Review by Tracey Foster of "All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything" by Claire Harman

 

Written in the centenary of the death of Katherine Mansfield, this book looks to explore the short life and short works of this writer. She lived with the shadow of TB in her lungs but the desire to taste and feel everything: "The passion I feel, takes place of religion - it is my religion - of people - I create my people - of ‘life’ - it is Life."

Mansfield pioneered "fragmented narratives" of so-called "small things." The immobility she faced through frequent bouts of illness slowed her to a pace of stillness, into a space of noticing. She found joy in the small, the personal, in intimate human interactions. Using notes from her diaries released posthumously, against her wishes, this book exposes the details, desires and delicious nuggets of her thoughts and experiences. We delve deeper into a fascinating life: living in many countries, Mansfield was friends with D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf; she had many lovers of both sexes, a hushed pregnancy, and an affair in Paris in the height of WW1; and she even dabbled in walk-on parts in the early movies.

In this book Harman hand selects just ten short stories, unpicking the layers and running a real-time narrative of her life at the time of writing the piece. This gives the reader a valuable insight into the facets of life that affected and shaped the author. Her expedition into Māori territory in 1907, as only one of four females, was daring and enlightening for an eighteen-year-old girl in Edwardian times, but it gave her first-hand experience of the native peoples of her New Zealand home. 

Going out alone at sunset to admire the sunset she wrote about "the long, sweet steel-like clouds against the pale blue, the hills full of gloom, a little river with a tree beside it, burnished silver like the sea." Into this scene slipped a beautiful Māori girl, "her charm in the dusk, the very dusk incarnate." This material was later utilised in her short story "How Pearl Button was Kidnapped" and although the word Māori is never mentioned, the protagonists are dark in contrast to Pearl's white skin and blonde hair. Mansfield draws on the reader's prejudices of "others" and the use of an unreliable, infant narrator, allowing this piece to explore our fears and assumptions about race. This use of a third-person voice, allowing room for personal interpretation and allusion worked well for Mansfield and was adopted in other works to great effect.

Her marriage and the many relationships that Mansfield had through her life were a great source for her stories. This was a topic she dipped into in several pieces. All Sorts of Lives investigates one particular story, written in 1915, just weeks after she had made a reckless rendezvous in occupied territories to meet her lover, Francis Carco. "An indiscreet Journey" is a comment on war but with a unique female perspective.

Mansfield uses a mix of tenses to describe the journey into a war zone, so we get a real-time narrative of the character’s thoughts and emotions on seeing the effects of war. Never published in her lifetime, the posthumous piece gives an insight into the writer’s life. whilst in Paris, she experienced the first bombing raids of Zeppelin airships and later wrote: "The night was bright with stars … I never thought of Zeppelins until I saw a rush of heads and bodies turning upwards as the 'Ultimate Fish' passed by, flying high with fins of silky grey."

The contextualising of this story in relation to Mansfield’s life makes it even more poignant. She had also recently rekindled a relationship with her younger brother "Chummie," who then enlisted and went off to France. This closeness was short-lived as he was only there a few days before suffering a fatality when demonstrating a hand grenade. The shock of losing her brother so abruptly must have given an extra dimension to the horrors she witnessed in Paris and gives us a new perspective on the internal monologue of the character in "An Indiscreet Journey."

Harman also provides fascinating insights into the sour relationship Mansfield had with her loyal companion Ida. The dog-like devotion she held throughout the rough friendship and poor treatment at Mansfield's hands became the kernel of her story, "The Daughters of the Late Colonel." Mansfield wrote it at the end of her life, suffering in great pain. In a flurry of activity, she finished it in the middle of the night. Calling Ida to make them both a cup of tea she said, "Shall I read it to you? It's about you." A story about coercive control, lost youth and regrets, highlighting the inaction and loss of confidence that continue long after the control is gone, is not a complimentary piece to write about her most faithful friend, housekeeper and nurse: "She gave me the gift of herself ... I ought to have made a happy being of her. I ought to have proved my own worthiness of a disciple - but I didn't."

Harman says, "Being able to take what you need 'from life' and avoid, or resist, overstating it is an incredible power for a writer, and one Mansfield made use of time and again." The subheading of this book takes the nub of this idea, The Art of Risking Everything. Mansfield herself said, "The truth is one can get only 'so much' into a story; there is always sacrifice. One has to leave out what one knows and longs to use." The extensive inclusion, therefore, of diary notes, personal correspondence, family photographs and period details in this book helps to retell the wider story of Mansfield's life and loves and the creation of her "little moments." 

About the reviewer
Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, Zine magazine and The Arts Council and she writes her own blog, Small Sublime here.

