I remember seeing promo pictures of Mark Gatiss in a curly wig and wondering what it was all about, but I never actually saw Julia Davis' BBC comedy Nighty Night when it was first on - I have my wife to thank for correcting that with her DVD of series 1. Series 2 was always sold to me as a terrible disappointment which didn't make any sense following on from series 1 and was just plain crap. Recently we picked it up cheap, though, so I've finally had a chance to see it.
Is it crap? Not by a long stretch.
Are there inconsistencies? Kind of, but I'm happy to overlook them.
Is it as good as series 1? Possibly.
One thing it has done is make me review my thoughts on series 1.
Series 1 is dark and uncomfortable, and brilliant. The discomfort largely comes from seeing believable characters do things you know are funny but are either socially wrong or inappropriate. It relies on a firm grounding of reality. You can have grotesques and caricatures and still maintain the reality - we've no reason to doubt that Ruth Jones' Linda or Mark Gatiss' Glen Bulb aren't real people, for example.
That's not the case with Jill's husband Terry. You can't blame Kevin Eldon - he's given very little to work with and in some ways in may have been better if he was never seen at all, like Captain Mainwaring's wife in Dad's Army. Terry's not even pathetic, he's just there and clearly all the creative focus was on the other characters. Terry doesn't fit into that world. There's no sense of Terry and Jill having a life together before the series started. That's a shame, I feel.
It's also not very clear why Jill is obsessed with Angus Deayton's character Don. There's no real sense that he could make her happy or massively improve her life, it's almost that she wants him because he's someone else's - which would be fine if that was explicit, but it isn't so the audience is kind of left wondering and making up its own mind. With all due respect to Angus Deayton he's not God's gift to women!
But these quibbles aside, the series as a whole is excellent. Davis is a fantastic performer and Jill succeeds in being both utterly hateful and at the same time utterly alluring. Don's wife (Rebecca Front) Cathy's inability to deal with Jill taking advantage of her MS is painfully and awkwardly hilarious. The series ends with Jill's boutique having closed down, the Vicar and Glen having been poisoned, Terry waking up in a skip and Linda obviously dead lying next to him.
Series 2 starts with Linda back to life and Terry now properly dead. The vicar is in an iron lung, while his nympho wife's permanently erect nipples have grown. Glen Bulb has lost part of his memory and his intestines and is in a secure prison for the mentally unhinged. I don't mind - I can accommodate all this. The best thing they could do with Terry was to kill him off and Linda was one of the best things about series 1. I have a few generalised headline comments about series 2:
1) It starts well, goes flat in the middle, then picks up at the end.
2) It's at its best when Ruth Jones and Mark Gatiss have a lot to do.
3) Cathy is exceptionally annoying throughout - this is NOT good.
4) Ralph Brown gets more insufferable as the series progresses - but not in a good way.
5) Rape of any sort is never funny and if the idea of juvenile rape was going to be dropped so quickly why include it in the first place?
6) The overall scenario and a lot of Jill's actions are simply ridiculous and unbelievable in this series so it loses the discomfort of reality that the first series had.
The reason for point 1 is explained in point 2 - Linda and Glen don't appear so much in the middle couple of episodes. Both Jones and Gatiss shine in this series, given far more screen time and far more to do. Gatiss in particular undergoes a wonderful character journey.
Rebecca Front has more to do in series 2 - it seems Julia Davis decided to explore her character in a bit more depth. Unfortunately her passive aggressiveness and non-commital prudishness just make her annoying in more than small doses. As events escalate and Ralph Brown's character Jacques maintains his New-Age philosophy mantra he gets less and less real and believable. Some later scenes with Cathy and Jacques are almost insufferable.
Point 5 preludes point 6 in general: this series Julia Davis has obviously upped the ante from series 1 and as a consequence the it enters that strange comedy netherworld where stupid and unbelievable things can happen just because that's what the series needs them to do, not because life's like that.
So a lady can be run over, kidnapped, left for possibly weeks in a cupboard in a caravan parked outside someone's house without anyone noticing, then get run over again and eventually turn up for her interview without batting an eyelid. Class.
Jill can convince 'The Trees' New-Age retreat establishment that she's a middle-aged black lady and get her and Linda jobs there without any obvious qualifications. Yes, it's a comment on everyone's fears over political correctness, but it also says people have no common sense.
Cathy, a confirmed Christian, having left the support of a Christian Religious community without obviously losing her faith, is happy to go to a New Age retreat in Cornwall. Likely?
The scene in the hospital with Jill & Linda collecting Don's pre-vasectomy semen. Hilarious, but utterly ridiculous. Scrape that dinner into Jill's front bottom. Up that ante.
Jill convincing the local waitress Don is seeing that she has a stupid big nose and then that Jill can undertake some plastic surgery on her herself, there and then, on the beach. As you do, cos all Cornish teenage girls are gullible dupes of course, and it's all about looks. Hmmm...
Jill tries to convince Cathy and Don that their 12 year old son (a different son revealed for this series, explained predictably by his being off at boarding school during series 1) has raped her on many occasions, which is why she's now pregnant - which she isn't. The rape issue is then dropped, suddenly, while the pregnancy lingers. But if they couldn't deal with it properly, why deal with it at all? It's like there was another dark comedy box that needed to be ticked, then move on.
There's nothing to explicitly state a time difference between episodes 5 & 6 (11 months or so it seems), the viewer is left to figure that out for themselves which distracts us from the action. I think this is lazy, myself. I don't want to be spoon-fed necessarily, but I also don't want to spend half an episode trying to work out why things have changed suddenly.
But, despite all this there are a lot of laughs in series 2 and it trundles along at speed. Because it's ridiculous it's more comfortable to watch more than one episode at a sitting, unlike series 1 for me. The series 2 DVD contains a behind the scenes documentary which goes some way to explain how and why both series happened. Series 2 was obviously a more rushed affair but with a bigger budget, which may explain some of it's shortcomings. Although I appreciate Julia Davis' brilliance as both a writer and a performer I can't say that I subscribe wholly to her comedy philosophy.
Saturday 31 March 2012
Friday 30 March 2012
Gently Dirk (Gently) - that's good.
Douglas Adams can't have been such hot property for a few years now, but his virtual 60th birthday has virtually coincided with a bit of a media explosion - or maybe that should be the other way around? Anyway, there was his party at Hammersmith, Gareth Roberts' excellent novelisation of Adams' unfinished 1979 Doctor Who story Shada, and then there was BBC4's Dirk Gently series...
I loved the pilot when that was shown as a one-off some time back now, but I recall being unsure that it would work as a series. Gently is, at the root, a highly annoying character for all his brilliance. But then so is Sherlock Holmes. I was also concerned that the interconnectedness of everything may very quickly become both predictable and very trying to an audience.
I am loath to draw too many comparisons with Holmes, but just as many viewers and / or readers would get frustrated and annoyed with Sherlock without Watson to filter and dilute him (either in the Classic period or the modern day Moffat incarnation), so Howard Overman keeps Richard MacDuff from the original novel and the pilot and has him hang around as a slightly more likeable side-kick. Ping! We have an amusing and quirky 'hero' and an ordinary guy to get him out of trouble and say all the stupid things to Dirk that we'd like to say as the audience. Now I've made him sound like Doctor Who!
Fans of the Dirk Gently books, like me, will have enjoyed spotting the occasional references to either or both novels in the TV series. But really that's where the similarity ends. Adams created and birthed this character, but Overman has made him TV-friendly.These episodes have all been intelligent, witty, funny (there is a difference between those last two) and engaging pieces of television. At an hour they are the right length. They're well-made, well performed and competently directed without falling into the snappy editing trap of accidentally looking like BBC1's Sherlock - which even the last series of Doctor Who did at times, tut tut.
Stephen Mangan is spot-on casting for Dirk - perhaps even inspired - and is wonderfully eccentric. I enjoyed Harry Enfield's Gently on the radio, but he wouldn't have been as subtle and watchable as Mangan on TV so I'm glad they didn't think to transpose that casting. The radio, TV and book Gently's are all very different men, yet at the same time the same man.
I'm not 100% sold on Darren Boyd (who seems to be flavour of the month on TV these days - ads, sitcoms, Python dramas) as partner / assistant MacDuff, but he gives a solid enough performance. I'm also fed up with seeing Jason Watkins on TV at the moment. He makes an acceptable Gilks, and it's a change not to see him camping it up, but I do think 'Oh God, not him again' when I see him in stuff, which I'm assuming isn't the audience reaction either him or the production team are after.
If it returns for a second series I'd like to see them make more of receptionist Janice - I always found her hilarious in the books. I'd watch another series anyway - but first I want to buy a knackered old Austin Princess...
I loved the pilot when that was shown as a one-off some time back now, but I recall being unsure that it would work as a series. Gently is, at the root, a highly annoying character for all his brilliance. But then so is Sherlock Holmes. I was also concerned that the interconnectedness of everything may very quickly become both predictable and very trying to an audience.
