Terence Young – The Man Who Would Be Bond
Sean Connery, Terence Young and actress Claudine Auger during the filming of Thunderball
Terence Young is remembered today as the director of three of the first four James Bond films: Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965). The rest of his directing career was mixed: some genuinely good films, Wait Until Dark (1967) and Mayerling (1968), and many other films that were mediocre at best. Young himself is fascinating figure, but no biography has ever been written of him (although there is one Italian monograph which is a study of his films). However, he seems to pop up as a colourful character in the biographies of several famous figures. It was not until I read Ben Macintyre’s excellent Agent Zigzag (2007), about the extraordinary life of MI5’s wartime double agent and criminal Eddie Chapman, that I learned that Young worked with British Intelligence during the Second World War. Young was an intelligence officer attached to the Field Security Section of the Guards Armoured Division which saw heavy fighting at Normandy and Arnhem.
Young counted Eddie Chapman as a friend before the war. Young had a reputation as a sophisticated gentleman with a taste for fine wine, expensive clothes and beautiful women. Chapman, on the other hand, was involved with criminal gangs and was an expert safecracker. The two men’s paths crossed in London where the division between high society and the criminal underworld was not always distinct at the time. Macintyre describes the remarkable series of events that followed: Chapman was serving a prison sentence on the Channel Islands when it came under Nazi occupation. He was transferred to a prison in Paris when he offered his services to the Abwehr, German Intelligence. After being parachuted into England as a German spy, he immediately contacted MI5 in the hope of working for them as a double agent. Young was contacted by Intelligence agent Laurie Marshall to meet with his old friend Chapman and ‘build up his morale’. Young was glad to do this, and he also provided a character reference for Chapman saying he would make a perfect spy:
Young went on to describe the glamourous, roué world Chapman had inhabited before the war, the people he knew from ‘the film, theatrical, literary, and semi-political and diplomatic worlds’, and his popularity, ‘especially among women’. Could Chapman be trusted with intelligence work, Marshall inquired? Young was adamant: ‘One could give him the most difficult of missions knowing that he would carry it out and that he would never betray the official who sent him, but that it was highly probable that he would, incidentally, rob the official who sent him out… He would then carry out his [mission] and return to the official whom he had robbed to report.’ In short, he could be relied on to do whatever was asked of him, while being utterly untrustworthy in almost every other respect.
Young’s assessment of Chapman proved to be highly accurate. Young’s insight and experience into the real world of espionage must have surely influenced his contribution to the success of the James Bond films, just as Ian Fleming’s experiences in Naval Intelligence influenced his creation of Bond, even though the character inhabits a fantasy version of the world of a spy. Young also gave the cinematic James Bond facets of his own character. In an essay written for Her Majesty’s Secret Servant, Robert Cotton examines how Young schooled Sean Connery on how to be Bond:
When Connery arrived, far before filming began, Young saw his best opportunity to mold the actor in his own image. As Lois Maxwell related in one of Connery´s many biographies, “Terence took Sean under his wing. He took him to dinner, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat.’ Some cast members remarked that Connery was simply doing a Terence Young impression, but Young and Connery knew they were on the right track. Then, late in pre-production, when Connery was almost ready to make his debut, Young took Connery on a lunchtime trip into downtown London, to his own tailor on Saville Row. It was time for Connery to “put on the suit’ as it were. It was time for Connery to become James Bond.
By the time Connery showed up for his first days filming, Young had changed everything about him. Connery no longer talked with his hands, one of Young´s most infamous pet peeves. He still moved perfectly, but Young had coached him on WHEN to move. Connery was already far from being a hack actor when he came to the series, but Young knew how to make Connery shine, and he did. Young had taken elements of his own personality and passed them on to Connery. He had turned Connery into a gentleman, and then he turned that gentleman into James Bond.
It’s a shame that having played such a big part in the success of the Bond films that the rest of Young’s work would not be so distinguished. He directed a highly fictionalised and rather disappointing film about Eddie Chapman’s wartime adventures, Triple Cross (1967), and has the dubious distinction of directing what is generally regarded as one of the worst films of all time Inchon (1982). An epic retelling of the Korean War battle, Inchon was partly financed by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon and starred, in a terrible piece of miscasting, Sir Laurence Olivier as General Douglas MacArthur.
