As a writer in the genre, Crime fiction has, in my opinion, entered into a kind of golden Age. There are so many Crime fiction (and faction) TV shows like CSI, NCIS, Castle and Law and Order, to name just a few that the popularity of the genre is undisputed. The Underbelly series which has been going for several years now advertises itself as a representation of actual events. Whether or not that show or movies like ‘The Godfather’ have glorified gangsters is an ongoing discussion and depends on your point of view. When actual mafia gangsters began aping these fictional characters like Mario Puzo’s Don Corleone (Puzo also worked on the hugely influential film starring Marlon Brando and directed by Francis Ford Coppola) influencing the all too real Dapper Don John Gotti, I think the case was settled. There are echoes of that film and its language everywhere even 40 years after its release.
So Crime Fiction can indeed have an impact on our culture in real time. Why is this so? I was recently interviewed on the subject (posted on my website davidjamesbwriter.com) and my theory is that everyone, or almost everyone, has been a victim, an observer or an actual participant in crime. As someone who works in the security industry (as well as in teaching and training) I know from hard reality on the ground that it is much better to experience crime vicariously than to experience it for real.
I am interested in Speculative Fiction, which includes Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror fiction yet there is something inherently more credible in the Crime genre. For example, an entire micro-world of a future LA besieged by Replicants was created in great detail by Director Ridley Scott in his film Blade Runner in 1982. Yet even though this vision inspired a whole sub-genre of SF called Cyberpunk, his vision of LA in the year 2019 was widely off the mark if you want to talk about reality on the ground. His newest film Prometheus is even more fantastic yet well in keeping with the often over the top visual and verbal imagery of Science Fiction. We the readers, viewers and writers can relate to Crime Fiction in a way that is not as easy to do so with other genres.
I think the genre really came into its own in the early 20th century through the LA hard boiled school of crime fiction in writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet. Hammett by the way was a Pinkerton Detective and this field of security in general can give you an insight into people’s motivations or triggers for crime. This is a very useful tool for writers as several police turned writers have shown. I think it is also interesting to note that the high tech surveillance and policing techniques employed in the 21st century have caught up with the scenarios described in novels like ‘Minority Report’ by Philip K.Dick.
Contemporary writers in the crime genre are awash with material they can use. The American based Australian author Janet Turner Hospital has remarked that she got much of her material from the New York Times. When I was living and working in London, as well dealing with my hectic day job as a teacher of English in an inner city school, I read up to three or more newspapers a day so as to get a better take on this ancient megalopolis. When I was there I saw quite a few tensions that I wanted to write about. These tensions and divisions included resentment between the haves comprising high spending billionaires and the have nots of the many penniless or even homeless young men and women on the dole. Many of these young men saw themselves as without a future and this ultimately exploded into the violence of the August 2011 city wide riots. In my work and in the pubs I saw this up close and without claiming clairvoyant powers I did have a kind of presentiment which resulted in just such a riot in my novel even if the context was somewhat different in the fictional account.
Other tensions I read about and even experienced first- hand were between various religious faiths and within Islam. Work as a teacher of religion in a predominantly South Asian background student body gave me a window into this ongoing, global problem. There were even times when I was on the sharp end of violent encounters on the streets of London and this experience was certainly something this writer made use of.
Other material that was and is topical and which I managed to include in my narrative was the sometimes peculiar arrangements between the press or media and the government including the police. This has been a long running issue that has just come to a head with the UK Leveson Inquiry into Media Ethics. One character in my novel London’s Falling is not unlike a younger , hungrier version of Rebekah Brooks even though it was largely written well before the actual phone hacking scandal broke a couple of years ago. Keeping abreast of current events as well as the morphing speech patterns of the full spectrum of our society is a convenient too for all writers in my view.