I am loath to draw too many comparisons with Holmes, but just as many viewers and / or readers would get frustrated and annoyed with Sherlock without Watson to filter and dilute him (either in the Classic period or the modern day Moffat incarnation), so Howard Overman keeps Richard MacDuff from the original novel and the pilot and has him hang around as a slightly more likeable side-kick. Ping! We have an amusing and quirky 'hero' and an ordinary guy to get him out of trouble and say all the stupid things to Dirk that we'd like to say as the audience. Now I've made him sound like Doctor Who!
Fans of the Dirk Gently books, like me, will have enjoyed spotting the occasional references to either or both novels in the TV series. But really that's where the similarity ends. Adams created and birthed this character, but Overman has made him TV-friendly.These episodes have all been intelligent, witty, funny (there is a difference between those last two) and engaging pieces of television. At an hour they are the right length. They're well-made, well performed and competently directed without falling into the snappy editing trap of accidentally looking like BBC1's Sherlock - which even the last series of Doctor Who did at times, tut tut.
Stephen Mangan is spot-on casting for Dirk - perhaps even inspired - and is wonderfully eccentric. I enjoyed Harry Enfield's Gently on the radio, but he wouldn't have been as subtle and watchable as Mangan on TV so I'm glad they didn't think to transpose that casting. The radio, TV and book Gently's are all very different men, yet at the same time the same man.
I'm not 100% sold on Darren Boyd (who seems to be flavour of the month on TV these days - ads, sitcoms, Python dramas) as partner / assistant MacDuff, but he gives a solid enough performance. I'm also fed up with seeing Jason Watkins on TV at the moment. He makes an acceptable Gilks, and it's a change not to see him camping it up, but I do think 'Oh God, not him again' when I see him in stuff, which I'm assuming isn't the audience reaction either him or the production team are after.
If it returns for a second series I'd like to see them make more of receptionist Janice - I always found her hilarious in the books. I'd watch another series anyway - but first I want to buy a knackered old Austin Princess...
Tuesday 27 March 2012
Henry Fielding: Lisbon, narrative forms, truth and death...
The legacy of the Eighteenth Century is a treasure-trove for casual
readers and scholars of English Literature alike. There is, pretty much,
something for everyone to be found there (except maybe Cyberpunk - sorry!) - and usually
in some new, raw, ground-breaking form.
Genres were ill-defined back then – but then genres are a modern day creation, a system of ordering that we use ourselves and try to map on to older artistic works and ways of thinking. Authors commonly read today, like Daniel Defoe or Henry Fielding for example, would try their hand at many literary forms and cover wide-ranging subjects. This was the golden age of the political periodical, the satirical essay, and also the fledgling travel narrative.
Anyone interested in the early development of the travel or voyage narrative should check out the recent Oxford World’s Classics and Norton Critical editions of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, which cover this area fully. By the middle of the Eighteenth Century the genre had settled down somewhat from the tall tales of Captain Dampier and the like into a more earnest and respectable form where authors would endeavour to pass on genuine experiences, educated commentary and useful advice about foreign climes to their grateful readers. Unlikely adventures were still a possibility from time to time though!
Genres were ill-defined back then – but then genres are a modern day creation, a system of ordering that we use ourselves and try to map on to older artistic works and ways of thinking. Authors commonly read today, like Daniel Defoe or Henry Fielding for example, would try their hand at many literary forms and cover wide-ranging subjects. This was the golden age of the political periodical, the satirical essay, and also the fledgling travel narrative.
Anyone interested in the early development of the travel or voyage narrative should check out the recent Oxford World’s Classics and Norton Critical editions of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, which cover this area fully. By the middle of the Eighteenth Century the genre had settled down somewhat from the tall tales of Captain Dampier and the like into a more earnest and respectable form where authors would endeavour to pass on genuine experiences, educated commentary and useful advice about foreign climes to their grateful readers. Unlikely adventures were still a possibility from time to time though!
One piece that stands out from this period is Henry Fielding’s
posthumously published Journal of a
Voyage to Lisbon (1755). In some ways it straddles the Eighteenth Century
travel narrative discourses, being partly an exaggerated tale with some larger-than-life characters but also containing a
hefty dose of reality and a bucketload of pathos, courtesy of the suffering of the
author in his final illness. It doesn't quite do what it says on the tin; more correctly it should be called The Journal of a Few Weeks Hanging Around at
Anchor in the Thames Estuary and Then Just Off the Coast of Devon. But we must be thankful for all this delay, since once the wind picks up the journey to Lisbon is pretty short and Fielding finds little of interest to add to his journal - which then draws to a sudden close when they arrive at port.
I’ve not yet read Martin C. Battestin's authoritative Wesleyan Edition of
the work, but Tom Keymer’s 1996 Penguin Classics edition is superb and it's a shame that it has been long out of print (as has the slightly limp 1997 Oxford Classics edition which pairs the Journal with A Journey From This World To The Next from Fielding's 1743 Miscellanies Vol. 2).
Keymer creates an excellent biographical and contextualising framework within which to best present the text, with in-depth explanatory notes and enlightening appendices, complimented by a confident and scholarly (yet still accessible) introductory essay. It's not surprising that this essay was reprinted in Albert J Rivero's 1998 selection Critical Essays on Henry Fielding (New York, G.K. Hall & Co.) as it stands up as a work indebted to, but independant from, the Journal text itself.
Fielding is an incorrigible humorist and loves to create monstrous characters as we know: Joseph Andrews (1741) and Tom Jones (1749) are littered with grotesque landladies and inn keepers. Keymer's editorial framework allows the reader (should they choose to use it) to see the comic exaggerations for what they are, but also the pain and discomfort, the personal embarrassment Fielding was at while he was creating these final moments of glory for posterity. For me this optional deconstruction of the text makes the experience of reading it all the more moving.
Keymer creates an excellent biographical and contextualising framework within which to best present the text, with in-depth explanatory notes and enlightening appendices, complimented by a confident and scholarly (yet still accessible) introductory essay. It's not surprising that this essay was reprinted in Albert J Rivero's 1998 selection Critical Essays on Henry Fielding (New York, G.K. Hall & Co.) as it stands up as a work indebted to, but independant from, the Journal text itself.
Fielding is an incorrigible humorist and loves to create monstrous characters as we know: Joseph Andrews (1741) and Tom Jones (1749) are littered with grotesque landladies and inn keepers. Keymer's editorial framework allows the reader (should they choose to use it) to see the comic exaggerations for what they are, but also the pain and discomfort, the personal embarrassment Fielding was at while he was creating these final moments of glory for posterity. For me this optional deconstruction of the text makes the experience of reading it all the more moving.
It’s one of the shortest prose works in the Fielding canon,
and being an admirer I have read much of his work several times over. Yet this
final piece is undoubtedly my favourite. It's brief, strong, brutally funny at times and equally moving at others. There's an underlying truth to the writing, and as a posthumous work you can't escape the tragedy of knowing
how soon Fielding died after arriving at Lisbon and how unhappy he was there. But there's also the comedy with
which he laces the journal entries cataloging the interminable delays and the bartering over costs with his landlady who's clearly out to milk him for every penny he's got as a person of 'quality'. It certainly feels like the
closest we get to Fielding writing as himself, and not the character he created
for himself in Tom Jones. There’s an
honesty about it, despite the artifice; a humanity and a vulnerability – whereas
Fielding the narrator is never anything other than rampant and omnipotent in
his novels.
I’ve not read another work like it, in all truth. As a
parting gesture from a talented writer it’s a gorgeous piece to have. Being
only 49 when he died this book might be seen as evidence of a wasted talent,
passing on too young. I’ve never felt that particularly. Fielding left a
sizeable and varied literary legacy of plays, periodicals, essays, novels and miscellaneous
pieces (if precious little personal correspondence, alas). The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon doesn’t
necessarily make me wish he’d written more, or that he’d lived longer to write
more, but it makes me value what he did write – bittersweet though the ending
may be.
Tuesday 20 March 2012
Shada-prep: Gareth Roberts and the season 17 MAs
I'm rather excited about Gareth Roberts' Doctor Who: Shada novelisation - but then so seems to be everyone. 'Finishing' an incomplete Fourth Doctor / Douglas Adams story? There's masses hanging on it; I'd be bricking it if it was me. Sounds like he's done a good job though, if the raving is to be believed. I haven't read it yet - my copy hasn't arrived, and although it's on my wife's Kindle I'm not sure I want to go down the e-book avenue just yet; I'm still back with Caxton...
But in the build up to it (not getting too excited, honest!) I've been prepping myself good and proper. I've watched the 1992 Shada video release, which tantalisingly shows how brilliant the complete show would almost certainly have been. I've watched A Matter of Time, the Graham Williams era documentary on the Ribos Operation DVD, which I adore no matter how many times I watch it, and I've read a couple of Gareth Roberts' Season 17 Virgin 'Missing Adventures' for the first time: The Romance of Crime (1995) and The English Way of Death (1996).