Terence Young died in 1994, and because his reputation had steadily declined with each poorly received film, it is perhaps not surprising that he is largely forgotten today. But several years ago an intriguing rumour began to circulate on the internet. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Coalition forces an article written by Mark Bowden titled ‘Tales of the Tyrant’ appeared in The Atlantic. Bowden presented a rather distasteful, fawning portrayal of Saddam Hussein and briefly stated that Terence Young had edited the film The Long Days (1980), a propaganda piece about Saddam’s early life. The claim was later repeated in the play It Felt Like a Kiss (2009), and is examined in this online essay, but on Young’s imdb page, his involvement is listed ‘uncredited’ and ‘unconfirmed’. Even so, its remarkable to think that Young may have still been involved in a murky world of intrigue at that late stage of his life and career. If the rumour is true, it is a stain on Young’s reputation, especially considering that Young often appeared to be a patriot with a social conscience, having directed the anti-drugs trade film The Poppy is Also a Flower (1966), financed by the United Nations. The film may have been made before the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War, but the brutality of Saddam’s regime would have still been clearly evident. In the film, Saddam was played by his cousin Saddam Kamel, who was later killed on the dictator’s orders.
Regardless of this rumour, Young will be best remembered for shaping the cinematic character of one of our best loved spies.
Update: I’ve discovered new information on Young which I’ve put in a follow-up post ‘Where is Parsifal and the Continued Enigma of Terence Young’.
The Elusive Centre: Megan Abbott and The End of Everything
Abbott's novel is loosely based on her upbringing in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
Megan Abbott’s dreamy and compelling The End of Everything explores the strivings for an elusive centre: the central place, the definite reason, the moral certainty of childhood. Abbott’s narrator, thirteen-year-old Lizzie, begins the narrative almost without an individual identity: Lizzie’s personhood is bound up in Evie, her next door neighbour and best friend, whom Lizzie has known since infancy. Until Evie’s hair darkened and Lizzie’s body began to become more womanly, they were hard to tell apart. Their knowledge of one another has become instinctual, or so Lizzie believes, until Evie’s disappearance makes her reexamine her friend and thus herself.
Before Evie disappears, Lizzie and Evie seem on the periphery of things, marginalised by the relationships around them. Lizzie’s parents are divorced and have little time for her (as does her grunting teenage brother), whereas Evie’s home is dominated by Evie’s mysterious, sexual sister, Dusty, whose close relationship with her father is the envy of both girls. The Dusty/Mr Verver relationship upsets the household dynamic, excluding Evie’s and Dusty’s mother to a cipher-like existence.
When Evie disappears, the balance shifts dramatically, and Lizzie is both disturbed and guiltily excited to shift into the centre. Evie’s kidnap heightens Lizzie’s mother’s maternal instincts, and Mr Verver craves her companionship as Dusty becomes reclusive. But just as this seems a redressing of the balance, it is also another version of a distorted world, as Lizzie’s unspoken sexual feelings for Mr Verver and the fear of Evie’s molestation, rape, torture and even murder at the hands of her captor come to the front.
Abbott’s description of Lizzie’s physical and visual impressions, float before the reader like dreams, yet these powerful evocations are part of the fabric of reassessing and becoming as made evident by Lizzie’s attempts to find words, to find the truth, in these fleeting impressions and to describe what happened to her friend:
I’m watching through the kitchen window, the coffee pot chugging.
Sometimes, at night, he’s out there.
That’s what Evie had said.
When she said it, it was just a cold-spiny feeling, a bit of nighttime spookiness. But later, it snuck back into my thoughts, and I wondered about all the boys who trailed Dusty, who swarmed her in the school corridors, who wedged notes into her locker and buzzed about her. So many of them might flit around at night […]
Mr Verver walks into the kitchen, his whole body jumping with energy. “They think it could be something, ” he says. “They don’t know, but they think it could be.”
I feel a tingle on my tongue. I feel it because I think, Doesn’t he see what this means? Isn’t this scarier, a hundred times, the idea that wherever Evie is she might be with someone who watched her, for nights on end, from the dark sweep of a backyard tree, who watched, unhurried, unbothered, puffing and breathing and watching and–
Something clicks and shutters in my head, and there it is, there it is, tumbling from my half-opened mouth:
“The car. Twice. I saw a car go by twice.”
Abbott’s power lies in her descriptions, but also in what remains elusive to the reader, the tantilizing spaces which we are compelled to fill and adjust and reassess along with her characters. Although The End of Everything is a departure from her noir settings, Abbott retains her powerful style. My only reservation is having taught middle school myself, Abbott’s perceptions may exceed the capabilities of her narrator, although the wonder, the cruelty, and the uncertain striving of that age is powerfully present.
