Exit Ghost Day 1, Baba Yaga Starta

Philip Roth writes so clearly and, one of those words that I've never really understood in the context of writing, economically.  Economically rather than sparing which sounds a bit leaner and more desolate. Economically because he crams a lot into a few pages, just like, but not like, filling up a supermarket trolley to the brim for under £100, or driving so well that you make  a five hundred miles in a car on one tank of petrol. You can see that I take the unclearly understood metaphor fairly literally. His story of the Larry Hollis is compacted, without feeling crammed, into a few short pages, seamlessly woven into the main story. No, what am I saying, "seamlessly woven", what does that mean? I should say stitched in as neatly as a talented seamstress would sew something, something not really part of the original dress but something that accentuates and makes it look better than it did already. 

If this book were a TV makeover, Larry Hollis and his family would be the great accessory that makes the whole outfit work. It might be a cheap accessory, which wouldn't help the economic metaphor, or it might cost twice the price of the main item, but the main thing is that it works.


Baba Yaga first draft extract

Baba Yaga

You’ve sure heard told about the Yaga strip and the weirdnessess that came out of that old song and dance.  Classic frighten the children tales, but there’ substance behind all that menace. The NewGen that was meant o feed us all did, but there were some who took it down dark paths and then some. That’s always the way – it’s not the NewGen it’s the people who uses it, and they ain’t going to go away never. I don’t know where they come from –m well I do – you can see them brewing and in the making in the poor man cells and behind the rich man gates where love and affection are stifled and not valued for their own.  There’ s always new creation of the good and the bad just like the fizz of quantum particles in space o the animacula that they used o think sprang out of the mud. Good and bad and indifferent, though those that’s indifferent surely lean towards the badness unless they gets  a steer. And yes that’s what my story is about, because even in the bad parts of the strip there was goodness that came out of it, if only by the skin of her teeth.