On Writing – A L Kennedy

A L Kennedy spends a lot of time on trains, travelling up and down the country from one literary festival to the next, across the American continent from literary festival to literary retreat. She crosses oceans on ships, thanks to her underlying fear of flying. This means she does a lot of her writing on the move or in hotel rooms. She also teaches creative writing at Warwick University, appears on television panels and performs as a stand-up comic. As a writer who paid less attention to her physical welfare than to the demands of her writing, she has also suffered for her art. Thankfully these days her health is better, although there are still doubts about her workload. She was recently on the panel of judges for the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013.

That is the backdrop for a series of blog posts, originally published in the Guardian, now collected into this volume alongside some essays and the script of her one-woman eulogy to Words. A show I had the pleasure of seeing and I am delighted now to possess the script!

I can’t think of any book that would have been better company as I recently gallivanted up and down the country between Glasgow and London on both West and East Coast Lines. Because A L Kennedy is one of those authors I make a beeline for at any literary festival. She is sassy, funny, and not afraid to voice an opinion. She has an immaculate sense of timing. This is A L Kennedy writing as A L Kennedy (not one of her tormented fictional characters). Her voice is undiluted and as I read it was just like I was listening to her.

The blog posts follow the creation of an unnamed novel, though the timeline indicates it was The Blue Book. From the days of research through the first draft, the painful rewrites, the crafting of the words to publication. The genesis of a novel: a child is conceived, born, reaches adolescence (and drives its author demented) but is still nurtured into adulthood before making its own way in the world. Insights given as to how an idea forms into a narrative; the analysis of each sentence. For example:

A man walks into a room

We’re off then. He’s a man definitely a man, not a lady, or a unicorn, or an urchin – not even with urchin-like characteristics – unicorn-like, then? Does he seek out virgins? Not that I’m aware of. Was he at any time a lady? Nope.

Slowly a paragraph builds and along comes the following suggestion.

The light of the universe hightlights his broad cheekbones.

Right, I’m filling a sock with room-service supplies, taking you imto a bathroom and hitting you with it, until you either get a grip or die like the useless weasel you clearly are. Light and highlights? Because we love useless and meaningless repetition? …. AND DON’T EVER LET ME CATCH YOU SLIPPING POINT OF VIEW LIKE THAT – WE’RE IN CLOSE THIRD. HE CAN’T SEE HIS OWN SODDING CHEEKBONES, CAN HE?

Laugh out loud funny in parts, there are also serious and eloquent defences of the life enhancing and sustaining power of the arts in general and words in particular, alongside evidence of the role of community workshops in helping participants build a sense of self-worth. Kennedy pours her passion, honesty and humanity into every piece and thus delivers a masterclass on writing, on blogging and the realities of her life as an author.

Superb.

Thoughts on the London Book Fair

Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. Glad I wore trainers, heaven knows how those power dressers survived 3 days in 3 inch heels!

From the viewpoint of a reader, it was a wonderful window shopping exercise. Couldn’t do too much damage to the credit card, but the wishlist grew … exponentially … And a purchase or too may have been made since I got back. You’ve seen the pictures – aisle upon aisle of publishers known and unknown. Discovery of the fair for me The History Press – took more pictures of their books than any other, which is probably in keeping with the fact that I’m really enjoying my non-fiction this year. Expect a review or two from their catalogue sooner, rather than later.

Plenty of talks too to break up the day. I attended events at the Literary Translation Centre snd the Pen Literary Cafe. (Brilliant programme but not enough seats.) There were so many different streams of talk and seminars on bookselling, digital, international and self-publishing. Also and unfortunately, I discovered this on my way out, the Russian stand had its own separate literary festival – including at one point a talk by the legendary translation duo Pevear and Volokhonsky. (Really sorry to have missed that.)

The air was thick with book talk – not my kind, but the wheeling, dealing kind, as agents met publisher and pitched their titles, book distributors met sales people and placed their orders, foreign rights editors tried to sell translation rights to their books. At least that’s what I, a member of the public interloping for a day, imagine was going on. Or was it?