Whose Line is it Anyway? – Film Noir Spoof
Every Christmas I like to post a crime fiction spoof to celebrate the season of good cheer. Below is a clip of Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles imporvising a film noir spoof on Whose Line is it Anyway?
Happy Holidays everyone! See you in the new year.
Jim Thompson, Crime Fiction, and the American West
I have just finished reading Jim Thompson’s second novel Heed the Thunder (1946), a western set in early twentieth-century Nesbraska. When I first came across the book I initially thought it must have been a departure from Thompson’s celebrated hardboiled crime fiction, but it was actually published before Thompson started writing crime fiction. Like John D. MacDonald and Chester Himes, Thompson began his writing career with more respectable ‘literary’ aspirations. But like many of his contemporaries, he found his greatest acclaim in crime fiction, although in Thompson’s case much of that acclaim has been posthumous. Heed the Thunder is a loosely plotted series of episodes set around the wealthy Fargo family: much of the focus is centred on the patriarch Lincoln Fargo, a Civil War veteran who served in the Union Army but held secret Southern sympathies. The book often reads as an overly self-conscious attempt to write a ‘Great American Novel’, but it’s possible to see why Thompson would later excel in the hardboiled genre. There is a pervasive sense of secrets and conspiracies forming between families, friends and communities. The narrative also moves inexorably towards violently horrific conclusions as the repercussions are felt from immoral actions, such as a longstanding incestuous affair between first-cousins. It is the younger generation of characters who seem to meet the most macabre of fates. The older characters tend to cling on living with their sorrow. Although not everyone seems to be ill-fated, a venal and incompetent politician is steadily promoted and even manages to do something charitable. One of the most notable qualities of the novel is Thompson’s skill for eliciting pathos through his sharp ear for regional dialects. The deathbed thoughts of one leading character are particularly moving:
I know now, maybe, what the Bible means when it talks about a sparrer falling – I mean, every time there’s a death, the whole world dies a little. There ain’t no death, no deed, no o-mission or co-mission that don’t leave its mark…
“We burn off a forest, an’ all we see is the cleared land, an’ the profit. We burn the forest because we say it’s ours to burn, an’ we can do what we want with what’s ours. We burn it, an’ the birds leave, an’ the grubs come, and the grain don’t grow so good. And there’s hot winds and dust.
“We plow up the prairie because it’s ours to plow, and we dam up the cricks because they’re ours to dam. We grab everything we can while the grabbin’s good, because it’s ours an’ because some other fellow will do it if we don’t. … And, hell, there ain’t nothin that’s really ours, and we don’t know what’s in the other fellow’s mind. …
Other crime writers would excel in the western genre, such as Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker and Frank Gruber. But perhaps Thompson’s greatness in this field came from his experiences living a wild and eccentric life. The son of a corrupt Texas Sheriff, Thompson understood the mentality of western towns where power is concentrated in the hands of a few and the ideals of the American dream are drowned in a sea of blood and lawlessness, themes he appropriated so successfully in western-themed crime novels such as The Killer Inside Me (1952) and Pop 1280 (1964). Heed the Thunder (which was also released under the the more pulp sounding title Sins of the Fathers) ends with an intriguing author’s note:
I was about to pronounce this book the first of a trilogy when the ghost of a hawk-faced old man prodded me with an ethereal cane, “How the hell you know it will be?” he jeered, “Goddam if you ain’t a good one!”
And upon the taunt, there came another, in choked explosive tones, “Maybe I had ought to cut his ears off, seein’ he don’t plan to use ’em.”
So I will say this:
This may be the first volume of a trilogy; there may be a sequel to it – if, in the present book, I seem to have interested or amused sufficent readers to warrant such.
Sure enough the two sequels to Heed the Thunder never came. Thompson’s literary greatness lay elsewhere, in another genre.
On My Reading List
Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott’s latest novel The End of Everything was released earlier this year and has been sitting on my shelf just waiting be hungrily devoured. A new Abbott novel is a crime fiction event, and this one, set in an affluent 1980s Midwest suburb and focused on the disappearance of a young girl named Evie and the affect it has on her closest friend Lizzie, promises to be as gripping and powerful as Aboott’s previous novels Die a Little (2005) and The Song is You (2008).
