Writer and novelist
Townes Van Zandt: Road movie
Townes Van Zandt’s 1972 song Pancho and Lefty tells a story of comradeship and betrayal and the price we pay for the choices we make.
The story is told in outline and has an emotional reality that far outweighs the bones of the narrative.
There are spaces in the song, gaps allowing it to float into our consciousness and take a shape which is indefinite.
The song’s elegiac tone and quality of elusiveness have a resonance that makes it sink deep into your soul.
If you were expecting top tips on how to get a rich husband, then sorry, girls, you’re in the wrong place. But there are some aspects of the romantic challenges in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice which we can apply to our professional and personal lives in the complicated world of the 21st Century. [Read more…]
When Bob Dylan said in Ballad Of A Thin Man ‘Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?’ he could not have dreamt how the words would resonate with those of us growing up in the 1960s, the Ms Joneses who actually did know vaguely what was happening, but whose efforts to find where it was happening were doomed to failure.
We found – how could we miss – Carnaby Street and King’s Road, the celebrated epicentres of ‘Swinging London’, but it was as if Cinderella finally got to the ball only to find that the real dance had already finished.
Entering Carnaby Street, a stone’s throw from the mumsy familiarity of Oxford Street and John Lewis, was like being plunged into a different world. In the mid-Sixties this formerly unremarkable street, now the centre of Britain’s youthquake, was a dazzling concentration of boutiques, a riot of garish décor, a Peacock Alley full of strutters and paraders.
Best friends forever, until Charlotte makes a choice that Lizzie can’t accept.
Charlotte Lucas and Elizabeth Bennet are best mates, singletons leading uneventful lives in the village of Longbourn. Their families are friends, as people are in small communities, and Lizzie’s mother is a bit sniffy about Charlotte’s mother, as is the way of women everywhere.
My novel, Charlotte’s Wedding, is a reimagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and is inspired by the story of Charlotte Lucas, who, I feel, deserves more sympathy than she sometimes gets. Charlotte’s Wedding is available from Amazon worldwide. Click on the book cover here for more details.
Charlotte is the plain, intelligent one; Lizzie is the good-looking, sparky, lively one. They relish each other’s company and value their friendship. Lizzie confides in Charlotte, and misses her company if they don’t see each other for a week or so. Then a man comes between them, and it’s never the same again.
The dismal news that US literature is about to become an endangered species in the UK exam syllabus for 16-year-olds has been greeted with justifiable howls of rage.
The new curriculum stipulates the study of at least one 19th Century novel, a demand which eliminates the perennial favourite, To Kill A Mockingbird.
The requirements state that the chosen texts should be substantial, of high quality and intellectually challenging, criteria which Harper Lee’s 1960 classic certainly meets.
So a popular, rewarding novel is being ditched and youngsters are being forced into – ah, here’s where it becomes interesting.
I have always loved reading or watching spin-offs from and reworkings of my favourite books and plays. When they are done with imagination and zest, they provide a threefold enjoyment.
First of all, we engage with the new version on its own terms. We don’t need to know the original work, we can just enjoy a good novel or a good film or a good musical.
However, if we happen to know the original, there is further pleasure to be had from spotting allusions and references and contemplating the choices and changes made by the contemporary author.
Connie Francis: Collared her boyfriend
Connie Stevens: Ginchy jive
The recent death of super-suave actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jnr brought to mind the cult TV series 77 Sunset Strip, which ran from 1958-1964.
It was an offbeat, light-hearted story of two private detectives, one of whom was played by Mr Zimbalist, Junior, and a wannabe PI who worked as a parking attendant for the neighbouring club, played by Edd Byrnes.
This character was called Kookie, and he was the craziest, hippest thing to be seen on our TV sets – not that the bar was set very high in 1959. Kookie was a rock’n’roll-loving, hotrod-driving, wisecracking combination of Jack Kerouac, James Dean and The Fonz.
Some of the most enjoyable story songs don’t tell the whole story. They don’t take us through a complete narrative as many ballads do, for example.
What they do is focus on an isolated incident or a moment in time using the familiar elements of a narrative, such as character, plot, theme, place, to create a snapshot which leads us to read between the lines and create the bigger picture for ourselves.
The Night Hank Williams Came To Town, written in 1987 by Bobby Braddock and Charlie Williams and memorably recorded by Johnny Cash, is an evocative description of Hank Williams’ visit to a small town in the US to perform at a concert in 1951.
When I was growing up, the antique shop at the top of our road had a book trough containing a range of secondhand, very cheap paperbacks.
That trough and the public library were my gateway drugs to a lifetime hooked on books, so it’s appropriate that this bookstand was where I first came across Richard Hoggart’s seminal work, The Uses of Literacy.
It was the Pelican edition, a little creased and battered, a reprint of the original 1957 volume. On a quick flick through, I saw references to milk bars (whatever they were), a candy-floss world (whatever that was), adverts, council houses, working class people, radio programmes, popular songs, magazines.
It was unusual and exciting to find this material in a book which looked as dense and serious as the history text book we used at school.
Throughout the ages we have loved songs and poems which tell stories. The combination of narrative, rhyme and rhythm draws us into the tale, compelling us to listen while the story unfolds and builds up to its finale, sometimes happy, sometimes funny, often tragic.
Traditional folk songs and contemporary interpretations of the form abound, with ballads about love and loss, death, both fair and foul, bravery and sacrifice, rivalry, patriotism, violence, disaster, war, religion and superstition – the whole of human life is explored through the art of story-telling in verse.
Harry Chapin was a master singer, songwriter and storyteller who tragically died in a car accident in 1981. His song, Taxi, from the Heads and Tales album released in 1972, is a description of a brief meeting between two former sweethearts.
Surely no contest, I hear you exclaim. How can there be any comparison between Mrs March, the saintly mother of Meg, Beth, Jo and Amy in Little Women and Mrs Bennet, the vulgar mother of the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice?
They have more in common than you might think. They both worry about their daughters’ futures and want them to make good marriages, even if they have different ideas about what makes a marriage a good one.
Fresh from the sumptuous Isabella Blow exhibition at Somerset House in London, my mind is reeling with images of stunning, ground-breaking clothes. The exhibition features 100 pieces from Blow’s private collection and highlights the work of designers she cultivated, notably Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy.
Treacy’s hats are phenomenal. They are works of art, flamboyant, dramatic installations which burst from the head or perch on top of it in the form of lobsters, antlers, satellite dishes, spiked helmets, pheasants, castles and an eighteenth century galleon. What qualities would you attribute to a woman who wears such creations? Confidence, daring, style, a sense of fun, artistic aplomb for a start, I imagine.
