DIARY
P. D.JAMES The Society of Authors has announced that it is to administer two new literary prizes; the Prevo Prize funded by Lucy Astor for second novels, and the McKitter- ick Prize endowed by the late Tom McKit- terick for first novels by authors over the age of 40. Both are welcome. The second book is often the most difficult to write and is the work which distinguishes the one- book writer from the novelist. And it is good to have a first novel prize for older writers. Literary prizes are proliferating and it is no bad thing. They reward excellence, encourage interest in the writ- ten word and give more pleasure than pain, which is more than one can say of most human activities. But it must 'be getting difficult to find suitable judges. Judging a literary prize isn't an easy job and for Booker judges it is a formidable literary marathon which leaves one so sated with fiction that a six-month diet of letters and biographies is essential to restore the liter- ary digestion. And there are, of course, the usual dilemmas. What exactly do we mean by a good novel? How far should a judge persevere with what seems a non-starter? How do you make allowances for your own prejudices? How far can you distance yourself from the author's name and repu- tation, and should you? Ideally, of course, all entries for literary prizes should be submitted under a pseudonym. Perhaps it is as well that this is totally impracticable. We might get some disconcerting results.
Maureen Lipmann's funny and bril- 1 antly acted television advertisement for British Telecom is one of the very few one would actually turn on the set to watch. Yet some people, apparently, have pro- tested that it is racist. I find this hypersensi- tivity, to which we are becoming in- creasingly prone, both curious and sad. Surely by protesting when no offence is intended or could reasonably be taken we are in danger of diverting our attention and indignation from racist incidents which are deeply offensive and are intended to be.
Abiographer friend was talking to me recently. He cannot write a book except by hand, and then he sends the manuscript to be typed by an elderly lady who is the only living person who can decipher his writing. Not unnaturally he feels a certain insecur- ity about his literary future. I sympathise. I, too, enjoy the physical act of writing and like the sensation of words travelling from the brain down the arm to the hand and the pen. I fully appreciate the huge advantage of the word-processor and am delighted to have my books finally produced on one, provided it isn't by me. I have only to touch a machine and it goes wrong. I
deplore the tendency of every machine to become more complicated — I think the fashionable word is sophisticated. I have progressed to using an electric typewriter but even this breaks down with depressing regularity. And it isn't as if I ask much of it. I don't want it to correct my spelling, erase words at a touch, retain passages in its memory or provide half-a-dozen diffe- rent typefaces. All I want is a machine that doesn't crinkle the paper when I insert it, has a ribbon which can be quickly and unmessily changed and letters which don't stick. Some authors I know are so enthu- siastic about their word-processors that one could almost believe the machine writes the book for them. And with some books one can believe that it does.
Iseem to have acquired a large white cat, or, at least, the beast has acquired me after the manner of its kind. Obviously it requires a name, since 'Cat' seems in- adequate. A friend had a doctored tom whom she called Mr Salteena, since he was only half a gentleman, and I remember a similarly disadvantaged male named Jaffa because he was a large, seedless orange. But I disapprove of these joke names for an animal with so high a regard for its own dignity. The best namer of cats I knew was my husband's elderly aunt. At the end of her life she had two; a black, lean, sleek animal with slit green eyes and a large, philandering, authoritative tabby. They were called Dr Steinburg and Colonel Twig. There were occasional embarrass- ments when strangers overheard such re- marks as, 'The Colonel was so sweet this morning when he crept into bed with me', or, 'I can never persuade the Doctor to come in at night for his meals.' But no two cats were more appropriately named. I think I shall take the easy way out. My stray shall be named Hodge. Iwas sitting recently with my son-in-law in a pub where the combination of shouting voices and a juke-box became insupport- able and I explained that I had to leave. He told me (he is clever about these things) that he had no difficulty in shutting out the extraneous noises and hearing what I was saying but that the brain's ability to disting- uish and select in this way decreases with age. It was somewhat of a comfort to know that my intolerance to public noise is due more to old-age than irascibility but I am dreading the Nineties when young people will be in such a minority that their services will be competed for by practically every employer. Shall we then be subjected to loud pop music while waiting to be served in banks, in virtually every shop and, horror of horrors, on long-distance trains?
There has to be a limit to the amount of trivia which one leaves for one's depen- dents to sort out and destroy and I have been getting rid of some old school reports. These have reminded me of how much I owe to the Cambridge High School for Girls and its mainly spinster staff. The post 1914-18 war generation of women, robbed by the holocaust of Flanders of their chance of marriage and motherhood, may have resented their loss yet, in retrospect, they didn't seem bitter or unhappy and the generation they taught, born in the after- math of one world war and destined to reach adulthood at the beginning of the next, benefited' from a dedication which wasn't circumscribed by the demands of the teacher's husband and family. That dedication we took for granted, flourishing unthinking on their deprivation. Few teachers ever left and we weren't faced at a critical stage of pre-examination work by new faces, different methods, unknown personalities. We were superbly taught in the old grammar school tradition, scholar- ly, Christian, liberal, for which I shall ever be grateful. But tearing up the resistant pages of my small achievements I couldn't help thinking of the time I wasted on activities which have been of no possible use to me. This must be true of any school. Notable among them was the careful sew- ing of white knicker-linings from patterns laboriously drawn on graph-paper, grating soap-flakes from huge bars of white soap, and long division in pounds, shillings and pence. And it is, perhaps, unfortunate that the main fact that remains with me from my physics lessons was that the atom, being the smallest particle of matter, could never under any circumstances be split or in any way altered. But at least it has left me with a healthy scepticism, even about the truths of science.
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