AI vs Authors

Posted on November 22, 2025 by literarylad

A report released this week looks at the impact AI is having on the novel, and those who (up until now) write them. Impact of Generative AI on the Novel is by a team of independent researchers, working at Cambridge University, who are engaged on a mission of ‘radically rethinking the power relationships between digital technologies, society, and our planet.’

The report says that the UK government has so far focussed on the potential of AI for increasing ‘Growth’, without considering the detrimental effect it might have on the creative industries. Of course, successive UK governments have blindly chased ‘Growth’, in the ignorant and rather stupid assumption that it’s always a positive thing, so perhaps it’s no surprise they should view AI with the same rose-tinted spectacles.

The results of the survey on which the report is based suggest that the majority (67%) of novelists don’t use AI, and that those who do tend to use it only for non-creative tasks. They give the example of ‘information search’. I’ve never knowingly used AI, but I can’t understand why anyone would use it to search for information – isn’t that what search engines are for (unless a search engine is now considered to be a form of AI)?

The report says literary creatives are concerned about a loss of originality, as well as the risk of being accused of using AI when they haven’t. And of course, novelists are understandably concerned about being replaced by machines, with genre fiction being predicted as being most at threat (perhaps due to the more formulaic structure).

39% of novelists believed that their incomes had already been adversely affected by competition from AI generated books. Half of published novelists said they believed their work would, in time, be completely replaced by AI (a very worrying prospect). And 93% said they didn’t want their work to be used to train AI, but at the same time, more than half said they knew their work had already been used for just that, and in almost all cases, without their permission, or any remuneration. I was already aware of this thanks to a blogging friend, the successful, published author Damyanti Biswas (you can read about her upsetting experience of AI ‘scraping’ here).

Among other things, the report recommends that copyright law should be strengthened, and a licensing market implemented, where organisations who want to use existing work to train AI would have to both gain permission from, and provide payment to, the creators. This would of course require much more transparency from the tech companies, and much stronger regulation from government (which, in the current global political climate, seems unlikely).

For authors, as well as for other artists, the increasing use of AI looks to be a significant threat. For me personally, it suggests my chance of achieving success as a published author is slipping further away, however much my writing improves. But what about readers? If AI were to become so effective at producing novels that readers were unable to tell the difference, would it matter to them that a book was written by a machine, rather than a human being?

And for society generally? We’ve been through the information (overload) age and survived (albeit with rather more stress than we had before). But we seem now to be moving into a new age – a time when it’s increasingly difficult to know, not only what’s true, and what isn’t, but even what’s real, and what isn’t. What will that mean for us? And will society survive without a basic grip on reality?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Fiction or Non-Fiction?

Posted on October 31, 2025 by literarylad

When we think about reading, most often we have in mind fiction. Novels, short stories or even flash fiction can be entertaining and engrossing, invoke emotion, take us out of ourselves and give our minds a welcome rest from the things that concern or trouble us in our lives.

But there’s a lot of non-fiction out there too. And while biography and autobiography can often do the same job of storytelling, much non-fiction fulfils a very different role – it’s about education and information, rather than entertainment. It feels more virtuous – as though you’re doing something serious and valuable, rather than just having a good time – but can also add stress to your life. It is important to know what’s going on in the world, but some works of non-fiction can leave you wishing you’d stuck to crime/thriller/literary drama novels.

I’m currently reading a book called ‘This Land is Our Land’, by Marion Shoard. A weighty Tome running to over 500 pages (small print, and in a larger format than most paperbacks), it’s a vigorous investigation into land ownership in Britain. As well as setting out the current situation, she covers the history – how we got to where we are today, with the ordinary people practically excluded from most of the land – and what hope there might be for a fairer system of land ownership and use in the future.

This Land is Our Land is a mighty read, a bit dry and academic at times, but also fascinating and enlightening. It brings home just what mugs we, the British Public, are. It makes me want to rage and to shout, to tear down fences, to run across meadows, deer parks and woodland; along river banks and around lakes. It makes me want to confront those selfish, greedy, ignorant, privileged gits who have stolen our birthright.

