My daughter said that if typed my full name, John Graham Jones, on Google search, I would find my website first on the list. Which must make me famous.
But it doesn't. First on the list or not, I don't get many "hits" per week. I don't want to be famous anyway - rich yes, famous no. Unless, of course, if famous meant becoming rich.
Anyway, just below my name was another Graham Jones only this was a hyphenated one: Sebastian Graham-Jones. It was his obituary as printed in The Independent.
I didn't know him but remember seing him in quite a lot of productions many years ago at The Theatre Royal where the Bristol Old Vic used to perform.
The obituary didn't mention that he spent some time there as an actor; it drew more attention to his directing skills.
Last year The Bristol Old Vic died too. But it has resurrected itself and re-opens in November this year.
Glad to hear it. I believe they have refurbished the beautiful old Theatre Royal at which many of our now famous actors began their careers.
Wednesday 29 October 2008
Sunday 26 October 2008
The Farmer's Wife
A couple of years ago a friend of mine who deals in old books said he had bought at an auction a batch of books by Eden Phillpotts. "Do you know his work?" he asked.
I told him that my father had read him and, I think, liked what he'd read. I said I had never read a novel by him but had once picked one up in a library, read a few pages, put it back - it was a very thick book with small print and heaps of pages - but I had heard a radio play by him once when I was a kid. It had frightened the living daylights out of me. There was a murderer of children at large and - I remember the final scene well - he was making his way across a field to the farm house of two children with knife in his hand, when the knife's blade glittered in the moon's rays and attracted the attention of the farmer's bull.... You can guess the rest. Hooves running on grass. Boom. Scream. End of the murderer.
Yet I don't think he was that sort of writer generally - I mean of horror stories; he wrote country (Devon) novels about villagers and farmers and the love affairs and so on.
A novel by Phillpotts was turned into a play which ran in London's West End for a long spell. When my father and mother met in London in the twenties they went to see it. And enjoyed it. Later in 1928 it was made into a film, one of Alfred Hitchcock's early silent films.
I see from Google that a theatre group in a place called Tickenham (no, not Twickenham) are staging "The Farmer's Wife" on the 18th of November to the 22nd November this year. Wish Tickenham was bit closer to Cardiff.
I did once see Eden Phillpotts on TV. John Betjeman went down to Devon to interview him. He was then a very old man (he died aged 98); it was obvious that Betjeman admired him tremendously. Maybe because as well as being a popular novelist he was also a recognised poet.
Though most, if not all, of Phillpott's works are now out of print, it is possible to get some on Amazon and other sites for a quid or two. Think I'll get one.
I told him that my father had read him and, I think, liked what he'd read. I said I had never read a novel by him but had once picked one up in a library, read a few pages, put it back - it was a very thick book with small print and heaps of pages - but I had heard a radio play by him once when I was a kid. It had frightened the living daylights out of me. There was a murderer of children at large and - I remember the final scene well - he was making his way across a field to the farm house of two children with knife in his hand, when the knife's blade glittered in the moon's rays and attracted the attention of the farmer's bull.... You can guess the rest. Hooves running on grass. Boom. Scream. End of the murderer.
Yet I don't think he was that sort of writer generally - I mean of horror stories; he wrote country (Devon) novels about villagers and farmers and the love affairs and so on.
A novel by Phillpotts was turned into a play which ran in London's West End for a long spell. When my father and mother met in London in the twenties they went to see it. And enjoyed it. Later in 1928 it was made into a film, one of Alfred Hitchcock's early silent films.
I see from Google that a theatre group in a place called Tickenham (no, not Twickenham) are staging "The Farmer's Wife" on the 18th of November to the 22nd November this year. Wish Tickenham was bit closer to Cardiff.
I did once see Eden Phillpotts on TV. John Betjeman went down to Devon to interview him. He was then a very old man (he died aged 98); it was obvious that Betjeman admired him tremendously. Maybe because as well as being a popular novelist he was also a recognised poet.
Though most, if not all, of Phillpott's works are now out of print, it is possible to get some on Amazon and other sites for a quid or two. Think I'll get one.
Saturday 25 October 2008
Janacek
I once had, a long time ago when I was a student, a terrible argument with a man who knew more about music than I did and so he won the argument. It was over Janacek's opera "Jenufa".
Now, what I know about opera can be written on a single piece of notepaper but I had been to see the opera and I hadn't liked it. This music professor (something like that) had a great knowledge of the composer and his opera and proceeded to lambast me with arguments, with facts and opinions. Opinions which I could not contest through lack of knowledge.
I had merely said that I thought "Jenufa" was a silly work - the story I meant; the music was to me a bit atonal - "modern".
Ever since that encounter I have had a deep disliking of anything written by Janacek. I sort of refuse to listen to his music, saying to myself, after a few bars, "rubbish".It's as if I am all the time trying to prove that I had been right in my contention that the opera was no good.
The opera is about a young woman, Jenufa, who gets herself pregnant; her mother decides that this shame is unliveable with and she throws the baby into the icy river. The townspeople set upon her (can't remember what happens next) and Jenufa then makes it up with a boyfriend who is decent and kind, nothing like the jerk who made her pregnant.
I hated the story. I hated the mother who killed the baby; I hated ber because I did not believe anyone could, due to shame, do such a thing. I didn't take to Jenufa very much..... It was all a bit Mills and Boonish.
I could go on with my prejudices but I won't because I have just been reading about Janacek and he is a kind of appealing sort of fellow.
I must try him out again. Though there is that fanfare for trumpets, Synfonia? (or whatever it's called) standing between me and him: it's popular - as popular as Jenufa - but I hate it, I detest it.... almost as much as that fanfare for the common man by Aaron Copland. God, what a dreadful bore that is!
