Before "Downton Abbey"...There was SNOBS

Photo of Julian Fellowes © Giles Keyte

I still remember the day in late 2004 that an unexpected package arrived from St. Martin's Press. Inside was an advanced reading copy of SNOBS, the debut novel of Julian Fellowes. Stephen Fry's blurb on the back cover got me hooked: "A delicious thoroughbred delight, a guilty treat that is awake to every maddeningly and appallingly attractive nuance of English social life."

I gobbled up the book, then snagged a phone interview with Mr. Fellowes courtesy of my new best friends at St. Martin's. The piece ran in Bookreporter.com in Feb. 2005. It seems to have been pulled, but my interview with Mr. Fellowes about his second novel, PAST IMPERFECT, is still there. Fans of Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess in "Downton" will enjoy Lady Uckfield in SNOBS (soon to be rereleased with a new cover, per today's NYT.

BIOGRAPHY
At the tender age of 55 [in 2005], Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes has just had his first novel, SNOBS, published in the United States. Born in Egypt, where his father was in the Foreign Office, Fellowes grew up in England and attended Cambridge. After going to drama school, he was a “jobbing actor for ages” and appeared in more than 40 movies and TV shows. Fed up with going to auditions, Fellowes turned to writing and worked for a while for BBC TV, where he adapted LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY and THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER for the small screen. Subsequently he wrote a screenplay for Anthony Trollope’s THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS, which caught the eye of producer Bob Balaban, who was looking for a British society insider to write a screenplay for a murder mystery. “And so ‘Gosford Park’ was born, and so was the rest of my life,” Fellowes explains.

In addition to "Gosford Park,” Fellowes wrote the screenplay for “Vanity Fair” and the book for the new London musical "Mary Poppins." He also wrote and directed "Separate Lives," a film starring Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett, which opens in the U.K. in March. He describes it as “a little art house British movie about middle-class people being unhappily married, and so will doubtless be steamrollered in the Big, Bad World but I love it and I loved making it so I have no sad tales to tell.” Never one to sit idle, Fellowes is currently writing a family movie for Columbia pictures; SNOBS is in the works as a three-part series for British TV. He and his wife Emma Kitchener, a descendant of Lord Kitchener and a lady-in-waiting to Princess Michael of Kent, live with their teenage son in “Hardy country” near Dorchester.

INTERVIEW
January 17, 2005
Narrated by an actor with an aristocratic pedigree, SNOBS is a delicious social satire set in 1990s England, in which a beautiful middle-class young woman claws her way into British society by marrying a dim-witted earl. Though its setting is modern, the wry sensibility and gimlet-eyed deconstruction of social morays put SNOBS firmly in the tradition of Jane Austen, E.F. Benson (especially the “Lucia” series) and Anthony Trollope. Fellowes talks with Bookreporter.com’s Bella Stander about mental toughness, second chances and the tribulations of the acting life.

BLS: How did you come up with the idea for SNOBS?

JF: I live in two secret worlds: show business and high society. People know them from magazines but not from the inside. I thought it would be fun to go into those worlds in a reasonably clear-seeing vein.

When I was a young man, I came from the bottom end of the landed gentry. Now I get the glad hand; in those days I made up the extra--the one who gets invited when someone else can’t make it. At house parties I had the bedroom next to Nanny with the uncomfortable bed. When you're a minor player, you're in a better position to see people as they really are than if you're a grandee.

BLS: There are many references to Anthony Trollope in SNOBS. You write about Lady Uckfield, the mother-in-law of protagonist Edith, “She did not know what it was to be bored--or rather, to admit to herself that she was bored…In our sloppy century, one must at least respect, if not revere, such moral resolution. And after all, to borrow a phrase from Trollope, when all was said and done, ‘her lines had fallen in pleasant places.’”

JF: Yes, it means that without planning, your life has entered a pretty nice area. Mental toughness is becoming increasingly a class thing. The twentieth-century concept is that we should only consult our private wishes and always live in accordance with our personal tastes and desires. Trollope would regard that as a recipe for an ultimately disappointing life, and on the whole, I would agree with him. It is a false notion that the more rules we abandon, the freer and more fulfilled we will become. One only has to look around to see that a great many people are floundering because of the abolition of all rules.

SNOBS is a rather caustic look at the British upper classes and their obsession with rules. They don’t see themselves as others see them, to quote Burns. They believe they live in a world whose values are more broadly held than they are. However, I am unable to keep from a feeling of respect for their un-breaking standards. The Lady Uckfields of the world are still capable of self-discipline, which is the key virtue. Our education system avoids giving children a clue that the world is going to be a tough place. Adulthood comes as a horrible disappointment to them, because they believed that the whole thing was going to plop into their lap.

