by Will Self
‘Gentlemen, I appreciate Messrs Greenslade and Cracknell bringing me their work to read, but in my class we shall start from scratch, from the beginning, and proceed in an orderly fashion to the end. During this course you will write one short story, gentlemen, of between four and six thousand words. That's it. That's what we will focus on. Writing a story is deceptively easy – and deceptively hard. I don't want you to run before you can walk. I'm not going to be looking for fancy timescales, unusual settings, or stories that take place entirely within the mind of a stick insect.’ He paused and gave Cracknell a meaningful look. ‘And nor will I be satisfied with stories which feature unbelievable characters in unreal settings.’ The look was directed at Greenslade. ‘Your stories should be about something you know, they should be written in plain language, and they should have a beginning, a middle, and an end.‘
These last assertions were punctuated by Mahoney turning to the clapped-out whiteboard at the front of the room, and writing the three words on it, each with an eeeking flourish of a marker pen. ‘Beginning, middle, end,’ Mahoney reiterated pointing to the words in turn, as if he half expected the three nonces to sing along. ‘When I'm at the beginning I should know where I am, and the same goes for any subsequent point in the story. A story is a logical progression like any other. For the next twenty minutes or so I should like you to think about a subject for your story and write me a single paragraph about it.’ As he said this Mahoney moved between the three of them depositing pieces of paper and biros. ‘A single paragraph’ – Crackell got the look again – ‘that tells me who, where, what, why, and when. That's all, no fancy stuff. Got it?’ And with this the big Irishman plonked himselfdown in a chair, put his feet up on another, pulled a small-circulation left-wing periodical out of his jacket pocket, and commenced reading.
Twenty minutes later Mahoney identified the third stereotypic wannabe in his creative-writing course: the writer who can't write. Danny had just about managed a paragraph, but the sentences composing it infrequently parsed, and the individual words were largely spelt phonetically. Mahoney, however, did find to his surprise that Danny had genuinely fulfilled the assignment. His projected story had a beginning, a middle and an end, it had recognisable characters, and it was set in a milieu Danny clearly knew well. Mahoney looked down sympathetically at his newest recruit to the fount of literature. ‘This isn't too bad, Mister O'Toole. I like the idea, although I'm not so sure how you're going to handle the triple cross over the coke deal, but you can get to that later. Are you serious about giving this a try?’
‘Well, yeah, s'pose,’ Danny muttered – Mahoney hadn't taken this trouble with the other two.
‘In that case I would be obliged if you'd stop behind for a couple of minutes.’
When the repugnant duo had shuffled off down the stairs, each secretly satisfied that he was the most talented writer in HMP Wandsworth, Mahoney turned to Danny with a new and more serious expression on his broad pink face. ‘You've got to get your spelling and grammar up to speed,’ he said. ‘It's no good having good ideas – and I can see you've got those – if you can't express them. I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I've got two course books here designed to help adults with their literacy – with their reading and writing, that is. I'd like you to have at look at them. If we're going to make a writer of you, Mister O'Toole, you need to have a good command of basic grammar, hmm?’
Danny didn't take it the wrong way; he had decided a while before something quite momentous – he liked Mister Mahoney and wanted to please him. And within a matter of a fortnight Gerry Mahoney discovered something rather momentous as well – Danny O'Toole had genuine talent as a writer.
Danny chewed up the adult literacy course and digested it with ease. By the time the next class came round he was able to hand in to Mahoney all of the completed exercises. Mahoney gave him another book for a higher standard. Danny also began to read – and read at speed. He invested all of his birdhouse earnings to date in a torch and a supply of batteries. Then, after lock-up each afternoon, he proceeded to read his way through every single book available in the meagre nonce-wing library.