Creating realistic dialogue in Crime Fiction
Realistic dialogue is attractive to readers required in most narratives although perhaps some more than others. It could be argued that some genres like Speculative Fiction (including sub-genres like Magic Realism and Fantasy) have dialogue which is the opposite of realistic and can fall into the surrealistic category. The genre I have been working in for the last several years is Crime fiction and ever since the early days of Detective and hard Boiled Crime fiction with writers such as Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler natural, direct, stripped-down dialogue has been the order of the day. Bare, stripped down prose was of course also a staple of Ernest Hemingway’s work, and even further back with Mark Twain, in the pantheon of American writers.
Modern American Crime fiction writers like Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, Jonathan Kellerman and others have taken this one step further and their novels are stripped of all superfluous descriptive passages so that it is almost a kind of short hand of human dialogue and interaction. This, in my opinion, is particularly suited to the gritty realism of Crime fiction. We all know what various cities like Las Vegas and LA or the interior of flea bag (or plush 5 star )motels look like and going into great detail describing them just gets in the way of a good story.
The dialogue of what American Crime fiction writer James W. Hall calls ‘low-road commercial fiction” has a number of common characteristics. These include slang and vernacular speech, the absence of (most) adjectives and sometimes bizarre pronunciation.
Some of the techniques used by writers, including this writer, to research and create realistic dialogue, are quite simple and easy to do. Whether writing here on the Gold Coast or offshore in places like London and Tokyo I would listen to conversational dialogue at work and in public. My day job in Tokyo was a teacher of conversational English and in the UK as a teacher of secondary English so this was not at all difficult. Naturally, conversations overheard in pubs and clubs, or on the Tube, were less self-conscious and down to earth than in any classroom, sometimes exceedingly so. I acquired an ear for natural language by listening to and participating in conversations with all manner of people, from ex-cons and cops, to pillars of society and street people, not to mention language learners of all ages and backgrounds. Exposure to such a wide spectrum of accents and register (but no dialects, in my view English has no genuine dialects) was essential for this writer so as to get the sound and feel of various Englishes ladled with a fair dollop of slang.
In the UK and later I thought I had this all down in my soon to be published Crime novel ‘London’s Falling’, yet I was mistaken, or at least partly so. Many of my dialogue sentences ended in ’ yeah’ as a kind of question mark, something which I had heard on the ground in the UK frequently and even here. I had made use of this conversational stylistic device so often that the dialogue came out off key to my publishing editor and I made amends. Using the word ‘mate’ (often used in fiction and in real life in the UK and especially Australia) too much or including too much out dated slang can also take away from the credibility of your story.
A certain logical perspective is required in the use of direct speech when creating believable dialogue. Sure your novel might have some remarkable villains yet they don’t have to all sound that way and certainly not all the time. A cockney accent can be feigned or it can be masked with one more cultivated according to the motivations of the character and you can see such sudden alterations on the ground in real life. Even a teacher of elocution or an Oxford Don may sound very different away from the classroom or lecture theatre.
Most actual dialogue is made up as you go along so pauses, errors and digressions can be part of realistic fictional dialogue just as it is when you, say, have a telephone conversation. If a character, such as a dodgy politician is prone to ostentatious speechifying, then that can be included also. A change in register or tone in such a character can add insight and traction to the story. It’s only word on paper so you want to make your narrative, not least in Crime fiction, as life like as possible. A character can be in character or out of character in the manner of a confidence trickster or someone making out (s) he is something (s) he is not.
In many Crime fiction novels, crims, cops and politicians don’t always speak the same language or accent, so to speak, and this can have an impact on events. In my own novel(s) there are inappropriate connections between the crooks, the cops, the politicians and the press and I thought this was best conveyed through dialogue according to the show don’t tell rule. All have something to sell and the tenor, tone, register and vocabulary of the pitch, not to mention the dishonesty, can and does get them in trouble. When people dissemble or prevaricate there are certain ’tells’ (paralinguistic as well As linguistic) that an experienced observer can pick up. As someone who also works in the security industry I have experience in this and have put these observational and analytical tools to work in my fiction.
So when writing crime fiction or in any other genre, a good start is to try listening to real people have real conversations. Happy writing!
