“War (On Drugs) / Good God, Now / What Is It Good For? / Absolutely Nothing / Say It Again …”

“There is huge technical development happening in drugs. We are only just around the corner from memory-enhancing drugs. Middle-class parents will be looking for them to dope up their children to enhance their points. We are also close to safe euphorants and drug users won’t be reliant on peasant farmers.
“The future is much more dangerous than the present. Prohibition can’t handle the present. It certainly won’t be able to handle the future.”

A Grand Vizier writes: “That may sound like the blurb for an undiscovered Philip K. Dick novel, but no – it’s the conclusion to a superb interview conducted by the Irish Times’ legal affairs editor, Carol Coulter, with Dr Paul O’Mahony and published on Saturday. Dr O’Mahony has just had THE IRISH WAR ON DRUGS: THE SEDUCTIVE FOLLY OF PROHIBITION published by the Manchester University Press, and has some perceptive things to say about why the war on drugs is unwinnable, and why that has always been the case.
  “Personally, I’d argue that the decriminalisation / legalisation of heroin, ecstasy and coke, et al, would be a very bad idea indeed, as it’d blow a huge hole below the waterline of the good ship S.S. Criminal Motives for most of the crime writers I like to read. But that’s just me. And right now I’m out of my box on some grade-A Purple Ninja, which kicks like a mule with five legs, albeit so subtly I can’t remember if it was a spliff, a microdot or a stiff belt of poitín. So I’m probably not the most qualified person in the world to comment. You, on the other hand, are …”

On The Perils Of Not Being A Genius: A Grand Vizier Writes

‘Read, read, read and write, write, write’ is what experienced writers tend to say when their aspiring brethren ask for advice on how to become a writer, although the Grand Viz (right, in full-on smug-on-holiday mode) is of the opinion that if you need to be told to read a lot and write a lot, you’re probably not a writer by instinct. Anyhoo, the point being: submerge yourself in story, find out how the best do it, and then do what they do, only different and – hopefully, one day – better.
  Solid advice, for sure, and the most fun you can have while dressed to boot.
  But here’s the kicker – is there a danger of absorbing too much story?
  The Grand Viz has always loved books and movies, and over the last two decades has spent his professional life moving to a point where he now pretty much writes about movies, books and theatre for a living. Nice work if you can get it, certainly. But last Monday, for example, the Grand Viz attended two movie screenings (Meet Dave and Savage Grace), read a goodly portion of Benjamin Black’s new novella THE LEMUR, and saw Tom Murphy’s play The Sanctuary Lamp at the Samuel Beckett Centre in Trinity College.
  The movies, for very different reasons, were both poor; THE LEMUR is terrific fun; and the current production of The Sanctuary Lamp, which the Grand Viz had seen years ago, is excellent.
  The rest of the week was a little quieter from a story point of view, although it still involved watching the movies Baby Mama, City of Men and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (!), finishing off Fritjof Capra’s THE TAO OF PHYSICS, and reading Liam O’Flaherty’s THE ASSASSIN.
  All of which is wonderful, as the Grand Viz tends to spend most of his week steeped in story, absorbing almost by osmosis the hows and whys of the way others craft narrative, learning from their mistakes, taking note of where they got it right. It seems churlish to complain, especially as there’s a pleasing diversity in terms of story and discipline, and it all generates income for the ever-pressing ‘baby needs new shoes’ fund.
  But is there a danger of saturation? Is there a part of the brain that requires stories in order to be satisfied, and if fully sated, won’t need to create any stories of its own? Is there a danger of becoming imaginatively ham-strung, in the sense that you can begin to second-, third- and fourth-guess yourself, dismissing embryonic ideas as ‘already done’, or not potent enough to rise above the mass of stories clamouring for the public’s attention? And where, once you’ve established that the story you have in mind is fresh, unique and worth another person’s precious time, does the time come from, and enough blank mind-space, to put it all down on paper?
  And all this, of course, is susceptible to the Grand Viz’s sneaking suspicion that no story he could possibly contrive could compete with the interest he has in the narrative of his real life, particularly that of the most recent addition to his family, the endlessly fascinating Princess Lilyput (right).
  The GV does have stories he wants to write and / or redraft, although whether he needs to write them remains to be seen. Matters aren’t helped when he steps out of his reading-for-review routine, as he did last night, and embarks on one of his most self-indulgent pleasures, that of reading a master for the sheer enjoyment of it, in this case Lawrence Durrell’s MONSIEUR, the first of the Avignon ‘quincunx’. It’s at times like these that the Grand Viz begins to wonder if there’s any point in writing anything that doesn’t at least aspire to Durrell’s (for example) quality of writing and scale of ambition. With time so precious – his own time, and everyone else’s – and vast swathes of popular culture engaged in a dizzyingly fast race to the bottom, has the Grand Viz – or anyone else, for that matter – the right to write anything that isn’t, in a word, mind-blowing?
  Of the 41 books the Grand Viz has read so far this year, Cormac McCarthy, John McFetridge, Flann O’Brien, Salman Rushdie, Elmore Leonard, Adrian McKinty and Kurt Vonnegut excited him to the point where he resolved – each time – to abandon reviewing / blogging / his wife (if not his child) in order to get down and dirty with the blank page. Each time, happily enough for his wife, he resisted the temptation. Because he’s saturated, soma-like, with story? Because he simply doesn’t have the time? Or because he’s becoming acutely aware that he’s simply not good enough, and very probably never will be, to match and perhaps even better the stories he most likes to read?
  Questions, questions … Although, the Big Question is, given the outrageously poor time-to-benefit ratio involved in writing novels, at least at the Grand Viz’s level, particularly when said time could be much more profitably spent elsewhere – changing nappies, for example – why bother?
  This month there’s a final edit on the sequel to THE BIG O to polish off, which should be a hugely enjoyable experience, but once that’s out of the way, answers will have to be delivered. One thing is for sure – something’s gotta give, folks, and it won’t be Mrs Viz and Princess Lilyput. Stay tuned …

