Page 3 of 9

A book review: Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck (published 1935)

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

Written forever ago describing places and people that can no longer exist in America, and yet so very contemporary. Reviews of Tortilla Flat have been coming out off and on for nearly one hundred years. I haven’t read any of them, but surely they also say that this short novel harbingers the Steinbeck of Nobel and Pulitzer. In Tortilla Flat we can already hear Steinbeck fast becoming a master craftsman. He’s only 33 years old but his authorial voice is loud and clear. Tortilla Flat is an early work, barely a novella and in this book Steinbeck flexed muscle and bone as hard as his Tortilla Flat characters avoid doing so. You could read it as a mysoginistic series of gruff clichés, except that the male friendship group Steinbeck describes is so tenderly drawn and they are such lovers and respecters of women. Or maybe they just fear them? Steinbeck’s female characters have such agency, even Señora Cortez who is barely 25 and has 9 children. She’s not entirely sure why and doesn’t much care who the fathers are. She and her mother thrive and her children are healthy and strong.

Tortilla Flat isn’t a single narrative but a series of little tales, written pictures, whatever you want to call them. John Steinbeck doesn’t be doing with the show don’t tell school of writing so championed by Ernest Hemingway. Steinbeck’s characters don’t need to be shown because his loving portrayals tell us who they are, he describes them so tenderly, so beautifully. And anyway I think the show don’t tell thing is a feint for writers too scared to let their imaginations loose on character. No risk of that with Steinbeck.

Tortilla Flat is set just after the first world war. It’s a series of windows we look through into other peoples’ lives. The lives we’re shown are those of a group of paisanos living in the hills behind Monterey, California. A muddle of Mexican and Italian, paisanos are the people of Tortilla Flat, liiving in their own, separate community. The paisanos live on the edge of a remote blob of America. Their world is anchored and yet separate, a collection of disparities that’s what made America America in the early 20th century. Tortilla Flat is one of countless communities that look to their common interest but only loosely connect themselves to others and no one much bothers. The sense of federation is far away and the government some remote entity that has little to do with day to day existence, day to day survival. 

In 1935 when the book was published America was recovering from a remote war that touched its local worlds from a great distance. An abstraction only made real when American soldiers came back, or didn’t. Several of the paisanos in Tortilla Flat are war veterans who came home to nothing and drift back into lifestyles of indolence and grift with no complaints and no expectation for much of anything. They live in the woods, on the beach, go with women as it suits. Upon his return from the war Danny discovers that he has inherited two houses in Tortilla Flat. The first one almost immediately catches fire and burns down. The second one Danny moves into along with a couple of his friends who share his lifestyle and values. They gradually accommodate more friends, a bunch of dogs and spend their time telling stories on the sun-warmed porch, and working out how best to get the next gallon of wine and something to eat. Occasionally they go with local women who just as occasionally decide they are in need of a man for a night or two. Chickens go missing and other peoples’ goats get milked. Children are fed and lovers wax and wane.

The story is not so much story as a space Steinbeck creates through the intense interiority of his characters. What a word. I mean that Steinbeck tells you what characters think, why they think as they do, their subtle and sincere rationales for their actions. Pilon, the logician and rationalist, cares only about what makes most sense to achieve his goals with the minimal moral compromise. And he considers the implications of actions and inactions, mostly concluding that he should do as he wants because his motivations and expectations are pure. In the movie of Tortilla Flat Spencer Tracey portrays Pilon as a bit of a rogue, trying to make him lovable but conniving. It doesn’t much work and I don’t think he hit his mark at all. Pilon is, as all the friends are, roguish in his way. But he has a deep sense of connection to those he cares about, especially to Danny. Danny is best described as feckless, a little thick and more concerned with his next thrill than anything else. But Pilon does care, he isn’t just a devious idler a “cunning mixture of good and evil”. All this Steinbeck tells us so beautifully: “Pilon was a lover of beauty and a mystic. He raised his face into the sky and his soul arose out of him into the sun’s afterglow …that Pilon was beautiful, and his thoughts were unstained with selfishness and lust.” 

These men are heroes in their world, champions for each other in word and deed, like medieval knights. They are not at all bothered with the urgencies of facing life’s challenges. Poverty or dispossession are not feared and these men are not pathetic curiosities. These men care about very little and their lives are shaped by small and easily satisfied wants: enough to eat, enough wine to drink, enough love, the occasional fight. We learn humility reading this book so long after it was written and in a world that is so very far from the gentle one Steinbeck shares. The love for that world and those people shines through every line.

