Anne Aylor: Write Now!

Making flashbacks work

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:48:00 +0000

In novels and motion pictures a flashback is a narrative technique to interrupt the chronology of the story to cut away to something that has happened in the past.

The flashback technique is as old as Western literature. In The Odyssey, most of the adventures that blighted Odysseus' return journey from Troy are told in flashback by Odysseus when he is at the Phoenician court.

Roger Levy is a writer who’s deservedly been said to be "the heir to Philip K Dick". His science fiction novels, Reckless Sleep, Dark Heavens and Icarus are all published by Gollancz. He is one of the founding members of the Zenazzurians, a writing group that I was priviliged to have been asked to join 8 years ago. Roger nicknamed me “The Flashback Queen” because flashbacks occurred so frequently in the novel I was then reading to the Zens. And he was right. In The Speed of Dark I relied on them too heavily and didn’t handle them skillfully enough for the reader to be unaware of their presence.

What most readers are interested in is the story moving forward in the present, not making distracting detours into the past. But if you need to have a flashback, the reader shouldn’t notice it. In the 1986 edition of my first novel, No Angel Hotel, the flashbacks weren’t handled well, as is evident in this Chapter 11 excerpt because it is immediately followed by a flashforward in time. The flashback below is indicated in bold.

Ivan went to Cabourg each year. Each time he walked up the Avenue de la Mer he saw the face of the Grand Hotel as he would a friend, a little older, a little changed.

At the hotel he could lie all day in his room; he could remain an outsider. In September he could order a plate of chaudfroid, the maître d'hôtel not protesting, 'But monsieur, that was on the summer menu.' Instead, a red-boleroed waiter would serve the filleted poultry in jelly and withdraw.

He had first gone to the Grand Hotel in Cabourg with his father five months before he died. Helen Doran had gone too, to look after the boy. She had been twirling a new, cream parasol with flounces.

The first morning they'd eaten breakfast in the glass-sided dining-room which faced the Channel. She had thanked his father for the gift of the parasol; she had called his father James. The boy cried, 'He's not James to you!' and Helen had looked up from her plate in surprise. His father had turned towards the glass wall. The two adults on opposite sides of the table, tears on her face, the glass's reflection on his.

Twenty-five years later, in his son's jacket pocket, was a note he'd received the morning he left for his annual visit to France:

Ivan, I was quite surprised to hear that you are to be married! You could have had the decency to tell me. I am, after all, your mother. I wouldn't have known except for the enclosed which appeared in the Sentinel. It was the thing to do as far as Pellipar is concerned, though I would have thought you could have found someone more in your league. Having said that, I did find her that night at dinner rather charming and, of course, quite beautiful. My congratulations to you both.

He folded the note and engagement notice and returned them to his breast pocket thinking, Mother dear, you're not the only one she should have had the decency to tell.

Below is the re-edited page from the 2012 revised edition. Only the first paragraph in this excerpt is in the present. The rest is a flashback, but because it’s extended, it’s more active because this "umbrella scene" unfolds as if it were the present:

He went to Cabourg each year. Every time he walked up the Avenue de la Mer, he looked forward to seeing the façade of the Grand Hotel like he would an old friend. He knew the bellboys, the night staff, the chambermaids. With the casino next door, he could gamble all night and sleep all day. If he went in the off-season, he could order chaud-froid from room service and not be told, ‘Monsieur Pakenham, filleted chicken in jelly is only available on the menu of summer.’

He had first gone to the Grand Hotel in Cabourg with his father five months before he’d died. His mother was supposed to have accompanied them, but the doctor had sent her to bed with ‘nervous exhaustion’. His new nanny, Miss Doran, had gone instead to look after him.

They had arrived at the Dives-Cabourg railway station on a hot July afternoon. They checked into the Grand Hotel, then went for a walk on the mile-long promenade above the seawall his father told him was called the digue.

Halfway down the beach was an umbrella shop with a scalloped blue awning. Miss Doran stepped into its dark rectangle of shade to fan herself.

He turned to his father. ‘Why are we stopping, papa?’

Miss Doran leaned down and explained the heat was making her feel faint.

His father asked if she had an umbrella and she said she’d forgotten to pack one. Then his father said that he must do something to remedy that.

Leaving them on the promenade to watch the waves, his father went into the shop and came out with a big, banana-coloured parasol with a handle in the shape of a swan’s neck.

Miss Doran twirled her new umbrella as they walked in the direction of the cliffs. They were passing a cafe on the promenade that had a flaking lattice screen hung with framed pictures. Ivan was a few steps ahead when he turned back and saw Miss Doran slip her hand into his father’s. He heard her thank him for the gift of the parasol. He heard her call his father James.

In the 1986 version the leap from a flashback into the present (flashforwarded 25 years) was too jarring. This was solved by editing out the section about the letter and engagement notice and inserting them into the following chapter so the time frame was more straight forward.

A postscript. After Roger called me the "Flashback Queen", I began to wonder why I was so drawn to using them until I realized that it was because I was more interested in my characters' past than in their present. That must be why I'm so fond of this quote by Kirkegaard: "Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards."

Stay tuned . . .

Making a book trailer

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:57:00 +0000

One of the things a writer needs to do once a book is published is to promote it. Many authors do not feel comfortable with this (myself included), but it's a necessary evil. There are millions of novels out there. How do you get the message out that yours is now available in the seemingly-infinite soukh of physical and cyber books?

One of the things I decided to do was to create a 3-minute book trailer for No Angel Hotel. But what images and footage to use to best give the flavour of the novel to tempt a potential reader?

The first task was to create a short synopsis that would, hopefully, create interest. Not an easy thing to do. Writing a synopsis is similar to what Flaubert said about writing a novel; it's like trying to put the sea into a carafe. I finally managed to "bottle" a minute's worth of plot on which images could then be overlaid.

I have friends who are award-winning photographers and they generously allowed me to use their images. Then there was some hand-held footage filmed in Cabourg years ago. And I was also able to use several of the covers the graphic designer had come up with for both the front and back covers. Line of Sight had given me a choice of six covers and I was able to use four of them in the trailer.

Music was a hugely important consideration. I had originally decided to use Eric Satie's "Gymnopédie No 3" as the soundtrack, but while I was compiling source material for the video, I was playing one of my favourite songs, "Blue" by Joni Mitchell. The album by the same name came out in 1971, only a few years after the late 60s when much of NAH is set, but as I worked, I realised the song was the perfect backdrop. So many of the images I'd chosen for the trailer were blue and the mood of the book is blue and, for much of the novel, the main character is "blue".

As Mitchell said herself in 1979 about the Blue album, "there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either." A lot like the heroine, Elkie Bonner, in No Angel Hotel.

Even if you have no desire to buy the book, listen to the trailer, just for Joni and for three minutes be serenaded by her sad angel's eloquent voice.

