Book of Numbers
Book of Numbers is an exciting anthology of new writing, edited by myself, Geoff Mills and Roger Noble, and published by Imprimata press on June 29 2009, and launched on that day at Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road, London.
It features short stories, poems and creative non-fiction by fellow students and staff at the National Academy of Writing, including my own story, Hold on Tight and Count to Three! Why Book of Numbers? Well, numbers are all around us. Whether we like it or not we live by numbers. Most of us don’t like it. In the sixties TV series, The Prisoner, the hero declares “I am not a number, I am a free man!” though he himself remains anonymous except as a number. The theme and the imagery remain dear to us. We assume a tension between numbers and emotions, between the seemingly exact notion that anything can be described and manipulated if only the right measurements can be applied, and our experience, which is fluid, ever-changing and open to multiple perspectives. It is the sort of cry that has echoed down the years, ever since the industrial revolution introduced widespread mechanisation and transformed the way people worked and thought.
The pieces in Book of Numbers represent a free ranging and creative response to the experience of living with numbers. None quite accept the premise that numbers offer certainty and exactitude. The randomness of numbers and their simultaneous if paradoxical function as markers in our lives is reflected in the first piece in this collection, A Small Number of Things, which savagely undercuts the sense of security that we look for in quantities. It is a theme picked up elsewhere, in Quidquid, for example. Numbers offer oblique symbols representing family life and love in Jackie Gay’s beautiful piece of life-writing, By The Number. The strange primacy and purity of mathematical beauty is reflected in Nicola Monaghan’s story, Numeracy Hour. Numbers ironically tag a tradition of anarchic resistance in Rena Brannan’s 330ml Bottles. Numbers take on ontological significance in Tamsin Walker’s A Match Made in Hell; and receive a southern blues treatment in Caitlin Griffiths’ Three Songs. Count Me Out, by Edmund Bealby-Wright also plays with a musical theme in the unlikely setting of an American prison. Joshua and Caleb plays with a story from the original Book of Numbers, and Barrack’s Fold finds number at the heart of the story of the Derbyshire village of Eyam which resisted infestation of the plague in 1665. Surprisingly, few stories took up the theme of the current credit crisis, Robert Ronsson’s The Man Who Beat the Credit Crunch being a witty and original take on the consequences of chance and risk. The theme is explored in poetry by Anthony Mellors in his set of four sonnets to Gordon Brown. Rena Brannan’s diptych, Flight of Birds and Simplicity, plays with the idea of migration and our relationship with the so-called third world. Some writers chose to incorporate the theme as part of an exploration of character and the effects of history. Roger Noble explores a Victorian legacy in Slate, and my own contribution, Hold on Tight and Count to Three! evokes a seminal childhood memory. Fiona Joseph captures a portrait of insecurity and prejudice; while Jane Heather presents an original take on an Orwellian theme. Sophie Ward balances the books in The List, and Geoff Mills takes a comic look at obsession in The Rather Peculiar Case of Laura and Leopold von Winklebonk.
It features short stories, poems and creative non-fiction by fellow students and staff at the National Academy of Writing, including my own story, Hold on Tight and Count to Three! Why Book of Numbers? Well, numbers are all around us. Whether we like it or not we live by numbers. Most of us don’t like it. In the sixties TV series, The Prisoner, the hero declares “I am not a number, I am a free man!” though he himself remains anonymous except as a number. The theme and the imagery remain dear to us. We assume a tension between numbers and emotions, between the seemingly exact notion that anything can be described and manipulated if only the right measurements can be applied, and our experience, which is fluid, ever-changing and open to multiple perspectives. It is the sort of cry that has echoed down the years, ever since the industrial revolution introduced widespread mechanisation and transformed the way people worked and thought.
The pieces in Book of Numbers represent a free ranging and creative response to the experience of living with numbers. None quite accept the premise that numbers offer certainty and exactitude. The randomness of numbers and their simultaneous if paradoxical function as markers in our lives is reflected in the first piece in this collection, A Small Number of Things, which savagely undercuts the sense of security that we look for in quantities. It is a theme picked up elsewhere, in Quidquid, for example. Numbers offer oblique symbols representing family life and love in Jackie Gay’s beautiful piece of life-writing, By The Number. The strange primacy and purity of mathematical beauty is reflected in Nicola Monaghan’s story, Numeracy Hour. Numbers ironically tag a tradition of anarchic resistance in Rena Brannan’s 330ml Bottles. Numbers take on ontological significance in Tamsin Walker’s A Match Made in Hell; and receive a southern blues treatment in Caitlin Griffiths’ Three Songs. Count Me Out, by Edmund Bealby-Wright also plays with a musical theme in the unlikely setting of an American prison. Joshua and Caleb plays with a story from the original Book of Numbers, and Barrack’s Fold finds number at the heart of the story of the Derbyshire village of Eyam which resisted infestation of the plague in 1665. Surprisingly, few stories took up the theme of the current credit crisis, Robert Ronsson’s The Man Who Beat the Credit Crunch being a witty and original take on the consequences of chance and risk. The theme is explored in poetry by Anthony Mellors in his set of four sonnets to Gordon Brown. Rena Brannan’s diptych, Flight of Birds and Simplicity, plays with the idea of migration and our relationship with the so-called third world. Some writers chose to incorporate the theme as part of an exploration of character and the effects of history. Roger Noble explores a Victorian legacy in Slate, and my own contribution, Hold on Tight and Count to Three! evokes a seminal childhood memory. Fiona Joseph captures a portrait of insecurity and prejudice; while Jane Heather presents an original take on an Orwellian theme. Sophie Ward balances the books in The List, and Geoff Mills takes a comic look at obsession in The Rather Peculiar Case of Laura and Leopold von Winklebonk.