Now, what I know about opera can be written on a single piece of notepaper but I had been to see the opera and I hadn't liked it. This music professor (something like that) had a great knowledge of the composer and his opera and proceeded to lambast me with arguments, with facts and opinions. Opinions which I could not contest through lack of knowledge.
I had merely said that I thought "Jenufa" was a silly work - the story I meant; the music was to me a bit atonal - "modern".
Ever since that encounter I have had a deep disliking of anything written by Janacek. I sort of refuse to listen to his music, saying to myself, after a few bars, "rubbish".It's as if I am all the time trying to prove that I had been right in my contention that the opera was no good.
The opera is about a young woman, Jenufa, who gets herself pregnant; her mother decides that this shame is unliveable with and she throws the baby into the icy river. The townspeople set upon her (can't remember what happens next) and Jenufa then makes it up with a boyfriend who is decent and kind, nothing like the jerk who made her pregnant.
I hated the story. I hated the mother who killed the baby; I hated ber because I did not believe anyone could, due to shame, do such a thing. I didn't take to Jenufa very much..... It was all a bit Mills and Boonish.
I could go on with my prejudices but I won't because I have just been reading about Janacek and he is a kind of appealing sort of fellow.
I must try him out again. Though there is that fanfare for trumpets, Synfonia? (or whatever it's called) standing between me and him: it's popular - as popular as Jenufa - but I hate it, I detest it.... almost as much as that fanfare for the common man by Aaron Copland. God, what a dreadful bore that is!
Thursday 23 October 2008
K's Bus Journey
I'll call him K (as Kafka does of his central character in "The Trial"). I've known him a long time but hadn't seen him for a few years. So we talked about old times and new times, how the world had changed and how daft some of the politically correct happenings were. How the police made mistakes and didn't answer calls.... There was the woman whose shed was being broken into; she called the police twice but they didn't come, so she called them a third time and told them not to worry about coming now, she'd sort things out herself; she said she'd use her gun. Within three minutes two police cars arrived together with a helicopter hovering over her back garden.
K had his own story to tell involving an official - a bus driver.
After having a few drinks with his friends in the centre of Cardiff he was waiting with, he said, about eight people at the usual stop when the 49 bus, the last bus of the night to Rumney, went straight past them without stopping. What could he do but get a taxi home? So he hailed a taxi and was half way to his destination when he caught sight of the 49 bus which the taxi had evidently overtaken; he jumped out of the taxi and waited for the bus at a stop. This time it did stop to pick him up.
He said to the driver: "You let ten people (the number had increased) standing at the bus stop in Westgate Street."
"I didn't," said the driver.
"You did," said K, fuming. "Fifteen of us (!!!) were left there. I had to get a taxi."
"I stopped," the driver insisted.
K, still fuming, sat down. But the bus didn't move. Suddenly the lights went out and the driver stormed out saying as he went "I've had enough, I'm going."
So there they were, the late night passengers, sitting on the bus, no lights on, with the driver, head in hands, sitting on a wall outside.
A drunk got up and made his way to the front. "I'll drive the xxxxxxx thing," he said.
He was restrained.
Then the passengers turned on K. "It's all your fault.... what did you want to upset him for?" etc.
K said: "There we were, about twenty of us (!!!!!), at the bus stop...."
Then a little, kind old lady - you always get one on a late night bus full of drunks - she got up and went out to speak to the driver who, after a while, got back to his seat and drove everyone home.
K said nothing for the rest of the journey.
K had his own story to tell involving an official - a bus driver.
After having a few drinks with his friends in the centre of Cardiff he was waiting with, he said, about eight people at the usual stop when the 49 bus, the last bus of the night to Rumney, went straight past them without stopping. What could he do but get a taxi home? So he hailed a taxi and was half way to his destination when he caught sight of the 49 bus which the taxi had evidently overtaken; he jumped out of the taxi and waited for the bus at a stop. This time it did stop to pick him up.
He said to the driver: "You let ten people (the number had increased) standing at the bus stop in Westgate Street."
"I didn't," said the driver.
"You did," said K, fuming. "Fifteen of us (!!!) were left there. I had to get a taxi."
"I stopped," the driver insisted.
K, still fuming, sat down. But the bus didn't move. Suddenly the lights went out and the driver stormed out saying as he went "I've had enough, I'm going."
So there they were, the late night passengers, sitting on the bus, no lights on, with the driver, head in hands, sitting on a wall outside.
A drunk got up and made his way to the front. "I'll drive the xxxxxxx thing," he said.
He was restrained.
Then the passengers turned on K. "It's all your fault.... what did you want to upset him for?" etc.
K said: "There we were, about twenty of us (!!!!!), at the bus stop...."
Then a little, kind old lady - you always get one on a late night bus full of drunks - she got up and went out to speak to the driver who, after a while, got back to his seat and drove everyone home.
K said nothing for the rest of the journey.
Wednesday 22 October 2008
Religiosos
Religiosos: religious fanatics who wish to try to convert people. People like me.
I feel I must have that sort of face that attracts them. Maybe they see that there's be a challenge in trying to convert me to their particular faith; or maybe they see an easy one to convert so that it'll knock their "converting points" up for the day. Or maybe because when they smile and say "Hi" I always smile back and say "Hi" to them.
Then I always say "You are going to try and convert me to your faith aren't you?"
"What makes you think that?" they say.
"There's a sparkle in your eyes that tells me that inside that skull of yours there's a burning fire of fanaticism...."
No, I don't say that. I say "Well aren't you?"
"All I want to do is make you aware of...."
That's when I get "the message", "the punch line", "the commercial" so to speak.
I have been approached by Krishna Whatevers, by Mormons, by little old ladies who speak in quiet tones about the world to come and many others.
I always leave with "literature". Which I sometimes read.