A quote Marion Shoard uses in the book, from David Lloyd George, the former Prime Minister (and in 1909, when he said this, Chancellor of the Exchequer) which says it all is:

…who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?

It’s a pity we never hear such words from our politicians now.

Reading about such things doesn’t do much for my blood pressure. And although I was already painfully aware of the limited access to nature and land (from frustrating attempts to walk some of the few paths that are supposed to be open to the public, but which often turn out to be obstructed), I needed to read the detail. I needed to understand – we all need to understand – exactly what the situation is.

Everyone in the UK should read this book. It should be on the school curriculum. We need to consider how we let ourselves be dispossessed of something so basic, so essential, as the ground beneath our feet. And then we need to gather together and march on the self-appointed landowners and take back what should be available to everyone, and owned by no-one. Of course, that won’t happen.

I don’t have much time for reading. Which means there’s a conflict between fiction and non-fiction. Do I read the books that will educate me about issues that really matter in the world today? Or do I spend my reading time on novels that will entertain me? It’s difficult getting a balance when time is so limited.

How do you approach the fiction/non-fiction dilemma? Do you favour one over the other? Or do you have time for both?

Posted in reviews, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

The Shape of Things to Come

Posted on August 27, 2025 by literarylad

I was speaking to a friend the other day about the books we read in our youth (which is oh, just a few years ago now). And in particular, those novels of a prophetic nature. My friend has just come back from a trip to America, where he lived for many years before returning to the UK just before Trump got in for a second term.

He talked about what Trump’s people are getting away with, and related it back to (I think) Aldous Huxley’s novel ‘Brave New World’, and a fictional state telling its people to ignore the evidence of what they see and experience, and instead believe the “truth” the state is telling them. [1.] This, of course, is something unscrupulous regimes have always done. The fictional societies described in books like Brave New World, and Orwell’s ‘1984’ are extrapolations from states the authors will have seen, or in some cases experienced first hand.

The difference now is in the technology being developed and used by devious, evil-minders leaders (and would-be leaders), even in the so-called ‘Free World’. They no longer need to tell people to ignore what they see, when there is the capability to show people something that appears to be real (even though it isn’t). Video evidence that looks incontrovertible may have been artificially created by artificial intelligence, proving quite clearly the alternative ‘reality’ they would have us believe. My friend said he had a bad feeling about the way things are going, and how they might end, and I’m afraid I share that sentiment.

One thing none of those books predicted, my friend pointed out, was mobile phone technology. I guess they were never going to get everything right. We agreed that one of the pieces of fiction that most accurately predicted the future was E. M. Forster’s (yes, he of ‘Room With a View’ and ‘Passage to India’ fame) short story ‘The Machine Stops’. In this particular future society most people live underground in closed rooms with all their needs provided for, and spend their time exchanging ideas, through what looks very much like our own internet, with people across the globe. Not entirely accurate, since most of us are still getting out and about quite a bit. Although, as anthropomorphic climate degradation progresses, we may yet have to retreat underground.

All those years ago in our youth, when my friend and I started a band, we used the title of the short story, and I recorded under the name ‘The Machine Stops’ for many years after. I never ‘made it’. Although who knows, as I’m still writing music, (and getting better all the time). It’s never too late to break out from the shade. Maybe I’ll share some of my songs on this blog sometime soon.

Logo for ‘The Machine Stops’ (the band, not the story)

[1.] Some time later it occurred to me that this is exactly how religions operate – ‘believe what we tell you, even though it contradicts everything you can see, and know to be true.’

Posted in Politics, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Bonfire of the Rights…

Posted on June 4, 2025 by literarylad
Image by Rafael Juarez from Pixabay

Here in the UK we like to think of ourselves as belonging to the ‘Free World’. You’d think we’d have the freedom to burn books, for instance (so long as they belong to us, of course – burning other people’s books would amount to criminal damage).

Hamit Coskun thought he would have that right, when he set fire to a book outside the Turkish consulate in London, by way of a protest against the imposition of Islamic rules in Turkey. It seems he was wrong, as yesterday he was convicted, under the Public Order Act, of a ‘public order offence’. Actually, it was a ‘religiously aggravated public order offence’. Because the book he set light to was, of course, that masterpiece of compassion and reason, the quran.

