Good News: novel completed (subject to editing and proofreading)

After several years on and off and a lot of reworking I finally finished my novel yesterday, subject to editing and proofreading.  I thought I had finished it on Sunday, but then going through and rereading it I noticed I hadn't, that there was a great big hole that needed filling, and one or two important parts missing, so I knuckled down and wrote and filled it in.  Of course, I have no doubt that I will need to do more work on it before hawking it to publishers - I've sent it to various friends to proofread it.

Also I will have to come up with a title for it as I still haven't yet.

For those who just came in, and to refresh people's memories, it’s a crime novel set in New York during the Second World War.  A wealthy but immoral socialite is murdered; the prologue details the murder scene, the first half of the narrative details the circumstances that brings us to this event and the second half deals with the consequences.  The three main protagonists are the two detectives investigating the case, Frank Roebling and Alfred O’Malley, and the husband of the deceased, Stan Rosenbaum, mob lawyer; the main antagonist is – funnily enough – the victim, Rachel Warner-Rosenbaum.  The supporting cast includes a fictionalised version of the Hell’s Kitchen Gang, an enigmatic hitman feeling conflicted about his chosen vocation, a sick, perverted multimillionaire banker and a water buffalo named Nigel.  Okay, I’m kidding about the buffalo, but the rest are definitely in there.

I like to think that I've plumbed the depths of the human experience, or at least touched on deeper themes, such as choices we make, what it is to be a man and so forth, but I might sound a bit full of myself if I carry on like that.  I guess I should let the reader be the judge.

Hopefully it’ll pass muster, get published and sell.  E-books look like the way ahead because they’re cheaper to produce and will reach a much wider audience, but I hope to see (and sign) printed copies too, and support bookstores.

Perhaps the worm is starting to turn.  It's exciting to contemplate…

The notion of a “canon” of “great books”

  What constitutes great literature, or capital-L Literature?  Is the idea of a “canon” of “great books” false, or is it valid?  Who is to judge what is worthy of inclusion in this “canon”?

 Definitions in the American Heritage Dictionary include “a basis for judgement, standard, criterion”, and “an authoritative list, as of the works of an author”.  But isn’t this ultimately subjective?  Who is to say what should go in and what should not?

  Literature is clearly more than just the written word, more than just books.  The truly great Literature is both of its time and transcends its time, and also transcends cultural barriers.  It remains relevant to generations and cultures beyond those of the authors that wrote it.  As Ezra Pound said, Literature is news that stays news.

  People from one or two more radical schools of thought, or collectively the “School of Resentment” – who, it would seem are basically butthurt lefties hung up on imposing “political correctness” on us all – are quick to dismiss or tear down the “straight white Christian male” element in Literature, having us believe that their work has a narrow view of the world and accuses it of being racist, sexist and homophobic.  However, they are quick to forget that these writers were a product of their time, that in a lot of cases they were holding up mirrors to the society that produced them and even observing with a critical eye; furthermore they were actually the more enlightened minds of their time.  More pertinently, not all of the great writers were men – Mary Shelley, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters come to mind, and George Eliot was a woman who wrote under a man’s name and she was certainly not the only one.  Not all of the great writers were straight – E.M Forster, W.H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, Sappho, Gustave Flaubert, D.H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman and W. Somerset Maugham were either gay or bisexual.  (Rumour has it that Christopher Marlowe also was, and some have even suggested William Shakespeare was too, though there is no reliable evidence to support this contention).  Not all of the great writers were white either – Sun Tzu, Confucius, Siddharta Gautama Buddha, Mohandas Gandhi the Mahatma (and even if they weren’t all writers, strictly speaking, they were all great authors by virtue of the words they came out with).  Furthermore, it’s ironic that many of these straight white males from Europe and the Americas so maligned and even accused of anti-Semitism by aforesaid butthurt lefties had their spiritual and moral outlook influenced by a book that was written by Jews and worshipped a God who took human form as a Jew.  Even more interestingly, there are stories which have come to us from the Far East and other traditions, stories which at the bare bones are not dissimilar to the ones in our own culture, or at least contain themes which are universal.

