Pic
courtesy The American Library Association, Flickr
“Clay
lies still, but blood's a rover; / Breath's a ware that will not
keep. / Up, lad; when the journey's over / There'll be time enough
for sleep.”
-
A.E. Housman, UK scholar / poet
Blood's
a Rover is the third piece in James Ellroy's Underworld Trilogy, a
saga I spent the whole of 2011 reading. The books provide a riveting
fictionalised depiction of historical American events between 1958
and 1972. There are plenty of reviews out there on the net, so I
won't clog up cyberspace repeating other people, but I will say that
Rover is a good book. The hallucinogen sequences were very memorable,
set in Haiti where various characters learn to live and die. It's
well worth your time hammering through American Tabloid and The Cold
Six Thousand to get to this. The book took me AGES to read- partly
because of its size, and partly because of juggling it with another
book. In fact, I started it around the end of September and was
reading it sat outside my flat in the sun, topless, on the 1st
October, which was bizarre enough. I finished it on New Year's Eve,
just before I went out. I just spent the whole of 2011 on a James
Ellroy trilogy. What a journey.
I
also read Teach Yourself Psychology, a good introduction to the
science of understanding people. Dr Nicky Hayes takes us step by step
through how psychology affects us, taking in the workplace, sports,
education and how and why we think in certain ways. In fact, this is
a subject that could help anyone, no matter their occupation or
lifestyle. It's a good, plain-English insight into a fascinating field. I
was reading the book from the perspective of someone with memory
difficulties who has been in and out of psychology departments for
most of my life. The book frequently comments on the way people
remember-and forget- things, and used case studies to prove certain
scientific facts. One trait that many people possess is a tendency to
imagine certain things and mistake those thoughts for moments in
real life. For instance, one case study involved a group of
scientists showing some subjects a video of two cars colliding. “Half
were asked, 'How fast were the cars going when they hit one
another?', while the other half were asked 'How fast were the cars
going when they smashed into one another?'
“A
week later, they were asked whether there had been any broken glass
in the film. There hadn't been any, and those who had been asked
about the cars hitting one another remembered that. But those who had
been asked about the cars smashing into one another distinctly
remembered broken glass strewn around the road, and were surprised to
find that it wasn't there when they saw the film again.”
This
is something that happens to me a lot. For instance, I could be
“reminding” someone of something they said to me, only to find
out I've imagined it and mistaken what must have been a daydream for
something that really happened. I've also found people telling me
that I've said certain things, when I've known that what I actually
said was quite different.
One
thing the book taught me is that, even though I've got these
difficulties, I'm actually not that different to most people. I make
pretty much all of the same mistakes as everyone else, only on a much
more frequent basis.
The
book also taught me one other important lesson. Psychology affects
sports, and athletes need to be not only physically prepared to win,
but mentally prepared too. As well as sports, the science can affect
academics in a similar way. Many athletes- and students- will use a
method called visualisation, where “the person imagines him/herself
going through the whole activity successfully- winning the race, or
passing the exam, or whatever it is. By concentrating only on
positive thoughts, and on systematically imagining the successful
scene, the person leaves no mental room for the doubts and worries
which would add to their level of stress.” Dr Hayes later notes
that the hurdler David Hemery used this strategy the year he won an
Olympic gold medal.
Even
though I'm a long way from being the person who should be telling you
this, I'll tell you anyway: people discuss self belief to the extent
that it becomes a cliché, a mindless mantra: if you believe you can
do something, you can. I always thought it was psycho-babble- if I
believe I can knock a building down with my bare hands, I'm a
lunatic, not a confident and successful demolition expert.
But
then, I don't want to knock a building down. I want to be a
successful writer, and I want to overcome a social anxiety issue- a
fear of women, put simply. That's all it is. So, according to Dr
Hayes, if I see myself having no discomfort, if I imagine myself
talking to women- and more- with no fear at all, then there will be
no fear at all.
And
I am having that Goddamn Knopf contract.