A funny happened at the pub (to which I retired in need of liquid refreshment at the end of day one). I’d forgotten to remove my badge (and my promotion to literary agent!). How was the book fair for you?, asked a disgruntled overseas visitor. Our man had come to the fair with a not insignificant book budget – £40,000 – and the objective of getting the best deal for the educational establishments he was supplying. Perhaps his mistake had been to think he could do business without an appointment? What he found on the stands he visited were publishers represented by temporary PR staff unfamiliar with the product. Also publishers who had sub-contracted order taking to other publishers, who wouldn’t then take his order! At the end of a long and frustrating day our overseas visitor was taking his entire budget back with him. Seems to me that some publishers had missed the point. Can they really afford to lose orders like that in these austere times, particularly when they must have shelled out thousands to exhibit at the fair? Or is £40k not worth getting out of bed for?

I did, of course, offer to relieve him of his burden – I can just imagine a £40k splurge around the London book shops – unfortunately he wasn’t biting. He returned home to do business elsewhere. And I don’t see him visiting again next year.

Gallivanting into Spring: 5 minutes from the Piccadilly Line Part 3: London Book Fair

This final installment of 5 Minutes from the Piccadilly Line brings us to Earl’s Court – just in time for the London Book Fair!  Anyone following my twitter feed would have realised that the intention was to tweet the fair with photos.  Technical hitches prevented that – can’t fathom why tweets without photos tweeted but those with photos didn’t.  Oh well, that just means we’ll have to relive the experience here.

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The fair lasts for 3 days. I was there for 1.5 days and I had the feeling that I barely scratched the surface. May just have to go back next year. #soundslikeaplan

Gallivanting into Spring: 5 minutes from the Piccadilly Line Part 2

Our first Piccadilly line gallivant took us one station down the line. From King’s Cross to Russell Square. This time we’re going a little further afield – 2 stops to Covent Garden and a further 4 to Hyde Park Corner where we’re going to enjoy some literary-themed night life.

Covent Garden is right in the middle of theatre land and there are no end of theatre productions inspired by literature. The current season includes stage productions of Roald Dahl classics Mathilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a thoughtful production of two of Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories – excellent by the way if a quiet, thoughtful, vignette of ordinary lives is what you seek. But for the best piece of theatre I’ve ever seen, hie thee to the New London Theatre for War Horse..

In theory, this shouldn’t work. Whoever heard of puppets where the puppeteers are visible? And the star of the show Joey (or Topthorn, if you are Captain Stewart aka William Rycroft from Just William’s Luck) is controlled by 3 fully grown men. Actually it takes only 5 minutes, if that, to forget the men and live the story. The flick of the tail, the movement of the head, the ears. Name the movement, those horses are real. The story may be taken from a children’s book but I wouldn’t say this play is for kids. There are some brutal scenes, and while not graphic they are frightening. Also there are scenes in French and in German. The idea is to portray the war from the horses’s viewpoint. They had no translators and neither should the audience.

My fellow blogger William offered a post-show backstage tour and so, for one night only, I trod the boards of a West End stage.

Don’t give up the day job, Lizzy.

I was also amazed at how little space there was for all the props. Tanks, and spectral horses are simply hanging from the ceiling, though fortunately Joey the horse, Joey the foal and Topthorn were spared that indignity and granted stables at stage level.

Interestingly a German version is being prepared for the Berlin stage – I can feel a trip coming on.

Continuing our excursion down the Piccadilly Line, let’s skip Knightbridge (alight for Harrods) and Green Park (alight for Pall Mall and Buckingham Palace) and head for Hyde Park Corner. We’re heading for Belgravia, home of the mega-rich and the most expensive real estate in London. These Georgian mansions will set you back about £10 million – if you can find one for sale. Belgrave Square is also home of the embassies and we’re now heading for the Austrian Embassy. (Thank you, New German Books for the invite.) Another blogging superstar, Katy Derbyshire of Love German Books is moderating (actually, as you can see, she’s deeply engrossed in) a conversation with Austrian author Clemens Setz.

That’s just bizarre!

The translation of  Setz’s German book prize shortlisted novel Indigo is currently in progress, targeted for publication in 2014. Clemens Setz read a portion of the translation and pronounced it more beautiful than his original! It appears that Ross Benjamin is doing a fantastic job. Read a sample here.

