(no subject)
Apr. 14th, 2019 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsPeople who follow me on Twitter may remember that when I was a few chapters away from the thrilling conclusion of The Singer Not the Song, I temporarily lost my copy of the book and went into a full-blown tailspin about it.
As you know, the book eventually turned up safe and sound, but it turned out in the end to be a blessing because without that panic, I never would have gone to look up local libraries in the faint hope that they might have acquired some more Audrey Erskine Lindop since my first time searching several years ago -- and in fact they had! Specifically, they had acquired Sight Unseen (1969), the back copy of which reads:
Everybody wanted to play Brian Touhey's life for him:
His fiancee wanted him to stay sober and paint "sober" pictures.
His fiancee's mother wanted him to find another fiancee.
His "Beau Brummel" cousin wanted him to be a successful businessman.
His cat, Dogberry, wanted him to give up women completely and serve fresh fish more often.
But none of them worked quite as hard for what they wanted as Colonel Hawkins. And he wanted to lock Bryan away in a gloomy old house on Romney Marsh -- where Bryan could drink and paint; where he could put down on canvas the phantasmagoria of his alcohol soaked brain; where he could die...
For the record, I remember clearly that I acquired this book the day before St. Patrick's Day, because I went to chorus practice and forcedsovay to look at the back cover, and then went to a St. Patrick's Day party and forced everybody there to look at the back cover as well because it delighted me so much.
Based on this cover and the experience of The Singer Not the Song, I felt it was not unreasonable for me to expect this book to be an extremely homoerotic boy-meets-house Gothic. Which it ... sort of is? And I want to be clear: it's not quite as gay as The Singer Not the Song (but then, what could be.) The emotional dynamic is more like a version of the main triangle in Gilda with Gilda and Johnnie's roles reversed: an older man becomes obsessed with a younger man, and sets him up with a young woman who's obsessed with him (the older man) in a situation where they can't help but also become a little obsessed with each other, and it's all going to resolve in either threesome or murder.
The plot:
Brian is a fairly terrible young man who owns a failing antiques shop, which he lies and says is haunted to see if it will turn out in an uptick in sales. (It doesn't.) He also paints intense, creepy paintings, but only when he's drunk. He also has a semi-hemi-demi fiancee whom everyone including the reader is clearly meant to find a bit boring, so it's a pity that approximately the first half of the book involves a lot of will-they-won't-they about their clearly doomed relationship. (The fiancee's mother, on the other hand, who hates Brian with the passion of a thousand suns, is absolutely great and I'm so sad she disappears from the book.)
Anyway, Colonel Hawkins comes across Brian's art and promptly decides that he can make Brian's Extremely Valuable, possibly by spreading rumors that he's possessed by a painting ghost. Or maybe Brian is possessed by a painting ghost!
As in any good Gothic, Brian is immediately suspicious of Hawkins but also compelled by him:
It occurred to me that it was only when I was out of Hawkins' company that I thought him so sinister. When I was with him I felt stimulated and oddly soothed by that cool voice.
Colonel Hawkins, by the way, also has a tragic backstory involving the imaginary painting ghost:
"Who was 'Darling, darling Laura'?" I asked.
"The only person I have ever met whose work bore the smallest resemblance to yours."
"Oh, she painted?"
"He did."
There the conversation ended as Hawkins had no obvious intention of continuing it.
Hawkins, by the way, himself paints technically well enough to arouse Brian's deep envy, but despises his own work:
BRIAN: "If you can touch me up, why don't you paint like that yourself?"
HAWKINS: "Because I can only touch you up and not paint like that myself unless I copy you."
Along the way Brian is adopted by a stray cat, which promptly becomes the most important relationship in his life, and also a means by which Hawkins can further exert control: Brian has accidentally tripped over Dogberry the cat and now Dogberry is mad at him! HAWKINS, CAT WHISPERER, IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HELP HIM COAX DOGBERRY TO EAT. I suspect I am not the only one who find this a pleasant piece of thematic repetition in Lindop's work.
Inevitably, Colonel Hawkins decides that Brian's fiancee is a Bad Influence on his work and sends him off to stay in his sinister mansion. For company, he sends along his secretary, Bethan, a sulky psychic hippie who has been obsessively in love with Hawkins since she was a teenager (Lindop theme! take a drink!) and who has been in mutual loathing with Brian since their first meeting early in the book.
Inevitably, after several weeks of being trapped alone in the house, that loathing turns to love! Alas, Bethan explains to Brian patiently and repeatedly that he will always have second place in her heart. Although Hawkins is a.) a terrible person and b.) completely uninterested in her, she will nonetheless love him until the day he dies, and even beyond it; since she's psychic, and believes in the afterlife, she's perfectly happy to wait until they've gone through several rounds of spiritual reincarnation for him to become a better person.
