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Book of the month
: JANUARY BOOK OF THE MONTH - discussion night and author chat will take place here Thursday 31st Jan from 8pm
(191 messages)
This the place to come for our January Bookclub discussion and to chat to our esteemed author Tim Dowling, author of The Giles Wareing Haters Club.
If you can't make it on Thursday then do post a question for Tim here and we'll make sure he gets to it. And if you are coming on Thursday but want to post an advance question then feel free - we'll email them to Tim and will kick off with the answers when he comes on.
Oh, and if you have self-googled - which you must have - were you a) pleased with the results b) somewhat taken aback c) driven to assume a fake identity to clear your name? ('Fess up - did you take it all terribly personally and get all punchy? Or send your missus in to fight your corner? It happens...)
I must apologise but I've not read your book because the main library in Somerset doesn't have it in stock, although I've had it on order for 4 weeks HONEST. We do have proper roads and a few books about pig farming and a biography of the Wurzels but that's about it.
And just a reminder to everyone else to post your advance questions here; otherwise you can save them up for Thursday night - we'll kick off at 8pm and Tim is joining us from 8.30 onwards.
Hi Tim, I have some questions for you, enjoyed the book BTW. To what extent does Giles’ experience of life as a freelance journalist in London reflect your own? The book presents a bleak picture of suburban London- is it really that bad? Is ‘Chair’ based on a real person? Giles seems to be having some sort of breakdown and clearly becomes detached from reality. I was concerned at the end of the book for his future state of mind when his wife announced she was pregnant- this was presented as a turn around for him (along with the book deal) but babies are pretty much guaranteed to give you a shed load of stress. It would not be easy to write a book with a new baby in the house. How would you see him going foreward…..will he get proper treatment for his depression? And will we find out in a sequel? Oh , and I loved the Road protestors!
I did start reading the book with a certain amount of trepidation; I love your columns (Permachat is a work of genius), but worried that the book might just be one of the "smug-middle-class-journo type writes a book about a smug-middle-class-journo-type" sort, but I should have had more faith - I really enjoyed it, I wish Salome66 had been real, I loved the chatroom bits - it's a great book. I sort of wish we had got to know Caroline bit better. As these all seem to be comments rather than questions - why did you pick that Devon town in particular? Did the name just appeal or have you such happy memories of Cheriton Fitzpaine that you had to incorporate it somehow into a book?
I thought it was good, I enjoyed it, although I did feel that the last part of the book wasn't quite as convincing as the first three-quarters of it. Some scenes I did not find entirely convincing; it wasn't really clear why he ran from the road demo, for example.
I felt that there was a clash between the first-person voice of the narrator and the fact that he was having a breakdown of some sort - it is a tricky balance of course because if you are barking then you are unlikely to be able to string together a coherent narrative. But when the narration is compared with, say, his diary entries, it didn't feel very authentic.
I really did NOT like the line, "Mothers gathered in a knot where the road dead-ended alongside the school gates, while besuited fathers came and went purposefully." That's really inexcusable and I can't believe your wife didn't slap you when she read that.
I felt that the theme of Gile's father came into the book as a bit of an after-thought. Likewise, their marital chaos was not really addressed by either of them until the last few pages. That didn't seem very convincing to me, particularly as Giles was spending half of his life having blackouts and becoming entrenched in alcoholism and drug addiction and having a nervous breakdown. I think really his missus might have demanded a few answers beforehand.
I REALLY liked some of the early descriptive language, particularly when Caroline was hungover and compared to an animal left in a cardboard box overnight after being roughed-up by the dog.
I really liked the descriptions of working at home and how <cough> challenging it can be.
So I've got some more questions although of course now I am going to splurge all my good questions and there will be nothing left for tomorrow, but I'll put them here anyway.
- Do you think that actively seeking out criticism by bloggers on the internet is healthy, or do you think it is "a peculiar form of self-harm"?
- Do you think looking up criticism on the internet is avoidable?!
- Do you think that the forum of the internet and the nature of the criticism it liberally dishes out is putting potential writers off column-type journalism?
- Have you experienced cyber-bullying, and in what context?
- Do you ever unplug your router in desperation to get work done at home?
- Can you tell me a bit about your own history with the internet? When did you first come to chat-rooms or talkboards, and do you still frequent them? Have you ever been to a talkboard meetup?
- Do you have a dog, as well as children? Isn't that just doubling your workload for no real return?
Right I'm going to do some work now I've finished the book (I work from home, obviously).
MP - Giles left the demo because his co-demonstrators appeared to have kidnapped an MP - wouldn't you have legged it at that point? Thank you for reminding me about that mothers at the school gate line - winded me up at the time of reading no end.
