Todd Snider at the Borderline

My son and I share genuine fandom for Todd Snider, the self-described “stoner folk singer” from Nashville via Oregon who sings songs about the politically weak and the permanently frazzled which are funny, beautifully written and always very, very clever. And last night we finally got to see him, in the flesh, at the Borderline in London.

He didn’t disappoint, but then he never does. He performed a few new songs – one about a man helping a younger man who is running from the police, another about how perplexingly angry all the kids seem to be today – and seemed genuinely to be enjoying himself. The crowd was a mixed bunch, the highlight being a mother and her daughter who were right down at the front, the daughter closing her eyes and mouthing all the words to the best known hits, the mother shouting out “Doublewide Blues” when Todd asked us what we wanted to hear. And Doublewide Blues just happens to be Todd Snider’s best song, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Thanks for coming to London, Todd. Come back soon.

Two guitars and a harmonica - it's all a guy needs

We made a solemn vow not to take any job outside of show business.  We borrowed money from parents and friends, rather than take that lethal job waiting tables.  This forced us to take any job offered to us.  Anything.  We once did a show in the middle of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia as part of a fashion show on a hot July night while all around our stage, a race-riot was fully underway.  That’s how serious we were about our vow.

via Brian Brushwood – Bizarre Magic: America’s #1 College Magic Show – News – 14 years ago: the day Teller gave me the secret to my career in magic..

As a successful journalist, what attracted you to fiction writing? Have you experimented with fiction over the years?

Well, I don’t know about “successful” journalist! I’d be happy with “competent.” Yes, I’ve always written fiction, and I did complete a novel ten years ago, called Woman’s Work. It was OK, and an agent did show some interest, but they wanted me to work on extensive rewrites. At the time I had a new job and a young family, and I just couldn’t spare the time. I thought that meant I didn’t want to write enough, but the itch kept itching. I stopped writing fiction for more than five years, and then got back in the saddle for The English Monster.

Was your experience as a journalist experience a help or a hindrance during the transition to fiction? For instance, one journalist might find it hard to adapt to the longer length novel form whereas another might find that the experience of writing concisely and to the point an advantage in turning to fiction. Or perhaps other aspects helped or hindered?

The thing that journalism gives you is the sense that writing is a craft; something to be worked at and practised and developed. Something like a job. When you make your living hammering words into coherence – either your own words or someone else’s – you soon develop a toolkit for writing which is always there, even on the days when there’s no inspiration coming at all and you’re staring at an empty screen with nothing to say and no way of saying it. On a days like that, you just have to fall back on the toolkit you’ve developed: concision, grammar, sentence structure, flow. You keep at it, and eventually good things happen. Or, as my daughter would say: shut up and get on with it, Dad.

The English Monster has a fascinating structure of different ages and eras. Did you plan that from the beginning or did it emerge as the plot of the novel evolved?

Thank you! It emerged from the concept, really; that these murders were in some strange way an end-note to three hundred years of British history. Once I had the idea of England’s first slaving voyage being a key component – well, I had to find a way of filling in the intervening three centuries! The problem then was choosing which eras to write about and which to ignore; I didn’t want to end up writing a History of England with some Regency murders at the end of it. So I focused on personalities rather than eras – I found the historical characters who would come to life for me, and went with them.

What was the initial starting point for the novel that spurred you into action: the Ratcliffe Murders, the location of Wapping, or the protagonist, the Monster?

The murders, definitely. I first read about them over a decade ago, in Alan Moore’s Jack the Ripper story From Hell. They really got under my skin: their motiveless viciousness seemed very modern, very nihilistic. Then I read Thomas de Quincey who wrote about them in his essay On Murder, which pretty much set the template for the modern detective story. So in some ways the Ratcliffe Highway murders are the quintessential murder mystery. They’re the source for everything that came afterwards.

