Nicci French Blog

The passing of time

Last week we went to see Sam Mendes's production of The Winter's Tale at The Old Vic. Such an odd play, so artificial, with the abrupt onset of jealousy and sexual disgust; the figure of Old Father Time to announce, at the end of Act 1, that 16 years had now passed; the division of the play into two distinct  parts - the first a sombre and agonised atomisation of jealousy set at the court of Leontes, the second a light-filled and redemptive celebration of love and forgiveness. I'd read the play long ago and seen it only once, also long ago. Was it simply because this production was so beautiful, clear, impeccably acted and outstandingly designed, that it moved me so much more this time? Or was it because I am older now, a parent myself watching a play about lost mothers and lost daughters, and the passing of time is so much more haunting. The moment when Hermione steps down from the plinth where she has been standing posed as a statue and reaches out her hand for her husband who wronged her years ago filled my eyes with tears. Some works of art seem made for people who have left their youth behind them and this magical late play of Shakespeare's is one. That's not a small consolation for growing older: the places in your imagination that you can finally reach....

Wild places

Nicci:

We have just returned from a few days spent walking in the Western Highlands of Scotland - the place they call the 'Last Great Wilderness'. And it certainly is wild, breathtakingly beautiful with its ranges of impregnable mountains through which no roads pass and which you can only get to on foot. 

On the morning we left, we discovered a questionnaire we should have filled out and left with the hotel, but had failed to notice. It was from the Northern Constabulary and was headed 'Let Us Know Before You Go To The Hills'. It asked for our name and address, time and date of setting out for the day and estimated time of return, our vehicle registrations, our route, including the map reference, and our bad weather alternative. We were also asked to tick which of the following equipment we carried with us:

Waterproof Clothing (Colour)

Winter Clothing (Colour)

Head Torch

Emergency Food

Whistle

Map Compass

Avalanche Transceiver (Make)

Mobile Phone (Number)

Ice Axe

Crampons

Polybag (Colour)

We would not have ticked many boxes. We did not have a bad weather alternative. We had flimsy waterproof jackets which turned out not to be very waterproof at all. We had no winter clothing, or any extra clothing at all. We had no torch, no food, no transceiver, no axe or crampons or polybag of any colour. We did have a map, of course, but it quickly disintegrated into sodden pellets. We had a compass but discovered that we were not entirely expert at using it. We had a mobile but there was little signal up in the mountains and after I had fallen in a swollen river, there was no phone either. 

We lost our way because the weather turned, and from blue sky and clouds it became heavy rain, sleet and hail, swirling fog and howling winds, into whose teeth we stumbled blindly. It was impossible to tell which path we were supposed to take after about twelve miles, because all tracks had been swallowed up by water. We eventually turned back, only to discover that the tiny streams we had crossed before had broadened and deepened and now poured off the mountainside. We had to leap over waterfalls and wade through rushing rivers (hence my lost phone). We returned to our little hotel many hours later than we would have estimated, had we filled in the Northern Constabulary questionnaire, drenched, bruised, twisted, sprained, exhausted, ravenous, very chastened. You step off the road and you're in a different world, one where there are no signposts and no instructions, where you are no longer in control.  

It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.

Worser and Worser

I'm very much enjoying Clive James's new collection of essays, The Revolt of the Pendulum. Is it possible to say someone so celebrated is underrated? The fact that he's funnier than most comic writers obscures that he's a better critic than almost any academic I can think of.

Of course, part of the pleasure of reading critical essays is arguing with them in your head. I told the author to his face how I completely disagreed with his contention in an early book of essays that the best Hitchcock film is Stanley Donen's Charade. In my league table of Hitchcock films, Charade would perhaps come one place above Torn Curtain but would narrowly have missed promotion to the Premier League.

And I believe that his argument in the new book about the decline of the English language is just a wasted of his time and energy. Since 2001 James has been collecting linguistic blunders he has spotted in the press, an anthology of mixed metaphors and misplaced modifiers. 

People have always lamented the current slovenly use of language. Socrates built a philosophy on it. Dr Johnson complained in the introduction to his dictionary of a decay so alarming that he questioned the point of a dictionary at all. 

I have a problem with people writing about language use which is a bit like the problem I have with nudity in plays and films. In the second case I stop thinking about the story and the character and start thinking about the actor's body. In the first case, I stop thinking about the writers's argument and start thinking about the writer's own use of language.

James ends one of his polemics like this: 'During my own career in Fleet Street I oscillated between anger at mistakes made on my behalf and mistakes that I had made myself but had been left in. The resulting picture of choleric schizophrenia might have looked less disarming than I thought.'

This last sentence isn't exactly a mixed metaphor; more an unsatisfactory assembly of half metaphors. Why would one think a picture of choleric schizophrenia (whatever that is) would look disarming? And who was meant to be disarmed? And hasn't the use of schizophrenia to mean 'of divided disposition' now gone the way of spastic and cripple?

Is language getting worse? I'm not sure what evidence would count for or against the proposition. My own feeling is that commercial fiction and popular journalism are probably a bit better written now than they were, say, in the 1930s. But what do I know?

Three old women

Nicci: The other day, the oldest man in the UK celebrated his 113th birthday. I saw his photograph in the paper, with his great-great-grandson beside him - the pouched and crumpled and battered face, all cracks and crevices, alongside the little, unworn, smiling boy. And I heard him interviewed on the radio as well. It was hard to make out what he was saying: his voice seemed to come from a long way off and his words were all vowels and few consonants. He'd lived through six monarchs and two world wars, had had a wife, children, grandchildren, great and great great grandchildren. He was so ancient that he seemed heroic, just through the fact of his survival; it was hard to remember that he was just a man, with a man's memories, a man's virtues and flaws. 

