Oi, Kids – Go Play In The Traffic

It were all fields round here when I were a boy, and where it weren’t, we used to play football on the street, with special rules to allow for passing traffic. No one I knew was ever killed that way, and occasionally diving out of the way of juggernauts gave you a body swerve Georgie Best would’ve given his left liver for.
  All of which is a long-winded way of saying that kids are tougher than we think, and that the desire to protect kids (especially from themselves) has grown out of all proportion to the real dangers that exist. That’s a bit rich coming from someone who has adapted the last line of the Rock-a-Bye-Baby lullaby to ‘Down will come baby / Daddy break your fall,’ so thankfully John Connolly is on hand, courtesy of the Brisbane Times, to lend a bit of perspective to the debate, and particularly the part of the debate that centres on what kids should or shouldn’t be reading. In a piece titled, ‘Why It’s Good to Terrify Children’, JC ruminates thusly:

“Like a lot of boys, I was curious about the darkness, and I quite liked being scared a little, as long as I was in control of the medium.
  “I can’t ever remember closing a book because it frightened me, but there were a couple that I tended not to read when alone in the house, or when I was sitting up in bed at night. After all, I might have been adventurous when it came to my literary tastes, but I wasn’t stupid.
  “Recently I have been put in the unfamiliar position of having to defend my latest book, THE GATES, from accusations that it may be a bit frightening for younger readers who don’t get out enough …
  “When the Victorians bowdlerised the fables, removing much of the violence and peril, and indeed the punishments visited on the wrongdoers at the end, they took away their power and their purpose. Without terror they have no meaning.”

  The scariest book I read as a kid was the Illustrated Bible, especially the bit where Herod slaughtered all the babies. That and the crucifixion. When you’re a kid, and you realise that this is what they do to the good guy … that’s pretty damn scary.

You Never Show Me Your Funny

Off with yours truly and my good lady wife to Belfast on Saturday, only to discover that John Connolly had been in to No Alibis on Friday night to launch THE GATES. Boo, etc. No doubt a good time was had by all.
  I read THE GATES a couple of months ago, and loved it, and what I liked best about it was that it represents yet another string to Connolly’s bow. I’ve always loved William Goldman for his ability to write terrific stories regardless of genre – MARATHON MAN, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – and for his ability to play it straight when required, but to mix it up and have fun whenever he gets the chance. To date John Connolly has written straight crime novels (BAD MEN), crime blended with the supernatural (the Charlie Parker novels), a collection of short stories infused by the classic fairytales of Charles Perrault (NOCTURNES) and the mythology mash-up of the superb THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS. THE GATES blends Satanism, quantum physics and good old-fashioned fun in a tale that put me in mind of THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. It really is one for all the family.
  These days, of course, it’s tough to write in more than one genre, because publishers believe that a writer shouldn’t confuse the oh-so-easily confused readership by offering them anything that deviates from the established brand. Connolly, who writes his non-crime offerings out of contract, is to be celebrated not only for taking a gamble with his time and energies, but for having faith in his readers. Yes, it’s entirely probable that THE GATES will not sell in anything approaching the numbers that the next Charlie Parker novel will. By the same token, it’s also very likely that the publishing house will more than recoup its investment.
  I don’t care, particularly, about the profit margins and bottom line of any publishing house, but if THE GATES does sell well, then there’s a good chance we’ll get another novel featuring the dauntless Samuel Johnson and his faithful daschund Boswell (there’s rumours of a possible three-book series). Which means, and this is my bottom line, that we’ll get another fun book. Remember when you read for fun? Gosh, those were the days …
  Maybe it’s just me, but it can often seem that the publishing biz takes itself far too seriously, writers included. Yes, there are bottom lines to attend to, and in these straitened times there are jobs at stake when a potential best-seller fails to meet expectations. But even taking all that on board, there’s no reason in the world why books – some of them, at least – can’t be fun to read. In fact, in times like these, the industry might do well to play to (and profit from) people’s need to laugh, for the childish (in the best sense of the word) impulse to find fun in the most improbable of places. And John Connolly is a funny guy. Were I a publishing exec, in this day and age, I’d be tickling his funny-bone and hoping it’d get his fingers busy on a keyboard.
  Meanwhile, beg, borrow or steal (or go crazy, and buy) a copy of THE GATES. You owe yourself some fun.