Stay tuned . . .

Rewriting: between dog and wolf

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:28:00 +0000

The French have an interesting phrase for dusk: entre chien et loup. Literally translated, it means “between dog and wolf”. More precisely, the phrase might be rendered as “twilight” in English: when the level of light is so low that one is unable to distinguish between these two similar, yet very different, four-legged creatures.

But the French phrase means more than that, implying that it’s also the time between what is comfortable and familiar and what is dangerous. What is unknown and frightening.

Reworking a text that is familiar, but needs major work was, for me, entre chien et loup. Terrifying because you can see—and not see—how to proceed. You can still make out the shape of the old narrative, but the new chapters are dissolving.

I had been working on the rewrite of No Angel Hotel for months; the more I played with the “canvas” of the text, the muddier (and uglier) it became. I was about abandon the project forever when one of my students gave me some wise advice. Gwendolyn Kosten Modder had read the published version and loved it and she told me, It’s of its time, Anne. Don’t tinker with it too much.

So I went back to the drawing board. I took the original and compared it, word by word, with the muddy, reworked version, keeping the best of them both and correcting some major plot inconsistencies.

Not many writers have the chance to rework their prose once it’s been in print, but I was lucky enough to be able to. The result is the same book, but one that is completely different and, hopefully, much better. And if you don’t believe me, buy the new one and get the old out-of-print one on Amazon for one pence (plus postage). Stay tuned . . .

Rewriting: kill your darlings (2)

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:54:00 +0000

Another easy decision in the rewrite of No Angel Hotel was to remove the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I’d been attached to what I now call my second-hand "darlings" when I first wrote the book, but jettisoned them for the new edition.

I did love those quotes but, thinking back on it, I believe I'd put them there in the hope of making my first novel have more literary "weight". My younger self didn’t think my own words were enough. I can still remember the amount (a considerable chunk of the small fee I received in advance royalties). Some people who dispensed the permissions were extremely generous and asked for no remumeration for a few quoted lines from a first-time novelist. I am still grateful, Vera Nabokov and Olywn Hughes. As beautiful as some of those twenty-four chapter quotes were (from sources as diverse as Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood, Vladimir Nabokov's "Spring in Fialta" and T S Eliot’s "The Waste Land"), they all disappeared from the fourth imprint at no detriment to the manuscript.

I did, however, keep the epigraphs at the beginning of each of the four sections the book is divided into: Autumn 1966, Summer 1967, The End of Summer 1968 and Fall 1980. Reading a short quote on each of these pages slows a reader down just enough so they register that time has been kaleidoscoped, flash forwarded.

My favourite quotation in the book is two sentences taken from a short story by a friend of mine, Victor Rowe. "Night Time" is his plangent tale about an unequal love affair and absolutely perfect for the third section of No Angel Hotel. "How I hug my antique grief to me, it keeps me warm." Thanks, Victor.

Stay tuned . . .

Rewriting: kill your darlings (1)

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:59:00 +0000

When BareBone Books decided to re-release my out-of-print first novel, I was thrilled. No Angel Hotel had been published many years ago: twice in the UK and once in the US. I hadn’t looked at the book in ages and it was a shock to re-read it.

When it was first published, No Angel Hotel received excellent reviews, including ones in Kirkus and the Washington Post Book World. But reading it again, with a colder, crueler (and more experienced) eye, I was unwilling to publish it in the version that had appeared more than two decades earlier.

Words have power; they are precious, but every word a writer produces is not precious. I often quote William Faulkner’s wonderful phrase to my students: “Kill your darlings.” I discovered that to make the new edition work, I had to kill quite a few youthful “darlings” of my own.

The writer is a puppeteer, creating a world of characters that only exist in a metaphorical theatrical box. The string-puller must invent, clothe and conjure up words for their marionettes to speak. They must move them behind the proscenium arch in a way that is so skilled that an audience suspends belief, surrendering to the irrational idea that these wooden, wigged figures have lives of their own. During the magical time of the performance, the audience is aware of the puppeteer’s existence (who wears black so as to be as invisible as possible). The audience wouldn’t want the house lights to come up and see the person manipulating the strings.

Authorial sentences and “suspect verbs” do exactly this; they reveal the presence of the puppeteer. So one of the easiest parts of the rewrite of NAH was to delete lines that were suspect, inaccurate, unnecessarily poetic or clever, examples such as these in Chapter 5. In the rewrite, I was relieved to leave these, and many other, cringe-making phrases on the cutting-room floor.

• “Through the drawn curtains a splinter of light embedded itself into the floor.”

Geez, this is embarrassing. Why you may ask? Because pulled drapes allow in more than a “splinter” and light cannot “embed” itself into the floor. A physical impossibility (and a suspect verb, to boot). Old curtains in a child’s bedroom, a small hole through which light can pass, is more atmospheric. And precise.

• “In Frankfurt, they’d buried their dead with bells on their fingers to prevent premature inhumation.”

This might have been credible in third-person narration, but it was an internal thought of one of the main characters after a one-night stand. I don’t think many men think something as arch and complicated as that after mattress mambo with an attractive young woman, even if they are remembering a recurring nightmare about their father’s death.

• “his [father’s] fists hammering against the Risorgimento sides [of the coffin]”

Risorgimento had to go, too. The word was there because it sounded grand; I liked the sound of it. My younger self was trying to be clever and, for my crime, I am now whipping myself with a wet noodle.

To illustrate the difference in just one page between versions, above is the edited original first page of Chapter 5 and the 2012 edition. If you’re interested in the editorial process, compare the old and new versions (click on the relevant page to enlarge), then decide for yourself which is better. I had to. Stay tuned . . .

Denise Chávez

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:03:00 +0000

Denise Chávez is one of the leading Chicana playwrights and novelists of the US Southwest. Her books include The Last of the Menu Girls, Face of an Angel, Loving Pedro Infante and A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture.

In an interview with William Clark of Publisher’s Weekly Chávez said, ‘Writing for me is a healing, therapeutic, invigorating, sensuous manifestation of the energy that comes to you from the world, from everything that’s alive. Everything has a voice and you just have to listen as closely as you can. That’s what's so exciting—a character comes to you and you can’t write fast enough because the character is speaking through you. It’s a divine moment.’

Throughout her writing she emphasizes the need for comunidad, or community, and that is exactly what she creates in spades at the Cultural Center de Mesilla that she runs with her husband, Daniel Zolinsky. A stone’s throw from where Billy the Kid was once jailed, CCM is a vibrant, eclectic place where you can buy books, new and old, find wonderful LPs which have been donated to the center, attend workshops as diverse as learning about Nahuatl and Mayan teachings to creating a papel picado. There is also a children’s corner and a freezer where you can buy delicious handmade Mexican ice cream. It was at the Cultural Center de Mesilla that my novel, The Double Happiness Company, received its US launch this summer. To view a short video of the celebrations, click here.