I didn't give these any attention at the time they were published. I'd not got on very well with the 'New Adventures' at that point and I'd foolishly believed the MAs would tread similar ground and not recognisably represent the programme I loved. So I focussed on catching up with old episodes I'd never seen on video instead and years and years of creative, inventive fan fiction passed me by.
I'm slowly correcting that years later...
I've read a few of the MAs published prior to The Romance of Crime. John Peel's Evolution is my favourite from those simply because I couldn't put it down [cracking read, not a glue-related incident - note]. State of Change and The Crystal Bucephalus are the other two. They're OK at best, but never great, and they never really feel like the era they're 'missing' from. I found both Craig Hinton's and Christopher Bulis' prose tough going; I just wanted them to relax a bit and stop trying so hard to impress all the time.
The beauty of The Romance of Crime is that Gareth Roberts is capable, confident and relaxed, and the book is TOTALLY season 17 Doctor Who. The tone is spot on: a really good yarn, with larger-than-life characters, moments of real humour & sudden seriousness, and some familiar lumbering monsters to boot. It's also pretty much studio-bound. It was very easy to visualise this story throughout and the regulars are depicted perfectly. Having gained the reader's trust, Roberts can then stretch us a bit with The English Way of Death. Here we have the Doctor, Romana and K9 clearly in season 17 mode and again with some eccentric supporting characters, but this time the canvas is grander; boundaries are pushed a bit further. This is largely a story set on location, and the subject comes much more from the horror genre than the production team of the time would have accommodated, counter-balanced by the whimsical notion of future humans choosing to retire back in time to 1930s London. This is the comedy / drama / horror interplay that Douglas Adams aimed for in his Doctor Whos, each heightening the impact of the other. What this does is remind us all that beneath the bluster of the latter-day Fourth Doctor he's still brooding and horror-struck by grotesque power and zombies - but it's not simply a Hinchcliffe / Holmes-era yarn with Romana, K9 and some Blue Peter design-a-monster competition winners thrown in for good measure. Again the story is no less difficult to visualise in the house style of season 17, and Roberts coaxes us to allow our imaginations to wander a bit further without it feeling out of place with Creature From The Pit or Nightmare of Eden. In both novels K9 is well-used as a character and as a practical tool (not a get-out-of-jail-free-card); Romana gets plenty to do and spends a lot of time separate from the Doctor. The Doctor gets to be funny, witty, heroic and dramatic - in much the same way as he does in the new series these days on TV.
These books came highly recommended and, I feel, with good reason.
I'm looking forward to Jonathan Morris' PDA Festival of Death and Roberts' other MA The Well-Mannered War after Shada. If they're anything near as good as the other Season 17 'missing' adventures then they'll be a cracking good read.
But in the build up to it (not getting too excited, honest!) I've been prepping myself good and proper. I've watched the 1992 Shada video release, which tantalisingly shows how brilliant the complete show would almost certainly have been. I've watched A Matter of Time, the Graham Williams era documentary on the Ribos Operation DVD, which I adore no matter how many times I watch it, and I've read a couple of Gareth Roberts' Season 17 Virgin 'Missing Adventures' for the first time: The Romance of Crime (1995) and The English Way of Death (1996).
I didn't give these any attention at the time they were published. I'd not got on very well with the 'New Adventures' at that point and I'd foolishly believed the MAs would tread similar ground and not recognisably represent the programme I loved. So I focussed on catching up with old episodes I'd never seen on video instead and years and years of creative, inventive fan fiction passed me by.
I'm slowly correcting that years later...
I've read a few of the MAs published prior to The Romance of Crime. John Peel's Evolution is my favourite from those simply because I couldn't put it down [cracking read, not a glue-related incident - note]. State of Change and The Crystal Bucephalus are the other two. They're OK at best, but never great, and they never really feel like the era they're 'missing' from. I found both Craig Hinton's and Christopher Bulis' prose tough going; I just wanted them to relax a bit and stop trying so hard to impress all the time.
The beauty of The Romance of Crime is that Gareth Roberts is capable, confident and relaxed, and the book is TOTALLY season 17 Doctor Who. The tone is spot on: a really good yarn, with larger-than-life characters, moments of real humour & sudden seriousness, and some familiar lumbering monsters to boot. It's also pretty much studio-bound. It was very easy to visualise this story throughout and the regulars are depicted perfectly. Having gained the reader's trust, Roberts can then stretch us a bit with The English Way of Death. Here we have the Doctor, Romana and K9 clearly in season 17 mode and again with some eccentric supporting characters, but this time the canvas is grander; boundaries are pushed a bit further. This is largely a story set on location, and the subject comes much more from the horror genre than the production team of the time would have accommodated, counter-balanced by the whimsical notion of future humans choosing to retire back in time to 1930s London. This is the comedy / drama / horror interplay that Douglas Adams aimed for in his Doctor Whos, each heightening the impact of the other. What this does is remind us all that beneath the bluster of the latter-day Fourth Doctor he's still brooding and horror-struck by grotesque power and zombies - but it's not simply a Hinchcliffe / Holmes-era yarn with Romana, K9 and some Blue Peter design-a-monster competition winners thrown in for good measure. Again the story is no less difficult to visualise in the house style of season 17, and Roberts coaxes us to allow our imaginations to wander a bit further without it feeling out of place with Creature From The Pit or Nightmare of Eden. In both novels K9 is well-used as a character and as a practical tool (not a get-out-of-jail-free-card); Romana gets plenty to do and spends a lot of time separate from the Doctor. The Doctor gets to be funny, witty, heroic and dramatic - in much the same way as he does in the new series these days on TV.
These books came highly recommended and, I feel, with good reason.
I'm looking forward to Jonathan Morris' PDA Festival of Death and Roberts' other MA The Well-Mannered War after Shada. If they're anything near as good as the other Season 17 'missing' adventures then they'll be a cracking good read.
Sunday 11 March 2012
People of Earth, your attention please: happy virtual 60th Douglas Adams
There's a lovely clear blue sky here in Beckenham this afternoon. No clouds, or gigantic yellow slab-like spaceships hanging in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. Thankfully. Plus it's not a Thursday - I never could get the hang of Thursdays...
It would have been Douglas Adams' 60th birthday today. In Hammersmith, and traipsing round Islington, it's Douglas Adams' virtual 60th birthday bash! It's a measure of the impact of the man that he's getting the kind of treatment you'd only expect for Shakespeare, Dickens or Jane Austen.
I just wanted to share a few words on how I discovered the world and works of Douglas Adams, since I can't imagine my life without him.
I first encountered Douglas Adams' work at a stupidly young age. I have vivid memories of his 1978 Doctor Who story The Pirate Planet and all of the following season which he script edited and partly wrote. That season was airing when I started school. Doctor Who was still cool at my school then, we all loved its thrills, chills and monsters. And K9. The following year many kids apart from me started to go off it, although I do recall signing a petition to bring back K9. When Peter Davison came along in 1982 I started keeping liking Doctor Who to myself, as it was an invitation for all the other kids to laugh at you, or beat you up. Cool kids were watching anything else. No one started a petition to bring back Adric.
Of course, when all this was on TV the first time I didn't know or care who Douglas Adams was. His time on Doctor Who was relegated to an eye-catching line in the author's biog in the Hitchhiker books. It wasn't until many years later, when I started reading those books almost by accident, that I discovered the low esteem in which most fans held both season 17 and Douglas himself. I'll admit to having a bit of a shock myself when I first saw City of Death again as an inquisitive, intelligent teen, having been enthralled and scared by it as a five year-old. But that quickly passed and I saw instead the wit, the intelligence, the charm and the joy behind it. I'd remembered Tom Baker as a brooding Doctor, who's gaze and voice were almost as scary as the monsters. This isn't the Doctor of season 17 - but that's not Douglas's fault, that's Tom Baker not wanting to be repetitive.
Views on season 17 have changed considerably over the past ten years or so. Knowing that City of Death was a rough template for RTD's 'New Who' has given it an added kudos, but also people have looked beyond the apparent surface silliness, light banter and witty quips and realised that some pretty hefty sci-fi ideas were being played with. City of Death and Creature From The Pit are two of my favourite stories these days, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Nightmare of Eden on DVD later this year (the pied piper sequence excepted, of course).
