Cooked a seafood paella with chorizo - probably not kosher but hey, whaddya gonna do. Red onions, garlic, chili, green capsicum, basmati rice, bottle of dry white wine, litre of chicken stock, green beans, peas, sliced chorizo (cooked first in the pan - the juices with some e.v.o. acting as a cooking base) raw tiger prawns, strips of filleted rockling, salt, pepper, chili flakes (mmm… chili), saffron, spring onions, tomatoes, and parsley. I think that was everything. Could have added some beans but it was already a mighty carb festival in its own right.
Shaved. Did some writing of Fox 4. Bit of reading of a thriller serial novel that I’m contributing to. Bit of thinking and note making about future projects. Teaching, study, answering emails. Nice chat with my publisher about Fox 5 and the novel after that (may or may not be a Fox novel).
Launching BLOOD OIL at Scotch College tomorrow, should be good - and supposedly getting new tyres on the thirsty Merc… better coordinate those two activities actually. Damn. Charity event Saturday night. Awarding some short story winners and place getters down at Phillip Island on Sunday, with my friend Christine Darcas, catch up with mum wile I’m down there. Heading to NSW next week, bit of a rural trip, should be some good drivin’ involved. Then home to more of the same.
Oh, DVD’s worth watching: THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE - I’m a big fan of Benicio and here he reminded me of James Dean in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Also, THE PAINTED VEIL was a nice surprise - seemed ho-hum and predictable but progressed and came together to end in a pretty good little film.
Well, been a while since I’ve done any sort of diary-type entry, so here goes:
Did a bit of a tour for BLOOD OIL, which I’ve told you about I’m sure. Did a gig at Inverloch library to a lovely (and surprisingly large, and not just because my step dad was there – he looks a bit like Peter Jackson you see, circa LOTR filming) crowd. Anyway, hello Inverloch people! I judged a short story comp for which I’ll be attending an awards ceremony next weekend, and I don’t have much to say about the entries other than kids can write and most adults can’t. Caught up with John Birmingham and some of his blog buddies – Burgers to those in the know. Birmo has a new novel out, WITHOUT WARNING, which is kinda like every novel I’ve written wrapped between two covers – it’s huge, and it’s good. I’ll read it in the new year when I can dedicate that kinda time and headspace. Been having a Radiohead revival lately, lately my iPod seems to play nothing but, and IN RAINBOWS is particularly good. Cleaned my office, put all my papers in neat piles which I might go through one day but doubt it, got some big fruit trees for my balcony (two pear, two orange), watched a few DVD’s but nothing stand-out, re-reading (nice and slow) TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Each year I auction off a couple character’s names in Fox books, for charity, and this year both are going to the Cancer Foundation. One sold a couple weeks ago, the other auction/charity event is this weekend, and I’ll do a blog post later in the year with these character’s names and their roles in the books (basically, the more they pay at the charity auction, the longer their character lives). Doing a launch at Scotch College this Friday, which I guess I’ll shave for – did I mention I’ve grown a beard? I’ve had not much else to do lately, so I’ve been learning piano and growing a beard, both activities that I can do at home with minimal fuss. Later this month I am talking at the Balwyn Library, and Box Hill TAFE, the latter with my mate Andrew Hutchinson who’ll be crashing here so I really should sort out the spare room (it’s something of a music, papers, and yoga-ball room at the mo and has not benefited from my cleaning mood). Oh, and a week or so ago I gave a six-hour class to a group of young teenagers at the Queensland Writer’s Centre – it was brilliant, the kids were far smarter than most adults I’ve met and the day flashed by at warp speed, certainly faster than Virgin took off from the airport on the way home (I mean really, did we need to turn around and go back just because the weather computer was out? Look out the window. And really, can’t a fifty million dollar jet fly through any and all Australian clouds???). Anyway, hello Queensland kids if you’re reading this – you are all stars.
And with kids in mind, my new book ALONE has been read by a few pro-readers and the response has been better than expected. Two of them said it’s the best book I’ve written, which is a bit worrisome as it took me 16 days to write compared to 3 months to write BLOOD OIL but then it is a very different book: it’s aimed at teenage readers but these two adults (Tony and Em, if you must know) enjoyed it as much as they’ve enjoyed pretty much any book, and they read more books than most people I know (funny, typing that then I was thinking about how Harper’s Scout speaks – it’s been great to go back into that world, those summer’s making fun with Jem). Anyway, I’m still waiting to hear from a select few teenage readers, then I’ll make any changes in a month or so and get it in to the publishers as a good, solid first book in a series. Meantime, I’m tapping away at Fox 4, and I’m very happy to tell you all that my writing has really moved along since writing this kids book (yes mum, you were right). Watch out for more info coming here soon…
Oh, and for readers in Sydney who saw a Sun Herald profile on me a couple weeks back, the journo got quite a lot wrong, which is not unusual with any profile piece – I might make a perpetual list here one day of all the wrong stuff they’ve written about me over the years. Anyway, it happens to us all and the stuff-ups are only getting bigger and worse as journalists are getting lazier and more time-poor - I’ll leave you with a little snippet from Ricky Gervais’ blog:
During an interview in America recently the subject came up about me ad libbing in all my film roles and what it’s like for me not being in charge as usually I write and direct myself.
