M J Johnson
  • Blog
  • Home
  • Books
    • Niedermayer & Hart >
      • Reviews for N & H
      • The Prologue
      • Sample the Book
      • Animations
    • Roadrage >
      • Reviews for Roadrage
      • Roadrage Sample
  • Contact Me

The Sky is Overcast

19/2/2015

0 Comments

 
PictureChallenging teenage behaviour in South Wales
I met someone yesterday who had formerly been a scene-painter in the world of theatre. I immediately expressed my great enthusiasm for the scene-painter’s craft. I imagine the scene-painter’s role has changed considerably over time, and I guess the real heyday of scene painting as an art must have been the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, before the advent of television, when music hall and repertory theatres were attended with a regularity that can only be dreamed of by people working in live theatre today.

My own first experience as a scene painter was as a teenager at my local youth club in Gorseinon, near Swansea, in Wales. The director of our pot-boiler play The Sky is Overcast, which had been entered in a one-act play competition amongst Glamorganshire Youth Clubs, was a lovely chap called Howell Edwards. He’d heard somehow that I was safe with a paintbrush and so I got drafted in to paint the fairly straightforward box set as well as playing a character in the play. The story was set in occupied France during World War II and concerned a dastardly German plot to parachute in a spy purporting to be an RAF officer but whose real aim was to infiltrate the French resistance. I remember doing the set painting very fast and extremely broadly using really bold brush strokes.

The part I played in The Sky is Overcast by playwright Anthony Booth (not to be confused with T Blair’s Father in law) was that of a very unpleasant SS Officer whose name I now forget. However, what I most certainly couldn’t have forgotten is the fact that when the costumes arrived in a wicker trunk from costumiers Bermans and Nathans in London, mine wasn’t among them! Yikes! There wasn’t enough time to get another costume sent, so Howell went to a fancy-dress shop in Swansea and picked up the kind of Nazi uniform some people might wear to a silly eighteenth birthday party! The aim of this costume was clearly to be funny rather than authentic. Take a look at the picture of me above at fifteen threatening my mother (Mam looks about as terrified as she’d be if mauled by a King Charles Spaniel named Cindy). I don’t know how he did it - hypnotism perhaps - Howell managed to convince me that nobody in the audience would probably even notice it wasn’t a proper uniform.

The night of the competition, which took place in the Little Theatre, Aberdare, arrived. I come originally from Aberdare so I was even fielding a few family members in the audience. I had a big powerful entrance set up with the characters on stage rushing about nervously announcing that my approach to the house was imminent. There came a loud rap on the door, centre stage. My friend Paul Davies, taking the main part in the play, went to the aforementioned door and drew it open, only to reveal me in my fancy-dress Hitler. It was an entrance designed to bring hush and awe, but when the people of Aberdare saw what I was wearing, there was just a huge, spontaneous guffaw of laughter. It was the theatrical equivalent of Benny Hill’s Ernie the Milkman making an impromptu guest appearance as the ghost in Hamlet.

Anyway, teenage chutzpah got us through on the night. And things worked out well in the end: we won the cup for best production, the main adjudicator gave me a special mention for a good performance despite a bad entrance she said was beyond my control, and perhaps most unexpectedly of all, we won the prize for the best set.

The Youth Club took us all out to a posh hotel in Llandeilo for a slap-up meal to celebrate. Happy days!


0 Comments

The First Four Ripley Books by Patricia Highsmith

12/2/2015

3 Comments

 
Picture
I’d always meant to read some Patricia Highsmith, and I let this be known last year in time for Christmas. I was prompted to do this after watching Ripley’s Game (2003) with John Malkovich and Dougray Scott on DVD - unfortunately, I missed it when it first came out! I’d also very much enjoyed the film version of The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) with Matt Damon and Jude Law.  A number of Highsmith’s novels have made the big screen, yet despite this, as her army of devoted fans will attest, she remains woefully overlooked. During her lifetime she was most certainly underrated in her native US, and her talent as a writer appears to have been more fully appreciated by Europeans - perhaps we are more naturally attracted by the existentialist themes of the psychological thrillers she gave us?

Patricia Highsmith was born in 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas and died in 1995 in Switzerland, aged seventy-four. She appears to have had a fairly unhappy early life (not always a bad ingredient for a writer it seems), disliked her adopted father, whose surname she kept, and had a lifelong love-hate relationship with her mother who pre-deceased her by only four years. She had relations with both men and women, however none of her relationships lasted very long it seems. Highsmith considered herself to be creatively at her best when she was alone, although she shared her home with animals, particularly cats, which she found preferable to people. Highsmith wrote about thirty books; she reprised the character of Tom Ripley through five novels, produced over an incredible thirty-six years.

