A friend asked me to give my opinion on whether he had the makings of a book or not. It’s a collection of his art criticism, plays, exhibitions over about 10 years.
”Hi Sam, I’m yet to update the art writing section with recent work. And no music writing is included. Do you think i can publish selections from my portfolio as a book?"
I've been too busy to read it all, so he finally just asked me to read the contents page.
"Hi Sam, how are you? When you find the time go over my table of contents, i want to know if i could publish selections from my journalism in a single book.
The entire thing is over 80k words so just a cursory look at the table and texts would do. Thank you"
Which I had the capacity to do. So I said...
"yes I think it's fine. But before you seriously think about pushing forward write an intro essay. If you can somehow connect everything into a coherent thesis etc then you will know if it is a book or not. “
But this morning I went back to him and said “oh yeah so I should say that everything I write is basically about the same thing.”
“On the surface it doesn't look like it, but generally I write about class and injustice.
Or class as injustice. Even the only film and theatre review I wrote was about that.”
About 19 years ago I used to work for a financial PR company. The best of the best. Brunswick. They're assassins. When it comes to disaster management I can't think of anyone better if you're a FTSE. Much of that is down to the founder Sir Alan Parker. For a while I was friends with his son Sam who was then a really beautiful boy. I wasn't exactly in the company as I worked in events, putting on AGMs for the same FTSE companies and others.
However If I had been a secretary or a receptionist (who were my friends) we probably wouldn't have been friends. Because Brunswick was a class system in a building. The execs were head hunted from Oxford and Cambridge. The partners had been around so long who knew what universities they went to but they were certainly credentialed. Both the men and the few women.
I'd go to the Christmas party and mix it up with the partners and execs but the next day they went back to studiously ignoring us. As if we had never met. Sam wasn't like that. Neither was his dad. Always sweet,, polite and lively. One day I'll write a script about the class system in professional settings. I can imagine barristers offices are much the same. Remember This Life? What a show! But Joe said it best when he claimed Anna only had sex with him because he was a bit of rough as a clerk where she was an up and coming barrister.
This Life
Series 1: 7. Brief Encounter: Contains some strong language and some sexual content.
Anna has a passionate one-night stand, but discovers that there's no such thing as casual sex.
I expect there was a lot of under cover class crossing sex in my old work place but I don't know for certain. I never partook!
On my writing about class and injustice another friend Matt Potter who has a few books published said the same thing to me as above.That all his books are about the same thing. I haven’t finished reading his books so couldn’t say what they were about, but was intrigued that he used a quote from the Master and Margarita in his first book.
I've only been in one book club, we started with The Bell Jar and finished with the Master and Margarita, which broke us. I've still never finished it but have brought it with me to Glasgow in the vein hope that I will finish it plus Matt's books and Orwell and Marina Lewycka's books and the Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. Instead I have found myself reading Steve Howell's book Collateral Damage. Loving it so far!
I said to my friend "I expect if you read your essays you'll find the same if you don't know already. That should help with the intro essay. And maybe think of some intro quotes you would like. that should help with knowing what book is about too.” I use a Gary Younge quote which I have been posting on social media for 9 years in my book The Wannabe.
And the Giles Dilnot quote was something he said personally to me after reading my intro chapter over 3 years ago.
“My advice to a budding war correspondent was “never take such a risk that you simply become your rivals next biggest story” - Giles Dilnot, former Daily Politics reporter and friend
Hopefully it helps him or you if you are thinking of writing/collating a non-fiction book. See below for information on one of the books I am currently working:
Radical Empathy: The columnist class, egos and accountability
'A fundamentally unserious trade full of aristocratic wastrels'
~ Anonymous freelancer, who does not wish to be creditied
A collection of polemical essays, critiquing the elite UK media class and columnism. Take a tour through the UK's media from someone at the edges.
In 'The columnist class, egos and accountability' Samantha discusses her experiences within the “columnist class” and the editors and gatekeepers standing in the way of the voices of black working class women being heard.
In 'Britain is Just as Culpable as Saudi Arabia for the War in Yemen',she reflects on Britain’s culpability for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the ongoing Yemen war. The United Nations reports that fatalities could reach 1.3 million by 2030.
In 'Britain’s homelessness crisis shames us all', Samantha reflects on the roots and lessons of a national scandal and what George Orwell's book Down and Out in Paris in London published in 1933 tells us about now.
Whilst knowing know it’s hard for some to care about prisoners, Samantha describes how and why we should all care about a prison system used to effectively torture individual prisoners whilst reflecting on the disruption she encountered from the Ministry of Justice when investigating Indeterminate Prison Sentences for Public Protection
In 'On the Nationality and Borders Bill and the UK Left' Samantha acknowledges that The Nationality and Borders Bill presents a grave danger to Britain’s ethnic minorities and asks why then why has there been so little opposition to it from the UK left?
In 'There's a War on Black People in Britain' Samantha juxtaposes the deportation of Black British people to Jamaica to the Stansted 15 case and Windrush scandal an posits that there is an escalating war on Black British people that the media must do more to challenge
Essays that are evergreen and contemporary.
Also based on conversations with columnists, including Owen Jones, Hugo Rifkind and Suzanne Moore. Plus editors such as Max Strasser at New York Times and Ramzy Alwakeel at Open Democracy, and freelancers ,Ben der Merwe and Lo Jones
A list of my writings that are actually about Class as Injustice, some which will feature in my book below.
Have a great day
Sam
P.s I know there is going to be some non-black women and /or middle class women who try to take my experiences and use them as their own. Trust me, I will hunt you down if you do and you will catch these hands.