M.J. Johnson's Blog, page 6

The Sky is Overcast

Challenging teenage behaviour in South Wales I met someone yesterday who had formerly been a scene-painter in the world of theatre. I immediately expressed my great enthusiasm for the scene-painter’s craft. I imagine the scene-painter’s role has changed considerably over time, and I guess the real heyday of scene painting as an art must have been the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, before the advent of television, when music hall and repertory theatres were attended with a regularity that can only be dreamed of by people working in live theatre today.

My own first experience as a scene painter was as a teenager at my local youth club in Gorseinon, near Swansea, in Wales. The director of our pot-boiler play The Sky is Overcast, which had been entered in a one-act play competition amongst Glamorganshire Youth Clubs, was a lovely chap called Howell Edwards. He’d heard somehow that I was safe with a paintbrush and so I got drafted in to paint the fairly straightforward box set as well as playing a character in the play. The story was set in occupied France during World War II and concerned a dastardly German plot to parachute in a spy purporting to be an RAF officer but whose real aim was to infiltrate the French resistance. I remember doing the set painting very fast and extremely broadly using really bold brush strokes.

The part I played in The Sky is Overcast by playwright Anthony Booth (not to be confused with T Blair’s Father in law) was that of a very unpleasant SS Officer whose name I now forget. However, what I most certainly couldn’t have forgotten is the fact that when the costumes arrived in a wicker trunk from costumiers Bermans and Nathans in London, mine wasn’t among them! Yikes! There wasn’t enough time to get another costume sent, so Howell went to a fancy-dress shop in Swansea and picked up the kind of Nazi uniform some people might wear to a silly eighteenth birthday party! The aim of this costume was clearly to be funny rather than authentic. Take a look at the picture of me above at fifteen threatening my mother (Mam looks about as terrified as she’d be if mauled by a King Charles Spaniel named Cindy). I don’t know how he did it - hypnotism perhaps - Howell managed to convince me that nobody in the audience would probably even notice it wasn’t a proper uniform.

The night of the competition, which took place in the Little Theatre, Aberdare, arrived. I come originally from Aberdare so I was even fielding a few family members in the audience. I had a big powerful entrance set up with the characters on stage rushing about nervously announcing that my approach to the house was imminent. There came a loud rap on the door, centre stage. My friend Paul Davies, taking the main part in the play, went to the aforementioned door and drew it open, only to reveal me in my fancy-dress Hitler. It was an entrance designed to bring hush and awe, but when the people of Aberdare saw what I was wearing, there was just a huge, spontaneous guffaw of laughter. It was the theatrical equivalent of Benny Hill’s Ernie the Milkman making an impromptu guest appearance as the ghost in Hamlet.

Anyway, teenage chutzpah got us through on the night. And things worked out well in the end: we won the cup for best production, the main adjudicator gave me a special mention for a good performance despite a bad entrance she said was beyond my control, and perhaps most unexpectedly of all, we won the prize for the best set.

The Youth Club took us all out to a posh hotel in Llandeilo for a slap-up meal to celebrate. Happy days!

The First Four Ripley Books by Patricia Highsmith

I’d always meant to read some Patricia Highsmith, and I let this be known last year in time for Christmas. I was prompted to do this after watching Ripley’s Game (2003) with John Malkovich and Dougray Scott on DVD - unfortunately, I missed it when it first came out! I’d also very much enjoyed the film version of The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) with Matt Damon and Jude Law.  A number of Highsmith’s novels have made the big screen, yet despite this, as her army of devoted fans will attest, she remains woefully overlooked. During her lifetime she was most certainly underrated in her native US, and her talent as a writer appears to have been more fully appreciated by Europeans - perhaps we are more naturally attracted by the existentialist themes of the psychological thrillers she gave us?

Patricia Highsmith was born in 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas and died in 1995 in Switzerland, aged seventy-four. She appears to have had a fairly unhappy early life (not always a bad ingredient for a writer it seems), disliked her adopted father, whose surname she kept, and had a lifelong love-hate relationship with her mother who pre-deceased her by only four years. She had relations with both men and women, however none of her relationships lasted very long it seems. Highsmith considered herself to be creatively at her best when she was alone, although she shared her home with animals, particularly cats, which she found preferable to people. Highsmith wrote about thirty books; she reprised the character of Tom Ripley through five novels, produced over an incredible thirty-six years.

