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| Big School Home | Read a Chapter | Readers' Reviews | BUY BIG SCHOOL | Geedon Bruce chats with the author |
InsideCornerBook's Geedon Bruce talks to Craig Dubya about Big School … The book's genesis is to be found in the author's 24-year teaching career in English secondary schools “I started out with the basic idea of working on the tension between a new guy taking over a big, important secondary school with these new educational ideas, and the staff. And pretty much straight away I had the ending. So I just had to make the journey from the first day of the school year to the event that climaxes the story.” GB: If that's the ‘basic idea,' how did you develop it? Where did you take it? Well, I knew that this was only going to be the main thing driving the narrative – and that I would inevitably deal with the issue in schools of the new technocratic, soulless approach to education – and that the meat of the book was also going to be Tim's story and the relationships he developed or got involved in at the school. GB: I think you'd better tell us something about Tim… Tim is the character who narrates the story. Big School is about Tim's first term as a secondary school teacher, he's 28 and he's had a chequered and somewhat unusual life to this point: he's lived on both sides of the Atlantic, he's spent years of his life hiding from work studying English up into his mid-20s in getting his PhD, and to some extent he's been hiding from people. So his first term in teaching is like his ‘coming out.' He's finally accepted that he has to get out into life and participate. But though you get plenty on his internal life and his romantic life, he is also a key observer of the drama that unfolds at this school, Peggy Lane . And to some extent a participant. GB: Which brings in the Michael Peniston story. Exactly. Michael is the guy who on the same day Tim starts his English job, starts his career as Peggy Lane 's new headteacher. His new plans for Peggy Lane , when initiated, unleashes one half of the drama in the book. GB: How does he ‘unleash' this drama? Michael functions simply, and well, I think, as your archetypal ‘baddie.' He's very much a modern managerial man, full of jargon and all these new technocratic ideas in education. He's pompous and voraciously ambitious, and chronically insensitive to those below him in the chain of command, so he is just bound to arouse the opposition of the staff – some of them anyway. Especially with Sef around. GB: Yes, the amazing Sefton Demmler: where did he come from? [Sefton Demmler is Michael Peniston's nemesis – an English teacher of long experience at the school with whom the new head has a memorable encounter on Day 1 of the new term] Sef, I suppose, thinking about it, is an idealised version of a father-figure without the hugs and kisses. He's a guru for Tim, but something more too. While I was writing it, Sef came to represent God for me at times: or maybe he was God for Tim – I have to say, I didn't develop that: there were enough themes coming out of the story anyway without going deeply into religion. But I tried to give him – make him more human. He has to be fallible, either he is in danger of being too God-like a figure. But I wanted Tim to have this incredibly wise person available to him. Don't ask me why – I just intuitively wanted Sef there, who knew so much and who almost reluctantly guides Tim along the path. GB: How much of there of you in Tim? A certain amount. This is my first novel so I was feeling my way right through the story from beginning to end. Although Tim has a very different personality to mine he's quiet; quiet in the staff room, quiet in most company; a guy who only comes to life in the presence of people he feels he knows really well - I'm not a quiet guy like that, as my family and everyone I've ever worked with will tell you. I probably didn't try hard enough to establish him as a totally separate entity to me. I don't know – perhaps I let my own reactions feed into his head as he went through his journey a little too much, or maybe it makes the book read better. If Tim was a complete stranger to me, perhaps the story wouldn't have flowed so easily. GB: Is Tim's story a serious one? Intensely so; it's not far short of life and death for him, his struggle to win the girl he loves and to find some peace of mind. I was going to say ‘some basic peace of mind' but finding peace of mind is of course, very difficult. But I find that when I write, I can't help finding comedy in what I'm describing. It seems to lurk everywhere. Having said that, Tim isn't humorous very often; most of the time other characters are producing the comedy because Tim is too preoccupied with his problems. GB: There's a terrific scene – because Big School is very cinematic, I think – between Tim and Sef, at Tim's house, where Sef has finally decided to stand still in his life and help Tim sort out the personal mess that he's in. And it's almost unbearable to read Tim wrestling with his big moment, his big