In Islamic countries people don’t generally have the right to criticise religion. In Pakistan, for instance, a well-used method of destroying your enemies is to claim they said something nasty about ‘the prophet’, and then you can round up a posse, chase them down, and string them up from the nearest tree, secure in the knowledge the police will just stand by and watch. In Iran, Afghanistan, and others, the police will do the hard work for you.

But in the ‘Free World’, surely things are different? Surely we have the right to criticise religion? Surely the law is framed to protect individuals, not ideologies? Apparently not. Hamit Coskun, during his protest, was attacked by a man wielding a knife and threatening to kill him. But it seems that in our ‘Free World’ crimes like ‘carrying an offensive weapon’ (interesting the different meaning applied to that word ‘offensive’), or ‘intent to kill’ pale into insignificance compared to the ‘crime’ of causing someone to be offended. In one of many ironies, it was the reaction of this dangerous psychopath that sealed the conviction, in that it was used as proof Hamit’s actions had threatened public order. Because in Britain today it appears people are no longer responsible for their actions, if they can show that something has caused them to be offended.

Wearing my Literarylad hat, I find myself wondering what would have happened if a copy of one of Jane Austen’s books, or William Shakespeare’s plays were to be burned publicly. Could us literary afficionados complain it had caused us ‘offence’, and have the person doing the burning arrested? Or would we have to beat them up a little, just to prove their act had threatened public order?

We know that in other, less enlightened parts of the world, religion is so privileged as to be exempt from criticism. But in a healthy society ideologies not only can, but should be challenged. Burning an ideological document is a fairly obvious way of expressing dislike of that ideology, or how it’s being used (just as an Iranian might burn the British flag in order to express anger at British interference in the Middle East). Our society, I would argue, is anything but healthy.

What are we doing to protect the right and freedoms that were so hard won by our forebears (how many bears, do I hear you ask?)? We should be out on the streets carrying out mass burnings of religious books, from the quran to the bible, and any others we can find, to show we’re not going to stand for this withdrawal of our rights.

We need to use our rights, to ensure they can’t be taken away by popularist right-wing despots like Putin, Trump, Oban. Or Starmer.

But what will we do?

Yes, you guessed it; absolutely nothing!

Posted in Ethics, Religion, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Contemporary Fiction Worth Reading…

Posted on May 6, 2025 by literarylad

At last!

I believe I may have written previously about my struggle to find contemporary novels that I like. As a youngster my reading was concentrated on novels from the past, mostly early twentieth century, from authors such as E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, and John Wyndham. There were a few contemporaneous (to me at the time) authors I read in the late twentieth century, particularly J. G. Ballard, Anthony Burgess, and A. S. Byatt. But ever since, my forays into current works have generally been disappointing, as some of the reviews I’ve posted here testify.

I’ve not been alone in this, but not so long ago a friend who felt the same put me on to a novelist she had found that bucked the apparent trend for careless plotting, wooden characters and generally rather poor quality writing. His name is Amor Towles, and the book she had read was ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’. I looked out for it the next time I was in a bookshop. They didn’t have it, but they had two others by the same author, and I chose to buy ‘Rules of Civility’, which follows the progress of a young woman in New York in the Jazz age years, before WW2.

As you can see from my review on Goodreads here, I rather liked it. So much so, in fact, that when I saw his latest in a bookshop in Crickhowell (on a short break in the Brecon Beacons) I bought that too. ‘Table For Two’ is a collection of short stories. The book looks impressive, with the edges of the pages dipped in black ink (which, on the other hand, could be seen as un unnecessary use of ink, and environmentally damaging). I’m looking forward to starting it, although sadly, despite now having retired from the day job, I don’t as yet seem to have much time spare for things like reading.

Towles’ use of English was sometimes unfamiliar, with some colloquial American (New York?) words I didn’t know, but that just added to the interest. The quality of his writing was high, it ‘read well’, without any awkward phraseology leaving me struggling to discern meaning. The level of description was just right, and done efficiently and effectively. The chapters did read a little like a series of vignettes, rather than a cohesive story, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment, and I felt I was in the hands of a talented storyteller.