Tortilla Flat is a masterclass in fiction writing and it has every marker for what John Steinbeck would come to be most associated with: the wonder of our everyday ordinariness, the need for kindness, survival and our responsibilities to one another and to our world. 

Why you should go see ABBA Voyage

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Actually there is no reason to see it at all if you don’t want to. But as a passionate fan I simply had to and I shall go again. It’s strange because I completely ignored ABBA in the 1970s and 1980s and then embraced them wholeheartedly when our daughter was about 4. She was superkeen on one of the ABBA songs covered by a now forgotten band, A-Teens. Another bunch of Swedes? Can’t remember which song, but we gave her ABBA Gold for Christmas and there was no turning back.

So I came to this show, way out in the middle of London nowhere with high expectations of having a fantastic time. And I did, but there was plenty of unexpected too, like the lack of places to eat and drink, bar one, outside the venue. Superkeen you rush off the DLR at Pudding Mill Lane station wanting wine and a wee in almost equal measure, and there is the stunning ABBA Arena massive, black with ABBA in huge bright multicolour letters. But opposite the arena is only a miserable looking bar, dark and uninviting, squatting sullen and sour behind a low picket fence that would do a vampire residence proud. Who know what happens in the shadows behind it, so of course you don’t go in. 

Instead you head quick fast to clear the highly efficient airporty security controls into the arena’s lobby. This huge expanse of reception space also is airport like, but lacks the usual food and drink outlets. It’s an expanse of vaulted wood with coloured lights on the beams matching the external arena sign. It’s reminiscent of super cool mountain lodge, except it’s clever interior design is shaped to accommodate many, many people, and it was heaving on a Wednesday night. The four colours of the themed lights glow everywhere in the arena, on the outside sign, across the ceilings of the lobby, on the arena’s ceiling and even in the avatars’ costumes. Colour coordination all over the place, but the outside lobby still feels airporty.

Instead of the branded food outlets you get in an airport, at the ABBA Arena you get a repeated array of food and drink stations. They’re all branded yellow and black and serve limited selections, all part of the venue’s lowest common denomoninator principles: macaroni cheese, chilli, burgers and so on with cheesy chips an additional veg choice. The alcohol is wine and beer and canned cocktails. Yum.

It’s all very futuristic and brings to mind what bomb shelters would probably look like, if we end up at war and need fully resourced safe spaces. Also branded yellow and black is the tackiest merch place conceivable. The tat shop had on sale the most hideous Christmas jumpers ever, proudly declaring ABBA allegience. As if. There is also a hotel-like VIP lounge, entry £99 each, but once inside everything is free. Of course it is. 

You’re recommended to get to the venue some 90 minutes before the show so that you can enjoy the delights of the not very nice wine and sort of ok food that you have to eat standing up. The loos are spotless and abundant so the queues are barely there, much appreciated after two plus hours on trains. The lobby atmosphere on the night we went was unexpectedly tame and almost subdued. Too many people dressed in their ABBA finest were reconsidering their decisions over warm white wine and macaroni cheese served in a little paper bowl. The fizz and shimmer of anticipation got lost in the shuffle.

But once inside and on your seat the spirit leaps and flames with renewed excitement. The arena’s big but not so big as to leave people on another planet instead of at a performance. The stage is massive and while you wait you’re treated to Scandinavian forest scenes that appear to have magical spirits floating through the trees.

Technology is the real star of this show. It is nothing short of spectacular. The lighting system is literally dazzling, an amazing level of creativity tightly integrated with the constantly changing soundscape. The varied costumes, the slick integration of the live band, analogue recordings and digital enhancements stunned the senses and yet felt cosy. The ABBA avatars are fluid and graceful although Agnetha’s face was definitely a bit immobile, in the way that women who’ve been under the knife too often tend to be. Perhaps that’s on purpose but I prefer to think it a coding shortfall.