In The Talented Mr Ripley (1956) we are introduced to Tom Ripley, a sexually ambiguous, slightly neurotic, insecure character, who has already been dabbling in fraudulent activities in New York by the time we first meet him and lives in some fear of getting caught by the authorities. He appears to know a number of shady characters in the city who he’s keen to disassociate himself from; homosexual relationships were of course very much illegal in the US and Europe at that time. At the start of the book, Ripley is approached by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf who erroneously believes that Tom Ripley knows his son Dickie far better than he actually does. Herbert Greenleaf tries to enlist Tom’s help to encourage his prodigal son to return home from Italy where he has taken up residence. Unbeknown to Herbert Greenleaf, it is without much coaxing and some relief that Tom Ripley abandons life in New York and sets sail for Europe. Once he reaches Italy, Ripley’s unvocalised but unmissable sexual attraction and infatuation with Dickie Greenleaf develops to monstrous proportions. He is especially jealous of Madge, Dickie’s girlfriend; he resents her presence and influence over Dickie, is disgusted by her femininity, and in his thoughts constantly berates her, finding her ‘gourd-like’ shape utterly loathsome. Ripley fantasises constantly and obsesses about being alone with Dickie, and when he realises this isn’t going to happen, he opts to kill Dickie and take on his identity (come on, it’s the natural solution to an unrequited love problem for any psychopath worth their salt!). There is of course a lot more story; Highsmith clearly had a wickedly dark sense of humour. To my mind The Talented Mr Ripley is a definite classic of that literary genre known as the psychological thriller. At her best Highsmith is without any doubt an accomplished novelist, and should be regarded as far more than just a writer of competent thrillers. Definitely recommended reading.

Ripley Under Ground (1971) is set in the village of Villeperce a short distance from Paris, where Tom Ripley, some three years on from his murderous and larcenous activities in Italy, enjoys a leisurely existence of rural bliss at Belle Ombre, the pleasant residence he shares with his beautiful, rich, French wife Heloise and their devoted housekeeper Madame Annette. Those deeply insecure character traits that made Tom Ripley such a fascinating character in The Talented Mr Ripley have almost completely been ironed-out and we are now presented with an urbane, nearly benign man who is fully in command of himself - no hint of sexual ambiguity about his personality at all, although he is prepared to commit murder for the sake of a peaceful life. I must admit, it all seemed like a bit too much of a credibility leap for me - as did the story of art forgery and physical impersonation, that Ripley, still dabbling in dodgy activities (thank goodness!) becomes embroiled in. I enjoyed reading the book for Highsmith’s robust prose, although I wasn’t really convinced by the caper or its denouement. This isn’t a bad book, however, it is flawed and not in the same league as its forerunner.

In Ripley’s Game (1974) we are once again transported back to the rural idyll of Belle Ombre, Ripley’s house in Villeperce, France. The game of the title refers to a rather nasty little rumour Ripley has spread about Jonathan Trevanny, who lives nearby and who Ripley feels has slighted him in some (unexplained) way. The story also involves another character from the previous book, Ripley Under Ground, Reeves Minot, who is a fence living in Hamburg who Ripley assists in various ways from time to time. In Ripley’s Game, Reeves Minot asks Ripley to suggest someone with a clean and untraceable CV who might be prepared to assassinate some members of the Mafia for a large sum of money. Ripley suggests that he approach Trevanny, who he knows is terminally ill, not believing for a moment that the man (who is in reality desperate to leave his wife and son with some financial legacy), will actually consider going along with it. Ripley becomes involved himself and by the end of the book there is a sizeable body-count. This is a well crafted, hugely enjoyable crime thriller, although not quite as fine a book as The Talented Mr Ripley. Very good.

The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980) was, I am very sorry to say, a bit of an ordeal. If it had been anyone other than Patricia Highsmith I think I would have stuck to my fifty pages rule and jumped ship! The story had potential but Highsmith just meanders and rambles on, giving us page after page of detail about the most inconsequential details of domestic life. There is also a strange sexual ambiguity about Ripley’s association with Frank, the boy of the title, which I found repetitious and annoying. Highsmith seems to find it amusing to place Ripley with Frank in gay bars, or having to share a three-quarters bed; Ripley actually dresses up in drag at one point. The only action in the book is confined to one short rather poorly set up section of the story; it’s never really explained why Ripley suddenly acts on impulse quite in the way he does. Here’s a (mercifully) brief example of some of the superfluous prose Highsmith subjects us to in this book:

Antoine and Heloise exchanged French kisses at the door, smacks on the cheek, one, two. Tom hated it. Not French kisses in the American sense, certainly nothing sexy about them, just damned silly.

I had planned on completing what is known to Highsmith fans as the Ripliad but this book has put me off the idea;  also the reviews on Goodreads for the final book Ripley Under Water would suggest it’s little better than its predecessor. So I think I’ll bail out on Ripley and concentrate on discovering Highsmith’s earlier more celebrated books.

Finally, a little bit of news about my own psychological thriller Roadrage. The Kindle countdown promotion which ran over last weekend was very satisfying. Roadrage actually made it into the Amazon UK top 100 psychological thrillers and was (if only briefly) alongside some illustrious names in crime fiction. Who knows, after a few more reviews and if the people who downloaded it this time recommend it to their chums - it might get back up into the charts and start climbing again!

Anyway, thank you to everyone who tweeted, liked, reviewed, bought or recommended it during the countdown. I have absolutely no budget for promotion so your help is always most gratefully received. Again, thanks.


