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Inspired to Emulation: Bellman & True

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One of my favorite quotes about writing is this one from Saul Bellow:

“Writers are readers inspired to emulation.”

That notion calls to mind three recent posts here at Writer Unboxed: one by Dave King on how much he’s learned about dialog from Aaron Sorkin; a second by Kathleen McCleary on how incredibly helpful reading fiction has been for her current work in progress; and just yesterday Greer Macallister’s exploration of writing lessons to be learned from the hit play Hamilton.

Accordingly, I’ve decided to provide my own contribution to this emerging mini-genre, and discuss a book I return to often for the numerous lessons it’s offered.

The novel is titled Bellman & True, written by British novelist and screenwriter Desmond Lowden. He adapted the book into a film of the same title (follow this link to watch the trailer), and that title comes from an old Cumberland song, “D’ye Ken John Peel,” specifically the lyric:

Yes, I ken John Peel and Ruby too.

Ranter and Ringwood, Bellman and True.

From a find to a check,  from a check to a view,

From a view to a death in the morning.

There’s a pun in the term “bellman.” Above and beyond its use to denote both a hotel employee and a town crier, it ‘s also criminal slang for someone who specializes in getting past bank alarms.

From a view to a death in the morning.

I saw the movie first, and as good as it is—it’s not just one of my favorite crime films, but one of my favorite films, period—I recently spent a sunny Sunday reading the book. I’ve now ordered everything else I can find that this man’s written—most of which, sadly, is long out of print and can be had for a song.

Don’t confuse obscurity with lack of talent.

This book provided me with one of the most gratifying reading experiences I’ve had lately. As I said, I read it in a day—it’s a mere 183 pages—almost in one sitting. I’ve only done that with three other books: James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, and Kim Addonizio’s brilliant poetry collection, Tell Me.

Don’t confuse obscurity with lack of talent.

The book is briskly paced, deftly executed, with brilliant dialog and a well-researched and richly detailed high-tech bank heist at its core.

But what makes it truly unforgettable is the writing, which accomplishes its effects not with surface pyrotechnics but “writing from the inside”—developing its depth and richness and texture from fully imagining the characters, the setting, the situation, the action.

Consider a couple character sketches, which are deceptively simple:

Of Hiller, the hapless hero:

He was middle-aged, with thinning hair, but there was something of the schoolboy about him. It was the tweed suit, ready-made, from a High Street tailor’s. The sort of suit you bought on leaving school for your first job. The man had kept to the same style ever since, though heavier now in the stomach and seat. And he’d looked after them well, as he walked he kept the suitcases carefully away from his trouser creases.

Of Hiller’s stepson, known only as “the boy”:

He was small, the back of his head was soft and rounded. But his face was pale, sharply pointed with the effort of being eleven years old.

Of Anna, a former high-priced call girl (“on the game, what you’d call the big game, South Africa and the Bahamas”):

She had two suitcases, a radio, and a little girl called Mo. The girl sat quietly while her mother took over the spare bedroom next to Hiller’s room. She swept it, scrubbed it, and all the time she kept the radio at her side as though she needed a wall of sound around her. . . She wore no make-up, she was strangely neutral, like a fashion model walking from one job to another, her face and hair in her handbag, and no expression for the journey in between.

Even minor characters get mindful treatment, such as this shop clerk:

The man was grey-haired. He had bacon and a suburban train-ride on his breath, and he caught the smell of whiskey on Hiller’s.

Lowden’s setting descriptions are equally evocative. This one manages to convey the place, the situation, the character and a sense of menace all in one, while being not in the least bit showy:

The room, when they reached it, was small. There was an old striped carpet, and a basin in the corner held up by its plumbing. Hiller went straight to the window. He stood close to the glass and smelled the sourness of other people’s breath. Across the street he saw the four houses in a row that were empty, their insides gutted and piled at the kerb, their windows dark. And Hiller felt safe. No-one could see he was here.

But the truly great reward of the book is in the interactions between Hiller and the boy, specifically the stories Hiller tells him to keep him entertained.

Hiller has a bit of a drinking problem (to put it mildly), and his storytelling conveys not just that, but an imaginative intelligence squandered in drudgery and a misbegotten marriage to the boy’s mother, who has abandoned them both:

            ‘Tell me a story,’ the boy said.