The selection of songs was both what you’d want from the many old hits and want you’d want as a surprise: two tracks from the Visitors album. In homage to the old hits many people were dressed per the songs as seen on television and in the films and stage show. But there were plenty of ancient people having a blast, even if they weren’t dressed up. There were also plenty of people who were definitely not ancient also having a blast. Seriously impressive that these newbies even knew all the words to most of the songs. And although the place was packed the temperature was perfect with an atmoshere at once intense yet polite. It reflected the people there who were mostly older and singing along to happy and sad echoes of their own lives. A sprinkling of greying male partners were looking mildly embarrassed and probably wishing they’d stayed in the pub at London Bridge station. But I’d prefer to think they enjoyed being part of so many peoples’ joyfully happy space. That feeling was marvellous, a perfect escape from outside woes and internal turmoils that didn’t get erased, but got put into a different, more positive context. Most of us seemed to know most of the words even to songs that weren’t big hits, old and new.

The performances of ABBA’s latest singles Do I have it in Me and Don’t Shut Me Down were perfect links, past and present. They didn’t so much close the ABBA circle as to invite new hopes for more, somehow we still want more. Mind you we probably don’t want more of the weird Manga like cartoons that popped up a couple of times during the show, presumably during digital switchovers of some sort. Or perhaps to give the avators a binary breather. A Manga cartoon was weirdly the backdrop for Voulez Vous and might have been a questing story involving ancient runes and towers. There may have been pigeons. I struggled valiantly to make the connection but still haven’t managed it. At various points each member of ABBA gives a little welcome via their avatar and a thank you of their own. Björn’s avatar touchingly thanks the audience, “the fifth member of ABBA”, for being there. And then it’s suddenly over and we’re all shuffling back to the DLR with our senses overloaded and a sensation of mild confusion at what we’d just experienced. Recovery was slow and sweet and as we head for another Eurovision where it all began for ABBA, remembering that and ABBA Voyage brings fond reminiscences of 1974 when we were all oh so young and pretty. 

The ABBA Voyage concept or model is where so much performative art is heading. And it’s a wonderful thing as long as live, real body experiences kept happening as well. Without the source there would be no quest or voyage. So maybe in fifty years time we’ll be watching Kaj perform their wonderful sauna song Bara Bada Bastu, favourites to win this year’s Eurovision. Enjoy! 

Byebye blurbs

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Once upon a time a blurb was a short description of a book on the flyleaf or the back that told you what the book was about. Over the years the blurb has turned into something much less helpful. What passes for blurbs today are short endorsements of a title, usually by other authors. They often include words like “brilliant” or “heartfelt” or “tour de force”. Nowadays gushing single-sentence guff counts as a blurb.

But modern blurbs are a waste of space, time, energy, eyetime. I’ve thought this for a long time and have mourned the loss of proper back-of-the-book summaries of stories. Now in a move author James Folta describes as “dazzling” publisher Simon & Schuster is dropping the requirement for authors to provide blurbs.

You’ll see at least one blurb on most books, but some have many, many supposedly authorative people offering effusive praise for a title. I managed one blurb for The Draftsman (thank you John Walsh), a debut novel. But successful authors are pushed to come up with as many as possible from names as lofty as possible. Why? Do readers really care if someone thinks a book is written in “effervescent” prose, or if it’s just “impossible to put down”? Or if the author has created a “tour de force”? It might as well be a tour de france or a divinely juicy sandwich you can’t stop chomping on. And should prose be effervescent at all? A nonsense all of it.

What authors want is readers and what readers want is a short summary of what the book’s about. How hard is that to get? What’s maybe more interesting is why publishers think that a bunch of mostly meaningless peer comments are of interest to readers. Is there a belief that if Salman Rushdie or JK Rowling has been arsed to supply a blurb for a book, that potential readers will be induced to cough up and buy the thing? Actually maybe that’s it. Perhaps publishers believe that readers are sheep, inclined to follow the lead of authors they respect. And that’s just silly. So many of the multiple blurbs splattering today’s fiction and nonfiction are written by people most readers have never heard of, because they are produced by the cognescenti of the book scene. It’s another example of the cosy closed world of friends of friends of agents or of colleagues in publishing who might be flattered to be asked. Or who are helping out as insurance for the future. Maybe it’s about protecting the exclusive inner shrine that is is today’s publishing business.

Harvesting blurbs is a soul destroying task for authors and their lexical supply chains. Far better to spend the time on more imaginative forms of promotion, working with alternative distribution channels, massaging the egos of booksellers and librarians and the trade press. Even writing the next book. Anything has to be more rewarding than blurb collecting.