In The Talented Mr Ripley (1956) we are introduced to Tom Ripley, a sexually ambiguous, slightly neurotic, insecure character, who has already been dabbling in fraudulent activities in New York by the time we first meet him and lives in some fear of getting caught by the authorities. He appears to know a number of shady characters in the city who he’s keen to disassociate himself from; homosexual relationships were of course very much illegal in the US and Europe at that time. At the start of the book, Ripley is approached by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf who erroneously believes that Tom Ripley knows his son Dickie far better than he actually does. Herbert Greenleaf tries to enlist Tom’s help to encourage his prodigal son to return home from Italy where he has taken up residence. Unbeknown to Herbert Greenleaf, it is without much coaxing and some relief that Tom Ripley abandons life in New York and sets sail for Europe. Once he reaches Italy, Ripley’s unvocalised but unmissable sexual attraction and infatuation with Dickie Greenleaf develops to monstrous proportions. He is especially jealous of Madge, Dickie’s girlfriend; he resents her presence and influence over Dickie, is disgusted by her femininity, and in his thoughts constantly berates her, finding her ‘gourd-like’ shape utterly loathsome. Ripley fantasises constantly and obsesses about being alone with Dickie, and when he realises this isn’t going to happen, he opts to kill Dickie and take on his identity (come on, it’s the natural solution to an unrequited love problem for any psychopath worth their salt!). There is of course a lot more story; Highsmith clearly had a wickedly dark sense of humour. To my mind The Talented Mr Ripley is a definite classic of that literary genre known as the psychological thriller. At her best Highsmith is without any doubt an accomplished novelist, and should be regarded as far more than just a writer of competent thrillers. Definitely recommended reading.

Ripley Under Ground (1971) is set in the village of Villeperce a short distance from Paris, where Tom Ripley, some three years on from his murderous and larcenous activities in Italy, enjoys a leisurely existence of rural bliss at Belle Ombre, the pleasant residence he shares with his beautiful, rich, French wife Heloise and their devoted housekeeper Madame Annette. Those deeply insecure character traits that made Tom Ripley such a fascinating character in The Talented Mr Ripley have almost completely been ironed-out and we are now presented with an urbane, nearly benign man who is fully in command of himself - no hint of sexual ambiguity about his personality at all, although he is prepared to commit murder for the sake of a peaceful life. I must admit, it all seemed like a bit too much of a credibility leap for me - as did the story of art forgery and physical impersonation, that Ripley, still dabbling in dodgy activities (thank goodness!) becomes embroiled in. I enjoyed reading the book for Highsmith’s robust prose, although I wasn’t really convinced by the caper or its denouement. This isn’t a bad book, however, it is flawed and not in the same league as its forerunner.

In Ripley’s Game (1974) we are once again transported back to the rural idyll of Belle Ombre, Ripley’s house in Villeperce, France. The game of the title refers to a rather nasty little rumour Ripley has spread about Jonathan Trevanny, who lives nearby and who Ripley feels has slighted him in some (unexplained) way. The story also involves another character from the previous book, Ripley Under Ground, Reeves Minot, who is a fence living in Hamburg who Ripley assists in various ways from time to time. In Ripley’s Game, Reeves Minot asks Ripley to suggest someone with a clean and untraceable CV who might be prepared to assassinate some members of the Mafia for a large sum of money. Ripley suggests that he approach Trevanny, who he knows is terminally ill, not believing for a moment that the man (who is in reality desperate to leave his wife and son with some financial legacy), will actually consider going along with it. Ripley becomes involved himself and by the end of the book there is a sizeable body-count. This is a well crafted, hugely enjoyable crime thriller, although not quite as fine a book as The Talented Mr Ripley. Very good.

