Topsyturvydom is proud to hold this leg of the virtual tour for Charles Lambert’s
The Scent of Cinnamon. This is Charles’s second major publication, following his novel
Little Monsters. First, a biographical note: Charles Lambert was born in Lichfield, in 1953. After going to eight different schools in the Midlands and Derbyshire, he won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge from 1972 to 1975. In 1976 he moved to Milan and, with brief interruptions in Ireland, Portugal and London, has lived and worked in Italy since then.
Currently a university teacher, academic translator and freelance editor for international agencies, his occupations have included kitchen hand, shop assistant, medical journal editor, guidebook writer, receptionist, teacher of political science, and journalist with ANSA, the Italian news agency. He now lives in Fondi, exactly halfway between Rome and Naples, a stone’s throw from what was once the Appian Way.
The Scent of Cinnamon has been well received-
Scott Pack went so far as to say that “the majority, the vast majority, of people who routinely enjoy the Richard & Judy books would wet their knickers (or pants, but let’s face it, it would mainly be knickers) over the title story of this book.” Well, up to a point, Scott… Where I would agree is that these stories are all exquisitely crafted, showing the same attention to the telling detail that was such a feature of
Little Monsters. And if anything is going to restore the popularity of short fiction in this country, it must be the publication of stories such as these, by turns humorous, surreal, disturbing, but always memorable. Here’s a short question and answer session I conducted with Charles:
RS: You mentioned when we corresponded that you are working on a novel that might loosely be described as detective fiction. In The Scent of Cinnamon, at least one story, “Moving the Needle Towards the Thread”, might be said to have some of the characteristics of that genre. Are you attracted to genre fiction? I wondered if you like to subvert it, as, say, Gilbert Adair does.
CL: Yes, I am attracted to genre fiction but, bluntly, I’m not very good at it. What tends to happen on the occasions I set out to work within a genre is that, without wanting it, I find the writing wriggling off towards something else. The story you mention is a good example. The set-up – a corpse, a murder, a murderer, a sort of confession – certainly has the characteristics of, if not quite a whodunit, a whydunit, if you like. But what happens as the piece develops is that the narrator begins to find her own certainties questioned, so that by the end of the story what began as self-justification is crumbling in her hands and she no longer has an explanation for anything, least of all her own actions. The story has become, willy-nilly and regardless of its quality, ‘literary’ fiction in that it lends itself to, indeed necessitates, more than one reading. The Number Worm also looks like a pure genre piece – a classic horror story – before veering off into (and it’s been criticized for this by one irate SF/fantasy reviewer) ‘psychological metaphor’ (quite apart from its nodding salute to a story that has almost established its own genre, “Metamorphosis”). I’m a great admirer of certain genre writers, like Stephen King, say, or Ramsay Campbell, or Ian Rankin, and I have a special place in my heart for Patricia Highsmith, who has, I think, influenced me as much as any other writer, but these are all people who are challenged and stretched by the genre they’ve chosen to work in, rather than writers like, say, Patricia Cornwell, who stay within their genre for less creative reasons (I hesitate to use the word money). I also like and admire the work of Gilbert Adair, but I wouldn’t see my use of genre as involving the kind of very knowing operation he performs so skilfully in his Christie-inspired novels. The book you mention, by the way, has already broken free of its detective fiction moorings and is heading off who-knows-where… Right now, a study of what it means to be lonely might be a more accurate one-line description.
RS: We touched on your relatively late emergence as a writer in our interview. Many reviewers have commented on the sense of craftsmanship and maturity in these stories. Has it been an advantage to do your apprenticeship in private as it were?
