Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
GREAT LYRICISTS: I've always loved the interplay of words and music. So no list of my literary heroes/heroines would be complete without mentioning three lyricists who have inspired me throughout my adult writing life.... JOAN ARMATRADING - Born in Saint Kitts 1950 - Creator of 19 studio albums to date. She features in the playlists for 'Boundaries' and 'A Tale of Two Sisters'. Here's one of my favourite tracks live: PATTI SMITH - Born 1946 in Chicago. Eleven studio albums. Several books. Lots of poetry. Patti features in the playlist for 'Boundaries'. Here she is at Madison Square Garden with 'Beneath The Southern Cross':
LEONARD COHEN - Born 1934, Westmount Canada. Died 2016 Los Angeles USA. 16 studio albums. 11 books. He features in three of my playlists. Here he is singing 'Suzanne' as heard in 'A Betrayal'. ..
CINEMA: When I was 18, I saw two films that have influenced my writing more than any others. The first - 'Cabaret' with Lisa Minelli and Michael York - chronicles the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930's, interlacing the 'divinely decadent' stage performances at the Kit Kat club with the steadily growing evil outside. The 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' scene is one of the most chilling I've ever seen in cinema. And the realisation of how quickly a liberal society can be hijacked and destroyed has never left me. The second - 'The Wicker Man' (the 1973 version, not the later remake) is, at first glance, a much more superficial venture. It's a very low budget, pulp horror B Movie, not taken particularly seriously by its directors, and set on a fictional Scottish Island with weird religious practices. It looks very dated nowadays, the treatment of women is typical of the 1970's, and it isn't anywhere near the same league of seriousness as Cabaret (it's fiction, for one thing, and Cabaret most certainly isn't!). But there's something about the sense of creeping evil in both films that left a lasting impression on me.
They also seem to me to be cut in very similar ways. It's a quick-fire style that appears in a lot of the modern American TV drama that I currently binge watch ('Damages', 'Scandal', 'The Good Wife', 'Homeland' etc). It's a style I use a lot in my own writing. Cabaret gets a mention in 'Boundaries' when Jan and Elizabeth watch the film together on TV. And 'The Wicker Man' is widely referenced in 'A Tale of Two Sisters'. |
Here are some writers who have particularly influenced my work.
EARLY READING
My first reading was 'Harold Hare's Comic', way back in 1960. But it was Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five' books that really fired my love for 'thrillers'. With gender-bending George (surely my first ever fictional LGBT friend), Timmy the dog, and 'lashings of ginger beer', these mini-masterpieces were universally derided by educationalists, but I can safely say, they never did me any harm. Gill's excruciating chat-up attempt at the start of 'The Full Legacy' is inspired not only by the many happy hours I spent immersed in one Famous Five book or another, but also by Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Ade Edmondson in their 1982 spoof 'Comic Strip Presents - Five Go Mad in Dorset'. Here's a traditional Famous Five adventure for anyone short of bedtime listening.... GROWN-UP READING Of course, JANE AUSTEN has always been a massive influence, but her work has been so well chronicled elsewhere, it doesn't need anything adding from me. So, here are some of my less well known inspirations... NORTHERN KITCHEN SINK REALISM - Keith Waterhouse, John Braine, Stan Barstow.... The dissaffected Northern writers of my youth. All men, sadly, but writing about young people's dreams and aspirations in the urban landscape of Yorkshire in the 1950's and 60's. When I read 'Billy Liar''. 'A Kind of Loving', and 'The Jealous God', I found people who spoke just like the people around me; towns I recognised; and concerns I shared. These books taught me that it was ok to write about ordinary people and their lives. Garside in my novel Boundaries is a very lightly fictionalised Bradford, the home town of Billy Liar, and my own home base on and off for a large part of my adult life. Here's a Youtube documentary about the film version of Billy Liar. I must say, apart from a new and very posh shopping centre, Bradford hasn't changed much since the documentary was made. ELIZABETH TAYLOR (The author, not the actress) 1912 - 1975
Almost the opposite of the Northern writers above, Elizabeth Taylor's writing is quintessentially English, Southern, and Middle Class. Born in Reading and then living for most of her life in Buckinghamshire, she was the author of eleven novels and lots of quietly chilling short stories. She was a brilliant writer and I'd hate to see her fall into obscurity. Her novel 'Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1971 Here's BookGirlBUZZ talking about a recently released collection of her short stories And then there's DAPHNE DU MAURIER (1907 -1989) Author of seventeen novels, including 'Rebecca' and 'Jamaica Inn'. Plus such hair-raising short stories as 'The Birds' and 'Don't Look Now'. Her obituarist Kate Kellaway described her in The Observer Newspaper as a 'mistress of calculated irresolution'. I love that in her work. My novel 'The Full Legacy' is heavily influenced by Du Maurier's modern gothic writing style. Here's a YouTube video about her life and work. Plus a collection of her short stories: |
And a Publisher... THE NAIAD PRESS (1973 - 2003)
From my very first days of lesbian-fiction hunting in a tiny independent bookshop behind the Sunwin House department store in Bradford, to Gay's The Word and Silver Moon in London, I must have devoured every book produced by this wonderful lesbian publishing house. Home to such lesfic giants as Sarah Aldridge, Ann Bannon, Katherine V Forrest, Karin Kallmaker, Claire McNab and many more. Naiad were there long before the big publishers discovered the 'pink pound'. They showed me that there was a whole world of women like me out there. Naiad were a life-line at a time where my family were telling me I was doomed to live a tragic, lonely life on the fringes of society. I'm more grateful to them than I could ever express.
From my very first days of lesbian-fiction hunting in a tiny independent bookshop behind the Sunwin House department store in Bradford, to Gay's The Word and Silver Moon in London, I must have devoured every book produced by this wonderful lesbian publishing house. Home to such lesfic giants as Sarah Aldridge, Ann Bannon, Katherine V Forrest, Karin Kallmaker, Claire McNab and many more. Naiad were there long before the big publishers discovered the 'pink pound'. They showed me that there was a whole world of women like me out there. Naiad were a life-line at a time where my family were telling me I was doomed to live a tragic, lonely life on the fringes of society. I'm more grateful to them than I could ever express.
Keywords: Jane Retzig, Jane Retzig influences, Naiad Press