How’s about a nice cup of tea?

Contained in the Prologue to Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, and wrapping it up nicely, is the following neat bit of dialogue:

“I can see it now.” said Mack.
“Ghosts?” Eddie asked.
“Hell, no,” said Mack, “chapters. . . .”

Preceeding that is hidden a beautifully compact and unassuming set of rules for writing a story so’s people will enjoy reading it. Good rules. The kind of rules you might find printed on bright white card, laminated, and set on the gingham-topped tables of a sparkling clean diner where writers are wont to go for breakfast mid-morning when all the early rush is over, the floor washed, and the waitress relaxed a little after her ciggie break out back in the company of the skinny bloke who scrubs the pans.

And yet the funny thing is that in writing them where and how he does, Steinbeck breaks one of the fundamental rules of writing for the ordinary man. Nobody reads Prologues.

Well, if you pick up a copy of Sweet Thursday, ignore that rule. Read and absorb the prologue first, and then set back to read the rest. You’ll enjoy the book at a depth you’d not experience otherwise.

I can’t remember when I first encountered “Sweet Thursday”. It’s a long, long time ago, that’s for certain. I can picture the book now, with a lurid cover from Pan Books. Got lost ages back and has been replaced by another Pan Book version that’s now well past its fall-apart date. I must get myself another copy soon.

Reading that prologue again today I am astonished and delighted to find just how much my own approach to writing was influenced by it, and by the genius of Steinbeck. I’m not convinced I’d have thought the same way back then, in my late teens or early twenties. I had higher things in my sights then, thinking that my style was far more in line with Joyce and Beckett. How wrong is it possible to be? Well, my mind is rather more open now, and I agree wholeheartedly that literary hooptedoodle should be limited, and set off to the side so the reader may safely ignore it.

I’m a little older now than Steinbeck was when he died, and count myself blessed still to be writing busily away every day. My literary ambition is however quite dead, wrapped up nicely with a bird’s feather for company, and stowed away in my box without regrets. It feels good to be able to appreciate literature, though, no matter how distinguised or otherwise its provenance may be, and I’m grateful for that.

Hooptedoodle aside, I’ve had one of those run away and hide days. Graham’s been painting walls and woodwork, in the top bathroom, the downstairs cloakroom and, now, the kitchen. He was very careful to choose high quality ‘low odour’ paints but even so the house reeks of the stuff, smelling to me somewhere between old vinegar and sour milk. Makes me feel slightly vomitous when I let it. And I can’t get out into the fresh air too much because it’s still wet and windy. Dolly and I spend these times with our noses applied to an open crack in the door, gazing forlornly out, and thinking of summer.

It’s coming, though. Summer, that is. Each day is a few minutes longer than the day before, and the night a little shorter. There’s a good wadge of winter still to come of course, and the whole of spring, but summer is on the way, and will come along soon enough. I said as much to Dolly.

“Yer wot?” Graham said, pausing, paintbrush in hand.

“I was just telling Dolly that it’s alright and it’ll be summer again before we know it.”

“You spend far too much time talking to that cat. How’s about a nice cup of tea?”