Blackeyes

by Dennis Potter

Blackeyes is a literary thriller of immense subtlety and power.

Writer Maurice James Kingsley is seventy-seven. It is twenty years since he has produced a novel, but when he does, his picture of London's demi-monde, seen through the career of the model known as Blackeyes, is the surprise hit of the season. But, when life starts to imitate fiction, the plot takes a new and sinister twist...

Genres: Fiction, Drama

185 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective (1986). His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture. Such was his reputation that he convinced BBC 2 and Channel 4 to co-operate in screening his final two works, written in the months he was aware of his impending death.

Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute that drew threats of litigation. Although Potter effectively disowned the play, it is notable for its use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. Broadcast as part of the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand in 1965, The Confidence Course proved successful and Potter was invited for further contributions. His next play, Alice (1965), was a controversial drama chronicling the relationship between Lewis Carroll and his muse Alice Liddell. Potter's most celebrated works from this period are the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton; the former the tale of a miner's son going to Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, the latter featuring the same character standing as a Labour candidate—his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. Both plays received praise from critics' circles but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics.

Potter's Son of Man (The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring the Irish actor Colin Blakely, gave an alternative view of the last days of Jesus, and led to Potter being accused of blasphemy. The same year, Potter contributed Moonlight on the Highway to ITV's Saturday Night Theatre strand. The play centred around a young man who attempts to blot out memories of the sexual abuse he suffered as child in his obsession with the music of Al Bowlly. As well as being an intensely personal play for Potter, it is notable for being his first foray in the use of popular music to heighten the dramatic tension in his work.

Potter continued to make news as well as winning critical acclaim for drama serials with Pennies from Heaven (1978), which featured Bob Hoskins as a sheet music salesman and was Hoskins's first performance to receive wide attention. It demonstrated the dramatic possibilities old recordings of popular songs. Blue Remembered Hills was first shown on the BBC on 30 January 1979; it returned to the British small screen at Christmas 2004, and again in the summer of 2005, showcased as part of the winning decade (1970s) having been voted by BBC Four viewers as the golden era of British television. The adult actors playing the roles of children were Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski, Michael Elphick, Colin Jeavons, Colin Welland, John Bird, and Robin Ellis. It was directed by Brian Gibson. The moralistic theme was "the child is father of the man". Potter had used the dramatic device of adult actors playing children before, for example in Stand Up, Nigel Barton.

The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own battle with the skin disease psoriasis, for him an often debilitating condition, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality.

His final two serials were Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (two related stories, both starring Albert Finney as the same principal character, one set in the present and the other in the far future).

Potter's work is distinctive for its use of non-naturalistic devices. The 'lip-sync' technique he developed for his "serials with songs" (Pennies

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

synopsis: the novel Sugar Bush is published to instant acclaim, capturing the zeitgeist. the author Kingsley clutches his teddy bear and his niece Jessica plots his demise. there is suicide, there is murder; there is the peeling back of layers and there is a reckoning.

materials that form the model: pages from a book, blood and water, thoughts and desires from the minds and dicks of men. the model is of a woman; the woman is a model.

the book is slim and sharp, an arrow launched at the male gaze. the humor is dry, cold, and evil but is only a brittle veneer, a cover for the anger and empathy beneath. the meta is deployed like a weapon turned upon its shooter: Potter acknowledges he is a man writing about women, an author representing the representation of women, the irony there. the postmodern "narrative" is mirror facing mirror, shingles of plot overlapping, and yet a clear and merciless trajectory is followed. this is a tale of revenge.

Dennis Potter was a fascinating man. I love him for writing the films Pennies from Heaven, a bleak and ruthless musical, and Brimstone & Treacle, a dark and nauseating family drama. Two favorites of mine back when I was a clearly sick in the head kid. I can't believe I've had Blackeyes for a couple decades and just recently got around to it.

SIDEBAR: what a relief to read a pointedly feminist novel that was actually written by a man! genuine relief. after reading Updike's wannabe-feminist Witches of Eastwick, I started wondering if such a thing were even possible.

SECOND SIDEBAR: still hard to believe that in 2019 some people are proud to claim they aren't feminists. is it stupidity, a knee-jerk, a misunderstanding of the word, or are they actually against gender equality? who knows.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wiki description: Blackeyes is a BBC television miniseries first broadcast in 1989, written and directed by Dennis Potter based on his own novel of the same name.

Broadcast as four 50-minute episodes, first screened weekly from 29 November 1989 to 20 December 1989 on Britain's BBC2 channel, Blackeyes starred Gina Bellman as the title character, an attractive model, with Michael Gough in a key role as her uncle.

Potter described the series' theme as the objectification of "young and attractive women as consumer goods in a way that brutalizes both sexes".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbq5r...