  I’m sure that some six hundred years on we can relate to the characters portrayed in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – the archetypal strong, silent hero in the Knight and his flashy, ostentatious Squire, the lovable rogue Monk, the grotty, scabby, drunken Cook, the hopelessly corrupt Summoner and his boyfriend the lying, greedy, hypocritical extortionist Pardoner, the unscrupulous but oafish Miller, the social-climbing Prioress and of course the decent, honest, hardworking Ploughman and the true ambassador for the Lord in the Parson.  In each of these characters we see not only archetypal characters in literature, theatre, cinema and music but also people in real life who have frequently featured in real life in one manifestation or another time and time again over the centuries.  Even if the language has altered dramatically there are themes and characters which are timeless, and once you can bridge the gap between medieval English and modern English (or whatever language you and yours may speak) The Canterbury Tales are very easy to understand and appreciate.

  In contrast, we have James Joyce’s Ulysses, which was written much more recently and is considered a literary classic – why?  I personally found the book a little dry, not to mention a little bit full of itself, a little ostentatious, and overall difficult to read.  The characters were less than engaging too.  I can’t help but harbour the conviction that he deliberately wrote it as a joke to confound scholars, critics and readers.  People are still bashing their heads against this brick wall hoping to break through and find the prize inside, and whether they think they have found it or really haven’t but are pretending to, or have found that it’s bullshit anyway I can still imagine Joyce laughing.  And the fact that he still has people reading this book, embarking on this literary wild goose chase hoping to find the Holy Grail, nearly ninety years after it was published – that takes genius.  I realise there will be people who disagree with what I say, and so the controversy also continues almost a century on so the immortality of the book and indeed of James Joyce himself is assured.  Whether it actually deserves a place in the canon, well, again with the controversy.  I guess bullshit is a perpetual part of society and the cultural lexicon too, even when it is not actually relevant.

  Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert has all the trappings of being of its era, or close enough to it (it was first serialised then adapted as a novel in the 1850s, whereas it is set around the 1830s or ‘40s).  However, there are themes in it that are still just as relevant today – adultery, forbidden love, existential angst and ennui, social status – and some that are even more relevant now than then, such as the evils of consumerism and materialism, especially on credit.  Therefore it is worthy of its place in any great literary canon.  Madame Bovary is reportedly the result of Flaubert caving into peer pressure to drive a stake through the heart of Romanticism, which apparently didn’t feel right for Flaubert who was still a Romanticist even as the literary world had moved on.  If so, it is ironic that it should be his most famous and enduring work.

  If this story is true then one would be able to compare it to A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  In both cases we have men who wanted to be noted for something else.  Tolkien as an academic, linguist and literary critic (!) who actually resented the cultural relevance the Rings books were gaining.  Milne was already a novelist, poet and playwright determined to write what he pleased and refused to be confined to one genre, so Fate and the public pigeonholed him as a children’s author, and much to his disgust and annoyance the bear of “very little brain” and his mates had more or less eclipsed everything else he had created previously.  Indeed, these men would probably be turning in their graves now that Lord of the Rings and Winnie the Pooh are both multi-million-dollar franchises, and the latter thanks to Disney no less.

  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley demonstrated a great degree of foresight and painted a vivid and perhaps even prophetic dystopian picture, and this statement still stands even if you strip away the science fiction exterior.  When we do we are presented with a world ruled with the Pleasure Principle, manifested in consumerism and sex and infinite distractions, and the consumption of mind-altering substances is prevalent in the world portrayed too.  Indeed, it is more relevant today than what it was when it was written 80 years ago.  Therefore, if you believe there should be a Literary Canon, then this too would have to be included.

