David Williams's Blog, page 6
February 10, 2012
Back to George's roots
Outside George Stephenson's birthplace, Wylam, NorthumberlandToday I went back to George Stephenson's birthplace in Wylam, Northumberland at the invitation of the News Post Leader for a photograph to illustrate their feature on
Mr Stephenson's Regret
. It was my first return since researching for the book, and I felt a pleasing sense of oneness with the place, even though we couldn't go inside today as the National Trust don't open the cottage until the supposedly warmer days of March.Don't imagine the Stephensons had all that cottage space behind me to live in. In fact the entire family, Old Bob and Mabel with what were eventually six children, lived in the one tiny room located where you can see the shutter just above my left shoulder. There was only one bed, with some of the children sleeping in a shakedown underneath. I can tell, you it's a very modest space indeed. This picture is taken from the likely position of the bed in the room.
Inside the Stephenson cottageThis eighteenth century cottage (George was born in 1781) has been beautifully preserved, and the fact there is no vehicular access for half a mile along the track where it is located means that you get a real sense of how it must have been over 200 years ago. The track follows the route of the wagon way that used to roll past the house: wagons drawn by horses in those days of course, not the working steam engines introduced around 1815 by George.
Artist's impressionGeorge Stephenson's birthplace is by no means the only destination for visitors on the trail of the Stephensons in the North East. In the period covered by much of my novel, George and Robert lived in West Moor, Killingworth, in what became known as Dial Cottage because of the sundial father and son built above the doorway, and is there yet.
Dial CottageRobert's mother Fanny died in that cottage, as did his baby sister Elizabeth. Robert was subsequently brought up there by his Aunt Nelly, and it was only much later that George married again, to his long-time sweetheart Betty Hindmarsh. Again, don't imagine this cottage was then as big as it is now. Though George eventually extended it to four rooms as his position with the collieries improved, in the early years the cottage comprised one room and a garret reached by a ladder. On the track near to the cottage George worked on his first locomotive Blucher while in the fields the boy Robert tried to emulate Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment and almost got himself struck down by lightning.Dial Cottage is now on a major road called the Great Lime Road, but was once part of the much more romantic-sounding Paradise Row. I think it's a shame that North Tyneside Council have not preserved and furnished the interior of this cottage as the National Trust have George's birthplace, especially as Dial Cottage has the greater claim to importance in the Stephenson history, but there is a plaque, the sundial, and you can peer through the windows into the bare interior - though the last time I did I noticed an empty bottle of cheap sherry, evidence I guess of recent habitation by a down-and-out.
To be fair to North Tyneside Council they are involved, along with Tyne & Wear Museums with the Stephenson Railway Museum in nearby North Shields, which is home to an early Stephenson locomotive Billy. Having just checked the website I note that today is the start of a Half Term Family Festival which is running for the next month, so now's the time to take the kids - there's a train ride to look forward to.
Travel from North Tyneside to nearby Newcastle and you will find plenty of interesting Stephenson stuff, mainly in the vicinity of Newcastle Central Station. In Forth Street behind the station is the building that housed Robert Stephenson and Company, where Locomotion No.1 and The Rocket were built. Until recently, at certain times you could go inside the building and see part of the works restored by the Robert Stephenson Trust, and an excellent display. Unfortunately, private developers have now kicked the Trust out of the building, despite efforts at a reprieve. Ironically, the developers are labelling their commercial opportunity 'The Stephenson Quarter'.
Not far from the front of the Central Station is the Newcastle Assembly Rooms, now an entertainment and function venue, which was the original home of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society where Robert studied in the library and George demonstrated his miner's safety lamp several months before Sir Humphry Davy came up with his own 'invention'. A few steps across the road is the existing Lit & Phil Building, opened in 1825 and still housing the largest independent library outside London. The adult Robert saved the Lit & Phil from debt, became its President, and left a legacy. Next door is the Mining Institute where I researched parts of the Stephenson story from original documents and records. Right outside the door is a statue of George himself, dressed somewhat incongruously in classical robes.