chance, for Sef to tell him what to do to make everything right. Was that a difficult one to write? Yes, very much so. Apart from the first chapter, that I had a long, war-like relationship with, it all wrote itself very easily. But Friend of Spirit was awkward in one or two places. When you're writing a conversation, you almost put your head up in the air, or into the wind, and try to hear what they're saying to each other – and I could hear the conversation clearly and wrote it down. But their conversation went on for longer than the chapter needed, so I had to edit it, and that was difficult. In real life, Tim and Sef would have sat drinking tea and talking for about a half an hour, minimum, and that is a lot of dialogue. That chapter is the longest in the book anyway, so I had to find a place to end my re-telling of their conversation, so as to keep the story tight and pacey. I couldn't do a Dostoyevsky and have 30 pages where Sef sets out the author's philosophy through a character. Sef is in a hurry to get somewhere and he breaks his own rules to sit with Tim Weaver for half an hour to try to put him straight. And Sef is his own man: he's not me. His philosophy of life isn't mine, necessarily. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From Chapter 15 – Tim has at last got the chance to get his would-have guru Sefton Demmler at his village cottage home to sort out the mess he thinks his life is in. But the conversation isn't going to plan…This excerpt begins mid-conversation with Sef telling Tim that… “ …Nothing worth having in life... ” “ Comes easy. ” “ Correct. Nothing. ” “ So I have to fight for Jez, but I have to work at it a little, is that it? ” “ I don ' t know what ‘ it ' is. ” He heard me tut in disgust this time, but when I looked up at his face again his eyes were dancing with light. “ But you know Jez would be good for me, don ' t you? ” “ I ' ve no idea. No, really, I don ' t. She may be, or she may be the last one you need. ” “ But I want her. ” “ Okay, so... ” He waved his right hand in the air in a rising, fluttering gesture of suggestion. “ Thanks for that, ” I said. “ Look, you ' re a good man, you know you are. But... ” It was like he was talking about someone else. “ ...you ' ve had problems in your life... ” Thanks Sef, for making me want to cry. “ How the hell would you know that? ” “ It ' s written all over you. Don ' t look like that. ” I can if I like. “ Understand this: you simply don ' t need to be unhappy. ” “ Everyone ' s unhappy. Aren ' t they? ” “ And your point is? ” “ It ' s the human condition. To be unhappy. I mean, even you ' re unhappy, look at the row you ' ve just had. ” But Sef was anything but sad looking. “ You think happiness is not possible? ” “ I don ' t know. I really don ' t and you can ' t blame me for thinking that. I ' m an American Lit. guy for God ' s sake. But can I ask you one thing: why me? Why are you helping me? ” “ Why not you? ” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GB: There's a large cast of characters in this story… Yes, indeed. When you're working in a school you're surrounded by a very large number of people every moment of the day. In my last school there were 1900 students and over 100 staff. So for Big School to have some naturalism, to give it the feel of a real school and a real staff room, I put quite a large number of people on the stage, as it were. It feels good to me… GB: Who are your favourites? Oof, that's an unfair question. They're my children so I love ‘em all! I don't have favourites… GB: But… I have a very soft spot for Les, because he makes me laugh. When “Michael has burned his budgie” appeared on the page in front of me I laughed so much. I love nonsense talk. Always loved Stanley Unwin. And Monty Python when they went down completely nonsensical roads. Les is my unsung hero. Naturally, though, I have little or no time for Michael, nor Malcolm. Though I do care about Susan. I do worry about her, still. GB: It seems to me that by the end of the book there's a real affection there that you have for them… Oh, yes, as I said, I love them. Most of them. They were real to me by the end. This is my first novel, and my first attempt at writing a work of fiction, so I had no idea what to expect, but I found out that it's true what I'd heard listening to other novelists talking on the radio and so on, that your characters really are real to you as a writer. Or at least, these are. GB: Where does this love come from? Blimey, good question…um, I think it goes back to my first school as a teacher, in Orpington in Kent . I was there for seven years and the staff room there was a really happy one: there were about 70 staff but we were like one big unit, really. I've not experienced anything like it since. Even though I used to get fed up about stuff there, like you do, the staff room was always a place I could go to and have a laugh and feel, um, safe? Secure. There was a nice sense of security about it. It was lovely. GB: So are any of those people in Big School ? No. Maybe shreds or pieces of