Had a lovely time talking to Margaret Pinard on her YouTube channel last night. As part of Agitation August I was talking about a book that really shook me up. I chose Emergency Sex: True Stories from a War Zone which had a huge impact on me when I first moved to Rwanda. We talk about everything from the state of international development, to youth unemployment, and the meaning of life - just small things. There's a lot more laughs than I make that sound! Turn on the live chat replay for extra entertainment, and if you could lightly bother the like button, it would be much appreciated.
Yikes! I forgot to post about this to my blog. Managed all the other social media outlets but forgot this one. Definite socmedia burnout.
My friend Margaret Pianard is hosting Agitation August all this month over on her YouTube channel. She's interviewing lots of readers and authors about books that really shook them up and changed the way they see the world. Go subscribe and hit notifications to follow along. You can also play book bingo (see the video above) for a chance to win $75 in book tokens. Well worth watching.
I'll there on 22 August at 10 am PDT, 6 pm GMT, 7 pm CAT talking about Emergency Sex: True Stories from a War Zone, which had a profound effect on me when I first arrived in Rwanda. I'll also be hanging out in the chat to answer questions and just say 'hello.'
I have very much been enjoying this YouTuber recently. He finds old guidebooks and follows them to see if the sights to be seen are still there. He throws in other interesting things like this review of history's weirdest titles.
Short review as I've got a few books that I've finished recently and falling behind.
In Six Minute X-Ray, you’ll learn the most powerful people-reading system in the world. Chase exposes and unpacks simple techniques that come together to allow you to see beyond the mask that anyone is wearing.
I fell into this during the Depp v. Heard trial. Like a lot of people, I thought I'd have no interest in that at all, who cares what celebs get up to in their personal life? (No, don't answer that, as I suspect it might be 'a lot of people'). But I became engrossed when it turned into a case of 'bloke accused of abuse' becomes 'victim of abuse.' A very interesting revelation and one that challenged a lot of social preconceptions.
I do enjoy a bit of behavioural analysis, and read Joe Navarro's book What Every Body is Saying, years ago. I recommended it to my English students when I was lecturing, to try to raise awareness that not everything we communicate is verbal.
During the trial, I stumbled upon The Behavioural Arts channel by mentalist Spidey. He had the author of this book on there, analysing body language, and recommended Six-Minute X-ray a few times, so I thought I'd check it out. I was a bit surprised to discover Chase Hughes was American, as the audiobook is narrated by a Brit.
I enjoyed it, especially the chapters on language, as I am a linguist. I did an MA in Language & Communication Research, which covered a lot of sociolinguistics (how languages is affected my situation and culture) and forensic linguistics (idiolect and identifying linguistic patterns). Some interesting stuff in there about linguistic distancing and use of pronouns.
I knew quite a few of the body language indicators, but there were definitely a few things in there I wasn't aware of. I think, with body language, a lot of it is very instinctive, because we've been watching for boy language our entire lives, but because it's so natural we tend to miss a lot. Books like this just bring things to the forefront. By listening to them a couple of times, we become naturally more aware of the way people speak and move. It can just give you a little heads-up sometimes.
I enjoyed this and would recommend if you're interested in body language. As Spidey regularly points out, there's no one action or reaction that definitively tells you someone is lying, but there are clusters of behaviour that increase that likelihood.
I have to admit, I was sceptical once upon a time, but Joe Navarro convinced me. I'd just finished reading What Every Body is Saying and there was a part in there that said the direction someone's feet are pointing are usually a good indication of where they intend to go next. I was down the village pub with my mum and some friends. One of our friends was saying his goodbyes, but his foot was pointing towards the main room in the pub, not the door. I looked at this and thought, 'well, that's bollocks isn't it.' But just as he was finishing his goodbyes, he said 'right, I'm just going to pop to the loo before I go,' and walked the way his foot was pointing. I honestly believe he indicated that he needed the toilet before he was even consciously aware of it. The direction of his foot really was the direction he went in, even though everybody expected him to head straight for the door from his words. I've never forgotten that. It was kind of fascinating.
I've just added a unit on biographical writing to my free online writing course. This looks at how to plan out your autobiography and offers some exercises for autobiographical, biographical and memoir writing. You can find the unit here, and the full Writing101 course on my website.