I explained that I’m usually taken on with that remit and I said that directors usually hire me knowing that I will bring something to the role. I said, “If they wanted someone to stand where they’re told and just say the lines as they’re written in the script then they should chose any other actor to do that.”
Obviously that was taken out of context by an english news site. i wont embarrass them as they are going to right the wrong, but this is the headline they went with. “Gervais admits he is the worst actor in Hollywood” Gervais admits he is the worst actor in Hollywood Brilliant. The thing that annoys me is this. They know exactly what they are doing. It’s not a mistake. It’s deliberate. The world would be a different place if things had always been like this.
Martin Luther King - “I have a dream.”
TheDailyShit.com - “Lazy black man always sleeping”
Jesus Christ - “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
WeeklyRumour.co.uk - “Scruffy Jew starts riot”
Elizabeth I - “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”
InternetCuntWhoCan’tGetArealJob.Net - “Scrawny cannibal lezzer eats own father”
Can’t wait for tomorrow’s headlines… Gervais says he’s as misunderstood as Dr. King. Virgin Queen and Son Of God.
It’s been a busy few weeks for me. The third Lachlan Fox novel, BLOOD OIL, came out late August. I’ve toured for it and I’m happy with the final product and the feedback from readers is so far, so good. Other than that, I started another novel late August, and finished it mid-September. It’s outside the Fox series and it has 15 year-old protagonists, so I guess it’s a teenage-audience book, but I like to think that all ages will read it as it’s an archetypal story of identity and survival told in a way I’ve never seen or heard. I wrote it un-contracted and it will be interesting to see what publishers think of it.
Highlights from what I’ve been reading…
James Frey’s BRIGHT SHINY MORNING. He’s described it as a love letter to LA, only the kind of letter you’d write to a lover you’ve been with for ten years. It’s that and more. I caught up with Frey when he was in Melbourne and he mentioned that he’s very much carrying the torch of Norman Mailer which was nice to hear because that’s exactly how I think of Frey’s writing: he works in prose but he’s essentially, like Mailer, an essayist and chronicler of the self and the times around him. His best subject has been himself, much like Mailer, a man I never met Mailer and it’s a regret because I sense that he, the artist, the observer, was the most interesting part of his fictional creation. Mailer never really had the big novel that I’m sure he’d hoped for, certainly not as big as his precursor Hemingway. Much of his best work are now period pieces, which is not a bad thing in itself and they were important and current and immediate reads at the time I’m sure (AN AMERICAN DREAM, and WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM?). In this regard he was closer to Orwell, who was an essayist better than a prose writer and his books lacked any real future importance. Frey mentioned that in a discussion he had when dear old Mailer was still alive, that the man said to him and I may paraphrase: “You’re it now. It was Hemingway and then me and now it’s you.” I think that anxiety of influence crippled whatever real originality Mailer might have developed, as it did to Hemingway with his artistic competition to Tolstoy. Hemingway’s greatness was his short stories, which rival any other master of that form, Joyce, Chekhov, Babel, and he’s certainly the best short story writer we’ve seen since Joyce’s DUBLINERS (although my readers will know I have an affinity for Proulx and Winton as modern virtuosos of the sublime). Hemingway was the master of ellipses and his longer works, particularly THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, misses this virtue of aesthetic economy. William Faulkner praised this book as Hemingway’s best but then his taste was a little off some of the time. It’s at once a Christian parable and a work of sentimentality and it’s far too much for the novel to bear. To Frey’s credit he has none of that. I’d not say Frey’s strongest point of writing is his brevity for he details his prose as a painter might paint a canvas and apply stroke after stroke to built a picture that’s as rich as it is intriguing but what he achieved as a writer of literature is develop a parataxis that is at the forefront of achievement of 21C writers. I have no doubt that one day in the not too distant future, should Frey tackle an issue that strikes a chord with a time or generation, such as Mailer did with his VIETNAM etc, then he will receive the recognition that he deserves and strives for. He will be studied at universities, they will no doubt incorrectly read his work, but he will be appreciated as a poet observer beyond the limited view we have of Mailer, because he’s capable of better writing. Frey has written about his writing process that he approaches the page and task much like a method actor, to really get into the mindset that the given scene requires. I’ve tried that with some of my works but have found it to be too self-destructive and dangerous to everything around me. I do hope, and I trust, that Frey will get to write a canonical novel beyond the immediate that will last the ages and place him in his country’s best writers, to make them, as he says, insignificant. The danger, if he does not achieve this, as I believe that Hemingway realized he had not produced a novel to beat Tolstoy (THE SUN ALSO RISES came closest, but even it was beaten by Hemingway’s own short work, seen in much of the FIRST FORTY-NINE STORIES). In a letter to his publisher Charles Scribner, Hemingway wrote: “Am a man without any ambition, except to be champion of the world, I wouldn’t fight Dr. Tolstoy in a 20 round bout because I know he would knock my ears off. … If I can live to 60 I can beat him. (MAYBE).” Hemingway’s suicide at 61 had its reasons beyond anything hereditary and more than any sickness, like we saw only a few years ago in Dr Gonzo, another genius journalist-writer. Sadly, that door in the psyche is still an option for too many talented, ambitious artists, particularly and usually young men, which I might discuss in detail another day.
