Emily and Wuthering Heights Part 1

Emily is famous for one novel and her poetry, unlike her sisters, she only wrote this one work. Charlotte, who lived almost to the age of 40, wrote and published four novels, many stories and some poetry. Anne, who died around 30, also wrote poetry and 2 novels, Agnes Grey and Tenant of Wildfelll Hall. It has been said that critically speaking there is only one Bronte –Emily. Many critics feel that Charlotte’s novels are uneven and that Anne’s works are slight. But Emily’s one work is a great novel. I tend to agree. I think that Anne’s works are slight and overly moralistic and that Charlotte (while she has real talent) was often preposterous. Jane Eyre has wonderful early chapters about Jane’s childhood, but the later plot shows her lack of knowledge of the upper classes. The bigamy situation, which is probably meant to make Rochester more sympathetic, only makes him ridiculous. Her experience of the world was limited, but she chose to write novels that demanded such knowledge. She never mixed in “high society” except for a brief time, after her first novels were published. As a child, she wrote from imagination and reading the newspapers. In Shirley, she made an admirable attempt to write about the Luddite riots earlier in the century, which meant researching into the industrial and social history of Yorkshire. However her mixing of stories based in “society” and “real life” with the passionate and wild emotions that were very much part of her character tended to create very uneven works. Emily’s one novel is more unified. Unlike her sister, she didn’t bother very much about “normal” social life. She lived contentedly as a recluse, only mixing with her own family… and knowing little of the world other than what she had learned from her short times as a teacher or in Brussels. So there is not the same divergence between 2 different sorts of writing, in Wuthering Heights. The novel is “Gothic”, but it is not set abroad in some exotic location, but firmly rooted in Yorkshire. Charlotte said that Emily knew nothing of the “world” but she heard old stories of life in Yorkshire. At that time, rural Yorkshire was very isolated. People lived in a small circle, and were often obsessed by family feuds going back for years. So the fact that the Earnshaws and Lintons were the only 2 “well to do” families of any social standing, around Gimmerton, is not unrealistic. By setting her novel in the late 18th century and in the rural wilds of the county, Emily avoided having to deal with “society” which she knew very little about.

Rough Music, sex and drugs and rock and roll

I have now published “Rough Music”. It is not a romance; it’s about people who are a bit older than the “very romantic” age, who are 30-ish and trying to sort out problems in life, rather than looking for a perfect love affair or marriage. Jeff and Brandon are two guys, who are good friends, and work together. They are both trying to work out how far they compromise in their work lives and how they try and manage a music career, with its frequent traveling and still maintain contact with their wives and families. They want to do real music that they love, rather than concentrate on commercially successful stuff, but they also need to earn a living. This is in its way a historical story, set in the late 1970s, so attitudes are not the same on many issues as they are now, but there’s fun, sex and I hope some real life in there! I find writing about older people, who are not at the age when love and finding the perfect partner are all important. Jeff and Brandon are married, they have children, they have work problems and problems with friendship. I know that some readers wont like their attitudes, but they were of their time..

Emily Bronte a short post

I’ve been reading a short book on the Brontes by Margaret Lane. It is not an in- depth study, but covers talks given to the Bronte Society by Lane, who was an author in her own right. I want to write a longer piece about Emily someday but the book threw up a few ideas for me. It is called the “Drug like Bronte Dream”. Lane believes that all of the Brontes had a capacity for ignoring ordinary life and living in an imagined world, which gave them scope for their writing. In real life, they were the children of an Irishman (Patrick Brunty), from a very poor background. He had raised himself to becoming a clergyman of the Church of England and a modest success as Curate of Haworth in Yorkshire. He changed the spelling of his name to Bronte and married an English girl, by whom he had 6 children. But while he had done very well, they were still poor by middle class standards. Patrick lost his wife – she died of cancer when the children were very young. Then he lost 2 of his children when he sent them to a school which he hoped would give them a good education. The school was horrifically harsh. The two older girls - Maria and Elizabeth -were taken ill and died. He removed Charlotte and Emily and took them back home to educate them himself. Patrick's stipend was small but enough to keep him and his children frugally. He had to help his girls towards earning a living when he was gone. He had particularly high hopes that his only son Branwell would do very well and would get a good job. Branwell was clever and more outgoing than the girls, and he had talent at writing and painting. Patrick expected that his daughters might have to go out as governesses, this being almost the only form of employment allowable for genteel girls. So he was anxious to have them well educated also. The children socialised a little, with the local gentry and other clergy families but they were very shy and awkward and were happiest in their own family circle. At home, they were able to foster their imagination by writing. They created entire fantasy worlds, Gondal and Angria, and from an early age wrote stories about their characters. What was unusual about this, Lane points out, is not the creation of a world or writing and acting out stories. That had been done by other children and even other families of children who were creative. From childhood, they “wrote” books in such a way as to make them look like small print books. They wrote in tiny print because paper was so expensive, but they wanted the “books” to look like real published books. The four children spilt up into two pairs, Emily and Anne creating and writing about Gondal and Branwell and Charlotte writing about Angria. They read the papers and used characters from the news of the day, such as the Duke of Wellington, as material for their stories. Charlotte was able to “switch off” from normal life and hypnotise herself into the world of her characters, to literally “see” them, while she was busy with routine things. Emily too, was happy when helping with housework and cooking. She also could go into her private world of imagination while doing the household tasks and work out her plots and “see” the people she was writing about. Charlotte was very shy and socially awkward, but she did her best at times to mix with people. However Emily seemed to reject completely “normal real life” and to choose to live entirely in the imaginary life she had created for herself. She never worked as a governess, unlike Charlotte or Anne. She went to a school after the disastrous school where her sisters had died, but she was unhappy away from the moors. She then spent a few months as a teacher in a private school called Law Hill. Later she was a pupil teacher in a respected Brussels school, with Charlotte. She never made any friends outside the family, and lived for her writing and her rambling on the moors.

