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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

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

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English as she is spoke

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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?

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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.

Writer’s block and how to solve it

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There’s been lots of chat online recently about overcoming writer’s block. Writer’s block is defined by some site Google thinks knows, as the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing. And that’s a load of old toe. I can state with complete confidence that never in a career spanning 40+ years have I suffered from this terrible condition. And the reason for this is simple: I can’t afford it, not just because without the article there can be no invoice. I can’t afford it, because without getting on and writing something, my head implodes.

It’s not just me. Writer’s block is a problem no jobbing writer, say a journalist or a copy writer can allow. Hilary Mantel was asked at some event if she ever go it and how she resolved it. I can’t remember the exact words but in essence she said no, and that writing is something that cannot be blocked. You sit down and write something, anything and see what happens. Try it, try writing out your nine times tables in numbers and words and see where it takes you. If it only takes you to the ten times table, go backwards. See what clever things you notice about the nine times table.

A way more serious problem is a lack of ideas to turn into stories and here too Hilary had a solution: read a newspaper. You’ll find a host of stories presents itself, especially if you’re looking at smaller local titles. The point is that ideas spring from your observations of what is all around you. Wherever you can find scenes or communications about life and people, you can have something to say: the discovery of a long lost relative; a pony who can speak English with a Welsh accent; vegetables that double in size in the fridge overnight; a mysterious visitor you thought was just the new postman and who turns out to be your first lover in disguise. And so it goes on.

Writer’s block is not a problem, it’s an excuse, an indulgence that puts the complainant first and centre, and overlooks the writing. More interesting is why someone thinks they cannot write, have no ideas, no stories to tell. It might be reasonable to say that individual trauma justifies shelving the pencil or pen or keyboard for a while. If you’re distracted by some family worry, your spreading midriff or how to pay the electricity bill, writing is not going to be top of the list of what to do with your time. In the case of the electricity bill, there’s motivation right there to get on with it. In the case of other dramas though, perhaps a writer is so sensitive that any kind of practical or emotional disruption is sufficient to knock them off course.

For me, it’s the opposite. The worse things are the more buried I get. The hardest part about writing a weekly blog isn’t overcoming a fictitious block or coming up with ideas. The hardest part is the same as it has always been, it’s that contact problem. Not people or networking mind, it’s just getting the backside into contact with the chair and the fingers with the keyboard. It’s the old problem of finding a round tuit. I have to get one every week to make sure the noise in my head reaches the page. I suffer not at all from writer’s block, but massively from the maelstrom that’s constantly raging in my head. Perhaps now its a little quieter, but I know the noise will be back soon. Like writer’s block it’s all in the mind. 

The Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival 2024

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The Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival is coming up. It’s only the third year running for this event, but #twLitFest has some impressive headliners: Michael Ball, Michael Palin and others not called Michael. The programme is organised by genre with sessions at various venues in Tunbridge Wells, from the 9th to the 12th May, 2024. Organisers expect to welcome more than the 5,000 visitors who came last year.

Literary festivals are supposed to be a bookish version of a musical festival, but they are not quite the same. There’s much less mud involved and at a music festival it’s more likely that most people have already shelled out for the work of the performers. A music festival is more like a two way thank you: thanks for buying my records, thanks for making those records. It’s a celebration of an intimate and shared relationship, whereas a literary festival is primarily about promoting books and networking. A literary festival puts authors in front of readers in the hope that they will buy, so the focus is squarely on the authors. But a literary festival should be as much about readers, because readers are the market and they are increasingly oversupplied.

Let’s not forget that everything to do with publishing, music or books, is a business. Whether it’s books, magazines, newspapers or albums, the bottom line is money: money funds production, marketing and distribution. With books the route to the money can be especially slow and meandering; the connecting lines are convoluted and often quite entangled. There are many interests involved and many slow processes from the authors and writing, to agents and editors, proof readers and publishers, designers, production, marketing people and publicists. All these interests should get as involved in literary festivals as they possibly can, because this is where readers rove about and the readers are the ones who part with their cash for the books they want.

