The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything.
— Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth


When you’re writing alongside a full-time job, you have to give some things up. For years now, I’ve been practising this art which is more sacred than what I take on. It has caused me to give up my Leyton Orient season ticket (Ohh, how I wish I were watching some live football now), saying no to various nights out, saying no to various nights in, saying no to learning what the Top 40 is, or what that recent meme means (except #berniesmittens), a career alongside writing, a dog, a family, sanity, etc. But what I’ve said “no” most of all to over the years, the thing which is brought up to me in conversations time and time again from friends asking if I’ve seen the latest one, is TV shows (again, an exception will follow alongside It's A Sin which I recommend you go watch - after you finish reading this).


I haven’t seen The Wire, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, Band of Brothers, Sherlock, True Detective, Fargo, Twin Peaks, Narcos, Better Call Saul, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Oz, Stranger Things, The Crown, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Mrs Brown’s Boys, Countryfile, Homes Under The Hammer, Bargain Hunt, Loose Women, The Real Housewives of Slough…etc. So how I ended up watching The Queen’s Gambit - I don’t know. But, looking for something to teach recently, I’m glad I did. And I’m even happier that I read the book afterwards.


With so many books published today, it’s harder than ever to catch up (let alone keep up). What was being raved about yesterday, you only get the time to read tomorrow. If you read a lot, you’re not out of trouble on this one. Part of reading is opening yourself to many ideas and experiences and in that multitude rises the quest for more. To find a book that many people have read can be tricky unless you wish only to teach the classics. By being part of the cultural zeitgeist, The Queen’s Gambit is one of those books which steps in. The milestones the TV series hits, come directly from those milestones in the book.


Let’s look at just one example of what we’re looking for when seeing milestones within a book: inciting incident. If we take Joseph Campbell’s definition of an inciting incident as the “call to adventure”, there are many early scenes we could choose as the inciting incident. But I think with an inciting incident when it has a deeper meaning which we can go to, again and again, then the scene which best epitomises this is not simply when Beth beats Mr Shaibel (the caretaker who taught her chess), and nor is it when she beats him and Mr Ganz (who runs a chess club), but it is when she beats them both, at the same time, and with ease:


“About midway into the games she was staring out the window at a bush with pink blooms when she heard Mr. Ganz’s voice saying, “Beth, I've moved my bishop to bishop five” and she replied dreamily, “Knight to K-5.” The bush seemed to glow in the spring sunlight.” (pg. 21)


Beth wants more of that ease, which becomes as the book progresses more crucial than merely winning or losing. Being a good writer, Tevis brings back this sense of Beth’s ease, of her casualness when she reaches an equilibrium outside of drugs, outside of obsessive study, at the end of the second act when Beth beats the US Champion Benny:


“She looked to the other side of the room and out the window. It was a beautiful day, with fresh leaves on the trees and an impeccably blue sky. She felt herself expand, relax, open up. She was going to beat him. She was going to beat him soundly.” (pg. 156)


If you’re a writer, or you’re teaching writing, The Queen’s Gambit is not only a good read but also helps to highlight the milestones writers hit, the roads taken, when they are delivering a story: arousing readers not merely to read the surface but to dive deep down for jewels.

If you're interested in learning more, are working on a project you'd like to make better, please feel free to contact me:

https://www.writerchrissimpson.com/teaching.html

“…for all the good that is or ever was
beneath the moon could never offer rest
to even one of these exhausted spirits.”


— The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri


Like me, during these times of a lockdown, which is everything in name and nothing more, you may have to still take the tube. Taking the tube during the gaps of lockdowns, was a worrying enough experience as you stared at your fellow traveller who wasn’t wearing a mask, examining their bloodshot eyes wondering if they’ve just had a massive coughing fit or whether they’ve been up all night watching QAnon videos. Now, when I start my descent down the escalator I’m looking around for Virgil to walk with me, to guide me through these modern nine circles: past the ignorant, the callous, the ones who don’t care and the other six circles of marauding wheezy idiots who think they can out macho, outrun, outsmart a virus.


