The image is that of the private detective; the loner; walking the mean streets - righting wrongs, defending the weak and helpless and doing so whilst remaining frightfully uber-cool. The modern image of this chivalric ideal has been rewritten many times but it still holds within it the element of heroism that Literature, Film, Society and Culture all in general can recognise. For myself the Spenser novels of Robert B. Parker demonstrate these qualities par excellence.
Spenser the eponymous hero of the series is now a middle-aged but still strong figure. As the series has developed the physicality of his force has changed - he uses violence only when necessary and never seems to glory in its accomplishment. His powers of persuasion and detection have also subtly altered to include seemingly opposite perspectives from his long-term love interest Susan (The Psychologist) to his brutal enforcer-friend Hawk (The Executioner). Spenser's path (and by inference Parker's) seem to travel between these points. His regular heroic characters portray a stillness around their own centrality. They are confident. They have learned from experience and maturity. They are autonomous without the arrogance of condescension or the unreality of the isolated hero. They are self-sufficient in their autonomy but they accept the need for the beauty and the passion of an outside commitment; whether to truth or beauty or even an individual. Spenser would not shrivel away if Susan died .(Indeed she did leave him in an early book). He would contemplate events and feel sad but I would expect hime to move on. Stoically but with style.
The Godwulf Manuscript (1973)
God Save the Child (1974)
Mortal Stakes (1975)
Promised Land (1976)
The Judas Goat (1978)
Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980)
A Savage Place (1981)
Early Autumn (1981)
Ceremony (1982)
The Widening Gyre (1983)
Valediction (1984)
Catskill Eagle (1985)
Taming a Seahorse (1986)
Pale Kings and Princes (1987)
Crimson Joy (1988)
Playmates (1989)
Stardust (1990)
Pastime (1991)
Double Deuce (1992)
Paper Doll (1993)
Walking Shadow (1994)
Thin Air (1995)
Chance (1996)
Small Vices (1997)
Sudden Mischief (1998)
Hush Money (1999)
Hugger Mugger (2000)
Potshot (2001)
Widow's Walk (2002)
Back Story (2003)
Bad Business (2004)
Cold Service (2005)
School Days (2005)
The Hundred Dollar Baby (2006)
Now and Then (2007)
Friday, September 28, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Looking in Mirrors
Once upon a time I was a runner. I was never incredibly fast. I never travelled faster than a speeding bullet or leaped tall buildings in a single bound - but I enjoyed running. For many reasons I stopped (and started and stopped) running, even jogging (which is/was a more accurate description). Unfortunately my body thinks I still burn off the calories and that increased rate and that glutton inside myself has not told my body. In fact (as in pregnancy) I am eating for two - Chris the runner and Chris the couch potato - and it makes the thought of trying to change these habits harder. I now weigh 16 stone 4 pounds. At my pre-Transplant running weight (1993) I weighed 10 stone 8 (1 stone underweight as befits the serious runner). I would like to get to 11 stone.
Therefore I advertise my intention here. From the 1st of October I am deciding to diet, to exercise, and to stop biting my nails. I have taken that ultimate deterrent ; the semi-naked body picture of the Before (posed frontally and in profile) and it is not a pleasant sight. [Don't panic I have no desire to put it online]. I hope to take an After (the diet) picture that will allow my self-image to recover. I will keep a food diary and an exercise log and will record either my progress or the lack of it. In my high mileage days one of those books written to inspire and encourage me used to suggest that the runner should check in shop windows to watch his form. This means that I would be leaning slightly forwards not backwards, that my arms were carried low, with hands loose rather than clenched into fists. That my arms moved forwards and backwards as opposed to crossing my chest and restricting my breathing. Finally that my face was relaxed and preferably smiling. The image in my mind was the slow motion image of Steve Austin (the 6 million dollar man) striding through the city - the slow motion interestingly conveying the notion of high speed athleticism.
In reality I found recently that I do actually move in slow motion (but not cinematically) and that my face, rather than being illuminated by a smile is contorted into a grimace, a rictus of pain. I convey nothing but an image of a fat plodding potential heart attack victim out tempting fate. I will need to tell myself that it will get easier in time and that simply taking exercise carefully and slowly is at least a beginning. It is the ASICS slogan that stands for "Anima Sana in Corpore Sano" (a sound mind in a sound body) that leads me to this optimistic frame of mind; rejoicing in the interconnectedness of my fitness with other elements of my life. In the past running has worked for me for many reasons, especially as a form of meditation and I hope it can do once again. If you see a lonely figure trudging along Rivelin Valley Road or around Damflask please feel free to lend encouragement. This man is trying to make a start, to fight the ravages of time and age and their pressures weighing on his much-maligned body.
