And as far as I know, I haven’t even died

There are comments on previous posts that I must still address, but for now, some news. Tartarus Press have re-issued Morbid Tales as a paperback.

Thank you to Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker at Tartarus, to Mark Samuels for the Foreword, and to all those who bought the hardcover first edition of the collection.

My copies of the paperback edition arrived on Saturday morning. Naturally, I leafed through it. I ended up re-reading (I don't know how long it's been since I last read them) 'Far-Off Things', most of 'Autumn Colours' and a little of 'The Mermaid'. It was not as bad as I feared. There is even a kind of rough, vigorous lyricism that I don't know if I have the sap and strength for any more. Then again, I found some lines that made me want to stab myself with shame. I won't say which they were. Anyway, it's not my job to review the book. Others have done so, and perhaps shall do so again. At this link you can find what I believe is the most recent review of it.

I was thinking that I would use this occasion as an opportunity to ruminate. It's been eight years, roughly, since Morbid Tales was first in print, and this seems like a chance to situate the work in my life, to be generally retrospective, and to bother at the frustrations and humiliations of my existence like a campanologist ringing a bell.

Well, let's see what, if anything, I have to say…

Morbid Tales came out in 2004, the year after my return from my second sojourn in Japan, where I had been studying the works of Higuchi Ichiyo at Kyoto University. It was not my debut collection. My debut, The Nightmare Exhibition, had been brought out by John B. Ford's BJM Press in 2001 while I was teaching English in Taiwan. There were three years between the first and second collections, not because I had no material, but because it took me that long to find a publisher. There had been the promise of another publisher who were going to put out a huge collection (of most, or perhap all, of the material now split between Morbid Tales and Rule Dementia!), but nothing came of this. They dragged their feet, and eventually a correspondent of mine told me that the publisher in question was actually defunct. I confronted the publisher, I gave a time limit, the time limit passed, a moment came when it became clear the collection was not going to transpire. That must have been in 2002. I remember the despair, after all the work, all the waiting and expectation and the raised hopes – I remember walking around a cemetery on the top of a hill in Ohbaku, to the south of Kyoto, thinking, "That's it – back to the wilderness again. For how long? Until I join these people in the ground?"

I kind of got used to this. And kind of getting used to the wilderness has been a recurring pattern in my life.

When I returned to Britain in early 2003 (at about the time of the invasion of Iraq), I was soon met, at a pub in Waterloo Station, by Mark Samuels. We had met before, on the eve of my Kyoto sojourn. He suggested that I try Tartarus Press and was oddly and quietly confident that they would be interested in my work. To me it still seemed very much a lottery, but perhaps his confidence was infectious, because soon I became guardedly optimistic. I sent Tartarus all the material that had been destined for that second collection that never transpired, the one that I had called, You Put the Dirty Pictures in My Head!. The title was discarded, and so was much of the material.

I remember surprisingly little about the release of that first edition. There were two book launches for it, one at the now sadly closed Fantasy Centre, on Holloway Road. (Two friends who met for the first time at that launch were later to marry.) And another launch in Twickenham, where I remember drinking lots of red wine and reading aloud very nervously to those gathered. The reviews were mainly good, though not unanimously. One reviewer did me the magnificent kindness of saying that my style was something like a cross between Morrissey and Mishima. I liked the cover picture, which (despite what I've since discovered is a resemblance to Clark Ashton-Smith), I took to be a kind of portrait of me, by way of the 'Cousin X' character of the tale of that name.

If I rooted around in boxes for manuscripts, I might be able to tell you for certain exactly what I was writing after Morbid Tales came out, as I date my manuscripts. There may have been other stories I was working on, but I'm fairly sure that the main one at that time was "Remember You're a One-Ball!". The genesis of this story now is a kind of mystery. The very first seeds for the idea came to me on the top of a bus in Taiwan, whilst talking to a friend about school days (the friend to whom 'The Tao of Petite Beige' is dedicated). It was a very silly conversation we had, and I intended to write a very silly story. At some point during the writing of the story, however, from the second or third chapter, I felt myself get 'in the zone'. I was writing as if this were a page-turner for me in the writing of it. By about halfway, I had a sense that here was an opportunity to encapsulate in one particular narrative a great many things that I had long felt very deeply about life, but had been unable to tie together or fully express before. What's more, it would be a full-on, proper novel, with a beginning, a middle and an end. I needed a novel! I needed it to get an agent. I needed an agent to get the ears of the big publishers. I needed a big publisher, well… so that I could get out of the ghetto and write full time. I wrote and phoned to one agent after another. One after another. No luck. There was also a rejection of the novel in the terms that have been quoted in the inside pages with its recent publication. Another publisher later expressed strong interest over the course of a year before ceasing entirely to answer my e-mails.

Well, these were still pre-Kindle and pre-PoD days, and things were very different… Though perhaps not that differnt. Once again I despaired. Once again, it was back to the wilderness. The wilderness, in this case, came after the release of Rule Dementia!, from John B. Ford's Rainfall Books, in 2005. Between then and my next standalone publication there would be four years. Again, not because I had no material.

