FIGURE IN A LANDSCAPE
Figure in a Landscape is a novel by Tim Thwaites and me, Martin Pearson. Tim is a longstanding friend of mine, and the driving force behind Nottingham-based band Radium88. (Previously, I've collaborated with Tim on various Radium88 album covers. Follow this link to find out more about that.)
So, in 2024 we present this novel. How would we describe it? Here is the description we give on the amazon sale page:
'A comic, dramatic, visionary tale which poses the question: What if the most influential artist of the 20th century turns out to have been an unknown painter from the mountains of North Wales? The story of his eccentric, convoluted life is told from a variety of perspectives, building up a picture of the man, the culture and the landscape which inspired his unique vision.'
Sounds intriguing, right? Click the figure to go to the amazon page right now, if you're tempted to buy a copy.
However, if your interest is whetted, you might like to listen to a few extracts from the text, read by Martin. There are three to choose from, but we're sure you'll want to listen to them all!
Sounds even more intriguing now, doesn't it? You can use this link to buy a copy!
There's a bit of a story behind our writing of this novel, but only read on if you really, really want to know about this. Some would say as a backstory, it's interminably dull and could induce depressive thoughts in the reader. Naturally, I disagree with these entirely fictional naysayers and would encourage you to take in this fascinating and (mostly) real account of the writing of this unique novel.
In 1990, I was working in Kingston, Jamaica, teaching life drawing. I was living in Gordon Town, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, where I drank Red Stripe, ate plantain and murdered cockroaches with highly toxic insect spray. Previously, Tim and I had collaborated on short, comic material, but now we started to come up with ideas for a longer story, set in historic Wales. It took a while to get things going, as we depended on physical mail, but it was exciting for me to put something in the post to Tim and to anticipate his response and further input. Little of our correspondence from that time survives, but here are two samples of notes from a small book I used.
Now, I know what you're thinking; 'Poor Tim, no wonder it took so long to do the book, it must have taken him weeks just to decipher one paragraph of that spidery scrawl!' One drawback with the letter-writing, as compared with a phone call, is the unforeseen ambiguity of pronunciation of characters names. A case in point is Gareth Tredevilly, in part one of the book. The alternative pronunciations of his name led to two very different ideas about his character. In case you've bought the book (highly recommended,) and are not sure, then let me clear it up. It's pronounced 'Gareth'.
On my return to the UK, (unnoticed by the media,) I found myself in Cardiff, training to be a teacher, for my sins. As most of us in the UK know, Wales, while being a separate country, is not overseas. However, my nearest phone was in a tall, narrow, red, windowed box, roughly ten minutes walk away, and usually had a queue for its use. The letter writing would just have to continue until someone invented the digital revolution. The coincidence of being in Wales while writing about a Welsh character was not lost on me.
Eventually, for reasons of employment, I appeared in the creative powerhouse of the north known as Selby. Home computers were getting to be much more the thing, and chapters written by either of us were regularly typed up. Sometimes, Tim would come over and we would sit at the computer, typing up our manuscript, all the while laughing, laughing until our jaws ached, until our cheeks wobbled and our teeth turned to blancmange. If you've bought the book, (highly recommended,) then this is a health and safety warning.
Then, real life happened for a whole bunch of time. New versions of Microsoft Word regularly came out and it was all I could do to open each chapter and save it in the latest version. Sometimes I'd read a bit of the text, but I had to be careful of the blancmange teeth thing. Our story was in cold storyage, like the pack of sausages in my freezer because it was cheaper to buy two packs, and I like Cumberland ones, if you're ever coming to visit. Tim and I imagined we'd return to the story 'one day', a dim and distant day in a vague, grey-skied, dystopian future. Little did we know, it would turn out to be a Tuesday.
2023 came around and I had already metamorphosed into a retired person with time to kill, thrill, and fulfil, if you will. One day, after eating scrambled eggs on bagels, I had an epiphany that this one day was the 'one day' we'd imagined. Obviously, there wasn't just going to be the 'one day', but a number of one days until we got to the one day when the book finally appeared in printed form and we could say,'that's it, we did that.' So there was and we did and now it exists for real. Perhaps you'll want to buy a copy? (Highly recommended.)
