At last rit propper 7 April 2022 albeit in a tremendous rush due..certain pressing issues. And an injury to an arm that makes typing rather a pain in the ...arm. Funnily enough an injury - i never have them, from outdoor activity related to a lot of this in a way, still...
Now it is of course daft to imagine a writer or two (or even all four or five) to help try and co write or even write something that may end up some sucker chucking a few million bucks at. And if it is as good as The Untouchables, making 2000 percent return on pocket money.... Or maybe even the musical, Slumdog, making a rather decent return, too....
Except i do know several things: 1. jolly good material. The real stuff - funny events in police cars and even funnier ones breaking very very serious contempt of court publishing rules. And plenty of super poignant moments including a death of someone central (in my life - used as true public emotional blackmail, coercion, and outright abusive thought control, upon the most senior Appeal Court Judge in UK) ) ...in fact two of them in my story i loved a lot died most tragically over a few years ! and i have had a very very quiet uneventful life quite by choice. And havent loved that many fellow humans at all really...
I have many a vignette jotted down over the years and am extremely efficient (only ever lost two - last week). All sorts of poignant moments. Some a great surprise. I have read many books and know what qualifies as part of something. And what may grip a viewer or reader. The problem will be editing out plenty a poignant moment.
So, writing something for adaptation - but I rather myself just get on with it. Except I reached a point in life where I am bored. Bored pondering the story. It is a necessary job but i have done it now. And I have a great memory. I just want to 'tell' the story. Once. In fact to one person. But to someone somehow with an investment in it too. I am so tired of the cynical attempted tripper uppers.
It seems there is a curious modern thing of everyone wishing to be their own investigative journalist wishing to expose some hidden truth in another's persona. Someone did it to me once - it didn't end well.
I am the luckiest chap alive - it's obvious, when one is held up initially as baddie in public, for a judge who has total power - total.... to then return your child to you in record time - a far shorter time than the 'average' parent stuck in endless hearings of the custody court system, well, that says something. To most rationally objective people, rather a lot.
And i am a deep deep philosopher walking my local hills days on end solo. I know the modern writers may well have tried to show some of it but there is absolutely no point figuring the 'inner life' of almost anyone; even people one spends long periods with in extremis as in the last few years. I have absolutely no idea the true motivation of almost anyone i have ever known. especially nowadays...
The story may at that point seem to end. Kid given back spring 2004. But that is the point and the real story. EVEN with that 'ending' - because it was, May 2004, it all ended and my life began again, however and this doesn't sound as sexy as it felt like at the time (and was to other associates as no one else had even known anyone who had one slapped on them - we were bumbling civilians..), a High Court injunction.... and then continuation of boxes and boxes of paperwork....at one point the whole floor of a whole medium sized room had it all laid out in war gaming the whole damn thing... its the thing of finding a way to just smile some of the time with that monolith ever growing in my office room... and live too. And for a fair amount of the time deep within feeling despite the complete and utter mad oppression of the citizen, that i wouldn't have it any other way. Despite the lies, lies, rude deceit and lies. And i am not a masochist and truly do value my freedom heading off with lass in the old camper van any possible window of a few days.
Anyway, only the last year (i think i have a page in the other site https://www.simonclayton2020.com/ ) i was pondering. I deeply debate the concept of fanaticism with a range of acquaintances. Where is the line between fanatic or zealot, and being one for the genuinely sane reason of you are bloody well right!?
And i realised if anything can be ever distilled into one cause and effect, relative to many other people - some with 'causes', i have pondered since, it was because all my adult life i had read many good novels. Fairly highbrowish. But always looking for the experience of being taken, by the rarer writers who seem to have that knock of grabbing us entirely, to a reality that is alive. Even if in another imaginary world. Not a silly fantasy one - one that is still a question like all of life is but nevertheless real before my eyes. By having that in me i could hold on to what was in my 'imagination' - the interpretation of the many year law was bloody well wrong and EVERY single person i ever met was as if rabbit in the headlights. Blinded by what they had come to accept as their group, mass formation, fact. My fanatical other imagined how-it-should-be world was easy enough for me to hold on to even being insulted by my own 'side' because i was a reader of the great works of imagination.
