A Dame by any name
[Books]
BY TAN GIM EAN
CALL me Beryl.” With that, the grand dame of English letters set the tone for a video linkup filled with hoarse laughter and animated answers. The conference was part of the Meet the Author series organised by the British Council in Kuala Lumpur.
The screen image was not very sharp, but there was Beryl Bainbridge , with her signature fringe and impish features, reading extracts from her 2001 novel, According to Queeney. What was missing was the cigarette.
Yes, after decades of non-stop puffing, she simply quit after the doctor warned that she could lose a leg if she didn’t. Last December, she had woken up with a violent pain in the left leg, caused by the inflammation of certain blood vessels.
Bainbridge blames her fag-less state for the coughs that punctuated her reading, and the writer’s block that is affecting the structure of her next book. “Smoking is a release for the soul. I can’t write any more since I gave up smoking,” says the 70-year-old, who attained Dame status in 2000.
The superstitious part of her won’t let on more than that this new historical novel will be set in the United States, which she had visited in 1968. But readers can expect her to blend fact and fiction with the distinct voices of people who figure in real life. After all, her early works – Harriet Said, Sweet William, The Dressmaker, and An Awfully Big Adventure – were mainly autobiographical.
“I’ve never seen the point of writing fiction ... You don’t have to make anything up,” Bainbridge explains. “I wouldn’t write about anyone I hadn’t known about 20 years.”
She plucks her plots from the newspapers – “I get funny ideas that won’t go away” – then fleshes them out with family and friends. In the process, she often takes on more than a cameo role.
Harriet Said reflects shades of her sad childhood, during which she had to deal with a tyrannical father while constantly trying to protect her mother. Dressmaker was inspired by her aunts, while Big Adventure, about a fictional repertory theatre in 1950s’ Liverpool, draws from her own experiences with the Liverpool Playhouse. The book was made into a film in 1995 by Mike Newell, with Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant among the cast.
When asked if Sweet William is based on anyone she knows, her reply was quick and intimate: “Yes, and I had a child by him.” She was referring to the writer Alan Sharp, who reportedly went downstairs to get a book from his car after Rudi’s birth, and never returned. Bainbridge has two other children, Aaron and Jo-Jo, from her first marriage to Austin Davies.
After over 20 books and numerous awards, she feels she isn’t as conscious of people as she used to be. “Writing it down makes you lose that curiosity.” In the same vein, “nothing about human nature surprises me now ... but I still think human beings are wonderful”.
Having “killed off” her family – an observation made her friend and fellow writer, Paul Bailey, who was in Malaysia last July under the same series – Bainbridge then turned to the historical novel. The Birthday Boys, Every Man for Himself, Master Georgie, and According to Queeney are anchored by true events and incidents involving real people, who she recreates in fictional form. She bases her research on journals and letters, “nothing contemporary”.
Birthday Boys is centred on Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, while Every Man re-tells the days leading to the sinking of the Titanic. Queeney is built round the hundreds of letters written by the neglected Mrs Hester Thrale, who had an unusual affair with the lonely, depressive Samuel Johnson, whose famed quotes add to the novel.
Master Georgie (1998), about the Crimean War, has been described as “the best book ever not to have won the Booker Prize.” Bainbridge made the shortlist five times. The first was for Dressmaker (1973).
Is she upset about not having that biggie to her name?
“What is the Booker worth ... £50,000 (RM365,000)? I’ve won a lifetime achievement award (the David Cohen British Literature Prize, in 2003, jointly with Thom Gunn) and lots of money. I think I’ve done very well. I think I was made a Dame because I have not won the Booker.”
Bainbridge still gets a thrill from completing a book and thinking, “it’s a work of genius although you can’t think of what you’d written”.
She writes straight into a 15-year-old computer, often from dawn till night, stopping only for a nap in the afternoon. Caught in such frenetic spells, having a bath is a treat because one tends to neglect hygiene while working indoors. Other treats are fried eggs and Coronation Street, in which she played a minor part decades ago.
Bainbridge and Bailey are fans of this longest-running British soap opera; should one of them miss an episode, the other would be on the phone with updates!
Does she revise her drafts?
Definitely – up to 14 times – or at least till she is satisfied because “I need to get everything perfect before I go on to the next page ... I walk up and down all night long and read it straight through aloud. You hear rhythms that are wrong and you take them out.”
She advises young writers to “write, write, write till you drop. You must write as if no one is going to see it.”
This old-timer would rather see someone attain recognition after years of keeping at the craft. As things are today, “new writers tend to be pushed forward. They get so much attention that often, the next book is not as good.”
