I\u2019m serious: maybe no writing or drama or art is actually any good. Maybe it\u2019s just that some of it is more shiny, some of it is somehow more reflective and it catches the eye for a brief while.<\/p>\n
The one book I simply will never dare re-read, for example, is Sylvia Plath\u2019s The Bell Jar. Because I read it when I was exactly at the right point in my teens to find it a tumultuous bellow of a book and some of the bruises it gave me have yet to disappear. Now that I\u2019ve read it once and moreover am somewhat older than I was, though, I fear that it may be feel blunted if I read it again. I want to keep these bruises. <\/p>\n
Not long ago I did re-read Isaac Asimov\u2019s The End of Eternity and, god in heaven, he\u2019s a schoolboy. Yet so was I when I first read it and perhaps consequently I did not notice characters, attitudes, situations and writing that now makes me wonder if the book is a joke. All I saw back then was the plot which, to be fair, still seems replete with deeply imaginative ideas.<\/p>\n
So I definitely had to be a schoolboy in order to think Asimov is good. I think I might have to be a teenager to truly appreciate Plath again. In which case, I and who I am, how old I am, perhaps even where I am, makes the difference to me between a book being good or bad. Your mileage will vary but the same factors apply: I don\u2019t think you can enjoy a Young Adult novel as much as if you were a Young Adult, for instance.<\/p>\n
This week, a colleague told me that she doesn\u2019t like Doctor Who. She wanted me, I think, to make a pitch for why I think it\u2019s good but instead I just told her that it isn\u2019t compulsory.<\/p>\n
I gave her this example. Mindful of how there\u2019s just been some football tournament thing, I said to her that she or anyone might well be able to tell me that this game or that is good. You can argue about the beauty of the beautiful game, you can tell me how you\u2019ve held your breath in moments of action that are greater than any theatre could ever hope to achieve.<\/p>\n
And so what? I\u2019ll never know because I\u2019ll never watch because it\u2019s football.<\/p>\n
I have a few mantras in life. One is that it\u2019s better to be crew than passenger. Another is that the show comes first. But the third is my unstoppable certainty that everything, absolutely everything is interesting. Except football.<\/p>\n
Yet if you do that telling me it\u2019s a pinnacle of drama, I might want to take you out to the theatre a bit more but it won\u2019t occur to me to doubt you. <\/p>\n
So that means that the quality of football doesn\u2019t matter. It can be wonderful or it can be dreadful, it\u2019s all still rubbish to me.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re thinking that says more about me than it does football, I completely agree and I think that\u2019s actually the point.<\/p>\n
For if the quality or not of a sport has no bearing on whether I\u2019ll like it, so surely the reverse is true. Things I do think are good really just happen to be things I like. <\/p>\n
As writers and creators, maybe we shouldn\u2019t bother striving to be good, then. We should just write things that include things people like. A bit with a dog, for instance.<\/p>\n
Except, as a writer, I long to say to you that all of this is utter bollocks. I yearn to say definitively that if you do good work it will reach people. Whether or not they happen to be the right age or in the right demographic, good work will reach them.<\/p>\n
And I think I can make that argument.<\/p>\n
That mention of a bit with a dog \u2013 I realise only after having typed it \u2013 is a quote from the 1999 film Shakespeare in Love. And thinking of Shakey makes me think of this. That fella wrote Hamlet four hundred years ago and I\u2019ll bet it was a hit with the teenagers of the day but it has lasted.It can\u2019t connect with anything I do. It doesn\u2019t depend on my being a Danish prince. Nothing Shakespeare could\u2019ve put in as a crowd pleaser can work with me four centuries later. <\/p>\n
Yet Hammy is one of my favourite plays. <\/p>\n
Then the same should be true with Jane Austen. She wrote 200 years ago in a society I can\u2019t imagine, in a world I cannot recognise. But her writing in the 18th and 19th Centuries has made me laugh aloud here in the 21st. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s also made me wince at her sometimes deft cruelty in describing characters such that one sentence brings them to vivid life.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what I think works and lasts and connects. The ability of truly fine writers to see beyond the present-day trappings and dive so deeply into people that they also dive into us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m serious: maybe no writing or drama or art is actually any good. Maybe it\u2019s just that some of it … Continue reading