The Cultural Center de Mesilla and Denise will be featured in PBS’s “The American Experience”, in a new documentary about Billy the Kid’s life and his relationship to the Southwest and Hispano New Mexico. It will be aired nationally on 10 January. For more information, click here.

Denise is also the Founder and Director of the Border Book Festival, the longest running literary festival in the American Southwest. This year's title is “The Shamaic Journey” (La Jornada Chámanica) which will take place from 20 - 22 April in Mesilla, New Mexico, featuring healers from Mexico to Africa.

While I was in the United States for the launch of my novel, I was honoured that Denise agreed to an interview. “Mango Day” is the result: a 10-minute video where she reads from her moving memoir, A Taco Testimony, and reflects on the process of writing. She has said of her work, ‘My characters are survivors . . . I feel, as a Chicana writer, that I am capturing the voice of so many who have been voiceless for years. I write about the neighborhood handymen, the waitresses, the bag ladies, the elevator operators. They all have something in common: they know what it is to love and to be merciful . . . My work is rooted in the Southwest, in heat and dust, and reflects a world where love is as real as the land. In this dry and seemingly harsh and empty world, there is much beauty to be found.’ Stay tuned . . .

A story of a book and its cover(s)

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Due to the popularity of my second novel, The Double Happiness Company, BareBone Books have decided to reissue my first. No Angel Hotel was written a long time ago which is why I wanted to revise the text to reflect the fresh new cover design.

Throughout the four reincarnations of No Angel Hotel, I have been fascinated to see how differently my book can be perceived because of its "wrapping". The first edition was a hardback with a jacket. The editing, typesetting and layout were top notch, but I was less than happy with the cover: a doleful watercolour of a young woman with thick red hair, staring mournfully into space. There were dropped pink rose petals on the table where she was sitting. I cringed when I first saw it and I inwardly cringe when I think of it now (which is why you won't see it pictured here*). This book—which is the exploration of the obsessive love of a young Northern Irish woman for a man who can not return her passion—looked to me like an upmarket version of a Mills & Boon publication. I had spent years writing a book which my editor (and later reviewers) compared to the novels of Jean Rhys, only to have the art department create a cover that looked like it belonged on one churned out by Barbara Cartland.

The first paperback edition by Grafton Books was miles better. My editor commisioned a pastel drawing by Emma Chichester-Clark. The artist read the text carefully because the bedsit window has straggly house plants, orange curtains and four teak elephants with raised trunks, all of which feature in the book.

The US edition was a jacketed hardback with Elkie and Ivan in a car: he in a tux, she leaning against his shoulder in a friend's black dress. Again, the artist read the book closely and created an image after the ball that Elkie and Ivan go to where he ignores her and she is left to dance with a bald old lecher in a cummerbund. (And if you're wondering why the title is different, it's because the marketing department at St Martin's Press said a negative title wouldn't sell in America.)

The new edition of No Angel Hotel will be available in February 2012 with this striking new cover by Line of Sight Associates in Toronto. The artwork was designed by Sharon Lockwood, the company’s President and Creative Director, who read the novel closely and was clearly moved by it. What she has created is sensual, sexual: the throwing open of a window in a darkened room onto a vista which is reminiscent of the explicit flowers of Georgia O'Keeffe.

I found Lockwood’s interpretation fascinating. She produced artwork that perfectly conveyed the sense of isolation which all the key characters in the novel possess. The darkened room, either in a hotel or a bedsit, is suggestive of both intimacy—or of being utterly alone. There is the empty bed, the yearning. Mystery. Suspense. And there is the female character drawing open the curtain, arms raised. There is the suggestion of wings to either free her or try to move the barrier of her imprisonment. You’ll have to read the book to see which version got it right. Stay tuned . . .

*I've relented. If you're curious to see the "Cartland cover", click here.

Suspect Verbs and Adverbs

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:37:00 +0000

English is an incredibly rich language, a bazaar of many tongues. We are lucky to have a huge vocabulary to draw upon, but as writers we don't want to obfuscate language. Did I just have you reaching for your dictionary? When students begin to write, one of the things they tend to do is use "suspect verbs", a phrase I invented. Whenever it occurs, I underline the offending verb and, above it, write SV. A couple of examples are "She wended her way to school" and "He masticated his meat." A more natural way would be to say, "She walked to school" and "He chewed his meat."

A simple way to check if a verb you're thinking of using is "suspect" is to say it in dialogue. For example, if you'd written this sentence (shown in red) about a teacher who is dressing down one of her students: "Enough impertinence!" she retorted. Test it by changing it to the first person and say it aloud: I retorted, "Enough impertinence!" Unless you're a pompous person, you wouldn't say "retorted" when you were retelling the incident; you would say something far simpler, like "said" or "shouted". An even better choice would be to leave out the verb altogether. The dialogue is doing the work and needs no help from a pronoun and a suspect verb.

At a subconscious level, I think people use suspect verbs to be considered clever, but its effect is to alienate the reader. As Jonathan Franzen said, "Interesting verbs are seldom interesting." It doesn't mean you can't use language in a rich way, but it must honour your style, your story and your voice.

Adverbs, adjectives and, less commonly, nouns can also be "suspect", as you’ll see in this passage:

He beseeched his spouse to accompany him to the garden to see how those beloved, pungent foxes of hers had wreaked havoc in the crepuscular hours. "Perfidious vulpine creatures!" he exclaimed vociferously. "They have purloined my philtrons!"

As a little exercise, have a go at rewriting this paragraph without any suspect verbs, adverbs, adjectives or nouns. Stay tuned . . .

Balzac's Death

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 09:28:00 +0000

Like many writers, it is coffee that kick-starts my day and my writing.

Coffee first came to Europe in the 17th century from the Middle East after being brought back by Venetian traders. The word derives from the Arabic, qahwah ("that which keeps you awake") which the Turks pronounced as kah-veh. It was believed by some Christians to be the devil’s drink. The pope of the day was thinking of banishing it . . . until he sipped it. Pope Clement VIII was so delighted he baptized it instead.

Coffee houses quickly became centres for gossip, reading, writing or doing business. One of the most famous in London was the Turk’s Head in the Strand where you might find Samuel Johnson, his biographer Boswell, Oliver Goldsmith and Edward Gibbon, all ordering Beelzebub's beverage. It was not long before coffee not only stained manuscripts and diaries, but entered them. Early mentions of coffee can be found in Francis Bacon’s Historia Vitae et Mortis (1623) and Sylva Sylvarum (1627).

