We asked our publicists which departed writers they would most like to hang out with, and the results were rather revealing! Leave a comment to let us know which literary figure you would bring back from the dead and why.
Joe Pickering, Publicity Manager
I’d most like to meet Samuel Beckett. When I was 18 a friend of the family took me to see every single one of his plays during a season at the Barbican. Not everyone’s idea of fun, I know, but I loved a lot of what I saw and was struck when the friend, in his 50s, said he was sad he’d never got to meet him. This was way, way before I’d ever entertained the idea of working in publishing and getting to meet great authors all the time, and I was puzzled at the idea my friend had even thought this could be a possibility. Meeting Samuel Beckett wouldn’t just be meeting a literary hero, it would be meeting someone who has had a profound influence on theatre, the modern novel, and even has a phrase that typifies a certain mood or theme: Beckettian. I’d like to meet him because I love his work but because I feel sure he’d just be a fairly normal, shy, slightly intense person – someone you could take on a stock signing tour round London in a cab and just talk about cricket with.
Lija Kresowaty, Publicity Assistant
As my love for the Little House books borders on obsession (ok, I passed that border years ago), I’d like to hang out with Laura Ingalls Wilder. She’d teach me useful skills like making a straw tick mattress (handy), cooking up some apples and onions (delicious) and fashioning a balloon to play with out of a pig’s bladder (resourceful). She’d also make sure I keep any potential vanity in check with a stern “Pretty is as pretty does.” She was a tough lady, and suspiciously feminist, though I don’t think she ever would have admitted it at the time (she wasn’t into the woman’s vote).
Ben Brusey, Viking Editorial Assistant
My dead author buddy of choice would be Ernest Hemingway. And we'd go for a night out on the town.
A real manly man who liked nothing more than to drink, fish, hunt, seduce beautiful women, play with his cats (he loved cats) and of course to write. A Moveable Feast chronicles the period when he was living in sexy Paris with lots of other writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. His encounters with them are fascinating, and often boozy, and he paints an incredibly evocative portrait of the time. Despite all of Hem's flaws, and there were many, he was dedicated to his craft as a writer, and what comes across so strongly in the book is his amazing worth ethic, discipline and desire to push himself. It's funny, sad, and often very beautiful.
If you like Hemingway and find yourself in Florida, I'd highly recommend visiting the house he lived in on Key West, which is an island not far from Cuba where he lived with his wife and cats. They still have cats on the site who are descendents of his own, and they all weirdly have huge paws with six toes.
Amelia Fairney, Publicity Director
The deceased literary figure I would most like to meet would have to be John Keats – my favourite poet and a true literary immortal. He had a tragically short and sad life, but his poems have brought joy and understanding to millions all over the world, and wouldn't it be great to be able to go back and tell him that? He didn't even get good reviews when they were first published!
For those without plans for the long weekend I recommend a visit to Keats' house in Hampstead, where he lived briefly with Fanny Brawne, which has many original letters, possessions and manuscripts on display, and a lovely mulberry tree in the garden perfect for picnicking under – while reading one of those enduring poems…
Yesterday, quite a few people were freaked out by this news story, which dominated the Guardian's homepage. In essence, it’s been revealed that an iPhone not only keeps track of your location but keeps that data stored on the phone and syncs it to your computer when you plug your phone in. Many people were outraged, leading to lots of comments on Twitter about how much of an invasion of privacy this constituted. It was also debated this morning on The Today Programme, arguably the country's leading broadcast news outlet.
What surprised me was how much people were suprised by this, until I remembered that I've already read The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser, published by us on June 23rd, and the subject of which is exactly this: the data companies gather and store about you through the internet and what they use it for. For major digital corporations such as Google, Facebook and increasingly Apple, information is their bread and butter; by gathering lots of information on a person they are able to make their advertising space more attractive to advertisers and therefore charge more money for it. Eli Pariser says that former Google CEO Jeff Schmidt likes to point out that "if you recorded all human communication from the dawn of time to 2003, it’d take up about five billion gigabytes of storage space. Now, we’re creating that much data every two days". Where you are, where you've visited is all part of this and while the data currently doesn't seem to be being sent back to Apple, it perhaps might be useful for future location-based advertising services. It all ultimately adds up to a lot of information on a given person, much of which is incredibly useful and valuable. It's a fairly simple equation – gather info, work out what's valuable, sell it to advertisers – but it's done to such enormously complex degrees by companies that it boggles the mind of even the people who work there.
