One for the Trouble

William Boyd

Description

One For The Trouble is the first in a series of newly-commissioned writing from Book Slam authors. Writers include leading names such as William Boyd, Irvine Welsh, Patrick Ness, Hari Kunzru and Jon Ronson; to rising stars like Helen Oyeyemi, Joe Dunthorne and Tim Key; plus exciting newcomers like Sophie Woolley, Kate Tempest and Luke Wright. Book Slam has a long-established reputation as London's best book event, bringing together storytellers in every form, including novelists, journalists, poets, comedians and songwriters. The decision to extend the brand into publishing is a natural one and reflects the changing nature of publishing and bookselling. For the last eight years, Book Slam has worked to promote literature in a way that bookshops cannot do, and break down the imagined boundaries between 'literary' and 'popular' culture. The nature of publishing and bookselling has evolved, and with numerous new platforms, outlets and production tools, access to both the publication and consumption of the written word has widened like never before. One For The Trouble grants Book Slam the opportunity to showcase a diversity of the best contemporary literature in a way that ensures writers are given fair reward for their work and that is both financially and technologically accessible to all. Writers were asked to take inspiration from a favourite song to create new pieces exclusive to Book Slam. Simon Armitage's poem, for example, reflects hauntingly on the suicide of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, while award-winning YA author, Patrick Ness, stretches his skills with a darkly comic take on Let Me Entertain You. One For The Trouble will be published as a beautifully realized, limited edition hardback, signed by all the short story writers - highly prized and collectible. It will also be simultaneously released as an eBook, multi-platform App and audio download, allowing stories and poems to be purchased individually or as part of the whole. This is a genuinely innovative take on the new possibilities of publishing, distribution and reward - one of a kind and the first in an annual series!

Sujets

• The arts

Informations

• Publié par: Book Slam Productions Ltd
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908615022
• Langue: English

Extrait

ONE FOR THE TROUBLE
Book Slam Volume One

Published by Book Slam Productions Ltd 2011
Collection © Patrick Neate 2011
Copyright of the individual stories and poems remains with the respective authors.
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any from or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
eBook ISBN 978-1-908615-02-2
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Book Slam Productions Ltd
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London N1 6PB
www.bookslam.com