            ‘Don’t know any stories.’

            The voice was slurred. The boy knew the time was right. ‘Yes, you do,’ he insisted.

            ‘If you say so.’

            ‘Come on.’

            ‘Cowboy story?’ Hiller tried. ‘The one about Pissoff the Peon? Shot people from behind, mostly in the stomach?’

            ‘Not that one.’

            ‘All right. The one about the vicar, who always wore slippers with bunnies on them?’

            ‘Not that one.’

            ‘What one then?’

            ‘You know.’

            Hiller sat back, his pipe sappy between his wet lips. ‘The Continuing Saga of Sod’s Law,’ he said at last. ‘You Can’t Win.’

            ‘That’s the one.’

            ‘Where’d we got to?’

            ‘This place with the sign outside,’ the boy said. ‘It was called Lulu Land.’

            ‘Ah, yes, Lulu Land.’ Hiller nodded. ‘Short Life beer, fourpence a pint, all checques accepted. And the juke box played nothing but Wagner, went through Tristan from the overture on.’

            The boy didn’t understand. ‘Who was there?’ he asked.

            ‘The usual people. Sooty Ann Gorge, Mousey Tongue, and Alcide Slow Drag Pavageau.’

            ‘And the Princess?’

            ‘Yes.’ Hiller sighed, a short flat sound in the darkness. ‘She was there.’

            ‘The Princess who smoked French cigarettes? And was only beautiful when she wasn’t looking?’

            ‘That’s the one.’ Hiller’s hand shook as he picked up the bottle.

            The boy was silent. He’d known the Princess too. ‘And was I there?’ he asked finally.

            ‘Course you were.’ The warmth of the whiskey got into Hiller’s voice. ‘We were all there. We played Skittles and Brittles and One Jump Ginger. And we had a dog that ate nothing but Income Tax Men.’

            ‘What else did we do?’

            ‘Sometimes we’d go out in the Hupmobile. We’d have our pints in quart mugs so they didn’t spill while we were driving. And when we got back we’d light the fire with coal-bills. It was good there. We had only one rule. We didn’t let in anyone with a Rover TC.’

            ‘A Rover what?’

            ‘TC. A Rover Tinear Cruoris.’

            ‘What’s that?’

            ‘I’ll tell you.’ Hiller spoke louder suddenly. ‘People with Rover Tinear Cruoris’s live in four-bedroom fake Georgian houses. They marry St. Bernard dogs called Darling, and they have nasty little kids in green jump-suits who come in through the window on a wire, and say Gosh and all that sort of thing.’ There was real anger in his voice. ‘What’s more, they keep a cross-index file on everyone earning more than five grand in the Southern Counties. And if you mention Stoke Poges, they say you must know Mannering.’

            The boy sat forward, not understanding, but drawn to the anger because it was like a child’s. ‘And then?’

            ‘Well, we made just the one mistake in this place of ours,’ Hiller said. ‘We let this man in, and we didn’t know he had a Rover Tinear Cruoris. He didn’t seem like it at first. The Princess liked him. He had things weighed up, you see. He had a camel hair coat, and he knew the going price of Manganese.’

            ‘But the Princess wouldn’t have liked any of that.’ The boy was hurt. ‘She wouldn’t have liked him at all.’

            ‘No, she wouldn’t.’ Hiller’s voice was soft as he lied.

            Because he’d been just one of the men the Princess had liked. She’d always surprised him, every time.

            ‘Let’s kill him off,’ the boy said, ‘with a digger-tractor, sharp, with bits of stones sticking to it.’

            ‘That’s it,’ Hiller said.

The brilliance of this exchange is the multitude of things it accomplishes: We see Hiller’s struggle with drink and his tender if troubled relationship with the boy; we see the flickers of mawkish anger beneath the wit, especially anger at vapid bourgeois pretension—and resentment of the financial success that has eluded him; we learn of the Princess (“only beautiful when she wasn’t looking”), who is the boy’s mother, and the infatuation they share for her, despite her cruel desertion of them both; and we feel that desertion bitterly, even though (or perhaps because) its extremes are merely hinted at.

We also learn of Hiller’s love of music, not just opera but jazz (Alcide Slow Drag Pavageau was a famous bassist).

