Dear readers, my head is spinning. Here's why. I was invited to the first ever literary festival in Dubai - the Emirates Airline international festival of literature. I accepted: who would not wish to support such a brave venture? Goodwill abounded. Hope flowed - among the streams of which was a hope for tolerant cultural interchanges. Oh, those idealists - when will they ever learn?
Then, a week before my planned departure, a nasty storm broke out. Geraldine Bedell claimed that her novel The Gulf Between Us had been "banned" and "censored" for containing - among other things - the whiff of a mention of a gay sheikh.
From reading the press, I got the impression that her book had been scheduled to launch at the festival, and that the launch had then been cancelled, for whiff-o'gay-sheikh reasons; and that, furthermore, it had been banned throughout the Gulf states; and that furthermore, Bedell herself had been prohibited from attending the festival, and also from travelling in Dubai. So said TheCelebrityCafe.com and other commentators.
This was a case for Anti-Censorship Woman! I nipped into the nearest phone booth, hopped into my cape and coiled my magic lasso, and swiftly cancelled my own appearance; because, as a vice-president of International PEN, I could not give my August Seal of Elderly Writer Approval to such a venue.
Well done, Anti-Censorship Woman! was the response. How stalwart!
But possibly not. Although I had read the press statement by the festival's director, Isobel Abulhoul, it had not done much to reassure me. Then I spoke with her in person. This is what I understand her to have said: Bedell's book was not poised to be launched at the festival; thus no launch had been cancelled. Penguin had asked for the launch, and Abulhoul had commented that this was a little-known writer who would not ordinarily be accorded that kind of slot. But she asked to see the manuscript. On the basis of that, she passed.
This happens every day at every festival in the world. Publishers always want to launch or feature their authors, and all festivals pick and choose. Usually, however - being experienced - they don't give the real reasons for their rejections. They don't say "It's a stinker" or "The local Christians will barbecue us". They say: "Not suitable for our purposes." They know that if they tell the truth, they'll be up to their noses in the merde.
First-time festivalite Abulhoul had not yet been hardened in the fire. She was candid. She sent her actual reactions in an email: publisher asked, publisher didn't get, here's why. She thought the exchange was frank and also confidential. She thought all parties were acting in good faith. Silly her. So goes her version.
All that was last September. The little golden time bomb of a refusal-with-reasons was carefully guarded by someone - who? - until now, when it was hurled into the press to great publicity effect, easily stampeding people like me. Aren't we all too ready to believe that This Is Exactly What Those People Do? To arms, Anti-Censorship Woman!
But was Bedell invited and then disinvited to the festival? Abulhoul says that, in fact, Bedell never answered the letter of invitation in the first place. Penguin says that maybe she was invited personally, but they don't know. Is the book banned from the festival? No, says Abulhoul. Is it banned in Dubai? No, says Abulhoul. Yes, says Penguin - they say they were told this by a bookseller in Dubai. Is the author banned? No, says Abulhoul. Is the book banned in the Gulf States? Who knows? It's not even published until April.
Is this a case of "banning" and "censorship"? I'm not sure those terms apply. Maybe they do, maybe not: we'll find out in time. Is it a case of a naive organiser giving her honest opinion about possible local reaction? Does Bedell have a right to a festival slot because her publisher asks for it? Line up to the right, all Refuseniks.
So what do I do now? Having leapt into this dog's breakfast, I have it all over my face. And Bedell or no Bedell, the question of censorship remains. Every country has some form of the not-permitted. In Canada, child pornography and hate literature are both illegal. What should not be permitted seems self-evident to those within a culture, though often bizarre to those outside it.
The positive effect of this fracas is that the door has now been opened for a discussion of such matters. PEN will send its international secretary, Eugene Schoulgin, to initiate such a discussion; there is talk of a panel. I am considering my options. Should I - for instance - appear at the festival on video screen? Or are there yet more twists and turns to this story?
Books are seriously "banned" and "censored" around the world, and people have been imprisoned, murdered and executed for what they've written. A loose use of these terms is not helpful. MA
To the University of Manchester, where Martin Amis and Howard Jacobson were discussing literature and Britishness last week. "You see before you the last two comic British novelists," Amis announced. "If I had to pick three pieces of prose to make you laugh," Jacobson said, "one would be by Martin and the other two would be mine." Professor Murray Pittock, the chair, tried to bring the debate to order, but the novelists just wanted to talk about sex. Why are Welsh women so sexy, demanded Jacobson as he remembered the sexual revolution of the 1960s - in Wales towards the end of 1971. Amis told a funny anecdote that ended with the punchline "When I came across the word 'schadenfreude', I thought it was Welsh."
The home of the stiff upper lip, Jacobson said, has become the nation of the wet trembling lip. The British can't stop crying. "They're sobbing because they've lost a talent show, because they have no talent." Their dream has been shattered. Even the meaning of the word "dream" has changed. We have imported the American sense. But, Amis asserted, we have to "plagiarise American society. Just as a Pakistani in New York will say, 'I am an American', a Pakistani in Bradford should be able to say, 'I am British.'" Questions from the floor prompted Jacobson to remember enjoying being the butt of antisemitic jokes at Bernard Manning's Embassy Club. Both writers argued for the right to offend. "I don't think you can have a decent life unless somewhere decency is being trashed," said Jacobson. "A culture loses its nerve if it doesn't believe it has a centre. You can't have margins without a centre." NR
Three of the five nominees for best picture at tomorrow's Oscars are adapted from novels or short fiction, and what an odd set of works these sources are: a little-known life-in-reverse fantasy ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") by the 25-year-old F Scott Fitzgerald; a first novel by an Indian diplomat, Vikas Swarup (Q&A, adapted as Slumdog Millionaire); and a German crime writer's switch to fiction addressing Holocaust guilt (Bernhard Schlink's The Reader).
But then few of the 17 novels that have been best picture sources over the past 50 years are books that have movie written all over them, or by authors whose literary reputations have producers salivating. Lew Wallace, James Leo Herlihy, Avery Corman, Judith Guest, Michael Blake? Hardly names that resonate, but they respectively wrote the books behind Ben-Hur, Midnight Cowboy, Kramer vs Kramer, Ordinary People and Dances with Wolves (Guest remains the only woman since Colette - Gigi won in 1959 - to have written a novel leading to a best picture).
A handful of films adapted from big-name literary novels have picked up the Academy's main prize. Leaving aside the 60s triumphs for Fielding (Tom Jones) and Dickens (Oliver!), and the quasi-factual Schindler's Ark, the most illustrious novels to have won since 1959 are Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (widely seen as unadaptable), JRR Tolkien's The Return of the King (almost 50 years after its publication) and Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (an outlandish, gory western). More obviously movie-friendly texts - Atonement, Chocolat and Brokeback Mountain - tend to inspire films that get nominated only to lose out on Oscars night.
But mega-sellers rarely result in best picture winners either. The screenwriter William Goldman's dictum about making films seems also to apply to whether a novel has the potential to carry off the most prestigious Oscar statuette: "Nobody knows anything - every time out it's a guess". JD