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB
Contents

Cover


Preface


1. Grave Architecture
(Pavement, 1995)
by Richard Milward


2. New Gold Dream
(Simple Minds, 1982)
by Hari Kunzru


3. New Dawn Fades
(Joy Division, 1979)
by Simon Armitage


4. Comeback Girl
(Republic Of Loose, 2005)
by Irvine Welsh


5. I’m Going Slightly Mad
(Queen, 1991)
by Bernardine Evaristo


6. The Bed’s Too Big Without You
(Sheila Hylton, 1981)
by Kate Tempest


7. When I’m Sixty-Four
(The Beatles, 1967)
by Joe Dunthorne


8. Tears of a Clown
(Smokey Robinson And The Miracles, 1967)
by William Boyd


9. The Message
(Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, 1982)
by Paul Murray


10. Ascension
(John Coltrane, 1966)
by Roger Robinson


11. Violet Stars Happy Hunting!
(Janelle Monáe, 2007)
by Helen Oyeyemi


12. I Read My Sentence
(Radka Toneff, 1982)
by Don Paterson


13. Let Me Entertain You
(Robbie Williams, 1998)
by Patrick Ness


14. Bank Holiday
(Blur, 1994)
by Luke Wright


15. I Am The Walrus
(The Beatles, 1967)
by Sophie Woolley


16. That Summer Feeling
(Jonathan Richman, 1984)
by Jon Ronson


17. Underground
(Ben Folds Five, 1995)
by Tim Key


18. Endless Art
(A House, 1992)
by Jon McGregor


Biographies


Acknowledgements
Preface
Welcome to One For The Trouble . This is the first Book Slam Annual, so you’re in at the beginning. Congratulations. If you already know about Book Slam, thanks for your support. If not, greater thanks still, because you’ve taken a punt. But we’re confident you won’t be disappointed.
Book Slam is London’s leading literary shindig, mixing the finest writing in all its forms – prose, poetry, comedy and song-writing. When we started at Cherry Jam, a tiny Royal Oak bar, eight years ago, it was something of a struggle to convince anyone of our manifest cultural importance. But thanks to an innate bloody-mindedness and the support of the bar’s owner, the estimable Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl fame, we were able to persist. Some of those early nights were the best – Nick Hornby reading alongside Jamaican praise poet El Crisis, Kate Nash before she was Kate Nash, Adele before she was Adele . . . Eventually word began to spread. It’s no surprise that this upturn coincided with the arrival of Angela and Elliott, my better thirds, who shared my enthusiasm, but brought a welcome professionalism to the whole venture. Over the last few years we’ve discovered there are actually a lot of people out there who think like us. It’s been very heartening.
Book Slam is now a large and rambling extended family. Like all such families, we have the odd embarrassing cousin and uncle who like a sherbet, and occasionally we have a full-blown row. But we meet up once or twice a month somewhere in London, three or four hundred of us, because we have a genetic love of stories. We never imagined it would turn out like this.
Angela, Elliott and I organize Book Slam mostly to create a night out to which we’d want to go. Nonetheless, it has always worked on two key principles. The first is that literature is not something high-falutin’ and esoteric, but rather a key part of our popular culture. The stories we tell, read and hear make us who we are, so there’s no way that books should just peep self-consciously from library shelves or only come out at night for ten soporific pages before sleep. Stories are important. To pick two of our contributors at random, I am convinced that the world would be a better place if everyone read Hari Kunzru’s novel Transmission , or Don Paterson’s collection Rain . I say this with some confidence because I know I’m a better man for both.
The second principle follows from the first. If stories make us who we are then diversity is vital. The more diverse stories by talented storytellers that we consume, the better we can empathize – surely of ever more importance in a complex world of seemingly limitless contradictory and unmediated information. For this reason, at Book Slam, we have always tried to feature a diversity of material – acclaimed writers, sure, but also unknowns with important, moving, funny, or simply different stories to relate. This collection, for example, includes a quite brilliant story by Sophie Woolley, a talented but relatively unknown actress and writer with a voice that deserves to be heard. Suffice to say: if you haven’t been to Book Slam before and you get the chance, please come down. We promise you’ll enjoy yourself. And if you do make it to the event, please make sure you say hello.
The idea for this collection was simple. Book Slam has always featured the best live music and we wanted to reflect that in our first steps into publishing. So, we set our contributors the task of taking a song title for inspiration. Some took this literally (Jon McGregor’s moving reimagining of A House’s ‘Endless Art’ – not a song I knew, but one I now love), others suggestively (who’d have thought Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ would lead Paul Murray to a heartbreaking tale of Irish schoolboy rugby?). But all delivered interesting, engaging, remarkable work and we are indebted to every one.
Why One For The Trouble ? Well, initially we wanted to call it One For The Money , but, as with all things Book Slam, figured, ‘Who are we kidding?’ One For The Trouble , therefore, seemed a pleasingly coy aside, referencing both the troubles we foresaw and a favourite old school hip-hop tune. Turns out we foresaw very few of the troubles and have developed a new (albeit grudging) respect for mainstream publishing.
Nonetheless, the process has been consistently entertaining and I’ve got to know a whole lot of writers I’ve long admired who turn out to be peculiar only in their talent. I stood outside a Soho hotel for a full twenty minutes, practising a pitch to persuade Irvine Welsh to contribute, only for him to say, ‘That sounds fine, Patrick,’ after approximately twenty seconds. I watched the redoubtable Helen Oyeyemi start signing the title page at two p.m. and, since she refused to compromise her signature, passed her the last sheet at ten past eight. I discovered that Don Paterson loves rum ’n’ raisin ice cream.
Of course, there have been hiccups too. I was told to ‘stop being a child’ by a leading literary agent, and Elliott had to restrain me from immediate childish response. I discovered that VAT – would you believe? – has a tendency to throw off a budget by precisely 20 per cent. I am pleased to report that we have repeatedly made folk at Companies House, the Inland Revenue and Barclays Bank laugh. A lot.
But it’s all been worth it. Because this is One For The Trouble , the first Book Slam Annual, and we are able to offer it to you with all humility and genuine pride: how often does one get to say such a thing? Thank you, sincerely, for your interest.
Patrick Neate for Book Slam
Grave Architecture
by Richard Milward

The rent was a snatch at £625 a month, and left her enough spare pennies to start a new life in the suburbs, away from the selfish bastard. He might’ve taken the old house – with its pool, which stank the whole place out, and its three TVs and toilets – but at least she still had her youth, and her wardrobe. He also took back his grandmother’s ring, the Jag, the 4x4, and the kids, but he had no use for her designer dresses. Those dresses were going to come in handy for her, once she felt well enough to snare a new suitor. Then they’d be disposed of, along with the rest of the rubble that reminded her of him.
Admittedly, the selfish bastard had helped her find the new house, but the gesture seemed suspiciously like another selfish manoeuvre. He couldn’t even hang on till the divorce petition arrived – he wanted her out of his life, as soon as possible. He reckoned it’d speed along the healing process. She reckoned he’d met someone else.
Her new house was about eighty years older than her old house. It wasn’t close to the shops, or her job, but the street was pretty, lined with silver birches that tossed leaves into her front garden, like ginger birds’ wings. The pace of life round here was slow. She could hardly see a soul in the windows of the other houses, and there was a lack of wildlife, cars and passers-by, which made her feel lonely. Apparently, it used to be a main thoroughfare, before they’d built the bypass. The loneliness explained the house’s value for money, but nothing could explain the problem with the walls.
If you watch those interior-design shows, you’ll know there are many ways to create the illusion of space inside a poky property. However, the strangest thing about the new house was it seemed a lot smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside. From the outside, she was instantly seduced by the stately three-storey terrace – it even had a loft conversion, should she wish to peer across the city, on the lookout for her old house (with or without binoculars). However, both she and the letting agent were surprised by the deceptively small interior. The dimensions of the rooms didn’t seem to refl