All down the Uxbridge Road there are Evening Standard placards proclaiming: 'Shepherd’s Bush author reveals sex secret.'
Charles Boyle
Charles Boyle, poet, publisher, and now award-winning novelist, recounts the week that saw him collect the McKitterick prize for his first novel 24 for 3 and blow his cover as the man behind Jennie Walker.
Those pages of writing I did in Brighton on Sunday - they've vanished, I can't find them anywhere.
Sunday
Up at an ungodly hour to take my two teenage sons to Clapham Common, the start of the London-to-Brighton bike ride, then drive on alone to Brighton. I arrive before the café in Preston Park has even opened. I sit on the grass and open my shoulder bag: the book which I'd looked forward to reading is not there. There is, however, paper and a pencil, and a pack of cigarettes. This is one of those times which never happen, when I have no excuse - no book, meal to cook, ironing to do, deadline to meet, emails to answer- not to write. I scribble - for hours, while 27,000 cyclists steam into Brighton, a Napoleonic army, until my sons finally arrive, along with two friends, and we have fish and chips on the beach.
Monday
Drive back to Brighton to collect four bikes, which I left overnight in the hallway of a block of flats where a friend lives. I have a stand-up row with the ground-floor tenant: the leaving of bicycles in hallways is apparently against every conceivable health-and-safety regulation, and I clearly deserve to be hanged. If I was watching, this would be funny. In fact it is painful in the extreme, which may explain why I'm shouting: while manhandling the four bikes into and onto the car I've done my back in, but I'm determined not to let the tenant see this because he would consider it perfect justice.
Tuesday
A deadline to meet, in my freelance hackwork. But I'm distracted by a tussle over a book of poems by Francis Ponge that CB editions plans to publish: a rights person in Paris says I can't include certain poems because an American university press has exclusive English-language publication rights in them. The Americans say don't be silly, they only have rights in the translations they publish and I'm free to publish new ones; but the French woman insists (I'm sure she's related to the ground-floor tenant in Brighton).
Wednesday
At 5.50 p.m. I meet my editor in a bar in Clerkenwell. Half an hour later my agent arrives. He is wearing a suit and tie, and so am I: we stare at each other dumbfounded, then burst into laughter. We proceed to the Society of Authors' awards evening, which is a bit like a school prize-giving day except that it takes place not in the gym but in the Great Hall at Bart's. A biography prize, some poets, some travel grants, and then the McKitterick Prize (for a first novel by a writer over 40) is awarded to Jennie Walker for 24 for 3. I don't so much step up as hobble (my back hasn't mended). Most of the audience must assume that either I am Jennie's agent or that the prize has this year been won by a cross-dressing 84-year-old. As I stumble away with my cheque in its lime-green envelope Tracy Chevalier, on stage, helpfully explains: Jennie Walker is a pseudonym of Charles Boyle, poet, me. Rosemary Hill calls me a sly one, David Harsent calls me a queen - both are amused. But there may be others - and the Brighton man would agree with them - who consider that a rather childish practical joke has been played. I have some questions to answer. On cue, a journalist from the Evening Standard approaches. I know I am going to say something stupid, and that even if I do manage to say something sensible it will be printed wrong.
Thursday
The book was rejected by an agent and a couple of publishers; I inherited some cash from a deceased uncle; I started CB editions and published four books; because self-publishing is a suspect activity, and because of the maleness of the other writers, I decided the author of 24 for 3 should be female. Will that do? That's all true as far as it goes, but for some I suspect that basic, pragmatic answers don't go far enough.
Those pages of writing I did in Brighton on Sunday - they've vanished, I can't find them anywhere. I think about reading the Martin Amis story about poets who lead glamorous lives and screenwriters who scrabble around to get their work placed in little magazines, then decide not to bother. A friend from Yorkshire emails to say that I have at last found my true voice: that of - and she quotes the Guardian review - 'an intelligent woman going through a crisis'.
Friday
The Standard article appears. I read it and then, of course, read it again and am surprised that it is, after all, pretty damn accurate. (Except for the guff about the Orange Prize: 24 for 3 would not have been eligible because it's hardly a 'full-length novel'.) One of my sons comes home from school and tells me that all down the Uxbridge Road there are Evening Standard placards proclaiming: 'Shepherd's Bush author reveals sex secret.' Which I think is his joke. Until an hour later I wander down the road myself.
Oh this is silly: the confusion about whether a self-published book is a 'proper' book at all; the assumption that authors must be who they say they are on the title page; the whole tangle of 'gender', a word that in newspapers so quickly translates into 'sex'. But it's fun too. And it fits that Jennie was outed by a prize, because there's a silliness about them too - good books, yes, but a best book is a mythical creature.
Saturday
Wandering round Shepherd's Bush collecting yesterday's placards from obliging newsagents I meet another local author, who tells me that he bought the paper assuming the headline must be about himself. He was probably relieved; most readers were simply disappointed. The oddest thing of all is that Jennie now exists. I'm thinking of asking her to collaborate on my next book: alternate chapters, perhaps.
Friday, 4 July, 2008
In My week
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- Kathleen Kent
- Daniel Everett
- Mark Crick
- Glyn Maxwell
- Rabih Alameddine
- Nicholas Hogg
- Charles Boyle
- Mohammed Hanif
- Sarah Hall
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