In The Name Of The Father

Rosita Boland had a rather poignant interview with John Connolly (right) in yesterday’s Irish Times to mark the publication of THE GATES, in which Connolly touched on the death of his father, and how the loss has impacted on his writing. To wit:

When Connolly left Dublin Corporation to study English at Trinity College, he had money in the bank, and a renewed vigour for education. On a summer student job in the US soon after, he called home one evening from New York and discovered his father had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He flew home the next day, and his father died soon afterwards. The cancer he died from has since become a recurrent symbolic motif in Connolly’s work: people’s bodies being horribly consumed by something they cannot control. “I think because of what happened to my father and the way he died, I have an absolute loathing and fear of that disease. I just think it’s so insidious and so appalling. It occurs in the books again and again. ‘The Cancer Cowboy Rides’ [a story in NOCTURNES] is the most explicit version of it, but again and again, with people in my books, there is this image of cancer or of being eaten from the inside.”
  Recurrent also in the books is the theme of fathers – fatherhood, absent fathers, dead fathers, men who don’t know whether they want to be fathers. “I think all young men are trying to prove something to their dads,” he says carefully. “I think his whole idea was he worked so that at some point, he didn’t have to work any more, and that work was a kind of chore he got through as a prelude to retirement, when he could do all the things that he planned on doing. And then you know, work kind of had the last laugh, because he died while he was still working.
  “He was not impressed by me wanting to be a writer, or to be a journalist. And I suppose part of me becoming a journalist and part of me going to college and doing something like English was a kind of way of saying to him, well actually, what you want is not what I want. The awful thing is, having done all that, had he seen what I do now, he would have been immensely proud.” Earlier, he said his father had a distrust of the “kind of freelance existence” that journalism and a career as a writer offered. It’s not hard to see where the roots of Connolly’s drive and work ethic came from.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

When Johnny Met Ali

Ali Karim had an extensive interview with John Connolly over at the Rap Sheet recently, which makes for a terrific read, although they touched only briefly on JC’s forthcoming THE GATES (boo). To wit:

AK: So tell us more about THE GATES, which you’ve described as a young adult novel that “involves Satanism and quantum physics.” Will Charlie Parker make an appearance in that story?

JC: Hah! No, Parker doesn’t make an appearance in THE GATES. It’s actually very different from what I’ve done before. Well, there are probably slight echoes of THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, but essentially THE GATES is a mischievous book. It’s about a small boy and his dog who discover that their new neighbours are Satanists who are trying to open the gates of Hell. The book is filled with odd little footnotes about science and history. It’s probably the lightest book I’ve written, and the most purely entertaining. Frankly, writing it was a blast.

Johnson And Boswell Ride Again

I’ll be writing a full-length review of John Connolly’s THE GATES closer to the publication date (October 1 in the UK), but for now suffice to say that it’s a terrific piece of work that put me in mind of THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. That’s not a comparison I make lightly, as I’m one of those who thinks Douglas Adams was something of a genius in a minor key, but THE GATES has the same qualities: a beautifully wrought tone, a subversively funny take on the intricacies of science (in this case, sub-atomic physics), and a deceptively simple but utterly compelling story.
  In essence, young Samuel Johnson (with his loyal dachshund Boswell) takes on the might of Satan and Hell’s legions armed with little more than an irrepressible curiosity, a nascent sense of civic duty and a generous dollop of courage. At 40 years old I’m probably not the best judge in the world of this, but to me the secret of this particular success is that Connolly has tapped into the mind of a young boy of ‘perhaps eleven’ to give us the world as seen through Samuel’s eyes. It’s perhaps clichéd to say it, but in doing so the world is remade vividly in all its wonders, horrors and banalities.
  Samuel’s age and the way in which Connolly blends reality and mythology will very probably draw comparisons to THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, but – at the risk of offending teen wizard fans – this has more in common with the Harry Potter books in its apocalyptic battle between good and evil, albeit – and this is one of its major strengths – without the good guys having recourse to magic. Unless, of course, you consider the esoteric mysteries of quantum physics a kind of magic, which I do.
  Anyway, the bottom line is that THE GATES is a novel that should achieve the elusive crossover by appealing to both adults and children, and the whispers I’m hearing about a further two books in the series bode well (and will hopefully see the return of Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities). In the meantime, Chapter 1 can be found here …