We see his wicked sense of humor, especially in his puns: Sooty Anne Gorge (for soutien-gorge, i.e., brassière), Mousey Tongue (Mao Tse Tung), and ‘Tinear Cruoris,’ which refers to tinea cruris, i.e., jock itch. The obscurity of the jokes passes muster because the reader is often allowed, through the deft use of omniscient narration, to stand in the same position as the boy, i.e., struggling to understand.

Finally, the section presents the theme of Sod’s Law—You Can’t Win—which motivates the action, i.e., Hiller’s hapless, deepening, fateful involvement in a major bank heist.

The theme of Sod’s Law—You Can’t Win—motivates the action.

The foregoing passage does all of this through marvelously inventive indirection, while sounding very much like these two people talking. The speech tags and stage business surrounding the dialog are spare but richly evocative—nowhere more so than in the seering: Because he’d been just one of the men the Princess had liked. She’d always surprised him, every time.

My favorite heroes are seldom the stalwart, valiant, Galahad kind. I prefer the muckabout or lost soul, the despised and disregarded outcast who comes through in a selfless act of courage.

As I noted at the outset, I’ve gone back and reread the section over and over, hoping to learn more intimately the dozens of writing lessons to be gleaned from it.

The other great joy of the book is watching Hiller’s character deepen, and his love for the boy solidify.

My favorite heroes are seldom the stalwart, valiant, Galahad kind. I prefer the muckabout or lost soul, the despised and disregarded outcast who comes through in a selfless act of courage. He just feels more honest, more convincing to me, and his arc is more gratifying because it travels a more difficult and unlikely trajectory.

Hiller is just such a hero. It’s easy to assume that he’s doomed, because of his clueless involvement with men far more vicious than he realizes. But it’s not as simple as that, and Hiller is not that simple a man. And his fondness and concern for the boy crystallizes in their mutual realization they only have each other, and it’s never been otherwise.

It’s not as simple as that, and Hiller is not that simple a man.

Hiller engages me in ways more conventional heroes just don’t. He’s not just the clichéd “tarnished hero.” He’s a recognizable man with a complex past and an almost overwhelming problem in the present, caused by his own thoughtless flirtation with evil. And by the end he isn’t the same just more so, like so many heroes one comes across, especially in the crime genre. Without giving too much away, he achieves a recognizable nobility, that of a man who gets up off his knees.

Did you find the excerpts quoted above compelling or not? If so, what was it that worked for you? If not, why did they fall short?

What book or books have recently “inspired you to emulation?” What lessons did they provide?

About David Corbett

David Corbett is the author of six novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime, Blood of Paradise, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, and The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories, and his non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest (where he is a contributing editor). He has taught through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character, and Writer’s Digest will publish his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.

Comments

  2. Love the writing here. Favorite bits, since you asked:

    “He had bacon and a suburban train-ride on his breath…”

    “But his face was pale, sharply pointed with the effort of being eleven years old.”

    “He stood close to the glass and smelled the sourness of other people’s breath. ”

    “The boy sat forward, not understanding, but drawn to the anger because it was like a child’s.”

    Wonderful stuff. Thanks for sharing, David.

    • Thanks, Therese. Lowden did a lot of writing for film and TV, and his prose resembles that of screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, Delores Claiborne, etc.), in that his descriptions are often brief, concise, almost poetic renderings not just of the character’s appearance but essence.

      For example, this is from Michael Clayton:

      MARTY BACH looks up from his papers. He’s seventy. It’s his name on the door. Big power. Sweet eyes. A thousand neckties. A velvet switchblade.

  3. David – Crazy day has already commenced, but I wanted to quickly tell you how much I enjoyed the post and the excerpts. Great lessons here for me, particularly in the descriptions (on which I’ve tended toward heavy-handedness). My favorite of those is the boy’s. Two sentences, and I’ve got an image sufficient to carry me on, knowing I can glean more as I go. Thanks!

  5. I ditto Therese. The descriptions are amazing. They tell so much more about the characters than how they look. Everything has significance for the bigger picture. And I found the conversation between Hiller and the boy amazingly moving, the boy becoming the grownup, almost protective in the way he follows the story, while the man becomes more whimsical and childlike in his musings. I’d love to have the chops to emulate this!

