It’s an odd moment in time.
I recently read Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Wolf Hall, a novel based on the life of Thomas Cromwell, and am now engrossed in Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City, by Tristram Hunt. And have being researching the English Civil War for a book.
It felt extraordinary to be reading and writing all this at the same time that the Pope suddenly announced completely out of the lapis blue that Anglicans who wish to become part of the Church of Rome will be very welcome.
The earth shuddered. I felt it.
Here am I reading about the Reformation one moment and then in another reading of its – arguable – end.
Was it inevitable?
Reading Building Jerusalem, funnily enough, makes one believe it was. The two topics may not seem to be linked, but of course one of the most visible and lasting legacies of the Victorian city is its Gothic architecture, designed by men (almost entirely) who pined for the lost glories of a past embodied by the medieval Church.
The German Romantic, and then Pugin and his colleagues profoundly regretted the cultural loss of Catholic ritual and the medieval religious aesthetic, just as conservative commentators like Carlyle (and possibly Tony Abbott!) longed for the return of the social structures that bound medieval communities together.
It was the great clash between the Industrial Revolution and rationalist/utilitarian thought, and romanticism. (One might also argue that it’s easy to agitate for the return of the great barons when you’re not a peasant farmer, although whether 15th century peasant farmers had a worse time of it than 19th century cotton mill workers it’d be hard to say.)
I’m endlessly fascinated by the play between these ideas: between Enlightenment and science; and Romanticism and the sublime. One won the day in practical terms, while the other won the battle for hearts and minds – or at least fond memory.
The process is embodied in some ways by Wolf Hall, wherein Thomas More – the revered friend of Erasmus, Renaissance man and martyr, who clearly won the sainted memory battle – comes across as a finicky, heartless and needlessly stubborn old git.
Cromwell, on the other hand – the rationalist lawyer usually painted as the evil power behind Henry’s throne, destroyer of the Faith, and chopper-off of queenly heads – is the focus of the novel and in spite of being far from saintly wins the reader’s empathy.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of the great battle was the French Revolution in which we can see the two ideas at war, along with a great many others, and it splattered both rationalism and Romanticism in their political senses against the walls of history and belief.
Perhaps Danton and Robespierre are the Cromwell and More of the 18th century…
and as I write that I realise that Mantell has described both fatal duets – better than anyone else.

At the weekend I bought Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall at Dymock’s (not even a true independent bookshop) for something around $32. I walked around the corner and there it was on a table out the front of Big W for $20.

Now, I’m happy to buy my potting mix and Dynamic Lifter at Big W, but I know from the other side where those discounts on books come from – the author.

It may not matter much to Dan Brown or Jackie Collins, but if you respect an author, especially a local or someone who is not regularly on best-seller lists, do them a favour and don’t buy their books from KMart or Big W or anywhere else that offers a huge discount on new releases.

Consider the difference as an investment in our creative future.

Grisham hits out at ‘shortsighted’ discounts

Author John Grisham has called the book price war in the US between Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Target a “disaster” for the book business, warning that the “shortsighted and short-term” discounts would hit publishers, book stores and aspiring authors.

Giant US retailer Wal-Mart—also Asda’s parent—sparked the price war when it began offering 10 upcoming titles, including Grisham’s new book Ford County priced at $24, for $10.

Speaking on NBC’s “Today Show”, Grisham said the discounts, of more than 60% on some titles, “seriously devalued the book”.

He said: “Its shortsighted, short term, they know what they are doing I think, but if a book is worth $10 then suddenly the whole industry is going to change, you are going to lose publishers and book stores, and though I’ll probably be alright, asipring authors are going to find it difficult to get published.”

Grisham added that $24 was “a fair price” that “enables me to make a royalty, the publisher to make a profit and the bookstore to make a profit”.

Following Wal-Mart’s price promotion, both Amazon.com and then Target offered the front-list hardback books at first $9 and £8.99 respectively, though they did limit the number that could be ordered.

Though none of the three US retailers have so far matched the 75% discounts seen in the UK on Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and Peter Kay’s Saturday Night Peter, the developments led to the American Booksellers Association asking the Department of Justice to intervene over what it called “predatory pricing”.

In a letter to the DoJ it said: “What’s so troubling in the current situation is that none of the companies involved are engaged primarily in the sale of books. They’re using our most important products — mega bestsellers, which, ironically, are the most expensive books for publishers to bring to market — as a loss leader to attract customers to buy other, more profitable merchandise. The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war.”

Reading
I gave up on Soul Mountain. I don’t give up on many books, and I know it’s terrible, but I just didn’t care about our narrator – in the first, second or third person.
So I came, finally, to Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller, which I have meant to read for years. The first half had me, I’m sure, reading with mouth agape, it’s just so gob-smackingly fine. Now it’s gone all silly and annoyingly postmodern. Surely it’ll come right.
But in the meantime I’ve got my grubby little hands on Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Wolf Hall. God, she’s good. If A Place of Greater Safety is one of the best historical novels ever written, this may well come close. Philippa Gregory, read it and weep – even better, read it and vow never to write that crappy Tudor trash ever again.
Next up, Antony Beevor on The Battle for Spain.

Listening
To the new Madonna greatest hits album, over and over, and it’s not even me playing it.

Eating
Broad beans, rocket and beetroot fresh from the garden.

Watching
Rain. At last.
Oh and Drew Barrymore movies.

Sandi Toksvig on the real-life heroines that have inspired her (in The Guardian):

The niece of the great Mongol leader, Kubla Khan, Princess Khutulun was described by Marco Polo as the greatest warrior in Khan’s army. She told her uncle she would marry any man who could wrestle her and win. If they lost they had to give her 100 horses. She died unmarried with 10,000 horses.