The Genesis of Genius in London
I recently read a review, ‘Unruly incubators of fertile minds’ by Matthew Westwood, and (The Australian 17/4/2012) of a book called ‘Imagine: The Science of Creativity’ by Jonah Lehrer. The reporter details some amazing insights into the creative mind.
An intriguing chapter in the book concerns the ferment of creativity during the time of Shakespeare. Although the Bard’s father had been an illiterate glover, he had been blessed with lessons in Latin at the age of eight due to education reforms. Such reforms led to an explosion in artistic and scientific creativity that has continued to the present day. In modern times you could say, musically and artistically speaking, the British Invasion exemplified by the Beatles was another such period of exponential inspiration and creativity.
One of the points made by Lehrer is that too much focusing can make the act of creativity, in whatever field, that much harder. He cites examples (Bob Dylan included) where the artist came to inspiration and creativity almost subconsciously or when distracted as when say taking a shower or walking the dog. As a writer and artist I would have to agree with this although I would add the proviso that setting can also be important. I had always wanted to live and work in London and when I did I gained the inspiration to write about it in a fictional sense. I had done the same thing in Tokyo when in response to frequent earthquakes I wrote a sci-fi short story (‘Prescursors’, which is available as a free download on my website davidjamesbwriter.com) which was later published. The terrible Fukushima disaster of 2011 evoked painful memories that had already been crystallised in fiction.
Several Australian artists including the singer Helen Reddy and the ever visible Germaine Greer have commented on their burst of creativity after they had landed off shore in the US and the UK respectively. Moving overseas may not be a winning formula for everybody yet I did feel there was something exciting and inspiring about London specifically and I do hope this is evident in my soon to be published (on August 25th by Caffeine Nights Publishing) crime genre novel ‘London’s Falling’.
It appears through neuroscience that the brain is hard wired for creativity and Noam Chomsky the great psycholinguist has commented that that language is a finite toolbox for expressing an infinite number of things. The mere act of speech is creative and you can sense this when you make it up as you go along. Creativity is in our very marrow so let’s make use of it whether you are in London or not .
That is a bit of a tall order for any Australian writer in that we are still relatively isolated from the rest of the world. There is nothing wrong with creating fiction that is Australian based yet an international audience may not come with you forever staying on your home turf both literarily and figuratively speaking. Recently Australian cinema has come up against an old argument that our movies have little international appeal and are too parochial. A full discussion of that wide ranging and controversial issue is outside the scope of this article but suffice to say that a large percentage of our books and films are failing to attract overseas customers for this seeming lack of connection with audiences beyond our shores.
Yes there may well be a bit of cultural cringe in all this. We go to see American movies and read books by English and American authors in a largely mistaken belief that there is always something more interesting or exciting happening outside what sometimes seems to be a rather ordinary Australia. The funny thing is that many American and British nationals feel the same way about their home countries. Let me explain. Early in the 20th century a group of American writers that came to be known as the Lost Generation and included Hemingway and Fitzgerald, left the then staid and strait laced US for the more ribald and progressive shores of continental Europe. Something similar happened with the Beat generation a generation later. The Beats preferred Tangiers and Paris to small town America or even New York and famously included Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. The work produced from these groups over time was arguably the best in Modern American literature.
Some Australian authors have done like-wise and I shall discuss their journey in a later post. As for me, in the late 1990’s I went to Tokyo to teach English in a language school. Our classes were in a downtown high rise that afforded a great view of this mega city of over 35 million people. The place was like nothing I had ever seen before and I soon started writing about it. Sometimes after work the others teachers and I would go on pub crawls or more likely stop at my favourite, the Lion’s Head in Meguro. One day there I ran into someone who happened to be the editor of an in-flight magazine for ANA (All Nippon Airways) and I told him about some of my fiction. He asked me to bring some of the mainly sci-fi short stories and I did. He liked one of them enough to publish it in the Christmas edition of the magazine and this story, “Precursors” is available as a free download on my website davidjamesbwriter.com
Similarly a play I wrote while in Tokyo which was inspired by my experiences was published in Japan and is available as a free down load on the above website.