This morning I bought some bacon from a young black man in a supermarket. Very nice, friendly guy about twenty three.
"What's the bacon like?" I asked him.
"Good," he said. "So I'm told. I don't eat it."
"Why not?"
"I don't eat pig or black pudding. Blood!"
"Vegetarian?"
"No."
Then a new look came into his eyes. It signalled Religioso.
"Don't," I said, walking away. "I don't want to know."
I feel I must have that sort of face that attracts them. Maybe they see that there's be a challenge in trying to convert me to their particular faith; or maybe they see an easy one to convert so that it'll knock their "converting points" up for the day. Or maybe because when they smile and say "Hi" I always smile back and say "Hi" to them.
Then I always say "You are going to try and convert me to your faith aren't you?"
"What makes you think that?" they say.
"There's a sparkle in your eyes that tells me that inside that skull of yours there's a burning fire of fanaticism...."
No, I don't say that. I say "Well aren't you?"
"All I want to do is make you aware of...."
That's when I get "the message", "the punch line", "the commercial" so to speak.
I have been approached by Krishna Whatevers, by Mormons, by little old ladies who speak in quiet tones about the world to come and many others.
I always leave with "literature". Which I sometimes read.
This morning I bought some bacon from a young black man in a supermarket. Very nice, friendly guy about twenty three.
"What's the bacon like?" I asked him.
"Good," he said. "So I'm told. I don't eat it."
"Why not?"
"I don't eat pig or black pudding. Blood!"
"Vegetarian?"
"No."
Then a new look came into his eyes. It signalled Religioso.
"Don't," I said, walking away. "I don't want to know."
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Golf and Socialism
I used to have a friend who was a socialist. No. Correction. I think he must have been a communist. He must have been since he hated America so deeply. He didn't hate Americans - a bit like Tony Benn there who always said he didn't dislike Americans, after all he married one (which I always thought was a bit of a "get-out") - what he hated was America's policies abroad. He'd say something like "the Americans have broken 25 (or was it a 100?) treaties in the last twenty years...." And if I were to say, back then, that it was a disgrace that the Russians were waging war against the Afghans he would go very quiet indeed.
He would not go to see American films. He would not buy anything associated with America. When he bought a car it was a Swedish one (socialist country don't you know?).
One day we were out having a few drinks and lunch at a pub when he noticed that people were watching golf on the TV. "Golf!" he said scornfully. "Dreadful."
I wondered what he meant.
"Do you like golf?" he asked.
I said no because I was not any good at it. But I had the feeling this was not about if I enjoyed the game or not; I felt the question had deeper connotations.
This morning I read a passage in a book called "Black and White" by Shiva Naipaul (brother of the other Naipaul, the one with the Nobel Prize for literature, the awkward one, the beastly one - though I have to say I have a strange sort of liking for the old curmudgeon); it was about Guyana - Shiva Nailpaul was there investigating the Jonestown massacre.
"The golf course," he wrote, "a relic of the displaced planter regime, was set amidst the fields. Before the sugar estates were nationalised, the road leading to it used to be well maintained. Since then nature had been given a free hand and its deterioration had been swift. Golf and those who played it had no place in a society that was moving inexorably to socialism."
Get it? Golf: clubbish, elitist, played by people with wealth. Socialism: for everyone, fair to everyone, a way of life for everyone to enjoy the benefits of.
Er.... maybe.
Now I think I know what my friend was thinking when he said, so scornfully, "Golf!".
He would not go to see American films. He would not buy anything associated with America. When he bought a car it was a Swedish one (socialist country don't you know?).
One day we were out having a few drinks and lunch at a pub when he noticed that people were watching golf on the TV. "Golf!" he said scornfully. "Dreadful."
I wondered what he meant.
"Do you like golf?" he asked.
I said no because I was not any good at it. But I had the feeling this was not about if I enjoyed the game or not; I felt the question had deeper connotations.
This morning I read a passage in a book called "Black and White" by Shiva Naipaul (brother of the other Naipaul, the one with the Nobel Prize for literature, the awkward one, the beastly one - though I have to say I have a strange sort of liking for the old curmudgeon); it was about Guyana - Shiva Nailpaul was there investigating the Jonestown massacre.
"The golf course," he wrote, "a relic of the displaced planter regime, was set amidst the fields. Before the sugar estates were nationalised, the road leading to it used to be well maintained. Since then nature had been given a free hand and its deterioration had been swift. Golf and those who played it had no place in a society that was moving inexorably to socialism."
Get it? Golf: clubbish, elitist, played by people with wealth. Socialism: for everyone, fair to everyone, a way of life for everyone to enjoy the benefits of.
Er.... maybe.
Now I think I know what my friend was thinking when he said, so scornfully, "Golf!".
Sunday 19 October 2008
Tossa del Mar
A long time back we had a holiday in Tossa del Mar on the Costa Brava. Not much of a place I thought at first but lively, plenty going on there especially in the evenings. Swim in the clear water in the day and go to a restaurant in the evening: a few drinks, something Spanish to eat, a few more drinks then.... well, a few more drinks.
Across the street from the restaurant was a bar with a few tables and a floor for dancing. A lively but not wild place, no lager louts in those days, a sort of middle-class respectable crowd seemed to gather there. Among them was a group of five or six men, not young, not old, that in between age when, if they were married, they were "settled", and if they weren't they were ready to meet "someone nice", or maybe not so nice.
One of them was a little older than the others, tall, well dressed, handsome with a shock of blonde hair, weighty but, you could see by the way he danced, quite lithe and athletic. He was a real charmer of the ladies, he danced well, talked a lot which seemed to amuse his partners...