THE RIDE (SONG)

The Ride is a country song recorded by David Allen Coe, an “outlaw” country singer... It was on his album Castles in the Sand in 1983. Written by Gary Gentry and J.B. Detterline Jr, it's about an encounter between a drifting singer, hitchhiking towards Nashville, who gets a ride with a country singer who looks ghostly –half drunk and hollow eyed. They listen to the radio and as he looks at the driver, he realises that this is no ordinary ride. The driver asks him if he can “make folks feel what you feel inside”. As he lets the man out of his car so that he can drive back to Alabama, the hitch hiker thanks him. He replies “You don’t have to call me Mister, Mister; the whole world calls me Hank”. And he realizes it was the dead Hank Williams. The song has a chilling quality, helped by Coe’s delivery. I like it particularly because it hits so clearly at the appeal of country music. People who think that it is commercialized schmaltz don’t understand the deep meaning that it has traditionally had for poor “country” people. Most of the older singers, now beginning sadly to leave us, came from impoverished hard–scrabble backgrounds, sharecropping families in the southern states. It appeals in most countries where there is a rural base and where people have had to work hard to make a living… It has always been popular in Ireland and Scotland and the North of England. Also in Scandinavia and in parts of Eastern Europe. It’s usually sneered at by the well off and the sophisticated. For people of that time, music was one of the few entertainments that they had. They were too poor to go to the movies often; there were no theatres, not many books, and no TV, but most houses had some musical instrument. They could listen to the Grand Old Opry on the radio. Hank Williams wrote songs that appealed to the people he came from, whom he played for. People who were poor, struggling to live, who had stormy lives, trying to bring up children on too little pay, where a love betrayal was a tragedy... Many of his songs came from his love hate relationship with his wife Audrey and his own despairing addiction to pills and drink. And he could make people feel the pain that he suffered; make them believe that he felt their pains…-and that’s what makes a great country singer.

Cash In Concert 1997

It will be obvious to anyone reading this blog that I love country music. I love the singers that came to prominence in the 50s and 60s. But the one I love most is Johnny Cash. I saw him singing live once, in 1997. He was touring in Europe and played one night in England at the Royal Albert Hall. Jewel was his support act but I’m afraid that my friend and I didn’t go to see her. We just wanted to see Johnny. We went for a drink at the Albert Hall’s bar and then went to wait outside to see if we might actually see him coming in. It was April and it was starting to get dark. I was shaking with excitement over the prospect of seeing my childhood hero. I was hoping that he would still be in good singing voice. He was then in his mid-60s and I knew his health wasn’t too good. But when he arrived, I wasn’t quite prepared for how frail he looked. He was a tall man, but now a bit stooped and his hair was thinning and greying. He moved very slowly, and didn’t speak but signed a few autographs before going into the Hall. My friend and I took our seats and both of us were excited and apprehensive. My friend said that he hoped very much for my sake that Johnny’s voice was still good, because it meant so much to me. He too admired the man and wanted to hear him singing well. And we could see that he wasn’t the big strong looking man that he had once been. But when he came on stage, he bounded on and said “Hello I’m Johnny Cash”. We realised that he could save his energy for the performance and that he was going to be all right. I can’t remember now what song he started with, but I think it was Folsom Prison Blues. His son John Carter Cash was performing with him and his wife, June. His voice was as good as it ever had been. Strong, resonant, powerful and tuneful. I don’t think I have ever seen such a wonderful concert. I can remember many of the songs, Lefty Frizzel’s Long Black Veil, Big River, Ghost Riders in the Sky, and Jackson (A duet with June). June was charming and funny and sang and played beautifully, and the love between her and John showed very clearly in their duets. It almost moved me to tears when Johnny and June sang together. When it was all over, we knew that he wasn’t up to doing an encore, but had played and sung for about an hour and a half, and had sung his heart out. As we left, we saw him and June leaving. Soon after that concert, Johnny’s health got much worse and he had to give up touring abroad and had to cut down on his tours even in the US. But he kept on singing and recording as long as he could. Some time later, reading a biography of Johnny, I found that his sight had been failing then. I realised that that was why he had walked so slowly… He probably could hardly see in the poor light and the unfamiliar location. But it didn’t stop him from working and singing. In biographies of him, I’ve read of friends and family saying that they were worried, around that time, that he could hardly see in a poor light. He was slow and shaky, if he came indoors from outside, but that when he got ready to sing, he would be fine. And that sums him up. He went on singing as long as he possibly could. I only saw him live once, and we were lucky because that was the last chance we would have had... So I am deeply grateful for the wonderful experience.