The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980) was, I am very sorry to say, a bit of an ordeal. If it had been anyone other than Patricia Highsmith I think I would have stuck to my fifty pages rule and jumped ship! The story had potential but Highsmith just meanders and rambles on, giving us page after page of detail about the most inconsequential details of domestic life. There is also a strange sexual ambiguity about Ripley’s association with Frank, the boy of the title, which I found repetitious and annoying. Highsmith seems to find it amusing to place Ripley with Frank in gay bars, or having to share a three-quarters bed; Ripley actually dresses up in drag at one point. The only action in the book is confined to one short rather poorly set up section of the story; it’s never really explained why Ripley suddenly acts on impulse quite in the way he does. Here’s a (mercifully) brief example of some of the superfluous prose Highsmith subjects us to in this book:

Antoine and Heloise exchanged French kisses at the door, smacks on the cheek, one, two. Tom hated it. Not French kisses in the American sense, certainly nothing sexy about them, just damned silly.

I had planned on completing what is known to Highsmith fans as the Ripliad but this book has put me off the idea;  also the reviews on Goodreads for the final book Ripley Under Water would suggest it’s little better than its predecessor. So I think I’ll bail out on Ripley and concentrate on discovering Highsmith’s earlier more celebrated books.

Finally, a little bit of news about my own psychological thriller Roadrage. The Kindle countdown promotion which ran over last weekend was very satisfying. Roadrage actually made it into the Amazon UK top 100 psychological thrillers and was (if only briefly) alongside some illustrious names in crime fiction. Who knows, after a few more reviews and if the people who downloaded it this time recommend it to their chums - it might get back up into the charts and start climbing again!

Anyway, thank you to everyone who tweeted, liked, reviewed, bought or recommended it during the countdown. I have absolutely no budget for promotion so your help is always most gratefully received. Again, thanks.

Oh Boy, When Things Go Wrong!

“Oh, boy ... When things go wrong!” as voiced with great feeling by Kenneth Mars as Franz Liebkind, the pro-Nazi playwright and composer of the bogus musical-comedy  Springtime for Hitler - billed as - a gay (traditional sense) romp with Eva and Adolf at Berchtesgaden-  in Mel Brooks’ marvellous film comedy creation The Producers. I have watched this film countless  times and am able to quote almost every line - for me, everything about it just improves with age. Kenneth Mars’ Franz, complete with German WWII helmet, is just a little too loveably insane to ever be truly terrifying. A Nazi-sympathising author would be a horror if encountered in real life, but this is the art of comedy: where madmen, liars, thieves and adulterous philanderers delight and entertain rather than enrage us. In the film, Liebkind, whose maniacal fantasy of ‘taking’ Broadway with his musical before going on to ‘conquer’ the world, comes out with this splendid line once his dearly-held dream has been thoroughly wrecked.  He places a revolver to his temple and pulls the trigger ... only to discover he is out of bullets - “Oh, boy ... when things go wrong!”

Actually, the reason I chose this title for the week’s blog is because my son and I spent a good hour and a half last night waiting for a breakdown man to arrive on the verge of a dual carriageway, in what felt like a wind spawned in the Siberian tundra. We were on our way to see an apparently excellent exponent of the blues, singer Kent DuChaine from Georgia at the Anchor pub in Sevenoaks. Tom, who is a much finer judge of great music than I am, and had already seen a Kent DuChaine gig, assured me I was in for a treat; we were eager and on time. I’d even brought along a copy of Roadrage (it’s set in Sevenoaks!) for Snakehips Sue, the dedicated organiser of the Blues with Bottle Club, who generally runs a raffle, to give away.  All was going so well, that is until the engine on Tom’s little run-around suddenly died. We were fortunate that he could safely navigate the car over onto the hard-shoulder before we stopped moving forward altogether. So, if you were on the A21 last night and happened to see a young man and an older one wrapped-up together in a blanket whilst standing by the side of the A21 - that was us!

Actually, up until the breakdown, things had been going very well indeed this week: a Niedermayer & Hart countdown deal finished on Monday and I was extremely satisfied by the response to it; also Roadrage received an accolade - well, sort of, well, something along those lines! You see, it got onto a list. Let me explain, there are a number of things that are incredibly difficult for an indie/self-pub - writer to achieve:

1  It’s really hard to get people to believe that your book isn’t littered with typos and grammatical errors, and that it was thoroughly edited by a team of highly literate people.