Coffee’s addictive nature was noted by Voltaire who drank 50 cups a day. In Balzac's Treatise on Modern Stimulants he says that ideas are encouraged by drinking coffee: "Things remembered arrive at full gallop." Balzac was a man of huge appetites and some people believe that his love of coffee might have contributed to his death. (A Philadelphia coffee roaster has named one of their blends La Mort de Balzac.) Johann Sebastian Bach's inspiration for his “Coffee Cantata” was due to his dependence on the drink.

Today, coffee is as important as alcohol in literature and here I will refer to two works where coffee is featured. In Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe narrates in considerable detail about making coffee before leaving on his escapades. In The Wild Sheep Chase Haruki Murakami makes a coffee shop the place where his protagonist picks up men willing to pick up her ciggies and coffee tab.

A fact I find fascinating is that the Oromo people of Ethiopia traditionally plant a coffee tree on the graves of powerful shamans. They believe the first coffee bush sprouted from the god of heaven's tears as he wept over a dead sorcerer. So not the devil’s drink, but a celestial one. Stay tuned . . .

A Tale of Two Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:35:00 +0000

In 1985 I bought a anthology of Raymond Carver’s short stories. The thick Picador paperback included three of his collections: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (1976), What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) and Cathedral (1983).

One of the most memorable stories was “The bath” which appeared in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It is about a boy, Scotty, whose mother orders a cake for his eighth birthday. She asks the baker to decorate it with a "spaceship and a launching pad under a sprinkling of white stars”. Two days later, on the morning of his party, Scotty is walking to school when he is knocked down by a car.

As I devoured this wonderful anthology, I discovered this story also appeared in in Cathedral in a longer version with a different plot and tone. It had been transformed and retitled “A small good thing”.

I puzzled over this for a long time. Why would Carver publish a story twice? This question continued to intrigue me for years until I decided it might be interesting for my students to take the opening pages from each story and compare them. I thought it would be good for the class to decide which was their favourite and to defend their choice in a debate.

To prepare for the exercise, I went to Google and was finally able to find out why there were two stories, two titles, two versions. I discovered that “A small good thing” was the story that Carver had first written. That his editor, Gordon Lish, had reduced it by a third and retitled it “The bath”. That Carver had felt unable to resist the painful cuts and changes.

Gordon Lish's career in publishing began when he was employed as a part-time editor in Palo Alto, California, where he was a friend and drinking buddy of Carver’s. In 1969 Lish persuaded Esquire to hire him as its fiction editor and he sealed the deal by promising the magazine to find new voices. One of the first was Raymond Carver.

At the beginning of his career, Carver was grateful for Lish’s help, but as time went on, he became uneasy about Lish's aggressive editing. In July 1980 Carver wrote Lish a long letter telling him he could not publish the heavily-edited stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. “Maybe if I were alone, by myself, and no one had ever seen these stories, maybe then, knowing that your versions are better than some of the ones I sent, maybe I could get into this and go with it.” In the end, the stories were published as Lish, rather than as Carver, wanted.

I have to nail my colours to the mast and say that I prefer Lish’s versions of Carver. For me, his cuts were hugely effective because the reader is left to judge what a character is thinking or feeling rather than being told by the author. I was more gripped by "The bath" because I wasn’t sure at the end whether Scotty had lived or died. That suspense was taken away in “A small good thing” where the ending in unequivocal. But don’t take my word for it. Go to Carver’s collected works. Read both stories, then decide for yourself if Lish’s red pen served Carver—or his own reputation as a fierce, uncompromising editor.

Stay tuned . . .

The Paciu Portraits

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:58:00 +0000

Ion Paciu is a professional photographer and teacher of photography who is currently engaged on a project of capturing portraits of strangers he meets on the streets of London, a project he calls People I didn't know.

Having once endured a photo shoot for a book jacket, I know how important it is for a photographer to establish a rapport with their subject so they will allow you to look into their soul. That is why his pictures are so surprising: photos taken with natural light and no trickery. Portraits of people with whom Ion has no relationship. People who have trusted him enough to expose themselves to his lens.

It was my previous post about the Fayum portraits that made me think Ion's work would make a lovely companion piece to that blog: these two pictures of his with their 100-yard stares have much in common with those Egyptian paintings executed so long ago. In Ion's words, 'People I didn't know is a homage to human nature, the art of photography and a quest to bring together our solitary London souls.' Ancient and modern, these are extraordinary portraits, whether they have been created with paint and beeswax or paper and pixels, with the vast distance of over 1700 years between them.

John Berger wrote an essay on the Fayum portraits. Here is an extract: 'I've got a portrait out my pocket. There's a silence in her face. She appeals for nothing. They appeal for nothing, the Fayum faces, they ask for nothing. They look at us and their look says, 'We know we are alive. And you are alive because you are looking at us.'

Stay tuned . . .

The Fayum Portraits

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:13:00 +0000

After teaching two writing retreats in Catalonia, I took the train to Madrid. I went for two reasons: to do research for my new novel which is set at the time of the Spanish Civil War and to visit the Archaeological Museum to see the Fayum portraits.

I first learned of these extraordinary Egyptian paintings in 1997 when the British Museum had a haunting exhibition featuring them. Made by Greek painters on boards and canvas that covered the faces of the dead, the Fayum mummy portraits were painted on wooden tablets using tempera or pigments mixed with liquid beeswax. They are the oldest two-dimensional portraits in existence.

Created between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, these paintings from El Fayum necropolis were used by the souls of the dead to help them identify their bodies so that they could continue their journey to the afterlife.

With great accuracy, the artists captured the identity of each individual, revealing an almost photographic likeness. As the art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon said of them, ‘These people did not want to die and these images are the spells which they wave against their own extinction.’

Sitting on the bench in Madrid seeing all thirteen portraits across the dimly-lit room, not one of them is old, not one of them anywhere near my age. One is a beautiful young woman with large gold earrings that glint in the darkened museum light. She looks like someone I know, but I can’t place her. Through the center of each eye the wood panel has cracked so it looks like she is crying dagger-straight tears.

Another is of a young man with a dimpled chin, pillow lips, huge staring blue eyes. He has hair and side burns like the young Tom Jones. Arcing over his head, from one shoulder of his ice-cream white toga to the other, is a delicately carved narrow gilt band. Someone had loved him.

The most disturbing portrait is of a young woman with an ugly brown-black stain almost obscuring her right eye as if, in death, someone had blinded her.

I sit for at least half an hour, looking into their eyes. Their faces are earnest, naked, alone. I am staring at their painted souls. Each of them looks back at me jealously, wanting to be here, among the living. They are telling me to laugh, to love, to take chances, to make every day—every minute—count because death is very long. Stay tuned . . .