When I was doing GCSE English one of the coursework choices was to read Life, the Universe and Everything and write a story in the style of Douglas Adams. I'd heard of Hitchhiker, seen the restaurant clip on TV50 in 1986 and tried to watch the whole thing on video at my mate Graham's house without really 'getting' it. Anyway this coursework option seemed the most interesting one out of a terrible bunch so I chose it. I wrote 'The Amazing and Incredibly Concise Adventure of Keith'. It was about 13 sides of A4 - I could hardly contain my enthusiastic pen. My uninspired and uninspiring drone of a teacher, Mr Perry, gave it a 'B'. I recall he made some wry comment about the title not being very accurate. I think it might have been my best coursework grade in the end. It was certainly the piece I enjoyed writing the most. And Life, the Universe and Everything was the GCSE book I enjoyed reading the most. I remember feeling a similar comedy epiphany to that which had overtaken me on first seeing the Spanish Inquisition episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus a few years previously. You think 'wow, life will never be the same again'.
That summer, on holiday in Teignmouth, I sought out, found and purchased all four Hitchhiker books in paperback in WHSmith's, with special covers that allowed you to create pictures of a babel fish, a towel, a spaceship shaped like a trainer and the author's distorted face when you put them all together like a jigsaw. I've read them countless times. I still have them now and they're not in bad nick, considering.
Naturally I then read them all in the correct order - probably during that two weeks in Devon. I was used to experiencing cultural phenomena out of sequence - I'd watched Star Wars and Return of The Jedi many times before I finally got to see The Empire Strikes Back, for example.
I remember noting a decline in the amount of energy and playfulness in the books as the sequence progressed. But then the first book in particular is so random at times and has so many ideas almost thrown away as asides that I guessed no one could maintain such intense creativity for too long. I also saw the progression as a kind of maturing, with Douglas experimenting with his modes of storytelling. Despite this I've always struggled with So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish and it was no surprise to me to learn that he said no more Hitchhiker at that point.
I didn't pick up the Dirk Gently novels for some years, but I do recall being very excited about Mostly Harmless when it was published - an excitement that was well rewarded with an excellent return to form book (even if it didn't fit in with my set of matching novels). I was in agonies laughing at Arthur throwing up in the vicinity of the photocopier woman - I don't remember ever laughing that hard at any other book.
At that point I was a firm devotee. I quickly absorbed the radio series and TV series - including Kevin Davies' excellent 'Making Of' video, then the Starship Titanic and eventually Dirk Gently. At college doing A-Level English Literature we were tasked with a piece of creative writing for a change at one point, so I duly re-wrote Frankenstein as a zany Adams homage. Then for my extended essay coursework (5000 words I believe) I chose to look at Douglas Adams development through Hitchhiker books I, III & V. It was a day late (an unwitting nod to my mentor!), and I wrote it all in one sitting (longhand), drinking lots of black coffee and revising it later as I wrote it out in 'best'. I got an 'A' this time. It's probably around somewhere at my Dad's. It's almost certain to be awful!
At university I bonded with a guy who went on to become one of my best friends, and for whom I was Best Man, because he told me in the pub he bet I thought my digital watch was a neat idea. Ice broken, common ground found. It started a habit of quoting Hitchhiker in general conversation that has continued since, and has reached a kind of apotheosis in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Since Douglas died we've had the Hitchhiker film at last, for which he worked so hard for so long (alas - I didn't like it, sorry). We've also had DVDs of his Doctor Who stories with features about him and archive interviews, we've had the series return to our screens knowing he'd have been asked to write for it for sure (no one else from the Classic Series has so far) and we've had Dirk Maggs' wonderful radio adaptations of the final three Hitchhiker 'Phases' and the two Dirk Gently novels. I still get so much joy and inspiration from his work, it's amazing to me. His use of language, his wit and playfulness continue to surprise and entertain me on each listen, read or view.
I've never wanted to be him, just to be as good as him. I realised years ago that the best way was to allow his work to influence me but not guide me. We all need to find our own voices and they're usually made up of bits of other people's that we pick up along the way. I think I'm still finding mine - at least from a perspective of commercial viability, if not artistic integrity.
I think that's why Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing... failed so badly. We'll find out very soon if Gareth Roberts has managed any better with his novelisation of Shada.
As long as Douglas Adams' work continues to be re-appraised and re-packaged for a new audience, and the new audiences continue to love him so his work will live on.
Happy Birthday Douglas - thank you for what you gave the world; the world still misses you.
It would have been Douglas Adams' 60th birthday today. In Hammersmith, and traipsing round Islington, it's Douglas Adams' virtual 60th birthday bash! It's a measure of the impact of the man that he's getting the kind of treatment you'd only expect for Shakespeare, Dickens or Jane Austen.
I just wanted to share a few words on how I discovered the world and works of Douglas Adams, since I can't imagine my life without him.
I first encountered Douglas Adams' work at a stupidly young age. I have vivid memories of his 1978 Doctor Who story The Pirate Planet and all of the following season which he script edited and partly wrote. That season was airing when I started school. Doctor Who was still cool at my school then, we all loved its thrills, chills and monsters. And K9. The following year many kids apart from me started to go off it, although I do recall signing a petition to bring back K9. When Peter Davison came along in 1982 I started keeping liking Doctor Who to myself, as it was an invitation for all the other kids to laugh at you, or beat you up. Cool kids were watching anything else. No one started a petition to bring back Adric.
Of course, when all this was on TV the first time I didn't know or care who Douglas Adams was. His time on Doctor Who was relegated to an eye-catching line in the author's biog in the Hitchhiker books. It wasn't until many years later, when I started reading those books almost by accident, that I discovered the low esteem in which most fans held both season 17 and Douglas himself. I'll admit to having a bit of a shock myself when I first saw City of Death again as an inquisitive, intelligent teen, having been enthralled and scared by it as a five year-old. But that quickly passed and I saw instead the wit, the intelligence, the charm and the joy behind it. I'd remembered Tom Baker as a brooding Doctor, who's gaze and voice were almost as scary as the monsters. This isn't the Doctor of season 17 - but that's not Douglas's fault, that's Tom Baker not wanting to be repetitive.
Views on season 17 have changed considerably over the past ten years or so. Knowing that City of Death was a rough template for RTD's 'New Who' has given it an added kudos, but also people have looked beyond the apparent surface silliness, light banter and witty quips and realised that some pretty hefty sci-fi ideas were being played with. City of Death and Creature From The Pit are two of my favourite stories these days, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Nightmare of Eden on DVD later this year (the pied piper sequence excepted, of course).
When I was doing GCSE English one of the coursework choices was to read Life, the Universe and Everything and write a story in the style of Douglas Adams. I'd heard of Hitchhiker, seen the restaurant clip on TV50 in 1986 and tried to watch the whole thing on video at my mate Graham's house without really 'getting' it. Anyway this coursework option seemed the most interesting one out of a terrible bunch so I chose it. I wrote 'The Amazing and Incredibly Concise Adventure of Keith'. It was about 13 sides of A4 - I could hardly contain my enthusiastic pen. My uninspired and uninspiring drone of a teacher, Mr Perry, gave it a 'B'. I recall he made some wry comment about the title not being very accurate. I think it might have been my best coursework grade in the end. It was certainly the piece I enjoyed writing the most. And Life, the Universe and Everything was the GCSE book I enjoyed reading the most. I remember feeling a similar comedy epiphany to that which had overtaken me on first seeing the Spanish Inquisition episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus a few years previously. You think 'wow, life will never be the same again'.
That summer, on holiday in Teignmouth, I sought out, found and purchased all four Hitchhiker books in paperback in WHSmith's, with special covers that allowed you to create pictures of a babel fish, a towel, a spaceship shaped like a trainer and the author's distorted face when you put them all together like a jigsaw. I've read them countless times. I still have them now and they're not in bad nick, considering.
Naturally I then read them all in the correct order - probably during that two weeks in Devon. I was used to experiencing cultural phenomena out of sequence - I'd watched Star Wars and Return of The Jedi many times before I finally got to see The Empire Strikes Back, for example.
I remember noting a decline in the amount of energy and playfulness in the books as the sequence progressed. But then the first book in particular is so random at times and has so many ideas almost thrown away as asides that I guessed no one could maintain such intense creativity for too long. I also saw the progression as a kind of maturing, with Douglas experimenting with his modes of storytelling. Despite this I've always struggled with So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish and it was no surprise to me to learn that he said no more Hitchhiker at that point.
I didn't pick up the Dirk Gently novels for some years, but I do recall being very excited about Mostly Harmless when it was published - an excitement that was well rewarded with an excellent return to form book (even if it didn't fit in with my set of matching novels). I was in agonies laughing at Arthur throwing up in the vicinity of the photocopier woman - I don't remember ever laughing that hard at any other book.
At that point I was a firm devotee. I quickly absorbed the radio series and TV series - including Kevin Davies' excellent 'Making Of' video, then the Starship Titanic and eventually Dirk Gently. At college doing A-Level English Literature we were tasked with a piece of creative writing for a change at one point, so I duly re-wrote Frankenstein as a zany Adams homage. Then for my extended essay coursework (5000 words I believe) I chose to look at Douglas Adams development through Hitchhiker books I, III & V. It was a day late (an unwitting nod to my mentor!), and I wrote it all in one sitting (longhand), drinking lots of black coffee and revising it later as I wrote it out in 'best'. I got an 'A' this time. It's probably around somewhere at my Dad's. It's almost certain to be awful!
