@daedalus
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Glorious. I’ve been to that part of the world and had no idea there had been a railway there, let alone one with such a remarkable history. It’s a shame it didn’t survive long enough that the preservation movement had got going, though by the sound of things it was probably lucky that they quit while they were ahead.
Oof. Yes. Gaiman. I think a lot of people I know are particularly hurt by that one because he appeared to be a writer of such humanity. I didn’t read anything of his that I didn’t like, and connect with in some way. At first, I did allow myself to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not for very long, and I’m not sure there’s any doubt now anyway.
I don’t know if you saw the latest from Rachel Johnson (yes, of sister and frequent defender of Boris fame) who helped break the story with Tortoise media but she has written an article in which she says she never intended for Gaiman to get cancelled, and that she’d just meant to kick off a conversation about the tricky grey area of sexual assault within consensual relationships. I have little patience with that, considering the various additional allegations that have arisen about Gaiman since have shown things to be even more serious than the initial podcast indicated. It’s possible that people can convince themselves that everything was consensual. The question is whether that was a reasonable conclusion for anyone to reach.
I think for me Salter stands out because the spareness is also lyrical. I find many ‘less is more’ authors to be a bit dull, but his prose manages to be as poetic as it is simple
Salter is very much a writer of men. I was somewhat horrified by his treatment of women in All There Is (although there’s always a detachment to his writing that means it’s never entirely clear who his sympathies lie with). I find his earlier work rather tighter.
Sandra, interesting you say that about unconscious influence from books you read years ago. I’m generally reluctant to specify my influences because I’m certain that I don’t know who all of them are. On more than one occasion I’ve reread something I read in my youth but had only the haziest memory of. And, to my horror, encountered something that reappeared in a book I’ve written that I thought was mine. Something stylistic, structural, in characterisation or plot. Never anything huge but clearly something that had burrowed its way into my brain and lain in wait. I can think of examples from Ray Bradbury, Derek Robinson, John Christopher, Tolkein, no doubt others I’ve forgotten again or just haven’t realised yet.
As for the writers I’ve tried to emulate in some way, or whose writing has prompted me to do or not do anythinf – the most prominent is James Salter. He taught me that prose could be simple and spare but also lyrical and poetic.
Fantastic blog Richard, as ever. A difficult one for me to read, as I’ve always found reading about this incident, its sheer violence and the scale of the death toll, deeply troubling. That the sport I love, and a race I love, and a driver I have always been a fan of (Hawthorn) could have been (in whatever way) responsible for such slaughter is difficult to think about.
As far as blame is concerned, I wish people wouldn’t look at it that way. At least, not as far as the drivers are concerned. I find Hawthorn’s late move to be perhaps inconsiderate (it is to be remembered that then as now, it was the responsibility of the driver being lapped to stay out of the way). I find Macklin’s swerve to be perhaps a little excessive (the film shows the Healey getting a big moment of oversteer – the big Healeys were famously tail-happy) which kicked the rear of the car into Levegh’s path. As with the points you noticed about the bodywork, the Healey’s tail stepping out is not something that I’ve ever seen referred to in the copious analysis committed to ink in the years since. Poor Macklin would have had most of his attention on the Mercs coming up behind and probably did overreact slightly to seeing Hawthorn suddenly slowing. Could Hawthorn have predicted this? Possibly. Could Macklin? Hard to say. As everyone has agreed, we’re talking split seconds, and the accident happening at precisely the wrong place. Seconds and inches either way and the incident would be a footnote.
No, to my mind, attributing blame to any of the drivers is like blaming John Derry for the horrendous death toll at the Farnborough air show accident three years previously. Yes, technically he initiated the manoeuvre that overloaded the section of wing skin that triggered the disintegration of the DH110, which then impacted in the crowd leading to many horrific deaths. But you can’t *blame* him for the deaths. The question of blame, even ‘villainy’ is spectacularly wrong-headed in this case. Blame the organisers, perhaps, or the governing body for allowing racing at close to 200mph on a track with virtually nothing that could be called a safety feature. Blame the police for what can legitimately be called a cover-up – when I worked at Autosport I was told by a longstanding reporter there that many of the victims are still listed as ‘missing’…
As you say, Richard, when we live in an era of drivers using their vehicles as offensive weapons (what Senna and Schumacher shamefully did on occasion, we now see the entitled little twerp Max Verstappen doing every other weekend – where will it end?) it seems perverse to lay the blame on drivers making small mistakes in the heat of competition. I am biased, being a fan of Hawthorn, but the French press did a hit job on him rather than blame the race and its organisers. Judging him from a bit of footage after an incredibly stressful and exhausting 24 hour race is akin to tabloid journalists declaring Sally Clark guilty of infanticide on the basis of the look in her eye when the verdict was read out.
