John Ironmonger's Random Blog: January 2023

My Book Shelves (11): In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall [19 Jan 2023]

The first time I read Jane Goodall’s ‘In the Shadow of Man,’ I was studying zoology at university, and this was one of our course-books. I was expecting a dry, academic tome. What I discovered was the intensely personal autobiography of a young English woman and a detailed account of the family of chimpanzees that accepted her into their fold. It is a book that has never left me, and I have re-read it several times. One feature that makes In the Shadow of Man so compelling is the family-tree of chimp faces that appears on the flyleaf. It is impossible to read the book without regularly consulting this handy guide to the chimps in the troop. Goodall was twenty-seven when she started work at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. It was 1960. For years she lived in the park, spending most of her daylight hours with the chimps. She is said, to this day, to be the only human ever to have been accepted into a chimpanzee group, and for almost two years she was the lowest ranking member of the Kasakela troop.

Almost every aspect of Jane Goodall’s work with chimpanzees was pioneering when she started, and not always welcomed by the scientific community. The idea that a researcher should live among a group of wild apes was considered rather shocking, especially if the researcher was young, blonde, and female. But Goodall’s most unconventional idea, perhaps, was to give her chimps names. This annoyed traditional primatologists who accused her of becoming emotionally attached to the animals. Today it is common practice for zoologists to name animals, especially primates, and the names Goodall gave to the Gombe chimps helped to bring their stories to a worldwide audience in a way that would never have happened had they been Chimp A or Chimp B. I still remember with affection the names of the chimps from In the Shadow of Man – David Greybeard, Goliath, Flo, Fifi, and Flint.

The Family Tree from In the Shadow of Man

I've been working on a novel, on and off, that may or may not ever see the light of day. It draws heavily from 'In the Shadow of Man.' At present my title for this book is Girl/Ape. It is the entirely fictional story of a young woman who lives with a troop of wild chimpanzees. I'm 38 thousand words in; but who knows. I shall let you know how it goes.

Sue and I have been lucky enough to meet Jane Goodall twice on her UK lecture tours, and both times her stories have brought us to tears. If you want to learn more about Jane Goodall I heartily recommend In the Shadow of Man, along with ‘My Life with the Chimpanzees’ and ‘Through a Window: 30 Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe.’ You might also like to subscribe to the Jane Goodall Institute’s YouTube channel.

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com

My Book Shelves (10): The Asterix books by Goscinny and Uderzo [18 Jan 2023]

It is the year 50BC. After a long struggle, Gaul has been conquered by the Romans. All Gaul is occupied. All? No. One village still holds out stubbornly against the invaders…

And there it is. The simple conceit that launched over forty books, a theme park, a film franchise, and one of the most enduring partnerships in graphic literature – Asterix and Obelix – the indefatigable (and indomitable) warriors of the little Gaulish village we have come to know so well. If you’ve never encountered Asterix – where have you been? Surely no one can have escaped at least a passing acquaintance with the books. In a 1999 poll by Le Monde, 'Asterix the Gaul' was voted 23^rd greatest book of the 20^th Century. And it isn’t even the best of the canon. Not by a very long chalk. But it was the first, published in 1959 (and in English translation a decade later.)

Some of my dog-eared Asterix books ...

I’ve been a fan since … well, since a teacher at my school gave us untranslated versions of the books to encourage us to read in French. I was about twelve. I dare say couldn’t make head or tail of the language. But the pictures themselves are enough to draw you in. And then one day I discovered Asterix and Cleopatra in English and that was it. I was hooked. And I have been ever since.

Where do I begin to catalogue everything that makes the Asterix books such works of unrivalled genius? They are funny, witty, touching, and beautifully drawn. They mercilessly lampoon every national stereotype in a way (and to an extent) you probably couldn’t get away with now. They are charming. Original. Clever. And above all they are great stories.