  According to George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History at Brown University:

“Belonging to the canon confers status, social, political, economic, aesthetic, none of which can easily be extricated from the others. Belonging to the canon is a guarantee of quality, and that guarantee of high aesthetic quality serves as a promise, a contract, that announces to the viewer, "Here is something to be enjoyed as an aesthetic object. Complex, difficult, privileged, the object before you has been winnowed by the sensitive few and the not-so-sensitive many, and it will repay your attention. You will receive pleasure; at least you're supposed to, and if you don't, well, perhaps there's something off with your apparatus." Such an announcement of status by the poem, painting, or building, sonata, or dance that has appeared ensconced within a canon serves a powerful separating purpose: it immediately stands forth, different, better, to be valued, loved, enjoyed. It is the wheat winnowed from the chaff, the rare survivor, and it has all the privileges of such survival… It also means that to read these privileged works is a privilege and a sign of privilege. It is also a sign that one has been canonized oneself -- beatified by the experience of being introduced to beauty, admitted to the ranks of those of the inner circle who are acquainted with the canon and can judge what belongs and does not.” (Landow, 2010, online)

So we are ourselves beatified and privileged upon reading these works – so outside of this class, by reading canonical works we can actually choose to be privileged and beatified?  Of course, this is provided one actually ascribes to the idea of a canon of great books to begin with.  Of course, this in itself is subject to debate, the validity of the idea of a canon of great books, let alone which books belong in there and which do not.

Bibliography:

  Landow, George P., Professor of English and Art History, Brown University, “The Literary Canon” from The Victorian Web: Literature, History and Culture in the Age of Victoria [Online].

Available: http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/canon/litcan.html [June 18, 2011].

  Stockton, Kathryn B., Associate Professor of English, University of Utah, “Canon: Dictionary Definitions” from The Victorian Web: Literature, History and Culture in the Age of Victoria [Online].

Available: http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/canon/defcan.html [June 18, 2011].

The Muses

The Muses - who are they? What are they? And how do they relate to me?

The traditional - or at least Classical - understanding is that there are nine Muses who embody the arts and inspire creativity through such diverse forms as music, writing, acting and dance. (However, according to the Roman scholar Varro, there are (or at least were) three muses: Melete or Practice, born from the movement of water; Mneme or Memory, who makes a sound when striking the air; and Aoide or Song, who is embodied only in the human voice). They are sometimes referred to as water nymphs,

"associated with the springs of Helicon and with Pieris. It was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses." (Source: Wikipedia)

However, other stories conflict with this one vis-a-vis their genesis and parentage, including Zeus and Mnemosyne (goddess of memory) and Uranus (god of the Sky) and Gaia (goddess of the Earth), Zeus' grandparents.

The nine Muses are:

- Calliope, muse of epic poetry, whose emblem is the writing tablet;

- Clio, muse of history, whose emblem is scrolls;

- Erato, muse of love poetry, whose emblem is a lyre-like instrument called a cithara;

- Euterpe, muse of song and elegiac poetry, whose emblem is a flute-like instrument called an aulos;

- Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, whose emblem is the tragic mask;

- Polyhymnia, the muse of hymns, whose emblem is the veil;

- Terpsichore, the muse of dance, whose emblem is the lyre;

- Thalia, the muse of comedy, whose emblem is the comic mask;

- Urania, the muse of astronomy, whose emblem is the globe and compass.

The muses more or less covered all facets of the Arts, and were also associated with all forms of learning.

Now which Muses would influence me? Truth be told a lot of my poetic and literary endeavours have been inspired by women, particularly ones I've been in love/infatuated with. I think it's safe to assume that I'm not the only one. It is no accident that the Muses have traditionally been portrayed as beautiful women, and indeed that's how I imagine them, though no doubt for some they would alternatively assume a more masculine manifestation. Being an aspiring novelist, casual poet, history buff and at times having been something of the class clown, I guess the Muses that would impact me or have done so would be Calliope (assuming that "epic poetry" includes novels/novellas, etc), Clio, Erato and even Thalia (though this last one might be the subject of some debate).

May the Muses never turn their faces from me.

Thoughts on Eros and the Arts

About a month ago I attended a Philosophy lecture at the local library which sparked much food for thought and interesting conversation. The topic was on Plato, Women, Sex and Eternity. Apparently Plato had a lot to say about marriage, even advocating it, for a man who himself never married. The subject of love also attracted some debate - do we love the other person in and of themselves? Do we love them for their help in us fulfilling procreation and legacy? Do we marry the person we love or love the person we marry?

