Find Another Place by Ben Graff

Author:Ben Graff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

At another literary festival I got Mum to ask Alain de Botton if he liked the characters in his books, and he said that he did. The question was triggered, as much as anything, by my own low self-esteem.

I remembered one of de Botton’s protagonists having failed to get into Oxford, just as I had done, and I thought the author had rendered a kind of verdict on her, which he had not. The only judgements being made were by me on myself, another lesson I was slow to absorb.

Yet now, writing this, I do think again to the broader question of whether we necessarily like the people we choose to write about, beyond the obvious examples of when a serial killer or some such is being described.

I did not always like my father. He could be irritating, insensitive and annoying. His father Dave often used to embarrass me with his singing and observations on marriage. Anna could fuss. Theresa with her desire to shock, often did. Even my mother’s multiple worries could be a bit much on occasion.

There is like and there is love. Like only takes you so far, only has meaning in a shallow sense. It works with acquaintances, less well with family. All of which is not to say that I did not like my family, rather that I could see both their strengths and limitations, as they could mine. I hope this book is a richer picture for all that, and a more complete one.

When in Hay, we browsed in the bookshops and drank tea in the marquees, coming home with paper and plastic bags filled with books. The sorts of things that had to be found and couldn’t just be bought anywhere, at least before we fully understood what Amazon could do.

These trips fulfilled us at one level. Together, doing something that interested us, exploring and learning as a family. A collective purpose and sense of who we thought we were. Even if it also showed what I was not, listening to Ian McEwan read was no different to talking to Rachel Cusk or David Flusfeder. It moved me no closer to becoming a writer myself. In chess terms, when it came to writing, I was what would be termed a kibitzer, which is the name given to somebody who watches others play and perhaps passes comment on their moves but does not take to the board themselves.

The only way to avoid ever making a bad move, or drafting a poor sentence, perhaps a whole story that nobody liked, was simply to avoid playing, or writing. There is a certain comfort in being a kibitzer. Yet I knew that I wanted to do more, to write rather than simply to read, even if the desire still did not burn as much as did that to play chess. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the demand to write pulled at me more slowly, even if I did my best for a long time to ignore it.

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