Simon & Schuster’s “dazzling” move is a first, at least a first by a big name publisher. Sean Manning, Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher wrote in Publishers Weekly he’s “decided that beginning in 2025, the Simon & Schuster flagship imprint will no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books.” He also said that “this kind of favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent”. This is spot on for an industry that trades on its history as nurturers of the contemporary socio-political et al voice. It’s all very precious, a cosy, protected space. 

More likely Mr Manning has made his decision because he recognises that it’s a waste of salaried peoples’ time collecting blurbs and that they really make little difference to potential buyers. He surely also understands that in today’s oversaturated market, publishers don’t need such unreliable tools to sell books. And besides AI can generate all the tempting whimsy you could possibly want, along with all manner of fictitious author identities, life stories and of course books. And who amongst readers will really care if the next Jilly Cooper title was AI generated. Jilly might but I bet her fans would be thrilled to get the next Rivals, say Rivals II or maybe Rivals: next generation? They’d buy it blurb or no blurb. And as to the AI thing, they just won’t care.

When Hollywood comes to call

Laurel Lindström 5 Comments

Unbound published my first novel, The Draftsman, in 2021. Absent any sort of marketing whatsoever the book sank without a trace. Weirdly (or stupidly) the publishers got 700 copies of the book printed, but had no sort of marketing plan in place to sell them. When the distribution house collapsed earlier this year and had to clear their warehouses, Unbound chose to pulp the remaining books. Before that happened we bought a some at cost to sell online and at literary festivals. The remaining copies of The Draftsman are now living new lives as recycled paper.

Despite a business model that is a great idea for prospective authors, Unbound is best avoided. The idea of crowdfunding publications, essentially the subscription model, is not new but it is an idea that depends for success on active and close collaboration between author and publisher. In the Unbound universe (would that be a u-bend?) the collaboration is entirely onesided. The author is expected to sell the books, rather than being able to trust their publisher to take care of sales. Prospective authors are instead better off working with a project manager to pull together the editorial, production, publishing and marketing processes, on the basis of a revenue split. The disappointment of working with Unbound still haunts me. But their incompetence may have turned out to have a silver lining.

The pulping means that The Draftsman is out of print and that means that the rights to the work revert to me. This is a good thing, especially when Hollywood comes to call. Except that the silver lining thing is a load of old toe. It’s real only for a brief glimmering moment, a moment that with a bit of thought soon turned into a wildfire of haemorraging fantasy. I should explain.

All this excitement was based on several emails and two telephone calls with a bunch of questions including about rights ownership (that silver lining). The emails were from people telling me that The Draftsman has been identified as a possible for a film or television series. This much we know because it is a good book with interesting characters. But the emails said this too. Me being me I forwarded these messages to the originating companies with a note that their email system had been hacked. But then I got another approach to which I responded “is this a joke?” That yielded a further message asking when it would be convenient to chat about the plan. Blimey.

Yeah right, yes you can call me because the exercise will be interesting. So a man rings, not once but twice. He’s extremely polite, professional and keeps repeating the lines. He keeps explaining the process and he keeps reminding me that the details of his emails and of the conversation are subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), not that one has been signed. Of course this is a scam, and it’s like really, how much do you want from me to progress this. The nice man on the telephone laughed and said they would not be asking for any money. The offer is contingent on all sorts of things and having giving him the confirmations he needed to take things to the next stage, he would be handing over this project to his colleague. And that I should expect further contact within a couple of months. I am being warmed up for the sting, and yet am already considering possibilities for my protagonist, Martin Cox. Aidan Turner’s too old and gruff; a young Johnny Depp isn’t an option; Timothée Chalamet’s hair is too short and curly; the blue eyed bloke in the Bear could be perfect but he too has short curly hair. And who could play Joshua, my favourite character? The gleaming silver keeps on shining ever brighter. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oscar Wilde’s 170th birthday dinner

Laurel Lindström 1 Comment

Guests at Oscar’s 170 th birthday bash shimmered and shone. They were stars in Oscar’s very own firmament, mingling together for delicious pre-dinner snacks and generous quantities of fizz. And it was real champagne, not the dreaded Prosecco! Robert Whelan (Deputy Chairman, Editor of ‘The Wildean’) welcomed us and James Liu performed “Serenade (for music)” a piece with Oscar’s lyrics and FH Cowen’s music. This wonderful song is a early plea from Paris to Helen to flee with him across the Aegean to Troy. She declines, preferring instead to let Paris abduct her sometime later. Much more fun. After the song, there followed more champagne, more snacks and glamorous hobnobbing. We were a small riot of sparkling colours, feathers and sequins, offset by just the right amount of two tone penguin formals.

