Ivy & Stevie - Kay Dick

The first book I read from my recent Hay-on-Wye haul was Kay Dick's Ivy & Stevie (1971) about Ivy Compton-Burnett and Stevie Smith.  Dick was friendly with both, and recorded conversations with them as part of a wider project she was researching.  'When' (she writes) 'Stevie Smith died earlier this year, not long after Ivy Compton-Burnett, it occurred to me that public interest in them both was sufficient to warrant publications of these two conversations on their own.'  So the book is divided into two - transcripts of each interview, paired with Dick's reflections on each author.  Ivy C-B gets the first half of the book (and is the reason I bought it), while Stevie Smith gets the second half.

As I say, ICB - sorry, Dame ICB - is the reason I bought this book.  Maybe only one fifth of people who try Ivy end up liking her, but that one fifth will be passionately pro.  And she came across pretty much as I imagined she would from her writing and from photographs - formidable, amusing, confident, rather intimidating.  I think all of that comes across in this response:

What question do you most dislike people asking you about your work?
[...] 'Do you find other people's conversation useful?'  I went to a cocktail party the other day, and some woman I was talking to said, "Mustn't this be useful to you?"  Of course it wasn't useful.  Whatever good would it be to put down, "Do you feel that draught?", and "Are you sure you won't have another sandwich?"?  Conceit, because the don't say a thing that would be any good at all.  One would be only too glad to take it down if one heard something deep or revealing or interesting.  Certainly not at a cocktail party, which is a dreadful function in itself.  I can't bear them.  I went to this one because it was given by the landlord.  We're frightfully friendly.  That is to say he's frightfully friendly to me.  I believe it's because of the enormous rent I pay him.  He rather likes my fame, but he thinks of the rent much more.

If I was hoping to learn a lot about her writing process, I was rather out of luck.  The interview is mostly about her thoughts on religion, families, even her characters - but not really about how she creates them.  And the big question that everyone must ask when they encounter ICB - why so much dialogue? - is sadly one which she cannot answer herself:

I don't know why I write so much in dialogue.  I think it must just have been my nature.  It just came like that.  I don't think one can explain these things - they probably go deep, these reasons, don't you think?

So, there you go.  Was she being disingenuous?  Hard to say.  There is an air throughout that ICB is slightly above these sorts of discussions, or that she feels distanced from them somehow.  Perhaps that's just her no-nonsense personality, and that isn't to say she doesn't give her views firmly.  I liked what she had to say about accusations that her novels were old-fashioned (I'm going to keep quoting quite a lot from these ladies, because the whole point of Ivy & Stevie is that it focuses on the authors' voices.  That, and typing out quotations takes less energy than forming my own sentences!)

I know you get very annoyed, don't you, when people say that you write about a world that is no longer there, because, as you say, human beings are always there.
Oh, I think the world will always be there.  It is true I put my books back, because the kind of world one knows one doesn't know completely until it's finished.  In a sense one has to wait until it's finished.  Things are so much in a state of flux now.  I think that some of these modern books that depict human life with people just roaming about London and living in rooms and sleeping with everybody - it's not interesting, because, of course, I can't read them.  Everybody doesn't live like that, do they? [...] They live in civilized houses as they always did.  They have servants as they always did, although fewer.  Supposing I were living fifty years ago, situated as I am, I should have had a house and a cook and a housemaid, and, I suppose, a pony trap and a stable boy, instead of just a flat and one factotum.  But that's a superficial difference.  I don't think people do alter - if they do, they react back again, don't they?  There must be family life.

Stevie Smith says something quite similar in her interview:

What do you think of the world today?
Well, much the same as I always thought of it yesterday.  It doesn't change very much does it?

Well said, Stevie!  I think the difference between question and answer here can be attributed to the difference between journalist and novelist.  Not that Dick was a journalist (she was an erstwhile novelist herself) but she takes that stance for these interviews.  The journalist focuses on change, and everything being new in the present moment; the novelist (especially one as perceptive as ICB) looks at that which stays the same; the consistencies of human nature throughout the generations.

When I say that I bought Ivy & Stevie because of Ivy, I don't imply any distaste for Stevie.  I just haven't read anything by her - except for 'Not Waving But Drowning' - although I do have a novel or two of hers on my shelf.  Having now read the interview with her, she comes across as a charming, modest, slightly scatty woman - qualities which make me rather love her.  She lived with her aunt for a long time, who obviously took scant interest in Smith's writing, and she describes it wonderfully (I think there is something in the expression 'my dear' which will always win my support):

What did you aunt think of your work?
Oh, her attitude was simply splendid, everything one asks for really.  I should hate to live with a literary aunt.  My aunt used to say, "I'm very glad to hear you've got another book coming out, but as you know I don't know much about it.  It's all nonsense to me, my dear."  I felt this was the right attitude.  My aunt had a faintly sardonic attitude, I think, to the whole world.  Her highest praise was when, after I got the Cholmondeley Award, she said, "I wish your mother was alive and could have known about this dear."

Being unfamiliar with her work, I couldn't really relate it to what she said.  My main knowledge of Stevie Smith comes from Kathryn Williams' song 'Stevie', from the album Leave to Remain.  I can't find a version online to imbed, but it includes the line 'They say she's obsessed with death and that / but what else do you laugh at?'  Which prepared me for Stevie Smith saying something like this:

There's a terrible lot of fear of life in my poems.  I love life.  I adore it, but only because I keep myself well on the edge.  I wouldn't commit myself to anything.  I can always get out if I want to.  I think this is a terribly cowardly attitude to life.  I'm very ashamed of it, but there it is, dear.  I love death, I think it's the most exciting thing.  As one gets older one gets into this - well, it's like a race, before you get to the waterfall, when you feel the water slowly getting quicker and quicker, and you can't get out, and all you want to do it get to the waterfall and over the edge.  How exciting it is!

So I came away with a new fondness for Smith, and determination to read her writing, and a renewed admiration for (and slight fear of) Dame Ivy.  As for Kay Dick herself, I rather enjoyed her brief reflections upon knowing both writers.  Neither sticks in my mind particularly, but the personal touch was valuable.  I thought I knew Kay Dick's name from somewhere, but can't track down where... I Googled her and read an obituary which I wish I hadn't, as it was incredibly vicious (and provoked letters giving opposing views.)  Well, whatever else Dick was or wasn't, did or didn't do, I am grateful that she preserved these conversations, which could only take place with an interviewer with whom the authors felt comfortable.  An invaluable resource for anyone interested in either of these writers - or, indeed, in the lives of writers in general.

My First Agent Crush

by Melanie Thorne

My first and only agent crush hit me during the summer of 2008 at the Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s Conference. My dream agent had bangs and cool nerd glasses and walked in wearing hot-pink, strappy, heeled sandals and sat next to me. She led our workshop with friendly authority and insightful comments; she was encouraging but critical. I got to talk to her during the break. I said I liked her shoes and managed not to drool. She was smart and sarcastic and funny and I decided right then she was going to be my agent.