At university I bonded with a guy who went on to become one of my best friends, and for whom I was Best Man, because he told me in the pub he bet I thought my digital watch was a neat idea. Ice broken, common ground found. It started a habit of quoting Hitchhiker in general conversation that has continued since, and has reached a kind of apotheosis in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Since Douglas died we've had the Hitchhiker film at last, for which he worked so hard for so long (alas - I didn't like it, sorry). We've also had DVDs of his Doctor Who stories with features about him and archive interviews, we've had the series return to our screens knowing he'd have been asked to write for it for sure (no one else from the Classic Series has so far) and we've had Dirk Maggs' wonderful radio adaptations of the final three Hitchhiker 'Phases' and the two Dirk Gently novels. I still get so much joy and inspiration from his work, it's amazing to me. His use of language, his wit and playfulness continue to surprise and entertain me on each listen, read or view.
I've never wanted to be him, just to be as good as him. I realised years ago that the best way was to allow his work to influence me but not guide me. We all need to find our own voices and they're usually made up of bits of other people's that we pick up along the way. I think I'm still finding mine - at least from a perspective of commercial viability, if not artistic integrity.
I think that's why Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing... failed so badly. We'll find out very soon if Gareth Roberts has managed any better with his novelisation of Shada.
As long as Douglas Adams' work continues to be re-appraised and re-packaged for a new audience, and the new audiences continue to love him so his work will live on.
Happy Birthday Douglas - thank you for what you gave the world; the world still misses you.
Was Frankenstein a novel of unreliable narrators and homosexual love?
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein, ed. Maurice Hindle, Penguin (Harmondsworth 1991)
To my reckoning this is the fourth time I've read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus since it first cropped up on a Nineteenth Century Fictions reading list on my English & Drama degree. The last two occasions were Marilyn Butler's 1994 Oxford Classics edition of the 1818 text (highly recommended). This time I chose a different edition off the shelf.
There is something unavoidably alluring about this novel - possibly due to the imagery of the diminutive mad professor and his Herman Munster creation that has been firmly fixed within the public psyche since 1931, and possibly because of the persistent reminders of how little this truly reflects the actual content of Shelley's Romantic horror / Jacobin Gothic masterpiece.
I don't lazily subscribe to the traditional, canonical view when I call it a masterpiece. It's a bold, challenging, atmospheric work full of brooding weather, poetic descriptions, challenging ideas and posturing melodrama - hardly surprising when you consider its conception, as outlined by the author in her 'Standard Novels Edition' introduction which precedes the text. It's not really horror - although it is distasteful on occasions (and no doubt the concepts it deals with would have seemed horrific to many at the time). It's not science fiction since Shelley (wisely) avoids any indication of what exactly Victor is doing in any detail. Is it Gothic? Not really - although it tends to get grouped with Dracula and Jekyll & Hyde as the classic Gothic horror triumvirate thanks to the 'Monster'. Does it fit into the Romantic movement, along with PB Shelley's & Byron's poetry? Possibly. But there are also traces of the Jacobins from Mary's parents' works - particularly her father William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams (1794). Thus, like any true masterpiece, the book resists cataloguing and pushes boundaries.
Although for the most part it doesn't feel like it, it's actually an epistolary novel compiled of letters sent from Captain Walton to his sister Margaret back home in England. One of these letters, though, is nearly two hundred pages long (I'm unsure of postage rates in those days but I'm assuming this would have cost a lot to send!) This, the main body of the story, consists of Walton recording as accurately as possible the tale told him by the infirm Victor Frankenstein who he's just picked up on his ship as he journeys through the Arctic. Walton is undertaking his own voyage of discovery. He takes to Victor and they become close companions for their brief time together; Victor even approves of Walton's journalising his story and (we are told) corrects the proofs himself. Mixed in with this dictation is also Victor's recollection of the Monster's life story, as told to him on the slopes of Montanvert.
It is clear, then, that there are many authorial layers to this story and it assumes that the reader trusts the veracity of them all. But can we? Is Walton, in particular, reliable? He is clearly in awe of Victor's resolve, selfless drive and singlemindedness, whereas he is aware himself of his own shortcomings when trying to achieve similar reknown for pushing the boundaries of current knowledge and understanding. Is he setting the tone for us to feel the same way?
Almost at the very end, just before Walton and the Monster meet, we get a brief piece of writing 'to the moment' - such as Samuel Richardson was criticised for in his early novel Pamela (1740). It's unfortunate because it breaks the reader's attention by its complete artifice:
'I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again there is a sound as of a human voice; but hoarser; it comes from the cabin where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise, and examine. Good night, my sister.' (p.210)
What follows would have read just as effectively without this brief section. With one contrived gesture Walton allows us to call into question his reliability as a narrator throughout the rest of the novel so far.
Besides the narratorial issue, the main feature of the book that struck me on this reading was how insufferably self-centred Victor Frankenstein is. Other people are necessary to Walton - he can't go anywhere without his crew, for example. But by comparison, for Victor other people are a nuisance, an obstacle. He has the gall to play at being God, creating his own Adam (and nearly his own Eve) and then rejecting it for not being in his own image. He's annoyed at the Monster for being ugly, and for being more lithe, strong and hardy than 'normal' man - rather than blaming himself for making the creature that way. Victor at all points refuses to tell anyone how he created a new body from parts of cadavers and miraculously imbued it with life, because it doesn't even enter his reasoning that this knowledge wouldn't make Walton (or whoever) rush off and create their own 'being'. He's not made these discoveries for the sake of the progress of mankind, he's done it all for himself alone. He's appalled at what he's done when the creation first shows signs of life, but he won't take responsibility for his work and kill it; instead he runs away and hopes the situation will take care of itself. When he returns to Geneva and Justine is being wrongly tried and executed for the murder of his little brother he takes every opportunity to state how his internal suffering is worse than that of others. For example:
'The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forego their hold.' (p.82)
We only have Victor's word (via Walton) that Justine was bearing up so well. How dare he? It's a measure of the discourtesy and disregard Frankenstein has for those around him that he can make so bold and ridiculous a statement as this. Victor impotently blames himself in his delirious rantings for the deaths of Henry Clerval and others, but he always has an excuse not to hand himself in to the law or report his previous doings. When he does eventually try, towards the end of his narrative, he's clearly seen as mad in the eyes of anyone sane, so it's conveniently too late to win anyone round to his side. Most frustratingly, when the Monster promises 'I shall be with you on your wedding-night' - which is often repeated - Victor can only see this as the Monster planning to kill him before he can obtain wedded happiness with Elizabeth - this despite the Monster already having stated clearly that he wants to make Victor totally broken and wretched. Only a totally self-centred fool could fail to see what this promise really threatens. It is a shame that so many innocent others come to harm because of Victor's self-centredness and narrow-mindedness, but through their suffering he at least gets what he deserves.
The reader's sympathies are almost completely with the Monster throughout, despite his dreadful deeds. The tale of his development (which relies on incredible coincidence and good fortune) is moving and endearing. His reappearance at the end, when we find that above all he loved his creator and only wanted Victor to love him back and honour him as his own creation, is equally pathetic and emotional.
This is the only time the Monster's words are reported directly through Walton, not filtered through Frankenstein first. I noted a strong suggestion of homosexual love here at the end. Was Victor gay? He never showed any physical interest in Elizabeth, or any other female, and she was certain he loved another. He told her he had a dreadful secret to reveal to her only after they were married. Perhaps Victor really created the Monster so he could express a love that otherwise he had to keep secret? When the creature came to life perhaps he was as much appalled at his own thoughts as he was at the fact that he had created his own 'man'? The description of the Monster when he is first animated (p.56) resembles a penis in many respects. Or maybe it's the Monster who's homosexual? He asks for a woman to be created in his image - but this is reported by Victor and filtered through Walton, so there are clear opportunities for censorship before it reaches the reader. And there's this repeated promise that the Monster will be with Victor on his wedding night which causes him perturbation and misapprehension. Can we as readers trust that the meaning of this is being truthfully portayed through the double censorship of Victor and Walton? Perhaps, also, Walton heightened the suggestiveness of the Monster's final words to cover for his own feelings of love towards the recently deceased Victor?
I'm only throwing these ideas out there - I have no particular view either way.
There are some other thoughts that struck me as I read the book this time:
Why didn't Victor simply reanimate the corpses of those the Monster killed, knowing he could bring life to dead flesh?
Why didn't the Monster's brain recall any of its previous existence, before Frankenstein acquired it? This would have made a very interesting angle to the Monster's development, but would probably have been more likely a hundred years later, post-Freud.
