I realised I haven’t written anything here for a week. The official reason is that I was busy – the unofficial reason is that I was in a constant state of nervous anxiety and couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds at a time. The reason for the nerves is pictured here: public speaking. I’ve done it… Read More
Date Archives February 2009
On not knowing very much about anything
Even Tolstoy and Goethe and Proust must have had the odd moment when they wondered if they really knew what they were talking about. Somehow I find that heartening.
Read MorePost-racial America
Please, somebody give me a non-racist explanation for this cartoon. Please.
Read More“Amsterdam” by Ian McEwan
This was a good, quick read. An interesting story that explores several moral issues such as euthanasia and privacy rights. Another theme is the yearning for greatness and the sacrifices involved, often in vain. For example, Clive is a famous composer trying to create a “Millennial Symphony” and struggling with the pressure. He feels on the verge of creating a… Read More
Books arrived!
When I first decided to quit my sensible career job and focus on writing, I suppose this is the day I had in mind. At the end of all the early mornings and late nights and rejection letters and self-doubt and setbacks and new starts and hating the chapters I loved yesterday and editing and wondering and dreaming and starting… Read More
“An Artist of the Floating World” by Kazuo Ishiguro
An elderly, celebrated artist, Masuji Ono, is living in retirement in Japan just after the end of World War Two. His daughter is having trouble in her marriage negotiations for reasons he can’t understand: gradually he realises it’s because he is associated with the rise of Japanese militarism in the 1930s, a period now discredited and blamed for bringing disaster… Read More
Article in The Bookseller
There was a nice piece about my novel On the Holloway Road in The Bookseller recently. It’s the main business magazine for the book industry in the UK, so hope it will get some people’s attention. There’s a scan of the article below, and you can also read it on my publisher’s website. Gives some good information about the book… Read More
Don’t apologise….
Show me the money!
Read MoreExtract from Susan Sontag’s diary
“X” is when you feel yourself an object, not a subject. when you want to please and impress people, either by saying what they want to hear, or by shocking them, or by boasting + name-dropping, or by being very cool. …… The source of X is: I don’t know my own feelings….. ….So I look to other people (the… Read More