FAVOURITE YOUTUBE JOURNEYS: THE ARTISTS IN THEIR STUDIO

THE first time I can ever recall looking at YOUTUBE.COM was when I came across a link on a Van Morrison website for his frenetic song ‘Mystic Eyes’ – an enigmatic performance taken inside some zoo grounds with ‘Cuby and the Blizzards as backing, a guitarist running around and around a tree. I loved the clip- still do- and it set me off for hundreds, if not thousands, of YOUTUBE journeys.

VAN: MYSTIC EYES

Some of the clips I have watched the most are live clips from favourite performers, like Elvis singing Unchained Melody, and Joni singing Amelia, Melanie with Ruby Tuesday, The Moody Blues dubbed somewhere in Paris in a concert called The Lost Performances 1970, even America on German television with I Need You, and an exhilarating performance by Stevie Nicks of Rhiannon on Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special.

 

Then there are these clips, special for that extra bit that they can add. They consist of footage of the singer or the band performing live in the studio in preparation for the album. Each of them offers fascinating insight into the craft of recording, and what it tells about each performer.

 

This first one is of Simon and Garfunkel in 1969 in a rehearsal of the majestic Bridge Over Troubled Water, from a documentary called Songs of America 1969. From the same film is footage of their special live performance of the beautiful For Emily Whenever I May Find Her.

 

Art sings Bridge Over Troubled Water dutifully whilst Paul wanders around the studio looking at various stages tired or grumpy. When his ‘mic’ doesn’t come into play immediately for the shared ‘Sail on silver girl…’ he barks orders consisting of ‘where’s my mic!’ Towards the end of the song he wanders behind Art and dances and does his own orchestral moves, clearly enjoying the tune. I love watching it, not just for the lovely, lovely music, but also because I fancy that I can read Paul Simon’s ecstatic sense of ‘wow, what a great song I have written’, on his face, and I find that intriguing; and also because his grumpiness reminds me of the story, apocryphal or not, that he was always jealous that his partner got to sing the majority of the track, and received most of the plaudits as a result. The performance is raw and it makes me think that the song is young and fresh, like newly grown flowers, and that is exciting.

 

SIMON & GARFUNKEL: BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER

 

I grew up pretty much obsessed with The Doors. I had great fun wearing my Jim Morrison t-shirt in the Year 12 school photo. I wore a Morrison badge everywhere I went. Not many people my age back then seemed to know them. This was the period before the great Doors renaissance that occurred around 1980-81. It was rumoured that John Travolta was going to play Jim in a film (it ended up being Val Kilmer). Slowly, slowly some of my friends caught on to how good they were, and then we started collecting bootlegs. Wild Child is a good song, but I don’t think it’s one of their very best. This clip is unique, though, in that it captures the band and their producers in the studio rehearsing, and possibly even laying down, the definitive take. Jim looks stoned, Robby appears to be quiet and going with the flow, John is practising his drumming, and Ray is trying desperately to get some control happening. It’s just as I would have pictured it. Jim is clearly having a great time, much to Paul Rothchild’s chagrin. ‘Don’t overblow it, Jim, we’ve got a long way to go…’ One imagines he might have said these words plenty of times. After some false starts, the song begins, sounding just like it appears on the record, and a transformation takes place. Like a true professional. Jim suddenly becomes serious- concentrating but posturing, eyes closed, doing his best to pay due credit to his great lyrics and whatever the others have done to his words. He looks and sounds wonderful, enough to make Michael Hutchence cry.

 

This revealing clip intrigues me for another reason. It shows rehearsals for the album The Soft Parade. If you look at the footage of Jim singing other songs from the album- Touch Me and Tell All The People- outside of the studio-he is fully bearded and looks much older. Did his looks alter that much, so quickly? It all may be partly explained by the fact that the album took a total of nine months to record, beginning in June 1968. By all accounts a lot of this was due to Jim’s alcoholism and general apathy. There is a hint of this in this clip. My guess what we see is very much a truncated account.