Midmingle our Hon. President Gyles Brandreth made a very special welcome and presentation to Joan Winchell, thanking her for supporting the newly published collection of selected articles from The Woman’s World. He pointed out that “if it wasn’t for her this wouldn’t be happening …” adding that “without her we would not have had this book”. He reminded the happy crowd that it had been an ”exciting Oscar Wilde week for many of us, culminating in this evening”. As he handed over the gift to Joan, Gyles explained that, “we are all about to bow or curtesy to you … it’s a British tradition …[you have] been a true friend to us and to the memory and to the genius of Oscar Wilde”. Joan responded with gracious acceptance of the lovely photo and an invitation for Gyles to blow a kiss from her to the crowd. The crowd happily accepted and returned kisses of their own in number.

From the grandeur of the National Liberal Club’s (non)Smoking Room, some 100 + guests moved to the equally auspicious David Lloyd George Room for dinner. Properly warmed up with predinner drinks and canapés people took their seats in keen anticipation of what came next, having no real idea of what that might be. Anticipation is everything, bringing to mind Oscar’s observation that ‘the suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.’

We didn’t have to wait too long for Vanessa Heron (Chairman and Editor of ‘Intentions’) to extend her own warm welcome to everyone, especially those who  had travelled long distances to this dinner. And Vanessa tipped an appreciative nod to her predecessor, Don Mead (Hon. Vice President), “who has almost certainly attended more of these dinners than anyone else”.

Merlin Holland, Oscar’s grandson and archivist, then proposed the toast to to his grandfather. Merlin describes himself as the “keeper of [his] family flame”, and shared family memories touching on what his grandmother Constance had gone through after Oscar’s fall. She faced “an appalling social problem” so horrible that she had to distance herself and her children from all things Wilde, and she did so by changing her name. The change of name was wise, because Oscar never did listen to advice or try to avoid notoriety. He particularly ignored the many requests to keep away from Bosie. Sadly or maybe not, he welcomed Bosie back into his life to sow yet more sorrow and disharmony. Merlin explained that “only this time it happens in slow motion which is worse”. Oscar’s view was that he needed “an atmosphere of love … I need to love and be loved … I still love him, how could I not love him, he wrecked my life?”

In De Profundis Oscar explains that he “was no longer the master of my fate, the captain of my soul” (the reference is to William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem Invictus). Merlin reminds us that with these lines in De Profundis Oscar had recognised the depths of his collapse and could begin to “come up out of the depths”. He ended his toast preliminaries with a quote from Frank Harris’ 1916 biography of Oscar Wilde where he relays a conversation Frank once had with Oscar. With considerable prescience Oscar had predicted that “a hundred years hence, no one will know anything about Curzon …  whether [he] lived or died will be a matter of indifference to everyone; but my comedies and my stories and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ will be known and read by millions, and even my unhappy fate will call forth worldwide sympathy.” How right he was about this and so much more. We shared Merlin’s toast: “my grandfather at this, his 170th birthday”. Happy birthday Oscar.

Guests then tucked into three courses of lovely food and more wines. Conversation flowed in a glittering, joyful, sometimes unexpected and definitely noisy torrent. We clearly all shared the unmatched joy that is love of Oscar Wilde, the man, his life and his amazing achievements. Oscar would’ve loved it.

Eleanor Fitzsimons (Hon. Patron) rounded off the evening with a few profiles of the contributors to The Woman’s World. The likes of Elisabeth of Wied, first Queen of Romania, Marie Corelli the English novelist, and Dr Mary Marshall, who along with six other women was forced to campaign to be allowed to graduate as a medical doctor. Wilde championed many women of ambition, ability and courage, using The Woman’s World to give them a platform and visibility. Copies of the book were available for sale at the dinner, but did not last long. The moment for purchasing a copy passed too fast, and like the evening the moment was over much too soon. Drifting home sleepy on the train, I am certain that over us all Oscar’s bemused spirit was surely smiling.

© Laurel Lindström 2024

Welcome to the Oscar Wilde Society

The Draftsman in brief

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Martin Cox left school at 16 with stellar grades. But too traumatised to progress any further academically, he instead took a low-paid, low-skilled job in a local drafting office.