So, a success. My mission now is to find other authors whose work I can enjoy reading.

Posted in reviews, Writing | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Vettriano

Posted on March 5, 2025 by literarylad

The Scottish painter Jack Vettriano has died. He represented striking and convincing images of people and places on canvas with an economy of fluent brush strokes, much in the way that the best of the impressionists did, and his talent was obvious to anyone who cared to look. His pictures were compelling, attractive, enigmatic and fascinating, and had widespread appeal. All of which made him a figure of hate for the privileged elites of the art world.

The old saying ‘never speak ill of the dead’ is almost always followed by obituary writers; even when writing about politicians whose actions caused misery and destruction. Obituary writers will always find something nice to say, and gloss over the bad things they did in their lifetimes. It’s telling therefore that when writing an obituary article about Vettriano (in the Guardian), a man whose only crime (so far as we know) was to create beautiful paintings, the art critic Eddy Frankel couldn’t resist sticking the knife in. He compared Vettriano’s work to greasy fast food, and the only good thing he had to say about it was that a lot of other (for which read ‘common’) people liked it.

According to Frankel, Vettriano ‘lacked a conceptual edge’, and ‘didn’t have any post modern self-awareness’. Oh no! Vettriano’s biggest crime, the reason his work is apparently worth very little, is that it doesn’t carry ‘a message’ which, according to art world elites, is the very purpose of art. I believe I may have touched on this subject before in this blog. Indulge me if I slip into the vernacular for a moment, but that’s complete bollocks from stuck up twits who are so far up their own (and possibly each others’) backsides, it’s a wonder they haven’t done us all a favour and disappeared! The ‘messages’ in most contemporary artworks are facile, shallow, say nothing new, and would be better communicated in very short articles (probably in the Guardian). According to Frankel ‘the thing about modern art is you need to be smart to get it’ – the classic ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ put down to us plebs – if you don’t appreciate this, it isn’t because it’s no good, but because you’re too thick.

The ridiculous accusation against Vettriano is that he had nothing to say. Of course not. He was an artist. ‘Art for Art’s sake’ may be an old fashioned adage, but its veracity outlasts petty minded fashion. Art has, throughout history, been used to communicate messages – usually propaganda. But at its best, relieved of that burden, its true genius is in its ability to delight. Not just to present accurate representations of the world around us, but to create alternative visions, perhaps even to present the world as we would like it to be, rather than how it is.

I’m with William Morris – art should be beautiful, and Vettriano’s is. What kind of human being wants to look at ugly, poorly crafted artworks, simply because they carry some simple message we probably already know well enough, like ‘sex sells’, ‘money is power’ or ‘consumerism is ruining our world’? The best art makes the world a better, more attractive place, rather than dragging us down.

Vettriano was often accused of perpetuating sexist attitudes, because some of his works portray the sexual stereotypes of powerful men and sexily adorned, seductive women. This too is a shallow, unthinking assessment of one particular theme in his paintings. It’s written off as mere titillation, but to me, his more sexualised works, regardless of what the artist himself intended (if indeed he intended anything) do more than communicate a facile ‘message’. They make us think for ourselves; about traditional gender specific roles and the sexual interplay between men and women. Most are more thoughtful than a simple ‘here’s an attractive woman in sexy underwear’. They draw you in, make you wonder just what the ambiguous situation might be, what the characters you’re looking at are thinking. His world is an alternate universe of 1940’s style noir – something different to everyday life.

But more than that, he had an incredible talent for painting. The apparent simplicity of his style led the idiots who run the art industry to assume he wasn’t very good. But for anyone who’s ever done any painting, and found it hard, and who have actually thought deeply about how it works, it’s Vettriano’s astonishing ability for representing realism, and particularly the play of light and shade, with an economy of brushstrokes, that was his genius. There are actually very few artists who can do that (I wish I could!) His canvasses are vibrant and alive, and he had an eye for a great composition. So for a short while at least, could the narcissistic artistic elites please crawl back under their stones, and allow those of us who are more interested in appreciating great art than trying to make everyone else think we’re cleverer than them, mourn the loss of a great talent.

