Fast Fiction: Instead Of Poppy Cromer
Oh dear, oh dear! The bearded journalist from a former broadsheet clutters his questions with “sort of’’ and “you know’’.
Richard Mallinson tells a tale of a crass substitute.
'Now, Mr Lucus,' said the bearded fellow from one of the former broadsheets, 'shall we begin? You don't mind the tape recorder, do you? I'll just switch -'
'It's Lucas,' I said, 'not Lucus.'
He stared at me as if I'd broken into Gaelic.
'Now, Mr Lucus,' he said, 'shall we begin? . . . Are you aware beforehand how your novels will end or do the endings, er, sort of take you by surprise?'
'Sort of? . . . God help us ... Now look, I don't even know how the bloody things will start, let alone end . . . Anyway, I was expecting Poppy Cromer.'
'Ah, well, I'm afraid that Poppy, er, bottled out... so they sent me instead.'
'Bottled out?'
'Oh, it's just, er, you know, a saying in today's idiom.'
'You know? Can't you utter a simple bloody sentence without saying you know? .. . Mind you, thousands do it.'
'Do it?' he asked. I didn't like the look in his eyes.
'Yes, surely you heard what I said.'
'What did you say?'
'I said thousands do it.'
'Yes, that's what I thought you said.'
'So?' I asked, suddenly losing confidence.
'So perhaps we should get on with the interview, if you don't mind . . . Now, Mr Lucus, the title of your latest novel, Dipping, reminds me of Henry Green's use of one-word titles, such as Doting. The main character seems to stem from Gatsby in F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The final chapter, in which the pert mistress indulges in a lengthy interior monologue, seems to be based on the Molly Bloom section of Joyce's Ulysses ... Oh, and I almost forgot - the first chapter, with the mentally retarded character watching the golfers, does bring to mind the opening pages of William Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury, don't you think? . . . Er, Mr Lucus? ... Mr Lucus? . .. Are you still listening?'
