How I learned to love my loathsome literary character!

This post has been edited and included in my new Kindle e-book anthology 'Becoming a Butcher in Paris and other short essays'.

Why do Danish movies have so much grunt?

 

My last post ended with a quiz. This time I’m starting with one:

Q: What is stød ?

a)      Reindeer meat jerky

b)      A Norwegian male porn star

c)       A sacred mountain in Norse mythology

d)      A suburb of Copenhagen

e)      None of the above

Watch out for the answer later.

It’s been Danish week at our place. I watched last week’s episode of Borgen on catch-up last Tuesday, the next episode ‘live’ on Wednesday and then Mads Mikkelsen in The Hunt at the movies on Thursday.

Borgen has a pretty standard TV political drama plot: Against all expectations, politician Birgitte Nyborg  becomes Denmark’s Prime Minister, forming a centrist coalition by outsmarting the smarmy veterans of the left and right. Each week she steers a nifty course, never succumbing to venality, coming home occasionally to her impossibly patient house husband, who has drawn up a lovemaking schedule (I sense that there is a story arc beginning here). I flinched a tiny bit at her rapid conversion to the Greenland cause and the slightly mawkish day-in-a minute scene where she tours the island learning about the troubles of the inhabitants; we see her talking earnestly to poor Inuit fishermen, windbeaten housewives, and other unfortunates, with no words audible behind the musical score. But I’m hanging out for next week!

The feature film The Hunt is a lot grimmer: Lucas, a teacher, lives in a small conservative village. When the school closes down, he takes a job at the kindergarten, but is accused of sexual misconduct towards a small girl. I won’t spoil it for you, but watch out for performances in a film that had me welded to my seat; I especially loved Alexandra Rapaport as the immigrant girlfriend who can see through the hypocrisy and blockheadedness of the villagers.

So what’s special about The Hunt? And for that matter my top-of-the-list Danish films The Celebration, Open Hearts, Brothers, and Pusher?

The easy answer is Mads Mikkelsen, but of course he’s not in every Danish movie. The next easy answer is directors Susanne Bier and Lars von Trier, but there are other Danish film directors too.

My yardstick for analysing non-English language cinemas is to ask the question ‘How would Hollywood have made this film’. For example try watching Wim Wenders’ divine Wings of Desire and then gag on the US remake City of Angels.

I suspect that the answer here might be patience: Danish film makers seem to have a keen sense of restraint in the way that strong emotional content is delivered. Watch out for the scenes of violence in The Hunt; you’ll be caught unawares. I don’t think a US director would have credited their audience with that much patience. Or watch the subtly handled reaction of the kindergarten teacher when she is told of the sticky details of the alleged offense; I’m sure a US director would not have been able to resist a full-face shot of horror and a bit of vomit.

In Pusher (yes, Mads Mikkelsen again) the bungling drug pushers owe money to gang boss Milo, played by the brilliant Zlatko Buric; violence oozes beneath the surface and you shiver at the sociopathic Milo’s feigned affection for the terrified Frank and Tonny. Somehow I think our sorry lads would have had their asses kicked much earlier in the US remake (Heaven forbid that it will happen!)

Back to Borgen and the quiz. Having said such complementary things about Danish movies, I have to confess that Borgen doesn’t actually come up to the mark. To use the Hollywood test, there are equally good or much better US TV series, such as The West Wing. So why does Borgen get under my skin? I have a suspicion that it is actress Sidse Babett Knudsen’s  enchanting stød. Whoops, I forgot to say that the correct answer to the quiz is (e), none of the above.

If you listen carefully to Danish, you’ll hear frequent little grunts or ‘creaky voice’ as linguists call it, a pronunciation feature known as stød. This is strictly speaking a suprasegmental  feature, that is a little overlay of sound used to distinguish meanings. So while, the Danish words hun (she) and hunt (dog) are pronounced with the same consonants and vowels, the dog word carries a little grunt.  I’m intrigued by this example, and I wonder if it is a source of mother in law jokes in Denmark. The rules for using stød are terrifyingly complex and would deter any foreigner from ever attempting to speak the language authentically (or acquiring a Danish mother in law).

They all do it: Mads and his brother Lars stød like champions. For all I know the Tasmanian-born Mary Crown Princess of Denmark practices it in a gilded mirror nightly, and has nightmares about grunting in the wrong places at balls. But no one gives stød so minxily as Sidse Babett Knudsen playing Birgitte Nyborg .

So let’s get to the heart of it: I’ve fallen in love with Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg ‘s grunt. I can excuse the holes in Borgen’s  plot, the lack of patience, the full-face emotion shots and even the soft focus Inuits: Just give me my weekly dose of Birgitte and her stød!


Buy Stuart's e-book novel 'The Play's the Thing' for US$1.25 with one click at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BMIF0J0

From Bandicoot Ridge to Nicosia’s Green Line with a detour via Byron Bay

This post has been edited and included in my new Kindle e-book anthology 'Becoming a Butcher in Paris and other short essays'.

Can I give you some grated fertiliser with your tagine?

This post has been edited and included in my new Kindle e-book anthology 'Becoming a Butcher in Paris and other short essays'.

e-book covers: Throwing down a challenge!