Posted in Art | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Libraries for Growth

Posted on January 24, 2025 by literarylad

My local library is permanently closed due to the discovery of dangerous ‘RAAC’ concrete in the building. This typifies the plight of libraries across the country. Our library system has been neglected and underfunded for decades. But the current government’s predilection for economic growth could be a good sign. Couldn’t it? Don’t hold your breath!

Six months into a new government and I find myself asking the same question I’ve asked of every government in my lifetime. Which is; are they on the make, or just plain stupid? This one say their priority is economic growth – on the face of it, not so unreasonable, because growth sounds positive, doesn’t it? You want your children to grow, you want your savings to grow, you want growth in your vegetable patch. But if you’re unfortunate enough to have a tumour..?

There are three problems with this government’s almost religious fervour for growth. The first is a matter of priority. The Chancellor has said that growth is more of a priority than net zero. Right. So, if human society fails to reign in its emissions, there’s a fair chance we’ll so denigrate the environment as to render it unable to support human life; thereby bringing about our own extinction, but rather than addressing that, we should concentrate on allowing some people to make money in the short term?

The second problem with the apparently unquestionable economic truth that our economy must always be growing is that growth means buildings, infrastructure, and use of natural resources. Are economists and politicians so inherently stupid they can’t see that indefinite expansion within a finite world is an impossibility?

And the third problem is the issue of quality. This government, like those before it, want growth, but don’t seem to be too picky about what’s growing. The expansion of Heathrow airport, for instance, was challenged in the courts during the last government, and judged to be unacceptable. Obvious really. Apart from the effect on people living near the airport (it’s a heavily populated area), the last thing we need is yet more air travel and a corresponding increase in emissions. Who was it who said that the Heathrow expansion shouldn’t be allowed to happen? Oh yes; Keir Starmer, when he was leader of the opposition. Now, as the PM, he’s changed his mind, to the extent that he’s planning to reform the legal system to block campaigners from challenging infrastructure projects. What a hypocrite!

There remains the problem of getting the economy moving so as to generate more wealth to lift some of those millions of people out of poverty (I mean, we could just get the super rich to contribute their fair share, but that would be too simple).

So here’s an idea…

Instead of building for the sake of building, why not ‘grow’ things that will actually benefit people, without an unacceptably high cost to the environment? We could start with libraries. So many have closed, and those that remain are woefully underfunded. Why not invest in a bold program to renovate, repair, and build new, well stocked, well run libraries across the country? That would be ‘growth’. It would generate jobs and income (and thereby increase tax revenue). It would help us all to become better read; better educated. It would help rejuvenate our decaying town and city centres.

You could support that with a significant investment in public transport, so we can all get to our local library. Improved public transport would reduce the number of car journeys, and therefore, reduce emissions; contributing towards net zero. And borrowing books, rather than buying them, reduces environmental impact too.

Because what our apparently rather dense Chancellor can’t seem to see (dare I suggest she’s distracted by all those fossil fuel industry lobbyists whispering promises of non-executive directorships and highly paid after dinner speaking gigs in her ears), is that it doesn’t have to be a choice between net zero and growth. Net zero can be the growth. You just need to make sure you invest in projects that will contribute towards net zero.

Like libraries.

But what do I know?

Posted in Politics, Writing | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Sleep Culture

Posted on November 18, 2024 by literarylad

Thought for the day –The opposite of ‘woke’ is ‘asleep’.

It’s an age old trick of extremists. First you find a word or phrase that sums up the ideas and principles you don’t like (or that don’t suit your agenda). A word like, for instance ‘woke’. Then you repeatedly lie about, and misrepresent what it means, until it becomes accepted by the populace as a pejorative term – a bad thing. In time, the term (along with all the good sentiments it represents), can’t be uttered without evoking disapprobation.

Perhaps the best way to counter such nefarious propaganda is to fight like with like. So welcome to the launch (will it fly?) of…

Sleep Culture!