That afternoon she was on an agent panel—that was why she’d worn the fancy shoes—and I wrote down nearly everything she said in my notebook. The three other agents had good information to share, too, so I took pages of notes about how advances work, what percentages to expect for royalties and commission, what to say in a query letter, what to ask an agent before signing, but most of all their message was clear: make the writing shine before you submit and find an agent who loves your work. Or, as my dream agent said, “If you’re not physically nauseous at the sight of your book, you’re not done,” and, “If your agent loves your writing, she’ll fight for it and for you.” 

I wanted her to fight for me. When I gave her my pitch after class—palms sweaty and my pulse in my temples—she said what every agent-struck author wants to hear: “That sounds interesting. When you’re ready, send me your query and the first two chapters.” OMG! I practically twirled. She was interested!

So I left that conference all flutter-hearted and ready to make my work shine, to make it sing from the rooftops that it was good enough, that it was ready to be represented. I revised for months. I won the Maurice Prize in fiction that fall but I kept revising. All my friends said I was waiting too long, that I should send it to the agent I’d met, but I wasn’t nauseous at the sight of my book yet. I had to follow her advice to the letter or hate myself for rushing and ruining my chances.

I revised for a few more months and finally, finally, I sent my query and the first two chapters just like we’d discussed. I was sure she’d love it. She was perfect for me. She had to see we were a match made in heaven, right?

She rejected me. Very nicely, but still, I was deflated. I’d put myself out there, poured my heart into this relationship only to get dumped with a line that sounded like a bad TV break up: “it just isn’t right for my list at this time.” It’s not you, it’s me. What a cop-out, and a lie, too, because even in teen movies the kid knows that phrase really means something is wrong with you. If this were a real camp crush story, now would be the part where I ran into the bathroom and locked myself into a stall to cry in gasping hiccoughs.

In real life, I mourned for a few days, then I stewed in the bitterness of being scorned, and then I got over it. I emailed my no-longer-dream-agent and asked for more specific criticism. She was kind enough to write back with more feedback, and though she thought the writing was strong and the book had potential and promise, it was just not a “perfect fit” for her.

What I realized is that it wasn’t a clichéd break-up line or a cop-out; it was the truth. I had been so sure she was the one, but she didn’t love my work, and we were, therefore, not a match made in heaven. I didn’t know that the right agent who was the perfect fit for me, who would fight for Hand Me Down in a way ex-dream-agent couldn’t have, was just around the corner, but she was. Just like people say when you get dumped, there are indeed other fish in the sea.

Our first crushes are rarely the relationships that last, but if we’re lucky, we learn from them. I will forever be grateful to the cool agent with the hot-pink heels for her valuable advice and for motivating me to get my manuscript in gear for submission. It was this heavily revised, nausea-inducing manuscript that my actual agent fell in love with just a few weeks later. If I hadn’t been rejected first, I might not have met my true agent-mate, the one who really got my book and my writing, the agent who responded to my first email in a day and believed in me from the start.

We are still happily working together today. 

Forthcoming Dodie Smiths

Following on from my recent enthusiasm about Dodie Smith's autobiography, I was excited when someone (Claire, I think, or maybe Verity) pointed me in the direction of Corsair's new reprints of some obscure Dodie Smith novels.  I wrote about The Town in Bloom a while ago, which I thought started very well and got a bit worse, but lots of folk have told me that I should be reading The New Moon with the Old.  Once these come out on 15th March (or, more precisely, when Lent is over and I'm allowed to buy books again) these will definitely be flying their way to me.  I love the cover designs, and I really love the cheap price they're going for at Amazon.  And I say that despite never having got around to sorting out an Amazon Affiliates account.

Anyway, still too under the weather to write much, so I'll just leave you with the pictures...

The Pitch

Brenda Remmes

I know there are a lot of fine writers who struggle endlessly to get a book contract and finally give up.  Many a good novel has died for lack of a home.

My perspective on what I had to do and how hard it was going to be came when I attended my first writers’ conference with the SC Writer’s Workshop in 2008. I learned more about the publishing world in those three days than I had in the previous two years surfing the web. 

Some conferences are made for craft and some are made for marketing.  Like many new writers, I put the cart before the horse and went to the one on marketing first.  But I learned a lot and I got hooked up with a truly wonderful critique group that has guided me through many beginners’ mistakes.

During the next two conferences I continued to rewrite my novel and perfect my pitch.  A pitch is that three minute summation of what you’ve written that might hook a perspective agent or editor.  The common scenario is what is called the elevator pitch. You’ve just gotten on the elevator on the eighth floor to go to your next workshop.  Standing next to you is Ms. Bess Agent from the OMG Publishing Company in Gotham City and your heart skips a beat.  You say, “Shazam, we’re delighted you agreed to attend our conference.  I’ve just completed my novel and I’d love to tell you about it.”

Being Ms Bess Agent, (and honestly I’ve found all the agents I’ve talked to at conferences to be extremely cordial), she says the magic words… “What’s it about?”

Voilà, opportunity just knocked.  Grab it!  You now have approximately three minutes for your pitch before the elevator reaches the lobby.  “My sixty thousand word romance novel tells the story of how Rover Wolf tries to seduce poor beguiling Mercy Flowers, unaware of the fact that she’s on to his dastardly dog tricks and plans to remake him into faithful Fido to fortify her feline fetish.”  Door opens and Ms Bess Agent says, “Sounds interesting.  I’d like to see the first chapter.”  BINGO.

Here’s where my opportunity knocked.  I was at a baby shower in Atlanta.  I never go to baby showers.  I mean never.  Send a gift, stay at home and write is my motto. But this was for my grandson.  What kind of grandmother was I anyway?  So I put on a little lip stick, sucked in my stomach and climbed into a pair of panty hose.  At the refreshment table one of my daughter-in-law-friends says, Mrs. Remmes, let me introduce you to Ms. Bess Editor from Gotham City.”  My ears perk up.

“I’m working on a novel,” I say, watching her body language for any tell-tell signs of a seizure.   I imagine her eyes rolling back into her head as she thinks, Please God, spare me…not another writer, but she can’t help herself and she does what all good editors are trained to do and says, “Really? Tell me about it.”  I lunged into my pitch, promising myself I will shut up in three minutes and leave her in peace. After two mints and a cookie she says, “Here’s my card.  When you start looking for an agent, call me and I’ll give you a couple of good names.”

I did.  She did, and the agent she recommended signed me and sold my book in two weeks.

