Urban Magic

Vaclav Havel

Posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 in Writing | 2 Comments

I was asked, a few months ago, to say what name went with ‘Havel’ in a ‘guess that playwright’ game, and automatically said Vaclav.  It took me a while to figure out why I’d said this – was it some vague hangover from GCSE history, or a lingering half-memory of ‘The Cold War Endgame’, that fatal LSE exam where I got a mental block on how to spell ‘Gorbachev’ half way through the final paper…?  Whatever – we had no time to find out, since the context in which Mr Havel was named was a theatre history lecture on the absurdist movement of the 20th century, and no one seemed particularly interested in why the name was setting off alarm bells.  And so for a while I ignored it, until, wandering into the library, I found a copy of the works of Vaclav Havel 1969-83 and started reading.  And it all came flooding back…

Czechoslovakia (as was during the Cold War) was not a country, I vaguely recalled, that had taken particularly kindly to communism.  Sure, there was the whole post-Nazi reaction that swept most of Europe where, for a good 6 months, extreme leftist politics seemed a suitable response to extreme rightist politics and so long as the socialists/communists were willing to let themselves be voted out of government on a regular basis then that was all fair and above board.  But then oh whoops, the Warsaw Pact, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, secret police, one-party states and the Cold War as we all know and love…

In 1968 the Czechs had their own uprising that was, in the tradition of the time, brutally suppressed, but a theme remained in Czechoslovakia of protest via art.  The central theatre in Prague was more often than not, a place of dissent, where pissed off people gathered together.  Charter 77 began there, as did numerous movements with such catchy names as ‘ The Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted’.  The actors and writers were ridiculously active – or as ridiculously active as safety permitted – in protesting loudly and fearlessly against the state.  One story tells the tale that in 1989 as communism seemed to crumble overnight, an orchestra set up in Prague and played the Moldau, a song more Czech than alcoholic cough medicine on a snow-shaken night, over and over and over again in celebration of a national identity that had been systematically crushed in the name of universal brotherhood.  And when the world stopped turning and the state looked up between the slits of its fingers, a playwright, dissident, sometime-prisoner-of-the-state by the name of Vaclav Havel was probably a little surprised to find himself the first prime minister of a post-communist state.

But this isn’t really about the politics of Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic.  The point is; I sat down and read some of the works of Vaclav Havel on the tube, and it was utterly fascinating.  The writing (of what I’ve read so far) ranges from the ridiculous to the surreal, the wonderful to the bizarre, but is never anything other than utterly absorbing.  With a history-loving hat on, it’s also absolutely fascinating – sort of George Orwell meets P.G.Wodehouse.  You can see why he got into trouble with the authorities of the time; the sheer ridiculousness of the communist system, which specialised in disguising fear as ideology, is shown in all its absurd glory.  A charge which can sometimes be leveled against the more didactic kinda playwriting is that, with writers like, say, Brecht, the story takes second place to the politics.  Havel’s writing is clearly political and opinionated, but has so much more going on as well.  I have no idea how you’d make it work on stage; with difficulty, I suspect; but if you could get it work, it could be well worth the ticket.

Urban Magic 3

Posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 in Writing | 7 Comments

So, I haven’t even really got going in talking about Urban Magic 2 – the Midnight Mayor – but feel that, since this is my blog and it is related to all things Urban Magicy, I would share the happy and joyous news that the contract to write Urban Magic 3, is currently sitting on the end of my bed!  I’m not entirely sure what the publication date would be – my publisher may or may not be thrilled to know that the writing is already well underway and they’ll probably receive the manuscript in the next few months… – but it’s there, it’s happening and, barring disaster, will hopefully, some day, somehow, be on a bookshelf near you!

However, despite the desire to say lots about it, I won’t yet, since as established, I ought to really say more about the Midnight Mayor.  Did you, for example, know that the thing that causes most problems in the London sewer system is not so much sewage in the traditional sense, but congealed cooking fat?  Imagine what could go wrong for your average sorcerer when the underground world of London decides to take a wander on the streets above…?