 

 

THE DOORS: WILD CHILD

 

 

The Rolling Stones have always been a strange fit for me. A band I admire, for their music, enigma, charisma, the same reasons I like The Doors, as a matter of fact- but there is some sort of hole, or chasm in my appreciation, and I have never really been able to work out why. It might because I don’t know their music well enough- just their ‘popular’ songs, mainly. And they don’t work for me in a lot of cases all that well. I am thinking about ‘You Don’t Always Get…’; ‘I Know It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll; ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’; ‘Get Off My Cloud’, etc, etc- all ok tunes but not ones I would deliberately listen to. Then there are the ‘classics’, like ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and ‘Brown Sugar’, great songs but for my brain the appreciation wears off- in other words I tire of them- I would say this is the same for ‘Wild Horses’ as well- I will it to be a GREAT song, a masterpiece, but it doesn’t quite seem to me to get there- unlike, say, my favourite Stones songs like ‘Gimme Shelter’ or ‘’Street Fighting Man’ which I CAN listen to every week of the year.

Nevertheless, I do really enjoy this clip of ‘Wild Horses’- it really is something to watch a tired looking, really hard working band laying back to hear the fruits of their success and hard work, knowing that they do have a lovely song, and listening carefully to it to make sure it is exactly what they want. It reminds me a little of the story about Justin Hayward who apparently cried when he heard ‘Nights in White Satin’ played back for the first time- this one not quite as euphoric! Mick: pensive, thoughtful, ultimately content;  Charlie: nearly asleep???;  Keith: having the time of his life. Each member of the band probably listening to their own personal contribution to the song- the vocals, guitars, drums.

 

THE ROLLING STONES: WILD HORSES

This is Nick Cave in the studio during the making of ‘No More Shall We Part’, in Abbey Road Studios, around 2001. My favourite album of his- I played it to death in the car on the way home and on the way to one of the toughest jobs I’ve ever had, in a place called Mansfield, Nottingham, UK. This is probably the most polished of all the studio recordings, a kind of documentary feel, like it was always going to be released. There are other songs that feature on this DVD as well.

Nick Cave looks very serious, very professional, wanting to do a great, sombre serious justice, with the rest of the band fully committed as well. The false starts are magical, as is the intensity of emotions, the removal from the loose, anarchic days of ‘Nick The Stripper’, the live playing of music in separate rooms, the mixing, everyone’s contorted faces, and the fantastic blast of aggression at the end with Cave standing up and throwing everything behind it- ’98 out of 100? Well we better do another one then!”

 

NICK CAVE: MY SORROWFUL WIFE

 

 

An Homage to Katherine Mansfield 1888-1923 No. 2

The Tiredness of Milly

When the Smartbus arrived at the Madden Street junction at the exact time she hoped it would, Milly dragged her tired limbs onto the first step and used the small handrail to clamber onto the path of the bus proper. In her right hand was her vinyl briefcase and in her head were memories of last night and the dull repetition of the previous nights before- and, oh, for as long as she could remember. There had been, for some time now, the ‘infotainment’ shows like ‘My Kitchen Rules’, and ‘Masterchef’, both as bad as each other and now the news itself had become dreary, and there was those ghastly American courtroom and law and order shows on every other channel… Milly looked around at all the flashy advertising on the walls of the bus, and the driver’s door, and even above her on the roof if you ever craned your neck that high. Notices about fare evasion abounded-  she always hated the way young people- students mostly, refused to pay their way- and there was a droll notice about changes that were about to be made at the Northland interchange… and when it came right down to it there weren’t too many advertisements, they all seemed to be from the transport commission, about giving up your seat to pregnant women, and the consequences of placing your feet on the seat, and a number to ring if, as a passenger, you see anything suspicious. The explanation of what might entail ‘suspicious’ was not made clear.

Then Milly glanced around at the other people on the bus. Everybody had the same expression, sitting so still, looking directly in front of them. She counted twelve people all together, excluding the bus driver, and all but two besides herself were engaged in the use of a mobile phone in some way, whether it be employing some kind of application, texting someone or merely scrolling a screen stupidly and automatically.

The bright lights of Bell Street threw a hazy glow onto the windows of the bus. Milly noticed with relief that Balmoral Avenue appeared through the windscreen gloom. It was sudden but as luck would have it somebody else wanted Milly’s stop and had planned its arrival better. The rear doors yawned open and Milly spilled onto the street, crossed the road with the 7-Eleven on the corner, and walked solemnly around the corner into the path of her apartment.

Her own room at last! She closed the door, put the kettle and the radio on, unfastened her shoes and stepped out of her dress. She found a half- finished bottle of wine in a cupboard and some crackers besides the fridge. Milly found herself staring at the plum-coloured carpet at her feet, as she eased herself slowly into a chair. Whenever she stared like that she asked herself if she was happy. She often had these interior conversations. She hated sitting completely still, in case depressing thoughts came into her head. Besides the useless chatter coming from the radio, everything else was completely still. How she longed for a knock at the door or the phone to ring. This feeling of melancholy stillness lasted long enough for Milly to finish her wine. She began to think about everything that had happened that day.