CL: Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, talks about the numbers of hours a person needs to devote to a certain activity before becoming proficient in it. I haven’t read the book, but I think he suggests a minimum of 10,000. That would work out, roughly, as three hours a day for ten years, or one hour a day for thirty. In these terms, I’m definitely proficient, which, for me, means being aware of what I can do and of which limits I can profitably push against. Having said that, the stories in the collection cover a fair number of years and I hope they’re all both well-crafted and mature, though I’d like to think that some of the newer pieces were, if not better, perhaps more sparely written. It’s noticeable that the most recent work of, say, Bob Dylan and Alice Munro– to take names out of a mixed-genre hat of personal favourites – has a feeling of being stripped back, and I’d tend to say that maturity is also a process of freeing the text from what’s inessential and decorative. I hope that I’m doing this. As far as conducting my apprenticeship in private goes, I can take no credit for this at all. From the very start, I did everything in my power to go public and I’d still be happy to see a novel I wrote over 15 years ago sitting on readers’ shelves. Over to you, world of publishing.
RS: You’ve lived nearly all your adult life as an exile. Do you still feel as if you belong to Britain, and has your sense of place been affected by your long absence? Your novel Little Monsters moves easily between British and Italian settings, and there’s a similar breadth of setting in The Scent of Cinnamon.
CL: I’m not sure I’d choose the word ‘exile’ to describe myself, though I might if the alternative were ‘ex-pat’. I don’t feel exiled, by myself or anyone else, from Britain. At the risk of alienating readers of Private Eye or the Daily Mail, one of the papers incidentally that reviewed Little Monsters most enthusiastically, I’d like to think of myself as European and equally at home in both the UK and Italy; but that wouldn’t be true either, because what I feel is not-quite-at-home in both, which I think is the state I was aspiring to when I first left Britain. Bilingual speakers are said to achieve 100% proficiency in neither language. I’m not bilingual, though I wonder sometimes about my linguistic competence in English and Italian, but I’m certainly bicultural, by which I mean twice incomplete. I’m made aware of this most strongly when I watch programmes like Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and discover that the first few questions are the ones that flummox me: I’d need to ask the audience. More seriously, I’m not sure how far I actually have a sense of place. In the sense of feeling rooted, or the need for that, I have very little. I had a fairly nomadic childhood, if only within the confines of the Midlands (from Lichfield to the Pennines, with quite a few stops in between), I’ve moved around quite a lot in Italy as well, and I’m beginning to look forward to the next country, whichever that might be. What I do have is a strong visual memory, which comes in handy, a strong curiosity in the minutiae of other people’s lives (a faculty that people who don’t have the excuse of being a writer call nosiness) and a sort of reckless belief that I can write about anything if I try hard enough. Transmitting the feel of a place, or time, is often a question of reducing detail to a minimum. There’s nothing less convincing than a sense that the author is ticking stuff off on a checklist of local colour: what I call the Bakelite ashtray syndrome. The thing that makes Penelope Fitzgerald’s other places so utterly convincing isn’t the precision of her attention – which is extraordinary – so much as the sparseness of detail. There’s a moment in Innocence when she talks about one of the characters buying school exercise books from the local Upim and it’s perfect. and all that’s needed to fix a world.
Thanks, Charles for those illuminating answers. Now, gentle reader,
buy the book!
Yes, that haunting line from The Tempest. It’s one of the stories in Charles Lambert’s new collection, The Scent of Cinnamon. Topsyturvydom is proud to be one of the virtual stopping points on Charles’s virtual tour, and we will be virtually hosting him on 20th January. In the meantime, check out the tour so far at Salt, and read Charles’s always entertaining blog, which I see currently features one of my faves, David Byrne.
To Liverpool, for the Transition. My reader will recall that my views about Liverpool and its status as Capital of Culture were formed in the days when a new disaster was announced every hour on the hour, and the whole thing seemed an absolute joke. Well, time to eat my words, because, in the hands of Phil Redmond, a laughing stock was turned into a fantastic success.
There’s still a tendency in Liverpool to trade on the past – come on, the Beatles split forty years ago- and a habit of trotting out the cliches about how everybody in the city has a marvellous sense of humour and community spirit – especially, and paradoxically, when something awful, such as the murder of a child, has happened. Boris Johnson, who was lampooned in the presentation, had to apologise for offending Liverpool’s delicate sensibilities by using the “victim culture” stereotype- but at the time, Liverpudlians just subscribed to another stereotype.