It Matters Not How Strait THE GATES …

I’m loving the strap on John Connolly’s THE GATES, which runs: “The Gates of Hell are About to Open. Mind the Gap.”
  A comic novel about Satanism and quantum physics? Roll on October … Mind you, given the impending anti-blasphemy legislation, there’s every chance THE GATES will mange to get itself banned in Ireland. Boo, etc.
  Meanwhile, JC has posted up the first chapter of THE GATES over at his interweb malarkey, to wit:

Chapter One
In Which We Encounter a Small Boy, His Dog, and Some People Who Are Up To No Good

On the night in question, Mr Abernathy answered the door to find a small figure dressed in a white sheet standing on his porch. The sheet had two holes cut into it at eye level so that the small figure could walk around without bumping into things, a precaution that seemed wise given that the small figure was also wearing rather thick glasses. The glasses were balanced on its nose outside the sheet, giving it the appearance of a short-sighted, and not terribly frightening, ghost. A mismatched pair of sneakers, the left blue, the right red, poked out from the bottom of the sheet.
  In its left hand, the figure held an empty bucket. From its right stretched a dog leash, ending at a red collar that encircled the neck of a little dachshund. The dachshund stared up at Mr Abernathy with what Mr Abernathy felt was a troubling degree of self-awareness. If he hadn’t know better, Mr Abernathy might have taken the view that this was a dog that knew it was a dog, and wasn’t very happy about it, all things considered. Equally, the dog also appeared to know that Mr Abernathy was not a dog (for, in general, dogs view humans as just very large dogs that have learned the neat trick of walking on two legs, which only impresses dogs for a very short period of time). This suggested to Mr Abernathy that here was a very smart dog indeed—freakishly so. There was something disapproving in the way the dog was staring at Mr Abernathy. Mr Abernathy sensed that the dog was not terribly keen on him, and he found himself feeling both annoyed, and slightly depressed, that he had somehow disappointed the animal.
  Mr Abernathy looked from the dog to the small figure, then back again, as though unsure which one of them was going to speak.
  “Trick or treat,” said the small figure eventually, from beneath the sheet.
  Mr Abernathy’s face betrayed utter bafflement.
  “What?” said Mr Abernathy.
  “Trick or treat,” the small figure repeated.
  Mr Abernathy’s mouth opened once, then closed again. He looked like a fish having an afterthought. He appeared to grow even more confused. He glanced at his watch, and checked the date, wondering if he had somehow lost a few days between hearing the doorbell ring, and opening the door.
  “It’s only October the twenty-eighth,” he said.
  “I know,” said the small figure. “I thought I’d get a head start on everyone else.”
  “What?” said Mr Abernathy again.
  “What?” said the small figure.
  “Why are you saying “what”?”, said Mr Abernathy. “I just said “what”.”
  “I know. Why?”
  “Why what?”
  “My question exactly,” said the small figure.
  “Who are you?” asked Mr Abernathy. His head was starting to hurt.
  “I’m a ghost,” said the small figure, then added, a little uncertainly: “Boo?”
  “No, not ‘What are you?’ Who are you?”
  “Oh.” The small figure removed the glasses and lifted up its sheet, revealing a pale boy of perhaps eleven, with wispy blond hair and very blue eyes. “I’m Samuel Johnson. I live in number five hundred and one. And this is Boswell,” he added, indicating the dachshund by raising his leash.
  Mr Abernathy, who was new to the town, nodded, as though this piece of information had suddenly confirmed all of his suspicions. Upon hearing its name spoken, the dog shuffled its bottom on Mr Abernathy’s porch and gave a bow. Mr Abernathy regarded it suspiciously.
  “Your shoes don’t match,” said Mr Abernathy to Samuel.
  “I know. I couldn’t decide which pair to wear, so I wore one of each.”
  Mr Abernathy raised an eyebrow. He didn’t trust people, especially children, who displayed signs of individuality.
  “So,” said Samuel. “Trick or treat?”
  “Neither,” said Mr Abernathy.
  “Why not?”
  “Because it’s not Halloween yet, that’s why not.”
  “But I was showing initiative.” Samuel’s teacher, Mr Hume, often spoke about the importance of showing initiative, although any time Samuel showed initiative Mr Hume seemed to disapprove of it, which Samuel found very puzzling.
  “No, you weren’t,” said Mr Abernathy. “You’re just too early. It’s not the same thing.”
  “Oh, please. A chocolate bar?”
  “No.”
  “Not even an apple?”
  “No.”
  “I can come back tomorrow, if that helps.”
  “No! Go away.”
  With that, Mr Abernathy slammed the front door, leaving Samuel and Boswell to stare at the flaking paintwork. Samuel let the sheet drop down once more, restoring himself to ghostliness, and replaced his. He looked down at Boswell. Boswell looked up at him. Samuel shook the empty bucket sadly.
  “It seemed like a good idea,” he said to Boswell. “I thought people might like an early fright.”
  Boswell sighed in response, as if to say: “I told you so.”
  Samuel gave one final, hopeful glance at Mr Abernathy’s front door, willing him to change his mind and appear with something for the bucket, even if it was just a single, solitary nut, but the door remained firmly closed. The Abernathys hadn’t lived on the street for very long, and their house was the biggest and oldest in town. Samuel had rather hoped that the Abernathys would decorate it for Halloween, or perhaps turn it into a haunted house, but after his recent encounter with Mr Abernathy he didn’t think this was very likely. Mr Abernathy’s wife, meanwhile, always looked like she had just been fed a very bitter slice of lemon, and was looking for somewhere to spit it out discreetly. No, thought Samuel, the Abernathy house would not be playing a very big part in this year’s Halloween festivities.
  As things turned out, he was very, very wrong.