This one is actually a reread but always worth a visit; Meyer Levin’s Compulsion (1956) is a
epic novelisation of the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. A precursor to the non-fiction novel which some critics claim began with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965), Levin thrillingly explores the psychology of the young killers (here renamed Strauss and Steiner), in the process giving a fascinating insight into upper middle-class Jewish life in 1920s Chicago. The subsequent murder trial where the killers were represented by Clarence Darrow (renamed Jonathan Wilk in the novel) includes some of the most dramatic courtroom scenes in crime fiction. Highly recommended.
As much as I love reading crime fiction, it is in some respects my job, so I like to read other types of books as well. In order to diversify my reading I’m trying to read more history books. I’ve just checked out from the library Antony Beevor’s The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This appealed to me as Beevor appears to be one of those historians who can write to a wide audience and not get too bogged down in excessive details. I know very little about the conflict other than it was a forerunner to the Second World War. I’m looking forward to this one.
Sabbatical
I have a publishing deadline for early December, so I’m taking a short break from blogging. Most of the work is completed, but there is still the checking, double checking and triple checking to be done. I’ll be blogging again in mid-December. See you then.
Beebo Brinker and Lisbeth Salander
Ann Bannon's Odd Girl Out
I’ve been reading several novels in Ann Bannon’s excellent ‘Beebo Brinker Chronicles’ series, and I was struck by how much the stories reminded me of Stieg Larsson’s ‘Girl Who’ novels. On the surface the two series appear to be very different; Ann Bannon is the pseudonym of Ann Weldy who wrote five novels, Odd Girl Out (1957), I Am A Woman (1959), Women in the Shadows (1959), Journey to a Woman (1960) and Beebo Brinker (1962), which are now considered groundbreaking works of lesbian pulp fiction and form the Beebo Brinker Chronicles. Bannon’s only other novel, The Marriage (1960) is generally not considered part of the series, although it does feature several series characters. The series centres around the characters Beebo, Laura, Beth and Jack as they come to terms with their sexuality in late 1950s and early 1960s America. Beebo is sometimes considered the archetype of the stereotypical butch lesbian, but this is a somewhat unfair assessment as Bannon is highly skilled at subtle and plausible characterisations. Beebo does not even appear in the first novel, Odd Girl Out, which is set in a fictional midwestern university where Laura and Beth first meet and begin a friendship which develops into a romance. Unlike others novels belonging to the lesbian pulp fiction genre, such as Theodora Keogh’s The Other Girl (1962), the Beebo Brinker series contains little in the way of actual crimes. Instead, Bannon explores the emotional violence that entails from relationships complicated by feelings of misogyny and sexual jealously. Indeed, the sexuality of the characters is the crime to their society. Occasionally in the novels, the turbulent emotions of the characters does manifest itself in physical and sexual violence, such as rape. But for the most part, the Beebo Brinker chronicles have a literary feel which some critics would argue transcends crime fiction.
Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander
So how does this connect to Stieg Larsson’s Girl Who novels? After all, Larsson’s series fully embraces all manner of crime fiction elements such as locked room mysteries, private detectives, corporate intrigue, espionage, international conspiracies and serial killers to name just a few. Well, in the character of Lisbeth Salander, Larsson created a protagonist who was socially ostracised in a manner not unlike Beebo Brinker and Bannon’s other characters. Lesbianism no longer carries the stigma it once did in 1950s America and elsewhere, but Salander’s bisexuality is by no means universally accepted nor is her Goth identity. Indeed, sinister bureaucratic figures often consider Salander criminal or mentally deficient partly because of her tattoos and body piercings. Another connection between the two series is that they destroy the facade of idealised societies by taking the perspective of characters who are not accepted by that society. The Beebo Brinker Chronicles are set in an America that had become the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world following the Allied victory in the Second World War. But her characters do not find happiness in these economic boom times, as they are either marginalised or have to live with deceit to protect their sexuality. By the time the last novel in the series was published in 1962, America was on the cusp of massive social change and painful upheaval with race riots and anti-Vietnam war protests in what would be a fractious period for the nation. Larsson, and fellow Swedish crime writers who came before him such as Henning Mankell, have thrillingly dramatised Sweden’s social and political ills. This has been culturally significant, as many readers in the UK and elsewhere had somewhat naively regarded Sweden as an ideal European state, almost entirely devoid of poverty, crime and political corruption. This is not to say that either Sweden or the United States are wholly dysfunctional societies masquerading as utopias, far from it. But it is noteworthy that both the Beebo Brinker Chronicles and the Girl Who novels created a certain revisionism as to how we have come to view these societies.
