We live life forwards, but understand it backwards. Either way, it's a personal journey.
The characters in this collection are looking back into the half-shaded landscapes of memory. Most are "of a certain age", but young voices appear too, in stories uplifting and regretful, comic and sinister, poignant and optimistic.
Common ground is that moment of realization - eventful, fleeting or veiled - unearthed during a journey into the past.
Interview with Paul Toolan
If only I received royalties every time a reader asks me this! Here, there, and everywhere is the true but unhelpful answer. In A View from Memory Hill, there's a story called Old Man, Young Pub that was triggered by seeing…an old man in a young pub!
"In the half-dark, she looked squarely at him, black T-shirt and jeans appraising jacket and tie. A slight twitch flickered her lips. He thought there might be tears.
- Will "Ruby, the Silver Surfer" learn to cut and paste and save?
- Who is "Mrs. Melanie?"
- Should "Billy the Quid" sell up?
- Can Frank Smith cope with being an "Old Man in a Young Pub?"
- Why is Lydia "Sleepless in Southampton?"
- "What's in your bag, mister?" asks the small boy in "A Bag for Life."
Interview with Paul Toolan
Where do your stories come from?
If only I received royalties every time a reader asks me this! Here, there, and everywhere is the true but unhelpful answer. In A View from Memory Hill, there's a story called Old Man, Young Pub that was triggered by seeing…an old man in a young pub!
I was at the Brighton Festival (Brighton, England - I used to live there) with old friends/fellow retirees. We dropped in to a wonderful, low-ceilinged pub called The Basketmakers, whose decor has barely been touched since it opened. I remember thinking we were the oldest people there, among many young and lively folk, some dressed in the trendiest fashion, some so far ahead they were next year.
It was a hot day, but as I looked around I spotted an old gentleman in a tweed jacket and tie, standing at the bar, quietly sipping his pint. All around him, bright young things were loud and full of energy. They squatted on bar stools, but no-one offered a seat to the old guy, and his legs could have used one. I wondered about his silent thoughts.
His anonymity, mine too, amongst this colorful crowd threw up a name: Smith. With the conscious germ of a story now in my head, I called him Frank Smith in hope he would eventually be frank enough to tell some sort of tale. I never spoke to this old man, but later when I sat at my keyboard, I spoke to Frank Smith, or he to me. I really don't know which came first.
What I had was a character and a setting. No plot, no events, no history. Yet. But Frank Smith traveled with me, later in the Arts Festival, to a shabby-chic little theatre where, on hard seats, we watched a trio of skilled actors on a bare, dark stage. Magically, they brought to life some of Damon Runyan's New York Prohibition stories.
Shortly after, inside that inexplicable swirl called a writer's head, two separate experiences merged. Frank Smith went to his local pub; and he went to see a play. To keep the story structure tight, I made the theatre a blacked-out room at his pub, and had him go out of sheer boredom. Frank would have liked the Damon Runyan stories, but there's insufficient conflict in what characters enjoy. I needed to change the play, to find one that Frank Smith liked less, that triggered something of his history, his demons or regrets.
On my bookshelves, I have Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works. I browsed through it. Krapp's Last Tape seemed ideal. It featured an old man's memories, recalled with the aid of an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. Krapp is a drinker too, which resonated with Frank. While flicking through, I revisited Rockaby, a short Beckett play featuring an old woman in a rocking chair, remembering her past. Within moments, Frank Smith had a wife.
A day or two later, I named her Lucy. Then killed her off. The story would have become a novel if I hadn't, and I wanted to balance Frank's ageing memories - of Lucy and others - with voices of youth. So along came the young woman who ushers the audience to their seats in "the long thin dark theatre" where Krapp's Last Tape is performed. Her surprise that Frank turned up at all, among so many young people, releases the demons that rumbled as Frank watched the play. Short stories need a moment of realization or change, and the clash between her enthusiasm for the play's use of the past and Frank's disturbed memories provided this.
"We've all been something," was all he managed to say. "Known someone."
The story might have ended there, but because the theme of age and youth was well-established I felt more could be done. I went back to the keyboard and jiggled the plot, making Frank inadvertently upset the "woman in black", so her young hopes and dreams could quietly confront his regrets.
'We all have dreams,' she said, in the quietest voice he'd ever heard. 'I'd rather dream than drift, any day.' She pressed her lips together to control the twitch, but it continued. 'What's wrong with having dreams?' she asked.
This exchange then allowed a more positive development in Frank, making for a more satisfying conclusion [in my view, anyway, but I'd love to hear yours too].
So, a chance observation in a pub, a visit to a play, a book on a shelf, some musings and experiments at the keyboard – and before too long there's a character's voice, a felt situation, and a set of realizations. If it was as easy as I've made it sound...
I drop in to a pub maybe once week. I'm wondering if I should go more often. Pubs are full of people, and where there are people, there are stories.
Purchase A View from Memory Hill
About the Author
Paul Toolan is a Northerner who now cheerfully admits being a southern softie living in rural Somerset in the United Kingdom. After a successful career in Colleges and Universities, he wrote book/lyrics for stage musicals, before "turning to crime."
A Killing Tree and A January Killing, the first two books in the Detective Inspector Zig Batten series, are set in the apple orchard landscape of the West of England. Look out for the third, An Easter Killing.
A View from Memory Hill, is Paul's first short story collection, exploring themes of aging, memory, and personal realization.
Like Inspector Batten, Paul enjoys walking, gardens, fishing, music and the occasional whisky. Unlike him, he enjoys sport and the taste of mushrooms, and loves travelling to sunnier climes - Greece in particular.
Connect with Paul Toolan
Connect with Paul Toolan
No comments:
Post a Comment