When I was on the Observer, I was keen to interview three great - and very old - writers before they died. All three wrote children's books to which I had (and still have) an ardent, childish attachment. One was Tove Jansson, the author of the magical, mystical, wonderful Moomintroll books. I knew she was a depressive who lived half her life on a remote island. She turned me down, offering to answer questions I faxed to her. The next was Astrid Lindgren, author of the Pippi Longstocking books, and of the equally glorious books about Karlsson-on-the-Roof. She was frail and ill and also turned me down. The third was P.L. Travers, the inventor of Mary Poppins. She I did manage to interview. 

She was unwell and confined to her small house in Chelsea. Her face, collapsed with time, was haunting. I remember that we sat in a dark room downstairs and the clock ticked loudly on the wall - ticked much more loudly than she could speak. Every word took her a long time to form, and she swallowed very painfully after each one. I stayed with her for hours, slowly gathering her sentences. She had always been a very private and stubborn woman and age had not changed that. Gradually I began to see beyond the fact of her great age and recognise that she was mischievous, spiritual, unsentimental, grumpy, captivating, indomitable, lonely. She knew she was going to die very soon and she was told me that she was going to take her secrets to the grave. I found her so touching that it was hard to leave the dim, quiet little house near the river and return to my own rowdy, rushing life. I wanted to see her again and wrote to her offering to take her for walks in her wheelchair when the weather was warmer. But she died shortly after, as did Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson. I think of her quite often, though, her strangeness and her alone-ness as she sat at the edge of her life. 

Plump Stately Etcetera...

I was reading Declan Kiberd's outstanding Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living and I thought, sod it, I'll have another go at reading the novel itself, which I haven't read since I was at college. But, of course, I'm not just reading Ulysses. There'd be no point in that. I'm accompanying it with Kiberd's book and with Don Gifford's utterly essential Ulysses Annotated. And then there's the garnish of the audiobook, read, quite beautifully, by Jim Norton. (I believe that for any non-Irish reader, Norton's version will be a revelation, with its extraordinary variety of accents for the different characters - and I'm only three chapters in.)

I feel like a Victorian explorer heading into the jungle with tents and packing cases and cleft sticks and native bearers. Possibly never to be seen again.

Things I Like

A few days ago I quoted the startling end to the second chapter of John Franklin Bardin's The Deadly Percheron and wondered if the rest of the book could live up to it. Well, I've finished it, and it certainly carries on being strange. It's like a noir thriller written by James M. Cain in collaboration with someone like Kafka or Dali or David Lynch. Does it work as a thriller? Kind of, but it's not really the point. Nobody would bother with an Agatha Christie novel if the final chapter was missing. I think The Deadly Percheron would be almost improved if the last chapter was missing. 

First published in 1946, it's a strange masterpiece of dread and unease. In an introduction to one re-issue, Julian Symons bracketed him with Highsmith and Poe; in another, Jonathan Lethem (citing a New Yorker piece by Greil Marcus) linked him 'the B-movie poets of film noir, most of them them European exiles: Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Max Ophuls (I'd add Jacques Tourneur).

Bardin uses a plot device, the narrator's amnesia, that we used in our book, Land of the Living. In both books the narrator has to follow in the footsteps of their own earlier investigation. The results could hardly be more different.

Sadly, Bardin seems to be one of those authors (like Patrick Hamilton) who is constantly re-issued, garlanded with praise, and then goes out of print again. But second-hand editions are easy to find.  

The Only -ism They've Heard of in Hollywood...

Bryan Appleyard links to a genuinely funny ad for beer. But does it maybe remind you of something?

I'd like to have been at the creative meeting where someone said: I've got a really good idea.

PS It was Dorothy Parker who said: 'The only -ism they've heard of in Hollywood is plagiarism.'

The Fame Game

A couple of days ago Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr appeared onstage to announce the Beatles Rock Bank computer game. I imagine it's a pretty big deal. It's been years in preparation, it's going to earn many millions. McCartney and Starr must have spent a day or two getting to the launch event in Los Angeles, stayed in suites, been transported in limos.

In this context look at the video of their appearance on the BBC website.

A few reflections:

1) They quite clearly went on stage having given no thought as to what they were going to say. But who cares? We're Beatles, aren't we?

2) Paul McCartney is chewing gum throughout cos it's kind of rock 'n' roll, you know.

3) Paul  is 66 years old and Ringo is 68.

4) Mark Ellen's theory that rock stars are psychologically frozen at the age they become famous is borne out once more.

5) This is what you get when you've spent more than forty-five years with people telling you that everything you do is great.

6) All of us, even Paul McCartney, needs someone who can tell you to pull yourself together.

7) And I'm a Beatles fan.

Things I Like

DVDs are good for movies but they are utterly fantastic for opera. Take, for example, Bernard Haitink's terrific Glyndebourne version of The Marriage of Figaro. All right, I will concede that it's probably better to actually be at Glyndebourne. But I've just checked and one ticket for the only production at Glyndebourne that still isn't sold out will cost you £175. (The only price on offer.) You can buy the DVD for £14.

And it has various advantages:

It has subtitles.

With noise-excluding headphones, you can watch it on your laptop on the train with CD-level quality. 

You can watch it in bits and when you put your disc back in,your clever computer will start from where you left off.

And what was the old joke about masturbation? Unlike going to Glyndebourne, the good thing about watching it on DVD is that you don't have to dress for it.

I only need about two more inventions and I'll never need to leave the house again.

Boyle's Law

Nicci's written an article about Susan Boyle in today's Daily Telegraph.