The Temptress, Anne Boleyn

I think it was my first year of secondary school when I initially became entranced by the vampy sensuality of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second, and most evil, wife. Well, the only evil one, and that's only if distorted legends are to be believed. I still remember watching a documentary in class that featured jousting, and Anne removing her gloves to reveal her stubby sixth finger and cackling lasciviously, throwing her head back as the camera swirled around to make her seem like a delicious psychopath. Since then, she's been my strangest celebrity fantasy. I might add that in my imagination, she's a lot closer to the buxom Natalie Dormer version in the Tudors tv programme than to the actual version in her royal painting, which I'm sure has been wildly distorted to make her seem a lot more demure and unappealing than her true likeness. Perhaps the real Anne was so stunning that painters fled with their eyes burning at her beauty, and somebody who'd never met her had to invent a dowdy image instead.

Boleyn is a great character, a woman so entrancing that she managed the unthinkable: not only enticing Henry away from his wife of many years, Catherine of Aragon, but doing so with him in full knowledge that the consequences would be the severing of ties with Catholicism and ostracising of England from countries that they shared an uneasy peace with at the time, particularly Spain, where Catherine was born. Of course, Henry's hand was partially forced by the desperation to secure himself a male heir, but I like to think that without Anne's wily witchiness he simply would never have considered that he might have the power to renounce Catholicism, instead satisfying himself with nominating an heir already living, rather than trying to manufacture a new one, no matter how much uncertainty that may have put around his legacy. In my eyes, Boleyn was sent to Henry's court by the Devil to destroy Christianity in its present Catholic form, and her sensual powers were such that every man in the kingdom fell under her spell, while women were left cold and flummoxed by the intense devotion she inspired. Maybe none of the legend of her is really true, and the witch Anne was popularised after her death to validate Henry's decision to have his wife beheaded, but it's a really exciting idea that she came to Court with her supernatural powers to wreak havoc, and that for a time she succeeded.

In the end it was delivering a still-born baby, who is theorised to have been horribly disfigured, that lifted the wool from Henry's eyes. He was able to see her full wickedness made flesh in this devil-child, and swiftly invent a tale of her sleeping with her brother to dispatch her. Still, Anne's sex-stained devilry was to forever taint the kingdom in the form of the Church of England, and caused deaths for years afterwards as Catholics and Protestants alike were burnt and tortured for heresy, depending on the religious proclivities of the monarch at the time. But if she hadn't delivered her demon spawn and had her head struck from her body, who knows, Anne could still be around today, with one bat of her luscious eyelashes bending the actions of the world's male leaders to her wicked will and bringing empires crashing to the ground.

God vs Science vs Father Time

"If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size"

That's just one of the many amazing lines in Stephen Hawking's mind-blowing A Brief History of Time, a book that explains the history of scientific thought on the big bad universe we inhabit. I'm not very good at science so I worried that a lot of it might go over my head, but Hawking must be the greatest teacher in the world, as the most gigantic yet infinitesimally esoteric concepts managed to sink into my brain. What's weird for me is that the more Hawking proves the reasons for our existence and the existence of Earth itself with baffling scientific theory, the more I contrarily believe that there must have been some God behind it all. Take the quote above for instance: if when the universe initially expanded it had gone 1/100000000000000000 (I think) slower then it would have collapsed back in on itself ages ago and we would never exist. And that's just one tiny qualifier in our existence. When you add together all of the different ways in which life on Earth could have been scuppered, the odds of us being here are so small that it's impossible to comprehend that we actually exist by chance, and the idea that there was a nice God to put us here instead (and then make up loads of complicated science to bamboozle us) becomes a lot more palatable.