Review by Colin Gardiner of "Coal Black Mornings" by Brett Anderson

Brett Anderson, lead singer of the indie group, Suede, describes an eccentric childhood in an ‘oddball’ family's marginal existence in a Sussex housing estate. The portrayal of life in a commuter hinterland is sharply observed, from childhood land-fill explorations, family gossip and adolescent angst in the local comprehensive school. Anderson describes suburban boredom fraught with tension along with the possibility of escape through creativity, in affecting detail.

Anderson’s mother was a frustrated artist. She encouraged creativity within her young family, with a ‘make-do’ attitude, but, ultimately, was destined for domestic servitude to an overbearing, but sensitive father - a classical-music-obsessed taxi driver. 

The most effective sections of the book describe the complicated relationship between father and son. Anderson uses biography as a way of examining the relationship with his father, in order to strengthen the bond with his own young son. Anderson’s emotional collapse and subsequent spiritual paralysis at the death of his mother is devastating, and subconsciously affected his subsequent songwriting and creative persona.  

The tribal youth culture of the eighties is also sharply observed. Anderson describes an existence on the outside of the mainstream, not quite fitting in between the goths, headbangers and neo-mods. His adolescent awkwardness will be instantly familiar to any readers who came of age in the Thatcher years.

Life in an almost unimaginable pre-gentrification London is also portrayed, in a series of dope-hazed bed-sits, lager-soaked concert venues and cramped recording studios. His band was no overnight sensation, and the struggle of poorly attended gigs, inept songwriting and the search for musical identity in an indifferent business is revealed, in unflinching hilarious detail.  

Coal Black Mornings is an honest account set in the dying embers of youth culture in the United Kingdom. A highly recommended read, at turns heartbreaking, excruciatingly hilarious and always convincing.


About the reviewer
Colin Gardiner lives in Coventry. He is currently studying an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. He writes short stories and poetry.

Review by Kevan Manwaring of "Out of Sheer Rage" by Geoff Dyer

An attempt to review a book is to put into words what one thinks about it. One perhaps starts off by not having a firm opinion but by the end of the review, if all goes well, one has been formulated. This does not really change the nature of the book, but it may change the person writing the review, or possibly the person reading it. It may persuade or dissuade this hypothetical reader to buy the book, or it may affirm or conflict with their existing opinion about it, if they’ve already read it – or simply read lots of reviews. It is a chain of ghosts, drawing us further and further away from the book itself, itself an articulation of an experience (either direct, vicariously, or imagined), encoded into black marks, which we translate in our minds into thoughts, feelings, images, and sounds. A homeopathic dilution of real life – that could be a working definition of fiction, creative non-fiction and especially literary criticism. Dyer’s book is, in some senses, a critique and deconstruction of this hall of mirrors. It is an anti-biography, an apparently ‘failed’ attempt at a ‘book about DH Lawrence’ (that we all end up writing, sooner or later, in the Dyerverse of ever decreasing circles – the singularity of futility which is his MO), which, in its gonzo approach of endless digression, indulgences, annoyances, paranoia, and transgressions, actually ‘succeeds’ in channelling something Lawrentian. Dyer makes endless comic capital at of the vainglorious absurdity of ‘experiential research’, while actually undertaking it – globetrotting in pursuit of Lawrence in a form of protracted displacement activity, an endless deferment of gratification – by gratifying every deferment. By the pathological deconstruction of such an approach Dyer actually reifies it, as he finally admits: ‘Had we not seen and done all these things we would not be the people we are’ (p231).  Dyer’s antics is a form of invocation – though he protest too much (ad nauseam) his aches, pains, mishaps, moments of weaknesses, fury, frustration and many failings, all help to conjure Lawrence, to embody Lawrence, to live Lawrence: ‘hoping by this Lawrentian touch to persuade my audience of the all-consuming bond between the subject and the speaker of the talk’ as he quips about a botched talk on Lawrence he gives (p206). He argues forcibly against the aridity of dusty academic studies, far removed from Lorenzo’s full-blooded approach to life – mocking the ivory towers even as he moves to ‘Dullford’ as he calls Oxford, his very own alma mater. His restlessness and neurosis are very much first world problems from the perspective of male, white privilege, at that (the modest lower middle class roots long since abandoned), and as such, his self-ironic posturing would be facile if it wasn’t so frequently funny. And despite his disingenuity – Dyer wears his erudition very lightly – this is only a performance of philistinism within the context of … a book about DH Lawrence. Yet there is method to Dyer’s madness and there are moments of genius, or at least, great wit: ‘Spare me the drudgery of systematic examinations and give me the lightning flashes of those wild books in which there is no attempt to cover the ground thoroughly or reasonably’ (p105). And yes, Out of Sheer Rage is full of mini-lightning flashes as we observe the synaptic pyrotechnics of Dyer’s overheated brain. It is amusing, almost transgressive, like listening in to the ‘mad’ person at the party who says all the things everyone is thinking. This is writing as Tourette’s Syndrome. Dyer plays the court jester with gusto and perhaps makes some valid points amid his buffoonery. He is entertaining, but exasperating. To spend too long in his company would be grating, but for a while his Lawrentian ‘playback theatre’ is a gloriously irreverent read. And as an approach to ‘life-writing’ it has some originality and literary merit: it has a pulse. But that is perhaps only a reviewer seeking an ending to his review and wanting something positive to end on.