If we look at 20C American literature Nathaniel West’s MISS LONELYHEARTS rates right up there. Pynchon couldn’t touch him, only Faulkner holds the higher title. Of living writers, McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN ranks, as does DeLillo’s UNDERWORLD. Steinbeck was crippled by the shadow of Hemingway, as I believe Mailer was crippled to produce a work of sublime aesthetic achievement by Mailer himself, a Mailer constantly sparring with both himself and Hemingway. I mention these writers because of this: Faulkner’s AS I LAY DYING, West’s MISS LONELYHEARTS, Pynchon’s GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, and BLOOD MERIDIAN, UNDERWORLD, etc, go on through time to prove to us what literature can do, and these works go on harming and teaching and killing us with every read.
I don’t think that such a canonical work is beyond his reach of Frey and it’s certainly within the scope of his ambition. He has the ambition to be heavyweight champion of the literature world, to obliterate the others - if there are any remaining with similar ambitions - into obscurity, and I love him for it. The best I can hope to muster would be to muscle up and fight these guys, as Hemingway did against Stevens - which I’ve written about here before - and I like to think I’d be able to rank pretty high in those stakes. Sure, it’s been tempting to me as it is for so many young writers to write something of such worth and greatest that it will be remembered through all time as something of the finest aesthetic beauty, and maybe one day I’ll dedicate the time to do that but maybe I’ll just keep at my thing, whatever that is. At any rate, Frey’s proved with his third novel that he has reach beyond himself, and produced something that isn’t too restricted to time and place, which is a reach greater than Mailer could ever muster as he placed himself too near events time and time again. Frey’s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES is Mailer’s ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF and BRIGHT SHINY MORNING could well be THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG. Mailer was his own best fiction complete with every nuance New Journalism brought along. Frey was there and now he’s broken the mould and stretched his wings. Mailer wrote in ADVERTISEMENTS: “…I pointed to the farthest fence and said within ten years I would try to hit the longest ball ever to go up into the accelerated hurricane air of our American letters. For if I have one ambition above all others, it is to write a novel which Dostoyevsky and Marx; Joyce and Freud; Stendhal, Tolstoy, Proust and Spengler; Faulkner ad even old moldering Hemingway might have come to read, for it would carry what they had to tell another part of the way.” Hemingway characterized ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF, in a letter to George Plimpton, “as a sort of ragtag assembly of his rewrites, second thoughts and ramblings shot through with occasional brilliance.” It’s easy to read Frey and say that he might share much with Mailer, much more than we may ever realize. Mailer as described by Richard Poirier: “…insists on living at the divide, living on the divide, between the world of recorded reality and the world of omens, spirits, and powers, only that his presence may blur the distinction. He seals and obliterates the gap that he finds, like a sacrificial warrior or, as he would probably prefer, like a Christ who brings not peace but a sword, not forgiveness for past sins but an example of the pains necessary to secure a future.”
Over the coming years I’m excited to watch just how far the reach of James Frey can go, and I look forward to him carrying the torch another leg of this great relay, to hit the ball out of the park and show the world what literature can still achieve.
What I’ve been writing…
My newest novel, titled ALONE.
