John Baker’s Blog

John David Pears (JD) was a writer because literature allowed him to transform the black internal chaos of his days into something crafted and worthy. Although he thought of himself as a novelist he spent an inordinate amount of time playing drums with his group, Fried (not Freud) and the Behaviourists and for the past [...]

‘The Porsche and the peacock tail are exactly the same thing. They are both in their different ways, expensive, costly. They’re handicaps; and they have to be or they wouldn’t be reliable indicators of the fitness of a potential mate.
‘The tail and the Porsche are both useless in terms of survival, but their uselessness is [...]

‘How’s the novel doing?’
JD considered. ‘When you say How’s the novel doing, you could be referring to that collection of prose narratives that’ve been around for the last couple of hundred years, and which continue to pop up from time to time; or you could be making a personal inquiry about the book I’m writing.’
Sam [...]

‘It’s the latest thing,’ JD continued. ‘First thing they gave me was a vacuum constriction device. It was an elastic band on a plastic cylinder attached to a vacuum pump, and I had to put my digery-doo inside the cylinder, then pump the air out of it.’
Marie closed her eyes. Tried to [...]