[Brent Legault · Rating 1 out of 5]

The adjectification of Nabokov on the back of this book is due, I believe, to the fact that one of his novels, Laughter in the Dark, is mentioned within it. And there might be a bit of Nabo-pander, on the author's part (though Nabokov, luckily, was long dead before this book was ever published), in some elements of the narrative. But there is nowhere to be found even an ink splash of Nabokov's talent, unless you count the best line in the book: the previously mentioned title of Nabokov's sixth novel.

You see, this novel is a lengthy length of tripe. Over the top tripe, I might add; bruised, splotched and positively piebald with great purple-nurples of so-called prose. And what's more, it sucked. And to add injury to insult (not my insults, which are more than warranted, but the heinous insult of anyone - I'm talking to you, anonymous reviewer at Vanity Fair - who would call this clown car of a novel "Nabokovian.") it is the most overtly Freudian (possibly on the wink, though still unbearable) b-b-b-book I think I've ever read. I mean it was Pyschological, in the slapstick way that certain Hitchcock movies are Psychological, but without the Hitchcockian style to make it work. The kind of Psychology that is bewhiskered and Austrian-accented and has perhaps never existed in the real world, though it has absolutely never, never, never existed in the world of good literature. Good literature - I mean the artful stuff - suffocates under the weight of Psychology's cliches. Just as I wanted to put a thick pillow over my face throughout my reading of Blackeyes.

[A W Main · Rating 4 out of 5]

In hindsight I'd rather that this was my introduction to reading Dennis Potter and not Ticket to Ride.
Blackeyes is far more accessible, and all the better for it.
Both books are however entertaining and fascinating in equal measure.

I will certainly be looking out for more from him to read this year. I may be late to the party, but I'm here now.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this an interesting read. A little hard to get into at first and then a little hard to exit. Written by a white male regarding a book written by a elderly white male about an (a)typical younger female model, Potter is nevertheless well aware of the traps inherent in that story and not only lays them but (attempts) subversion. Whilst Blackeyes (the model) is clearly a subject of adoration her seeming indifference undermines - and makes uncomfortable - the male perspective. Yet also - by way of white male bias in the readership - still renders her desirable. Intriguing characterisation, if ultimately whilst it tries to illuminate stereotype it subsequently conforms. Whilst I wasn't keen on the obvious ending (because doesn't everyone have to have a reason to be? Answer, no) it was still worth a read, and I'd be interested to see the TV series this spawned.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to give this book to a friend of mine who is a university English professor to help me discern whether (a) the book was as good as I thought it was; or (b) I am so accustomed to Dennis Potter's screen work that I could SEE and UNDERSTAND the story in a way that a reader unfamiliar with Potter would. She assured me that the book was good and very visual. Dennis Potter, for those unfamiliar with him (and many are), goes back and forth in between characters and stories both in time and imagination so that you're never sure what is real and what is not. He's one of my favorites!

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish that I'd been able read through the entire book in one sitting. Maybe that would have helped me keep better track of the book, the book within the book, and the dreams. Or maybe not. In a way, the plot style reminded me of The Life of Pi. You might need to read it more than once to sort out what's really going on. I'd love to watch the filmed version produced by the BBC to see how, or if, they differentiated between the "real" people and the fictionalized people that are in the book inside the book.

[Linda Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anything by Dennis Potter please. I first found his work by accident on Netflix I think, years ago, movies from his books: THE SINGING DETECTIVE, also PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. Googling now I see there are many more. I was entranced. This book (which may have been made into a movie) is a combo detective story, a bio of an elderly writer, straightforward simple writing but a complex story.

[Petteri Hynönen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Piti selvittää onko Dennis Potter tosiaan niin hyvä kuin 90-luvulta muistin. Viihdekuvaston ja arjen limittäminen ei enää tuntunut yhtä tuoreelta idealta kuin aikanaan. Toisaalta ihmisen esineellistäminen ja seksuaalinen hyväksikäyttö, joita teos käsittelee, aukesivat ehkä jopa uudella tavalla nykypäivää ja metoo -liikettä vasten.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Later made into a successful four-part series for the BBC (directed by its author, the first episode of which may be found here), Blackeyes is Dennis Potter's examination of the valuation the world puts on female beauty, and the process of writing. (Or the role of the author, more correctly.)

The story is pretty simple - Kingsley, a past-it author, finds a new audience through Sugar Bush, a novel created by borrowing from Jessica, his niece. The story of the model - professional name Blackeyes - and the way her Sugar Bush life affects that of its inspiration is where most of the story's tension originates.

In some regards, it's Potter-does-Potter, really - there's The Enduring Mystery Of Women, rooting and bits of improbable nudity. There's no doubt that though the main male character of the novel shares a name with an Amis, the doddering, farting author is something of a stand-in for the ageing Potter himself: all befuddlement and teddy bear attachment.

