Undergraduate memories

These days, it's forty years since I got my first degree. I am not particularly proud of this part of my professional career, and I don't think I ever told anyone about it properly, except in passing in my memoir. It wasn't important, but forty years later it is interesting to look back and see how some decisions turned out to be life-changing. As they usually do.

During my two last years in school I worked hard toward my grades and took extra private lessons because that was what you did if you wanted a higher education. My parents expected me to apply to the Faculty of Philology at Moscow University because literature had always been my favourite subject (hideous teachers notwithstanding). It was enormously competitive, and apart from excellent grades from school you had to take four entrance exams: written composition, oral literature, English (as a foreign language) and history. Written composition was easiest to fail: the examiner could always state that the argument wasn't sufficiently developed. Most of my classmates had “connections”. It meant either that your parents knew someone high in the college administration or that they knew someone who could be bribed. It was a truth universally acknowledged that you could not be accepted into college without connections. My parents had no connections. I still don't know whether they genuinely had no connections or whether they stood above it, but I was expected to get in without connections, and they would be disappointed if I failed. I was a well-behaved girl, used to do as I was told. If I were told to pass entrance exams then that's was what I had to do.

Eventually, my parents found a remote connection at the Faculty of Philology and sent me in for “consultation”. The professor made me read and translate a passage from an English novel. There was one word I didn't know. Forty-five years later, I still remember the shame of it. The word was “pace”. I could answer all questions and discuss the passage fluently, and the professor was highly encouraging, but I realised that I would never pass the exam without knowing the word “pace”, and then my family would denounce me, and my friends would despise me, and the only way for me would be to take my life. Although I, like most teenagers, had repeatedly contemplated suicide, the prospect wasn't appealing. I was scared. I admit it: I was a coward. I was scared of my parents' scorn, because they had always been brilliant in everything and would tolerate nothing else from me.

After the school finals – eleven exams, half of them in subjects I would never ever use again – I prepared my paperwork, including the special recommendation from my literature teacher (the horrid one) stating that I was the leader of a reading club that had never existed. Actually, the recommendation started – and I remember it word for word, after forty-five years: “There is no writer in the world, not even a third-rate one, that she doesn't know”. I wasn't supposed to see the recommendation, but my principal who was known for breaking rules showed it to me with an amused smile.

My parents went away for holidays. They were not like other parents who cooked their kids' favourite food for them, made their beds and turned down the radio while the kids were revising for exams. My parents had confidence in me. They went away for holidays, leaving me alone to take the decisive step toward my adult life. I thought already then it was strange, but it wasn't my habit to question my parents' behaviour. Looking back at those weeks, I assume they left me some money for food, but I have no memory of it. I couldn't cook then, and there were no eateries in Moscow in the late 60s. So I guess I had bread and cheese three times a day. I don't remember feeling lonely, but I must have been. All my classmates were revising, most likely at their family country houses, because I have no memories of revising together with a friend. I had a lover, but that's another story.

I was a coward. I knew I could not fail my parents' expectations, and I knew there was no way I could pass exams at the Faculty of Philology without connections. So I took my paperwork and applied to the Foreign Languages Institute, a prestigious school, but one my parents despised, and I did too. Looking back, I don't understand why I thought that getting into FLI without connections would be easier. I am sure that if my parents had been by my side I wouldn't have done it, and my life would have been completely different. Or maybe not at all. Sometimes we ascribe more significance to our decisions than they deserve.

I passed my entrance exams and went to join my parents at the holiday resort. I don't remember their reaction when I confessed. I know they were terribly disappointed, but I cannot remember exactly what they said. Maybe they didn't say anything. My mother had a habit of not talking to me for weeks. Yet what was the point of talking or fighting: it was over and done with, all because I didn't know the word “pace”.

To be continued.

More fun with indexing

The index has gone to the publisher and come back as a concordance. This is a new process for me, and it looked clever and helpful – until I started checking what the indexing software had done with my original list. First of all, for some reason, I noticed that “White, Hayden”, whom I only mention once (and one time too many), has got a long row of page numbers. On closer examination, it included fifty shades of white, including White Witch in Narnia.

Henry James and William James were of course brothers, but they are still two separate people with an entry each, while the concordance also suggests a reference to King James the Third (from a counterfactual novel).