What brought this scene back to mind was listening to the Alan Tichmarsh programme, "Memories for You", this evening; he played "Someone to Watch over me" the Gershwin number sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Which brought back the memory that at the bar across the street the music they mostly played over the speakers were records of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.
It was very pleasant sitting there, my wife and I, watching the goings on in the bar and on the dance floor.
Then suddenly, every evening, the lights would be turned off and a sort of luminous glow would light the place - I think it might have been ultra violet rays. This had the effect of lighting only those parts of the clothing that, I guessed, had been washed in detergent, so that the collars and shirts could be seen moving about though you couldn't see the persons in them. But you could always pick out one of them - the guy I mentioned, the tall, good-looking one, the charmer: he was the only one who must have washed not only his shirt but his hair as well in detergent because there he was, his cuffs showing white at the end of his black jacket, his shirt collar white, and above it, no head, just this mop of persil-white hair.
Incidentally, there's something else I remember about Tossa del Mar: it has a superb art gallery of hundreds (it seemed to me) of paintings and drawings by Salvador Dali. Even those who hate his work I'm sure would be impressed with this collection; it demonstrates what a fantastic craftsman he was - if, maybe, not much else.
Across the street from the restaurant was a bar with a few tables and a floor for dancing. A lively but not wild place, no lager louts in those days, a sort of middle-class respectable crowd seemed to gather there. Among them was a group of five or six men, not young, not old, that in between age when, if they were married, they were "settled", and if they weren't they were ready to meet "someone nice", or maybe not so nice.
One of them was a little older than the others, tall, well dressed, handsome with a shock of blonde hair, weighty but, you could see by the way he danced, quite lithe and athletic. He was a real charmer of the ladies, he danced well, talked a lot which seemed to amuse his partners...
What brought this scene back to mind was listening to the Alan Tichmarsh programme, "Memories for You", this evening; he played "Someone to Watch over me" the Gershwin number sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Which brought back the memory that at the bar across the street the music they mostly played over the speakers were records of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.
It was very pleasant sitting there, my wife and I, watching the goings on in the bar and on the dance floor.
Then suddenly, every evening, the lights would be turned off and a sort of luminous glow would light the place - I think it might have been ultra violet rays. This had the effect of lighting only those parts of the clothing that, I guessed, had been washed in detergent, so that the collars and shirts could be seen moving about though you couldn't see the persons in them. But you could always pick out one of them - the guy I mentioned, the tall, good-looking one, the charmer: he was the only one who must have washed not only his shirt but his hair as well in detergent because there he was, his cuffs showing white at the end of his black jacket, his shirt collar white, and above it, no head, just this mop of persil-white hair.
Incidentally, there's something else I remember about Tossa del Mar: it has a superb art gallery of hundreds (it seemed to me) of paintings and drawings by Salvador Dali. Even those who hate his work I'm sure would be impressed with this collection; it demonstrates what a fantastic craftsman he was - if, maybe, not much else.
Saturday 18 October 2008
Mirrors
That old mirror problem cropped up again in The Daily Telegraph: why was one's reflection in the mirror turned around but not upturned. So a letter appeared explaining the phenomenon.
It's not a phenomenon; it's quite simple. The image is not one that looks as if you have done a 180 degree turn if you were, magically, to be able to stand where the reflection is, otherwise your right hand would be on the left and your left hand on the right. Which they are not.
This took me back to my youth at school when we were given for homework the task of drawing our faces as seen in a mirror. I found this rather awkward to do - the mirror kept sliding or whatever - so I thought "The hell with this," and got out a photograph and copied that.
Our art master was a bit of a tyrant, rather frightening, brilliant but scarey. I presented him with my effort: me looking from a page of my artbook out at him.
"You didn't use a mirror, as I wanted," he said.
"Yes, sir, I did," I answered, chest out.
"Why then is your hair parted on the wrong side?"
"Huh!"
In those days the old stick was wielded on hands and bottoms and the old hand was slapped across heads.... I felt the old, hard slap of the hand on the back of my head and was told to get back to my seat; as I did so I felt my work of art, thrown angrilly by the teacher, give me an extra whack on the head.
The question must therefore be: why does a photograph reverse the image left to right but not up and down?
As another letter in The Telegraph put it: before I try to answer that I think I'll reflect on it a while.
It's not a phenomenon; it's quite simple. The image is not one that looks as if you have done a 180 degree turn if you were, magically, to be able to stand where the reflection is, otherwise your right hand would be on the left and your left hand on the right. Which they are not.
This took me back to my youth at school when we were given for homework the task of drawing our faces as seen in a mirror. I found this rather awkward to do - the mirror kept sliding or whatever - so I thought "The hell with this," and got out a photograph and copied that.
Our art master was a bit of a tyrant, rather frightening, brilliant but scarey. I presented him with my effort: me looking from a page of my artbook out at him.
"You didn't use a mirror, as I wanted," he said.
"Yes, sir, I did," I answered, chest out.
"Why then is your hair parted on the wrong side?"
"Huh!"
In those days the old stick was wielded on hands and bottoms and the old hand was slapped across heads.... I felt the old, hard slap of the hand on the back of my head and was told to get back to my seat; as I did so I felt my work of art, thrown angrilly by the teacher, give me an extra whack on the head.
The question must therefore be: why does a photograph reverse the image left to right but not up and down?
As another letter in The Telegraph put it: before I try to answer that I think I'll reflect on it a while.
Friday 17 October 2008
Orphans of the Storm
In the college where I taught for some ten years we were asked to provide classes for adults who did not attend the college; I chose "Films" as my subject.
I thought I'd start by giving a talk on the silent film director D. W. Griffth, famous for two big films: "Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance". I hired a Griffith film from the British Film Institute; or, rather, a sort of compilation film lasting about half an hour - scenes from one of his films put together so that it worked quite well as a story. It was called "Orphans of the Storm" and starred the then famous Lillian Gish.