And blogging’s bringing some unexpected and fantastic experiences along with it. Who would have believed that, when I lost my notebook and decided to put future notes in a place where I would not lose them, it would lead to opportunities like this?

Gallivanting into Spring: A second trip to Aye Write 2013

From the moment the programme was published, I knew the 8th AyeWrite festival was going to be fun. It seemed much more diverse and far less parochial that in previous years. I don’t remember ever wanting to attend 5 events on the same day before.

This post will focus on the 3 fiction events- leaving the non-fictional subjects to be dealt with at a later date (when I have read the books).

We start at midday and are transported to 17th century Florence and the life of Zumbo, the infamous-in-his-lifetime master of the wax figure. Rupert Thomson described the moment when the idea for his novel, Secrecy, began to germinate in his mind. At the recommendation of a stranger, he visited the Specula in Florence, and was astounded by the anatomical wax figures he found there: Minute wax tableau, the figures can fit on the palm on the hand, depicting, depending on your outlook, death and putrefaction, or love of the lost beauty of life. Astounding figures, said Thomson. The life-sized models even more so – macabre, yet quite beautiful, with a sensual sheen on the skin, a cross between the anatomical and the erotic.

He discovered them in 2000 (he remembers it well, there is an accompanying story of personal trauma), spent a goodly number of years researching Zumbo’s life, and discovered the perfect subject for a novelist – enough facts to give a structure but plenty of space for his imagination. Zumbo left Sicily at the age of 19 and never returned. He left under a cloud due to an “irksome incident”. This is alluded to in Secrecy, the first of many secrets, not all factual, not all answered. The novel mixes history with fiction in the same way as Zumbo mixed his waxes – one shade blending into the next with no discernible edges. This is a smooth read, seemingly effortless writing … Not a bit of it, there were 10 drafts.

Thomson is a perfectionist. The challenge was to make his story fit history and, frustratingly, he was still discovering new facts after the 6th draft. Plus, said Thomson, there was the challenge of producing a text that mirrored the contradictions within Zumbo’s wax figures and the historical figures at the Florentine court: the powerful Grand Duke who was more suited to the priesthood, his contemptuous wife, who eventually was sent to convent and, of course, Zumbo, himself- a man, with enemies, trying to make himself invisible in order to survive.

Thomson is more than equal to the challenge he set himself.

Maggie O’Farrell takes us back to a time within living memory – the now legendary heatwave of 1976 – which I remember all too vividly because of a migraine that went away only when the weather broke and the rains came bucketing down. (How my weather sensitivities have since changed). This is not the book she intended to write. It’s just that she kept hearing snippets of a bickering family and that family, the Reardons, just wouldn’t shut up, The heatwave came into focus thanks to that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano. People in London behaved very strangely, said O’Farrell when their delusions of being in control were made manifest. So too, the Reardons.

It’s boiling outside and tensions are certainly simmering in the Reardon household. They have been for years, although the disappearance of the father, who simply pops out for a paper one day and doesn’t return, ups the ante somewhat. The adult children return from their now separate and not entirely successful lives to the nest to support their mother. While they are trying to solve the mystery, all kinds – and I mean all kinds –  of skeletons emerge from the closet. The question is will the crisis bring them closer together or fragment them beyond the point of fixing?

For me, the strength of this novel lay in the small details, inserted at times casually into the text and which rendered it totally authentic: the smugness of a mother whose adult children return to her; how a conversation can turn into a fight through one mis-inflected word; a child immersed in driving toy toy cars down the cracks in the lawn; the behavioural patterns of a dyslexic, survival strategies to them, strange and alienating behaviours to others. The big reveal, however, struck me as implausible. Still, the ending, understated and well-timed, made me cry.

The final event of the day was a celebration of the works of Muriel Spark, particularly those she published 50 years ago in 1963, 2 years after The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the debut novel that made her a millionaire but which overshadowed everything she wrote thereafter. The four panellists read from her novel The Girls of Slender Means, a couple of short stories, The Thing about Police Stations (utterly marvellous!) and The Gentile Jewess as well as a scene from her only play, Doctors of Philosophy and a poem entitled On the Lack of Sleep. They followed this with a discussion extolling Spark’s virtues.