Therefore I advertise my intention here. From the 1st of October I am deciding to diet, to exercise, and to stop biting my nails. I have taken that ultimate deterrent ; the semi-naked body picture of the Before (posed frontally and in profile) and it is not a pleasant sight. [Don't panic I have no desire to put it online]. I hope to take an After (the diet) picture that will allow my self-image to recover. I will keep a food diary and an exercise log and will record either my progress or the lack of it. In my high mileage days one of those books written to inspire and encourage me used to suggest that the runner should check in shop windows to watch his form. This means that I would be leaning slightly forwards not backwards, that my arms were carried low, with hands loose rather than clenched into fists. That my arms moved forwards and backwards as opposed to crossing my chest and restricting my breathing. Finally that my face was relaxed and preferably smiling. The image in my mind was the slow motion image of Steve Austin (the 6 million dollar man) striding through the city - the slow motion interestingly conveying the notion of high speed athleticism.
In reality I found recently that I do actually move in slow motion (but not cinematically) and that my face, rather than being illuminated by a smile is contorted into a grimace, a rictus of pain. I convey nothing but an image of a fat plodding potential heart attack victim out tempting fate. I will need to tell myself that it will get easier in time and that simply taking exercise carefully and slowly is at least a beginning. It is the ASICS slogan that stands for "Anima Sana in Corpore Sano" (a sound mind in a sound body) that leads me to this optimistic frame of mind; rejoicing in the interconnectedness of my fitness with other elements of my life. In the past running has worked for me for many reasons, especially as a form of meditation and I hope it can do once again. If you see a lonely figure trudging along Rivelin Valley Road or around Damflask please feel free to lend encouragement. This man is trying to make a start, to fight the ravages of time and age and their pressures weighing on his much-maligned body.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Reinvention tension
When I win the lottery I will stay exactly the same. Nothing will change. This is the refrain often spouted towards the cameras as the so-talented beneficiary celebrates their good fortune. Personally I swear now, here, in public - I will definitely change as many elements of my life as I feel necessary. Please don't misunderstand me I won't swap Val for a younger model or insist on silicon implants (to either of us) but I will reconfigure the environment of my life.
The term is Reinvention and it comes with many problems. I don't mean the small changes like giving up smoking or even eating meat, or the style changes for image purposes. Those well-worshipped celebrity changes ; Madonna's chameleonesque transformations, Bob Dylan's decision to use an electric guitar, or Kylie's iconic shiftings from girl-next-door to siren to show queen. The true reinvention is a spiritual and psychological decision to restructure and reshape your life. Yes I would give funds to the hospital that granted me my kidney transplant in 1995 and buy my brother the house he will need when Noah is born but that is only the doing of things. With reinvention comes the chance to BE different, to be MORE, to be how and what you feel you could be.
For certain individuals this move may be brought upon them by personal crisis by the death of a loved one or the betrayal by a supposedly loved one. These reinventions are born out of pain and misery and at the time they feel only like survival - of moving from day to day and going through the motions. My own divorce involved no children and for the two of us the reinvention was helped by the fact that we realised the intelligent person we once loved was still intelligent but had simply made a decision. A decision that allowed friendship to remain and reinvention to begin whilst gaining the knowledge of who and what we were, are and might be.
Reinvention is about a realistic understanding of personal identity. It is about self-knowledge and self-worth. It is not the mid-life crisis or the adventures of hormonal change it is a thought process that, for me, would be a pleasure to undertake. In the (statistically unlikely) event of that monumental windfall or the (astronomically improbable) urge of a benevolent patron of the arts with a spare ten millions pounds to see me as the next great MABA (Middle-Aged British Artist [think Damien Hirst with Stickleback rather than Shark]) then my reinvention is going to be slow and steady. It will probably only begin when I retire whilst hopefully the body will still be holding together. This is the curse of the Working Man to (heroically) man the barricades day by day whilst internally one's mind is circumnavigating the globe or saving the rainforests.