It was set in the French revolution and some of it was, quite blatantly, taken stright from Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities".
The courses were advertised in the local area and quite a lot of people turned up for some of the courses on offer - but no one turned up for my course.
So, the next day, when I had a class in General Studies on "Films", I showed the D. W. Griffith film to the class of about twenty young men and wondered how this old, silent film would go down with them.
They watched it in silence and at the end we discussed things about it - the French Revolution, the director, the actress, Dickens's novel and so on.
In the General Studies course on films which went right through the year I showed all sorts of films, most of them fairly modern, talkies I mean: "12 Angry Men", "The Third Man", "Shane" I recall.
At the end of the course I asked them what film they had enjoyed most and they pretty well all said "Orphans of the Storm".
At first I couldn't believe it; then I thought back to seeing it myself and I thought "Yes, it was a damn good film."
I thought I'd start by giving a talk on the silent film director D. W. Griffth, famous for two big films: "Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance". I hired a Griffith film from the British Film Institute; or, rather, a sort of compilation film lasting about half an hour - scenes from one of his films put together so that it worked quite well as a story. It was called "Orphans of the Storm" and starred the then famous Lillian Gish.
It was set in the French revolution and some of it was, quite blatantly, taken stright from Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities".
The courses were advertised in the local area and quite a lot of people turned up for some of the courses on offer - but no one turned up for my course.
So, the next day, when I had a class in General Studies on "Films", I showed the D. W. Griffith film to the class of about twenty young men and wondered how this old, silent film would go down with them.
They watched it in silence and at the end we discussed things about it - the French Revolution, the director, the actress, Dickens's novel and so on.
In the General Studies course on films which went right through the year I showed all sorts of films, most of them fairly modern, talkies I mean: "12 Angry Men", "The Third Man", "Shane" I recall.
At the end of the course I asked them what film they had enjoyed most and they pretty well all said "Orphans of the Storm".
At first I couldn't believe it; then I thought back to seeing it myself and I thought "Yes, it was a damn good film."
Thursday 16 October 2008
Cartoons
I have a couple of ideas for cartoons, but I can't draw them; all I can do is write the caption.
There was a tutor at the adult education college I used to attend whose course was "Cartoons". One evening he gave us on the writers' course a short lecture on what he did. "You don't have to be able to draw well to make a cartoon," he began.
Well, most of the cartoons I have seen over the years in such magazines as Punch and The New Yorker and more recently in The Spectator have been the work of highly skilled artists. Some are not too well executed but these are few and far between.
Yet James Thurber, who was not a good drawer, had tremendous success at The New Yorker. Paul Johnson in last week's Spectator writes about him and, in comparing him to Matisse, who could draw well, says: "Personally, I would rather own a good Thurber joke than anything in Le Maitre's entire oeuvre."
He tells of how Thurber would doodle and produce with a few lines a sketch of, say, a seal; then he'd give it a caption; later he'd draw something the seal is sitting on maybe.... Eventually a cartoon with caption would be formed.
That's one way of doing it. The trouble with my ideas is that having thought up the cartoon in every detail first, I know what I want to draw but can't draw it.
I could, of course, try to get someone else to draw it, or send the idea off to a magazine maybe.
Well, I don't know anyone who could draw it, so sending the idea off to a magazine might be a better option.
Not on your life, Matey!
I met the wife of a professional cartoonist who told me that her husband often sent work out but occasionally it would be refused and then, later, he would see the same idea used by someone else. He never complained, she said, in case it ruined - wait for it - the good relationship he had built up over the years..... blah, blah, blah....
Good relationship, my foot! Let me tell you, it's a jungle out there.
There was a tutor at the adult education college I used to attend whose course was "Cartoons". One evening he gave us on the writers' course a short lecture on what he did. "You don't have to be able to draw well to make a cartoon," he began.
Well, most of the cartoons I have seen over the years in such magazines as Punch and The New Yorker and more recently in The Spectator have been the work of highly skilled artists. Some are not too well executed but these are few and far between.
Yet James Thurber, who was not a good drawer, had tremendous success at The New Yorker. Paul Johnson in last week's Spectator writes about him and, in comparing him to Matisse, who could draw well, says: "Personally, I would rather own a good Thurber joke than anything in Le Maitre's entire oeuvre."
He tells of how Thurber would doodle and produce with a few lines a sketch of, say, a seal; then he'd give it a caption; later he'd draw something the seal is sitting on maybe.... Eventually a cartoon with caption would be formed.
That's one way of doing it. The trouble with my ideas is that having thought up the cartoon in every detail first, I know what I want to draw but can't draw it.
I could, of course, try to get someone else to draw it, or send the idea off to a magazine maybe.
Well, I don't know anyone who could draw it, so sending the idea off to a magazine might be a better option.
Not on your life, Matey!
I met the wife of a professional cartoonist who told me that her husband often sent work out but occasionally it would be refused and then, later, he would see the same idea used by someone else. He never complained, she said, in case it ruined - wait for it - the good relationship he had built up over the years..... blah, blah, blah....
Good relationship, my foot! Let me tell you, it's a jungle out there.
Wednesday 15 October 2008
Oliver Stone
Someone was interviewing Oliver Stone for The Times; he thought his new film "W" was poor and that he considered Stone's "masterpiece" to be "Wall Street". I would agree on "Wall Street" being his best film but I'm not sure about "masterpiece".
He seems to me to have had a great big chip - if not a boulder - on his shoulders as regards Vietnam. This is not surprising since he served there in the war. When he came home he made a series of films which condemned in various ways the American involvement in the war. His bitterness probably would have consumed him entirely if he had not been able to contain it within the body of those films. A psychiatrist once said "If you have problem then tell it in the form of a story." That's what, it seems to me, Oliver Stone did. Otherswise he might have gone mad.