    • Hi, Susan. That’s a marvelous insight about the adult-child reversal in the dialog piece. Interestingly enough, when they decided to edit the film for DVD, they took out this scene, which is one of the best in the movie. Why? I imagine someone thought it “didn’t move the story forward,” meaning they only saw the outer action of the bank job, not the interpersonal connection between stepfather and stepson, as important. Stupid. Sad.

      The scene is in particular an excellent example of moving a story forward through the interpersonal struggle between characters. Glad you enjoyed it.

  6. Highly compelling. And it wasn’t just the content. I was caught up and couldn’t stop reading. David, you point out the treasures here so well. The thing that struck me was I kept hearing the rhythms in each of the sentences. In many there is a 3-hit pace, like a slap-slap-slap: ‘He was middle-aged … with thinning hair … something of the schoolboy. It was the tweed suit … ready-made … from a High Street tailor’s. She had two suitcases … a radio… a little girl. Short Life beer … fourpence a pint … all checques accepted.’

    It’s almost musical. Can you comment on this kind of pace in sentence structure? Is this an example of creating triplets as a literary technique in fiction? I’ve seen it mostly in poetry.

    • Interesting point, Paula. Well, to be honest, if I were to make any general statement about Lowden’s use of rhythm I’d be pulling it out of my Tierra del Fuego, as it were.

      I would note, however, that only by varying up the rhythm — i.e., using more than just these apparent triplets — does the rhythm really work.

      Note the varying four-beat cadence here: People with Rover Tinear Cruoris’s live in four-bedroom fake Georgian houses.

      Being too consistent with rhythm can create monotony. But with just these occasional change-ups the relentless boom-boom-boom of the triplets you identify really help keep the momentum of the prose kicking forward.

      Great insight. Thanks.

      P.S. I’d love to here Keith Skinner’s take on this, given his work as a drummer.

  7. David-

    To me, objective narration such as Lowden’s holds the reader at arm’s length. The striking details, the character quirks, the spare style all make for arresting reading, to be sure. Lowden is good.

    But when do I *feel* for Hiller (last name only, of course) and the boy? In some passages I see the scene vividly but feel nothing.

    A line like, “He stood close to the glass and smelled the sourness of other people’s breath,” does nothing for me. It strikes me as mannered, showy and empty.

    More effective, for me, is the simple line, “”And Hiller felt safe. No-one could see he was here.” I feel the daily, low-grade anxiety with which Hiller lives.

    That said, I do agree with you that the passage in which the boy coaxes a story out of Hiller is a masterpiece of subtext. The tender relationship between Hiller and the boy is heart-grabbing, more so because it’s wholly implied. Hiller’s struggle to be real is emotionally gripping.

    From which I conclude that sparkling writing and objective narration, what I call “outer mode”, grab us only when there’s something deeply emotional underneath.

    I’m all for under-playing, but only if there’s something to play in the first place.

    • Thanks, Don.

      Well, I’ll play the agree-to-disagree card, and suggest that some of the “something deeply emotional underneath” is in sections I couldn’t quote without putting the whole novel in front of you.

      But I also believe it’s there in sections you’re overlooking, even the one you consider “showy and mannered.” Smelling the breath on the glass further establishes the shabbiness of the room in which he and the boy are forced to hide (as does the sink “held up by its plumbing”). Holding the suitcases away from his trouser creases emphasizes that money is an issue (he’s spent the money the criminals gave him in exchange for a computer tape — and now they’re after him because the tape is unreadable).

      I think the subtext you appreciate in the scene between Hiller and the boy is there in the other excerpts as well. But I tend to enjoy objective writing far more than you do, precisely because it obliges me as reader to lean in, to realize there is more than is being admitted to. It engages me by not insulting my intelligence through over-explanation.

      I don’t need to be told what the character is feeling or thinking unless it contradicts appearances or the outer details fail to suggest the inner life adequately. Here, for me, they do.

      But I’ve also read the whole novel (and seen the film) so perhaps my imagination is more primed to fill in the blanks than yours.

      Thanks for chiming in.