 Have you lived in Wapping or nearby? The cover of your novel quotes a local saying ‘God has left Wapping’ – but modern Wapping is far different from the Wapping of 1811. Can the atmosphere still be felt?

No, I’ve never lived there. But I’ve always been fascinated by how oddly cut off it seems from the rest of London; this strange little bow of land stuck between the City, Canary Wharf and the river. It definitely has a feeling about it, a sense of purposeful neglect but also of history just below the surface. And yes, you can always pick up the atmosphere on a cold night when the tide is high in the river and there’s no-one about but you and the seagulls. Stand in the passageway by the Town of Ramsgate pub and imagine steps following you down to the river stairs….

Your representatives of the law, the River Police Constable and the Magistrate, are operating before the age when the word detective comes into use. Was this part of the interest of this particular story for you, as politics and inefficient investigation played a large part in the Ratcliffe Murders’ story.

Yes, very much so. It’s fascinating to see how this investigation was effectively impossible given the policing mechanisms of the time. The mess the authorities got themselves into led to a Select Committee on London policing, and eventually (two decades down the line) to the formation of the Metropolitan Police. It is amazing how important these killings are to our modern understanding of murder: de Quincey put them at the heart of the “narrative of murder” which gave us the traditional murder mystery, and the government used them as the starting point for a wholesale reform of policing and, eventually, the introduction of “detectives.”

‘Folk memory’ of the murders lived on throughout the nineteenth century, which given that it happened in one of the areas of east London most notorious for murders has always puzzled me, horrific though the Ratcliffe Murders were. Which aspects of them do you think has caused them to be so remembered? I read that the Highway’s name was changed in the mid nineteenth century, forty years after the murders, in a vain bid to eradicate its notoriety.

Yes, the name was changed, first to St George’s Street, then to The Highway, as it is today. And yes, the folk memory was very long – but, when you think about it, not nearly as long as the folk memory of Jack the Ripper, who killed fewer people and whose story is still very much with us. But you must remember that these murders were sensationally famous across Britain at the time; Robert Southey and Thomas de Quincey, who were both in the Lake District at the time, reported how people were double-locking their doors out of the fear which the murders engendered. I think there is something peculiarly vicious, odd and inexplicable about them. I won’t spoil the plot (even though the story of the murders is widely available) – but I think these crimes, more than almost any I can think of, do not lend themselves to rational explanation. And that’s why they resonated for so very long.

Has your experience as a travel writer influenced and helped in this novel?

Well, I don’t have that much experience as a travel writer! Just a couple of articles. And in actual fact I didn’t travel to most of the far-flung places in the book. I had to imagine them, from contemporary writings and current descriptions. And, of course, photos – the availability of photos of these places from an army of tourists is a small miracle, and a boon to any writer’s imagination.

Did you find history your friend or your enemy as you plotted and researched the novel? Sometimes the facts dovetail beautifully with a plot, sometimes they don’t. How did you deal with either or both?

Excellent question! Yes, I did try to cleave as close as possible to real events: their timings, in particular. And that does box you in at times. But it also frees you to be creative in other ways; it’s what an old boss of mine used to call “Apollo 13 creativity”, the idea that if you put limits on people they tend to be more, not less, creative. So sticking to the timelines, both in 1811 and in the previous 300 years, meant I had to come up with believable stuff to account for those timelines. And after all, the dates are real – things did happen over those periods of time.

Once your readers have recovered their breath from reading this novel, they’ll want to know what comes next. This would seem to be a standalone novel, and if so you planning to write modern crime novels or more historical novels. Are there other monsters about to materialise?

Well, my second book is actually a sequel to this one, with the same investigators pursuing mysterious events related to a ship returning from Tahiti. Unlike in The English Monster, the story is entirely fictional, although many of the characters are real. Harriott and Horton will return as the central characters, and just like in The English Monster I’m trying to write historical fiction with a supernatural twist. All is not what it seems. I like to think of it as a Regency X-Files!

