On the Spartacus Road - with new friends

This week I did an indulgent thing. I travelled to Bungay, a Suffolk village set in what is the most beautiful landscape in England for those of us whose childhood eyes were imprinted with the lesser flatlands of Essex.

And I watched a book of mine bounce, bind and bundle itself off the Clay Printers' presses, a great experience although few authors that I've spoken too seem ever to have experienced it.

Only three days ago, On the Spartacus Road, a diary of a trip along the route in Italy of the Spartacus Slave War, originally written in notebooks night by night last year, emerged from the squashing and gluing of the Suffolk machines as a fully formed book for the January buyers. And, with a mixture of mild wonder and mostly concealed pride, I watched it happen

These are busy machines. On the Spartacus Road was proud to share the conveyor belts of Compac1 (I hope I have its name right) with the latest Adrian Mole, The Prostrate Years, and the latest reprint of Wuthering Heights. All around there was verdigris ironwork purring 24/7 to produce teenage vampire treats, stocking-thrillers and the paperback of this year's great masterwork, Wolf Hall.

Convention and good sense dictate that On the Spartacus Road will not be reviewed here. There is a fine review in the current Literary Review and Conde Nast Traveller magazines but not online. So, for the time being, you can only trust me.

[Note: 18 January: review in The Scotsman]

The next stage, I am told, after a shrinkwrapping from a machine fit to clothe a million Lady Gagas, is that the books will sit in a 'hub' whence shops and Amazons can claim them - and if any reader of this blog wishes to pre-order a copy, that will enhance the speed of their escape.

I may say more in future posts about this book and its post-Christmas progress. In the meantime, I'll report instead on my fellow occupant of Compac1, the latest Adrian Mole, whose covers and 'blocks' were piled up waiting to chug-chug for hours and days after my own work was completed.

An excellent book, not least because it is so much about love for book-selling. Poor Mole, aged now 39-and-a-half, has a bookshop job that is on the brink; his novels and non-fiction are as unwanted as ever, his home is a Leicestershire pig-sty, his wife prefers sex with the  low brow Lord of the Manor, the Prime Minister refuses to help him with the tax man and he has prostate cancer.

The hero of Sue Townsend’s ninth volume of eponymous diaries, a man additionally beset in the age of post-office closures and 10p-tax rows by his mother’s bid to star on reality TV and one of his customer’s desires for a copy of Ulysses signed by the author for Christmas, is having a hard time. Millions who have followed him loyally from the age of 13-and-three-quarters, through the Wilderness and Cappuccino and Weapons of Mass-Destruction Years will be sharing his further pains.

Books are poignant punctuation marks of this latest diary year, June 2007 – April 2008. A gratifying sale of The Oxford Companion to English Literature (ed. Margaret Drabble) is slightly marred by the shop-owner’s remarks upon Mole’s frequent lavatory visits. The discovery of his mother’s copy of Angela’s Ashes  comes with  the somewhat less welcome companion volume, still in manuscript, A Girl Called ‘Shit’ by Pauline Mole. Jordan’s A Whole New World  sells splendidly even though his boss had ordered it on the basis that it was a contribution to the Middle East peace debate. His wife is studying closely, and menacingly, Christopher Hitchens’ For the Sake of Argument. A copy of John Donne’s poems from the ‘over-fifty-pounds’ box is not, Mole decides, a successful way to counter the attraction to Mrs Mole of ‘a manor house, a canopied bed and sexual fulfilment with a handsome aristocrat’.

 He does, however, have his own lady admirer, a doctor who queries the stock-status of Yes, I would like to have sex with you  and with whom he shares an enthusiasm for Mill on the Floss. There may be hope for him yet.

Comments

[Clayton Burns]

Not bad. Not bad. It's always good to know what the moles are up to. Here is a case for Sir Peter: read, if you have not, "Open" by Agassi. Compare it with "Infinite Jest," by DFW.

Book an interview with Agassi in Vancouver during the Olympics. Watch the Sam Tanenhaus conversation with Agassi, NY Times video. What strikes me about this powerful book (as Tanenhaus points out eloquently) is that despite his energy and voice Agassi did not read it himself (in the Random House audio). He should have done so.

What also stuns me is that Tanenhaus passed up the opportunity to discuss "Infinite Jest," the great tennis novel, with Agassi. So Sir Peter could ask Agassi to read it, if he has not, and interview him on it.

There is also the matter of The Globe and Mail coverage of the Glenn Gould biography of sorts by Mark Kingwell. Most inconclusive. Perhaps Martin Levin could review the review, and comment on Kingwell's curious apology.

Mario Rossi may have other suggestions on how to improve TLS. The extensive NY Times coverage of "Open" is indicative: some powerful work, but often a lack of imagination. Too much summarizing. Perhaps in 2010 it might be possible for the book reviews that I have mentioned to be more adventurous?

[Wwwinabstentia-andrewk.blogspot.com]

Congrats on the book's entrance into this strange world. I'll keep a look out for it. In the words of William Blake:

"My mother groaned, my father wept
Into this dangerous world I leapt."

[Air Jordans]

It is my pleasure to read your article! Thank you for sharing! good luck!