I know that few writers have had such luck.  This is not the typical story.  I had geared-up to spend a year or longer to find an agent, and at a baby shower a fairy godmother dropped her wand and it hit me on the head. I had gotten the long end of a wish bone.  The mints were laced with a hallucinogenic drug.  Who knows?  But my three recommendations to anyone hoping to publish are:   1) Go to conferences, 2) Get into a good critique group and 3) Polish your pitch.  I probably should add go to baby showers, but then you wouldn’t believe the first part.

The World My Wilderness - Rose Macaulay

I hope this will turn out coherent.  I wrote most of it a while ago, sent the book away to a friend, and am now trying to complete a review sans book and sans health.  Here goes...

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is my first overlap of A Century of Books.  Rose Macaulay's The World My Wilderness was published in 1950, a spot which is already occupied on my list by Margaret Kennedy's Jane Austen.  First come, first reviewed, so it's Kennedy who's on the century list.  But I'm still going to talk about Rose Macaulay, naturally...

This is the fifth novel (and eighth book) that I've read by Rose Macaulay, and she is becoming one of those reliable writers I know I can pick up and enjoy; the only dud I've encountered was Staying With Relations.  Wikipedia tells me that her final novel, The Towers of Trebizond (which I have not read) is 'widely regarded as her masterpiece'.  I am edging ever closer to it, since The World My Wilderness is her penultimate book, and the other one which people tend to have heard of, if they've heard of Macaulay at all.

'Reliable' is just another word for 'consistent', really, and Macaulay does seem to write in a consistently dry, almost satirical style, pursuing a similar theme in each novel - albeit a theme so broad that she could have written two thousand novels and never needed to approach it from the same angle twice.  It is dangerous to summarise thus (and others may have said this before me - indeed, now I see that Karyn has) but I believe Macaulay's broad theme across her novels is: 'What does it mean to be civilised?'  In Keeping Up Appearances this is addressed through literary eschelons; in Crewe Train through the 'civilised savage'; in Dangerous Ages through psychoanalysis, and so on and so forth.  In The World My Wilderness, the title alludes to this debate - and the setting, postwar France and England, offers the physical destruction and moral weariness that the word 'wilderness' suggests.  Macaulay includes an anonymous epigraph, from which she draws the title:

The world my wilderness, its caves my home,

Its weedy wastes the garden where I roam,

Its chasm'd cliffs my castle and my tomb...

The cast of characters is initially broad and confusing (or at least it was to me) and I pesevered by ignoring those who weren't dominant in the narrative at any one time, then slotting them all together later.  There are so many children and stepchildren and half-siblings that I had to throw my hands up in the air in defeat.  Ok.  Stiffen the sinews, summon the blood.  Here goes.

Helen and Gulliver had Barbary and Richie.  Helen and Gulliver divorced; Helen moved to France with Barbary (leaving Richie behind) and married Maurice, while Gulliver married Pamela.  Helen and Maurice had Roland.  Maurice was drowned in mysterious circumstances, leaving Helen with a stepson Raoul.  Gulliver and Pamela had David, and Pamela is pregnant again.  Phew.  That will do - I'm leaving out mother-in-law and uncle, who make cameo appearances.

There are so many characters, but I'm only going to focus on the two I thought most important.

The novel begins with Barbary and Raoul moving to England (Richie visits his mother in France) and these two form the chief interest of the novel.  Macaulay is often quite playful with names, and I don't think it's any coincidence that 'Barbary' is so close to 'barbarous'.  She is used to running amok with the French maquis, a group whose aim was to resist the invading Germans, but who extend this resistance to all forms of authority.  She has the same attitude in England, except now her companions are deserters and thieves, living their lawless lives in the bombed out old churches and houses of London.  Her old nurse warns her against being too trusting:

"And I ask, Miss Barbary, that on no account will you ever trust those young men, for of trust they will never be deserving."

Barbary, experienced in discredited young men, had never thought of trusting any of them.  Lend them something, and you never had it back; leave anything about near them, and you did not see it again.  If they could derive advantage from betraying you, betray you they would; these were the simple laws of their lives, the simple, easy laws of the bad, who had not to reckon with the complication of scruples, but only with gain and loss, comfort and hardship, safety and risk.
[...]
"Oh no, Coxy," Barbary said, in surprise at the eccentric idea suggested to her.  "I should never trust them.  I mean, trust them with what?  Or to do what?  There couldn't be anything..."

Barbary is a very Macaulayan character, if you'll excuse me coining the term: she is something of an outsider, straight-talking, independent, but uncertain of her place in the world.  And the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree - but while Barbary's inability to cohere with society turns her into a restless, waif-like exile from civilisation, her mother Helen is the selfish, self-absorbed type whose callousness hides behind a veneer of grace and elegance.  She claims to have a 'phobia of being bored', and very little breaks through to her heart.  Helen is overtly uncivilised, as Barbary is, but she respects none of the values of civilisation - preferring, instead, a reckless and ambiguous love for beauty.

"As to one's country, why should one feel any more interest in its welfare than in that of other countries?  And as to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals - or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.  A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?"

"My dear Madame, not almost.  It is a religious ideal."  The abbe spoke dryly, and did not add anything about the Holy Family at Nazareth, for he never talked in such a manner to his worldly, unbelieving friends.

It is worth noting that Macaulay delights in giving her characters views that are not her own.  She signposts this with a motif running through her novels; that of looking down on writers and novels.  Some readers always want authors to be making a point, moral or otherwise, in their writing; I am happy if a writer can convey characters acting believably.  That is 'point' enough for me, and I think for Macaulay too - it would be a mistake to extrapolate too much from her writing, other than an examination of the way that certain characters behave in certain circumstances.  She extends beyond this, to questions as vast as the role of civilisations, but she doesn't attempt to answer these questions.  Nor could she.

Speaking of her writing... Macaulay has a dry, ironic tone which I've preferred in other of her novels.  Sometimes, in The World My Wilderness, she seemed to get a bit carried away with a romanticised, flowing, almost baroque writing style.  Perhaps that fits into the themes - but it did include this section, all of which is one sentence:

In this pursuit he was impelled sometimes beyond his reasoning self, to grasp at the rich, trailing panoplies, the swinging censors,of churches from whose creeds and uses he was alien, because at least they embodied some cintuance, some tradition; while cities and buildings, lovely emblems of history, fell shattered, or lost shape and line in a sprawl of common mass newness, while pastoral beauty was overrun and spoilt, while ancient communities were engulfed in the gaping maw of the beast of prey, and Europe dissolved into wavering anonymities, bitter of tongue, servile of deed, faint of heart, always treading the frail plank over the abyss, rotten-ripe for destruction, turning a slanting, doomed eye on death that waited round the corner - during all this frightening evanesence and dissolution, the historic churches kept their strange courses, kept their improbably, incommunicable secret, linking the dim past with the disrupted present and intimidating future, frail, tough chain of legend, myth, and mystery, stronghold of reaction and preserved values.

