Ysgol Jacob - First Welsh Talking Book

On Monday 28th March on the Glanfa Stage at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff the Welsh branch of the Royal National Institute for the Blind will launch the first ever Welsh language talking book. I'm happy to say that the title chosen is Ysgol Jacob, a translation of my novel Jacob’s Ladder.

I'm always pleased when a book of mine is translated into another language but I was delighted when Jacob's Ladder was rendered into Welsh because like the Welsh language movement itself, this is a book that concerns itself with identity and that's one of the main themes of my work.

As someone who grew up in London with Irish parents determined to maintain their ethnic identity and to pass on their pride in their heritage to their children I feel real solidarity with those people who are determined to see the Welsh language given the place in contemporary culture that it deserves.

Literature is something to which everyone should have access. That's why the cuts to library services that are taking place in parts of Britain at the moment make me feel so depressed. However, I'm cheered up greatly, and proud too, that through my book I am able to play a part in RNIB Cymru's initiative to increase access to those Welsh speakers who are visually impaired.

Words Are Deeds

While the 44th president of the United States was being sworn in, I was cleaning the kitchen sink and while he was making his first speech in office, I was making bread. To me these do not seem inappropriate tasks, for one of the strongest themes of his speech was the need to clear up the mess left behind by those who went before him, and to provide a wholesome future for those who will come after.

Like so many others, I have been deeply moved by Barak Obama’s campaign and by his glorious speech-making. It is such a delight to have an incumbent in the White House who is sensitive to language. Not everyone seems to agree with me, however. Immediately after the speech, cynical emails were arriving in the BBC newsroom, maintaining that words are easy to produce, but deeds are what count. Speaking as a writer, I would like to call into question this old cliché, for the truth is that words are deeds.

When in 2001, President Bush called for a ‘crusade’ in response to the destruction of the New York World Trade Centre, oblivious to the associations this word had for the muslim world, that was undoubtedly a deed, and an incredibly stupid one, for in showing such a lack of sensitivity to another culture he gave ammunition to America’s enemies and alienated some who might otherwise have been won over to moderation.

When seven years later, Barak Obama summed up the essence of his message in that now familiar three word slogan, ‘Yes we can’, that too was a deed, for it articulated the buried hope, not just of the United States of America but of people of goodwill all over the world.

The business of politics, like the art of fiction is conducted through words but, unlike an author, an inarticulate politician has the power to ruin lives. Thank goodness, therefore, that the man who has produced so many bad lines for the last nine years has finally departed . And three cheers for the new wordsmith. He’s got a difficult narrative to construct but if anyone can do it, I believe he can.

It's The Sub-Text, Your Majesty

The news in the UK recently has been full of two stories about members of the royal family. In a video diary which he made himself while serving in the army Prince Harry is heard to call one of his fellow officers, ‘our little Paki friend’. It has also been revealed that Prince Charles calls an Asian man with whom he plays polo by the nickname, ‘Sooty’. Both princes have been accused of racism.

Actually I don’t believe that either of them is really guilty of racism. They are just guilty of being insensitive, patronising, and totally oblivious to the historical and social context in which so-called friendly banter like this takes place.

Writers for children couldn’t get away with such behaviour. We have to be acutely aware of the messages that our writing conveys because we have a responsibility to our readers. That is why authors like Enid Blyton, whose books feature evil golliwogs, tend to be shied away from in schools these days. Nobody is saying that Enid Blyton was a racist; it’s just that we no longer feel comfortable with such images. They were a product of a time when attitudes in Britain towards black people were quite different to those which prevail nowadays.

It’s a simple point, really, a matter of politeness as much as anything else. As someone of Irish descent, I am angered when people make jokes predicated upon the notion that Irish people are somehow more stupid than people from other countries. Fortunately, such jokes are dying out nowadays. You don’t hear them on the tv or radio like you used to. But I can recall how frequent they once were and I can recall how much offence they gave to my mother and father – hard-working, decent, honest people who quite reasonably resented such a slur.

When defending such humour, people are fond of pointing out that it's universal. Over in Ireland they make similar jokes about people from Kerry, they argue. That may be true but it’s neither here nor there. You cannot justify your bad behaviour by pointing at someone else’s. My parents came from a culture that had been oppressed for hundreds of years. They knew, as I did, that Irish jokes began as a justification for such oppression since if you think people are inferior to you in intelligence or culture, then it’s easier to justify taking over their country, making them all speak your language and forcing them to do what you tell them.