Henry Mayhew

Posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 in London, Writing | 2 Comments

So, when not writing the adventures of Matthew Swift as Kate Griffin, I write children’s books – the adventures of Horatio Lyle – as Catherine Webb.  (Which you may or may not enjoy, I dunno…?)  These are stories set in Victorian London about a part-time detective and his unlikely mates, but the real point of this entry, apart from to say all of the above, is to talk about Henry Mayhew.

With my historian’s nerdy hat on, I gotta say right now, I love primary sources.  It’s all very well being told by historians of today that in the dark old days the streets of London were knee-deep in horse manure, but when you read the actual documents written by the people of London who lived in London at the time, you get so much more.  You get a sense of the stink of it, the feel of it, the noise and the bustle, the casual attitude of the inhabitants towards filth and the outrage of the people towards the conditions they live in, all jumbled up together; you get street seller’s cries and verbatim stories of nasty things done by improbable characters – you get, in short, a fantastic story, that has the added benefit of being real.  And Henry Mayhew, praised be to historical fore-thought, left posterity one of the most comprehensive, most exciting accounts of Victorian London as he was living in it that I have ever read.

That said, the guy suffers from statistics, and in doing so arguably proves the point that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics – but he also spent years walking the streets of London and talking to everyone and everything from every class and every walk of society, going into places where even Charles Dickens (a man who prided himself on being indomitable) would hesitate to wander.  The London of Mayhew reads like another world, full of rookeries and slums, no-go areas and vast contrasts and, if you ever find yourself contemplating the history of London and wanting to get to know it a little bit more, I heartily recommend the works of Henry Mayhew as an entertaining and wonderfully enlightening read.

What Makes a Good…?

Posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 in Writing | 2 Comments

I have been sat for the last few days in various team-building classes designed to make me and my colleagues better techies.  And while all have been fun, and some have been very productive, I have kinda left them feeling a tad ambivalent.  A good techie, we have been told, is patient, communicates calmly and clearly, is organised, is understanding, always says ‘yes’ and never ‘no’, seeks to find the best way to achieve a thing, and, when it can’t be achieved, to find a suitable alternative that will be acceptable to all parties, listens to their team, apologises for their mistakes, is always prepared, is always thinking of others, is always working to suitable deadlines is always…

… and so on and so forth until very promptly you have achieved a state of enlightenment that, I can’t help feel, you might just take some of the joy out of the business.  No one said the Buddha had fun on the way to paradise… but all these things are excellent aspirations, and things to try and work towards as the situation calls for, but life is, alas, far too complicated to apply good generalities easily to bad situations.

All of which leads to a more relevant question…

… what makes a good writer?

Answer is; buggered if anyone knows.  Everyone, as with everything in life, has a different answer.  My publisher would, without a doubt, inform you with a face only slightly twitching with a wry smile, that the ability to take editorial criticism is vital.  My agent would say that being over 45 is preferable, although experience is the key.  Some might say experience of the world; some might say experience of the soul, which is itself a very difficult and delicate subject to pick up on.  Is that man whose father died suddenly more experienced, is their soul cut deeper, are their eyes opened wider, than that woman whose mother passed away after a long battle?  Is that girl whose boyfriend dumped her somehow wiser than that boy whose best mate turned out to have been lying behind his back all that time?  Exactly how we define ‘experience’ in terms of how it shapes people, and therefore writers, is a thorny one.  Which may be why my agent hits ‘45 years old’ as a general definition and hopes it goes well from there…

My Dad used to inform me with a stern expression that writers were supposed to have suffered in order to be any good.  This statement usually was followed by ’so take the rubbish out or else’.  My Mum would add to that discipline and craft, a grasp of the English language and ability to shape a decent story from it.  Again, a thorny area – the excellent English of Jane Austen bears about as much resemblance to the excellent English of Raymond Chandler as a cup of tea to a kangaroo steak.   At primary school we were told ‘you must never start a sentence with ‘but’ or ‘and” (two of my favourite sentence-starters…) and a story must always have a beginning at the beginning, a middle in the middle, and an end at the end.  Rules like these, you might say, are meant to be broken…

