Do I have a special place to write? Somebody asked me the question and the answer was no, I don’t. I think I said I sometimes write at the dining room table, sometimes in my study (or ‘work room’ as my family calls it) and sometimes wherever I am, laptop perched on my knee.
That’s true enough in the literal sense. But I gave it some further thought. I’d been moaning about some irritating aspect of the country we’d been living in, and then it struck me, out of the blue. Counter-intuitive it may be, but I did live - albeit temporarily - in the perfect place to write for a living.
Why?
First of all, no-one there read, other than road signs, sale prices, and text messages. On average, the locals probably managed two full sentences a week. In the years I’d been there, I could count the number of people I’d actually seen reading a book on the fingers of one hand. I’m not exaggerating. That’s the truth. People didn’t read, not even on trains and buses commuting to and from work.
They didn’t write in their own mother tongue much, either, and they didn’t seem to know or care what a writer or a novelist was. They were certainly not impressed. (They do have novelists, I’m told, but nobody knows who they are). As for English, they didn’t for the most part speak it beyond a handful of hackneyed words and phrases, the most common of which was: ‘Where you from, Mister?’
This had enormous advantages. The ego was not massaged. No-one looked impressed. No-one had read my books. No-one wanted to read my books. No-one gave a monkey’s if I told them I had a new book coming out.
Being a novelist had the same social status as, or lower than, a road sweeper or tenant rice farmer in the remote border margins. Zero.
That was good. It meant I had no laurels to rest upon and none to aspire to, at least not there.
The locals were impressed by money, lots of money. In fact, it was the national religion. They prayed a lot for money, lit candles and incense and bought lottery tickets. They believed in luck. They had to: most were born in poverty and would die in it. So if I said I was in business, or I was an engineer, a stockbroker, a landowner, a brain surgeon, a manufacturer, a designer, the owner of a worldwide chain store with a famous brand, or if I drove a BMW or a Ferrari or I had a framed selfie with George Bush or Mr Trump on the living room wall - that would earn me instant respect (and murderous envy).
But writing fiction? Forget it.
So my energies were turned inwards. I didn't share my writing, my thoughts about it, my successes and failures. There was no-one to impress, and that’s always good for a writer. Writing is after all a dialogue with oneself, no-one else.
I happen to be interested in politics, and I’m a member of a political party and a couple of activist groups back home. But there, in that place, there was no way my obsession with domestic UK politics and international affairs was going to distract me from writing because no-one talked about these things.
My host country was not a democracy, but an authoritarian, autocratic and deeply corrupt state closely aligned with, and subservient to, the United States and its corporate elite. The military were in charge there, even when they weren’t, if you see what I mean. They managed the shop on behalf of the stakeholders (aka gangsters), most of the latter safely offshore.
The media were neurotically parochial. Sensational crime and celebrity news took the place of politics on television and in newspapers.
There was no free speech.
Those few people who did take the risk of sharing their thoughts on matters political did so in furtive whispers in darkened rooms. Folk got locked up without charge, having been denounced for whispering something naughty. The defamation laws were so comprehensive that no-one could really criticise anyone else openly - certainly no individual or institution in a position of power and privilege. The Rule of Law was just a form of words no-one read.
But that was okay because this really was the perfect place for a writer, a consumerist paradise of massive shopping malls and little else.
I told myself that every day and it made me feel better at least for a minute or two. To be honest, my recurring nightmare was that we would all end up one day living in a place like that.
Maybe I’m describing Britain’s future.
Can you guess where I am?
John Fullerton
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