2  It’s really hard to get people to believe that any nice things reviewers have written about your books weren’t all manipulated through multiple accounts organised and run by your Mum! Conversely, any negative review, no matter how badly it’s been written or how rotten the reviewer’s grammar is, or whether his/her spelling sucks, must be the damn truth!

3  Promotion is really hard - the big publishers actually pay stores like Waterstones to give prime positions to their latest titles. David and Goliath isn’t in it - it's impossible to compete! I’ve often wondered how they get starry reviewers to say all kinds of lovely things about a pretty mundane book. Ever read the blurb on a book’s cover and thought ‘This must be a cracker’, but fifty pages in you wonder if they attached the wrong cover to the pile of doo-doo you have in your hand? (Okay, rant over! )

Anyway, back to accolades, ah yes! In the words of Hamlet’s father’s ghost, “List, list, oh list!” This week Roadrage, as voted for by people on Twitter and Facebook, made it onto a W H Smith list entitled Underrated Crime Books. So - Hurrah! I say, and grateful thanks to W H Smith and especially grateful thanks to the kind souls who voted for Roadrage.

Incidentally, the list couldn’t have been better timed, because I had arranged weeks ago for a Kindle countdown promotion to begin over the forthcoming weekend on Amazon UK.  From tomorrow morning, you can download a copy of Roadrage for just 99p, and I hope that as many people as possible will take advantage of this (US readers had the same opportunity on Amazon.com a few weeks back).

The Roadrage countdown offer starts 8 am Friday, 6 February and runs over the weekend until 8 am, Tuesday, 10 February before reverting to its normal price.

Here’s the link: Roadrage on Kindle countdown

Filming the Prologue to Niedermayer & Hart

The prologue to Niedermayer & Hart was originally a scene appearing thirty-seven pages into the book which introduced a new character. It was only through a series of trials, errors and pure luck that it actually found its way to start the book, but once I’d sussed it, I was never in any doubt that it was in the right place. I always do numerous drafts of any story and I’ve found there is absolutely no substitute for taking the odd ‘breather’ from the work; I believe it is absolutely vital to allow a piece of writing the opportunity to ‘leaven’. It never fails to astound me how perception can change so much after only a few days away from a project - insurmountable problems can suddenly seem altogether more manageable. 

The film of the prologue was shot over two nights by my son Tom, operating a borrowed camera; the lighting, white van (blue really) and location site we used were all generously donated gratis too. It was freezing in the van on the late November nights in question, and of course we had to turn the engine and heating off during takes. Our primary aim was to find a means and style of presentation that would enable us to convert a seven minute piece of book-text, written in the third-person, into something that not only grabbed the attention of a viewer but which might also prove quirky and (hopefully) unsettling - we basically wanted to produce a shop-window for the writing and mood of the book. We’d never done anything like it before, although I do of course have the advantage of being experienced before a camera. Even so, it was very much an experiment and not something we felt confident we could achieve. 

I did the film editing over a week on Adobe Premiere Elements and at times I admit I almost came close to despair, as I not only had to acquaint myself with previously unknown software, but needed to join together the different takes in what might otherwise have been a straightforward monologue. The trouble with attempting this, it seemed to us, was: that seven minutes is an awfully long time for things to go wrong; lines might easily be dropped or forgotten; a car or plane might suddenly whiz past; or someone might walk by giving a cheery wave to camera; it would also have been a completely static shot. However, I may well have risked this, as the sense of claustrophobia created by one unbroken shot might have been quite chilling - a homage to that master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, perhaps? However, we were very lucky not to have chosen this one-take option, as I, in my naivety, had not yet discovered that the royalty payments that would be required on the three tiny snippets of song originally written and subsequently filmed in the prologue would cost far too much to be viable. The songs were cut from the text and had to be edited out of our film - this would have been impossible to do if we had gone for the one take idea. Phew! We got lucky! 