Brian is vastly sulky about this, but also, I mean, he gets it: I marched into Hawkins' room. He was lying in bed wearing dark blue pyjamas. It struck me as extraordinary that I had ever found it unreasonable of Bethan to feel he was attractive.
And meanwhile things at the house get creepier, and there is the constant question about Hawkins' motives: maybe he just earnestly wants to encourage Brian to paint more and reach his full potential? Maybe he wants to encourage him to drink himself to death, so that the tragic story will cause his paintings to increase in value? Maybe he wants to straight-up murder him? Maybe he's just queer and hung up on a painting ghost? WHO CAN SAY. NOT BRIAN.
All of this tension comes to a head at the end of the book in ... kind of a mess? There's an attack by a drunken groundskeeper that doesn't much impact anything except to introduce a gun? It turns out Hawkins is deathly ill and shoots himself accidentally-on-purpose? Maybe he was scheming for Brian to die but now he likes Brian and feels kind of bad about it? IT'S ALL VERY UNCLEAR but there is a scene at the very end where Hawkins is maybe going to die, and Brian and Bethan and Hawkins are all just like hanging out together waiting for the paramedics, and Brian comes to understand What Hawkins Means To Him -- I found it extraordinary to think what a lump he would take out of my life. I had not realised how much I had come to accept and demand his close interest in me -- and is like "when you get back it's going to be ME that makes YOU paint for a change, you're just a lazy bastard with more talent than you deserve," and it's ... really cute? IT'S CUTE. LET THEM HAVE THE THREESOME.
But instead, tragically, Hawkins dies.
BETHAN: We'll try and stay together shall we? I'm certain that's what he'll want.
BRIAN: I couldn't help but see the irony of it. "A lifetime of fighting Hawkins!" I thought. "Well, I ought to be used to that."
Okay, FINE: I will also accept a ghost threesome.
As you know, the book eventually turned up safe and sound, but it turned out in the end to be a blessing because without that panic, I never would have gone to look up local libraries in the faint hope that they might have acquired some more Audrey Erskine Lindop since my first time searching several years ago -- and in fact they had! Specifically, they had acquired Sight Unseen (1969), the back copy of which reads:
Everybody wanted to play Brian Touhey's life for him:
His fiancee wanted him to stay sober and paint "sober" pictures.
His fiancee's mother wanted him to find another fiancee.
His "Beau Brummel" cousin wanted him to be a successful businessman.
His cat, Dogberry, wanted him to give up women completely and serve fresh fish more often.
But none of them worked quite as hard for what they wanted as Colonel Hawkins. And he wanted to lock Bryan away in a gloomy old house on Romney Marsh -- where Bryan could drink and paint; where he could put down on canvas the phantasmagoria of his alcohol soaked brain; where he could die...
For the record, I remember clearly that I acquired this book the day before St. Patrick's Day, because I went to chorus practice and forced
sovay to look at the back cover, and then went to a St. Patrick's Day party and forced everybody there to look at the back cover as well because it delighted me so much.Based on this cover and the experience of The Singer Not the Song, I felt it was not unreasonable for me to expect this book to be an extremely homoerotic boy-meets-house Gothic. Which it ... sort of is? And I want to be clear: it's not quite as gay as The Singer Not the Song (but then, what could be.) The emotional dynamic is more like a version of the main triangle in Gilda with Gilda and Johnnie's roles reversed: an older man becomes obsessed with a younger man, and sets him up with a young woman who's obsessed with him (the older man) in a situation where they can't help but also become a little obsessed with each other, and it's all going to resolve in either threesome or murder.
The plot:
Brian is a fairly terrible young man who owns a failing antiques shop, which he lies and says is haunted to see if it will turn out in an uptick in sales. (It doesn't.) He also paints intense, creepy paintings, but only when he's drunk. He also has a semi-hemi-demi fiancee whom everyone including the reader is clearly meant to find a bit boring, so it's a pity that approximately the first half of the book involves a lot of will-they-won't-they about their clearly doomed relationship. (The fiancee's mother, on the other hand, who hates Brian with the passion of a thousand suns, is absolutely great and I'm so sad she disappears from the book.)
Anyway, Colonel Hawkins comes across Brian's art and promptly decides that he can make Brian's Extremely Valuable, possibly by spreading rumors that he's possessed by a painting ghost. Or maybe Brian is possessed by a painting ghost!
As in any good Gothic, Brian is immediately suspicious of Hawkins but also compelled by him:
It occurred to me that it was only when I was out of Hawkins' company that I thought him so sinister. When I was with him I felt stimulated and oddly soothed by that cool voice.