Stephenson monument in Westgate Road, NewcastleThere are so many other places you can visit. There's Newburn Church, where George wed first Fanny Henderson, and later Betty Hindmarsh. There's 5 Greenfield Place (now a private home), where Robert and his new wife (also called Fanny) set up home in Newcastle. Later you should visit Darlington, home of the first public railway, and specifically Darlington Railway Museum, which holds George's Locomotion No. 1, built for the opening of the Stockton and Darlington line. If you are travelling north, take in the fabulous Royal Border Bridge at Berwick, built by Robert to complete the railway from London to Scotland and thus fulfil his father's great dream. But on no account should you leave Newcastle without walking along the High Level Bridge at road level, or perhaps better still wandering down to the Quayside to appreciate this fine piece of Robert Stephenson industrial architecture in all its glory, and see it in context with the other great bridges that span the River Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead. Is there a finer sight in England? See the pictures below, and my Writer in the North masthead.
Newcastle High Level Bridge, with the Swing Bridge in the foreground
Tyne Bridge in foreground, Swing, High Level and railway bridges behind
Newcastle bridges at night
January 31, 2012
The book arrives
To be honest, it took me by surprise. The publisher had told me to expect a launch by the third weekend in February. It was only ten days or so since I signed off the final version of the artwork, and just a month since I checked the laid-out proofs. When the delivery van reversed into our drive in the middle of the day I thought, not expecting anything, that the beggar was using it to save himself a three-point turn. But a knock on the door, and soon I was cutting through the tape to reveal my author copies of the latest novel Mr Stephenson's Regret .
I know 'new baby' is a hackneyed expression, but it's only the birth of the breathing offspring (three for me) that tops the feeling of seeing and handling your new book for the first time. I guess that for mothers the delight may be proportionate to the pain of labour, and that holds good for authors too. This one took me nearly three years all told, research included, and it was relieving as it was gratifying to witness its fruition. And to touch it, smell it, riffle through the fresh new pages close and cool against my face.
Relieving too, having now read it cover to cover in its Sunday best, to find no missed typos or printer errors - the baby's fit and healthy. To the midwife publisher, well done.
From here, from now, the metaphor breaks down, or rather is transmuted. We send it out not as a baby (can have no expectation of charmed indulgence for the new-born) but as a fully-fledged, fully-developed product that must make its way in the world by its own lights. It's had all its raising, and learned to mind its ps and qs, right there in the womb. There's no more chance or hope of improvement now - it is what it is.
I hope you'll find it smart, companionable, engaging, and altogether worth knowing.
January 17, 2012
Final cover 'Mr Stephenson's Regret'
Here it is, folks: final version front and back. I particularly like the way that the artist has 'smoked' the driver behind in order to put greater emphasis on the foreground figures, and the subtle softening of Fanny's glove, which was causing a minor distraction problem. I like the finally selected typeface too. Many thanks to all who commented here and in various fora during this process - it has been very helpful. Special thanks to the artist Peter Fussey. Great job.
January 15, 2012
Almost done - front cover for 'Mr Stephenson's Regret'
Peter Fussey the artist has now just about completed the front cover for my book Mr Stephenson's Regret. Here for your interest is his nearly-done version, together with a close-up on Robert and Fanny. Let me know what you think.
January 12, 2012
The cover develops for 'Mr Stephenson's Regret'
Peter Fussey has made more progress on the front cover for my new novel, Mr Stephenson's Regret. This week so far he has sent me near-complete work on the engine:
And, even more excitingly, revised and developed close-ups of Robert and Fanny:
I'm pleased as punch, but let me know what you think.
And, even more excitingly, revised and developed close-ups of Robert and Fanny:
I'm pleased as punch, but let me know what you think.
January 10, 2012
Artist's roughs for 'Mr Stephenson's Regret'
The artist Peter Fussey is now working on the front cover of my new book Mr Stephenson's Regret (provisional publication date 25 February), so I thought it might interest readers to see how the cover is taking shape through the early roughs against the brief given, and to get a flavour of our conversations about the image.
As the novel is based on real historical figures and events, the cover challenge is a tricky one for Peter, and a challenge for me to provide a coherent brief. I am anxious to convey the historical context while retaining the look and feel of a novel. I want to include the essential element of the railway/the steam train while emphasising the personal, especially through my central character Robert Stephenson, upon whose life, relationships, and inner thoughts the story revolves. I want to give the casual browser in the bookshop an immediate sense that this is a story with a historical context, but is certainly not a history book.