The Little Prince & 200 Sunsets

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:04:00 +0000

One of my favourite books came into my life when I was 21. It is a children's book that is adored by adults all over the world. That book is The Little Prince which tells the story of a sad, misunderstood boy who is unashamed of expressing love, confusion or delight. The Little Prince reminds us of who we once were: before we stopped appreciating the beauty of stars and flowers and talking foxes. I have many favorite quotes, but there is one I highlighted years ago, one I still try to live by: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The Little Prince lived on a tiny planet that had three volcanoes, two active and one dormant. He spent a great deal of time pulling up baobob trees that would destroy his tiny asteroid if they were not removed. One of the Little Prince's few pleasures was watching the sun go down. When he wanted to see the day end, all he needed to do was pick up his chair and move it backwards a few steps. One day he saw forty-four sunsets.

The Little Prince leaves his asteroid to travel to other planets. In Chapter 6 he says to an aviator on Earth:

“I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset now.”
   “But we must wait,” I said.
   “Wait? For what?”
   “For the sunset. We must wait until it is time.”
   At first you seemed to be very much surprised. And then you laughed to yourself . . . “I am always thinking I am at home!”

Atardecer Edvard Grieg is a beautiful 5-minute film of not 44, but over 200 sunsets. When you look at Emiliano Moro's images of dusk and twilight, look not with your eyes, but with your heart. And you don't even have to move your chair. Stay tuned . . .

El horizonte desde el prado Photo © Emiliano Moro

Love: the origin of creation

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 13:21:00 +0000

Is not love the origin of all creation?

Henri Matisse

When I first came to Europe, I remember going to the old Jeu de Paume in Paris and staring for ages at Claude Monet’s paintings showing Rouen Cathedral at different times of the day. The shimmering effect of light at dusk made me catch my breath in wonder. I stood in front of those magical canvases, wondering how Monet was able to paint something so elusive. I didn't know how he did it, but marvelled at his technical ability. Every brushstroke seemed to catch the love he felt for light.

I bought postcards of his Cathedral paintings and pinned them up in my bedsit in London. I stared at them endlessly. My fondness for these canvases made me want to bring them, somehow, into my first novel which I was then working on. The main character, Elkie Bonner, is a romantic from County Londonderry who models herself on Anna Karenina. She falls recklessly, hopelessly, madly in love with a man who reminds her of "Count Vronsky with dark hair". Realising that he will never care for her as deeply as she does for him, she kids herself that, alone, she will tour the world, travel to Moscow and "watch the changing light on the façade of St Basil’s Cathedral. She would never go to Moscow. So little light. So little light in the world."

That was all I was able to weave into the text of No Angel Hotel. Even though the Rouen paintings are not referred to by name, I would like to think those paintings somehow still cast their shadow in the book. Stanley Kunitz wrote about a poem that came to him while he was in his garden. "I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer'. It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sounds of their beating wings."

Monet's friend, the writer Georges Clemenceau, wrote an essay about the exhibition Monet held in 1895 of his Cathedral series: "In front of the twenty views of the building by Monet, one notices that Art . . . teaches us to watch, to perceive, to feel. The stone itself is transformed into an organic substance, and one can feel how it changes in the same way that a little moment of life is followed by another one."

Monet painted 31 canvases in his Cathedral series showing the shifting light on the front of the cathedral in sun, rain, at dawn, high noon and dusk. They are held in collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Even though they are variations on a theme, I can see the love in every one. Stay tuned . . .

The Burden of Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:40:00 +0000

Werner Herzog has achieved notoriety in the movie industry as someone who makes films that would be almost impossible for any other director to make. Audiences who have seen his film, Fitzcarraldo, will never forget seeing a real steamship pulled over a muddy hillside in Peru using no special effects, only brute force.

But that brain-searing scene only happened because Herzog refused to simulate a 320-ton steamship pulled overland. Despite the seemingly insurmountable difficulties it presented, he refused to give up on his dream of moving a ship over a hill because he did not want to fake it. When the investors backing Fitzcarraldo found out that it was proving impossible, they asked Herzog if it might be wiser to abandon the film and write off the huge pre-production losses. He was outraged. “How can you ask this question?” he replied. “If I abandon this project, I will be a man without dreams, and I don't want to live like that.”

Living with a cherished, but unrealised, dream is hard on the soul. It's like dragging a boat up a 40-degree slope. I should know, having spent years writing a book I thought would never be finished. Now that it's finally out, it's a relief, a joy and a sadness, all at the same time.

I started on The Double Happiness Company many years ago. It was a book I never wanted to write because I knew how hard it would be to write convincingly about a young girl with a dream so big that it almost kills her. But the themes and the characters kept nipping at my heels. The first draft was written in the first person from the point of view of Katie Rivers, the novel’s teenage protagonist. My writing group kept telling me it wasn’t working because it was bathetic and the main character was weak, irritating and unsympathetic. But by the time I realised they were right, the manuscript was already 140,000 words long.

So I started from scratch, writing it from in the third person from Katie’s point of view to gain more objectivity. I added two other narrators: Katie's brother, Rhett, and their mother, Lola, in an effort to make the narrative more balanced. The manuscript was slowly getting better, but I still had not fully resolved the book's many flaws.

Depressed and defeated, I shoved the bulging typescript in a drawer. For a long, long time. Seven years to be precise. But even hidden away, the novel would not leave me alone. I would have abandoned the manuscript, except that I knew the technical problems I had to solve would never go away until I faced them. That even if I did start a new novel, the same problems would surface in another form to haunt me. Then I read this by Robert Moss: “Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.”

I knew I couldn't give up because I was being stalked by some of my best material so I finally surrendered and let myself be “caught”. I cut and cut and cut. I added missing scenes. I deepened the main characters by exploring, then revealing their motives. By pushing through the many problems in The Double Happiness Company, I was finally able to finish it to my satisfaction. And not only to my satisfaction, it would seem. Almost without exception, people have found the book gripping. Some have read it one long sitting. Others have purposely read at a snail's pace so it wouldn't be over so quickly. One mother of young children cursed me because she found The Double Happiness Company so engrossing she didn't get to bed until 4.00AM on Christmas morning, only to have to get up a few hours later to look after a sniffly little one. Surely the loveliest “curse” I've received from anyone.

Do I regret starting the novel? I do not any more than, I suspect, Werner Herzog regrets the madness and the folly of moving his steamship through a jungle for Fitzcarraldo. That is the price you must willingly pay for the burden of a dream. Stay tuned . . .

Metamorphosis of a title: Title taddle (2)

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:22:00 +0000

Vladimir Nabokov is known primarily for his infamous novel, Lolita, which was written while travelling on butterfly-collecting trips in the western United States. Everyone knows the title, even though they may never have read it. But the book I’d like to talk about in this second post on titles is one of my favourites.