  © John Connolly, 2009

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

JC Vs The Satanists

When is a stalker not a stalker? When he’s a queue. If John Connolly (right) looks out of the windows of his mansion any time soon, to see a man in a shabby raincoat standing at the gates, it’ll be yours truly, waiting not to flash him again (he laughed the last time, and had his coachman lash me with a quirt) but for a copy of THE GATES. Quoth JC:

After finishing THE LOVERS, I worked flat out on THE GATES. It was a labour of love. I so wanted to write it, and I didn’t care if it was going to be picked up or not. Oh, it would have hurt a bit if it had been rejected by my publishers, but I wouldn’t have regretted a moment of the time that I spent writing it. I was able to let my imagination run riot, while at the same time retaining a thread of pure science. At times, it felt like a bit of a balancing act, and I’ve asked the physics department of my old university to check the science to make sure I haven’t mangled some very complicated stuff too much, but I hope that the enthusiasm behind it is communicated to those who read it. We’ll see.
  So THE GATES is a book that combines quantum physics and, well, Satanism, I suppose …

  I. Am. So. There.
  Mind you, it puts paid to my own quantum physics-inspired novel THE GATES, in which computer whizz Bill Gates, ’70s crooner David Gates, and be-mulleted crafty schemer for Ipswich Town FC’s early ’80s UEFA Cup winners Eric Gates all fall into a black hole and come out mind-melded in a parallel universe – a universe where there are no gates, only revolving doors. Oh, the humanity …