WHAT'S ON YOUR DESK?

WESLEY STACE

I sit beneath a Hogarth print called "The Enraged Musician." My desk, by the way, is a huge, extraordinarily heavy, oak number that has moved around America with me. I have probably owned it longer than any other piece of furniture. It cost $30 at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco's moving sale, which took place one Saturday morning in the early 90s. It was a total madhouse, as people tried to snap up the bargains, and I had to run around like crazy to find the desk I wanted. I found it.

What is actually on the desk at this very moment is slightly atypical. For example, there is a picture of myself aged four. This is because Japanese Esquire magazine are currently taking pictures of me, typing - and who knows we may even be able to find this photo to illustrate this piece. In some of these pictures I am modeling a $45,000 Cartier wristwatch. Sadly, I don't think I get to keep it. The picture of me, aged four, is placed there for atmosphere. The photographer assures me that it will be out of focus.

Other than that, my desk has the normal computer and its various wires and attachments - keyboard, firewire hub, speakers, external hard drives, modems, router, etc. But more interestingly, I have a nice antique Watch Strap Display Case in the separate compartments of which I keep picks, foreign money, etc; an inbox on top of which currently sits a great poem called The Examiners by John Whitworth which I tore from the TLS - it came second in their annual competition; a stack of numbered DVDs downloaded from various places; two books which I have read but from which I have yet to transcribe various notes and scribbles - Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty and Girl, 20 by Kingsley Amis. There is a phone I wish wasn't there - I am only happy when my mother rings me from England or my wife calls from the third floor - and a copy of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (Third Edition) which I consult often during online games of Scrabble with Steve in Portland an Eddie in Los Angeles.

There is a rather nice, slightly ethnic, box that was a gift to me from a friend's father, after my friend died - he kept some rather prized items in there (including a 1984 signed letter from Arthur Scargill thanking him for the donation of One Hundred Pounds to the National Union of Mineworkers, and some pointed notes to himself: "do repay your mother's love" being one, and an Auden quotation another) and I have added a few of my own. And then there is also a faux-Victorian letter holder, where I keep two flasks for alcohol - I never use them: one is engraved "Wesley 22.10.88," the other "Wordstock Festival" in Portland - plenty of postcards for when I need them, a bunch of loose CDs that I don't know what else to do with, and some laminates from various gigs and events - Cheap Trick at The Crocodile in 1998, Bowie at Roseland 2002, The Band World Tour 95, Bumbershoot 2005 - things I enjoyed or want to remember.

I am finishing this off a little bit later - and now there is a bunch of milk on my desk, which my daughter (who was just sitting on my lap, trying to type along with me) has spilt from her Playtex Insulator.

Wesley was born in England in 1965, and now lives in Brooklyn. His first novel, Misfortune, was an international bestseller, nominated for The Guardian First Book Award, The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The James Tiptree, Jr. Award, listed as one of the books of the year in The Washington Post and The Boston Phoenix, and was one of Amazon's Top Ten Novels of the Year. 

His second novel, By George, will be published by Little, Brown in August 2007. 

He is also known as the musician John Wesley Harding.

WONDER BOYS
(2000)

Written by:
Steve Kloves

Starring:
Michael Douglas
Tobey Maguire 
Robert Downey Jr.

A Pittsburgh professor/writer struggles with writer's block
while dealing with the various problems of those around him. 

Chow - food; something that nourishes, sustains or supplies.
     “What do you have to do to get some chow around here?"

Ciao – (Italian) used conventionally as a word of greeting or parting: hello, goodbye, so long, see you later.
     “Ciao, man, I’ll see you at the game.”

A MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING

In 1986, a British novelist, of Japanese descent, grew frustrated at having grown up in an idealistic age. As a college student, he had been politically active and firmly committed to changing the world. Yet as an older man, he realized things were much more complicated than his college eyes could see. Yes, he was a highly educated man with two degrees, but he was also completely ignorant in critical areas of the world, such as economics, science, ecology, etc.

He felt he had abandoned all civic responsibility, leaving it to others to head the government and make the big decisions.

Kinda like a butler.

He spent two years thinking of this metaphor, and shaping it into a story. He spent another year writing of a British butler, Mr. Stevens, who prided himself on serving his employer, Lord Darlington, but who turned a blind eye to his employer’s chumminess with the Nazi party.

When The Remains of the Day hit the bookstores in 1989, it soon earned the Booker Prize, England’s highest literary honor.

And the frustration Kazuo Ishiguro felt had disappeared. He realized he served the world with what he did best: writing.
 

OUR CURRENT CONTEST

Great storytellers are read, not seen. They let their characters do the talking and the listening and the getting in and out of trouble. Still, no law says they can't make a cameo appearance. Are you ready for your close-up?

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