I almost inserted the adjective alleged there. You see, while I love Jean Brodie, I absolutely detested A Far Cry from Kensington when I read it a couple of years ago and I doubted I’d read anything by her again. This has puzzled me, given that I’m a great fan of Dorothy Parker’s ascerbic wit. So in the spirit of the event, I did read The Girls of Slender Means and, while not entirely bowled over, I have pondered and am in the process of uncovering depths that don’t reveal themselves with a superficial quick read. Plus last night’s event – particularly The Thing about Police Stations – is working on me. If there’s ever another Muriel Spark week in the blogosphere, you might find me joining in.

Secrecy – Rupert Thomson ***1/2 / Instructions for A Heatwave – Maggie O’Farrell  *** / The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark *** for now. Rating likely to rise once I have pondered some more.

Gallivanting into Spring: 5 minutes from the Piccadilly Line Part 1

Travelling to London is really quite pleasant on the train. No aggravation associated with flying – just 5 hours uninterrupted reading time and once you’ve added in all the to-ing and fro-ing to airports and security checks, train travel is not that much slower from house to hotel door. Plus there’s no need to worry about the weight of the bookbag suitcase on the way back. I could make a habit of it. Heck I am making a habit of it, if you call 2 trips in 3 weeks a habit.

Once in London, I have to confess, I am not a tuber. Give me a bus whenever time is not of the essence. I want to sightsee and the top deck of a London bus is a great way of doing this. However, this year, given as the underground is 150 years old, I thought I’d make a special effort and, when I looked at the places and events on my itinerary I discovered that, with just a couple of exceptions, everything was literally only 5 minutes from the Piccadilly Line. It shouldn’t me much of a surprise. In the words of Peter York, author of The Blue Riband it is the tourist trophy line.

Have you seen the Penguin Tubelines bookset? A brilliant idea in which each tubeline is celebrated with its own volume. The Blue Riband, the Piccadilly line volume, was written by Peter York, a self-proclaimed capitalist tool, who hadn’t travelled on the tube for 25 years before being given this commission. How was he going to approach it? He summarises it neatly on the back cover: Idea for Book: The Line of Luxury, Big London with the highest house prices in the universe and a Royal Blue Line running through it..

The rest of this post compares Peter York’s architecture-focused Blue Riband with the literary one that I experienced during Spring 2013.

I arrived at King’s Cross after an excellent trip south with East Coast Trains. 1st time I had travelled with them and I shall willingly repeat the experience. Also the first time I had been to King’s Cross, currently in the midst of an extensive and pretty impressive renovation. Just look at this roof …

King’s Cross Station

Admittedly this is the overground station and so is not mentioned by Peter York but it seems to me to me to be as architecturally aspirational as the Piccadilly line interwar underground stations designed by Charles Holden- modernist architectural experiments, modern, glamorous and clever, a metaphor for the new world.

Russell Square station, built 1906, designed by Lesley Green, is two stops from King’s Cross, is the heart of Bloomsbury and the centre of my first London trip.

Piccadilly Line Platform – Russell Square

George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, aka London University’s Senate house, designed by Charles Holden, is 5 minutes from Russell Square as, indeed is the British Museum. But, for me, Bloomsbury is a hub of British Publishing and while in the vicinity I used the opportunity to meet up with Alison from Atlantic and Rebecca from Faber.

Faber And Faber HQ

Bloomsbury is also, as we bloggers know, home to 2 world famous bookshops: the London Review of Books Shop in Bury Place and the Persephone Book Shop in Lamb’s Conduit Street. According to York, there’s a bit of a smart street scene around Lamb’s Conduit Street featuring several clothes shops and restaurants suitable for youngish types who’ve had a design education.

Of course, I visited both shops and it was in the LRB shop where I met Kim on her way to the same place as myself, the Bloomsbury Bloggers Tea Party. This is a very civilised and special occasion where a small number of bloggers are treated to tea and cakes and an afternoon of literary chat regarding forthcoming publications in the elegant reception area at Bloomsbury HQ in Bedford Square. It is such a literary setting – tea, cakes, bloggers, authors, publishers, surrounded by literary history …

Bloomsbury belles!