But I need to make an important distinction here. My unrequited love for these books is limited to the first 24 volumes – those written by written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo (and translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockeridge) until Goscinny’s death in 1977. These are:

1. Asterix the Gaul
2.     Asterix and the Golden Sickle
3.     Asterix and the Goths
4.     Asterix the Gladiator
5.     Asterix and the Banquet
6.     Asterix and Cleopatra
7.     Asterix and the Big Fight
8.     Asterix and the In Britain
9.     Asterix and the Normans
10.  Asterix The Legionary
11.    Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield
12.   Asterix at the Olympic Games
13.   Asterix and the Cauldron
14.   Asterix In Spain
15.   Asterix and the Roman Agent
16.   Asterix in Switzerland
17.   Asterix and the Mansions of the Gods
18.   Asterix and the Laurel Wreath
19.   Asterix and the Soothsayer
20. Asterix In Corsica
21.   Asterix and Caesar's Gift
22.  Asterix and the Great Crossing
23.  Obelix and Co.
24.  Asterix in Belgium

After Rene Goscinny’s death Albert Uderzo ploughed on alone, writing and drawing the books. The eight books Uderzo created are not nearly so good. I possess them all – of course. But who, if anyone, really enjoyed Asterix and the Actress? Or the Falling Sky? The books are a poor imitation of the first 24 – and oddly even the drawings aren't as good. In 2013 an agreement was made with Uderzo and the estate of Goscinny for a new writer and illustrator to take over. Enter Jean-Yves Ferri as writer, and Didier Conrad as illustrator. The books were better than Uderzo’s solo efforts. Asterix and the Picts was even quite good. But they too have failed to hit the highwater mark of books like Asterix the Legionary or Asterix in Corsica.

I give you below, the opening page of Asterix in Spain. If you can show me a better opening page of any book, I should like to see it.

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com

Never go Back. Should I revisit Nairobi? Or not? [13 Jan 2023]

Never go back. I’ve been given that piece of advice plenty of times, by lots of different people, but always with reference to one particular place. Nairobi. The city where I was born. Where I went to primary school. Where I went to prep school. Where I lived until I was seventeen.

Never go back.

I get it. I do. I understand why you should never go back. Memories are fragile enough as it is, why spoil them? Everything will have changed. I left Nairobi in 1971, and when I did, I felt as if I knew every street corner, every shop and bar and café and market stall. I knew the bus routes, and the clubs, and the museum, and the National Park. I was a regular at the Impala Club, and at Dam Busters, and the Snake Park, and the animal orphanage. I knew my way unaided around the city maze. I used to sit at a table in the Thorn Tree Café at the New Stanley Hotel and spot celebrities with my big sister. I was on first name terms with the man who ran Top Ten Records on Kimathi Street, and with the Sikh who ran the camera shop next to the market, and with several owners of second-hand bookstores all along Bazaar Street. I knew the best stall to buy mealies and the best place to get cut pineapple. My little brother Paul and I used to take the lift to the top of the highest building (then the Hilton Hotel) and climb the service staircase to the roof and we’d sit there watching the whole city at our feet. It was our city. That was how it felt.

Me at Kenton College in around 1966. I'm the miserable looking one - second to the right on the front row.

There is still a city called Nairobi, and it still stands in the same place - midway between Mombasa and Kisumu on the great railroad - but it isn’t the same city. I understand that. I look at the city on Google Streetview and nowhere is recognisable. I try to find the several old colonial bungalows where we lived at various times between 1958 and 1971, and I can’t find them. The houses all have high walls now. Nothing looks familiar.

Never go back.

But should I? Won’t I get a frisson of pleasure from recognising the occasional place? Surely my old school won’t have changed very much. Surely the Impala Club is still there. And the hippo pool in the National Park. And the museum. And the Stanley Hotel …

Well it’s a moot question. I’m going back. Next month. With Sue and with our good friends Graham and Jenny. Feel free to send me your advice. Places to see. Places to avoid. I will blog about the trip and let you know how it was. But I can tell you this already. Four weeks to go and I’m already ridiculously excited.