(Not that it particularly matters but I suspect Jaguar would have won even without Mercedes pulling out. Moss and Fangio only had a lap on Hawthorn and Bueb, the lap they had gained when Hawthorn drove slowly round back to the pits after the accident, and the Mercedes’ drum brakes would have declined in effectiveness and not have allowed them to keep up the same lap times, while the Jags’ disc brakes stood up a lot better).
Thoroughly enjoyed this, Richard. Another wonderful bit of writing that is bound to lead to a substantial musical rabbit-hole
Burn
The day the power went off for the last time, Dad started on about the country again.
“When did this country change?” he growled. “Things never used to be like this. This is Britain, how did it get so the electric doesn’t work?”
Gemma didn’t understood when he talked like this. It was like he felt the whole island was somehow the same. Gemma didn’t feel the same as people from Astley Bridge, never mind Manchester. When people talked about London it was like hearing about the Roman Empire or something.
And hot summers were nothing unusual. This was the third in a row. Two months without rain, and it had been a dry spring too. The fires on the moor had started after no more than a week this time. Some people said the peat had still been smouldering since last year.
Summer meant helicopters. Their distant thok-thok-thok was comforting, though she rarely saw them through the smoke. The sound carried, telling that they were out there dumping water on the fires. At first Dad laughed, and sang ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, dum-de-da-daa-dum – from a film, Mum said, before a black look from her silenced him.
Then the thokking grew less, and on day sixty-two, stopped.
“Army’s gone south,” Dad said when she asked. “Too many boats crossing the Channel.”
All their windows were closed, even in this heat. Had to, with the smoke. Thicker than before. She lay on her bed in a strappy top and shorts, missing little fan school gave everyone before classes were suspended – the battery expired on day 74. Couldn’t use the bath to cool down – Dad filled it with water when the army left. Just as well he did. The taps stopped on day 80.
Gemma wished she’d stood outside when it last rained. What did rain even feel like? The thought of water made her swallow. It was like there was a potato in her throat.
Downstairs, Mum was at the table. A tear traced through the dust on her face and dripped off her chin. For a moment Gemma wanted to lunge and catch the droplet before it hit Mum’s sleeve and soaked away. She tried to speak but her tongue wouldn’t unstick. The clockwork radio was hissing in the background. When she heard the words from it she wanted to run upstairs, but made herself sit and held Mum’s hand.
…Local government has issued orders for citizens not to attempt to leave. At least twelve people died earlier today when their vehicles became stuck in melted tarmac and caught fire…
“They’re going to let us die,” Mum said. So calm. Gemma wanted to scream for a moment, and then it passed and she just felt tired.
Near the end of the road, a new pillar of smoke unsunk into the sky, blooming outwards at some invisible layer to join the pall covering the city.
485 words (this is adapted from something I wrote a few years ago but it feels relevant so here goes)
I was just reading up on Gresford following this and noticed one striking coincidence. The name of an MP who castigated the mine’s management during a debate in parliament following the inquiry’s mealy-mouthed conclusions:
David Grenfell…
We had one of those on our conservatory door a couple of years ago. Huge, and very striking. We see dragonflies and damselflies around the river quite a lot, some of them almost have the same presence as birds
2014-15 – Here and There
2015-16 – Not in Kansas Any More
2016-17 – Now and Then
2017-18 – Whispers and Glances
2018-19 – A Room with a View
Those were the ones I took part in. I think there may have been one or two before I joined the Cloud, one of them called Intercity.
And yes, my story was Craquelure, the one about Landseer’s Man Proposes, God Disposes
And quite right it is too!