 

Milly taught her Year 7 class first thing in the morning. As she emerged from the room, feeling good about things because her fears of an unruly class were not even close to being realised, Harry Taylor walked toward her from the opposite direction. He must have seen her smile because he wanted to chat now it was recess. ‘It’s funny’, thought Milly, ‘how everyone wants to speak to you when you have a smile on your face, but hide or look away when they see you glower.’

 

Harry Taylor was always strict with his kids. Milly was glad her students had not interrupted his, two doors away. She saw right away that he was feeling good about something too, a rich beam spread across his encouraging face. Milly accepted his invitation to stop, somewhat apprehensively, because it hadn’t happened before.

 

‘Hi Milly, something’s made you happy. You know, I have never been able to reconcile the thought of you being a teacher, even for the whole two or three years you’ve been here. None of the teacher’s at my school when I was a kid looked like you. There is nothing remotely teacher-like about you!’

 

Milly felt her face redden, and couldn’t help asking, ‘ so what is a teacher supposed to look like then?’

 

Harry’s face flickered and his eyes glanced over Milly’s shoulder, and he replied ‘oh, I think you know exactly what I am talking about.’

 

She had thought of nothing else all day; she shivered in her sudden realisation that Harry’s face fascinated her; she could see clearly the soft lines around his cheeks and the small, charming grey stubble on his chin; his grey eyes that were soft and endearing; his teeth that were surprisingly small and even and still naturally white despite what Milly knew to be his mature age.

 

Suppose Milly invited Harry Taylor back home, to Balmoral Avenue. She would have to get rid of quite a lot of clutter. She would be embarrassed by her bedspread and her old, faded yellow towels. The ugly gnome by the front door would have to go as well as her sentimental collection of snow domes from all over the world that had been on her dining room shelves forever, depicting places Milly had never been to, and in some cases, had never heard of.

‘Come in, Harry’, she would giggle, and offer him a glass of her favourite McLaren Vale wine. She would ask him to take off his shoes, and take him on a tour of the apartment and show him the lounge and the two bedrooms. She would sit next to him on the couch and finger her glass romantically and smile flirtingly and offer him some Chocolate Royals.

A glint of moonlight shone through the bay windows. Sitting at opposite ends of the couch now, Harry and Milly’s shoeless feet touched meaningfully. Milly felt light-headed and filled to the brim with happiness. Harry’s pleasant faced creased into an involuntary smile. Now there were two small crystal glasses filled with a strong dark liquorice liqueur. Milly’s favourite Beethoven Cello Sonata floated through the air. Milly’s shoulders twitched. She looked at Harry’s heavy, commanding hands and asked him if he would massage her neck and shoulders. Harry leant forward into Milly’s aromatic space…

The real Milly crept away from the couch and undressed slowly. The stress of the teaching day meant she could smell a faint odour of sweat. She struggled with her underclothes and accidentally ripped a gaping hole in her left stocking. Feeling drunk and ill at the same time, Milly had difficulty finding her balance and settled for an ungainly squat in an ugly attempt at the Lotus position. Her mind became filled with the messy minutiae of the day that lay ahead, seemingly only hours away now. She threw her arm out to grasp something that wasn’t there. A cry reverberated around her apartment’s walls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Creative Exercise as an Homage to Katherine Mansfield 1888-1923

1. The Coin

 

WHEN Milly emerged from the hot afternoon sun and crept indoors holding a greasy old chain, her father sighed and her mother trembled with fury.

‘You really must do something about her!’, she exclaimed, ‘and stop treating her like a baby.’

‘What is it you propose I do?’ asked Milly’s father a little glumly, resentfully.

‘Well, she has to learn. She is doing these things to bait us. God knows if it will ever end if you don’t jump on her now. Amelia, when are you going to stop trying to upset your parents?’ asked her mother forcefully, aggressively.

