Buchan Forth...

John Buchan was in bed, suffering from a duodenal ulcer when he wrote the book that changed my life. And he later described it as a “shocker”. Not in the sense that we take that to mean, but Buchan used “shocker” to refer to works that contained events that were very unlikely to really happen – and that readers were only just able to believe in.

And The 39 Steps, as this work became, along with its hero, Richard Hannay, was a success and has influenced many a film adaptation (to date, 3, with one more in the pipeline), as well as a spin-off drama series on ITV in the late 1980s.

I need to nail my colours to the mast here. I don’t like the 1935 Hitchcock version very much. As a film, its well-constructed, and well made – but its not the story Buchan wrote and I fell in love with.

The Hitchcock film was re-made in colour in 1959, starring Kenneth More, and was an upgrade of the original, but essentially the same, with the same altered story.

The 1979 film starring Robert Powell was far more to my taste, but I still can’t stand the ridiculous dangling-off-of-Big-Ben ending that has become so famous.

I discovered the novel at the age of 14. We’d been forced to move house to an area I didn’t like and away from all my friends – my bus ride to school was now two buses and was long and torturous. The Christmas coming up didn’t seem to be too promising to me then. And when I wandered into a little bookshop in Orpington (which has long since gone), I had no idea what would happen when I picked up a small book from the Wordsworth Classics display. I’d only looked at that because they were all just £1 each, too.

On Christmas day, we travelled to my nan and grandad’s house near Croydon. I had the book with me – not because I didn’t get anything nice for Christmas, or because I was expecting to be bored. But I had it because for once, I’d read something that intrigued me from the start. That first chapter – read in slight desperation because I wanted to go to sleep on Christmas Eve – had had my mind whirring ever since I’d woken up. But until that car journey, there’d been too much going on to read – there’d been church, and then a visit to my other nan and granddad’s… But now I could see how it would continue.

I read the rest of the book between then and the end of the evening. I’ve not read many books within 24 hours, and this was the first. I read it again over the next week. I was enthralled. This was escapism as it was intended. I didn’t care one jot what was going on elsewhere – I was in a world of espionage and treason, where you couldn’t trust anyone completely. Brilliant. Just what I needed.

So that’s basically why I don’t like the Hitchcock film – because its nothing like the book. I was so excited when I managed to get hold of a copy of the film… and so disappointed when I watched it. The ending of the book is so Holmesian in its reasoning, so suspenseful – and its totally changed.

It’s a very good film, I concede, but its not the film I want it to be – the whole plot is altered substantially when The 39 Steps are changed to be the name of an organisation rather than what the book says it is. And even more when a love interest is introduced. The importance of the Memory Man character to the film is very clever, and well-worked, but it all seemed rather less than only just believable to me.

I only really mention this stuff because I read these articles today:

BBC to remake Buchan classic

Austen? Buchan? It's time for more unusual adaptations

I’ve been waiting for the BBC to do this. It’s been my dream for roughly 15 years to write a new version, and I am obviously only hurt because the BBC didn’t ask me to do it… But Rupert Penry-Jones is a great casting choice for Richard Hannay. Its being written by Lizzie Mickery too (who, amongst other things, co-wrote the marvellous The State Within), and the BBC have been at pains to say that although it’s an adventure first written and set in the first years of the twentieth century, it will be worthy of a Bond of a Bourne story.

I’m in two minds about that. On the one hand, it’s a brilliant idea. But on the other, I’m nervous of the implication that it could be somewhat more, shall we say, modern. When trying to play up to the Hollywood standard, TV adaptations generally simply put in more CGI and explosions. I hope this won’t happen here. It looks promising, but I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed!

An exciting marriage…

No, not an actual marriage… But it’s the first thing to make me so excited (if you discount the release of Artemis Fowl book 6 last month… and perhaps not surprisingly, this is related).

Here’s the press release on Eoin Colfer’s site: And Another Thing: Full Press Release

And here’s a summary for those who can’t be bothered to read it:

The widow of Douglas Adams, Jane Belson, has chosen Eoin Colfer to write book 6 of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Trilogy… It will be called “And Another Thing”, and will be out in Penguin Hardback next October (2009).

