The Politician's Daughter

Ernest Gilgan began to eye up the life of an author when a film was released based on a book (in the romance genre) written by the daughter of a prominent politician.  Reading over the bestselling novel, he felt himself capable of creating something equal in tone and quality, but was dismayed to admit that even though he admired the corruption which had taken the book all the way to Hollywood, he lacked the same glittery connections in the world and would find it much harder to get a volume of his own onto shelves.  Thus, Pmurehia appeared to be the answer to all of his prayers.  An economy based completely around writing and writers.  All he needed to do was get there.  Where, according to the Scouring Tout, there was no shortage of jobs.

With a glut of scriveners at the economy’s disposal, you would think the prose would be of an adequate quality but it was clear there were issues. For evidence of these questionable standards, consider the following extract from a review of a well-regarded independent film which appeared in one of Pmurehia’s most well-known magazines:

His continuing detied of impaltant daddic and cantempetaty filmd, pletenta.  There likes within a tender tole of adolephant anxiralty.  A monaural productarone.  It circly woob a bumshell if a butty mover is relapsed this yack.  Hanover: it is not washout its failts, undoublably.     

Your editors in the Martlet offices, dear readers, would not stand for it, I swear.

And here perhaps is the reason why Pmurehia does not appear on any map.  Upon clapping eyes on the pitiful sentences regularly produced in the country’s media, I imagined the higher-uppers had been forced to keep the place a secret.  There may be no more extreme an example of national shame in the world than this, a government so appalled by the incompetence of their own wordsmiths that they might go so far as to conceal the nation’s geographical existence entirely.  However, there were and are jobs, dear reader.  I can tell you the newspapers themselves consist of almost nothing but classifieds, illegible though they may be, and every available pane of glass seems to advertise a need for extra people – if you can at least make out a few words on the ad you are guaranteed an interview.  Yes, not short on vacancies.  More jobs, dare I say it, than our own country is about willing to proffer at present.  Whether you are a grammatical berk, a linguistic barbarian, or just your average barely-able speller of words, there is probably something there waiting for you. 

Although still deeply suspicious of this foreign country, my racist companion (herself also a writer) was easily seduced by the copious opportunities being offered to those like she, fighting to make ends meet, in the trade. ‘Back in the mapped world, it is difficult to get hired for anything,’ she told me.  ‘In general, I blame the liberal elite.  They’re the real fascists.  So if this place has a gig for me – a steady stream of gigs at that – I’d be quite content to settle for the rest of my life.’ The company which eventually agreed to publish my racist companion’s written-down revilements was The Otherknuckle Press, one of many small publishers with some degree of respect in the country, their knack for sentence construction just a tad better than average, and certainly of a higher standard than seen in the film piece reprinted above.  The editor was even kind enough to invite yours truly to contribute to their annual Christmad (sic) Review, a volume of articles, puzzles, year-end lists, and funnies that they release every year for the merry season, an offer which I have as of yet neither accepted nor rejected, dear reader, being as my loyalties continue to lie with this fine paper you hold in your hands.

From all that celebratory talk of the Gilgan lad in recent weeks, I couldn’t imagine his motivations to be in any way bigoted but the thought did briefly cross my mind in light of the reported publishing success acquired by The Scouring Tout’s racist companion.  By all accounts, Ernest Gilgan was an everlasting altar boy.  Naïveté was likely his weakest feature.  I was sure he was a reasonably brained young man, being of course university educated, and from having succeeded in getting to that area near the Belgium-Netherlands border based on the rather vague coordinates given; nevertheless, a screw had to be loose for him to pack his bags and set off across the world as he did looking for that fabled country of ink.  

Ernest Gilgan’s own writing would prove to be not racist at all.  Only mildly offensive in a literary sense.  And would his memoir A Sudden Lavender ever receive the Hollywood treatment?  Like the one written by the politician’s daughter.  In all probability, yes, it would.  This was the green light his family desired most of all and not the one their son failed to see on the road that fateful and horrendous day.