There is a glorious assumption from Victor not only that the Monster will want to propagate itself with its demanded female companion, but also that the female he'll create in the same way will automatically be able to bear children! Highly egotistical on his part. This is apparently something that all women can do, even when compiled from cadavers.
There is a wonderful moment in Volume Three, Chapter III (p.160) when Victor questions whether the female he is creating will actually want to be partnered with his original Monster; she will have her own thoughts, feelings and opinions after all. It's a very forward piece of thinking to allow Victor not to make that decision for her and expect her to abide by it. This is certainly Mary Shelley's voice coming through in what must be acknowledged as a statement of female free-thought and emancipation worthy of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.
It may not make my top ten novels of all time, but Frankenstein is still a book I would recommend anyone to read - if only for the melodrama, and to remind everyone that Frankenstein isn't the monster, and also how little the monster resembles the wonderful Boris Karloff!
As for the edition itself, Penguin have given us a very long and workmanlike introduction from Maurice Hindle. I had a drink with him once at an Open University event - thoroughly likeable chap. Hindle's introduction is nothing profound, but it thoroughly contextualises the work and its author, reavealing sources and inspirations. Consequently we get few explanatory notes at the end to enlighten the reader further - which is good for those who don't want to be distracted by numbers or asterisks and the promise of further nuggets of information or clarity.
Hindle has made a very bold move with this edition. He chooses the 1831 single volume revised version of the novel, but prefers the three volume structure of the 1818 original edition. Thus we get a composite edition following the 1831 text but structured like the 1818 text. To the casual reader does this make much difference? Probably not. Most readers probably wouldn't fuss over whether it was the 1818 or 1831 text either, or bother to read the extensive list of differences between the two. But should a modern editor be 'editing' a classic text to this extent? Doesn't this add a further level of separation and distrust between the reader and the author(s) as discussed above..?
For undergraduate students working on the novel it will be important which edition of the text you use, and so it's probably best to avoid this Penguin edition with its own idiosyncratic text, although the introduction is very useful and the appendices are a valuable bonus, featuring John Polidori's The Vampyre: A Tale and Lord Byron's 'Fragment' from which the former was probably developed (discussed elsewhere in this Blog).
To my reckoning this is the fourth time I've read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus since it first cropped up on a Nineteenth Century Fictions reading list on my English & Drama degree. The last two occasions were Marilyn Butler's 1994 Oxford Classics edition of the 1818 text (highly recommended). This time I chose a different edition off the shelf.
There is something unavoidably alluring about this novel - possibly due to the imagery of the diminutive mad professor and his Herman Munster creation that has been firmly fixed within the public psyche since 1931, and possibly because of the persistent reminders of how little this truly reflects the actual content of Shelley's Romantic horror / Jacobin Gothic masterpiece.
I don't lazily subscribe to the traditional, canonical view when I call it a masterpiece. It's a bold, challenging, atmospheric work full of brooding weather, poetic descriptions, challenging ideas and posturing melodrama - hardly surprising when you consider its conception, as outlined by the author in her 'Standard Novels Edition' introduction which precedes the text. It's not really horror - although it is distasteful on occasions (and no doubt the concepts it deals with would have seemed horrific to many at the time). It's not science fiction since Shelley (wisely) avoids any indication of what exactly Victor is doing in any detail. Is it Gothic? Not really - although it tends to get grouped with Dracula and Jekyll & Hyde as the classic Gothic horror triumvirate thanks to the 'Monster'. Does it fit into the Romantic movement, along with PB Shelley's & Byron's poetry? Possibly. But there are also traces of the Jacobins from Mary's parents' works - particularly her father William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams (1794). Thus, like any true masterpiece, the book resists cataloguing and pushes boundaries.
Although for the most part it doesn't feel like it, it's actually an epistolary novel compiled of letters sent from Captain Walton to his sister Margaret back home in England. One of these letters, though, is nearly two hundred pages long (I'm unsure of postage rates in those days but I'm assuming this would have cost a lot to send!) This, the main body of the story, consists of Walton recording as accurately as possible the tale told him by the infirm Victor Frankenstein who he's just picked up on his ship as he journeys through the Arctic. Walton is undertaking his own voyage of discovery. He takes to Victor and they become close companions for their brief time together; Victor even approves of Walton's journalising his story and (we are told) corrects the proofs himself. Mixed in with this dictation is also Victor's recollection of the Monster's life story, as told to him on the slopes of Montanvert.
It is clear, then, that there are many authorial layers to this story and it assumes that the reader trusts the veracity of them all. But can we? Is Walton, in particular, reliable? He is clearly in awe of Victor's resolve, selfless drive and singlemindedness, whereas he is aware himself of his own shortcomings when trying to achieve similar reknown for pushing the boundaries of current knowledge and understanding. Is he setting the tone for us to feel the same way?
Almost at the very end, just before Walton and the Monster meet, we get a brief piece of writing 'to the moment' - such as Samuel Richardson was criticised for in his early novel Pamela (1740). It's unfortunate because it breaks the reader's attention by its complete artifice:
'I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again there is a sound as of a human voice; but hoarser; it comes from the cabin where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise, and examine. Good night, my sister.' (p.210)
What follows would have read just as effectively without this brief section. With one contrived gesture Walton allows us to call into question his reliability as a narrator throughout the rest of the novel so far.
Besides the narratorial issue, the main feature of the book that struck me on this reading was how insufferably self-centred Victor Frankenstein is. Other people are necessary to Walton - he can't go anywhere without his crew, for example. But by comparison, for Victor other people are a nuisance, an obstacle. He has the gall to play at being God, creating his own Adam (and nearly his own Eve) and then rejecting it for not being in his own image. He's annoyed at the Monster for being ugly, and for being more lithe, strong and hardy than 'normal' man - rather than blaming himself for making the creature that way. Victor at all points refuses to tell anyone how he created a new body from parts of cadavers and miraculously imbued it with life, because it doesn't even enter his reasoning that this knowledge wouldn't make Walton (or whoever) rush off and create their own 'being'. He's not made these discoveries for the sake of the progress of mankind, he's done it all for himself alone. He's appalled at what he's done when the creation first shows signs of life, but he won't take responsibility for his work and kill it; instead he runs away and hopes the situation will take care of itself. When he returns to Geneva and Justine is being wrongly tried and executed for the murder of his little brother he takes every opportunity to state how his internal suffering is worse than that of others. For example:
'The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forego their hold.' (p.82)
We only have Victor's word (via Walton) that Justine was bearing up so well. How dare he? It's a measure of the discourtesy and disregard Frankenstein has for those around him that he can make so bold and ridiculous a statement as this. Victor impotently blames himself in his delirious rantings for the deaths of Henry Clerval and others, but he always has an excuse not to hand himself in to the law or report his previous doings. When he does eventually try, towards the end of his narrative, he's clearly seen as mad in the eyes of anyone sane, so it's conveniently too late to win anyone round to his side. Most frustratingly, when the Monster promises 'I shall be with you on your wedding-night' - which is often repeated - Victor can only see this as the Monster planning to kill him before he can obtain wedded happiness with Elizabeth - this despite the Monster already having stated clearly that he wants to make Victor totally broken and wretched. Only a totally self-centred fool could fail to see what this promise really threatens. It is a shame that so many innocent others come to harm because of Victor's self-centredness and narrow-mindedness, but through their suffering he at least gets what he deserves.
The reader's sympathies are almost completely with the Monster throughout, despite his dreadful deeds. The tale of his development (which relies on incredible coincidence and good fortune) is moving and endearing. His reappearance at the end, when we find that above all he loved his creator and only wanted Victor to love him back and honour him as his own creation, is equally pathetic and emotional.
This is the only time the Monster's words are reported directly through Walton, not filtered through Frankenstein first. I noted a strong suggestion of homosexual love here at the end. Was Victor gay? He never showed any physical interest in Elizabeth, or any other female, and she was certain he loved another. He told her he had a dreadful secret to reveal to her only after they were married. Perhaps Victor really created the Monster so he could express a love that otherwise he had to keep secret? When the creature came to life perhaps he was as much appalled at his own thoughts as he was at the fact that he had created his own 'man'? The description of the Monster when he is first animated (p.56) resembles a penis in many respects. Or maybe it's the Monster who's homosexual? He asks for a woman to be created in his image - but this is reported by Victor and filtered through Walton, so there are clear opportunities for censorship before it reaches the reader. And there's this repeated promise that the Monster will be with Victor on his wedding night which causes him perturbation and misapprehension. Can we as readers trust that the meaning of this is being truthfully portayed through the double censorship of Victor and Walton? Perhaps, also, Walton heightened the suggestiveness of the Monster's final words to cover for his own feelings of love towards the recently deceased Victor?
I'm only throwing these ideas out there - I have no particular view either way.
There are some other thoughts that struck me as I read the book this time:
Why didn't Victor simply reanimate the corpses of those the Monster killed, knowing he could bring life to dead flesh?
