Open Writing

James became a writer by accident.

He was with a group of friends in a pub. They were discussing contemporary classical music, about which he knew nothing. One enthusiast, a podgy girl with glasses and spots, fresh from the premiere of Da Pollo’s Silence Among the Ruins, had irritated him with her unbridled rapture, so he had interrupted.

“But much of Da Pollo is derivative. He’s that sort of a composer. He does it superbly well, of course, and his cleverness at concealing his sources compels admiration. Basically, in my view, he is an accomplished pasticheur, but no more than that.”

The stunned silence made him think he had gone too far, so he added:

“Except, perhaps, in some of his early chamber pieces which are so rarely performed these days. A great pity, because they hint at the truly innovative, ground-breaking compositions that might have followed, but which, alas, didn’t.”

His contribution effectively ended the discussion.

On his way out he was accosted by a large, fleshy man, puffy and tired about the eyes, who laid a hand on his arm.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” said this man. “Here’s my card, Give me a ring tomorrow.” He tucked a card in James’s breast pocket and returned to the bar.

At home James wondered why the music editor of a well-known weekly journal should want to talk to him, but the next day he nevertheless rang.

“Thanks for ringing. We can’t talk on the phone. Let’s meet for lunch.”

“Look,” said James, “I don’t know what you’re after, but I’d better put you on the right lines here and now … “

“Don’t be silly,” said the man. “I’m offering you a job. Legit. With good money attached.”

Intrigued, James agreed to lunch at a pleasant middle-of-the-range restaurant in the City.

The man got down to business without delay.

“I overheard what you were saying about Da Pollo the other evening.”

James looked puzzled and surprised.

“You invited me to lunch to talk about Da Pollo?”

“I’ve no views at all about Da Pollo. I’ve never heard any of his stuff. Whether you were right or wrong is of no consequence. My job is to see that new musical works are regularly reviewed in The New Courier by my team of music critics. But there’s a problem.”

He sipped his wine. James waited.

“My chaps won’t listen to or write about anything written since about 1920. Bolshie lot, but there it is. What they do produce is OK, but, as I say. … That’s where you come in.”

“I think I ought to tell you .. ,” began James.

“I think I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it. The deal is this: I send you from time to time a list of new works - commissioned by whoever, first UK performance, world premiere, ink scarcely dry, that sort of thing, with details of the performance and, most importantly, a deadline and a word count.”

“I’m not sure that I have the time to attend … ”

“Don’t be obtuse. You don’t have to attend anything. All I want is the sort of stuff you trotted out the other night about Da Pollo. I watched their faces. They believed every word. You’ve got the gift, James, and that’s what I’m prepared to pay for.” He mentioned sums of money which caused James’s eyes to open wide.

He went home with a piece of paper which he looked at more closely in front of his computer screen. Columns, dates, time, venue, composer, name of work, short description.
He decided to try his hand.

The slow melancholy of Eugene Kalik’s Nachstragen contrasts strongly with his earlier work, little known outside his native Romania. This is a many-layered piece which does not reveal itself at a single hearing. In any event, the orchestra sounded sluggish and the conductor uncertain in places, all of which was reflected in the no more than polite applause the performance received.

*
Ideas of light and energy mingled effortlessly in David Yarnoff’s Cupid’s Dart. Perhaps a little too effortlessly. A more dedicated, invigorating approach would have paid off. Twenty-five minutes is rather a long time in musical terms to stare at one’s navel. Yarnoff is too self-indulgent at this stage in his career to command the attention his talent aims at. This is one orchestral piece that could make its point more effectively if re-scored for a much smaller ensemble.

*
The peculiar mixture of order and surprise that characterises Se-en Yuhan’s exotic Plaisanterie sur la Seine for string orchestra and small chorus remind the listener that in a plurality of pluralities the only trend seems to be a lack of any trends. It may be, as we are often told, that a modernist stance goes hand-in-hand with antique subject matter, but this shouldn’t be an excuse for making excessive demands on an audience. Plaisanterie, I’m afraid, does just that.

It wasn’t too difficult. It didn’t take too long. He could fit this sort of thing in round his day job.

The New Courier in a fairly short time became known for its forthright and perceptive reviews of modern music to such an extent that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and the like found themselves taking a back seat. True, in the beginning, several irate composers wrote to the editor to complain that they had been misunderstood, misrepresented, misinterpreted. On the advice of the music editor, some of these letters were printed together with comments (supplied by James). This clearly demonstrated the open-mindedness of the journal and its willingness to encourage and contribute to the public airing of views and counter-views.

James declined to attend receptions, presentations, introductions and so on on the grounds that it was the music that mattered, not its trappings, and that his independence as a critic might be compromised if he accepted hospitality of any kind. The music editor supported him in this and smiled complacently as sales increased and his own prestige became enhanced. He even arranged for an editorial in another journal praising the robustness of The New Courier’s music criticism and its policy of printing the sort of constructive assessments to which the general reader could immediately relate.

He and James met for lunch from time to time and on one such occasion at the coffee stage he touched on a new development in the office.

“James, a vacancy has cropped up which I think might suit you. Gerald Swithins is retiring.”

James waited.