I hear the brave people out there with courage to back up their conviction muttering about seizing the day and grasping the dream and perhaps in my unwillingness to alter my circumstances lies the very foundation of a conventional stagnation. This blog comes out of that stagnation and although it makes make little claim to be either a mission statement or a strategic plan there lies within it the potential to be both. Perhaps everybody somewhere sometime has these ideas unless their life is perfect and that seems to me to be unlikely. In the meantime plans are forming, seeds are growing, intentions are made or muddied, the world turns and gravity holds us in position. Reinvention is the mother necessary to change that position.
six numbers = ?
The term is Reinvention and it comes with many problems. I don't mean the small changes like giving up smoking or even eating meat, or the style changes for image purposes. Those well-worshipped celebrity changes ; Madonna's chameleonesque transformations, Bob Dylan's decision to use an electric guitar, or Kylie's iconic shiftings from girl-next-door to siren to show queen. The true reinvention is a spiritual and psychological decision to restructure and reshape your life. Yes I would give funds to the hospital that granted me my kidney transplant in 1995 and buy my brother the house he will need when Noah is born but that is only the doing of things. With reinvention comes the chance to BE different, to be MORE, to be how and what you feel you could be.
For certain individuals this move may be brought upon them by personal crisis by the death of a loved one or the betrayal by a supposedly loved one. These reinventions are born out of pain and misery and at the time they feel only like survival - of moving from day to day and going through the motions. My own divorce involved no children and for the two of us the reinvention was helped by the fact that we realised the intelligent person we once loved was still intelligent but had simply made a decision. A decision that allowed friendship to remain and reinvention to begin whilst gaining the knowledge of who and what we were, are and might be.
Reinvention is about a realistic understanding of personal identity. It is about self-knowledge and self-worth. It is not the mid-life crisis or the adventures of hormonal change it is a thought process that, for me, would be a pleasure to undertake. In the (statistically unlikely) event of that monumental windfall or the (astronomically improbable) urge of a benevolent patron of the arts with a spare ten millions pounds to see me as the next great MABA (Middle-Aged British Artist [think Damien Hirst with Stickleback rather than Shark]) then my reinvention is going to be slow and steady. It will probably only begin when I retire whilst hopefully the body will still be holding together. This is the curse of the Working Man to (heroically) man the barricades day by day whilst internally one's mind is circumnavigating the globe or saving the rainforests.
I hear the brave people out there with courage to back up their conviction muttering about seizing the day and grasping the dream and perhaps in my unwillingness to alter my circumstances lies the very foundation of a conventional stagnation. This blog comes out of that stagnation and although it makes make little claim to be either a mission statement or a strategic plan there lies within it the potential to be both. Perhaps everybody somewhere sometime has these ideas unless their life is perfect and that seems to me to be unlikely. In the meantime plans are forming, seeds are growing, intentions are made or muddied, the world turns and gravity holds us in position. Reinvention is the mother necessary to change that position.
six numbers = ?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Wisdom 101.i
"Most of the world's ills, it seemed to him, were caused by men who believed themselves important: on a good day it always ended in tears, on a bad day in global destruction. Oliver was not a man to start a war or provoke pestilence: his icons were the makers of music, the tellers of tales, the clowns and the balladeers, and all who celebrated life's footnotes, appendices and afterthoughts."
Alan Plater, Oliver's Travels, Little Brown, London, 1994, p. 2
Self-Help and the Pregnant Pause
I like to think I can sort myself out. I keep thinking that if there is a question there must be an answer. Why do I think this ? Is there any evidence that suggests that resolution of our problems is imminent ? Or is it an inbuilt sense of boundless optimism resonant with the promise of Micawberesque possibilities that something will turn up. It is not simply a choice of option between the glass being half-full or half-empty because in other areas of my existence I display a fairly healthy dose of outright scepticism (if not cynicism).
Therefore I ask myself why do I purchase diet books or exercise books. Books on Yoga or Runes or Native American Medicine. Why are there boxes of cards supposedly to encourage creativity or to find one's soul or to encounter the truths of buddhism or meditation. Could it be the frantic graspings of a control freak coming to terms with not being in control of anything, particularly of his own surroundings. Self- help has come a long way since Samuel Smiles in 1882 advocated fine old values such as hard work and moral improvement. Self-Help as a marketing and publishing style has entered the new age of the individual far from the needs of societal enhancement. Perhaps when the day dawns that shows these two elements need to be reconnected will be when the world starts to be a better place. In the days when Church and State mattered to individuals in the sense that Life and Death matter self-help could rather simplistically be viewed as the Bible as the instruction book for those generations who chose it. And equally so every other Religion had their equivalents (with equal certainty and the power to enforce it).