If you haven’t watched the prologue before, I hope you enjoy the experience. US readers will have to wait until the end of February to get a discount copy, however, UK readers can still download a Kindle copy of Niedermayer & Hart for just 99p for a short time. Here’s the link: Niedermayer & Hart on Kindle

Ghostly Stuff

Readers of this blog (see previous post) may recall I recently fell prey to the forces of mystery and imagination - a nightmare, me, imagine! I guess I must be a little odd (my wife would maintain a lot odd!), because I not only found the experience amusing but would almost certainly have continued reading the offending book at my bedtime, that is if the wife hadn’t given me a bit of a drubbing down for being so daft. You see, she’s never understood this: I quite enjoy a good nightmare. Although I must confess I have had one or two over the years that I’d rather not have repeated!  

I consider my dreamscape a rich source of some of the strangest and most wonderful imagery, copyright free and ready to plunder (unless of course you’ve just dropped off and watched a re-run of Casablanca in your head). I had a teacher at RADA, a marvellous Polish lady, Maria Fedro, elderly then, but she had in her youth danced for the great impresario Diaghilev’s famous Ballets Russes. I recall she used to tell us how she had imagined and then taught herself some of her greatest dancing roles through dreams. I somehow always understood this; I have often taken many of my most perplexing problems and difficulties to bed with me - and it never fails to astound me how many times I’ve woken up secure in the knowledge that I’ve reached an understanding of a previously unresolved difficulty, or workable solution to a problem. I think I’ve already shared on this blog how the basic idea for Niedermayer & Hart came to me in a dream when I was a teenager in Wales. Admittedly, the final published work bears little resemblance to the original premise, but that tiny seed, sown in the imaginings of the night, remains the source of its story.  

And now onto the cause of my bad dream - Collected Ghost Stories by M R James. 

Montague Rhodes James (1862 - 1936) was a distinguished mediaevalist scholar who during his lifetime published many works of academic significance. However, two generations on, he is best remembered, and deservedly so, as the master of the ghost story. He started writing tales in this form as an entertainment for his friends and colleagues, beginning in 1893 with Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook. A tradition was subsequently acquired of reading a new ghostly tale to his chums each Christmas - the darkest period of the year seems to lend itself perfectly to such a practice. Imagine, after a shared festive meal, they adjourn to James’s candlelit study, and all but one of the candles having been extinguished, allowing James just enough light to read his handwritten manuscript, he begins.  It must have been such a thrilling experience to be one of the first to hear him read a classic like Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad (certainly one of my favourites!), which was delivered in this way to friends and colleagues in December 1903. 

Personally, I think the thing that makes James’s writing so memorable is what he doesn’t choose to tell us - he is economical with his descriptions and in this way he never ‘over-eggs the pudding’. His ghostly manifestations are almost invariably shrouded in a mist, half-seen imaginings, a spidery or tentacle-like arm, a hideously deformed face partly glimpsed through the corner of one eye, a pair of red eyes watching from the dense shadows of a cloister. James often narrates in the first person; however, he is generally telling us a story he was once ‘told’ by an acquaintance or is passing on something that once happened to a colleague. He adopts almost a documentary approach, and deliberately omits chunks of time that are not absolutely essential to the story he’s relating to us. I think this lack of embellishment in the storytelling is fundamental to the effectiveness of his style. We are never going to experience any passage written by James that sounds anything like this: “The ghoulish creature staggered out of the darkness, and where its eyes had once been there were now only gaping pits of raw flesh, oozing with greyish-green slime ...” He is much more likely to describe something along the lines of an impenetrably dense shadow that has inexplicably appeared beside a tomb from where his protagonist thinks he may have caught the tiniest movement or perhaps heard a small, dry, laugh. I know which of these two examples makes my hair go tingly! 

If you’re looking for a gory thrill-fest, then M R James is probably not for you. These are stories to curl up with on a winter’s evening beside a cosy fireside while the wind outside is rattling at the window panes. The language is of its time, of course, however, James isn’t given to verbosity, and his stories skip along at a thoroughly enjoyable pace. When I read these tales I felt that James was simply having a great deal of fun and that he wanted to communicate this pleasure with me, his reader. I can highly recommend them. 

Incidentally, another dark tale, my own story Niedermayer & Hart, is on a Kindle countdown deal at Amazon UK from Monday, 26 January, until Monday, 2 February. If you live in the UK you will be able to download a copy during this period for only £0.99. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Niedermayer-Hart-M-J-Johnson-ebook/dp/B007BVA2AO

Whimperings in the Dark!

