Chancery Stone - Saving the World From Mediocre Writing

Comments

Hi, this is a little late now (Jills pregnant and there's been a bit of complication) but I received cult fiction a while back, enjoyed it loads. I subsequently bought the films I hadn't seen on the list, some of them I loved. I really liked Great Expectations, Evil and Brotherhood of the Wolf (anything with Vincent Cassell is always welcome), you'd already included some of my favorites, Lawn Dogs, Jack and Rose, L.I.E. (I think also can't remember if you included Mysterious Skin but I love that one as well), etc, but it made me want to watch them again to check for DANNY in the less blatant examples. I have never been able to get my hands on the copy of that particular Othello and I've been wanting to see it for ages, I'm going to have to fix my eBay account to get a VHS copy.

As for best sellers, I thought I'd give my two pence worth. I think there is a place for best sellers, just like there's a place for blockbuster films. Even though most of the time I would rather watch a good independent that makes me think, sometimes if I can't deal with deep thought a blockbuster is great for escapism and simplicity. I think some less meaningful books are enjoyable at certain times but I don't necessarily think this means bestsellers because I can't think of many I've read that I've ever liked, I just reread the few that I have liked or I half read the hundred that I buy and never start or finish.

Its strange with best sellers because I honestly can't think who enjoys them. I too bought Labyrinth a while back and have never gone past half way through because, as you say I didn't know what was happening and I cared less. In fact as an example, when I first bought DANNY I also bought Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (which was hailed as an amazing accomplishment from a new writer and unputdownable) and The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (as I had actually liked the previous book). I have never finished either book since 2004, whereas I have read DANNY more times than I can remember. That has to show something even if it is only me.

I agree that the writers of those type of books all write the same way, there is hardly ever a spec of originality in any of the books and most of the time this makes me lose interest. I've never been able to sleep since I was a kid and have always read through the night, so I have had my fair share of shit books, and although there is a place for them, when you don't want to think, it should be a much smaller one, however maybe a lot of people never want to think.

There are so many people that write for the first wall in W H Smiths and they will always write that way and people will always buy them but to not be a sheep, to be able to write something completely different with a originality that no one else can touch has to mean more. It does to me, for one.

Posted by: Jodie | Wednesday, 16 July 2008

"There are so many people that write for the first wall in W H Smiths"

What a beautiful turn of phrase. So much shrewd observation and condemnation in one phrase; the kind of brilliantly succinct encapsulation of an (unpopular) idea you only fall over about once a month - if you're lucky. Delicious. I have now adopted it as a catch-all maxim for popularist mediocrity. Did you write it yourself or did you nick it from someone else? (No shame in that - do it myself all the time. Brilliant bon mots need exposure in this world of idiocy.) If you wrote it yourself you should definitely consider writing as a career - not that I would ever recommend writing as a career.

Very sorry to hear about Jill's trials. When I told Max about 'writing for the wall' he said he'd had an e-mail from you and that you were looking after Jill's child (sorry, I forget if he specified gender - I'm always insulting people by referring to their babies as it). I regret to say this caused undue hilarity at the lunch table at the idea of you making the kid sit up all night reading passages from Danny. Please tell me you're not. That book could warp young minds, you know. And I know you're a freak of nature, but NORMAL children do need to sleep....

I did finish Kate Mosse, but I regret I caved at around 380 pages and skim-read the rest. I felt so disillusioned by it that I never reviewed it (why add to the trillion and one complaining about it?) Not only that, but I took Cloud Atlas back to the library unread. I'm afraid my foray into novel-reading fifteen years (longer?) after I last read one was NOT a success. It increased my futility-of-it-all quotient by about 200 points.

Publishing actually seems to have got worse since I was first being roundly rejected. Or maybe I've just forgotten how bad it really was.

Glad you liked the film list. Have you seen Dangerous Lady? I know it's only available as an American import but I do love it. I never meet anyone else who's seen it. That and Frank Langella's Dracula - never meet anyone who's seen that either, or who realises just how much of it FF Coppola stole for his version. I keep thinking of films that should have been on the list and weren't. Maybe I'll do a Part Deux.

And thanks for sharing your comments on Danny v. Everything Liked by Richard & Judy. Been in one of my black holes for longer than usual recently, and have completely lost my sense of why I write. Me being A Child of Narcissist blah, blah, blah, I have trouble with external validation and have to fight a constant uphill struggle with 'being ignored = why bother'.

