Grosse Fugue

The Chief Rabbi's empty rhetoric

21/9/2012

So, a Facebook friend posted a link to a tremendous address by the Chief Rabbi, his oratorical powers unleashed at full pelt.

And here's the comment I posted on his official website:

"That must be one of the most dispiriting things I have witnessed in a long time. Great oratory, of course, but the content. Oh, my. ‘God never deserts us.’ In four words, a complete denial of the significance, not to say fact, of the Holocaust.

The subtle conflation of the deeds of a great man with a morally-defunct injunction to be a better Jew, to leave our comfort zones, when the very examples suggested an ever-more deeply embedding into that comfort zone. Davan better? If it wasn’t so reprehensible, it would be laughable.

Where is the injunction to question, to challenge, to doubt – the inescapeable drivers of progress? Nowhere. It is all carefully calibrated to shore up the status quo, to reinforce conformity.

Is this not the man who called Hugo Gryn an heretic after he died? Where is the holiness there?

I admire his gall, envy his oratorical brilliance .. and pity his inability to reconcile genocide with worship."

Funnily enough, the comment is still being moderated. I do hope they don't put it up. It would be rather fun to be censored by the Chief Rabbi!

6 Comments

The therapeutic qualities of writing

23/8/2012

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“Writing is a kind of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.”

So wrote Graham Greene.

I’ve been thinking about the next book. Well, actually, more than thinking. Writing has begun or, to be more accurate, re-begun.

After Grosse Fugue was complete (or so I thought), I started another novel. With all the research demanded by the first one, I wanted to try something that required little or no background reading and could be written rather more seamlessly.

I won’t talk about the idea just yet; it’s all a bit early. What’s been interesting is that I’ve now picked it up again and been rather productive.

Which is where Graham Greene comes in.

My wife was recently diagnosed with a major health issue. It could be a game-changer. Worry suddenly clouds the horizon. But writing affords a refuge. Fernando Pessoa wrote ‘I read and am liberated’. For me, that goes for writing too.

When the muse and fingers work in perfect harmony and the words flow, one can be free from fear, free, in fact, from everything. There’s a passage in Grosse Fugue where Reuben Mendel immerses himself so deeply into music that he can, for the moment, suppress his demons.

I’m not sure I really understood what that meant.

Until now.

8 Comments

50 Shades of Bald – the feather or the chicken?

10/8/2012

2 Comments

That sound you can hear is not so much a bandwagon trundling by as a tumbril, taking the doomed hopes for uplifting literature to the guillotine.

What to make of 50 Shades of Grey? On one hand, we struggling authors look with the deepest green hue at the stratospheric sales, the publicity, the movie deal. On the other, we cleave to the general view that the writing’s a steaming pile of dinosaur crap.

We already know that the lookalikes and out-doers are in the pipeline but what’s a middle-aged male writer with virtually no hair (of whatever colour) to do?

So here are some new genre-busting suggestions.

Geriatric erotica: It doesn’t last long and you may have to break off for a pee.

Nostalgic porn: These are all the things I fantasised about doing before I put my back out.

Sexual Dementia: I know this used to go somewhere – but I’m fucked if I can remember where.

Isabel Allende said that the difference between erotica and pornography is that with erotica one uses a feather, with pornography the whole chicken.

You know you’re past it when that sounds tasty.

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What a load of Boulez

1/8/2012

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The word ‘revolution’ hung in the air over the Beethoven Symphony cycle from The Proms.

If the performances weren’t themselves revolutionary, the orchestra, Daniel Barenboim’s epoch-making West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (made up of young Arab and Israeli musicians), certainly is.

And, of course, there’s the nine symphonies themselves. While the First and Second are clearly the children of Haydn and Mozart, the Third, ‘Eroica’ is, quite simply, the most genre-busting piece in the classical repertoire. From its great opening chords to the final moments of awe-struck silence at the end of the Ninth, the symphonic journey is one of constant innovation and inspiration. He changed that world not only forever but irreversibly.