In 2005, I had a job. I was teaching future teachers of Japanese how to teach Japanese to native English speakers. It was probably the best – that is, the most respectable – job that I've ever had. I had it for about a year. But I was ambitious for my writing. Towards the end of the year, I gave in my notice. I knew that would mean having no security for my future, but I had to take the chance, to have faith in my writing. I remember the conversation in the principal's office, as he offered me salted plums. He was himself, an admirer of literature. We had spoken about Hagiwara Sakutaro, and he had told me that the poet was quite an eccentric, even a disturbed individual, who had, for instance, had to touch the wall with his fingers when he descended a stair, not for balance, but in an obsessive compulsive need simply to touch the wall. The principal offered me increased hours for greater security… The situation was painful, but I declined.

In 2006, I went to America for a couple of months, kind of, but not entirely, on the spur of the moment, to see if there might be a life for me there. Things didn't work out, and when I came back there were issues that I had to deal with. I dealt with them almost immediately by writing Shrike. This seemed to me a very personal piece of writing. It was almost entirely introspective and most of the action was off-stage. It had pretty much poured out of me, but I viewed it as personally esoteric. I did not think anyone would be interested in reading it, and might never have sent it anywhere. Someone – I forget who now – urged me to try sending it. So I did. I sent it off, and within a week it was accepted for publication (by PS Publishing). I was, on this occasion, very surprised. I believe the acceptance came in 2007, but it could have been late 2006. One of the most gratifying occasions in my writing life was when I read Lisa Tuttle's introduction for the novella. It eventually came out in 2009, as I said, to very mixed, I think predominantly puzzled, reviews – unsurprisingly.

Some time in 2008 I had to move. I was by this time really more despondent than I can hope to explain. Perhaps I should have moved to somewhere in London, but I had no confidence, and that seemed actually impossible to me, something that I did not have the energy, spirit or wit to deal with. I spent the next two years in a hamlet in Wales. It was there that I wrote 'Suicide Watch'. Some of my stories, I think, are 'pivotal', or definitive. As far as I'm concerned, 'Suicide Watch' is one of these. If you want an accurate summary of my life between the first edition of Morbid Tales and… now(?), in spirit if not letter, then 'Suicide Watch' is the story to refer to.

Well, naturally, there's far more than this to tell, but I don't have the time or the energy. I moved to Devon again. And finally, somehow, I have found the confidence to get a flat in London. I don't know how, exactly.

One thing struck me when I examined the paperback edition of Morbid Tales. It was this, on the back cover blurb:

[These stories] are unified, perhaps, by a yearning for the achingly perfect, ecstatic moment.

Yes, I thought, that is very, very true, and something that I haven't been specifically conscious of for a long time. I always wanted to reach out. For other people, as well as for that perfect, ecstatic moment. It seemed that the two things go together, reaching out for people, and reaching out for that moment. Now… why have I forgotten all about that perfect, ecstatic moment? Why?

Recently, I was sent a YouTube clip about an autistic girl who can't talk. Apparently at the age of 11, when presented with a computer, she began to type, and her family discovered for the first time that there was a thinking, feeling person in there (they had, the father said, been talking in front of her as if she were absent all this time). Something you should never do is read YouTube comments, but I did, and I noticed someone saying something like, "I've got to say, I'm skeptical about this", and others saying, "I'm calling bullshit on this", etc.

People choose some peculiar things to be skeptical about. What about if you hear a cry for help from a mineshaft? "I've got to say, I'm skeptical about this." "Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on this cry for help from down this mineshaft. Where's the actual proof that anyone is there?" But it shouldn't be surprising, really, that people don't believe that there is someone there if you can't talk, because from what I can tell of the human race, most of the time they don't believe that there's someone there even if you can talk.

They don't believe there's someone there if you shout or scream, or write long, complex, angsty novels. Several characters in Morbid Tales find that it takes a killing (homicide or suicide) for other human beings to begin to suspect that there might actually be 'somebody there'.

And what do we call this soul-blindness? I call it materialism.

I mentioned the idea of 'pivotal' stories. I do think that Morbid Tales is strong on reaching out for the "achingly perfect, ecstatic moment", and perhaps that's the same as the "vigorous lyricism" I noted. I wonder if I am still reaching out. In 'Troubled Joe' we find someone whose life is already over – a ghost – who is still trying to tell his story and still failing, but no longer expecting to succeed. This seems to me one of those pivotal stories.

(Additional: 'Troubled Joe' and 'Suicide Watch', as it happens, are bookend pieces in All God's Angels, Beware!, which came out in 2009. I think it was my best collection so far, but it was ill-fated in a number of ways I'd rather not go into here. I think there have been two reviews of it, both from readers who were not sent review copies – fewer than for any of my other books. Anyway, at this moment in time it seems to me that, if Morbid Tales was a 'before', then Shrike was a turning point, and 'Troubled Joe' and 'Suicide Watch' were, perhaps, an after, in more than a chronological sense.)

There's always more to say… but I rather think that Mr. Newton has had enough.