03 October, 2011

On Writing CONSUMPTION:A NOVEL with Dangerous Liaisons

For me, creative writing has always had a large quotient of collation. Taking snippets from here and there – films, books, newpapers, things heard on the street – and weaving them into a story I wanted to tell. In this process, there are certain movies that I’m drawn back to again and again. One of these is Dangerous Liaisons.

There’s great danger rewatching movies you enjoyed years earlier . It’s probably 20 years since I first watched Dangerous Liaisons. When it was released I saw a trailer on TV and my father let out a proto-Homer Simpson blurt: “Boring!” To me the film looked lush and thrilling, with Glenn Close fresh from her fabbo psycho-turn in Fatal Attraction. I was excited.

Fast-forward 20-odd years and unfortunately it looked tired, not lush and wasn’t really all that thrilling. Glenn Close really is the standout, divine as the lead. John Malkovich gets it mostly right as the scandalous lothario, Valmont. His turn as a sociopath, conniving rake is chilling and compelling though I don’t find it entirely convincing. Surprisingly, he was passed over for an Academy Award nomination while the tepid performance of Michelle Pfeiffer garnered a nomination. Pfeiffer’s role, however, was challenging to play fey against the exuberance of the two Machiavellian leads.

The younger supporting cast, Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman, lacked focus and shaping. They both seem to be waiting for the director to tell them what to do, almost floundering. Reeves is way out of his depth, though as the character is naïve and dim it almost works. Not suprisingly Stephen Frears didn’t pick up an Oscar nomination for his directing, and perhaps this is also where the film just doesn’t cut it. People can get snaky when you call a film ‘slow’. This film isn’t slow per se, it’s just dull. The slippery machinations of the Close and Malkovich dominate the first half, and then as we creep to the finish line through the foggy claustrophobia of the cinematography, we’re meant to feel sorry for these characters. And the heavy-handed mirror imagery (duplicity anyone?) Yeah, we get it. Hitchcock covered that and did it so much better.

The epistolary novel the film is based on is cited by some as a criticism of the Ancien Regime and the similar moral tone of the film fit the times it was released. Coming at the end of the greed-is-good ’80s, Dangerous Liaisons had more resonance. It appeared in cinemas a year after Oliver Stone’s Wall Street at around the time President Bush Sr had promised a “kinder, gentler America” in his Republican nomination acceptance speech. I guess, as they say, hindsight is 20/20. We all know the corporate sharks of the ’80s lived on and brought us the Financial Crises of the 2000s and the endless consumption of material possession as an enduring edifice with which we construct our public personas. This really was one of the motivations to write, CONSUMPTION. Perhaps the moral I get from the film now is not “the bad guys will cop it in the end”, but “history will teach us nothing.”

There’s some heavy-handed quasi-feminist lines in the film that sound like rococo bumper stickers about how hard it is to be a woman, even an aristocratic one. Close can deliver this dialogue with a controlled malevolence layered over a brittle shell. That line, and it’s delivery, of digging a fork into the back of her hand under the table to gain control is thourougly delicious. Close’s performance was the stand out for me after this viewing, the steely delight. I also realied how much I had distilled the Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil and her machinations into my own character, Martin Blake. How will he stand up in 20 years?

 

21 August, 2011

Returning to Hejira

On clearing out my parents’ house, I found a tatty box of records. Cast iron and frail Joni stared out at me from Hejira. I remembered walking into a friend’s kitchen and hearing, “Like Icarus ascending,” and being hit by a lightning bolt. God knows, I loved you thirty years ago but I’ve not listened to you in many years. The volume switch of the record player grazed rusty as I turned it up high. The needle graced the vinyl, bbb-ttoom.

‘Coyote’ picked me up and I was away again. Gone were the fine melodies of The Hissing of Summer Lawns, replaced with restless chugging, a prisoner of the freeway. Her voice played in and out of the bars, syncopating the bone and the skin and the eyes and the scrambled eggs and yet still related to the whole. Hard to imagine the song without Jaco’s bass erupting up into the melody.