When I was reading A Brief History of Time on my way to work I found myself staring out of the window at the land and just thinking "wow". Everything that exists, everything that got us to this point in humanity is amazing. And the book is stuffed full of so many great ideas, I can't believe Hawking managed to pack them all into two-hundred pages. The ones on time are the most inspiring. I've always had a problem with time: it seems so queer to me that when something is done it's done and you can never go back and do things differently or better. We're supposed to learn from our mistakes, but everytime we mess something up and get the chance to learn, we never get to live through the exact same thing again and defeat our previous mistake like an end-level boss in a computer game that killed us the first time round. Or when an era of our life is complete it's gone forever: why can't we go back and dip in and out of different times of our lives instead of always being stuck in the present? It would be so much more interesting to flit between the past and future too, and also make us appreciate the here and now instead of just drifting through it. Hawking raises a lot of points about the arrow of time and the possibility of it being fiddled around so that we could live a more Slaughterhouse-5 style existence, and it's given me lots of good ideas for short stories. I'd like to write one where you got to the half-way point of a story and Time's Arrow was reversed, and then you'd follow the character back where he'd come from. Or a story where a character met all of the different versions of himself when time splintered off after major decisions and events in his life. So I think I will. Thanks for the inspiration, Hawking!

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle might be one of the best books I've ever read. It's my third Murakami novel, and while the first two were very good, there seemed to be some slight indefinable quality missing that stopped them short of being great, but with Wind-up Bird everything in Murakami's writing comes completely together, and results in a fascinating exercise in surrealism. The main character, Toru, is mostly a foil for all of the weird and wonderful people who inhabit this bizarre Japan, and the novel is so bursting full of ideas that 600 pages really isn't enough to fully flesh out the paths of all the characters involved. In a nutshell, it's about a guy who quits his job and spends his days housekeeping. After his cat goes missing, and his wife becomes increasingly distant before leaving too, he embarks on a quest to win her back, actively doing little but being dragged around by the actions and stories of a phenomenal supporting cast of characters who propel him through his journey. It's packed full of brilliant surreal ideas and some very entertaining history on Second World War Japan and the puppet state that they created after invading parts of China. Every chapter is bursting with ideas, I can't recommend it highly enough.

My one criticism of the book is that the first two parts build up a couple of characters who aren't that involved in the final third, but maybe I just need to re-read it and see if things make a bit more sense. It's certainly a book that demands re-reading, maybe even studying, something that you could immerse yourself in. I always find this annoying about books: you can watch a film or listen to an album over and over again, learn every tiny nuance of it, but a book is usually only going to be read twice at most, and has so much more to get your head around to begin with. If I could stop time I'd sit and read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle over and over until I knew every sentence off by heart, and knew exactly what Murakami was trying to say with every wonderful word. Although actually, I suppose if I could stop time I'd rob a bank and rave around the world forever, and I'd still never get round to reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle as many times as I'd like. Perhaps the only way you can get involved enough in a book to truly understand it is to write it yourself.

The Atomic Bomb

Reading Haruki Murakami's amazing The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has encouraged me to learn a bit about Second World War Japan, and any cursory glance of this topic ultimately points you in one terrifying direction: the atomic bomb. After the war with Germany had ended, America turned its full attention to the Pacific and the Japanese, and, bored instantly at the thought of engaging in a long and drawn-out conflict, instead put the finishing touches to the newly-invented atomic bomb, which it promptly dropped on Hiroshima and a few days later on Nagasaki, wiping out about a quarter of the population of each and hastening Japan's surrender. Dropping the bomb was such a significant and insane thing to do that it seems strangely glossed over in history now: when I was at school I don't remember it being taught at all; we only focused on the nice old-fashioned warfare with Germany. I'm fascinated with what people thought of it at the time, both in Japan and the USA.