Are the Critics Wrong About Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?
Gary Oldman as George Smiley
I finally got to see Tomas Alfredson’s new film adaptation of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy last night. The film has been lavishly praised by critics for its acting, writing, direction and evocation of a 1970s British setting. Unfortunately, I found the film to be disappointing in all these regards. I’ve written on both Le Carre’s excellent novel and the superlative 1979 BBC production of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy before and I think its one of the greatest pieces of spy fiction. Alfredson’s film sticks to the plot of the source novel fairly closely: there is a mole in a senior position at the British Secret Service (the Circus) passing highly classified information to the Soviets. A former British spy George Smiley is called upon by a high ranking civil servant to investigate and expose the mole. Smiley had been sacked from the Circus in the aftermath of an ill-fated British mission in Eastern Europe, so he must conduct his investigation from outside the Circus. Aided by his protege Peter Guillam, he gradually puts his case together interviewing ex-agents, most of whom have also been sacked as a result of a power struggle within the Circus. That’s the deceptively simple plot: there are a myriad of sub-plots and extensive back-story which all finally merge to form a remarkably complex narrative. The former head of the Circus, known only as Control, sent the agent Jim Prideaux on the ill-fated Eastern European mission in an effort to expose the mole. Control is sacked and dies after Prideaux is shot and captured on the mission. Smiley finds himself working through Control’s original investigation. The title is derived from a nursery rhyme which forms the codenames Control has given to the suspects who might be the mole; Tinker (Percy Alleline), Tailor (Bill Haydon), Soldier (Roy Bland), Poor Man (Toby Esterhase).
Alfredson’s new adaptation faces two big hurdles to overcome in adapting this story to the big screen; firstly, to prove the story is worth telling again after the novel has already been adapted for television and radio, and secondly, to successfully compress a long, detailed and complex story into a two-hour film. He succeeds at the first task but fails at the latter. The film moves at a breakneck pace, characters and scenes from the original narrative are jettisoned, and the complexity of the story is often rendered incoherent. Another problem is the plausibility of the film; Le Carre’s spy novels are noted for their realism, and Tinker Tailor was based on the Cambridge spy ring and more specifically the traitor Kim Philby. The film does not portray espionage with any sense of accuracy — in one embarrassing scene a British spy can clearly see through his hotel window into the apartment block across the way (curtains fully open) where a Russian spy is having sex with his mistress and his thugs are guarding the room outside. When the spy’s unfortunate wife walks in and catches them in bed together, she is savagely beaten by the husband. All of this takes place in plain sight for the British spy to see, and we are supposed to believe the Russian spy would be so incompetent to allow himself to be exposed like that! One unfortunate aspect to this production is the focus on violence, we see the grisly aftermath of several torture murders which are not necessary to the story and seem very unlikely. Alfredson previously directed the horror film Let the Right One In and the influence shows not only in the violence. The tone of the film comes across as somewhere between gothic horror and graphic novel, which to my mind undermines the 1970s setting of the story. In fact, the setting consistently comes across as more like 1940s wartime Britain. Much of the wit and the sparkling dialogue of the novel is absent here, too often replaced with obscenities aimed at getting cheap laughs. As a consequence, a lot of the characterisation seems weak with several performances misjudged. Benedict Cumberbatch does not get the tone right for playing Peter Guillam. The character should have an inner anger and intensity mixed with his fierce loyalty to Smiley and Cumberbatch doesn’t quite pull it off (Guillam is a homosexual in the film for no apparent reason whereas in the book he is a womaniser). It’s also hard to imagine that a senior spy would get so unnerved so easily. Kathy Burke comes across merely as coarse and uncouth as Connie Sachs. Toby Jones seems to drop in and out of a Scottish accent as Percy Alleline. The character of Jerry Westerby is merged with the Sam Collins character of the novel and played by the Liverpool born actor Stephen Graham. Graham is completely miscast and plays Westerby as a cheeky scouser and is not at all convincing as an intelligence agent. In fact most of the cast are unconvincing because they seem to be trying too hard to act and appear terrified in the suspense scenes when they should be trying to keep calm! Gary Oldman is good enough as George Smiley, but again the film is moving so quickly we never get a chance to get to know the character, and he comes across as quite faceless. He even confesses he can’t remember what his nemesis in Soviet Intelligence looks like after meeting him years ago. Hardly inspiring! Also, the plot has been so truncated by the screenwriters we get no sense of Smiley doing much to unmask the mole, rather it just lumbers on from one scene to the next.