I am ashamed to admit to this (which doesn't help) because it sounds needy. Trouble is, it doesn't feel needy, it feels normal, and it's very difficult to sort it out and get back onto an even keel when you have no real idea of what an even keel is.

Anyway, your comments were very timely. They may not have helped me to decide what I want to do, but boy, do they feel good. It's a bit like, 'Hey, someone else sees the Martians too.' So that means we're either sharing the same delusions and it doesn't matter if Danny is crap, or that Danny is meaningful enough to exist without justification, and I should just find a way to live with being impoverished, ignored and irrelevant, and keep doing the book till the bailiffs come.

Give Jill my love and try not to warp her progeny.

Posted by: Chancery Stone | Friday, 18 July 2008

Hi. The W H Smith’s thing is mine, all mine. It’s true, the amount of crap you find on that wall, people should only venture towards it if every other book has fallen off the face of the earth. I could list so many books that were highly recommended that turned out to be completely unimportant. That may seem a strange word to choose but those books just don’t seem to matter to anything, they don’t usually say anything about the world or people or life, they’re just bland. They may as well just pick a catchy title, an eye catching design and leave the inside pages blank. As long as they attach a few quotes from well know magazines, it’ll still fly of the shelf.

I really could go on and on about this topic, I drive my friends mad ranting about the bestseller list, when really they couldn’t give a fuck, but I have to vent. Most of the books that I’ve really enjoyed weren’t available in mainstream bookshops or at the very least I’d have to wait months for the shop to drag them out of some dark storage room labelled ‘Books that may cause reader to think- Only unleash if forced’. Only the internet and a few dingy back street places sell books of any worth.

Jill says thanks for the well wishing, hopefully it will all be sorted soon Don’t worry about being insulting, the new baby’s ‘it’ till Jill decides on a name. (I have banned Jill’s first choice, which was Riley, and Jill banned her husbands, which was Spike). Also your laughter is not unwarranted, when Jill first had her daughter I suggested DANNY as a bed time story, but I was joking. Honest.

I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy of Dangerous Lady yet as they only have region 1 on Amazon and my DVD player won’t play region 1 anymore, for some strange reason. I’ve found a few on ebay though along with the Kenneth Branagh Othello, my paypal is almost sorted so I should get them soon. I’ll look up the Dracula as well, because I won’t even bother checking the shops. There’s the same problem with films as well, HMV never have what I want, or they don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

I’ve learned to avoid anything Richard and Judy promote as I’m invariably disappointed, and I know that a really original, challenging book, wouldn’t get within a mile of their sofa. Everyone I have ever spoken to who have read all of DANNY count it as their favourite book. I don’t believe any of the people who condemn the book have read it all, they’ve read the first few chapters and got scared or skim read it so missed the point. To be completely honest, all joking and emotional outbursts aside, DANNY wipes the floor with every other book, to me this is just a fact.

P.S. Just read The Gryphon Virus and was pissing myself.

Posted by: Jodie | Monday, 21 July 2008

Spike? SPIKE???!!!

I do hope you realise I'd just come in from town when I opened the Blogspirit e-mail and I choked on my bowl of fruit. I hold you personally responsible. He does realise the child isn't a pit bull, doesn't he? Or is there something about Jill I should know? Does he want his child to grow up as a member of the National Front or as a transsexual? (Transsexuals always seem to have been called Fred and George and Butch before they become Lola and Liza.)

Spike indeed. The man needs to calm down.

I see from Amazon that there's a double bill of Martina Cole on R2 DVD featuring Dangerous Lady - that wasn't available when I bought mine (I have an R1 – which is good). Not bad at £6-odd. It has 2 different series on it. The Jump is the other. Not having a TV I don't know it. Not a big fan of British TV drama. The only ones I own are all period dramas, generally.

Pay no attention to the reviews you will fall over on Amazon bleating about how the book is much better than the TV series. Trust me, it SO isn't. After I'd seen the TV series I went and bought the book, hoping it might give me more depth. Nothing could be further from the truth. The TV series offers far more complexity in the characters and the plotting, adding some very important elements which are not in the book at all. This, of course, is exactly why these readers are complaining.