Why didn't the Monster's brain recall any of its previous existence, before Frankenstein acquired it? This would have made a very interesting angle to the Monster's development, but would probably have been more likely a hundred years later, post-Freud.
There is a glorious assumption from Victor not only that the Monster will want to propagate itself with its demanded female companion, but also that the female he'll create in the same way will automatically be able to bear children! Highly egotistical on his part. This is apparently something that all women can do, even when compiled from cadavers.
There is a wonderful moment in Volume Three, Chapter III (p.160) when Victor questions whether the female he is creating will actually want to be partnered with his original Monster; she will have her own thoughts, feelings and opinions after all. It's a very forward piece of thinking to allow Victor not to make that decision for her and expect her to abide by it. This is certainly Mary Shelley's voice coming through in what must be acknowledged as a statement of female free-thought and emancipation worthy of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.
It may not make my top ten novels of all time, but Frankenstein is still a book I would recommend anyone to read - if only for the melodrama, and to remind everyone that Frankenstein isn't the monster, and also how little the monster resembles the wonderful Boris Karloff!
As for the edition itself, Penguin have given us a very long and workmanlike introduction from Maurice Hindle. I had a drink with him once at an Open University event - thoroughly likeable chap. Hindle's introduction is nothing profound, but it thoroughly contextualises the work and its author, reavealing sources and inspirations. Consequently we get few explanatory notes at the end to enlighten the reader further - which is good for those who don't want to be distracted by numbers or asterisks and the promise of further nuggets of information or clarity.
Hindle has made a very bold move with this edition. He chooses the 1831 single volume revised version of the novel, but prefers the three volume structure of the 1818 original edition. Thus we get a composite edition following the 1831 text but structured like the 1818 text. To the casual reader does this make much difference? Probably not. Most readers probably wouldn't fuss over whether it was the 1818 or 1831 text either, or bother to read the extensive list of differences between the two. But should a modern editor be 'editing' a classic text to this extent? Doesn't this add a further level of separation and distrust between the reader and the author(s) as discussed above..?
For undergraduate students working on the novel it will be important which edition of the text you use, and so it's probably best to avoid this Penguin edition with its own idiosyncratic text, although the introduction is very useful and the appendices are a valuable bonus, featuring John Polidori's The Vampyre: A Tale and Lord Byron's 'Fragment' from which the former was probably developed (discussed elsewhere in this Blog).
Friday 2 March 2012
Bernice and Ruth - the new Weather Girls..?
It's not raining men, so hold that 'hallelujah'. However, the changeable weather on the planet Versimmon is certainly an eventful affair requiring more than a serviceable brolly, and Matthew Griffiths' first full-length novel is a densely-packed work from start to finish.
Matthew has previously written several short stories for Big Finish's Short Trips anthologies, which have been variously received, so this is his chance to flex those creative muscles with a little more length and freedom. I may be wrong about the freedom though: from the early days Big Finish have intertwined their Bernice Summerfield audios and novels / short stories so this book clearly has its place within a story arc. Does that matter? Does a reader such as myself, who's had little contact with Benny and her antics since Death and The Daleks some years back, need to catch up to get the most from this book? Possibly yes, possibly no - sorry, that's a wet liberal sit-on-the-fence answer, but it's honest!
'Possibly yes' means that I can't guarantee I wouldn't have got more from this book if I was fully clued up on Bernice's current life (naturally). For a start there's a new girl, Ruth. But the dust jacket gives us some contextual notes and I'm not sure I need to know much more than they tell me.
'Possibly no' means that there's enough merit in the book as it is to carry you through without having to worry unnecessarily about who these people are - only possibly why they're there.
I very much enjoyed the book, but if I have one criticism it would be its breakneck pace. For a poetry research student there is surprisingly little poetic language and description in the work - it doesn't hang about to ponder and be pretty! Matthew is so eager to tell the story, and has so much story to tell, that at times I felt overwhelmed by it and I often found myself struggling to picture the characters and where they were - particularly during some of the more involved action sequences. But Matthew's prose style is comfortable and reader-friendly, and the treadmill of progressive action and intrigue kept this reader interested throughout.
The action starts from the off - we're thrown in at the deep end at the beginning. It takes us a large amount of the book to backfill all the necessary information about why Bernice and Ruth are on Versimmon, what purpose the planet performs and what relationship to it each of the characters has. I don't have an issue with this personally; it forces the reader into an active role, not just a passive free-loader - which is why I'm avoiding specific plot details and spoilers in this review.
There is intelligent use of arboreal terminology providing alternative words and names within a civilisation based around trees and plants. This shows care and thought on the part of the author - the Versimmion civilisation is not just a hollow gimmick - and this level of detail brings the story and it's people to life so much more effectively. There's sense and clarity behind it too, so the reader doesn't (or shouldn't) require a glossary - in fact it almost became a game to me, where I was on the look out for the next witty occurrence. I'm still undecided whether Abenoke should be pronounced Aben-oak or not - that's how suspicious I'd got..!
The key to the whole book has to be the characterisation of Bernice, and Matthew has got this spot-on. I could hear Lisa Bowerman in my head delivering every line and thought the character had with utter conviction. The Versimmion and Palastoran civilisations provide memorable and engaging supporting characters, and splitting up Ruth and Bernice early on allows the story to develop along two strands giving all the characters more space and opportunity to be individual.
If you're coming to this as a Doctor Who spin-off unsure what to expect, it's not Doctor Who, but it does have monsters and intrigue and corridors and weather. I'd also ask where the hell you've been - Bernice Summerfield has been around for years now! Sort it out people!
Big Finish have recently re-branded the Bernice Summerfield range, with a simpler, possibly more adult look. Maybe this is suggestive of a more grown-up or responsible attitude for the title character? I can't imagine this becoming Archaeology, She Wrote, though. Certainly the Bernice in The Weather on Versimmon didn't seem that different to me than the Bernice of the earlier audios and books, with their stylised cartoon covers and illustrations. Maybe I've read too much in to that, though, and they just felt it was time to spruce-up the range and make it eye-catching to a new audience. But I have a fondness for the cartoon style, and I can't help thinking that some of the images from this book would have looked great brought to life on the cover, instead of the rather sober photo montage.
Overall I found the book intelligently and proficiently written and I look forward to more of Matthew's work.
Matthew has previously written several short stories for Big Finish's Short Trips anthologies, which have been variously received, so this is his chance to flex those creative muscles with a little more length and freedom. I may be wrong about the freedom though: from the early days Big Finish have intertwined their Bernice Summerfield audios and novels / short stories so this book clearly has its place within a story arc. Does that matter? Does a reader such as myself, who's had little contact with Benny and her antics since Death and The Daleks some years back, need to catch up to get the most from this book? Possibly yes, possibly no - sorry, that's a wet liberal sit-on-the-fence answer, but it's honest!
'Possibly yes' means that I can't guarantee I wouldn't have got more from this book if I was fully clued up on Bernice's current life (naturally). For a start there's a new girl, Ruth. But the dust jacket gives us some contextual notes and I'm not sure I need to know much more than they tell me.
'Possibly no' means that there's enough merit in the book as it is to carry you through without having to worry unnecessarily about who these people are - only possibly why they're there.
I very much enjoyed the book, but if I have one criticism it would be its breakneck pace. For a poetry research student there is surprisingly little poetic language and description in the work - it doesn't hang about to ponder and be pretty! Matthew is so eager to tell the story, and has so much story to tell, that at times I felt overwhelmed by it and I often found myself struggling to picture the characters and where they were - particularly during some of the more involved action sequences. But Matthew's prose style is comfortable and reader-friendly, and the treadmill of progressive action and intrigue kept this reader interested throughout.
The action starts from the off - we're thrown in at the deep end at the beginning. It takes us a large amount of the book to backfill all the necessary information about why Bernice and Ruth are on Versimmon, what purpose the planet performs and what relationship to it each of the characters has. I don't have an issue with this personally; it forces the reader into an active role, not just a passive free-loader - which is why I'm avoiding specific plot details and spoilers in this review.
There is intelligent use of arboreal terminology providing alternative words and names within a civilisation based around trees and plants. This shows care and thought on the part of the author - the Versimmion civilisation is not just a hollow gimmick - and this level of detail brings the story and it's people to life so much more effectively. There's sense and clarity behind it too, so the reader doesn't (or shouldn't) require a glossary - in fact it almost became a game to me, where I was on the look out for the next witty occurrence. I'm still undecided whether Abenoke should be pronounced Aben-oak or not - that's how suspicious I'd got..!
The key to the whole book has to be the characterisation of Bernice, and Matthew has got this spot-on. I could hear Lisa Bowerman in my head delivering every line and thought the character had with utter conviction. The Versimmion and Palastoran civilisations provide memorable and engaging supporting characters, and splitting up Ruth and Bernice early on allows the story to develop along two strands giving all the characters more space and opportunity to be individual.
