Literary fathers

Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book has prompted this post, with his post today.

He asks who our favourite literary fathers are. I commented on his post, here, but I feel so strongly that Mr Bennet is the best literary father in my literary world that I've turned my comment there into a post here.

Mr Bennet is undoubtedly the best literary father, to me, for these reasons: when Lizzie Bennet turns down the obsequious Mr Collins's offer for her hand in marriage (a match that would keep the Bennet house in the family, that would save the Bennets from losing the roof over their heads when their father dies, but a match that Lizzie cannot make because she cannot love Mr Collins) Mr Bennet says:

'Well, Lizzie, from this day henceforth it seems you must be a stranger to one of your parents.' (He looks at her while she nervously awaits his decision. He keeps her waiting ... .) Then he says: 'Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins ... and I will never see you again if you do.'

Benjamin Whitrow as Mr Bennet in the BBC's 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

Mr Bennet's deep love for his favourite daughter shines through these words, as does her subsequent relief, her slight surprise and then her gratitude and her laughter at what he has to say.

And Mr Bennet's amused, and sometimes not-so-amused tolerance of his desperate-to-marry-off-their-daughters wife (see here for some more of the wise and wonderful words Jane Austen gave him, adapted for various screenplays), his asking of the right questions of his daughters at crucial moments and his understanding of them (for instance, when Jane becomes engaged to Mr Bingley it is Mr Bennet who understands why they will never quarrel - because they can only see good in each other) - all these things make him the father of literary fathers, to me.

But I also feel this deeply because my own too-long-dead father loved Mr Bennet himself, and sometimes thought himself in a similar twentieth-century version of Mr Bennet's position because he had four daughters of his own and no sons.

Why don't you suggest your own favourite literary fathers, either in comments here, or where the idea began, over at Stuck in a Book, here.

Writing yourself well

I've just read, over at the wonderful Stuck in a Book, that he's just about to read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. He has a treat in store.

And that reminded me that Perkins Gilman also wrote about why she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. You can read the full article here, but here's an extract:

For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown. ... I went ... to a noted specialist ... [who prescribed] the rest cure [and when that worked, very quickly he] sent me home ... [saying] "never to touch pen, brush or pencil again" as long as I lived.

... I came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin ... [but with help] I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and [began writing once more] ... and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it. ... But ... many years later I was told that ... [he] had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.

She wrote herself well, and she had the satisfaction of discovering that the 'specialist's' treatment changed as a result of what she wrote.

Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto appears in Speaking of Love because he 'wrote himself well' when he wrote it (he thought he'd never write again after a drunken performance of his first and a vile review but, with Dr Dahl's help - a wise psychiatrist this time - he got back on the horse).

I know that I am a miserable old bag if I'm not writing, or at least dreaming about a new piece of work. The alchemy is in the doing.

Cover story ... and fab reports

In October I asked people to tell me the short story that Speaking of Love's paperback cover told them. I promised a copy of the paperback to the writer of the story that most appealed to me (see original post here) ... and the one that most appealed to me was Richard Gray's.

It's in the post, Richard.

Also, the wonderful Mark Thornton at Mostly Books blogged yesterday about the event that Eliza Graham and I did at Mostly Books on Monday 3 March. He's got YouTube videos of us reading and all ... how do you do that Mark? And Simon Thomas at Stuck in a Book also blogged about the Mostly Books event, here. Fab reports both ... thank you.

Orchids for Simon

I am overwhelmed.

This orchid is for Simon at Stuck in a Book for his overwhelming review of Speaking of Love. See The word on ... at the top on the right.

Orchids, according to Clare Florists' flower meanings are flowers of magnificence and, although I'm not at all sure what the thanking-for-a-blog-book-review etiquette is, it would surely be rude not to thank Simon, publicly, for such a magnificent review, wouldn't it? So thank you, Simon.

It is also the most wonderful MAT yet ... I read the review early this morning, fell over, read it again, posted a thank-you comment on Simon's blog for it, failed to do my exercises, haven't even had a bath yet, and am sitting here in my PJs writing this before I do any of the above, let alone before I get down to writing for the day.

But there is a serious point to make, too. Speaking of Love is published by the wonderful, independent Beautiful Books and, as dovegreyreader says in this post 'small publishers work with limited funds' and so, if the literary review pages don't review the books the small publishers publish (and send out in their hundreds to them for review) - and they didn't review Speaking of Love - the bookshops won't stock their books. And if the bookshops don't stock the indie publishers' books how do the indies sell their books, when they can't afford to buy the space in the big-chain bookshops' windows? And it's almost impossible to get a review in the literary review pages if the writer and the publisher are unknown. So how does an indie publisher become better known if the literary review pages ignore them? See my post here on this Catch-22 situation-situation.

However, I think I have discovered a secret weapon. This Sunday, 19 August, I'm going to Mostly Books in Abingdon to take Mark Thornton's one-day course for writers on how to sell your book into indie bookshops. I heard him talk at the Society of Authors on 25 July (see my post here for more). And I will post about his course and my success, or failure - which I'm sure will be because of my incompetence, not his advice - when I am armed with the secrets of (t)his secret weapon.

In dovegreyreader's post about all this she says that she thinks the 'Indies should just band together and set up their own review magazine'. I heartly endorse that and enthusiastically forwarded her post to Beautiful Books, and suggested they go and hear her at the Publisher's Publicity Circle lunch at Foyle's on 30 August: see here.

But in the meantime, here are more orchids for Simon,

for giving Speaking of Love a helping hand on its way out into the world.

Thank you, Simon.