The film does have its qualities, and it would be unfair to say that its a complete failure. You could feel the tension in the cinema as the film drew to a climax with the unmasking of the mole. Also, I went with a couple of friends who knew nothing of the story, having neither read the book or seen the BBC production and they seemed to be gripped. So, ending on a postive note at least the film has served to bring this classic story to a new audience. But you would be better served by reading the novel or watching the 1979 television production with Alec Guinness in the role of Smiley than watching this highly overrated version.
Joe McGinniss and the Legacy of Fatal Vision
Joe McGinniss’ latest book The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin is released today, and its controversial claims about the former vice-presidential candidate have already generated a storm of publicity. McGinniss claims Palin had an extramarital affair and snorted cocaine amongst other sordid details. Now I am not a fan of Sarah Palin politically, but I do feel that it’s unfortunate an author with McGinniss’ shady reputation has set his sights on her. McGinniss shot to fame with his debut book The Selling of the President (1968) which examined the successful ‘marketing’ of Richard Nixon during the 68′ election campaign. Since then McGuinniss’ output has been mixed, with his nadir coming with the true crime book Fatal Vision (1983). Fatal Vision was a bestselling book which told the story of Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green Beret and army physician, who was convicted for the murder of his pregnant wife and two young daughters. MacDonald and McGinniss spent a lot of time together during the murder trial and MacDonald was fully expecting the book to portray him sympathetically and help prove his innocence. However, Fatal Vision presented an uncompromising portrayal of a pure psychopath guilty of multiple murders. MacDonald sued McGinniss and the case was eventually settled out of court. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for MacDonald, but McGinniss’ despicable behaviour during the drafting of the book has been laid bare by Janet Malcolm in The Journalist and the Murderer (1990) and in Laura Browder’s essay ‘True Crime’ for The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction (2010). In his search for a writer to portray his case in a good light, MacDonald had written to Joseph Wambaugh requesting that the novelist would take on the job but Wambaugh declined. Ironically, Wambaugh would later get into even more trouble than McGuinniss for his true crime book Echoes in the Darkness (1987). Throughout the drafting of Fatal Vision McGinniss told MacDonald that he thought he was innocent long after he had been found guilty at trial, yet all the while he was busily writing a very different version of events. One of McGinniss’ techniques for encouraging MacDonald’s full disclosure was to condone MacDonald’s adultery by giving him multiple examples of his own infidelities. It makes you wonder how McGinniss obtained the revelations of cocaine use for his book on Palin.
Fatal Vision’s legacy is not just the controversies surrounding a single book but its negative impact on the True Crime genre. Fatal Vision and many other books have given the genre a reputation for sensationalism, bad journalism and in some cases the publication of outright lies. This is a shame because there are many brave and honest writers working in the true crime field today. It’s difficult to imagine that over forty years ago Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965) raised the true crime genre or non-fiction novel as he called it to an art form. But even the reputation of that book has suffered somewhat as Capote’s questionable behaviour during its composition has come under scrutiny.
Does Print Have a Future?
The continued closure of bookshops and libraries across the UK and the resultant job losses makes for some grim reading. It is also rather ironic as book sales are steadily rising. In comparison to the noticeable decline of feature films and music albums, books seem to have a bright future. But with the increasing popularity of E-Books does the printed word have a future? E-books are great for many things: they save massive production costs for publishers and are also easy for readers to access and search. They also seem to appeal to some people who might not be natural bookworms. The downside is individual E-books are usually so cheap that it does not produce a great profit for authors and publishers. Some readers think E-books take away a certain pleasure in reading. I prefer E-books if I’m scouring for references or information in an anthology, but they do not appeal to me for reading novels or poetry. E-books are definitely here to stay, but I think print has a bright future too. There are so many types of books we love: the coffee table book, the dog-eared paperback, the shiny hardback on the bookshelf. It’s hard to imagine these books disappearing, and I don’t think they will. It would be a terrible shame if Waterstones went into administration or had a revamp that made it look like the now almost bookless WHSmith. However, retail booksellers do have some thinking to do; like many readers I buy most of my books on Amazon or AbeBooks. What’s the point of paying full market price when you can find pulp collectibles online sometimes for only a few pounds? But lately I’ve found myself wandering into bookstores and libraries and thinking it would be a shame if this community-based immediate contact with books was lost.
E-books and print complement each other quite well. I hope both will thrive.
The Venetian Vase 