Why be a writer?

I've decided not to post the articles that have been rejected (through inaction) by a certain newspaper. Not yet, anyway. They might still change their mind, or rather, decide tardily to make up their mind, and I suppose I had better not get their backs up too much in the meantime.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to be a writer. Even now that my book is published, no one outside a small circle of enthusiasts appears to be interested in it, and none of the nationals has shown the slightest interest in reviewing it, even though it contains substantial new info on one of the most influential writers in the English language and is (though I say it myself) ruddy well written.

It is also no way to get rich.

Unfortunately, becoming a writer isn't really a matter of choice. It's a kind of compulsion. I write plays and don't get paid for it, I have written a book for which I have been paid a small amount (now blown to the four winds) and which I happily promote for no money and in fact at personal expense. How do they do it, the rich writers? Will Self and the other guys whose names I can't think of at the moment? They are keep themselves airborne somehow, despite the fact that minimal numbers of people appear to read their works.

It's a mystery.

Plays: written and performed

My play Working Lives was performed on Wednesday, a one-off performance as part of a playwriting festival. It was a great experience, and it reminded me of all the stresses and rewards of writing for the stage.

When you create a script--sitting around brooding about characters and themes, and then pushing yourself to write down as much of what you have in your head as possible, and trying to mould it all into shape and keep quality control and all the other things you have to do to make something usable--when you're doing all this you're making something quite abstract, with parts that you think might work in front of an audience, it's all quite abstract and bloodless. In fact it's like a short story, but without descriptions and "fine writing."

This is fine. You feel you've done all the work, and having it performed is sort of an added extra. Then it gets passed over to the director and cast.

The rehearsal process, certainly this time, involved a rather complex combination of reactions as far as I'm concerned. The cast was very well chosen, and the director clearly knew exactly what he was doing, and seemed very sympathetic with my actual intentions. I saw three early rehearsals, then two late ones, including the tech run-through on the Monday two days before performance.

It was this rehearsal that made me very very anxious. At least two of the actors didn't know their lines, and while the performance was billed as "script in hand", the director wanted them to be off-book for the performance. So the actual run-through was very ropy, with some long embarrassing stalls. It was all very rushed--we had to be in the space and out again within an hour. The director afterwards assured the cast that he was very happy with their performances. I wasn't so sanguine.

On the Wednesday, the day of performance, the cast weren't able to get together again till about 6.30 (the play started about 8pm). A quick line-reading was all that was possible, and a cast member was having big trouble with two substantial scenes. He was forgetting lines, and persisted in skipping ahead in a scene bypassing about a page of dialogue. The director said (thank God) that it was okay for him to take the script on stage. One of the other actors also did this. But it was obvious to me that the performance would be very basic and I was prepared for a very embarrassing 45 minutes during the actual event.

And then.

It was to be the second play in a double-bill. I saw the first, an entertaining though afterwards rather unsatisfactory piece. We settled in for the second half. I was sitting next to the director. We smiled at each other, said each other was great, shook hands, and saw the lights go down. The play started. The first scene went all right. People laughed. The scenes progressed. One scene in particular, a job interview that goes disastrously wrong, took fire on stage--the audience laughed, really immediate, genuine laughter, and the director was almost creased double, in fits. And I knew the thing was working. The last scenes of the play turn very serious, but I think we held the audience right to the end. I was very relieved and very euphoric. There was much congratulation (genuine) and hugging and talk of taking the thing on tour. Don't know if it will happen, but it seems a real possibility.

What has all this to do with Gilbert? Well, rather famously, he wasn't able to watch his own first nights. He would leave the theatre, stroll on the embankment, go to his club or see another play, returning only for the curtain calls. This is a very idiosyncratic thing of his, an almost physical condition which made him sweaty and hysterical if he had to see his own plays performed in front of an audience. But I can understand it very well. It is simply a very stressful, though often very rewarding, experience. I believe at the start of his career he did witness his own plays. But there was a point at which he stopped. He decided it involved too much unnecessary suffering.