In a way the modern concept of self-help is definitely more peaceful but it sows in its individualism the seeds of its own ineffectuality. In terms both of a more fractured philosophy of existence and in the disparate attitudes shown to global problems. If only one factor should intrude upon an individualistic autonomy of life it must be that of ecological stewardship. Self-help in a post Mad-Max world will be about self-preservation if the environmentalists cannot get their messages across. In a pregnant pause between thinking of a possible disaster and that catastrophe being pushed upon our grandchildren we need to create and nurture an unself-help that can save the world. It may be as simple as recycling and composting to begin with but voices need to be raised. In that pregnant pause before the birth of the idea whilst people are thinking - that is the time for one's self to provide the answer.
Therefore I ask myself why do I purchase diet books or exercise books. Books on Yoga or Runes or Native American Medicine. Why are there boxes of cards supposedly to encourage creativity or to find one's soul or to encounter the truths of buddhism or meditation. Could it be the frantic graspings of a control freak coming to terms with not being in control of anything, particularly of his own surroundings. Self- help has come a long way since Samuel Smiles in 1882 advocated fine old values such as hard work and moral improvement. Self-Help as a marketing and publishing style has entered the new age of the individual far from the needs of societal enhancement. Perhaps when the day dawns that shows these two elements need to be reconnected will be when the world starts to be a better place. In the days when Church and State mattered to individuals in the sense that Life and Death matter self-help could rather simplistically be viewed as the Bible as the instruction book for those generations who chose it. And equally so every other Religion had their equivalents (with equal certainty and the power to enforce it).
In a way the modern concept of self-help is definitely more peaceful but it sows in its individualism the seeds of its own ineffectuality. In terms both of a more fractured philosophy of existence and in the disparate attitudes shown to global problems. If only one factor should intrude upon an individualistic autonomy of life it must be that of ecological stewardship. Self-help in a post Mad-Max world will be about self-preservation if the environmentalists cannot get their messages across. In a pregnant pause between thinking of a possible disaster and that catastrophe being pushed upon our grandchildren we need to create and nurture an unself-help that can save the world. It may be as simple as recycling and composting to begin with but voices need to be raised. In that pregnant pause before the birth of the idea whilst people are thinking - that is the time for one's self to provide the answer.
Keeping a Journal
When I was small I would be given a diary and for a few days or weeks I would write in it everything I did ; that is until I got bored with it and it became a chore. When I was fit and active (before this mysterious extra four stones appeared around my body like a cellulite rings of Saturn [Faturn]) I religiously kept a running log. And I mean religiously. Times were recorded to the minute, second, tenths, hundredths. What shoes were worn was recorded with the distance run for each pair (so if a pair dropped to bits you could compare performance). A subjective measuring of effort was noted as was the weather or any other data which might prove useful in gauging training for an event or analysing an injury.
Even when the running began to slacken off - I haven't given up - the running log has subtly changed its style and its relevance. It is a blending of what has been called in the past a "Commonplace" book - collecting quotations and reviews of books or television, a journal - where intimate thoughts (or not) are expressed, and an artist's ideas book. Postcards and images are kept. Random thoughts are preserved. It functions as a confidant, as an audience, as a trigger, as a resource for future writing, as a listing, as a repository for useless (and useful) information. It is an aid in understanding how I think and feel and act and make decisions and solve problems.
It is a form of presentation that is becoming far more widely used - from my daughters' school giving her a homework logbook to a Project Management tool to the online versions of the same. The Blogging generation with all the new found flexibility that technology can give are but an offshoot of this desire. Although I use this blog for many of the same purposes I do so in reference to my Journal. However the Journal is also Art in the sense of its objectival value. As a construct with aesthetic meaning that book form fits into a tradition that so far technology has not dimmed. As in the predictions that have been made saying that the Book is dead - the Screen Supreme - it has not happened. Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" has not happened. For many of us the book is an object to be treasured and touched. Indeed, even the smell of a new book (especially a glossy coffee table book)- the opening of a crisp new notebook to write in with its promising potential; these conjure up an image that encapsulates newness and freshness and the hint of a knowledge somehow sensually to be possessed and enjoyed. Imagine those Venn diagrams from early mathematics classes - the circles that overlapped creating sets and subsets. If the circles are "Me" , "Us" , "Them" , that section which contains all of those is the Journal. That is a position I try to keep it in.