Milly’s features quickly became troubled. Her bottom lip protruded and she felt bereft, as though a tiny pearl which once lay in her soft palm now decided to suddenly shatter. She didn’t speak for fear the old stammer would return. She wandered over to her father in small, resentful baby steps, and attempted to bury her soft face in his big chest. At that moment he stole a glance at his wife and she signalled back a tortured expression- a look that said ‘there you go again- babying her…’

A swift change of mood crept over the face of Milly’s father as he tried to betray his own moral sense and began lecturing his daughter in order to appease her mother. The awkwardness he felt meant that he unwittingly overstepped the mark.

‘You heard your mother. That greasy old chain is the final straw! Get your act together or we will put you in your room until night time. You are a silly, childish petulant little girl!’

Milly, abandoned, felt her face crumple and hot tears dripped down in anger and shame. As she rushed out of the room, blinded, her father began making tentative steps towards his daughter. He faltered when his wife’s frown came into focus, but charged ahead, determinedly, to rescue his forlorn little princess. When he reached his daughter he shoved a dollar coin into her trembling hand, and she accepted it with grateful sobs.

 

 

 

 

Looking for Joni

 

 

IT was in the stillness of the car, driving along Bell Street, where something happened to cause me to take a sharp, inward breath. A was rustling in one of the back seats and I had the radio playing. The afternoon news. Half listening. Drifting slightly, but still concentrating. The speaker on the radio mentioning something about Joni Mitchell. Joni is never mentioned on the news. It suddenly hit me that she might be dead. Then it registered. No, not dead, but ill, in hospital, some sort of a collapse, like fainting perhaps. It sounded ominous in its own way- it was big enough news to make it on Melbourne radio, after all- but at least it wasn’t fatal.

I spoke to A in the back seat. A, although she is only six years old, has her own special connection to Joni. She listened in her own vague semi-conscious six year old way. She understood I was feeling stressed and concerned and wanting to tell other people, adults, right away. “Oh my God, I thought he was going to say she is dead.”

Naturally, after this, in fact for the next few weeks leading up to today, April 22, I have been, in a sense, contemplating life after Joni. The quietness about what has happened is extraordinary. No-one is saying anything. Joni has been in hospital at least three weeks and no-one knows anything. Every day I look at newspaper reports across the globe. These are either infrequent or are saying the same thing. Privacy is a wonderful thing, and in a way it is extraordinarily good that the whole world is dumb about this. But on the other side of the coin, for me, it is troubling. I would just like to know. I would like to be there, or at least send a message. Is Joni dying? Or is she really recovering ok as www.jonimitchell.com would have you believe.

Joni feels like some kind of relative. I have thought of her every day during this ordeal. The self-portrait of her wearing her heart on her sleeve on the cover of her orchestral album (Both Sides Now) is on my screensaver. Her songs are in my head. I fancy that I know her or have met her…

The closest I ever came, and ever will come, to meeting Joni Mitchell was when I was in London in 2002. I heard somewhere that she was leasing George Martin’s AIR studio in Hampstead for this aforementioned record. i soon discovered that I was two weeks too late. The man in charge saw that I was dejected by this news, so he took me to the vocal booth where she had sung so many of her songs just days earlier. “See”, he said, laughing, “you can still smell the smoke from her cigarettes!” I then met one of the mixing men, who explained that the songs were still in the stage of being finished. He played me the orchestral beginning of one song, but I couldn’t make it out. “I must be tone deaf”, I said. It turned out to be ‘The Circle Game’ which should be fairly recognisable.

So I play her songs like I have, often, since about 1978. Discovering new little things along the way, reading the book by Katherine Monk called ‘Joni’, which was ok but a bit disjointed and a bit gossipy, hearing the song ‘Man From Mars’ in a new way, knowing now that it is was written about her missing cat, Nietzsche, who appears on the ‘Taming the Tiger’ cover, and generally waiting and waiting, and hoping for good news, and wondering about the silence, reading about Morgellon’s disease, thinking that ‘there’s comfort in melancholy, when it’s so hard to explain.’

 

FINAL HOURS- A MEDITATION ABOUT THE SEA

 

I saw a photo recently that captured my attention. An elderly woman lies on a bed in an art gallery- as it happens it is the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She is mostly obscured, but the viewer can see the tell-tale wires and medical supporting paraphernalia attached to the bed. The sheets and pillow are of that creepy blue hospital colour. She is flanked by medical people and a woman who looks a bit like a gallery guard or curator. Their backs are to the camera and they are looking intently at a famous Rembrandt self-portrait. There are floorboards on the ground and the painting sits on a barren slate-grey wall. The woman’s bed is organised in the way hospital beds can manage it, with the back half of the bed raised so the woman can receive a good view of the picture.