Colonel Hawkins, by the way, also has a tragic backstory involving the imaginary painting ghost:
"Who was 'Darling, darling Laura'?" I asked.
"The only person I have ever met whose work bore the smallest resemblance to yours."
"Oh, she painted?"
"He did."
There the conversation ended as Hawkins had no obvious intention of continuing it.
Hawkins, by the way, himself paints technically well enough to arouse Brian's deep envy, but despises his own work:
BRIAN: "If you can touch me up, why don't you paint like that yourself?"
HAWKINS: "Because I can only touch you up and not paint like that myself unless I copy you."
Along the way Brian is adopted by a stray cat, which promptly becomes the most important relationship in his life, and also a means by which Hawkins can further exert control: Brian has accidentally tripped over Dogberry the cat and now Dogberry is mad at him! HAWKINS, CAT WHISPERER, IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HELP HIM COAX DOGBERRY TO EAT. I suspect I am not the only one who find this a pleasant piece of thematic repetition in Lindop's work.
Inevitably, Colonel Hawkins decides that Brian's fiancee is a Bad Influence on his work and sends him off to stay in his sinister mansion. For company, he sends along his secretary, Bethan, a sulky psychic hippie who has been obsessively in love with Hawkins since she was a teenager (Lindop theme! take a drink!) and who has been in mutual loathing with Brian since their first meeting early in the book.
Inevitably, after several weeks of being trapped alone in the house, that loathing turns to love! Alas, Bethan explains to Brian patiently and repeatedly that he will always have second place in her heart. Although Hawkins is a.) a terrible person and b.) completely uninterested in her, she will nonetheless love him until the day he dies, and even beyond it; since she's psychic, and believes in the afterlife, she's perfectly happy to wait until they've gone through several rounds of spiritual reincarnation for him to become a better person.
Brian is vastly sulky about this, but also, I mean, he gets it: I marched into Hawkins' room. He was lying in bed wearing dark blue pyjamas. It struck me as extraordinary that I had ever found it unreasonable of Bethan to feel he was attractive.
And meanwhile things at the house get creepier, and there is the constant question about Hawkins' motives: maybe he just earnestly wants to encourage Brian to paint more and reach his full potential? Maybe he wants to encourage him to drink himself to death, so that the tragic story will cause his paintings to increase in value? Maybe he wants to straight-up murder him? Maybe he's just queer and hung up on a painting ghost? WHO CAN SAY. NOT BRIAN.
All of this tension comes to a head at the end of the book in ... kind of a mess? There's an attack by a drunken groundskeeper that doesn't much impact anything except to introduce a gun? It turns out Hawkins is deathly ill and shoots himself accidentally-on-purpose? Maybe he was scheming for Brian to die but now he likes Brian and feels kind of bad about it? IT'S ALL VERY UNCLEAR but there is a scene at the very end where Hawkins is maybe going to die, and Brian and Bethan and Hawkins are all just like hanging out together waiting for the paramedics, and Brian comes to understand What Hawkins Means To Him -- I found it extraordinary to think what a lump he would take out of my life. I had not realised how much I had come to accept and demand his close interest in me -- and is like "when you get back it's going to be ME that makes YOU paint for a change, you're just a lazy bastard with more talent than you deserve," and it's ... really cute? IT'S CUTE. LET THEM HAVE THE THREESOME.
But instead, tragically, Hawkins dies.
BETHAN: We'll try and stay together shall we? I'm certain that's what he'll want.
BRIAN: I couldn't help but see the irony of it. "A lifetime of fighting Hawkins!" I thought. "Well, I ought to be used to that."
Okay, FINE: I will also accept a ghost threesome.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 05:27 pm (UTC)Does it ever just resolve in threesome?
*reads on*
. . . Like, not ghost threesome?
no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 05:38 pm (UTC)I bounced off Fionavar in high school, so I have no idea! But I will think on this pattern.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 05:34 pm (UTC)That's cool!
no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-16 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 03:05 am (UTC)Is the "when you get back" as in reincarnation? As in, he expects that he and Bethan and Hawkins are now all soulmates for afterlife?
no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 05:34 pm (UTC)That's how I first read that line, too.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-15 04:54 pm (UTC)like I mean good on Korea but WHERE IS EVERYONE ELSE? STEP IT UP!
no subject
Date: 2019-04-16 04:38 am (UTC)I'm deeply offended that the author could write this line and then LET THE MAN DIE. Make Hawkins repent for his sins by suffering artistically as he deserves!
no subject
Date: 2019-04-18 04:12 am (UTC)