If you're coming to this as a Doctor Who spin-off unsure what to expect, it's not Doctor Who, but it does have monsters and intrigue and corridors and weather. I'd also ask where the hell you've been - Bernice Summerfield has been around for years now! Sort it out people!
Big Finish have recently re-branded the Bernice Summerfield range, with a simpler, possibly more adult look. Maybe this is suggestive of a more grown-up or responsible attitude for the title character? I can't imagine this becoming Archaeology, She Wrote, though. Certainly the Bernice in The Weather on Versimmon didn't seem that different to me than the Bernice of the earlier audios and books, with their stylised cartoon covers and illustrations. Maybe I've read too much in to that, though, and they just felt it was time to spruce-up the range and make it eye-catching to a new audience. But I have a fondness for the cartoon style, and I can't help thinking that some of the images from this book would have looked great brought to life on the cover, instead of the rather sober photo montage.
Overall I found the book intelligently and proficiently written and I look forward to more of Matthew's work.
Thursday 1 March 2012
Lord of the Sounds?
I picked up the CD box set of Tolkien BBC Radio adaptations some time ago now, but have only just got round to listening to them. They came highly recommended to me, and they are a curious experience.
The Hobbit was made in 1968 and has a very progressive sound - with atonal music & songs and occasional Goonish voices (I checked the cast list and none of The Goons appear). What strikes me most about the show is the pronunciation - GanDALF, GollOOM, Thorin with a silent 'h'. Since J.R.R was still alive when this was made I thought perhaps he'd advised them and that this is how the character names should be pronounced. But then Peter Jackson et al took so much care over all aspects of the films that it seems unlikely they'd have messed up Gandalf and Gollum, and Ian McKellen mentions Thorin with his 'h' intact as they trudge the mines of Moria in The Fellowship of The Ring so I think these are eccentricities of this production (prodooction?) alone.
My main issue with The Hobbit is that I don't really like it very much. I've read the book a couple of times and despite my best attempts I find little of merit in its pages. This radio adaptation is a good listen, and I adore Bilbo's need to spell out his surname to all and sundry to avoid confusion (delivered impeccably for maximum comic effect by Paul Daneman), but overall I find the story too shallow and unevenly weighted to engage my enthusiasm. Yes, I know, I'm not an imaginative eleven year old and if I had been when I first read it maybe things would be different. But it's not the world of Middle Earth I have difficulty with since I adore The Silmarillion and The Lord of The Rings.
Speaking of which I am only a third of the way through the 1981 radio adapatation of LotR so this isn't a review, more an opinion on what I've heard thus far. Observations (auralvations?!) to note:
- Less treatment of character voices than in The Hobbit.
- Disappointing soundscape - there's not been much in the way of atmos effects so far, just occasional sound effects and music but it's mainly the words that are driving this forward. Brilliant as they are, the words on their own often lack the pace and drama needed to imprive the dynamic. It's a particular shame since this production post-dates The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, in which the almost constant atmos, music and effects holds the listener and allows us to engage far more easily with the fictional world created.
- Familiar voices / famous names! Now I'm fully aware that this is my own fault and I need to disassociate actors with certain roles but it's difficult! Ian Holm as Frodo sounds the same then as he did years later as Bilbo in the films. Not a problem, just something worth noting. Bill Nighy plays Sam. I'm not a fan of Bill Nighy - as far as I'm concerned he gives the same performance no matter what he's doing (except in Harry Potter where he destroys the Welsh nation). He's actually OK here, but the director should have got him to be more consistent with his rustic accent. Richard O'Callaghan plays Merry. He's also good, if not a little properly spoken for a country hobbit. But I can't help thinking of him getting all flustered over Jacki Piper in Carry On Loving and it's very off-putting! John le Mesurier is great as Bilbo and I can cope with him sounding like a character from Bod. Similarly Michael Hordern is wonderful as Galdalf (here pronounced in the usual way) and doesn't necessarily make you think you're in an episode of Paddington. The other actor I've had issues with so far, though, is Robert Stephens as Aragorn. Stephens has a great fruity voice, but he doesn't sound like I'd imagine a tough weather-beaten ranger to sound. He also conjures images of the villainous Abner Brown he played in The Box Of Delights which is no good for a hero - particularly when he's in the Prancing Pony talking to fellow Delights actor James Grout!
But like I said, I need to sort this out myself...
I recently re-watched The Fellowship of The Ring (extended version, of course!) for the first time in some years. It's my favourite film of the three, being the only one with its own beginning, middle and end. Although I love the films I don't think they unduly colour my appreciation of the story in other media. I am glad, however, that I read the book first. And curiously what the radio series is doing, but the films never do, is make me want to read the book again. Where the radio series and films can surpass the book(s) is that they are strategically edited. Not shortened, necessarily - but edited. I appreciate that Tolkien was creating a whole world, but he was also telling a story for the reading public and sometimes you need someone (a good literary editor) to focus you to that task and get you to leave all the meanderings and Tom Bombadils to your appendix or your Silmarillion.
I'll return to this once I've listened to the rest of it...
The Hobbit was made in 1968 and has a very progressive sound - with atonal music & songs and occasional Goonish voices (I checked the cast list and none of The Goons appear). What strikes me most about the show is the pronunciation - GanDALF, GollOOM, Thorin with a silent 'h'. Since J.R.R was still alive when this was made I thought perhaps he'd advised them and that this is how the character names should be pronounced. But then Peter Jackson et al took so much care over all aspects of the films that it seems unlikely they'd have messed up Gandalf and Gollum, and Ian McKellen mentions Thorin with his 'h' intact as they trudge the mines of Moria in The Fellowship of The Ring so I think these are eccentricities of this production (prodooction?) alone.
My main issue with The Hobbit is that I don't really like it very much. I've read the book a couple of times and despite my best attempts I find little of merit in its pages. This radio adaptation is a good listen, and I adore Bilbo's need to spell out his surname to all and sundry to avoid confusion (delivered impeccably for maximum comic effect by Paul Daneman), but overall I find the story too shallow and unevenly weighted to engage my enthusiasm. Yes, I know, I'm not an imaginative eleven year old and if I had been when I first read it maybe things would be different. But it's not the world of Middle Earth I have difficulty with since I adore The Silmarillion and The Lord of The Rings.
Speaking of which I am only a third of the way through the 1981 radio adapatation of LotR so this isn't a review, more an opinion on what I've heard thus far. Observations (auralvations?!) to note:
- Less treatment of character voices than in The Hobbit.
- Disappointing soundscape - there's not been much in the way of atmos effects so far, just occasional sound effects and music but it's mainly the words that are driving this forward. Brilliant as they are, the words on their own often lack the pace and drama needed to imprive the dynamic. It's a particular shame since this production post-dates The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, in which the almost constant atmos, music and effects holds the listener and allows us to engage far more easily with the fictional world created.
- Familiar voices / famous names! Now I'm fully aware that this is my own fault and I need to disassociate actors with certain roles but it's difficult! Ian Holm as Frodo sounds the same then as he did years later as Bilbo in the films. Not a problem, just something worth noting. Bill Nighy plays Sam. I'm not a fan of Bill Nighy - as far as I'm concerned he gives the same performance no matter what he's doing (except in Harry Potter where he destroys the Welsh nation). He's actually OK here, but the director should have got him to be more consistent with his rustic accent. Richard O'Callaghan plays Merry. He's also good, if not a little properly spoken for a country hobbit. But I can't help thinking of him getting all flustered over Jacki Piper in Carry On Loving and it's very off-putting! John le Mesurier is great as Bilbo and I can cope with him sounding like a character from Bod. Similarly Michael Hordern is wonderful as Galdalf (here pronounced in the usual way) and doesn't necessarily make you think you're in an episode of Paddington. The other actor I've had issues with so far, though, is Robert Stephens as Aragorn. Stephens has a great fruity voice, but he doesn't sound like I'd imagine a tough weather-beaten ranger to sound. He also conjures images of the villainous Abner Brown he played in The Box Of Delights which is no good for a hero - particularly when he's in the Prancing Pony talking to fellow Delights actor James Grout!
But like I said, I need to sort this out myself...
I recently re-watched The Fellowship of The Ring (extended version, of course!) for the first time in some years. It's my favourite film of the three, being the only one with its own beginning, middle and end. Although I love the films I don't think they unduly colour my appreciation of the story in other media. I am glad, however, that I read the book first. And curiously what the radio series is doing, but the films never do, is make me want to read the book again. Where the radio series and films can surpass the book(s) is that they are strategically edited. Not shortened, necessarily - but edited. I appreciate that Tolkien was creating a whole world, but he was also telling a story for the reading public and sometimes you need someone (a good literary editor) to focus you to that task and get you to leave all the meanderings and Tom Bombadils to your appendix or your Silmarillion.
I'll return to this once I've listened to the rest of it...
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