Rough Music - A musical love story

A couple of years ago, I was recovering from an operation, and found that I was rather bored with the genre I used to write in. So while I was convalescing, I started to listen to music that I’d loved in my youth, in the late 70s and 1980's. I developed an even stronger interest in country music. So I started to write some stories based in the world of music. I didn't want to write soft edged, happy ending stories. Musicians aren’t choir boys and back in the days of long tours, there was a lot of wild stuff, drinking, sex and drug taking. There still is. My next story is more of a story of a marriage, (Beds and Blue Jeans, available on Amazon) between a young couple who live together, but who aren’t Love's Young Dream. He has a small band, and plays in the Nashville bars. His girlfriend is a young mother and they don’t have much in common apart from their baby. But they find a way of living together. The latest story, “Rough Music”, does not have the traditional happy ending. It is about a band who play country and rock and who are just breaking into the big time. The lead singer finds that his marriage is falling apart, because of his long months away touring and his own infidelities and drinking. He remarries, but is the second marriage going to be more successful? I know that many people won’t like these type of stories, but I feel that writing all the time about “happy endings” and “rakes tamed by the love of a good woman” is unrealistic. I like to write about people who are real, who do stupid things and good things, who aren’t “sorted out by the end of the novel”.

Merle Haggard, country legend

Merle Haggard was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1937, and died on his 79th birthday. His family were “Okies”, farming people who had moved from Oklahoma, to California, during the Depression. At that time, the “dust bowl” destroyed farms in their home state, and reduced them to a desperate condition. They mostly had no option but to pack up and leave. They made the trip west in their cars, hoping for a new life. John Steinbeck’s novel, Grapes of Wrath, is about this terrible time in US history. Like most country singers of his generation, Merle had experienced the social problems that he wrote about in his songs… They were born in rural poverty, and isolation. Family was often all the wealth that they had, Even then, their families were not immune to the many issues that affected most people in the 20th century, such as desertion or divorce, children “going off the rails”, harsh parenting. Country music was the white working class blues; it was about the real life experiences of the singers who wrote the songs. They were often sneered at by the more fortunate or educated. As a boy, Merle loved music and played the guitar, but he was often in trouble with the law. In his teens. he ran away from home, and spent time in various juvenile detention centres. At the age of 20, he was serving time in prison, San Quentin, when Johnny Cash played a concert there. Merle resolved to straighten himself out. He was traumatised by the more appalling aspects of prison life, and wanted to get out. Cash understood brushes with the law, and had made helping prisoners one of his causes. Merle got out of prison, and eventually he won a full pardon for his crime. He got a job and began to sing. Many of his songs were drawn from childhood experiences. “Mama Tried” was about how his mother had hoped to keep him from crime… “Sing me back home” also has a prison background. One of his most famous songs was “Okie From Muskogee”- a semi humorous song about the clash of the values of Middle America and the hippies of the 1960s, who “smoke marijuana” and “make a party out of loving”. He was ambivalent about the song... it was taken up by the conservatives as supporting the values of the “silent Majority”. Merle saw it as praise for the old style ways and beliefs of his parents and grandparents, without being overly right wing. One of his other songs was Irma Jackson, about an inter-racial romance and in later life, he wrote songs against the Iraq War. Although he performed for Nixon at the White House in the 70’s he was always willing to listen to protestors against the Vietnam War… Merle’s love life was stormy. He was married 5 times, and during the 1980s he developed a coke habit, which damaged his health to a degree. But his musical career was fruitful and he loved his work. He went on performing even when he had had cancer. Sadly I never saw him perform live, but I have loved his songs and his singing... Ever since as a child, I saw him in a small role in the Waltons.