I wonder if, had the bomb been developed sooner, would it have been dropped on Germany? It seems to me that the fact that the Japanese weren't white and were very culturally different to the West, led those who dropped the bomb to rationalise that the Japanese were almost a separate species, and this thus made their destruction a more conscionable action. Plus, the thought that defeating Germany was a European concern ( and helped a lot by Russia) perhaps made the USA feel that they wanted the final victory, even as Russia were gearing up to crush Japan as well. I just can't imagine the insanity of the moment the bomb struck: in Japan they lost contact with Hiroshima and thought that there may have been bombing, but assumed it to be no more than damage to communications, so they dispatched an aircraft to the area to see what was going on. When the pilot arrived he found utter devastation, presumably beyond his wildest nightmares. What would you think to see miles and miles of densely-populated land simply wiped out? And what did the Americans think? Did they realise the true extent of what they were going to do? I suppose it was the kind of thing that could only become reality once it had happened - any thought of it beforehand would be masked by the fact that such devastation couldn't truly be imagined, only experienced.

Even more scary is that the only reason that just two bombs were dropped initially is that this was all the USA had manufactured at the time:  they would have had to wait weeks for more bombs to be produced and could only make around three a month. They debated over whether they should continue dropping the occasional bomb as produced, or whether to stockpile them and orchestrate one sustained attack. Luckily, the Japanese got smart and gave up before this happened. It's interesting that every major advancement in war, from arrows, to guns, to tanks, and bombs, has led to a revolution in the way that war is fought, but the atomic bomb has instead led, theoretically, to a regression. Now, countries have the technology to win a war in one fell swoop, but instead use more limited forms of combat to wage battles, always with the spectre of this dreaded final solution hanging over their heads. What if America got fed up again and dropped an atomic bomb on Iran? Would they be able to get away with it? Are they stopped by the fear of what the rest of the world would think, or what people at grassroots would do; or do they have the atomic fear hanging over their heads too, the worry that perhaps Iran or an ally is nuked up and would retaliate? The world seems in such a precarious position. America spends much of its time attempting to stop others being nuclearly armed, but maybe everyone needs their own nuke to keep the fear hanging equally over everybody's heads, and keep warfare back in the mid-twentieth century.

What Ever Happened to Stuff?

I love having stuff. I used to buy CDs and DVDs all the time, and I've got shelves and shelves packed with books. Having stuff looks brilliant: there's no substitute for looking through your collection and having to wade through lots of magical albums that you've completely forgotten owning before finding the right one. But just recently, there doesn't seem much point in having stuff anymore: everything can be found online and saved to a slightly bigger box, so what's the point in having loads of little boxes lying around, taking up room, when all of your entertainment can fit in the palm of your hand? I always thought I'd buy CDs forever, but now it just seems such a poor use of money, and every time you buy a new CD rack it's full straight away anyway and you have to think about getting the next one. I've just always hated the idea of owning something but not actually having it, not having an album cover and liner notes, and a CD that gets scratched and doesn't play properly after a few years. I form a strong emotional attachment to actual 'things' that I don't think I'll ever be able to have for a digital copy. I like that I still have my copy of Weezer's Blue Album with it's crinkled booklet from when a beer bottle cracked in my bag, and that my copy of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless always skips on track four from when my housemate hilariously removed every CD I own from its case. What love can you have for recorded music that doesn't exist physically? You can still love the tunes, but you can't hug them.

Anyway, point being, on Saturday I got an uncontrollable urge to buy some books. I went to Waterstone's and bought Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, London Fields by Martin Amis, and three Philip Marlowe novels by Raymond Chandler. I loved walking around the shop, I loved looking at the books, and I loved carrying them home and putting them in my massive to-read pile. And I'll love seeing the varying degrees of degradation they go through as I read them. I really hope that the nasty e-reader never tricks me into thinking that having shelves and shelves of books and spending money on them is a waste of time and resources, because if it ever does I'll be a shell of a person. I'm not as staunchly against e-readers as I used to be when I thought they were devil spawn (the halcyon days of a few weeks ago) but I just can't ever see myself not wanting to read real books. The feel of them, the weight of them, the fact that the image of somebody sat quietly reading, under a tree or something, could come from any point in human history (if you include hand-scribed books). Books have always been a part of me, and that rasping yearning for childhood that I feel when innocence further slips from my grasp could be made a permanent feeling if they disappear. And if e-readers really have to be everywhere, can they invent ones where the back of the thing morphs into the front cover of the book, so I know what people are reading on the train, please?

