Matthew Ted > Books

Bolaño, for example - reading Bolaño being one of the unwritten commandments - declared that 'a short-story writer should be brave' and drive in headfirst. Piglia claimed his lifestyle defined his literary style. Augusto Monterroso urged young writers to 'make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.'

I. A short-story writer should be brave. Drop everything and dive in headfirst.

II. Make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.

III. Remember that writing isn’t for cowards, but also that being brave isn’t the same as not feeling afraid; being brave is feeling afraid and sticking it out, taking charge, going all in.

IV. Don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve opened your eyes underwater, unless you’ve screamed underwater with your eyes wide open. Also, don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve burned your fingers, unless you’ve put them under the hot water tap and said, ‘Ahhh! This is much better than not getting burned at all.’

V. Be in love with your own life.

VI. What sets a novelist apart is having a unique worldview as well as something to say about it. So try living a little first. Not just in books or in bars, but out there, in real life. Wait until you’ve been scarred by the world, until it has left its mark.

VII. Try living abroad.

VIII. You’ve got to fuck a great many women / beautiful women / […] / drink more and more beer / […] attend the racetrack at least once.

IX. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.

X. People in a novel, not skilfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him.

The writers behind this advice – in strict disorder – are: Javier Cercas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Auster, Roberto Bolaño, Charles Bukowski, Hernán Casciari, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Augusto Monterroso. (Exercise: draw a line between each author and his advice.)

Some of the new people we'd picked up after Aleph used 'tha, ther, thim' instead of 'he, his, him', for the collective pronoun.

The streets throng with people who panic, looking to the left and the right, covering the scissors, sucking poison from a wound they cannot find, judging their time from the sun’s position in the sky when the sun itself has melted and trickles down the ridges of darkness into the hollows of evaporated seas.

It was autumn, with the trees in the town gardens turning gold and the mornings in chiffon mist and the cold sweat of dew clinging in chains to the grass blades. The derelict apples trees blighted and scabbed with lichen were shedding, with help from the blackbirds, their last caved-in rotten apples, and when I walked under the trees in the long damp grass, I squashed the fruit and ruined the houses of the tiny worms who had settled in for the season, webbing themselves close to the core, at the heart of the matter. All the dockseeds had ripened and fallen, and the stalks of the plants were steepled with milky white ‘spiders’ houses; …

And my ‘old self’? Having had warning of its approaching death will it have crept away like an animal to die in privacy? Or will it be spilled somewhere like an invisible stain? Or, discarded, will it lie in wait for me in the future, seeking revenge? What is the essence of it, that the thieves are like metre readers who unknowingly bear away a blank card, and furniture removers trustfully sweating at the weight of imaginary furniture?

The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.

Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow;
bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
bright blue his jacket was, and his boots are yellow

'Fair lady!' said Frodo again after a while. 'Tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish, who is Tom Bombadil?'
'He is,' said Goldberry, staying her swift movements and smiling.

'Who are you, Master?' he asked.
'Eh, what?' said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. 'Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees: Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless—before the Dark Lord came from outside.'

Bilbo's Last Song
(At the Grey Havens)

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar
I'll find the havens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-Earth at last.
I see the Star above your mast!