Unfortunately, it's in this kind of indulgence that the novel falters most. The rants - all very poetic and feeling-my-age as they are - seem rootless and almost chucked in from another work.

Weirdly, the book reads quite well taken as an unfolding mystery, assuming you can sidestep the frequent explosions of purple prose, liberally spiced with a dose of oh-those-youngsters-and-their-talk-I-don't-understand snark. (There's a particularly painful interview in the book which it seems was based on a real event, which further supports the idea that Potter put himself in the work, which makes some of Kingsley's thoughts even more worrying.) There's a mystery here and though a bit of consideration renders the ending pretty obvious, it's satisfying to see it come together in the final pages, even if it does appear rushed.

The biggest problem with Blackeyes, though is that it comes across that Potter wants to make a big statement about the objectification of women, but tries to do so through a character who's not allowed an identity of her own. I wanted to feel something for Blackeyes, or for Jessica, but they were painted so distantly that it was difficult to muster much emotion either way. This could be a brilliant statement on how the consumption of women as body only results in a sort of personality prison, where identity is locked within, not for consumption of the viewers - bit I think that'd be more success than the novel warrants.

Are you better off watching the miniseries? Quite possibly. This is entertaining for a day's commute, but that's about it. Sorry, Dennis.

[John Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most interesting thing about this book is the way different narratives or different realities are placed one on top of another, and sometimes mingled. Blackeyes is the name of a character in a novel inside the novel called 'Blackeyes'. The inside novel is called something sexier. And the character Blackeyes is an astonishingly beautiful young woman found naked and dead in a cold pond. Whether she killed herself or somebody else did it is a matter of investigation. The story of Blackeyes, the character, was told by an astonishingly beautiful young woman to her elderly writer uncle, but the young woman disagrees with the way the old man wrote the story.
If you think this female-male contest for ownership of narrative sounds to have come from some sort of literary theory, then I think you are right. But this is not an academic, dry read. It has many pop flourishes such as the already mentioned suspected murder, as well as sex, romance and maybe some dark secrets, too. In fact, at one point, the 'real' author complains of 'embarrassment' at the popular romance turn the tale takes.
The weak point maybe that the characters are too much pop stock. The preternaturally beautiful young woman with sorrow in her heart, the vain, bombastic, has-been, never-was literary old gent with a vulnerable centre, and a tough, weary, seen-it-all, dedicated detective.
There are some dated bits of satire on 'youth speak' that seems to come from a decade or two before the story, and the emotionless sex with multiple partners seems very pre-Aids though the novel was published in 1987.
The thing that keeps it interesting and worth reading is that complex structure that is easier to understand than to describe, freshening up all the potentially stale elements in a witty and entertaining way.

[Ian Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it's a worthy effort at looking at the downside of the then-current rise of the supermodels and how it affects the people working within and attached to that industry it falls down through its apologetic prose and structural and thematic similarity to Mr Potter's previous work, The Singing Detective. There's the mix of reality and fantasy, the references to popular music from a previous generation, a character who laments the similarity of his name to that of an iconic member of his profession - there's even a woman's naked body pulled from the water! This sort of repetition of theme and idea doesn't normally bother me too much because good authors usually have a lot more stuff going on in their writing than their pet concerns/ obsessions but as this is quite a slender volume it came across as derivative more than anything else.

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, surreal novel. An elderly writer has produced a best seller about the tribulations of a beautiful young model, Blackeyes. What the world doesn't know is that it was cribbed from the memories and diaries of his niece... who had her own reasons for helping him write the story. Blackeyes is found drowned in Kensington Gardens - in real life? Or is this just fantasy? Or all part of the male gaze that fills this book?

Four stars because it was interesting but not un-putdownable.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Potter at his most misogynistic but still an exciting and sexy thriller.

[Pennies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a big fan of the book, as a whole. In fact, I had to force myself to read parts of it, but the ending was really entertaining and engrossing.

[Pixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haunting. Sad. Life mirrors fiction.

Would be good for lit crit class.

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[Laurel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Though Dennis Potter described the book as being about "the objectification of young and attractive women as consumer goods in a way that brutalizes both sexes", Blackeyes seemed so repulsively misogynistic, I had difficulty finishing it (and only did so because it had been lent to me by a friend who usually has quite good taste).

I'm no prude, but the book was chock-full of improbable and unnecessary sex which was sufficiently erotic to earn a lifetime achievement award in the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards.

In short: I've heard book likened to Nabokov, which is outright offensive to me... If this book is like any other artist, to me, it is most like a Kirk Hammett solo: self-indulgent, superficially slick, but with no substance.