the m john harrison blog

I was watching Sacrifice last night and it reminded me that the most searching professional question I’ve ever been asked was, “Are yer an author or is yer name Arthur? I can’t quite make it out.” I nearly answered, “No my name’s Otto and I’m an auteur.” I didn’t, because (a) it was Yorkshire (b) it was in December & snowing & I was on my way to the coal shed–which was quite a long way detached from my house in an extension of the farm yard–and (c) perhaps more importantly, at thirty four I didn’t have the confidence in my sense of humour I’ve developed since. But I wish I had, because life produces an opportunity like that only rarely & feelings of defeat will always accompany you if you fail to take advantage of it. After thinking about that for moment I realised that I was experiencing feelings of defeat around Sacrifice too & that Bela Tarr might be more my auteur these days.

“Several years ago, walking east on Fifty-seventh Street between Sixth and Fifth Avenues on a bright fall day, I had what I believed at the time to be an apprehension of death.” —The Year of Magical Thinking.

Neither side has the slightest understanding of the other, or of how the other’s product works; with the result that most conscious attempts by the one to present as the other are still quite clownish & unviable. But these attempts have accidentally generated a space where something–indeed more than one something, as many somethings as there are practitioners & that’s the key–that belongs to neither is being made. Although made isn’t quite the right word; it’s something more organic than that, obvs, & as ever the best of it is being done by people who don’t seem to know or care where they are & who are wandering about navigating by their own intuitions & are really quite surprised when they bump into another inhabitant. These are the gold standard performers, & the rest of us revere them, as we should. The main thing, as always, is to prevent, or at least slow down, the standardisation of their practice. One way is to keep an eye open for commodification. Performer or commentator, pack your stuff & move on the moment you catch a whiff of it. Don’t engage. The space should always be temporary & shifting & never have an inside & it doesn’t matter what you have to set fire to in yourself to get out there, into it & free of it at one & the same time.

Liked: The Wind in the Willows.

Liked enormously at the time but now don’t remember a thing about it except the illustration of a stream on the Moon: Dr Dolittle in the Moon.

Never liked: EE Nesbit.

Liked a lot but then went massively off: CS Lewis, Tolkien.

Didn’t read until I was an adult & loved: Marianne Dreams, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Mrs Frisby & the Rats of NIMH.

Didn’t read until I was an adult & was appalled by: Watership Down.

Re-read as an adult & was massively impressed by: Peter’s Room, The Moon of Gomrath.

Re-read when I was an adult only to be appalled by: The Dark Is Rising

Didn’t re-read for 50 or so years then realised I’d always had some kind of weird unconscious relationship with: The Water-Babies.

Haven’t read recently but have read a million times & now I come to think of it may read again soon: Treasure Island.

Have Never Read: Swallows & Amazons, Charlotte’s Web.

Will probably never read after one attempt: Beatrix Potter.

Will probably never read after multiple attempts: Noel Streatfield.

In Real Estate, Deborah Levy gleefully quotes this brutal passage from Marguerite Duras–

“I think that what I blame books for, in general, is that they are not free.

“One can see it in the writing: they are fabricated, organised, regulated; one could say they conform. A function of the revision that the writer often wants to impose on himself. At that moment, the writer becomes his own cop. By being concerned with good form, in other words the most banal form. The clearest and most inoffensive. There are still generations that produce prim books. Even young people: charming books, without tension, without darkness. Without silence. In other words, without a true author.” –Duras, Writing, 1999

As true now as in Duras’s heyday, a fair bit before Writing.