The meaning of life

I have spoken about book jackets many times in this blog. Writers underestimate their importance at their peril I think.

A book jacket at its simplest level is just product information. It tells you what the book is and who made it. The blurb is a kind of ingredients list.

All of that is important stuff, and it all needs to be there and readable. But of course a jacket is more than that. The cover can also give a visual impression of the book. It can show one of the characters or a scene from the story. It can give some idea of the setting or the historical period or even the prevailing mood.

But though all those things are important as well in their way, I think the truly vital quality of a book jacket - one that can get lost in all those discussions about typefaces and illustrations - is its ability to make the book a desirable object.

This is clearly a subjective thing: what is desirable to me might not be desirable to a fifteen year-old girl, but that is where clever graphic designers come in. A good book jacket will both confirm tastes we already held, while also intriguing us and showing us something new.

I have bought many books on the strength of their jackets and I find it almost impossible to buy a book - even by an author I like - if it has a bad jacket. And I think I'm far from alone in this. As long as a book does not actually misrepresent a book, I think the main design aim should be to make it as attractive or compelling an object as possible.

Which brings me on to the Oxford University Press A Very Short Introduction series. These books are great. They are perfect for authors in that they give a short grounding in a variety of subjects. They are well-written and thought-provoking.

As well as being short, they are also small - half the size of a normal paperback: perfect for rail journeys as they weigh next to nothing. But they are also beautiful objects. Non-fiction jackets that are a thousand times more desirable than many, or even most, fiction jackets.

I assume the abstract covers (painted by Philip Atkins) were a way of providing a series continuity whilst answering the problem of the diversity in subject matter. But there could have been a crushingly dull solution to that. Go into any bookshop and see.

These jackets are lovely. They bring out the collector in me. They make me want to buy the whole lot.

Turkish tales of terror

Of course I should maybe have pointed out that Boris Karloff (real name, William Henry Pratt) was British - like Colin Clive who plays Frankenstein (Henry, rather than Victor in the movie). The director James Whale was also British, but it is odd to see how early that American conceit of having dubious characters played by Brits actually started.

And I was very pleased to hear that there is to be a Turkish edition of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. It occurs to me that I haven't seen the Turkish edition yet. By an odd coincidence the Turkish translator of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror - Zeynep Alpaslan - was kind enough to get in touch a couple of posts back.

So merhaba to all my (existing or potential) Turkish readers.

Happy birthday Boris

It is Boris Karloff's birthday today - or at least would be were he still alive. I was trying to think where I first became aware of that iconic image of him as the monster in James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein movie. I suppose it would have been through parody and cartoons first. It is so ingrained in our consciousness that it feels like we were just born with it.

I first saw that Frankenstein movie when I was in my teens as part of a series - called, I seem to remember, Monster Movies - on TV late on Friday nights. I was spellbound by those early RKO and Universal movies. I haven't seen them for a long time, but they had a huge impact on me and I still think about them now. The series went all the way through to the sexy Hammer movies of the 1960s and I certainly enjoyed those too - though perhaps for other reasons.

I've been thinking a lot about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein of late and although the book bears little resemblance to the James Whale movie - especially in regard to the creature, who is an intelligent and articulate being rather than a shuffling mute - the movie has a resonance all of it's own.

Karloff's performance is superb. Karloff had acted in dozens of movies before but he became synonymous with horror after that. He appeared in so many horror movies it would be boring to list them, but here are a few: FrankensteinThe Old Dark House, The Mummy, The Black Cat, Bride of Frankenstein, The Walking Dead, The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead and The Raven. He was great in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets. He had a wonderful voice and even narrated Chuck Jones's animated version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

But it is as that shuffling mute creature that he really got to me. He managed to act through the make-up and diver's boots and made that character both frightening and sympathetic.

And that is such a haunting combination.

Wind and rain

I took my son plus Will Hill and his son, to football today. We were playing on the AstroTurf pitch where the team do their training. Familiarity did not help them - they lost 6-1. It was nice to see Will though and have a chance to chat on the way there and back. We seem to have lived parallel lives in many ways.

