A Writer’s Notebook
No. 44, November 2013
Contents
Notes in passing: double-click on
KleeFeedback: what's in a title?
Poems of place (20) Alien presence, Gunwalloe
Ned to Inspector Morse
Kindle editions (3) Ticket to Prague
Always thought that Paul Klee was best sampled in
small doses; but not a bit of it. The show at Tate Modern stokes up an appetite
for Klee in plenty. Some major exhibitions of artists have a stretching effect,
quality and inventiveness flag; though it could also be eye-wearout on the part
of visitors; that and the crowds.
Klee
sustains interest despite the fact that his work, in the main, is small-scale.
One could run off with most of his works tucked under the arm, and the
temptation offered by so many of them, like the 10”x 5” Translucancies: Orange, Blue,
a tiny poem of colour composition, tempts one to furtively check the CCTV
cameras. The artist wrote about his art, taught it (at the
Bauhaus) and was a ceaseless experimenter. This exhibition focuses on his work
from 1913 to his death in 1940.
Boosted by Blue Rider
Klee’s confidence as an artist was contributed to
by the other artists he met, in particular the Blue Rider group which included
Kandinsky, Marc and Macke, the latter two killed during World War 1. Klee too
was called up, but someone with a vision of his future had him employed as a
clerk.We are all the beneficiaries of that decision. Klee was also lucky in those who admired and wrote about him. In his book Flight Out of Time published in 1917, Hugo Ball wrote that Klee in ‘an age of the colossus…falls in love with a green leaf, a star, a butterfly’s wing.’ Louis Arragon commended his ‘lightness, grace, spirit, charm and finesse’, while Jankel Adler referred to his ‘creative quiet’.
What we
get in equal measure in Klee is craftsman and artist. In this sense he was an
exemplar for the Bauhaus at Weimar, then Dessau, that championed both. Klee was
not, however, a slave to craft, to exactitude.
He
wrote, ‘We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is a good thing.
You can do a good deal without it, but not everything. Exactitude winged by
intuition is at times best’.
Art ‘makes visible’
Tate Modern gives emphasis to what Klee said or
wrote in his diaries about his art, leading off with a classic: art, he
believed, ‘does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible’. His
pictures are processes in making, assembling colours, lines, shapes – some
representative, some semi-abstract, some wholly abstract – on meticulously prepared
surfaces. They are the fruit of constant experiments employing what he called
an ‘oil transfer method’ and ‘gradation’, approaches he encouraged his Bauhaus
students to follow.
In fact,
though one is intrigued and entertained by the foreground images, the
juxtaposed squares of colour, the rhythmic shapes, the fish (that have swum out
of his personal aquarium); despite the effects, the fabric-like pointillism,
the fishing rods, the exclamation marks, the stars, the crescent moons, one’s
attention keeps returning to the surface treatment that makes all possible,
renders all magical.
Such radiance Klee encountered on a trip to Tunisia early in his career. The impact of it seems to be a constant in his work. After his visit, Klee wrote in his dairy, ‘Colour possesses me. I don’t have to pursue it. It will possess me always. I know it...Colour and I are one. I am a painter’. (1914).
Klee is famous for his memorable observation that in his art he is ‘taking a line for a walk’; however, it is colour that does the talking. Catch the Tate Modern show before it closes on 9 March next year. It’s worth every (expensive) penny.
FEEDBACK: what’s in a title?
Issue
43, looked at the ways titles enhanced or risked undermining their texts,
whether novels, plays or films. Eye-catching, informative, evocative,
mystifying or simply over-obvious, off-putting, dry-as-dust, uninspiring,
misleading? Thanks to the readers who responded to the Good, Bad and Ugly
challenge, serving up some humdingers and some dot-balls.
From Carl Briggs: My all-time favourite is a seven-worder: Pirandello’s
play Six Characters in Search of an
Author. It suggests dramatic innovation, a process about to take place, an
exploration. It hints at an uncertain outcome. I guess what I’m getting, as
much an experiment as the telling of a story.
Like you,
I’d find the film Misery a turn-off,
but then the reputation of the director, John Huston, would suffice for me to
give it a try; and that goes for authors generally and as far as films and
plays are concerned, who’s in them counts for as much as the allure of the
title.
