Version control: Surabaya Johnny....... you swine!

I posted last week about how much I very love the Kurt Weill song Surabaya Johnny. See my visual (right) for the eponymous Johnny - Valentino, natch, except that, given that he spends so much time in Buuurrrmmma, a pith helmet on his handsome head, methinks.

My favourite version is one by Robyn Archer (per my last post) but you can't get it on the You Tube.

Darn.

And the problem with this marvellously overwrought song is that there is a very very fine line between sublime and ridiculous. Also I am very very fussy about the interpretation.

The main thing I love about this song is that it's a brilliant evocation of a woman's mixed feelings about the scoundrel she's in love with. In short, she knows he's a rat, but she still loves him, helplessly and painfully.

It's a real torch song.

Each of the verses is a bitter rehearsal of Johnny's shortcomings and then the refrain is a lush bittersweet hymn to the singer's doomed love for him. So it has a sort of duality/dialogue/opposition about it that I absolutely adore.



Some favourite lines (these to be delivered in jaded harsh tones):

You talked a lot, Johnny,

A lot of lies, Johnny,

.....

I hate you so, Johnny

....

Take that pipe out of your mouth,

You swine...


A good interpretation of this song should marry jaded, painful bitterness during the verses with a bleak adoration in the refrain. There is no room for embarrassment in any performance of this song. You have to really go for it.

There are some excellent versions available in the original German. This Ute Lemper version is superb but despite her virtuoso performance, I find myself preferring more restrained one by Nina Hagen and of course there's the classic version by Lotte Lenya.

It's much more difficult to find a great English version. This one by Dagmer Krause is played with a straight bat but doesn't really work for me. And this one by Megan Mullaly is interesting - a spoiled brat version - but I'm not sold.

Interestingly, this is a song that works whatever the gender of the singer. Here is Marc Almond's version and here is Jacob von Mourik's German version which actually is one of my favourites - it's lovely.

So what version will I leave you with?

Lotte Lenya.

She doesn't have the best voice of all these versions, but the emotions are so true that actually it's not overwrought at all. Just really lovely.

I'm really quite excited to be blogging about Morning Glory by Lavyrle Spencer. It seems to be a much-loved book. See for example, Azteclady's glowing review over at Dear Author and the numerous comments that follow.

You will see that I am saying I am 'blogging about' the book rather than reviewing it. This is not a review. I do sometimes try to write what might pass as a review, but generally, that's not what I'm interested in. What I'm interested in - and why I blog - is because I want to share my gut feelings about whatever I've been reading. That can sometimes mean that I pass over stuff that would be vital in a review.

To my mind, a review should look at the book pretty comprehensively. It should give some (at least brief) thoughts on the story, characters and prose. If I write a 'review' (usually for other blogs) I will try to do at least that.

But this is not a review. This blog post is prompted by the fact that I have a few particular things to say about this book. But these things are not the sum total of my reading experience of this book. And so, in the interests of giving you some flavour of where I was when I closed this book, I will ask you to take the following as read:

- I really enjoyed this book;
- the writing quality was very good;
- the romance was heartfelt and satisfying;
- the ending was pleasing;
- the characters were beautifully drawn.

So, now that we've got that out of the way, get a load of this:

This is the inner 'secret' cover of the book. What do you think? How does this picture strike you? It's actually quite a useful picture, in terms of orientating the reader. We see a slightly dilapidated house, barefoot children and mother, the hero in jeans with a pile of tools at his feet. The heroine has a sweet, loving expression on her face and the hero is looking up at her adoringly - an interesting expression of their relationship.

Just to orientate you a little more, a very brief plot summary: when the book starts, Elly is pregnant, having lost her husband a few months previously and Will is drifting through her town, an ex-convict recently released from prison. Elly has two children already and is desperate. Her house is falling about her ears - she has placed an advert for a husband. Will too is desperate - he answers the advert. She lets him stay, and after a short while, they marry. Gradually, they fall in love, only to be parted by the war before being reunited for their HEA. There is an additional plot-line involving the 'town slut' Lula Peake.

My thoughts in no particular order:

1. The Romance

The thing that made this book really stand out for me, was the development of the romance. It really was very beautiful indeed. Will and Elly both start this book in a bad way. Interestingly, although they are both wounded souls, Elly is very much in the 'healer' role and Will is transformed through the bestowal of her love upon him. By contrast, Elly's doesn't seem to need Will's love in the same way - he does make her life better and gives her a greater sense of self-worth, but she doesn't seem transformed by it as he is by hers.