"You do not marry the one you love; you love the one you marry."

                                                                            

                                         - Indian Proverb.

In our culture at least marriages tend not to be pre-arranged, they're more or less of the choosing of the bride and groom alone, and I could say that marriages of convenience are a thing of the past, but that assumption may be a little naive. Generally speaking they're based on love - romantic, erotic, I'm almost scared to apply those two labels as the semantics seem to vary from one century to the next or even between different schools of thought.

As for procreation, is that really a prerequisite?  History has proven that the answer is "Not necessarily".  Most royal marriages throughout history were political business transactions and procreation was very necessary for the sake of the kingdom, and if the king and queen fell in love with each other that was a bonus.  No doubt in most cases they grew to love each other, but that was more of a mature love than a romantic love (the marriages between King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitane and, more recently, Charles and Diana are proof that marriage for purely political and/or dynastic reasons is a bad idea, especially as both unions ended rather acrimoniously and in the former case an entire family was torn apart and at war with each other).  Conversely, there have been couples who no doubt loved each other very much but one partner was barren - does this make their love any less valid?  And then there are all those gay couples throughout history who have all been biologically incapable of procreating together - does that make their love any less valid?

"Eros" as it was in ancient and classical Greek originally referred to an all-consuming love, be it between man and woman, between parent and child, between man and God, whatever, though only in the case of husband and wife or that of paramours hetero or otherwise was there a sexual element to it.  Or indeed it referred to the essential life force in all of us manifested in an all-consuming, all pervasive love.  However, transferring to English the meaning has been down-graded and bastardised somewhat, so that in modern English "erotic" is synonymous with "sexual", pure and simple, and whether love is involved is another story.

One tangent the talk of love/"eros"/call it what you will led us on was onto Dante, author of The Divine Comedy, and his muse Beatrice. He was never with her and never could be with her because he was already married so instead he wrote an epic poem (the aforementioned Divine Comedy) with himself as the hero and her as the heroine/love interest. 

As a writer myself I can totally relate - when a man is in love with a woman he can never have, what better catharsis than to channel those feelings into great writing or art or music? Sappho wrote poetry dealing with unrequited love, and such feelings have been set to music in all its forms and genres - Eric Clapton's feelings for George Harrison's wife Patti were famously articulated in the song Layla, and a lot of John Lennon's contribution to The Beatles' White Album dealt with his feelings for Yoko Ono. Eric did get together with Patti, albeit temporarily, and John did end up with Yoko, but they didn't know that at the time, and that didn't detract from their feelings. Also, there are a plethora of blues songs dealing with unrequited love and also illicit love.   And we have knights and their lady friends to thank for the concept of courtly love - whether it was completely platonic I don't know and couldn't say for sure, but theirs was a love more or less invariably doomed and at least in real life couldn't be seen through to the ideal romantic conclusion because they were married to other people. Mind you, even now in this age of no-fault divorce these situations are never totally painless or without consequence so I guess the great art will continue to be fuelled by such feelings for a long time to come.

Someone once said that love should set you on fire.  Would one want to feel that way about someone else if they either don't feel the same way, or worse that person is someone other than one's spouse or they're someone else's spouse?  It certainly defies logic and rational thought, and a cool, clear head is what each person needs when they decide to make a commitment such as marriage - granted, it should be governed by both the heart and the head.  As for the love that sets you on fire, well, if it ultimately fuels great art, literature or music and gets channelled in that direction because the more desired pathway is closed off then it is not a complete waste of time and energy after all.

My Personal Poetic

My own particular Poetic: what is it? It is only in the last few months that I have even considered this question. And it’s not worth bothering with Wikipedia – it told me nothing! If I have understood correctly my personal Poetic is my literary or artistic voice, and perhaps touches on influences, experiences and what inspires me or has inspired me to write or create. In order to answer this question I shall touch on these and other factors, and hopefully provide a clear picture of my own literary microcosm, a coherent idea of the literary and artistic macrocosm and perhaps even how the two relate.

