Hari Kunzru's piece for The Guardian made us laugh and then...run over to our own shelves, scramble to our messy desk(s) to check our own novel-notes. Samina Malik's recent conviction for possession of "records likely to be used for terrorism" has Kunzru wondering about his own fate, if his books and notes for his forthcoming novel My Revolution were discovered:
"When the story leaks, it will look bad. A loner, obsessed by political violence, who had filled dozens of notebooks with his semi-indecipherable scrawl. In one, a "list of possible targets" including army barracks, power stations and Conservative party offices. In another, the chilling phrase, "should I kill him? A bullet to the head ..." Perhaps at this point an astute detective will realise that the vast bulk of suspicious material relates to a period before 1975, and that what he has in front of him is a collection of research material for my last novel, set in the terrorist underground of the early 70s."
A quick scan of my own stuff shows that I've got a bent towards death, funerals in particular. What people wear at funerals and the kinds of food they serve pre and post. And real estate...I've got a lot of new housing development maps floating about my desk these days. Hardly something that would raise concern with the authorities.
What does your "stuff" say?