Over the course of a couple of years Martin progresses in skill and appreciation of design and structure. He is an engineering genius and when he makes recommendations to change a patent application his life is turned around. He becomes very rich, but Martin Cox is a damaged man, a man whose past has left deep and abiding scars. He’s high-achieving, autistic, and craves routine and consistency in his life, yet he lives in chaos. He cannot relate to other people and is barely even aware of his own identity or his considerable limitations. Child abuse is not unusual in modern fiction, but a mother’s abuse of her son in the name of love is less common. Its legacy is rarely addressed.

When Martin Cox buys a house in the countryside, it is the first time ever he has spent any time out of London. He is slowly intrigued by the landscape and the history of the property. He starts to learn more about the original house, about the wartime hospital, about the school and about a young woman and her Canadian airman. As he becomes more fascinated, Martin starts to grow away from himself and towards others. He gradually comes to recognise the damage he has suffered at his mother’s hand, and even to care. His relationships become a source of healing, first the connection with his boss and later with his business minder. But these relationships are unclearly defined. The ambivalence with which the writer addresses Martin Cox’s sexuality is deliberate, a device to keep the reader guessing and a reflection of Martin’s own uncertainty and confusion.

Martin’s fascination with his house and its landscape, the local history, the wartime realities he learns more about as the book progresses, lead him to a mystery. As Martin’s sense of identity develops the reader sees his unacknowledged and unrecognised victimhood, mirror the solution of a mystery that only becomes apparent in the book’s climax.

The Draftsman is a compelling and highly original work of fiction. Readers come to understand Martin’s curious obsessions, contradictions and motivations through the course of the book. Martin’s logic, extreme orderliness and control are his default, but they mask his capacity to care or love. These limitations are a function of his mother’s unwelcome attentions.

© Laurel Lindström 2024

https://www.newyorker.com

Home
Home

https://www.theatlantic.com/world

Unspoken or speechless?

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

People with sore throats apparently have sore throats because they are not very good at expressing themselves. Difficulties we’re facing but can’t express, so we get a sore throat? Nah. People with sore throats may just have sore throats and be in need of gargling with a 1:5 solution of TCP. 

If you’ve trouble with self-expression, it’s much more effective to build a very high, very thick wall. Stay behind it as long as you need to and keep adding bricks when necessary. This is completely opposite to what the head doctors will tell you because it amounts to repression: oh no I’m repressed. And it’s doing me in. My mental health, oh dear. Except no, not expressing yourself isn’t doing you in at all, it’s providing you with a safe space behind walls that only you can occupy and this is not so bad.

Everyone has these walls to some extent or another because it’s how we protect ourselves, how we hide what’s important or the effects of trauma. It’s also where we can stay when times get tough, so that we can work out how to get through those gnarly times. We can wait and figure out what happened, how we feel about it and what we can do to deal with it, which is usually not much. Mostly the best thing is to be patient and be still, to lie in the dark and watch as the wiggles in your eyes weave unseen webs and rehearse their silent chorus. You know it all.

We can talk about stuff and share, or keep behind a wall. Either way anxieties and insecurities, fears, are absolutely who you are along with the rest of what makes you you. But owning such things can be hard sometimes, especially if they’re reflected in your conduct. Fear and insecurity drive behaviours and creativities: we can always do better. It takes a genius on the scales of Lennon and McCartney to have the confidence to say, actually that piece of work is not so bad. And then they could only make such judgements in later life, once the crazy Beatle years were over and they were further along on their respective journeys.

For people aspiring to write fiction, does it maybe ever happen in the same way? Do we ever look back and say, I hated that at the time but actually it isn’t so bad? Time maybe the magic ingredient no one can add at the point of creation. As with music, revisiting what you created ages ago can be instructive for what you are creating now: it shows you boundaries, different walls that you might want to extend or penetrate. For those walls, the limits to your creativity, the more creative work you do, the thinner and lower they might become. We can always do better. There are always more words. 