This isn't particularly representative of The World My Wilderness - 200 pages of this would have driven me crazy - but it does pop up now and then, and adds to the richness of Macaulay's writing, if you can cope with this sort of thing.

I'm afraid this review is going to peter out rather, because I seem to be heading towards semi-consciousness... so, in summary... I liked it, but I think Macaulay newbies might be better off with Crewe Train or Keeping Up Appearances.  Let's hand over to some other folk, who might have been more conscious whilst writing their reviews...


Others who got Stuck in this Book:

"[...]it is despairing, and unrelentingly sombre and pessimistic." - Karyn, A Penguin A Week 

"It's a beautifully written and nuanced story that's filled with amazing (in the fantastic sense) imagery of a post-war London" - Danielle, A Work in Progress

"It’s a stunning, well-written novel." - Katherine, A Girl Walks into a Bookstore

Song for a Sunday

I've featured her before, on my first ever Song for a Sunday, and this is my other favourite song by her: it's Vienna Teng and 'Kansas' (apologies that the quality isn't amazing):



Still feeling rotten, but I dug out the perfect novel to accompany feeling sorry for myself: Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson.  So far, giggling away to myself in a corner.  Lovely.

Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Hope you all have nicer weekends lined up than I do.  Well, the weekend will probably be fine, it's just that I've come down with a horrible cold... that stage where you feel semi-conscious all the time.  Yeah, not fun.  Lots of bed and Lemsip for me tomorrow... And it's going to be a pretty brief miscellany, so that I can slump in a heap somewhere.  (Cue violins, etc.)

1.) You know me, I love a review of Miss Hargreaves - and I especially love this one by Chris.  Go and have a gander - and if, for some strange reason, you've yet to read the novel... get to it!

2.) Doesn't The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel look wonderful?  I can't believe Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Penelope Wilton are in a film together - and one that looks such heartwarming fun.



3.) A review of Diary of a Provincial Lady, you say?  Iris and Jenny are happy to oblige.

Self Promotion as Self Reflection

by Anita Hughes

One of the greatest joys of being a mother is not having the time to think about yourself. As a mother you are so busy attending to scraped knees and elbows, broken bones and bruised egos, you don't focus on your own small dramas.

The same is true about being an author. The minute you turn on the computer and disappear into the world of your characters, you stop obsessing about real world problems like faulty appliances, ruined recipes or anything else that can derail your day.

 So it is a rude shock, like stepping out of a warm Jacuzzi into a cold shower to suddenly have to promote your book and talk about YOU. When did you first start writing? What is your inspiration? Does your story draw from personal experience? Why would I want to talk about ME when the purpose of writing fiction is to create an imaginary world and sweep me under the rug.

Self promotion, I have found, is very much self reflection. I am asked questions by well meaning interviewers that make me look at myself, my choices over the years, what I see for my future. What are my goals, beliefs, ideals. I can't simply answer: "I write so I don't have to think about those things!" I write so I can forget about war, famine, heartbreak and trauma and submerge myself in a world I control. Certainly, my characters go through terrible moments. Sometimes I cry while I write, but it is up to me to rescue them (or not) and shape the ending as I see fit. But what I have found as I fill out another author Q&A, is that in the process I get to know myself better. I learn what are my strengths and weaknesses, where I have come from and where I would like to be going. And that makes me a better writer. I approach my new manuscript with more confidence in my abilities, more energy, more excitement for what the future holds for my characters and myself.

No writer wants to spend the day gazing in the mirror (writers - like mothers - are not know for their glamorous wardrobe and makeup choices) but a little introspection now and then makes one wiser. So I am thankful for the opportunity to ask myself questions that have been lurking in my brain, hidden under the needs of my fictional characters and real-life children.

Look Back With Love - Dodie Smith

I am growing very fond of those lovely folk at Slightly Foxed.  Last December I had spotted that they were publishing Dodie Smith's first autobiography, Look Back With Love (1974), and was umming and ahhhing about asking for a review copy... when they offered me one!  Although I'm always flattered to be offered books by any publisher, my heart does a little jump for joy (medically sound, no?) when it's a reprint publisher doing the offering.  And even more so when it's one of these beautiful little Slightly Foxed Editions (I covet the *lot*) - and even more so when it's a title I've wanted to read ever since I first read and loved I Capture the Castle back in 2003.

I was not disappointed.  Look Back With Love is simply a lovely, warming, absorbing book.  It is only the possibility that I may prefer one of her other three autobiographical instalments (think of it; three!) which prevents me adding it to my 50 Books You Must Read list just yet...

You may have gathered from all those volumes of autobiography that Smith doesn't cover her whole life in Look Back With Love.  Indeed, she only gets as far as fourteen by the end of this book, placing it firmly in childhood memoir territory.  I do have a definite fondness for memoirs which focus on, or at least include, childhood - as evinced by my championing of Emma Smith's The Great Western Beach, Angelica Garnett's Deceived With Kindness, Harriet Devine's Being George Devine's Daughter, Terence Frisby's Kisses on a Postcard, Christopher Milne's The Enchanted Places, and one of Slightly Foxed's other recent titles, P.Y. Betts' People Who Say Goodbye.  I especially like them if they cover the Edwardian period - perhaps because that means the subjects will have been adults in the interwar period which I love so dearly.  What links all these autobiographies, besides their recountings of childhood, is that they recount happy childhoods.  That is to say, they all find and express happy moments from within their childhoods, rather than prioritising the miserable or cruel.  Misery memoirs, I'm afraid, will never have a place on my bookcases.  I can understand why people write them - it must be a form of catharsis - but I cannot begin to fathom why people want to read them.

Dodie Smith's family sounds like it was wonderfully fun.  True, her father died in her early childhood, and she was an only child, but these sad circumstances do not seem to have held her back.  She certainly didn't grow up isolated: her widowed mother moved back to her parents' house, and so Dodie grew up surrounded by grandparents, aunts, and uncles.  The aunts gradually married and moved, but three uncles remained bachelors and meant (Smith says) that she never felt the absence of a father.  The dynamics of the family certainly don't seem to be lacking much.  As the only child amidst so many adults, Smith was showered with affection and approval - and no small amount of teasing...

Somehow I knew I must never resent teasing and though I sometimes kicked my uncles' shins in impotent rage, never, never did it make me cry.  Teasing must be accepted as fun.  And I now see it as one of the great blessings bestowed on me by those three uncles whom, even when they became elderly men, I still referred to as 'the boys'.