Finding no Virgil, I’ve had to get creative to get through my journeys with my blood pressure rising. Taking comfort in the expression, A rising death and R rate is the mother of invention, I decided to pretend to be a spy. Here are some pointers:


— When someone enters your tube carriage without a mask and sits opposite say, “The sparrow is most alive in the mornings,” before escaping from the closing tube doors.


— Carry an umbrella as a weapon. Preferably one four metres long which you can hold like a javelin to avoid people wheezing down your neck.


— Listen to Liszt or anything which can inspire a Cold War feeling.


— Don’t pick up the Metro to leave cryptic notes in. That tatty rag left on a seat didn’t need to be engaged with pre-Covid, nor should it be engaged with now or post-Covid. Leave it alone. Its writing will only raise your rage. Instead, look around for a correlation between readers of that newspaper and those who aren’t wearing a mask.


— Instead of using a poisoned tip on enemy agents, liberally throw around hand sanitiser.


— If you want to blend in, you won’t achieve it by reading a book. However, reading a book will lower your blood pressure. Here are some cheery titles to read in a speeding underground petri dish: Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Bell Jar, The Painted Bird.
​

— Remember, you’re an agent who can’t rely on their government*.




* This is just a good tip for life.

Oh, leave off, said I to myself. Do you really think I want your crowds? Your people? Why, even our Saviour said -to his own mother at that -“why should I care about you?” So why should I, of all people, care about all these noisy, beastly people?
— Moscow Circles, Benedict Erofeev


Last Sunday evening, I decided to go on an 800-calorie a day diet. Working as a caretaker across two schools, while on a zero-hour contract, this diet lasted until the salient leader I follow (Nicola Sturgeon) announced a lockdown. Six hours later, the same news (unsurprisingly) was delivered by the semi-sentient sausage meat wrapped in privilege, topped with an Andy Warhol wig. Since then, I’ve been eating 800-calories an hour.

While riding the tube, heading to work, wondering what would happen first, furloughed or heading to the ICU (so far - neither), I started to read Benedict Erofeev’s samizdat masterpiece, Moscow Circles. In the madness of the week, it seemed appropriate to read about an alcoholic, travelling seventy-eight miles from Moscow to a small town to see, what we believe, is his beloved and son. As we travel with our narrator, Benny, towns are jammed in the text, enjambments all over the work, we start to learn that all is not at it seems.

Suffering from delirium tremens brought on by what could be zapoi*, Benny gives us insights on Soviet culture, agriculture, architecture and politics, filtering all of Russia’s heroes through the prism of alcohol. Chekhov is pressed down to his dying moment, asking attendants to bring him champagne. Alexey Stakhanov, a hero of the socialist Soviet economic system for increasing worker productivity, becomes part of a maths riddle, given by an imagined Sphinx, asking how many times a year “…did he crap…”, bearing in mind “…he went on a bender 312 days every year” and on those days he doesn't crap. Lastly, Pushkin’s fate is pronounced as unknown, “…no one in Russia knows…” but everyone knows “…how to purify varnish”. In reality, Pushkin’s fate is known to Russians with as much clarity as we know Guy Fawkes’ fate.

Throughout these fantastic moments from an intelligent but unreliable narrator, there are glimpses of daily life that seep in giving reasons to his alcoholism and drunk journey. There is the sacking from his job as a foreman of a crew laying telephone cable. There is his love of his son, who he is separated from who he yearns to see. Then there is a scene where he describes a man cut in half by a train. With the upper-half still alive, children bring him a cigarette and laugh. The scene is written in a more structured way than what is before and after. To such changes, we have to speculate the reality, the soberness, of the section.

In a challenging world that is delivering punches steadily and from many angles, perhaps the denouement of Moscow Circles, offered twenty pages from the end, stays with us as it asserts the danger of looking for relief in addiction. Benny talks with an imaginary valet:

—You see, Peter, there’s one question which I simply cannot answer. Perhaps it’s because it’s such an important question.
— What is it?
— Have I got anything left to drink?


* Described by  Emmanuel Carrère in his excellent book, Limonov, “…going several days without sobering up, roaming from one place to another, getting on trains without knowing where they're headed, telling your most intimate secrets to people you meet by chance, forgetting everything you've said and done: a sort of voyage.”