The article tells us that the woman is visiting the exhibition as part of a final wish that has been granted to her. A Dutch charity has been helping people realise their final wish before they die. In the case of the woman in the picture, she has terminal cancer.

It got me thinking about final wishes. I think the idea of seeing great pictures for the last time is a great idea, or would be for me. I would choose a final visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, or the Munch gallery in Oslo, or perhaps the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

Maybe for me it wouldn’t be about pictures at all. It might be to meet a famous person I admire, if they would allow it. Drinking tea in Joni’s kitchen in Bel Air Los Angeles, or beer with Van Morrison in a pub in Orangefield. Visiting a place I have always wanted to see. Where Lawrence lived in Taormina, Sicily. Perusing the Sylvia Plath manuscripts at the Lilly Library in Indiana. Closer to home, Katherine Mansfield’s treasures at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand.

I went away this last weekend with the family. It was to a YMCA camp at Anglesea. I thought about the picture when I went for a run. I ran down to the main back beach at Anglesea, just at the back of the big car park there. I was almost alone. The weather was cool but invigorating. Not swimming weather, but great running weather. There were two forlorn life-saving flags at one end of the beach, mostly uninhabited. Some people wandered along the coastline taking photos with their dog. A few people were scattered in the water wearing wet suits. I ran along a stretch of soft white sand at the east side of the beach. The landscape curved around there a bit like the mouth of a bay does. The tide was coming in, fast. I had to jump the incoming water after the waves crashed. I watched the water unfurl as it landed on the flat, like a flower slowly turning. The sky was grey and slightly moody, and it was reflected in its coldness by the surface colour of the sea. I thought briefly of the famous picture of ‘A Monk By The Sea’ by Caspar David Friedrich, and then that photo with the Rembrandt painting again. Standing there, breathing heavily and filled with sweat, I was also thinking about the Van Morrison song ‘Coney Island’, and how it ends with ‘Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?’  Here is one of the great views of our time, as good as anywhere in the world, and it is only about two hours from my home. I stood marvelling at that encroaching water, that cool blue-grey sky, and the surf endlessly unfolding, the pale yellow sand, the colours and music of the sea, and felt so much in awe and so incredibly free.

 

  

BOARDING SCHOOL NIGHTMARE

 

Melbourne author and editor, Rebecca Starford, has published her first book, based mostly on her memories of the year she was a fourteen year old boarder at an elite private girls’ school. She calls the country school Silver Creek, and the account is a horrendous one but very compelling. Someone said it is a bit like a female Lord of the Flies, albeit with mostly hapless teachers roaming around instead of a total absence of adults, and I can see the comparison. Rebecca comes across as no saint- nor either Simon or Ralph-like, but there are rivals to Jack and Roger. Miraculously, in Starford’s memoir, no-one gets killed.

Besides detailing  the most vivid memories of being a boarder in Red House with 14 other girls, Starford’s account is also mixed with other autobiographical side narratives to do with rites of passage and ‘coming out ’, life on holidays with her largely non-supportive family, and more recent years of navigating her way through female friendships and relationships.

The most interesting, and compelling aspects of the account, however, are the chapters about Silver Creek. The reader feels like a guilty voyeur- well,  that’s a bit like how I felt, anyway- eagerly turning page after page to see what other forms of cruelty can be applied to fellow human beings. Portia and her cronies are the main culprits. Starford offers a good account of what the main bullies are like. I imagine them going to their local bookshop and reading about themselves in thinly veiled pseudonyms, saying to no-one in particular ‘did I really do that? was I really that bad?’  To her credit, Starford hardly comes out of it all a saint herself, often complicit in the aggressive and cruel behaviour that is going down, seemingly lacking the confidence not to take part, being coerced, bullied or even being a willing participant in every effort to try and fit in. There is a touch of the smell of blood about it all- that once something weird is going on, it’s hard to detach yourself and be a passive observer.

