your life story

Tom at work asked me today if I'd read A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers, and if so, what I thought about it. I said I was in two minds. I'd loved it to begin with, but it began to wear after 100 pages or so. But I've started A million little pieces by James Frey, I said, and I'm loving that so far. Tom said he'd been put off by the knowledge that it was a memoir which took dramatic licence with what had actually happened. And that does divide opinion. But for some reason, that's what magnetically drew me to the book in the first place. Maybe it's because I think some kind of creative or imaginative act is inevitable when you're trying to understand your life. Especially when memory is involved. Warming to the idea, we started talking about works of fiction that map onto authors' lives and the act of creative memoir in general. And there are loads of good ones. Like The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Read his How to be alone book of essays and you'll see what I mean. There's another good example in a different Jonathan (Safran Foer) and his book Everything is illuminated. And I think I've said before how much I love Amy Fusselman's The pharmacist's mate. Or read The liar and Moab is my washpot by Stephen Fry one after the other. Or Boy by Roald Dahl next to, well, any of his fiction. And all that got me thinking about us more generally, as consumers and creators of the information that we assemble under the headings of our lives. You need creative, interpretive tools to help you understand yourself. And sometimes it's easier to get some kind of truth of feeling (however slippery that is) by departing from what people might think is the "real", documentable truth. You need to reach for something beyond you in order to express what it feels like inside. Stuff (ideas themselves, or the stimuli that give us the ideas) helps us to do that. Not (necessarily) the materially aspirational stuff, in the sense that you find in lots of advertising. More the things that enhance or challenge the idea you have about who you really are. Whether that's novels or your own photographs, a pair of trainers or something else. Which is an interesting challenge for all cultural output, whatever it is. There's lots of things out there, but very few really touch people's lives in a way that changes their course, however small. It's rare to achieve it, but it is possible. So I like the idea that whatever I do, I should be aiming to achieve this quality of interesting or useful. (Picture courtesy of the rather splendidly named Auntie P.)

three, no four, interesting things

Ian "Crack Unit" Tait blogging about the trend for brands trying to cash in on the idea of collaborating and sharing. Keep reading up the page to see the mini-storm and the interesting qualifications he made. (For my money, the T-Mobile ad leaves me a bit cold. Can't help feeling that it will take the fun out of flashmobs forever more. That said, plenty of people I know love it.) Faris writing about advertising as distributed content. You know when someone says something you're thinking? That's how this felt. And Stephen Fry blogging about Twitter etiquette. Oh, and Matt Jones of Dopplr reviewed at the PSFK Good Ideas Salon (wish I could have afforded a ticket) talking about good ideas for mobile. Feeling pretty interested by Dopplr recently, no doubt helped along by sight of Rishi's Dopplr annual report. Don't know what on earth the thread could be, but all of these things feel connected in some way. Any ideas? (Pic courtesy of this person.)

words' work

Don't know quite why, but I've been inspired to get a couple of long dormant writing projects off the ground this weekend. Suspect it has to do with these two things I've enjoyed in the past couple of weeks. First, my love of all things Stephen Fry has reasserted itself. I follow him on Twitter (and, as with thousands of his other fans, he was kind enough to follow back). And I've just started getting his vodcasts. Whatever the media, I love the fact that you're just as likely to hear his verdict on the G-Phone or some other piece of kit as his love of Oscar Wilde or Anton Chekhov's stories. Or even, if you're up to it, a reflection on structuralist linguistics. What a dude. Then there's this, the first annual 26 speech. I couldn't be there myself, but as you'll see from this vid, it was a corker. Philip Collins, a former speech writer for Tony Blair, took to the lectern for the inaugural speech, about, ironically, how to write a great speech. No, it's bigger than that; what emerges is a meditation on great writing that can be applied to any form. For example: “It’s not the words but the facts that make us shiver. The emotional effect comes from the restraint that allows the subject to be its own witness.”
Annual 26 speech 2008 from Tom Clarkson on Vimeo.