'The Cut', selling rights, and a piece on Zimbabwe

Ian McKellen now looks like my last memories of my father. His acting tour de force is one reason to see Mark Ravenhill's The Cut. The audience was admirable too, packing the Donmar and eager for a good night out at the theatre, taking the slightest opportunity to laugh. I hoped for fun, or at least outrageousness, after Ravenhill's Mother Clap's Mollyhouse. 'Twas dreary, though. Picking around in Pinter's furrows like a seagull, Ravenhill came up with mouthfuls of language but no tension. Fine acting. Slack play reaching out for ideas beyond its capacity to embrace them dramatically.

I made an early run to the London Book Fair in the afternoon, attending a seminar on 'How to sell rights'. Good presentation, top people. I have some notion of selling other people's rights, and also reckon it's good to know what happens to one's own when the books are carried out into the world by others. Sara Fisher of the agency A.M.Heath fed the platitude 'agents care for the writer's whole career, not just one book' with such conviction I was ready to believe her.

A piece of my own came out in The Guardian yesterday, Writing In Zimbabwe. Odd to see how this online version has a different title, and different editorial spin to the original. I prefer the original. Glad to have the piece in, though, after all the interviews. As all those at the fair agreed, when talking about selling serial rights, newspapers are always liable to 'bounce' your work. Years ago The Guardian bought a piece of mine on a train trip through the Ghobi desert, which never saw the light of day. I'll be posting extended pieces from that Zimbabwe trip through these next weeks, as with the Virginia Phiri piece posted below.