My word! Wasn't this a great TES thread...
https://community.tes.com/threads/novelists-corner.456752/
Opening post:
In_You_Go_Jones
I'm sure there are so many out there who like myself have a novel in the works. Why not have a thread where we can share opinions on each other's work? Let me start the ball rolling with an excerpt from my novel, THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE HEARD JENNY LIND SING... I would appreciate opinion. No sycophancy please!
'It's slow Saturday in mid-December. Gene looks out through the darkening conservatory and snow clouds blanket Hillingdon. Snow falling like petals from the whitethorns of spring; snow drifting in oblique sheets over the Grand Union Canal at Uxbridge where sometimes on early summer morning jogs Gene used to see the former boxer and now painter, the late Kevin Finnegan, at work at his easel. Snow. Everywhere. Snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes, snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of grey-black clouds in white flocculent dustings, or dropping in long low lines, like white spears gliding down from the silent heavens. But always silently!'
And there's more...
In_You_Go_Jones
THE DAILY MAIL ... 21 st MAY 2011
James Delingpole interviews the author of the novel everyone is talking about. A few months ago he was an anonymous teacher in west London. Now Gene Vincent, author of 'The Man who thought he heard Jenny Lind sing...' is a literary superstar.
It is a glorious morning in the summer half term.
An unpretentious Nissan is parked in the driveway. Gene is standing in the doorway. Mahler's Das Leid von der Erde wafts though the open front window. On the hallstand hangs a Bogart-style Burberry trench coat. I am obviously in the home of a man of innate good taste. He greets me warmly and is straight through to the kitchen where he has been busy with the coffee grinder. The strong aroma of freshly ground Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee fills the air.
Gene is dressed casually in a plain grey T-shirt, faded chinos and flip-flop sandals. His is alone at home; his wife (also a teacher) is out shopping at the new Westfield Shopping Centre at Shepherds Bush and his seventeen year-old son, Paul, is off on a soccer training course. "He should be at home revising for his AS levels" mutters Gene, "but his ambition in life is to play for Brentford FC."
With his lithe build, supple movements and shaven head Gene looks much younger than his fifty-four years.
To be continued
Dear God, this brings back so many happy memories.
ReplyDeleteOf how the awful first chapter of "The man who thought he heard Nellie Melba fart" was greeted with universal derision by the connoisseurs of TES Opinion, and of how Gene tried vainly to defend its cliched vulgarity, hackneyed style and tone-deaf prosody. Selwyn, in particular, tore Gene apart in a series of forensically detailed critiques to which Gene had no answer.
On the other hand, this thirteen year old piffle also furnished us with the first, frightening signs that Gene's intermittent narcissistic psychosis was beginning to curdle into the full blown pathology we see today. If only we had realised that the demented "interview" by "Libby Purvis" - later expanded to a brain-deadening 5,000 word essay - was a sure sign that Gene had parted company with reality. Not only was "The Man who thought he heard Nellie Melba fart" never published, it never progressed beyond the feeble few lines rendered above. That of course is no surprise - no real writer would have left un-polished the appalling solecism "former boxer and now painter".
Turning to the "profile" - entitled, unbelievably - "Gene - close-up on a phenomenon" I wonder why Gene has changed its alleged authorship? from the excellent Libby Purves to the thuggish James Delingpole, now a writer of trashy war novels for those who think that Andy McNab is a good author?
Actually, I don't wonder at all. Gene spelled Libby Purves's name wrong in his first paragraph and had to invent a clumsy justification for being interviewed by "Libby Purvis", as if anyone cared. The whole profile yielded a rich harvest of nonsense. My favourite was P C Clint Tebbit, who was given a walk on part purely so that he could kiss Gene's arsehole most savorously ere he knew.
Enough - I've had my fun. Now to serious matters.
Which is to say that I am signing off for good from your blog, Gene.
ReplyDeleteDetterling has given you more than ample opportunities to behave like the Christian gentleman you purport to be, and you have availed yourself of none of them.
Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday 2025, will therefore mark the start of open season on Gene Vincent, whose malice, hypocrisy, dirty-mindedness and sexual misdemeanours will progressively be exposed to a series of communities whose good opinion he prizes - but in a manner which will raise his hopes that he has got away with it before dashing them as cruelly as possible.
It will not be pretty, nor will it be seemly; and I shall try my best not to enjoy it, as the wrath of God is not a laughing matter. But it is necessary.
Today we let the Gene Vincents of this world get away with disgraceful and vicious behaviour.
Next week, the likes of Andrew Tate suddenly find that they have an audience among the simple and the young and escape justice through the good offices of Elon Musk.
And next year, a moronic psychopath who sees politics as a zero sum game sells a country to another psychopath.
Gene, you are the thin end of a potentially world-destroying wedge, which is why I am stamping on you now.
Goodbye, goodnight and sod off, Gene.
Detterling.
"It will not be pretty, nor will it be seemly; and I shall try my best not to enjoy it, as the wrath of God is not a laughing matter. But it is necessary."
ReplyDeleteDetterling once you see the peace offer I will be proposing you will change your mind about going ahead with this malice.
GENE
'Snow. Everywhere. Snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes, snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of grey-black clouds in white flocculent dustings, or dropping in long low lines, like white spears gliding down from the silent heavens. But always silently!'
ReplyDeleteGene this is writing of James Joyce quality. Well done!
Mary Winterbourne