Recently finished this. A truly excellent autobiography. As it says in the reviews:
Equal parts memoir, whodunnit, and manual for living... a
beautifully written, honest look at the forces of blood and bone that
make us who we are, and how we make ourselves. – Neil Gaiman
I'll admit, I was originally drawn to it because of The L Word. I don't read a lot of biographies, but I'm really glad I picked this one up.
In his unique and engaging voice, the acclaimed actor of stage and screen shares the emotional story of his complicated relationship with his father and the deeply buried family secrets that shaped his life and career. A beloved star of stage, television, and film—“one of the most fun people in show business” (Time magazine)—Alan Cumming is a successful artist whose diversity and fearlessness is unparalleled. His success masks a painful childhood growing up under the heavy rule of an emotionally and physically abusive father—a relationship that tormented him long into adulthood. When television producers in the UK approached him to appear on a popular celebrity genealogy show in 2010, Alan enthusiastically agreed. He hoped the show would solve a family mystery involving his maternal grandfather, a celebrated WWII hero who disappeared in the Far East. But as the truth of his family ancestors revealed itself, Alan learned far more than he bargained for about himself, his past, and his own father. With ribald humor, wit, and incredible insight, Alan seamlessly moves back and forth in time, integrating stories from his childhood in Scotland and his experiences today as a film, television, and theater star. At times suspenseful, deeply moving, and wickedly funny, Not My Father’s Son will make readers laugh even as it breaks their hearts.
He really takes an extremely painful subject and examines it with humour, humanity and the wisdom that only comes with distance from the source material.
You see, I understood my father. I'd learned from a very
young age to interpret the tone of every word he uttered, his body
language, the energy he brought into a room. It has not been pleasant as
an adult to realise that dealing with my father's violence was the
beginning of my studies of acting.
He examines a lot of questions common to people who have had difficult relationships with a parent, such as doubt over becoming a parent themselves and perpetuating those same behaviours, about subduing joy or attachment to things that might be taken away, and a desire for space and alone-time.
I love long flights. The feeling of being completely unreachable is
something I savour, and the limbo-like state of being, having departed
but not arrived, somehow allows me to catch up with myself, to regroup
and check in. It's a little contrary to think that I look forward to
careering through the skies in a metal-fatigued box in order to gain
some feeling of inner calm, but that's the way I roll.
I've always felt that about service stations on motorways, too. You can just pull over, switch off your phone and rest from the world for a while. He also mentioned crying a lot on planes, which is a really common phenomenon. That article says there's no scientific research into this, but I thought I read an article about it some years back claiming it was partly cabin pressure. Anyway, we've all done it.
But alongside the immediacy of his childhood and his relationship with his father, runs the parallel story of his grandfather and the legacy of his life - and death.
I had lost a father but found a grandfather. One of them had never
sought the truth and lived a life based on a lie. The other's truth was
hidden from us because society deemed it unsuitable. Both caused strife
and sadness, but now both combined to reinforce for me what I knew to be
the only truth: there is never shame in being open and honest. It was
shame that prevented us from knowing what a great man Tommy Darling was,
and it was shame that made my father treat me and Tom and my mum the
way he did. All those years ago, lying in the grass of the forest at
Panmure, I rejected shame instinctively. Now, my forefathers had
reinforced for me how right I had been all along.
Really makes you wish everyone in the world had access to in-depth information about their predecessors. It always amazed me in Australia that so many Australians could tell you how many generations Australian they were and how their ancestors had first come to Australia, and from where, whereas in the UK most people are hard-pressed to tell you two generations back.
It's also interesting, working with genocide survivors, the scientific evidence we see coming to light about transgenerational trauma and how exposure to stress and violence alters not just your neural pathways and emotional responses, but also your DNA, and that these changes can literally get passed down to affect the behaviour of future generations. So, our behaviour is deeply rooted in both our blood and the environment in which we grow up. The interplay of those two things is very real.
Throughout the whole story, he's got a really lovely outlook on life:
I think I learned [from my mother] that having money could never be
guaranteed. It could disappear at any moment, and so I've grown up
wanting to feel secure when it comes to money, but doing so by treating
it as something to be enjoyed, shared, and not given power.
Also, did you know Scots were the first to catalogue the word 'fuck'?