Even when the running began to slacken off - I haven't given up - the running log has subtly changed its style and its relevance. It is a blending of what has been called in the past a "Commonplace" book - collecting quotations and reviews of books or television, a journal - where intimate thoughts (or not) are expressed, and an artist's ideas book. Postcards and images are kept. Random thoughts are preserved. It functions as a confidant, as an audience, as a trigger, as a resource for future writing, as a listing, as a repository for useless (and useful) information. It is an aid in understanding how I think and feel and act and make decisions and solve problems.
It is a form of presentation that is becoming far more widely used - from my daughters' school giving her a homework logbook to a Project Management tool to the online versions of the same. The Blogging generation with all the new found flexibility that technology can give are but an offshoot of this desire. Although I use this blog for many of the same purposes I do so in reference to my Journal. However the Journal is also Art in the sense of its objectival value. As a construct with aesthetic meaning that book form fits into a tradition that so far technology has not dimmed. As in the predictions that have been made saying that the Book is dead - the Screen Supreme - it has not happened. Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" has not happened. For many of us the book is an object to be treasured and touched. Indeed, even the smell of a new book (especially a glossy coffee table book)- the opening of a crisp new notebook to write in with its promising potential; these conjure up an image that encapsulates newness and freshness and the hint of a knowledge somehow sensually to be possessed and enjoyed. Imagine those Venn diagrams from early mathematics classes - the circles that overlapped creating sets and subsets. If the circles are "Me" , "Us" , "Them" , that section which contains all of those is the Journal. That is a position I try to keep it in.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
To be creatively continuing
So I tell myself it is all about Process and not simply Production. Creativity is found in the unlikeliest places and not necessarily at the times when one is searching for it. "Being an artist" (and I admit I am only guessing) - a professional artist - is an occupation. It is not stereotypically as pictured ; the bearded emaciated figure high in his Parisian garrett waiting for inspiration to strike him. Writing has a similar romantic image but Terry Pratchett as a writer tries to produce a certain number of words per day and for the artist there needs to be a similar sense of discipline. Robert Genn's letters on "The Painters Keys" website illustrate this perfectly. (see http://www.painterskeys.com/ ). What is needed is a product that ideally will bring joy both to the creator and to the purchaser.
Within the process there are millions of traps to ensure that production is sidetracked. Reference books become more interesting than actually painting. The decision on the subject matter leads to a mindless doodling - usually into what is described, by myself, as "an abstract format" but by my intrigued daughter as bubbles or rocks or fingerprints. (That is three different styles I happen to use ; not one unrecognisable one.) Sometimes I simply tidy my art boxes out or reorganize my workstation. Is this art or creativity or I am still in "a building stage" and I will burst into profligate artistic nirvana any day now. Part of the problem lies in the act of possession.
I like to be ABLE to do something if I wanted. If I want to paint or draw or carve I can. I have the tools and the materials I have collected. They are waiting. With regard to subject matter I have collected cuttings from magazines - faces, eyes, images which shock and surprise, ideas that other artists have used which I admire, photogaphs which range from the iconic to the bizarre. I am intrigued by masks, by the concepts of individuality and identity, by the spiritual nature of everything from running to worshipping the sun. I like to possess the information to learn and to harvest that knowledge any time I choose in order to create something new. So far I realise I have created a library and an archive but as for creativity I believe that is somewhere within. I hope this blog may help me to think out loud and turning that churning morrass of ideas and instincts and intentions, that intensity of feeling into some artwork profoundly purposeful and poignant. The question is how to manufacture Creativity.
Within the process there are millions of traps to ensure that production is sidetracked. Reference books become more interesting than actually painting. The decision on the subject matter leads to a mindless doodling - usually into what is described, by myself, as "an abstract format" but by my intrigued daughter as bubbles or rocks or fingerprints. (That is three different styles I happen to use ; not one unrecognisable one.) Sometimes I simply tidy my art boxes out or reorganize my workstation. Is this art or creativity or I am still in "a building stage" and I will burst into profligate artistic nirvana any day now. Part of the problem lies in the act of possession.
