I’ve always worked in a technical, scientific sphere but the ability to write well, if not necessarily creatively is important. Over the last few years I was involved very centrally in an issue which was of some significance and has been widely written about by many people, predominantly scientists etc. I’ve been ill and convalescing and I sometimes think about writing of my experiences and perspectives. However, if I were to do this I don’t think a scientific analytical treatise is what’s now needed. It’s more of an emotional, almost philosophical analysis of what happened and what the human dimension is. It’s rather like the moon landings and the astronauts who wrote about their experiences. They were virtually all test pilots and had doctorates in maths and physics. However, as has often been discussed what if a writer or artist had travelled to the moon and communicated their thoughts and shared their creativity? I think what you’re doing Hanif is both valuable and unique. You’re now drawing on your experience and indeed genius and stimulating your readers to think about their creativity and experience as writers. Being a writer though isn’t just about novels, poetry and plays but can be cold and technical but nevertheless elegant and satisfying.
Having spent most of my adult life in LA as a film producer, your comments struck a bell. Yes, the Brit writers remained pale, so did the Brit directors and producers. But there was wonderful talent coming from there. I miss Alan Parker the most. The fact that film is a collaborative art can be painful, but it starts with the script. That is the most important item. A good script can survive a journeyman director (as long as he knows how to cast).
Another beautiful post, Hanif, with your insights tumbling freely from your mind to open ours. How many artists I know, myself included, who succumbed to the contract to produce for a client. It's a long and interesting road back to freedom. I love your courage. It is the work! And you are shining so brightly even now! Thank you. ❤️
This morning I awoke on three separate occasions. Eventually I put on a light dressing gown. It is now past eight in the evening. In terms of my appearance very little has changed. The dressing gown has acquired a chameleon, who is dozing in one of the folds, with his tail wound into a neat spiral. Occasionally he will issue a contented click. The beard that I have grown, more through personal neglect than intent, has perhaps acquired a few additional millimetres.
I get sucked into the various projects that I have on the go, and overlook the fundamentals – shaving for example. It is plausible that I haven't seen my reflection in a mirror since sometime in late 2022. When I finally confront my visage, I expect to be greeted by the face of a man who has recently returned from a long expedition to the North Pole.
There is a subconscious showmanship that surfaces in the appearance of many well-known writers, as if some form of capillary action has drawn a modicum of their creative essence to the surface. This pre-dates PR nannying and the kind of gung-ho image consultant who might courier over an encyclopaedia of tie swatches, bookmarked with post-it notes. Rightly or wrongly, this is the kind of thing that I can imagine happening to Martin Amis.
Immerse yourself in the smouldering gaze of Jean Rhys, as she balances her chin on a plinth formed from her interlaced fingers and raises a quizzical eyebrow at you from a vantage point of the 1920s. The only point of balance in her face is the fixed, tight-lipped smile that could go either way. How could anyone look at her and not be the least bit curious about her writing?
As a teenager I was drawn to tough guys who looked like they had led hard lives. At that point I had not led a hard life. Choosing a book on the basis that its author could probably beat me in a fist fight is admittedly an unusual metric. It was by no means my only method for judging unfamiliar writers. I reckon that I could have gone toe-to-toe with George Mackay Brown, Queensbury rules, and come out on top, but I still sought out his poetry and prose. Were that contest to be re-framed in terms of raw intellect, he would have crushed me like a primeval granite boulder pulverising an ant.
Part of the attraction with writers like Charles Bukowski or Harry Crews was that their scarred, crudely-chiselled faces, and frayed shirts, left them with no place to hide. They had to be good writers. Their looks certainly weren't earning them any points.
Growing up, I read an awful lot of music journalism. I developed a fascination with that accomplished and intuitive breed of elite session musician who cluster around industry nexus points like Nashville or L.A. I am referring to the kind of person who turns up on time, spends a couple of takes laying down a guitar part, or some drums, that elevates a song without grandstanding, and then leaves. For some reason Chris Potter's saxophone solo, that closes out Steely Dan's 'West of Hollywood', comes to mind. I read somewhere that the band started the backing track and he improvised over it.
I wanted that for myself, only as a writer. I also knew that it lay beyond my intellectual reach. The books I admired were the products of hard work, grounded on a monolithic bedrock of raw talent. I was, at best, of average intelligence and obsessed with idiosyncrasies that were of little interest to anyone else.
A ray of hope came in the form of an early book by Henry Rollins – a Renaissance man, who is fated to be remembered as the vocalist for the US punk band Black Flag. The book was an outpouring of Rollin's thoughts, crude and, at times, embarrassing. With every successive book he wrote, he became more articulate. I thought: I can do that. I can write in a way where it is more an act of will than an expression of talent. I have since come realise that, if you strip away any attempts at artifice, everything I write is an attempt to work out what I think about things.