MIKEY WAS BORN into a Romany Gypsy family. They live in a closeted community, and little is known about their way of life. After centuries of persecution Gypsies are wary of outsiders and if you choose to leave you can never come back. This is something Mikey knows only too well. Growing up, he rarely went to school, and seldom mixed with non-Gypsies. The caravan and camp were his world.
But although Mikey inherited a vibrant and loyal culture, his family's legacy was bittersweet with a hidden history of grief and abuse. Eventually Mikey was forced to make an agonising decision - to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere he could truly belong.
Apparently, it was "...the first commercial memoir written by someone on the inside of the notoriously secretive culture of the Romany Gypsies." If you get the audiobook he narrates it himself and I was impressed he managed to remain so steady whilst reading parts.
I recently watched the Netflix documentary One of Us about the Hasidic Jewish community, and there were some similar undertones, especially when it comes to male control, domestic violence and extreme homophobia.
Of course, I was curious about the mystical side of things. Massive Peaky Blinders fan and have a close friend who occasionally used to talk about his grandfather being Romany. It was interesting to read that many Romanies don't believe in an afterlife nowadays and that:
Gypsy women were not allowed to work outside the home, the only exceptions being the handful that occasionally sold trinkets and told fortunes. Gypsies are very superstitious people. Black cats are often seen as a good sign, as are horseshoes, and even Dalmatian dogs, as long as you can spit on both hands and rub them together before you lose sight of one. They are also certain that if a bird flies into your home, someone is about to die. But, contrary to popular belief, they don't believe in magic, and the Gypsy curse is no more than an age-old way of scaring non-gypsies into buying something. I have run into many people who have asked me to remove a curse placed on them by a Gypsy, because tradition says that it can only be removed by another Gypsy. Of course, I oblige. I may not believe in curses, but the poor people who have suffered at the hands of some old Gypsy woman often do.
And there were some interesting rules relating to women, such as being expected to marry before the age of eighteen, allowed to date from the age of fourteen, but no more than four suitors before choosing a husband, and that they are not supposed to wash their hair or speak to men whilst menstruating. So many cultures around the world get squeamish about women's menstruation. You can't step into a Jain temple if you're bleeding, some places in India make women sleep in a hut in the garden during that time of the month, and so on.
He also goes on to speak a lot about the sexual, mental and physical abuse he suffered growing up and it was fairly horrifying at times to realise how easily this sort of abuse goes undetected or covered up and wasn't addressed within the school system. You just want to pull him out of the pages and give him a big hug.
He's written a follow-up called Gypsy Boy on the Run, which I've just bought. Highly recommended reading.
Can't believe it's been six months since I was standing on a stage in Luxembourg desperately hoping not to fluff my lines.
And just a reminder that Henri, who I mentioned in the talk, has just released his autobiography and it's a stonking good read, so get your eyes around a copy - UK/US.
3 Reasons why you should get it. We have some great reviews on Amazon, check it out. have been working on this project since 1999, This book is more than just a personal story, it is about the challenges we face, the false premise we have about the West.. #books#Myafricandreampic.twitter.com/Rmq0KDj1a7
Like The Silk Roads, I came away feeling as though I had learned a lot.
Some of the most pertinent facts that sunk in were: Around ten million slaves were taken from Africa to America, which is around the same number of Africans slaughtered in Belgian Congo by Leopold II. Of the 60 trillion dollars of money in the world, only around 6 trillion of that is in hard currency. Around 90% of all money exists only as numbers or data. Almost all of the most famous national dishes in the world don't originate from the countries they're associated with:
In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghetti in tomato
sauce; in Polish and Irish restaurants lots of potatoes; in an
Argentinian restaurant we can choose between dozens of kinds of
beefsteaks; in an Indian restaurant hot chillies are incorporated into
just about everything; and the highlight at any Swiss café is thick hot
chocolate under an alp of whipped cream. But none of these foods is
native to those nations.
And the world today appears to be far less violent than it once was. Of 400 ancient skeletons examined in the Danube Valley, eighteen died violent deaths most likely at the hands of other humans. That's 4.5% for the Danube Valley alone. Whereas, today, the global average is only 1.5%. An average of nine murders per 100,000 people annually, and mostly in conflict areas. It drops to 1 per 100,000 in Central European countries.
In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence... In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is more dangerous than gunpowder.