Interspersed with these immortal works was a selection of pieces by the French avant-garde composer, Pierre Boulez. Invariably, these involve electronics, something he believes classical music has to master if it is to thrive. He, too, sees himself as being in the vanguard of a musical revolution.

Anthologies of quotations are chock-full of predictions that now seem utterly foolish in their lack of vision. Let me join them. The output of Boulez et al is frozen in time, as relevant to the future as Egyptian hieroglyphs are to us, and just as comprehensible.

Music should speak to the heart and the soul, as well as the brain. If it tries to address only the cerebral and the intellectual, it ceases to be music and becomes something wholly different, something arid and inaccessible to all but a few.

Beethoven would, I am sure, laud the attempt and decry the result. He wanted to inspire, he wanted to write for posterity - but he wanted people to 'get' his music and would be distraught if, like the 'Große Fuge', it was seen as impenetrable. Boulez, perversely, seems to yearn for that.

It all reminds me of the observation by Jascha Heifetz: "I play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven."

3 Comments

Masturbatory publicity – the eye-wrecking need for DIY

26/7/2012

5 Comments

Grosse Fugue has now been on the market for a month or two. What’s clear is that any author but the most established needs to be as much a marketer as they do a writer.

You only have to look at the fabled lists of looked-forward-to books to see the challenge. Here’s one example: Huffington Post’s 15 Best New Books Of 2012. Predictable, tedious and entirely elitist. Established authors from established publishers log-rolling their respective interests. This is no more a commercially competitive picture than retail banks or privatised utilities, with their cosy co-existence and identical offers (and that, of course, it no imputation of cartelling).

It’s a picture of those who are striving every sinew to keep what they’ve got. Conservatives in the true sense of the word. So, for the brave, entrepreneurial independent publisher and their stable of authors, the chances of penetrating the fortified walls of the publishing behemoths and the papers who review their works are slight indeed.

We writers have to do it ourselves. The proliferation of electronic media makes all this possible. Easily upgraded websites, Facebook, blogs and Twitter are all essential weapons.

The great challenge of course is content. It’s all very well having these media at your fingertips. It’s quite another thing to originate interesting things to say on a regular basis. And, sheesh, are they hungry! A bit like the burgeoning of tv channels inevitably resulted in a reduction in quality and the long, triumphant march of mediocrity, so that is the threat hanging over social media.

That means I’m off to a darkened room now to dream up screeds of interesting high-quality material to feed these voracious beasts. I may be some time.

5 Comments

OUCH – a novelist’s response to a stinging review

19/7/2012

2 Comments

So, how should you react when the first media review of your debut novel is less than complimentary, to say the least (and on the website of your favourite newspaper, to boot)?

It would have been all too easy for my publisher or me to arrange a balancing contribution anonymously. And it certainly was seductive to pretend it had never happened.

But neither of those positions is honest or transparent. My recourse? This blog (and a link to it on the Guardian website).

I know that my writing style doesn’t appeal to everyone. But then, whose does? In all the conversations about Grosse Fugue, I’ve sought to discover a book that everyone loves and have so far failed to do so. Fortunately for me, my publisher APP was very much drawn to it.

One of the interesting effects of my novel is that people are entirely inconsistent about what features they like. The Guardian reviewer commented on the Intermezzi, particularly #1. Others like #2; some hate them all! Some have remarked on how interesting a lot it is; more have said how moving it is. This reviewer discerns ‘long, pompous passages about European history and culture’; a number have commented on how informative they found it.

This all goes to prove that reading is inevitably subjective. Can one improve? Of course. Does this review spur me to be better? Damn right it does. Should it discourage people from trying Grosse Fugue? Ah, there’s the rub. It probably will do, but has no right to. If people are drawn to the subject, attracted by the interlacing of catastrophe and great art, and want to get drawn into challenging debate, then I would argue they should try it.

The review eschews all that, focusing on style (perfectly legitimately in the context of a literary prize). A few have commented on it and on a passage lifted from Amazon’s ‘Look inside’ facility. Criticising any book based on a very narrow selection does seem unreasonable to me.