After entertaining and dismissing several possible scenes from the novel as the basis for the cover, we settled on one which alludes both to a significant event in the book - the unveiling of the Rocket at the Rainhill Trials - and the relationship between Robert and the woman who became his wife, Frances (Fanny) Sanderson.
I have a scene in the novel where Robert takes his new wife for a ride on the footplate of the Rocket during a break in the Rainhill Trials. I dismissed the notion of the two of them actually riding the train (the wind in Fanny's hair) as over-romantic, settling instead for a simpler image of the two of them together in front of the train.
Our attention should be on the couple, who should be shown not in the giddiness of young love (which would strain against the sombre title of the book) but in a state of thoughtful stillness. In the immediate context of Rainhill, I suggested to Peter, Robert would be looking slightly anxious, Fanny holding in some excitement. Perhaps Fanny's head is a little cradled into Robert's shoulder - the merest trace of incipient sexuality behind her affection. They will not be looking 'at the camera' as it were, but somewhat abstractedly into the middle distance. Penny for their thoughts.
They are at this point in their early-to-mid twenties, and dressed in late Regency middle class clothes, quite smart though Robert, lately returned from three years in South America, might look a little more informal than some of his contemporaries in this situation - no top hat, for example, and not too much fuss around the collar. The couple would indeed look quite 'modern' for their time.
One of Peter's challenges is that most of the images that exist of Robert are when he is older. This is the youngest-looking we found:
Robert Stephenson
Of Fanny there are no images at all (how females are so often shunted to the side of history), just this brief contemporary description: not beautiful, but she had an elegant figure; a delicate and animated countenance, and a pair of singularly expressive dark eyes. At least there is plenty for the imagination to work on.
Peter worked first on a black-and-white sketch of the scene, his aim to get the composition right, begin to render a faithful impression of the Rocket, and make a start on the faces and forms of our two characters. Here is Peter's first rough:
There's a lot I like about the rough, particularly Fanny's face - she is how I imagine her to be. The man too looks like Robert, though I wonder if he's looking a little older than he should be at this stage, and a little too formal. His coat seems very wintry when placed against Fanny's lighter wear. (The Rainhill Trials took place in mid-September.) Also I'm not sure about him appearing to stare at us directly from the picture - Fanny's abstracted look by contrast is excellent. The hands obviously need work. I love the composition and the typeface. The Rocket looks great in the background, and I like Peter's use of the steam to bed in the author's name.
I've passed these comments on to the artist as he develops the cover further. Before working more on the characters Peter has spent some time on the train and in adding colour to the background. Last night he sent me this:
I feel this is really coming to life now, and I'm looking forward to seeing the cover progress to a final version. Your comments at this stage would of course be welcome.
As the novel is based on real historical figures and events, the cover challenge is a tricky one for Peter, and a challenge for me to provide a coherent brief. I am anxious to convey the historical context while retaining the look and feel of a novel. I want to include the essential element of the railway/the steam train while emphasising the personal, especially through my central character Robert Stephenson, upon whose life, relationships, and inner thoughts the story revolves. I want to give the casual browser in the bookshop an immediate sense that this is a story with a historical context, but is certainly not a history book.
After entertaining and dismissing several possible scenes from the novel as the basis for the cover, we settled on one which alludes both to a significant event in the book - the unveiling of the Rocket at the Rainhill Trials - and the relationship between Robert and the woman who became his wife, Frances (Fanny) Sanderson.
I have a scene in the novel where Robert takes his new wife for a ride on the footplate of the Rocket during a break in the Rainhill Trials. I dismissed the notion of the two of them actually riding the train (the wind in Fanny's hair) as over-romantic, settling instead for a simpler image of the two of them together in front of the train.
Our attention should be on the couple, who should be shown not in the giddiness of young love (which would strain against the sombre title of the book) but in a state of thoughtful stillness. In the immediate context of Rainhill, I suggested to Peter, Robert would be looking slightly anxious, Fanny holding in some excitement. Perhaps Fanny's head is a little cradled into Robert's shoulder - the merest trace of incipient sexuality behind her affection. They will not be looking 'at the camera' as it were, but somewhat abstractedly into the middle distance. Penny for their thoughts.
They are at this point in their early-to-mid twenties, and dressed in late Regency middle class clothes, quite smart though Robert, lately returned from three years in South America, might look a little more informal than some of his contemporaries in this situation - no top hat, for example, and not too much fuss around the collar. The couple would indeed look quite 'modern' for their time.