The pitch if on the crest of a hill and there was a piercing wind at our backs as we fathers stood moaning on the touchline. It was freezing. I needed several more layers than I was actually wearing and was very jealous of the fact that Malcolm Harding had nipped home to add a layer before the game started.

I had an email back from Helen and Richard who we stay with in the Lake District. They told us what life has been like up there in the recent horrendous weather. It sounds incredible. It is hard to imagine the water levels being that high. Ullswater rose by 4 feet apparently. 4 feet! And there is more rain to come.

Whoosh

I went to London yesterday. I was meeting Paul Stewart at the Royal Academy. I decided to walk to the station rather than cycle and on the way I did I what I do in pretty much all of my spare waking hours - I worried away at the story I have been writing.

Sometimes this process is like whittling a piece of wood, honing it and perfecting it, sometimes its like trying to catch a trout with you're bare hands, another time it can be like doing one of those wooden puzzles where the pieces will only work if put together in one particular way.

I love writing, and this part of it - the sketching things out in your head, is very much part of what makes writing a compulsion for me. I am aware that I have always done this - for as long as I can remember.

As I was walking past the Botanical Gardens I had one of those lovely moments when things just come together. An idea popped in to my head like a cartoon light bulb being switched on. It will amount to no more than a sentence or so in the book, but it will change the whole thing. As I have said many times before, I think it's important - vital - to be surprised by your own work. It is why plotting can be such a killer.

Writing isn't about plodding on towards a predetermined end. It isn't one long methodical steady labour. Or not for me anyway. It is hard work punctuated by dizzying spells of effortlessness. You push and push and then suddenly there's no resistance. You struggle up the hill and suddenly you're whooshing down a snowy slope on a sledge of your own devising.

Of course, you know in the back of your mind you are going to hit a tree at some point. But still - its fun while it lasts.

King's

I went to life drawing at King's. I still have not lost my childish thrill at entering the college at night. The approach to the wing containing the life drawing studio is magical. Right up until you open the door and hear the thump, thump, thump of music coming from the bar and see the shabby and unsympathetic interior. Once inside you could sadly be in any underfunded institution in the land.

Of course the excitement is increased for me in knowing that M R James told his stories in a study nearby all those years ago, as Christmas treats for his friends and favourite students. What a setting. I wish my audience had to approach my stories via a huge wooden door in a vaulted gatehouse and a wide open quad lit by the glow of old lamps and enclosed all about by silhouetted pinnacles and spires.

I wish all this had an inspirational effect on my life drawing. . .

I hate Dell (continued)

I had a very, very, very long conversation with a representative from Dell today. She was supposed to be from Customer Services - but the customer seemed to figure a very long way down her list of priorities.

I have a Dell desktop which has caused me very few problems at all in the last few years. It is starting to get a bit slow and cranky in its old age, but aren't we all? My Dell laptop however - a machine that is only a year and a few months old - is a very different story.

That laptop has been back to Dell on two separate occasions, the last time in June this year when it was extensively refitted. The hard drive was replaced. The DVD drive was replaced for the second time. It still didn't work and has subsequently had the DVD drive replaced for the third time.

But far from being ashamed of having sold someone such a can of scrap, she was much more concerned with trying to convince me I had wasted my money getting support elsewhere despite the fact that the Dell technician had been adamant the problem was a software one. It wasn't. The laptop had simply failed again and had the technician spotted this it would have gone back to Dell a third time. Instead of which a technician came out to Kevin, my support. After messing him about of course.

At the end of an hour and a half conversation where she tried to convince me the laptop must have worked fine after it came back, that I should have paid for software support from Dell because they would have discovered that it was hardware and refunded, etc etc etc, I happened to mention that I intended to contact the Consumer Association and suddenly she offered to refund the money I had paid for support and Dell would extend the warranty until July 2010. When I asked her why it had taken her so long to accept any need to compensate me, she said that she was responding to what I had said during the conversation.

They should have replaced the laptop. But of course, that is not going to happen. They would rather keep replacing parts and ferrying it to and fro and paying technicians to work on it than admit that they have been at fault from day one.

I will never buy so much as a mouse from Dell in the future.

And of course I should have bought a Mac.