The book is unleashed

In a way I rather like the fact that practically no one is reading this blog. It takes the pressure off so much, and allows me to try out ideas. The book is now effectively published, even though the official launching date is at the beginning of May. Amazon is showing it as available. It is all rather frightening in that respect. I've been in contact practically all afternoon with someone in Marketing at The History Press; BBC Radio Scotland is showing an interest and I may be interviewed for two different programmes--one of them live!! The Sunday Express is taking a review copy, and The Stage, and probably others. I have a double attitude to this. I am very very keen for reviews in the proper papers, because it's the reviews, as far as I'm concerned, that publicise the book and lead to sales. But at the same time who knows what the fiends will say? I am aware that I myself have not proved very effective in organising publicity for the book. No interest in articles that I myself have suggested to others. But publicity is happening, not just organised by the publishers but also by friends and well-wishers. Ian Bradley apparently has written an article for History Today next month which refers to my book extensively. I also have another stupid idea, which however I am tinkering at because it might possibly work--a compilation of killer quotations from Gilbert. Things like this, from the opera Ruddigore: "Ah, you've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it." Or this, from a letter to The Times:

"In the face of Saturday the officials of the [London and North-Western Railway] company stand helpless and appalled. This day, which recurs at stated and well-ascertained intervals, is treated as a phenomenon entirely outside the ordinary operations of nature, and, as a consequence, no attempt whatever is made to grapple with its inherent difficulties. To the question, 'What has caused the train to be so late?' the officials reply, 'It is Saturday' — as who should say, 'It is an earthquake.' "

And there's more, much more, where that came from.....

It's arrived!

The first copies of the book arrived yesterday, and they're looking good! I was getting pretty neurotic about it, imagining that my corrections to the proofs might have been ignored or translated into nonsense. But the book seems to be all right (barring a couple of minor glitches). They arrived just in time, as I am going down to London to give a talk to the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and will be able to sell copies. The big thing about the book is that it tells Gilbert's story as not just another Victorian success story, but as something more ambiguous and conflicted. It's a tale of struggle and opposition, and the success he achieved came at a price. There are some nice pics as well, particularly an unfamiliar one of Lucy Gilbert probably dating from the 1880s; she is magnificent in a formal gown, but there is an expression on her face which is impossible to describe. Most images of Lucy date either from her teenage years, when she had just married Gilbert, or from her years of age and serenity at the beginning of the twentieth century. I seem to have agreed to two interviews, one with the Stuart Box of the G&S Society and one with a guy who has a website. I'm just hoping I can be coherent and fluent on both occasions. We'll see.

Sondheim: Talking Through His Hat (Part Two)

Oh, what's the use? You know and I know that Sondheim's opinion is nothing more than that--his opinion. I have just deleted a long and useless wrangle over his arguments. If you like Gilbert, you won't like his opinions on Gilbert; if you don't like Gilbert, you probably will.

Why should I worry about a modern lyricist using his mid-20th-century rules to demolish a master lyricist who was using Victorian rules (which he largely devised himself, because there were no effective models) to create lyrics which have lasted and are still enjoyed over a century after they were written?

As a matter of fact, I do admire Sondheim. At his best, he is brilliant. I object to his using local and slightly absurd assumptions about what a good lyric should be to demolish all his rivals and also himself. His ideals are too high to be followed. He insists that every aspect of a lyric should copy the speech patterns of the character, even though this is plainly arbitrary when dealing with a highly artificial convention like musical theatre. A music theatre song, it could be argued, is an expression of internal feeling, and it certainly makes no sense on realistic terms. People don't burst into original song with perfect rhymes in real life. Why object to poetic inversions in their lyrics, for instance, if you don't object to their faultless use of perfect rhyme when the character probably wouldn't recognise a perfect rhyme if it hit him on the head? Why should Maria not sing a "sophisticated" song like "I Feel Pretty", if that's what she feels like? Audiences recognise this; Sondheim does not.