I’d started reading The Long Valley by John Steinbeck shortly before Christmas and was proceeding happily in the company of the great author, before my son and daughter-in-law-to-be presented me with a volume of The Collected Ghost Stories of M R James. A bit like a character in a James tale, I found myself irrevocably drawn to them, and immersed myself in these dark pleasures at bedtime over the next few evenings. 

“You aren’t seriously going to read those before turning off the light and going to sleep are you?” 

“Why not?” I asked (perhaps somewhat dismissively). 

“Because you’ll have nightmares ... you are daft!” 

I smiled and may have gone as far as a scoffing sound. 

A few hours later: my wife was shaking me awake after I was found whimpering; whilst I, simultaneously, gripped firmly in the arms of Morpheus, was being confronted by a coarse-haired creature (no, not the wife! considerably more diabolical!), that was all too rapidly materialising before my eyes.  

Once awake, I was duly told off for foolishly entertaining ghost stories last thing at night. And, as if this wasn’t quite humbling enough, the next day  my son was informed about the incident by the aforementioned wife; yes, gentle reader, they could actually be heard sniggering! In fact, I couldn’t, it seems, have provided them with finer amusement, and for the next few days mockery and derision became my lot; I, who have (I admit to it!) sometimes (often?)  boasted about how untroubled I am by all things ghostly or which go bump in the night. So, understandably chastened by my experience, you’ll appreciate that I didn’t dare  run the risk of embarrassing myself again; M R James was confined to the hours of daylight whilst the Steinbeck became my book at bedtime. It’s proved a comfortable arrangement, and I’m pleased to announce there have been no more whinnies in the dark. 

So, the Steinbeck ... 

The Long Valley was published in 1938. The majority of its stories had previously appeared in various American magazines. The stories themselves, Saint Katy the Virgin being the exception - a strangely whimsical tale set in mediaeval France - are set in Steinbeck’s birthplace, the background for so much of his writing, the Salinas Valley in California. Apparently, Steinbeck demanded that Saint Katy the Virgin be included in the collection, and although I enjoyed it, I have to admit that it does seem a bit of a puzzle alongside the rest. In all the other stories, Steinbeck does what Steinbeck can do like no other: informs us about the human condition. He uses symbolism to good effect, and his descriptive imagery is admirably lean; sometimes a tale’s starkness certainly left this reader with a haunted, almost desperate feeling. However, I never feel that Steinbeck is ever being wantonly bleak. Above all, Steinbeck is telling us stories about human beings and of their relationships to others. He lets us make our own inferences. The scholars, critics and academics have it seems from the very start often been divided on their appraisal of these stories. I’m perfectly happy to let them go on arguing! This collection is eminently readable and worthwhile. 

I’m still reading my collected ghost stories - more to come on these ... if I survive the nights!

First New Year Post

I’d wanted to tell you about the great Christmas we had, about the rich cache of actually wanted presents I received (I must be getting really good at getting my hints across to interested parties!), maybe relate the amusing disaster that happened to our turkey crown, which made it involuntarily a ‘poultry-lite’ Christmas as they say, or ‘zero-cal-turkey’ perhaps; I thought I might even set down some of my writing plans for the year ahead, discuss some of the books I’m planning to read in 2015. Then, yesterday, out of the blue as these things have an unlooked for tendency of happening, there came the apalling act of barbarous violence done to the staff of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, and suddenly everything had changed; it seemed difficult, if not improper, to talk of such trivia. 

I have no doubt the perpetrators of this act, and I don’t mean the puppets who fired the guns, but the vicious masterminds behind this atrocity, have their cold hearts set firmly on breeding more mistrust, more intolerance and more hate. I am certain that they are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of those reactionary voices in our society who will now, as a result of yesterday’s action, do their utmost to incite and ferment racial hatred. 

Let’s not give them what they want! There’s already enough hate in this poor old world without adding to its burden. Just a week into the New Year, naive though it may seem, let’s cling to the Christmas message of peace and goodwill to all; I know we live in an increasingly secular society, but surely this most simple wish can’t seriously offend anyone, can it? And, when we find our tolerance tested in the face of incomprehensible savagery, the like of which Paris witnessed yesterday, when cartoonists became the targets for gunmen, let us hold firm to our values and our belief in law and democracy, imperfect though these may seem at times, and the right of everyone to freedom of speech.  

