Many years ago – about half-way from
its original publication in 1934 and the present, I’d guess – I read
a book called An Experiment
With Time, by J.W. Dunne. He had the idea that dreams were a kind
of time-shifted reality: a reality spawned in the future as well as
in the past. To gather evidence for this theory he kept a notepad
by his bedside and jotted down a record of his dreams before they
evaporated into thin air, as most dreams are wont to do. I was impressed
by this, and decided to replicate the simple task. At least I thought
it was simple enough in concept: in practice my head found itself
deciding that the warmth of the pillow was preferable to this temporal
shifting game. I had only a few garbled fragments written down before
I quietly abandoned this venture for the bliss of wakening more naturally
from sleep.
So I was intrigued to see from the introduction to A World Elsewhere that Ian makes a habit of keeping, and regularly
using, a notebook by his bedside. Indeed, he goes so far as to tell
us that ‘the following pieces are accurate accounts of dreams’. His
motivations are literary rather than investigatory as was the case
with Dunne all those years ago (or was my own dismal failure 30 or
so years later). In this little book he has turned some of his notes
into proper sentences, added a few sentences here and there to make
the episodes read better, and otherwise refined the language. Nevertheless,
these are substantially the records of actual dreams.
What are we to make of them? Well, for myself Ian’s dreams are much
more coherent and rather less lurid than my own of 30 or so years
ago (or of the present, come to that). I don’t think, though, that
I’ll be repeating the experiment. Still less will I be likely to donate
my head to medical science or to send out for the teams of psychoanalysts
that I so obviously need. I’d rather keep my dreams. As I suspect
is the case for most writers, I do use fragments of my dreams in my
own writing. Along with experiences and feelings and all the other
things of which life is made, they provide the raw material of the
written word. But although I’ve got a fairly good memory, I’d be hard
put now to tell you from where the various elements of any particular
piece of writing came. It is surely one of the jobs of the writer
to blend these ingredients into a piece of fiction (or poetry, or
any other form of writing).
Ian Robinson, though, deliberately seeks to isolate this one source
of the written word, and presents it to us in book form. Your first
reaction when reading it might be, as mine was, to question why it
should be that one of the most intensely personal of experiences should
be committed to the public page in this unrefined form. Some parts
of the accounts do in fact make interesting reading on any terms.
I am thinking in particular of his father’s quotation in ‘Memory’:
‘A Marxist intelligence with devastating bursts of speed’, for example.
Or the exploration of the mysterious building in ‘Quonum’. Or the
abstruse conversations in ‘The Evacuation’ and elsewhere. And a number
of other sequences are well worth reading.
Still, I am not sure that I could recommend the book as if it were
some kind of literary curate’s egg. I often found myself wishing that
the writer had not been so conscientious about his recording and taken
the additional steps necessary to create genuine fiction. That, I
know, would be contrary to his intention, so I feel that I have to
look at the book as it is presented to us.
Would I recommend it? I probably would, just. Although many readers
will see it as something that should have stayed in a private notebook
- as self-indulgent, even - there is no denying that the basic idea
is thought provoking and absorbing. Though perhaps you could just
read the 1934 book. It’s still in print.
How Do You Spell Bl…gh? and
other stories sees Ian Robinson in a more traditional mood. ‘Traditional’
in this case may be something of a comparative term because there
is no doubt that he writes after his own fashion and on his own terms.
His style of writing is in fact an odd combination of mainly spare,
utilitarian prose and a way with the narrative line that has ‘no compromises
with the reader’ written all over it. Sometimes you might feel, too,
that the dream notebook is not as firmly closed as it should have
been - but I accept that this may be a factor my reading these books
one after the other.
Ian Robinson is anything but a ‘new’ writer. He founded the Oasis
imprint in 1969, has been published in a number of countries, and
has a number of prose and poetry books to his credit and (the most
praiseworthy to me) was editor of the PALPI magazine (Poetry and Little
Presses Information) from 1992 to 1996. None of this means that his
writing will appeal to everybody. It won’t. It’s too individual for
that. And to be honest, although I have seen some of his work before,
I cannot pretend that very much of it appeals to me personally.
It is unfortunate that this collection begins with ‘Waiting’. The
reader seems to be doing just that as the story unfolds. We seem to
be taken just a bit too close to the author’s thought processes, when
nothing in particular seems to be happening. But there are some brighter
spots. The one that has most appeal for me is ‘Hands’, a slight but
engaging story exploring the relationships of four people via the
device of their hands and stones on a beach. Another I liked was the
title story, where the author uses slightly more complex prose than
elsewhere to focus on a number of things beside the sound of the Bl…gh
of the title, though this provides a pleasing centrepiece for the
story. Then there are memorable passages at various places in the
book. The start to ‘Echoes’ for instance is one that stayed with me:
‘ “Once you start to say something,” Henry said, “you always seem
to end up saying more than you meant. Or coming out with something
completely different. Don’t you find that?” ’
Whether these were the books that Ian Robinson intended to write,
I cannot say. One thing that I am sure of is his integrity and honesty
as a writer. This is a genuine attempt to speak as he feels. But overall,
I have to say that Ian Robinson didn’t say enough to me. I have the
feeling, though, that he will speak more clearly to a number of other
readers.
© Raymond Humphreys