C.S. Boag's Blog

A lot of water's gone under the bridge since i last wrote an entry. If you write for a living you don't feel like doing it in your spare time.

I've got older. Funny thing to say, I know, but you're a different person when you're old just like you as a child are barely recognizable in the person you became.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I've got arthritis, my hair's falling out and various important parts don't work as well any more. I'm blessed in that I got a wife like Judith who not only is my love but is adept at picking up the pieces. A writers not as good at tending his emotional garden as "normal' people.

We've traveled- to Europe, I've painted and Judith has done everything else, as well as made exquisite felt objects. And the first of the two volumes of the Rainbow Omnibus have been released.
What is Rainbow? Christ, even I don't know and I created him. He's the monster, if you like, who took over my life for 7 years. beyond that, he's a private detective with a curious bent: he's sensitive.

And the seven volumes that make up Rainbow (The first Omnibus contains the first three) delineate his odd journey: from solving crimes to realizing that he's really been trying to solve himself.

I won't tell you what happens- you'll have to find out for yourself if you're interested, only to say that there's more where they came from- what happens to Rainbow after he realizes who and what he is.

But that's the subject of another series tentatively titled : "The End of the Rainbow?"
Wait for it.Mister Rainbow The Omnibus Edition

Another day, another work of pulp fiction, this time The Big Sin (they're always the Big Something), a tour de force in this demanding genre by Jack Webb.

How good it is. A single suicide turns into a cause celebre when a catholic priest challenges the verdict- he knows the kid, she was a firm believer, which meant she would never suicide (because Catholic suicides go to hell).
A great ingredient of such books is their humour and Big Sin contains a lot, mostly at the expense of the not-so-golden-haired man, Sam Golden. There are sweet moments, too, mainly hinging on the love between Golden and his girlfriend, Nell, who sticks to him through thick and thin.
I am now writing my 8th book in this genre and am totally inspired by Webb's example.

Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other ThingA friend lent me this book over Christmas- "you might know one of the players," she said. I was familiar with only a few but I know the times. I am 73, only a few years younger than Whiteley would have been had he lived.
But he didn't of course, dead of an (accidental) overdose in a motel room in the south coast town of Thirroul. I am of a time but I knew nothing of it. I was a boy in short pants compared to Whiteley. While i lived sedately and toed the line he was living wild climbing his way up there with the greats.
he did it with drugs. It was a sort of self destruct button, prepared to do any thing to get what he wants. His art is great mostly but you do wonder. I f an athlete can't take performance enhancing drugs, why can an artist? I think I would even swing from the highest trapeze with out the right support.
But perhaps it is all about what you're prepared to do for your art. In his public pronouncements, Whiteley was all but incoherent. Patrick White, an early fan, disowned him when it became clear (to Patrick) that he was grovelling to those of use to him.
But in the end, its albout art, and Whiteley and drugs was a great artist The art gets you wondering, which art is supposed to do.
But the book- nicely written, well researched makes you think : about art, about life and about Whiteley.
In the end he was an irresponsible little boy, but what are we to expect. As he himself believed, as an artist he was little more than a medium. The trouble was his god was drugs.
But I enjoyed the book, finishing it in a couple of sittings. Whiteley will stay with me because of it. We are all little boys at heart, but not all of us have the guts or ability to be great artists. Good on you Brett, wherever you are. At least you made us think.

Kingsley Amis: A Biography
I don't usually bail on books but I did on this one. I'd been perturbed by Martin Amis's dudding of the author, Eric Jacobs, and then excited by the insights in the early part of the book.

Then it becomes drivel, with Jacobs daring to confuse Amis's life with his fiction- it happened in Amis's books so it must have happened to him, the protagonists were like this, so Amis must have been like this, too.
So silly, so not worth reading. Martin Amis was right-the man's a fraud. It doesn't make me like Martin any better, though.

The Brain: The Story of YouThis is one of a rush of new books on this topic of which i am aware.
The brain's a weird creature- even to try to understand what it is about is nyh impossible for someone like me with a middle-sized brain. We just have to have faith that the people writing about it have bigger brains than we do.
This book, though, is a beauty. It explains in simple language how the brain works and major important aspects of it. It staggered me to read for instance, that when we perceive something 10 times more information travels out than travels in. In other words, we expect to see something and that's what we see- plus or minus what conflicts with our expectations. Some books are too detailed; others not enough. For my brain, this ones just about right, with lots of full-page inserts scattered through out if you want more detailed information on that topic.
Having read a few brain books by Susan Greenfield this one has my vote.