This information can lead to some remarkable things, not least personalised search, whereby what appears when you type something into a search engine is tailored to you (simplifying enormously there, of course). The search engine works out what you're interested in and filters out what you're not. Many of us probably see this as a service, an improvement on the way we used to have to trawl through the results to find what was relevant: I simply typed 'iphone location guardian' to find that story just now. When, for example, was the last time you even clicked to the second page of a Google search result? But on the other hand it can lead to what Eli Pariser calls a 'filter bubble', whereby we are no longer challenged or inspired by things outside of our realms of experience or comfort zone. This means politically, culturally, right to down to the restaurants we visit or what bicycle we might buy next. We think we're being shown something just because it's relevant; in fact, it may be that the particular brand of running shoe that comes up has paid to be there should you trigger the right algorithm.
So, having read The Filter Bubble, it doesn't surprise me at all that location data isn't ditched by the iPhone, as it's valuable information for Apple to have, however freaky it may look to see an algorithm track your movements on a map. This isn't to make anyone paranoid, and Eli Pariser isn't an internet sceptic; he just wants us all to think a little more about what we're being presented on the net, where it's come from and what it's based on, and is providing us with the tools to do it. It's fascinating stuff and it'll make you want to talk to people about it, hurl the book (don't do that with your Kindle) across the room in outrage at points, make you think 'I thought that!' at others, and startle you with some of the stats and facts it presents. It'll also change the way you think about something that is part of normal life and that you do unconsciously dozens of times a day, ie, what you put into your search bar. You can't ask more of a book than that.
Although I've been a publicist at Penguin now for nearly seven years as a day job, for a year or more I have been merrily moonlighting, putting together Penguin's Great Food series. There are twenty books in the series, all extracts from some of the sharpest, funniest and most delicious recipes and writing about food from the past four hundred years. The series is parented by Great Ideas (of course) and a six-month stint spent reading old recipe books in the British Library and falling in love with the food, the kitchens and the people who wrote them (most of them, at any rate, Mrs Beeton still scares me stiff).
As social history, recipe books are gold dust. Reading Gervase Markham (1615) whooses us directly into the sculleries and pantries of Wolf Hall; Alexis Soyer (1878) takes us into the kitchen of Florence Nightingale's hospital in the Crimea; Colonel Wyvern's rigorous advice to memsahibs tells us as much about the status anxieties of the Raj as Passage to India. All our cooks and food writers (such as Charles Lamb or Pepys) are informative and engaging people to spend time with. But can you actually cook the recipes? This is what I have been trying to find out over the past few months. The answer is a resounding 'yes'. And sometimes you can also eat the results.
The successes first. Leaving aside Claudia Roden, Alice Waters and Elizabeth David whose fame and influence comes from their recipe followability (as well as their innovation), there are a couple of cookery writers here who inspire total trust. Mrs Beeton, in spite of her alarming advice about rising early and having cold baths, is reliable and there is nothing wrong with her Asparagus Pudding or Ginger Cream. And Eliza Acton (1845) is brilliant because she has clearly cooked everything herself and she includes helpful explanations such as don't overheat the butter or the cake will be too heavy; I love the names she gives her dishes ('Publishers Pudding', she says, can scarcely be made too rich; unlike the 'Poor Author's Pudding'. Hasn't she got that the wrong way round?). Even Gervase Markham, the oldest of the writers here, has some blinding recipes. His suggestions for game and meat, whilst definitely Tudor in taste (all that fruit, spice and meat), are often surprisingly good. Marchpane (cooked marzipan) is one of the most delicious thing on God's earth.