Who could fail to be inspired by such a sense of literary and architectural history? Final words to York on Bloomsbury:It’s very late eighteenth century in its core architecture , the great Bedford estate squares (Bedford, Bloomsbury, Russell), and the wonderfully long, narrow, sooty, London brick Gower Street. And it’s festering in blue plaques.

To be continued …..

Meet the Translator: Donal McLaughlin

I know Donal. I’ve met him a few times at the Edinburgh Book Festival, whirling round Charlotte Square like a human dynamo, full of enthusiasm as he ambassadors on behalf of translated fiction. I couldn’t be more delighted that his latest translation, Urs Widmer’s My Father’s Book, has been longlisted for Three Percent’s Best Translated Book of America and I am, of course, dead pleased that he found some time in his hectic (you’ll see) schedule to answer a few questions of mine.

1) How did you become a literary translator?
Meeting a Swiss writer in a cave in the Karst region of Slovenia in 2001 was to prove to be the crucial moment. Prior to that, I read a lot as a kid and wanted to write; discovered foreign languages and wanted to translate. I then did the university thing. What was at least as important was attending hundreds of readings in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the 80′s and 90′s. Listening to writers read. To what they said about their work. Later, chairing events and interpreting for visiting writers at the Goethe Institute in Glasgow and the Edinburgh International Book Festival also helped. For me, it’s not just about the page, it’s also the stage – in the sense of reaching out to an audience.

2) Is your specialism in translating Swiss Literature self-chosen and influenced by your own reading preferences? If not, how did it come about?
My ‘specialism’ has done just that: come about. I remember reading for the first time that I specialise in translating Swiss fiction. The sentence didn’t come from me but there is a certain truth to it. How did this focus come about? Various factors – or steps along the way. Frisch and Dürrenmatt were among the first writers I read at school and university. Andersch – a German who became Swiss – was the subject of my PhD. His Franz Kien stories were a certain inspiration for my own Liam stories. Fast forward to that cave. I’ve also been attending the Solothurner Literaturtage since 2004 when I had a residency in Berne as a writer. I was later asked to translate over 100 writers for the New Swiss Writing anthologies (2008-2011). That literary exchange between Glasgow and Berne – which later opened up to all of Scotland and more of Switzerland – also meant that for seven years, we had regular Swiss visitors to Glasgow. Including Pedro Lenz whose novel I’m translating into Glaswegian.

3) What are the particular challenges of translating Swiss fiction?
The so-called Helveticisms. Though dictionaries can normally help. If need be, I ask. Also while, at university, I specialised in the Third Reich and the post-war period from a German point of view, translating someone like Urs Widmer requires research on the Switzerland of the same period. The political landscape etc. The actual landscape can be challenging too. Finding the words for it.

4) According to your website, you’re currently translating Widmer books 4-6? What’s the attraction? How did you become his translator?
If I may answer your questions in a different order: I became Urs’ translator because Naveen Kishore of Seagull Books asked whether I’d be interested in translating My Mother’s Lover, My Father’s Book and the Frankfurt lectures on poetics (due out this summer). A good friend and colleague, Katy Derbyshire, drew Naveen’s attention to me. I was thrilled, of course, not least because Urs’ play Top Dogs is an all-time favourite of mine. It’s both hilarious and heart-breaking. A brilliant and necessary take on the world of work.

The attraction of Urs’ writing? How long have you got? The great story-telling. The warmth, the humour, the colour. The historical / political context. The outrageous risk-taking, the things the guy pulls off. In the lectures on poetics too. Not just the fiction.

And yes: books 4-6 are currently happening. And we hope there will be more.

5) Your translation of My Father’s Book is currently long-listed for the Best Translated Book of America? Were there any particular challenges translating this book?

My Father’s Book is long-listed, yes. That might be as far as it goes, of course, but it’s great to get a mention. From memory, three Swiss novels (one written in Russian!) and four German-language titles made the cut – which is encouraging for those who do so much work, both paid and unpaid, to find English-language publishers for books.

