On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I was sitting in a railway station coffee shop counting down the many minutes before I could board my train back to my family. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bloke read a book I worked on about four years ago. In fact, it was a book I spent four months or so, all but reconstructing from dust. It was a music biography of a well-known band. Let's call it, for legality's sake, ["Halo James: Angels of 90s Rock" by Hambum Parfitt].
I'd worked as a sub-editor and writer for many years. One of the first major jobs I had undertaken was to reshape article copy by many first-time writers for a music encyclopedia. It was clear that, although some of the material they had submitted required extensive reworking in order for a house style to be established for the book, there was still plenty of value in what they'd sent. They just needed direction and shortening.
[Hambum]'s first draft, though, which I encountered some years later, was a real eye-opener. The man had managed to assemble all the members of [Halo James] for their memories of those crazy times [in the 90s], to talk about their many hits [from "I've Cleaned the Kitchen" to all the others]. The results of the process made me weak with horror. [Hambum Parfitt] COULD NOT WRITE. The oaf could only dream of 'cliche-ridden and workmanlike prose'. His grasp of syntax was so appalling that I was simultaneously angry in two directions: at the writer, certainly, but also at the publishing house that had allowed such sloppy old stink to be presented as final work. Had they required three chapters and a synopsis? Had they read anything he'd written before? Maybe all his previous books had been saved by subs as well.
So, it was a terrible book, and while I improved it measurably with research, background knowledge and sentences rather than just hurling random jumbles of letters at a Word document, it was still no great shakes. The tepid reviews it received on fansite [www.couldhavetoldyouso.net] were fair ("They've just trawled the music press!"). The ones it got on amazon were over-generous. But to see a human being reading this Frankenstein's monster of a tome was startling all the same. I watched as he sat engrossedly turning the pages, pausing only to sip at his latte, consult his iPhone, stare into space, shut the book, glance at the departure boards, and consult his iPhone again. I reckon he probably reached about page 30, about the time [Halo James] first shook up rock's complacent and lazy scene with their heady mix of [raw power, confrontational energy, and powerplays on Gary's Bit in the Middle]. Clearly, all that had given this reader so much food for thought that he couldn't handle any more ideas and theories, was stuffed to the gills with breathtaking anecdotes. Enough! Else there'd be a Cresoteric explosion.
Disappointed by his lack of commitment, though? To be honest, I wanted to shake him by the hand, as vigorously as I'd wanted to shake [Hambum] by the windpipe. "I could have told you so", I'd have quipped. "You really should have spent your hard-earned on something else. Like that [And Why Not? track by track guide]." And then I thought of all the far superior books that authors really have toiled over, spent years of their lives researching and writing, and which I've stopped reading either due to mild disinterest, or sometimes due to forgetfulness. I can be as feckless as committed when it comes to reading.
Still, the experience was a sort of microscopic fame, seeing as I got a small print co-author credit, though not on the cover, and it made me wonder what it must be like for the best-selling authors who must see people on planes and tubes reading their work all the time. Did they get excited the first time that happened? Do they still do, from time to time?
If you see a copy of ["Angels of 90s Rock"], please don't buy. I'm sure there'll be an authorised [Halo James] biog one of these days. Also, I'm not on a royalty rate.
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