One of Peter's challenges is that most of the images that exist of Robert are when he is older. This is the youngest-looking we found:
Robert StephensonOf Fanny there are no images at all (how females are so often shunted to the side of history), just this brief contemporary description: not beautiful, but she had an elegant figure; a delicate and animated countenance, and a pair of singularly expressive dark eyes. At least there is plenty for the imagination to work on.
Peter worked first on a black-and-white sketch of the scene, his aim to get the composition right, begin to render a faithful impression of the Rocket, and make a start on the faces and forms of our two characters. Here is Peter's first rough:
There's a lot I like about the rough, particularly Fanny's face - she is how I imagine her to be. The man too looks like Robert, though I wonder if he's looking a little older than he should be at this stage, and a little too formal. His coat seems very wintry when placed against Fanny's lighter wear. (The Rainhill Trials took place in mid-September.) Also I'm not sure about him appearing to stare at us directly from the picture - Fanny's abstracted look by contrast is excellent. The hands obviously need work. I love the composition and the typeface. The Rocket looks great in the background, and I like Peter's use of the steam to bed in the author's name.
I've passed these comments on to the artist as he develops the cover further. Before working more on the characters Peter has spent some time on the train and in adding colour to the background. Last night he sent me this:
I feel this is really coming to life now, and I'm looking forward to seeing the cover progress to a final version. Your comments at this stage would of course be welcome.
December 31, 2011
Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down for BBC's 'Great Expectations'
Thumbs up
The opening scene, dripping and dank with the sight, sound and imagined smell of the marshes. Magwitch's appearance shocking but compelling. The boy Pip, emboldened through his fear.
Thumbs down
The lack of humour throughout - humour so evident in Dickens even in the most serious of his works. Here its absence was most felt in the portrayal of the Gargerys - no simple sentimentality or touching gaucheness from Joe; Mrs Joe's harshness not reflected in the mirror of absurdity, and therefore not tempered as it is by Dickens. Herbet Pocket, enthusiastically played here by Harry Lloyd, but not the hilariously lovable character of the book - the fight scene between Hebert and Pip, for example, was robbed of all its comic potential, dismissed in one blow.
Thumbs up
Miss Havisham's haunted appearance. The spectre of her beauty in Gillian Anderson's performance, more tortured as the years pass by.
Thumbs down
The grown-up Pip all too poster beautiful; Estella (forgive my saying) not nearly beautiful or alluring enough. And Pip as a pouting, supercilious adult descends so far that we can't recover enough sympathy for him to cheer his redemption, such as it is.
Thumbs up
David Suchet's Jaggers - his intelligence and smouldering scorn for Pip so well expressed in voice and eyes. His cutting precision - we can easily believe his success and reputation as a top London lawyer.
Thumbs down
Miss Havisham's death - while applauding the BBC effects department I can't comprehend or forgive the decision to make this a deliberate act of self-immolation. Dickens means the fire as fate's revenge on Miss Havisham for the two lives she has tried to ruin; it is hellish retribution not willed oblivion.
Overall score: 7/10
December 21, 2011
A Christmas quiz - books, films and music
For your festive fun and entertainment, try my Christmas quiz. Click on the Show/Hide button at the bottom to find the answers. Please comment to tell me how many you scored.
Round 1 Books
1. Which much-loved Christmas classic of 1978 is wordless?
2. Who wrote of a child's Christmas in Wales?
3. Which Shakespeare play has the lines: 'At Christmas I no more desire a rose/Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;/But like of each thing that in season grows.'?
4. A page from which Christmas book?
5. What are the opening five words of Clement Clarke Moore's poem, A Visit from Saint Nicholas?
6. What are the closing five words of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol spoken by Tiny Tim?
7. Apart from A Christmas Carol there are four other works by Dickens generally grouped together as 'the Christmas books'. Can you name one of these?
8. Which Agatha Christie novel has 'Christmas' in its title?
9. Who wrote about 'the journey of the Magi?'
10. In which Victorian classic does Tom Tulliver come home for Christmas?
Round 2 Films
1. Who played Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)?
2. In which 1994 film does Father Christmas fall to his death from a roof on Christmas Eve?
3. In Love Actually what is the title of the Christmas Number One hit recorded by Billy Mack (Bill Nighy)?
4. In which 1942 film does Bing Crosby sing White Christmas?
5. Name this 2003 film.
6. What name is given to the Pumpkin King in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas?
7. Which 'miracle' was originally seen in 1947 and has since reappeared differently - for example in 1959, 1973 and 1994?