Particular challenges? I heard Urs read for the first time while I was working on the Father book – and realised I needed to “up the ante” even more in terms of the energy in the text. I also had this book in particular in mind earlier when I mentioned the need to do research on the historical and political context.

6) Which of your translations gave you the most pleasure and for what reason?

Impossible to answer. I’m a lucky man. I’ve been offered great books. I’ve also managed to find outlets for those I “discovered” through e.g.  New Swiss Writing and the festival in Solothurn, or a study trip to the Leipzig Book Fair organised by the Goethe Institute.

Since I’m answering this question in the week of the 98th birthday of the author of my first translated book, I’ll single out Stella Rotenberg and Shards. Born in Vienna, Stella fled to the UK in 1939 and has lived here – divorced from her mother tongue – for over seventy years. Her poems are written in a language she has been aware, for decades now, of losing. I shall never forget how audiences responded to the poems – and Stella – when the book came out.

7) I’ve been trying to catch you for this interview since last year’s Edinburgh Book Festival – but you’re never in one place long enough. What have you been up to? Did you ever think that being a literary translator would be so jet-setting?

I think YOU decided last time that the interview should wait! That I’d enough on my plate!
Editor’s note: This is true. I saw your itinerary. Believe me, it was for your own good.

Jet-setting? I certainly didn’t expect to tour India one day with Urs Widmer. Or to go gigging in the States with Christoph Simon and Zbinden’s Progress. Or to be Tom Leonard’s interpreter when he was awarded the N C Kaser Prize in Lana. For me, that’s what it’s all about, though. Reaching out to audiences. Exchanging ideas with other writers and translators internationally. I am grateful to the LCB in Berlin, who like the Goethe Institute and Pro Helvetia, do so much to bring translators from all over the world together – in a bid, too, to improve the quality of translations. Those workshops / conferences – and translation houses like Looren in Switzerland – also help to foster to a greater sense of community among translators.

8) You’re an author as well as translator. Which role do you prefer? Have you thought of translating your own stories into German? Do you think they are translatable?

If I may answer your questions in the wrong order again.
Editor’s note: I can’t help asking them the wrong way around.  I was a breech birth.

Translate my own stories? No way! They’re hard enough to write. I have to dig so deep for the language. Translatable? Yes, by the right person. – Individual stories have been translated into different – often eastern European – languages. I remember listening to a Latvian version of an allergic reaction to national anthems at a festival in Riga. The translation was read by the translator’s husband. Andris is a radio man, and I could tell from his gestures, expressions and intonation that Valda Melgalve’s translation was something special. I knew at all times where Andris was in the story though I have just two words of Latvian. (“Labdien” and “paldies”, if you’re interested.)

As for author / translator and which I prefer: the trick is to get the balance right. To get to do both.

9)Which 3 works of German-language literature would you take to the proverbial desert island and why?
The dreaded question! On the assumption that German-language publishers and authors would find ways of getting their books to me, in glass bottles or via the ethernet, I’m opting for Raymond Carver Where I’m calling from, Bernard MacLaverty Selected Stories (forthcoming) and James Kelman Collected Stories(which will exist one day, I’m sure).
Editor’s note: I’ll allow that answer – we are talking about a fantasy island after all and I know how difficult it would be for you to recommend just 3 works of German lit.

10)You are allowed another book to take for translation purposes. Which would it be and why?
If you force me to choose, it has to be “the one that got away”: Rolf Lappert Nach Hause Schwimmen – an Irish-American novel by a Swiss writer, winner of the Swiss Book Prize in 2008 and shortlisted for the German Book Prize. The readers’ favourite, according to the FAZ. – Why? A translation is already overdue – and surely one day, an English-language publisher will get over the fact it runs to (almost) 450 pages!

***

Donal’s translations of Abbas Khider’s The Village Indian, Urs Widmer’s Frankfurt  lectures on poetics, On Life, Death, and This and That of the Rest (both Seagull) and Pedro Lenz’s naw much of a talker (Freight) will appear in the months ahead. His own new book, beheading the virgin mary and other stories, will be published by Dalkey Archive in 2014.

Hopefully his translation of My Father’s Book will appear on the BTBA shortlist on the 10th of April. Here’s  a link to a piece by Tess Lewis on why it should.