In the army Danny had read Sven Hassel, and on the outside he'd occasionally toyed with a thriller, but he'd never devoured print like this. He read historical romances and detective stories; he chomped his way through ancient numbers of the Reader's Digest; and he scarfed vast quantities of J.T. Edson westerns, with titles like Sidewinder, and Five Guns at Noon. As he read more and more Danny found himself essaying more difficult texts – the old dusty linen-bound books with the oppressively small type that were crowded on the bottom shelf of the library cart. So he came to read Dumas and Dickens, Twain and Thackeray, Galsworthy and – and an especial favourite – Elizabeth Gaskell.
Reading, for Danny, triggered an astonishing encephalisation. Not that he was stupid before – he was always sharp. But the reading burst through his mental partitions, partitions that the crack had effectively shored up, imprisoning his sentience, his rational capacity, behind psychotically patterned drapes. The alternative worlds of nineteenth-century novels enabled Danny to get a hard perspective on his own world, and to interpret his own life honestly. And there was more, much more. Danny, it transpired, also had an ear for prose. He could assay a line of English for its authenticity – the effectiveness with which the writer had psychically imprinted it – at the same time as he could parse it. As it was to crack addiction, so it was to literature – Danny was a natural.
After a month Gerry Mahoney began to bring books in for his favourite pupil, augmenting the tattered basics of the trolley with selections from his own library. Mahoney thought that Danny, being black, might prefer black literature. So he lent him James Baldwin ('Queer anna’ coon – thass a turn up! ‘); Ralph Ellison ('That brother is angry, man – he's feelin’ it all the time!'); Toni Morrison ('Yeah, yeah, yeah – but I did fill up a bit at the end. ‘); and Chester Himes ('Wicked! The man's a contender, funny, sharp, and he knows his shit – the fucker did time!'). Contemporary black writers appealed to Danny as well. He particularly admired the coolness of Caryl Phillips's prose and the quiet, lyrical anger of Fred D'Aguiar, but to Mahoney's enduring astonishment, the literature that Danny really liked was altogether different.
Danny liked the Decadents. To be more precise he adored tales of unnatural pleasures and artificial worlds. He devoured Maldoror; he cantered through À Rebours; and he spotted that Dorian Gray was sadly derivative. Within four months, with Mahoney's prodding, Danny was seriously translating Paradis Artificiel – and enjoying it. Not that any of this leaked into the story that Danny was writing himself; here he remained very much Mahoney's own acolyte. The story was set in Harlesden; it featured a protagonist not unlike Danny himself; it had the mandatory beginning, a middle Danny was attempting to slim down into an elegant waist, and an end that both of them agreed was an absolute stonker.
Already, even before the spectre of the prize came to haunt them, there was an exacting rivalry between the members of the writing class. Greenslade, who had once had a poem about his cat ('Oh beautiful cat/That makes me happy/Why can't you use your flappy . . . ?') published in the Rainham Advertiser, considered himself streets ahead of the other two when it came to the actual business of being a writer. ‘Professionalism’ was his watch word; and he would interrupt Mahoney's discourses on dialogue, or description, or development, to share his latest information on available grants, or royalty scales, or subsidiary rights. In fairness to Greenslade it has to be admitted that he did actually conform to most of the attributes of a British writer of his age (late fifties), without having had to go through the tedious business of actually publishing books, and then seeing them fade out of print, like dying stars.
Living stars were Cracknell's preoccupation. Mahoney had bullied him into attempting a short story, because that's what the class was all about, but Cracknell's subject matter – five thousand years in the history of the Printupian Empire – proved diff
icult to manage effectively in the abbreviated form. Rather than taking this personally – something he was incapable of, along with ordinary sympathy – Cracknell saw the whole thing in terms of genres. Science fiction – as its name implied – was the way forward, the way of the future. Anyone who continued to write sublunary tales was dealing in the worn coinage of mundanity. Not that Cracknell could have put it that well himself, he simply interrupted Mahoney's flow from time to time in order to observe that this or that sci-fi writer had long ago exemplified the point the teacher was making, and could they move on?
Moving on remained in the forefront of Danny's mind. His new-found absorption into literature wasn't about to sway him from his course. Danny still burned with a fervour; he wanted off the nonce wing, then he could appeal, clear himself, get free. Fat Boy, who was quite happy where he was, thought the piles of paper that trailed though their cell were quite ridiculous. ‘You wanna get a transfer, right?’ he wheedled Danny.