8. What is the first name of the character who was 'home alone' at Christmas in 1990?
9. Name this 1946 Christmas classic.
10. Which 2003 film was publicised with the strap line 'He doesn't care if you're naughty or nice'?
Round 3 Music
1. Who went 'rockin' around the Christmas tree' in 1962?
2. A Facebook campaign helped prevent a fifth consecutive X Factor winner from topping the UK Charts for Christmas 2009 and helped which US performers to Number One instead?
3. In 1973 Elton John invited us to 'hop aboard the turntable' and... what?
4. According to the well-known carol, 'Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen.' What date is that, in Western tradition?
5. Who featured with the Pogues in the recently re-released Christmas favourite Fairytale of New York?
6. Which song featured in the film version of 'The Snowman'?
7. Which Christmas artefact did Lady Gaga sing about in 2008?
8. The title has been brushed out of this famous Christmas album cover. What is it?
9. In the song Twelve Days of Christmas how many birds are there in total?
10. Which 1980 song became a Christmas favourite even though it has nothing to do with the festive season except for the line 'Wish I was at home for Christmas'?
Show/Hide
Round 1 Answers
1.1. The Snowman by Raymond Briggs
1.2 Dylan Thomas
1.3 Love's Labours Lost
1.4 How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr Seuss
1.5 'Twas the night before Christmas'
1.6 'God bless us, every one.'
1.7 One from:
The Chimes
The Cricket on the Hearth
The Battle of Life
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
1.8 Hercule Poirot's Christmas (also known as Murder for Christmas)
1.9 T S Eliot
1.10 George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss
Round 2 Answers
2.1 Michael Caine
2.2 The Santa Clause
2.3 Love Is All Around (a variation of the hit by the Troggs)
2.4 Holiday Inn
2.5 Elf (starring Will Ferrell as Buddy Hobbs)
2.6 Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon)
2.7 Miracle on 34th Street
2.8 Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin)
2.9 It's a Wonderful Life (starrring James Stewart)
2.10 Bad Santa (starring Billy Bob Thornton)
Round 3 Answers
3.1 Brenda Lee
3.2 Rage Against the Machine (with Killing in the Name beating Joe McElderry's The Climb)
3.3 Step into Christmas
3.4 26 December
3.5 Kirsty MacColl
3.6 Walking in the Air
3.7 Christmas Tree
3.8 A Christmas Gift for You (produced by Phil Spector)
3.9 23 (7 swans, 6 geese, 4 colly birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves, 1 partridge)
3.10 Stop the Cavalry (by Jona Lewie)..Show/hide
Round 1 Books
1. Which much-loved Christmas classic of 1978 is wordless?
2. Who wrote of a child's Christmas in Wales?
3. Which Shakespeare play has the lines: 'At Christmas I no more desire a rose/Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;/But like of each thing that in season grows.'?
4. A page from which Christmas book?
5. What are the opening five words of Clement Clarke Moore's poem, A Visit from Saint Nicholas?
6. What are the closing five words of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol spoken by Tiny Tim?
7. Apart from A Christmas Carol there are four other works by Dickens generally grouped together as 'the Christmas books'. Can you name one of these?
8. Which Agatha Christie novel has 'Christmas' in its title?
9. Who wrote about 'the journey of the Magi?'
10. In which Victorian classic does Tom Tulliver come home for Christmas?
Round 2 Films
1. Who played Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)?
2. In which 1994 film does Father Christmas fall to his death from a roof on Christmas Eve?
3. In Love Actually what is the title of the Christmas Number One hit recorded by Billy Mack (Bill Nighy)?
4. In which 1942 film does Bing Crosby sing White Christmas?
5. Name this 2003 film.
6. What name is given to the Pumpkin King in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas?
7. Which 'miracle' was originally seen in 1947 and has since reappeared differently - for example in 1959, 1973 and 1994?