      • I, too, disagree, Don. For me, “He stood close to the glass and smelled the sourness of other people’s breath” reveals a lot, even if not in a straightforward manner. For me it speaks to confinement/entrapment, being on the outside of something you seek; feeling not just ordinary but sourly so; and dissatisfaction with all of the above. Just my two cents.

        • David & Therese-

          Nah, sorry, not sold, although I do take David’s point that having the story context can make a difference and Therese’s point about the symbolic quality of a small detail. Fair enough but the line still doesn’t clobber me.

          To me what is vivid in writing is not what we see with clarity but what we feel with force. Lowden’s writing gives me a lot to see, less to feel.

          You both feel differently, though. Hiller’s inner condition is coming through to you in a big way. You feel it, I sense, because it’s artfully suggested, it’s subtext-rich.

          I may be over-reacting. I am wary of pure evocation because it can become stylized, it’s own kind of cliché, just as gushy exposition-heavy writing can be so hackneyed you want to poke out your own eyes.

          Maybe I’ve read too many sere and mannered New Yorker stories. (Too much pulp too.) What I have not read enough of is Desmond Lowden.

          I’m sensing the guy is an undiscovered (by me) 20th Century gem of the Hemingway school. So, hey, what’s wrong with being proven wrong? I’m going to read him.

          And BTW, this learning of lessons from great writers is a great idea. I’ve been thinking of tackling one of my favorites, the forgotten Neville Shute. Maybe also Phillip K. Dick, Anthony Powell, Phyllis Whitney…hey this could be a WU content solution for a couple of years, eh?

          Love these discussions.

          • I wouldn’t put Lowden so much in the Hemingway school as the school of British playwrights and screenwriters like Pinter and Orton and Osbourne. Pinter, of course, is virtually nothing BUT subtext, to the point one wonders what’s actually going on much of the time, but I still love him.

            I also think this is Lowden’s best book — the others are pretty straightforward, if better than run-of-the-mill, crime stories.)

            And yeah, great idea for the next dozen posts: lessons I’ve learned from …. (insert writer’s name here).

            • David-

              Okay, kept my promise. Downloaded Bellman & True and just started reading. You are so right about the context being key. Here’s an excerpt from the opening:

              They stopped outside the hotel. The man, whose name was Hiller, looked down at the boy a moment. “What shall we call ourselves this time?” he asked. “Hawkins? Mr. J. Hawkins? Will you remember that?”

              The boy nodded. He didn’t seem surprised.

              Hiller looked up the street and down, carefully, into the shadows. He told himself they couldn’t have followed him here. He’d shaken them off yesterday and he’d had twelve hours start….

              Wow, David, what a difference that context does make. I’m hooked! Looks like we’ll have to have a beer to discuss further. Shame. Not the beer, but the waiting.

          • I started reading Neuville Shupe after Don and Porter discussed his work on this blog. He writes great adventures in a very comfortable British way with a diverse racial cast of lead characters. I can’t put down once I start. He has one tale about reincarnation with much of the action set in Iceland which is a lesson in master backstory. I would love a series on learning from the greats. PKD is one of my favorite all time authors, and I love to see him from a new angle. This is the one of the best things about the WU blog. The new perspectives opened up, along with the warm reception for interesting and open discussion. Thank you.

            • That’s Neuville Shute. Forgive my typos. I typing on my phone, and between auto correct and my thumbs I’m making a mess.

          • I enjoy subtext–giving readers something to excavate on some level, somewhere in a scene. And I enjoy an author who does likewise for me.

            You’re right that it isn’t felt with force; it’s subtle. It isn’t vivid; this is the sort of language that lives on the edges in a blur–the literally equivalent of peripheral vision. But consider life without any peripheral vision, moving only from one small punch of detail to another, all of the context that would be missed. At least, I’d miss it.

            Just my… I guess we’re up to three cents.

  8. Hello David.
    Yes, I found the quotes compelling, and I thank you for them. In some respects, they are too Britcentric for my taste. That said, they certainly make the case for talent that can be emulated, that can be inspiring, but in realistic terms almost never matched or exceeded.

    Your emulation leads me to make a broad generalization: writers learn from many sources. When known, those sources shed clear, sometimes painful light on the writer who turns to them. What does the writer admire? What does she or he aspire to?