Reading
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper, which were, of course, delightful but also rather poignant towards the end. It’s fascinating to read his earlier letters through the prism of Brideshead Revisited and see the young Charles Ryder taking shape. (He wrote Brideshead in four months – now doesn’t that put us all to shame?)
Lady’s Maid, by Margaret Forster, a novel in the voice of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s maid, Wilson. It started promisingly but went on and on until I was almost desperate for poor Elizabeth to drop off the twig. (Now there’s a story that could do with a new movie treatment. So long as Brad Pitt wasn’t cast as Robert. Perhaps it could be a Fiennes of some sort. And for God’s sake don’t let Gwyneth anywhere near it.)
Now I’m reading Soul Mountain, by Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian. I’m surprised by regular jarring cliches, but assume it’s the translation. And now I know who to blame for that rash of second-person narrative of a couple of years ago.

Watching
The second series of Mad Men on DVD.
I love a cuff link.

Stephen Fry in America
I love a charming gay eccentric genius.

Oh and did I mention how brilliant Blessed is?

Writing
The dramatic horseback race across 17th century Italy, by a girl who hates ships (now there’s a turn up for the books).

Lying
On a beach in north Queensland.

Gardening
But I won’t bang on about that here: go there instead.

… that everything is just so interesting.
For the current book, I started off – years ago now, I’m embarrassed to say – with a draft based on admittedly sketchy research about the Jewish community in Amsterdam in the 17th century, went on to river routes of Germany, how an Auto de Fe was conducted and the mechanics of an early printing press. I used information I already knew – or thought I knew – about the Inquisition and Reformation, and the Index of Forbidden Books, and Venice and read, well, even more stuff.
My pattern seems to be that I only start writing about a setting or time about which I already vaguely know, even if my memory is not that sharp. Then I do need to research a certain amount to get the context right, but the first draft is more about character and plot than the delightful distractions of detail.
Now I’m redrafting it and adjusting my historical timelines a little, and I’ve decided I really can’t go any further without a refresher on Descartes and Locke (it’s now 20 years since my Philosophy major and what I’ve forgotten in that time would fill more pages than I’m actually writing), and delving into astronomical discoveries, and then I end up flicking through long-forgotten books about Gallileo or Bruno and wondering how to make a poultice for boils.
Of course there’s the re-reading histories of the English Civil War, and poring over maps of ancient cities or histories of costume, and retracing my early and sketchy research tracks rather more thoroughly.
You do all that, and then a huge portion of it you cast aside, so the reader never notices it. Although they do if you get anything wrong, which is one very good reason for doing it in the first place.
I’m sure it must be a great deal easier to write vampire novels.
Umberto Eco wrote (in Postscript to The Name of The Rose) that to tell a story, “you must first of all construct a world, furnished as much as possible, down to the slightest detail”.
And also it’s fun.

Writers Festival in Melbourne: Bernhard Schlink brilliant last night and Antony Beevor (all hail) on D-Day tonight.
But I do wonder:
1. Where do all those black berets live for the rest of the year?
2. Why, O why, do they let people ask questions? One in five is halfway reasonable – the rest are incoherent, lame, bloody obvious if you had either read the author’s books or listened to a word he or she has just said, or self-serving claptrap. Almost all are impossible to answer. You! Vainglorious moron! Step away from the microphone. Perhaps we could have a seven-second delay button. In my hand.
3. Is there no apostrophe in “writers’ festival” any more?

Last Saturday night I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came home and collapsed straight into bed and didn’t get up again.
It’s been strange. First day or so I was quite feverish and demented so I didn’t do anything at all except mutter like a nutter and cough. Then the pig pox turned into something else and I’m not sure which was worse.
I looked like a zombie, because the infection was in my eyes and my eyeballs were a fetching crimson, so if anyone had seen my staggering around in my pyjamas they might have called the SES. Or Buffy.
Luckily nobody was here. My girlfriend was in NZ and all she got from me was a sort of rusty squawk over Skype.
I’ve been in some kind of twilight zone – missed my nephew’s birthday, the glamorous premiere of my friend’s brilliant film [trailer here], the delivery of my brand new laptop, Geelong beating Hawthorn by a point, and about a million meetings at work.
Hours, days (eight so far), just vanished without trace.
Couldn’t read or watch anything I hadn’t already read or seen, which resulted in an awful lot of Harry Potter and Broadway musical rehashing, which in turn resulted in some fairly bizarre dreams (Hermione Granger in jail with Roxie Hart … or something). Couldn’t even read the newspaper. After a few days I have graduated to watching crap on YouTube, which, due to the constant buffering on our wireless connection, just about matches the pace of my brain.
All very odd. As if the brain needed to just stop.
If only it could do so without tearing out the lungs and throat as justification for lying down – speaking of which, I urgently need to go back to bed. Pathetic.

Writing
Or rather rewriting my book for young readers set during the Counter-Reformation.
(And clearly not writing on this blog)

Reading
Harry Potter again, from start to finish, because I saw a trailer for Half-Blood Prince and got a little too excited for my age.
Doctorow’s The March – brilliant, of course, but not Ragtime. I know that’s unfair, but that’s what happens to people who write one of the great books of the 20th century.
Michael Dirda’s Book by Book, which was a complete waste of my time, his publisher’s ink, paper, and over-enthusiastic cover blurbs. Read like an undergraduate blog.

Watching
Tenko on DVD. Remember that?
The Lemon Tree

Waiting for
The Blessed premiere at the Melbourne Film Festival

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