Early in the New Millennium I worked and lived in London and the home- counties. As a teacher of English and as an inveterate drinker at the local pub I came into contact with many people including one memorable patron who has just been released from Belmarsh prison. Not long into my three year stay in greater London I began researching and writing a novel that became London’s Falling.
Being on the ground so to speak in Europe’s largest city was invaluable experience for writing such a book and I do hope it finds an international audience. I do feel that this crime thriller speaks to the conversations of our times and these talking points include religious fundamentalism in a modern western society, the corrupt synergy between the media, politicians and the police, and the effects of social decay and crime in urban areas. In a novel it is through characterisation that the underlying thematic material is best given expression. When you believe in a character and care about that character all the rest comes alive. I shall be writing more on this topic in the coming days and weeks. Keep an eye on these blogs!
Set and setting as part of the writer’s tool box
There is an old saying in writing, “write what you know”. Well it’s not quite that simple of course. For example, author of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”, Ken Kesey, has said, “Write what you don’t know”, as opposed to “write what you know”. Of course he did both. While working as an orderly under an experimental drugs program he was able to get the insight to write that modern American classic.
Another literary lion, Ernest Hemingway wrote about what he knew (war, hunting etc. etc.) and he would go out into the field to such places as the African veldt or the Caribbean to improve his knowledge, skills and experience enough to write about it. While attending high school in the US a fellow student spoke of his father’s interaction with Hemingway in the dying days of War 2. Whether it was a bull fight arena or on a battlefield the author of “A farewell to arms” always wanted to be there. One day he woke up and discovered he couldn’t do that anymore and it killed him.
My journey has taken me on adventures around the world. Much of that has been grist for the mill so to speak and the best way to share that, in my view, is through fiction. I have found it necessary to write what I know as well as what I don’t know when creating my own fiction. Although my background is in teaching I have worked in many other jobs and have extended my teaching experience into three continents in addition to my home country (and continent) of Australia.
My crime/thriller genre novel “London’s Falling” is about a teacher drawn into a web of crime and political corruption in the city of London. It so happens that I worked for some years as a teacher of English in and around the city of London early in the Millennium. Sure I well knew about teaching and had written about it in a fictional sense when I taught at a language school in Tokyo(a free copy of my Tokyo based earthquake science Fiction story can be downloaded on my website davidjamesbwriter.com) in the 90’s. So in a practical sense I knew about various types of teaching (from elementary school up to adult or tertiary education) in different settings, although my experiential knowledge of the UK and London was wanting.
In order to make up for this deficiency I read several newspapers a day and spoke to as many people as I could from stock brokers working in the square mile to street people to dangerous villains just out of prison. This was generally an enjoyable and pleasant past time although I did get into one or two sticky situations which could have proved dangerous to my health if it had gone the wrong way.
After I had meditated (for want of a better word) on all this information and on the ground experience I began my novel about a year after my arrival in the Old Dart. I data mined my own teaching experience and more (about the overall context of the city and beyond) by having my main protagonist Michael Prescott, an itinerant teacher between jobs and down on his luck, get an offer to run a collection of English language schools. This is an offer he can’t refuse as the wage is in the stratosphere and the chance to make strategic managerial decisions on his own proves irresistable. I won’t go into revealing the entire plot but suffice to say that the power and influence the character attains proves chimerical and soul destroying.
Although the novel will be published in August 20 by UK based caffeine Nights Publishing some aspects of “London’s Falling” have proved prescient in that a city wide riot explodes following ongoing social, ethnic and religious tensions. Another topical plot line involves questionable interactions between the press and the police. My views on the situation in workaday London were always best expressed through creative writing; a straight out biographical piece would never have done the job properly.
