Finished reading Volume 3 and instead of going on to read Volume 4 I have decided to go back and edit Volume 2 so that I can have it done for the end of the year. I figure I don't need that much of the history to get through Volume 2, being as how it's the ghost novel and doesn't deal much with 'The Past' in a literal let's-piece-it-together-sense.
So I'm about a hundred pages into Volume 2 and not disliking it as much as I usually do. And here, as I am among friends, I am about to make a dark confession. A very, very dark confession which I would ask you not to repeat.
Volume 2 has always been my sickly child. I try, like any good parent, to be impartial. I love all my progeny and want what's best for them, but Volume 2, oh mamma.
I've always felt it was my weakest link, even when I was writing it. The trouble with it, you see, is that it has no heart. When that stopped beating in Volume 1 what was there to replace it? I'll tell you - nothing. And nothing is what it's got, in spades. It's got a lot of looking for something. But the sad truth is we don't find it. Uh-uh.
Yep, Volume 2 is a long tale of people with nothing in search of something they cannot hope to find. And they don't.
Even in Japanese films the hero usually at least finds a stick. Not in Volume 2, he doesn't.
Do you realise how insane/dangerous this is? People believe everything they're told. About two per cent of the population think for themselves, on a good day. I have just committed creative suicide, because, let's face it, although we keep trying to get rid of them, some of my more determined detractors still lurk around here, like flies on shit, hoping to find something to "get Stone with".
And they've got it.
Stone just said it herself, it's official, Volume 2 has no heart, there isn't even a stick. We don't know what that means, but we don't care. We like writing words with exclamation marks! Hoorah! Hooray! Hoozah!
What can I say? It's true. Danny is but a ghost of a human being in Volume 2. He knows it himself. It wouldn't shock or hurt him to read it here. In fact, I'd reckon he'd think I was understating it. When I say he has no feelings I don't think I'm giving anything away you wouldn't get yourself in the first 20 pages (providing, of course, you're not post grad in I'm-only-here-for-the-porn - they'll still be struggling with the concept of loss on page 200). But, hey, I'll say no more. Don't want to spoil the clinical depression you'll all enjoy reading it.
Actually, it's not like that at all. I've never found it depressing. Worrying... hell, yes, but depressing, no. Don't ask me why, because I couldn't tell you, but this Tale of a Heartless Zombie is a strange and mystical thing indeed.
As I say, it's always been my sickly child, the book I couldn't quite bring myself to like because it worried me so. This is my fretsome child, the one that keeps me up at nights. All my others are hale and hearty. I make no pretence that Volume 4 is my favourite novel, hands down. Always has been, always will be. Love it to bits. For me it's the pinnacle of DANNY, and that's a damn good thing when you consider it's the last volume (maybe, as there is a fragment of Five). Good to go out on a bang not a whimper.
And Volume 3, although the size of it was initially a big worry, now that it's been split into two parts it's a piece of piss to read, a breeze of a book. They'll be slightly lopsided. About 600-odd pages in part one and 900 in part two but what the hell.
Oh, I should just say here that I'm going to leave it as Volumes 1- 4, couldn't bear to rename it after all, it felt disrespectful, like fucking with fate. But Volume 2 and Volume 3 will still be referred to as the inner trilogy and Volume 1 and Volume 4 as the book ends. It's what they are, after all.
But, as I say, Volume 3 is a big, fat, robust tale, crammed full of adventure on the high seas.
Well, not quite, although it does end up on the high seas. We've got sandy beaches, mobile homes, caravans and caravanning and more weird sex than you can shake a stick at (not often you see those things put together - now, I am alternative. Christ, I've got cult stamped all over me.)
No, I have no worries with Volume 3, except I know the 'duplicate relationships' are bound to get a fair amount of stick. The detractors (they're beginning to sound like a rock group) will be out in force with such gems as "Iain Mair in Volume 3 is just another Ian Jackson Moore. Stone is so inept she has even given him the same name."
Duh........
