Amanda's blog

                       LA VIE BOHEME

 

My first inkling of what a writer’s life might entail came when I saw La Boheme * as a child. It was performed in the Rome Opera House, a two-bit theatre where arias were enthusiastically greeted by old-fashioned “claques”, paid to applaud even the most appalling caterwauling, and persuade the rest to join in. The audience tended to turn up more to show off their diamond tiara than listen to the opera. The claques were of course, the real clue; but as a ten-year-old I was transfixed by Puccini’s music, and by the doom-laden story of Rodolpho and Mimi. Actually, what I was even more transfixed by was a lifestyle in which people had to burn novels in order to keep themselves from freezing, and hock their last bit of jewellery to pay for a doctor. I had an uneasy premonition that this might be my own future if, as I knew I wanted to be, I became a writer myself, and for a good few years I wasn’t entirely wrong about this.

Yesterday, a kind friend took me to see a performance of La Boheme at the Soho Theatre, now in its last week. What made it wonderful were two things: its witty translation, updating it to present-day Soho, and the youthfulness of its cast, who not only sang beautifully but who brought back many memories of my own twenties. Of course, living in modern Britain, I had the benefit of the dole, free medicine and centrally heated public libraries. Even if I still got chilblains on every finger and toe because my own shared accommodation was too expensive to heat during the day, it was nothing like La Boheme; I was miserable for a whole range of reasons, which were also in the opera but which I was too young and silly to work out. I did all kinds of nasty, boring jobs, and eventually, I found enough work as a journalist to improve my lot, and life became slowly better.

But it made me think again about how difficult it is to get started if what you want is to write or paint or compose, and how hard it is for the present generation of young people. Even if you are lucky enough to find employment in a severe recession, just how much time and energy should you give to earning, and how much to trying to realise your creativity? The bohemians in Puccini’s opera had a familiar jocose despair, which may have cost Mimi her life – though in those pre-antibiotic days, it’s unlikely they could have done much to help her – and you wonder just how long the painter would have resisted the allure of full-time commercial work if he was to keep Musetta from the streets. Nowadays, perhaps, she would turn into a sex-blogger like Belle du Jour and not need him but a hundred years ago, options (especially for women) were more limited. I especially liked the translator’s touch of making Mimi an illegal immigrant with TB, as this is the kind of world I wrote about in Hearts and Mind. Those who have seen the musical Rent tell me it’s the same story, in a gay environment; maybe it’s always going to be around for as long as people feel they must choose between Art and the world, the flesh and the devil.

Myself, I think that to live on air in pursuit of your ambition or ideals is not  always admirable (somebody after all has to pay, somewhere, and it’s not exactly honourable to live off your relations or the State unless you really are a genius) but that having a day-job is good for creativity. Artists of all calibres need to keep in balance two seemingly contradictory things, which is the purity of their individual vision, and the demands of the market. Very few are, like Emily Dickinson, so private that they never want to be published or exhibited, and most, even if they don’t dream of riches, would be overjoyed to sell. It does you no end of good to think that your audience may appreciate you more if you make your work intelligible to them; I could write in a very much more elaborate, self-pleasing style than I do, but I don’t think many would thank me for it. Yet money is always the crack in the golden bowl. Should you compromise in order to be more commercial?

Only you can decide – assuming it’s a choice you’re free to make in the first place. Most of the writers, painters and musicians I know box and cox, fitting in what they truly want to do with teaching, journalism or even (in the case of a sculptor) fitting new boilers. Are they any less bohemian for so doing? I don’t think so, but this isn’t everybody’s view. There’s nothing that journalists seem to hate more than a novelist who earns a living doing journalism, and the same seems to go for musicians who write commercial scores or artists who, like Millais, let their painting be used to advertise Pears soap. The same is true of film directors who shoot commercials; I’ll never forget how, after I saw a preview of Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner, I begged a features editor on The Times to let me interview him because I thought it so extraordinary. She curled her lip and said dismissively, “Oh, but he makes advertisements.” Presumably if Scott had been living off Arts Council grants, there wouldn’t have been a problem.

Poverty may look pure and romantic to the well-fed, but it is in itself dispiriting, and draining to the stamina creativity demands. Yes, it may make you time-rich but someone who can only afford a bowl of vegetable soup and a slice of bread for supper is not going to create with the same vigour as somebody who can afford a can of tuna and beans. In the end, whether you succeed or fail as an artist is down not just to talent and luck, but to finances, and if someone is able to finance themselves then good luck to them. Not everyone is, of course. I am very against a world in which the only people who are creative are those who can afford to be – and I worry about what the cuts in grants and bursaries is going to do to the arts, which any nation is right to treasure as its conscience and its soul. However, I also think that to be creative is not a right, and that to live off others if you can possibly support yourself does not make you more talented or truthful or worthy of respect.