It's actually a rather slight book, quite short and a definite 'easy read' - which the series markedly isn't. Martina Cole is a kind of poor man's P.D. James. Just because she's a little more low-life and less 'slim volumes of verse from Past Times' (dear old Adam Dalgliesh) does not mean she is any less Daily Mail. So, in this case, the 3 star rating it gets on Amazon is because it's too down and dirty for these viewers (one of them calls it "tosh" - always beware of people who dismiss raw dramas as "tosh", they belong firmly to the school of I'd Rather Not See That, Thank-you.)

Othello is STILL only available on VHS in this country. I have the VHS and it's quite good quality, but it's such a fucking amazing version who cares? (I have a feeling it may not be full ratio – THAT is annoying). Laurence Fishburne & Branagh have great chemistry in this and it is incredibly unusual on lots of levels. You are not aware that they're 'doing Shakespeare' for starters - it just plays like a period drama. They are great with their lines, as are the rest of the cast. It has a very good cast actually. Even Desdemona, possibly the worst heroine ever committed to paper, is relatively palatable in this. Branagh is positively reptilian, but not in a Hunchback monster kind of way but because what he does is so calculated and evil, and that's not a word I'm prone to use. But at the same time he has this sense of desperation about him, as if he's being driven to it (just like Ian – no surprises there). There's a wonderful scene on the roof where he sneaks a little touch of Fishburne (I think??? – while since I watched this) and it's just this tiny moment, late in the film – it's sheer poetry. If I could capture that in writing I'd be the happiest woman on the planet.

Fishburne, for his part, doesn't chew the scenery, managing, at long fucking last, to play the moor with some dignity. SO many people think a yelling, storming madman is the way to play him (nothing racist there then). So not. He actually isn't written like that, but you know, mad black man, must chew scenery. Fishburne's fabulous – dignified, elegant, powerful, tortured, insecure, uncertain, vulnerable and in love – and not a fucker gives him credit for it. The film is all but ignored then dismissed as sort of quite good, but not like Anthony Hopkins, or Sir Larry. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with these people? It's like, Can't you see the pink elephant in the room? - they're WHITE. And hammy.

Langella's Dracula isn't flawless - it's of its era, kind of lush and a bit eighties in places - but its fabulous points far outweigh its negatives. By far its strongest point is him - he is just so fucking hypnotic in it. He also manages to put sexy, sophisticated and animalistic altogether. Not easy. There are some stand-out set pieces in it. I'll try not to spoiler this for you, but here goes:- the under-grave sequence which Coppola stole (costumes and all), but his version (in the crypt) is not nearly as claustrophobic, tragic, emotional, ripe & disgusting as this. Also Dracula climbing up the wall and then pick, pick picking at the window. Jesus Christ, that still gives me goosepimples. It is so fucking eerie and unsettling. And the end section on the ship is fabulous.

Anyway, enough, or I'll spoil the fun for you. You might hate them all, but I don't think you'd regret watching any of them.

Glad you liked The Gryphon Virus - just wait till you see my versions of Mills & Boon and Kate Mosse.

P.S. Thanks, as ever, for the kind comments on Danny. They never fail to cheer me up, and I'm such a depressive cunt that's no mean feat. I shall make sure to mention in my autobiography that without you the book would have stopped at volume 2.

Posted by: Chancery Stone | Monday, 21 July 2008

"There's a wonderful scene on the roof where he sneaks a little touch of Fishburne (I think??? – while since I watched this) and it's just this tiny moment, late in the film – it's sheer poetry."

Oh no, he doesn't. Just watched this again last night because it was bugging me and sure enough I'd done my usual and re-wrote the scene. However, in my defence, it still is a tiny, sneaky moment and there is 'sly' touching in the sense that he allows himself for a moment to feel and express his own pain/longing - depending on your point of view. And it is still sheer poetry.

Funny thing, on this viewing I found less overt homosexuality, which probably says something about me - an overactive imagination, maybe - but nevertheless all the signs are still there: the roof top sneaky confession with a whole touchy-feely thing going on, the overt confession, masquerading as something else (but so not) in the cellars, the opening speech, which curiously you might miss the significance of if you don't know what you're looking for, the absence of sexual interest in (some might say hatred for) his wife. His loathing for Cassio which supasses his 'hatred' for Othello and then the little glimpse on his face at the end and, of course, the wonderfully Freudian boot crawl up Othello's body and into his bed at the end.