I like to be ABLE to do something if I wanted. If I want to paint or draw or carve I can. I have the tools and the materials I have collected. They are waiting. With regard to subject matter I have collected cuttings from magazines - faces, eyes, images which shock and surprise, ideas that other artists have used which I admire, photogaphs which range from the iconic to the bizarre. I am intrigued by masks, by the concepts of individuality and identity, by the spiritual nature of everything from running to worshipping the sun. I like to possess the information to learn and to harvest that knowledge any time I choose in order to create something new. So far I realise I have created a library and an archive but as for creativity I believe that is somewhere within. I hope this blog may help me to think out loud and turning that churning morrass of ideas and instincts and intentions, that intensity of feeling into some artwork profoundly purposeful and poignant. The question is how to manufacture Creativity.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Making a Mark
Back in 1976 I took Art A level. I got an A. The examination consisted of a written paper on Architecture and three practicals in Life drawing, plant drawing, and a still life. Due to the fact that a practical examination lasting three hours would not give the examinee time to finish his work to an acceptable level it was figured that he would complete a small section to illustrate how it would have been done had he had more time.
It is now 2007 and I am 49 and I still have not finished one single drawing or painting I am happy with. Correction - if I am unhappy with it I throw it away long before it could ever be finished.
Why ? I admit I am a perfectionist. I admit I have a lazy streak. I admit my mind would rarely stay still long enough to finish a drawing. To finish any art. I admit to a flexible outlook that allows me to lower my expectations. I admit that I collect all the materials but then have no idea what subject to draw. I know what I don't want to draw. Is this a start. On one project at A level I remember I decided to create a pointillist poster of Laurence Olivier as Othello holding the incriminating handkerchief in front of Desdemona (Maggie Smith). It was A1 size. As time progressed I realised it was so slow A1 was Optimistic to say the least. It is now in a frame at home (unfinished) A5 with only Othello's face drawn. The idea was fine but the implementation was slow and basically, lost.
However I feel like I want to be creative; to draw, paint, carve, sculpt, design.
To be Continued.
It is now 2007 and I am 49 and I still have not finished one single drawing or painting I am happy with. Correction - if I am unhappy with it I throw it away long before it could ever be finished.
Why ? I admit I am a perfectionist. I admit I have a lazy streak. I admit my mind would rarely stay still long enough to finish a drawing. To finish any art. I admit to a flexible outlook that allows me to lower my expectations. I admit that I collect all the materials but then have no idea what subject to draw. I know what I don't want to draw. Is this a start. On one project at A level I remember I decided to create a pointillist poster of Laurence Olivier as Othello holding the incriminating handkerchief in front of Desdemona (Maggie Smith). It was A1 size. As time progressed I realised it was so slow A1 was Optimistic to say the least. It is now in a frame at home (unfinished) A5 with only Othello's face drawn. The idea was fine but the implementation was slow and basically, lost.
However I feel like I want to be creative; to draw, paint, carve, sculpt, design.
To be Continued.
Imagined Worlds
It has long been a criticism of the Science Fiction fraternity - the readers of it - that they admire this genre because of its escapist leanings (and, of course a real proclivity for dressing up and living the part - the Tolkien afficionado who speaks elvish or the Star Trekkie with his Vulcan pointed ears or his Klingon body armour). Science Fiction and the Fantasy genre has grown up. Perhaps it is even approaching respectability. The literary critics, those guardians of the canon can now not only place Tolkien in the 1940s and Star Trek in the 1960s/70s but can historically allocate many other writers and their works to a position in which other texts of the literature and the visual arts can now relate. It is possible to make the connection that these works can be seen as both indicative and illuminating of the environment in and out of which they were produced.
The imagined world is a difficult place novelistically to construct. Often requiring epic lengths to create the necessary detail yet in that obsessive delineation of minutiae they risk losing the reader. John Norman's Gor books spend so long advocating the misaligned nature of male and female that it begins to read like the fantasy of a hen-pecked husband. The words "pleasure-slave" do little to enhance the feminist ideology which obviously seemed to threaten the author. Another perhaps more endearing methodology of imagined creationism is to allow each volume to stand on its own but to cohere to an overall universality of design. The Discworld concept in its shadowing of the real world has the power to find humour in both worlds. Thematically this can run for as long as Terry Pratchett can still find targets that amuse him. Jasper Fforde aims at the even more self-referential vision of literature, both classic and popular. It helps to have read Jane Eyre but his first book entitled "The Eyre Affair" works well without it. Classic patterms of literary development still function in this genre Girl meets Boy. Girl loses Boy. Girl gets boy back but only, it turns out, due to Thursday Next. Christopher Booker's "Seven Basic Plots" are as inspirational to the beginning writer as Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" was to George Lucas's Star Wars dream. For Fforde the pages of literature are ripe for the talents of a revisionist literary detective searching for her lost love.