‘Amelia’s’ opening shifting from 3/4 to 4/4 does it to me still. Potentially jarring and yet through her hands natural. Only to be followed by a key change, which keeps it all unsettled and at icy altitudes. The delicate vibraphone, up in the sonic clouds, the lead guitar soaring and falling on eddies. As she returned to melody, her voice had a maturity, playing like a silly sea-bird with the lead guitar. How perfect is her bluesy note behind “his sad request of me to kindly stay away”. And at the end, Joni pulls into the full and hollow Cactus Tree Motel and questions if she’s still up in the clouds of ‘Both Sides, Now’. I still hung to hear her guitar playing fall apart in the fade, a hall mark to the authenticity. This is no manicured recording, just an artist performing.

Old Furry swam around me, Neil Young’s meandering harmonica, the unresolved verse form, bravely cut free from a repeated tag line like ‘Coyote’ and ‘Amelia’. Whilst I liked the lyric of Strange Boy, musically it never did much for me, not really brought to maturity.
I held my breath. That first note of ‘Hejira’ and the travelling arpeggio stands out against the other songs, that turning and turning of the road, the sweeps of the overdubbed bass. Only Joni could play the same note on two different strings and make them sound different, hope and hopelessness. How would this song be without the bass lines? They set to travelling so perfectly, picked up years later by Vince Mendoza into the brass lines on the Travelogue version. The for-free clarinet. Her guitar overdub accentuates the song’s “truce against the moon” climax, so, so subtle and yet almost over powering.

‘Song for Sharon’ was always emotion and abstraction for me, brought to life by the Di-da-di-da backing vocals, almost as emblematic at the do-wap-wap-wap of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’. I wonder if Jaco ever played bass on this and wouldn’t behave himself so she didn’t use it? It would be hard to imagine him here.

‘Black Crow’ back to rhythm flapping again and not a percussive instrument in sight. And the pure blues of ‘Blue Motel Room’, leaving me west bound and rolling into the reflective précis, ‘Refuge of the Road’. Does any one else hear Jaco quote the opening melody of ‘Hejira’ in the closing bars?

What did I hear, 30 years on?

I realised these notes, struck out so long ago, form the soundtrack of life. In a car, ‘Hejira’s’ arpeggios tumble through my mind, in a plane ‘Amelia’ floats about the clouds. And how the lyrics, with all their resonating metaphors weaved through the work but out also into the greater body of her work, inspired me to write.

You’re still a masterpiece. A friend of spirit. Non, je ne regrette rien. I still love you.

After all these years, Hejira sucked me back that way.

10 July 2011
Since I published CONSUMPTION: A NOVEL, I’ve engaged with the internet in a new manner; looking for ways to market the novel. Amongst the mass of commercial websites, I’ve found people offering vast amounts of help for no financial return, just the joy of collating and disseminating information.

One such site was Bookwormink.co.uk. CONSUMPTION is about a young woman, Sara Sexton, looking for a less materialistic and simpler way to live. The BookwormInk website and reviews looked like something Sara would like. I approached the site asking for a review. They declined, saying they couldn’t review e-books at this stage. But they offered to “give me a shout” on their Facebook page. On my site, there was a surge of activity from the UK. It made me want to know more about this site and the people who organise it so I asked Laura Williams some questions. So as BookwormInk recommends, pour yourself a cuppa and enjoy a chat.

GS Johnston – Your site is different from other literary orientated websites in that it’s not really trying to sell a novel, just promoting good writing. What inspired you to start the site?

Laura – The internet has given people a wonderful medium to share their passions, and books just happen to be mine!
I’m a complete bibliophile and have been for as long as I can remember. Living, as we do, near many, many wonderful bookshops, means we have amassed several thousand books in our house; a fabulously eclectic mix spanning Wodehouse to Austen and Dostoevsky, passing through volumes on pottery, poetry and poultry along the way. I personally find reviews incredibly helpful and I adore reading about news in the publishing world and discovering new authors. Essentially BookWormInk is what I always wanted from a website!

GS Johnston – How long have you had the site up and running?

Laura – It’s only been running for just over a month, but I’m thrilled with the initial response. Before BookWormInk I ran a chick lit review blog called ‘GirlyScribbles’ with my sister, but I really wanted to branch out into other genres, especially children’s books. I chose a website rather than a blog to gain greater freedom in its layout, and I particularly wanted to dedicate part of it to my son Christopher’s writing.