8. What is the first name of the character who was 'home alone' at Christmas in 1990?
9. Name this 1946 Christmas classic.
10. Which 2003 film was publicised with the strap line 'He doesn't care if you're naughty or nice'?
Round 3 Music
1. Who went 'rockin' around the Christmas tree' in 1962?
2. A Facebook campaign helped prevent a fifth consecutive X Factor winner from topping the UK Charts for Christmas 2009 and helped which US performers to Number One instead?
3. In 1973 Elton John invited us to 'hop aboard the turntable' and... what?
4. According to the well-known carol, 'Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen.' What date is that, in Western tradition?
5. Who featured with the Pogues in the recently re-released Christmas favourite Fairytale of New York?
6. Which song featured in the film version of 'The Snowman'?
7. Which Christmas artefact did Lady Gaga sing about in 2008?
8. The title has been brushed out of this famous Christmas album cover. What is it?
9. In the song Twelve Days of Christmas how many birds are there in total?
10. Which 1980 song became a Christmas favourite even though it has nothing to do with the festive season except for the line 'Wish I was at home for Christmas'?
Show/Hide
Round 1 Answers
1.1. The Snowman by Raymond Briggs
1.2 Dylan Thomas
1.3 Love's Labours Lost
1.4 How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr Seuss
1.5 'Twas the night before Christmas'
1.6 'God bless us, every one.'
1.7 One from:
The Chimes
The Cricket on the Hearth
The Battle of Life
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
1.8 Hercule Poirot's Christmas (also known as Murder for Christmas)
1.9 T S Eliot
1.10 George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss
Round 2 Answers
2.1 Michael Caine
2.2 The Santa Clause
2.3 Love Is All Around (a variation of the hit by the Troggs)
2.4 Holiday Inn
2.5 Elf (starring Will Ferrell as Buddy Hobbs)
2.6 Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon)
2.7 Miracle on 34th Street
2.8 Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin)
2.9 It's a Wonderful Life (starrring James Stewart)
2.10 Bad Santa (starring Billy Bob Thornton)
Round 3 Answers
3.1 Brenda Lee
3.2 Rage Against the Machine (with Killing in the Name beating Joe McElderry's The Climb)
3.3 Step into Christmas
3.4 26 December
3.5 Kirsty MacColl
3.6 Walking in the Air
3.7 Christmas Tree
3.8 A Christmas Gift for You (produced by Phil Spector)
3.9 23 (7 swans, 6 geese, 4 colly birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves, 1 partridge)
3.10 Stop the Cavalry (by Jona Lewie)..Show/hide
December 12, 2011
Writing is talking to an ear in the dark
Shortly before our music and reading collaboration Born at the right time, the singer Billy Mitchell called me at home. 'I've just finished reading your stories, David,' he said. 'You've told my life in there.' I still cherish this as one of the greatest compliments I've ever been given as a writer.
Billy was talking about the stories in my collection We Never Had It So Good . Like me, he grew up in a North East mining community and at one level must have seen parallels in the locations and characters I used for the book. His comment seems to go deeper though, and certainly much of the writing is interior, based on the perceptions and sensibilities of a young boy such as he and I were in the mid-to-late 1950s.
Was Billy the reader I had in mind when I wrote the stories? Or was I, in a sense, talking to myself, or rather to the young boy I may have been then? The answer lies somewhere between the two. Did you ever as a child camp overnight (if only in the back garden) with a friend, or have what is these days called a sleep-over, perhaps one of you lying in a sleeping bag next to your friend's bed? If you recognize this situation, or some variant of it, chances are you will remember too, after the jokes and the horseplay and the repeated calls from downstairs - 'Do you two know what time it is? Go to sleep' - how you would lie there talking quietly in the dark together, in a kind of intimacy. That's the best way I can describe how my writer talks with my reader.
Nor is this confined to semi-autobiographical first person narrative. My thriller 11:59 has the central character Marc getting things off his mind in a confessional way. Though I tell the story in first person present tense for immediacy, I always felt while I was writing that I was inhabiting both Marc and his trusted, listening confidant.
Even the soon-to-be-published Mr Stephenson's Regret, a third person historical, seems to work best where I can hear the central character Robert unburdening himself to me in the role of friend, perhaps a surrogate of his close friend George Parker Bidder who comes to the fore in the novel's epilogue. And the articles I write for this blog and various publications are often conceived in the unsleeping darkness and shaped for the unknown bosom pal who is my reader (always one in my head, though I hope there are a few more of you out there).