The Pigeon Who Didn’t Want To Fly Home

Darragh McManus (right) waxes lyrical on the pigeonholing of writers below, and while Darragh might be an extreme example of the desire of a writer to write in different styles, genres and disciplines (Darragh’s the guy who kicked the ‘ass’ right back into Renaissance Man, basically), he makes a valid point or three.
  Two of the Grand Viz’s favourite novels were written by William Goldman, but it’s difficult to imagine two more different stories than those of MARATHON MAN and THE PRINCESS BRIDE (plus Goldman wrote Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and The Right Stuff, and a veritable buncha other novels and movies and non-fiction books). Closer to home, we’re always mightily impressed with Gene Kerrigan’s work, regardless if he’s writing novels, non-fiction or his weekly journalism. Another example is John Connolly, whose standalone THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is very different to his Charlie Parker novels, something of a minor masterpiece, and in the not-entirely-humble opinion of the Grand Viz, his finest work to date. Word around the not-entirely-metaphorical campfire is that Connolly’s book-after-next will not be a crime fiction novel, and we for one are already looking forward to it.
  So, yes, we’re perfectly open to the idea of a writer breaking fresh ground. By the same token, the Grand Viz can’t imagine wanting to read anything by Raymond Chandler outside of crime fiction; thinks Elmore Leonard is a genius in a low key, but has never read any of his Western stories, even though he loves Western movies; and cheerfully admits that he misspent a goodly portion of his youth re-reading THE CATCHER IN THE RYE but has little time for Salinger’s short stories, with the notable exception of ‘Teddy’.
  Anyway, the question is: are publishers short-changing readers by presuming they’re Pavlovian dimwits (how else to explain James Patterson?); or are they canny buggers really, who know us better than we think we know ourselves? Darragh, squire? Over to you …