Currently I am working on a novel that revolves around the Mexican Drug wars. While I have yet to go to Mexico I have lived for long periods of time in the American southwest and I believe I have a sense and a feeling for the area. Again a great amount of research was called for and I have read everything I could get my hands on with respect to matters Mexican. While I haven’t the length or breadth of experience in Mexico that I was able to bring to my London or Tokyo based fiction, YouTube and Google have helped fill the gaps. Everybody has a story to tell, what is yours?
London, my London
Drugs, cocaine use by the rich and famous, calls for a reduction in alcohol intake in the national interest, ethnic and racial unrest. Is this the London of 2012? Well it could be yet it is also a description of London circa the 1920’s and 30’s in a wonderful book called “London’s Curse” by Mark Beynon. This intriguing non-fiction book details the legendary mummy’s curse specifically the tomb of Tutankhamun and the deadly effect it had on most of those involved in its discovery and publicity.
I would urge readers to take a look at this detective like journey into that infamous saga although my purpose here is not a book review but a discussion on London itself over time. Many of the problems (not unknown to other large cities around the world) that faced Londoners from the great and the good to the downtrodden almost a century ago and before are still with us today. It brings to mind the old French saying, “the more things change the more they stay the same.”
Many of those who have never been to London have a very romantic view of the place which is understandable. Overseas visitors are prone to taking in the city as if it were some kind of tourist theme park. When I arrived there in 2002 to work for the government as a teacher of English I too had a few misconceptions. My early vision of the place was shaped by films like the Beatles’ ”A hard day’s Night”. For some reason I had this expectation that I would walk into a pub and see someone like Van Morrison playing by the fireside. It wasn’t to be and after teaching in a few bog standard schools situated near sink estates the hard reality sank in. Life could be bitter for many of my challenged students and became so for me after a couple of unfortunate encounters in classrooms, pubs and one or two serious health scares. I became a bit more wary and careful in the public drinking houses and nightclubs (and in front of the white board) and my health was in the best of hands under the remarkable NHS system (which includes some of the best medical specialists in the world) which helped preserve my quality of life in sometimes difficult circumstances.
So although not exactly a charmed life I made a few good friends and had a few laughs and no matter where you are you really can’t expect much more. Even if I did expect more I wouldn’t exchange the memories for anything. Over a period of three years in the UK I began to channel my experiences into creative writing and came up with a narrative which captures my time in Europe’s largest city far better than any photo or footage could. The multitude of ethnic and religious cultures in Ilford where I lived and worked for some time gave me some insight into modern London and would be largely inaccessible through other means like internet research.
My own book, a novel in the thriller/crime genre called “London’s Falling” (to be published by Caffeine Nights Publishing on August 20 this year) takes place in a contemporary, or near future, London beset by sinister forces and ethnic, racial and religious tensions. As well as corruption within the office of the mayor of London the novel also details ethnic and religious tensions that eventually explode into a city wide riot that is a partial reflection at least of the actual London riots of 2011. Additionally one of my characters is a nosey reporter who will stop at nothing in order to get a gripping headline story and here again considering the ongoing hacking scandal we have a case of art imitating life and (the novel was written well before these stories broke into the national and international consciousness) vice versa. This year brings the 2012 Olympics and, as they say, anything could happen although I have a gut instinct this year will be better all-round than last year.
An end to blindness is in sight!
The news coming out of the prestigious Moorfields Eye Hospital in London has been heartening for anyone suffering from vision problems. With an ageing population, that will include just about everybody over time. The radical use of retinal stem cells to cure macular degeneration and other irreversible eye diseases has shown promising results and this was recently reported in the world press and media to much acclaim and fanfare and rightly so.
It so happens that I was once referred to Moorfields (while I was living and teaching in London from 2002-2005) for possible eye surgery although I eventually opted for such treatment here at home in Australia. Along with the rapid development of the bionic eye by several competing medical research teams around the world (most prominently in the US, the UK and Australia) there is tangible hope that blindness as we know it will be scaled back markedly if not banished altogether. Stem cell research promises to open up new vistas in all areas of medicine and the retinal stem cell trials are an important step along that path.