Of course I’m disappointed with this review. Who would not be? But I’m also grateful that the book has been read attentively. I am saddened that the intention to move the Holocaust debate on from causation and suffering to legacy has been missed, as have the, no doubt futile, attempts to share my passion for Beethoven and his late quartets.

My only hope is this additional exposure does encourage more readers to consider the book and read the reviews on Amazon that offer a different perspective.

2 Comments

The tip of the iceberg – reflections on the German ban on circumcision

19/7/2012

1 Comment

Jews and Muslims around the world have been inevitably exercised by the Cologne court decision to outlaw male circumcision.

The old saws are being trotted out about a cultural assault, anti-semitism and islamophobia. And yet, if we detach ourselves from the noise, sentiment and, quite frankly, illogicality of the procedure, it is easy to see how the court came to its conclusion.
Babies – and young children – are incapable of informed consent. This is a central tenet of law throughout the world. The tolerance of the infliction of pain and irreversible body change is accepted only in relation to the treatment of male children. We have, thankfully, more or less universally turned against female circumcision.

Angela Merkel, inevitably sensitive to the furious response from world Jewry, states that there is a right to perform this rite. But on what basis? There is no logical foundation for this thought, even if the realpolitik is persuasive. It is clear that circumcision is an assault. The fact that its moving force is religious conviction and identity does not actually alter that. Perhaps one sign of the inherent weakness of the ‘pro’ position (similar to the ‘humane slaughter’ justification of kashruth and halal ritual killing of animals) is the health argument. Instances of cervical cancer and HIV/Aids are lower in areas of mass circumcision than elsewhere. But this argument is likely to be increasingly undermined by increased screening and immunological breakthroughs like the HPV vaccine.

For me, the Jewish argument in favour of circumcision is wreathed in sentiment and out-dated notions of identity. If Grosse Fugue is about anything, it’s about the redefinition of identity in the light of what befell my people. No amount of religious indifference or even conversion provided immunity from murder. Increased observance since the Holocaust is merely a strand of denial, pretending that it never happened so that all that went before can continue unchallenged.

Will the ban be overturned. Merkel has promised legislation. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the judgement was humane and legally correct. And it doesn’t destroy the argument that no amount of hanging on to arcane superstitions can obviate debate about what the Holocaust actually means today.

Hopefully, a new sense of identity will soon begin to take shape, one that acknowledges the universality of the slaughter and the moral obligations which flow from that. When that happens, we Jews can perhaps focus on our shared heritage of justice, freedom of thought, the search for knowledge and the quest for personal liberty.

1 Comment

The reasons for writing

5/6/2012

2 Comments

As the feedback begins to roll in, a recurring question is the motivation for writing Grosse Fugue. This has made me think about setting down what drove me.

First, there was the need to organise a constellation of ideas and thoughts that revolved around the Holocaust, identity and the moral imperatives of belonging to an oppressed and decimated people.

One day, our five-year-old son came home to say that it was Jewish New Year and they had all wished the Jewish children a happy new year. After a queasy period of parental guilt, we decided to do something about it. To belong to a Jewish community means to belong to a synagogue. But that proposition was insupportable for atheists. And yet we are undeniably Jewish. This was particularly true when the victimology of the Holocaust is studied. The killing was prescribed by clear laws; my family – and all its antecedents on both sides – would have ‘qualified’. Indeed, the most orthodox and the most assimilated were equal under the gas. This needed a lot of thinking through and working out.

Then there was the desire to share a love of classical music generally and, specifically, some of the ostensibly less accessible elements of the repertoire, notably string quartet music and, in particular, late Beethoven.

To a lot of people, Beethoven and Bach are the two greatest composers (whatever ‘greatest’ actually means). But some of their most extraordinary works are perceived as unapproachable. Bach’s Solo Violin Partita #2 is a work of power and intimacy, a tour de force of technique but, most importantly an inexhaustible source of consolation and pleasure. But it's a different sound-world and mood, so the three settings in which it is performed are designed to show it in different lights.