From Helen Chan: It’s true, a good title can mask a bad film, and a good
film can suffer from abad title. There are more of the second than the first. It
would be interesting to talk to creative people and ask why, when it comes to
titling, inspiration
deserts them. It’s not easy: I’ve just seen Michael Douglas in Behind the Candelabra. I tried to think
of a better title for this excellent movie. Not easy, unless you rename it The Liberace Story, or Liberace and his Lover.
For me,
good: The Mad Woman off Chaillot,
derived from the Jean Giradoux play, which could suggest that the best film
titles earn their keep from the stories they adapt. Same thing goes for The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Irving
Lerner’s film version of the Peter Shaffer play, The Looking Glass War from the Le Carre novel and Laughter in the Dark Tony Richardson’s
film version of the Nabakov novel. Lastly, as a promise of fun, There’s as Girl in My Soup Roy
Boulting’s take on a Terence Frisby play.
Thanks, Helen. Sometimes the film title improves on the original.
Get Carter has more oomph than the title
of Ted Lewis’s story Jack’s Return Home.
From JP: For me, Ring of
Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell and the recent movie, Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow; challenging because
its meaning isn’t obvious, but suggests something menacing. Or, talking in
numbers, how about a 12-worder from 1922, I’d
Love to Fall Asleep and Wake Up in My Mammy’s Arms. Beat that?
From Bron O’B: The sixties produced some great film titles: Where Eagles Dare, Carve Her Name With
Pride, The Lion in Winter, Nobody
Runs For Ever and the daddy of them all, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I decided
to pass on another one-worder, Foreplay. A
four-worder The Cute Girl Network wasn’t
for me. Toltanica left me bemused,
though Code of Darkness was perhaps
the best of the three-worders. What matters, of course, is the meat in the
sandwich of title and cover; but unless you’re drawn in in the first place,
you’re unlikely to give the meat a chance.
From LRC: Can’t remember details, but there’s wit in the following:
I’ll Never Forget What’s His Name, Charity Covers a Multitude of Sins and Never Complain to Your Laundress. One of
my all-time favourites is Kind Hearts and
Coronets, but having seen this wonderful British comedy it would be my
favourite even if it had been called The
Hell of It.
A quick vox
pop produced the following favourite titles: Knife in the Water, Riddle of the Sands, The Unbearable Lightness of
Being, The Ship That Died of Shame, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The
Missouri Breaks, They Crawl (a horror movie) and the English title of a French film, The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun (1970).
It seems that you can’t go wrong if you put
‘Great’ in the title: The Great Imposter,
The Great Muppet Caper, The Great Dictator, The Great Gatsby, The Greatest Show
on Earth and The Greatest Story Ever Told all got a mention.
Poems of place (20)
ALIEN PRESENCE, GUNWALLOE
His eyes
would seem to be closedIn contemplation, as on long arms
He extends in one hand a bell,
In the other a fist for nestling snails.
The lids resemble less the visage
Of an early saint, than a storm-smoothed Buddha,
The jetsam perhaps of a shipwreck
Washed ashore on barbarous rock,
Resurrected here by the church
To shiver in a graveyard, washed
By cold tides, and far from home.
Walk close, and suddenly the eyes watch
And follow with seeming malice
As if each wanderer to the sea is held
To blame for this exile among Christian bones.
The Ned Baslow Letters (cont)
Theatre, opera and poetry lovers from Land’s
End to John O’Groats are emailing ticket requests for ‘The Greatest Arts
Festival’ ever to be mounted in the west midlands during July 2014 at
Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven; and this is in no small way due to the marketing
genius of our regular correspondent, Ned
Baslow.
Over the past few months he has harnessed the
talents of not only geniuses of the worlds of art and music but the contributions
of some of history’s most iconic names. This month we see Ned replying to
Inspector Morse, whose sergeant, Lewis (a man after Ned’s own heart), has
applied for tickets on behalf of his senior officer.
What a a pleasant surprise to hear from your Sergeant Lewis that you are interested in attending our Summer Festival production of The Spectacles of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and the Sights of La Mancha, followed by the Epic Battle of the Titans, though at the moment there are no plans to allow your second favourite composer, Herr Mozart, to, as your Sergeant picturesquely put it, ‘wield the baton’. We are not even certain that Wolfy as we call him is prepared to play ball over writing the incidental music.