Because the opposite of ‘woke’ is not ‘sensible’, but ‘asleep’. Which is exactly what the ordinary folk who have been hoodwinked into believing the right-wing rhetoric are. All the way back in the eighties, with my first (and only) band, we had a song called Sleeptalk, with lyrics written by our very talented singer and co-writer Nigel…

They drug you up just to keep you down,
Send us to sleep so their system is sound,
They’re sending us to sleep./…

We’re lulled to believe their tranquil lies,
Too drowsy to open our eyes;
They’re sending us to sleep.

That was during the bad old days of Margaret Thatcher [1.], the architect of Britain’s ‘selfish society’. Today, Nigel’s lyric is more relevant than ever, as the general population is lulled into inactivity by Sleep Culture.

No wonder the Fascistic right wingers hate all things ‘woke’. They’ve been keeping us sedated – ‘asleep’ – for so long. The last thing they want is for us to be ‘woke’ to all the injustice, the discrimination, the oppression and the withholding of human rights we’ve been subjected to for so long. So they take control of ever more of the media, double down on their propaganda, keep us distracted with facile TV, video games, and ever more sporting competitions, so we don’t pay attention to what’s happening all around us. Sending us to sleep, so their (unfair) system is sound.

We need to wake up and kick back against this Sleep Culture. When much of the free world is on the cusp of slipping back into autocracy, there’s no time to lose. The last line of Sleeptalk pre-empts, and could almost be seen as a definition for, ‘woke’:

I open my eyes and I laugh at the shit and the lies the bastards fed me! [2.]

So in future, whenever you see the term ‘woke’ being used as a pejorative, if there’s an opportunity to reply (on social media for instance), why not hit back by denouncing their disingenuous narrative as Sleep Culture?

‘Woke’? Some of us ain’t never been asleep!

[1.] Ding dong, the witch is dead!
[2.] Apologies for the cussing!
[3.] Apologies for the quality of the sketch – I’ll hold fire on that application for the post of political cartoonist for the time being.

Posted in Ethics, Politics | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Nobel Prize for Literature

Posted on October 10, 2024 by literarylad

Congratulations to Han Kang on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature! Praised ‘for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life’, it’s encouraging to know that in these times of equality, no-one need be held back by characteristics such gender or lack of writing ability. In honour of the award I’m re-posting my review, from 2018, of her best known work ‘The Vegetarian’…

Until now, the few reviews I’ve done on this blog have been of books, and films, that I’ve liked, the rationale being that if you can’t find something good to say, then don’t say anything. I don’t like to be critical, but sometimes, in the interest of balance,  perhaps I should be. This is the time, and The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, is the book.


Warning

This review gives away a lot of the plot so, as they say on the sports reports, if you don’t want to know the result, look away now…

Synopsis

The Vegetarian is the tale of a young woman’s descent into madness, told mostly from the perspective of the people around her. The mental instability begins when she decides she can no longer eat meat, apparently inspired by a nightmare. Eventually she decides she can’t eat at all. The book ends with her close to death, in an ambulance on the way to hospital.


My Analysis

I can at least start with some positives. I can say that I did find the book both interesting and different. I was very aware of what I took to be the differences in attitude and outlook of the characters living in a different culture (I presume this was the reason, rather than it being just that the author had some strange ideas!) I didn’t find the book particularly satisfying, for a number of reasons, the most fundamental of which was that the reasons for the main character, Yeong-Hye, not wanting to eat meat, indeed the reasons for all of her strange behaviour, were never really explained. Perhaps it was just because she was mad, so that there was no reason. All the same, it would have been nice to have had some sort of description of how her mind was working, even if its processes were mixed up and illogical due to the madness. The book left me feeling ‘why? – what was it all about?’

The author’s approach to the male characters is rather skewed and unsympathetic. Yeong-Hye’s husband is portrayed as being very superficial, unfeeling and cruel, with little care for his wife. When she doesn’t respond to his sexual advances he rapes her, not just once, but habitually. And when her madness becomes more pronounced, he is happy to abandon her. Her brother-in-law, a character who we’d been led to believe might be a decent chap, uses her deranged state of mind to persuade her to have sex with him. And we later discover he’s been serially raping his wife, Yeong-Hye’s sister, In-Hye. As if that wasn’t enough, In-Hye later reveals that the girls’ father systematically abused Yeong-Hye when they were children. There’s nothing wrong with having a bad guy, but it seems as though the author wants us to believe that all men are complete bastards. Perhaps she accurately portrays men in South Korean society – I sincerely hope not.