I saw that yesterday and stared at the screen in wonder for several minutes.

My reason is this: Douglas Adams and Eoin Colfer are two authors who have changed the way I think about writing and about storytelling – both have surfaced in my consciousness when I was looking for something to keep going for, and have sustained their appeal for me ever since (which believe me, is unusual). They both also inspired me to write – in different ways.

I was lent a copy of the first Artemis Fowl book in April 2002 by someone who recommended it as something good to get through the gap between Harry Potter books. I devoured it in less than a day, and since then, I’ve read that book probably hundreds of times and have far and away preferred Artemis to Harry.

It was as visual a piece of writing as I’ve ever come across, if that makes sense. I wasn’t surprised to hear talk of a Hollywood film soon afterwards. But its exciting – writing that makes your heart beat faster, your nerves jangle and every sense in your body tingle is a rare and treasured thing. And he managed it with the first book in the series.

My theory is that most series of novels take a couple to hit a peak – it happened with Harry Potter, in my opinion (Book 3: The Prisoner of Azkaban is the best, I think). Saying that, its disproved countless times…

I then bought a copy of a different Eoin Colfer book – The Wish List – thinking I could read it during a week away at Spring Harvest. I read the whole thing on the journey up to Skegness – finishing with about an hour to spare.

When I think about it, it’s the spirit of the writing that attracts me – the style, certainly of Artemis Fowl – follows on almost fittingly on a line that includes Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne and John Buchan, with a twist of HG Wells. His writing – even for small children – is engaging, vivid, exciting, and laugh-out-loud-funny when it wants to be. All things I aspire to achieving one day.

One of my favourite things about Eoin is his enthusiasm. He recently wrote an introduction to a new Penguin Classics edition of “Treasure Island”, extolling the virtues of the book for good reason… and he also embraces his audience – going on national tours to connect with people, encourage kids to read and make people enjoy stories – not to promote his books… And his enthusiasm for Hitchhiker’s is infectious – here’s the piece on his website about the new project…

Eoin Colfer on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

If you haven’t read an Artemis Fowl, go and do that. Beg, borrow, steal, murder, whatever. You have to read the original book at least.

Hitchhiker’s Guide was a discovery I consciously made myself. I heard a couple of people at school talking about it, and soon after I got my first job, I went hunting for the cassettes of the original radio series. I wore those out in a matter of months. It took a while to read the books – mainly because I assumed that Adams would have produced a pretty standard novelisation (like happened with Doctor Who books – although they’re still marvellous). But I was proved delightfully wrong. Having then read Neil Gaiman’s biography of Douglas, I realised that he was so full of ideas, so creative in his thinking, that he never quite got the same result twice. I know that he suffered from crippling writer’s block, which depressed him – and he was famously not a prolific writer – often having to be forced to sit down and write.

The influence these two have had on my reading tastes and my desire to write is sizeable, but I’m not going to get all gushy – for people to spout forth about the brilliance and the influence of Douglas Adams is more cliché than a Westlife video and the best thing I can say about Eoin Colfer is what I’ve already said… Plus, I don’t want to look like a fan now, do I…?

Despite not wanting to be gushy, the combination of Eoin’s writing and Douglas’ creations makes me want to squeal with joy. So naturally, I’m already panicking that its going to be a huge let-down… Oh to be able to ignore paranoia.

Like A Rowling Stone

There was a really interesting article on Guardian.co.uk back in May, which looks into whether JK Rowling is accepted as a fantasy writer, or whether the world of critics and academics are sexist towards her (and other female sci-fi/fantasy writers). I meant to blog about it at the time, but a lot has been happening... So here are my thoughts.

Firstly, the article is here.