A comic writer should be witty; a large number famously suffer from clinical depression.  Romantics should have passionate and wild relationships, see deep into the state of the human heart and know how best to wring its mysteries; crime writers should perceive the darkness in human souls; fantasy writers value sweeping imaginations and brilliant visions of things impossible.  Academic writers should be both factually on the ball and, preferably, not require three stabs at every sentence before it makes sense to read. Perhaps a good writer is defined by his sales figures?  Deeply questionable.  Is Dan Brown a superior writer to Iain M. Banks?  Kinda doubt it; yet Dan Brown has the queues of people stretching round the block at 2 a.m. to get his latest.  (Dan Brown is, incidentally, one of a proud number of writers who, in response to being told by their primary school teachers not to start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’ went down the smart route of beginning sentences with ’suddenly’.  A habit my Mum would call bad English and my editor would call excellent narrative pace.  And they’re probably both right…)

Then the problem becomes even more personal.  Is Thomas Hardy a good writer?  (I personally loathe him; yet I know at least one person who in every other way is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met who swears he’s brilliant.)  Is Asterix of the same cultural value as the works of Ernest Hemmingway?  Or to put it another way – when the ice age comes and we’re locked up in the British Library about to freeze to death, do we burn George Orwell or Charles Dickens first?  (I know who I would vote for, but in order to prevent angry letters, I’ll just say (two-facedly) that it’d be a tragedy whichever way….)

Then there’s dudes like Shakespeare.  I personally think the guy rocks, but will freely admit that he has off-days.  (Although to say Shakespeare has an off-day is kinda like saying that the Creator could have tried a touch harder with Wales.)  But there’s plenty of people who can’t stand the guy, and throughout large swathes of the 1800s, the fashion was to nab the particularly nasty bits of Shakespeare (which are, lets face it, generally the best bits) and give them happy ending.  Hamlet gets to turn round in Act 5 and go ‘yo, Claudius!  You were like a total asshole, yeah, but now you and me, we’re blood, man!’  Macbeth gets to the murder of Duncan and goes ‘whoops the dagger was a fake well thank Christ for that, lucky escape all round really.’  In a hundred years time will there be a movement to take the collective adventures of Harry Potter and re-write them to suit a secondary comprehensive theme, and thus make it relevant to the kidz?  Not about to make any predictions on that particular future…

On the very few occasions I get asked what makes a good writer, I usually give the same two answers; imagination and empathy.  Technically speaking, they’re only one answer, since imagination is not just about being able to picture the end of the world and why it might happen, it’s the imagination to think your way into the head of a stranger and understand why they’re pissed off here, now.  But I like to throw in the empathy thing anyway, because I kinda figure it’s a nice human characteristic to have generally.  I’m tempted to throw it into the great ‘what makes a good techie’ debate too, since there are no easy rules on working as a team, or communicating with other people, since ‘yo dude how’s it hanging’ may be the only way to open a conversation with one stressed person, while it’ll result in summary sacking by another.  Empathy, and a willingness to see that sometimes the world is just a little bit more complicated than the rules on the page…

Traffic Wardens

Posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 in London, Writing | 2 Comments

Is there any creature more universally loathed in the mythology of all big cities than a traffic warden?  I kinda doubt it.  On the moving-in and moving-out days at my first hall of residence, the traffic wardens of Islington seemed to have some magical power that led them to zoom in without fail, dozens at a time, to penalize every single car that dared to park in front of the hall to drop off their kids.  Families that had driven hundreds of miles to deliver their kids to their first day of university found themselves variously ticketed, clamped, and towed, all in the space of time it took to get a clean change of socks and a teddy bear up from the street outside the residence to a room on the 8th floor.  I have never seen such a mean, miserable, miserly sight as gaggles of traffic wardens swarming in to slap fines of over a hundred quid on a proud parent who’d been parked for less than ten minutes to deliver their kids, and not reason nor appeals to emotional sympathy could persuade them otherwise.