I do love these kind of books. Dry facts delivered in an engaging, conversational manner. And, although I really enjoyed reading The Silk Roads, I think I enjoyed having Sapiens read to me just a little bit more. It seems to be a trend that people enjoy reading fiction but use their Audible subscriptions for non-fiction. I do this with Wiki, too. When I have a large bulk of factual information to sift through, I line it up in Word and get text-to-speech to read it to me.
The beginning of this book really sucked me in. As a writer, I loved Yuval Noah Harari's take on stories and imagination, and why humans need them so very badly. I've been finding the quotes online as I didn't have the text in front of me, so the paragraphs are a little out of order:
It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven. But why is it important? After all, fiction can be dangerously misleading or distracting. People who go to the forest looking for fairies and unicorns would seem to have less chance of survival than people who go looking for mushrooms and deer. And if you spend hours praying to non-existing guardian spirits, aren’t you wasting precious time, time better spent foraging, fighting, and fornicating? But fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Ants and bees can also work together in huge numbers, but they do so in a very rigid manner and only with close relatives. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of other individuals that they know intimately. Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.
*
Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade
or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God
was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to
redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs
who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because
both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian
homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common
legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine
efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the
existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in
fees. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people
invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no
nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the
common imagination of human beings.
*
Fiction isn't bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function. We can't play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can't enjoy the benefits of markets and courts without similar make-believe stories. But stories are just tools. They shouldn't become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget that they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality. Then we begin entire wars `to make a lot of money for the cooperation' or 'to protect the national interest'. Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; why do we find ourselves sacrificing our life in their service?
*
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been
living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of
rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of
gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality
became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers,
trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the
United States and Google.
I also love the parts about culture and how cultures develop and change. It's a hot topic in many of the African forums and dialogues I've followed in recent years, also in the work I've done editing courses on changing attitudes to prevent gender-based violence and support LGBT rights. The constant struggle between what is considered immutable culture - something that always has and will be - and a recognition, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says, that: "Culture does not make people. People make culture." Harari devoted chapters to the effects of empire and colonialism, but also to the way in which cultures organically change internally, even when left to their own devices.
Every culture has its typical beliefs, norms and values, but these are in constant flux. The culture may transform itself in response to changes in its environment or through interaction with neighbouring cultures. But cultures also undergo transitions due to their own internal dynamics.Even a completely isolated culture existing in an ecologically stable environment cannot avoid change. Unlike the laws of physics, which are free of inconsistencies, every man-made order is packed with internal contradictions. Cultures are constantly trying to reconcile these contradictions, and this process fuels change.
*
Just as medieval culture did not manage to square chivalry with Christianity, so the modern world fails to square liberty with equality. But this is no defect. Such contradictions are an inseparable part of every human culture. In fact, they are culture’s engines, responsible for the creativity and dynamism of our species. Just as when two clashing musical notes played together force a piece of music forward, so discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, reevaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
*
We would do better to adopt instead the viewpoint of a cosmic spy satellite, which scans millennia rather than centuries. From such a vantage point it becomes crystal clear that history is moving relentlessly towards unity. The sectioning of Christianity and the collapse of the Mongol Empire are just speed bumps on history’s highway.
The mantra to take away from the book is: biology enables, culture forbids. Meaning that our bodies are made to enable all sorts of pleasures, thoughts and pastimes, it is only our imagined beliefs that make unnatural what is purely, biologically, natural. As humans, we appear to be caught in a constant battle between what we are and what we thing we should be.
I really did enjoy this book, though, as with The Silk Roads, I find ancient history far more enticing. So much more known history has been packed into the modern era, but I do find us a little bit dull nowadays. Everything we could become, and yet we bog ourselves down in petty warfare and silly systems. I prefer the world when it held a little more wonder.
I'd only reached chapter two of Sapienswhen my friend Harris texted from Luxembourg with a picture of the cover of Harari's new book Homo Deus, asking: Have you read this? It's fucking brilliant!
So, Homo Deus is on my TBR pile and Sapiens is on his. Many an interesting discussion to be had over a pint of Mutzig when he returns to Kigali.
I was a big Young Guns fan when I was growing up. I think you kind of have to be born in the 80s to understand, what with American Adventure theme park and stuff. I had a collection of model cowboys and Indians, and stole a few more mounts from our edition of The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game. I think that was always the fascination for me - horses. The thought of riding across the open prairie on the fastest horse, pursued by the law, guns blazing - to the the sound of Bon Jovi - it was appealing.