But he was there legitimately, because he was covering the story. He wasn't actually responsible for that. Surely any proper journo would have taken lots of pictures and chortled at their good fortune...
It was good, but male chick lit and light relief after Agent Zigzag and the I read Faramus' story. I felt a bit cheated about having to buy it in hardback, ut hey ho and sadly wasn't laugh out loud. I preferred John O'Farrells book about the nale crisis. Sorry.
By OliviaMumsnet on Wed 30-Jan-08 22:32:40
(from MNHQ)
<<hijack MP take that BACK about the dogs. I would love a dog! According to DH I'm having a baby instead >>
Tim, I'm inexcusably out tomorrow night but I'd love to know which sites you looked at to get such a good grasp of posting styles. That was what I enjoyed the most about it.
Small hijack. I won't be joining in tonight because I had already read the book some time ago and I didn't have time this month to re-read it. However, I lurked last month, and joined in a couple of months before that (the first one), which I enjoyed enormously.
What I really loved about the first discussion was the opportunity to have a chat amongst ourselves in real time about the book. Last month we didn't really have a chance to do that and I think that's a shame. As I recall, and tell me if I'm wrong, last month Ben seemed to spend most of his time dealing with questions that had been posted in advance which made the discussion a bit more stilted.
I see that you are starting the convo tonight at 8, with Giles joining in at 8.30. Obviously, it is brilliant that the authors have been able to contribute, and I realise that their diaries are pretty important factors, but I was wondering whether we could go back to the original format, of an hour's discussion, followed by an hour with the author? I found that the discussion beforehand helped me to see the book in ways that I hadn't considered and it was great to have an opportunity to put the points we'd debated to the author in the subsequent hour.
Yes, very happy to move it back to the original timing. I think some people liked an earlier finish but I agree that you get more inspiration from teh chat beforehand and therefore have more to ask the author. Will do that from now on.
Also, quite a few people find their Thursdays are busier that Tuesdays, so we're going to move discussion night back to Tuesday.
Enough of the admin. I'm going to open a bottle and get myself ready for 8pm..
I reckon you can ask non book-related questions as long as they're not tooo personal.
Am in a quandry about Tuesday v Thursday - maybe we'll have a vote on it?
Just finished reading the JonRonsongate thread. Blimey. Wonder if Tim's wife knows she'll have to fly to the rescue should sophiewd say anything more about preferring Jon O'Farrell...
Thankyou very much. It's very long though, may take a while!
I am remebering the time I said to DH 'I miss the Jon Ronson column' just as he opened the Guardian Weekend magazine to see Tim Dowlings headline 'My wife has turned to this page and said I miss Jon Ronson'
Hi Tim, How close is Caroline in character to your own wife and did/ does she mind the comparison. Also you've got kids right? Are they old enought to read it and if so, have they and what did they think?
I have lots of opinions too. First off, did anyone else find it funny but also a desperately sad book? I didn't feel that Giles had sorted himself out at the end; once the baby news wore off he was bound to fall back into paranoid depressed self-absorbed behaviour, wasn't he?
I laughed at lots of things in it, but ultimately I think Giels was a terribly sad character.
Hmm yes @ sad. It was a pretty depressing picture of growing older and feeling irrelevant and useless. I think Giles needed some kind of counselling. And a new hobby. He should have taken up running or something Wholesome, and then I'd have felt more optimistic. I felt the novel was finished off a little bit too quickly without any convincing hope.
I think that a lot of what is posted online,and as mnetters you will have firsthand experience of this, is more a 'jumping on the hate bandwagon' response, rather than an intelligent well formed response. People seem to find it easier to make snap criticisms than spend the time thinking and composing an opinion. Many would have very diferent things to say in a 'real life' discuaaion.
Oh sorry! Well I liked it and quite liked Giles although had more sympathy with his Mrs, naturally. It did make me think about poor old John Ronson et al and how easy it is for us to brutalise talent on line from the comfort of our computer desks... did anyone feel a teensy weensy bit guilty reading it?
morningpaper, I reckon its a mix - comments range from fair criticism (his type of journalism can be 'cynical, lazy, second-rate') to pointless bullying (why doesn't he kill himself). I think that a journo who raids his private life for material woudl have to accept that people are going to get personal, but I can't see the point of slagging people off in cyberspace, really. Unless they are factually wrong, or harmful, or advocating something terrible then why spend so much time over them?
i think that's where I felt a million miles away from the characters in the story - I would never bother to get that vitriolic on a website. Or in general, actually. Who does it help and what's the point?