I don't consciously set out to think and write like this; it's the way it comes out of me, as if I'm acting as a medium for my characters, my words, in a one-to-one seance of imagination. When the spirit is truly with me, I would not be alarmed to hear someone say in the dark, 'That's him, that's Uncle Albert, I know it is,' or maybe the voice of Billy Mitchell: 'You've told my life in there.'
Billy was talking about the stories in my collection We Never Had It So Good . Like me, he grew up in a North East mining community and at one level must have seen parallels in the locations and characters I used for the book. His comment seems to go deeper though, and certainly much of the writing is interior, based on the perceptions and sensibilities of a young boy such as he and I were in the mid-to-late 1950s.
Was Billy the reader I had in mind when I wrote the stories? Or was I, in a sense, talking to myself, or rather to the young boy I may have been then? The answer lies somewhere between the two. Did you ever as a child camp overnight (if only in the back garden) with a friend, or have what is these days called a sleep-over, perhaps one of you lying in a sleeping bag next to your friend's bed? If you recognize this situation, or some variant of it, chances are you will remember too, after the jokes and the horseplay and the repeated calls from downstairs - 'Do you two know what time it is? Go to sleep' - how you would lie there talking quietly in the dark together, in a kind of intimacy. That's the best way I can describe how my writer talks with my reader.
Nor is this confined to semi-autobiographical first person narrative. My thriller 11:59 has the central character Marc getting things off his mind in a confessional way. Though I tell the story in first person present tense for immediacy, I always felt while I was writing that I was inhabiting both Marc and his trusted, listening confidant.
Even the soon-to-be-published Mr Stephenson's Regret, a third person historical, seems to work best where I can hear the central character Robert unburdening himself to me in the role of friend, perhaps a surrogate of his close friend George Parker Bidder who comes to the fore in the novel's epilogue. And the articles I write for this blog and various publications are often conceived in the unsleeping darkness and shaped for the unknown bosom pal who is my reader (always one in my head, though I hope there are a few more of you out there).
I don't consciously set out to think and write like this; it's the way it comes out of me, as if I'm acting as a medium for my characters, my words, in a one-to-one seance of imagination. When the spirit is truly with me, I would not be alarmed to hear someone say in the dark, 'That's him, that's Uncle Albert, I know it is,' or maybe the voice of Billy Mitchell: 'You've told my life in there.'
December 2, 2011
Review of 'At Home' by Bill Bryson
It's a while since Bill Bryson has written a travel book, but he certainly wanders far and wide with this one, though he never leaves his own house.
The answer to this paradox is in the structure of the book. Bryson packages his short history of private life into a sort of rambling tour around the rooms of his home, a mid 19th Century former Church of England rectory in a Norfolk village. (This American writer has lived for many years in England.) He uses the function or former function of each room, or sometimes its contents, as his starting-point for a wide-ranging, leisurely and digressive examination of the way our domestic lives have been shaped by innovators of the past. Many of those had enough idiosyncracies and obsessions for our guide to spin humour from, in much the same way he does with characters he meets along the way in his travelogues. Here he is not taking us along the Appalachian Trail or for a walk in the woods, but across time and continents, drifting pleasurably, with occasional swoops and dives, so that we feel sometimes like the boy being taken for a magic ride by the Snowman, where walls are no barrier and there's no particular schedule to worry about.
And that's the feel of the book - an engaging adventure, a fun exploration in the company of an amiable, cherubic narrator - if not the Snowman perhaps a jolly, anecdotal uncle. Don't look for structured history in Bryson's work, still less for philosophy, as some reviewers seem to have expected and been disappointed not to find - these are not Bryson's style. He's a dipper-in, a snapper-up of trifles, a jackdaw for twinkling facts.
Bill BrysonThe only further gem it would be a delight to have seen revealed by the author as he guides us through his home would concern the daily detail of his own living there, and his family's, but he keeps that particular private life out of these pages, and we can't really blame him for that in these prying days.
The tour through the house is anyway nothing more than a convenient device, and Bryson cheerfully drops it in several places when he can't map out a starting-point for what he wants to include precisely from the room we are in.
The whole tour is so discursive that I get the feeling he could have taken us back to the beginning and started again with a whole different set of interesting things to say. I'd happily sign up for that tour too; Bill Bryson is very good company.