Authors take part in a literary festival to get exposure, to entertain and to sell. Exposure helps sales of current titles and smooths the route into the charts for upcoming titles. This is part of what the celeb lit culture is all about. Each showcase is an investment for the next book, reducing risks associated with the author and their work. In this context, a famous children’s author can do a completely irrelevant and random stand-up routine, knowing it will give a boost to sales of an upcoming, as yet unwritten, memoir or gothic novel. 

The literary festival model could be about more than celeb profiles, like taking risks with new writing, like engaging readers more actively. Why not throw in moderated panel discussions about things readers care about: new authors, reviews, book lengths, demographics. Live debates would be a good addition, with big names getting involved rather than just passing through. A celebration of story telling, imagination and points of view from the ordinary to the outrageous, encourages readers to get involved. All of this involves risk.

Risk is fundamental to any business investment but the book business is pretty risk averse, whether it is into new authors or even coming to events like the Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival. The days when publishers took risks are long gone. Most of them sit behind layers of corporate interests far from the places where readers roam. Getting up close and personal with readers at a regional literary festival might make an interesting change for them. And a little more risk from publishers might make for a more interesting book business for everyone else. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Theatre Royal Haymarket – a review

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The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel. When its initial version came out as a story in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1890, the critics were not kind. It was declared an immoral book to which Wilde responded in the preface to the book version of The Picture of Dorian Gray that, “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”

In its presentation at the Theatre Royal Haymarket The Picture of Dorian Gray has a curious morality, an honesty resonant for our times. Sarah Snook stars in a one woman presentation of a novel that has never previously transferred well to the stage. There’s not much of a plot or structure and the brilliance of The Picture of Dorian Gray is in its intermingling of the witty dialogue for which Wilde is so justly famous, and the inner contortions we all suffer as we try to live the lives expected of us, while dealing with inner secrets and our quotidien moral dilemmas.

The basic story of Dorian Gray is not lost in this stage version: artist Basil Hallward paints the portrait of an exceptionally beautiful 20 year old man. His friend, the hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton, admires the painting and is keen to meet the sitter. Gorgeous Dorian arrives at the studio dripping innocence and very soon is fascinated by Henry Wotton’s talk of youth and beauty and the tragedy that is aging, amongst much else. Dorian’s first sin, vanity, comes on quickly and enthralled by Lord Henry’s quips and chat Dorian promises his soul, if he could remain ever youthful. In return for Dorian’s soul his aging will only be evident in the portrait which no one will ever see. Basil doesn’t ever want to exhibit the picture because “I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.” The portrait ends up in Dorian’s attic where its beauty soon starts to deteriorate.

Wilde put much of himself and his philosophy for life into The Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s his personal manifesto of sorts and this added layer of intimacy makes it even harder to present the story on stage. But at the Theatre Royal director Kip Williams, artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, has managed it in spades. He does so by using unconventional methods: videography and what I suppose are film or television cameras and a single actor, Sarah Snook. Five cameras buzz about the stage throughout the two hour performance. The picture of Dorian Gray is a giant screen in portrait orientation hanging centre stage with constantly changing images of the book’s characters, according to who’s doing what. We never see the deteriorating painting. Snook plays all 26 characters, with the less central ones prerecorded. The main characters are filmed live on stage as Snook changes wigs, facial hair and clothes with the assistance of the people doing the filming, to shift from one character to another and talking all the while. It’s an extraordinarily powerful and demanding performance.

The Picture of Dorian Gray connects ideas about influence and individualism to Dorian’s vulnerable innocence, with pretty sorry results. On stage the drawing of this link is all a little chaotic and unsettling. This is precisely the point: identity and sense of self is fluid, a little chaotic and unsettling. Numerous screens convey the characters as Snook narrates the story, sometimes in competition with herself, as more than one character overlaps to tell the tale. Oscar’s gorgeous words dominate throughout; so much of the presentation is him that Oscar’s almost there, an unseen adjunct to the cast. It’s wonderful.

As Snook narrates the story she works with the cameramen and works with her own image on a mobile phone. As she describes what’s going on, she uses image filters to share different versions of her face as Dorian, projected onto the larger screens. It’s a brilliant mimicry of the ridiculous online clichés of beauty, with the huge pouty lips, the superhigh cheekbones and the perfectly arched brows drawn on skin as taut as a drum. And there are the hideous distortions when things go very wrong. Very funny, but also very disturbing.

