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Broken Consort
‘We are taught by what we find … And what we find, we have to give away.’
Broken Consort is a chronicle of close attention (to books, films, plays, paintings, music, notebooks and car-boot sales) which will confound anyone who thinks rigour and generosity are contradictory. It includes an account of the evolution of the author’s prize-winning novel Murmur, an essay on Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, and practical reflections on the business of writing.
‘“At the heart of writing is curiosity,” writes Will Eaves in his essay on “Making Books”. Curiosity may fuel every writers heart, but very often it’s coffee that powers the writer’s mind. When all the coffee runs out, we will be even more grateful for Will Eaves and his essays – each one a shot of artisistic adrenalin and a euphoric psychostimulant.’
– Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice
Broken Consort is a chronicle of close attention (to books, films, plays, paintings, music, notebooks and car-boot sales) which will confound anyone who thinks rigour and generosity are contradictory. It includes an account of the evolution of the author’s prize-winning novel Murmur, an essay on Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, and practical reflections on the business of writing.
‘“At the heart of writing is curiosity,” writes Will Eaves in his essay on “Making Books”. Curiosity may fuel every writers heart, but very often it’s coffee that powers the writer’s mind. When all the coffee runs out, we will be even more grateful for Will Eaves and his essays – each one a shot of artisistic adrenalin and a euphoric psychostimulant.’
– Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice
- GenresEssaysNonfiction
208 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2020
19 people want to read
About the author
Will Eaves
19 books23 followersWill was born in Bath in 1967 and educated at Beechen Cliff School and King’s College, Cambridge.
After a brief spell as an actor and several years in trade journalism, he began writing for the Times Literary Supplement in 1992 and joined the paper as its Arts Editor in 1995. He left in 2011 to become an Associate Professor in the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick.
In 2020, he judged the Goldsmiths Prize and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. In 2016, he was a Sassoon Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Library.
He has written five novels, two books of poetry, and one volume of literary essays, and is represented by Carrie Plitt at Felicity Bryan Associates in Oxford.
He has given talks, seminars and readings around the world: at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Royal Society, the National Geographic Science Festival, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Shakespeare and Co Bookshop, Medicine Unboxed, Belfast Book Festival, the Goldsmiths Prize Readings, Gay’s The Word Bookshop, Poetry East, the Mildura Writers’ Festival, Vout-O-Reenee‘s, and the University of Melbourne.
He has appeared several times on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, with Ian Macmillan, and on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Open Book. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
He edits mss, grows trees, writes piano music, and lives in Brixton.
After a brief spell as an actor and several years in trade journalism, he began writing for the Times Literary Supplement in 1992 and joined the paper as its Arts Editor in 1995. He left in 2011 to become an Associate Professor in the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick.
In 2020, he judged the Goldsmiths Prize and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. In 2016, he was a Sassoon Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Library.
He has written five novels, two books of poetry, and one volume of literary essays, and is represented by Carrie Plitt at Felicity Bryan Associates in Oxford.
He has given talks, seminars and readings around the world: at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Royal Society, the National Geographic Science Festival, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Shakespeare and Co Bookshop, Medicine Unboxed, Belfast Book Festival, the Goldsmiths Prize Readings, Gay’s The Word Bookshop, Poetry East, the Mildura Writers’ Festival, Vout-O-Reenee‘s, and the University of Melbourne.
He has appeared several times on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, with Ian Macmillan, and on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Open Book. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
He edits mss, grows trees, writes piano music, and lives in Brixton.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 1, 2020
Broken Consort is a collection of essays and reviews written by the Republic of Consciousness Prize and Wellcome Prize winning author Will Eaves and published by the wonderful CB Editions.