Hope I'm not spoilering here. I'm assuming you, too, had Othello inflicted on you somewhere in our great education system.

On the other hand, you could argue whole different meanings for this lot. It was ever thus with great literature.

Posted by: Chancery Stone | Thursday, 24 July 2008

Hello, got the paypal up an running now so have ordered Othello off ebay, managed to get it on DVD for £10, also got Dangerous Lady off there for £6 which was much cheeper that Amazon, but got Dracula from there as it was cheep. Very excited to watch the Othello as I've been wanting to for ages now.

I forgot to mention the comment you made in Cult Fiction film list the Ralph Finnes Wuthering Heights. As I have a guest to find a film that dares to portray Heathcliff as written, I think I now own every copy of Wuthering Heights ever recorded. And I agree, they have never got it right. Finnes is a great actor and I think he has an air of cruelty but I don't think any adaptation has come close to portraying that character, because he is a bastard, with barley a redeeming quality, but still attractive, film makers never dare make him a bastard in case they loose the attractive angle and with it viewers. The only adaptation I ever saw that had a believable Heathcliff was a modern day version called Sparkhouse. In which the roles were reversed, where Heathcliff was a woman and Catherine a man. They didn't go the hole hog in this and show the character as not caring for anyone but (the male) Catherine but when (the female) Heathcliff gets emotional it seems more real than in other adaptations that I've seen. Especially when she is left at the alter and the camera shows her face changing from hurt to fury.

It may not be to everyones taste but I liked the female Heathcliff, I don't think filmmakers dare make a real male version of that character, but they seem to be more willing to create the character as female, I've no idea why.

I meant to mention that when I sent the message about cult fiction but forgot. I am now eagerly awaiting my new DVD's.

P.S. If there are any spelling mistakes in this please excuse them, I still don't have the internet set up so only have spare 5 minutes here and there on other peoples computers.

Posted by: Jodie | Monday, 28 July 2008

Yes, I've seen Sparkhouse and I really enjoyed it, even if it is a smidgin too MTV - at least it feels dysfunctional. And speaking of which, have you seen the MTV version of Wuthering Heights? I enjoyed it too because they don't even attempt to stick to the book and, of course, I have a sick, perverse passion for teen dramas. I mean, I enjoyed 'O', the teen version of Othello. Very plausible (he's a football jock),and I love any drama based on envy.

As regards the Fiennes version of WH, I think he's the only good thing in it. He has the cold-hearted determination to wreak revenge which is always overlooked in most versions. His hair does come dangerously close to a barnet though - most distracting.

I can't stomach any of the other WH's, although I will say there's one from the 60's (a TV version - forget who's in it) which has a fantastically dark atmosphere. It's also the only one where they live in authentically poky, dingy Yorkshire houses instead of fucking enormous - very homes & counties - mansions (got to keep those Americans believing in British aristocratic life).

The trouble with dramatising WH is people expect it to look and feel like Jane Eyre, which a lot of people think it is. The two books have nothing in common except a 'romance' at the centre - they're as alike as Danny and Pride & Prejudice. But, if we're talking about things filmakers never dare put in, why is the 'sub-plot' of Nellie Dean fancying Heathcliff always missed out? And why is she always portrayed as older when, in fact, she's not more than two years or so older than them - if that?

Ah, if ever I get to make a version it will have all the grit, envy and manipulations left intact, with horny little Nellie Dean shit-stirring to keep Heathcliff for herself. Always going for the mainstream, as ever, that's me...........

Posted by: Chancery Stone | Monday, 28 July 2008

Not to mention the fact that Mr Lockwood also fancies Heatcliff...

Posted by: Max | Tuesday, 29 July 2008

Oh, yes.........

Posted by: Chancery Stone | Tuesday, 29 July 2008

Hello,

I really enjoyed this blog entry. I very much appreciate your term of dashing about disease. That perfectly captures my experience with too many headache-inducing novels.

I do think however you are being a little too hard on some of those one-star reviewers. Yes it's true that standards in writing and publishing have been plummeting for several generations. Even thinking of a poorly respected genre like 'religious' fiction, here in America there are not that many writers as good as Catherine Marshall anymore. (And I am not particularly religious.)

Marshall wrote carefully and had her books edited meticulously. She was taught by an aunt to be precise in phrasing. She was told never to say an object was lost when it was only misplaced. That kind of care and precision is more and more uncommon in these days of writing careless first drafts by word processor and getting them published.