One of my greatest pleasures nowadays is watching a movie, then reading the book to find out what really happened. Most people prefer the book first, but then you can be disappointed by the movie, whereas if you like a movie, the book tends to add to the pleasure afterwards. When I saw this on Kindle, I couldn't resist.
The Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of
Daring and Blood made His Name A Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and
Northern Mexico - By Pat Garrett - Sheriff of Lincoln Co., N.M., By Whom
He Was Finally Hunted Down and Captured By Killing Him.
Pat Garrett, played by William Petersen, is a major character in Young Guns II, but really doesn't go into his association with Billy prior to tracking him down. A little disappointing, but he did publish it the year after he killed the Kid, and, given his position as Sheriff of Lincoln County, that wouldn't have gone down well. Not being a historian, I'm not entirely sure exactly what their relationship was prior to his deputisation, but he does say he knew Billy well and spent time with him.
The book itself is very short, but then so were their lives. Billy was 21 when Garrett shot him, and Garrett was only ten years older. The end of the film says Garrett himself was shot and killed by a 21-year-old, but that still seems to be a point of contention.
The films took material from the book and gave it a bit of gloss, but still, I was surprised how much of it had one foot in reality.
One thing that slightly irritated me was that Garrett kept spouting verse throughout the book, but didn't credit the poet. I spent a bit of time trying to work out whether Garrett actually wrote the verse himself - turns out it was mostly Sir Walter Scott. This led me to wonder if that's where the quirk in Keifer Southerland's character came from, as Doc keeps reciting other people's poetry and passing it off as his own.
The two films made a sort of mash-up of Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre. Josiah Scurlock only appears to have been referred to as 'Doc' once by Garrett, but was in there. He eventually split from the gang and, unlike Young Guns II, wasn't dragged back from a teaching position to face down mob justice. He appears to have skipped town with a huge amount of flour, later owned a mail station, became a respectable citizen and died aged 80.
Bowdre on the other hand, well, he didn't quite go out in a blaze of glory. The scene in YG2 where Doc is fatally wounded and comes out of the house shooting at the law in one last stand, so that his friends could escape - that was really Charlie's scene. As Garrett explains:
[Wilson] called to me and said that Bowdre was killed and wanted to come
out. I told him to come out with his hands up. As he started, the Kid
caught hold of [Charlie's] belt, drew his revolver around in front of him and
said: "They have murdered you, Charley, but you can get revenge. Kill
some of the sonfs-of- before you die."
Unlike fake blood, the real stuff took all the fight out of Charlie and he teetered towards Pat Garrett with his hands up and his pistol hanging in front of him, dying soon after.
So, the real Charlie Bowdre didn't die after being thrown out of a burning house in a clothes chest. However, about that burning house...
It happened.
They were cornered at McSween's place:
A magnificent piano in one of the front rooms was hit several times by these marksmen in the hill-tops, and at each stroke sent forth discordant sounds. This circumstance elicited from a Lamy, N.M., correspondent of the N. Y. Sun, the following: "During the fight Mrs. McSween encouraged her wild garrison by playing inspiring airs on her piano, and singing rousing battle songs, until the besieged party, getting the range of the piano from the sound, shot it to pieces with their heavy rifles." The truth is Mrs. McSween and three lady friends, left the house before the fight commenced. It was also true that she requested permission to return for some purpose, the firing ceased - she went bravely in - returned almost immediately, and the firing was resumed.
They then burnt the house to the ground.
A moment's silence for the piano, please.
The outlaws escaped through the back, even Bowdre, but McSween was shot and killed.
The other part that was true was him shooting his guard whilst under arrest. Although no one gave him the gun, he stole it from the munitions cupboard in the jailhouse, which some genius had put next to his cell. He ran up the stairs, took a gun, turned around and shot the guard who was coming up the steps behind him.
I'd always wondered whether that part about him being able to slip handcuffs was true. In the film he says:
Another historical and biological fact is that I had small hands and big wrists and that has saved my life more times than Colonel Colt's Equalizer.
Garrett confirmed it:
His hand was small and his wrist large.
Apparently, he really could slip off the cuffs pretty easily, and did so on many occasions.