one or two characters from those days sneaked into the people in Big School but no more than that. GB: You said you're not like Tim, but surely it's too tempting, when you have a character narrating your story, to resist using him to say the things you want to say to your audience? No, you can use any character to do that if that's what you want to do. It's more that you get so intensely involved in the ‘I' character that your own thinking, your own persona seeps into the character without you being able to stop it. For example, when Tim is trying to make sense of Jezebel's behaviour fairly early on in the book, it's very hard not to react as you would; even though as you write, you try to think out or to feel Tim's reactions, you can't help feeling that subconsciously it's you reacting. I think this is something I'm going to have to work harder at, perhaps, when I write more fiction. GB: Does the town where the book is set, ‘Yarrow' actually exist? There is a Yarrow village somewhere in Yorkshire , I think, but the town I set the story in does exist, it just isn't called ‘Yarrow.' GB: What is it called? I'm not saying, but if you're from the right part of Yorkshire , it's dead easy to work out. And even if you're not, there's a line near the beginning that's a dead giveaway if you're English and old enough to be familiar with a particular old song. I should perhaps tell you that a couple of strange things happened when I went to find my setting. I decided I wanted to set the story in Yorkshire , so I buzzed off one Wednesday morning from home to find it. I knew that north of Leeds , where I'd been to university; there were a number of likely candidates. The first one I stopped at, I got out of the car, paid for the car parking ticket, and flagged down this girl of about 19 immediately. I wanted to find out what the local school situation was. I told her what I was doing and she said, ‘Well, there's just one school in town that everybody goes to.' And she told me what it was called, and then she said, ‘they've just got a new headmaster this term.' That gave me a bit of a shiver down the back because I'd already decided that the story would start with both Tim and the new head starting together at Peggy Lane Grammar. So I got directions to the school from her, and when I turned into the school road, after about 40 yards there was a road going off to the right – and there directly in front of me was the sign: ‘Sefton Close.' I nearly fainted, I can tell you – it almost completely freaked me out. Remember I hadn't written a word at that point, I'd only made about five decisions about the book: one of them was that Tim's mentor or guru at the school was going to be called ‘Sefton Demmler.' So that was totally weird, but in an exciting way. GB: Did you think someone, somewhere was trying to tell you something? I'm quite a believer in fate; but then again, I'm just as tempted to believe that this means the book is going to completely bomb. That somebody somewhere is about to have a big laugh at my expense. GB: Overall, did you find writing Big School hard going? No. Not really. Not in terms of speed in terms of getting words on ‘paper.' But it did take me a while to find my voice. The first three chapters were very much only so-so in retrospect. Remember this was an experiment for me, really, writing fiction – I had no idea that I would go the distance and actually produce a whole novel or whether the thing would be a disaster. Anyhow, I wrote chapter 4, the dialogue-only scene between Michael and Sef in Michael's office, and for the first time, I thought, ‘That was perhaps good – that had some energy.' Then when I got to Tim's first lesson, the thing began to take off – I could feel something had happened in the writing. It changed, became much more confident. And then once I'd found that level, where you're doing something right, or a lot right, I found I stayed there. Or got better. I think the writing gets stronger and stronger, as it goes on. GB: That brings up the question of re-writes. Did you go back and re-write the chapters leading up to “The Lesson?” Not to a large extent, except chapter one; that I did completely renovate. That I gutted and re-gutted until I thought I'd never get something I was happy with to start the book. Eventually, just through trial and error, I got something I thought did the job. This was about three years after I started the first draft. But as for the other early chapters, where only about 10% of the original text of chapter one is left in the final version, the other early chapters are pretty much unchanged apart from polishing up sentence construction and so on – basic stuff really. And the story is absolutely the same as the one in the first draft. GB: We'll see…I suppose quite a lot of people are going to think that the ending is pretty far fetched… I want to tell them that the key scene that causes the drama to end does happen in schools. In fact, I got the idea from a headmaster I used to work with who told me that this very thing happened, only it wasn't