I choose to behave like a vile bigot? Oh, Paula, that’s not fair. No one chooses how to behave—not you and not me. Free will is the greatest lie we’ve ever been sold as a species. If humans have free will, why would Bryn Gilligan spend all day and night on Twitter, engaging at length with creep after creep on the subject of whether or not he ought to end his life? Why would Reuben Tasker imagine there’s any point in his forbidding me to read any more of his books since I evidently don’t appreciate them? Why would Keiran Holland attack me for lobbying to strip Tasker of his Books Enhance Lives Award? Having done no such thing, I’m a little baffled. I thought I’d been arguing to give Bryn Gilligan back his Olympic medals, and merely using Reuben Tasker as a convenient analogy. I’m equally baffled as to why Holland should feel the need to explain to me in such detail the difference between Olympic sprinting and a horror novel. In case any of you have been waiting for clarification on this point, here’s a small extract from his lengthy treatise on the subject:

A novel is the product of a process; it is not the process itself. Reuben Tasker’s artistic creation is his novel, not his ability to write a novel, whereas Bryn Gilligan’s product is his ability to run fast and nothing more than that. In competitive sprinting, product—the sprint sprinted—and process are interchangeable. A race does not last through the decades or the centuries, and so is inseparable from the ability to run, which is why that ability mustn’t be chemically enhanced. In the case of a novel, we do not and should not care how it came into being, only about what it is.

I can think of other differences that Holland omits to mention. Sprinting requires a pair of sneakers and a can of Lucozade. Horror novels can manage without both. Sprinting involves moving fast. A book doesn’t necessarily have to move fast (read Reuben Tasker’s if you want proof). On the other hand, horror novels and Olympic sprinting have some features in common: both can make you sweaty, whether from fear or exertion. Both have a competitive aspect—there are sprinting prizes and book prizes. If illegal drugs are a bar to winning in one, why not in the other? After all, the cash prize goes to the law-breaking drug-taking writer, not to the book itself. Books do not have bank accounts. Keiran Holland has yet to offer a persuasive reason why Bryn Gilligan should be deprived of his medals while supernaturally stoned Reuben Tasker should get to hang on to his.

CHAPTER 6

Thursday, July 4, 2013

“NICKI CLEMENTS IS A liar,” Melissa Redgate told Gibbs. “She always has been.” Unlike me, you and all decent people was the clear implication.