I agree with all of that, Tilly- thought he was going to top himself at one point. The thing about his father was never resolved was it? His relationship with his kids was sad, v distant even tho' he was the main carer. (Echoing his relationship with his own dad?)
Mind you being sued and everything sort of put me off too much personal criticism.
Some journo's do seem to attract a lot of negative emotion though - I mean people REALLY didn't like Ronson, did they? (not me, of course, I was ENORMOUS fan)
"I will aim to become a better writer, of longer and more serious things, with the ultimate goal of rendering all criticism of my work, be it Internet-based or otherwise, laughably wide of the mark."
This was included on an amazon review, a desperately sad situation really if you have any empathy.
And I agree that people can get out of hand online far quicker than RL. I think that's very interesting, that a modern comic novel has this whole new dimension of the internet where emotions are amplified and things can happen in a farcical way.
Yes I think John Ronson is laugh out loud funny in what he writes but clearly lacks a bit of a sense of humour about himself - still am sure Tim doesn't want to focus on John Ronson. Tim have people been mean about you online much? I'd imaging you have a huge fan club actually?
Lets see if Mumsnet can get a hat-trick - three Guardian Weekend columnists, all bashed by the same site....
I think that Giles would probably split from his wife in the end. There didn't seem to be enough holding them together. His 'drifting off' made me think he'd never really engage with any of his family, whatever happened. Too much time on the internet, that's the problem...
On the subject of all these columnists, I think that they're hired to have a 'schtick' and paid to give the audience the same sorta thing every week, which is always going to engender some criticism. They're supposed to be opinionated etc, that's why they're there. So if I didn't like someone's column, i'd blame the editor of the paper rather than the writer. The writer is just putting bread on the table whereas the editor has made a conscious decision to make that voice the voice of the paper...
He liked the easy life, whether it is committment to family, or work, and once in this rut then probably would have been hard to get out of, especially as his booses were commissioning light ha=earted pieces
I know what you mean Tilly but there wasn't really much EVIDENCE that his wife was that bothered by her husband having a complete breakdown. I spent most of the book thinking she was shagging the chap who was installing the kitchen.
Yes, people are more prone to make strongly-worded, judgemental responses in cyberpace than they would in RL, even about subjects that they probably don't otherwise really think about, and I think the expose of Grotius reflected that well - Grotius/Salome66 actually only thought Giles was mediocre, rather than the shockingly bad blot-on-all-literature he had talked about on-line. Grotius used the chatroom to make himself an interesting person.
Okay, it's time for our author to join us and spill the beans.
Tim, thank you for braving another internet chatroom - perhaps the best question to kick off with is from the beginning of this thread: which sites did you research? And were they more or less vitriolic than the GWHC?
MP - wasn't the evidence that Caroline was bothered there in the final showdown? ALthough in fairness, there wasn't much evidence of Caroline at all, really - she was a very shadowy, peripheral figure which I guess reflects the level of Giles' self-obsession.
MP we must have this discussion at a later date so as not to hijack this thread! I seriously wonder why some journalists are paid for the drivel they write. And this opinion is not exclusive to the Guardian..
I think Caroline, Giles' wife, was allowing him space/ indulging his midlife crisis and in her way, by having faith that he'd sort himself out in the end showed a great deal of love towards him (as a mother towards an errant child).
I think they'll go on to have a gloriously happy retirement, probably in an Umbrian farmhouse...
That Tim Dowling is SHITE. He's an exceedingly bad writer working for a certain newspaper who, while actually rather unremarkable, has become for some of us a portent symbol of everything that's wrong with everything.
I trolled a lot of boards, mostly newspapers and copied out any good abuse I found into a notebook. Then most places weren't quite as vitriolic as the GWHC, but I've seen worse since.
I also copied out a lot of posting formats: the Mail online, the Guardian talkboard, and random ones like Das Paintball Forum Archiv. I wanted a mix of the most common elements so that people who used talkboards would find it all familiar - without thinking it a direct parody of one site - but I also pared it down so it would be easier to read in book form. For a while I wanted to use underposts - those appended little inanities like "Insanity takes it's toll - please have exact change" - and I collected dozens, but they made reading it really hard going.
- Is Giles based on Jon Ronson? Are you well versed in our JonRonsongate scandal which followed our discussion about Mil Millington's hair?
Giles is not based on Jon Ronson. I remember JonRonsongate - I read about it on some other forum and dashed over to mumsnet to catch up. I remember thinking the whole thing was completely nonsensical, and then I realised I was reading the posts back to front. It certainly has some of the elements of GW's situation, but I'd finished the book long before that whole thing blew up.