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com

Movie Clichés (tropes and memes). And why it's time to stop them. [13 Jan 2023]

I wrote a blog post last month about ‘Avatar 2 (The Way of Water)’ and I used this post to bemoan the prevalence of lazy movie memes – especially memes that involve guns. But maybe, on reflection, ‘meme’ wasn’t the right word. Some people, I’ve discovered, call these things ‘tropes,’ which makes them sound almost respectable. But I’m starting to think of them as clichés. When a hero is rescued by a gunshot from an offscreen character (the Deus ex Machina escape) this is surely nothing more than a lazy cliché – predictable, unoriginal, overused, and boring.

Clichés take the fun out of movies. They tell you, 'here is an unoriginal screenwriter and an unimaginative director and a studio that is happy to rerun old ideas.' It is time for us, the movie-watching public, to call out these mind numbing practices. So I thought I might use this blog post to start a collection of these clichés, and I shall add to it when I come across new ones. Feel free to contribute movie clichés that annoy you – just drop them into the comments and I’ll add them on. Here are a few to get us started.

HEROES ALWAYS RUN FROM AN EXPLOSION WITH NOT A SECOND TO SPARE

THE TV NEWS FLASH IS ALWAYS RELEVANT

If the TV is on in the background of a scene, and the news is on (or there’s a news flash) – you can be absolutely certain this news item will be central to the story that is about to unfold. Particularly if it happens in Act 1. No other story will be aired and the characters will turn off the TV before the football results come on.

LESSONS ARE ALWAYS INTERRUPTEFD BY THE BELL

If a character is a teacher or a professor we will join them in class, but only for the last few minutes of class up until the point where they are interrupted by the bell. Never midway through. During the few minutes we see, the teacher/professor will expound upon a theory that will prove central to the story that is about to unfold. Particularly if it happens in Act 1. Usually he/she will be interrupted by a smartass student with a smartass question. This student will turn out to be the hero or the nemesis of the story.

THE DOG WILL DIE

There’s a dog! Oh dear. He’s going to die. Or go missing.

PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS WILL BE OVERHEARD

Two characters share their suspicions about a third character. Big mistake. The third character will be standing silently out of sight listening to everything.

DUCTS ARE EVERYWHERE

Every spaceship / building / ship / prison will have a network of ducts that are just wide enough to crawl through. Each duct has a cover with just two screws. A character can also use a duct to eavesdrop on conversations (see previous cliché).

BOMB TIMERS ARE REALLY HELPFUL

For no known reason, bomb makers helpfully include a digital count-down timer (even when they don’t expect anyone to be there to be there to see it.) The bomb maker is never smart enough to have triggered the bomb at any point on the countdown except zero. This is lucky because generally the hero will defuse the bomb with just three seconds to go.

COSTUME DRAMA DRESSES NEVER GET MUDDY

God knows there must have been a lot of mud. But long dresses stay clean.

DETECTIVES LIVE IN ICONIC HOMES

Usually by water. Or in a trailer. Or a boat. Or somewhere spectacular. Never in an apartment block or on a dull estate.

NO ONE SAYS GOODBYE ON PHONE CALLS

They just hang up. Rude.

IT WAS ALL A DREAM

This cliché annoys me more than any other. We think we’re watching a bona-fide scene in the movie. Dreadful things happen. They get worse. Oh my god! But then the protagonist awakes. Phwew! It was only a dream.

DRIVERS LOOK AT THEIR PASSENGERS WHILE TALKING

If a car driver has five lines of dialogue, he/she will deliver this whole spiel while looking directly at the passenger, and the passenger will never panic or say ‘keep your eyes on the road.’

COUGHING IN A COSTUME DRAMA MEANS DEATH

One cough is all it needs and you know the character has consumption and will surely die before the credits.

HIGH SCHOOLS ALWAYS HAVE BULLIES

But don’t worry. They will always get their comeuppance in the final act.

