Next Big Thing Chain Post

Tagged by Alison Summers

What is the working title of your book?

Arlene’s Atoms.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Hard to pinpoint. I started with the surreal conceit of the protagonist birthing a series of unusual objects—a car, a cow, etc. I tend to use strange images as a springboard for fiction.

What genre does your book fall under?

Magic realism. Surreal comedy.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Shirley Henderson as Arlene, Stellan Skarsgård as Magnus.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A hairdresser falls pregnant with a universe in an appalling Scottish town.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The element of choice implied in this question is misleading! I believe my book is as entertaining and worthwhile as any other work of contemporary fiction being produced by writers my age (i.e. barely out of nappies). The only impediment between me and an agency is an overwhelming nation-wide indifference to my writing and ideas. In that case, self-publishing is our friend.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Approx? Six months. 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Gertrude Wilmot’s Children of the Brown Things. Frank Dervish’s Crank.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I wanted to write something that both celebrated and reined in my tendency for extreme imaginative digression over cohesive plots or satisfying emotional encounters with “well-rounded” characters. To transform the horribleness of reality with the power of the surreal and comic is my mission.  

Other people doing this today:
Gill Hoffs
Chris Allen
Jane Riddell

Lunch With Cruella Collett

I lunched (or dined) with Cruella Collett, Vice President of Japan, as we were straddling a fault line, trying to halt another earthquake with our sandals. This might explain the cross-purposes nature of our chat, and why we have meatballs in our hair. Any reference to restuarants is the result of two much seismic shuggling.

*

Hello. Thank you for sharing this lunch (which is really a dinner) with me. I hope this green mankini is not too informal an attire for our meet, but my other outfit is in the wash. So: tell me about your latest novel.

Green is my favourite colour.

That is also the title of my latest novel. “Green is my Favourite Colour.” It’s a satirical musing over transgressions in the lower social strata of small Italian villages, frequently involving pasta of the unboiled kind.

Speaking of which – should we order?

That’s very interesting, whatever you said. I especially liked the words you used. Tell me, what’s the proper procedure for mounting a giraffe? And, once mounted, for safely riding one?

I like how you are listening with your heart.

“The giraffe is my favourite animal.” That is the title of my upcoming non-fiction coffee table book. It explains in detail how to respond to questions asked by people who will not listen to the replies. I am considering also making a fiction coffee table book tackling the same, touchy subject, at the first possible date. It will be starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn when it is adapted sometime in 2013. The world’s first coffee table film, actually.

What four things would you keep in your pouch if you were a kangaroo version of your present human self, with your present human brain transferred into the kanga cranium?

Aside from coffee table books and films, you mean? Well, I suppose I’d keep a kanga-kid or two in there. Make it four and I’ve answered your question.

You’ve written many novels, praised for their length. Your last book was over 4000 pages long and twice as long in endnotes. Honestly, how do you write so much? What is your secret?

Blindfolds. I never reveal to myself where I am going, and in my confused state lengthy novels (and non-fiction coffee table books) are my only escape from this harsh reality. Once I found myself at the top of the Empire State Building. I had no idea how I was supposed to get down again. There were tiny planes flying around my ears, and some nagging lady trying to make me put her down. After this experience I wrote the 2553 page long tome “Taking the King out of Kong”.

You are, famously, from Norway, or pretend to be from Norway, and have travelled recently to Japan, or pretended to have travelled to Japan. What is your favourite thing about America?

“Nigeria is my favourite African country.” That is a title I have yet to use.

What is your solution for dealing with needy street urchins?

I’m not sure you should have ordered those. Your face is turning green. In “Green is my favourite colour” I describe the feeling of being able to observe other people’s discomfort, but without opportunity to free them, since the Lobster Mafia is keeping a tight claw.

I think you should consider reading that.

Can you pass the meatballs, please?

Did you know that the famous movie “Lady and the Tramp” was set in this restaurant? I hear they keep a commemorative dog leash somewhere around here. Oh, good, you found it. I’m not sure you ought to wear it, though...

What would you do if all parentheses were banned from now until March 4, 2034?

(Oh, no! I would surely perish and forget to write my haiku-sci-fi-mash-up “For whom the metal bird

Flies,

No more.”

)

Thank you for lunching (dinnering) with me. I’m a little short right now, so could you get the bill? Thanks, you’re a star.