Smith's autobiography is not a string of momentous occasions, really, but a continuous, welcoming stream of memory.  Of course there are individual anecdotes, but the overall impression I got was of a childhood gradually being unveiled before us, with stories and impressions threaded subtly into what feels like a complete picture.  I was mostly struck by how accurate Smith's memory seems to be:

All the memories I have so far described are crystal clear in my mind; I see them almost like scenes on the stage, each one lit by its own particular light: sunlight, twilight, flickering firelight, charmless gaslight or the, to me, dramatic light of a carried taper.

This particular comment is actually an apology for the fact that, for recollections before she turned seven, Smith cannot recall exact chronology.  Well!  I have come to realise that my own memory is rather shoddy.  I remember strikingly little about my childhood - or, indeed, about any of my past.  If family and friends talk about an event, there's a good 50/50 chance that it'll come back to me - but if I were to sit down and try to write an autobiography, I think I'd come unstuck on about p.5.  I just can't remember very much, at least not without prompts.  Curious.  But it makes me all the more impressed when writers like Smith seem effortlessly to delve into their past and convey it so wonderfully - especially since Smith was in her late 70s when she wrote this memoir.

With memoirs, I seem especially drawn to people (like Harriet Devine) who grew up amongst theatrical folk, people (like Irene Vanbrugh) who became actors, or (like Felicity Kendal) both.  There's always been a part of me that wishes I'd grown up alongside actors and theatre managers.  Although I have no genuine aspirations to be an actor, I'm endlessly fascinated by the world of the stage, especially before 1950.  Well, although Smith's relatives were not connected with the theatre professionally, several were keen amateurs, and some of my many delights in Look Back With Love were Smith's first adventures upon the stage - especially the ad-libbing.

These sections were all the more enjoyable because Smith made frequent reference to her later career as a playwright.  (I've only read one of her plays - her first, published under a pseudonym - but am now keen to read more.)  When I wrote about P.Y. Betts' People Who Say Goodbye I commented that it was as though her childhood had been hermetically sealed.  Not once did she introduce her later life, or make links across the decades.  This worked fine for me, since I'd never heard of Betts before, and was happy to take her memoir on her terms.  Since I came to Look Back With Love with an extant interest in Dodie Smith, I've have been disgruntled if she hadn't made these connections between stages in her life (although, tchuh, she didn't mention I Capture the Castle.)

I keep saying that different things from this book were my favourite part... well, that's because I loved so much of it.  But I think, honestly and truly, my favourite element was Smith's ability to write about houses.  I love houses.  Not just to live in (they're handy for that) but as subjects for novels, autobiographies, TV redecoration programmes...  Chuck me a novel where the house is central, and I'm in.  Write something like Ashcombe and I'm delirious.  So I loved the way Smith conveyed the various houses she lived in.  Not that she wrote in huge detail about decor or style, although these were mentioned - more that, somehow, she manages to make the reader feel as though they were also residents in the houses, looking around each room with the familiarity of those who share Smith's memories.  I can't pinpoint an excerpt which made me feel like this; it permeates the book.

Most of Look Back With Love is (as the title suggests) lit by the glow of nostalgia.  The humour tends to be gentle, intertwined with the fond remembrance of innocent times past, rather than knockabout comedy, but there was one excerpt which made me laugh out loud.  It's part of Smith's tales of schooldays:

My mother felt the elocution lessons were well worth the extra she paid for them, but she was not pleased when Art became an extra, too.  Drawing, plain and simple, was in the curriculum but, after we had been drawing for a year or so, the visiting mistress would bend over one's shoulder and say quietly, "I think, dear, you may now tell your mother you are ready for Shading."  This, said my mother, merely meant she had to pay half a guinea extra for me to smother my clothes with charcoal; but it would have been a bad social error to refuse Shading once one was ready for it, so she gave in.  I then spent a full term on a bunch of grapes - the drawing mistress brought them with her twice and then we had to remember them; they were tiring fast.  After a few terms of Shading pupils were permitted to tell their mothers they were "ready for Oils", but mothers must have been unresponsive for I can recall only one painting pupil.  She had a very small canvas on a very large easel and was generally to be seen staring helplessly at three apples and a Japanese fan.  After many weeks I heard the drawing mistress say to her brightly, "One sometimes finds the best plan is to start all over again."

Lovely, no?

This has gone on for quite long enough, so I'm going to finish off with a characteristic piece of Dodie's writing.  The setting, ladies and gents, is the senior (mark it, senior) dancing class.

There were so many superb boys that I did not see how I could be without a partner, but I was soon to realise that there were two girls too many and I was always one of them.  Few of the boys were younger than fifteen.  I was only nine and small for my age, but I could never understand why they were not interested in me - I felt so very interesting.

This is the rhythm which is maintained throughout Look Back With Love: young Dodie always thought she was very interesting, and old Dodie looks back across the years with the same level of interest, albeit now more detached.  There is every possibility that this level of self-importance in a child would have been irritating for those around her - Smith freely confesses that she used to recite and perform at the merest suggestion of the drop of a hat - but, from the adult Smith, it pulls the reader along with the same happy enthusiasm.  Smith's childhood was not wildly unusual, but the way she is able to describe it elevates Look Back With Love above other childhood memoirs.  Everything, everyone, is capable of interesting Dodie Smith (adult and infant), and this makes her the most fascinating subject of all.  It is rare that I am bereft to finish a book.  A mere handful of titles have had this effect on me in the past five years.  But Look Back With Love is one - as I turned the final page, I longed for more; I longed to know why she made such dark hints about her stepfather; how her playwriting took off; how she experienced the theatre of the 1930s... thank goodness there are three more volumes to read!


Others who got Stuck into this Book:

Well, I was going to do a round-up of other bloggers who've written about Look Back With Love, but I can only find one who has!  But they say it's quality not quantity, and you couldn't do better than Elaine's review over on Random Jottings:  "Look back with Love is a lovely, lovely, lovely book.  It is charming, it is delightful, it is beguiling, it made me laugh and it made me cry and I adored every single word of it and was very sad to finish it. [...]"

Are You Competitive With Other Writers?

The Inklings, a legendary writers' group.
You realize these guys knew how to party.

by Lydia Netzer

Writers, for centuries, have socialized with other writers. In salons, in retreats, artist colonies, as penpals, personal friends, friendly rivals, actual rivals. There is something about this writing life that draws like to like, so even though we tend to imagine writers as garret-dwelling loners, they actually do clump up together all the time. Maybe because no one else understands this particular brand of crazy. Maybe because they want to compare notes, not only to learn from their comrades but also to see how they measure up.