We all love to think of creative people as something akin to holy man and women, ascetics who see visions while mortifying the flesh. No doubt some have done so, but anyone who studies the lives of great artists from the Renaissance onwards may note that most preferred steak and a glass of wine – just like Puccini’s bohemians, in fact.

 

*Yes, I know the second “e” has an accent on, but I can’t put one on. Sorry.

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UCAS AND PERSONAL STATEMENT HELL

 

  Selling Yourself to University: Personal Statement Hell

It is with some regret that I have come to realise that, far from being an advantage to my children to have a novelist for a mother, I am quite a serious disadvantage. For one thing, no teacher has believed their homework to be their own, despite my not having been allowed to see theirs since each turned ten – so my kids tend to get marked down. For another, when one of them shows me something they have written, it’s a prelude to fearful rows. I read everything with the stern eye of a professional, and this of course, is a bruising experience for a child, especially one who has inherited my own unfortunate knack of hearing the subtext. What I can damp down, tactfully, in a review is horribly apparent to them, whereas any praise is overlooked as bias.

As a result, my daughter is applying to a different university to my own to read English, and my son says he doesn’t want to do the subject for A-level at all. (My husband is hoping he may yet escape the curse of becoming what he fondly calls “another useless arty type” and actually earn real money. I have to say that this crosses my own mind as I brightly suggest a future in either brain surgery or plumbing.) Anyway, I have every confidence in both of them  - despite being wracked, like most parents at this time of year, with appalling anxiety about exam results. On top of this, my daughter has been concocting her Personal Statement for UCAS, or University College Admissions System.

This has been a harrowing experience all round. Every newspaper is full of dire predictions about universities being full up, so that even those with 11 A*s at GCSE level and 4 As at A level are rejected not just by Oxbridge but every place of their choice. I find my sympathy for immigrants strained on learning how many places are taken by fee-paying students from abroad, simply because universities are desperate for money. I’m sure they are very bright people, but my own preference would be for a needs-blind system in which applicants are means tested, so that those who can pay, should; something that I’m sure would stop a degree of brain-drain to the US, too.

Anyway, the Personal Statement is something I remember writing in a single burst of misplaced confidence some time when I was seventeen. At that age, you don’t (or didn’t) realise just what a life-changing thing getting into a good university is but now of course the middle class has expanded, A-levels have been accused of dumbing down and the number of university places has remained the same. Consequently, applying is an absolute torment. I have been allowed five minutes in which to cast an eye ofer the daughter's, gulp, and hand it back. To me, she sounds like Lara Croft but then so does every child. From the moment your child is in secondary school, they are supposed to be not just working hard academically but honing their hobbies and skills in order to look more impressive. As a result, thousands of teenagers spend far too much time plodding up mountains to gain a Duke of Edinburgh Bronze, Silver or Gold, pretending to love charity work and learning, in my tone-deaf daughter’s case, to murder the classical guitar. Really, all she wants to do is lie about with her head in a book just as I did, but instead she must fulfil that accused CV.

All of which, according to friends of mine who are Oxbridge dons or serious academics, is a total waste of time. They assume that if your child has Grade Eight violin they simply had lots of money thrown at them, and it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to whether they are any good at the subject. They don’t give a damn about rounded personalities or other accomplishments, just whether you are a geek who might one day become a colleague or get a First. Try telling that to schools, though.

So, what are you supposed to put in this accursed Personal Statement that makes you stand out from the crowd? I’ve looked at quite a few Personal Statements as a favour to friends whose children apply to Oxbridge, and it is depressing how few even bother to check their spelling and grammar – but then I myself, as the product of progressive schooling, misspelt “February” until the age of 22, and am still rather hazy about split infinitives. I still don’t know why I got into Cambridge and other, no doubt brighter and better-qualified applicants didn’t, but I imagine my Personal Statement must have had something to do with it even though I can’t recall a word I wrote. How are you to sell your achievements without sounding like a conceited twit and a monumental pain in the neck? A friend sent me the following from America, and it cheered me up no end:

“I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

“I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook thirty-minute brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

“Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by Juventus, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my shed. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

“I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. Last summer I toured Burkino Faso with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.

“I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I chant Latin whilst working casually as a freelance ambassador. I perform short operas in the street to raise money for injured stunt dolphins, and regularly powerlift garden furniture for an entire afternoon.

“I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on holiday in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

“I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a pot noodle and a small spoon.

“I breed prize winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling awards at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken to Elvis.

“But… I have not yet been to university."

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SHOULD I HAVE HEARD OF YOU?

 

The question, “Should I have heard of you?” is one every author dreads. When Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize last year, she said in her speech that now, at last, she could answer, “Yes”. Few are so fortunate. “Maybe if you read literary fiction”, is one answer; “maybe if you read newspapers,” is another; “maybe if you read at all” is a third.