One thing I think is that Kafka would have been a solid writer of those cartoons that trade on an endless cycle of thwarted desire: In pursuit of the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote runs several feet over the edge of a cliff. While he waits for gravity to catch up with his poor judgement, he turns and fixes the viewer with a plaintive, fourth-wall breaking stare, while holding up a pathetically tiny sign that reads: “Not again!”
However, on this occasion he has been denied access to the airspace directly below him. The paperwork he will require, if he is to fulfil his manifest destiny and plummet to the bottom of the canyon, can only be obtained on the other side of the tunnel that he painted on the face of a mountain in an attempt to capture his nemesis.
I think that the key to my Kafka-risation of Roadrunner would be for each cartoon to run long, perhaps uninterrupted over the course of several days. There would be a lot of repetition which would keep the costs down.
Tonight’s missive might be my favorite so far (and that’s saying something, given how much I’ve loved the previous ones!). Your choice of preferred authors, your description of Hollywood/LA (where I grew up) your love of soap operas, the palpable love for your son all moved me, but It was with this paragraph that you slayed me: “The singularity of the voice drives the story forward. This is a person you want to spend time with. You love their company. You will follow them where they want to take you. Any novel could be as short, as long, as eccentric as you like. I would abandon screenwriting and have a go at this....”
It is your voice so many of us follow now with that kind of connection, joy and excitement. We faithfully await your next missive. Your writing is like a drug. Much love and continued healing. ❤️
This post was inspiring, joyous, instructive, fascinating--a journey through multiple of your worlds. Thank you. As soon as I have freetime, I am going to watch My Beautiful Laundrette again, and listen for hints to the voice in these missives. Gratefully, your reader . . .
Good evening, You mentioned before the feeling and satisfaction of holding a pen and hearing it scratch the paper - the physical act of writing one word after another. I was wondering, Mr Kureishi, considering your current situation, how you experience writing "in your head" versus writing "with your hand"? How is the process different, what different sensations does it bring, what limitations, or what new perspectives? For me, writing is like thinking: when I want to clarify what I am thinking, I need to start writing and that's how the ideas actually appear clearly to me, as the words come out of my fingers and gain a physical form, an organized reality. It is as if my fingers are thinking, as if there is a direct flow between my head and my hands onto the paper. I would be interested to read about your experience with this different form of writting. Wishing that your recovery is as quick and gentle as possible.
Well - this was all going so well until we got to Mont Blanc. I had seen the photo of your study and wanted to ask you about pens. You seemed to be calling for it, in fact. I could see several distinctive workhorse Lamy Safaris, but what else was there? You spoke of your hope to hold a fountain pen again and write (in purple ink: I assume this was a joke?). But now I find that your favourite pen is a Mont Blanc, and I am crushed.
But wait? (I can't lose this comment from the app - you know how that feels) so I'll have to check what I think I've just realised by heading for the web browser - just a moment...
Yes! It's past tense and you are going back decades. It is a youthful abberation. You have been sold the lie that the Mont Blanc is the prince of pens and you have, understandably, fallen for it. But now, surely, you know better, and I am emboldened to ask, what *is* your favourite pen?
What a wonderful read this was today, thank you. I too wonder how you compose in your head and speak it, and about editing. But no matter, you have been at this trade/art for a long time, and perhaps it comes more naturally with experience. I love the story of how you came to discover the sort of writing you love best, and of being your own person, your own voice. Did I say I love this? I love this. But also the title of this post sent me into researching it's origin and how delightful to read of it in both Eliot and Dickens. Thank you for enriching my day. Wishing you a direct journey back to your purple ink or purple prose or Mont Blanc pens. I'm sure at this point you'd be grateful for a dull pencil stub. Keep up the delightful writing. I wait each day for the next missive.
Genuinely love this entry. Being a very shy writer myself, there is a lot in it to enjoy. A Tibetan man told my middle son that he was very shy- "you are very shy," he said, "but in Tibet, we think shy man is good man." I value the work of those who do not jump into useless projects. We intend to watch My Beautiful Laundrette this evening. My partner has not yet seen it.