But I've had endless trouble with old recipes for biscuits. I imagine that, without margarine or raising agents, they used to be much harder than we are used to – or else there is a technique for making them edible that is being kept secret from me. So, Tudor knot biscuits were thick white curls like solid dog pooh (yes, sorry, but that's what they looked like), reeking of cheap rosewater. Hannah Glasse (1747) gives a recipe for 'Shrewsbury Cakes' whereas the things I made bore no relation to cake as we know it; they were so rigid my colleagues (who I was forcing to do a rosewater taste test) nearly broke their delicate teeth.
But the worst thing of all has to be one of William Verral's intriguing sounding puds. Ordinarily I love William Verral; his 1749 recipes are lively, full of fruit and vegetable, and eminently cookable. But something went badly wrong with his Strawberry Fritters. Perhaps it was my batter; the temperature of the hot lard (which I thought would give a genuinely historic touch); who knows? The result was hot, fatty, soggy deep fried lumps of red with lines of pale batter following behind like limp frogspawn. It didn't taste as good as that sounds, either.
So, if you want to go for the Great Food experience, roll your own 'haschiche fudge' courtesy of Alice B. Toklas, or follow Alexandre Dumas' recipe for 'Mutton Kidneys, Musketeers' style', pick up a knife and a book and unleash your inner Heston Blumenthal. Otherwise, settle into an armchair with an almond or rose sherbert and imagine yourself in Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Feast, or sip a bumper of claret and enjoy, with Charles Lamb, A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. Either way, you'll have a great time. Bon appetit.
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A guest blog from Olivia Scott-Berry from Penguin's teen site, Spinebreakers
I’ve never wanted to hate but couldn’t help loving so many people all at the same time.
Every now and then an event comes along and you think, you know what? My biology homework can wait, Masterchef can be recorded, dinner is reheatable- It’s a Wednesday night, but I’m going out! (It’s a phenomenon I like to call ‘the dilemma of the sixth-former’)
The Penguin General Bloggers' event then, was something pretty special. Imagine this: you receive an email telling you that seven of the most brilliant authors are going to be giving readings, and that you will get to talk to them afterwards and there are going to be goody bags. Can you honestly tell me that you would have said no, I have to finish this sheet on quadrat sampling?
Arriving at the event, I knew that I had made the right choice between my education and my passion for books, because not only were the free books stacked high, but the room was packed with people each with their own unique take on the publishing world- editors, bloggers, authors- people who I was really excited to talk to and hear their experiences and get some advice.
It was probably one of the most daunting things I’ve ever done as a Spinebreakers – by definition we are readers, which is an activity that calls for quiet and aloneness and the kind of imagination that thrives in that environment more than any other- but it was gratifying to see that the authors were just as true to their sixteen-year-old bookworm selves as I was and acknowledged the paradox of the modern author’s duties. (Not that any of that showed in their amazing readings!)
Equally gratifying was the real interest people took in Spinebreakers and what we do, and I only hope that I represented us well to this group of amazing people, who, after all, were not just composed of authors, but of bloggers too. It was incredibly humbling but also inspiring to see all these people who do what we do at Spinebreakers but to a whole other level, and who do it so well (as you can probably tell from the fact that I’ve written up my report the very next morning without going on iplayer once!)
If you’re anything like me, you probably want to hear all about the books, but I thinkthat whatI took away from last night was the knowledge that I can allow myself to meet the authors- it is not a sacrilege and it could in fact enrich the whole experience (even now I am itching to reread Anatomy of a Disappearance after hearing it in Hisham Matar’s own voice). So I’m going to compromise and tell you a little bit about the books (which you must read, all of them!), and a little bit about the authors:
If you ever wanted to know what it’s like to grow up in a modern commune, it sounds like (I haven’t read it yet- even the Penguin editors are waiting anxiously for their proofs to arrive) Wild Abandon will be the perfect book for you, and if you didn’t- you will now just to hear Joe Dunthorne’s comic take on it. The man himself? Two words: Funny. Shorts. (Get yourself down to one of his poetry readings now).
