Author, question yourself

Back after a brief break that included dangling from cables in trees (GoApe), meeting a former pupil starring in a West End musical (Frozen), and spectating a Premiership Rugby match (Harlequins vs Bath), all with the grandkids. Now, to crack on…

Charles Dickens was a womaniser; Jane Austen’s family may have profited from slavery (most wealthy families did in the C18th and C19th); Eric Blair (George Orwell) treated his wife as a servant; Capt W. E Johns (of Biggles fame) was a racist and SF authors Robert Heinlein and Orson Scott Card have been accused of being fascists. Many authors have variously been described as racist, misogynist, antisemitic, homophobic, etc. Should authors of the past be held to the ethical standards of the C21st? If we knew more about William Shakespeare, the man, would we think so much of his writings? I think it would be very dangerous if we ditched works by people whose personality and behaviour now bring disapproval. We would lose the authentic view of the past (and the past’s view of the future) as witnessed and described by these authors. I have tended to see books, particularly novels, as independent of the author. When I belonged to a book group, other members often researched the writer in depth while I concentrated on their ideas as expressed in their works. The author’s personal views are important but separate from their works.

Which brings us to the works of J K Rowling. Whatever you may think of the quality of the writing in the Potter books (and some reviewers have been critical) the influence of the seven book series has been immense and maybe has encouraged many children, boys as well as girls, to become readers. The stories may be derivative but I think the key to their success was that the character grows with the reader. When they were being published one a year the fans aged as fast as Harry. That’s less true now but still it takes quite a while to get through all seven books from the somewhat twee Philosopher’s Stone to the darker last book.

The question is how the books treat diversity. Harry is an odd one out, something of a loner despite his group of friends because of his strange upbringing. The Potter world is divided into two races – wizards and muggles. The latter are somewhat looked down on by most of the former and the halfbloods like Harry who have a wizard father and muggle mother are particularly bullied. All the principal characters are white and the majority are male – Harry himself, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Snape, Hagrid. So perhaps not the most diverse character list and maybe an accusation of racism and sexism could stand up. Nevertheless I think such faults are relatively minor.

On the other hand the character of J K Rowling has been shown to be divisive and she is discriminatory towards transgender people particularly transwomen, despite adopting a male persona for her crime thrillers. It began some years ago as derogatory Tweets brushed off as unintended or of little importance. Rowling has now emerged as a leader amongst the “gender critical” crowd wishing to remove the right of transwomen to live their lives as normal women. Apparently she has funded, to the tune of £70,000, a case in the Scottish courts seeking to prevent transwomen calling themselves women. She has been prominent in the opposition to the new Scottish hate-crime law and set out to provoke a police response by circulating intimidatory tweets. The police refused to act. However, I have heard that Rowling also outed several women as former transwomen. Now to my knowledge that breaks the laws included in the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. It is against the law to reveal the previous gender of a holder of a Gender Recognition Certificate. Stating that someone, who says they are a woman, is a transwoman does exactly that.

With the financial support of people like Rowling and the media response that she attracts, the gender-critical brigade can hardly argue that they are unable to express their opinions, or are the weaker party in their perceived “war” with transpeople. There are trans activist groups of course, but they don’t have rich backers and struggle to get their opinions reported in depth or even accurately.

So, read your Potter books and watch the films if you like but don’t think that the author is a sweet, good -natured lady who accepts and respects everyone who is a little, bit different.

It was also back to writing group this week. The theme set was not surprisingly “April Fool”. I had an idea for a story where well known April Fools are actually true such as spaghetti trees, and the tropical paradise of San Serif, etc. The only problem was that I found I’d done it before, in 2019 when we had the same prompt. Back at the drawing board I came up with another simpler story. Many April Fools are good fun such as the two I have mentioned but sometimes practical jokes are only funny to the perpetrator. Here is Washing the Lions.

Washing the Lions

It was a family tradition. I think it was my father who started it when my brother and I were children, but it was Bernard, my elder by almost two years who maintained it. No, persisted with it to the level of OCD. We’re talking about what we as a family called “washing the lions”. Late in the seventeenth century someone put up posters and sent invitations inviting people to attend the washing of the lions at the menagerie in the Tower of London, entry via the White Gate. Many of the wealthy citizens of London responded, causing a traffic jam with their carriages as they tried to find the non-existent White Gate. Then the anonymous hoaxer revealed that it was an April Fool. It was one of the earliest recorded.

                Every year my father, and later my brother would engage in some complex ruse to fool me, my mother, each other, or anyone else who foolishly was in the vicinity. There was the time that all the clocks and watches in the house were changed to fool me into thinking it was time to get up for school, when in fact it was an hour earlier than all the timepieces said. The tricks weren’t always original sometimes piggybacking other fools, like the time my father sent me as a seven-year-old to the hardware store to buy a round tuit. The shopkeeper enjoyed that one. The fact that I got soaked in a rain shower made my brother laugh even louder.

                There was the time, shortly after I started work, that I got a message to say that my mother had been taken seriously ill and needed to see me. I dropped everything and drove a hundred miles to be at her bed side only to find her fit and well and surprised to see me. My brother laughed aloud. I didn’t.           

                The pranks continued year after year, long after my father died. I had of course developed something of a nose for April Fools. I avoided all contact with Bernard on the day and spent it in nervous anticipation of some scam or other. He still got me from time to time, such as when a parcel arrived which spurted out black ink when I attempted to open it. How Bernard knew I was expecting a parcel that day of all days, I will never know.