Is 11.22.63 Stephen King’s best novel to date?
I have always been a fan of Stephen King’s although no more so than now. His latest novel 11.22.63 is really the best narrative he has come up with to date in my opinion. Although he uses the trope of a time portal this could not really be considered a sci-fi novel or a techno-thriller along the lines of Michael Crichton. No, in keeping with other speculative fiction by this master story teller, King dispenses with any tedious technical explanations and gets right down to business.
The JFK assassination saga has got old yet the plot of 11.22.63 is intriguing and fast paced, even for such a lengthy novel. When an English teacher (something which the character, King and I and have in common along with creative writing, although that’s where the comparison ends) named Jake Epping learn of a time portal situated at the back of a butcher’s shop. The local butcher of Lisbon Maine, Al Templeton, takes advantage of this windfall by going back to September 9, 1958, where the portal is stuck, so as to buy cheap meat. After he unaccountably takes ill and ages beyond his years, he summons our English teacher Jake Epping and advises him to go back and save JFK and perhaps alter history for the better.
He does go back in time and settles down as an English teacher and falls in love. The context of the late fifties and early sixties is uncannily recaptured by King through meticulous research and an eye for relevant detail. King informs us that his wife (also a novelist and English teacher) saw JFK shortly before his death. King himself was only a teenager at the time of the assassination and I have spoken of my own experience during that star crossed time –space. I was an Aussie kid under ten who was living in JFK’s hometown of Brookline (a suburb of Boston) Massachusetts where my father attended the famous technological temple of MIT. That’s another story of course yet it gives me a sense of closeness to the narrative and has given me further inspiration to write my own JFK novel in future.
Back to 11.22.63, King really gets into alternative history when his fictional alter ego Jake foils the assassination with unintended consequences. When he deflects Oswald’s aim the love of Jake’s (other) life is inadvertently killed. Later Jake is consoled by both Jackie and JFK, the former telling him,” If only I could go back and changes things, I would.” At this a bemused Jake tells himself in a way entirely credible with respect to the character and through line, “No, that’s my job.”
At the climax events speed up as if warped by the portal and we get a picture of how it would be if the late president had escaped death on that dark November day. We learn that without the sympathy generated by the assassination as well as the efforts of the persuasive President Johnson, anti-discrimination laws would not have come into effect, and a later President George Wallace nukes Vietnam so as to end that debilitating war. Here King’s research through discussions with close JFK aide Richard Goodwin (who spoke at my local primary school in Brookline while I was in attendance during this dramatic time frame) and other source material comes into play. It’s funny but Goodwin also worked for JFK’s successor President Lyn don Johnson or LBJ. It has been said with respect to important anti-discrimination and other legislation that “Kennedy promised and Johnson delivered” and this too is shown in the novel. This alternate history again showcases the law of unintended consequences writ large. This is a world not as it is but how it could be yet one hardly ideal or desirable.
In conclusion I would rate this novel a great read and simply the best book by Stephen King in my experience and in my judgment. If you pick it up you will find it hard to put down and I can hardly wait for the coming film by acclaimed director Jonathan Demme.
Why the Mexican Drug Wars matter
The Mexican Drug war(s) have taken a terrific toll in the last ten years. The body count is conservatively estimated at around 50,000 and could well be twice as high. Sadly, most of those killed are civilians caught in the cross fire between often corrupt Mexican law enforcement officers and members of the various warring drug cartels.
On the other side of the border in the United States, government and law enforcement officials are growing increasingly worried about the mounting attrition rate and the spread of hard drugs and violence into all fifty American states. President Obama is a fluent Spanish speaker yet it will take a lot more than smooth talking to make this problem go away. A massive influx of policing assets isn’t going to make it just go away and one is left wondering if the problem will ever be solved. Doing nothing is no solution even if the appetite for drugs north across the Rio Grande will fuel the drug trade well into the future.