a headmaster, it was a PE teacher. But I figured, what the hell, I could see a headmaster doing that, especially when there are some extremely strange things occurring out there in the everyday world in this country, even as we speak. GB: What was the best thing about writing the novel? (laughs) Realising I could actually write one! I suppose anyone can write a novel, so what I mean is, realising that I could write a long story which worked – where I was able to sustain a sense of drama across 120 000 words or whatever it is, and that I was actually able to create drama in the first place, in the sense of being able to invent a story that had the legs to take it right across a proper narrative arc. Until I actually saw it unfolding right in front of me on the screen, I didn't know I could do it! Apart from that, it was realising that a story like BS actually writes itself. I'd heard writers use that term a lot of times before over the years but I thought it was pretentious bullshit until I found exactly this happening to me. GB: Can you give us an example of what you mean? Sure. The most obvious one is what happened to the story when something makes Tim really angry and he goes out in a rage and behaves in a way that is somewhat out of character. Then as a result of that, his story in the novel completely changes. I'd better be careful here just in case someone's reading this that hasn't read the book – I hate it when I know what happens in a book or a film before I've read it. I had no idea that this was going to happen until it did right on the screen in front of me. In fact, I had no idea that Tim was going to get angry in the first place! And here was what we're talking about happening: I suddenly realised that once you set up some good, real characters in a story, and you get really tuned in…and in tune with them, they'll talk to each other for you – you'll hear what they say in your head and all you had to do was write it down. That was amazing, as was watching Tim going flying out of his front door in a manic huff, hiring a car and driving off to his adventure in Leeds . It was lucky he's not a worse driver or he might have killed himself and I wouldn't have had a book! GB: Can you tell us a little about these ‘new ideas' in education that gave the book its starting point? In the last five years or so there's been a dramatic increase in the checking and monitoring of students and the checking and monitoring of teachers. They've been bludgeoned over the head with the target philosophy, so now, to get pay increases, they have to achieve a certain level of exam results and show that they can teach to a certain standard. There a whole load of things: committees and working groups being created. GB: Some would say there's nothing wrong with teachers having to prove they can teach effectively… Good point; the problem is that the system puts tremendous pressure on people who have a hard, stressful job anyway. And there are all the problems with headteachers being biased and other teachers who have to observe teachers who are literally putting on a performance in order to earn extra money, having a view on that lesson that the teacher doesn't agree with. GB: And you've been involved in all that… Oh, yes. I was told by my last headteacher that I couldn't have a pay rise because the lesson that I had observed didn't have enough ticks in the ‘high standard' column. Now: I could have argued, because this was a grey area – well, hugely controversial actually – but what I knew at the time that he didn't was that I was about to hand in my letter of resignation about two weeks later. So I didn't give a shit, really, that I wasn't going to pass. GB: Because you weren't going to be there… Exactly - I wouldn't be around to pick up the extra cash anyway. GB: So, how much of all this is in Big School ? Some – enough to make the reader aware of what's happening, which I could through the new head, Michael, who arrives at the school at the same time as my narrator, Tim Weaver; I made him into the baddie, bringing in these new ideas. And from that develops some of the most important drama in the story, the attempt by the people Tim becomes friends with at the school to fight Michael. GB: So, is Big School predominantly about school politics? No – it's just a part of Big School . To be honest, the politics of this wasn't at the top of my priority list when I wrote it. I was actually much more interested in Tim as a character and the major concerns of his life at this time… GB: Which were? …and building them into an interesting story. Finding a place in the world. Looking for anchors. It's only recently that I realised exactly what Tim is looking for. I thought it was love and a father, but I was listening to someone talking on the radio the other week about this stuff and he used the term ‘anchors' and I realised that he'd put it better than I had in my head. We all need – or most of us do at least – anchors to keep us on a stable footing: the love of someone; a family; a job or career. Tim arrives at this