In 1943, Benjamin Britten was in bed with the measles. Depressed at the thought of yet more hack work (he had been commissioned to write music for a film of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra), he was starting to think about his first opera, Peter Grimes.
Now, Peter Grimes easily falls into the category Imperishable Masterpiece. I don’t know whether you have set your literary sights that high (why not?) but what interests me is what Britten did next in this rather frustrated state. He wrote to his friendly local music publisher (Ralph Hawkes of Boosey & Hawkes) asking for the score of Rosenkavalier, saying he wanted to “pick the old man’s brains for my opera”.
And indeed, for those who look, there are traces of Strauss to be found in Act II, what you might call a family resemblance, nothing more.
Last time I offered the rather bleak counsel that for the self-publisher a course in creative writing (even assuming your soul is strong enough) simply won’t do. For reasons financial, social, spiritual, academic, and political. Which leaves me with the rather awkward job of suggesting an alternative.
The very best I can come up with is Britten’s solution: Send for the score of Rosenkavalier. No need to be silly, I do not mean literally (it’s extremely expensive for one thing), I mean pillage and steal from authors you admire. Indeed, go the whole hog and steal from those you may not admire , so long as they have somehow achieved an effect you want.
No, I’m not advocating plagiarism. I’m simply urging you to do what authors have done for generations. Here’s an exercise for you. How many characters do you know who lost consciousness? Don’t start with Homer, the list would become interminable; start at Jane Eyre locked in that dark bedroom, then hack through the years until you reach Rebus in his numerous encounters with darkness.
Now- and here’s the game, a lonely and long-winded game at that - find out how the authors did it. Tricks as they say, but good tricks and worth the learning.
It follows, to write you have to read. A novel, whether authors like it or not, has more fathers than they care to admit. Perhaps as author you owe it to your child to own up to its parentage.
By the way, that groaning chair of books last week was a sample of what had to be read to bring A Time to Tell Lies into the world. What is not in that pile (for shame) are my own particular Rosenkavaliers.
Indeed, I caught myself the other night wondering whether I could shake off these Strussian demons. Wondering whether those innumerable debts were not so very profound, after all. Given I’ve finished my sixth novel, I said to myself, can I, at last, get down from the table?
There’s nothing you can do about this tendency. It's not really hubris - more a kind of mildly infectious patricide. Even Benjamin Britten caught it eventually. In his Biography, Humphrey Carpenter tells the story of how the accompanist Graham Johnson was staying at the Red House in the early seventies.
Johnson writes:
I’m almost sure it was New Year’s Eve 1971 … The subject of Der Rosenkavalier came up:
B.B.: It is utterly loathsome. I almost get sick hearing it – even the overture makes me physically sick.
G.J.: But it’s got so many beautiful things in it, hasn’t it?
B.B.: What do you like about it?
G.J.: Well, that Trio (singing unwisely) ‘Marie Thérese …’
B.B.: (utterly icily): I know how it goes, thank you very much, and I don’t need you to sing it to me.
(Horrible silence. Close examination of plate-ware by the other guests. Peter activates the foot-bell for Heather to bring the next course.)
It may come to us all. With luck.