Category Archives: America and the UK

July 19, 2012 · 9:47 am

HUFFINGTON POST, THE STATE OF OUR LIVES AND STORIES!

Well, there you are. The Huffington Post announces that ‘Working Culture’ is making Britis ‘Sick, stressed and depressed‘Click here. Meanwhile banking crisis follows banking crisis, as those with their snouts in the trough run off with the cash, but the system affects everyone. Bob Diamond resigns over the Libor fixing and the HSBC is involved in drugs money laundering. Not to mention the corporate scandal of G4S in the Olympics, and David Cameron promising to ‘go after them’. That is a National scandal too, at the moment World attention is turning to London.

Perhaps, as FBI system’s man Danian Fabian gets an email, in the thriller The Godhead Game, inviting him to ‘change his life forever‘, we should all follow suite. Especially connected to systems like the Internet, even blogging, that probably disconnect lives more and more. So a world game begins, involving the Mayan Calendar and the ‘End of the World‘, this year, 2012. If we are all in need of a bit of moral or spiritual renewal, maybe The Godhead Game is another clue. It is available at Amazon.com or Click here

Fire Bringer, US Edition, is also available for FREE download today Click here

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July 18, 2012 · 11:01 am

EDMUND SHAKESPEARE AND ALAN NELSON

The Edmund Shakespeare Blog

William Ray described Alan Nelson as a somewhat rude Shakespeare critic, or words to that effect. That impression also emerged in a spat that took place between him and Katherine Duncan Jones on the Net, or his Socrates site. I first contacted the Berkeley University theatre historian about a novel I had started on Edmund Shakespeare, when a teacher in a Clapham pub told me about the tomb stone in the centre of Southwark Cathedral. It must be said, a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century addition to the sculptured dead there. Professor Nelson was working on listing the names in the Southwark Cathedral Token Books with a colleague, Professor Ingram, and certainly deserves the credit for naming the place Edmund Shakespeare turns up in Southwark, The Vine, at a little lecture to his students at The Globe Theatre. I hope I would have eventually uncovered it alone, but along with the difficulty of deciphering names and Elizabethan writing, you have to let a period into your blood, before you wake up to who and what, and interesting connections, that can suddenly vanish again, like wood smoke.

I was rather less impressed with a desire to ‘protect moral copyright’ in that work, since Edmund’s presence in the Token Books was already up on the net, and there is no copyright, moral or otherwise, in fact. To be fair, Alan Nelson quickly announced that at a first talk to the friends of Southwark Cathedral and how the name just might have been a forgery of John Payne Collier’s. He does not think so, though I am less certain about the name attached to The Vine, than Edmund’s certain burial record in Southwark Cathedral in 1607. I was also less impressed when I invited him to lunch in London, to discuss the whole subject, even perhaps seeking support from Berkley University, but never even got an answer.

As James Shapiro, doing 1608 for Faber and Faber, was not exactly hugely supportive of an Edmund Shakespeare project, although he said it was important. Well, our American cousins are as capable of being as protective of ‘new’ information about Shakespeare as anyone, not least because of waspish voices everywhere, in an increasingly competitive publishing world, and that there is gold in them there Shakespeare hills, or academic kudos. Except here, because frustration means we are giving work done for free! I hope it is of interest and value.

I also hope the scholars can be a little more open to work from those who are not the supposed ‘authorities’. I think writers’ and players’ instincts are very real authorities, but you must also have respect for what is actually said in the records. Alan Nelson made that point about the record of Will Kemp’s death, and the relaying of mistakes into the ‘mainstream’, picked up as ‘truth’. Go back to the source then, but do not get too fustion either about the nature of historical imagination and insight needed, nor the certain reliability of records or indeed scholarship. Much American interest in Southwark now, with Sam Wanamaker’s Globe, does seem to come straight out of the American search for its own roots, from an age of New World Discoveries, but I for one am rather dubious about the supposed name of John Harvard highlighted by an arrow in the Southwark burial records. Perhaps I am going blind!

As I have said though, I think the direct link of The Vine, in a group of Southwark buildings in the Token Books called Hunt’s Rents, to John Le Hunte, and The Brotherhood of Our Lady of Assumption, is a new and extremely important window into the vitally under studied area. As far as I know, no one else has revealed that but a scholar will have to tell me if I am wrong. Following the records of St Margaret’s Church there, which became one of the Compter Prisons, it is wonderful to find records of ‘pleyers‘ in the church, a hundred and fifty years before the new permanent Theatres. It ties that playing tradition to everyday and church life, to the great festivals and to the mystery plays, that were effectively banned under the Reformation. So theatre became essentially secular and political, in an intense and dangerous London environment. But as Ackroyd says, a Roman gladiator’s trident has been found in Southwark, and there was a very long tradition of ‘entertainments’ there.