Stories always begin with the writer and the very best have a voice , something to tell us , something to say , something to reveal , something to challenge with , something that hurts us or something that makes us cry with joy . Btw absolutely love your addiction to soap operas - oddly comforting. X
I’ve always worked in a technical, scientific sphere but the ability to write well, if not necessarily creatively is important. Over the last few years I was involved very centrally in an issue which was of some significance and has been widely written about by many people, predominantly scientists etc. I’ve been ill and convalescing and I sometimes think about writing of my experiences and perspectives. However, if I were to do this I don’t think a scientific analytical treatise is what’s now needed. It’s more of an emotional, almost philosophical analysis of what happened and what the human dimension is. It’s rather like the moon landings and the astronauts who wrote about their experiences. They were virtually all test pilots and had doctorates in maths and physics. However, as has often been discussed what if a writer or artist had travelled to the moon and communicated their thoughts and shared their creativity? I think what you’re doing Hanif is both valuable and unique. You’re now drawing on your experience and indeed genius and stimulating your readers to think about their creativity and experience as writers. Being a writer though isn’t just about novels, poetry and plays but can be cold and technical but nevertheless elegant and satisfying.
Having spent most of my adult life in LA as a film producer, your comments struck a bell. Yes, the Brit writers remained pale, so did the Brit directors and producers. But there was wonderful talent coming from there. I miss Alan Parker the most. The fact that film is a collaborative art can be painful, but it starts with the script. That is the most important item. A good script can survive a journeyman director (as long as he knows how to cast).
Another beautiful post, Hanif, with your insights tumbling freely from your mind to open ours. How many artists I know, myself included, who succumbed to the contract to produce for a client. It's a long and interesting road back to freedom. I love your courage. It is the work! And you are shining so brightly even now! Thank you. ❤️
This morning I awoke on three separate occasions. Eventually I put on a light dressing gown. It is now past eight in the evening. In terms of my appearance very little has changed. The dressing gown has acquired a chameleon, who is dozing in one of the folds, with his tail wound into a neat spiral. Occasionally he will issue a contented click. The beard that I have grown, more through personal neglect than intent, has perhaps acquired a few additional millimetres.
I get sucked into the various projects that I have on the go, and overlook the fundamentals – shaving for example. It is plausible that I haven't seen my reflection in a mirror since sometime in late 2022. When I finally confront my visage, I expect to be greeted by the face of a man who has recently returned from a long expedition to the North Pole.
There is a subconscious showmanship that surfaces in the appearance of many well-known writers, as if some form of capillary action has drawn a modicum of their creative essence to the surface. This pre-dates PR nannying and the kind of gung-ho image consultant who might courier over an encyclopaedia of tie swatches, bookmarked with post-it notes. Rightly or wrongly, this is the kind of thing that I can imagine happening to Martin Amis.
Immerse yourself in the smouldering gaze of Jean Rhys, as she balances her chin on a plinth formed from her interlaced fingers and raises a quizzical eyebrow at you from a vantage point of the 1920s. The only point of balance in her face is the fixed, tight-lipped smile that could go either way. How could anyone look at her and not be the least bit curious about her writing?
As a teenager I was drawn to tough guys who looked like they had led hard lives. At that point I had not led a hard life. Choosing a book on the basis that its author could probably beat me in a fist fight is admittedly an unusual metric. It was by no means my only method for judging unfamiliar writers. I reckon that I could have gone toe-to-toe with George Mackay Brown, Queensbury rules, and come out on top, but I still sought out his poetry and prose. Were that contest to be re-framed in terms of raw intellect, he would have crushed me like a primeval granite boulder pulverising an ant.
Part of the attraction with writers like Charles Bukowski or Harry Crews was that their scarred, crudely-chiselled faces, and frayed shirts, left them with no place to hide. They had to be good writers. Their looks certainly weren't earning them any points.
Growing up, I read an awful lot of music journalism. I developed a fascination with that accomplished and intuitive breed of elite session musician who cluster around industry nexus points like Nashville or L.A. I am referring to the kind of person who turns up on time, spends a couple of takes laying down a guitar part, or some drums, that elevates a song without grandstanding, and then leaves. For some reason Chris Potter's saxophone solo, that closes out Steely Dan's 'West of Hollywood', comes to mind. I read somewhere that the band started the backing track and he improvised over it.
I wanted that for myself, only as a writer. I also knew that it lay beyond my intellectual reach. The books I admired were the products of hard work, grounded on a monolithic bedrock of raw talent. I was, at best, of average intelligence and obsessed with idiosyncrasies that were of little interest to anyone else.
A ray of hope came in the form of an early book by Henry Rollins – a Renaissance man, who is fated to be remembered as the vocalist for the US punk band Black Flag. The book was an outpouring of Rollin's thoughts, crude and, at times, embarrassing. With every successive book he wrote, he became more articulate. I thought: I can do that. I can write in a way where it is more an act of will than an expression of talent. I have since come realise that, if you strip away any attempts at artifice, everything I write is an attempt to work out what I think about things.