In 1951 Nabokov published a collection of personal reflections in the United States under the title Conclusive Evidence. In its first UK edition he decided against that name because it suggested a detective story. He suggested to his British editor that it could be rechristened Speak, Mnemosyne. (Mnemosyne being the Greek Titan goddess of memory and remembrance, as well the inventor of language.) His publisher, not unexpectedly, was fearful that little old ladies would not ask for a book whose title they couldn't pronounce.

Nabokov’s achingly beautiful memoir was eventually published as Speak, Memory. The Russian version was published later under yet another title, Drugie Berega (Other Shores).

My own favourite title for this book is Speak, Memory. It is one of the best works of autobiography I have read, one I urge students who are writing memoirs to read it so they can see how a master does it. To tempt you, here is a paragraph from Chapter Three about Nabokov’s maternal grandfather: “Ivan Rukavishnikov had a terrible temper and my mother feared him. In my childhood all I knew about him were his portraits (his beard, the magisterial chain around his neck) and such attributes of his main hobby as decoy ducks and elk heads. A pair of especially large bears he had shot stood upright with redoubtably raised front paws in the iron-barred vestibule of our country house. Every summer I gauged my height by the ability to reach their fascinating claws—first those of the lower forelimbs, then those of the upper. Their bellies proved disappointingly hard, once your fingers (accustomed to palpate live dogs or toy animals) had sunk in their rough brown fur. Now and then they used to be taken out into a corner of the garden to be thoroughly whacked and aired, and poor Mademoiselle, approaching from the direction of the park, would utter a cry of alarm as she caught sight of two savage beasts waiting for her in the mobile shade of the trees.”

A title is the soul of the book and carries its essence, its themes and its mystery. So, dear reader, make lists of possible titles and try them on for size with friends and strangers. Name your literary babies carefully and, like Nabokov, don’t be afraid to rechristen them if you need to. Stay tuned . . .

PS: This 1925 photograph of Nabokov was doodled on by the writer himself.

Black Swan

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:59:00 +0000

It was with great anticipation I went to a recent screening of Black Swan. The film has already been a box-office smash with Natalie Portman tipped for an Oscar so I was saddened to find that it was a bit of a lame duck. There were some excellent things in the film and I applaud director Darren Aronofsky for pursuing his decade-long dream of making this movie that skillfully blends encroaching madness and reality. Despite not being a ballet dancer, Natalie Portman gave an excellent performance, though the one-dimensional script offered her little in the way of character development. Throughout the film her beautiful, fragile face looked like the poster, a cracked egg.

People who are not dancers may come away from Black Swan feeling it was over the top, but life in the ballet world can be far more melodramatic than the world portrayed in this film: bitchier, crueler and more psychologically devastating. When I was a young dancer in Texas, a male guest artist from the Harkness Ballet in New York City was flown in to perform. I will never forget what he told me: that someone in his home company was so jealous of his swift rise through the ranks that they put ground glass in his ballet shoes.

It was common practise when I was training for dancers to be taunted about their weight when they didn’t have a weight problem and to humiliate them if they did. Many already paper-doll-thin dancers developed eating disorders as a result of endlessly trying to please an unpleaseable teacher, choreographer or director. The worst victims were always the sensitive ones like Nina in Black Swan. Only years later did I realise that what was going on: balletic S & M. Sadistic adults toying and verbally whipping their young, masochistic victims. At least Nina had the presence of mind to bite her director’s tongue hard enough to make him bleed.

I think Aronofsky was hoping to make a contemporary Red Shoes, a movie classic which was probably responsible for launching more ballet careers than any other film. In this 1948 film the ballet director (played by Anton Wallbrook) asks Moira Shearer why she wants to dance with his company. Eyes blazing, she replies, ‘Why do you want to live?’ In Black Swan, ballet is not Nina’s life. It is what fills up her otherwise empty life.

Nina, like everyone else in her company, is infantilised because ballet careers start early; serious training begins at eight years old. In the dance world when a class is spoken to collectively, they are never called men and women. It is always, 'Boys and girls, take ten,' or 'Boys and girls, on stage for notes.' Dancers are, and have always been pawns, in a dance game of chess because they are dispensable. It is the kings and queens that always win. Stay tuned . . .

Title taddle (1)

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:09:00 +0000

Titles are something writers struggle with almost as much as their prose. Sometime a fitting title comes easily, sweetly, encapsulating exactly what you want to convey. Other times, the lack of the right title leaves you wanting to pull your hair out.

Titles and covers are how most readers choose a book. If you’re lucky, one or the other (or both), grabs your attention and reels a potential buyer in for a closer look. With so many books screaming for your attention, you need to find the title that will immediately hook a reader.

Imagine yourself in Waterstones at a 3-for-2 table. If you saw Trimalchio in West Egg, O Lost or Tote the Weary Load would you have been tempted to pick them up? Probably not. These are the titles their authors originally called them. Much better as The Great Gatsby, Look Homeward, Angel and Gone With the Wind.

I’m very happy with the name of my new book, The Double Happiness Company. It’s a deliberately enigmatic one which a reader has to work at, but they may be intrigued enough to want to try. Not just happiness, but double happiness! Something that is even enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

But the manuscript wasn’t always called that. For years, it had a half dozen working titles, only two of which I, cringing, care to reveal: Return to the Strange Land and Cage of Light.

I can remember when the right title came to me one New Year’s Day several years ago. I saw an abandoned paper horn on the pavement. Intrigued, I picked it up and read that it had been made in Hong Kong by The Double Happiness Company. A eureka moment. I had my title at last.

If you’re having trouble finding a name for one of your literary babies, don’t be tempted to resort to title generators when you’re stuck. While researching this blog I found a website which said, ‘Have you written a book, and have everything ready except for a great attention-grabbing title? Or perhaps you have writer’s block and need a title to get you started. Either way, the Instant Title Generator will save the day, as it gives you an automatic title that is sure to be a hit with potential publishers and the public alike!’ I tried it and one of the titles it came up with was The Devil and The President of the World. Underneath was the book’s suggested subtitle: Pizzas Are The #3 Men in Iraq. Hmmm, not something, I think, the buyers at Waterstones or Barnes & Noble will be rushing to stock. Stay tuned . . .

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:21:00 +0000

I recently went to the latest exhibition at the V&A, Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes. This innovative company is one that has blazed in my imagination from the time I could read. It was a thrill to see so many iconic items: original posters for Ballets Russes performances, the tunic worn by Nijinsky in Giselle, Alexandre Benois’ stage model for the first abstract ballet, Les Sylphides, the Cubist costumes from Parade, a pointe shoe worn by Tamara Karsavina, Picasso’s 34 x 38-foot front cloth for the ballet, Le Train Bleu (pictured below) which, because of its size, has spent more than 80 years in storage.

Sergei Diaghilev was the wizard and impressario who brought this hugely-influential company into existence. He was once described by Jean Cocteau as “that ogre, that giant . . . that Russian prince who lived only to create marvels.”