So the dirge being sung for Henry VIII, at his death, by priests in St Saviours, now the Cathedral, was interrupted by the rowdy sound of players in the Southwark streets. Ah, time and history stop for no man, as was written over London Bridge. That band of ‘low life’ scum that William Ray tries to refer to then, or a great tradition of player troupes in England, that Shakespeare joined and fed from, however much he and Hamlet may have redirected the vision of theatre, or not, as the case may be. But it is of course Hamlet, and Hamlet’s reaction to the players’, with their vital reports, their window into truth, the play being the thing to catch the conscience of the king, and everyone else, that is one of the most obvious signs of Will Shakespeare’s living engagement with the playhouses. As that ‘magestical roof, fretted with golden fire’, gives a new resonance to an actor’s consciousness, standing physically on stage, referring to the props and artifice of the wooden O. The echo chambers to his art and his metaphysics. But it works throughout the plays, as Shakespeare engages in a dialogue about his own art, and what is truth and what show. What ‘History’ is too.

If you try and read my handwriting, in my large notebook, out of six months work at the London Metropolitan Archive, you might think mine an example of sloppy, mispelt Elizabethan writing, before spelling codified, like so much else! I have not got that with me, but it will come out in time. The picture you can begin to build up of Southwark, what was there, who living there, and how that assists Shakespeare scholarship, is one that should be shared, and shared by people on each other’s ‘side’, not trying to be the harbingers of the only truth around. Shakespeare scholarship does stand on the cusp of recorded ‘history’, perhaps a new consciousness of English or British history, suddenly being dramatised so powerfully by Shakespeare, not least because it was the beginning of parish records themselves.

DCD

Phoenix Ark Press

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July 13, 2012 · 12:04 pm

PHOENIX ARK PRESS PROPHECY OBAMA VICTORY IN WORLD GODHEAD GAME

TWO WEEK COUNTDOWN TO LONDON OLYMPICS – FIVE MONTHS UNTIL END OF EVERYTHING!

Well, a new thriller here does, although since The Godhead Game by David Clement-Davies, set around the Mayan Calendar end this year, December 2012, is actually set in 2014, there are several predictions that may or may not materialise. We’ll see. The one we hope does not come true is the predicted end of everything, with the Mayan ‘6th Monument Stele.

But with the Olympic debacle already in London, David Beckham left out of the Olympic football squad, more huge banking scandals with Barclays and Mr Diamond, and the reports of how the Romney/Obama race is so dependent on vast sums of money, the themes in the thriller, moving between facts and fictions, realities and beliefs, are rather more serious.

A game is played, both imaginative and physical, a murderous Mayan game in the rainforests, with kidnapped world athlete. Perhaps then it should be THE READ for the London Olympics, or for those interested in how you might actually beat those world financial markets, that now seem to affect and control us all, and one day may really destroy the world. Or is it all just a Game of human illusions and money mysteries?

PA PRESS

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July 13, 2012 · 11:41 am

Protected: PETER NIMBLE AND HIS FANTASTIC EYES, TARA BREAK, MIKE JACOBSON AND THE ABRAMS AFFAIR

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July 9, 2012 · 10:45 am

TARA BREAK, MIKE JACOBSON, PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE AND EVIL

My books were both my pride and power in the world. They were my entire livelihood, my way of journeying, my self-respect, my way to free speech, independence and to truth. Five novels with a publisher, Abrams, two in print, three under contract, is a most monumental thing in any writing life and career. They already represented years of work and a career just starting to take off in America too. I am still trying to deal with the awful fallout, when everything that can be taken away, was.

How could Mike Jacobson, Abrams CEO, strip that away from any human being, from fans and from a highly lauded writer? They saw the battle, they saw the results, they saw a situation that amounted to sustained psychological cruelty, even torture. With the wound of love in the background too, out of a year’s emotional struggle already with a senior editor who behaved with astonishing irresponsibility, personally and professionally, betraying friendships, reversing words, acting with passive aggression and projecting all her political fears and cynicisms, it was hell on earth. It made me ill.