Wilde’s awareness of the nature of influence, obsession with youth, constant reinvention of oneself and the need to be seen, is just so current, so contemporary. For Wilde all influence is immoral. He says in the novel (and Snook as Lord Henry says on stage) that to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul, instead of letting a person be themselves. Influencing is immoral because the aim of life is self-development, not allowing others to tell you who to be. In an age where influencers are recognised as a sort of profession, Wilde’s reminder is profoundly reassuring. Only about 1% of influencers are self-supporting, so maybe enough people understand that they should be their own person and that the whole influencer thing is an invention to drive advertising and product sales.

Dorian soon falls in love with actress Sybil Vane, but Sybil is too distracted by her love for Dorian to perform well when Lord Henry and Basil are in the audience. In the Theatre Royal production, Sybil’s performance takes place on a tiny model of a stage filled by some filmic wizardry, with Snook’s head and a mass of golden curls covering the tiny stage. Sybil gurns and squints, alternatively mumbling or rattling off her lines whilst constantly glancing at Dorian, almost blowing kisses. Dorian is horrified at her poor performance and, declaring that he is no longer in love with her, ends the relationship. Days later Dorian’s feeling lonely and plans a reconciliation with Sybil, but Lord Henry arrives to tell Dorian that Sybil is dead. She has taken her own life. In taking solace in his own image Dorian notices the first changes in the portrait: “cruel lines around the mouth”. It all goes downhill from there with Dorian committing murder and living a life of inimitable corruption and yet never aging a day. His face belies no sign of the dreadful life he leads. Read the book if you want to know the rest of the story.

Oscar Wilde’s life, philosophy, his defiance of convention, his platforming, it’s all there in the book and miraculously on the Theatre Royal’s stage. Sometimes it’s a bit lost in a surfeit of production cleverness, which can leave the audience slightly numb and disengaged. But maybe that excess is deliberate: just like Dorian as he progresses to ever deeper depths of depravity and all around nastiness we the audience start to feel slightly deadened, alienated.

What happens in this amazing stage version is an extraordinary exposition of modern individualised egocentricity. Murderous stabbing with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons loud in the background. Donna Summer’s I Feel Love booming out in an opium den with Dorian and his gross friends. In every screen on the stage we see different aspects of Dorian’s corruption, his selfishness, vanity, greed, envy, all of it relentlessly engorged in vicious dissolution. Individual expression is taken to horrible extremes in this production, and there are reminders that much of what is in The Picture of Dorian Gray foretells the life and tragic downfall of Oscar Wilde himself. In Dorian’s ultimate demise we have an early whisper for The Ballad of Reading Gaol: each man kills the thing he loves. And Basil reminds us that we “shall suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly”. Somewhere in the book and somewhere in the chaos of screens and rapid fire narration on stage Wilde tells us that genius lasts longer than beauty. This astonishing production and Snook’s fantastic performance are proof that whatever beauty Oscar crammed into his life, his genius is what endures.

The Last Chairlift by John Irving – a review

Laurel Lindström 4 Comments

John Irving is about as lofty as it gets when we think of modern American novelists. Lauded for The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules and The Hotel New Hampshire, Irving has penned 15 novels and scads of other writings including screenplays during a career that spans over five decades. Not all of his work has been celebrated and some of it is borderline impenetrable. A Son of the Circus anyone? That novel goes well with tea and chocolate and was the most recent Irving I had read before tackling The Last Chairlift. I say tea and chocolate because A Son of the Circus is such a mess of a novel, that a reader requires sustenance throughout. Chocolate necessity. There is much the same sensation with The Last Chairlift although there is far less excitement in this latest (2022) work.