They don't necessarily feature (except for 4 years prior losing everything 2003 i had a small book shop) but the book - the imagination, is at the centre nevertheless. And that is perhaps a difficult thing to pass on to the viewer but to me is in fact the main thing i feel is worth passing on above all. Reading isn't just for just for ...well i am stuck now, as i don't know what Harry Potter is for.... but being able to inhabit imaginary worlds, may well one day be your saviour in holding on to your own very real world.
But it has to be bloody serious too.... the purpose - the issues...
So, books...
Sorry i have not read any book by any man for years that has even begun to thrill me - especially if his name is McEwan.
Only four women - albeit two from a while ago, have had me genuinely gripped as to where they go with their people in their books....and trying to second guess what do they - the author, REALLY think about the modern human condition.
My dream team number one associate, without question even if she may never have considered anything for film, Rachel Kushner. https://rachelkushner.com/ Mars Room changed my life. Haven't said that about a book for years. Man Called Ove and Reader on the 6.27 magnificent and warm, but....no huge thrilling questions within. Rachel..the real deal.
My daughter was pondering and muttering about a future in books when i read Mars Room five years ago. After finishing it on one session i said to myself " my lass must never know of this book.... it is too good.... any wannabe writer would know by about page ten....forget it this Rachel babe is in another orbit.... i will never get to......give up!"
And there is no pity in her pages....we do not learn from pity, self pity.... And thus i learned from this magnificent book that was TOO fucking good for their scrawny Booker... and to me so much british fiction became about confected vulnerability and otherness. Too exhausting. No life. Rachel's hell in her book, far more real life. And she got a few things about the life under the cosh of a system that in my reading i have only ever encountered in Solzhenitsyn. She does it better than him.
But in first equal just a smidgen lower than her
Rachel Cusk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07378ch
Now its not very nice being second, but...
I have read i think all of Rachel Cusk's books. Found them when she brought her first out. Backdrop to my 1990s seemed to fit that confusing adrift time.
And i think she is the most honest real writer of the era - in Britain at least. Because a certain confusion is always there. Even though none were truly enjoyable, but her unenjoyability is genus. But more....I think the honesty about about really ever being able to say very much about the British - which is in my opinion the net end result of her work, is poetry and genius. No one has ever handed out completely honest confusion in a more uncynical way - trying to figure us, and always just a bit short of ever being able to say vey much. i.e. no cheesy cheese...
But then. Mister aforementioned O'Connor. And may others. Take a note. Even if rather late in the day.
The day maybe 8 or 9 years ago i heard Ms Cusk speaking in a radio interview so frankly about her deranged harridan behaviour at a lawyers - seeking only pain for her ex husband. The father of her children must be destroyed at all cost. Her fabulous honesty. This is the only admirable interview i have ever heard ever of any public figure in this curious land. At that moment forever she is heroine. There is only one word (when you are a parent) that is ever a genuine compliment - all the rest disregard, but one you cannot: an example. A great example of a human being. I used to keep a list of them - for my daughter. I have only a very short list of them..... in life.
For that alone..... well, really she should be number one. Not to assist me with any 'agenda'. For one reason only, our children, any child, deserves only one thing which is to be as close to a truth as we can get. They are born with no lies. It is only their parents' lies and halls of mirrors that frame their lives.
Now there are however two other writers that only the last few years have come out of the blue and shocked me - i dont often get shocked, with... anything these days.
well, there is a Portuguese word saudade...
It used to be that we could speak in a way in the UK where everyone would know you do not mean harm or offence .... that sometimes unsayable or even frightening things were being described for some more noble ultimate cause.
I happened to have a protracted semi convalescent period by necessity after a weird menangitisy kind of bug went and took over five years ago... and was so broke i was working through my last pile of 'very very rainy day' books.... i had judged them so by their covers.
And out of left field, towards the bottom of that pile i Wendy Perriam's After Purple. Wow. The writing we used to revel in - no fear, no confected coy or artifice. No pretention either. And the real madness that can so easily warp any relationship. That makes you laugh too. And from which one learns. And internally debate where ones own moral compass may be.
If somehow what they had managed then could have been kept in British culture, even if in some ways not for the faint hearted, well in my opinion we would be so much more healthy a people.
What they got into those books we need more than ever in this society.