I also had a problem following what was going on. The order of events was often unclear. Often it wasn’t even clear which character was speaking, or acting. The text would read something like, ‘X did this’, followed by ‘she said this’, but the ‘she’ would refer to Y, not X. At other times, names were specified to make clear who was speaking or acting, but in language that was laughably clumsy (Y said this, X said that she, Y, thought that X thought this of Y, whereas X didn’t think she, Y, was what Y said X thought). Maybe it was down to the translation – although the translator has impressive credentials and, if the blurb in the back of the book is to be believed, is highly thought of. I found myself wondering just what part the editor played in the production of this book (or if there even was one.)

As the book progresses, it becomes ever more ‘spiritual’, with descriptions of dreams and fantastical analogies. I don’t have a problem with this, except that it all seemed rather confused. I got the feeling that the author was trying to tell me things – suggesting analogies between the dreams and the real lives of her characters, but was doing it in such a confused way that it just didn’t come across. Hence my feeling that I wasn’t clear what it was all about. One of the last of the dreams was of a black bird flying up into the sky. Was this the author’s way of telling us the main character had died? I had to go back and re-read the passage, and even then I wasn’t sure which of the two women was having this vision. I’d also say that if this was what it meant, I’m afraid it’s a bit of a cliche, so rather a poor ending.

Add to all this that there isn’t a single character in the book that a reader could feel any empathy for, and I’m left wondering just what there is in this book to make it worth reading. I made it to the end – I hate to give up on a book – but it was hard work.

Deborah Levy, writing in the Guardian, called The Vegetarian ‘a modern masterpiece’, and with inevitable insecurity I wondered – is it just me? Am I over critical of other writers’ work? Am I becoming bitter – do I want to put down the work of those who have achieved more literary success than me? Mrs Literarylad, who I trust as an arbiter of literary quality, read the book after me, and her comments made my criticisms seem positively reserved. Despite, like me, not liking to give up on books, she made it to page sixty-one and no further.

Summary

There are some interesting ideas in the book, and it is engaging in places, but ultimately, for the reasons I’ve mentioned, unsatisfying. Bear in mind that this book won the Man Booker international prize in 2016. Is this really the very best writing being done in the world today?

The cover of the book however, is both striking and beautiful, and I think it was this that made it stand out for me, but you know what they say…

Text & original photography copyright Graham Wright 2018

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Mozart – The Rise of a Genius

Posted on October 9, 2024 by literarylad

You know how it is when you start watching the first episode of a TV series, and find it so irritatingly bad you’ve no choice but to stick with it for the full hour? And then watch the rest of the series too? So it was for me with the the recent BBC2 ‘docu-drama’ ‘Mozart – The Rise of a Genius’. Fortunately there were only three episodes, so just the three hours of raging at the TV screen.

You might think three hours was enough time to give a comprehensive picture of the life and career of our Wolfgang (or ‘Wolfie’, as I like to refer to him). But a large portion of the airtime was wasted on talking heads giving their thoughts on what Mozart might have been feeling about events in his life, or what his motivation might have been for doing something. Some, like the star soprano Lucy Crowe, had a long and intense musical training and career to draw from. One was a historian. But the rest were ‘celebrities’ – actors, writers; even a comedian. To quote David Mitchell, they may not have known much, but they reckoned plenty. ‘They’, unsurprisingly, included the ubiquitious Stephen Fry, a well known atheist in danger of disproving his world view by reason of his own omnipresence – could it be that Fry himself is in fact god?

The term ‘dumbing down’ doesn’t suffice to describe the series. Particularly excruciating were the prolonged close ups on the talking heads while they gave it their best shot at producing a beatific smile (either that, or they needed winding) in response to an especially favoured piece by our hero (I’m guessing the music wasn’t even playing while they were being filmed).