The fact is, most members of the public, including those who do read newspapers and buy books, are unlikely to have heard of 99% of contemporary novelists. I was snidely reminded of this recently in the Letters Page of The Daily Telegraph. I had written a somewhat tongue-in-cheek response to Harry Mount’s claim that the novel was dead because there were no modern literary page-turners. All the writers he cited were men. I pointed out that, actually, there are many literary page-turners – citing not only my own work but that of Helen Dunmore (Orange Prize winner) Andrea Levy (Orange and Whitbread Prize winner), Liz Jensen (best-seller) and Louise Doughty (author of among other things the Telegraph’s own Novel in a Year column). All of us, I hinted, had something else in common (ie, our sex.) Of course it was cheeky to include myself, so maybe when Mr Anthony Kay of Buxton, Derbyshire, wrote in to say the thing we had in common was that he hadn’t heard of any of us it was only my just deserts...though Mr Kay himself appears to be a fictitious character, as the Electoral Register has no record of his existence. I do hope I am not being paranoid in pointing this out.

Philistinism is endemic in Britain, and most particularly in London; a favourite dinner party game is to recite, with pride, the list of great books you haven’t read and have no intention of so doing. One can’t imagine the French or Germans behaving like this. British authors have a life-long battle to get noticed, even when published to rapturous reviews. There are only four ways of becoming well-known as an author in this country. One is to win the Booker prize; another is to have your book made into a successful film; a third is to appear on a TV show like Oprah or Richard & Judy, and the fourth is write a best-seller. My ex-US publisher, the sainted Nan A Talese of Doubleday told me of a boss of hers who send round a memo at the start of the recession asking editors to “from now on, only commission best-sellers.” This is a joke those outside the inky vale may not understand, because of course editors have no more idea of what makes a best-seller than anyone else. Editors are a much-maligned breed, and it’s easy to forget that they are brave and passionate people who tend not to publish anything without the hope and the belief that it will sell. Most of the time, they are disappointed. “Hope for the best, expect the worst,” is what my own editor, Richard Beswick, has as his motto.

Of course, as a critic, I am in a different position to editors and to many fellow-novelists because I’ve been able to give a bit of help to authors who have gone on to become hugely successful. JK Rowling, Philip Pullman, Stephanie Meyer, Cressida Cowell, Rick Riordan, Francesca Simon, Anthony Horowitz and many more got their first real, serious coverage because I spotted them, and stuck my neck out to tell readers they were something special. No one person making a fuss in just one newspaper is enough, of course, but it’s often the small pebble that starts an avalanche.

All this however is in parenthesis from the original question: Should I have heard of you? Well, it depends what kind of reader you are. If you only ever read on the beach, then definitely not; ditto if you only ever read non-fiction, or classics. Equally, there are plenty of readers who only ever read the winner of the Booker Prize, more, one feels, as a sort of grim cultural duty as out of pleasure. There are those who only read the titles recommended by a particular newspaper. There are those who read a book because they have seen an interview with an author on TV, or have gone to a literary festival in which they said something interesting – or just like their column, or their photo. I’m not decrying any of these, because so many books published you have to have some sort of filter. Few have the leisure, or the money, to read everything.

Mostly, however, if you have heard of an author, it could well be because a publisher has paid to have their book publicised on the Underground, on railways stations and on buses, or to have them discounted in a supermarket, or promoted in a bookstore. I don’t know what this costs, but at a guess it’s several thousand pounds because, ironically, it only happens to people who are already selling well. Doris Lessing put it very well in her Autobiography: a publisher is like a general who divides his soldiers into two troops to fight a battle. One troop does well, the other not. Should he send reinforcements to the successful force, or the flagging one? The answer, counter-intuitive as it may seem, is to reinforce the successful troop. This is how you win wars, or in the case of publishing, make profits (which can often feel like the same thing.)

As a critic, nothing annoys me more when a book arrives on the wings of a massive marketing budget. I’d much rather discover something that has been over-looked, or which has been bubbling under as a cult book that many more might enjoy if they knew of its existence. It may be no coincidence that I myself belong to this category: one of the most frequent, and frustrating questions I’ve had from readers who have enjoyed my work is: Why haven’t I heard of you before? As an author, of course, I’d love to receive that kind of push. It’s very time-consuming to not only have to write your books but to sell them, too. With Hearts & Minds, I was incredibly lucky in being taken up by Waterstones’ own book club, which got me promoted energetically in every store for a month; I’m hugely grateful to them. It was one piece of real luck, which came after twenty years of the opposite. Being long-listed for the Orange Prize also helped – a bit.

Writers such as myself sell a bit through public recognition, but more through word-of-mouth. You can’t in the end beat that. We all depend upon people who have enjoyed our work telling other people, who tell other people, and so on. It’s a very frail system, which can break down at any time, and yet it can’t be faked or corrupted. There is something very satisfying in knowing that the people who do read your work have come across it not because it’s fashionable, or massively marketed but because they are actually the people for whom I, at any rate, write. These are Readers, with a capital R. They are people who have intellectual curiosity and yes, dear Reader, if you are part of this blessed breed, then yes you at least may have heard of me.

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