schools yet. The songs are amazing (I didn't write them) and, and this is the ballgame, the kids were grinning like crazy throughout. It was genuinely exciting.

(By the way, this feature on shopping addiction, via Light Reading over to the right, is jaw-dropping in various ways.)

gone farming

In 2002 or something crazy my friend Susannah Pearse and I wrote a musical called Farm! (SP wrote the songs. She's a genius.) Like a higher proportion of my work that most writer's, it features talking horses and centres around a race between a zebra and a racehorse on which the fate of a poor farm next to a rich farm hangs. A cute little girl rides the zebra, obviously, and the zebra is helped out by a sceptical team of fellow animals.

This is also the plot of the Disney movie Racing Stripes (2005). My mother will never not find this suspicious. I am convinced it's convergent evolution and my bad luck. It was unlucky because, in 2005, after a couple of years of workshops at Greenwich Theatre, it looked like Greenwich were going to put it on properly, and then Racing Stripes came out...*

The show was originally written for Debden Primary School in Essex, where my friend Holly taught. She now teaches at Mayfield School in Cambridge, and, after seven years, Farm! is being performed this afternoon. Sue and I are really excited about it.

(As you can see from the reviews links, there's a TLS review. You can, at present, only get it by paying. Or by reading it in a shop.)


* One of these workshops was professional and properly paid, which was quite something at the time. We suggested keeping the same director and mostly the same cast as we had in the first very successful workshop. Greenwich said 'I think we can do better than your university friends.' Thus, the Greenwich professional workshop did not feature David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Olivia Coleman (who had to pull out of the first workshop because she got paying work) and Gus Brown, and was not directed by Paul King. I regret these things still.

horse diving. for real, horse diving

How the hell have I never heard about this before? Now I can't think of anything else. Diving horses were a tourist attraction at Atlantic City for years, then they went away, then they came back. This one was from 1993, of all crazy things. Then they went away again.

Wikipedia says Doc Carver got the idea when a bridge broke and his horse fell in. Or, as Carver put it, 'dived'. His partner was Al Floyd Carver, who seems likely to have been a relation, and who married Sonora Webster, one of the riders.

Sonora's horse Red Lips slipped and fell in 1931 (I bet Doc would have called this a dive, but Doc was dead by now). The fall cost Sonora her sight, but she carried on anyway.

As a result of this, I also lost time to a great blog called Redneck Liberals and to the Fahey/Klein photography gallery. What about this! And this. And this. And, of course, this.

I am normally wary about retweeting and reposting reviews, because, you know, for all the obvious reasons. However, my day was genuinely made by Queenie on Amazon: 'This book was on a radio 4 programm and sounded really good. It was the most boring book I have ever read.' This is great! The only way she could have heard about the book on the radio was from listening to me talk about it! I knew I was good on radio.

(By the way, when you saw the diving horses I bet you thought, 'This would be a great way to advertise a President!' You weren't the first.)

warhorses, tall tales, hay is for horses

Gosh, time flies. You will be interested to learn:

Marie and I are writing the next Warhorses of Letters episode. Series 3 hasn't been commissioned yet, as far as I remember. (I definitely should know for sure, but it's been really busy and I could believe I'd missed it; I am pretty sure the situation is that we have heard, 'Don't worry, it will be commissioned,' but one doesn't make assumptions with these processes). We're going to write on anyway. We know what happens next, and what happens next is that Copenhagen and Marengo will be back in their regular slot at Tall Tales on 28th March, with me and John Finnemore. Do come.

Also, we'll be doing a Warhorses event at the Hay Festival, on Sunday 26th. Come to that too. I am doing something for The Dazzle on the following Saturday, so I might need to buy a tent.

You will also be interested to learn about the big stories in this year's NFL draft. Well, the ones I am following are:

- Barkevious Mingo, because he is called Barkevious Mingo. There's nothing the name doesn't have, but the thing that makes it art is the first 'o'.
- Menelik Watson, because in spite of the name he is from Manchester and he's only played two years of college football. Before that he was a basketballer and boxer.

Hot or not? An uninspiring photo essay.

Obviously, everything to do with bodies in public is much worse for women, and I am sorry for that. But a couple of times in the last week, I have been brought up short by male bodies. Mainly, it was Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. I mean, look at this weedy dude.

He's a super hard soldier in this movie! How does he even pick up a gun? He just looks like a normal fit human being. Cut forward 35 years and this is what a not particularly actiony actor looks like:

Sport is the other one. This is Finlay Calder, who captained the British Lions in 1989. He looks like a normal fit guy. But his head doesn't taper gently in from his shoulders, and his legs go in at the knees. He was a flanker.

So is England captain Chris Robshaw. But he is a professional sportsman, and he doesn't look normal by any means. He's 6'2" and weighs 17st 9lb. 

stop the world, i want to get off

I can't keep up with all the tabs I need to clear.

1. Tim Harford on tax: The tax system should be ... a system, with interlocking parts working together to achieve an overall goal. Instead the tax system is a labyrinth for ordinary users, a money factory for the tax advice industry and a stocking full of miscellaneous goodies for successive chancellors of the exchequer

2. The Sweet Valley High industry is really interesting. I loved this interview with Francine Pascal when I heard it on This American Life, and I loved Amy Boesky's piece on ghosting for the series when I read it this week: It seems to me now that part of the compelling power of Sweet Valley High’s vision of identical twins lay not in the obvious assignation between our split selves (id and ego), but instead, in the ways in which writing itself—real writing, difficult, strenuous, hard-won, “under your own name” writing—always stands in an uneasy relationship to its enchanting, seductive, rule-bending twin.

3. Nick Harkaway on conservatism and anti-technologism in mainstream literary fiction ('any fiction which can reasonably expect in the present climate to be discussed extensively on Radio 4'). Especially in light of previous post / comments. Why is Neal Stephenson not taken more seriously?

4. Horrid story about UN causing cholera epidemic and rejecting responsibility.

5. Victor Hugo's paintings are interesting. (Via Isak to the right.)