I was called mad, deluded and evil by an ex, so-called friend, and senior editor, and the labels were just held there by my own editor too. They created working conditions that were visibly harmful, in a conspiracy, threatened under contract and kept up the torture there even in the most fraught and astonishing circumstances later. It was arrogant, barbaric and inhuman. The arc of literature, but especially children’s and young adult literature, is protection of the child, even inside authors trying to navigate journeys, but the journey to resolution, meaning, value, some kind of goodness! What Tara Break, Sarah Van More and Abrams CEO have done was a human and professional evil and they should answer it. Why is HowaHarold Rove no longer Vice President? I see the blogs are being explored, so perhaps they are investigating some bogus attack, some proof of their ‘right’, but to put anyone through that, especially their contracted author, is unbelievable, for any flaws here. They do not know an author very well if they think they can get away with all that.

David Clement-Davies

PA Press

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July 4, 2012 · 9:20 am

ABRAMS MUST APOLOGISE AND GIVE REDRESS OR TAKE PHOENIX ARK TO COURT

“Writing is a struggle against silence” Carlos Fuentes

From rising interest in the Phoenix vs Abrams story, we believe a New York publisher are perfectly aware of renewed blogs at Phoenix Ark Press. A deal of time has elapsed, but on the so-called ‘principles’ of breach of privacy alone, Abrams should take us into court, or accept the charges, not that they will do anything about it. It was threatened by Oxford Law firm Manches, that a US company could close us down and slap a £30,000 legal bill on our heads, quite regardless of any other issue, or the truth. As the approach taken, supposedly softly softly, but again dishonest, might be worthy of reporting to the Law Society. Apparently people come to London to exploit privacy laws, or European Human Rights Acts, all the time, though in the mysterious ether, WordPress is hosted in the US. We can always copy the lot to another cyber site, though we don’t particularly want to be Julian Assange, and besides, there is no more room at the Ecuadorian Embassy. What fun it is being a creative author these days though, and falling in love, or building ‘friendships’ in New York! Don’t do it, go and see Toby Young’s How to Loose friends and alienate people instead.

Well, if they can close us, and it is impossible to tell a whole story without ‘breaching privacy’, they won’t get any money, because there is none, greatly thanks to them. Perhaps they could try to send an author to prison, for trying to do his work in safety, emotional as well as personal, or indeed to protect his livelihood, write valuable fantasy, or for trying to tell the ‘truth’, difficult as that has been. He has certainly never engaged in the kind of easy, horrid and brutal labels each one of them did at Abrams, beginning with a senior editor calling her ex and then a betrayed friend ‘mad’, ‘deluded’ and finally ‘evil’, in circumstances that came close to breakdown, and it just being left there for months on end, unanswerable, as he tried to work, while other book arguments were so distorted too. They saw very well what was happening but rather than helping, as promised, threatened under contract, to keep a secret from a CEO and made an emotional situation ten times worse. In the face of an open and generous apology too, considering what an ex had done over a year, into a wall of sinister silence, a powerful editor then brutally left an impossible professional position in place, we believe was discussed inside a department as strategy. Tara Break and Abrams do not know the meaning of love, friendship or peace, let alone a love of literature, or real human decency. They are a big American publisher, so perhaps in the land of the free or the brave, they know the meaning of the Constitution, free speech, or the right to protect your own livelihood, and work in safety, especially under two contracts. Perhaps they know the meaning of ‘mobbing’, the right of anyone ‘accused’ to a proper, but objective defence and hearing, they denied too in trying to stitch up an ‘enquiry’, or the harm of supposedly grown up editors being allowed to throw around words like evil, after their callous behaviour, even dark history, might be considered the source of real ‘evil’. Certainly what they then allowed to ensue was monumentally cruel.

