Hairy Arms and Icebergs

I’ve never much wanted to read Hemingway, having always been put off by the macho image and the bullfighting and hunting, etc. Didn’t think someone like that would have anything to say to someone like me. Then on one of my regular charity shop browses for bundles of books to keep me going, I came across ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and thought at 75p I might as well give it a go. It was entirely opposite to my expectations. I warmed to the central character, I found much of it tender and touching and the violence was never glorified in any way – quite the reverse. I had a few weeks of wishing I’d discovered him earlier, wishing he turned up in charity shops more frequently (I have difficulty affording new books at the moment) but then I had a brainwave – birthday coming up: ask Mother for some Hemingway. So I did, and she duly obliged with three more novels. I’ve just finished ‘Fiesta’ and absolutely loved it, even though a good proportion of the book is in Pamplona, there are bulls, they die – though one manages to gore a man to death in passing. And you know what? I get it. I get what Hemingway was saying about bullfighting, why it’s there, what it means. I get it in the spirit of the literature. I am not someone who would ever go to a bullfight, and I would happily sign petitions and demonstrate against the vile ‘sport’ – but in terms of the book, I absolutely get it.

A similar thing happened to me in my teens when I was going through a John Masters phase. I’d read a lot of the Indian novels, but then came across the Spanish one: ‘Fandango Rock’ which is very much a bullfighting novel. I hated the idea of bullfighting, but Masters really understood what it was all about and took it to the heart of his novel and made it work. It’s years and years since I read that book, and I possibly won’t read it again ever because I think one outgrows Masters at some point. He is very much an author to be read in one’s teens; fabulous storytelling, great characters, authentic settings, and sex scenes that are erotic rather than cringe-making, so he’s perfect when you’re fifteen or sixteen. He is also very full on with his prose – it’s rich and gorgeous. Very different to Hemingway, with his iceberg style – and that doesn’t mean he’s cold. Far from it. It’s referring to the fact that most of what is really happening is under the surface. Hemingway was a journalist first, so he reports what happens in a clipped and clear way. It’s left to the reader to work out what the real story is, and there will be much, much more beneath the surface than above, hence the iceberg analogy. He’s supposed to have pretty much invented this, apparently. I disagree. I reckon if anyone invented it, it was Jane Austen, because she does exactly the same thing. She tells you what people said and what happened. She doesn’t do a Bronte and delve deep into their emotions and pour them out gushingly in purple prose. Now, I love Charlotte Bronte in particular, but I sometimes find her completely unreadable because she will explain every last feeling in as much detail as she possibly can. Austen and Hemingway don’t do that, and the result is you are more likely to choking back the tears at the end of ‘Persuasion’ or ‘Fiesta’ than you are at the end of the infuriating ‘Villette’, and that’s because there is SO much going on underneath, you are left exhausted, whereas you feel with Charlotte Bronte, she’s the one who’s left exhausted at the end of the novel rather than the reader.

I have a thing I do with authors I love – unless they are hideously ugly, and I can’t bear to look at photos of them, I like to draw their portraits. It’s partly a sort of ‘thank you’ letter to them for the books, and partly self-indulgence, and that irresistible strange alchemy that happens when you study someone’s face and draw them. By happy coincidence, we were doing portraits in my art class this morning. (By ‘my’ I mean the one I attend. I don’t teach it. Wouldn’t know where to begin.) So I thought, yes! Hemingway! Today’s the day. Ideally when I draw someone who I haven’t met, I watch film of them on YouTube and make a composite drawing from various images I find online, but I was short of time so thought I would simply pick a photo I liked and work from that. There’s a great one of him actually engaged in writing. I thought I’d get the basic outline in before I went to my class so that I wouldn’t waste time there trying to get it right. Glad I did, because the method we were being taught this morning would have been incredibly difficult to get right for me – it involved careful measurement and ratios and all that stuff. Now, for me, there are three ways to get a likeness. Best – you trace it. Next best – grid it. Third best – entirely freehand. I wouldn’t even consider doing the careful measurement of, say, an eye, and then seeing how many eyes fit into the distance between the right nostril and the Adam’s apple. So I listened to the teacher giving the explanation and demonstration of this method, and her encouragement to follow it, and as usual, I went my own way, and was thoroughly relieved I’d thought to trace the outline first so I knew my proportions were broadly correct. Then it was simply a question of sitting down with my favourite Conté pencil and getting on with it. This sort of thing takes far longer than you expect, and men with hairy arms – well, you can get locked into those hairs. I have a thing about men with hairy arms. I am very fond of such things. I spent far too long enjoying his arms – but I did also get his eyes, glasses, head, nose, mouth, bit of beard, etc, broadly shaded. Still a long, long way to go. The question is, will I be able to resist finishing this one off until next Thursday? We have another portrait session then to carry on with what we started this week. If I succumb to temptation, which is highly likely, I’ll finish him on Sunday if not before, and then I will have to think of someone else to draw. Actually, that’s probably not too much of a hardship. I could always do him again.