But to me the greatest surprise of all.
Is she typecast?
I had had her Princess book for years. Unread. In fact decades. Anything Saudi was a problem for me. I had lived in shame for many years in my youth that my parents had lived off Saudi money. Earned yes - random business involvement, but to my generation the way women were treated in certain Arab and Eastern cultures was no different than the horror of Ukraine must be to an 18 year old of today.
And then one day i was very much at the bottom of the pile. Compounded by a rare life event - well almost unique. 2018 i had a few wobbly months. Anyone else would have chopped their own head off in 'chop chop square' (Jeddah).
Even shit books have some endearing something that one can learn something from so i rarely would even be so foolish as make any specific critique. Some aspect i don't like in a book will appeal to someone. And all books someone should at least try to read...
But that picture on the front, a bit bloody East Enders in fancy dress for me. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8187210-for-the-love-of-a-son
Hence it really was at the bottom of my last resort unread books pile.
I have a bit of a library of pretty good travel and socio political books. A fair bit on why the Arab and Subcontinental worlds are a touch in turmoil. Tariq Ali my God. Pilger too.
The Looming Tower is a great book for the real Saudi but in fact there is not enough of it. But within Ms Sasson's book having left it for the rainiest day ever in absolute pits of desperation ..."anything ok this at last..." ...
I learned more from that book For The Love of a Son, about the dynamics in Middle Eastern families and culture than anything else by far.....
but...i know a fair bit about Arab and even Afghan cultures; As the book goes on and towards the end the tragic shameful tales that Maryam Khail allowed to be shared with the world - the worst kind of indignities...so unusual for her culture.... to be so frank...
I respected that book maybe more than any other true life book i have ever encountered by far. And developed instant respect for Maryam for allowing us to read her past. And at last as i reached the end i really knew what books were for.... of course my own issue at the time was somehow less a burden. I trusted that book, the tales told, and knew that in fact so much of what may befall - even worst indignities, is just random. Maryam managed to live through her tragedy. And i felt better about mine in solidarity with hers. In some ways curiously not dissimilar.
There is obviously a pattern.
A few years ago, I trudged through all 3000 odd pages ...
The only 'sensation' about our Karl is he so needs to be something but doesn't really know what. Well he does, really... exactly as venerated as the dull white men of letters males he venerates. So be it but i learned so little and as for Struggle fuckin grow up and do something real...
But simply put i read no men who try to grapple with morality; even if it isn't very trendy to even utter the word. But in my opinion the aforementioned ladies, or is it women - people who go to certain toilets, i have lost count..... but i do suspect they can spell 'moral'. When i know no man who can. Not that men are any less 'moral' or more, hahh hahh i could say something....
But i do now one thing for sure, which is trying to tackle cover ALL moral aspects of parent parent child..... is far far far too absolutely fundamental a thing to a future sane society, so somehow trying to work through the moralities all the way....all the way.....with grace if one can but ALL the way..... no man dares. No male writer has the balls, so it has to be one that doesn't have any...
Please..... help.
(as you can see i have a policy of total 100% openness ...no coyness.... the product now is all that matters....women can be interviewed now from my home vicinity who know me the last few years and know that, that means always... their children are too serious a matter to me for it not to be so.... age appropriate language filter applied of course.... i fall out with NO ONE... the hardest nosed b of them all who loves telling everyone we had a public fall out a year ago when i read a list out of all the false things she had promised in respect of helpin local children i was arranging during covid non lockdpwn we didn't have em my way but the schools did and libraries too....so i tried to be regional librarian at times...off own back......like she promised me books for them from a large store of hers from childhood, and every word was bullshit....consulted me in person as we walked the fields today 7th april discussing quite positively her great idea for a book on what happens to possessions after a death in the family....)
I can get women, i think....to be fairly truthful with me..... MANY chime, the whole damn things has gone confused, poisonous so messed up...in so many average British families. why we need a great film on what the morality SHOULD be....or at least a bit of it...
But i learned from being a goodie goodie green low carbon footprint street corner vote hustler... and studying that whole movement. Earnest just never works.. preaching and earnest - hopeless. Even rationalising - not much good either. Only a good story well told gets deep down under the skin and maybe over time does affect who we may be.
