On Writing 'A January Tale'

On Writing A January Tale

I have nearly finished the typed draft of a new story, despite having been struck down and delayed with flu. I won't be able to show it to you for some time as I shall first seek some organ or other in which to publish it. If no one wants it, it will go on my website.

Outline

It tells the story of two friends who have long been estranged but who are seeking to rebuild their relationship, not really knowing how. The only thing they know is alcohol and the old habits through which they first became close, including a drinking game in which as students they used to compete to show their superior knowledge of literature. The game has many expressions, but in this case it involves naming the most iconic moments in literature. Before long, they begin naming moments that the other friend thinks is a loaded suggestion, and this soon becomes deliberate in a sequence of strike and counter-strike. So they launch their coded broadsides at each other through these proxy references, not knowing if they are killing something long sick, or else purging the body of its poison.

Origins

I have written before about friendship, especially male, and the idea has weighed on my mind since. After receiving recommendations from colleagues, including At Swim, Two Boys and The Body, I went for a long, late evening walk, as is my wont, wracking my mind. Eventually, as I was coming back to my flat, seemingly empty-headed, the idea of two chaps standing outside under the porch together coalesced with all the old stories I had been raking over as well as with the ideas about loneliness and distance that I had thought about for the recent blog post.

Development

The story clearly had legs. Firstly, it seemed to touch upon miscommunication, particularly of the male type, with which I am intimately familiar. There's that reluctance between men to open up and discuss anything, especially if it needs discussing, without the assistance of alcohol. It also touched upon that root of so much manipulation as well as miscommunication: the ability to pour your own meaning into something wide open to interpretation.  

But it also offered a glimpse into what often brings men together in the first place, that of the shared endeavour or activity. Such a preposterous little game would seem odd to a casual observer, but like any game, it has rivalry, frisson and, above all, something in common. Being particular to a small group, or a pair, would only recommend it to them even more as something unique, their own little world.

It is part of the question of the story: will it be enough? It might have been when they were under-ripe undergraduates, but much has passed since then. It is part of my own experience to find the things that as a student I thought were the most important things in the world don't really matter any more, and the games we played have been locked away with all our other toys. There's also a part of me, a very big part (some might suggest the greater part) that is still more boy than man, even if I do have a mortgage now. Reviving an old game like this might be desperate, and it might be too late; it might also work.

This game, and all else that such men might have in common, opens up an opportunity to explore something else I have long been thinking about, which is a kind of negative capability, the author putting things out of view, making something that is visible to the reader or audience still mysterious and private between the characters. (I shall write more extensively on this idea later.) When both characters speak through proxy references, they hint at things which we can, at best, only partially understand, either because we have insight already, or else because we know the content of the literary references. Yet we can't know, unless I reveal to us, quite what these references mean to each man, or why one would be conciliatory and another be provoking. 

Next steps

The foul hand manuscript all done, the typescripts half done, and the leg-work in finding a place to send it not yet done, and the waiting that follows not nearly begun, it will be a while before anyone sees it. Most organs take three months, sometimes as much as six, to ignore you and not reply, so you have to keep close watch on all your submissions. None has yet accepted one of my submissions so I hold no great hope. But that can always change.

Male Friendship in Literature (especially that which is new)

Male Friendship in Literature (especially that which is new)

The problem emerges

Too painful at my age

Upon a Friday evening spent alone, at home, I searched my DVDs for a story to keep me company and comfort me, specifically on the theme of friendship. I quickly became frustrated. Lord Of The Rings? Too long, too familiar and quite old. Brideshead? Much too painful for a man my age. Sherlock? Gets hysterical. Yet what else was there? Precious little. 

So I turned to literature. 

Lord Of The Rings? Brideshead? I could see a problem emerging: everything was either familiar or old. Or both.

I consulted the internet. There were a few more suggestions. Mice and Men? Please, I'm an English teacher. Lord Of The Rings was another. Brideshead Revisited another...