Then, when he had got that out of his system he turned his bile on "the establishment" in the form of Wall Street, Nixon, the forces against Kennedy and now George W. Bush - his new film "W".
When he was thinking of making "Nixon" he wanted Anthony Hopkins to play the lead; Hopkins dithered and wondered if he would and dithered some more like Caesar refusing the crown.... until Stone said "If you don't want the part I'll see if Gary Oldman will do it." "I'll do it," Anthony Hopkins instantly said.
Pauline Kael, the New Yorker film critic had a particular dislike of two film makers, Clint Eastwood and Oliver Stone. When she eventually retired she wrote how sorry she was to give up her job but that one thing she'd be looking forward to was "not having to sit through another Oliver Stone movie".
I think I know what she means. Though "Wall Street" is good.
He seems to me to have had a great big chip - if not a boulder - on his shoulders as regards Vietnam. This is not surprising since he served there in the war. When he came home he made a series of films which condemned in various ways the American involvement in the war. His bitterness probably would have consumed him entirely if he had not been able to contain it within the body of those films. A psychiatrist once said "If you have problem then tell it in the form of a story." That's what, it seems to me, Oliver Stone did. Otherswise he might have gone mad.
Then, when he had got that out of his system he turned his bile on "the establishment" in the form of Wall Street, Nixon, the forces against Kennedy and now George W. Bush - his new film "W".
When he was thinking of making "Nixon" he wanted Anthony Hopkins to play the lead; Hopkins dithered and wondered if he would and dithered some more like Caesar refusing the crown.... until Stone said "If you don't want the part I'll see if Gary Oldman will do it." "I'll do it," Anthony Hopkins instantly said.
Pauline Kael, the New Yorker film critic had a particular dislike of two film makers, Clint Eastwood and Oliver Stone. When she eventually retired she wrote how sorry she was to give up her job but that one thing she'd be looking forward to was "not having to sit through another Oliver Stone movie".
I think I know what she means. Though "Wall Street" is good.
Sunday 12 October 2008
Giving the end away
Why is it that some reviewers, particularly of films, often give the end away when they must know that readers want to enjoy the work without knowing who done it or if the girl does get off with the lord of the manor or if the bloke does win a hundred thousand pounds at poker - or whatever.
I think there is an attitude among critics that indicates their contempt for the storyline; surely, they think, what matters is the meaning of the work, what it tells us about life etc.
I have just read a piece by Jeremy Clarke in his "Low Life" regular section in The Spectator in which he tells of going to see the film "Taken"; he not only decribes what goes on in the film, all the killings and torturings, but tells the reader what happens at the end of the film when the girl..... No, you won't get me doing such an underhand and plainly petty thing as to give away the end.
The thing is that Clarke disliked the film so much, disaproved of it so much that he couldn't believe that any sensible, intelligent human being would like it or approve of it. So it wouldn't spoil our fun if he revealed the end.
Luckily I have already seen the film and. contrary to most critics' opinions, I enjoyed it as a sort of adult "boys own" story. OK it was pretty nasty but the characters the hero was up against were more than pretty nasty.
Unlike seeing, say, "Hamlet" when I know the story well and know how it ends, this film is exciting because you wonder how it will turn out. With "Hamlet" you don't; you enjoy it for other reasons.
I think there is an attitude among critics that indicates their contempt for the storyline; surely, they think, what matters is the meaning of the work, what it tells us about life etc.
I have just read a piece by Jeremy Clarke in his "Low Life" regular section in The Spectator in which he tells of going to see the film "Taken"; he not only decribes what goes on in the film, all the killings and torturings, but tells the reader what happens at the end of the film when the girl..... No, you won't get me doing such an underhand and plainly petty thing as to give away the end.
The thing is that Clarke disliked the film so much, disaproved of it so much that he couldn't believe that any sensible, intelligent human being would like it or approve of it. So it wouldn't spoil our fun if he revealed the end.
Luckily I have already seen the film and. contrary to most critics' opinions, I enjoyed it as a sort of adult "boys own" story. OK it was pretty nasty but the characters the hero was up against were more than pretty nasty.
Unlike seeing, say, "Hamlet" when I know the story well and know how it ends, this film is exciting because you wonder how it will turn out. With "Hamlet" you don't; you enjoy it for other reasons.
Saturday 11 October 2008
Starvation
A long time ago when I was a student I was returning from a holiday in France with no French money in my pocket so I was unable to buy anything to eat. I hadn't eaten for a whole day and I was now, the next day, on a train travelling across France to Calais where I'd take the boat to England.
I was starving. The hours went by and I was getting desperate. Sitting across from me in the compartment was a group of young people who proceeded to take out food from bags - boiled eggs, bread, this and that. This of course made things worse for me. I felt like grabbing something from them but I didn't; I felt like asking, begging them for a crust of bread but I didn't. I put up with it for the whole seemingly interminable journey. And I thought I felt that I knew what starving was like.
But I didn't know what starving was like. The sort of starvation that occurs in some countries like Ethiopia is 100 - no - 10000 times worse than what I had suffered.
The children's story "Handsel and Gretel" always intrigued me: I found it amusing and a bit, as a kid, frightening; but I never really understood what their problem was at the beginning of the story when the father (or was it the mother? Or stepmother or stepfather?) takes the two children into the woods to..... well, to get rid of them.
How could people do such a thing? Well, I thought, it's only a fairy story.
I went to see Englebert Humperdink's opera "Handsel and Gretel" a few months ago and the same problem of the parents abandonment of their children still troubled me (though in the opera there is not so deliberate an abandonment as in the original story). How could people do such a thing to innocent children?