“Dear Gerald has been reviewing books for us for many years and his name means something in the publishing world. He is planning to spend his sunset years abroad, but, for a consideration, has agreed to let us continue to use his byline. Are you interested?”

He mentioned agreeable sums of money, adding that the editor-in-chief had given him a free hand to recruit outside his normal discipline.

James thought for a while.

“Bit dangerous, don’t you think?” he said. “We’re not talking about avant-garde music and largely unknown composers. We are dealing with household names, established authors, bestsellers, aren’t we?”

“I think The New Courier’s reputation would benefit from a new, perhaps even ostentatiously non-sycophantic approach. We shall in any case be selective. James, let me worry about that.” He handed across an envelope. “Here are a few blurbs. See what you can make of them.”

At home James read:

Walter’s Retirement is not a semi-fictionalised, cosily reflective and leisurely meander through the events of the author’s childhood and youth in the North of England and his subsequent forty-odd year stint as a British civil servant. On the contrary, it is an irreverent account of a man’s involvement with four women, who come into his life just before his retirement. Walter is not an aging roué giving free rein to his sexual fantasies, nor is he a dry-as-dust historian commenting on the mores of his contemporaries in modern Britain. Walter is a man who has seen it all and decided that, despite an in-built scepticism and a firm belief that he counts for nothing in this world, he still wants to be part of it. The trouble is he cannot quite decide what ‘it’ is and what his role should be.

He then typed:

The trouble with Walter is that we learn very little about the man himself but a great deal about the women in his life, who are in their various ways sad, funny, pathetic, insightful, manic-depressive and virtually any other adjective you care to use. Unless we live in a monastery, we’ve all met women like this and either loved them or hated them. Perhaps the author would like to try his hand at writing about four men from a woman’s point of view? I for one would look forward to that.

He moved on to No Second Chance and read:

This is yet another of Harlan Coben’s terrifying explorations of the worst of fears - Marc Seidman wakes in a hospital after narrowly surviving a shooting in which his wife dies and their baby daughter went missing. The handover of a ransom from his rich in-laws goes wrong and Seidman realises that he is not only without a wife and daughter - and the sister who may have been an accomplice - but he is also the principal suspect. The reader knows even more than Seidman just how much jeopardy he is in - Coben does a brilliantly disturbing job of introducing us to a pair of psychotics who are in charge of the ransom plot and who plan to take Seidman and his in-laws on another ride into insecurity and hell. Marc turns to the one person he thinks can help him - the ex-girl friend who still has a place in his heart and used to be a federal agent. The problem is that Rachel comes with baggage and enemies, all of her own …

He reflected for a moment before his fingers sped over the keys.

There is much more to No Second Chance than its synopsis suggests. Readers familiar with other genres will detect an undertow of cannibalism, incest and the sort of old-fashioned sado-masochism which so rarely gets a convincing look-in in modern fiction. Marc Seidman, although ostensibly the hero, is overshadowed by the ex- girlfriend, whose interests clash with the job she is called upon to do. I look forward to Coben’s No Chance At All. If he hasn’t written it yet, he ought to get cracking without delay.

James looked at his watch. There was time before anything interesting appeared on television. He referred to his paper. Of The Men and the Girls he learnt

Lifelong friends now in their 60s, James and Hugh consider themselves to be very lucky to be living with attractive women 25 years their junior. All seems well until the appearance of Miss Beatrice Bachelor, a razor-sharp Oxford spinster, who fuels the discontent of both women with their lives.

James considered the scenario and added:

There is an element of more than usual fantasy about this tale of which the author may not have been aware. The description of the town in which the characters live is, I hope, intended to intrigue rather than identify. It is certainly no major city in the UK that I recognise. James, Hugh and Beatrice are, I suspect, blood-related (material for a sequel The Very Old Men and the Women, perhaps?), but to have made that clear would have spoiled the author’s fun at our expense.

He particularly relished the next challenge:

A story about fathers and sons, sex and love, loyalties and identities, a man’s mid-life crisis and a woman’s fear of failure. Most of all, it is a portrayal of the obsessions and dramas of English village life.

“A gift!” he muttered as he set to work.

This is a thinly veiled account of the royal family and their ups and downs (not to mention their ins and outs) of recent years, and the author should have been brave enough to say so. I wouldn’t call Windsor a village by any stretch of the imagination, but since the intended readership is clearly overseas I don’t suppose that much matters. I think the blue-rinse brigade will find this depressing reading. Not really a challenge to Stella Gibbons’s continuing popularity.

*

Sales of The New Courier continued to rise and a number of well-known writers wondered why Gerald Swithins seemed suddenly to have turned against them. This time there were angry letters to the editor-in-chief, because authors seem to have either larger egos or more influential connections than composers. An anthology of New Courier criticism was published with both a preface and an introduction written by the anonymous James. He and the music (now the musical and literary arts) editor lunched regularly, varying the venue and entering and leaving separately and discreetly.

“We are saying goodbye, James, to two valued members of staff and the thought occurred to me … ” said the more than ever fleshy man on one of these occasions.

“You keep me quite busy these days, you know.”

“I’m sure you can fit this in, James. You have an insatiable capacity for work. And I know you thrive on variety.”

“Who are these valued members of staff?”

“Our horoscopist and our obituarist.”