A post on Indie Author News doing the rounds on Twitter claims that a bad book cover equals bad sales. I can’t vouch for the claim, especially since the indie book world is full of notions about what may or not sell a book. But while I fight for every sale using any dastardly tactic I can think of, I’ll concede that my e-book cover is an important part of my marketing arsenal.

A recent Guardian article pointed me in the direction of the delicious Lousy Book Covers site, where you can enjoy some of the, well, more florid examples of e-book covers. This prompted me to cast a critical eye over a random sample of  hard copy book covers on my bedside locker:  

A 1960 edition of Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark: Seems like nobody really bothered – just white block lettering on a black background, and nothing else, somewhat improved I think by the second hand bookseller's red $10 sticker.  Perhaps  Nabokov’s name was enough to sell the book; or is the black background symbolic of the latter part of the book, when the teenage schoolgirl and her grotesque manfriend cavort silently before the blind Albinus?

A 2010 Jonathan Cape paperback edition of Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth: A young woman in a gloomy  tiled corridor, half turning to look at a male silhouette behind her. Well, to interpret this design would entail a spoiler, so you’ll have to work out the symbolism once you’ve read this literary hall of mirrors.

My favourite: A precious 1976 David Winter & Son edition of William McGonagall’s Poetic Gems. The self-published writer of earnest doggerel verse  in 19th century Edinburgh peers out of a half-tone portrait with an expression of guilelessness and hope, unaware that his destiny is to be a figure of affectionate fun throughout the English-speaking world. The words “poet and tragedian” appear below his name.

Now here's a challenge: If you think we did a good job with the cover of The Play’s the Thing, send me a comment. If not, send my cover to Lousy Book Covers! Here’s how my cover came about:

STEP 1: I approached my designer Rachel Ainge, who agreed to do the job. Rachel is a highly professional Sydney-based designer whose work ranges from billboards to thumbnails, and across print, web and video.

STEP 2: I went looking in the big bookshops for ideas. Here’s where I ran into the first hurdle: This isn’t a genre book, so it falls into the messy section of the shop where nothing seems to fit with anything else, rather than the neat ranks of paranormal, crime, etc. where the cover designs are largely formulaic. Oh, to be a rural romance writer -  expensively tousled blonde hair, Akubra hats, tractors! The best single word I use to describe my novel is ‘quirky’, so I went hunting for quirk, and came up with four books that I'd be honoured to sit next to: I’ve included the URLs rather than risk a copyright breach by pasting the cover images:

Michael Frayn – Skios  http://www.amazon.com/Skios-Novel-Michael-Frayn/dp/0805095497/ref=la_B000APIKYS_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367384119&sr=1-1
Joe Dunthorne – Wild Abandon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wild-Abandon-Joe-Dunthorne/dp/0141033959
Jim Keeble – The Happy Numbers of Julius Miles http://www.amazon.co.uk/TheHappy-Numbers-Julius-May-24-2012-Paperback/dp/B0092GDYGK/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356140491&sr=1-2
Randa Abdel-Fattah – No Sex in the City http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/display_title.asp?ISBN=9781742611372&Author=Abdel-Fattah,%20Randa

STEP 3: I reflected on the covers I liked and drew up a set of design principles, which I sent to my designer. Here’s what I emailed her:

• Title and author: The Play’s the Thing by S.J. Campbell
• I want to make the cover ambiguous as to the readership, i.e. equally appealing to male and female readers (which is why I want to use initials instead of my first name).
• I am torn between the zany style (e.g. Joe Dunthorne below) or a cool blocky style like Jim Keeble below.
• I want to avoid any explicit religious imagery.
• Symbolism: I have in mind something like a view of mountains seen through a stage curtain, but with some kind of threatening/mysterious symbolism (a shadow figure maybe, some bloodrops, a gun) somewhere in the image – maybe standing out against a cool pastel background.
• I’ve attached a rough sketch where I’ve put a crescent moon (vaguely but not specifically Islamic imagery) in an evening sky. It is truly horrible and will make a professional designer vomit but it is a possible starting point.

My rough sketch appears at the top of this post.

STEP 4: I discussed the zany vs. blocky options with the designer. Her advice – go blocky!

STEP 5: I received the first draft and was quite stunned at how my sad sketch had been transformed. The colours were deeper and more saturated than I had envisaged. The green foreground was textured so that the eye is drawn to the hills, which are lit by a menacing red dusk. The standout feature was the white and red block lettering, which provides a contrast to the brooding hills,  and also shows up well in a thumbnail. I loved the  addition of the hand holding the curtain aside. The crescent moon was there, but moved to the centre so that it unites the curtain and the title

STEP 6: I asked where’s the drop of blood gone? Well, it’s there nestled in the crook of the N, rather than drooping from the title. In fact I was in two minds about the drop of blood, which was originally there to point to a shooting. The problem was that while the design was being developed, I rewrote the shooting chapter and reduced the gunshot to the mere threat of a gunshot. There is in fact a bit of real bleeding somewhere else in the book, so on balance I was happy to have a discrete drop of blood on the cover.

STEP 7: I negotiated some small adjustments with the designer, for example heightening the row of hills slightly.  I paid for the stock images, reconfirmed the Kindle technical specification, and received the final design.

I'd love your feedback!
 

Buy Stuart's e-book novel 'The Play's the Thing' for US$1.25 with one click at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BMIF0J0