Then I read a report of what had happened to a village in the Ukraine when Stalin had deprived the villagers of food so that most of them starved to death. And I read about some of the horrific things that happened there. In particular of a woman who had eaten her own child.
It was then I understood what the story of Hansel and Gretel was really about.
I still recall my train journey when I was hungry, but I wasn't starving. Far, far from it.
I was starving. The hours went by and I was getting desperate. Sitting across from me in the compartment was a group of young people who proceeded to take out food from bags - boiled eggs, bread, this and that. This of course made things worse for me. I felt like grabbing something from them but I didn't; I felt like asking, begging them for a crust of bread but I didn't. I put up with it for the whole seemingly interminable journey. And I thought I felt that I knew what starving was like.
But I didn't know what starving was like. The sort of starvation that occurs in some countries like Ethiopia is 100 - no - 10000 times worse than what I had suffered.
The children's story "Handsel and Gretel" always intrigued me: I found it amusing and a bit, as a kid, frightening; but I never really understood what their problem was at the beginning of the story when the father (or was it the mother? Or stepmother or stepfather?) takes the two children into the woods to..... well, to get rid of them.
How could people do such a thing? Well, I thought, it's only a fairy story.
I went to see Englebert Humperdink's opera "Handsel and Gretel" a few months ago and the same problem of the parents abandonment of their children still troubled me (though in the opera there is not so deliberate an abandonment as in the original story). How could people do such a thing to innocent children?
Then I read a report of what had happened to a village in the Ukraine when Stalin had deprived the villagers of food so that most of them starved to death. And I read about some of the horrific things that happened there. In particular of a woman who had eaten her own child.
It was then I understood what the story of Hansel and Gretel was really about.
I still recall my train journey when I was hungry, but I wasn't starving. Far, far from it.
Friday 10 October 2008
What does it mean?
How is it that two adult, male theatre reviewers are so diametrically opposed in their viewpoints about a play? Charles Spencer in The Telegraph went almost overboard with his encomiums while Quentin Letts in The Daily Mail thought the play "a stinker".
Harold Pinter's play "No Man's Land" was the play under discussion.
There's something about Pinter that makes some people squirm with dissatifaction at not knowing what is going in. Someone (I think it was Alan Brien) said about Pinter's plays that they were like Who-Dun-Its without the body. Then - I knew one who was a member of the Pinter appreciation society (or whatever it was called) - there are those who find his plays fascinating. And deep.
They are so deep in fact that no one seems able to say what they are about.
So why don't they ask Pinter himself?
Because, probably, he doesn't know.
I was once at a weekend get together with a famous film critic giving a series of talks on famous films; one of the films under discussion was "Last Year at Marienbad", a very obscure film with a story, if indeed there was a story, that was not an obvious series of events. It was more like a dream.
I had a theory about what it was about and spouted it to the assembled group. Everyone was interested. Yes, they agreed, that must have been what it was about....
But the course tutor was unconvinced and slightly irritated I felt. He preferred it that the film remained obscure, difficult, not easily explained. I had taken away the mystery of it all. It wasn't a Who-Dun-It after all.
So perhaps Pinter is best left alone. For as T.S.Eliot said when he was approached by a journalist about a play he had written who asked him: "What does the play mean Mr Eliot?"
"It means what it said," replied the great man. "If it had meant anything else I'd have said so."
Harold Pinter's play "No Man's Land" was the play under discussion.
There's something about Pinter that makes some people squirm with dissatifaction at not knowing what is going in. Someone (I think it was Alan Brien) said about Pinter's plays that they were like Who-Dun-Its without the body. Then - I knew one who was a member of the Pinter appreciation society (or whatever it was called) - there are those who find his plays fascinating. And deep.
They are so deep in fact that no one seems able to say what they are about.
So why don't they ask Pinter himself?
Because, probably, he doesn't know.
I was once at a weekend get together with a famous film critic giving a series of talks on famous films; one of the films under discussion was "Last Year at Marienbad", a very obscure film with a story, if indeed there was a story, that was not an obvious series of events. It was more like a dream.
I had a theory about what it was about and spouted it to the assembled group. Everyone was interested. Yes, they agreed, that must have been what it was about....
But the course tutor was unconvinced and slightly irritated I felt. He preferred it that the film remained obscure, difficult, not easily explained. I had taken away the mystery of it all. It wasn't a Who-Dun-It after all.
So perhaps Pinter is best left alone. For as T.S.Eliot said when he was approached by a journalist about a play he had written who asked him: "What does the play mean Mr Eliot?"
"It means what it said," replied the great man. "If it had meant anything else I'd have said so."
Friday 3 October 2008
Pirandello
A couple of months ago I wrote a short play called "The Return of Lady Bracknell". An amateur group is rehearsing Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of being Ernest" but the woman who is billed to play Lady Bracknell is ill. There's a knock on the door and who should be there ready to take over the part? None other than the real Lady Bracknell.
But of course she isn't real. She never was real. She's a charcter in a play so she can't be real.
However, after some perverse reaction to her presence, the group accepts her and she plays in their performance (the "Handbag Scene" of course).
It didn't worry me that a fictional character becomes real suddenly. The play was a joke. I think it works. At the end of the play she disappears and the group talk about their next production - "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Needless to say a character from that famous novel is ready to appear. I won't tell you which one. You may guess it correctly, you may not. It's not so obvious as all that.
I wonder if Pirandello had a similar thing in mind when he had his six characters introduce themselves to a producer saying that they are in search of an author.
My play is a joke play. Pirandello's has been given the honour of being taken seriously: a play about reality - what is it? And so on.
Lloyd Evans in this week's Spectator has a real bash at Pirandello and at the play "Six Characters in Search of an Author": "Pirandello, the master of pretentious bombast," he writes, "is perhaps the most talent-free of all Nobel laureates."