My Dad, as the driver in the family, has a bitter on-going battle with traffic wardens.  He has perfected the art of the polite-yet-steely middle class letter of complaint, which, without wanting to imply that legal action is necessary, nevertheless makes it very clear that hear is an eloquant Radio 4 listener who’s just going to be more trouble than he’s worth.  However, this hasn’t stopped a local council for slapping him with a £120 fine for the day his car parked illegally in their borough.  Curiously enough, this was the same day that Dad was at work with a local charity, and the car did not leave Hackney all day or all night.  The cry of ‘numberplate fraud!’ was duly raised and now an intricate battle of suspicion, reasonable doubt and alibi-affirmation rages between a council stoutly refusing to conceed that it may be trying to rob an innocent man, and an ex-publisher with a knack for letter writing.

(On an entirely different, yet curiously related note, I discovered recently in a battle with my local council the existence of a thing called the ‘Postal Rule’ whereby if a council computer claims a letter was dispatched to a certain address on a certain day, that is considered valid evidence in court that it was so.  The only way to argue against this is by proving that you didn’t receive a letter.  Now… answers on a postcard please… how exactly do you go about proving that you haven’t received something?  Do you hold up the empty air where it should have been?)

Whether this is true for all traffic wardens in all cities, I do not know, but the vast majority of traffic wardens that I see around the centre of London are middle aged black ladies who look perfectly cheerful and pleasant to talk to – until you violate that double yellow line, of course.  Since I find it hard to imagine that the people who recruit traffic wardens have a personality test to determine your level of sympathy (lowest score wins), I can only assume that the people who run the traffic warden system as a whole have laid down a policy of go-get-’em-tiger which leads to the kind of swarms that attacked the families trying to unload at my halls of residence.   I was once told that traffic wardens receive extra money based on the number of cars that they manage to ticket – if this is the case (and I have yet to get this confirmed from a viable secondary source) then no wonder these perfectly decent members of the human race undergo such a magical transformation in the presence of an over-run ticket!

In matters such as this, a literal adherence to the word of the law becomes kinda more problematic… yes, these parents come from Leeds and Cardiff and, in one case, the Isle of Skye, were in violating of London parking regulations by being pulled up for more than five minutes on a single yellow line outside the halls of residence.  But they were not posing a threat to the public order and, more to the point, they were dropping off Little Tiddles for day 1 of university, an event as emotional as it is demanding on the size of the suitcase.  The law has them by the throat, and would duly find them guilty of pissing around with traffic regulations.  But in this case, tragically, the law, as enforced by the traffic wardens, is nothing if not a cruel cow.

On the other hand… traffic wardens notoriously suffer more shit from members of the public than any other member of the emergency services.  Angry drivers will do anything from shout abuse to spit to, on occasion, resort to physical violence against people who are, at the end of the day, just doing their job.  And yeah, it’s not exactly a happy thing when cars park parallel across Oxford Street and my Dad, for all that he writes those steely letters, has been rejoicing these last few years to have a residential parking scheme operating in his area.  Rejoicing, that is, were it not for the hundred plus pounds he has to spend a year for the honour of parking anywhere within a 2 mile radius of his front door…

I am, lets be honest here, trying to find some redeeming features in traffic wardens, since I feel it’s unfair to just condemn an entire profession off-hand, and, far worse, to condemn the people that work in it.  (Have none of us cheered when the guy with the big hair and the fast sports car gets ticketed for parking like a prat?)  But let’s face it, when it gets to the stage that, parking for a few moments to buy a round of fish and chips from your local residential chippy, you have to leave someone in the car to keep an eye out for the traffic wardens and, if necessary, circle round the block 5 times until they’re gone, you can’t help but feel this is a system running mad.