The historical representations were at best highly subjective, and at worst, rather suspect. The story went that young Wolfie acquired his ability on the keyboard, and as a composer, as if by osmosis, without much help from anyone else. As a child he was oppressed by a controlling father. Leopold (or ‘Leo’, as I like to call him) was, apparently, a second-rate musician and composer who nevertheless recognised his young son’s talent, and set out to exploit it shamelessly, parading his child prodigy around Europe in order to make as much money from him as he could. When Wolfie’s first symphony was performed publicly, cynics suggested it had been written by his father, but how could that be – we know the boy was a genius?

When Mozart grew to be a young man and finally broke free from the greedy, coercive control of his father, he went out into the world as the archetypal outsider, without connections, desperately trying to break into the closed world of the musical establishment.
And so it continued. It was implied that he never received any help from anyone in developing his abilities – he did it all himself. There was no indication that the music he wrote might have been influenced by others; it was all totally original. The name Haydn was mentioned in passing, as someone who got to go to an event that Wolfie didn’t get an invite to. The programme omitted to mention that the two composers had a long association, with ideas bouncing back and forth and Mozart in particular benefitting from the advice and musical direction from the older, long established composer. No mention of the time Wolfie spent, as a boy, in the London workshop of J C Bach, or the obvious influence of Bach’s work in Wolfie’s music (including his famous requiem).

Very little of Leo’s music remains, but what there is shows him to have been a very competent composer, and for me, Leo’s musical mannerisms are clear in his son’s music. He was also, I suspect, a great teacher. The relationship was undoubtedly difficult, but neither father nor son perhaps behaved as well as they might, and Leo too may have had reason to feel aggrieved, not least over the death of his wife while in his son’s care.

Away from his father’s influence, it was shown how Wolfie initially found success, but quickly blew it due to irresponsible behaviour; living beyond his means, excessive drinking and partying (I’m not sure the leather jacket and steampunk sunglasses were actually true to the period!) Perhaps, after all, Leo had good intentions in trying to guide his son’s career. And as for the suggestion that he was jealous of Wolfie’s success? After sacrificing his own career ambitions and devoting most of his energies to developing the son he recognised as a superior talent? Is that really likely?

The programme’s claim that Mozart was an outsider all his life really doesn’t compute. He may have been struggling to climb the greasy pole, but he was doing so from within the establishment – young Mozart had influential support and connections. It wasn’t until towards the end of the final episode that they casually mentioned he was a freemason. Was? In fact this renegade composer had been welcome at all the best lodges for the past six or seven years. They probably would have kept quiet, had it not been required information in the explanation of Wolfie’s last opera ‘The Magic Flute’, the plot of which they described, in a piece of unrivalled selectivity, as ‘an opera about an evil woman who tries to make her daughter kill her father’.
I nearly fell off my chair!
The libretto of TMF has a convoluted and somewhat dappy plot in which the patriarch who kidnaps his daughter and imprisons her in the care of a jailor intent on rape is somehow portrayed, through the magic of masonic mumbo jumbo, as the hero, while the distraught mother (the Queen of the Night – that ‘evil woman’) gets to play the bad guy. All it really tells us is that eighteenth century morality was rather different to our own. I think they used to refer to it as ‘The Enlightenment’.

I guess you could at least say that we got to hear some great music (albeit in fragments). Wolfgang undoubtedly had an astonishing talent, and an understanding for, and way with the structure of music that was extremely rare. And, unusually, he managed to make the incredibly difficult metamorphosis from child prodigy to brilliant composer. But like most, possibly all composers, he took influence from others, developed what had gone before, and interpreted it in his own way. This is evident in his music. He frequently ‘borrowed’ from other composers, including Clementi (who apparently wasn’t impressed!) Handel and Gluck. In his defence, the practice wasn’t at all unusual for the period.

I think it’s great to celebrate Mozart’s special genius. But for the sake of reality, his place both in society, and in the classical genre should have been properly established too. Mozart was integral to the classical period. He was special, but so were others. Personally, I believe Franz Joseph Haydn’s music was, on the whole, greater (but that’s only an opinion – please don’t shout at me!)
I’m just saying – other geniuses were available…

text & sketch © graham wright 2024

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