Am I right in supposing that at least three of the four listed stories from Denizens were from Den or Cloud winter challenges? (Mine was from the 2016-17 challenge, which iirc was the penultimate one to be wholly staged on the Cloud)
Brilliant news Richard – a fantastic story that absolutely deserves the recognition, and that goes for the writer too
Congrats to the long and shortlistees! I’ve only just noticed that my story was on the longlist – as I’d already resigned myself to not being listed, missing out on the shortlist does not come as a blow, but I’m delighted for Richard and Kate, best of luck to both of you!
Sorry for delay in replying to your very interesting thoughts @libby, but I’ve been neck deep in work lately.
Re modernists etc using the techniques and ideas of psychic distance before Gardner codified it. Yes, absolutely, a large measure of what he was doing was identifying techniques that were already out there. I would suggest that his innovation was in aggregating those existing techniques, and most importantly in arranging them as a continuum, which (correct me if I’m wrong) had not been done before. And I think because of that, we now think about the whole business differently. But it’s very much a subjective view.
A few floaty and unconsidered thoughts. Re-watched Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’ recently and the difference between the performance of both leads is striking (Al Pacino’s is very scenery-chewing, over the top, Robert de Niro’s is much more subtle, naturalistic and reserved – he pretty much only raises his voice when he’s robbing a bank) but I also wondered if this led to a difference in the way Michael Mann shot their scenes. I haven’t checked it at all but it feels as though de Niro has more extreme close-ups, especially in his more pivotal scenes, as he can convey an incredible amount of inner ‘life’ through the subtlest modulations of expression. Pacino has more medium close-ups (particularly in the famous ‘great ass’ scene) partly I suspect because we don’t need to be right up close to see his eyes bulging and veins standing out, partly because it becomes as interesting to see the reactions of characters around him, and partly because it would just be too intense for the audience. I don’t think I can think of a parallel in prose fiction. And it also suggests another difference between the two media, in that the screen has to choose which level of ‘closeness’ for each shot whereas in prose I think we can be more flexible in the moment. That said, a study of some great scenes at a really detailed level shows just how much is being communicated to the audience, most of which is not consciously appreciated, and it’s perhaps harder for us as writers to subtly place things in the background the way visual arts can.
It’s all just a thought experiment anyway, but it’s fun pulling on these threads and seeing where they lead.
Very true. There are precious few lighter moments. Mind you, he’s not quite the worst author I know for that. Not exactly fantasy (although he did write a collaborative series with Terry Pratchett), Stephen Baxter has the habit of making you identify with and root for particular characters, and then watch as their responses to ever tougher circumstances make them less and less sympathetic until you realise you’re effectively making mental excuses for the villain. It makes you realise how people can end up following leaders who start out offering simple answers and a bright future and end up less Mandela than Mugabe.
@woolleybeans wrote: “For me, that aspect [the defining factor of PD] was/is the level to which the POV character’s thoughts, feelings etc influence/become part of the writing style itself.
As for how that correlates to film/TV…
The saturation of colours? Whether the shot angles up through something? The somewhat cliché blurry/wobbly scene?”
I absolutely agree with this take on PD, but I think filmmakers, conventionally at least, are often trying to get close to this with the extent to which a shot closes in to a character. E.g. as the emotion and/or tension heightens, the camera moves closer in. A nice example of this is in Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’ during a sequence where during a dinner party James Stewart suspects one of the other characters of foul play and starts asking difficult questions. It starts out at a Medium Shot, then the camera is ‘distracted’ by something and moves away from the two characters briefly. When it moves back, it’s in a Medium Close-Up. Most people wouldn’t notice the difference consciously, but it would lend a sense of increasing discomfort, especially as we the audience are complicit to a degree. It strikes me that the Extreme Close-Up is most often used to convey the character’s emotional state more than anything else, being able to capture tiny facial movements, eyes widening or narrowing, breathing, sweat, tears, muscle tension and so on.
There are certainly other ways to contribute to the character’s thoughts/feelings being emphasised on film. Colour, stability, focus as you say. Other things like ‘Dutch Angles’ (shooting on a tilt), high or low angle (Orson Welles famously dug holes in the floor of the sound stage while filming Citizen Kane so he could get the lens down to floor level, looking up at the characters like they were giants), lighting, sound design, music or lack of it. You might get Close-Up ‘Insert Shots’ of something other than the character’s face, say, their hand tightening on a gun, or a glass so tightly they break it and draw blood (another example from Rope).