Lunch With Christopher Allen

I met writer, singer, traveller, blogger, and Munich’s foremost Henry James scholar Christopher Allen in a bowling alley for lunch. After a hard hour’s work tutoring turtles in Latin verbs, he likes to relax in the dark staring at pins, breathing into the night. It’s not creepy, he insists, it’s mellow. I lie down on the alley while he rolls a few balls around me. It isn’t lunchtime, exactly, more the middle of the night, but we don’t say anything.

Thanks for agreeing to this interview. Please don’t hurt my beautiful face. So: can you tell me a bit about your latest novel?

I can do better than that. I can recite it from memory while juggling bowling balls. But I won’t. I might, however, consider giving you a synopsis for, say, twenty quid? Good, here goes:

Linda, an incredibly gifted yet awful writer, has always got away with words. In Linda Wright’s Dairy we follow the daily diary entries of a woman realizing that her life is nothing like she thought it was. As she hilariously struggles to come to terms with the loss of her father and then the loss of her husband, we can’t help but slap our knees black and blue at Linda’s way with words. It’s over-the-top, hysterically funny of course—and sad. Moo.

Wow, that was interesting. You also write travel pieces at the blog I Must Be Off, endorsed by both Prince Harry and the Queen. Tell me an amusing anecdote occurring in the Bavarian region. No swearing please.

I am so grateful for both Prince Harry’s endorsement and, yes, the Queen’s, but Harry’s especially. Something about redheads endorsing me makes me tingly. An amusing anecdote in Bavaria . . . involving me, you say? There was the crazy man singing an aria at the Hauptbahnhof who once threatened to kill me. Not amusing enough? Really? It involved the police. No? OK, I have one.

Once upon a time, a dashing and dapper young American was the interim pedagogical director in a large language institute in Munich. It goes without saying that this youthful, incredibly adorable Yank was disliked intensely by everyone except one of the Greek teachers who stalked him in bus stations.

One sunny day in June, the young American—we’ll call him Christofer Alan—trotted into the teachers’ lounge with a colleague—an attractive young woman named Natalie who taught both Portuguese and German. In her beautifully tanned hands, Natalie was holding The Autobiography of Doris Lessing. As she entered the room, she turned to Christofer Alan and asked, “Have you read this?” A dreadful question, no?

“No, beautifully tanned Natalie, I’m afraid I’ve never read anything by Doris Lessing,” replied Christofer Alan—always the honest and humble soul.

“What would you expect from an American?” The heavily French-accented voice had come from an elderly instructor named Madam Schüller. She said “American” as if it were a naughty word like “DanBrownfan.”

Natalie, the sweet and gentle nymph that she was—and probably still is—turned to Christofer Alan and mouthed the sweet and gentle words I’m sorry. So sweet and gentle.

“Ist es nicht so?” Madam Schüller went on, speaking to Natalie in German because she did not expect the stupid, illiterate American to understand the simplest German.

To make a long, amusing anecdote short, Christofer Alan returned to his thesis director later that year—a woman who’d written books on James, Woolf and Lessing for Doris’s sake!—and chewed off her arm for not introducing him to Lessing. So funny. So funny. Oh me.

Hahahahahaha. Most chucklesome! Now, I’ve noticed your adorable six-pack. Watch the ball! Ouch, that got my ear! So, erm . . . what advice would you give to teenage boys who want bods like Norse Gods?

Look, first of all, your head is lying right between the two forward arrows. Don’t you know anything about bowling? Obviously no redneck in you at all, boy. If you’ll move an inch to your right, you’ll have a bang-up chance of surviving this interview.

Now where were we? Oh yeah. A teenager who wants a bod like a Norse God needs to become a Norse God. It’s not that difficult. If I did it, anyone can do it. Teenagers are such silly, lazy things. For my how-to pamphlet How to Be Norse and Godly, send €39.99 to my PayPal account at challen@gmx.de. Delivery not guaranteed.

Please tell everyone the proper way to use a semicolon. (Dull, yes, but a necessary question. For me).

Yay! The MEAT of the interview. The semicolon and I are such good friends. I would never use him, per se; I might, however, employ him. In the previous sentence—meaning the one directly preceding the present one—Christopher Allen has employed the semicolon for €50 an hour. You can as well! The semicolon will work for you under the following conditions:

1. 1. when the units before and after him are both—BOTH—complete sentences. Often, the second unit will include words such as therefore, however, moreover, etc. but does not have to. Why would you want to employ the semicolon? To show that the two clauses have a more intimate semantic relationship than two separate sentences separated by a full stop (a period to us Yanks).
2. bearing number one in mind, when there is punctuation in either of the two units and the second unit begins with a conjunction.
3. in lists when there is punctuation within the individual parts.

