John Harvey : In a Mellotone newsletter

IN A MELLOTONE — No.17 Spring 2003

A John Harvey/Charlie Resnick Newsletter

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No. 17 A John Harvey/Charlie Resnick Newsletter — Spring 2003

Well, there they are, almost in all their glory, the ten Resnick novels with brand new covers designed by Michael Mascaro and reissued in paperback by Arrow Books. This is the first time that all of the titles have been available in the same format and with the same look. Henry Holt came close to managing it in the States with their fine looking large format Owl paperbacks, but fell sadly short with several books to go. I think Arrow have done Charlie proud: the books look good on the shelves in the stores and they’ll look equally good on your shelves at home! In fact, one reader tells me he’s so impressed he’s buying them all over again and giving them as presents to his friends. And this ahead of Christmas.

The same design has been applied to the Arrow reissue of Now's the Time, which adds the relatively new Billie’s Blues to the Resnick short stories that were in the original Slow Dancer Press edition, and there’s a tasteful variation in moody monochrome on the new paperback of In a True Light. A good number of bookstores, incidentally, have been running a Buy One Get One Free campaign, which allows customers to choose gratis any Resnick title when they buy In a True Light. As Smokey Robinson’s mother used to advise, You better shop around.

After writing two novels in which father-daughter relationships loom large – In a True Light and the just finished Flesh and Blood - the volume of short stories I’ve assembled and edited for William Heinemann shifts interest across the genders. The majority of the stories in Men From Boys address issues of self-knowledge, of accepting - or denying - certain responsibilities. What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be a son? What does it mean to be a man? And most, but not all of this, within the overall context of crime fiction.
Certainly the writers whose work is featured are amongst the very best: Mark Billingham, Lawrence Block, Andrew Coburn, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Reginald Hill, Bill James, Dennis Lehane, Bill Moody, George P. Pelecanos, Peter Robinson, James Sallis, John Straley, Brian Thompson, Don Winslow and Daniel Woodrell. And, yes, I slipped something of mine in there too. UK Hardcover publication is set for November.

Obituaries, those of people in one way or another I know, have been coming saddeningly thick and fast. Mike Hart, who for almost twenty years ran the fiction, poetry and music sections of Compendium, possibly London’s finest independent bookshop, died in November of last year. Compendium itself had closed its doors at the end of the 90s and Mike had gone to work at Murder One.
Mike was encyclopaedic in his knowledge, eclectic in his tastes and generous in his enthusiasm. He opened the doors of the shop to many Slow Dancer Press readings and always kept a representative stock of most things we published. I found my first copies of Frank O’Hara and other twentieth century American poets in his shop, along with Peter Guralnick’s incomparable books on American music, and it was Mike who first recommended that I read Charles Williford and Elmore Leonard.
The writer and critic John Williams organised a celebration of Mike’s life Upstairs at the Garage in Islington, where a few of us read or sang and and many stood and drank and shared reminiscences in a way Mike himself would, I’m sure, have thoroughly enjoyed.

I met the American writer Louis Owens at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in Northern California. He was one of those rare people in whose company you simultaneously felt welcomed yet honoured, a man of warmth and
great integrity and it was a shock to hear of his death last year.
A novelist and university professor, Louis was of Choctaw and Cherokee descent and Native American literature became the main focus of his research and teaching, just as Native American life and mythology were at the heart of his fiction. His books included The Bone Game, Dark River, Wolfsong, Nightland and The Sharpest Sight, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and was awarded the Roman Noir Prize in 1995 for the outstanding mystery novel published in France in that year.

Although her first recordings were of British traditional songs, the Scottish singer Nancy Whiskey, who died earlier this year, was best known for the version of Freight Train which she recorded with the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group in 1957. Skiffle - a hand-me-down version of American folk and blues - was a strange phenomenon that achieved transitory prominence in the UK pop charts and Freight Train, written by the American folk singer Elizabeth Cotten, rose as high as the top five.

The thing about British skiffle, which borrowed both the term and its philosophy from the jug bands and similar outfits that proliferated in poorer areas of the US in the 20s and 30s, was that anyone could do it. Okay, you might buy a guitar rather than fashion one from plywood and some old strings, but an upturned tea chest and a broom handle would become a bass and for percussion all you needed was an old-style washboard from the nearest hardware store. (There were such things in those days - washboards and neighbourhood hardware stores.)
After school, Alan, Roy, Jim and I would adjourn with our instruments to the basement of a greasy spoon near the Archway where we sometimes had lunch, and where the owner allowed us to practise for free until the vibrations started to fracture the plaster overhead. Roy and Alan were the musicians in the group, that is to say, as long as their eyes didn’t stray too far from the frets, they could master a few basic chords, and they sang with a fervour which failed to make up for a basic lack of tunefulness or melody. Jim attacked the washboard with thimbles, while I, fingers wrapped for protection in Elastoplast, plucked hopefully at the single string bass.
Emboldened by our success at bringing down the ceiling, we took to busking in the Embankment Gardens near the Thames, serenading passers-by with such items as It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song and Don’t You Rock Me, Daddy-O. A good night would secure cash enough to buy us each a pint of Guinness in a nearby pub.
As I remember we only had one paid gig, in a upmarket club and bar which was, as I recall, owned or managed by a family friend of Alan’s. We were just a little way into our second number when said friend came swiftly over and, with a quiet word and a few notes stuffed into an enevelope, sent us on our way. It occurs to me that we must have had a name, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.
Not that it mattered. Within a couple of years the skiffle phase was over, superseded by Rock ‘n’ Roll. Tommy Steele was discovered by Larry Parnes in the 2Is coffee bar in Soho and all those other British rock and rollers with similar names – Wilde, Power, Pride, Fury, Fame - would follow in his wake. And up in Liverpool, John Lennon was warming up with the Quarrymen.

By the time the next issue of In a Mellotone comes around I hope to have publication news of Flesh and Blood. Anyone whose anxiety outstrips their patience (and with the right technology) can log onto the web site www.mellotone.co.uk, which also has regularly updated information about appearances and events, books for sale and all manner of other good things.

John Harvey, March 2003

February 2003 Playlist