The pieces range over more than 20 years and from film reviews of the bond movie Goldeneye (1995) and Titanic (1997) through to a Covid 19 inspired piece on Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, published in the TLS in May 2020 (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/da...), which begins:
Like a comet, its time has come again. Frantic and austere, the feeling for personal bewilderment running fast beneath the author’s plain style, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) brims with recognizable situations – the wealthy thundering down the road to Oxford and safety, the poor condemned by the riskiest essential employments (searching, guarding, nursing, burying), the revelation of powerlessness in authority, the joy of deliverance, and the shortness of memory.
It’s tremendous in every respect, as an invention sprung from fact, as a dramatic monologue, as a composition disordered by its own subject matter. To offset its evil charms, I’ve tried reading it alongside Gustave Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale (1869) – as different a novel as one can imagine – only to find strange resonances. In both books the act of fascinated witness has a sort of immunizing property, and Frédéric Moreau wandering the streets of the 1848 insurrection in Paris is uncannily similar to HF, Defoe’s narrator, making his way past plague victims screaming at their casements in London in 1665. In each description of chaos and disaster, the past tense is full of threat, because the past is where we’re all headed. I imagine scenarios for a film version of Journal and then watch the evening news: like Defoe, I’m inventing things that have already happened.
Several of the pieces are close readings of a books (or books on a similar theme) very much in the style of the LRB or TLS [and having written that, I discovered many of the pieces were indeed featured in the TLS]. Personally I always struggle with reviews of books I’ve not read on subjects I know little about, but the sales of the aforementioned publications suggests there is an audience for this, and Eaves is certainly a strong reviewer, generous to the authors and lacking in ego (unlike some reviewers in the aforementioned publications).
The more effective pieces for me were the more general essays, e.g. one on notebooks that begins:
Last week I lost a notebook and found it again at the week - end, my relief tempered by disappointment when I turned the pages and saw how little I’d used it. Notebooks are a writ - er’s workshop, says Somerset Maugham in the preface to his own published selection of sketches and impressions, but if so mine was deserted. Where were the great ideas and suggestive phrases? All I could see were offcuts and shavings, odd memos to an absent creator (‘put the pterodactyl after A comes round’). And, of course, the gaps in the record, the stories that stopped or weren’t written at all: ‘He was every - where, his head poking out of the fireplace, those wide eyes bobbing about in the soup.’
Entries in notebooks aren’t dated (a dated notebook is a diary), but omissions and changes in direction often signify a break in activity – illness, death, work – from which the writer returns in a different hand, re-inked by experience. What was I thinking all that time? What was I reading? Perhaps I was writing properly.
And for Murmur fans, the highlight may well be the piece that describes the novel and its origins, one it suggests aim at fulfilling Nabakov’s prescription for merging of the precision of poetry with the intuition of science (although as an aside, google can only find the quote in this form in the novel The Winter Vault Anne Michael’s Winter Vault and (not presented as a direct quote) in the critical appreciation of the writer by Nabokov's Mimicry of Freud: Art as Science, the more usual quote refers to the scientist's imagination).
Overall - I found this a book best browsed for those pieces of interest. 3 stars
The pieces range over more than 20 years and from film reviews of the bond movie Goldeneye (1995) and Titanic (1997) through to a Covid 19 inspired piece on Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, published in the TLS in May 2020 (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/da...), which begins:
Like a comet, its time has come again. Frantic and austere, the feeling for personal bewilderment running fast beneath the author’s plain style, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) brims with recognizable situations – the wealthy thundering down the road to Oxford and safety, the poor condemned by the riskiest essential employments (searching, guarding, nursing, burying), the revelation of powerlessness in authority, the joy of deliverance, and the shortness of memory.
It’s tremendous in every respect, as an invention sprung from fact, as a dramatic monologue, as a composition disordered by its own subject matter. To offset its evil charms, I’ve tried reading it alongside Gustave Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale (1869) – as different a novel as one can imagine – only to find strange resonances. In both books the act of fascinated witness has a sort of immunizing property, and Frédéric Moreau wandering the streets of the 1848 insurrection in Paris is uncannily similar to HF, Defoe’s narrator, making his way past plague victims screaming at their casements in London in 1665. In each description of chaos and disaster, the past tense is full of threat, because the past is where we’re all headed. I imagine scenarios for a film version of Journal and then watch the evening news: like Defoe, I’m inventing things that have already happened.