A similar set of historical associations come into play when nicknames are used by members of the mainstream white population for black people. When I was growing up it was not uncommon for gangs of white youths to go out on the streets paki-bashing. Indeed, Asian people were killed in such attacks. It’s no good, therefore, Prince Harry saying that his comment was only meant in jest. The use of such a term evokes the memory of those atrocities.

The defenders of such royal crassness will say that this is just another example of political correctness gone mad but it isn’t; it’s sensitivity to language. I regularly get sent manuscripts to read in which would-be children’s authors display the same lack of awareness as the Princes Harry and Charles. Not long ago, I recall someone sending me a manuscript in which a group of children who were having a series of adventures on an island frequently referred to the inhabitants of that island as ‘abos’ (short for aborigines). I pointed out, in my reply, that, though I certainly wasn’t accusing the author of racism, he ought to be aware that ‘abos’ had been regularly used as a term of abuse for black people in the past. He responded with a furious tirade in which he fulminated against me for calling him a racist when he was nothing of the kind.

If a black boy or girl walked into the room you are in now, would you want to be gratuitously rude to them? Of course not. Would the writer of the book about the children and the ‘abos’ want to be rude to them? Of course not. Would Prince Charles or Prince Harry? Of course not. So, it’s quite simple really. People whose words will inevitably be repeated need to think about what they say. That goes for writers and princes in equal measure.

The Veil Of Tears

The fact that my parents were Irish though I grew up in the middle of East London made me highly sensitive to the particularity of language. All around me people spoke in the brash and vivid Cockney dialect. But at home my parents still used the vocabulary and speech patterns of rural Ireland.

When particularly exasperated with me, my father would invoke the memory of the language from which he, too, had been exiled, calling me an ‘amadan’ or ‘a gamalog’ (Irish words for fool). My mother, on hearing unexpected news would not say that she had received a great shock or surprise but ‘a terrible land’, as if someone had picked her up and thrown her in the air.

Being a Catholic family we regularly said the family rosary and I was always particularly struck by the words of the prayer with which it ended, the first few lines of which are as follows:

Hail holy queen, mother of mercy
Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.
To thee do we send up our sighs
Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.

At least that is how the version we used to say began. Nowadays, I think people say valley of tears, vale being a rather old-fashioned and self-consciously poetic usage. But when I was little I thought it must be ‘veil’ and I often tried to imagine what a veil of tears would look like. I thought it must be a bit like an large spider’s web festooned with raindrops. It is an image that has never left me.

How I miss the music of my parents’ voices! I can hear them even now, rising and falling as they recited the prayers at bedtime. It will soon be two years since my mother died of cancer. Whenever I think of her last days on Earth and the pain she suffered, I am tempted to reach for that veil of tears to cover my face from the world.

The Machinery Of The Universe

When I was thirteen years old, I used to get tonsillitis on a regular basis – really badly sometimes. I remember one occasion in particular. I was off school, in bed with a raging sore throat and a high temperature, alternating between fits of shivering and feeling as though I were burning up. I fell asleep in the middle of the morning and woke several hours later to find the room filled with unearthly music that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside the house.

Struggling out of bed, I staggered weakly over to the window and drew back the curtain. I will never forget what I saw. The sky was full of golden clouds and, as I watched, they slowly parted while the music swelled climactically, as though some enormous celestial organ were being played. A great gap was revealed in the sky and in that gap I could see cogs turning, wheels revolving and pistons moving back and forth. I realised that I was being granted a vision of the machinery of the universe.

Okay, so I was hallucinating. But that hallucination was one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring sights I have ever witnessed and it has remained with me for the rest of my life. It’s the reason I have chosen to write fantasy. Of course, I know the universe doesn’t really have the inner workings of a giant alarm clock. But imaginary representations of the forces that determine our world can be tremendously profound. They can hint at truths we cannot easily explain, except through symbols, imagery, allegory and myth.

I think I’ve always, instinctively known this. That’s why, when I recovered from tonsillitis, I didn’t dismiss that vision as the product of a fevered brain. I tucked it away in my memory and returned to it frequently, to remind myself of what I'd seen. And I made a promise that one day I would find a way of generating such visions that did not require a raging temperature.

Of course, this is why people take mind-altering drugs. They want to be able to inhabit the state in which such visions are available on a regular basis. However, I’m pleased to say I’ve found a way that is more reliable than tonsillitis and much less damaging than psychedelic drugs. It’s called fiction.