The next time. The next time bricks get added to your walls is unavoidable. Bricks, mortar and the next brutal trowel are always close at hand, just waiting. But not because of the work. The next time the walls start going up doesn’t come with mean comments about the piece or with people laughing or mocking what you’re trying to do. The next time the walls start going up is because of stuff that traumatises and confuses you, undermining who you are, what you are. And if you are a writer or a musician those safety walls can have nothing to do with the work. The work’s apart from you and your walls; it’s more important. Walls that go up because someone doesn’t like your story or articles are flimsy and easily downed. They are trivial, false and fragile figments you can ignore: there is always more to say, more words, more stories; you can always do better. So when a piece gets criticised, instead of letting a wall go up let come a moment of joy, of elation. Comments and criticism confirm that someone has bothered to read your words and consider them. They’ve made the effort and taken the time to respond to what you’ve written. Creative output and you are intrinsicly bound yet separate, so your walls keep out the work as well as the rest of the world. Be content to toss words over the parapets and watch them fly away across the sky. And be happy if somebody finds them.

© Laurel Lindström 2023

https://www.newyorker.com

Home
Home

English as she is spoke

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

English has played quite a role in spreading culture, commerce and other things beginning with c across the globe. The language owes much of its success to its habit of agglomerating new words and meanings. And the fact that the English are too lazy to learn other languages. They believe that speaking English at volume will do the trick. It doesn’t. English speakers prefer to pinch words from other languages and make them work, often very effectively. Pyjamas from Hindi, zeitgest from German, ombudsman from Swedish, schmuck from Yiddish, divan from Arabic, croissant from French. You get the idea. English is a collection of words from other languages, pronounced wrong. Things are more complicated and far more creative with Cockney rhyming slang, but that’s for another day. 

The greediness for new words that makes English so dynamic isn’t matched by its ability to care for words; we let them get messed up and mangled without much of a fight. We allow bits of our language to fall into dereliction, and never think about why those bits have been relicted. We forget to use words even though they break no rules. Do you ever feel gruntled basking in the sun’s warmth instead of disgruntled because of the coolth?

Situations and people we don’t expect to run into can be very disarming but when we are expecting to see them we rarely feel a sense of arming. And if it’s hench people or environments we’d prefer to avoid, we can be pretty ruthless about getting ourselves elsewhere. If we change our minds we surely return with ruth. Except we don’t, even if we have decided that the hench people are couth rather than uncouth and that places are lapidated rather than dilapidated. Actually that one’s a bit of a cheat. To lapidate means to stone to death. But onwards.

First impressions can be accurate or deceptive and what you think is an accurate first impression might actually have misled you into some sort of false confidence. It might not take much to misle you; a person’s demeanour (they might have meanour, but we don’t mention that) and manner depends on the impression they want to give. How devastated we feel when we discover they’re a crashing bore depends on the circs. There’s only so much chat about the best place to get an MOT in Ireland one can take (Belfast apparently). Once you’ve regained consciousness walk away. The sense of devastation gone and feeling fully vastated, you’ll be ready to share alternative hospitality. Unless, or is that less, the encounter has left you hospitalised.

Unlike structured languages like German or Swedish, or even French, the English language is unruly and wayward. The collective linguistic naughtiness of some two billion speakers makes of English a perpetual chaos. Few people are aware of inventing words, yet still English vocabulary blossoms with no trammel whatsoever. Unruly but consistently inventive, it’s got some 170,000 words in usage. Most people work with 20,000 to 30,000. Unlike the rule driven Swedes and Germans, English speakers are not ruly, they are rule breakers. From the messy growth of English vocabulary we can infer that English is a bonkers language. Or is that a verb usage too fer?

https://www.newyorker.com

Three years on

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

It’s that laugh. It’s that laugh still echoing three years on from when it stopped. And a random unexpected picture. He’s sweaty and hot, a pint to hand, drumsticks sitting on the tom. And beaming at the people shyly coming to say how much they enjoyed it, saying his name, telling him where they’ve come from, how often they’ve heard him play and do you know such and such who came with me the last time, that time in Ghent, or Hastings or wherever. Always he is smiling back, nodding, buoying them up with his kindness, his generosity. He might have remembered, but he’s distracted thinking about the beats and patterns. So he laughs with them and they go home happy and excited.

For us the laughter was a soundtrack, along with the jazz, weaving its way into and around our early lives. Laughter and silliness touching all the days, a comfort and a place of safety, reassuring and always telling us that things would be fine. Loose tooth, cat scratch, falling down the stairs, something horrid on the plate in front of us. Laughter fixed all of it; it was his remedy for us and perhaps for himself.