One of my favourite scenes also turned out to be a mash-up of two incidents. Seems the guy he shot was based on a man called John Longmont, who was a brash bigmouth and insulted Billy and his friend in a bar without realising who he was talking to. But taking the bullets out of the gun was another incident, when he killed a guy called Joe Grant who also insulted him in a bar:
The Kid had his eye on him, and remarking "That's a beauty, Joe," took the pistol from his hand and revolved the chambers. It was his design to extract some of the cartridges, but he found only three in it, and deftly whirling the chambers until the next action would be a failure, he returned it to Grant... turning his pistol full on the Kid, who was smiling sarcastically, he pulled the trigger, but the empty chamber refused to respond; with an oath he again raised the hammer, when a ball from the Kid's revolver crashed through his brains, and he fell behind the counter.
Tom O'Folliard was an interesting portrayal in YG2, as he's made out to be a young, butter-fingered boy whereas in reality he was Billy's best friend and a hard-core outlaw. This picture is widely believed to be Billy, on the left, and Tom, on the right, playing croquet.
Although Garrett didn't talk about what became of Dave Rudabaugh, Christian Slater's character, his ending in the film seems to have been drawn from other events in the book. In real life, he was shot and decapitated after a card game five years after Billy was killed, but during Billy's lifetime they were both being escorted to jail by Pat Garrett when a Mexican mob attempted to board the train and take revenge on Rudabaugh, apparently for the killing of Mexicans in the past. They were easily dissuaded and nothing more is really said of him after that.
It was all really interesting stuff. One of the things I love most about reading old literature is the quirks in language. I was surprised to see Garrett use 'programme' in the English spelling, and assume it's the same in the original text? Perhaps it hadn't mutated to 'program' by 1882.
Some other words I picked up included monomaniac (having a one-track mind for something, in Billy's case killing all those responsible for John Tunstall's murder), Indian Root Pill, mouth-fighters (those 'brave mouth-fighters', derogatory term for people who fight with words instead of fists), buckboard (type of open cart for moving goods, buckboard driver) and moonling (imbecile).
Some things really don't translate through the ages, and gave a good laugh. They refer to bullets and buckshot as 'balls', people are constantly riddled with balls or have balls in them. When they shackle an inmate, they iron them: we ironed the prisoners. Which just brings to mind a whole load of neatly-pressed outlaws. At one point they talk about taking charge of the prisoners, but it's written: with the prisoners in charge. So, now we have a whole load of neatly-pressed prisoners packing balls, in charge of the sheriff's office. Ah, language.
At one point, I was happy to see mention of a Marion. Both a girl's name and a boy's name, this was Marion Turner from Roswell, New Mexico (yay, aliens and cowboys!), deputy to Sheriff Peppin, who later testified against the Kid.
So, I guess one of the main reasons I, and probably many others, read this account is to figure out whether we believe the version of events - did he kill the Kid?
Yeah, I reckon. I find it weird that Garrett and Maxwell were having a conversation in Maxwell's room and there was no light. Strange Maxwell didn't strike a lamp or anything, but the account leaves little room for doubt with Maxwell there and two of Garrett's men who saw the body. Like he says in the movie, even if he wanted to, he couldn't exactly let him go. Someone like Billy the Kid wouldn't stay out of sight for the rest of his life.
It's sad it all ended so suddenly, no great showdown - and all for a cup of coffee and a piece of beef.
It's also a shame it's written so matter-of-fact, and why we need a bit of fiction to bring characters to life. But it's clear Garrett had a lot of respect for the Kid. It seemed it wasn't easy on him to kill him. I think he probably could have said a lot more that he didn't put in the book, again because it was so soon after the event and the people he wrote about were mostly still alive.
Whilst in the UK last July, I was talking books with Aunty Patsy. We were talking about what we were reading, and she brought up a book called Stuart: A Life Backwards. She spoke of it in such high terms that I promptly bought a copy for Kindle and started reading it on the flight home.
I got through 30% on that flight, then readjustments to daily life took over, and I've just finished it now.
It's an extremely important book:
‘Stuart does not like the manuscript. He’s after a bestseller, “like what Tom Clancy writes”. “But you are not an assassin trying to frazzle the president with anthrax bombs,” I point out. You are an ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath, I do not add.’
This is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer (‘a middle-class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander’), and Stuart Shorter, a homeless, knife-wielding thief. Told backwards – Stuart’s idea – it starts with a deeply troubled thirty-two-year-old and ends with a ‘happy-go-lucky little boy’ of twelve. This brilliant biography, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, presents a humbling portrait of homeless life, and is as extraordinary and unexpected as the man it describes.