Landfall, Helen Gordon
Helen Gordon is a former associate editor of Granta magazine and the author of Landfall, the story of an art critic in South East London (woop woop), which sounds (again, I haven’t read this, but I do have the proof right next to me right now) totally brilliant in a knowing and satirical way, but when I spoke to her I didn’t know all of this yet. She took such an interest in Spinebreakers and encouraged me to keep writing (and had a jumper on which I coveted) that I now feel really bad that I didn’t ask her anything about the book, because it sounds amazing.
Mr Chartwell is one of those books where you absolutely love the author and hate them for having the idea instead of you- and hearing Rebecca Hunt read, the feelings intensify. She is absolutely lovely and the kind of person I wish I was and an amazing speaker- who else could pull off the voice of a large black dog who happens to be a metaphor for depression? And do you know what makes it one of those books even more? Even if I did have the idea first, I wouldn’t be able to pull it off in prose half as sparkling as Hunt’s. Girl in Translation, Jean Kwok
Jean Kwok is an absolutely lovely lovely person. I could hear my English teacher screaming at me for my limited vocabulary as I wrote that, but there is no better way to say it- she is the absolute embodiment of everything that is lovely. Not only did she make me feel completely comfortable talking to her, but she managed to command the floor like she was having a conversation with each one of us. Once I could tear myself away from her warm sunshine accent, I was equally fascinated- Kwok’s tale of arriving in New York and the troubles that ensued (having no central heating, working on a piece-by-piece basis in a factory, having a talent for school) has elements of truth with her own life. Even without knowing this, the novel is beautifully brilliant- it will make you smile.
On TV programmes when someone dies or goes missing then those who are left behind are shows in crying in a series of artistic shots, and the cameras will only return to them once something changes in their lives. This is a nice idea to believe in, but it couldn’t be further from the truth- as Hisham Matar shows exquisitely in Anatomy of a Disappearance- life, ordinary life, goes excruciatingly onwards. The absence of the main character’s father is described with such poise, the everyday events imbued with such numbness that it comes to sit in your own heart as you read. This book made me extremely guilty that I didn’t know enough about the events that forced the disappeared father out of Egypt, and especially after I heard Hisham Matar’s mournful, silken reading, I am definitely going to find out more. I’m afraid I might have to disappoint my English teacher again and tell you that Hisham Matar is an absolutely lovely man, who wonderfully disarmed me by telling me that he liked my jumper. I can only respond with how much I loved his book.
I’m not really sure how to do justice to the presence that is Ross Raisin- is it okay if I just tell you that, despite hailing from Yorkshire and not (as far as I could tell) having any particular links to Scotland that he did his reading in a Glaswegian accent, which, despite his warning that it wouldn’t, I thought sounded pretty good? His new novel, Waterline, sounds a world away from his first, God’s Own Country (which I loved), but looks to be just as brilliant. I’m going to take the words straight from the press release because I think they summarise everything that I am looking for in a book- ‘the tale of an ordinary man caught between the loss of a great love and the hard edges of modern existence’. Sold.
Luke Williams joins Rebecca Hunt in the ranks of authors I want to hate but absolutely can’t- the idea behind his first novel, The Echo Chamber, is brilliant. It tells the story of Exie, whose superhuman hearing means that she can hear things that other people can’t, and who is now writing up her memories of her life, beginning in Nigeria as the British Empire’s influence was deteriorating. I was instantly intrigued by this ambitious idea, and however much I want it to fail to make myself feel better, from seeing Williams read that doesn’t seem likely. He is so confident and in control and in sync with his story (though he actually is Scottish, he too pulled a Raisin and read in a voice completely different from his own) that I just know it is going to live up to my expectations.
Because I refrained so well from adding two simple words to the end of each of these summaries and because I’m pretty sure that my biology homework is going to have to wait for a little while because I will be taking my own advice, I’m going to end my review with what you really really must do. Read them. (Now!)
The Penguin Blog 