First of all, where does my creativity come from? I guess it comes from my soul; whether inspiration comes from God is hard to say – some of the ideas I’ve had it would be blasphemy to attribute to the Almighty, though He does have an uncanny knack of turning negatives into positives and He does move in mysterious ways. And as you probably deduced from my last comments, my soul is informed by religious beliefs of a discernibly Christian nature, and yet I would be lying if I said sex held no fascination for me either – I realise it makes for an interesting contrast! All my life I have been fascinated by both the sacred and the profane, but never the twain should meet. Of course, these don’t always feature in my work, at least as far as I’m aware, though no doubt a moralistic viewpoint would possibly be discernable, plus my fixation on the theme of redemption, and perhaps explorations of what it is to be a man. I am not sure I could write a purely dark piece, or a totally dark piece – I guess I am too fixated on heading for the light, and that would inevitably shine through. However, I have also written a few pieces light-hearted and comical in nature, if a little quirky. I guess this is indicative of my generally happy-go-lucky disposition.

I guess as first adolescence and then adulthood took over I may have inadvertently picked up an existentialist thread in my poetic. I was a straight white Christian male growing up in a middle-class household in a rural/regional conservative heartland, so what oppression could I have possibly faced? The answer: being a straight white Christian male growing up in a middle-class household in a rural/regional conservative heartland in the ‘90s! Certain elements of society seemed determined to make me feel guilty for being a straight white male, at least from where I was standing, and straight white male bashing seemed to be the sport du jour among the left-wing elite. Furthermore I just couldn’t get into the popular music of the day, be it the depressing, joyless proto-emo dirges of The Smashing Pumpkins and their ilk or the egotistical and at times sociopathic and misogynistic posturing of rap or the soulless electronic noise of techno or a lot of the bubblegum that was on the charts, and as I’ve gotten older television and pop music has gotten worse – vacuousness, cheapened sexuality and prime-time pornography, self-absorption, materialism and commercialism and all too often a moral compass that is either skew-whiff or non-existent. I found myself drawn to country music, jazz, and classic rock from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Because of my love of the classics and lukewarm to cold response to a lot of the newer material some of my peers harboured the attitude that I was a walking anachronism, born out of my era. “Do you listen to any modern music?” they would ask, to which I reply that I do, just not the teenybopper stuff. Then more recently I was stuck in a job I hated which drained me physically and mentally, which gave me no joy or stimulation, until enrolling in this course and finally breaking free of that treadmill. I now watch little television and listen to no commercial radio, choosing not to let advertising, abysmal pop music and general stupidity be shoved down my throat. More importantly, I feel I have broken free of the “Other” and am taking charge of my life.

However, somewhere between childhood and adulthood I swung from being a budding Romantic to more of a Realist persuasion; could I be currently swinging somewhere between the two? As a youth, just as the Romantics of old idealised medieval Europe I found myself drawn to mid-20th century America, and also Britain and Australia, taking perhaps a Romantic view of it, though I can’t help but notice a palaeo-conservative element to Romanticism – both schools of thought idealise the past, or at least perceive the past as better than the present. Indeed they seemed to be well-reconciled in me. Even in Realist mode, the attraction to that time and place still remains, perhaps not least because it gave us classic hard-boiled crime novels and film noir and the early music of artists like Johnny Cash – tales of the downtrodden and disenfranchised, of desperate losers and cynical heroes and anti-heroes often on the wrong side of the tracks.

Writers – be they novelists, poets and even songwriters/musicians – who have influenced me have included Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad, James Ellroy, Frank Miller, John O’Grady (a.k.a. Nino Culotta), T.S. Eliot, John Lennon, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. For some reason I’ve often felt like I subconsciously emulate O’Grady, though I like to think my literary voice is my own.