One thing I think is that Kafka would have been a solid writer of those cartoons that trade on an endless cycle of thwarted desire: In pursuit of the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote runs several feet over the edge of a cliff. While he waits for gravity to catch up with his poor judgement, he turns and fixes the viewer with a plaintive, fourth-wall breaking stare, while holding up a pathetically tiny sign that reads: “Not again!”
However, on this occasion he has been denied access to the airspace directly below him. The paperwork he will require, if he is to fulfil his manifest destiny and plummet to the bottom of the canyon, can only be obtained on the other side of the tunnel that he painted on the face of a mountain in an attempt to capture his nemesis.
I think that the key to my Kafka-risation of Roadrunner would be for each cartoon to run long, perhaps uninterrupted over the course of several days. There would be a lot of repetition which would keep the costs down.
Tonight’s missive might be my favorite so far (and that’s saying something, given how much I’ve loved the previous ones!). Your choice of preferred authors, your description of Hollywood/LA (where I grew up) your love of soap operas, the palpable love for your son all moved me, but It was with this paragraph that you slayed me: “The singularity of the voice drives the story forward. This is a person you want to spend time with. You love their company. You will follow them where they want to take you. Any novel could be as short, as long, as eccentric as you like. I would abandon screenwriting and have a go at this....”
It is your voice so many of us follow now with that kind of connection, joy and excitement. We faithfully await your next missive. Your writing is like a drug. Much love and continued healing. ❤️
This post was inspiring, joyous, instructive, fascinating--a journey through multiple of your worlds. Thank you. As soon as I have freetime, I am going to watch My Beautiful Laundrette again, and listen for hints to the voice in these missives. Gratefully, your reader . . .
Good evening, You mentioned before the feeling and satisfaction of holding a pen and hearing it scratch the paper - the physical act of writing one word after another. I was wondering, Mr Kureishi, considering your current situation, how you experience writing "in your head" versus writing "with your hand"? How is the process different, what different sensations does it bring, what limitations, or what new perspectives? For me, writing is like thinking: when I want to clarify what I am thinking, I need to start writing and that's how the ideas actually appear clearly to me, as the words come out of my fingers and gain a physical form, an organized reality. It is as if my fingers are thinking, as if there is a direct flow between my head and my hands onto the paper. I would be interested to read about your experience with this different form of writting. Wishing that your recovery is as quick and gentle as possible.
Well - this was all going so well until we got to Mont Blanc. I had seen the photo of your study and wanted to ask you about pens. You seemed to be calling for it, in fact. I could see several distinctive workhorse Lamy Safaris, but what else was there? You spoke of your hope to hold a fountain pen again and write (in purple ink: I assume this was a joke?). But now I find that your favourite pen is a Mont Blanc, and I am crushed.
But wait? (I can't lose this comment from the app - you know how that feels) so I'll have to check what I think I've just realised by heading for the web browser - just a moment...
Yes! It's past tense and you are going back decades. It is a youthful abberation. You have been sold the lie that the Mont Blanc is the prince of pens and you have, understandably, fallen for it. But now, surely, you know better, and I am emboldened to ask, what *is* your favourite pen?
What a wonderful read this was today, thank you. I too wonder how you compose in your head and speak it, and about editing. But no matter, you have been at this trade/art for a long time, and perhaps it comes more naturally with experience. I love the story of how you came to discover the sort of writing you love best, and of being your own person, your own voice. Did I say I love this? I love this. But also the title of this post sent me into researching it's origin and how delightful to read of it in both Eliot and Dickens. Thank you for enriching my day. Wishing you a direct journey back to your purple ink or purple prose or Mont Blanc pens. I'm sure at this point you'd be grateful for a dull pencil stub. Keep up the delightful writing. I wait each day for the next missive.
Thank you for writing these beautiful, moving dispatches. Your rich voice is immensely pleasurable.
Dear Hanif, your words went straight to my heart! Thank you!
Engrossing and vulnerable! My favorite blog post of yours yet, thank you!
Genuinely love this entry. Being a very shy writer myself, there is a lot in it to enjoy. A Tibetan man told my middle son that he was very shy- "you are very shy," he said, "but in Tibet, we think shy man is good man." I value the work of those who do not jump into useless projects. We intend to watch My Beautiful Laundrette this evening. My partner has not yet seen it.
Another beautiful, humble, and inspiring post. The details are precious. Thank you.
Stories always begin with the writer and the very best have a voice , something to tell us , something to say , something to reveal , something to challenge with , something that hurts us or something that makes us cry with joy . Btw absolutely love your addiction to soap operas - oddly comforting. X
A very interesting entry to read. Thanks for the insight from your side of it all.