 A girl called Kendall bears the brunt of most of it. She is a fairly shadowy figure whom Starford barely gets to know. It’s a fairly flattering portrait of someone who is stoic, tough and unbroken, despite the myriad abuse that is piled on top of her. The aforementioned Portia comes out of it very badly. The intensity of her bullying is shocking. Like any hardened, despotic leader, she has her cronies who act cruelly in unison or at her prompting, cowards all of them- Briohny, Alexis, Sarah, and a fascinating girl called Ronnie who somehow seems to fade out of the narrative. Starford herself seems to get her moral compass back again towards the end, but there is still this ongoing hint of rebellion, anti-social behaviour which frustrates her teachers who recognise real potential in her, more so than perhaps all the others. It’s very much a feeling that the whole crazy year has scarred the way she sees herself and therefore the way she acts, from her frustrations at being in such a wild and unforgiving jungle environment, to only ever rarely receiving letters from her parents and the difficulty she has in making friends.

So what do these awful girls do? There are some disturbing physical acts of violence or threat, some of it sort of psycho-sexual in nature. It is, as Starford describes, ‘a giant, human turd’ that ends up in Kendall’s suitcase. Portia didn’t do this, she merely dared Sarah, which somehow makes Portia think she is absolved from the whole thing- ‘Sarah did a shit in the suitcase, not me. It was a joke, a dare. I never thought she’d actually do it.’ Some of the more innocent sounding pranks might appear in any number of boarding school memoirs- running around dorms late at night naked, stealing alcohol from a hall, horrible nicknames, peer pressure to break rules, telling girls where they can and cannot sit… and then there’s events like this one, perpetrated against Rebecca- ‘They hoist me up by my underwear, lifting me clean off the ground. The pain is awful, burning between my legs. I start thrashing, arms and legs flying about, and I manage to kick Portia in the shin. They drop me.’ Later that night Rebecca feels ‘icy fingers at the band of my pyjamas’ as she climbs into bed’, the seriously disturbed culprit being Portia. In some ways the act of violence perpetrated against a teacher’s young daughter is the most shocking when she is padlocked inside a tiny crate…

 

The tile ‘Bad Behaviour’ obviously applies to Rebecca, Portia, Sarah and in fact the large majority of girls. It could also apply to how Starford’s parents feel about her emerging sexuality, the way she keeps being transported to the hell hole at the end of each holiday at home, a couple of the teachers whose attitudes and performance leaves question marks, but ultimately the school or governing body itself, that allows an institution like this to exist, where so many girls can become drunk with their own power and unashamedly inflict harm on other people. Silver Creek is the sort of place that should have been shut down at the start- or at least, its enrolments better screened to ensure that maniacs with personalities like Portia never get near the front door. Starford leaves the reader wondering about what sort of permanent psychological stain the whole experience may have left on her. And as for what Kendall is like now, God only knows.

There are a number of changes in narrative throughout the memoir- the action at Silver Creek, Rebecca at home with her family and on holidays, Rebecca in more recent times dealing with her sexuality, going back to Silver Creek after the events, filled with trepidation… the list goes on. The shifts are welcome to add variety to the telling of events, but they are sometimes incorporated awkwardly. When the boarding school experience is all over, you feel an immense sense of relief for a number of ‘characters’, as you do at the end of ‘Lord of the Flies.’ But the memoir continues with a kind of post-Silver Creek narrative which to me doesn’t really seem necessary. After everything that’s come before it, Starford’s latter experiences, including breakups with girls, trying to make friends, problems in share accommodation, struggling to connect with parents, and navigating the adult world, all of it seems sort of normal and underwhelming, like  it should have stayed in her personal diary. It’s the first two thirds of the book I will remember more, even the positive glimpses into camp life and rural settings, and her love of nature that inform us that boarding school could actually be a worthwhile thing:

‘What an exquisitely beautiful place we live in. I sit back, suddenly teary, overwhelmed by this mountain and this dishevelled land. I never expected this- this love. I take a deep breath, the crisp, clean air filling my lungs, and it feels like I’m also washing away all the grit and sweat and dust.’

 

 

Meaning amidst chaos- a Myron Bolitar novel

 

DARKEST FEAR, by Harlan Coben (2000)

I HAD the good fortune to win a book prize recently at the local library. When you win books you don’t usually get the chance to choose which books you’d like to have. These were paperbacks and most of them didn’t look interesting at all.

The chunkiest was a book that featured a city street scene on the cover. Cars travelling along a busy highway driving into a rich, golden sunset on the horizon and at the top of the book. In big letters ‘Harlan COBEN’, and near the tabloid title- ‘DARKEST FEAR’, the words ‘A Myron Bolitar Mystery’ underneath.

