Write Cricket Bats

An excerpt from Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Thing, Act Two, the middle of Scene Five:

HENRY: It's no good.

ANNIE: You mean it's not literary.

HENRY: It's not literary, and it's no good. He can't write.

ANNIE: I know it's raw, but he's got something to say.

HENRY: He's got something to say. It happens to be something extremely silly and bigoted. But leaving that aside, there is still the problem that he can't write. He can burn things down, but he can't write.

ANNIE: Give it back. I shouldn't have asked you.

HENRY: For God's sake, Annie, if it wasn't Brodie you'd never have got through it.

ANNIE: But it is Brodie. That's the point. Two and a half years ago he could hardly put six words together.

HENRY:He still can't.

ANNIE: You pig.

HENRY: I'm a pig, and he can't –

ANNIE: I'll smash you one. It's you who's bigoted. You're bigoted about what writing is supposed to be like. You judge everything as though everyone starts off from the same place, aiming at the same prize. English Lit. Shakespeare out in front by a mile, and the rest of the field strung out behind trying to close the gap. You all write for people who would like to write like you if only they could write. Well, screw you, and screw English Lit.

HENRY: Right.

ANNIE: Brodie isn't writing to compete like you. He's writing to be heard.

HENRY: Right.

ANNIE: And he's done it on his own.

HENRY: Yes. Yes. . . . I can see he's done a lot of reading.

ANNIE: You can't expect it to be English Lit.

HENRY: No.

ANNIE: He's a prisoner shouting over a wall.

HENRY: Quite. Yes, I see what you mean.

ANNIE: Oh shut up! I'd rather have your sarcasm.

HENRY: Why a play? Did you suggest it?

ANNIE: Not exactly.

HENRY: Why did you?

ANNIE: The committee, what's left of it, thought . . . I mean, people have got bored with Brodie. People get bored with anything after two or three years. The campaign needs . . .

HENRY: A shot in the arm?

ANNIE: No, it needs . . .

HENRY: A kick up the arse?

ANNE: (Flares) For Christ's sake, will you stop finishing my sentences for me!

HENRY: The campaign needs . . .

ANNIE: A writer is harder to ignore. I thought, TV plays get talked about, make some impact. Get his case reopened. Do you thing? I mean, Henry, what do you think?

HENRY: I think it makes a lot of sense.

ANNIE: No, what do you really think?

HENRY: Oh, really think. Well, I really think writing rotten plays is not in itself proof of rehabilitation. Still less of wrongful conviction. But even if it were, I think that anyone who thinks that they're bored with Brodie won't know what boredom is till they've sat through his apologia. Not that anyone will get the chance, because it's half as long as Das Kapital and only twice as funny. I also think you should know better.

ANNIE: You arrogant bastard.

HENRY: You swear too much.

…

HENRY: You're all bent.

ANNIE: You're jealous.

HENRY: Of Brodie?

ANNIE: You're jealous of the idea of the writer. You want to keep it sacred, special, not something anybody can do. Some of us have it, some of us don't. We write, you get written about. What gets you about Brodie is he doesn't know his place. You say he can't write like a head waiter saying you can't come in here without a tie. Because he can't put words together. What's so good about putting words together?

HENRY: It's traditionally considered advantageous for a writer.

ANNIE: He's not a writer. He's a convict. You're a writer. You write because you're a writer. Even when you write about something, you have to think up something to write about just so you can keep writing. More well chosen words nicely put together. So what? Why should that be it? Who says?

HENRY: Nobody says. It just works best.

ANNIE: Of course it works. You teach a lot of people what to expect from good writing, and you end up with a lot of people saying you write well. Then somebody who isn't in on the game comes along, like Brodie, who really has something to write about, something real, and you can't get through it. Well, he couldn't get through yours, so where are you? To you, he can't write. To him, write is all you can do.

HENRY: Jesus, Annie, you're beginning to appal me. There's something scary about stupidity made coherent. I can deal with idiots, and I can deal with sensible argument, but I don't know how to deal with you. Where's my cricket bat?

ANNIE: Your cricket bat?

HENRY: Yes. It's a new approach.

(Heads out into the hall)

ANNIE: Are you trying to be funny?

HENRY: No, I'm serious.

(He goes out while she watches in wary disbelief. He returns with an old cricket bat.)

ANNIE: You better not be.

HENRY: Right, you silly cow –

ANNIE: Don't you bloody dare –

HENRY: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly . . . (He clucks his tongue to make the noise.) What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might . . . travel . . . (He clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.) Now, what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting "Ouch!" with your hands stuck into your armpits. (Indicating the cricket bat) This isn't better because someone says it's better, or because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels off the field. It's better because it's better. You don't believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.

( . . . )

Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more, and Brodie knocks their corners off. I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

(Thanks, Paul)