Still, got to roll with the punches. I always try to get a kind of warped cynical satisfaction out of people making cunts of themselves. Sadly, feeling superior is not nearly as rewarding as people pleasantly surprising you. It defeats me why the web is full of people cruising everywhere and anywhere desperately trying to find something to sneer at - I can't do it and I hate anyone, good or bad (especially good), who does.
Forgive me, I digress.
I love Volume 4, Volume 1 and Volume 3, in that order, but Volume 2. Poor sad little Volume 2. What can it do?
Well, actually, Volume 2 does pull out a big sparkly present, near the end, of such magnitude it is gobsmacking. I'm hoping that people who don't enjoy soulless descents into misery will be so sideswiped by this unexpected, awe-inspiring, shiny gift they will cover me in instant forgiveness. (I shall, of course, claim the credit for it when, in fact, it just popped, gremlin-like, into my psyche with no profound thought by me whatsoever.)
However, equally well I know The Present is going to have some big-time detractors. If you were one of the people who couldn't swallow Volume 1's 'Death of a Policeman and Not an Angry Vengeful Cop in Sight' then trust me, you will NOT like Volume 2. Do NOT buy it, and save us both a lot of grief. You won't need to be disappointed and I won't need to listen to your inane why-fiction-has-to-follow-established-genre-rules whining.
But here's the real rub with Volume 2.
I'm suddenly, and finally, beginning to see the bigger picture. Obviously I've always known that it holds the rest of the book up, and without it the whole thing becomes unravelled. Probably just as well or in my darkest hour I might have thrown my damned changeling witch-child away, and that would have been a terrible loss, not to mention an irredeemable mistake.
No, aside from the obvious, having had a considerable amount of editing done on it already (I'm on number two edit, the hard, laborious no-scene-shall-be-left-unturned edit) I'm beginning to see the lean, mean fighting machine underneath. I'm seeing a whole different Danny, a whole different feel to the book. One that I can't find the right English words for. They always seem to be in French.
If DANNY Volume 2 could be described by any word, it is tristesse. Okay it's the French word for sadness. But, trust me, sadness doesn't cut it, and tristesse does, just as it's always been The Revenant - so much so that even if no other volume of DANNY has a subtitle Volume 2 will.
I always feel with Volume 2 that you somehow need to know its 'true' title. Maybe that's because I think my readers are all morons and need a clue.
I jest. But, yes, the clue part's right. After all, one day I got it, just thought, The Revenant - that's what this book is, even although I didn't exactly know why. I needed the fucking clue, so why shouldn't you?
I suspect Volume 2 is My Great French novel. Always knew I had one in me (knew nothing of the kind, but it sounds like I care). So maybe if you're a fan of Love Me if You Dare (if you haven't seen this film you need to see it NOW) you are going to be a fan of Volume 2.
Yes, Volume 2, I am both pleased and relieved to discover, is going to be my Alien 3. And no, I don't give a fuck that most people don't like Alien 3. I know there is a small, but growing, band of brave souls who realise (yes, realise) that 3 is, hands down, the best Alien movie - black, bitter, dispossessed and bleak as it is. Alien 3 is the Alien for grown-ups, people with a brain. And maybe that's what DANNY Volume 2 is, the DANNY for grown-ups, for readers whose concentration span can actually make it between sex scenes, who don't need love or romance to make sex palatable and who can understand that having no soul or heart is sometimes part of the human condition and need not, fictionally, be treated by Valium, alcohol or the writing of tragic verse.
I'm beginning to suspect that my least loved child, my pale sickly one who's never given me a moment's rest or peace, is about to blossom into a swan and do me proud.
And when I see its poor carcase ripped to shreds by unkind reviews I will comfort myself with the certain knowledge that, as in all things, sooner or later there will be fans shamefacedly, or even boldly, admitting, "Actually, I really like Volume 2. I think it's sad and poetic... in a weird, warped, kinky underage screwdriver-fucking kind of a way."