    Here’s another generalization. In order to see his or her work in print, a writer who respects and emulates the values present in Desmond Lowden’s writing– who tries to reflect them as a writer–that person will need one of two things: very influential and powerful contacts in publishing, or a willingness to self-publish. Either way, the writer’s work will almost certainly be read by few. That’s because the literary values at work in Lowden’s writing are in retreat along all battle fronts.

    But it won’t do to answer with the egalitarian, boilerplate response that we all have our own opinion as to what talent or good writing is. Or to say it’s bad form to insist that one opinion is better an another. What’s bad form is to not know the difference.

  9. Hi, Barry. Thanks for your points. I agree that the writing is “Britcentric,” but I’d add that your pessimism concerning the likely chances of present-day publication of writing such as Lowden’s is perhaps too “Americancentric.”

    I’m a huge fan of a great many Brit, Scot, and Irish writers, crime writers in particular, and their prose is not that much different than what I’ve quoted here. Kate Atkinson comes to mind, and she sells quite handsomely both over there and here.

    I think the larger point is that prose must be in service to story. Absent that, style is merely surface.

    • P.S. I’d add that Atkinson explores inner life much more than these excerpts from Lowden do — to the extent I’ve sometimes wondered how she gets away with it. Genius helps. Her perspective on the human heart and the fact that the thoughts and feelings are always in service of figuring something out, not mere expression, is also key.

  10. Loved these excerpts. At the end I could imagine a story about the boy as a grownup come home on college break, or later, how their life was after the heist, it could go so many ways, but always connected ways, because their bond is unbreakable.

    • Oh, Bernadette, the heist goes so much more badly than that…

      Don’t want to give anything away, but I love the idea of imagining the boy many years into the future.

  11. David–
    I’ve read over the comments of others, and have something else to add: the carpet bombing in WU posts lately, aimed at leaving nothing left but emotion is becoming less effective. All the terms lifted from oil exploration–drilling down into the bedrock core of one’s deepest, darkest places in order to release a gusher of deep feeling–that’s fine principally for melodrama (which I happen to write), but at the expense or irony, nuance, subtle imagery, etc? I don’t think so. For writers who care about language, there’s more going on than exposed nerve ends.

    • Barry, your comment made me chuckle. Nothing wrong with subtlety and suggestion in writing, of course. Art is artful. I think David’s post today works to tip the scales back in that direction.

      • David–
        I guess I’m contradicting myself, but I think a reader’s Eden lies in the eyes of the beholder. And that good readers are not genre-bound, but have multiple Edens.

        You say my pessimism is Americancentric. You aren’t wrong: far more British writers demonstrate Lowdenian attributes than do Americans. That’s because of what each country thinks is important enough to teach in school. What gets taught there forms the basis for what is later written, and emulated.

        A relatively small but very loyal readership in America admires and reads British authors. In fact, certain American writers so admire British writing as to set their stories in Britain, and populate them with British characters. Chief among them (for me) is Martha Grimes.

  12. BTW: word of warning. If anyone is interested in viewing the film, beware that some DVD versions have been butchered — um, I mean edited — with some marvelous scenes left out. If you can find an uncut version, go for it. (I have an old VHS version I refuse to part with precisely because it’s the complete film.)

  13. Have to love WU, where you have the gods, Thor and Zeus, er, Corbett and Maass, tossing about wry lightning bolts that carry an instructional charge, while Athena Walsh resets the bowling pins for another round.

    Don’t confuse talent with mere showmanship; we’ve got it all here.

      • We are nothing if not interdisciplinary here. By the way, David, I’m not deeply read in mysteries, but some of the physical descriptions of characters in the Lowden stuff puts me in mind of Raymond Chandler, though the use of mood/attitude is different. But I’d need to read more of both to know.

        • Chandler’s a bit more florid, but Lowden’s not as spare as Hammett, either. Both Lowden and Chandler go for something beneath the surface in conjuring the surface though.

          I’m going to post something below to develop this further. I’d continue here but the boxes are getting a bit too skinny.

        • I was going to say the writing reminded me of Robert Towne of Chinatown crossed with Pratchett, Tom. It’s a lovely juxtaposition of the fanciful with the hard-boiled, hopeless bachelor.