And oh yes…

… did I mention?  Randomly enough, traffic wardens may just prove to have their role to play in the life of Matthew Swift and the Midnight Mayor too…

In Praise of Terry Pratchett

Posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 in Writing | 3 Comments

Ready to have another literary god praised to the sky?  I hope so…

So, odds are that, if it wasn’t for Terry Pratchett, I wouldn’t have started reading fantasy books.  When I was 10 years old, my Dad, who at the time worked as a publisher, came home one day with a copy of The Colour of Magic, the first in the Discworld series of novels, tucked under his arm and a cry of, ‘give this a go [nickname that shall not be repeated] and see if you enjoy’!

And, having not much else to do, I did.

I devoured The Colour of Magic, and had to go the very next day to the library to get The Light Fantastic and joy of joys, discover when I did that there were more discworld novels just waiting to be read!  Since then I have read every single novel, discworld or other, that Terry Pratchett has produced, and loved every second.  And not only are they all brilliant reads on their own right or as part of a series, but if anything, he’s been getting better.  Everyone who’s ever read the discworld novels will have the conversation of ‘who’s your favourite character?’  Is it Rincewind, the cowardly wizard with about as much magical talent as a carrot, who somehow survives despite everything and is constantly frustrated in his attempts to not be saviour of civilization?  Is it Granny Weatherwax, the old witch who is always right despite everything and does what has to be done?  What about Death, who spends so much of his time attempting to understand the mysteries of humanity, eating fried breakfast and learning to play cards?  The Patrician of Ankh Morpork, a city of guilds, wizards, intrigues, speeding fines, dodgy street food, dodgier sanitation, tabloid journalism and a post office run by a man with unusual fashion sense?  Vimes, copper through and through who seems to find himself constantly being promoted despite his best efforts?  Are you interested in tales of gods and their schemes, in crime and thrillers, in vampires and why they always carry a dustpan and brush, in the legal rights of zombies or the trouble with going to the klickies?  The discworld contains all these things – over the years, this series of books really has become the embodiment of the phrase ‘he made a world on the page’.

And it’s funny.

It’s really really funny.  I mean, it’s a whole load of other stuff too; Pratchett tells the kind of story that makes you forget that you’re looking at words on a page and turning bits of brownish paper with black ink marks on them.  On a slightly more serious note, he has also been in the news recently, after being diagnosed with Alzheimers, which is, lets face it, a crappy trick for the universe to pull on any man, let alone one as brilliantly talented as Pratchett.  What this means for the future, I have no idea, but I for one will be first into the bookshop whenever he puts pen to paper, and even if that slows down, there is still a whole world of books – several worlds, in fact – sitting on pride of place on my bookshelf, ready to entertain and exhilarate whenever the technical rehearsals get long or the tube runs slow.

Lord Mayor/Midnight Mayor

Posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 in Writing | 5 Comments

Oh yes… did I mention the sequel to A Madness of Angels?

So, for many, many hundreds of years there has been an individual in London called the Lord Mayor.  In Magna Carta it was set down that the Lord Mayor of London could prevent the king entering within the city walls which at the time defined the city.  He was the chief authority in the city, a leader during disasters, a powerful figure within the guilds, wealthy and for a long time, the nearest thing London had to any sort of definable legal authority.  In recent centuries his power has declined, and now the Lord Mayor is chiefly regarded for the firework display put on in his honour every November, and for his excellent ability at shaking hands.   Certain symbols of the past remain; chains of office, a particularly shiny coach, big red robes and a lot of dead rabbit.  Around the Corporation of London, the oldest part of the city, you can also see practically everywhere you look, the old symbol of the city; a dragon holding a shield, bearing the red cross of St. George in its middle, and in the top left hand corner, a red sword.