school, Peggy Lane , with none of these: he's floating free and suffering because of it. GB: Big School is very funny; is it a comedy? I hate having to answer this question. The early signs from readers are that they do find it very amusing, which is a relief because they're supposed to. In fact, the best thing that's happened to me in a long while was sitting in our school work room last summer one slow morning just after I'd given chapter 1 to a colleague to read. After a page or so she burst out laughing and kept going for the next 20 minutes ‘til she finished the chapter. It's always wonderful to find someone who gets your jokes. But the idea of Big School being pigeon-holed into a ‘comedy' would annoy the hell out of me. It's like life, for me: it's alternately very amusing and very serious. One minute you're howling with laughter in a staff room, the next, you're hearing of someone having a nervous breakdown, losing their father or going through a divorce. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From Chapter 17 – The Chief Inspector . History teacher Andy Crucial is holding court in the staff room on the recent scandal surrounding the under-15 football team manager, Chris Lampeter. “But the interesting thing here, Sid,” says Andy, but looking at all of us, “is that underneath all this, Rex rings up Michael Peniston to tell him what ' s ' appened, because lurkin ' in his unconscious mind, as Freud would tell you... ” “ Is that Freddie Freud, the Scarborough Dog Strangler? ” said Les. “ No, Les, it is not Freddie Freud, the Scarborough Dog Strangler. Nor is it Ethel Freud, the Mablethorpe Saucepan Swallower, f-huh-huh. Sigmund, Les, as you well know. ” “And not Mitzi La Freude, the…” “ Shut up, Les! ” say four people around the table. “ As I was sayin ' , in the deep recesses of his unconscious, he ' s thinkin ' , ‘ Cor, slap a delicious, boyish young buttock with a towel! What I ' d really like to do is give that gorgeous little hump of soft white flesh a gentle stroke or two, then take it home for who knows what.' But he ' s not aware of this, and in his mind ' s confused state, he thinks what he wants to do is shop our Chris, when really he feels deep-seated guilt and self-loathin ' because of ' is latent desires. So basically, what he wants to do is punish himself, not Chris. Therein lays an even greater tragedy, I think we can all agree. ” “ Thank you Billy Big Brain, ” said Rob Rodder. “ What a load of bollocks. ” “ No, buttocks, actually, Rob, f-huh-huh, ” says Andy, taking no offence at this put down, because if he ' s nothing else, he ' s a thoroughly nice guy. GB: Most of the characters have very odd names; what's that all about then? Hmmm, I know. It's because about a couple of years ago I was reading novels and the characters all had names like ‘Jim Briggs,' ‘Alan Rogers' and ‘Maria Jones,' and I thought of their authors sitting in their offices at their keyboards coming up with these very ordinary and earnest names for their very serious books, and it suddenly just seemed ridiculous. It was as if the writer's were trying too hard to make them real, when as readers, we all know that we're reading made up stories. I mean, ‘come on!' And it seemed to me suddenly that the more earnest the names the characters were given, the less real they seemed to be. So when I wrote this I decided that most of the names would be eccentric, odd. So no one would be under any illusion that I thought I was doing anything other than making up a story. And though I've questioned myself about it, the thought I keep coming back to is that if Charles Dickens could get away with it…and actually, it was The Shipping News that made me go through with it – that book's full of silly names, and the publishers and the public seemed not to mind. GB: Isn't there a risk though, that this might detract from the serious elements in the book? Well it may, but for me, there's a kind of music in the names: Julian Preefer; Hetty Kiss; Fiona Twyford-Sounding. And I found that I liked the way the name gave weight to some of the characters. From Chapter 6, Big Game Hunters. The narrator is telling us about the reception Michael Peniston, new headteacher of The Peregrine Lane Grammar School, received on his first day. And already the benefits were beginning to accrue. Physics teachers, History teachers, French teachers, whatever teachers have come knocking on his constantly half-open door to pay their respects - homage really - to their leader, to their Peggy Lane Supremo. ‘ You have got to stop thinking like this, ' he says, actually out loud, admonishing himself with great seriousness, ‘ or you are going to make a bloody fool of yourself. Calm down. Think straight. Focus. ' But he is not wrong. This is exactly what they are doing. They respond to his welcomingly-modulated ‘ Come in 's with a reserved but smiling entrance and mouth respectful greetings. ‘ Hi, I thought I ' d just say ‘hello…' - Daphne Cloth, Textiles. ' Michael is, naturally, very keen to meet and greet, basking in this special attention. (Can