Someone who had a similar experience to mine is the estimable Lynsey Hanley, who also mentions that bizarre phenomenon of the outdoor pyjama-wearer, but in a serious context. I noticed on my last visit to Liverpool that peculiar juxtaposition of dereliction and prosperity that she comments upon.
The transition night was great fun.
Big screens at the Pier Head showed a fast-changing collage of the year’s events to the accompaniment of a soundtrack that cleverly referenced everything from Sgt Pepper to the La’s (always hated that apostrophe) though, of course, Lennon’s dreadful Imagine dirge had to be in the mix. It was all narrated by a bizarre disembodied Roger McGough head.
The official handover was done to the Lord Mayors of Linz and Vilnius- no speeches, as the thumping soundtrack was still going. (By the way, when did we finally crack the problem of public address systems, which, by definition, were always inaudible? At Liverpool, and in train stations, and football stadia, it’s crystal clear now). Then a huge firework display – the best I’ve ever seen, and then 30,000 people went off to roam the streets, shop, visit art galleries and museums, and generally have fun. We had a brief visit to a very crowded Tate, where we had a glimpse of Blake’s work, an even briefer visit to an even more crowded Bluecoat, and finished with an excellent pint or two at the Lion, before taking the train back to where we were staying (thanks for a great night out and, as usual, marvellous hospitality, Robert and Christine)
To a well-known supermarket (not T*sco, obviously) with ‘er indoors to purchase such Christmas baubles as we require for our frugal Winterval celebration. Amongst the seasonal tat, I discover a
CD of Ella Fitzgerald for one of your English pounds, or Euros, as we now call them. A quid! I spent £2.95 on a very indifferent coffee at Piccadilly station last week. For a third of that, I get Ella with Satchmo, the Inkspots, Louis Jordan and others singing a great collection of classic tunes. I can’t think of anything for a pound that would give me greater pleasure.
Over the tannoy in a supermarket yesterday:
“Can a member of price integrity go to aisle 24, please? Customer waiting.”
Price Integrity? Do you think there’s a Price Integrity team? Do they have team meetings where they pledge to uphold price integrity against all threats? Do they finish with a group hug and a rousing chorus of “Simply the Best?”
A colleague (thanks Anthony!) drew my attention to this rant from Susan Hill. It’s not the first time she has expressed her views on this topic, and doubtless won’t be the last as long as GCSE and A level students see the reading of books as a chore to be got through as painlessly as possible and with the least possible effort. I don’t think it’s actually their fault: the system encourages it, and has been running like this so long now, that, as “Suze” points out, there are teachers with the same attitude. I have commented in similar fashion myself before now.
Ms Hill used to publish a lively blog until she suddenly pulled it recently. At the time, I thought it might be because she’d received criticism for a post which, without apparent irony, praised Sarah Palin to the skies. I wonder if actually she just became so fed up with being accessible to all and sundry that she just felt she should concentrate on her writing.
We have a generation of students now for whom failure is not possible. A “pass” rate of 97% at A level means, in essence, that you pass by turning up. Coursework can, it seems, be endlessly deferred, and multiple attempts can be made to improve it. I have had to explain very patiently to lots of students what a deadline is, and also counsel them when they relapse into shock at the notion that once work is marked, that’s it.
The idea that students of Literature might actually enjoy reading is seen as a quaint one by many eighteen-year-olds. I notice a distinct difference in the attitude of older students, who accept with equanimity, and, indeed, enthusiasm, the instruction to read a book – a whole book!- for next week’s class.
I don’t think there’s any way round this. We need to re-establish in schools the habit of reading, and reading entire texts rather than the bleeding chunks beloved of A level syllabuses. I’ve no confidence that this will actually happen of course.
On the train to Stafford yesterday, the announcement for each stop went:
“We will shortly be arriving at Stoke. Stoke is the next stopping station on this service today”
How is this better than “The next stop is Stoke”?
On the train to York yesterday, I was startled by an announcement: “The Pennine Host will shortly be passing through the train.” I had a vision of some grizzled warriors dressed in sheepskins, rampaging through the ranks of commuters prior to a spot of ritual boat (or train) burning. Turns out it was a bloke wheeling a tea trolley.