Source: The Star
BY TAN GIM EAN
CALL me Beryl.” With that, the grand dame of English letters set the tone for a video linkup filled with hoarse laughter and animated answers. The conference was part of the Meet the Author series organised by the British Council in Kuala Lumpur.
The screen image was not very sharp, but there was Beryl Bainbridge , with her signature fringe and impish features, reading extracts from her 2001 novel, According to Queeney. What was missing was the cigarette.
Yes, after decades of non-stop puffing, she simply quit after the doctor warned that she could lose a leg if she didn’t. Last December, she had woken up with a violent pain in the left leg, caused by the inflammation of certain blood vessels.
Bainbridge blames her fag-less state for the coughs that punctuated her reading, and the writer’s block that is affecting the structure of her next book. “Smoking is a release for the soul. I can’t write any more since I gave up smoking,” says the 70-year-old, who attained Dame status in 2000.
The superstitious part of her won’t let on more than that this new historical novel will be set in the United States, which she had visited in 1968. But readers can expect her to blend fact and fiction with the distinct voices of people who figure in real life. After all, her early works – Harriet Said, Sweet William, The Dressmaker, and An Awfully Big Adventure – were mainly autobiographical.
“I’ve never seen the point of writing fiction ... You don’t have to make anything up,” Bainbridge explains. “I wouldn’t write about anyone I hadn’t known about 20 years.”
She plucks her plots from the newspapers – “I get funny ideas that won’t go away” – then fleshes them out with family and friends. In the process, she often takes on more than a cameo role.
Harriet Said reflects shades of her sad childhood, during which she had to deal with a tyrannical father while constantly trying to protect her mother. Dressmaker was inspired by her aunts, while Big Adventure, about a fictional repertory theatre in 1950s’ Liverpool, draws from her own experiences with the Liverpool Playhouse. The book was made into a film in 1995 by Mike Newell, with Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant among the cast.
When asked if Sweet William is based on anyone she knows, her reply was quick and intimate: “Yes, and I had a child by him.” She was referring to the writer Alan Sharp, who reportedly went downstairs to get a book from his car after Rudi’s birth, and never returned. Bainbridge has two other children, Aaron and Jo-Jo, from her first marriage to Austin Davies.
After over 20 books and numerous awards, she feels she isn’t as conscious of people as she used to be. “Writing it down makes you lose that curiosity.” In the same vein, “nothing about human nature surprises me now ... but I still think human beings are wonderful”.
Having “killed off” her family – an observation made her friend and fellow writer, Paul Bailey, who was in Malaysia last July under the same series – Bainbridge then turned to the historical novel. The Birthday Boys, Every Man for Himself, Master Georgie, and According to Queeney are anchored by true events and incidents involving real people, who she recreates in fictional form. She bases her research on journals and letters, “nothing contemporary”.
Birthday Boys is centred on Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, while Every Man re-tells the days leading to the sinking of the Titanic. Queeney is built round the hundreds of letters written by the neglected Mrs Hester Thrale, who had an unusual affair with the lonely, depressive Samuel Johnson, whose famed quotes add to the novel.
Master Georgie (1998), about the Crimean War, has been described as “the best book ever not to have won the Booker Prize.” Bainbridge made the shortlist five times. The first was for Dressmaker (1973).
Is she upset about not having that biggie to her name?
“What is the Booker worth ... £50,000 (RM365,000)? I’ve won a lifetime achievement award (the David Cohen British Literature Prize, in 2003, jointly with Thom Gunn) and lots of money. I think I’ve done very well. I think I was made a Dame because I have not won the Booker.”
Bainbridge still gets a thrill from completing a book and thinking, “it’s a work of genius although you can’t think of what you’d written”.
She writes straight into a 15-year-old computer, often from dawn till night, stopping only for a nap in the afternoon. Caught in such frenetic spells, having a bath is a treat because one tends to neglect hygiene while working indoors. Other treats are fried eggs and Coronation Street, in which she played a minor part decades ago.
Bainbridge and Bailey are fans of this longest-running British soap opera; should one of them miss an episode, the other would be on the phone with updates!
Does she revise her drafts?
Definitely – up to 14 times – or at least till she is satisfied because “I need to get everything perfect before I go on to the next page ... I walk up and down all night long and read it straight through aloud. You hear rhythms that are wrong and you take them out.”
She advises young writers to “write, write, write till you drop. You must write as if no one is going to see it.”
This old-timer would rather see someone attain recognition after years of keeping at the craft. As things are today, “new writers tend to be pushed forward. They get so much attention that often, the next book is not as good.”
Source: The Star
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