Diaghilev was one of the greatest, and most controversial, ballet directors of the early 20th century. He managed to hold his company together through revolution, exhausting world tours and war for two decades, dealing with the difficult demands of dancers, artists and composers who have since became household names: Anna Pavlova, Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky, to name but a few.

Diaghilev had no home; his home was his company and the road so it's not surprising that very few of Sergei Pavlovich's personal possessions were on display: only his top hat, opera glasses and travelling clock. More poignant were his travel documents (Diaghilev was stateless after the Russian Revolution of 1917) and the hotel bill he left when he died in 1929.

Like many Russians, Sergei Diaghilev was an intensely superstitious man. Told by a fortune-teller that he would die on water, he refused to travel by ship with his lover, Vaslav Nijinsky, when the Ballets Russes went on its first tour to South America in 1913. A Hungarian aristocrat and ballet groupie of the time, Romola de Pulszky, married Nijinsky as soon as the boat docked in Buenos Aires. Apoplectic with rage, Diaghilev threw Nijinsky out of the company when he found out. Sadly, his star dancer and choreographer became insane a few years later.

In my new novel, The Double Happiness Company, the book's protagonist, Katie Rivers, performs the role of Petrouchka, a signature production of the Ballets Russes. That it is a ballet is entirely due to Diaghilev's browbeating. In 1910 Stravinsky wrote the score for the ballet, The Firebird, and afterwards wanted to “refresh himself” by composing an orchestral piece that featured the piano. He composed “Petrouchka's Cry” and “Russian Dance” in 1911 and when Diaghilev heard them, he called their odd meters and shifting tempos “works of genius”. The impressario persuaded a reluctant Stravinsky to let him turn these pieces into a ballet and Petrouchka was born.

But back to Diaghilev, the master puppeteer of the Ballets Russes. The fortune-teller wasn’t wrong in her prediction. The man whose motto was “Astonish me!” died on the Lido. He is buried on the island of San Michele in the Venetian lagoon, his grave not far from his collaborator and compatriot, Igor Stravinsky. If you love the theatre, see this stunning exhibition before it ends on 9 January. Stay tuned . . .

The Alligators of San Jacinto Plaza

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:06:00 +0000

In a book store I was chasing an interesting read when I picked up a Charles Bukowski novel in which one of his characters, while stinking drunk, got into a fountain in El Paso, Texas, that contained alligators. This wasn’t fiction. There was a fountain in that city with alligators; I paid them a visit almost every time my mother and I went downtown to shop. Knowing what a huge boozer Bukowkski was, it’s my guess it was the writer who got into the pond which contained up to seven reptiles and then wrote about it. “Drinking,” Bukowski said, “yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

In researching this blog, I discovered several interesting facts about the alligator pond in San Jacinto Plaza. In 1883, the first winter the 'gators were in the Pass of the North, some kind-hearted men were worried they might freeze so they kidnapped the reptiles, covered them in burlap sacks and carried them to a saloon where they spent comfortable nights behind a potbellied stove. In the morning the men would wrap the alligators up again and return them to their home, breaking the ice with their boot heels before putting them back into the frigid water.

The reptiles’ descendants were moved to the zoo as late as 1965 after two unfortunate animals were killed by vandals and another had a spike driven through its eye. The alligators were briefly returned to the plaza in the early 70s, only to be removed once more because they were still being tortured. Their pond was replaced by a fiberglass sculpture created by Luis Jiménez. Though the alligators are long gone, many El Pasoans still call the park where they once lived La Plaza de los Lagartos.

Most people don’t think of alligators as being protective of their young, but they are. In 1952, Minnie, a 54-year old female, laid an egg in the fountain at San Jacinto. Spectators were astonished when a maternal Minnie rushed to protect her egg as park employees cleaned her concrete home.

Lola Rivers, the mother in my new novel, The Double Happiness Company, watches over her teenage daughter with the fierceness of a Minnie. I would have loved to include more information about these fascinating creatures in my book, but the dictates of the narrative meant I couldn’t stop and give any back story about the alligators of San Jacinto Plaza. This blog will have to serve. Stay tuned . . .

Viva la vida

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:36:00 +0000

On a visit to my hometown I recently went to see "Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nicholas Muray". This exhibition of 46 photographs is currently touring the United States. These portraits of her stare sensuously at the camera: Frida in her Tehuana costume, Frida posing with an eagle, Frida wearing earrings of tiny, severed plastic hands given to her by the surrealist, André Breton.

Frida was the wife of the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, who was unable to be faithful to any woman. The Riveras had a tempestuous marriage and, to hurt him, Frida look lovers, among them Leon Trotsky and Nickolas Muray, a Hungarian photographer who had immigrated to New York City.

Muray became internationally known as a portrait photographer, but he became famous for the many portraits he took of Kahlo. Their affair lasted ten years. To see the many pictures he made of her is to follow the waxing and waning of their love.

Muray photographed Kahlo not only with great artistry and skill, but also with extraordinary feeling. In the exhibition was a reproduction of a love letter Frida sent Muray. In it she enclosed an impression of her lips with her signature fire-engine-red lipstick. This is specially for the back of your neck. Despite Diego’s many betrayals, including an affair with Frida’s sister, Cristina, Frida always loved Rivera which explains why Muray wrote this plangent sentence, "The one of me is eternally grateful for the happiness that the half of you so generously gave."

I think of Kahlo as a novelist in paint because her pictures are a series that chart the events of her life and her emotional reactions to them: her broken body, her inability to have children. Muray let us see the woman behind them: proud, passionate, sometimes cruel (she made him photograph her kissing Diego).

Hayden Herrera has written a mesmerizing biography of her, Frida, and the British poet, Pascale Petit, recently published an excellent book of poetry, What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo. Both highly recommended.

Frida’s last, defiant painting was executed eight days before her death. Bedridden and in great pain, she chose as her subject the most beloved Mexican fruit: watermelons. Whole, halved, serrated, sliced. In blood-red oils, she depicted the lusciousness of their dying flesh. Should anyone miss her meaning, she painted in capital letters on the glistening pulp of the wedge nearest the viewer, VIVA LA VIDA. Viva life. Stay tuned . . .

The Devil's Dance

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:18:00 +0000

In my writer's notebook is a sentence by Eric Satie: "The tango is the devil's dance. He does it to cool down." Tango is something I have been thinking about a lot recently. One chapter in my book, The Double Happiness Company, which will be published in January, deals with a ballroom dance instructor who teaches tango.

So it was a moment of serendipity when friends from Barcelona gave me tango songs sung by the Spanish flamenco guitarist, Diego El Cigala. It was a most welcome gift because, at the time, I was going through the hard graft of finalising my 95,000 word manuscript for publication. Cigala & Tango, the album they gave me has el duende, that difficult-to-translate Spanish phrase. If someone, or something, has el duende, it gives you chills, moves you, makes you smile or cry.