.
..and no, I don’t mean I tool along with War and Peace propped open on the dashboard. What strikes me as I make my journey to work, largely on motorways these days, is how vans and trucks have become mobile advertising hoardings, with a sprinkling of mission statement thrown in.
Years ago, if you were in the business of moving stuff from one place to another, you would call yourself a haulier, and your lorry would say something like “Thos. Jenkins, Hauliers, Derby”. There would be a phone number, and, if you were at the cutting edge of technology, a fax. (By the way, what is the point of putting phone numbers on the side of trucks? Do people say, as they speed past, “Oh look darling, there’s an Eddie Stobart – just scribble down the phone number, will you?”) Now, however, the vehicle has to make a statement. So, forget being a haulier- you are in distribution, or, better, logistics. You don’t want anything as obvious as your own name as the identifier of your company. You need to have a name that is preferably meaningless, and you need to combine it with a statement about what you do. So now, you may go on the road as something like “Interlock Logistics – delivering quality to the nation”. Recently, of course, no activity has been considered worthy unless it contains the “solutions” tag. So, as we have seen, supermarkets now sell “meal solutions” instead of meals, hardware stores sell “DIY solutions” instead of tools, and one insurance company I noted wanted to sell me “risk solutions”. It’s all documented fortnightly in Private Eye, though not in the online version, I notice. This raises the stakes, of course, as haulage now has to become “logistics solutions”, and the mission statement becomes ever more complex as companies struggle to present themselves as distinctive. Thus, a firm that might have got by with “Perkins: Refrigerated Distribution” a few years ago now has to have “Ice-spire: Delivering Coldchain Logistics Solutions to the Frozen Food Industry Community” or some such abomination.
There are some compensations to this thin reading diet on the road, though. I forgave one catering company its incorrect use of the apostrophe in “Caterer’s” for its notice on the back of the van “No cakes are left in the van overnight”. My favourite, though, is the firm of electricians I often spot on the way to work. Their logo is unmistakeable – a silhouette of a head with an aquiline nose, with a deerstalker and pipe. The name of the company? “Mr Ohms”.
This novel was sent to me by Penguin, so that I could add a review to their Blog a Holiday Read site, where, apparently, it will appear sometime. You, discerning reader, can read about it now though.
Many things are coming to an end at the faux-bohemian College Sunrise: not just the education of a motley bunch of multi-national teenagers, but also the marriage of the proprietors, Rowland and Nina, and Rowland’s grip on sanity. It also marks another ending too: Muriel Spark, at the age of 87, published this novel in 2004. It was her last work. It is a testament to her vitality that the novel is as witty, sly and mordantly funny as the books for which she is most famous, Memento Mori, and, of course, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
The major conflict in the novel is between Rowland, whose youthful success as a playwright he cannot now replicate, and Chris, precocious and faintly sinister red-haired prodigy, whose half-written novel about Mary, Queen of Scots triggers a bout of uncontrollable jealousy in the older man.
All this detail and much more is deftly delineated in the opening pages of this slight but immensely enjoyable novel. Spark’s reputation for a kind of elegant nastiness, most obviously on show in novels such as The Abbess of Crewe and The Ballad of Peckham Rye, is certainly sustained here. The lives of the characters are sharply observed, with the telling detail often being used to skewer the pretensions of her cast of minor European royals, county-set girls, ambitious youths and phlegmatic locals. The running joke throughout is that Rowland, consumed utterly by his jealousy of Chris, has writer’s block, but is obliged to teach creative writing.
Those reviews that claim this is a satire on the publishing industry seem wide of the mark to me. True, a couple of publishers are exposed as shallow and grasping, but then, no-one emerges as wholly pleasant, as Spark anatomises the rivalries, ambitions and narcissism of her entirely believable characters.
This novel is not great literature, yet it is compelling, a genuine page-turner that can be read in a day with comfort. What keeps you turning the pages is the sheer pleasure of discovering what the next development will be in this fascinating tale of obsession and jealousy.
