Madame Ovary (2)
I like to say it was through Madame Bovary that I managed to miss 9/11. I'd been to a restaurant for lunch that day in South Western France. It was the kind of weather – heavenly - you don't quite get up North. It was almost too good: I had to sit inside the restaurant - outside seats were taken. The (much cheaper than in England) meal was finally too substantial for me and I left around the fourth – cheese – course. Maybe if I'd lingered I would have heard something. There was no TV in the house where I was staying and the radio – World Service – came on strong only after dark. I didn't – still don't – have a computer wired up to the net and I did some work, wrote a letter, which I took to up the lane to post, and settled down in the early evening to listen, not for the first time, to a couple of the eight tapes that make up the Naxos 'Madame Bovary.' Imogen Stubbs reads the novel. There are some wonderful snatches of Chopin. Across the Atlantic great events were happening. At about 8 p.m. the landline rang – my friend Katherine, wondering if I'd heard the news. Like the rest of the world she was watching the TV. Even 'Madame Bovary' had to give way after that… Flaubert had spent a number of years on a highly wrought, over-written first novel that his friend Bouilhet told him was no good. Flaubert had read the novel out loud over several days. 'They were the longest three days of my life,' Bouilhet said. It was Bouilhet who suggested a new subject: the story of Delphine Delamare, the adulterous wife of a school friend of Flaubert and Bouilhet, who had got into debt and poisoned herself. Flaubert resisted the subject matter for a time and then gradually realised that he could pour himself, particularly his romantic yearnings, into his seemingly unpromising Normandy subject: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi.' I told this tale faithfully. There are established facts - markers - and I did everything I could to insert the story round them. This is the pleasure of biographical fiction. Taking a sequence of events, a set of characters - known facts. No invention needed. It's often forgotten – so great the genius – that Shakespeare worked in this way, from Holinshead's histories and Plutarch's biographies. Or an old play, or old French or Italian tale. Only a couple of the plays – 'The Tempest' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream' come to mind - have no obvious source. Taking an established story means that you annihilate yourself. You immerse yourself in others' viewpoints. Well, to a point. The tales or histories you select will obviously resonate with you in a way you may not initially understand. And you often surface (you hope, seamlessly) through the material in one way or another. I gave Louis Bouilhet in 'Adulteries' a couple of lines that my director found a little puzzling but that I wanted to stay in – they covered a gap and expressed my own feelings about my writing.* You select material. Flaubert describes his near mystical state in writing the section of the novel he called 'the big fuck.' I loved his conflation of religiosity and sex. That went into the play, near verbatim. But the play was as much about Bouilhet and Louise Colet, Flaubert's mistress, as about the novelist. The two of them told the tale and I learned the advantage of the listener's friend in these stories, the characters who see you through sometimes quite complicated events. While novel writing I'd had great difficulties with who was supposed to be telling the tale, and lurched, often daily, between first and third person narration. Occasionally, I attempted an over-intrusive and self-conscious authorial voice: diluted Dickens. In radio, no problems: I think the listener needs a gentle guide, a ficelle, a thread – a friend if you like. When considering any new play, one of the first questions I ask of myself is where is the story coming from, who will tell it. Light, rapid narration.
* LOUIS: (Voice Over) In October, 1853, I borrowed some money, left my position, and moved to Paris. I was always rather pleased to be a writer, astonished people took me seriously. I was industrious, learned, had taste. I think it amounted to nothing really. (next scene coming in) Louise had helped me find an apartment.
* LOUIS: (Voice Over) In October, 1853, I borrowed some money, left my position, and moved to Paris. I was always rather pleased to be a writer, astonished people took me seriously. I was industrious, learned, had taste. I think it amounted to nothing really. (next scene coming in) Louise had helped me find an apartment.