My name is Darragh, and I’m a writer.
  Actually, I’ll be more specific – my name is Darragh and I want to write all sorts of things, but I’m not sure that this is possible. Let me explain.
  When I was growing up I read comic books, thrillers, crime novels, horror novels, lurid western paperbacks full of terrible Apache atrocities and even worse Apache stereotypes. I also read what might be termed ‘high literature’, albeit mainly suitable for children: ROBINSON CRUSOE, LAST OF THE MOHICANS, Sherlock Holmes stories. I seem to remember making a stab at JANE EYRE, aged around 12, which surely was a triumph of optimism over probability – if I couldn’t master this turgid leviathan in university, what hope had I at that age?
  Basically, I read any and all available printed matter, from timeless classics to the ingredients on cereal packets, and it all had an influence.
  Around my mid-teens the notion that I wanted to write for a living became formalised, became concrete in my mind. And what I wanted to write was … well, everything and anything.
  My favourite writers of all time, probably, are Don DeLillo and Margaret Atwood; therefore profound, elliptical, exquisitely crafted literature was definitely on my authorial ‘to-do’ list. My favourite books of all time are NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and I’ve always enjoyed sci-fi; therefore a paradigm-shattering, futuristic dystopia had to be tackled at some point.
  I had a soft spot for the Gothic horror of Anne Rice, Mary Shelly, Stoker, Poe et al; therefore a grand Gothic of my own (probably set in Ireland, the genre’s and my spiritual home) was factored into the master-plan. I adored comic books (particularly the more mature, ambiguous stuff like Alan Moore and Frank Miller), loved the way they married the visual and the verbal, word and image; therefore an award-winning creation, with huge movie spin-off potential, was marked as essential.
  Aged 23 I read Sarah Dunn’s THE OFFICIAL SLACKER HANDBOOK, the funniest book ever hewn by god or woman, and a collection of Woody Allen’s satire; therefore I allotted some future effort to making ‘em laugh, laugh, laugh. And I also loved James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard and Christopher Brookmyre, among many other crime writers; therefore I would, in this totipotential career awaiting me, find time for a series of dark, edgy crime novels, possibly with a metaphysical twist. (The details, as I’m sure you all recognise, were still a little fuzzy.)
  Hell, I probably even told myself I’d knock out something way post-modern, so hip it hurt, based on those cereal packet ingredients. The Tao of Vitamin B12 (a novel in B12 parts) …
  That was the plan, book-wise. In the day-job – journalism – I also desired diversity, variety, all those colours of the rainbow. I wanted to write about sport, movies, philosophy, politics, celebrity nonsense. I wanted to write serious social commentary and the silliest satire imaginable. I wanted to do interviews and reviews, match reports and features, restaurant criticism and news analysis.
  I wanted it all, baby – it’s the capitalist in me, I guess.
  So what’s the problem, I hear you ask? The problem is this: publishing and media (and in a broader sense, society) don’t want the Renaissance man or woman, the versatile epicurean of letters who can dip their quill into just about area they choose. They want to pigeonhole writers.
  Example: I spent two years, early in a journalistic career of a decade, editing an Irish sports magazine. Editing it, I might add, as a part-time gig, during which I also wrote features and satire for other magazines and newspapers. Forever after, I am known to some folks as ‘the guy who’s into sport’. I swear to God, I still meet people who say to me, ‘Oh, you write about sport, don’t you?’ Well, yes, I mean, I did up to 2001 which isn’t that long ago, so yeah, I suppose you’re not too far off the mark.
  And how does this relate to books – more accurately, to the contents of this here blog? It appears to me that it is very difficult to forge a career as a crime writer AND serious novelist AND purveyor of cheap horror tricks AND smart satirist AND who knows what else. The business, the culture and the audience don’t seem to want writers to diversify. We are encouraged to find our niche, get good at it and stick to it.
  Otherwise, whoa, who knows what might happen? We don’t want to surprise the reader, after all. God forbid a writer should challenge expectations or give a little flip to preconceptions, right?
  This is why someone like John Banville writes crime fiction under an assumed name, even though everyone knows it’s him. Benjamin Black isn’t a proper pseudonym which hides the author’s identity, but it delineates the literary, ‘serious’ Banville from the (assumed) mass-market thrills of crime fiction. He has a reputation to protect, after all. The Banville brand must be preserved in dust and amber.
  It’s why Sebastian Faulks publishes an espionage thriller with the caveat, ‘writing as Ian Fleming’. Or Steven King writes sci-fi under the name Richard Bachman. Or Iain Banks does likewise but only after inserting a middle initial on the book cover. Or a thousand other examples.
  I wonder why this is so in publishing – the field of artistic endeavour, one would imagine, that is most open to genre-busting, to freshness and the unexpected. After all, directors are allowed make movies of different kinds. Bands are applauded when they veer off in new directions. Even TV actors – the ultimate hacks in the ultimate hack medium – often quit their soap or medical drama to play a radically different character.
But for us poor writers? Get used to staying stuck in the same place.
  My first book, GAA CONFIDENTIAL, was a humorous, ironic little romp about Irish sports and culture, and I was so afraid of being ghettoised as a sportswriter that I seriously considered publishing under a nom de plume. (Thank God nobody actually read the thing, so I escaped that trap …).
  I’ve also written what might be termed a ‘literary’ novel, a collection of short stories on one motif, a crime novel with a vigilante angle, a fairly avant-garde play about dreams and memory, a broad comedy film script, a slacker drama film script, a collection of satirical pieces on pop culture and media, and the beginnings of a spoof history of the universe and a satirical travel book. I have about fifty other ideas in my computer for novels, plays, TV shows, movies, comic books.
  What’s wrong with the above list? I’ll tell you – it’s all over the place. Too diffuse, too varied, too unfocused. I mean, does this fella want to be a novelist or a comedian or a screenwriter or the new John Connolly or the new John Banville? Or what? (Wow – looking at like that, it’s no wonder I’m still waiting on a publishing deal.)
Meanwhile I’ve been trying to get satirical stuff published in British and Irish papers for over a year now, with limited success. Let me stress, in all modesty, that it’s not because the material isn’t funny, or accessible, or entertaining, because it is all three. The people turning it down even tell me so. But it’s just ‘not right’ for them, or it’s all a bit left-field, or maybe I should concentrate more on what I’m already doing …
  So I set up a blog, basically to promote myself and my work. Hopefully the features editor of the Guardian or New York Times will be passing by, stop for a gander and be enraptured by that hilarious rewriting of Hamlet in the style of Eastenders. But I’m not too confident.
  People always say, ‘Have faith in yourself.’ I have faith in myself, as I’m sure do all of you. The problem is that I don’t necessarily have faith in society, and in the publishing and media industries. I don’t have faith that any of us will be allowed a writing career encompassing crime fiction, heavily researched non-fiction, historical romances, poetry, action-espionage thrillers, elegiac non-linear novels wherein nothing happens and happens really goddamn slowly, or whatever our heads and hearts tell us to put on paper. I don’t have faith that one can earn a reputation as a journalist who writes equally strongly on sober matters and satirical daftness.
  For me there is absolutely no dichotomy in any of this. I see no tension between the guy who writes a meditative novel about death and the guy who writes a film script which crosses The Naked Gun with Commando.
  But that’s just me. The industry, I fear, goes by an inversion of the old catchphrase: ‘Now for something exactly the same as the last time.’ – Darragh McManus