My motivation for writing stemmed from a love of stories, be they in books, movies or songs, or whatever, together with a fertile imagination and a desire to create stories of my own. That plus at least while going through life at the time I found my everyday life as a white middle-class country kid bit nondescript at times, a bit mundane, so it provided a little escape too, a little magic. Plus there have simply been times where it’s in me and it’s got to come out. And indeed it has always been cathartic. With each story or poem I wrote, with each book I read and each class I took my technique got better. I also broadened and developed my vocabulary to lend richness and diversity to the language used, to have the right words to convey the message or paint the mental picture and it also comes in handy for poetry and alliteration, a literary device I am particularly partial to and welcome every opportunity to employ.

My poetry has tended to be free verse, sometimes almost prosaic. This is partly through laziness, as it can be hard to come up with a rhyme that doesn’t sound trite or corny, and I lack the ability to compose music so what need have I for the iambic pentameter?

My actual purpose for writing, well, again I like stories, though I’d like to think there’s at least some depth to what I write too, that they edify or at least entertain. Naturally I would like it to be read by others, I would like it to reach others and enrich them somehow – if I just wrote and didn’t do anything with what I had written it would amount to nothing more than artistic masturbation.

But then I suppose that’s been the case with many a writer or artist across the ages – they’re creating this possibly great work, something beautiful, so why not share it? And if they can do it professionally, even better. But what is the role in society of the writer, or indeed the artist or musician? Is it to make a social comment, to hold a mirror up to society? Is it to make a political statement? Is it to fight oppression, or alternatively to reinforce it? Does it create social change, or merely chronicle it? Is it to praise or commune with God, or thumb one’s nose at Him or disregard Him altogether? Is it to make an artistic statement? Is it to make a statement of any kind, or is it merely to entertain? In the case of writing, is it simply to record and provide information? Is it to escape one’s milieu, or confront it head on? Depending on the individual work any one of these answers is correct, and sometimes there is more than one correct answer.

I would like to think the average reader could be anyone, that I could have a broad and diverse readership. I seek to entertain and hopefully edify too, to hopefully make the reader think, to uplift the reader and perhaps even provide a moral compass. One faculty I’ve always wanted to engage in the audience is their imagination, to take the pictures in my head and put them in the heads of my audience.

Rough synopsis/idea for a novel

A few weekends ago I sat down and jotted out a rough synopsis for a novel I feel the urge to write.  This may be a little long, so hats off to those of you who read to the end.

The setting is primarily Memphis, Tennessee, USA between the years 1929-1934, though there will most likely be some action in other locales including Chicago.  Our hero is Henry "Hank" Strickland, a young agent with the Department of Investigation (now the FBI), who gets transferred from Chicago to the Prohibition Bureau in Memphis in his home state.  He wants to take down Capone and his ilk in the wake of the Valentine's Day Massacre, and it is decided it is safer for him to stop bootleggers and thus help cut off Capone's supply/source of income.  With him is his wife Dorothy, a native of Illinois who he met in Chicago.

Not long after they arrive in Memphis Hank meets our heroine Lucy Beaufort, a free-spirited young woman who owns and runs a theatre willed to her by her grandfather.  Each is intrigued by the other and before too long they realise they are in love, something Hank struggles with due to being married.  They eventually succumb to temptation, and when they realise what they have done they are both racked with guilt so decide to break the affair off.  The guilt is further compounded for Hank when his wife is fatally injured in a car accident, even though Lucy tries to save her life.  Dorothy, knowing or suspecting feelings between the two of them, asks that Lucy take care of Hank and forgives them as she dies.  Lucy offers herself to him, offers to be there for him, and he says he'll come around eventually, but for the time being he needs to mourn.  Hank blames himself and becomes depressed and even a little self-destructive, though still functioning at his job.  He eventually gets transferred back to the Bureau of Investigation.

Enter a third character, Aaron Craven, a banker, who comes to town having had to flee Birmingham, Alabama after being caught out embezzling his employers.  Hank meets him and manages to aid in his arrest (a possible catalyst being Aaron's attempt to bribe him).  Hank and Lucy meet again at the trial, and from there their affair starts anew.  Meanwhile, Aaron goes to the Alabama State Pen where he falls in with a cadre of criminals, with whom he escapes during the prison fire on November 28, 1932 (one of the crims sets the fire, only intending to create a distraction, but most of the prison is destroyed, providing the perfect distraction).  They set off robbing a few places, including banks, going from state to state.  They want to join up with the Barker-Karpis gang but get turned down.  Between jobs the gang and their women hide out in St. Paul, Minnesota and then Hot Springs, Arkansas.