I have studied the Mexican Drug War for some time and I am completing a novel called “Our Mexican Connection” which incorporates this ingoing research. This year (2011) there have been several large seizures of hard drugs coming out of Mexico with the smugglers becoming more inventive as surveillance is stepped up. One of the shipments (amounting to about $ 100 million worth of cocaine) was secreted in Tecante Mexican beer and one can only imagine where the next lot will be hidden and found. It appears certain that the highly costly (in lives, reputation and treasure) Mexican Drug War is unlikely to end any time soon. A new strategy may well be required although this is more easily said than done and will need the full cooperation of the United States of America and the United States of Mexico.
Bruce Conner,Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and me!
Recently the renowned actor and Director Peter Fonda gave a written tribute to these two accomplished artists and film makers. So where do I come in? In 1963-67 I was in primary school and living in an apartment in Boston Massachusetts (where my father attended Harvard’s more nerdy, tecky yet close brother educational institution MIT) with my parents and brother and sister. On the top floor of this three-story walk up lived an artist, then relatively unknown outside the Art world, named Bruce Conner.
He was probably the first real hippy I ever saw and from late 1963 to early 1967 (the period in which I lived in the same flats as he) Bruce Connor was making a name for himself as a visual and cinemagraphic artist of the first rank, producing ground breaking paintings, prints, photos and films. At the ground level we, that is friends, relatives and your’s truly living in the inner city flats, were able to get a glimpse of fluoro ( or Day-Glo to use Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool- Aid Acid Test appellation) painted floors, ceiling and walls and bizarre sculptures made from found materials (junk) and the imagination of one very radical guy. In some ways he became a kind of role model and it was great to see him being recognised and consulted by some of the best in the Art and movie business.
There is a bit of up to the minute serendipity that needs to be mentioned at this juncture. In late November 2010 I made comment (see previous blogs here and through my website davidjamesbnovelist.com) on a series of TV documentaries detailing live footage taken from the assassination of President JFK and the aftermath and telecast on the anniversary of that event on the 22nd of that month. When I first wrote this tribute to these artists I had no idea that Conner had himself created a widely viewed film (called REPORT a work in progress between 63-67, now part of the prestigious Library of Congress) stitched together from cuttings of TV coverage of the fours days from the death of the President (and the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald in between) to the funeral on the following Monday. Conner himself noted at the time the creation of a mythology concerning JFK. I have been able to speak to that event’s impact on my own life in the same space/time frame in a previous blog as mentioned. In the words of former confident and late critic of the Kennedy Clan, novelist and pundit Gore Vidal, the (subsequent) Dead Kennedys were transformed into “smiling initialed Gods”. Artist Andy Warhol also made his statement on the Kenndy myth-making in the 60′s through a series shocking and compelling silkscreen prints that got much exposure during the period. In the following decades there has been no sign of this phenomenon fading despite (perhaps even because of) exposure of his rakish, reckless lifestyle that in some ways also was itself a precursor for the far out hippies.
Bruce Conner’s non-linear film craft and diverse approach to the creative act (like Yoko Ono he embraced conceptual and absurdist themes to make his point whatever the commercial consequences albeit with no wealthy spouse to back him financially when times got tough, as it did for our Bruce) had an impact on the industry in Hollywood and Dennis Hopper in particular, something which Peter Fonda refers to that in his recent written tribute to his fellow cultural revolutionary and creator of Easy Rider. I was myself influenced by Bruce Connor’s eclectic approach to Art and Life, in fact I went on to go to Art College and become a practising artist and experimenter in multi-media myself. This year a novel of mine, London’s Falling is going to be published in the UK (Caffeine Nights Publications) and I hope, wherever you are Bruce (Conner himself went to God in 2008), that you get to read it in the Never Never.
As a writer and artist I feel it is important to push the boundaries or envelope of experience and tradition in order to create literary and artistic works of genuine and lasting merit. To brother artists past and present, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Connor, and yes Peter Fonda, I salute you! Your lives shall live on forever in your brilliant works and the world was made a better place for it.