you blame him?) Being new to the job, however, it is a moot question whether he is hip to the true social meaning of these micro events. Has it slipped under the neophyte radar that some of the smiles and ‘ I just wanted to say 's may have been, in just a few cases, a touch less than sincere? Jack Rush (Design Technology) comes by and shakes hands firmly and smiles as best he can while he takes his first shufti in close-up at the new gaffer. ‘ Lord love us, another bloody pen-pushing gimp in a posh suit, ' he says to himself, realising suddenly that he needs to scratch one of his bleeding piles. Dilly Kofner (Spanish) comes at the start of her free period to grin girlishly through strands of long, lustrous, Latin hair and wishes Michael ‘ every success in your new job, ' just beating Tamsin Cell to the punch. Tammy has made a detour from reprographics where she has just picked up 25 laminated copies of the structure of the eye, to deliver an opening salvo in her attempt to wiggle her way to any promotional post that might be in the offing this year: Literacy Coordinator, IT Development Officer (for Science), Deputy Head of Year (unpaid, if necessary), temporary assistant to the Citizenship Coordinator, part-time Washer of Ancillary Staff Clothing. Anything will do. Several others call to say ‘ good luck ' to try to insulate themselves from the negative fallout from any future mistakes or failings should they occur or become apparent: setting too much homework causing a parent to phone in and complain; producing a departmental budget overspend; calling someone's only son ‘a pillock' causing the irate father to march up to ‘that school ' to ‘have words'; forgetting to organise insurance for a day trip to the Bradford Museum of Photography, Film and Art; not setting enough homework so a parent writes a nasty letter to your head of faculty about your not stretching Jessica enough. There are many gaffes out there just waiting to be made. Mick Trance (PE) and Livvy Lovejohn (Drama) make their appearances because they know they were public enemies nos. 3 and 4 during the previous régime (Andrew Covely BSc [Oxon]) and want to make a fresh start. GB: Described them, you mean… ‘Tim' is a name for someone who lacks direction, and whose presence isn't as strong as it should be. ‘Rob Rodder' is very ‘Rob Rodder': a no- nonsense sort of bloke who's a bit too fond of his own groin. Some of this might operate at an unconscious level; a friend of mine said, ‘I like the way you called the headmaster ‘Peniston;' very clever. GB: Meaning? Meaning that as he's a bit of a prick, I'd used the Penis in Peniston to make that point. But I didn't. It was from ‘Penistone' as in the town the singer Kate Rusby has her business office. But in surnames like ‘Crucial' and ‘Nostrum' I was trying to use the written word to add information about each character's personality. ‘Nostrum' is an over-word piece of jargon from the Sociology world. ‘Crucial' is a rather earnest word I associate with socialists. But ‘Butter,' as in ‘Maurice Butter,' the head of Maths, I just liked the sound of it. As I did, ‘Les Person.' Before I knew it, the thing had taken on a life of its own and almost everyone in the book has a strange name. GB: Tell me about the Kate Rusby connection [Kate Rusby, for those outside this particular loop is England 's foremost folk singer]. I went to see her and her band play for the first time just as I was getting the ideas for the story together, in September 2002. I was so bowled over by the music I decided to use some of the information surrounding her to help give it some direction. GB: Such as? Such as ‘Peniston' as already mentioned, and the title. Although the very first title of the story was ‘ Big School ,' as in the school you go up to after primary school, I changed it to The Fairest of All Yarrow as a homage to my favourite Kate Rusby song. I also set the story not in the imaginary town of ‘Yarrow' but ‘Rusby,' but I ditched it after about a day. GB: It's a bit too close to home, isn't it…? Exactly. But I used Yarrow, and only ditched the Fairest of All Yarrow title at the last minute. GB: Because? Because it was crap, basically. It was too cumbersome; it wasn't slick enough. And of the likely candidates for the title, none of them lived in Yarrow. GB: So what's left of Kate Rusby? Just Peniston and the town of Yarrow , from her magnificent version of the traditional folk song, “the Fairest of All Yarrow.” And possibly the story wouldn't have been set in Yorkshire if I hadn't gone to see her at the Derby Assembly Rooms in September 2002. And then it would have become a different story – maybe only subtly, but maybe not. GB: Finally, what do you want your readers to get out of reading Big School ? Rule number one for me: entertainment; sheer enjoyment. If they find the book has something to say about modern life, or how to improve the living of it, then fantastic. But I want people to finish the thing, put it down and go, ‘what a ride that thing was.' GB: Craig, thanks. Only too happy to oblige, Geedon. |
