I promised myself that I would think about revising my 2011 book, The Courageous State, this week, but instead of considering a plan yesterday, I found myself thinking about the plot. The first is, of course, connected with the works of non-fiction, and the second with fiction. I am not, however, sure that the distinction is as clear as that.
I ended up thinking about plots for three reasons.
Firstly, I have been reading a lot of poetry of late, and have always enjoyed it. As a result, I revisited Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook, partly because I like her poems and partly because it is a short, highly structured yet readable guide to both writing and reading poetry. I stress that I have never written any successful poetry, and doubt I ever will, given that I do not have the time available to dedicate to the task. But, as a reader of poetry, the book remains worthwhile. In the context of my thinking, the connection emerged. As a genre, poetry also seeks, in many cases, because generalisation about poetry is hard, to create succinct plot narratives. Thinking about that led me back to The Courageous State.
Secondly, I wondered, what narrative would I need to weave through a revised Courageous State if I were to revisit the book or write a successor to it? That, in turn, made me think about what the narratives within so much of political economy might be, and how they could be shortened to the point where meaning was not lost, substance was recognised, and the foundations for claims could be clearly established. This is something I expect to come back to later this week. I have been working on these.
Thirdly, I returned to something I have talked about before on this blog, which is a scene from Willie Russell's film Educating Rita, where a relatively young Julie Walters plays the eponymous hairdresser who decides to attend her local university to study English, where she forms an intense relationship with her professor, played by Michael Caine. Both delivered extraordinary performances. Despite that, I cannot find a clip of the particular exchange I want from the film that plays properly on YouTube, but I did find this alternative instead, which is also well delivered and in the Liverpudlian accent used in the film.
You could write long essays interpreting that one scene, but I pull out two particular points. One is that Rita has reached an understanding that there must be a better song to sing, which is what every creator of a political economy narrative also desires, and that she has no alternative but to pursue it, which is necessarily the case if a political economy narrative is to succeed.
So, in that case, it is to narrative, and to plot, that I have turned.
And, unlike poetry, this is something I do know a little about. I wrote fiction for more than a decade, and sold it rather successfully, making five-figure sums in some years. I am not going to share my pseudonym or provide links, not that there is anything to hide; perhaps unsurprisingly, this was financial fiction. But I did learn the importance of plotting whilst pursuing that sub-career of mine, and when considering how a politics of care might be delivered, which is a question about which I am asked very often at present, I think that is an important issue to which I need to pay attention.
There will be more on this subject soon.
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Richard, it is very inspiring that on top of everything else you have also wrote some fiction and had success with that. Who knew!
How did you manage your time between these 2 pursuits? I ask because there is a part of me that wants to lend my voice and advocate for a politics of care, and there is another part of me that would like to pursue writing fiction as a sub-career of my own.
Do what you want.
Few writers of fiction do it full time. I most certainly did not.
“Ooh, we love a mystery;
and AI says we have an 85%-90% chance of unfrocking you.
It turns out even pseudonyms leave an audit trail;
the plot thickens.”
Have fun….
I would rather read the new edition of the economic thriller!
🙂
Dan, if you think there is some prize for guessing correctly -I think you will be disappointed.
The Courageous State.
But also:
The cowardly state
The cautious state
The careless state
The callous state
The criminal state
The corrupt state
The “christian” state
The cavalier state
The creaking state
The collapsed state
The craven state
The complaining state
The corporate state
The centralised state
The conflict state
The consumer state
The conquered state
The conspiracy state
I’d need a dictionary to keep going further.
I like The Craven State as what we have
@RobertJ
This reminds me of a line from the song Elephant Talk from King Crimson’s album Discipline:
“Words with a D this time,”
Tempting…
Financial Fiction eh
Sounds fascinating
Richard Murphy International Man of Mystery
I obviously dont want to ‘out’ anyone so will not say any more that necessary but its a bit like when someone I knew sent me a picture of their nephew at their TA Unit – and the insignia in the background was The Artists Rifles (Territorial SAS)
Financial Fiction.
So in one persona Richard has spent the last 20 years trying to dispel it, and in another trying to sell it
I’m afraid her Liverpool accent is not credible. Julie Walters did a perfect one, because she worked with the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool in the 1960s and she was from Birmingham, another celebrated regional accent. But that doesn’t detract from the message. As a Scouser who has not lived in the city for 50 years, I identify with the crisis the character is having “down the pub”. I don’t think anyone is going to be interested in my reflections though!
I thank you for them.
I saw this promoted in my emails today
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GovernmentGrowth.html
There’s a connection between the tax share of the economy in 1913 and prosperity 113 years later.
But you do have to ask yourself about the abuse of language in the modern world. “whither austerity?” is the question that springs to mind.
The author, Robert Higgs, places himself on the far-libertarian end of the political spectrum, explicitly defining his philosophy as libertarian anarchism (often associated with anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism). He rejects the traditional left-right spectrum, viewing the state itself as an inherently destructive institution. And you think this useful?
O/T
I found a very interesting article by the old One Nation Tory Ian Gilmour
It contains this pearler of a quote:
“Nearly everything, then, that the monetarists say about their Conservative predecessors is wrong. History has been rewritten. But that makes all the more remarkable their achievement in converting to their views, and to their ‘facts’, so much of the Conservative Party and much of Fleet Street.
Mr Roger Opie has blamed the economics profession for allowing it to happen and has referred to ‘this treason of the academics.’”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n01/ian-gilmour/monetarism-and-history
Gilmour understood vastly more than most Tories, and many in Labour.
[…] I have already noted, I have been thinking about a question that people often ask me, which is how do we actually create […]
Three things came out in June that you might want to tie up with: the global justice report (Picketty) the UN poverty report and Mariana M’s Common Good.
The themes of sufficiency, public ownership, redoing built infrastructure and creating work for all, and curtailing material use and billionaire exploitation all seem in a similar direction of travel.
2026- the summer of care?
Where does a non-workable wealth tax fit into this?
That is my issue.