So I consulted my friend, Bryan. He suggested Lord Of The Rings, Mice and Men...but he added to the tally some suggestions from classic Russian literature, quite a lot of friendship in Shakespeare, including Hamlet and Horatio, and in 19th century prose, such as Bingly and Darcy and some others in Dickens. Then we discussed the problem over the phone, and agreed that, as far as we could tell, there was not much noteworthy writing on this theme from the last fifty years, and nothing we could name. 

Then he made a couple of suggestions that really got me thinking. Maurice? Dorian Grey? No, I said. That would not do: they are romantic. But so what? What is the essential difference? I said at the time, and I think I was more right than I realised, that there was something delicate, mysterious, sweet and tantalising about friendship, especially between men, whereas depictions of romance are more obvious, predictable, digestible and, frankly, formulaic. 

Digging further

Internet searches revealed a number of interesting things:

1. Lists of 'top ten' etc. fictional male friendships are repetitive, and much of it is old
2. Male friendship currently is better served in film and television than in literature
3. From some quarters there appears to be even some hostility towards it featuring in new literature
4. Given how lonely men are becoming, with around 2.5 million men having no friends, and how difficult men find it to make and keep friends, there is surely a need to discuss male friendship in current writing
5. Male friendship makes people uncomfortable.

I want to dwell on points 2 and 5 together first. 

Putting aside direct page-to-screen adaptations, I could name a few titles, not all of which I have seen, or seen in full, which take up this theme. The problem I have with them is that they intensify what I would call the histrionics, to the point where I no longer recognise the friendship for what it is. Take Sherlock, for instance. It starts really well: two lonely misfits who find one another, and, especially Watson, find new life through one another. However, by the third series, and through into the fourth, their relationship starts revelling in the caricatures and fantasies of the fan base (more on that later) and morphs deliberately into a surrogate romance. Similarly with House MD, which is obviously based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. When House has his difficulties or when Wilson starts to die, the dynamic becomes weepy and saccharine. 

This speaks of two problems:

• Friendship is undervalued as a theme; less important than romance or family. Two close friends who remain close friends won't do, as friendship simply is not enough: they must become something more. 
• Friendship is not understood. It is precisely because friendship is naturally undramatic, normally, that it is so important and valued: conversation, quality time, nights out, confidants' advice, etc. This is quite apart from the war of nerves, anxiety and high-stakes conflict and resolution that goes with romantic interest but which, by contrast, make romantic relationships less stable, reliable and all too often less enduring. 

Sometimes the friendship is put under test, such as one friend falling ill, which is a naturally more revealing test of the depth of affection, but even then, the friendship, though demonstrative, remains for the most part undramatic. The best recent depiction of this that I have seen is the film 50/50, in which Seth Rogen's character is a doughty rock throughout his friend's ordeal.

This is mild.

The other, connected problem is that this topic seems to make people uncomfortable, as hinted at in the link on point 3 but more evident in the fan responses to things such as Sherlock and Lord Of The Rings. It is a common suggestion, made in countless pictures and fan fictions either hopefully or sneeringly, that the men must secretly have romantic feelings for each other: 'Johnlock' is a thing, as evinced by fan art, the featured image being the mildest I feel I can show. And the conversations around Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins seem deliberately to overlook the origin of that friendship in the model of the British officer and his batman in the trenches. Certainly, such treatments do touch on the real ambiguity of some male relationships, in which the line between the platonic and the romantic is not always clear to the friends themselves. But they also speak of a need either to laugh the friendship off or to transform it into something more easily understood and categorised; an inability, as Keats might have put it, to enjoy the mystery without the irritating reflex of reaching after certainty.

Writing now

Well reviewed and
worth investigating

I have mentioned 50/50 as a good modern treatment of male friendship that I know about, and the first two series of Sherlock as well. In terms of writing, I know of nothing very recent that has captured the public mood. I have heard of one title, At Swim, Two Boys, which seems promising but the synopses also indicate that the relationship becomes romantic. About a year ago I read The Gustav Sonata, which seemed promising at the start but quickly descended into the level of a first draft. It therefore seems to me that this is a topic and theme that is absolutely ripe for further exploration, both in pursuit of reading and of writing.