Post by dyingclown on Jan 13, 2015 11:22:40 GMT -1
Hi everyone
This is my first post here, and I thought you would be interested in hearing about my forthcoming novel, Death and Mr Pickwick - because I started the novel as a direct result of Griff's appearance on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
As I am sure you know, guests on the show have to choose eight records and a book to take to the imaginary desert island. Well, Griff chose Dickens's Pickwick Papers as his book, describing it as "so full of life". I had never read The Pickwick Papers before, and so I decided to borrow it from my local library. In the preface, I found one line referring to the suicide of the book's first illustrator, Robert Seymour, and I was instantly fascinated. Why had this man shot himself? Moreover, he had committed suicide shortly after illustrating an episode in Pickwick about a dying clown, and I wondered whether the subject of the picture was related to Seymour's own death. Thus, before I had read a single line of Pickwick, I had a "buzz" inside - I just knew there was something extraordinary here.
Well, I started writing the novel, which took AGES to complete (Griff appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2001) but I am glad to say that it will be published on 21st May this year, by Jonathan Cape of the Random House Group (in the UK) and a month later by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (in the USA). Further information about the novel can be found on the website www.deathandmrpickwick.com, where I explain how the book evolved beyond its original idea, to become a fictionalised history of the entire phenomenon of the Pickwick Papers. I mention Griff in the "About the Book" section of the website.
This is my first post here, and I thought you would be interested in hearing about my forthcoming novel, Death and Mr Pickwick - because I started the novel as a direct result of Griff's appearance on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
As I am sure you know, guests on the show have to choose eight records and a book to take to the imaginary desert island. Well, Griff chose Dickens's Pickwick Papers as his book, describing it as "so full of life". I had never read The Pickwick Papers before, and so I decided to borrow it from my local library. In the preface, I found one line referring to the suicide of the book's first illustrator, Robert Seymour, and I was instantly fascinated. Why had this man shot himself? Moreover, he had committed suicide shortly after illustrating an episode in Pickwick about a dying clown, and I wondered whether the subject of the picture was related to Seymour's own death. Thus, before I had read a single line of Pickwick, I had a "buzz" inside - I just knew there was something extraordinary here.
Well, I started writing the novel, which took AGES to complete (Griff appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2001) but I am glad to say that it will be published on 21st May this year, by Jonathan Cape of the Random House Group (in the UK) and a month later by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (in the USA). Further information about the novel can be found on the website www.deathandmrpickwick.com, where I explain how the book evolved beyond its original idea, to become a fictionalised history of the entire phenomenon of the Pickwick Papers. I mention Griff in the "About the Book" section of the website.