Needless to say, if the Lord Mayor developed over the years to maintain law and order during daylight hours, in charge of the ordinary ticking over of the city, there would be left a vacancy for a more mystical counterpart, whose remit begins when the sun goes down…

GIVE ME BACK MY HAT

Posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 in Writing | 2 Comments

It has been pointed out to me that there’s a sequel to Madness of Angels due to be published at some point in the next few months, and in the interest of this not coming as a total shock, I figure that I might as well say a few things about it now in order to stir up a furor of… well… fervour…

However!  In the interest of not actually giving anything away whatsoever, I’m going to do this in minor drips and drabs.  So, I think the very first, and absolutely most important thing to say about Matthew Swift’s next adventure in the world of Urban Magic, is this:

GIVE ME BACK MY HAT!!!

A dog and a cat

Posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 in Writing | 2 Comments

I know that these aren’t strictly literary heroes, but since I’m covering my heroes generally, I figured I might as well throw them in.  Garfield the cat and Grommit of Wallace and Grommit fame are up there as two of my greatest heroes of all time.  I mean, you could make a loose case for arguing that Garfield is a literary figure… of sorts… but it would be a very, very loose case and I’m not really going to try and make it. 

I was introduced to Garfield by a friend at school, who for the purpose of anonymity we’ll call Galadriel, in little cartoon strips that would be emailed to me usually at the culmination of a particularly ridiculous and frustrating day, and quickly got the bug.  I was given the classic volumes 1 and 2 to read prior to taking Physics AS-Level, on the sound and sensible principal that the wonders of the universe and, more to the point, the failure of said wonders to give you the right answer when you wanted them to, were really nothing compared to the need to have a decent slice (or bowl, or bucket, or whatever the largest vessel was) of lasagna on your table.  Make no mistake, I have never encountered a fictional character more thrillingly cynical, nasty, lazy and overweight as Garfield, and the sheer joy taken in all of the above is utterly infectious.  I’m not even going to attempt to claim that the cackling it induces is anything other than totally malicious, and that is what makes it such a guilty, wonderful pleasure.  Garfield became a permanent fixture on my shelf the same day that I gave myself an asthma attack on the Piccadilly line for laughing too hard; he then became required reading for at least an hour prior to any university paper I ever sat.  I should add that Garfield is nothing without the characters that surround him, of whom, in its own quaint way, my favourite remains Pooky, Garfield’s much-beloved teddy bear.  An utterly inanimate object, Pooky is the only creature for which Garfield shows any warmth, probably because he is inanimate and thus incapable of annoying his owner.

At the other end of the spectrum… it has been my long-held ambition to evolve into the non-plasticine, non-dog version of Grommit.  Where Garfield is an entirely malicious, manipulative creature focused entirely on the next meal, Grommit is the living embodiment of patience, tolerance, hard work and sensible eating.  With one eyebrow he can inform the world around him that yes, he is aware that his owner is making a very foolish mistake that’s going to end in disaster, but that he, Grommit, will stick by him through anything that’s heading their way and won’t complain or ask for praise, but will merely assist in solving the oncoming disaster because he’s loyal and loving and that’s what he does – so sayeth the eyebrow.  More to the point, he’s the uber-techie, capable of making anything out of anything, which is the essential techie dream; always with a gadget to hand, silent and focused and unfazed by anything from rogue penguins to giant rabbits.  Where Garfield induces cackles of malign cynicism, Grommit induces the kind of reckless, mouth-aching grinning that comes from knowing where the story is going, and wanting to see how on earth he’s going to solve this one.