I have never understood what the play is trying to say - if anything. It is a serious play not a joke play like mine and it has been taken seriously by critics over the years.
I have seen one production of it and I found it fascinating. This was an amateur production in Cardiff by a very good group, done about thirty years ago.
I have read that the production Evans saw is the one that started life out in Chichester this year and has been panned by both lovers and haters of Pirandello. I think if Lloyd Evans saw a more traditional version of the play he would be surprised to find that the play works very well.
Sit there and let yourself get involved with the characters and you'll find the play as fascinating as I do; but don't think too much about whether it "analyses the relationship between fiction and reality."
My play doesn't analyse anything. It's done for laughs.
O yes, and the character from Conan Doyle's novel that turns up at the end is .... the hound.
But of course she isn't real. She never was real. She's a charcter in a play so she can't be real.
However, after some perverse reaction to her presence, the group accepts her and she plays in their performance (the "Handbag Scene" of course).
It didn't worry me that a fictional character becomes real suddenly. The play was a joke. I think it works. At the end of the play she disappears and the group talk about their next production - "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Needless to say a character from that famous novel is ready to appear. I won't tell you which one. You may guess it correctly, you may not. It's not so obvious as all that.
I wonder if Pirandello had a similar thing in mind when he had his six characters introduce themselves to a producer saying that they are in search of an author.
My play is a joke play. Pirandello's has been given the honour of being taken seriously: a play about reality - what is it? And so on.
Lloyd Evans in this week's Spectator has a real bash at Pirandello and at the play "Six Characters in Search of an Author": "Pirandello, the master of pretentious bombast," he writes, "is perhaps the most talent-free of all Nobel laureates."
I have never understood what the play is trying to say - if anything. It is a serious play not a joke play like mine and it has been taken seriously by critics over the years.
I have seen one production of it and I found it fascinating. This was an amateur production in Cardiff by a very good group, done about thirty years ago.
I have read that the production Evans saw is the one that started life out in Chichester this year and has been panned by both lovers and haters of Pirandello. I think if Lloyd Evans saw a more traditional version of the play he would be surprised to find that the play works very well.
Sit there and let yourself get involved with the characters and you'll find the play as fascinating as I do; but don't think too much about whether it "analyses the relationship between fiction and reality."
My play doesn't analyse anything. It's done for laughs.
O yes, and the character from Conan Doyle's novel that turns up at the end is .... the hound.
Wednesday 1 October 2008
Inventors
Preston Sturges before he became a writer and then a director of films, invented a lip-stick which he called 'Desti's Red Red Rouge'; it was sold in his mother's perfume shop called Desti's.
I think a lot of writers, being creative, imaginative people, think of themselves sometimes as inventors. Don't they invent characters, plots?
I used to be a tutor of Creative Writing in an adult education centre. One evening a group of about six people and I were sitting around a table in the bar of the college having a drink. I asked a young woman in the group how her writing was going and she said that she wasn't doing much writing these days because she was tending to concentrate on her invention. Which was? A device attached to the lock of a car door such that a person would be quite safe if the car suddenly came to halt on some lonely road..... Something to that effect anyway (I have to say I didn't understand her precisely).
It was then I said that I too had invented a few things, some of which I had patented. I told the group of one which was a money sorting device..... which, incidentally, didn't work well enough for me to continue trying to sell it.
Then another of the group said he too had a couple of ideas for inventions....
And so it was that it turned out that every one of the group had, at some time, invented some device or other but which they had either never actually made into a prototype or just kept in their minds. But you could see that when they began tallking about their inventions they were full of enthusiasm.
I came to the conclusion with which I set out this blog: that fiction writers are inventors - some of characters and plots only, others who would like to make things that do a job of work.
One ex- pilot who had been in the airforce in WW2 said he had an idea once which he thought to exploit at some time but never did: it was a dog's lead with a suction device where the end of the lead was held; this suction device could be pressed against a shop window so that the dog's owner could leave the dog attached, so to speak, to the window while he shopped inside.
However, someone suggested that it wouldn't be much use for something like a rottweiller which, seeing a cat across the street might in his effort to get to the cat, take the shop's window with him.
"For little dogs only," the pilot said.
I think a lot of writers, being creative, imaginative people, think of themselves sometimes as inventors. Don't they invent characters, plots?
I used to be a tutor of Creative Writing in an adult education centre. One evening a group of about six people and I were sitting around a table in the bar of the college having a drink. I asked a young woman in the group how her writing was going and she said that she wasn't doing much writing these days because she was tending to concentrate on her invention. Which was? A device attached to the lock of a car door such that a person would be quite safe if the car suddenly came to halt on some lonely road..... Something to that effect anyway (I have to say I didn't understand her precisely).
It was then I said that I too had invented a few things, some of which I had patented. I told the group of one which was a money sorting device..... which, incidentally, didn't work well enough for me to continue trying to sell it.
Then another of the group said he too had a couple of ideas for inventions....
And so it was that it turned out that every one of the group had, at some time, invented some device or other but which they had either never actually made into a prototype or just kept in their minds. But you could see that when they began tallking about their inventions they were full of enthusiasm.
I came to the conclusion with which I set out this blog: that fiction writers are inventors - some of characters and plots only, others who would like to make things that do a job of work.
One ex- pilot who had been in the airforce in WW2 said he had an idea once which he thought to exploit at some time but never did: it was a dog's lead with a suction device where the end of the lead was held; this suction device could be pressed against a shop window so that the dog's owner could leave the dog attached, so to speak, to the window while he shopped inside.
However, someone suggested that it wouldn't be much use for something like a rottweiller which, seeing a cat across the street might in his effort to get to the cat, take the shop's window with him.
"For little dogs only," the pilot said.
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