It isn't too often that you find yourself reading biographies about people who are not A-list celebrities or important historical figures. It's a book about a man you might find in a doorway in any British city.
There are numerous types of homeless person:
There are those who were doing all right beforehand, but have suffered a temporary setback because their wife has run off with another man (or, surprisingly often, another woman). Their business may have collapsed. Their daughter has been killed in a car crash. Or both. Self-confidence is their main problem and, if the professionals can get hold of them in the first few months, they'll be back at work or at least in settled, long-term accommodation within a year or two.
Right at the bottom of this abnormal heap are the people such as Stuart, the 'chaotic' homeless. The chaotic ('kai-yo-ic', as Stuart calls them, drawing out the syllables around his tongue like chewing gum) are beyond repair. When Stuart was first discovered, Kaspar Hauser-like, crouched on the lowest subterranean floor of a multi-storey car park, the regular homeless wanted nothing to do with him. They called him 'Knife Man Dan' and 'that mad bastard on Level D'.
What unites the chaotic is the confusion of their days. Cause and effect are not connected in the usual way. Beyond their own governance, let alone within grasps of ours, they are constantly on the brink of raring up or breaking down. Charity staff fuss especially hard over these people because they are the worst face of homelessness and, when not the most hateful, the most pitiable extremity of street life. - Full Guardian Article
Harrowing and honest. It gives an insight into 'the System' (all of them, from the police and care homes through to social workers and media), into life on the streets and the origins of how a person loses themselves. It offers no easy answers, but definitely raises a lot of questions - and a little more compassion.
Tar for Mortar offers an in-depth exploration of one of literature’s greatest tricksters, Jorge Luis Borges. His short story “The Library of Babel” is a signature examplar of this playfulness, though not merely for the inverted world it imagines, where a library thought to contain all possible permutations of all letters and words and books is plumbed by pious librarians looking for divinely pre-fabricated truths. One must grapple as well with the irony of Borges’s narration, which undermines at every turn its narrator’s claims of the library’s universality, including the very possibility of exhausting meaning through combinatory processing. Borges directed readers to his non-fiction to discover the true author of the idea of the universal library. But his supposedly historical essays are notoriously riddled with false references and self-contradictions. Whether in truth or in fiction, Borges never reaches a stable conclusion about the atomic premises of the universal library — is it possible to find a character set capable of expressing all possible meaning, or do these letters, like his stories and essays, divide from themselves in a restless incompletion? While many readers of Borges see him as presaging our digital technologies, they often give too much credit to our inventions in doing so. Those who elide the necessary incompletion of the Library of Babel compare it to the Internet on the assumption that both are total archives of all possible thought and expression. Though Borges’s imaginings lend themselves to digital creativity (libraryofbabel.info is certainly evidence of this), they do so by showing the necessary incompleteness of every totalizing project, no matter how technologically refined. Ultimately, Basile nudges readers toward the idea that a fictional/imaginary exposition can hold a certain power over technology.
Braved the wet weather yesterday to attend the launch of My Name is Life, the first adult novel published by Rwandan publisher ImagineWe. I helped to edit this, so it was really nice to see the finished product. Fabulous cover design. It was also my first time inside Kigali Convention Centre, currently Africa's most expensive building.
Author, Karen Bugingo bugingo means life
ImagineWe founder, Dominique Alonga
Karen Bugingo is a normal teenager roaming the streets of Kigali. Bugingo means Life in Kinyarwanda. Her story seems quite usual, almost boring, until a series of heartwrenching events tear her from her friends, her school and life as she knew it. This is the journey of her courage to fight back and the strength to look death in the face and say "My name is Life."
It was really interesting to see the people she wrote about in real life. Her grandmother plays a big role in the story, which tells of her struggle for diagnosis and treatment as a cancer patient. Her grandmother was at the launch, along with other members of her family, and stood up to say hello. Strange to see them step out of the pages into the room.
It was a stormy night, and the speakers were lit by lightning through the ceiling-to-floor windows behind. Glad I faced the weather, though. It's fantastic to see publishing houses producing contemporary work in Rwanda. They plan to take this one on tour to other countries, so keep an eye on ImagineWe's social media: website, Twitter, Facebook. We were also encouraged to live-tweet the night, so check out the hashtag #MyNameIsLife for more pictures and comments.