I have become ridiculously fond of Ernest Hemingway. 

The Next Big Thing

The Next Big Thing, for those who don't yet know, is a way to network with fellow writers and to find out a bit more about what they're working on. The idea is fairly simple. The writer answers a set of questions on his or her blog one week, and then invites five other authors to answer the same questions the following week. They in turn invite five more.

I was invited by Angela Topping  

What is the title of your new book?

SERPENTINE

How did you choose the title?

It’s rare that a book title comes to me easily, but this one was inevitable given the content of the novel.

Location: several key scenes take place at the Serpentine, the lake in Hyde Park, as well as at the Serpentine Gallery.

Furniture: antiques dealer John Stevenson loves the sinuous shapes of Hepplewhite period serpentine furniture.

Character and theme: the idea of the serpent, the wily snake that represents temptation.  

 

Where did the idea for the book come from?

I’m an artist as well as writer, and this book gave me the chance to explore both my passion for contemporary art practice and my love of story-telling. I always visit as many galleries as I can when I’m in London, so had the raw visual material at my disposal. All I had to do was put my enthusiasm into a fictional character’s voice. In Victoria, I invented a character who is a far better artist than me, so I could use artworks I’d already made and let her turn them into masterpieces. She couldn’t have it all her own way, however. I threw a cartload of catastrophes in her path, at least partly out of jealousy. How dare she be such a good artist! Once I’d invented Victoria, and she started making me angry, the book took off.

 

What genre does your book fall under?

I would call it literary fiction, though one reviewer described it as ‘romance with a brain’.

 

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I love this sort of question. Unfortunately the perfect actors for the roles are either too old or dead. However, if I could resurrect and/or rejuvenate them, my perfect casting for the four central characters would be Victoria: Helena Bonham Carter (she needs to be dark and sassy and able to produce flashes of temper); Emma: Kate Winslett (think Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility and you get the idea. Utterly beautiful and prone to falling wildly in love with the wrong person); John: Ian McKellen (he’s got the right looks, and the role needs a hint of X-Men’s Magneto); Simon: I considered Rupert Penry Jones as the obvious choice, but he’s simply not gorgeous enough (sorry Rupert) so in the end it could only be Leslie Howard (think Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind with a bit of Percy Blakeney thrown in).

 Who has published your book?

Circaidy Gregory Press, a small independent publishing house based in Hastings, England. They also published my earlier novel Small Poisons and my poetry collection wormwood, earth and honey, and will be bringing out the as yet unnamed prequel to Serpentine next year.

What other books would you compare ‘Serpentine’ to, within the genre?

That’s impossible to answer, as it depends entirely on the reader’s response. All I can say is the writing has been influenced by everything from Jane Austen’s Persuasion to Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet; and from Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley to Stephen Donaldson’s Gap series – but it’s unlike any of them.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My first novel (now out of print) included two characters – Emma and John – who were in the throes of a tempestuous relationship, and I always wondered how that would work out after the end of the book. The idea stayed at the back of my mind for a long time, awaiting a catalyst. That finally arrived with the character of Victoria. Once I’d invented her, I realised I could make her an old friend of Emma’s from university days, and would therefore be able to re-introduce Emma and John and at last find out what became of them.

Having written Serpentine, I looked back at the old novel and realised the re-invented Emma and John were far more interesting than they’d been in the original novel, so I’m now engaged in a complete re-write of the first novel to give it the depth it needs. This will in effect be Serpentine’s prequel.

What else about the book might pique a reader’s interest?

The art aspect of the novel has proved fascinating to both art practitioners and those who go to a contemporary art exhibition and can’t help thinking ‘my five year old could do that’. What IS contemporary art all about? This novel aims to show why some people are profoundly moved by the latest installation at Tate Modern, or the latest exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery as much as they are by the exquisite paintings by Watteau at the Wallace Collection (the novel is dedicated to Watteau).

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

I’m going to be lazy here and let Friedrich Nietzsche speak for me. The quote I use at the start of the book says it all: Art is the proper task of life.

The following writers are continuing the tour. Do visit their blogs in due course to see their responses to the questions:

Rachel Green

William Woods

Russell Dent

John Irvine

Geraint Roberts