Bereft
One test I've taken to applying to books is that of memory: is it memorable?. It is an unfair test in one way- at 73 , my memory isn't what it used to be, if it ever was. But it has interesting results, nonetheless.
It is only a couple of days since i finished Bereft, and I remember being much taken with it. But do I remember it now? Hardly. It is a book about a murder of a young girl,for which her brother was blamed, causing him to run away. Then he comes back, the bulk of the book being about finding the culprit.
You see it is coming back to me now, but not in all the splendor i thought it would. Because in the end it was no more than a sad, sordid little tale from which i gained nothing. It, itself gained plaundits.
But it is one of those books, of which there are many nowadays, that strive for a weight they just don't have. It is a story of childhood but it is no Catcher in the Rye. It is a story of revenge, but it is not Monte Christo. It is a story of a young girl and an older man but it is not Lolita. There is a spooky resonance to it , but it is not Edgar Allen Poe.
I keep books, I have thousands of the things. Some i have reread, others i fully intend to reread. But this one - no.
It is a slight book that seems an echo of so many contemporary novels.
My faulty memory apart, I can't get excited about it, when there are so many- mostly older- books about which i can. Oh , for a great contemporary writer who has something to say and isn't doing what everyone else does

I Couldn't help thinking about Tom Cruise bouncing up and down on a couch on Oprah's TV show while I was reading this. Why on earth do they expect actors to be intelligent?
Some bright spark at Penguin thought of asking Guinness if they could publish 18 months worth of his diary and this is the result.
What he had for dinner, what the weather was like, who he holidayed with. Riveting stuff .
Now and again he ventures into profundity. Like this , written in the dead of winter, "Where is all this global warming we read about?".
A little later, " I can't think why anyone in this country wants to get rid of the Upper House....Of course it should be occupied only through inheritance and not topped up with temporary titles." He is being serious.
The book is a load of cods. I love him in "The Bridge Over The River Kwai", but going by this it would have been better to leave him there.

Graham Greene, for me, will be forever intriguing. A true writer, his mind and life are as intriguing as his own literature. This work attempts to shed light on a tiny cameo of that life - on Catherine -, the third woman of the title( more like 63rd) as well as the dark tangle of Green's Catholicism.
The two are intertwined. Catherine engineers a lesson with Greene by asking him to be her Godfather in converting to Catholicism - then becomes his lover. It is a fraught relationship, not less so because she is married and an insatiable collector, it seems, of other lovers many of them priests.

It is part of Greene's twisted ethos that he apparently found a consistency in bedding married women and staunch Catholicism.
It is interesting, in fact, it's what his books are about - how to be a bad catholic yet still be a catholic. The trick apparently lies in confession. As an atheist , that is a closed book for me. I simply don't understand, but i still like reading Greene.
I found this an odd little work, well researched. It is the tortured relationship that gave rise to Greene's "The End of the Affair", (which made a good film staring Jeremy Irons.)
But reading i felt a little grubby. It is not written with lascivious purpose and there are no grubby details in it. But it is a look through the keyhole at a part of Greene's life that he would have preferred remained hidden. You don't have to read it to understand Greene or or appreciate any of his books.
So, I don't know, a fine movie was made out of it and that's what counts. But don't read this book for edification. Greene was a writer first and foremost rather than a flawed individual and that is how I'd like to remember him.

"Sketching" by John Mills
Hot on the heels of the book by Churchill, this little gem produced in 1964. I don't know about you but, for me, finding a book that suits can be elusive.
Well, this one suited me. Mills is reasonable and pragmatic. The book is packed with do's and don'ts which aren't too formidably good. He gives advise on just about every conceivable method- in nice, simple easy-to-read prose.
 It is set in Britain, but who cares. With what he shares I am happily attacking anything Australia throws at me, from kangaroos to falling sheds to wild parrots.
This little book is very helpful for the beginner or almost beginner, particularly, those who like me, might be described as "elderly", if noit totally decrepit . Lovely

Painting as a Pastime by Churchill
He not only saved us from Hitler but he could both write and paint.
There's a lot of encouragement in this little book for the sometime, late-starting artist. Churchill himself started in 1915 when he found himself temporarily out of a job. It gave his restless mind something to do and he found he could do it.
The book is full of advise for busy people, for older people particularly
" .... if... you are inclined-late in life though it be- to reconnoitre a a foreign sphere of limitless extent, then be persuaded that the first quality that is needed is Audacity..."
In other words, jump in the deep end-just do it. Be brave, be foolhardy, if you like.
No one will get killed. Have fun. And, who knows, you might produce a work of art ot two- as Churchill did. Inspirational