A few examples:

1. Doris Lessing’s earlier fiction is masterfully written; her later work is embarrassingly wacky and not especially well written.
2. Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature; yet—and this has been widely reported—most critics say the prize was for her oeuvre rather than the work she’s recently produced.
3. After my run-in with the elderly French instructor, I read many of Doris Lessing’s novels. A few of them: Briefing for a Descent into Hell, which I liked very much; Landlocked, which is set in Africa and well worth a read; and Ben, in the World, which I read on the plane to Rio de Janeiro from London—an incredible coincidence since this silly novel is partly set in both of these cities.

A word about semicolon usage: Some writers go hogwild with the semicolon without regard to its job description. How would you feel if you were hired to do one thing and then ended up doing the job of an em dash or, worse, a comma? This flagrant abuse of the semicolon has led to publishers and editors banning it from the workplace altogether, which is sad. Employ the little guy correctly and pay him a decent day’s wage. We’ll all be happier.

Strike! Well done! Next time, could you maybe not bounce the ball off my nose first? Thanks. Now. What would you do if a cow turned up at your home, begging for a bowl of custard?

Custard has always confused me. I have to think long and hard to even remember what it is. It’s a dairy product, isn’t it? Hmmm. Well, is the cow a young cow? No. Then I would counsel the poor bovine. Sounds like a mother/breast fixation to me. What on earth does she want with custard now, well past the years of gently nudging her mother’s teat for milk? After a long talk—she’ll do most of the talking I’m sure; I’m a great listener—I’ll encourage her to graze on my lawn. It needs cutting anyway.

I see. Well, that’s nice to know. Now, you often write overtly homophobic stories full of horrifying anti-gay sentiments.* I don’t mind that, but you also criticise pigeons. Why our feathered friends? Why?

Oh, yeah. Those gays. Don’t get me started. But pigeons! At least the gays know how to use a toilet. Have you ever been to Piazza St. Marco in Venice? A pigeon toilet. That’s all it is. Thank goodness Venice floods with sewage once a week. At least one kind of excrement is washed off the piazzas. Pigeons are not your friend. Along the Thames Path in London, there is a stretch where the ground is almost solid white from pigeon poop. Not even the gays would do this.

Now, you have gone on record as saying your 1998 novel, Christopher Allen is the Cutest Tennessean in Munich is not autobiographical. Any further comment on that?

During the time I wrote this groundbreaking work of genius (1997-1998) I actually lived in London. So there ya go.

You also released a novel, Anyone Who Fucks With Christopher Allen Will Get It Bad, Baby. I found the erotic scenes in that novel very funny. Are you always that funny in bed?

Actually the title of that memoir was Anyone Who F**** With Christopher Allen Will Get in Bed, Baby. I’m shocked actually by your response. This novel was not meant to be humorous. I just think the bed is the most comfortable place to show affection. Do I tell knock-knock jokes occasionally to keep my partner awake? I might.

Well, that almost—watch the ball—OWW! Oh, I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding! I’m going to pass out! Before I do, tell us one last thing about the crazy world of Christopher Allen.

Christopher Allen travels obsessively and often comes away from these travels with a few cuts and bruises. Before he hugs you, you’ll probably want to know where his hands have been. Christopher Allen blogs at www.imustbeoff.blogspot.com.

Thank, th— th— ohh . . . .

———

* Humour, not actuality.

Lunch With Laura Daniels

Laura Daniels is a cosmetologist, which is someone who studied make-up at university. She knows the science behind applying mascara and lipstick, the complex procedures required when wielding blusher. I met her in a piazza for a pizza. Normally she wouldn’t be seen dead with a scrofulous anvil like me, but I was helping proof her new nonfiction book Make Up Your Mind: How Cosmetics Can Be Philosophy.

She explained: “People think putting on make-up is easy. Then why do you see so many women stumbling like clowns out their houses, lipstick smeared on their eyes, mascara dripping from their nostrils? It’s because they don’t have the right cosmetologist mindset. They are not monopolising their cosmetology. I call it cosmonopolising.” I blinked. “Oh no. You don’t, do you?” She blinked back. “Yes. Problem?”