Finally, returning to Christmas and its message of compassion: at the end of one of my most loved books, once Scrooge has been redeemed, Dickens tells us that he (Scrooge) kept the spirit of the season in his heart three hundred and sixty-five days a year, “... and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!”

Christmas 2014

As we approach the final few weeks of 2014 and another year appears to have mysteriously flown by, I find myself (quite customary at this time), in a reflective mood. I suppose this was inevitable, especially as I’ve just been listening to a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his marvellous A Child’s Christmas in Wales, recorded at Steinway Hall, New York in 1952 (You’ll find it on You Tube). If you don’t know this work, then take my word for it, it is pure joy! 

As Christmas in the UK has become increasingly secular and commercialised, I wonder whether it is a happier occasion now than it was in former times? It certainly seems to have become increasingly more stressful; I don’t recall hearing about people being trampled by over-zealous shoppers, or of fist-fights breaking out over goods in our shops. My family’s Christmas when I was a boy was divided mainly between chapel and home. The children’s Christmas party in the Chapel vestry was a definite highlight. Father Christmas inevitably made an appearance and passed out presents to each of us; some of the bigger boys suspected it was a deacon dressed-up; I for one never believed this, though come to think of it, for a man who spent three hundred and sixty four days a year in isolation at the North Pole he did have a remarkably strong Valleys accent! However, the seeds of commercialisation had already been sown even back then, and although the pile of presents I was given might seem modest compared to the personalised Aladdin’s cave the average British child seems to be presented with these days, compared to my parents’ generation who got little more than a tangerine and a few brazil nuts, we were generously provided for. 

It has always been a Johnson family tradition that a certain percentage of stocking fillers (always wrapped in newspaper when I was little) are booby prizes. My Dad (I learnt later on to recognise his packing style and handwriting) meticulously wrapped up for us, under numerous tightly packed layers: a broken pen, in fact anything broken might appear, carrots, potatoes, often a solitary brazil nut, and I generally received one or other of the small brass candlesticks off the mantlepiece (being a matching pair, brother Ian got its pal!). Dad’s written messages always urged us on, “Almost there!” “You’re going to love this!” “Something really good!” “This is just what you’ve always wanted!”. In a way the boobies, and their attention to detail, spoke as much to me about the love in my family home as did the ‘good stuff’. Yes, the Matchbox, James Bond Aston Martin DB7, complete with tiny man and ejector seat was a jaw-dropper, but I would have been awfully disappointed if my parents hadn’t taken the time to wrap up a few really misleading ‘duds’ that year. Judith and I continued the tradition with our own son. 

I think what I want to say is that Christmas isn’t solely about receiving, it’s about sharing too; a time for each of us to be gathered into ‘the fold’. It’s a time for inclusion and for expressing love; a time that makes me grateful for my family and friends; and causes me to remember too that I belong to a far wider human family. Henry James said: “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”

Have a lovely Christmas everybody!

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

I first read Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible when I was in my late teens, and it has remained one of my favourite plays ever since, even though I had yet to actually witness a production of it. Actors tend to view the passing of the years in a different way to other folk: once we pass age-milestones upon life’s track we have to (sometimes reluctantly) accept that certain roles have passed us by -  Hamlet of course, Lopakhin (The Cherry Orchard), Khlestakov (The Government Inspector), to name but three. I don’t really act anymore, so don’t feel this problem too acutely, although watching The Crucible for the first time last week, revived in me a small but poignant sense of regret - the part of John Proctor had always been very high on my ‘to play before I’m forty’ list. Alas, not to be. 

The play is set in Salem, Massachusetts during its infamous witch hunt and trials of 1692/3. The Crucible received its first performance in 1953 and is a partly fictionalised account of the mass hysteria that ran amok and took control of the Puritan communities in the Massachusetts Bay Colonies when fear and superstition overtook common sense and villagers accused their neighbours, sometimes through sheer malice perhaps, of witchcraft. Miller uses the play as an allegory for the spectre of McCarthyism and its dreaded blacklisting of suspected communists. Miller himself would later be called upon to testify before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities, where he was convicted of ‘contempt of Congress’ for refusing to identify others who had been at meetings he’d attended. 