‘You know that, Fat Boy, you know that damn well.’
‘An’ you fink that all this reading and writing's gonna get it for you?’
‘Maybe – I dunno.’
‘One good bottler, my man, one good fucking bottler. Half an ounce of gear – a quarter even; and you'd be out of here. That old man Higson, yeah?’
‘Principal Officer Higson?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Principal Officer Higson, that's the one. He's an old-style PO, knows the form, right? Now, a couple of years ago it would've taken a poxy grand, but given inflation an’ that, and given that you're near the beginning of your sentence – which always makes it look a bit fishy – he says he can manage it for two.’
‘Manage what?’
‘Your fucking transfer, you moody little git, your fucking transfer!’
‘Two grand?’
‘Wake up, will you, O'Toole? I can't make it any clearer; you come up with two K for old Higson an’ he'll recommend your transfer to the Governor. You'll be in a fully integrated, cat. C nick before you can say knife. And the only fucking writing involved is one poxy letter – instead of all this bollocks.’
But Danny stuck with the bollocks and then Mahoney announced the prize. It was another Thursday afternoon in the Education Room, and the three grown men were leaning – cheeks cupped in hands, elbows jammed below – on their desks like adolescents. ‘Gentlemen,’ said Mahoney in his high, faintly mocking tones, ‘I think I mentioned to you at the outset of this course the existence of a competition for prison writing. It's called the Wolfenden Prize, it brings the winner guaranteed publication in an anthology, five hundred pounds, and considerable esteem.’ Mahoney pulled some entry forms from his briefcase and handed one to each of them, whilst continuing. ‘It's awarded for the best submitted story of between four and six thousand words. So, gentlemen! You can see that there was method in my madness; that there was a reason why I was so insistent on beginnings, middles and ends. I think all of you have the ability to be potential winners.’ Mahoney fixed all of them in turn with his gimlet gaze, and each of them thought he was referring to them alone. ‘And entering the competition will bring our course to a natural, effective end, by enabling you all to learn the absolute importance of’ – he began eeeking on the whiteboard – ‘deadlines!’
Greenslade, preposterously, accused Danny of nicking his ideas. Cracknell, ludicrously, imagined Danny was appropriating what passed for his style. Tensions ran high. There were two weeks to go before the entries were due in, and during that time the three men studiously avoided one another. This wasn't easy, given that they all had to type up their manuscripts in the same room. Danny was acutely conscious that he'd managed to avoid any trouble on the nonce wing until now; but he sensed that Greenslade wouldn't hesitate if he thought that a strategic jugging was all that lay between him and the literary laurels.
Mahoney attempted to defuse the rivalry: ‘I'm aware that the three of you feel very competitive about this, but I urge you to remember that there are at least ten men in this prison who will be entering for the Wolfenden, let alone the tens of others that will be entering in other nicks. And anyway, when you write you are competing only against yourself and posterity – there can be no living rivals.’
Mahoney certainly believed this, but he also believed that Danny was a genuinely talented young man who really deserved a break. He'd read Danny's story and it was streets ahead of most of the stuff currently being published. He'd never discussed Danny's crime, or sentence, to do so was taboo, but Gerry Mahoney didn't believe for a millisecond that he was a nonce.
Cal Devenish had agreed to judge the Wolfenden Prize for Prison Writing in the way that he agreed to do so many other things – without thinking. It sounded like a worthy cause, and there was something sexy about the whole notion of prisoners writing. Perhaps Cal would discover another Jack Henry Abbott, and become tied up in an infamous correspondence like Norman Mailer? What Cal hadn't factored in was the actual reading of the entries, set against his own fantastic indolence.
