Do people really hate success in this country? It's surely a generalisation to say so. If people hate success in the UK, then how come The Beatles and Elton John were (are) so popular. There is some schadenfreude around - I hate to bang on about it, as per previous posts, but Martin Amis's 'Experience' is interesting on this. Maybe for 'people' we should substitute 'press' - quite a different thing.
So, publication is on the way, eh? - success to you both. It's good you're being 'trailed' at Frankfurt, Emma.

Joe

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Just re-read your last post JB, sorry to be so hasty in replying - as you say, the papers are often full of it, and not just the tabloids - but I think most people are only too pleased to see someone make it. Close relationships and family members may be different, of course, where the psychodynamics are more involved.

Joe

No doubt part of it is a class issue - 'thou shalt not try to better thyself' - but I think part of it is the cult of amateurism: what Kate Fox in 'Watching the English' (very interesting if sometimes very irritating book) calls 'thou shalt not be in earnest'.

The real crime is not being successful, but looking or sounding as if you've tried for it, that it's planned and you've worked to get there. And the real humiliation is not failure, (we love Eddie the Eagle) but failure when you've announced your ambition - remember Michael Heseltine not making PM? The tabloids don't get their knives out for new young stars, but for the ones that look settled-in enough for it to be plausible to accuse them of 'getting above themselves'. And of course there's a power kick for journalists and superiority for the gossip-mongers in reversing the received view of someone.

Emma

Yes, I am being generalist and ironic of course. But Emma you mention the very thing - we find some young guy/girl and elect them to stardom, in much the same way Quasimodo is elected to status of KIng of Fools - and then, after a while, we proceed (or THE PRESS)to rip them to peices.

I don't really draw a distinction between THE PRESS and THE PEOPLE because you can't have one without the other.

JB

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Anyway, I'm just having a gripe.

I always remember Hugh Grant's mother saying, a year or so after Four Weddings, 'He says he's got about another six months of being the favourite, and then they'll start going for him.'

And right on time, a snide little piece cropped up in the gutter press about some incident when they were filming The Englishman... and it grew from there. Presumably those in the industry know that this is how it works.

Sometimes I agree with my father, who was a diplomat and civil servant of the old school, who regarded the Press as the scum of the earth.

Emma

I wouldn't say, with deference to your old man, Emma, that the press are always the 'scum of the earth'. There's a whole complex world of work there, between individuals and institutions ... just take the example of James Cameron, wonderful reporter, wonderful broadcaster and writer (God rest his soul).

I don't deny the perrnicious 'institutional/industry' side of it all, and the degraded aspects of our civic culture.

Joe (Disgusted of Hale End)

No, that was only in his grumpier moments, when some delicate, complicated and potentially important negotiation had been scuppered by the politicians' need to be able to reduce what was going on it to a single sentence which would keep both the Guardian and the Sun happy. I think generally he would have called the Press a necessary evil, and had no difficulty with individual journalists at all. I well remember a camping holiday in Spain which was punctuated by his trying to get hold of the Herald Tribune, as the only way of finding out in those pre-internet days what was happening about that strange burglary in the Democratic Headquarters...

It was only the French who he really hated, but then so do all non-French diplomats. (Not ordinary French, you understand, just the ones he came across in his professional life.)

Emma

Pitching in late here, but...

'English-modesty' is a default setting for many of us and it's hard to escape it. Imagine you were introduced at a party to someone big in the publishing industry - a top editor, the dream person to read your book. I can imagine myself being so gripped by the terror of seeming to be pushy that I probably wouldn't even mention my writing. Or if I did I would probably say something like 'Oh, you wouldn't be interested in my scribbles.' (A friend of mine, a very gifted writer, actually had such an opportunity and reacted in precisely this way.) It's tragic but I think a lot of us would do the same and we would be watching ourselves and thinking 'What the fuck are you doing, you idiot?' I think somehow, if you can, you have to separate yourself from your work. You have to say something like, 'I may not deserve this, but my book does.' That's what I'm trying to do anyhow.

One last thought. I think more than successful people, we hate pushy people in this country - it's the last thing we want to be taken for.


Roger.

Roger, oh, how right you are about English modesty. I've done just that on occasion, terrified of being pushy. The thought that someone, behind their smile, might be thinking that I'm being a nuisance, is absolutely paralysing.

I even used to do it when I'd lost my small children in some shop or park, and didn't like to disturb people to help me find them! How stupid is that?

Emma

Emma, I hope you found your children. I think you must have done. You're very calm about it.

Well, I can honestly say that no one gets any such false modesty from me! You don't have to be agressively pushy, or overly arrogant - but you can achieve the same results by a lot of charm and by being open and direct. Eye contact and smiles go a long way, with the odd veiled compliment thrown in. I try to seduce someone with an idea nd a dream, rather than forcefeed it to them.

I find that kind of fumbling self apology to just create awkwardness and act as a natural repellent. One has to have confidence in your work, and not be afraid to say so. How the hell is anyone going to be interested, if you seem like you aren't yourself?

As I often tell my friends and collegues, from the benefit of all my travels 'Stop being so bloody English!'

JB

Roger, yes I did find them. The two worst times (4yr old son at Wisley Gardens, 3yr old daughter in IKEA) it only got so awful because kind people spotted they were lost and whisked them away to the lost-child-place before I realised, so when I went back to find them, there they weren't! As my mother said, as you chase desperately around calling their name, you realise it's not that there's any evidence that something dreadful HAS happened, it's just that, if something had, THIS IS HOW IT WOULD START. My son is now 5ft 11" and rather harder to lose.

Emma

JB, you're right, of course. It just comes easier to some people than it does to others.

Emma, phew! I remember when I lost my little boy at the school summer fair a year or so ago. I turned my head for a split second (I promise) when I looked back he had wandered off. It was very very busy and he was nowhere in sight. It's impossible to describe what you go through in the few moments it takes to find them again. And they don't really understand why you're so emotional when you find them. As far as he was concerned, he'd been having quite a nice time.

And personally, the emotion I chiefly felt, once I found them in one piece, was to smack them very hard indeed and repeatedly for running off. I only didn't because we were under the eyes of all those concerned citizens going 'aaah' at this touching re-union.

It's not a feeling I've ever tried to write, come to think of it (I shy nervously away from writing any experience that comes too identifiably close to my own) but yes, it would be very hard to describe.

Emma