The Kansas City Massacre on June 17, 1933 sparks the U.S. Government's "War on Crime".  Hank practices his firearm techniques and petitions Hoover to allow heavier firepower for agents and adequate training in their use.  He is consigned to mostly office work as usual, and is passed up for the Flying Squad (or Dillinger Squad).  However, he is one of the agents who assist in the arrest of Machine Gun Kelly.  He also ends up catching the girlfriends and wives of Aaron and his gang, and holds his own both in interviewing and in armed confrontations.

Between the changing nature of his job and his relationship with Lucy we see Hank go from quiet, somewhat repressed desk jockey to crime-fighting hero.  Conversely, Lucy proves to not be a femme fatale at all, quite the opposite she's a decent person and though she and Hank do the wrong thing initially she is determined to atone and ultimately helps redeem Hank.  What I'm especially interested in also is not punishment so much as redemption, at least for Hank and Lucy.  I also want to make comment and criticism of the Prohibition (which will still be relevant today, given certain elements taking a hardline anti-alcohol stance) and of consumerism and materialism, relevant both in the 1920s and today.  Granted the tale will have some romance elements but also with Hank as something of a noir hero, and I also like the idea of Hank and Lucy as existentialists.

Hank is a nice bloke, intelligent, conscientious, conservative and even somewhat repressed, an eccentric but fun-loving side in him is repressed.  He's tall, slim and bespectacled, and depending on one's perspective is either handsome and scholarly or lanky and nerdish.  He and his wife love each other, even if Dorothy doesn't entirely understand him and even treats him as quaint, even nerdish.  He is a member of a prestigious lawyer family and is fully qualified himself, though his Dad got him a job with the Justice Bureau because he was just too honest to be a lawyer and join the family business.  He wanted to be a Texas Ranger as a kid like a favourite uncle of his was, but his overprotective father talked him out of it.  He is bored by the bourgeois lifestyle, and despises materialism but is putting up with it because it's what he's supposed to do.

Lucy Beaufort is slim, blonde and gorgeous, a lady but a free spirit and very independent too, dressing like a flapper to screen the true gentlemen from the riff-raff.  She is single when we meet her, having been cheated on and dumped by her erstwhile man.  She is kind and generous and compassionate, she is also eccentric, fun-loving and free-spirited, is very much a '20s woman when we meet her, and unlike others she encourages him to think different, be himself, be his own man, take more of an interest in the arts and such and he's right, the bourgeois lifestyle is bullshit.  She engages and stimulates him intellectually too.  She vibes sensuality, non-conformity, but not malevolence.  In her Hank finds a kindred spirit.

Of course, there may well be some small deviations between the initial plan and the final product - I guess it all depends on where it takes me - but the above is what I'm aiming for so far and the direction I feel I'm being led.  Now to get it underway...

Introductory Post

Hello everyone, how are you all?  Hale and hearty I hope.

As the byline says, I have opened this journal for the purposes of musings, discussion and even projects of a literary nature.  Acting upon the advice of more literary-minded friends I have finally opened an account on Blogspot/Blogger.as it may get me the networking and exposure I need on this journey.

All my life I have wanted to be a writer, though I haven't travelled the simplest route to get here.  It tended to be more of a hobby than anything, though an ill-advised Accountancy course and a few years in an abbattoirs got in the way.  Now I have more leeway to pursue my passion so may the Muses not turn their faces from me now.

I also have two blogs at LiveJournal, The Jester and The Jester's Literary Journal, if you fancy a look.  I may even cross-post entries from time to time.

I've just opened this blog so it may be a little rough around the edges to begin with but I will fine-tune it.  I look forward to communicating with fellow bloggers, writers and people in the industry, making friends and contacts.  And again, may the creative juices keep flowing.

If you'll excuse the cliche, watch this space.