I had turned myself into a novelist, and novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although, like Aldous Huxley, he may be permitted to be an intellectual. It is in order for him to make aesthetic judgements, though these will tend to partiality and the reflection of his own practice. But it is dangerous to turn him into a little seer or twopenny philosopher, though this is probably bound to happen when professional philosophers and churchmen have so little useful to say about moral or social problems. The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world.
You've Had Your Time (1990)
Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.' It also operates a museum/performance space in his home town of Manchester.
Some songs appear to break every established rule of songwriting and go on to achieve classic status in spite of it. Ode to Billy Joe, title track of Bobbie's Gentry eponymous debut LP, reached #1 on the US Billboard chart in August 1967, won her three Grammy awards and has since been voted one of the 500 greatest songs of all time by the (predominantly male and white) readers of Rolling Stone magazine.
Yet the song itself, released more than half a century ago, remains an enigma wrapped in a riddle. Who exactly is Billy Joe McAllister? What is the precise nature of his relationship with the song's unnamed female narrator? What object did they throw off the bridge together before Billy Joe threw himself into the muddy waters of Mississippi's Tallahatchie River? None of these questions are answered yet ultimately the lack of definite information doesn't seem to matter. The song remains a masterpiece of allusion and understatement, an example of what I would describe as 'sonic cinema' which takes the listener on a compelling aural journey that possesses the cumulative power of a brilliantly conceived short story.
Gentry achieves this effect by continuously shifting the song's point-of-view. Its shared past tense narrative begins in the fields, then moves to the family kitchen, then shifts again to a memory of the past before ending in the present day. Yet none of this feels jarring to the listener because the accompaniment, like Gentry's voice, is deeply soulful, with orchestral backing used to emphasize certain key lines without ever becoming obtrusive or overly dramatic. The technique is almost entirely cinematic, jump cutting between incidents and images in a way that never compromises the song's appeal as a straightforward piece of storytelling. None of that is easy to do in a four minute pop song, requiring laser-like precision on the part of the writer and, of course, on the part of the vocalist performing it as well.
Ode to Billy Joe also has the distinction, shared by only a handful of popular songs, of serving as the basis for an entire motion picture. This film, directed by Max Baer Jr (who played the character of Jethro in The Beverly Hillbillies television series) and starring Robby Benson as Billy Joe and Glynnis O'Connor as his girlfriend Bobbie Lee Hartley, was released in 1976 and attempts to 'solve' the mystery of the song via a plot which shows the typically small town southern teenagers grappling with their first experiences of love and sex and, in the case of the title character, his unadmitted homosexuality. The script, stated in the credits as being penned by Herman Raucher, was allegedly co-written by Bobbie Gentry herself, with some of the scenes filmed on the farm owned by her grandparents in rural Mississippi where she grew up. It was made for the minuscule sum of $1 million and grossed $50 million at the US box office, a considerable achievement in itself given its setting and, for the time, its somewhat controversial subject matter.
Gentry is thought to have retained ten per cent of the film's profits for life in her deal with Warner Bros Studios, which may have helped to fund her disappearance from the music business — and from the public eye altogether — after her final live appearance in 1981 on the Bob Hope All Star Salute to Mother's Day television special. She's now rumored to be living in Los Angeles where she continues to ignore all requests for interviews and information about herself.
Use the link below to visit the UK-based Bobbie Gentry website which features a full biography of North American singer/songwriter BOBBIE GENTRY along with a news section, a full discography and a photo gallery:
Wat = abbreviation of Walter, ie. Sir Walter Ralegh
ne = nor
rede = counsel
speed = success/succeed
Elizabeth Tudor — or Elizabeth I Queen of England and Ireland as she would be known after ascending the throne on 17 November 1558 following the death of her Catholic half-sister Mary — was arguably one of the most well-educated people and possibly the most well-educated woman of her time. Not only was she taught to speak French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish as a child, she was also fluent in Latin and thought to have had an extensive knowledge of Greek along with a fair command of the Welsh, Cornish and Gaelic tongues. She made many translations from Latin, including works by Cicero and Plutarch, and boasted an extensive knowledge of music and poetry as her father Henry VIII had before her. She was raised, not as girls generally were in Tudor times to be seen but never heard, but as a Renaissance prince just as her father and half-brother Edward, who reigned as king until his early death in July 1553, had been raised.
During her own reign, the English language became perhaps the most expressive and precise language on earth, its many expert users helping to create what is now known as 'the Golden Age of Elizabethan literature.' The Queen was an active participant in the rebirth of English culture, serving as patron to the theatre company of William Shakespeare and as the inspiration for Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queen (1590–1599). She similarly inspired Walter Ralegh, who named the new North American colony Virginia in her honour, and had what was, at times, a very difficult relationship with her following his secret marriage to Bess Throckmorton, one of her ladies in waiting. This probably accounts for the teasing tone of Ah, Silly Pug, Wert Thou So Afraid? with its suggestion that Ralegh, here identified by the nickname 'Wat,' was mistaken to believe that she would ever be capable of truly doing him harm. That would be the task of her successor James I, who had the Queen's former favourite beheaded on 29 October 1618 at the behest of Count Gondomar, Spanish ambassador to England, who was outraged that a party of men commanded by Ralegh had violated a treaty between the two countries by unsuccessfully attacking a Spanish outpost in Guiana.
Use the link below to read more poems by QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533–1603):
In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep, and the details unfold in the dream.
'Mrs Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles'
[Article by HERBERT MITGANG published in The New York Times, 22 April 1984)
Use the link below to visit the website of British/Zimbabwean writer DORIS LESSING (1919–2013):
