Author Archives: James

About James

James specialises in digital literary heritage projects. He spends most of his time in front of a computer screen writing about life instead of living it. Therefore, do not trust a word he says.

A day in the life of…

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Photo LeftLion.

When LeftLion hits the city it serves two purposes. Firstly, as an amusing drunken distraction whilst waiting for a friend to turn up and then later on, when the friend has turned up, as a useful device for wedging under a wobbly table leg to restore equilibrium. But there’s so much more that goes on behind the scenes, Nottingham. Take today…

Spend four hours going through a PDF of an upcoming literature festival programme and copying and pasting events into a multi-columned word document that lists time, location, date, and event details. Just to appease anal personality, colour-coordinate events according to genre. Email out to subs list. Answer emails from subs list who all want to review the same event. Persuade them to do different events so that the whole festival is covered.

Now submit list to festival for press passes and discover they’ve changed their policy on passes because they need to break even on ticket sales. Contact subs list and explain they now don’t have to review the events you convinced them they needed to review. Tantrums. Reviewer quits. Put a call-out for new reviewer through social media.Get in trouble at work for using social media instead of doing work.

Now go through a similar process with a book reviews schedule. Compile list detailing: Book, publisher and author details, copy deadlines, a short synopsis, genre, web links, etc. Allocate appropriate reviewers for specific books, email them, find out if they want physical or digital copies, contact publisher for electronic ones in the correct format, take physical copies to post office, offer to meet reviewer in town to hand over the book to save on stamp but end up buying them a coffee.

Phone call. Someone wants advice on various aspects of starting up a literature-related business. You are under no obligation to do this. You do this because you like their idea and it will be good for Nottingham if they succeed. Spend an hour compiling a list of useful contacts who can help the said person. Offer to meet them. Buy them coffee.

Upload various articles to website that subs have submitted. Find images online or videos to embed in the file and then resize the images in photoshop so that they correctly fit the house style. Go for a ten minute walk around the block thinking up catchy sub headings and titles for their work. Find relevant literature listings that the person reading this article might be interested in and then link them to the article.

Phone call. Meet poet for a chat about their new book. Arrange to do interview and come down to their next event.  Buy them coffee. Put flyers for festival up in café so that people buy tickets (in the hope that the festival will then reallocate more press passes). Put events in calendar. Check emails on phone. Author wants to know when their work will be reviewed or why a recent review was critical of their work when it was brilliant. Offer to buy them coffee.

Go home and read book for review on bus and in the bath. Boot up laptop and forget to eat. Argue with girlfriend about always being on that laptop. Write blog. Write article for magazine. Tweet something promoting someone else’s work. Remember that you’ve written a book yourself and the agent hasn’t been in touch for ages and you need to find a new one. Email from PR company. Poet in town tomorrow. Any chance of writing a quick preview? Start to write preview but don’t know anything about the poet. Start researching poet on google. Yes, I’m coming to bed in a minute. Drink coffee. Get email from festival saying they are reverting back to their original press passes policy. Email all subs again saying that they can review the events that you just said they couldn’t. Start to do the work you were meant to do at work at home. Forget about own book.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/psycho_crow/3278713226/ LeftLion readers.

The hundred-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared

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Allan Karlsson is a few minutes away from celebrating his hundredth birthday when he decides to climb out of the window of an old people’s home and do a runner, or rather a steady walk away. The attending press and Mayor are worried at his unforeseen absence but they needn’t be as this is a centenarian more than capable of looking after himself, as we discover over the next 392 pages.

Karlsson makes his way to the nearest bus depot and buys a ticket for the next outbound journey out of the sleepy Swedish village. While waiting for the bus a ‘long-haired youth’ asks the harmless looking pensioner to mind his suitcase while he relieves himself. Karlsson agrees, but warns the impolite youth to hurry up as he has a bus he needs to catch. But the youth is in too much of a hurry to heed his words and so Karlsson catches his bus, along with the suitcase. Having left the retirement home in such a hurry he hopes the suitcase might include some useful items. It does in the form of 50 million crowns.

The novel follows Karlsson on an absurd and comical journey across his homeland where he collects an elephant, hot dog seller and a master thief on his way, while being chased by an incompetent and bemused police force and vengeful mafia. It’s like On the Road with Forrest Gump. The outrageous narrative is complimented by killer one-liners and wry observations that are perfectly weighted throughout, making this a wonderful page turner.

The chapters mix between the past and the present, so that we learn about Karlsson’s amazingly odd life as the novel progresses. Karlsson turns out to be an explosives expert who has wined and dined the most important political figures across the globe from Stalin to Mao Tse-tung. Yet he is completely unfazed by the influential company he keeps and decidedly uninterested in which side of the political spectrum they fall on. He has no time for politics or religion, not when there is food, vodka and a warm bed available.

Jonasson uses his centenarian to reinterpret some of the most significant events in history from Watergate to the splitting of the atom. Yet wherever Karlsson goes there is some kind of disaster and so he appears almost like an angel of death, yet he bears no malice to anyone. He is driven only by the desire to live a simple life which serves as a poignant contrast to the situations he finds himself in.

The book was Sweden’s bestseller in 2010 and has now been translated into English. It is due to be turned into a film directed by  Felix Herngren. It’s a clever book but never smug, occasionally the events can get a little ridiculous but the tone is so devilishly dark that it sucks you right back in. There’s no moralising either yet it leaves you with plenty to think about. I certainly won’t be tutting at doddering old men fumbling for change at the checkout again.

Jonas Jonasson’s website