Our "Book Pregnant" group consists of 30 debut authors. As we've been going through this process together, sharing our news and asking questions and learning about the experiences the others are having, I've realized that besides the obvious (money) there are a multitude of comparison points authors can use to measure each other. Here are a few:

• Covers. Do you have foil? Is your name bigger than your title? Stock photo or original art? How thick is your paper?
• Blurbs. Were you blurbed by your buddies or did you draw in some strangers to publicly love you? 
• Tours. How many dates? Publisher footing the bill? 
• Giveaways. How many ARCs is your publisher putting out there before your launch?
• Reviews. Are you getting reviewed in the New York Times? Or not?
• Media. Where are you interviewed? Morning shows? NPR? 
• Lists. Not just bestseller lists, but "Most Anticipated" lists, recommendation lists, Indie Next lists, award shortlists... the list of lists goes on.
• Numbers. Did you know there are web sites where you can put your book, your friends books, and the books of everyone you know including Kafka and Nora Roberts, and then see side-by-side sales data in a handy graph? True. 

Not my actual sales figures.

With all of these ways that writers can one-up each other, all of the feelings that can potentially be hurt, and all the ways you can feel rotten about yourself by bathing in everyone else's success, you would think that our little group would be just a tiny bit fraught. That there would be a little bit of "Well, you may have gotten that profile, but I got that interview," or at the very least, "Damn, I wish I had that kind of print run." But I'm telling you, honestly, it's not like that. Not only is this group not like that, but I've been friends with other writers for most of my life, and while some of my friends have been insanely successful and others of us have not, I have seen my friends helping each other, helping me, supporting each other, cheering each other on, commiserating without eye-rolling, encouraging without comparing. It's really amazing. 

Why is this happening?

One idea is that writers have so many obstacles to overcome, so many external threats and potential "enemies," that it doesn't pay to attack each other from within the team. There are unimpressed reviewers, Goodreads users that give you one star with no explanation, Amazon coders that somehow leave your best info off your page, bookstore patrons that don't show up for readings in the rain, etc. Who needs to worry about other writers' snubs or sabotage? 

Crazy writer will bathe for Likes.

Another thought is that writers really do need each other to succeed -- for introductions, for advice, for recommendations, for instruction -- so once one has been helped, one is likely to turn around and help others. But what I've been thinking about lately is that possibly now in this online world of social media, where you need Likes and Retweets and Pinnings and Follows... you really can't survive on your own. Even if you're a loner, a tortured artist living in a cave, with no social skills and no deodorant, you better learn how to craft a cool status update, because your publisher is looking at your fan page, and you better have some engaged readers. 

You know what a hashtag on Twitter is, right? A hashtag is a word proceeded by a # sign, which creates a searchable, followable stream connected to a topic, group, or conversation. So if you use the #fallenwoman hashtag, you can click on it to find other fallen women. If you use the #bachelor hashtag, you can find other people discussing the show. If you use both, you can express your opinion about the cast, in a concise and Twitter-friendly way. If you use the #amwriting hashtag or the #mywana hashtag, you'll find writers joining together to support each other online. 

#amwriting was begun by Johanna Harness two years ago. It's an abbreviation of "I am writing" and its purpose is to connect writers to other writers around the world. You can read more about it here, or just jump on Twitter and search #amwriting to get a taste. #mywana is a tag that was launched by writer Kristen Lamb based on her book for writers, We Are Not Alone. She calls it the Love Revolution and you can read more about it here. I asked these two networking experts some questions about competition between writers and how the internet has changed the way writers interact. 

1. What inspired you to promote this hashtag? Was it seeing existing friendliness and collaboration between writers or was it seeing a dearth of it?

Johanna Harness: When I started on Twitter, there really wasn't a community of writers.  Agents had a lot of followers and there were pockets of authors who all knew each other, but it was difficult breaking into those groups.  I wanted a place where all were welcome, a place where it would be okay to jump into a conversation.  Twitter is a great medium for showing daily life. There is comfort in knowing that writing is frustrating and difficult and just a hell of a lot of work. Most writers have other gigs in their lives and still make time for words.  Just because the writing journey is difficult, that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.  Twitter shows that the real writing path is not magical.  It's wonderful some days and some days it makes your head explode.  That's normal.  I wanted a community on twitter where people would not feel so alone with that daily reality.

Kristen Lamb: Actually what inspired me to write WANA was that I saw a bunch of technology and marketing experts giving writers what I felt was flawed advice. They were well-meaning, but clearly didn't understand that writers are not car insurance and books are not tacos. Traditional marketing has never sold books...ever. And using Facebook as a new way to spam people is a bad idea.

I saw how writers could come together and support each other and they weren't doing that, at least not in a meaningful way that had power to eventually drive book sales. There was no reason we couldn't be one big family, leaning on each other and helping each other. Books are not so cost-prohibitive that people can't buy more than one, so there really was no reason for rivalry.

2. Do you think it's possible for a writer to survive the digital age *without* reaching out to support and network with other writers?

Kristen Lamb: No. I think the Lone Wolf writer is a romantic anachronism. Hemingway wouldn't last a minute in the new paradigm.

3. Conversely, do you think it's possible for a writer NOT to feel competitive with other writers? 

Johanna Harness: Yes.  I think it has a lot to do with how a writer experiences validation.  If motivation and validation come from within, writers are much more likely to be supportive of each other. 

Jealousy gets in the way of all kinds of relationships. If someone is jealous of my success and feels delight when I fail, that's not much of a friendship.  If that same person achieves great success and is only nice because she knows she's better than I am, that's no kind of friendship either.  I'm of a mind that we're all on individual paths.  We all struggle.  We're all working toward our goals. We can support each other and lift each other up and it doesn't diminish us.  Love inspires love. Jealousy inspires all sorts of nasty stuff.

4. Have you seen evidence of back-biting, invidious comparisons, put-downs and such on Twitter... without naming names? :) Or is it pretty rare?

Johanna Harness: Writers are no different than any other group of humans. I see it.  I distance myself from it. Anyone whispering ill of others to me is likely whispering ill of me to others.  That's not the kind of energy I want in my life.   

Kristen Lamb: I hate to say it, but the worst behavior and the most unprofessional behavior I have witnessed on Twitter actually came from agents. I have unfollowed literary agents who found it fun to hide behind a cutesy moniker and talk about writers like they were morons. They would whine that writers were unprofessional and then act like high school mean girls. I've seen less of that lately and that is good. I think many of them are realizing they need writers and that being unprofessional won't be tolerated. 

The only bad behavior I have witnessed from writers is the spamming. But, in fairness, a lot of "experts" are teaching them that blitzing people about their books is being a responsible professional. So in this instance I can see how I writer would mean well, but come off wrong. 

Agents mocking writers? There is no gray there. It's just wrong. But, again, I've seen less and less of that so that's a good sign.

5. Can you name some good examples of writers who give others hand-ups and help newbies, so I can give them shoutouts? :)

Johanna Harness: Recently the writers over at Beyond The Margins honored me with their Above and Beyond Award.  The best part of the experience has been getting to know the other nominees on the list.  I'd point you to that list for some really wonderful examples of community-builders. 

