I recently watched the first season of The Hills, an MTV reality drama series about a girl called Lauren who used to be on another reality TV programme I’ve never watched, called Laguna Beach. For me, the show was interesting in two ways: firstly, it offers a voyeuristic look into American life, and secondly, more interestingly, it creates a strange interplay between the real and the fake. For example, the show is structured as a television drama serial, with each episode centring around a particular subject and leading to a climax within the episode, in the same way each season builds towards a climax, and all the ’stars’ of the show are presented as characters, with certain traits enhanced through the editing. It’s certainly not a documentary, the way it presents this skewed view of its subjects, and instead, with the title referring to Beverly Hills, the city neighbouring Hollywood, becomes a reality TV show in a town where everything is fake.

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Recently, since reading Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway, I’ve come to a new appreciation of the short story. I’ve always written short stories, but I’ve always wanted to be a novelist, to tell long, grand tales over hundreds of pages. Consequently, I’ve always read novels rather than short stories. And novels are worthwhile, fulfilling experiences. But they take a long time, and it just hit me that maybe, and I think this is true of myself, though I can’t speak for anyone else, I generally don’t enjoy novels while I’m reading them, only afterwards, when I look back on them. (more…)

A man driving a red sports-car overtakes a funeral procession. His wife, in the passenger seat, with the seat tipped back, is in labour.

“Sorry,” he mouths silently to the driver of the hearse as he narrowly avoids an oncoming lorry.

“When are we going to have sex?” the girl asked.

“When you say ‘I love you’ and I say ‘I love you’,” the boy replied.

“I love you,” the girl said.

The boy looked at her and he felt sad.