Several of the pieces are close readings of a books (or books on a similar theme) very much in the style of the LRB or TLS [and having written that, I discovered many of the pieces were indeed featured in the TLS]. Personally I always struggle with reviews of books I’ve not read on subjects I know little about, but the sales of the aforementioned publications suggests there is an audience for this, and Eaves is certainly a strong reviewer, generous to the authors and lacking in ego (unlike some reviewers in the aforementioned publications).
The more effective pieces for me were the more general essays, e.g. one on notebooks that begins:
Last week I lost a notebook and found it again at the week - end, my relief tempered by disappointment when I turned the pages and saw how little I’d used it. Notebooks are a writ - er’s workshop, says Somerset Maugham in the preface to his own published selection of sketches and impressions, but if so mine was deserted. Where were the great ideas and suggestive phrases? All I could see were offcuts and shavings, odd memos to an absent creator (‘put the pterodactyl after A comes round’). And, of course, the gaps in the record, the stories that stopped or weren’t written at all: ‘He was every - where, his head poking out of the fireplace, those wide eyes bobbing about in the soup.’
Entries in notebooks aren’t dated (a dated notebook is a diary), but omissions and changes in direction often signify a break in activity – illness, death, work – from which the writer returns in a different hand, re-inked by experience. What was I thinking all that time? What was I reading? Perhaps I was writing properly.
And for Murmur fans, the highlight may well be the piece that describes the novel and its origins, one it suggests aim at fulfilling Nabakov’s prescription for merging of the precision of poetry with the intuition of science (although as an aside, google can only find the quote in this form in the novel The Winter Vault Anne Michael’s Winter Vault and (not presented as a direct quote) in the critical appreciation of the writer by Nabokov's Mimicry of Freud: Art as Science, the more usual quote refers to the scientist's imagination).
Overall - I found this a book best browsed for those pieces of interest. 3 stars
November 16, 2020
Book, Film & Music Reviews from the 2019 RoC Prize Co-Winner
Review of the CB Editions paperback edition (October 2020)
I found this collection of reviews and essays to be very entertaining as it covered various media such as action adventure films from the mid-90's (James Bond Goldeneye 1995, Executive Decision 1996, Titanic 1997) to contemporary poetry and fiction and even some classics such as Homer's Odyssey. There was even a quirky parallel between book & film with Odysseus telling the Cyclops that his name was "Nobody" in Homer and analyst Curt Russell tells the lead terrorist the same thing in Executive Action.
The writer is also the novelist of Murmur (2018), which was the co-winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize and one of the essays also discusses his work on that book. Murmur is a fictionalized version of the real-life story of the persecution of Enigma Code breaker Alan Turing, who was homosexual at a time when it was illegal in Great Britain.
I read Broken Consort as the October 2020 Book of the Month perk from my support of The Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers.
Review of the CB Editions paperback edition (October 2020)
I found this collection of reviews and essays to be very entertaining as it covered various media such as action adventure films from the mid-90's (James Bond Goldeneye 1995, Executive Decision 1996, Titanic 1997) to contemporary poetry and fiction and even some classics such as Homer's Odyssey. There was even a quirky parallel between book & film with Odysseus telling the Cyclops that his name was "Nobody" in Homer and analyst Curt Russell tells the lead terrorist the same thing in Executive Action.
The writer is also the novelist of Murmur (2018), which was the co-winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize and one of the essays also discusses his work on that book. Murmur is a fictionalized version of the real-life story of the persecution of Enigma Code breaker Alan Turing, who was homosexual at a time when it was illegal in Great Britain.