I’ve read a heap of “Young Adult” fiction because I’ve just written my first, a little break in-between writing Fox novels. I read like 50 or so, from Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl (a couple of my childhood favs) to Robert Muchamore and Matthew Reilly. The older books still hold up, even Marsden’s TOMORROW Series reads well, so does OSC’s ENDERS GAME. I flinch at a lot of Blyton, as I’ve done with other period pieces of fiction that I’ve re-read as an adult like LORD OF THE FLIES and KING SOLOMON’S MINES, and while there’s still something to like in them they never live up to the memories of the first read when I was full of youthful ignorance and ready to be carried away. Contemporary YA fiction, with the exception of perhaps Jasper Fforde (if you’d call his stuff YA) is so utterly boring. It’s action and thrills but it’s hollow and doesn’t say much about anything. Golding’s first novel in LORD OF THE FLIES is relevant today but only if you are a teenage private school boy, likely an English one at that, who identifies with those weak characters; that’s all those characters were, private English school boys, and that’s all they ever will be, products of an author who had been through that system and continued a similar one by serving in the Navy and further residing in that system in teaching. I just now re-read Huck Finn, and yes, again I flinch at the language that we now know to be very non-PC, but Huck has so much more depth than any of Golding’s characters. Huck has irony, not seen in Ralph et al, and Golding’s “creations” are no more than humourless names with embarrassingly small views and ridiculously limited minds. There’s nothing universal about LORD OF THE FLIES, it certainly is not an allegory of moral depravity, it’s nothing more than a story of a few cardboard private school boys continuing their existence in a situation that a mature writer would have explored and mined for richness beyond the literal and expected, making names on a page resonate through the ages.
Now that books are marketed to kids like never before we need some bright shiny voices and stories available that are beyond the ordinary. We need the KIM and HUCK of today. So, I’ve created Jesse, in my first YA novel, ALONE. It’s McCarthy’s THE ROAD but set during the apocalyptic event rather than years after, with four teenagers at the centre as seen through Jesse’s eyes and without the overt writerly influences that hampers McCarthy’s effort. ALONE is a product of today and written for today’s readers and like THE ROAD, LIFE OF PI, THE BOOK THEIF, THE ALCHEMIST, ENDERS GAME, THE HOBBIT, THE LITTLE PRINCE, and SIDDHARTHA, I can see it will be read by adults as well as teenagers as well as advanced kids, and I hope they all identify with the archetypal qualities in the story. We follow four teenagers for three weeks and we see how they cope and survive in a city that has been attacked, and through it Jesse struggles with his identity and ego and self as much as his friends’. It holds no punches. It’s raw and it’s real and it will be interesting to see what publishers think of it. Clearly I’m biased - but I’ve admitted on many occasions to not liking my previous work when I’m working gone the next project - and this has not happened with ALONE. I’m writing FOX 4 and 5 back-to-back, as the storyline and through-arcs carry through them both and I figure it’s smart to mine this creative zone that I’m in while it lasts. But when I think back about those four lonely characters in ALONE, I still love them and I love their story and it was a great month of writing. I’ve looked back and felt that way about anything I’ve ever written. Usually I’m glad the writing ordeal is over and the world I’d created and lived in for months on end is behind me.
What I’ve been watching…
A few DVD’s.
GONG BABY GONE. Enjoyed it about as much as the book. The twists still worked, even though I expected what was coming. Ben Affleck did a great job of directing. The only thing I had issues with was the small jump cuts in the scene where they were in the house of the mother - they worked fine, but it seemed out of place as a device and the first couple jarred until I was used to it. Still, it’s a little thing, like the little things I pointed out with Tony Gilroy’s first effort in MICHAEL CLAYTON. Make no mistake, both these guys can direct better than most, it’s just my super-critical eye because I expected so much. What pleased me the most with both their efforts is that they have such a minimal, old-school approach that is not reliant on any visual gimmickry.
STREET KINGS. I like David Ayer and I expected so much from this film and it didn’t deliver. TRAINING DAY was a deceptively good script and well acted and executed. In fact, I didn’t love it that much on the first run through but after reading the script and re-watching I got so much more from it, but perhaps that’s either me not being in the mood in the first instance to take it all in, or they filmmakers didn’t do a good enough job putting the script to screen. I suspect a bit of both. HARSH TIMES remains my favourite Ayer film and it’s small-budget genius. Chris Bale and Freddy Rodriguez were perfect; Bale’s character was utterly riveting and frightening and most importantly incredibly empathetic, which cemented Bale in my mind as one of the best actors around. Anyway, STREET KINGS could have been the story that I wanted to write, and when I’d read early news about it I was disappointed that I’d never get to write a similar novel that I’ve been kicking around in my head for a while, the third of a cop trilogy. But, I will write that novel one day soon, about a cop who’s hard and tough as can be because of the two novels before it (both storylines of which came to me in separate dreams with the same cop characters – go figure), because STREET KINGS and its ridiculous cast did not deliver.
This week I’ve given two talks at very different schools, one in Melbourne, and one in country Victoria. Both audiences where great, and eager to know about BLOOD OIL. Well, we’re two weeks from publication and the first review is in. Also, I’ve done my first press interview, for Sydney’s Sun Herald. Both the review (pasted below) and the interviewer from SH liked the book, so I now feel somewhat vindicated in thinking that this novel is my best by far - you know, third time lucky and all that. Having finished BLOOD OIL this past February, then having a couple months of edits, it’s always a nice feeling when objective feedback starts trickling in from the media and my readers. Meanwhile, I’ve been tapping away at FOX 4… better get back to it.
The first review for BLOOD OIL, from Bookseller & Publisher Magazine, August 2008.
BLOOD OIL – Four Stars/an excellent book.
Melbourne-based author James Phelan continues to redefine the often stale and cliché-ridden political thriller genre. The setting of this third novel is present day Nigeria. Australian journalist Lachlan Fox is assigned to cover a devastating terrorist attack on an oil refinery, and the resulting turmoil on oil markets. The trail leads to a plot to overthrow the Nigerian government, take over the oil reserves, and eventually destabilise America. Although BLOOD OIL relies on conventional ingredients – Arab terrorists, corrupt politicians, ruthless Russian businessmen, a maverick ex-CIA agent, a gutsy hero, and an action climax – the author refreshingly re-invigorates them without resorting to the predictable political agenda of writers such as Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn. Because Phelan’s hero is an investigative journalist rather than a gung-ho Rambo type, the author seamlessly integrates factual background without interrupting the narrative flow, and injects a serious moral component usually missing in most thrillers. The genre is in safe hands – Phelan proves again that “intelligent thriller” is not an oxymoron.
MIFF starts any day now. Don’t know which quote I like more:
“If I’ve learned anything from big budget action movies it’s that complicated global problems are best solved by one lonely guy.” - documentary filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me)
OR
“I hope your balls turn to bicycle wheels and backpedal up your arse!” - Barry McKenzie
What I’ve been up to. Last week:
Total hours alive: 168
Awake, maybe 100. At least 80, or maybe 70 something…
Teaching: 2 hours
Writing secret project: 5 hours
Studying/reading: 51 hrs
Reading all 4,000 lines of Hamlet aloud: maybe next week.
DVD viewing: 10 hrs.
Cooking: 3 hrs
Sitting at the cafe: 2 hrs
Thinking: 5-10 minutes.
Driving little brother to an audition/waiting in the car reading Shakespeare: 2 hrs.
Sport: 2 mins (20 push ups). Hey, at least I’m honest.
That’s about it. Received a dozen paperback copies of PATRIOT ACT: awesome. Found a typo in the unedited ’sneak peak’ of BLOOD OIL in the back pages, fuuuuuuck. Invited to Dolly Teen Choice Awards: WTF? That could only end badly. Had a laugh with a courier who delivered a carton of beer to my building: watched him punch in my apartment number… sweet. “Free” slab of VB from Fosters who are sponsoring some book event I’m doing later in the year: very niiiice. Although I’ve still given them about $170k over the past 14 years of hard drinking.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: if there’s an occupational hazard to writing, it’s drinking.
FOX HUNT is now available in Australia and New Zealand as an audio book. PATRIOT ACT will follow in June, and BLOOD OIL will be available by August/September for a simultaneous release with the printed book.
More details, including online ordering, at Bolinda’s web site located under Menu - Links.
What I’ve been doing…
Resting! The third Lachlan Fox novel, BLOOD OIL, was finished a couple months ago. By finished, I mean it’s had it’s first edit and I’m waiting for the copy edits to come back to me for a final polish. My editors are very good and we seem to work as a well-oiled team to get the book into shape pretty quickly.
For a bit about BLOOD OIL, see the link in the Category menu.
I’m well into the planning of novel four at the moment. The end of BLOOD OIL sets up a storyline (hinted at in PATRIOT ACT) that will take at least two more novels to unravel, so there’s plenty of interesting territory that I’m mining at the moment. While BLOOD OIL dealt with an oil crisis, the next story is about water scarcity in India. At the moment it’s a massive canvas that I’m trying to hone down to fit nicely with the main pillars of my story. That said, each novel has been a little longer in length and this one will be no exception.
What I’ve been reading…
Usually I read one or two novels a week. During the writing of a novel I tend not to read much other fiction, so my summer was mainly spent reading magazines, non-fiction books, and some film scripts.
Magazines that I read each month, without fail, are: National Geographic, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair. I read a few online sites such as Variety, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Economist, and BBC. As much of BLOOD OIL was set in Nigeria, I read a few of their online newspapers each day, which has been a surprisingly interesting endeavour.
NON-fiction wise, I enjoyed and recommend the following books:
NOT A GOOD DAY TO DIE by Sean Naylor. This was a brilliant first-hand account of the first major battle of the twenty-first century – the cluster-fuck that was Operation Anaconda.
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein. Interesting book about disaster capitalism in all its ugly glory.
MARTINI by Frank Moorhouse. Re-read this memoir for a laugh. I have a bone to pick with Moorhouse about a bar in NYC that he recommended for their martinis but each to his own I guess.
NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER by Helen Caldicott. I read all her books in this vein and this was another well-put-together argument by one of the world’s great seekers of the truth.
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET by Jordan Belfort. Hilarious, sad, frustrating, and above all very entertaining.
THE WORLD IS FLAT by Thomas Friedman. This is the follow-up to one of my all-time favourite non-fiction books, THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE. I rate Freidman as not only one of the top economic writers of all time but a top writer period. His books make light work of what could easily be considered the dense and boring information that comes along with writing about the globalised world in which we live.
SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD by Joseph McBride. This has been on my shelf threatening to be read for about two years. It was a little long and dry but ultimately a fascinating account of the life of one of cinema’s greatest figures.
Film Scripts:
Over summer I read and re-read all the produced scripts of: Joe Carnahan, Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, David Ayer, Brian Helgeland, Charlie Kaufman, Aaron Sorkin. In my mind, these guys are among the best screenwriters in Hollywood and some of the best writers in the world right now. I’m just glad they’re not pursuing careers as novelists!
In writing this I’m reminded of the conversation that Andrew Denton had with Matt Damon, in a 2004 episode of Enough Rope. Damon’s reply as to why Hollywood makes so many crap movies: “I know. Oh, no, I know. I think it’s hard to make a good movie. For one thing, you have these studios who are trying to fill up a production slate. They have a certain number of movies they have to make every year, and so you get movies that get made just because they need to get made, called ‘programmers’. It’s like, well, we need a movie to come out in September. OK, we’ve got do it with 20 million dollars. OK, bank, let’s get it. Alright, let’s get some unknown actors. Do we have any old script lying around? They go into their library of scripts and go, “This one doesn’t suck that much. Let’s make that.” And I’ve been in those movies.”
Fiction:
My fiction reading over the last couple of months has been a trip down memory lane and a chance to read and reread some of my favourite novels along with the work of some novelists that I’ve had sitting on my shelves. I’ve often joked that I so many books on my shelves that I’ve yet to read that I’m waiting to break a leg or something, so that I am laid-up and have little else to do other than read. Well, while a tragic accident has yet to come my way I have found myself sitting around home doing not much else to speak of, so why not make a dent in that reading pile?
I reread my all-time favourite novel, Hermann Hesse’s beautiful SIDDHARTHA, about five or six times over summer. I had reread the lovely little LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel and was reminded of Hesse’s work. In the end, Fox and Gammaldi’s journeys in BLOOD OIL are very close to that which Siddhartha and Govinda embarked on in SIDDHARTHA. My characters are about half way through their personal journey in search of identity and I hope that over the next couple of novels that I can get them to a place where Siddhartha and Govinda eventually find them selves enlightened.
I’ve managed to read a few novels from many of my favourite writers, living and dead, such as John Steinbeck, James Ellroy, Cormac McCarthy, Dennis Lehane, all of which I’ve been meaning to read for a while now. Most were their earlier works that I’ve not had the chance to read before for one reason or other, such as Steinbeck’s TO A GOD UNKNOWN and McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN. Both were startlingly brilliant, and McCarthy’s Judge in BLOOD MERIDIAN is probably the most realised and scary villain in the history of literature. Steinbeck’s prose is disgustingly good. I think it was the critic Harold Bloom who said that his style was not so much a biblical style as mediated by Ernest Hemmingway, as it is Hemmingway assimilated to Steinbeck’s sense of biblical style. The monosyllabic diction is hardly the mode of the King James Version, but certainly is Hemmingway’s. This biblical sense rubbed off when I was writing BLOOD OIL, where I have used the King James Version of Psalm 137 to carry one of the stoylines in my novel, which also ties in nicely to the operatic interpretation of that psalm in Verdi’s “Nabucco” and back into my story with its connotations of revenge.
And right now I’m delving back into one of my favourite child-hood reads, the collection of Indian stories titled THE TALES OF THE PUNJAB. I can’t find my book copy (I suspect it’s safely buried somewhere in my parent’s library) but thankfully there are a few versions available on the internet. Unfortunately, the internet document does not have the beautiful illustrations that my copy had, although that said I remember there being the biggest publishing/printer error I’ve ever seen in a book – entire sections are repeated where they clearly do not belong.
Finally, I got around to reading ENDERS GAME by Orson Scott Card. This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read, in any genre. Over twenty years have passed since its first publication and it’s as relevant today as it was then. Card’s influences of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundatiuon” series is obvious, as is the stamp of Ursula K Le Guin. What I didn’t realise, until reading the author’s 1991 introduction note, was the influence that Bruce Catton’s work on the Civil War had on a young Card. Looking back at the text of the novel, the psychological themes within it, it seems an obvious now. The benefit of hindsight never ceases to fascinate me. I’ve read and heard that ENDERS GAME is popular with military personnel, and I now know why. This should be compulsory reading not only for every serving member of every military outfit in the world, it should be a reading text for all of humanity. As an aside, this was the first ever novel available for free downloads on the internet before its publication, waaaaay back in 1984.
What I’ve been listening to…
While I write I always listen to music, either via headphones into the laptop or over my Harmon Kardon SoundSticks. The music serves a few purposes. It sets the scene and mood in my mind, informs the pace and feel of my writing, and quietens out all the other clatter I hear – real and imagined.
My iTunes playlist for much of BLOOD OIL’s creation included: Nick Drake, Muse, Cowboy Junkies, Verdi, Powderfinger, Silverchair, Eskimo Joe, Rob Dougan, Linkin Park, Eminem, David Grey, Eddie Vedder, and Damien Rice. An eclectic mix, and many of these artists and their work are referred to in the novel.
What I’ve been watching…
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and INTO THE WILD were by far my favourite films of late and I’ll be buying them on Bluray when they come out. I watch a few DVDs each week, most of which aren’t worth recommending here. Here’s a few highlights:
NEXT starring Nicholas Cage and Julianne Moore, directed by Lee Tamahori. I’m a fan of those two actors and the director, and a big fan of the late Philip K Dick whose short story THE GOLDEN MAN this film was based on. Overall it was a well-executed film, with some great realising of the way that the Nick Cage character could see two minutes ahead of present time. Cage felt a little off in this pic, as if he was going through the motions as he’s done in so many blockbuster Hollywood movies. To me he’s always at his brilliant best in indie films, such as ADAPTATION, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD.
A SCANNER DARKLY: based on the Philip K Dick novel, and the DVD includes an interview with the author. Very different production to NEXT. Another great cast, Keanu Reeves and Robert Downy jnr were stand-outs, direction by Richard Linklater is up there with his best and shows just how diverse a visionary he is.
MICHAEL CLAYTON. Clooney was good, and Gilroy did a great job with a tiny budget. While Gilroy’s script showed the brilliance that he’s known for, I think I was expecting a bit more from his first shot at directing. There were a few beautiful shots, and structurally I liked the time split in the narrative, but the directorial tone felt a little too understated even for the type of film it was. That said, the casting was perfect and the opening monologue was brilliant –Tom Wilkinson’s rambling delivery is undeniably a defining role of his career. I’ve got no doubt that a few films down the track, Gilroy will become one of the great directors. Or maybe auteur is a better title for him. Whatever, he’s already a GENIUS writer.
RESCUE DAWN. I’m a massive fan of Chris Bale’s work. This film and his performance was pretty good, but still my favourites of his are HARSH TIMES, THE MACHINIST, and BATMAN BEGINS. Bale has that rare ability to inhabit a character while managing to let us in as well. This probably sneaks into to the top ten Vietnam War pics, although it’s down the bottom of a list that includes PLATOON, APOCALYPSE NOW, THE DEER HUNTER, FULL METAL JACKET, GOODMORNING VIETNAM, TIGERLAND and CASUALTIES OF WAR.
BABEL. Finally, I sat through this film and enjoyed it a lot. I tried to watch it ages ago but got distracted – it’s the type of movie that you need to be prepared to tune in properly, which is rare for a film staring two of Hollywood’s biggest names in Brad and Cate. There was a lot to like in this film. It was beautifully put together, the stoylines flowed and converged better than I thought they might, and the themes were, thankfully, not overstated with banal dialogue. I just wished I had of seen this one on release; BABEL is the type of film best appreciated in the shared experience of a theatre.
EASTERN PROMISES. Mortensen and Watts did great work, and I think this was one of Cronenberg’s better films. The story was good and the atmosphere of this underworld well portrayed. Cassel, as usual, was the weak link.