A veritable cornucopia of writing can be found at Darragh’s blog, Satire For Hire

A GONZO NOIR: An Internet Novel # 11

The story so far: Failed author Declan Burke (right), embittered but still passably handsome, wakes up one morning to find a stranger in his back garden. The stranger introduces himself as Karlsson, a hospital porter who assists old people who want to die and the hero of a first draft of a novel Burke wrote some five years previously. Now calling himself Billy, he suggests a redraft of the story that includes blowing up the hospital where he works. Intrigued, Burke agrees to a collaboration, but things do not go swimmingly …
  For the reasons we’re publishing a novel to the interweb, go here.
  If you want to skip all that malarkey, the novel starts here.
  If you’re one of the 34,014 readers who have been following the story, the latest update can be found here.
  Now read on …

CRIME: But Will It Pay?

He’s not Irish, but he lives here, so we’ll call Irvine Welsh an adopted Irish crime writer. Anyhoo, Welsh has been getting some grief over the subject matter of his latest novel, CRIME. Quoth Peter Doyle in the Irish Independent:

TRAINSPOTTING author Irvine Welsh has lashed out at claims he’s cashing-in on Madeleine McCann’s disappearance and the horrors of child-sex abuse with his latest novel. Set in Florida, CRIME is a thriller about a burned-out Scottish detective who stumbles across a paedophile ring while on holiday with his fiancée … some critics have panned his latest literary venture, saying the best-selling novelist is cynically exploiting a controversial and emotive subject to “pay the mortgage”.

  This story is particularly relevant in Ireland, where the release of Ben Affleck’s movie Gone Baby Gone, based on Dennis Lehane’s novel, was delayed for six months in deference to the sensibilities of those affected by the McCann disappearance. An unusually tasteful and worthy move by the distributors, the delay was nonetheless a pointless exercise in the kind of woolly thinking that strives to protect the general public from itself.
  Without being flippant or dismissive of child sex abuse, or the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, this issue really does beg the question of what an author, and particularly a crime novelist, is allowed to write about without incurring the wrath of morality’s storm-troopers. For example, on pages 6-7 of yesterday’s Irish Times, there were stories, in no particular order of importance, relating to:

drug smuggling; solicitors found guilty of misconduct; the jailing of a man for possessing child-rape pornography; a woman convicted of murdering her husband; a man convicted of indecent assault; a woman alleged to have contracted a hitman to murder her husband; the trafficking of a Nigerian girl as a sex-slave; a Gardai inquiry into a case of alleged euthanasia; and a murder arising from a gangland feud in Limerick.

  Are these stories, and any stories similar to them, now off-limits to novelists simply because those involved have achieved their 15 minutes of fame? Should Shakespeare be struck off the Leaving Certificate curriculum for writing about regicide? Is it our moral duty to tout Arthur Conan Doyle to the SPCA for advocating the relentless pursuit of large hounds on Dartmoor?
  We don’t for one second believe that Irvine Welsh – who wrote about heroin addiction when it was neither popular nor profitable, for example – had Madeleine McCann in mind when he began writing CRIME. But even if he did, is he not entitled, and some might argue morally obliged as a novelist, to confront the issues that are relevant to contemporary society? If crime fiction is about only one thing, it is about lancing taboos to allow us confront our worst fears, forcing us to deal with the casual horrors of day-to-day life in a mature and balanced way. Demonising paedophiles hasn’t helped; trying to understand the whys and hows of their sickness might help, both them and us. For that reason alone, Irvine Welsh’s CRIME deserves a wide audience.