I’m writing a second novel, set in 1956-57. It’s an account of the breakdown of a marriage. In the background there’s a lot of music (trad-jazz and folk revival) and there’s the Suez Crisis. I have read extensively round these subjects and I found that several times I was struck by particular lines or phrases, which reflected key themes or episodes in the novel. These may, eventually, become epigraphs for chapters or sections. Some observations by Jeff Nuttall, in particular, seem to sum up what I’m writing about. (Nuttall was a counter-cultural commentator, author of Bomb Culture [1970]. To my amazement, I’ve learnt he died in Abergavenny in 2004.) My current working title is The Heart, the Swamp and War’s Harsh Metal, drawn from Nuttall’s words.
‘Naivety was equated with honesty, ineptitude was equated with sincerity, and merit was gauged in terms of proximity to the animal and the vegetable. It was a natural reaction after the harsh metal of war.’
Jeff Nuttall (1970)
‘The world was evil, governed by Mammon and Moloch. New Orleans jazz was a music straight from the heart and the swamp, unclouded by the corrupting touch of civilization. It would refertilize the world.’
Jeff Nuttall (1970)
‘Love isn’t the work of the tender and gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.’
Rumi, p. 190
‘This flute is played with fire, not with wind,
And without this fire you would not exist.’
Rumi
‘Around them seethes a great flux of bizarre new social groupings through which they proceed, like tourists traversing the casbah, unseeing and unaware.’
Colin MacInnes (1959)
‘Instead of going to the aid of the victim of an aggression, we would claim the right to assist the aggressor by attacking his victim.’
Anthony Nutting (1967)
‘We were not going to get away with it, because we were neither ruthless enough nor strong enough to carry our plan through to the bitter end.’
Anthony Nutting (1967)
‘Fog and war share an aesthetic of ruin and pollution.’
Lynda Nead (2017)
‘Politics permeated everything then; the Cold War was a poisonous miasma.’
Doris Lessing (1997)
‘…slaves imagining freedom see it through the eyes of slaves.’
Doris Lessing (1957)
‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘—so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if only you walk long enough.’
Lewis Carroll
‘The time was an age of subjection, repression and dissolution into nothingness; the place was the prison of the house.’
Fadwa Tuqan (1985)
‘We are full of dreams, but they are dreams of a vanished past, because nostalgia is the opium of the people. The Germans do not look back—behind them are only cruelty, ruins, collapse. The Russians do not look back—the future cannot be worse than the past. The Americans do not look back—the future has always seemed better than the present. But our ruling class turns away to that old faith in God, Crown and Empire, the Victorian trinity, at once secure and omnipotent…’
Norman MacKenzie (1958)
‘…let the kids jive. It all helps to make good jazz.’
Brian Bird (1958)
