Read Online Research by Philip Kerr - Free Book Online Page B

with someone else.’
    ‘I’m sure you could find someone cheaper than me, John. Perhaps if you were to put a small ad in the back of
Books and Bookmen
. Or
The Literary Review
. Writer in a Hurry Seeks Amanuensis. Must be able to spell “amanuensis” and write bestselling novel to order. Thomas Pynchon need not apply.’
    ‘No, I didn’t mean that. What I mean is that if I can make this deal with one writer then why not with two? That way I could have two novels being written while I research another story. That’s what I’m good at.’
    I shrugged. ‘Why not? Like you said, it’s what Warhol does. I could be your Gerard Malanga.’
    ‘The question is, who? Who else is there who can write that’s as desperate as you, old sport?’
    ‘You mean at Masius?’
    ‘Why not? Everyone who’s any good wants out of St James’s Square one way or the other.’
    ‘What about Sally?’
    ‘One of the many pleasures I have enjoyed in leaving Masius is that I will never again have to see or hear Sally van Leeuwenhoek. Or try to spell her fucking name.’
    ‘Might be useful to have a woman on your team.’
    ‘No, I disagree. You see, I know my market, old sport, because I’ve researched it very carefully. And before you ask, yes, I paid for a proper research company to carry out some market research and make a report. I’m writing for men; men who want to read books about solidly heterosexual men who think the female eunuch is a fucking mare with a horn on its forehead; who think a problem shared is a fist-fight in a bar. Blokes who grew up thinking that Ian Fleming is a better writer than Christopher Isherwood. Anyway, I never met a woman yet who could write like a man. Did you read
The Sea, The Sea
by Iris Murdoch? The narrator of that novel is supposed to be a man, but he’s a man who’s interested in curtain fabrics and hence not a real man at all but some daft old bat’s idea of what a man sounds like. Hence he sounds like a complete fucking poof. No, this is a good idea we’ve had here today but no fish, old sport. Besides, I have an idea that we’ll have a lot more fun if we keep this a purely stag do.’
    ‘All right. How about Paul Cliveden?’
    John thought for a moment and then shook his head. ‘He’squeer and therefore similarly disqualified from writing about heterosexual men.’
    ‘Yes, I’d forgotten about that.’
    ‘You worry me, sometimes, old sport. How anyone could forget that Paul Cliveden is queer, I have no idea. He makes Quentin Crisp look like Burt Reynolds.’
    I thought for another moment. ‘How about Peter Staken-borg?’
    ‘He failed the copy test, didn’t he?’
    ‘Yes, although I think it’s to his credit that you thought he wasn’t suitable copywriter material. As I recall it was you who told him there was no shame in not being able to think at the elevated intellectual level required to write a Ribena commercial featuring a talking blackcurrant bubble.’
    ‘True.’
    ‘Besides, he got a degree in English at Oxford. Not only that but I happen to know he’s just started to write his second novel.’
    ‘The first one having been rejected all round. Yes, that’s right. It was about advertising, wasn’t it? I remember him boring me about it during the D and AD dinner last year. I don’t know why people should think a story about the sad hucksters who work in advertising should be interesting to anyone. The adman as a sort of modern class warrior was already dead and buried when Michael Winner made that crappy film about the business back in the Sixties. What was it called?’
    ‘
I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname
.’
    ‘So what’s the new one about?’
    ‘He said that it was a comic novel about what it was like growing up in Malawi. It sounds like another
Good Man in Africa
, I think.’
    ‘Jesus. I bet Jonathan Cape is just gagging for that. Still, Stakenborg has been absolutely everywhere. Mostly to the sort of fly-blown countries I wouldn’t ever want to