For “Wolf, Mark”, “Wolf, Maryanne” and “Wolf, Shelby Ann”, the concordance has picked up Max's wolf suit in Where the Wild Things Are, wolf pack in The Hunger Games and the epomymous character in Emily Gravett's Wolves.

The young adult author Lucy Christopher got references to Christopher Robin, and the critic Jacqueline Rose to Rose, the sister in The Tunnel.

I have a theoretical discussion of animal characters in fiction, but I don't want references to any kind of animal mentioned in passing in text analysis. Likewise, I only have a few pages on representation of society and family, but apparently both words appear in abundance in my book. I should have anticipated it.

And of course the concordance doesn't know that if I discuss a novel on eight pages I probably only mention the title on the first and the last. 

Joys of indexing

I know you won't believe me, but I truly enjoy compiling an index for my books. Most people I know hate it and will pay someone to do it or let the publisher do it. Once, in a tight moment, I asked my publisher to do the index and deduce the costs from my royalties. Of course I had to do it all over again myslef. I am the only one who knows what is important in my book and should go into the index. I am the only one who knows when “dream” is a cognitive process and therefore should go into the index, as opposed to when it is part of a content discussion and therefore shouldn't. I am the only one who knows that “the death of the author” should neither be indexed under death nor author.

Indexing is the first and only stage at which you realise what your book is really about because you see which terms and names pop up on every other page, rather than those in your subheadings. The first and only stage when you notice all small inconsistencies, such as alternating between “dystopian literature” and “dystopian fiction”. When you see that sometimes you provide authors for titles and sometimes you don't, and it will be a hell to index these titles. When you have to admit that some terms and concepts are superfluous because you only mention them once in passing and never explain. When you regret that you have mentioned names in the body of text rather than in in-text references because they quite unnecessarily get a separate index entry. Or the other way round, with the in-text reference only, an important source is not reflected in the index. And so on, infinitely.

Sadly, at this stage it is too late to make any changes. I used to compile the index with the first draft checking for exactly these small stupid details. For some reason, I didn't this time, and now I am punished for my laziness. Of course nobody will notice, because the only reason people use indices is to check whether they are in them and how often. (At least, this is the only reason I use indices in other people's books).

PS In Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle there is a character who can tell the author's personality from an index. I have no doubts.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in memoriam

There has been a lot written about the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez these days, and I cannot add much except one detail that made a deep impression on me when I read it, many many years ago. In fact, so many years ago I am not sure which book it was, but I believe it is The Autumn of the Patriarch. It is the episode with the lotttery, when each year a young child is asked to pull out a random ball with a winning number. Only it is not a random ball, but the winning ball is heated, and the child is instructed to choose the hot ball, and the dictator always wins. The children are kept in custody so that they cannot reveal the secret. At one point, they are all taken on a boat trip as a reward for their services. By a strange coincidence, the boat sinks.

I am sure most people outside totalitarian contries think that this is satire and grotesque. For me it was just another confirmation of the bitter truth.

Writing First World War for children, part 2

Another reflection I made at the First World War symposium was that my grandchildren presumably don't know anything about it.

Of course, I didn't know much about it when I was a child, once again, because it was totally eclipsed by the 1917 revolution and the subsequent Communist coup that eventually harvested more lives than the Great War on both sides – but our history books didn't tell us about it. Our history books told us that the war was instigated by world imperialism, and it was a blessing for Russia that it finished off the Russian empire and established paradise on earth.

I don't know what my Swedish grandchildren's history books tell them about the Great War. Probably a short paragraph with a blurry black-and-white picture explaining that somewhere, far away, there was a war that Sweden did not participate in. Sweden had its own problems then. It was an impoverished country, and a third of its population had emigrated. That story takes many pages in the history books. I guess it's inevitable, because history is always written from a particular perspective, and what is major for one history writer is a footnote for another. Yet being a displaced hedgehog, I cannot help asking myself: can I do something to make my grandchildren aware of the Great War that did not affect their forefathers? And do I want to? Why would they care? And then I think about red poppies, and the war monuments by the Cambridge railway station and in our little village, and lists of perished soldiers in King's Chapel, and yes, I want my grandchildren to know about it, just as I want British children to know about it. And history books won't help. You need the power of fiction to get the message across. Or rather, get the feeling across.