Thank you very much for agreeing to answer these questions and all good wishes for the novel and for the Monsters that follow.

Thank you!

Why you should “never” use quote marks for “emphasis”.

Very Suspicious Quotation Marks | Smosh.

Her biggest hit gave the stage to “I,” a first person that is so easily recognized that if you even mumble “and I” with some kind of melody, whoever’s standing there will assume it’s “I Will Always Love You.” Originally written and recorded by Dolly Parton, “I Will Always Love You” was momentarily ceded to Linda Ronstadt, but Houston owns it now. The song broke through a dozen different ceilings because of the first person chorus, but just start with the first forty-five seconds, which is Houston singing without any accompaniment. She states the first verse, moving carefully through her own filters, not even hinting at how bright the lights can get. The second verse casually drops in some heavier flashes and then the second chorus comes out as if Houston is no longer any kind of regretful—she is using her magnanimous nature to flatten whoever’s chosen someone over her.

via Culture Desk: Whitney Houston’s Invincible Voice : The New Yorker.

Personally, I’ll always remember her with this. God, she was beautiful.

Brockwell Park this morning. Hasn't come out very well, but the trees were WHITE

Anyway, Nick’s jumped into the whole “ebook v. print” debate which some people wish would go away, others are making a whole living out of, and the rest of us find fascinating and satisfyingly controversial.

His point, in an excellent posting on Futurebook, is that ebooks are fine, but only when they find their right slot inside our personal cultures:

After a few years of enjoying and thinking about electronic books, paper still has a very specific place in my world – in fact, it has regained some ground. The depthless grey of my Kindle screen and the gloss brightness of the iPad or iPhone are fine and good, but they are not the hearth and home experience. For that, I want paper, with its grain and flexibility. I want to be able to manipulate pages in three dimensions, riffle through them, flick back. I want to be an ape with an object for a while, relax into my physical universe while my mind generates the world of the book.

via … everything looks like a nail… | FutureBook.

For myself, I’ve yet to be able to read my Kindle at bedtime and here’s the thing: I don’t know why. It just doesn’t feel right. I read my Kindle in the living room, on the bus, at the kitchen table: anywhere where portability matters and time is moderately fleeting. But bedtime is different; bedtime is for quiet reflection, surprisingly sharp concentration, and for unplugging oneself before sleep. So there, I’ve maybe answered my own question: that’s why I prefer a proper book. And as of right now, it’s Nick’s, even though it’s a heavy bloody thing and I wake up with sore wrists and a sizzling head in equal measure….

If we believe the evidence of our eyes, we necessarily must look again at those economic growth figures. Preposterous though it may seem to an unacclimatized Western observer, it appears that Japanese officials have been deliberately understating the nations growth. But why would they do such a thing?  For those who know Japanese history, a clue lies in trade policy. The fact is that, constantly since the 1870s with the exception of a brief interlude in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Japans pre-eminent policy objective has been to keep ramping up exports. That policy came very close to derailment in the late 1980s as a groundswell of opposition built up in the West. By the early 1990s, however, the opposition had largely evaporated as news of the crash led Western policymakers to pity rather than fear the “humbled juggernaut.” It is a short jump from this to the conclusion that Japanese officials have decided to put a negative spin on much of the economic news ever since.

via The Myth of Japans Lost Decades – James Fallows – International – The Atlantic.

There’s so many good young people and old people, I can’t listen to it all. I end up listening to Muddy Waters and Mozart, Muddy Waters and Mozart. Hank Williams every so often, and Lightnin’ Hopkins. I mean, I listen quite a bit, but mostly I’m playing. Traveling and playing. And when I’m in a car, somebody gives you a tape, you listen to it. That’s one of the best places, but eventually it comes down to the hum of the wheels.

via LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | Muddy Waters and Mozart.

The sign in front reads “Price, Birch & Co., dealers in slaves”.

The Civil War, Part 1: The Places – In Focus – The Atlantic.