Kristen Lamb: Anyone you meet in #MyWANA. Also any of the WANAlums #WANA711 #WANA1011 and #WANA112 (WANAlums are blogging classes of mine who have teamed up). Piper Bayard @PiperBayad, Jenny Hansen @jhansenwrites, Marcy Kennedy, Patrick Thunstorm... There are just too many to name. 

***

What do you think? Are you competitive with other writers? Do you believe me when I say that writers can be purely supportive with other writers? Does Twitter foster comparison or foster collaboration? Have you seen the ugly side of a writing friendship? Leave a comment and tell us about it. 

The Readers and My Life in Books

If you enjoy reading Stuck-in-a-Book but have always thought that it was missing a certain audio quality, then I have just the thing for you!  Simon S and Gav very kindly asked me to contribute my Five Favourite Books to their awesome weekly podcast The Readers - and it's now up!  I'm at the end of the podcast, but obviously you should listen to the whole thing.  Here it is!  Probably not a lot of surprises there for regular readers of SiaB, but I had such fun doing it (and re-doing it when I went on for too long the first time - is anyone surprised?!)

My e-friend Julie alerted me to the fact that the second series of BBC Two's My Life in Books is on its way - some info here - and that seems like a good bandwagon-jumping opportunity.  Some of you will remember that I shamelessly ripped off the idea (and title) for my own My Life in Books series last March/April, inviting some of my favourite bloggers and blog-readers to participate, in mystery-partner pairs.  You can still read them all by clicking on the image below...

Well, I've decided to do it again!  Last time I decided not to ask bloggers in their 20s and 30s, since we've barely begun our reading life - but I rejigged the questions a bit, took away any age limit, and contacted another 16 of my favourite bloggers and asked them to join in.  I'm delighted to say that every single one of them said yes!  Not sure exactly when the series will start, but it'll be sometime in the next two months.  Just thought I'd get you excited about it - it's going to be a fun few collaborative months here at Stuck-in-a-Book, what with Elizabeth Taylor Centenary Celebrations, Muriel Spark Reading Week, and My Life in Books.  Isn't the blogosphere fun?

Another Blogger Meeting

I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of bloggers over the past four or so years - one of these days I must compile a list and see quite how many I have met - but the award for furthest-flung blogger has to go to Karyn of A Penguin A Week, whom I met in Oxford today.  Karyn has come all the way from Australia to Penguin-hunt, as you are probably aware if you read her fab blog.  Well, when I saw that she was heading to these shores, I decided we should definitely have lunch and scour some bookshops together - and she thought it sounded like a good plan too.

I arrived a little early at The Nosebag, my favourite lunch place in Oxford, and wandered around to see if Karyn was there yet.  She wasn't, but I did bump into an old housemate, and had to explain that I was meeting somebody off the internet, and only had the small photograph from their site by which to identify them.  Liz (the said housemate) is familiar with my blogging excursions to some extent, but I think I made an 'interesting' impression on the guy with whom she was having lunch...

So I popped outside, and there Karyn was, browsing through the books of the shop next door: I had chosen the eaterie not solely for its good food, but for its proximity to Arcadia, which specialises in Penguins.  We sat, ate, and nattered.  As always when I meet bloggers, it feels like I've known them forever, and I gab away nineteen-to-the-dozen.

Then off we went, to Arcadia, Oxfam, and the Albion Beatnik bookshop.  In all three, we both bought at least one book - in the first, Karyn very kindly bought me the book I'd eyed: Molly Keane's Young Entry.  She also told me how great The Quest For Corvo by A.J.A. Symons was, which reminded me that I borrowed a copy about eight years ago...

Later I got a few more - as always, I love to share my spoils, so here be they:

They Were Defeated - Rose Macaulay
Bachelors Anonymous - P.G. Wodehouse
A Man With A Horn - Dorothy Baker
The Far Cry - Emma Smith
Smoke and other early stories - Djuna Barnes
Young Entry - M.J. Farrell/Molly Keane


I didn't keep track of what Karyn was finding, but I'm sure they'll appear on her blog in due course.  It was a really fun afternoon, and yet another reason to be grateful for that day when I decided starting a blog could be a fun idea - who knew all the people I'd get to meet?

Oh, and my favourite moment of the day?  When the owner of one bookshop suddenly asked me: "Do you know how to make jelly?"

Erm...

Publishing in the Age of Google Alert

            By Nancy Bilyeau

Occasionally when my red “smart” phone trembles in my palm, signaling the arrival of book news--perhaps welcome, perhaps not--I think of A.S. Byatt’s 1992 novella Morpho Eugenia.

            Adapted into a fine film called Angels and Insects that ramped up its more-decadent plotline, Morpho Eugenia is at its core a mid-Victorian love story between an impoverished naturalist named William Adamson and a repressed governess named Matty Compton (wonderfully inhabited by Kristin Scott Thomas). Long before their feelings are made known to each other, when William can do nothing but admire Matty’s vigorous wrists, they hatch a plan to earn much-needed money: write books about insects. William’s is about ant colonies on the grounds of an aristocratic mansion where they are both ensnared; Matty’s is a fairy tale featuring same bugs.

            The two of them get busy researching and writing. And I know what you must be thinking: How could decadent plotlines exist in such a novella?  But this is the sublime A.S. Byatt, and yes, it gets kinky, including a passage about a family card game that spells out a sexual act not legal even now in any of the United States. To my point—William and Matty mail off their respective manuscripts to London. And more than a year later: results. William receives a letter saying, “We are very happy you have chosen our house as publisher and hope we may come to a happy arrangement for what will, I am quite sure, be a most fruitful partnership.” Moreover, Matty tells him she has quietly sold her insect fairy tale book and now has in hand a sizeable bank draft. With that money, they run away from the mansion in the middle of the night, heading straight for the Amazon, determined to study much larger insects for a number of years.

            Since the mid-Victorian age, there’ve been some changes in publishing.

            About six months ago--which would be a year after I’d sold my historical thriller The Crown to Touchstone/Simon&Schuster--someone savvy about these things told me to put a Google alert on my name. This was the best way to keep up with news on the book. I did so, and for several weeks was kept informed about the dessert recipes created and then published by a distant relative in Michigan and the high-school-quarterback achievements of an even more distant cousin. I was intrigued by an alert that led to news of someone with my last name being arrested and charged with robbing a Dollar Store in Kentucky. I pondered under what circumstances this would have seemed a profitable plan.

            My Google moment came when I sat at the bar at our local Thai restaurant, sipping a club soda while waiting for my take-out order. It was Friday night, there wasn’t much food in the house, and I wanted to surprise the kids with Pad Thai and their favorite duck with crispy noodles dish. My phone whirred, and I glanced at my Gmail account: “‘Publishers Weekly’ review of Nancy Bilyeau’s ‘The Crown.’ ”  I clicked on the link, excited. My first review! And then a cold and sour panic took hold in my stomach as I read the sentences once, twice, three times. It wasn’t a good review. There was no Pad Thai for me that night, and not much sleep either.