About the reviewer
Kevan Manwaring is a Creative Writing PhD candidate at the University of Leicester, currently working on a novel dramatizing the folk traditions of the Scottish Lowlands and Southern Appalachians. He blogs and tweets as the Bardic Academic.

Interview with Ray Connolly

About Ray Connolly

Ray Connolly has written biographies, several novels, including Sunday Morning and Shadows On a Wall, the movies That'll Be the Day and Stardust, the television series Lytton's Diary and Perfect Scoundrels, and has published a collection of his Beatles interviews as The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive. He also worked with record producer Sir George Martin on the television series The Rhythm of Life, and has written TV plays, films and documentaries, radio plays, short stories and much journalism. He is married and lives in London. His website is http://www.rayconnolly.co.uk/ 

Interview with Lee Wright

LW: What determined you to become a writer? 

RC: I stammered very, very badly as a boy, and teachers would say to me many times, ‘If you can’t say it, write it.' So, it was set in my mind. I was also very good at English and history and not much else. So, I think I always saw myself as going into journalism. And when I was at the LSE I began to write. I edited the magazine there. 

LW: How did you start writing biographies? 

RC:  I only began writing biographies about three years ago because I thought that the story about Elvis is not really very well known – the Faustian plot side of it, I mean. So, I thought I ought to tell it and wrote Being Elvis on spec. Then my agent bullied me into writing Being John Lennon, who I knew very well. I’ve just finished that today. I won’t write any more biographies. I prefer fiction. 

LW: Is there any formula to follow in order to become a novelist?

RC: I think the formula is different for different writers. I admire very much those people who can tell a good story. That’s what I’ve tried to do. I’ve no patience with novels that are all about form. Making up a good and original and meaningful plot is everything to me.

LW: Do you need seclusion in order to write? 

RC: I need quiet and a regular untroubled life, which is what I have now. When I’m also doing journalism as well it gets in the way of the bigger projects and slows me down with its interruptions and deadlines. But because I’m not clever with money I’ve had to usually keep some journalism on the go to bring up a family. Still do, although the family are grown up.

LW: You’re said elsewhere, that before writing the hit 1973 film That’ll Be the Day, you knew nothing about writing a screenplay. So, how did you go about it? 

RC: My friend David Puttnam sat me down and told me to write what I saw in my mind’s eye, and to add the dialogue. He then gave me a script so that I could see how it was laid out. So that was what I did. I’d been quite a big film fan, and had been a co-publisher of a film magazine when I’d been at university, so I intuitively understood that films are about structure with the less dialogue the better. David helped me a lot. We would talk about movies and movie moments all the time, and I was allowed to be involved in all aspects of the film. That helped.

LW: A sequel called Stardust quickly followed, for which you won the Writers Guild of Great Britain award for best original screenplay. How did you approach writing the sequel? 

RC: Much the same. David Puttnam was convinced there should be a sequel before That'll Be the Day came out. We plotted the storyline together while I was with his family on holiday in Italy. He should have had a storyline credit alongside me for both films, but he didn’t want to. If you ever write a screenplay make sure you have a brilliant producer. He was the best ever and I was lucky to know him as a mate. I’ve written better films than those two, but without him they never got made. We’re still good friends.

LW: After winning the award, was there ever a point when you saw yourself exclusively as a screenwriter?

RC: Foolishly, yes. But I always had to go back and do some journalism to pay the mortgage and feed the family.

LW: What advice would you give to someone hoping to succeed as a writer?    

LW: Write a lot.  Get stuff published or produced. It’s difficult to break into movies, so try writing radio plays. The BBC will tell you how. You never know where it will lead or who will hear it, and it’s all good practice. See lots of movies and read all the time. Read the papers. God loves a tryer. So never give up.

About the interviewer
Lee Wright was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire in 1980 and has been writing both fiction and non-fiction since 2008. He is taking an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.