Gilbert was more than a lyricist; in fact he was only a lyricist in his spare time, when he was not a leading dramatist, director, cartoonist, and so on. He wrote: "I have always held that English is (next to Italian) the very best of all Eurpoean languages for singing purposes, provided that the song-writer will take into consideration the requirements of the singer & reject words and phrases that involve a hard collocation of consonants & a succession of close vowels. I wrote two of the songs in 'The Yeomen of the Guard' ('Were I thy bride' & 'Is life a boon') for the express purpose of proving this."

A scandalous opinion, and one that many people will still object to today. But isn't it a fact that the history of popular song-writing in the past century (which more or less begins with Gilbert) bears it out?

The Curse of Peter Haining

Some things anger me, even though I know it is pointless. One of these is a book that was published in 1982, entitled The Lost Stories of W.S. Gilbert.

The actual stories are fine, and it's great that they have been properly reprinted in modern times. But the Introduction by Peter Haining is a criminal disgrace. It misattributes a significant number of stories. For instance Haining says the short story "Foggerty's Fairy" was first published in Temple Bar in March 1880. I tried to track this down and was puzzled to be unable to find the story in the relevant volume. It took me some time to accept that the information was utterly and inexplicably wrong. In fact the story, under the title "The Story of a Twelfth Cake", was published in the Graphic Christmas Number, 1874. I am still unable to imagine how the mistake could have happened.

I mention all this because the Curse of Haining has struck again. The Curse of Haining takes place whenever someone writing about Gilbert and Sullivan makes the mistake of trusting the information Haining provides. In Carolyn Williams's new book Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody, which is generally excellent, she says that Gilbert's short story "An Elixir of Love" was first published in the Graphic Christmas Number, 1869. Right publication, wrong year: it was actually 1876. Why does Williams say 1869? Because Haining said 1869, of course. The misinformation is perpetuated, and will continue, for ever and ever, because Peter Haining scribbled a pile of criminal rubbish in 1982.

I may add, as a footnote, that Haining (who died a couple of years ago) also wrote a book about Sweeney Todd in which he claimed the case was real. The evidence and quotations from newspapers that he provided appear to be fabricated. If I could bear to look upon the man kindly, I would suggest he was a rogue. As it is, I have no words for him.

Utopia

It's just beginning to sink in now: it's 2011, the big Gilbert year! I have reserved the next month to try and catch up with all the things I've been promising people I will write in order to help launch the book.

Years ago, I urged people on Savoynet (the G&S online discussion group) to prepare for 2011, because this is the right time for a Gilbert revival. Well, in a strange way perhaps the world is ready. I've done my little bit, and am still doing it. Not as well as another, more perfect person would do it, but still, I've done what I can.

The big obstacle is what it always was: Gilbert's own reputation. His name is compromised by association with English complacency and bourgeoiserie. His rage, his savagery, his contempt for the values of his own society, have been dulled and submerged. Something must be done to bring them to the surface again.


I think of the late G&S opera Utopia, Limited. The harshest satire that he wrote with Sullivan. An attack on Thatcherite politics ninety years before Thatcher. An opera without a plot; if it had been written in the 1970s it would have been called a concept musical, but as it is, the fact that it has no consistent through line is considered a flaw. But the simple fact is that it is a satire, of the kind that we are constantly told Gilbert was incapable of writing; and satires usually have structural problems.


I will quote one passage from the end of the opera. The island of Utopia has been "reformed" by the introduction of English ideas. But this has resulted in disaster, because the professions that rely on misery and pain--doctors, soldiers, lawyers, and so on--have been thrown out of work. And it is realised that the last plank of reform has been omitted:


"Government by Party! Introduce that great and glorious element--at once the bulwark and foundation of England's greatness--and all will be well! No political measures will endure, because one Party will assuredly undo all that the other party has done; and while grouse is to be shot, and foxes worried to death, the legislative action of the country will be at a standstill. Then there will be sickness in plenty, endless lawsuits, crowded jails, interminable confusion in the Army and Navy, and, in short, general and unexampled prosperity!"

And they still say Gilbert wasn't a satirist! Well, it must be true, because they say it. Still, I'm very glad to know that in this centenary year, with the Conservatives in power, Utopia is going to be professionally performed at the Buxton Festival. If it's done right, it will explode like a bomb.