Really interesting point about technology. I had been giving some thought to that, and wondered if we could consider concepts like PD as analogous to technology. After all, people before Gardner were more or less instinctively doing something akin to it, but as soon as Gardner codified it, he reified it and allowed people to develop it as a technique, exploiting its potential in a way that would not have been possible without identifyng it. Perhaps it would be like the way James Joyce used language, and certain aspects of it were then assimilated and absorbed into mainstream style.
You’re probably right re urban fantasy, I have a rather vague grasp on the various subgenres, and that’s when authors oblige and ensure that their work falls squarely within one category. I have no idea where to put China Mieville’s Bas-Lag novels, and I suspect he likes it that way. They have the epic sweep and complex magical systems of high fantasy but a post-industrial urban setting, distinct steampunk overtones and not a few aspects more akin to horror.
George RR Martin rewards only utter commitment and multiple rereadings. There are so many details that just aren’t noticeable but can actually have a big impact on your understanding of the story. Part of that is the result of Martin’s deconstructive attitude to the common tropes. For example (and this is true of the novels so far published, not the TV series), imagine there being a ‘hidden prince,’ the true heir to the throne, only everyone who knows of their existence is dead, there’s no way for the prince to learn of their true identity and so that’s effectively that. And moreover it’s never explicitly set out, you have to pick it up from a couple of asides here and there. You have to unlearn a lot to get the most from them. And you also have to be prepared for any character you might vaguely care about to die, probably horribly and almost certainly pointlessly.
We had one of those alight on the edge of our utility room door a little while ago. Huge, and very striking. Almost big enough to have the same sort of presence as a bird rather than an insect. Can’t find pics of it now, but we fairly often see them out and about, along with different types of dragonfly and damselfly.
I was going to edit this to add some links but apparently I’m too late. Anyway, in case there are any non-SE grads out there, some details on psychic distance here
That sounds fantastic (in both senses of the word). My tbr pile is probably already longer than I will get through in my lifetime but I will add it anyway.
Fantasy definitely did seem to go through an obligatory magic ring/sword phase, not to mention the ominpresent dark lord – the overlong series’ of Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind and, to a lesser extent, Robert Jordan all strike me as notably Tolkein-dependant from what I’ve heard/read – but I think we’re mostly well out of it now. My other half is a huge fantasy fan (and immensely picky about what she reads) and we talk about it quite a bit. Dr Daedalus laid aside Sword of Shannara in disappointment at how derivative it was, but on the other hand there are high fantasy series by Robin Hobb, Steven Erikson, George RR Martin to pick a few that divert strikingly from the Tolkeinesque world, or utterly subvert the tropes and expectations of a conventional high fantasy series. There’s also a thriving and innovative world of urban fantasy of which it sounds Ten Thousand Doors is a good example.
So I think Le Guin is being a little harsh here, in the same way that Margaret Attwood was about science fiction, criticising her idea of it rather than what the thing itself had become. Although I do note her qualification ‘commodified’ which covers a multitude of sins. There is still no doubt a lot of hackneyed stuff out there. I remember a review of the film of Christopher Paolini’s ‘Eragon’ that simply read “It’s ‘dragon’ with an ‘e’, that’s as interesting as it gets”.
Thanks Ath, and everyone who’s kept this place going. I admit I haven’t done as much as I would have liked to help the process, and like everyone else who has commented I would miss the Den if it were not here. I’ve been in a bit of a low spot for (fiction) writing for a while but I have recently been meaning to wander back in the hope of a chat about writing.
I agree with the comments about critical mass. Worth remembering that while the Cloud had a membership well into five figures, it was probably only around 100, if that, that kept it going healthily – but, the steady stream of new blood helped keep that pool fresh. So on that… Can we survive with what is essentially a group of Word Cloud refugees? Or do we need to find a way of luring the occasional newbie in to place in our literary wicker man and sacrifice for the good of the community? Er, I mean welcome with tea and cake and chat about writing and stuff.
Yes, the blogs were a big part of keeping things moving along and conversations happening. I suppose blogs don’t have to be long. Richard has done sterling work posting his fascinating and frankly eminently publishable articles – it would be nice to see a bit more of that kind of thing, and I’ll try to contribute.
The other thing that brought people to the Cloud was that it was somewhere to get crit on work in progress. I don’t know if there simply isn’t the need for that now (and I know it could be fraught with differences of opinion on how to give/receive crit sometimes) or if people are shy or have simply got out of the habit, but is that one area we might cultivate?