The growth to love is beautifully done. They start with respect, then attraction, then trust, growing finally to a deep mature love that feels very real and permanent. One thing I found fascinating is that Spencer is very overt in showing that part of the attraction of Elly for Will is in her being a mother figure. He loves her as a mother of her own children, feeling wistful when he sees her lavishing maternal love on them and wanting it for himself; and later, enjoying the maternal affection she shows him. This sense of the heroine as a font of maternal love is something that I think is *in* a lot of romance novels but that is not usually overtly acknowledged so it was interesting to see it expressed here.

2. Lula

The additional bit of plot involving Lula, was the one weak part of the book for me. It largely book-ends the novel with a couple of chapters at the start and a couple more at the end, leaving me wondering if was added on to make it longer or add some more obvious conflict. In my view, the novel would have been better without it. There was plenty enough action as it was.

It wasn't merely the tacked-on sense of this bit of the story that bothered me though - it was what it actually involved. And for me, how it related to part of Will's backstory. THERE BE SPOILERS HERE

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My first problem:

Will was convicted of killing a whore - it was for that crime that he served five years in prison. When we finally heard the story of that crime, I was slightly taken aback. There was no mistake. He did kill the whore. And there was no sense that he felt bad about it. The story given around the events of the crime was presented with the implication that Will was not to blame for what happened. Despite the fact that the killing was not intentional, I found Will's self-pity and lack of remorse for the actual consequences of what he did off-putting. The sub-text was that victim's death didn't really matter because she was a money-loving prostitute.

My second problem:

This mind-set seemed to carry over into the Lula storyline. Lula is not a pleasant character. She is selfish, money-grabbing and unpleasant. She is also a promiscuous single woman living in a small town in 1941. Lula decides the moment she sees Will that she is going to have him and pursues him aggressively, even threateningly, despite his lack of interest. In short, she is a panto-villainess who ends up dead. Will is blamed for her death and Elly has to prove his innocence.

Again, the sub-text is that Lula had it coming. What else could a woman like her expect? At the trial, witnesses actually joke about her promiscuity while on the stand. I found that a bit nauseating.

Now, I don't want to overegg the pudding here. This issue did not ruin the book for me. But, yes, I found it disturbing. Perhaps more so, because of the point arising twice, both in Will's backstory and with Lula. I found myself asking, what is Spencer getting at here?

3. The fast-revolving omniscient POV

As I read this book, I realised how used I've become to the standard third person POV that switches between the hero and heroine. With the odd exception, that is very much the norm for the majority of romance I read and it's also my favourite form of narration for straightforward romance: deep POV that explores the emotions of the hero and heroine thoroughly.

Morning Glory, however, is written with an omniscient narration. As well as Will's POV and Elly's POVs we also get bits of Lula and Miss Beasley. And then we get dual-POV that felt unusual to me. Like this:

In the end, neither of them moved. She lay with her hands atop her swollen stomach, her heart hammering frantically, afraid of rejection, ridicule, the things she had been seasoned by life to expect.

He lay feeling unlovable due to his spotty past and the fact that no woman including his own mother had found him worth the effort. So why should Elly?

And so they talked and gazed during those lanternlit nights of acquaintance - crazy Eleanor and her ex-con husband - learning respect for each other, wondering when and if that first seeking might happen, each hesitant to reach out for what they both needed.

Maybe I've just become much more POV-sensitive since I started seriously trying to write myself (the first time I got a bit of my own writing critiqued, my uneven POV was the major gripe) but I found these bits - which were peppered throughout the book - unsatisfying; they felt very 'tell' and quite distant, quite unintimate.

But let me finish by reiterating my words of earlier. Notwithstanding these gripes, I really did enjoy this book. The romance arc is one of the most beautifully realised I've read and I'd highly recommend it despite my reservations.

Version Control: Mac the Knife

I am unashamed about the fact that I loathe and detest Bobby Darin's version of Mack The Knife.

Why? Well, it's a - well, what is it? He's singing about this murderer guy and he's all peppy and finger-pointy and winky? Like there's something cosy about being a killer? Ugh, I hate that song!

Initially, say for a decade or so, I thought I hated Mack The Knife itself. But then I discovered that Mack The Knife by Kurt Weill is an amazing and breathtaking song with creepy and disturbing lyrics that send a shiver up my spine.

F'r instance, the Bobby Darin version seems to not have this verse:

And the child bride, in her nighty

Whose assailant's still at large

Violated in her slumbers

Macky, how much did you charge?

Creepy and disturbing indeed. And Weill's music, with its circling relentness underlines the disturbing lyrics. The music and lyrics together really communicate to me this idea of a random psychopath.

