Sex.

(Yeah, that’ll fetch ya.)

A while back, I was on the radio and got mistaken for Russell Smith. In case you don’t remember, or did not care in the slightest even at the time, Russell Smith is a Canadian bloke who wrote a book under a female pseudonym and submitted it – he says in ignorance, and I know of no reason to doubt him – to a publishing house which only takes books from women. He withdrew the book when they asked for gender verification, which is what they always do in the course of contractual negotiations.

This passage provoked a small but noisy storm of boy-girl griping, all of which no doubt pimped his book and the books of the eroteuses who assailed it, and got a lot of people some additional filthy reading. I am therefore hugely in favour of the discussion, since more people reading more dirty books is a prospect I look on with considerable delight.

However…

A canard came up. (I love that word: canaaaaard! As in “You lie, sir! It is a filthy canaaaaard!” Which, indeed, rhymes with another of my favourite words: “Baudrillard”. By the way, if you’re like me and now wondering why the French word for a duck should also mean an outrageous lie, the answer apparently is that there’s an old expression in France meaning “to half-sell a duck”. Since you can’t half-sell a duck, this is slang for a con-trick. There’s also a verb form which means “to fly abroad as a false report”. I love English. Specifically, I love the OED.)

The canaaaard was that women don’t write well about sex. It’s sheerest poppycock, so I won’t even bother to dignify it by talking about the women who transparently do write well about sex, because that somehow suggests they might be a small group. What is true, though, is that some writers do not write well about sex.

In fact, there’s even a prize for not writing well about sex. (Oh, look, lots of men have won it.)

For myself, I dislike the far ends of the spectrum of erotic language. I’m equally ill at ease with throbbing rods and trembling rose-petal gardens. I tend to think that if you’re going to write about sex, you have to find a way to do it which is both explicit and unembarrassing; unabashed and dirty, yet not laughably biological nor primly metaphorical. In other words, it’s a very fine line to walk. I suspect you also need plenty of foreplay for a big bonk scene – unless your book is one, long sexual obstacle course, in which case your reader is probably primed to accept some filth right off the top. (Oh, dear. This is going to get innuendish, isn’t it?)

You can’t just jump in and start heaving away.

Your audience has to be flirted with, stroked, and made to anticipate the, er, big entry. It has to feel as if you’ve danced with them, then taken them back to your place and allowed your hand to make contact with, say, the small of their backs. You may even have to show them a bit of leg.

Because otherwise it’s just like some alarming lush putting an arm around them and saying something about gearsticks or moistness.

Ew.

It’s just so depressingly familiar.

While most of the world is desperately hoping for a change of government in Iran, Nokia Siemens Networks have built the most sophisticated dissent-suppression tool ever created for President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Nice one, fellas.

Still, I can’t really get annoyed with NSN – well, I can, but I shouldn’t – because they’re barely even scratching the surface of stupid with that. Never mind where Coltan comes from or what oil companies do in countries we prefer to ignore: the really idiotic moves in this arena are made by governments – who also, one suspects, quietly sponsor and endorse the actions of corporations based on their soil.

Let’s see… Saddam Hussein? Check. Britain trained Dr Germ in the eighties and everyone loved Saddam until he got cocky. Like another recent bad guy, Saddam was someone we did business with when he was against them darned So-vee-ett Rooskies – a short term decision which frankly looks a bit less than splendid now. There are plenty of unpleasant people in the gallery of allies – Pinochet was another good friend.

The thing is, I remember the Cold War well enough to know that we believed it would never end. Those decisions, daft though they are in retrospect, looked sensible because – while in today’s climate Allende looks infinitely preferable to Pinchoet – back then anyone on the Left was basically considered a Soviet stooge.

There are no such excuses now. We know the situation is volatile. We know things can change radically because of some small force applied in one direction or another. We know that what we do defines the next year, the next decade. We are familiar with blowback. (Although have you noticed how little we’ve heard of it since Barack Obama was elected? Apparently, his decisions will not have blowback… Oh, honey. Yes, they will.)

And yet we persist in this nonsense. We like ‘strongmen‘ for other people’s countries. Democracies are so annoyingly flaky – they might at any moment elect someone we don’t approve of.

How about this: we’re quite happy to have a law which governs MPs expenses, so let’s have one which says you can’t do this crap. A law which CEOs and ministers have to pay attention to…

You’re nervous, aren’t you? It’s scary to think of a law powerful enough to do that. You’re probably right.

So let’s have a better class of leader, and some regulation which promotes, rather than disadvantages, ethical behaviour in corporations.

Yeah. Exactly.

But somehow, we really have to stop with this stupid stuff.

A couple of people have asked me what I’m reading and what I’m going to read this Summer.

I’m lousy with planning things like that, and in any case I’m up to my neck in the new ‘un. I don’t read a lot when I’m deep into my own projects – never have – because I start writing like a bad imitation of the person I’m reading and it all goes wrong. (Even as I say that, I realise it’s nonsense. I do read a lot, I just have to be really selective, and it’s not always clear what the criteria are. Some books I can read while I’m in the midst, others I can’t. Go figure.)

Still and all, these are the books in my life right now – by arbitrary category.

Books which are near me at this moment:

The Harrowing – Robert Dinsdale

Selected Works of T.S. Spivet – Reif Larsen

Nocturnes – Kazuo Ishiguro

Books I have not read and feel guilty about because I bought them and wanted to and somehow…:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz

Homicide – David Simon

Books I am currently reading for fun:

Paris Noir – Jacques Yonnet

The Pyrates – George MacDonald Fraser

Book my mother recommended which I know I ought to read but there’s so much other stuff…:

The Horse Boy – Rupert Isaacson

Books I am reading or will read or re-read because of the work:

On Life And Art – John Ruskin

Passages From The Life of A Philosopher – Charles Babbage

Somewhere In The Night – Nicholas Christopher

Doomsday Men – P.D.Smith

The Hero With A Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell

Book by a mate:

Powers: Secret History – John Berlyne

Book I ordered from some guy on Amazon which is amazingly expensive but I really want:

No Man Knows My History – Fawn Brodie

Book my local shop mysteriously does not have, which was reviewed by John Freeman, who is now editor of Granta, whose write-up completely persuaded me that I wanted to read it, and that it might even have some relevance to my own:

The Given Day – Denis Lehane