      • We are nothing if not interdisciplinary/intermixological (to bring in bartending as well) here. By the way, David, I’m not deeply read in mysteries, but some of the physical descriptions of characters in the Lowden stuff puts me in mind of Raymond Chandler, though the sense of mood/attitude is different. But I’d need to read more of both to know.

  14. I agree. This was a great post. I feel like I’m privy to a conversation between skilled writers and thinkers, and as one who is working toward being skilled, I have nothing more to say but thanks.

  15. This is a follow-up to Tom’s comment above about the similarity between Chandler and Lowden.

    I replied that both try to evoke the interior by describing the exterior. One great way to do that is through contradiction, which Jean Cocteau described as the best way to get to the deeper truth beneath surface.

    In another context, I wrote about using contradiction in this way:

    In Kate Atkinson’s short story, “Affairs of the Heart,” she describes her character Connie from her newfound lover’s point of view: “She was possessed of the kind of flawless complexion that you only got from a clear conscience.” The description works in two distinct ways. First, it uses the physical to describe the psychological. Second, though this is not apparent until later in the story, it provides an ironic contradiction. That same lover so smitten with her skin will shortly discover Connie’s conscience is anything but clear.

    Another use of contradiction as foreshadowing appears in the opening section of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. We and the narrator, Marlowe, see Terry Lennox for the first time as he’s all but falling drunk from a Rolls Royce—a case of ironic juxtaposition. This is followed by even more contradictions: Despite Lennox’s obvious inebriation the articulation of his words would suggest he hadn’t had “anything stronger to drink than orange juice.” In fact, he’s “the most well-mannered drunk” Marlowe can remember ever encountering. That alone piques our curiosity.

    But Chandler employs a second contradiction, this one physical: “He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white.” On closer inspection, Marlowe discovers the right side of Lennox’s face is “frozen and whitish and seamed with fine white scars … A plastic job and a pretty drastic one.” Why Lennox would go to the trouble of such a drastic surgical alteration of his features but not dye his hair is, well, a mystery. But then that’s Marlowe’s line of work.

  16. David,

    Brilliant contribution to our WU world today, and thanks, Don, for weighing in. Taking in the polar swing between your tastes is even better than setting up my tent in one spot.

    Whether it’s the cognitive flash from unique imagery (bacon and suburb) or emotional integrity that arises in the reader from subtext, here we have an author pushing language without fear of needing to color within the lines. If that’s all he ever does, then we might become soporific as with any other expected diet. If he drops these jewels beyond the rules of syncopation then we are more inclined to listen (reread and mull) . . . along the lines of your back and forth with Paula about rhythm. Having only read this segment of his creativity, I can’t make an affirmative statement either way.

    Lowden’s attention to the words does as much for my emotional receptors as do their denotations. There’s a poetry here that takes me to a violin solo in an empty hall. I see muted light in the room without him ever describing it and that’s coming from a sense of something about to go terribly wrong. . . Hiller feels it too and yet he stays with the boy’s needs.

    Good stuff. I’ll go imitate me some.

    • Nicely said. Glad you enjoyed it, Tom. And yeah, nothing like a sense of dread — and empathy for who might be harmed — to key up the reader’s senses and overall attention.

  18. Lately I’ve been interested in emulating the detail-in-action richness of the writing of Geraldine Brooks. Specifically March.

    The writing you cited reminds me a little of the dialogue of George V. Higgins, who was great with the less is more.

    • Higgins could be great. He could also, sadly, be terrible. But when he was on in his game, no one could touch him. No one.

      The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a personal favorite.

  19. David, perhaps it’s my Canadian heritage, but I tend to love British authors. The dialogue sold me on this book, particularly this line: ‘The Princess who smoked French cigarettes? And was only beautiful when she wasn’t looking?’

    As I’m looking to enhance my dialogue, thank you for the reference. By the way, the novel is only $1.08 on Amazon’s Kindle and is #53 in British fiction. Perhaps you’re inspiring a Lowden love-in?

  20. Dang, you always seem to post on days when I’m too slammed to have any time to check in on WU. But I’m glad I found this post – this author is new to me, but I’m VERY impressed, particularly with his gift for description (a huge weakness of mine).

    Just bought a copy. Thanks for turning us on to this talented writer!

 

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