The shortlisted entries had arrived about three weeks before. Cal signed the courier's docket and leant them against the radiator by the front door. They were still there, a bulbous Jiffy-bag full of unimaginable pap. Cal groaned. It was a sharp, cold morning in early April, and he was scheduled to present the prize the following afternoon. He'd been awoken at nine sharp with an apposite alarm call: it was the secretary of the visitors’ board at Wandsworth Prison, where the prize giving was to be held: ‘Mr Devenish?’
‘Yeah, what? Yeah, right?’ Cal was gagging on consciousness.
‘I'm sorry, I didn't wake you or anything?’
‘Naw, naw!’ Cal had been having a dream of rare beauty and poignance. In it, he had awoken and tiptoed downstairs to discover that the novel which he had been procrastinating over for the past two years had been completed during the night and lay, neatly word-processed on the desk. On picking it up and beginning to read, Cal was delighted to find that it was just as he had conceived of it during the long hours of not writing – but far far better.
‘It's John Estes here, I'm the secretary of the visitors’ board at Wandsworth.’
‘Oh – yes.’
‘We're very much looking forward to seeing you tomorrow –’
‘Me too.’
‘I wondered if it might be possible at this stage, Mr Devenish, for you to give me some idea of your decision regarding the winner – and the runners up?’
‘Decision?’ Cal floundered in his slough of irresponsibility.
‘As to who's “von the prize?’
‘Is there any particular reason, Mr Estes?’
‘Well, the thing is, as you may be aware, Mr Devenish, a lot of prisoners get transferred, and we wanted at least to be sure that the winner would be actually in the prison when you came tomorrow.’
‘Oh I see, that does sound reasonable . . . the thing is, I was about to reread my short shortlist when you called. I should have an idea about that before the end of the day; may I call you then?’
Cal took the secretary's number down and hung up. Christ! It wasn't as if he didn't have enough other things to do today. He swung himself out of bed and, naked, stamped down the stairs of the mews house into the main room where he worked. Cal's desk was thatched with an interesting rick of unpaid bills, unanswered letters, notes for unwritten articles and unwritten books. As if to garnish this platter of ennui, almost all the sheets of paper, the desk itself, the computer and the fax machine had Post-it notes stuck to them recording never answered phone calls. Cal groaned and headed for the Jiffy-bag; at least with the formidable excuse of judging the short-story competition he could hold the rest of the obligatory world at bay for another day. He headed back up the stairs and dived into bed with the entries.
Cal Devenish had won a prestigious literary prize himself about five years previously. It was for his third novel, and the previous two – which had barely been in print – were yanked back into favour as well. The glow had been a long ti
me fading, but now, along with the advance for a further novel, it had. Cal told himself that he was marking time, allowing himself the creative liberty of genuine abstraction. But on days like these, when he was confronted with other potential contenders’ work, he was worse than rattled.
It didn't matter that about ten of the fifteen shortlisted stories were barely literate – at least their authors had managed to get the words down on paper. And anyway, reading bad writing was like playing against a bad opponent – your game suffered as well. Every duff sentence Cal read convinced him that he himself would never write another good one; every feeble plot he speedily unravelled hammered home the fact that he himself would never contrive another interesting one; and every wooden character's piece of leaden dialogue left him with the chilling intimation that he lacked any human sympathy himself.
The stories ran the whole gamut of predictable awfulness. There were chocolate-box romances, and dead-pet dramas; there were ‘it was all a dream's, and Stephen King copycat nightmares. Naturally, there was also a whole subgenre of justification, stories about honest crims who would do a bank and give the proceeds to a charity; or else save kiddies from unspeakable nonces. The stories were so terrible overall that Cal decided to order them in terms of being least bad, because he had such difficulty in judging any of them to be good.
That's until he got to the last three in the batch – these definitely had something, although exactly what it was difficult to say. One was a kind of spoof space opera about an intergalactic empire called Printupia. The writer had attempted to compress five thousand years in the history of this enormous state into the six thousand words allowed, and the result was an astonishingly compacted, near meaningless prose. Cal wondered if it might be a satire on the ephemerality of contemporary culture; narrative itself characterised as a non-biodegradable piece of packaging, littering the verge of the cosmos.