My wife might have come on and slagged you off for picking on Jon Ronson, had she known. She loves him and wishes he hadn't given up his Saturday column. Tim
Are your books indeed semi autobiographical, and if so how do you feel about revealing those, often dark, feelings to all and sundry. Not to mention your close family and friends?
I meant that italics were easy, not revealing my dark feelings to all and sundry. This is confusing enough. I think semi-autobiographical is about right. There are a lots of bits of Giles I wouldn't own up to. Going to try to post this as me. It's meant to be working now.
I'm trying to do some work here, but having failed miserably to (month 1) remember to come along, and (month 2) buy the right book, I am determined this month to keep half an eye on the discussion.
Oh. I'm very confused already. I might have to go back to the work.
I really enjoyed the book. It's been a while since I laughed out loud at a book (tbh I don't read a lot of comic novels, as I don't often find them very funny), but I thought the radio interview featuring Giles as a gout 'expert' was great.
Tim - I'd like to know your advice to freelancers as to how best to avoid excessive navel-gazing and over-inflated ego.
Why did you pick that Devon town in particular? Did the name just appeal or have you such happy memories of Cheriton Fitzpaine that you had to incorporate it somehow into a book?
I've never been to Cheriton Fitzpaine. Is it nice? In August of 2005 I was in Cornwall with my family, and getting up at 6 every morning to do a couple of hours on the book. It's my father-in-law's cottage, and I was thumbing through his bookshelf in search of a name for a new character, and I found an old map. Another name survives from that week - a briefly mentioned author called Becket Hitch, which is from a book of knots.
hello I'm here - dd1 got glowing reports from her teachers so am in a waaaaaay better mood than I expected to be in.
Anyway, hello Tim (or should we be calling you Tilly for this evening?) Really enjoyed your book and saw a fair few parallels between what you wrote about and things I have seen on t'internet for myself.
My question is: Your "day job" is writing short stuff for papers - did you find it difficult to keep a story going for an entire books-worth?
I'm not sure I'm in a position to give advice on avoiding navel-gazing, but you can get away with it as long as you remember that no one cares what you think.
Sorry everyone about the confusion. I think it was nicely in keeping with the books themes though (identity crisis, internet false names, anxiety etc..)
Tim, do you find that men and women post differently? Do you find it easy to tell if someone's masquerading as a man/woman? Obviously Giles was taken in, but I wondered if that was because he was having marriage problems and quite fancied the idea of Salome being a woman,,,
I was worried that I wouldn't be able to sustain a book's worth of story (I'd written longer things, but never this long), but it was a relief to be able to stick with something, and not have to discount an idea because you already expended 600 words on it 2 months ago. And whenever the narraitve seems to be running out of steam, you just have the phone ring.
I'm interested in the American/Brit thing too. Many of the characters seemed so very British to me. I wonder if you find that easier to do as someone coming to it from a different background?
- Do you think that actively seeking out criticism by bloggers on the internet is healthy, or do you think it is "a peculiar form of self-harm"?
It's a good question. Nowadays when you write for websites the criticism that gathers underneath is part of the deal - you're meant to take it in, and even respond to it. But there's a lot of abuse out there, often directed at people who really haven't asked for the attention. I'm not sure it's actually avoidable, but I think silence is the best weapon. That way know no one even knows if you've read it or not.
- Do you think that the forum of the internet and the nature of the criticism it liberally dishes out is putting potential writers off column-type journalism?
It doesn't seem to be. I think the more navel-gazing and personal a column is, the more pointless it is to critique it. Either you like that sort of thing or you don't.
- Have you experienced cyber-bullying, and in what context?
No. I don't even get much abuse on the Guardian's website. I think it's because every time someone mentions my name, everyone else thinks, "who?"
- Do you ever unplug your router in desperation to get work done at home?
No. I do waste a tremendous amount of time online, but deadline panic is usually enough to focus my attention.
- Can you tell me a bit about your own history with the internet? When did you first come to chat-rooms or talkboards, and do you still frequent them? Have you ever been to a talkboard meetup?
I think the first time I googled myself there were 11 hits, and all of them were to do with a Father Tim Dowling in New Jersey. I went on a lot of talkboards for the book, and I still look at a few now and then, but I never post and I've never been to a meet-up, though I've been tempted to do the latter.
- Do you have a dog, as well as children? Isn't that just doubling your workload for no real return?
You're telling me. And as far as the dog goes I am sole carer, which is why she follows me everywhere and stares at me all day.
on the man/ woman theme - have you had markedly different reactions to the book from men and women? << sorry that's not great English but hope you know what I mean >>
MP take that BACK about the dogs. I would love a dog! According to DH I'm having a baby instead 
>>
@ primarche-devil
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