The Last Chairlift is the story of Adam Brewster who’s mother is a ski instructor. Little Ray lives away from her son for six months of the year, while she’s working and living at a ski resort with her partner, Molly. Adam’s grandmother, who reads him Moby-Dick (all of it), takes care of him when Little Ray’s not around. Adam grows up missing his mother when she’s away and being doted on by her whenever she’s around. They are in love from the start. Adam’s close to his cousin Nora and her girlfriend Em who are some six years older than Adam. When Adam is around 14, Little Ray marries an English teacher, Elliot Barlow. A snowshoeing enthusiast and cross dresser Adam has met and introduced Mr Barlow to his mother. At their wedding in Little Ray’s and Adam’s childhood home Adam’s grandfather standing naked in the rain is killed by a lightening strike. He haunts the house. There are other ghosts, mostly from the Hotel Jerome in Aspen Colorado where Adam was conceived, but this isn’t a proper ghost story. The ghosts might be metaphorical ones. Little Ray doesn’t share Adam’s paternity details with him or anyone else. The boy’s got a mildly obsessive interest in his father’s identity; it gets more persistent as Adam gets older. All the other loving and supportive members of his family want to know too, but no one really sweats it. The truth comes out eventually and doesn’t really matter that much. What matters is that Adam is deeply loved by a collection of wonderful people who enrich his life story and sense of personal affirmation.

Over the course of 889 densely typeset pages we share in the evolving relationships of these closely bonded characters, plus a mass of other mostly uninteresting ones. There are just too many people in The Last Chairlift to keep caring about, or to try to keep in mind in case they pop up again around about page 765 or wherever. Popping up again is what you expect but what often doesn’t happen. This is why chocolate has to be close to hand. Consolation or distraction. Most of the extra characters are props for a lazy rather than meticulous plotline, or they’re convenient devices to drive the plot along. Most never reappear. It’s in part why this novel feels so baggy, unedited, random. Add in the fitness, obsessions with smallness, the mock screenplays, the ghosts with so much volition and personality, the wrestling and Moby-Dickreferences; it’s an exhausting mess.

Or it’s a life that we’re participating in; the unsketched reader’s just another of the outcasts Irving celebrates in these and other pages. The Last Chairlift celebrates its outcasts as sexual variables, yet we get no insight as to what makes people want to do what they want to do to each other. Nor do we learn more about how they decide who it is that turns them on, or who they would like to turn on. Is any of it a decision? So far so normal. For bog standard heterosexuals this is a constant conundrum within and beyond their own tribe. It’s probably the same for the nonbogstandard ones too, as well as the rest. Independent of tribe, what’s the intangible we all miss? Why isn’t it enough that to love is enough? What conflates peoples’ sexuality and sense of identity? The Last Chairlift offers no hints or revelations, apart from the love thing. “There are more ways of loving.” It’s fine to parade a cohort of alternatives, but is it fine for an author to offer no interiority for his or her characters? In 350,000 words, there surely should be room for more nuance and expression of persona.

It’s safe to say that if this book had landed on a publisher’s desk without the John Irving moniker it would have been unceremoniously rejected. At over 350,000 words there are far too many of them used to tell the basic story of Little Ray and Adam and their loved ones. The text is well bogged down with repetitions, reminders, cop-outs and the use of screenplay formatting, a complex clutter of what is essentially a lazy and unfocused narrative. But maybe that’s deliberate. One of the repetitions throughout this novel is that fiction is tidy, but that life’s storylines are messy. Irving’s way of presenting this may be more dumpling than soufflé but the point is clear. One way to consider this novel is as roughly autobiographical; it includes all the usual Irving tropes: an abundance of semicolons, writing chat, politics, wrestling, personal alienation, relationship overdosing, films and movie stars, New Hampshire and New York City, sexual awakening, sexual minority, sexual expression, sexual dysfunction and überfunctioning, sex in whatever manner you fancy. As the novel grinds interminably on, sex as Irving’s obsession dribbles ever slower, ever more passively. Perhaps this is what happens to men, or this man, slipping into a ninth decade. Other things become more important, like how we care for each other and all the other ways there are to love. And where I left my slippers. 

This book is easy to judge based on its plot (check) and characters (too many, but check), but less easy to consider based on what it is about. It isn’t really about what it says on the back cover: those two paragraphs cover incidences in the book, But those incidents are among many and although they might be triggers for wider themes, those events aren’t important. There’s just so much going on in this novel, but mostly it’s about John Irving. If you’re a John Irving fan get stuck in and wallow with him a (long) while. If not read Moby-Dick instead.