Nicci French's Blog, page 2

Crying Woolf

Wonderful essay on Virginia Woolf by Benjamin Schwarz. He has a gift that isn't often noticed. He quotes well. Woolf could be an atrocious snob. But still, she was a snob who could say this, in a lecture to the Workers' Education Association in 1940:

'Let us bear in mind a piece of advice that an eminent Victorian who was also an eminent pedestrian once gave to walkers: “Whenever you see a board up with ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted,’ trespass at once.” Let us trespass at once. Literature is no one’s private ground; literature is common ground … It is thus that English literature will survive this war … if commoners and outsiders like ourselves make that country our own country, if we teach ourselves how to read and how to write, how to preserve and how to create.'

I wish I'd written that.

Alice's Adventures

Nice Radio Four documentary about Alice's Restaurant by one of my favourite people, Ian McMillan. Apart from a sweet meeting with Alice herself and a colleague of the police officer who arrested Arlo Guthrie for littering, the programme showed how this 18-minute anti-Vietnam War, talking blues song is now a children's favourite.

This came as no surprise to us. We used to play it to the children on long car journeys. I remember once a four-year-old piping up from the back seat: 'What's a father-raper?' We always tried to answer the childrens' questions honestly, but I think it was the hardest question I've ever been asked. First I had to explain what sex was, and then things got really sticky.

Twittiquette and Email

David Aaronovitch has just provided 'The 10 golden rules of Twitter'. The final one is the 'rule of rules':

'Never, ever tweet anything about anybody that you wouldn’t say to their face. There’s a REASON why you wouldn’t say it to their face. They might hit you, or sue you. So why would you want to tweet it?'

I think it's a problem with metaphor. When a new form of communication comes along, we see it in terms of an older form. Tweeting is part shouting at the TV, part nattering on the phone with a friend. But you can't get sued or arrested for shouting at the TV. (Well, not yet; let's wait and see on that one.)

This applies to email. The problem is in the 'mail' bit of the word. Some people see it as like writing a letter. I always try to think of it as a postcard. You know those offices where people pin up postcards people have sent from their holiday and any passer-by is allowed to read it. Emails are so easy to forward. I try not say anything in an email that would be a problem if it were printed out and stuck up on the wall.

(On the other hand, I'd rather people didn't print out my emails and stick them up on walls.)

 

 

 

 

Naming Names

An exceptionally interesting review in the current London Review of Books by Colin Burrow on the subject of personal names in English literature. Worth reading for just one sentence, which seems to be the response to a literary challenge: can you construct a normal English sentence using the word 'knightly' three times in a row? Yes:

'The fact that [Jane] Austen called the knightly Knightley 'Knightley' suggests the way the choice of a name can follow from the particular nature of a specific work...'

 

 

 

A Dutch Treat

Ten years ago, we were asked to write a short story for a literary festival in Holland. We'd once told ourselves that the one subject we would never tackle was the death of a child. Needless to say, from that moment we know we had to do it and so we wrote a story called 'Grief' (published in Dutch as Verlies). 

A couple of years ago, we were approached by a Dutch theatrical producer with the idea of turning it into a play. It sounded a crazy idea.

Well, Leon van der Sanden wrote and directed it, and yesterday we went to the premiere in the beautiful town of Haarlem. It's pretty strange to see your story dramatized, your characters played by actors - and all in Dutch. Grief is one of the most intensely emotional things we've written - and, even with our extremely rudimentary Dutch, we were overwhelmed by the power of the production. Many thanks to Isa Hoes, Irma Hartog and Ad Knippels for their amazingly committed performances. (You can see them here.)

We got a glimpse of a very different theatrical tradition. Firstly, these productions are more like a rock tour than the kind of theatrical season we're used to in England. Over the next few months, the production is heading out on an eighty(!)-date tour of Holland. If you're in Holland - wherever you are in Holland - you'll be able to see it.

Secondly, we learned that there's a tradition of adapting modern ficion that we really don't have here. It's common to adapt children's books for the London stage. There are occasional versions of classics (Nicholas Nickleby, A Handful of Dust, The Master and Margarita). Apart from the very particular case of The Woman in Black, I can't think of any other examples. Can anyone else?

 

 

 

TKO

Last night we went to see Punch Brothers up the road in Islington. They're ostensibly a Bluegrass band (mandolin, acoustic guitar, banjo, violin, upright bass) but it's Bluegrass informed by classical chamber music, rock, soul whatever. They're good on record, but live they are absolutely dazzling. They give you the intimacy, the interplay between the musicians, of a string quartet, and the energy of rock band. Seeing them live was really very special indeed.

I'll tell you now special they are. Last month, the band's lead singer and mandolinist, Chris Thiles, won a MacArthur 'Genius' Grant. (I couldn't say that when I saw The Damned back in '77.) But then, unlike many recipients of the award, Chris Thiles really is a genius. 

This gives a hint of their stage presence, playing Bluegrass Bach.

 

 

And Finally....

...one day before the US election, I've found a comentator who can express what I've never quite been able to put into words.

 

The Best Software Ever Created

I've discovered some software that has the potential to transform my life - entirely for the better. Unpolitic.me is an extension that removes politics from your Facebook and Twitter feeds and replaces them with fun things like sweet cats and babies laughing and people jumping off mountains. Isn't that just great? And can I have it implanted directly in my brain?

Because I've spent way too much of the last year checking up on the latest Ohio polls, debating (inside my own head) whether Florida has decisively switched into the Romney camp, whether Obama's decisive victory in the foreign policy debate will have any effect in the battleground states. 

I sometimes wonder what I would think if I heard of someone roughly like me sitting in somewhere like New Zealand, constantly checking the UK opinion polls for the swing seats, wondering whether Ed Miliband was a plausible leadership candidate and what the effect of the improved employment figures was. I know what I'd think: that he should get a life.

Does anyone read Dr Johnson's wonderful novel Rasselas any more? There's a character, an early meteorologist, who has been observing the weather for so long that he believes he controls it. I suppose I'm a bit like that, except that I'm not even observing my own weather, I'm observing American weather.

And speaking of weather, is Hurricane Sandy going to help Obama (by making him look presidential) or harm him (by depressing the Democratic turnout)? 

 

 

Tony Scott RIP

Tony Scott, as director, was responsible for one of the greatest movie sequences of the last quarter century. This one:

 

Of course, it owes a lot to the startling performances of Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walker, and even more to the writing of Quentin Tarantino. But Scott gave it a moody atmosphere and chose the music (even though he had used it before in another memorable scene; it starts at 1:48). Actually the True Romance sequence is one of those scenes that is so powerful that it actually overbalances the film. I struggle to remember anything else about the rest of the movie.

My other favourite Tony Scott scene also involves Quentin Tarantino, and isn't even from a Tony Scott film. It's Tarantino's legendary riff on the gay subtext of Top Gun:

 

I've always felt that I ought to like Tony Scott's movies more than I do. Sex, violence, hi-tech hardware and a slick style are fine things, but they aren't everything. Still, Enemy of the State is an enjoyable variation on the Three Days of the Condor theme and The Last Boy Scout is Bruce Willis's fourth best film (after Die Hard; Pulp Fiction - omigod, Tarantino again; and The Sixth Sense).

 

 

 

 

Fifteen Years On

We've written a reflection for the Independent on fifteen years as Nicci French.