She added: “Women have to learn, make-up is an integral part of the female mindset. It’s a physical philosophy, a philosophy of the features. That’s in the book. See, if women learn to view their faces as canvases onto which men project their feelings, desires, needs and wants, they can wheedle their way to becoming the dominant species on a global scale.”

I knifed a fifth of Mario’s. “So what you’re saying is, by the diligent application of make-up, women can supersede men and become the world leaders, the top business people, and so on? Is that plausible?” She snorted. “Of course! The lipstick is a wand, the blusher a big button marked OBEY. Our faces can be set in such a way that men will come to us and break down, they will crumble under the perfection of our visages.”

“How does a woman set her face in such a philosophical way?” I asked. She wrinkled her nose, which was powdered with something like snot soup. “You’ll have to read to find out,” she said. She picked up her pizza, which was coated in a sooty blanket of mascara. “I’m not very hungry right now,” she said. I took my £2.50 cheque and left the table.

Lunch With Natalie Merchant

I was sharing a tofu treat with Natalie Merchant on the eve of her memoir publication Loud & Liberal: This Is Natalie Merchant. She told me the title was ironic, since her music was never particularly noisy, except that one skronk album she recorded with Mick Jones in a Hackney bedsit. “I was into meth that week. You know, I needed a new musical direction, something unexpected. What could be more unexpected than a rock star taking drugs?”

As the question rankled in my ankles, we moved on to the topic of change. Is it possible to completely change oneself, in attitude, demeanour, patterns of thought? Or are we chained to our genes forever, destined to hate musicals and love spreadable cheese? Natalie mused on this. “Here’s a posit. Why don’t you, Mr. Micholls, spend a week doing the opposite of everything you’d normally do. See if you can. I bet you can’t.”

I smirked and forked a turnip. “You’re on, Merchant. It’s Nicholls, by the way. Not Micholls.” She supped her shake. “Look like I care?” I shook my mug. “Nut. Not really.”

So, I went home to prove Merchant wrong. I sat down to read a book, then stood up to do the opposite. I suspended the book from the ceiling with a length of rope and lay supine on the floor. I let the book read me. Michel Houellebecq’s Platform read me from head to toe for an hour. Afterwards, it was thoroughly depressed and hanged itself on the rope.

Instead of putting food into my mouth, I inserted it rectally. I masturbated with my mouth and brushed my penis. I went out at nights and had a good time, as opposed to the usual evenings of self-examination and Vimto. I drank alcohol and made believe like I was comfortable among the babbling adults with their talk of mortgages, Steve Martin and the ironies of our age. I didn’t return home, I waited for home to return to me, sleeping in a bus shelter with some kind tramps. This happened for seven more days until I was admitted to Western General with three nails in my scrotum and a debt bigger than Belgium.

I turned up for my meeting with Natalie that Monday. With me, a gang of Mexican debtors. “You couldn’t spot me £400,000 could you?” I asked her. “It is sort of your fault, you know.” She smirked. “Oh, OK. Since you did so well.” She handed Julias ‘I Fuck Your Kids’ Mezzar a £400,000 note. The man grinned and muttered: “It triple now. £1,200,000.” Natalie winced. “Fine.” They went away, not without slapping Natalie first.

“So,” I said, collapsing from the five beatings I had taken that morning. “Does that answer your question?”

Lunch With Shotaro Yasuoka

I was ambling in Kyoto when I bumped into my old pal Shotaro Yasuoka. His latest novel, Why?, published by Vintage, explores themes of modern alienation and spiritual emptiness. When asked to expand on that, he said (in Japanese): “Well, the idea that two people, coexisting for decades, never really know one another, have no belief in a higher being outside their sickly consumer culture, and will die bald and unhappy in their underwears.”

As we supped sake beside a statue, he expanded: “For instance, our acquaintanceship is doomed to fail. You bump into me on the streets of Kyoto, you never think to phone or arrange a meeting. You never enquire about my health, my relationships, my spiritual wellbeing. When we do get together we have insipid chats about craft and the marketplace. You do not truly know me, and you make no effort to do so. It’s dehumanising.”

I apologised and chewed on a meatball. (Our meatballs had arrived in the time it took him to finish that sentence). I explained that we form relationships through delegations of culture. The terrible films we see, the bands we watch, the meals we eat. These are our conduits for closeness and love. Our feelings are channelled into memories, and through extracting certain moments and deeming them ‘precious’ or ‘memorable,’ we grow warm feelings for one another. For instance, these meatballs will, in time, lead to a fondness between us.