I'm not sure at all how the above verse relates to the original German but I'm betting it's closer in spirit to the original that Bobby Darin's version. I heard that verse for the first time on a CD of Weill's songs sung by Robyn Archer. Mr Tumperkin hates this CD with a passion, and I love it. Particuarly the gloriously overwrought version of Surabaya Johnny which I have tendancy to sing along to loudly while imagining myself draped over a grand piano. (Such is my love of this absurd song I may have post on it separately)

But back to the rather better-known Mack The Knife. My very very best version is this one by Lotte Lenya, Weill's one-time wife (who played Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love). I love the organ-grinding music at the start; it makes me think of sinister clowns.

Heroes, heroines, winners and losers

I've just started reading Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer which Janet Webb very kindly sent me. (Thanks Janet!). This seems to be a much-loved book in romanceland and so I've been looking forward to it greatly. I am only a few chapters in so it's early days and this is not a review of MG. I mention MG only to explain how I started on the particular train of thought that this post will now try to organise into something semi-linear and comprehensible.

MG surprised me as soon as I picked it up - it starts with a hero and heroine who are both powerless. The heroine, Elly, is living in isolation, the derided crazy widow on the hill and the hero, Will, has just got out of prison where he has suffered both physical deprivation and mental torment. I literally can't think of another romance in which both hero and heroine find themselves so powerless.

Contrast that with a book like Devilish by Jo Beverley where the hero and heroine are both endowed with a lot of personal power. And then contrast both of those with a book like To Have and To Hold by Patricia Gaffney where one character is very powerful and the other is very weak. Historicals, in particular, teem with this latter type of story. Usually, though not always, the powerful character is the hero and the powerless character the heroine, a phenomenon I've posted on before.

I find myself having quite distinct emotional reactions to what each of these books are offering me as a reader. The most alluring type of story to me is where there is a power differential between the H/H. Why do I find that trope so endlessly alluring?

It's trite that the vast majority of romance heroes are 'winners': billionaires, dukes, sports stars, leaders of men, men of action. This is often popularly taken to denote that romance readers see that type of 'alpha' male as the perfect partner. That's not how I see it at all. I really don't have secret fantasies about being swept of my feet by a big stwong man.

No, really.

So what's it all about?

Theory the first: convention

It's convention. Literary and cultural. We expect heroes to be extraordinary/world-changing and heroines to be ordinary/domestic and the genre obliges us. Consider these contrasting definitions of hero and heroine from the online Webster-Merriam dictionary:

Hero

(1)(a) : a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability (b) : an illustrious warrior (c) : a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities (d) : one that shows great courage
(2)(a) : the principal male character in a literary or dramatic work (b) : the central figure in an event, period, or movement....
...(4) : an object of extreme admiration and devotion

Heroine

(1)(a) : a mythological or legendary woman having the qualities of a hero (b) : a woman admired and emulated for her achievements and qualities
(2)(a) : the principal female character in a literary or dramatic work (b) : the central female figure in an event or period

Ok, so you can argue that definition (1) of heroine subsumes the whole of definition (1) for hero, but I think it's telling that the heroine definition seems to be regarded as completely stated with, effectively, "see 'hero'".

When I thought about this point myself (before looking up definitions) I realised that my internal definition for 'hero' was a male of extraordinary courage/daring/achievement and that my internal definition of heroine was merely main female protagonist.

Hmmmm.

Theory the second: the reader's desire/fantasy

This is my preferred explanation.

My feeling is that it's a mistake to focus too much upon what specifically the hero and heroine *are*. Do readers like books with Duke-heroes because they think hereditary peers are intrinsically *good*? Of course not; it's nothing to the point - for me anyway. The point is that the heroine will, in the course of that story, move from a position of weakness to a position of strength; the hero is her destination. She is going to win. I've mentioned my feeling that romance is about women winning before.

And it's all very coherent and satisfying, a neat explanation that suits me very well.

And then along comes Morning Glory and disrupts it.

Without the power differential, it's a very different story, isn't it? More, you and me against The World, babe? Winning together?

On discipline and wiggle room

Thank you all for your comments on my histrionic wobble of last week. Really, they helped me no end.

The questions you posed were particularly helpful, making me think about what it was that was really bothering me. I had characterised this in my post quite vaguely as a feeling that effort-in was not proportionate to the rewards earned. Interestingly, however, when I reflected on this, I realised that the time I spent actually blogging on this blog was not a huge part of the frustration. Much of the negative feelings were related to the time I spent generally surfing around, commenting and sometimes (very time-consumingly) not commenting on other blogs.