BEST FRIENDS ARE ALWAYS QUIRKY

Usually a little overweight. Not too bright. Not too good looking. Often a member of an ethnic minority. They will fall out with the hero in Act 3. But they are staunch. In Act 4 they will reappear just when they are needed.

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com

My Book Shelves (9): Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke [5 Jan 2023]

I once wrote a novel about a man called Thomas Post who happened to be (fictionally of course) an international authority on the subject of coincidences. (The novel is, unsurprisingly, titled ‘The Coincidence Authority,’ and it is still available if you are interested.) Anyway. Because of this book, people sometimes send me coincidences that have happened to them. They think I might be interested, and I always am.

But now it is time to share one of my own.

Sometime in around 2006 or 2007 or thereabouts I bought a copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell in paperback from a bookstore at Glasgow Central Station. I needed something to read for the journey home. Now this is a hefty volume (1,006 pages) and I usually run a mile to avoid starting anything over 300 pages (although for exceptions to this rule you may want to read my blog posts on Donna Tartt and John Irving). Nonetheless, something drew me to this book, and I’m dashed if I know what it was. I was aware of the book, but only faintly. It had been Costa shortlisted and had been busy gathering other awards. But I had never planned to buy it. Never expected to read it. Nothing about the cover blurb excited me. I hate travelling with a book that won’t slip into a jacket pocket. And generally I don’t read fantasy.

So why did I buy it? I really don’t know. But by the time my train was passing through Carlisle I was already too hooked to look up and see where I was; and when I had to disembark at Stafford I was resenting the drive home. I wanted so much to read on. This is a story as magical as the characters who inhabit its pages. I rarely read fantasy novels, so I don’t know where this book belongs in the canon, or whether the tropes that populate it are original, or borrowed, or part of a noble tradition. All I know is the quality of the writing, and the depth of characterisation, and the sheer detailed bravura of the magical landscape that Susanna Clarke created make this book a genuine undisputable classic. Clarke litters the text with academic footnotes and even an imaginary bibliography (³ A Complete Description of Dr Pale’s fairy servants, their Names, Histories, Characters and the Services they performed for him by John Segundus pub. By Thomas Burnham Bookseller, Northampton 1799.) She creates a world unlike any other, so rich in its particulars, and rules, that you will never question any conceit. It is a world we already know – or think we know – where Wellington is fighting the Peninsula War and where nineteenth Century mores and manners prevail – but where magicians, like the rock-stars of their age – manipulate the very fabric of reality. And at the heart of the story an age-old professional enmity – the kind of intergenerational abyss we all recognise – as the reckless but brilliant magician Jonathan Strange begins to outstrip the skills and achievements of Norrell, his mentor. I love this book. I turned every page with a sense of awe. Who was Susanna Clarke? How had she done this? How had she created this colossal fictitious citadel?

And now here is the coincidence. I had a good friend at school who was (still is) a writer. His name is Colin Greenland. Among other things he won the Arthur C Clark award for his novel, ‘Take Back Plenty.’ (A brilliant book). We used to talk a lot. But we’d lost touch. Some years had passed since our paths had crossed. We had barely swapped emails for a decade. All I knew was that Colin still lived in Cambridge, we occasionally exchanged Christmas cards, and Colin’s card in recent years had read ‘Colin and Susanna.’ And that was that. Meanwhile the only biographical note that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell offers on Susanna Clarke is just eleven words long. ‘Susanna Clarke lives in Cambridge. This is her first novel.’ Hmm. Finally the very last line of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is an acknowledgement ... ‘and above all to Colin.’ So I dropped Colin an email, and discovered that according to the ‘seven degrees of separation’ rules I was only one connection away from the author of just about the most brilliant novel I’d read for years.

Thomas Post, by the way, would say this isn’t a coincidence. Millions of people read this book, so some are bound to discover a connection to the author. But it feels like a coincidence to me, so I’ll take it.

And as a postscript – if you really can’t face 1,000 pages, may I recommend Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I don’t want to tell you anything about it. Just that you ought to read it. Another masterpiece. And then have a go at Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com