But after a year trying to get it right and surreal circumstances, when they breached another agreement, refusing to heal anything, CEO Mike Jacobson thinks he can defame an author behind the scenes to The US Authors Guild, speaking scornfully of “our relationship with Mr Clement-Davies“, when out of a destruction of many relationships, initiated by a completely hypocritical senior editor, Tara Break, as she ‘grew up’ into mounting ruthlessness, an excellent publishing relationship, indeed a joy, was just suspended, under two contracts for three novels. His own editor could see they were ‘holding his life and work to ransom’ but then, with a career just starting to take off in the States, a massive body of work was destroyed. Removing any vital dialogue on books already there too, until he took back his eBook rights with the help of the Author’s Guild. As his own editor was allowed to threaten politically, months before a crisis, breach privacies to another publisher at Penguin US, and an ex so close to her betrayed vital trusts. As a department reversed promises, conspired, made virtually criminal threats, in the circumstances, insulted personally and professionally, and glossed it all with lies or half-truths, around the blatant internal political manoeuvring there. You should try fighting a US firm and your own publisher for a year on your own, with the memories of love and friendship in the background, or right in the foreground, or your ex suddenly doing a useless book with a so-called male ‘friend’, Hew, Screw and Glue, he had specifically warned her about inside a relationship, but whose ‘respect’ in the industry saw his work cancelled at Bloomsbury and complained about loudly. Who was the one person in the world that could do maximum damage, personal and professional, and spit on a hard-fought and once wonderful relationship with a New York publisher, not to mention two happy years of partnership. A beautiful form of respect or professional standards! It saw the removal too, because we cannot believe he happily stood down at Abrams, of publisher and Vice President Howard Reeves, and quite dreadful pain this side of the deep, dark pond. But unless that is just cynical proof of internal ruthlessness, that very loud evidence about so much that has happened being wrong has produced no equivalent redress for an author, kept under conditions of psychological harm, trying to work there, for months on end and snatching away everything he had built over ten years. Tara Break could have taken responsibility and stopped it in a stroke. Harold Rove and their own contracted author were made the fall guys for something that could have been stopped so easily, except for the personal ambitions there.

As those who remain sit behind desks, take large salaries and shares in author’s work, the human and writing story within that is terrible too, although extraordinary, much to the ever vanishing Tara Break’s shame, if she were capable, or of ever bullish Sarah Van More, new Vice President and doyenne of Grimm Sisters, or Wimpy Kid Diaries, but not of any real publishing and editorial standards, in defence of the author they ‘owned’, who could not walk away for threat of being sued. It’s really a rather grown up story, this one. But Abrams neither understand basic psychology, real writing and its vitally needed environment too, David had literally to plead for and was denied, nor the most fundamental legal principles, let alone wider kinds of humanity or love. CEO Mike Jacobson, since some buck should stop somewhere, should apologise on a firm’s behalf, compensate, attack legally for breach of privacy, which we’ll have him know would be a corrupt defence of the wrong principle, or just accept the truth. Once again we call for an independent publishing Ombudsman, not on the side of author or editor, but a way of objectively resolving dispute as it happens. An author under contract is not responsible for the kind of awful fear or politics inside New York firms that could lead to all that, nor the obsessive ‘privacy’ of an ex and senior editor, whose disrespect of his privacies and also working life and books became absolute. We think it the saddest story ever told, but then we would.

DCD

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July 3, 2012 · 9:10 am

BARCLAYS, BAD BANKERS AND THE MAYAN BIG BANG!

Why do we not listen to ‘our’ nobel prize winners, like the American economist Joseph Stiglitz, who warns about the danger of introducing austerity to weak economies, as happened in the US in 1929, until visionary American leaders introduced programmes of National Renewal? Perhaps with the Barclays debacle, suggesting nothing has really changed since 2008, there might be some moral renewal that could help, but are the likes of Bob Diamond, or big bad bankers, really ‘evil’ men? At one level we want bankers pilloried and prosecuted – in the Elizabethan city of London there was after all literally that ‘Stockes Market’, to shrive transgressors – at another level we want financial services, world importance, and New Labour’s giant breaking of the bank, opening up a culture to a casino mentality, now written across TV too, with its Million Pound Drops and Endemols, is the ‘culture’ of Super Capitalism. A kind of world gambling too, reflected in clever, devious or ultimately fraudulent banking packages. Stiglitz himself, talking about Greece and Europe, said that came from America, with the massive repackaging of sub-prime toxic debt, but also the super deregulation of Presidents like Reagan, then Bush, and the Chicago Economists like Friedman, that produced the kind of macho madness many have called ‘Shock Capitalism’. That led straight to Enron, which did not start out as, but certainly became pure fraud. But a fraud that was bought greedily into by a great many people, in the games of success and perception played on the markets all the time. The voices that came out of some of those American traders might well be called evil, or completely amoral, and that ‘culture’ may also have led straight to the Iraq war. But while the likes of Diamond has at least taken responsibility for something bigger than him, or was forced to, in a way ‘honourable’ politicians stopped doing years ago, it will happen again and again. The ‘Big Bang’, a rather pompous term compared with the origins of the Universe, was designed, in all its glorious energetic deregulation, to keep the City of London there as a high rolling world player. Perhaps the brutal truth is that none of us really care about the morality of the City, as long as we are not the worst losers. Maybe that is nonsense and a great many care about increasing kinds of responsibility or interconnection. David Cameron may be a Tory grandee, but he does not seem to agree with Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society“. Even the humblest students of nature or indeed physics must realise that everything has an eco-system.

Though neither Marxism nor Communism worked, with command economies and totalitarian models, actually deep human evils, do we not think the anti-capitalism protestors have a great deal to say though, if they could only articulate it, especially about the appalling and growing disparities? Yet the problem is what is a better kind of Capitalism, and does anyone really know who is in control of a system anymore? Are the systems we have created then, and which perhaps we are all becoming victims of, like some giant call-centre in the sky, not only unsustainable at many levels, especially environmentally, but part of the rot from high to low, that produces the London Riots too?

We don’t know the answers, but they are all themes inside the thriller The Godhead Game, that talks about the Mayan ‘end of the world’ this year, that we trust will not stop the Universe, even if you do want to get off, but might start some kind of waking up and involves not only a Game of spies, and a search for real crystal skulls, but posits how you might actually beat world markets themselves! It has an ultimate moral purpose, though the problem is that to do it, a rather cynical and brutal Game has to be played, that is much like the financial Games that are played non stop in the City and on Wall Street, and other world financial centres. Perhaps it is something about the competitions of life itself. An email invitation arrives in Washington, inviting an FBI systems man to change his life forever, as his footballing brother is simultaneously kidnapped. But the real story behind it is a dialogue about what we really believe in anymore, including the battles between science and faith, perception and reality, and if there are not other things to talk about in terms of world renewal, than the often corrupt games of money and numbers that spiral on and on. It might give a new meaning to the banking term “Futures”! Available at Amazon.com

PHOENIX ARK PRESS

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July 2, 2012 · 9:19 am

US PUBLISHING PRESIDENT MIKE JACOBSON ACTED CORRUPTLY

The simplest proof of corruption at Abrams is the fact that publisher Harold Rove is no longer Vice President, but David Clement-Davies’s career was held to ransom, he was ‘mobbed’, his work destroyed but no apology or compensation ever given, for what Harold Rove’s removal surely proves was so wrong and unnecessary. Unless CEO Mike Jacobson simply manipulated everything for his own ends and Harold should not have been removed. Harold was liked by all his authors, was exceptional in his liaison skills, unlike often arrogant and aggressive Sarah Van More, new Vice President, but he, like David, was made a scapegoat for Mike Jacobson’s dislike of him and Sarah Van More’s conflicts and vaulting ambition. Welcome to the world of Amulet children’s’ books, that produce huge bestsellers at Abrams like Hello Kitty and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

The long-term actions of CEO Mike Jacobson though were extraordinary. Over a situation that could have been resolved but was used to bully an author and he would not go on, could not, a half-hearted ‘enquiry’ was held, until Mike Jacobson tried to bully, his natural instinct, and a glaring stitch up and lock down was attempted, that within a week reversed words of promised support, right in the middle of a hopeless galley edit. That glaring lack of objectivity, even corruption, was resisted, repudiation of contract effectively admitted and work began again, in a situation where Sarah Van More should never have just removed support from a contracted author, on three books, because of her ‘power over her list’, bullied both personally and professionally herself, left a word like ‘evil’ at the centre of a creative firm, or masked a long-standing alliance with Tara Break, personal and professional, loudly sounded in the threat “we will protect our girl” months before. If she took revenge for Harold Rove’ slight amusement at the pressure she was under, David tried to move away, her sins became far greater, and perhaps a savage company culture in New York is to blame, fully justifying David’s fears, and experience of other publishing cyncisms, that makes the ideals fought for in fantasy literature, in any real writing, that authors not editors have to undertake, completely meaningless, despite the pretty covers. It had all started with the betrayals and personal and professional arrogance of Tara Break though, for any ensuing loss of control or despair on David’s part. A personal unilateralism, over-projected fear and blindness, that became an entire firm’s and in fact had to, once Susan Van Metre absolutely synthesised issues into “US” against “YOU”, that should have been kept separate, somehow, and Tara Break so arrogantly and destructively kept them there too, after an apology, in a situation that could be considered illegal and certainly psychologically damaging.

But CEO Mike Jacobson’s actions over a personal and professional nightmare, where David asked for the wisdom of Solomon and got Saddam Hussein, became dreadful, and in the end are also proved by a highly regarded and committed author having to force dialogue and any say in the work already at Abrams, via the US Authors Guild. It was appalling. As Abrams used an Oxford lawyer to intimidate, pretend it was just about Tara Break, which so long back it was not, and try and silence an author and publisher on far bigger issues, instructing an entire department not to read a blog. But David had left because of the breach of a hardly acceptable agreement and the unilateral arrogance of new Vice President Sarah Break, in refusing to respect purely the work she had held there so long, or to heal the impossible atmosphere they kept there, to mask their admitted legal mistakes, and in ransoming his life and work, as she said she could see at the time. So perhaps a CEO and VP should stand side by side in taking responsibility for how Abrams disrespected work, fundamental principles of contract law, basic justice, equity, truth, the essential humanity literature should be about, especially children’s’ literature, and destroyed the excellent spirit that was once there at Amulet under Harold Rove. Tara Break’s irresponsibility underwrote the lot, but they ignore that issue, since it undermines their defence of David’s ‘bad’, they would never just put away in some act of mutual forgiveness and working peace. But the only buck that ever stops at Abrams is with over kind publishers, or vulnerable authors trying to work into walls of threat and nonsense, proving the power of editors over writers and money over justice. Why did Sarah Van More leave Dutton and why did both she and Tara Break not stand up to defend the man who hired them both, and who cared deeply about Tara Break, let alone Susan Van Metre defend the proper, indeed essential working conditions and spirit with an author whose work she said so good? Tara Break’s own ever cowardly silence, selfishness and in-action throughout, indeed long before, made an entire firm dance around her. Perhaps they tried, we hope they did, but ambition, back stabbing, cynicism and the failure to respect the truth and value of the writing itself are written right across that story. David was the one who wrote to say he would not work there if anyone was harmed, and look what happened. Roll on the next pulp instalment of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but throw literature and ten years work in a dustbin!

Phoenix Ark Press

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July 1, 2012 · 3:56 pm

SHAKESPEARE’S BROTHER AND JAMES SHAPIRO

It was the US academic, and very nice guy, even if he would not help with an agent, who said that any work on Edmund Shakespeare was a ‘good idea’. So it was gloomy to take it to Faber and Faber and discover James Shapiro is doing another book on the year 1608 there, after his very valuable and enjoyable 1599. Sorry to correct editors though, but there is a great deal that was and is completely new in writing about Edmund Shakespeare and Southwark, in Shakespeare’s Brother.

Firstly is the precise discovery of where Edmund was living in Southwark and probably died in 1607, The Vine, who owned it and what it was. It was based on initial information in a lecture by Berkeley Professor Alan Nelson on the Token Books at Southwark Cathedral, but then original research into deeds and the ownership of The Vine by the Hunt family. That family also played a part with a fascinating local Catholic fraternity called The Brotherhood of Our Lady of Assumption, linked to the leatherworking Guild that played a large role at the all important church of St Mary Ovaries, later St Saviours, now Southwark Cathedral, where Edmund Shakespeare is buried.

There are jewels of information in those Token Books, that read like an Elizabethan Address Book, as there are in birth and death records, new to the Reformation, proving how long Philip Henslowe, who became a warden, lived in Southwark, precisely where, and the residence there of his son in law Edward Alleyn and his family. There are a great many things about other players living in Southwark at the time too. But following the trail of that Brotherhood of Our Lady there are also unknown facts, as far as we are aware, about ‘pleyers’ in the district and at the Church of St Margarets, that was thrown down during the Reformation, well over a hundred years before Shakespeare’s troupe, especially performing on St Margaret’s and St Lucy’s days. But in that Reformation earthquake also specific evidence of how The Bishops of Winchester were running and licencing brothels, and how so much of the history of Bankside was about the tavern and then coming brewing industry, and the battle for money and wealth in the great capital.

Much of the writing on Shakespeare nowadays comes from the US, perhaps because of the forming of a consciousness at a particular time, or a US need for roots, especially in Southwark, with the likes of John Harvard being born there (if he was). Also because of those religious echoes that still sound so loudly in America. But much as American academics can be very brilliant, and well funded, there seems also the danger of American literalism in work on Shakespeare that does miss some point about the mysterious well springs of language and inspiration itself. Read the story with us, as it happens, and perhaps James Shapiro can tell if it is of further importance or value.

Phoenix Ark Press

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June 30, 2012 · 2:48 pm

TARA BREAK, DAVID ROSEN AND THE BATTLE AGAINST ABRAMS

One of the things that became so extraordinary about Tara Break standing behind the cloak of an entire publishing firm, and standing over the destruction of an ex’s career too, one just taking off in America, was her own obsessive privacy and secrecy. It has an intimate cause, we believe, but was matched by an ability to seek permission for her actions among others, underlined by her warning of how ‘political’ work can be, but not face the music on things that really matter. Is that Abrams, New York, Tara Break or modern life? So she asked David once what she should do about an Abram’s colleague on the slide there, David Rosen, she said was drinking too much, as she would later say, like Sarah Van More, of the man who hired her and also loved her, Harold Rove . Tara Break had once been so seemingly sensitive to people, but over David Rosen, David C-D did a mime into a swimming pool once about being stabbed in the back, with teasing laughter at the time, but the point was perhaps being able to be a little tougher, yet to take responsibility for that yourself, and not ask everyone else. It became an issue about really standing beside the people you are with too and say you care about. Little did he suspect…

The crisis at Abrams though was always both personal and professional, but the so-called ‘protection’ of an employee at the expense of a contracted author, meant that vital aspect of the situation was blocked and denied and it totally distorted ensuing arguments about books too, and the right working relationship and conditions back. Instead a kind of ‘mobbing’ happened, that for a time was later supported by a CEO, as he started to see where the chips were falling. So a literally unanswerable ‘stalking’ charge was held in place, partly on grounds of privacy, and used to bully, in breach of fundamental principles of justice and ultimately the US Constitution. It was underlined by the arrogant words and actions of Sarah Van More, in so many ways, especially in accusing of betrayal and puting Satelite Tours into a catalogue that completely undermined a contracted author’s ability to promote and function in the US, as he had done so well, and support his future and past work properly and forcefully. Both valuable to a firm and essential to him, not to mention the deep emotions involved anyway. Also supporting Tara Break’s claim he alone was in the wrong.

The open threats to a contracted author, who had asked for help, apologised – though never put yourself even slightly in the wrong in New York business – and was seeking some power back in his work, including a novel that would have been held there four incredible years, were harmful and outrageous, David needed a way back to a far lighter storytelling and positivity too, like the wasted proposal he offered, but the fundamental issue was a senior editor refusing to allow any professional peace. Just go on hiding instead and stick your easy labels on others. Yet now the issue became a fight with his own editor too, that she saw wrongly as some attack on her “power over her list” and because he got so close to the heart of a firm over two years, David was talked to in a way they would never have dared get away with compared to any American author. Then there was the effective conspiracy that developed between people in a small department, to keep a secret from a CEO, that would have pushed a book into print that his own editor did not think good enough. Before that, they knew about it as it happened, and people David had worked with for years did nothing. That was surreal itself, as it was his own editor admitting she “saw what he meant” when he argued they were holding his entire life and work to ransom, but what later happened would make Kafka blush.

Tara Break ‘stabbed David in the back’ in several ways though. First over a ‘private’ medical issue, then over a relationship itself she spoke about to colleagues without asking him first. Then in her bizarre responses and failed priorities, when he was coming on tour to New York, and she was a major firm representative too, that made it so difficult to function. With words from her like ‘porn is evil’, from a woman who edits books on Rock n Roll, some real writing was on the emotional wall. That’s what makes the claim to privacies such a joke though, and it included Sarah Van More’s breach of private trust to an outside publisher at Penguin US. In Sarah Van More telling David once “loyalty is a tricky thing”, you might wonder where Sarah Van More’s loyalties lay, in terms not only of people, but basic editorial duties, now Tara Break was supporting her over her own personal crisis, but she could come out with a line like “we will protect our girl”, months before David’s issue reached a head, work dialogue already drying up, and she was hand in glove with Tara Break’s new man too. At the point where Susan Van Metre developed pneumonia, perhaps it was the atmoshpere inside New York firms that was very much to blame.

Tara Break knew something of previous publishing fights and difficulties though, why Abrams support had been so important and special to him, not to mention America, but seemingly nothing at all about the psychology of authors, the process of writing, the wider value of it, or someone she had been with two years, who had specific issues with the high handedness of some editors. One was the fact Macmillan had swapped editors on a third novel the same day he told them his father had died. But as ever intimate shared trusts were abused and then used in ‘evidence’ against the ‘bad guy’, behind the scenes. Try working in front of that. It seems Abrams editors are allowed absolute protection of their ‘private’ lives, but not expected to show one iota of professional care, intelligence or respect for working author’s private or professional lives. When they first met she came out with the line “don’t make me the last to know”, then did just that to David in every way imagineable. Just as they had shared ‘trusts’ about being hurt in other relationships, but she took a pick axe to real trusts, personal and professional, in her own ‘growing up’. If a relationship with a publisher itelf is like a kind of working marriage, especially in the language used in America, she should take a leaf out of the calendar book she did with the artist Donny Miller!

Then not only saying things that might have given anyone hope personally, yet going behind his back to friends in London, reversing even a friendship she asked for, admitting she had a fear of any kind of ’emotional confrontation’, and in the complete breach of professional trust too in allying with someone in London David specifically warned her about to do a ‘book’. That spat on a ten year fight to produce work of value and meaning, and to him a very ‘special relationship’ with an American firm. Her indigant claim “now you’re not respecting me” may have become true, but was laughable in terms of everything she had so disrespected in a life, friendships and work too. But then in the slam door absolutes there, she refused to even read Fell, or other obviously worthless work, compared to the ‘Hew, Screws and Glues’ she was producing at Abrams. She might by now have read “War and Peace”!

So the crisis happened, which was actually an argument both about love and friendship too, but also about work, surreal in the way it was pinned into one bad moment in time, or ‘truth’, voiding any honesty that ‘side’ about why it had happened or how, while David found it almost impossible to write. It was bloody obvious he went too far, but in comparison to Tara Breaks’s astonishing failure to ever take one single positive action, beyond the months of silent passive aggression of sitting at the heart of a firm, that David had also once so loved, and was doing so well at, culminating in a meeting where she told him “I give myself permission to change my mind”, before she took the whole thing to another guy in the background, he had to make all the gestures, when the real harm was all on the other side.

Espcially when it became “US” against “YOU”, so quickly, courtesy of Susan Van Metre, synthesising delicate personal issues and judgements and so-called working ‘rights’, as David was forced to work under contract, into a situation that was almost killing. His agent told him categorically “they will sue you” if he tried to walk away, days before she walked away on him, as he was about to take her professional advice, though he thought the principle of threatening a contracted author and blocking proper working conditions and dialogue wrong. That happened after whatever was said to her on the phone by his own editor Sarah Van More. Then a CEO’s right response was they had been in effective working repudition of a contract and potential defamation with regard to all previous working standards on his front. David has noticed how they talk merrily about ‘kicking ass’ at Abrams now, but you are not actually supposed to do that to your own authors, under contract and in the middle of three commissions, with two novels already at a firm.

He had apologised, and too generously, into a wall of complete silence from his publisher and editor too, in the next door office to Tara Break, but even then nothing could come back from the person who had declared “life is unfair”, to help just a work situation. But then the issues went on and at any moment Tara Break could have stood up at work and put them away, or even privately before a so-called ‘enquiry’, but again used the group, with ensuing damage everywhere. The cruelty of it became astonishing. Oh yes, but of course a contracted and supposedly valued and supported author at ‘Family Abrams’ was to blame for everything, trying to bring out his own truths or meanings in complex books, losing a persion, under conditions they could see were doing harm, or find some balance in his working life and respect again, as Sarah Van More replaced Harold Rove! In one way, in knowing the point of going wrong, he was to ‘blame’, he lost his better self, though he no longer thinks his better half, but in everything else that happened, welcome to Abrams, or Amulet, and the story of the scapegoat, although it seems Harold Rove became one too.

It was never just about Tara Break though. Why could Sarah Van More not even show the respect to an author, in looking at his rewrite of a second novel, or Abrams stick to its own forced agreements, in announcing to readers, in breach of that difficult agreement, a book was still cancelled? If it was all so obvious about ‘new people sending out emails by mistake’, or already failed trusts, how could they maintain such an appalling, military style insistence on contracts they themselves had already breached? Because basic publishing contracts are hardly worth the paper they are written on, as Ginger Clarke warned “you will destroy trust” if you even mention them. For reasons of deeply breached trusts on that side of the fence, it was already gone. There are two very simple questions though, if ‘they’ were right why is Harold Rove no longer Vice President, and why has David not been compensated for such unnecessary harm, to life and work, over so long, despite repeated attempts to make peace, and get on with work under the right conditions? The authors do not matter, unless right at the top, the publishers do.

DCD

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