I know it’s a tad peculiar to have two fictional characters as heroes; but then again, the world is sadly lacking heroes who are quite as heroic as the ones that come out of the imagination.  Most of the real people who I cheer for as heroic are long-dead figures from the past or names half-glimpsed in the corner of a book about doctors or activists or scientists who stood up and said, ‘this is wrong; let me make it right’ and received a footnote worth of praise in a political tome in the back of a library.  When I think of people who I’d class as living heroes, I always end up thinking of a story I read about a team of fewer than ten Red Cross workers in Rwanda, who stayed during the worst of the genocide when everyone, including the U.N., had fled, and would stand in front of gunmen and say, ‘we will treat all, regardless of who they are’ and not back down; or of the firemen at the Chernobyl disaster who were given a shovel full of sand and told that they had four seconds to throw their sand onto burning uranium, after which their exposure would be too high, and they would die -  and yet, knowing this, they still fought the fire.  I don’t know their names, and probably never will, and their stories are so drenched in horror as to remove any flavour of inspiration and just put numbness into the soul.  Grommit and Garfield, a fictional cat and a fictional dog, are far more comfortable heroes to pin to the back wall of my imagination, and if nothing else, are extremely good at lowering the blood pressure just before an exam…

In Praise of Raymond Chandler

Posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 in Writing | 1 Comment

A while back, I started in on a list of my favourite writers, and got as far as Roger Zelazny before becoming distracted by the usual plethora of Stuff and Things that keep on cropping up.  But I figure now is the time to remedy that and get onto Great Hero No.2 – Raymond Chandler.

And yeap, he’s not a fantasy writer.  And yeah, even if you haven’t read him, you’ll have read someone trying to be him.  Every edgy, witty, sharp-tongued noir crime thriller you’ve read (or seen) since 1945 is either consciously or unconsciously pinching from Chandler, to varying degrees of success.  A quick sum-up for the uninitiated…

Raymond Chandler got scribbling in the 1930s, and his main character, Phillip Marlowe, still remains one of the most famous fictional detectives of all time.  A private eye in Los Angeles, Marlowe was on perpetual edge of almost being paid for his time, a man of battered but decent principals in a town without any.  The plots clock up a respectible body count, but are very rarely kicked off by anything other than a passing act of pettiness or an accidental moment of compassion on a night like any other.  What sets Chandler apart was the way the stories were told – Chandler could to more with 5 words than most other writers can say in 50.  There’s been numerous films of his work made, ranging from the Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, to some really, really iffy adaptations set in the 1970s starring bad hair, dubious trousers and not much else of note.  The Singing Detective also borrowed (lovingly) from Chandler, in ways ranging from the obvious to the geeky that you’d kinda have to squint to spot.

A legend, probably a myth, relating to Chandler’s approach to plot, relates to a phone call he received from the director working on the film adaptation of one of his novels.  The director complained that he just didn’t understand what was going on at this bit of the film, to which Chandler’s reply was ‘just have a guy come in with a gun’.  While not exactly a solution Jane Austen would have gone for, it has a lot going for it…

My other, favourite Chandler quote, and a slightly more pretentious one, relates to an occasion when Chandler was asked by his publisher to review another author’s book and give him a favourable quote.  To my annoyance, I can’t find the exact words on my bookshelf, but his essential reply to this request boiled down to, ‘I’d love to, but I can’t.  The writer has craft, he has skill, he understands character, he understands plot, he’s got narrative and rhythm.  But I can’t give me a good review, because he just doesn’t hear the music.’ 

Now, while this is, from a technical point of view, pretty harsh, anyone who’s spent more than a few chapters in the company of Raymond Chandler’s prose will fairly quickly work out what he’s talking about.  It’s not the characters, and certainly not the plot, that sweeps you along when you read Chandler.  It is a sense of momentum, an immersion into something which cannot be described as anything more than absorption into a story, can’t be broken down into any more nor less true than to say that the writing has a kind of music, that catches you and pulls you along, whether you meant to go or not.

Chandler would probably resent being told that he was also the master of the one-liner, so I’ll put in several lines instead.  This description is on page 1 of Farewell My Lovely, and was the first taste of Chandler I ever had….

‘He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck… His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgotten cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers.  Slim quiet negroes passed up and down the street and stared at him with darting side glances.  He was worth looking at.  He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes…. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them.  Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.’