However, I think many in the general public, UK, US, and elsewhere, retain a kind of naive faith that books especially hardback, heavily promoted books, are going to be good. And then along comes an author like Mosse who is a particularly egregious example of low quality. That is, many authors have a kind of BS-ability which means they can fool the reader into thinking she or he is the problem.

Mosse seems unable to do this. So a lot of people get upset b/c they see that the quality is not there, and my guess is that for at least some readers, they are only *now* starting to wonder what this means for themselves and their children.

More educated people have known about this for several decades if not longer. In America the age of consistently well-edited books, to the extent it can be said that existed, was over at least 50 years ago. But I think many readers don't know what you know.

The corruption in the book industry, including the sanitized places like Borders pushing the same few books which are often of very low quality, really depresses me.

The other problem is the large number of published books, many of which are truly excellent, which never gain any attention at all. I have thought it would be good for someone to start a website called:

allbookspublished.com

or .org

and then list, by category

fiction (type of fiction)

nonfiction (type of nonfiction)

Academic (subject matter)

the name of each book published in the US, or UK, for example, each year, along with number of copies, availability, publishing house, and a short description of the book, plus title and author and information on reviews if any.

With information grouped first by category (chicklit, literary fiction, physics, music, etc.) and then alphabetical by author.

I have thought about doing this myself but it would be a lot of work. I actually wonder how much work it would take to get lists and descriptions of books from ALL major and minor publishing houses.

If something like this exists and I am ignorant of it, please let me know :)

thanks.

Posted by: Mary Katherine | Sunday, 24 August 2008

Hi Mary Katherine, thanks for your comment.

I understand entirely why readers may feel particularly galled by a book like Mosse's. There is nothing worse than really looking forward to the 'escapism' of a creative work only to be severely let down by it.

With something like Labyrinth there is an extra insult, in that there seems to be an Emperor's New Clothes thing going on: everybody raving about how brilliant a book is when it so obviously isn't.

Unfortunately, it does tend to produce an overreaction to what is really very common. Mosse's book is no worse than a thousand other library-only novels. It's notable for its mediocrity rather than its awfulness. I don't feel one star accurately reflects mediocrity, hence I feel she's being punished for her publicity.

I also appreciate your point "that standards in writing and publishing have been plummeting for several generations." I can understand how you'd feel that, and it seems that publishing appears to have become completely commercially motivated and, therefore, quality has suffered as a result. But, truthfully, I would debate whether that's true.

The actuality is that publishing has always been driven by commerce. You only have to look at publishers' dealings with the Brontes or Jane Austen, for example, to see that they a) had no idea what they were looking at, b) they didn't care about quality or the lack of it c) they only worried about getting the maximum sales for minimal commitment. What's really changed?

It appears different simply because publishers used to have much more clout and printing was cheap and easy. They could afford to take risks and there were a lot of people they could practice those risks on.

What has really changed is that printing has got outrageously expensive. Additionally, advertising has got even more expensive. Add into this mix that far fewer people read and it has become a lethal mix for publishing. There's too much money tied up on too small a market and they want a sure thing. End result: only big mainstream sure of a sale books get taken on – hence their love of 'celebrity' books – of which Kate Mosse is defintely an example. Although it may appear that her book is being marketed as fantasy fiction, the nature of its publicity is very markedly that of 'celebrity' – i.e. every name she knew in the business was roped in and made to dance.

As to your last point about a work cataloguing all the books in print – these things do already exist. In the UK Books in Print is the tome that details this kind of stuff. I don't doubt the U.S. has one too. It's very unlikely though that you'd get information such as print runs, or reviews included. The former is far too much information for publishers to give to the competition and the latter would be considered too subjective for a reference work, I imagine.

Perversely, there are far more books published now than ever before (go figure) so compiling such a monumental list yourself would not be physically possible for one human – even working all God's hours. It would really take a team, and we already have such an undertaking here in the British Library which holds one of everything published in the UK.

As to getting good work read, I think encouraging people to think for themselves and not follow the herds of fashion would be the way to go. But if you can think of a way to get humans not to be sheep-like and stop following the dictates of fashion then you're a better (wo)man than I am!

However, any suggestions always welcome…………..

Posted by: Chancery Stone | Sunday, 24 August 2008

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