3 Comments

Oh Boy, When Things Go Wrong! 

5/2/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
“Oh, boy ... When things go wrong!” as voiced with great feeling by Kenneth Mars as Franz Liebkind, the pro-Nazi playwright and composer of the bogus musical-comedy  Springtime for Hitler - billed as - a gay (traditional sense) romp with Eva and Adolf at Berchtesgaden-  in Mel Brooks’ marvellous film comedy creation The Producers. I have watched this film countless  times and am able to quote almost every line - for me, everything about it just improves with age. Kenneth Mars’ Franz, complete with German WWII helmet, is just a little too loveably insane to ever be truly terrifying. A Nazi-sympathising author would be a horror if encountered in real life, but this is the art of comedy: where madmen, liars, thieves and adulterous philanderers delight and entertain rather than enrage us. In the film, Liebkind, whose maniacal fantasy of ‘taking’ Broadway with his musical before going on to ‘conquer’ the world, comes out with this splendid line once his dearly-held dream has been thoroughly wrecked.  He places a revolver to his temple and pulls the trigger ... only to discover he is out of bullets - “Oh, boy ... when things go wrong!”

Actually, the reason I chose this title for the week’s blog is because my son and I spent a good hour and a half last night waiting for a breakdown man to arrive on the verge of a dual carriageway, in what felt like a wind spawned in the Siberian tundra. We were on our way to see an apparently excellent exponent of the blues, singer Kent DuChaine from Georgia at the Anchor pub in Sevenoaks. Tom, who is a much finer judge of great music than I am, and had already seen a Kent DuChaine gig, assured me I was in for a treat; we were eager and on time. I’d even brought along a copy of Roadrage (it’s set in Sevenoaks!) for Snakehips Sue, the dedicated organiser of the Blues with Bottle Club, who generally runs a raffle, to give away.  All was going so well, that is until the engine on Tom’s little run-around suddenly died. We were fortunate that he could safely navigate the car over onto the hard-shoulder before we stopped moving forward altogether. So, if you were on the A21 last night and happened to see a young man and an older one wrapped-up together in a blanket whilst standing by the side of the A21 - that was us!

Actually, up until the breakdown, things had been going very well indeed this week: a Niedermayer & Hart countdown deal finished on Monday and I was extremely satisfied by the response to it; also Roadrage received an accolade - well, sort of, well, something along those lines! You see, it got onto a list. Let me explain, there are a number of things that are incredibly difficult for an indie/self-pub - writer to achieve:

1  It’s really hard to get people to believe that your book isn’t littered with typos and grammatical errors, and that it was thoroughly edited by a team of highly literate people.

2  It’s really hard to get people to believe that any nice things reviewers have written about your books weren’t all manipulated through multiple accounts organised and run by your Mum! Conversely, any negative review, no matter how badly it’s been written or how rotten the reviewer’s grammar is, or whether his/her spelling sucks, must be the damn truth!

3  Promotion is really hard - the big publishers actually pay stores like Waterstones to give prime positions to their latest titles. David and Goliath isn’t in it - it's impossible to compete! I’ve often wondered how they get starry reviewers to say all kinds of lovely things about a pretty mundane book. Ever read the blurb on a book’s cover and thought ‘This must be a cracker’, but fifty pages in you wonder if they attached the wrong cover to the pile of doo-doo you have in your hand? (Okay, rant over! )

Anyway, back to accolades, ah yes! In the words of Hamlet’s father’s ghost, “List, list, oh list!” This week Roadrage, as voted for by people on Twitter and Facebook, made it onto a W H Smith list entitled Underrated Crime Books. So - Hurrah! I say, and grateful thanks to W H Smith and especially grateful thanks to the kind souls who voted for Roadrage.

Incidentally, the list couldn’t have been better timed, because I had arranged weeks ago for a Kindle countdown promotion to begin over the forthcoming weekend on Amazon UK.  From tomorrow morning, you can download a copy of Roadrage for just 99p, and I hope that as many people as possible will take advantage of this (US readers had the same opportunity on Amazon.com a few weeks back).

The Roadrage countdown offer starts 8 am Friday, 6 February and runs over the weekend until 8 am, Tuesday, 10 February before reverting to its normal price.

Here’s the link: Roadrage on Kindle countdown



0 Comments
    Picture
    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    Amazon.com
    Picture
    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    Amazon.com
    Picture
    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    ​Amazon.com
    my read shelf:
    M.J. Johnson's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)

    M J Johnson

    You can join Martin on
    Facebook
    If you'd like to subscribe to this blog, click on the RSS Feed button below

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Books
    Family Matters
    Film
    Historic/Factual
    Might Raise A Smile
    Miscellaneous
    Music
    Niedermayer & Hart
    Places Worth A Visit
    Roadrage
    Tea 'n' Coffee
    Theatre
    TV Stuff
    TV Stuff
    Wales
    Wilhelm & Laszlo
    Writing

    Archives

    April 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    June 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011

© 2018 M J Johnson. All rights reserved.
             Contact               Blog                 N & H                 Roadrage