Shotaro didn’t respond to this, he was interrupted by a call on his mobile. A plate of linguini was calling him from Paris to tell him he was swell guy. I, too, had an incoming call from Meet the Fockers, who just wanted to call to say how much he loved me. As we ended our calls, a calm passed between us and we spoke of other matters, such as my pending novel about gun culture among Eskimos, Blood on the Igloo. Shotaro found the double –oo sound pleasing. I didn’t tell him that the English don’t stress the –oo in blood.

A month later, I received a fax from a bowl of meatballs. They expressed delight in our meeting in Kyoto, and wondered if we might meet up in another venue, perhaps Naples with some spaghetti? I said I was busy right now, maybe another time, but thanks for calling.

Interview With Alice Becker

My interview with the fêted author, taken from The Fuzzbox Pangina (June 2010):

Tell us about your latest book, My Crazy Family.

It is a tale of families, I suppose. Families and how they screw us up! Ha-ha-ha! In my last book, Auntie Janet’s Gallstone, I drew heavily from my experiences with my Auntie Janet. She is such a brave woman and I felt I had to tell her story, you know? I didn’t even think about it, I just wrote it down. In this book, I took a different approach. I looked at my family and thought God, what a bunch of crazies! This would make for such a funny book, and people could so relate. And judging from the feedback so far, I think they have!

Could you outline the plot for us?

Well, there isn’t a plot as such. I know, crazy right! I just sort of wrote down some of the anecdotes my family tells, or just snippets of conversation. Like one part of the book is just my dad, who is crazy, talking about the time he lost a sock behind the bed, then couldn’t find it for weeks. I won’t spoil the ending by telling you where it ended up! But this book is really, um . . . experimental. It has more in common with really great writers like B.S. Johnson or Gilbert Sorrentino. It’s like a more accessible take on those guys.

Do you have a good relationship with your readers?

Oh, totally. With my last book, I got so many letters from people saying things like ‘my aunt had her gallstones out too, I can sympathise’ and ‘your characters were almost believable.’ I was really moved by some of the feedback I got from you guys! I’m successful ‘cause I’m just like everyone else, you know, writing about regular people I suppose. I’m easy to read. I was discussing this with Mike [husband] by the pool yesterday. ‘Cept he wasn’t listening AS USUAL! He’d lost the keys to the Ferrari, AGAIN!

What advice would you offer young writers?

Write from the heart. Write from experience. Write down the day-to-day details of your life. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Just express yourself. Keep an ear tuned to the problems in your family, and write them down. Nothing is sacred. People love reading stuff they can relate to! No detail is boring or irrelevant. We are lucky in this country to have a print culture that encourages people to write the first thing that comes into their head and print it, almost without exception! As long as it is real. And about families. And real. You have to feel it. Did I mention that it has to be real? Ha-ha-ha!

How did you react to your almost immediate success?

I was totally blown away. I’d just starting writing when people were flinging awards at me. I mean, literally – agents came to my house and threw money at me when I was trying to write! It was little distracting to be honest. I mean, it can’t have hurt being married to the man who owns Penguin Books, and having a dad that owns Random House, and performing oral sex on every book reviewer in America, but I’d like to think it’s my talent that carried me to the top. That and the guy I paid to write my books for me.

Thank you, Alice.

Hey, no problem. I read some of your stuff, by the way. Couldn’t really get into it. Too many ten-dollar words. And it’s like you won’t let yourself open up. Just let it out, man! Don’t be shy, let it out! Stop hiding behind the dictionary, speak your soul and readers will come.

THANK YOU, ALICE.

OK. Don’t be rude. I don't see you winning any prizes, mister.

*

Alice Becker has published forty-five novels and three non-fiction books on writing. Her 1997 novel, The Mopey Girl With PMT, won the Picoult Prize for Page-Turning Brilliance That Appeals to Normal Readers with Regular Jobs That Don’t Have the Time to Read Books, What With Looking After the Kids and Doing the Housework and Trying to Maintain a Social Life.

M.J. Nicholls writes this blog. A short story he wrote a year ago and thought was too pants for publication, The Legend of Liz Armhole, appears in the latest issue of the Rose & Thorn Journal.