WILL AND GRACE television series. I was a fan when it was running, and I took the time over summer to do a marathon viewing of the whole series for a bit of respite from the novel writing. This is up there with the best TV sit-coms ever produced; it’s fun and hilarious and the characters become your friends in a way that I’ve only ever felt with the cast of THE WEST WING.
Earlier this year I had a horrible feeling about Heath Ledger. I’d had similar thoughts before and I’ve long learned to trust it, no matter how bizarre, to act on it; it could be that I’d call a friend or family member to check if they were okay, and more often than not they would admit that they weren’t. I cannot explain where it comes from and with Heath it was no different other than perhaps I felt some sort of connection to this person who was not only my age but also an inspiration to me as an artist. Perhaps it was a moment of clarity on my part after having just passed through a long period of dark intensity. I started writing a letter to him that I had planned on getting my Hollywood agent to pass on. The following day, I awoke to a world where he was no longer walking among us. It was a wake-up call I will never forget, and it drives me to this day. Still, to this day, I feel sick in the stomach at the thought that this perfect actor will not shape my life in the future with anything new, and I’m not sure when I will be able to bare to re-watch his films. Here’s a small tribute that I wrote later that morning - it seemed all I could do at the time:
Heath Ledger. Go slowly. Come back quickly.
I am compelled to write something of the way that I feel on hearing the news of Heath’s passing as I think it’s our responsibility to not only celebrate the too-short life of this young Australian, but it’s our burden to think about the consequences of his death. It is always too fickle to speculate on the circumstances involved and I will not do that here. What is certain is that Ledger’s movie roles will be remembered alongside that of all the great actors who have gone before him. What I am keenly aware of is that like so many talented young people, he has left us far too soon.
I am a month younger than Heath Ledger and his trajectory and quality of work has been inspiring. Since seeing him in Gregor Jordan’s film ‘Two Hands’, I have keenly watched all his films and have always been impressed with his performances. He is by far the greatest actor of my generation. I use the present tense because he will remain so – no one of my age will surpass his talent. His body of work is that good.
One of the most interesting aspects of Heath’s career has been his choice of film roles. His latest, due for release this year, is as Batman’s the Joker. Already it’s been said that his portrayal rivals that of Jack Nicholson’s 1989 version. I have no doubt that it will, as Heath inhabited the darkness of life all too well.
The 2002 release ‘The Four Feathers’ was the film that proved to me that Heath was the guy to watch. Directed by Shekhar Kapur, in a nutshell it was a film about the fall of the British Empire through their first significant military defeat. Heath plays the star, the young soldier driven into service out of family pressure and who leaves the army when they are to be sent to war. The film spoke of many themes of what it is to be a young man, not only in that society but through all the ages. Heath’s performance transcended the screen with an archetypal set of characteristics that resonates with me today, six years on. He embodied the themes of honour, love, betrayal, and redemption so beautifully. Through his acting, he showed us, the audience, that there is a path of redemption available to us all, if only we have the courage to pursue it. It spoke of the possibilities open to us all if only we have the gumption to strive on.
Actors, like writers, give so much of themselves. We invest so much emotion, it drains what little we have left to lead our own lives. Our art takes so much, sometimes more than we should give, often more than we realise. It’s a fine line, between our work and our lives and it is all too easy to blur that line. When we bring our work home, it destroys more than those around us. It consumes the very essence of what makes us human. When we explore darkness, in particular, it’s often too hard to turn back. It’s at times too intoxicating to walk away from when in the midst of the creation. You feel you have to live it to make it true.
The truth portrayed in ‘Brokeback Mountain’, the incredible Ang Lee film based on the brilliant story by Annie Proulx, cemented Heath’s spot among history’s great actors. The heavily silent emotions Heath brought out in his character added significant weight to what was already a heady role as written on the page and brought to the screen by Proulx and Lee respectively. Heath, through his character Ennis Del Mar, proved that love is as blind as it is unforgiving. That while it may be forbidden, the price of a love lost far outweighs a future of regret.
We will never know what brilliant work lay ahead in his future. We will reflect on what he has given us, those roles that defined him as an actor and a young man that will live on. Considering that he gave us so much of himself, I will always wonder if he had enough left of himself to sleep in peace at night.
What I do know, is that he has left a legacy and a benchmark for so many of us to strive for. And I do know that for someone who sought to bring us characters who had lived with so much truth, he deserves to be remembered through time as a genius actor.
As someone Heath’s age I am more than saddened at missing out on what else Heath would have taught me. While I am angry that I will now live a life without him in it, I come away reflecting on what he gave. Too much, too soon.