Likewise Malcolm Pryce's Aberystwyth novels or Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast or Christine Feehan's Carpathians they all convey in a microcosm the universe as their author sees it or would want others to see it. The popularity of each work further emphasizing that many other participants see it the same way. The accusations of escapism only block off an imaginative entry into these worlds - to see the honour in a work by the late great David Gemmell ; fighting against despair because it must be done - to see faith and loyalty in the words of James Barclay. The response of the reader to these works - to these worlds - is more than is termed a demeaningly described suspension of disbelief - it is a true spiritualised belief far from the religiose demands of compulsion - but not in broadswords and elvish heroes but in a humanistic capacity to improve and grow. Of course the book ends and the reader wends his weary way back to his life but inside him that affiliation to those higher qualities is still there and it only needs some trigger to harness it. We know we will be unlikely to face these heroic types of choices but we are shown the way. And we know the way. Read the instruction book carefully......
Afterthought...
The Pern books of Anne McCaffrey demonstrate this breadth of interest very clearly. From the original settlers decision to leave a crowded and strife-riven home planet to designing a system of government and opening up a new world with all its attendant crises. Where would one park one's dragon ?
The imagined world is a difficult place novelistically to construct. Often requiring epic lengths to create the necessary detail yet in that obsessive delineation of minutiae they risk losing the reader. John Norman's Gor books spend so long advocating the misaligned nature of male and female that it begins to read like the fantasy of a hen-pecked husband. The words "pleasure-slave" do little to enhance the feminist ideology which obviously seemed to threaten the author. Another perhaps more endearing methodology of imagined creationism is to allow each volume to stand on its own but to cohere to an overall universality of design. The Discworld concept in its shadowing of the real world has the power to find humour in both worlds. Thematically this can run for as long as Terry Pratchett can still find targets that amuse him. Jasper Fforde aims at the even more self-referential vision of literature, both classic and popular. It helps to have read Jane Eyre but his first book entitled "The Eyre Affair" works well without it. Classic patterms of literary development still function in this genre Girl meets Boy. Girl loses Boy. Girl gets boy back but only, it turns out, due to Thursday Next. Christopher Booker's "Seven Basic Plots" are as inspirational to the beginning writer as Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" was to George Lucas's Star Wars dream. For Fforde the pages of literature are ripe for the talents of a revisionist literary detective searching for her lost love.
Likewise Malcolm Pryce's Aberystwyth novels or Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast or Christine Feehan's Carpathians they all convey in a microcosm the universe as their author sees it or would want others to see it. The popularity of each work further emphasizing that many other participants see it the same way. The accusations of escapism only block off an imaginative entry into these worlds - to see the honour in a work by the late great David Gemmell ; fighting against despair because it must be done - to see faith and loyalty in the words of James Barclay. The response of the reader to these works - to these worlds - is more than is termed a demeaningly described suspension of disbelief - it is a true spiritualised belief far from the religiose demands of compulsion - but not in broadswords and elvish heroes but in a humanistic capacity to improve and grow. Of course the book ends and the reader wends his weary way back to his life but inside him that affiliation to those higher qualities is still there and it only needs some trigger to harness it. We know we will be unlikely to face these heroic types of choices but we are shown the way. And we know the way. Read the instruction book carefully......
Afterthought...
The Pern books of Anne McCaffrey demonstrate this breadth of interest very clearly. From the original settlers decision to leave a crowded and strife-riven home planet to designing a system of government and opening up a new world with all its attendant crises. Where would one park one's dragon ?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Interpretation and Post-modernism
At school we learned things.
What we were taught was considered to be true.
After compulsory education, you were in the growing-up phase where you did things.
Just like I believed that the bible was the word of God so did I read about Boadicea (as she was then named), about German aggression and how the Empire was a civilising thing. I believed in fairness, truth and justice. I believed in elders and betters.