There are a few things that I picked up on particularly. Firstly, the quote from Michael Rosen, which was jumped on by the media the week before that for being anti-Potter... He was quoted in the Scottish Sunday times as saying that the Potter books are rather hard-going for children under six. Well, that's right, surely? Why is that controversial or anti-Potter? That's no more a criticism than saying Shakespeare is difficult for toddlers. The books are full of heavy themes and events - things that a lot of adults struggle to comprehend. Michael Rosen is not the Children's Laureate by good fortune. He knows what he's talking about - I'm not sure there are many who understand and promote storytelling better. And yet, his comments were interpreted as meaning that the books were unreadable.

Secondly, and I hadn't paid attention to the criticisms of JKR before now - I was content just to read and enjoy the books, enjoying the storytelling and the escapism - but the comments of AS Byatt are snobbish and ignorant. If you don't know what this is about, she has said that the popularity of the Potter books is because they are "written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip." Sounds disturbingly like jealousy to me... Very unseemly for an extremely well-respected novelist, poet and Dame of the British Empire...

I, for one, don't fall into the target audience Byatt suggests, and I find it offensive to be pigeon-holed like that. If you don't like it, fine, but I don't see what right you have to condemn others. It's easy to read - maybe not all that deep and meaningful (to me), but its a nice escape from a world that is increasingly becoming dark and corrupt. You write what moves you - and you know what you're talking about there. But Rowling wrote what she felt she had to - and there's no doubt that she knows what she's on about in that realm.

Another point in the article was about Rowling being invited to give Harvard's graduation day commencement address this June. The reaction from students was not altogether positive. This is from the Guardian article:

Writing in the university paper, the Harvard Crimson, student Adam Goldenberg rips into Rowling as "a flash in the pan", "a petty pop culture personality" who "tricked parents into letting their kids read books filled with sex, murder, and homosexual role models". Furthermore, "writing bedtime stories is lame".

What utter, utter crap. I'm going to sound like I'm JKR's press officer now, but I have to disagree. A flash in the pan - seven books worth. Does that make seven flashes in seven pans? A highly successful movie series isn't exactly half an hour’s work either...

Petty pop culture personality - the way she's handled her fame, and riches - the philanthropic and compassionate way she's dealt with it all makes that comment every bit as ignorant as AS Byatt's jealous rant. Writing articles about subjects you clearly know nothing about isn't the way to cultivate respect...

I'll skip the tricking parents thing, as I think its nuts - OK there's murder in there, but sex? No more than kids would have experienced growing up, and homosexual role models - that maybe true, but when you're not told a character is homosexual until well after the books are published, it kind of diminishes the effect. And what's wrong with a homosexual role model anyway? That would make two ‘isms’ from Mr Goldenberg in one comment. Good going there...

"Writing bedtime stories is lame." That comment is just so wrong that I actually feel violently-inclined to this whingeing, envious wheeze bag. As a parent, I love reading stories with Luke. I have always loved stories and storytelling, and I am a huge fan of children’s or “young adult” books - because they tend to be more creative and imaginative. I read plenty of bona fide adult fiction and non-fiction too, mind you. But that only sharpens my appreciation to it all. I don't think I would enjoy either one half as much without the other. Writing a bedtime story is every little bit as legitimate, literary and commendable as writing a historical novel, or a thesis on the US constitution.

In general, I agree with the point of the article - novels of this genre are generally only talked up if they are written by men - Philip Pullman, Garth Nix, Darren Shan, Philip Reeve et al. But there are female writers who produce books of a quality matching, if not surpassing them - Diana Wynne Jones and Marjorie Blackman are two that spring to mind immediately. Both of those I discovered through recommendations, having seen nothing of their work advertised or hyped up in the press to the same extent as the male authors quoted.

People like different things. Lord of the Rings is pretty good, I think - but I don't consider it to be that good to deserve obsession and repeated readings. Or a musical. When you strip that down to its bare bones, it’s essentially a fairly tedious road trip story. Albeit a road trip with tiny men in possession of huge hairy feet. And a fiery thing at the end. And orks. I did enjoy it, but I also got very bored at various points.

JK Rowling has achieved what she has through hard work - and in the process she's stimulated millions of minds (not just those of children), and made reading popular with many, many children once more - in an age where the internet and TV rule without competition. How on earth, with clear conscience, can you criticise that?

Unless she’s selling more books than you, of course…