John Baker’s Blog

The Other Mouths site asked the question: What should fiction do? The following is only part of one of the answers:
. . . the narratives generated and sustained by the American political system, entertainment industry, and academic trade have taught us over the last half century how not to think for ourselves. Essentially, those narratives [...]

I read William Boyd years ago, probably before he published his first novel, when his stories were published in The London Magazine. He was one of those guys who were going to be the next big thing.
He has now published eight novels and is widely regarded as one of the UK’s major novelists, being particularly [...]

“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
So ran the maxim of Gustave Flaubert, which is probably why, after his father’s death, he lived with his mother in their country home until he was fifty years old. Despite this he maintained his [...]

‘There’s no such thing as time,’ Geordie said. ‘Time’s a function of consciousness. If there was no consciousness there’d be no time.’
‘How about timing?’ Sam said.
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
‘Because timing exists,’ Geordie said. ‘We could make music and dance before we knew we were doing it.’
They were in Sam’s office overlooking St. Helen’s [...]