You will understand that our conductor of
many years, Mr Entwistle, who incidentally taught my boy Benjie the piano
(until he gave this up for the trombone – Benjie, that is, not Mr Entwistle),
will be supervising Wolfy and leading both the Women’s Union Chorus and the
Lower Fernhaven Brass Ensemble, with interval music from the Gilbert Stokoe
Jazz Quintet, featuring Lord Gilbert’s sons Julius, Hadrian and Octavian and
his daughters Penthesilea (Penny for short) and Cybille.
We are hoping that Lord G will be able to
entertain us with a medley of ballads on the theme of Robin Hood, composed by
himself (Lord Gilbert, that is, not Robin Hood), though his main task will, of
course, be in the starring role of Don Quixote and, by honoured tradition,
leading the National Anthem at the conclusion of the performances.
It’s my opinion, Inspector, that we in
Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven are on the way to matching any cultural event
available in your native Oxford; and while the village hall theatre is smaller
in area than your famous Playhouse (I saw the panto Dick Whittington there, or
was it Dick Turpin?), it at least has more comfortable seats than the
Sheldonian which, if you don’t mind me saying, is the most uncomfortable venue
I’ve ever had to plonk my bottom in.
My only visit was a disaster. Having been
forced to sit through a piece of music forty-five minutes long, I suffered
chronic back pain from which I fear I shall only slowly recover. Also. I shall
remember to my dying day the looks I got from others in the audience when I
dared to clap during what only turned out to be a pause in the music.
I would never have gone to the concert at
all had I known that my wife Betty had misheard the lady in the box-office, and
dragged me to hear music by Steve Reich rather than Steve Race, always one of
our favourites on Radio 2.
Course, everybody around me thought this
Reich rubbish was wonderful: I guess your Sergeant Lewis will appreciate how I
felt, a real fish out of water.
They are now slumming it in Gibraltar, but
are determined to make the Festival as they have a soft spot for Sancho Panzer,
personal servant to Don Q, and source of considerable comedy throughout. I am
happy to say, incidentally, that the part has been awarded to your correspondent,
though it was auditioned by at least three others (including a current spear
carrier at the Royal Shakespeare Company).
Another candidate for the part was my
Betty’s tutor at the Open University, Dr. Ivan Arbuthnot, who I might have
mentioned in my previous letter is an expert in 18th and 19th
century corantos and chapbooks. As compensation he has been given the part,
appropriately, of a wandering tinker and will be rendering one of Wolfie’s
arias though this may have to be curtailed or cut altogether if Jill, our
next-door neighbour, gets her voice back so she can, as the fair Dulcy Naya,
the heroine, render her three duets with the Don Quixote.
Ned Baslow
In trouble with the law, talented swimmer Amy Douglas is put to voluntary work in a small home for mental patients. Josef, a middle-aged Czech stares all day at a blank TV screen. Amy learns that he was once a poet who, on a visit to England from Communist Czechoslovakia too refuge here.
Her love of reading ignites the poet’s
interest. A friendship develops followed by the invitation, as the Velvet
Curtain is drawn back from decades of Soviet oppression, for Josef to receive a
literary prize in Prague. Amy accompanies him, and finds fresh challenges and a
new love.
Shortlisted for the Lancashire County
Council Book of the Year.
‘A very enjoyable
way of researching Eastern European history in a fascinating story laced with
risqué language and rich vocabulary.’ Ann Fisher, Carousel.
‘Although it is often funny, Ticket to Prague is also a very
serious novel, and it shirks none of the tragic implications which it puts
forward. [The novel] is deeply thought-provoking, dealing as it does with real
personal and political problems and wisely leaving most of the answers to the
individual reader.’ Junior Bookshelf.
‘I
just finished reading your book Ticket to Prague for the third time, and
I wanted to tell you how much I love it. You described Prague in such vivid
language, I want to get my own ticket to Prague!! I won the book quiz at my
local library last year and like I mentioned before, have read it several
times. I'm a young writer myself, and books like Ticket to Prague give
me something to aspire to. I'm waiting for school to start again, so I can hunt
down some of your books in my school library, and I can’t wait!! I suppose you
might get this a lot but you are a brilliant writer Mr. Watson and I love your
work.’ Young teenager,
emailing the author from New Zealand.
Thanks
for reading Blog 44.
In Blog 45 there will be a review piece on IMITATION OF LIFE by Laura Solomon; two small extracts from the
novel were published in Blogs 42 & 43.
