The Triumph of the Quill
By Torquil Arbuthnot & Nathaniel Slipper
As we perambulate around town, between the French House in Soho and the Garrick, we are inclined, every few weeks or so, to make a rendezvous with Mr Foyles’ bookstall on the Charing Cross Road. This is to see how our published work is doing in the invariably disappointing “best-sellers” list. At the last count, Mr Arbuthnot’s Bordellos of London was hovering in the lower 300s, and Mr Slipper’s Shakespeare’s Forests was bottom. However we are not dispirited by this, and we often feel a warm glow as we traverse Trafalgar Square knowing that the muse has been with us, and that we are grown-up, proper writers. Indeed, it would be true to say that on several occasions we have been forced to climb trees to escape the attentions of blue-stockings who have read too deep of La Plath and La Woolf, and desire our hands in marriage.
We have also often been asked at our signing sessions (Oxfam in Bolton was the last) how other people can become, like us, grown-up, proper writers. It would appear to be very simple, as one writes one’s book (be it a novel, a biography or a literary analysis of the poetry of Mr Edward Lear) and afterwards loafs about on a chaise longue smoking Moroccan gaspers. But if it were so straightforward, then surely everyone would be doing it, and there would be no-one left to lecture at universities, issue tickets to illegally parked cars or work in Woolworths in Brighton. There are, in fact many pitfalls to the life of the writer, some of which we shall endeavour to explain to you here.
The actual writing of the book is the effortless part. Mr William Beckford wrote that excellent novel, Vathek in one 48 hour sitting. And, thinking that he was not pushing himself enough, he wrote it in French. Therefore one simply needs to opt for a time scale, and a foreign language, order one’s houseboy to provide a steady supply of tobacco and absinthe and rattle away on the typewriter until one’s novel comprises a beginning, middle and end, a decent story, and an exciting ending. The steady intake of the green fairy will provide a unique style to impress the scribes of the review sections of the Sundays.
It is essential, also, to live the life of an exotic writer. Indeed, Mr Arbuthnot even now resides in the Paris of the 1920s and 30s, writing gags for Monsieur Sartre and loafing round the artistes entrance to the Moulin Rouge; and Mr Slipper is often to be found off the coast of Cuba hunting marlin and smoking cheroots with Mr Bukowski. Many of the more excitable authors can currently be found travelling to Spain to take part in their exhilarating Civil War; or, for the more sturdy, there is a large population of bearded authors to be found in the gulags of Siberia.
There are of course, pitfalls to be had, and dangers lurking for any stout fellow who wishes to enter this noble profession. There can be no fate more ignoble than one’s publishers insisting that the cover of a novel should include the expression “the new Harold Robbins”. Other genres are likewise to be avoided. One will find no respite from being glowered at in the Garrick if one’s books are to be discovered in the Fantasy and Science-Fiction section of Waterstones in Kensington. Likewise, proudly brandishing a horror book with an overly-vivacious lady-vampire on the cover will simply have fellow authors shaking their heads sadly as you enter the room. Moreover, although someone, it would appear, is legally obliged to write The Little Book of Soppy Nonsense That Girls Wish Their Boyfriends Would Take Note Of or The Little Book of Pictures of Winnie The Pooh Explaining Keynesian Economics, there is no reason that it should be you. Humour is indeed a tricky area. Although traditionally, one should aim for something dramatic and possibly gothic, it is perfectly reasonable to cobble together old articles from certain Gentlemen’s Quarterlies in time to impress the Christmas market, and even to tour bookshops scribbling one’s name and a kind message to the purchaser on the flyleaf.
Another worthy purlieu of the Thalian muse is the school story, featuring ripping yarns involving sterling chaps getting up to wizard capers. For the Chap this is “money for old rope” as one just recounts one’s boyish exploits in the redbrick cloisters of one’s youth. A school story will sell exceptionally well if it concentrates on the merry torture that occurs when several hundred small boys are incarcerated in some Victorian educational penal colony.
An interesting method of earning a living from literary lucre is that practised by our old school friend Meadowcroft, who publishes fashionable novels under false names. His current best seller is that favourite of the “chick-lit” set, Having Faith, under the name of Trixie Mischief. Despite his knowledge of all things womanly being limited to playing the part of Juliet’s nurse in the lower fifth’s production of Romeo and Juliet (“a daring dada-ist interpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy of doomed matrimony” – the Glasgow Herald), this hasn’t prevented all lonely woman of a certain age settling down to a quiet night in with three bottles of wine, seventeen boxes of chocolates, and his publication.
Of course, what every great writer aspires to be is a great poet. One will not get one’s elegant bust in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey by dashing off penny-shocker novelettes (along the lines of Mr JK Rowling), nor by scribbling the Bolshevik ramblings of Mr Pinter. Also, a great poet must write about the great themes: Love, Beauty, Truth, The Nobility of War, the Greek Myths, the Glory that is England; and not, as Mr Ted Hughes is wont to do, fill one’s doggerel with odes to eviscerated stoats. On one’s own memorial in the Abbey will be inscribed those immortal lines from one’s most famous poem, “Ode to a Night in Gaol”:
I wandered lonely as a Chap
Who floats around in faultless tweeds,
And after luncheon has a nap
And dreams of daffodils and weeds;
A mixture which he dries and smokes
With other sterling, manly blokes.
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