I read Broken Consort as the October 2020 Book of the Month perk from my support of The Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers.
September 16, 2020
Will Eaves style is what I call minimally encyclopedic. This means that although there is an economical approach to his writing, the amount of knowledge is vast. Naturally since this book is a collection of Essays and reviews, the reader will be able to see how many different topics will be tackled.
On this front, Broken Consort does not disappoint. As expected the scope here is wide and deep. There are film, poetry and book reviews. All which Eaves uses as a springboard for other topics. His review of Harry Selick's adaptation of James and the Giant peach delves into Dahl's sexist and misogynistic traits which occur in his writing, while also how the the film and the book simultaneously break down these aspects of said traits. Elsewhere there are explorations of James Bond's character, queerness in literature, Robert Mapplethorpe and gay photography, how Nolan intellectualized Batman and dozens of other topics.
However it is the personal pieces which struck me the most ; The usefulness of a book's title, how a marketplace is similar to writing a book and some background notes on his last novel Murmur , which is his take on Alan Turing's life. I admit when I read the book at the time, I did see some bits as fuggy but this piece helps clarify some concepts behind the novel.
To be fair, Broken Consort is not the type of book to really read in one sitting. I see it as a 'dip in and out' sort of thing but the writing is excellent and there are fresh perspectives on popular culture. The reader will definitely get something out of it.
On this front, Broken Consort does not disappoint. As expected the scope here is wide and deep. There are film, poetry and book reviews. All which Eaves uses as a springboard for other topics. His review of Harry Selick's adaptation of James and the Giant peach delves into Dahl's sexist and misogynistic traits which occur in his writing, while also how the the film and the book simultaneously break down these aspects of said traits. Elsewhere there are explorations of James Bond's character, queerness in literature, Robert Mapplethorpe and gay photography, how Nolan intellectualized Batman and dozens of other topics.
However it is the personal pieces which struck me the most ; The usefulness of a book's title, how a marketplace is similar to writing a book and some background notes on his last novel Murmur , which is his take on Alan Turing's life. I admit when I read the book at the time, I did see some bits as fuggy but this piece helps clarify some concepts behind the novel.
To be fair, Broken Consort is not the type of book to really read in one sitting. I see it as a 'dip in and out' sort of thing but the writing is excellent and there are fresh perspectives on popular culture. The reader will definitely get something out of it.
November 24, 2020
In an afterword, Will Eaves explains the concept of a broken consort, a term used in music, especially during the Renaissance, for an ensemble that mixes instruments from different families (e.g. woodwind and strings). The phrase is an apt title for this book which gives us a collection of Eaves’ writings that cover a wide range of different “families”. There are philosophical discussions, reviews of books, music and film, transcripts of interviews and much more. For me, one of the main attractions going into the book was the mention on the back that it “includes an account of the evolution of the author’s Wellcome Prize-winning novel Murmur”. I have to acknowledge I was slightly disappointed to discover this particular part of the book is only 4 pages long. That does actually make it longer, I think, than the average piece, but with Murmur being one of my favourite books (ever), I was sort of hoping for more.
This is not a book to sit down and read cover to cover. It is extremely well written, but it is often very erudite and presents some complex thinking. To my mind, it is better to read this one or two articles at a time spread over a long period. When you approach it like this, you can admire Eaves’ intelligence and knowledge without becoming somewhat overwhelmed (which is what I found happening to me when I tried to read several articles in one go).
This is not a book to sit down and read cover to cover. It is extremely well written, but it is often very erudite and presents some complex thinking. To my mind, it is better to read this one or two articles at a time spread over a long period. When you approach it like this, you can admire Eaves’ intelligence and knowledge without becoming somewhat overwhelmed (which is what I found happening to me when I tried to read several articles in one go).
July 4, 2021
Will Eaves writes so well it's a pleasure to read him on any subject. Having read the whole collection I've now gone back to several essays for a second time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews