February, 2006

Sayeth The Fool

You could ignore big notions like Freedom but for the fact that the news is all about cartoons of the prophet. Danish exports are being boycotted by Muslims everywhere. I had thought that Denmark's only real export was bacon, but never mind that: cartoonists should be beheaded for giving offence.

Some people look for offence. Not me. Every time I walk into Leicester railway station I am put to pass by a series of strategically placed hoardings advertising books by large-breasted models. But one of these hoardings seems to be rented - for what grand fee I have no idea - by some Christian evangelical group. A rather dull (well compared to the aforementioned glandular triumphs of Jordon) poster proclaims to all and sundry that "There is no God, sayeth the fool." Then in small print underneath is the biblical chapter and verse reference for those who doubt - and there are doubters among ye - that this is a direct quote. From someone. Perhaps even from God.

Now, as a hard-boiled, born-again dyed-in-the-wool atheist, do I take offence at this? Do I object to being publicly held up for ridicule in this way? Because I know it's me they're talking about. Do I run around in a bloodthirsty rage, smiting my brow and calling for people to be beheaded? No. I merely blink at these rather provocative words, buy my newspaper from the lady at the kiosk and get on the train.

You see, because I'm an atheist I get no respect. Neither do the faithful think I am entitled to any. I have to listen to the vile ranting of religious fundamentalists of all stripe and the ravings of those ready to burn down theatres, threaten writers with murder, or attack newspaper offices. I'm supposed to put up with this religious frenzy in the name of tolerance. My very pluralism - my anti-racism, my democratic belief in the right to dissent, my celebration of cultural diversity - is turned against me in the name of tolerance. I have to tolerate bigoted, oppressive, bullying and even murderous zealots of various religions, their mouths reeking of blood and smoke, who want to attack any right I have to challenge their faith.

Someone recently said that the temples of the atheist are the theatres, the libraries and the publishing houses. And one of the many decorated edifices in those temples is the pillar of Satire. The great religious institutions offer cultural leadership to the people. Sometimes the only way that the unaffiliated artist or writer can offer a challenge to that leadership is by inducing laughter against it. Pointing out absurdities. Can't they just think of a joke to sling back at us? No. These monumental institutions cannot deal with laughter from the back of the hall. They hate our levity. They say it's the blasphemy they can't take. It's not. It's the mockery. They fear that it can make their walls fall down.

Joe and Ella's school is admirably multi-racial. They get R.E. lessons in all the faiths and festivals: Ramadam, Ede, Diwali. Hanukkah, Chinese New Year (okay that's not a faith, but you know what I mean.) Plus of course the usual steady diet of the Middle-Eastern Shepherd Cult of Death. I suggested to the teachers that they bung in a bit of healthy atheism. You know, a balanced diet. The looks I got! Why do people think I'm joking when I'm not? Anyway, maybe as a compromise on my suggestion the kids now get something called Meditation. I asked Joe to tell me what this was all about. He assumed a half-lotus position, held out his arms with palms upturned and fingers and thumbs touching and closed his sweet eyes. Two seconds later he was reaching for his Dandy (amazing - still going, with Desperate Dan and Korky The Cat! Sod the meditation!). "Is that it?" I asked. "Yep." I stroked my chin and asked, "But aren't you supposed to think about things during meditation?" I suggested. "What things?" Well, it's been about 25 years since the fat little Guru Maharishi relieved me and many other suckers like me of a week's wages so's he could live in barefoot luxury in a fancy pad in Switzerland, and anyway I didn't want to burden Joe with a mantra, so I said. "Think of the sound of one hand clapping." He looked at me like I was the fool referred to in the above-mentioned poster. "What? I'm not doing that."

Can't say I blame him. Contemplating the sound of one hand clapping is a bit like thinking about adapting an 80,000 word novel into a two-hour screenplay. But, dare I say it, the adaptation of The Tooth Fairy is coming along nicely. A completed draft is almost ready. We are committed to locating it in England, though it will be a contemporary and updated setting. A positive decision: yes you lose the nostalgia element, but you get contemporary relevance. The Tooth Fairy always makes a deal. I don't dare to say too much other than that things are progressing very well. Meanwhile I have sold an option on my first novel Dreamside to a French film producer, whom I hope to meet when I'm in France for the Paris Book Fair. Obviously I won't be writing that script, because mon franglais n'est pas up to it. Anyway I've had fifteen years to re-think the ending of that particular novel.

Hell, I've just re-read that last line. You'd want it to be good, wouldn't you? The revised ending, I mean. After fifteen years of thinking about it, it had better not still be one hand clapping.

In writing one is always chasing the platonic novel in which there are none of the glaring flaws that are apparent to you the author, but which are less visible to the reader. But to sabotage any possibility of writing the platonic novel I have radically altered my approach to the current one (working title: The Current One). I'm writing into the dark with absolutely no target point. (I don't map out my novels, but I do have target points, a rough sense of where I want to arrive.) I wanted to disrupt the patterns of my creativity this time, open up some new neural pathways. The interesting thing is that I can feel the narrative homing-beacon switched on the back in of my brain, and it's hunting for a reflecting signal point way up ahead. (Didn't know I was a cyborg, did you? Well I am.) So I'm trusting the back-brain. It's productive. I'm happy with what it's delivering. Oh, look out, song coming on:

Back-brain boy, back-brain boy,

Got a new ploy, got a new toy,

Lordy lordy he's a back-brain boy.

Hmmm. Too much new neural pathway, that? Blame the fact that I've been reading the Booker shortlist. I do so most years because it's guaranteed to excite certain creative emotions in me. On average, two of the titles will be so splendid and admirable they will infect me with facile notions of refreshing and improving my own writing; two will be so bad that I can use them as incontrovertible truth that there is a conspiracy against including my own far superior books on the list; and one will be so necrotic that I can be reassured that the inexplicable agenda of the judges in promoting dullness and worthiness above all narrative excitement hasn't changed a bit. Guess what. This year the necrotic category triumphed.

The Banville book is the worst winner in thirty years. It wasn't helped by the author's condescending acceptance speech, but I did try to ignore that. Then I happened to hear a radio interview in which he spoke mournfully about the sacrifices a writer has to make. He reported that one summer's day he looked out of his study window to see his children cavorting on the grass, and, though he dearly wanted to set down his pen and join them, he was put back, sighing in his soul, to the tyrannical wheel of authorship. Oh for God's sake! Does he think that the identical sacrifice made by every plumber, doctor, nurse, school-teacher and office worker every day is of less value? Even before I'd heard doleful plaint I was choking on the adjectival soup of his depressing, bleating and sorry novel. And when the "narrative" failed to resolve in any way I swore to end my personal annual Booker festival there and then. Do other writers feel this thrill of disgust at the whining and special pleading of authors? No wonder it's hard to make that "temple of atheism" argument with this sorry example of the effete Brahmin caste of writers languishing in its porticos.

Bet cartoonists have more fun. When they're not busy being beheaded, I mean. I have another World According To Joe to finish on. I was trying to get him to do a bit more reading. "What's the point of all this reading? You only end up better at reading."

Answer that in an email of less than twenty characters.

Graham Joyce can be contacted by emailing graham@grahamjoyce.net