Thought-provoking article in Harpers Magazine, November 1911

I was drawn to the article, "Broken Britain: Nothing is left of the family silver" in the November 2011 issue of Harper's Magazine, because of my interest in England. Not only did my late father come to Canada from England as a child, but also my education has involved reading a lot of English literature and works on English history (including social history). This article, by leading journalist Ed Vulliamy (senior correspondent for Britain's Observer and Guardian newspapers) is a troubling tale with implications for Canada.

"Criminality" was the explanation given by both Conservative and Labour Party leaders in response to the August 2011 riots in Britain. Vulliamy contends that the "moral collapse", a phrase used by Prime Minister Cameron, started at the top of society. He notes scandals in which prominent Conservatives and Labour politicians have been implicated. Vulliamy describes his country as "greedy, obsessed with commercialism at the expense of any other value or norm, xenophobic, belligerent and hubristic."

Vulliamy blames Britain's "decomposition" on the devastation of manufacturing under Margaret Thatcher's administration, in parallel with drastic privatization of infrastructure, utilities and services. Traditional industries were replaced by retail and service ones, especially financial services "so that the economy came to rest on the whims and needs of supranational banking." Prosperity didn't "trickle-down" to the public; rather, taxpayers' money went to bail out the "very institutions that have looted our economy."

Vulliamy says that dependence on the financial sector has "changed the geography of opportunity." In the past, there were apprenticeships and opportunities all over Britain, but now, he says, "the only real money is in London", and the "ethos of London" governs the way the country thinks.

Although Vulliamy blames Thatcher for "selling off the nation's collective assets", he says that Blair proved to be her "natural successor." The title comes from a 1985 speech by former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, in which he compared privatization to selling the family silver.

Vulliamy mourns the loss of publicly run and owned industries and services like the now-defunct National Coal Board, British Rail, the Gas Board, etc., saying that they were run by people who "knew what they were doing and provided what they promised." In 2006-7 ,Vulliamy's aged father endured a winter without heat, due to a snafu to do with privatization and outsourcing. The family took up the matter, which was not solved until the end of March 2007, the day before his father died.

Privatization, says Vulliamy, has led to increased consumer prices, rewards to civil servants who were "selling off the silver", and loss of jobs. He notes a number of indicators that all is not well in Britain. It rates low among nations when the well-being of children and economic equality are measured and compared. There has been a marked increase in fatal accidents since British rail was privatized, and the new privatized company is still government subsidized. Authoritarianism is on the rise; Britain has more closed circuit TV camera surveillance than any other country in the world.

Canadians who are concerned about our Wheat Board, the spending on the G-8/ G-20 conferences, the suppression of the protests against them, and the growing gap in Canada between rich and poor will find food for thought in Vulliamy's article.

a writing exercise from this past summer

This past summer, when all the gardens were gorgeous, a writer friend and I issued each other a poetry challenge. We were to try to write a poem, any style, comparing our friends to flowers, and to do it within twenty minutes. We both produced poems, but she felt that hers fell below her standards and decided not to add it to her computer files. (We were writing in longhand at the time.)

My poem fell below my standards, too, but since so many of mine do, what's one more? Here is the poem:

How like a flower garden are my friends.
The poppies and sunflowers stretch so tall.
Impatiens loves the shade. So much depends
upon their natures. I enjoy them all.

A pale wallflower, and a belle, so blue
should dally with the spikes of lavender,
or black-eyed Susan with her gaze so true
will make eye-contact, bending them to her.

Nasturtiums nourish, other blooms surprise,
like purple asters with their orange smell.
Forget-me-nots rate highly in my eyes,
though dazzled by the scarlet pimpernel.

Most flowers bloom and fade; it's what they do.
The pearly everlasting one is you.

Catching up on literary magazines

Once a month or so, Roger and I visit the public library to catch up on all the periodicals that we enjoy reading. To subscribe to them all would cost too much; as well, our house has too many books and magazines already.

While there the other day I read the Summer 2011 New Quarterly because it included an interview with Alice Munro about her novella, "Too Much Happiness" in the book by the same name. She was talking about the influence of Freud, not only on the characters in her novella, but also on women in the 1950s when she was a young wife, mother and aspiring writer.

She said, in answer to one question: "..[W]hen I was a young married woman I learned that educated women wanted desperately to follow and give help to a man. It was not the uneducated women who wanted this. It was the girls who read Freud...In the writing community it was that way too. It was was women who were difficult for me to deal with. They didn't approve of me because they sensed I wanted something of my own... When I got to live in the suburbs I found out, and it was a total surprise to me, that female achievement was so out of style... People accept fashions very readily and intellectual women or men are not immune to this either. The '60s was when I finally began to feel alive..."

I also read the October 2011 Writer's Digest, which includes an article by Les Egerton called "The Four Goals Your Beginning Must Meet." A novel or short story, he writes, must start with a "story-worthy problem." There must be trouble of the sort that alters the protagonist's internal psychological profoundly.

The other rules have to do with the hook, the establishment of your particular story's rules, and forecasting the ending. Read the article for more information.

I also came home with the new Lisa See novel set in China in 1957-8. All in all, it was a useful trip to the library

article about me in Ottawa This Week

This past Friday Ottawa This Week (West Edition) included an article about me by Kristy Wallace. The website is www.yourottawaregion.com

A friend sent me a poem

My old friend and editor, Valerie Simmons, sent me this poem, which was read at the funeral of her cousin's wife.

Death is Nothing at All

by Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effort,
Without the ghost of a shadow in it.

Life means all that it ever meant,
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again.

Tips on Writing Fiction

Recently, while browsing for writers' markets, I came upon a two part article in The Guardian entitled "Ten Rules for Writing Fiction" See http://www.guardian/. co.uk/books/2010/feb/20 The authors/compilers asked fourteen established authors, including Canada's Margaret Atwood, to provide ten tips (commandments?) for aspiring novelists.

Among the gems were:
"Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip." (Elmore Leonard);
"Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones." (Roddy Doyle);
"Have more than one idea on the go at any time." (Geoff Dyer). Dyer also says to beware of cliches "of response as well as expression... There are cliches of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels... are cliches of form which conform to cliches of expectation."

(My apologies for not knowing how to put the accent on the e in cliche.)

Other bits of advice I liked:

"Marry someone you love and who thinks your being a writer is a good idea. Don't have children." (Richard Ford).

I didn't agree with "always write in the third person", but all of the advice is worth mulling over.

The only tips I might add are:

. Be selective when it comes to showing your works in progress to other people.

. Learn to work on your own. Avoid other writers and writers' organizations if you sense that they are picking your brain, sucking up your time and disparaging your work in the guise of constructive criticism.

. Learn from reading fiction that is like yours only better. Sample books on the craft of writing.

a fan letter I can't write

When I can't sleep, I often get up and read short stories by a famous Canadian author. An hour later I have put aside whatever concern had prevented sleep and go back to bed feeling that all is right with the world.

Sometimes I think I should write to the author and tell her how much her work means to me, but so far I've rejected the impulse.

"Dear Famous Author: I can't tell you how much your books mean to me. When I can't sleep I read one of your stories and soon I can't keep my eyes open and am ready for dreamland."

Now, that's hardly flattering. It's true yet it isn't. It creates the wrong impression, because the author's work is fascinating. I see myself in many of her characters and read to see how the character comes to terms with a situation/ predicament/issue, or rethinks it, endures it, lets time solve it, or triumphs over it. I'm left with the feeling that my own dilemmas are normal, typical, solvable, not always my fault, and best of all, interesting. I go back to bed feeling affirmed.