The tango is a dance of passion. Invented in Buenos Aires at the turn of the last century, it was first danced in bordellos by lonely immigrant men and ladies of the night and even between the men themselves. Tango lyrics are about broken hearts, pimps, thieves and drunks. One famous tango opens with “The world is and always has been a pigsty, in 510 and the year 2000 as well.”

Researching this blog I came across a clip of a ballet created by the late, great Pina Bausch. I have never seen her Bandonéon performed, but I long to now that I have seen this YouTube clip. The filming is jerky and yet, in its own way, is as mesmerising as the choreography. Men and women move out from their line and begin to dance. They move from sedate steps with their partners to sensual hip-grinding combinations that suggest vertical fornication. Meanwhile, upstage behind the couples there is a lone man wearing a romantic tutu. In his long net skirt he repeats the same step over and over: the first step a dancer learns, the humble plié. I don’t know what it is about this repetition that is so moving, that makes it pull at my heart. The simplicity perhaps, the yearning of someone who will never fit in, never know love, but is destined to dance alone, echoing what Bertrand Russell called the ‘terror of cosmic loneliness’. Stay tuned . . .

Homage To Catalonia

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:14:00 +0000

The picture illustrating this blog is a wall covered with loaves of bread which decorate the rear wall of the Salvador Dalí Museum in Catalonia. It was chosen because I have just completed my first novel writing retreat in Spain, close to Dalí’s birthplace of Figueres.

There was something magically surreal about the week, the absence of the reality of my life in North London. At home, I go to bed listening to police and ambulance sirens. In Camós, there was silence, broken only by the bell-like call of a scops owl. I woke to the sound of cuckoos.

On this retreat there were morning workshops that covered six different aspects of novel writing. Lunch was then served on the terrace and, in the afternoons, I offered one-to-one tutorials. Each evening before dinner, we had a showcase night where students read and received feedback on their work.

Some course members arrived with manuscripts they’d been working on for several years, others with just the germ of an idea. Novel themes included the history of the North Tyrol after World War I, a boy whose dead twin speaks to him and the unrequited love of an undertaker and his long-suffering housekeeper.

On the chefs one night off (the incredibly-talented Lee Pennington and Debbi Reid), we had gin and tonics, followed by a meal in Banyoles whose lake was the location for water sports during the 1992 Summer Olympics. We ended the week with a fiesta. To get a flavor of the course, click here to view the video which featured the talented Catalan musicians, the Bel and Sammy Duet.

I’ll be back in Camós next year for two workshops: a novel intensive, followed by a retreat for those who want time to write and receive extended tutorials. Click on the respective links above for full details. Stay tuned . . .

Chocolate Unwrapped

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:19:00 +0000

In a January blog I mentioned that one of Margaret Atwood’s cures for writer’s block was, “Eat chocolate . . . must be dark, shade-grown, organic.” The chocolate tree’s scientific name, Theobroma cacao, comes from theobroma, “food of the gods”. I wonder what depressed writers did before the 16th century when chocolate first arrived in Europe.

In 1528 the conquistador, Hernando Cortés, presented Charles V of Spain with cocoa beans. In Mesoamerica the plant had been cultivated for over three thousand years where these highly-prized tropical seeds were fermented and used to make a drink. Chocolate was also prized as currency. Two hundred beans would buy a turkey; one hundred beans a rabbit. Three beans could be traded for a turkey egg, an avocado or a fish wrapped in maize husks. One bean would get you a ripe tomato.

The Aztecs attributed the creation of the cocoa plant to their god Quetzalcoatl, but it was the Mayan people who gave it the name we use today, xocoatl (bitter water).

Given most people’s taste for chocolate, not surprisingly it features in book titles: Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Dying for Chocolate (Diane Mott Davidson’s tale of murder in high society) and Robert Rankin’s The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse where the inhabitants of Toy Town are killed with chocolate treats!

Writing this blog has reminded me of a handwritten note that used to be on my mother’s fridge: Chocolate is in your mouth for a few seconds, in your stomach for a few hours, on your hips forever. Reading about this “food of the gods” is the best way to enjoy it . . . without any calories.

I’m off now to chew on Laura Esquivel’s Water for Chocolate, a novel which features a chocolate recipe at the start of each chapter and combines Mexican mysticism with Esquivel’s love for this wonderful concoction. Viva chocolate! Stay tuned . . .

Pavarotti & Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Write Here!) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:34:00 +0000

After years of thinking I couldn’t crack the problems with my second novel, a Bosnian poet, Danijel Lozancic, asked to read the opening chapter of The Double Happiness Company. At the time I was working in East Mostar, the beautiful Ottoman town whose iconic limestone bridge had been destroyed in 1993. I was treating war-traumatised patients with acupuncture when Danijel had heard, through the grapevine, that I was a novelist. He turned up in my treatment room one day with his poems and asked to see what I was working on. The yellowing manuscript of DHC had been in my bottom drawer for years and after he’d read the first few pages, Danijel’s positive reaction excited me enough to make me think this book might be worth resurrecting.

I met Danijel at the Pavarotti Music Centre in 1998, built with money raised by Luciano Pavarotti through his concerts in Modena. I was thinking of the Maestro as I watched him last week singing a short extract of Turandot on Rick Stein’s BBC4 programme, Food of the Italian Opera. Check it out on BBC iPlayer.

According to Stein, food was inspiration, as well as fuel, to the great Italian opera composers Puccini, Verdi and Rossini, who loved their meals as much as their music. The gourmand Rossini once declared that he had only cried three times in his life: once when his mother died, a second time when he listened to Paganini playing the violin and the third time picnicking beside a lake when a warm truffled turkey slipped from his arms into the water.

Rossini was a prolific artist who could compose an opera in less than two weeks, but sometimes left the overture until the day of the première. The composer would be locked in a room with a bowl of cold pasta until he produced it. Once the distraught conductor had his overture, Rossini would be released to feast on a full-blown meal.

Stein said that the Big 3 of Italian opera took their own food with them when they travelled. Maestro Pavarotti followed them in this practice by not only taking his own food with him, but also his Columbian chef. He had his own restaurant, Europa 92, which was housed in a converted stables on the outskirts of Modena. I dined there once as his guest. The best dishes on the menu were pasta and the black rice risotto the tenor loved.

Luciano Pavarotti was a great humanitarian as well as a great singer. He did not have to raise money for the children of Bosnia, or anywhere else. But he did. I was privileged to have attended his “Pavarotti and Friends” concerts for two years running. One of my great memories is of watching Liza Minelli and Pavarotti rehearsing a duet of “New York, New York” wearing a Hawaiian shirt and his trademark scarf. To hear it, click here. I remember him with gratitude and joy. Stay tuned . . .