The Hunter S. Thompson Phase

The Rum Diary (film) didn't get great reviews when it was released last year, but I thought it was really good. It works well as a companion piece to Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, but also (the director) Bruce Robinson's earlier film, Withnail & I, both of which I love. It's not about much more than Paul Kent (a re-named Hunter S. Thompson) mooching around and drinking a lot, but it has that easy-going Thompson charm that makes his writing so much fun. Also, I thought Johnny Depp was very good in it: a lot of his performances since Fear and Loathing have been really over the top, but in this he seems to have recognised that this was pre-wildman days for Thompson, and so plays the character with a greater restraint, with just a glint in his eye of the excitement and madness to come. There are some great hardcore drinking scenes that recall Withnail kneeling on the floor begging for antifreeze, and also some brilliantly choreographed cock-fights (fowl) in which the cockerels were taught for weeks to give the appearance of sparring and to strike their blows as close as possible to their opponents without actually fighting.

I've loved Hunter S. Thompson for years, his articles and books are always written with an amazing energy and have so much to say about America's seedy underbelly. Sometimes though, the fact that he has such a brilliant, unique style can make him appear a bit of a cliche, since every writer in the world who likes that kind of thing seems to go through a Hunter S Thompson phase, and reading anything written by somebody under the influence of this hex is one of the most excrutiating things imaginable. The curse is often found in music or film journalism, hip young gunslingers who think they sound cool. You can see it a mile off: an article that begins something like "I'm buring down the motorway at 90mph on no sleep on my way to meet Pee Wee Herman, brushing my teeth and spitting out of the window when I notice globs of toothpaste swirling in the wind and landing smack on a police car, who promptly pulls me over..." or some such trash. It's not big or clever, and whenever writing like this appears in print it blemishes the Thompson name just a little bit. And it makes you feel as if saying that you think he's a great writer makes you look like a bit of an idiot, when it really shouldn't.

Most writers grow out of it pretty quickly, but when the ghost of Thompson lingers in the pen it's visible a mile off, and it never works. Plus, once he's in your blood, he can be very difficult to get out. Luckily, I first got into Thompson when I was mostly just talking about being a writer rather than actually writing, but for ages the little narrative voice in my head was banging on about "Capitalist pigs" and "foul years of our Lord". I think the only way you can write after reading Thompson is to completely forget about letting even a hint of him into your writing - if you emulate him in the slightest you're going to end up looking like a terrible plagiarist. I guess this is what makes Thompson one of the best writers of the twentieth century: his style is so indelibly stamped as his own that it's impossible to get away with writing anything that can be compared to it, and so he stands alone.

Vigorously Editing; Second Meeting With the Veals

I’m planning to enter Meet the Veals in a short story competition, the Bridport Prize, in May, and this has meant I’ve had to shave off about three-hundred words to get it beneath the 5000 mark required. It only took three edits to get it down, and it’s shocking how much you can shave off a story without really trying. All I’ve taken out are odd words and phrases, and about two sentences that were basically repeated elsewhere in the story. I didn’t remove one word that made any difference to it, and yet I’ve managed to get rid of a hell of a lot of them. The new version is up now and reads a lot better, I think. I tried to follow George Orwell’s advice that “if you can cut a word out, cut it out”, probably the best piece of writing advice I can think of. I think I need to go back and re-edit all my old stories; I seem to use the word “that” a magnificently pointless number of times.

In other news, I’m working on a new short story, a dystopian apocalyptic sci-fi kind of thing, then I’m hoping to can writing shorts for a while and work on my novel.