And this is why I have sent copies of War Horse to my grandchildren and encouraged their parents to take them to see the film. And I will read the books that I learned about at the symposium and see whether I want my grandchildren to read them.

Most of all, I wish somebody would write a book about a Swedish child who by serendipity gets caught in the Great War. 

Writing First World War for children, part I

Yesterday I went to London for a symposium in the British Library on writing for children about First World War. I went because I am involved with the group that organised it, and I am not sure what my expectations were. War Horse is one of the best books ever written about any war, and it is also a very interesting phenomenon because the novel, the theatre performance and the film are all brilliant, each in its own way. I was particularly sceptical about the film, but it was excellent. Anyway, Michael Morpurgo was obviously there, but I must admit that I wasn't familiar with the other three writers. They had fifteen minutes each to tell the audience why and how they write about First World War for children, and they had very different approaches, which was very interesting. I have already bought three books.

If I had moderated the discussion I would have probably asked quite different questions from those posed because I am an academic and interested in boring things, like fictionality. How do you make today's children understand that all this really happened? That it isn't fantasy, adventure, dystopia, computer game? Many books use authentic letters, photos and other documents, but why is great-great-Uncle Will more real than any adventure hero? It's all once upon a time, not my time, not your time, but somebody else's time. How can we make children feel the pain and the horror? Do we want them to feel the horror?

But mostly the questions were good, and the answers better still. I was pleased to hear that the writers believed that French and even German fates deserved to be portrayed.

And yet I could not help thinking: what about the Eastern front? The writers discussed at length how the war between the UK and Germany started, but the war actually started between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, very far away from the UK. I am sure the writers knew it, but for them it was a small fact of little consequence. Their war was elsewhere. (I know I am unfair).

And for Russia, the war brought about the worst human tragedy of all times, the aftermath of which we see today in Ukraine, and who knows how close we are to Third World War. I hope I am wrong.

I am deeply moved by British memory of the Great War. I am a bit envious. I wish I had a generational memory I could cherish, but for my country, these was no victory.

In a country churchyard

I have never been particularly interested in writers. I have had the privilege of meeting quite a few great writers, but it was exciting because they were interesting people, not because they were writers. I seldom visit writers' homes and museums, and when I do, I never feel anything special, never a sense of awe, of seeing the actual desk, the actual pen or inkwell. The only really weird feeling I had was in Thomas Mann's house in Nida, where I truly sensed the writer's presence, just for a moment.

But every now and then a writer's home can offer something amusing, such as Dickens' works in his museum in London, from which he had public readings and that have notes in the margins: “Raise voice” or “Significant pause”.

Last week I was on a holiday in Kent, and my friend Morag had told me that one of the numerous churches in Romney Marsh had E. Nesbit's grave. Now, I do have a very special relationship with Nesbit, or rather with her books, but I had never bothered to find out about where she lived and died. Yet the goal of finding a grave is more enticing than simply visiting a number of very similar – unless you are an expert – churches. But there was nothing about Nesbit's grave on my guidebooks. The Lonely Planet England guide was conspicuously brief on Kent; the authors must have had unpleasant experiences. None of the many local guidebooks and folders in the cottage we were renting showed any recognition of one of the greatest British children's writers. I gave up, because combing through twelve churchyards is not my idea of a relaxing holiday.

We were driving along the coast, actually looking for a reasonable road to take us home to the cottage when I saw a sign to Romney Marsh Visitors' Centre. I like such institutions, absurd as they are with their guidebooks, maps, ceramic birds, cheap binoculars and bad coffee. The coffee was exceptionally bad, and the brochures hardly promising, but I have a habit of picking up any readable materials, so I picked up one about the churches, and then – wow! “The grave of E.Nesbit, the author of The Railway Children”. The Railway Children is not my favourite; frankly, I have never understood why it is considered a masterpiece, but never mind. St Mary's in the Marsh was just a few miles away by a horrifyingly winding road, and there was no parking except at the nearby pub that I had no intention to visit.

I don't know what I had expected, but probably a conventional grave. I should have known that Nesbit's grave would be unconventional. I have repeatedly told a story about Nesbit, the origin of which I don't remember, so it may not be accurate and in fact may be about someone else. The story goes: two ladies are exchanging gossip, and one says: “Have you heard that E. Nesbit has died?” “Has she really? So unlike her”.