SPEAK UP, I CAN'T HEAR YOU

"There's nothing more surprising and enjoyable than getting a comment on your blog" wrote Guy Browning in The Guardian Weekend magazine the other day ('How to ... Blog' December 16th). I'm sure what he suggests is true but I really (clearly) wouldn't know.

When I worked as his producer on the television serial King of the Ghetto, the director Roy Battersby said many things that I remember and by which I remain nourished. Pertinent to the matter in hand is his description of taking home rushes (the daily unedited footage on tape) for long and detailed discussions with his family. "Christ," I thought when I first heard this, "I'll be lucky if anybody in my family even gives me any sort of indication that they watch it on transmission, let alone volunteering to put in their twopenn'orth during the process of making it".

My father who, as the saying goes, "never read a book in his life", certainly never read any of my three books published in his lifetime; or, if he did, he never told me so. My mother lived to read my novel, not a work she would ever have encountered had it not been, as it were, related to her. Her only comment was to deprecate a passing reference in the story to a man taking a shower, pulling back his foreskin and soaping the glans of his penis. It was hardly the pivotal moment of the story and I waited eagerly for her to find something in the main traffic of the plot to remark upon but she never did. While they were both alive, I published a large body of journalism which, I fondly imagine, she at least would comprehensively have read, but as to whether it ever entertained, educated or informed her, I remained unenlightened. My father used to spend a long time with his face buried in "the paper" but I never heard that he read anything that his son wrote. Maybe it was just a cover for snoozing, or avoiding issues.

Even my partner of nigh on 27 years, as voracious a reader as I know on seven continents, is not what I would venture to call forthcoming about my own stuff. If he has read my book Common Sense (freely downloadable from the link to the right of this entry) and if he reads this passing squib, I do not expect ever to discover it (but if I do, I will report back).

Why is this? Is it something about me? Is it something about writing? Some 15 years ago, I worked for a while in a bookshop. The shop manager was also a singer in the local choral society, a highly regarded body of voices that has appeared on professional recordings. Now, you understand, she was one voice among many. Even so, she manifested lasting indignation that, while working at the shop, I omitted to attend a performance by this choir, the choir needless to say playing a supporting role in which, as I say, she was but one unidentifiable voice. I thought – but did not say – "I wonder which if any of my books you have read. Books, after all, are your business as a book shop manager. And a book is a considerably more personal investment for its writer than is a performance in a choir by one of its members". I did not lay indignation on her. But I thought her own indignation was, to put it mildly, disproportionate.

Performers do seem to think that they are entitled to a remarkable degree of reassurance. All the actors I have known over the years – quite a few – have expected me AS A MATTER OF COURSE (I don't want to shout but I have yet to find how to access italics on this blogsite) to make the effort to witness their performances, however paltry the role in however humdrum the telly serial or play above a pub, however fugitive the advertisement or inaccessible the regional rep production. I think to myself: "Here I am forcing myself to watch an episode of The Bill that I would really rather not bother with for one scene towards the end but to how much trouble does this actor put himself in order to read all or any of my exquisitely honed pieces of journalism? Does it even occur to him that to seek my pieces out would be an appropriately equivalent gesture?"

I have been hugely gratified by the volume of downloading that my book has attracted. Of course, in one's fantasy version, one anticipates THOUSANDS of downloads so that, after just a week or two, one can tell the sceptical publishing editors who thought one was "too intellectual" for their market (ha!) that one has attracted sufficient readers that, were they paying, one would be in the best seller list. (Well, dear reader, unless you pass the word as assiduously as I hope you might, this will not be achieved for all that the download has exceeded my expectations). But I really wish I had a better idea of what response the stuff has wrought. Instructively enough, with the odd bright exception, the initial feedback came from writers of one kind or another, not least the aforementioned Mr Battersby, an auteur manque if ever there was one (as well as italics, I have still to find accents here). They KNOW that writers need quite as much reassurance as performers do. I don't want to bleat but I do wish everybody understood that.

So please, if anything in this blog or the associated book touches any chord at all for you, either positively or negatively, do take a few moments and a deep breath to say so. It makes far more sense to me than an uninterpretable digit on a visitor counter. And do have a cool yule.