            Since that autumn evening, I’ve been reviewed in national magazines like O: The Oprah Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, in trades such as Kirkus Reviews and BookList, in daily newspapers and on more than a dozen blogs. The reviews of The Crown have been mostly positive. Oprah said, “The real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy, and betrayal.” It’s wonderful to read a sentence like that. Yet nothing can quite erase the dismay and disappointment I felt when I read my very first review in a Thai restaurant, with no warning from agent, editor or friend.

            I considered removing the Google alert the next day. But I decided, “No, put on your big girl pants—you have to be able to handle this.” And so when the Google alert trembled the next time, I clicked open my Gmail. I had roughly the same defensive stance as a boxer who’s suffered a powerful right hook, trying to ward off the knockout. This alert wasn’t even about me. That Michigan relative had produced an amazing apple crisp, and I burst out laughing.

            The next time Google came for me it was just after breakfast on Saturday morning—a giveaway of advance copies of The Crown just commenced on goodreads. I had no idea this was planned. But before lunch, I’d fired off emails to friends and relatives. My goal was to hustle 50 requests. It was absolutely thrilling to watch the number of people who requested The Crown soar to just over 1,000 in a week.

            More and more, the Google alerts were for me and not the chef or the football player: book reviews; an announcement that the first two chapters were posted on scribd; a news brief in Time Out New York about my upcoming reading and signing at a Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. After my book was published on January 10, the alerts came faster and faster. Yet more reviews—Devourer of Books just named The Crown her pick for the month of January. Yay! A piracy website with a skull & crossbones as its emblem offered my book for free, a novel that took five years to write. Boo!

            Google knows no borders, and now that my novel is on sale in the United Kingdom I get alerts on reviews popping up across the Atlantic. Don’t get me wrong. Coming out with a first book is exciting. But there is much about publishing a book that is baffling too—and at times harrowing. Several times I’ve considered removing the Google alert that sends news updates hurtling into my world. Wouldn’t it be nice to search through the Amazon for unusual insects with William and Matty, oblivious of the latest news in book publishing?

But in the end I always accept that knowledge is power. It was Sir Francis Bacon who said it first, in Religious Meditations Of Heresies in 1597, proving that for me all roads lead back to the 16^th century.

I feel confident that if Sir Francis were here right now, he would tell me there is no going back. Information must flow, and I must be ready for it, and never fail to respond when the news comes, which is more often than not through that sudden whirring jolt in a small red phone.

            www.nancybilyeau.com

Right Ho, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

My book group recently read Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) by P.G. Wodehouse.  I always like an excuse to read some Wodehouse.  A diet of nothing else would be like living on ice cream, but as an occasional snack, there is nothing better.  And it would be a mistake to think that, since PGW makes for such easy reading, that it is easy writing.  I think Wodehouse is one of the best wordsmiths (or should that be wordpsmiths?) I have read, and it is far more difficult to write a funny book than it is to write a poignant or melancholy book.

But perhaps there are people out there who have yet to read any Wodehouse?  Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the way he writes (since, let's face it, there is minimal variety within his output.)  In the typical Wodehouse novel you will have comic misunderstandings, elaborate disguises, accidental engagements, wrathful aunts, and everybody ending up happy in the end.  This formula is more certain than ever in a Jeeves and Wooster novel, where rich, foolish young Wooster gets himself entangled in a comedy of errors, and wise butler Jeeves demurely extracts him from them.

But the sheer joy, the genius, of Wodehouse is his wordplay.  It's the kind of thing which will either appeal or not, and is impossible to explain into funniness (which is true of all humour, probably) - Wodehouse uses language like an acrobat, dashing from hyperbole to understatement in a moment; finding the longest way to express the shortest phrase; finding the most unexpected metaphors and similes, and twisting them all together alongside absurd slang and abbreviation.  Who but Wodehouse could have written this line?

Girls are rummy.  Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being more d. than the m.

Or have conceived of this image, when serving an aunt with alcohol?

"Give me a drink, Bertie."

"What sort?"

"Any sort, so long as it's strong."

Approach Bertram Wooster along these lines, and you catch him at his best.  St. Bernard dogs doing the square thing by Alpine travellers could not have bustled about more assiduously.

Like Richmal Crompton's William Brown, Bertram 'Bertie' Wooster is nothing if not blessed with aunts - most of whom view him with an unwavering, and understandable, loathing and distrust.  But, like William Brown, Wooster is endlessly well-meaning.  This is what makes him such an attractive hero - more or less all the messes in which he finds himself are caused by trying to help others, often in the romantic department.  Although Wooster himself sees engagement as a misery beyond all others, he often attempts to help others reach this state (invariably finding himself engaged to the soppiest female present.)

But so far I have not been specific.  I should mention Right Ho, Jeeves.  Aunt Dahlia - the only aunt who can tolerate Wooster, although she demonstrates the sort of affection which is shown through terse telegrams and much use of the term 'fathead' - summons Wooster to her mansion in Market Snodsbury, Worcestershire.  (Not many novels feature Worcestershire, the county in which I was raised, so it's nice to see it get a mention - and Pershore, no less, which was the nearest town to my house.  If you're thinking the village name is ridiculous, I should mention that Upton Snodsbury is in the area, and presumably inspired Wodehouse.)  He is being summoned to distribute prizes at a school, a fate which Wooster would rather avoid, to put it mildly.  So he ropes in newt-fanatic Gussie Fink-Nottle, who had been looking for an excuse to go there.  For why, you ask?  Well, with the coincidental air which characterises so many of Wodehouse's convoluted plots, the girl with whom Fink-Nottle is besotted happens to be staying there.  She, 'the Bassett disaster' as Wooster terms her, comes across pretty clearly in his first description of her:

I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don't sometimes feel that the stars are God's daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.

The romantic entanglements do not end there, of course.  Wooster's cousin Angela and her beau Tuppy also have something of a rollercoaster relationship, just to add to festivities.  Then there is Wooster's white jacket, which Jeeves is determined shall not be worn...

My favourite scene from this, and one which often appears in anthologies etc., is Gussie at the prize-giving.  All I'll say is that he's been drinking, for the first time in his life.  It's supposed to stiffen the sinews and summon the blood, but it's a little more chaotic than that.

This isn't my favourite Wodehouse novel.  I think I prefer the stand-alone books to the series, perhaps because they're all the more unexpected and strange.  But Wodehouse's exceptionally brilliant use of language is on fine form in Right Ho, Jeeves and I certainly loved reading this.  There are many imitators, but nobody can equal Wodehouse for his strand of comic writing - and a dose of it, in between other books, is always, always welcome.