#6 Alex Martin: Crime fiction, decadence, Monty Python, Shakespeare, The Bible and creativity

From researching for Monty Python to writing crime fiction, Alex Martin’s life has been rich with creativity, adventure, and learning. His experiences frame our discussion which includes how to tackle Shakespeare, the importance of beauty and the soul diminishing impact of ugliness.Creative writing is a dwindling endeavour. The tik-tokification of entertainment has distracted the focus of many would-be readers. In response or in parallel, the publishing industry has become dominated by accountants obsessed over ROI, leading to consolidation and a formula and scale driven mindset to choosing who to promote and who to ignore. We understand the world through stories and fiction is our primary avenue to discovering truth. As per Taleb:“Fiction is a certain packaging of the truth, or higher truths. Indeed I find that there is more truth in Proust, albeit it is officially fictional, than in the babbling analyses of the New York Times that give us illusions of understanding what is going on. Newspapers have officially the right facts, but their interpretations are imaginary – and their choice of facts are arbitrary. They lie with right facts; a novelist says the truth with wrong facts.”Publishers no longer help dedicated writers, obscure or otherwise, find their audience. Instead their focus is on celebrity tourists to the craft from whom revenues are more predictable. As such it was comforting to know that there remains a tribe of creatives, dedicated to observing the world and helping us understand it through their efforts. I especially enjoyed Alex talking about his research into the history of bad behaviour via his Decadent series in the 1990s. Indeed the Decadent CookBook that he co-wrote under the pseudonym of Medlar Lucan and Durien Gray includes delights such as Testicles on Toast. A brief correction from the episode – I incorrectly stated that William Buckland, Dean of Westminster ate the heart of Robespierre. It was of course Louis XIV’s heart that he ingested!I highly recommend reading Code Name Xenophon, by Alex’s pseudonym Leo Kanaris available here and hope you enjoy the episode as much as we did recording it.