Much of that time felt like a waste - and was partly down to a chronic lack of discipline. In all my time of blogging, I've not been using any kind of feeder. I've always just added blogs to favourites and surfed around in an ad hoc way, visiting blogs only to find no new content etc. Not very efficient, particularly given how disorganised my sidebar is.

So here is my all-new self-disciplined approach to blogging and blog reading:

1. I'm going to take the advice of Maili and have a fixed day for blogging - both posting here and visiting other blogs. This means that I can get the benefits that I still enjoy (a soapbox of my very own, a 'stake' in the community, the ability to exchange ideas with like-minded - and sometimes very non-like-minded people) without allowing it to be the time-drain it's developed into; and

2. I spent lots of time last night adding the blogs I visit on my sidebar to Google reader, and that is how I am going to organise my blog visiting from now on.

Hopefully, this will work out and be a big improvement. My work-life is such that I may not be able to be entirely fixed about what my 'blogging' day is going to be, but probably it will be mid-week.

I am also - crucially - going to allow myself a little bit of *wiggle room* for exceptional situations, such as Laura Vivanco's fantastic series of posts on Georgette Heyer which I am reading as they come up. But a series of posts like that only comes along once in while. I urge you to check them out if you haven't already done so.

As I mentioned in that last post, I have some more questions about certain blogging issues and I've put up a second poll dealing with the next one - it's about Twitter and how you view it. Again, if any voters would like to expand in the comments, please do so. I'd be fascinated to hear what you have to say. My own answer is that I'm not really interested in Twitter, given the potential for more of my time draining away.

One last thing. The results of the last post were highly reflective of my own feelings: the most popular result was that blogging can feel like an opportunity or a chore, but more of the former than the latter. Which is why - in a nutshell - I think it's worth continuing with. For now.

Yet more observations about blogging

It's become something of an obsession with me, hasn't it? What is blogging? Why do I do it? Who am I when I do it?

Well, I am slightly obsessed. Which makes this article a very interesting read. I urge you to look at it. Does it ring any bells with you? I hate to admit this (denial, you see) but it does with me.

I also read a very interesting last week about how we react to email; how it's quite like gambling in terms of the amount of effort people put in and the types of 'reward' it gives them.

This is all very timeous, because I find myself feeling very disenchanted with blogging recently and much of that feeling is centred around the relationship between the effort expended and the rewards it brings, not to mention a general feeling of ... dissatisfaction.

In short, I am thinking about stopping blogging. And genuinely, this is not a plea for reassurance. It is just - well, where else am I going to express this view? I won't go into all my reasons just now. Instead, I have some questions re blogging that I'd like to put to anyone visiting by way of (in true blogger fashion!) a poll. The first one is up now and I'll leave it up till this time Wednesday. I'd appreciate it if you voted - and feel free to expand on your thoughts in the comments.

Reader creativity and the spaces between moments

I have this double CD of Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations. The first CD was recorded in 1955 when his career had just started, the second in 1981 a year or two before he died. It's amazing how very different they are. The 1955 version is all quickfire brilliance, brimming with confidence and bright technique. The 1981 version is quieter, more reflective. More melancholy. More beautiful.

One of the things that is interesting is the time difference. Take the first movement, the Aria. The first version lasts for 1 min 51 seconds and the second version at 3 mins 4 secs. I've posted a video giving both versions below at the end of this post and there's an interesting discussion between Gould and Tim Page after the music. Gould is critical of that earlier version - he says when he listened to it again he recognised the 'fingerprints' - the mechanical aspects of playing the piano - but he couldn't recognise the spirit of the person who made the earlier recording.

What's fascinating to me is that arguably the most beautiful parts of that 1981 recording happen in the tiny, almost imperceptible silences between the notes. In between the very deliberate notes, are very deliberate silences. And it makes you 'hear' the silence; it makes you realise that things happen in silences, however brief they may be. The silences draw attention to the notes that follow. They inform the notes. In short, they are part of the music.

A similar thing happens with comic books. I don't know much about them, but my brother is into them in a big way. Here is a snippet of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, which I bought him for Christmas one year and keep meaning to borrow back:

Don't you just LOVE that explanation? And the intoxicating idea that in that 3 or 4 millimetres of white space, your brain is filling in story, is creating as you read?

A book is not a piece of music or a series of drawings, but it has its silence, its gutter. It has those spaces between moments that are not really empty or silent at all but the place where the reader's brain engineers whatever it is that is not said.

I blogged recently about the reader-writer transaction and quoted Margaret Atwood: the act of reading is just as singular - always - as the act of writing. And I think this is why. Because the reader is engaged - in a small way - in a creative act, negotiating the silence and gutters between the moments reported by the author.