This production of The Crucible, directed by Yaël Farber, aired at The Old Vic over the summer and we were fortunate enough to view it in a Digital Theatre broadcast at our local Odeon Cinema. This really was a marvellous production, absolutely riveting, despite a first half lasting for two hours (it was only my bladder had attention span problems, honest!). Reviewers have used adjectives like visceral and scorching to describe Ms Farber’s production and it’s not difficult to appreciate why these descriptions are quite apt. From the very opening scene we witness a community consumed by fear of the supernatural, ready to abandon good judgement and common sense. It is a powerhouse production that repeatedly drives home a heavy punch; its blistering effect upon the senses of this observer and his companions, sent us staggering homeward emotionally wrung-out and quite stunned. We felt affected by the force of the drama for some days afterwards. I understand it is nominated for a number of awards, which I can only anticipate it has a great chance of winning. I tend not to list names (very appropriately considering the play!), but if you’re fortunate enough to catch a recording of this great production I’m certain you’ll agree with me that the acting all round is excellent. And without wishing to diminish in any way the performances of the male cast, my wife and I both felt that the quality of acting from the female cast was really quite exceptional. 

It strikes me as a very good time indeed to revive this play, to reacquaint ourselves with its warnings; especially seeing as we have recently entered a new era where liberally-minded democratic governments like our own have seen fit, in light of the perceived threat from our enemies, to withdraw some of our legal rights. I recently heard a balanced commentator on BBC Radio point out that newly-assumed surveillance and arrest measures, ostensibly taken to defend us from the extremists who would wish to harm us, might equally, if we should ever be unfortunate enough to discover ourselves under the control of a less than benign authority, make ordinary life in our country very uncomfortable. Miller’s play calls us to seek truth and justice, to require an impartial legal system and to demand nothing less than the due processes of the law; after all, in the end it’s all that stands between us as free individuals and the rule of despots. 

Definitely see this production if at all possible.

The Dog of the South

I’m sorry to say I’d previously never heard of or encountered this book, or any of the other literary offerings of Charles Portis, until it was given me as a birthday present earlier this year by my son. Tom knew I’d really enjoyed the author’s Western story True Grit (someone has yet to make a movie truly faithful to the book!); he thought the reviews on the back cover of The Dog of the South were promising and it looked like a book that might appeal to me. So, first off, a big thank you to Tom for directing such a great read into the grateful clutches of his old man. 

I can only describe The Dog of the South as a comic masterpiece, and Portis is without any shadow of a doubt in my mind a greatly underrated American novelist. I’ve heard him compared to Cormac McCarthy, and I can see the line of thought taken here: the characters both writers create often inhabit a similar kind of universe, down at heel and desperate; both authors’ prose has a poetic elegance about it. However, (it seems to me) the difference is that Portis really likes his characters, he’s like a watchful father who wants to see his children do well, whereas McCarthy, great writer though he unquestionably is, can be a bit like the God of the Old Testament when it comes to his literary offspring; you know - vengeance, punishment, destruction. 

I laughed out loud (unusual for me) so many times as I lay in bed reading this book. As with all the funniest writing, the people of the story are never in on the joke and remain completely dumbfounded throughout. Everyone in this story is a little bit lost and down on their luck, but you somehow find yourself rooting for all of them, hoping they’ll somehow just find a way to get through. Portis delights the reader by offering us a deadpan narration through the slightly Quixotic, good-natured voice of the book’s central character Ray Midge. Ray, a bit goofy by his own observation, is on something of a heroic quest to right a wrong - well, rather a lot of wrongs, perpetrated against him by the unconscionable, yet pretty hapless, Guy Dupree. I’m not really giving very much away here - this is the novel’s opening sentence: My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone. 

Portis, an author who has only written about five novels in as many decades, could hardly be considered prolific. However, I’ve chosen to view this positively - this means I still have three Portis novels yet to read, and both True Grit and The Dog of the South are most certainly worthy of return visits someday! So - hurrah! 

Hope you get a chance to read this book and that you enjoy it as thoroughly as I did!