Transformation
It’s easy to transform. You just change, from one state to
Another. Nothing much to worry
About. Examples are (quite literally) everywhere you
Look. Consider the universe. Just
Took the universe a picosecond to drag itself
Out of an incomprehensible
Mess, shrugging on the laws of physics, sorting
Its chaotic nature into four fundamental
Forces. (Put aside for
A moment that some of them don’t
Line up terribly
Well – the universe was doing its
Best. I’d like to see
You turn things around in a
Picosecond without
Leaving a boson or two unaccounted for).That’s self-confidence. And if
Things have been
Downhill since then (in terms of the
Conservation of energy) what
Of it? You might see an expanding girth. Others
See new horizons. Just
Pull yourself together and be your
Best. The universe
Didn’t exactly have it easy. But it
Got through the
Planck Epoch at 1.417×1032K
And look at it
Now. And butterflies. Who doesn’t
Love a butterfly?Each one transformed, from a
Dull larva to
A glorious fluttering being. That
Could be you too
You know. Just takes the courage to
Fix your pupa and
Change. That’s it. Just wait while
Your organs liquify
And rebuild, while on the surface scales
Erupt, each expanding
From a single cell, and vestigial flaps flare
Into vivid wings,
Tearing your new self from the
Shrivelled old.Does it hurt? I can’t imagine
It doesn’t. Does
The butterfly remember what
It was, while
It flits and wafts among flowers, drinking
Nectar and living
Its best life? Perhaps it’s better
Not to.261 words
@bellam, perhaps you can help me. I remember as a child hearing about a pirate radio ship that had been caught in a storm and had to put into Harwich, when it was impounded. I was there with my Mum and she pointed it out to me. I just remember a small, red ship. This was in the mid 1980s. I can’t find any references to it. I know we still had pirate radio in those days as I remember hearing it now and again, and grownups mentioning it.
Having had one more try at finding it, I think it may have been the ‘Communicator’, home of the Laser 558 station. Ring any bells?
Lovely, elegiac blog, Richard. I don’t think I realised how hard it could be to access pop music, especially anything out of the mainstream, until the late 60s.
As you know, Fairport is one of my favourite bands as well. I’d never heard the live version of Percy’s Song but just listened to it, and I know what you mean – both versions have different things to recommend them, and I’m not sure I’d like to say which I like best. I don’t think it had ever occurred to me to draw the parallel between the minibus crash and that song, but I can see why they’d never want to perform it again. It’s also a bit sobering to think that we have that incident to ‘thank’ for the step into Liege and Lief, and the band’s subsequent direction. I suppose they were heading in that direction anyway, but I can imagine that the transition would have been more gradual.
Sandy Denny’s story is tragic too. Like many of us here, she seemed to have a real talent for second-guessing herself, and was (in professional as well as human terms) quite possibly her own worst enemy. Leaving Fairport on the spur of the moment and setting up Fotheringay seemed to rob her career of all momentum at the point it was really taking off. (I sometimes experience something close to panic when I remember that there are only four Fairport albums that have her vocals on them, and of those, only one is from the band’s musical peak). And then when she rejoined Fairport and made Rising For The Moon, an album I have a lot of time for (and which bears a lot of similarities to what would have been Fotheringay’s second album), its moment seemed to have passed, and I can’t help feeling Denny felt rejected as a result. Years ago I found the ‘Boxful of Treasures’ 5 CD compilation in a record shop for something stupid like £25 (good luck getting that new for less than five times that, these days) and it has a pleasing sprinkling of her songs from the various bands she was in and solo, with a book about her life. She recorded a lot considering how short her life was, but it should have been more, and I can’t help wishing more of it was with Fairport. Not that I have anything against the later lineups, but she had magic in her voice.
Interesting to see this pop up again – thanks for those podcasts Libby, looks interesting – and it has sort of kicked a thought into the foreground.
As a writer, my books *are* me (when it comes to fiction, that is). They are fragments of my being that I have extracted and slapped down on paper. I find it impossible to conceive of someone who disapproves of me as a person enjoying my books. If anyone wants to know what it’s like in my head, they have only to read my books. They won’t find everything, of course. Each one only really covers a sliver of an aspect, but it is there.
