‘Pretend you are Kirsty Wark,’ I say. ‘It can be helpful for the interviewee to describe their own novel. Very often you find out stuff about your work you hadn’t been aware of.’
When they come back I get people to make a little presentation to the group based on what they’ve discovered about their partner’s novel. Greg partnered off with Grace and he comes back and announces that her novel is about a girl who kills a tramp and that it can be pitched as L’Etranger meets The Bell Jar. I glance at Grace and see that she is staring right at me.
‘Is that all you found out about it, Greg?’ I say. ‘It doesn’t sound a lot like the novel I’ve been supervising.’
One or two people laugh.
‘Well,’ Greg says, ‘it kicks off in Zanzibar in the 1960s. Or should that be on Zanzibar? Like Stand on Zanzibar? Whatever. It kind of tells the story of this kid, how she comes into the world and what happens to her in it and how she ends up trying to leave it.’
‘What does that mean, Greg?’ I ask him.
‘Suicide attempts,’ he says. ‘Hence The Bell Jar.’
‘Sounds pretty intense,’ interjects one of the other students.
A few more people comment and we move on.
After the session, while people are getting lunch, I look at the flip chart and see that Grace has signed up for one of the afternoon tutorials. I get The Blindfold from my room and sit in the garden and read.
Grace comes to find me at 3.30 p.m. We stay outside.
‘I like all this stuff about Ray’s career,’ I say, ‘the way it develops. And I like the way you tell that story at the same time as telling the story of his relationship with his son, Nicholas. You interweave the two successfully. We’re never in any doubt as to which is the more important, yet keeping the story of his career just as prominent helps to ground the bigger story, make it more believable.’
‘Thanks.’
We’re sitting on the step outside the barn. The garden is wide but shallow and it’s just a few feet from where we’re sitting to the railing and then there’s the drop to the field with the pheasant and the sheep. I spend most of the half-hour tutorial staring across the valley at the woods and the sandstone bluff on the other side while talking to Grace or listening to her, very aware of her virtually uninterrupted stare drilling into the side of my head.
‘Is it still a bit clichéd?’ she asks.
‘Not the set-up or the plot, no, but every now and then you let a line get through that’s not really worthy of the rest of it. Like, er…’ I flick through the manuscript pages in my lap. ‘Or just a phrase, like this, “brushing shoulders”, when you’re talking about the other writers Ray encounters at book launches and so on.’
‘Is “brushing shoulders” a cliché, then?’
I pull a face. ‘I don’t know. Is it? It struck me as one when I read it. Mind you, I’m not even sure if it’s right, now I come to think about it. Is it brushing shoulders or rubbing shoulders? I’m not sure.’
‘Well, whichever one is the cliché, I can use the other one, right?’
I laugh. ‘I suppose so,’ I say. I’m looking at the manuscript again. ‘This, here. “This gentleman was just leaving.” It’s TV dialogue. Casualty. Holby City. You know, like “I’ll see myself out.” Phrases you never hear in real life, only on the telly. And not very good telly.’
‘Very popular telly, though.’
‘Yes, but your novel doesn’t feel like a commercial novel.’ I turn to look at her. ‘And L’Etranger meets The Bell Jar certainly doesn’t sound like it’s describing a commercial novel.’
‘Greg came up with that.’
‘It’s a good pitch for what sounds like a pretty serious novel.’
We both look out across the valley.
‘Meursault in L’Etranger,’ she says, ‘he kills an Arab.’
‘Yes.’
‘In my novel, it’s a tramp rather than an Arab.’
I hesitate. Then: ‘Like the workshop piece on campus, written by someone in your group. Was that your inspiration for that element of your novel? Did you borrow it, or was that your piece?’
She doesn’t answer. I turn to look at her.
‘I think my time’s up,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to keep you from whoever’s next. Thanks… Paul.’
I note the hesitation.
That night we all gather in the snug after dinner. I read to them about the Moss Nook and the runway lights and the waitress with the ponytail and Erica and the Stockport Pyramid and the idea that this life is just a blink in eternity, that what really matters is some kind of eternal survival, if only on the outside, if only by appearance, that appearance is the same as reality, that there’s no difference between the inside and the outside, if there’s nothing inside, like in a stuffed animal where all the insides have been taken away, leaving only the skin and the appearance of the animal as it was before, how that’s no less authentic than the alternative, how you can live a life without feelings, without thoughts almost, if you have to. I read to them about how you can live without regret if you lack the capacity for regret, how you can live without distinguishing between this and that if neither this nor that has any meaning for you, how you can be either alive or dead and it makes no difference, how something can be either true or false and it makes no difference, how a story can be either yours or somebody else’s, how you can be either you or another person, how there can either be someone watching you have sex in your car or no one watching, how you can be either the man or the woman, or the man or the other man, or the woman or the other woman, how it can either make sense or not make sense, how you can be either male or female. I read to them about how you can watch either surveillance videos or amateur porn, how you can fly either a Piper or a Cessna, how you can travel either east or west, how you can go in either this direction or that direction, how you can choose either right or wrong, how you can either choose or not choose, how you can be either sane or crazy, how you can either go straight on at the junction without looking or stop at the white line, how it can all either be very important or not make a fuck of a lot of difference.
Though, arguably, most of that is subtext.
They clap when I’m done because that is the convention. I ask them if anyone has any questions and for a moment it looks as if no one has, but then someone asks me who is my favourite writer and I say I don’t think I have favourites any more. I used to avoid saying writing was either good or bad and would just say instead whether I liked it or not, whereas now I don’t know what I like and what I don’t like, nor even if I have the ability or the capacity to like or not like someone’s writing, and I think instead in terms of good and bad. There’s good writing and there’s bad writing. Someone either has it or they don’t. This is a line I’ve heard myself use before — you’ve either got it or you haven’t — in response to the perennial question ‘Can you really teach creative writing?’ If someone has it, maybe I can help them develop it and write a little bit better; if they don’t have it, I can’t give it to them or teach it to them and neither can any of my colleagues or any other creative-writing tutors anywhere in the world. If you can’t write, you can’t write, period. If your writing is bad it will always be bad. If it’s good, it could perhaps get better.
There is a pause. Then Helen asks a question.
‘We’re all writing first novels,’ she says, looking around for confirmation and receiving a few nods around the room. ‘And we know you have a particular interest in first novels because you selected all first novels for the lit course. What is it about first novels that appeals to you so much? And,’ she goes on, deadpan, ‘why is your own so difficult to get hold of?’