Beethoven’s five late string quartets were called by one critic ‘the crowning glory of his achievement’. And yet, for many, they are more or less unknown. His symphonies and concertos are famous and recognisable but these great works, his last outpourings, are inexpressibly inspirational, moving and brave. The novel launches something of an innovation in arguing that they are, in fact, one work, rather like the five acts of a play But what will make a hopefully irresistible impression is the depiction of a recital of the middle of the five quartets. It tries to capture the drama of a performance of the third of the five, culminating in the Grosse Fugue (or, most accurately, ‘Große Fuge’).

The only way to achieve wide distribution of such things is via the novel. To write these concepts into a compelling narrative would enable them to fly to the greatest number of hearts and minds. Hence a plot to accommodate ideas and to carry readers along through what might in other media be forbidding but which, in a novel, becomes accessible, understandable and seductive.

Perhaps three Russian quotes will help encapsulate my ambitions:

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN: There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY: Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN, again: True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and sceptics.

2 Comments

A confluence of interests

29/5/2012

4 Comments

Funny how things come together sometimes.

Last week, there was a mini-furore over an exam question inviting candidates to explain antisemitism. British Education Secretary Michael Gove ventured, clearly with little or any thought, the following devastating apercu: "To suggest that antisemitism can ever be explained, rather than condemned, is insensitive and frankly bizarre".

This demanded a letter to The Guardian, which was published today. It provided an opportunity to tie together three strands of thinking that have been occupying my mind.

First, of course, there's Grosse Fugue. As the numbers reading it have increased and comments started to flow, it's clear that the main 'agenda item' - shifting the Holocaust debate from articulation of the horror to articulating its legacy - does have some genuine resonance.

Secondly, education. from my privileged position as a Chair of Governors, it seems pretty clear to me that there is a form of jihad going on, where the holy war is against anything resembling corporate statism. One manifestation is the deliberate fragmentation of local state education structures, creating a free-for-all in the provision of primary and secondary schooling unhampered by inconveniences such as planning, centralised procurement, co-operation or, indeed, any other concept that might encourage consistency of provision. I should say also that this process is without any evidence base whatsoever. It is an exercise in reverse social engineering and class war that will have as its inevitable legacy the need for local democratic institutions to pick up the pieces and rectify an act of wanton vandalism.

And, thirdly, I'm exercised by issues of experience and competence. Michael Gove was a journalist before becoming Education Secretary. What possesses people like this to think they can do a job of near-infinite detail, requiring exceptional people skills and, perhaps most importantly, considered intellectual thoughts and responses? To quote Calpurnia to her hubby in Julius Caesar: 'Your wisdom is consum'd in confidence'. The problem with people who have passed through an elistist education system is that they believe in their own powers in an entirely non-critical, non-self-censoring way. Gove's remark is typical of many: 'If I say it, so must it be'. It is not so.

4 Comments

Reflections on the launch

17/5/2012

4 Comments

It's been a couple of weeks since the soft, local launch of the book at Waterstones Hampstead.

The intervening fortnight has been a little surreal. Those attending have been uniformly complimentary. The event was really well organised and my speech seemed to go down ok, There's an extract on YouTube and here's the text. The glow has been longer-lasting than I ever could have imagined.

Now the hard work begins. Grosse Fugue was never going to be a supersonic best-seller. It will rely on word-of-mouth and good reviews. A debut novelist and a little-known publisher make getting reviews a real challenge. My belief in the book resides as much in its ability to haunt readers and make them want to talk about it as it does in the way it's written and narrative strength.

I hope that as many people as possible evangelise it to their friends and family and, with luck, post reviews on Amazon. Here are the ones already up.

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<<Previous

The Chief Rabbi's empty rhetoric

The therapeutic qualities of writing

50 Shades of Bald – the feather or the chicken?

What a load of Boulez

Masturbatory publicity – the eye-wrecking need for DIY

OUCH – a novelist’s response to a stinging review

The tip of the iceberg – reflections on the German ban on circumcision

The reasons for writing

A confluence of interests

Reflections on the launch

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