A book I helped edit has its launch coming up. If you're in Kigali on 9th March, head for the Convention Centre. It's the true story of a Rwandan cancer survivor's battle for diagnosis and treatment. Published by ImagineWe.
I'm predominantly a fiction writer, but people often come to me asking advice about writing their life story.
Really, the two things are not so very different. The same things that make fiction gripping, make for an interesting life story:
Truth
Honesty
Mystery
Adventure
Momentum
Insight
The tale is in the telling - how you present your story.
New Year makes for a good time to practise writing biographies and autobiographies.
Autobiography - when you write about your own life
Biography - when you write about somebody else's life
Rather than attempting to recount the whole of your life in one go, let's take a single year to begin with. A good autobiography isn't about how many small details you can recall, but about what makes your life truly interesting. People read biographies to live experiences they never will. You're the tour guide to your own world.
A subject I touched on briefly in Lucid is the aboriginal concept of time. In native Australian culture, time isn't generally linear. The things that you remember most clearly, that have the biggest impact on your decisions in life and your sense of self, are the closest in time. You don't remember what you had for breakfast this time five years ago? That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it's not important. Yet the way someone looked at you in high school, the tone of voice your mother uses when she's angry - those things happened a moment ago.
This is really what you're looking for in a good autobiography. What are the things that make you, you. What makes your life unique?
What's your aboriginal timeline - what is close in your memory, and what is very far away?
Break open the post-it notes and colouring pens.
What were the big events that happened to you in 2016?
When you close your eyes and let your mind wander, what rises to the surface first?
Each year I do an Oath, Boast & Toast roundup, featuring some of the highlights from the last twelve months. I tend to put them in order of the things that made the biggest impression, rather than chronologically from January to December.
Do this for yourself. Brainstorm the things that happened to you. If you keep a dairy, it might be useful to refer to it, but try not to get bogged down in the day-to-day minutia. Go for the really big things that feel significant.
Aim for five or six experiences. If you have more than that, start cutting back. Rank the post-its in order of importance and drop some off the bottom. Remember, an autobiography isn't an account of everything you've ever done, but the things you've done that will really interest other people. The stuff that gives a real insight into human nature, and what it's like to be somewhere, meet someone, or do something that others probably haven't.
I'll post another time about chronology in storytelling, but the two key things to remember are:
1. The order of time is often less interesting than the order of reason
What this means is that whether something happened on a Monday or a Wednesday, really doesn't mean much to your reader. They won't remember it five pages on. But why something happened - the cause and effect - is important. Why a character got blindingly drunk in a bar and started a fight is far more interesting than what time of night he started it. In an autobiography, you are your own character. Help the reader to understand why you did the things you did, and how previous experiences converged to create that moment in time.
2. Start in medias res
This is a literary term simply meaning 'in the middle of things'. It's the opposite of David Copperfield (I am born...) or the Bible (In the beginning...).
Instead of: I was born... I went to school... I graduated (or didn't)... I was in a terrible car crash... I got married...
Start with the car crash.
Begin by describing whatever is at the top of your memory list for the past year, the anecdote you're most likely to tell at parties, then take it from there.
Have a think about how the experiences on your list connect with each other. Try to shuffle your vivid moments into some sort of order. You can peg them to a washing line, space them in a circle with a central event in the middle, stick them to a sheet of flipchart paper and draw joining lines. Whatever works for you visually.
When we tell stories about ourselves, we very rarely keep to a straight timeline. We bounce about, changing the direction of our narrative as we remember things we had forgotten and things that came before, or after, but are related to what we're talking about now. Next time you're having coffee with a friend, or asking a grandparent about their early life, pay attention to how they tell their story.
It's perfectly fine to do this when writing an autobiography, so long as things don't get confusing. If your sideline runs for more than a paragraph or two, perhaps devote a new chapter to it.
When sectioning up your autobiography, do it by theme, not time. Instead of:
School
College
Work
Travel
Retirement
Try:
Discovering my parents were human
First love
Realising life is worth more than money
Stuck up a tree in Timbuktu
How to cope with ageing
You've found the defining moments of last year, now find them for a lifetime. Use each chapter to talk about a theme, and use your life experiences to illustrate that theme.