There’s at least two schools of thought. One says it’s not worth reading fiction like this- it takes up too much precious time and alternatively you could be reading something important or life changing- like a ‘Catcher in the Rye’, this kind of book, which is more or less what a friend said as we walked through the gates at work one morning last week. For some, this would be a snobby, or bourgeoisie response.

The other school of thought says, ‘no, give it a go- it’s good to read something different- you might find it’s more interesting and better written than you thought. You might even find that you are more involved in this, than you are with books like ‘Catcher in the Rye’, or ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, or whatever it might be. This seems to be a more daring and fresher and more exiting approach to reading.

Well I finished it the other day, realising pretty quickly that Harlan Coben is a popular crime author in America who sells a lot of books. The Guardian called his last one a ‘thriller to stir the heart.’ So I knew what I was in for and happy to take the plunge. Then I discovered that ‘Myron Bolitar’ is a well-known protagonist that has featured in other Coben books. It didn’t seem to matter, but this book is a sort of sequel as it charts the life of this wacky and inventive sports agent.

In this particular book, Myron finds out he is the father of a young man from a previous relationship several years ago. What’s more, the young man is dying and desperate for a bone marrow transplant. The former girlfriend has asked Myron and his eccentric team to track down a missing donor, which proves to be much more difficult than it may sound. His party use all their wile and ingenuity to track this person down, and along the way get caught up in a kidnapping spree, dealings with the FBI and dangerous criminals and an unhinged wealthy family.

I enjoyed the story, implausible as it is, for the most part. It rarely takes itself too seriously and there is a lot of laid back humour and interesting cultural references, as well as verbal sparring that is witty and inventive. In fact, Coben does dialogue very well, and he probably knows that because there is a lot of it. The plot itself is engaging and the action is fairly frenetic.

There lies the rub. I got sick of it. How frustrating it is to kind of enjoy a book for the first 200 pages or so, but become a bit sick of it, so the last 60 pages or so drag so you find yourself skipping bits and in the end you don’t really care what happens- not to Myron or his loony associates, not even the young sick boy called Jeremy Downing. Feeling lukewarm about all the characters does not help much. And the plot became a bit stupid and convoluted, with its snaky twists and turns everywhere, which might be a hallmark of modern crime fiction but is not for me (I have just realised how much I enjoyed the more subtle Agatha Christie as I grew up).

Only really two bits grabbed me forcefully enough so I might remember them. For a good novel- and Alex Miller’s ‘Coal Creek’ is the last good novel I read- there might be 20 or 30 bits.

Two thirds into the story Myron visits his ageing father: ‘His father put his head back down, the gray wisps upright in the humidity, his breathing tool-work heavy, and Myron again felt something open up his chest and grab hold of his heart. He looked at this man he’d loved for so long, who’d gone without complaint to that damn muggy warehouse in Newark for more than thirty years, and Myron realised that he didn’t know him. He didn’t know what his father dreamed about, what he wanted to be when he was a kid, what he thought about his own life.’

This is the kind of stuff worth reading and remembering. Not the FBI car chase, the race against time, the avoidance of the bullets.

A bit later Myron says goodbye: ‘When he hugged his father goodbye, Myron again noticed that his father felt smaller, less substantial. Myron held on a little longer than usual. For the first time he felt like the bigger man, the stronger man, and he suddenly remembered what Dad had said about reversing roles. So he held on in the dark. Time passed. Dad patted his back. Myron kept his eyes closed and held on tighter. Dad stroked his hair and shushed him. Just for a little while. Just until the roles reversed themselves again, returning both of them to where they belonged.’

Wow. Talk about a little too close to the heart. It’s funny how good fiction can hit a nerve somewhere. So you can see Harlan Coben can write. It’s just that the thriller/ mystery/ clever twists part of submerges a lot of the poignant stuff.

The end is also interesting and pretty sad. Myron has been to such great lengths to rescue his boy from certain murder, including putting his own life in the firing line on many occasions, just because he feels this fatherly pang, even though he didn’t even know his own son. Myron absolutely wants to be a big part of this boy’s life and make up for years of something far worse than estrangement. He digs away, only to receive this reaction:

‘You’re not my dad,’ he said simply. ‘I mean, you might be my father. But you’re not my dad. You know what I mean?’

Myron managed a nod.

‘But’- Jeremy stopped, looked up, shrugged the shrug of a thirteen-year-old- ‘but maybe you can still be around.’

Coben captures the difference in depth of feeling beautifully. You could say that he has the potential to be a remarkable writer.