GS Johnston – How much time do you devote to preparing articles and maintaining the site and what costs are involved?

Laura – I spend a huge amount of time reading the books to review: I read each one from cover to cover, no speeding through allowed! I’ve got quite a backlog at the moment as BookWormInk has proved to be so popular. It took me a while to design and set up the site as I’m not naturally very good at that sort of thing, but I’m so proud of myself for doing it; I know I’m biased, but I think it looks gorgeous! I aim to put on at least two book reviews and one book chat piece every week, and each takes me a good few hours to write and edit.
Other than time, the costs are relatively low: just buying the web domain and an image I used on the site. My husband designed the logo, but I haven’t received my bill from him yet!

GS Johnston – Where do your followers come from? Is there an evident common thread in their likes and dislikes. What ages? Generally how do they find the site?

Laura – A lot of my followers are women, probably between the ages of 25 and 60; I think most find me through Twitter and Facebook. There are all sorts of site stats which I can look up, but I don’t tend to; of course it’s nice to have lots of hits but, regardless of how many visits my site gets, if I’ve helped one new author find some new fans I’m happy! I’m trying to keep a wide range of book reviews on the site so it attracts a variety of followers.

GS Johnston – Where do you get ideas from?

Laura – Most of my ideas for the book chat pieces come from places I’ve been or things I’ve read in newspapers and magazines- I try to read as widely as possible: I think it’s very easy to fall into a niche which it’s then hard to climb out of. I want to keep the content of the site fresh, up to date and thought provoking.

GS Johnston – Do you have sponsors? If not, if you were offered would you take them on?

Laura – I don’t currently have any sponsors; I didn’t initially envisage the site as a commercial enterprise. But I wouldn’t rule anything out for the future.

GS Johnston – What, besides your own, is your favourite website and why?

Laura – I visit The Guardian and The Telegraph’s websites most days, and National Geographic have an amazing site which I can quite happily get lost in for a couple of hours. For book buying, it’s hard to beat either Amazon or the Book Depository.

GS Johnston – Computers have rather taken us over. How long are you away from your computer now? Do you panic if you can’t use it?

Laura – I do spend a fair amount of time with my computer on – so I can check things and get the odd bit of writing done during the day – but I don’t panic if I can’t use it. My 4 sons are home educated so we use the internet constantly to look up stuff, and I use social media, mainly Facebook, to keep in touch with family and friends.

GS Johnston – As you mentioned, your son Christopher has a page on your website. He clearly loves books and reading. How does he feel about e-readers and computers generally? Have you pointed him towards reading? Given half a chance, does he want to veer off towards computer games or TV? How has reading shaped him?

Laura – Books will always come first for Christopher! Last week he picked up the audio cds of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ from the library, we barely saw him for 3 days! He’s been read to every day of his life and loves nothing more than cuddling up with his Daddy or I for a story. And of course, now that he’s reading himself, he’s an even busier busy boy! Books are an intrinsic part of our family life and everything stops for 2 weeks of the year when the Hay Festival of Literature comes to town – last year he met Francesca Simon, the author of the Horrid Henry books, and he still hasn’t stopped talking about it! Christopher also loves the computer, he’s a real whizz on his favourite websites, and is very adept at adding books he fancies to my Amazon shopping basket.

GS Johnston – Do you have plans to expand the website?

Laura – My main aim is to provide a wide variety of completely honest book reviews so there really is something for everyone on the site. I’m considering having a section dedicated to advice for aspiring writers, which would contain links to useful articles as well as pieces written by established authors.

GS Johnston – What does reading mean to you?

Laura – I’ve always loved to read, and I can’t imagine my life without books. Luckily I made the sensible decision to marry someone who feels the same way that I do. Reading can be an escape, or a comfort, something to while away an idle moment or a meaningful pursuit for a day. It can be entertaining, educating, a window into a world outside of your perceptions, or just a source of frivolous good cheer: there’s nothing quite like discovering a really fantastic book.

GS Johnston – well, thanks, Laura, for the opportunity to chat and an insight into the machinations and inspirations of your site. It’s great to know that the internet does still inspire people to do these things.