As those few short years passed slowly from laughter to sorrow, the laughter shifted to sighs and patient smiles, glancing looks and long hugs. Tight hard cuddles instead of giggles and then everything changed so fast and he was not there like he used to be. No more late night jam sessions or squeaking stairs in the darkness. No more jokes or teases, just a sullen scowl as the path once lit with joyous gold turned dark and scary. Uncertain, we were stepping through thorns and murky holes, trying to bypass the unexpected decay of wonder. But it didn’t work. Instead were many years of distant and disparate unshared lives, peppered with outreach and lonely calls back into the past. Eventually the future reclaimed all of us and just as unexpectedly what came next brought back the laughter.

Time took all of us along, and we followed in the noisy wake of him, following but never quite catching his riotousness. And still he’s always there in my head, in silence or in the music. Thank you for that and for the laughter, the wisdom, the kindness, the patience and the love. The time. Through all the complications and confusion, the absences and losses, the distractions, the otherliness of life, through everything, he has always been with me even if the plan went its own way. So thank you Daddy for holding us still and for your constancy living on in loving memory.

Trial

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

And error. The journey wasn’t improving and her map-reading skills were clearly nonexistent. The blind date had been fine, but what could go wrong in a Mexican restaurant where they served margueritas in glasses so big you could barely lift them. But this, finding a party somewhere in Santa Monica, was different and here they were on the 10 looking for the exit by trial and error. “I know exactly how we get there,” she’d said when she suggested this Santa Monica excursion as a second date. They’d met downtown, driving their cars on the 110 to the 10 stopping for coffee and leaving her car at a Denny’s somewhere off La Brea. He was driving and she was reading the map on her ’phone. He should’ve known this wasn’t going to work. She’d been a bit confused getting them back onto the freeway, so they’d ended up taking Apple Street running parallel to the 10. Slowly. 

He knew the way to Santa Monica, but chose to support her agency. It seemed only fair. On the surface street he took advantage of the dawdling pace to glance at her. He was wondering what had made that first date so great. Was it the voice, slightly drawling, peppered with pauses as she stared at the ceiling in search of the next words. Or was it the soft gleam of such very pale skin, almost translucent and unworldly in this dessicated Californian climate. Or was it that endearing vulnerability that made him want to wrap her up in his arms and just hold her forever. Or was it just tequila and lust. Libidinous joys had been sparse of late.

That voice, still gentle and sympathetic, was getting annoying. It never got out of second gear; he was trying to confirm that her friend’s baby shower was down on Second Street in Santa Monica. But the drawl was almost tidal in its relentlessness, so he tried hard not to show his exasperation and to be conversational in an eh-huh, ok, uhmmhmm, sort of way. And now they’re facing another navigational challenge, cruising within spitting distance of the 7B on ramp at Washington Boulevard, but her directions take them not onto the 10 but to Venice Boulevard running parallel to the freeway. Again. Her concentration on her ’phone meant momentary suspension of her droning voice; he could finally tell her, “listen, I haven’t been quite on it with you. I told you I’m not from LA. True. But I have lived here over 10 years. I can tell you we need to get on the 10, so I’ll take it from here. Okay?”. Those big baby blues turned on him as she slowly twisted in her seat and lowered her sunglasses from the top of her head to the well-sculpted bridge of her nose. She said nothing as he took the Culver Junction and got them back onto the 10 heading finally at a decent clip in the direction of Santa Monica and the now questionable joys of her friend’s party. A baby shower? Really? What was he thinking?

They crossed the 405 in silence and when he asked if she was sure about Olympic she said nothing. He took the exit and made a U turn at 14th to pull up in front of Tacos Por Favor. He knew Mexican was a fave food and he knew he’d gotten them back on track. He knew too that her calculations for how long the journey would take were wildly inaccurate. From where they were on Olympic would take them about fifteen minutes max to get to the party. They had almost an hour to spare. “We’ll be there way early. I need to eat. I think you’ll like this place.” She said nothing, wrestling instead with Google and its confusing maps. “So are we staying on Olympic,” she ventured, not moving. He was standing in the sharp sunshine, doing his best to keep focused on why he was bothering with this vague and annoying woman. But there was something in her winsomeness, her trial and error approach to getting somewhere. The Santa Ana wind was starting to pick up and he fancied he could already smell the hint of smokey air from distant fires. She was out of the car and looking at him with an equivocating expression; sunglasses up, brow slightly wrinkled, eyebrows raised, the mouth a quizzical pout. He melted a little. “Let’s go inside, let’s order; and I can explain.”