                Why did I put up with it, you are no doubt wondering. Well, he was my one and only brother and for the other 364 or 5 days in the year, Bernard was kind and considerate. However, it did get so that I dreaded the arrival of April 1^st. Sometimes I made sure I was away and didn’t tell Bernard where I was but when that wasn’t possible, I knew that something weird would happen, curated by him.

                At last, I had enough and decided to do something to get him back. Why hadn’t I done it years before my 50^th birthday, you ask, and put an end to the farce? Well, I was just no good at planning practical jokes and I was his junior, his little bro.

                Anyway, I finally had a plan. On April 1^st, my brother received a letter saying that an anomaly had been noted on his recent medical checkup. He was quite a fitness fanatic, and I knew he had a medical MOT every couple of years. All the letter did was tell him to contact the medical centre via a particular email address. That was an address I had set up myself and I expected to be able to reply “April Fool” when he sent the message.

                I was, however, unaware quite how much of a hypochondriac Bernard was. He missed the email address I had provided and immediately rang his GP. How was I to know that some results had just come in. The doctor was surprised at Bernard’s call since the letter he had written had not yet been posted. It was to say that my brother had a heart condition that needed treatment.

                No one laughed, I certainly didn’t, and Bernard was far too worried by his diagnosis to see the joke. That was the last mention of washing of lions.

…………………………

Jasmine has a fool

Another week of governmental chaos. I would call it a farce but I laugh at farces (especially the old Brian Rix Whitehall Theatre farces – remember them) but this business is too serious to laugh at. It did inspire a story however (yes, another one).  See below.

………………………..

Next Thursday I will be at the Kings Arms in Abergavenny  or Y Fenni as us Welsh call it) for the Abergavenny Writing Festival  (see the programme here). Having put myself forward I was delighted to be asked to sit on a discussion panel  (2.30pm  Thurs. 11th) with three other contributors and a chair – all writers.  I was rather dismayed to see that I looked considerably older in my photo than the others – that is unless they’re using old profile photos (some authors do use the same portrait for many years. I’ve met a few who look quite a bit more haggard than their profiles – not mentioning any names).  Our topic for discussion is the old one – “Do we all have a novel in us?”  I think it’s an opportunity to talk, briefly, about our own novels.  So I will have all 8 of mine (with my name on) to hand. I think it’s natural to answer, of course we do, but that is writers speaking. In fact I think most people would be horrified if they were told they had to sit in front of a computer screen or a pad of paper and spend something like 2,000 hours churning out words to make a novel (conservative estimate not counting editing?). Unless you count lifestories, which I don’t think count as novels unless they are fictionalised, I don’t think everyone necessarily has a story to tell that it long enough for a novel. Mind you, there are enough of us that do think we can write a novel, to keep the presses and ebook sellers busy and provide all that competition for readers. Come and join in the discussion.

………………………………..

The prompt for this week’s piece of writing was, not surprisingly, “April Fool”.  I was stumped at first for an original angle.  However, the present political situation, gave me an idea that, if not new, was quite appropriate. Here we go:

A Fool’s Day

It seemed like a normal morning when I got up. I sat down to my usual breakfast of toast and marmalade and opened the newspaper. There was alarm that this year’s spaghetti harvest might be late, concern that the new customs barriers on the Welsh-English border could hold up traffic, that more staff would be needed on the Isle of Wight ferries to check passports and more of the usual stuff.  There was also an article about the annual round up of wild unicorns on the Siberian steppes. Several adverts amongst the news caught my eye. There was one for Round Tuits, which interested me since I needed one; another for striped paint in a pleasant shade of red and white. I noticed that holidays on San Serif were popular this year, and there were various remarkable innovations to BMW cars. Nothing out of the ordinary for which I was grateful.
Then I put the radio on to catch the nine o’clock news. As the news reader read out the first item, I gradually had a feeling of normality sliding away from me as if I had slipped down a rabbit hole or stepped through the back of my wardrobe. I checked the date. It was March 32nd, so that wasn’t the explanation for my feeling of mental discomfort.
I was informed that a country with a long history of world trade and leadership in world affairs had decided to part company with its twenty-seven near neighbours. The fact that it did forty per cent of its trade with this group and obtained a good portion of its food from them did not seem to have been considered. This nation had decided to forfeit the benefits of free movement of goods and people, as well as the security and clout of being part of a large trading bloc. What’s more its citizens would no longer have the right to live and work in the neighbouring countries. This relatively small country would henceforth have to compete with the dominant forces in the world economy for the increasingly scarce resources necessary to feed, clothe and employ its population.
As if this news was not mind-bogglingly odd of itself, it was apparent that the decision had been forced on the government by a rebellious group of the ruling party that numbered less than a quarter of their total representation. The foolish and blinkered leader had asked the citizens to give their opinion while failing, over many years, to provide them with the information necessary to make a reasoned response. He had also failed to take the precaution of ensuring that the result of vote would be only taken as advisory, especially if it turned out to be close.
My head was spinning at this point, but then I learned that the nation had been given two years to negotiate a sensible resolution of the problem but had failed to suggest any solutions that would not cause harm.
I turned off the radio in disgust. How dare they broadcast such nonsense. Perhaps some people thought it was a joke to make such ridiculous suggestions. For me, it was total balderdash and impossible to contemplate as having any connection to reality. I decided to have a lie down with the hope that when I woke again normality would be restored.  Perhaps there will be more news about that UFO that has landed in London, again.

……………………………………..