The world was never like this. Why was I lied to ? Why was my education inextricably intertwined with an ideology I now recognise as not just untrue but obviously untrue and patronisingly simplistic. Nobody told me this but now I see the glimmerings of the doubts beginning to appear. Approaching A-levels I remember how essay writing began to involve the use of the word "perhaps" and how one was encouraged to offer the differing sides of the argument. One still had to use that pompous tone of official authority but in hindsight the cracks were starting to appear. My history teacher told me that no-one needed to know the date of the battle of Waterloo and that History, as a subject, taught an individual to learn to think. Similarly, years later, at an Open University Summer School reading King Lear and the Literary Critics the varying interpretations of the text were offered and rather than judgmentally deciding that one was right and the others wrong I learnt to recognise differing degrees of "Rightness".
Although I make, even now, no pretence to either wisdom or knowledge, I can see in a text (whether it be news documentary, film, or book) the meanings that exist. Not a single meaning but many. The quality of that text is assessed by the accuracy or the emotional response engendered in the work. It is judged by the depth of its presentational awareness and by its avoidance of the banal, the sensational or the dogmatic. Truth is not a single authority nor can opinion be cast as fact. The truth of the fossil record destroys the basis of Genesis but the bible and its believers do tell of power, propaganda, misinformation and manipulation. The bible describes the voice of man rather than the word of God. The organised church, indeed all religions tell of governance and the belief that wanes as humanity both asserts itself and searches for comfort in an alienating, marginalised world.
As an individual I value my capacity to think and dislike it when it is assumed that I will routinely follow a pre-ordained path. I wish to choose my own direction and to power that search not with a cause that I will inflict on anyone else but out of a natural curiosity to find the option which I want to keep. I suspect that the answer to contentment lies in a blending of a multiplicity of skills, talents and thinking. I believe the first step on that search is to satisfy an individual's curiosity to create. The answer starts in that Creativity. And that creativity stems from.........
What we were taught was considered to be true.
After compulsory education, you were in the growing-up phase where you did things.
Just like I believed that the bible was the word of God so did I read about Boadicea (as she was then named), about German aggression and how the Empire was a civilising thing. I believed in fairness, truth and justice. I believed in elders and betters.
The world was never like this. Why was I lied to ? Why was my education inextricably intertwined with an ideology I now recognise as not just untrue but obviously untrue and patronisingly simplistic. Nobody told me this but now I see the glimmerings of the doubts beginning to appear. Approaching A-levels I remember how essay writing began to involve the use of the word "perhaps" and how one was encouraged to offer the differing sides of the argument. One still had to use that pompous tone of official authority but in hindsight the cracks were starting to appear. My history teacher told me that no-one needed to know the date of the battle of Waterloo and that History, as a subject, taught an individual to learn to think. Similarly, years later, at an Open University Summer School reading King Lear and the Literary Critics the varying interpretations of the text were offered and rather than judgmentally deciding that one was right and the others wrong I learnt to recognise differing degrees of "Rightness".
Although I make, even now, no pretence to either wisdom or knowledge, I can see in a text (whether it be news documentary, film, or book) the meanings that exist. Not a single meaning but many. The quality of that text is assessed by the accuracy or the emotional response engendered in the work. It is judged by the depth of its presentational awareness and by its avoidance of the banal, the sensational or the dogmatic. Truth is not a single authority nor can opinion be cast as fact. The truth of the fossil record destroys the basis of Genesis but the bible and its believers do tell of power, propaganda, misinformation and manipulation. The bible describes the voice of man rather than the word of God. The organised church, indeed all religions tell of governance and the belief that wanes as humanity both asserts itself and searches for comfort in an alienating, marginalised world.
As an individual I value my capacity to think and dislike it when it is assumed that I will routinely follow a pre-ordained path. I wish to choose my own direction and to power that search not with a cause that I will inflict on anyone else but out of a natural curiosity to find the option which I want to keep. I suspect that the answer to contentment lies in a blending of a multiplicity of skills, talents and thinking. I believe the first step on that search is to satisfy an individual's curiosity to create. The answer starts in that Creativity. And that creativity stems from.........
Friday, September 7, 2007
In the beginning
In the beginning -
There was not the word, there was not a bang, there was certainly no flash photography - there was probably only silence.
These thoughts are about Creativity, about Art and Culture, about Interpretation and Interrogation. It is about answering questions and questioning answers. It is about the narratives of Vermeer or the shadows of Rembrandt; the crow-dark imagery of Ted Hughes and the imagined worlds of Pratchett and Fforde.
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