Increase da Peace
Like many others, I fell for David Peace, the now-ubiquitous, overground Yorkshire-born novelist, after reading The Damned United (NOW A MAJOR FILM!), which I remember grabbing off the shelf at Borders when the two books I'd specifically gone in to buy turned out to have "three for two" stickers on and the woman at the till helpfully pointed out my missed opportunity. He had me by the end of the first page. (Actually, I liked the table before it even starts, showing Leeds United's progress during the 1974-75 season.) Having been an actual football fan in 1974-75, aged 9-10, the subject matter of Brian Clough's 44 days at Leeds gave me a lot of Proustian rushes, but this is a grown-up book, not a book for boys, and I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in how the male mind works, whether they have an interest in the game or not. I'm seeing the film tomorrow - it simply cannot replicate the book.Naturally, having devoured The Damned, I was keen to investigate this mystery man's previous books - it turned out there were loads of them! Funnily enough, it was another offer, in a different Borders - this time "two for one" - that helped me take the plunge: I purchased 1974 and GB84.
Peace, who absorbed so much pride and prejudice from his Yorkshire upbringing he was able to relocate permanently to Tokyo to write his books about it, is my kind of novelist, as he sets his fictional stories - or fictionalised stories - against living, breathing, documentary backdrops. Although the characters that run through the Red Riding Quartet - 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983 (GB84, set against the Miners' Strike, is separate, but very much in the same groove) - are made up, they operate in the real world. So, the Yorkshire Ripper is named in 1977 and 1980, but his victims' names and dates are changed, to protect the families, presumably. George Oldfield, who led the case, becomes George Oldman. John Stalker becomes Peter Hunter. These may seem like cosmetic changes, and they are to a degree, but the surrounding detail is accurate to the dates of the singles played on car radios and other news stories of the time. Police forces, riven by corruption and brutality, are named. If the names of precise streets and locations in Leeds and Preston are changed, they feel all too real. (Did or does The Gaiety exist?) This deliberate blurring of fact and fiction is probably what excites me about David Peace's work the most. I'm not a big reader of fiction, but this is a halfway house and it's a place I like to dwell.
His prose style - interior monologue, mundane conversation, dreams, repetition, swearing, mantra, gory detail, snatches of songs and other sources, sometimes a pretentious switch in typeface - is utterly compelling to me, but may well be tiresome to others. Perhaps he's an acquired taste, although it didn't take me long.
Last week, I put the thrilling and hypnotic GB84 on ice, in order to finish 1974, which I'd already started, stirred on by the imminence of C4's Red Riding Trilogy (three films, starting tonight, adapted by Tony Grisoni from 1974, 1980 and 1983 - he did 1977 but they scrapped it because they couldn't afford to make the Quartet, which is insane, by the way, but money seems no longer to be falling out of TV's ears). I finished 1974 two days ago, and finally found a copy of 1980, in the miraculous Foyle's on London's Charing Cross Road, yesterday, which I'm now reading while the partially-read 1977 sits it out.I am actually too excited about the Trilogy. I can't remember when I was this animated about a TV drama. Beware, though, I will become one of those twats who compares the film to the book.
I'll leave you with this choice David Peace quote, from 1977 (if you don't like, you won't like him):
I woke in a rapist sweat from dreams I prayed were not my own.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:15 AM
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12 Comments:
I was foolish enough to spurn an invite to a preview of the first episode last week. I have been rightly lambasted for that by my peers.
I'm not familiar with his work, but I'm going to make sure I am soon.
Btw - saw the trailer for Damned United and didn't really get Sheen's Clough. Not fair to judge on a few soundbites in a trail, but it didn't seem quite right to me. Too smiley...
The Gaeity didn't, but the Gaiety did:
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Film-makers-focus--on.4328242.jp
office pedant
Hi Andrew
Have you ever read any James Ellroy? David Peace's The Damned United seems like a sister novel, to Ellroy's work, especially stuff like The Cold Six Thousand, a style that Ellroy described as;
"...direct, shorter-rather-than-longer sentence style that's declarative and ugly and right there, punching you in the nards."
Jim
I am very apprehensive about this TV adaptation. At the risk of being a twat, I worry about what they'll be left with once they've taken David Peace's writing out. But I can't NOT watch it.
David Peace is, I think fairly explicitly, working in the Ellroy idiom. For me there are no more compelling books than the the LA Quartet (at least the first three, culminating in LA Confidential - very good film, but if anything a better book (and don't even think about the Black Dahlia film)). The more stylised writing came after that (e.g. The Cold Six Thousand), and it's this style that Peace is going for, and that, as you say, can be off-putting or compulsive. Whatever, get hold of and read the LA police novels (would be my - unsolicited - opinion).
I read 1974 a few months back and immediately went out and bought the other three. And then my daughter was born so they are, as yet, unread.
Question is, do I Sky+ the TV shows and read the books before I watch them or watch them and probably never read the books? I'm leaning towards the former.
Despite not liking football, I'll check out The Damned Utd, on your recommendation.
I agree with Jim.
Peace is very Ellroy-esque, though I suspect he isn't quite as odd as Ellroy.
Have you read Peace's Tokyo Year Zero? It's not set in Yorkshire, but the style is familiar, in a good way.
I'm just finishing re-reading the lot in advance of the TV show. I read them originally out of order (1977, 1974, 1980, 1983), but I think that it's essential that you read them in sequence. The sheer depth of the project and the strength of the writing is awe-inspring over the 4 books, with 1983 a re-write of 1974, with the rotten net curtains of the drawn back. The simple sour evocation of Leeds and it's environs is also breathtaking: I lived in Leeds in the late eighties, and the books instantly transport me to the pubs around the Kirkgate Market, Milgarth, the sour reek of a Chapeltown summer, the top-floor flat I lived in Headingley, with Armley gaol looming over the valley. There's no gothic like Leeds Gothic, and these books scare the cr*p out me. This is the north and we do what we want!
Whoops, got a bit carried away there. Any road, these books are great! Read them!
I'd echo the endorsement of The Cold Six Thousand. By mistake I read it out of sequence with American Tabloid (which comes first) and as a result the first couple of chapters were a bit mystifying. Ellroy's blurring of reality and fantasy is very effective.
I read The Black Dahlia many years ago, but having been ill at the time can't really recall it in detail. I therefore approached the film with a fairly open mind and was actually quite enjoying it until the last 10 minutes which I found to be hurried, confusing and Scooby Doo-esque. Where it did succeed though was in making me want to re-read the book.
The problem is, you've now convinced me to add five new books to an already impossible list! Please, stop recommending so much good stuff!
A few weeks ago you were exploring audio books. If you don't mind me asking, did you get any further or come to any conclusions?
Thank you for championing these books Andrew! They are fantastic and I will be re-reading them on my upcoming transatlantic trip.
I am, however aghast that no "I love 1983" style remarks have been made yet. Is Richard Herring saving these for the podcast the week that episode of Red Riding goes out?
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