One of the most important elements of the book is that it’s about choice. All our lives, we’re the product of our choices. We’re all at the point that our choices have taken us. We can set off in a new direction, but what we can’t do is start again. The great advantage of America is its optimism; it’s always open to new ideas. You don’t drag your past around with you like a heavy chain.

BLS: Americans believe in second chances, in starting over. Miss Manners recently wrote, “This country was founded by people who weren’t doing well at home.”

JF: The notion that you can get a facelift and be 33 again is a false one. You have to take the consequences of your choices: That’s the one you married; that’s the mother or father of your children; this is the career you chose; you have to make this career work for you. You can’t spend the rest of your life regretting that you didn’t go to med school. You have to have the strength to realize and accept when there isn’t still time. I’m all for doing something for yourself and not allowing other people's expectations to steamroll you, but you should choose something where you have a reasonable expectation of fulfillment.

BLS: That’s certainly hard when you’re an actor. You get rejected all the time.

JF: This business continually tells you you're nothing until you start thinking you are, and finally you collaborate in your own humiliation. That’s the horrible truth of it. The great challenge of acting is to hold onto your own self-worth despite constant attack. Actors have my sympathy. A lot of them don’t hold on. The only real protection is to have people believe in you.

When our son Peregrine was maybe four, I was leaving for an audition for a commercial. Emma had gotten stuck in traffic and I had to take him with me. They were totally hostile to this little boy and this poor actor who had to take him in. This was one of those key moments. I thought, I don’t have to involve my child and myself in this. I am too old to justify myself to people I don’t even like! That was the last audition I ever did for a commercial. I retook ownership of myself and my own dignity. It was a curative, positive step for me. However, I’m not saying that everyone who turns down commercial auditions will go on to write a screenplay and get an Oscar.

BLS: What was the reaction of your society friends and acquaintances to SNOBS? Did any of them think you were betraying your class?

JF: There certainly were mixed feelings as to whether or not I had, in some way, betrayed my own kind by holding them up to ridicule. Of course, lots of people thought they had sat for the portraits--although they were mostly wrong. Characters, as you know, are usually an amalgam of different acquaintances and seldom drawn from a single model. Having said that, there were one or two pretty close depictions, and one person in particular was very annoyed. "Really!" she said. "A lifetime of avoiding the newspapers, and now look!" Although, in my defense, I never gave away her identity.

At the risk of vanity, I would say the accuracy of the book was what irritated them most. Like politicians or show-folk, toffs usually shrug off any criticism of themselves in fiction by pointing out the inaccuracies which demonstrate that the author cannot have had a close view. One senior aristocrat was reported as having said, "The problem with SNOBS is you can't fault it." An old pal telephoned with the greeting, "It's a wonder to me you have any friends left!" However, all in all, I would say more of them were amused to find their world in print than were offended. For which I am heartily grateful.

BLS: Will your screenplay of THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS be made? It certainly should be, as Lizzie Eustace is a character for the ages. I saw shades of her in Edith.

JF: No, "Eustace" is still looking for a home. You're quite right about Lizzie. I always think of that trio--Becky Sharp, Lizzie Eustace and Scarlett O'Hara--as being identical triplets, and I love them all.

Strange & Beautiful: Kevin Wilson & THE FAMILY FANG

The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson’s debut novel from Ecco Press, opens with:

Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief. "You make a mess and then you walk away from it," their daughter, Annie, told them.

And what a mess Caleb and Camille Fang have made of Annie and her younger brother Buster! Labeled “Child A” and “Child B,” from infancy they were pressed into service—not always willingly, or even wittingly—as key players in their parents’ notorious performance art pieces.

Having attended art school and hung around the Manhattan art/music scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I came of age with people like Caleb and Camille Fang. I was curious how Kevin Wilson managed to capture them and their milieu with such piercing, tragicomic accuracy....
More at Wild River Review

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Lionel Stander (center) in "The Big Show-Off"

My father would have been 103 years old today (the simplest date of all: 1/11/11). My latest acquisition of Lionel Stander memorabilia is a publicity still from The Big Show-Off, released in January 1945. I haven't seen it, but per the synopsis it seems to be a typical Republic Pictures "B" movie. Its one claim to fame is that it stars Dale Evans just before she hitched up with Roy Rogers.

I visited my mom and stepfather in Maine two weeks ago. While I was doing my morning stretches, I suddenly noticed a book, which I'm sure had been on the same shelf for 20 years: BUILDING A CHARACTER.

"Huh," I thought. "This might be useful in writing fiction." (I've been working on The Great American Potboiler, in fits and starts, for several years.)

I pulled the book down, and saw that the author was Constantin Stanislavski, inventor of "The Method" espoused by Jacob & Stella Adler, and countless other of Dad's actor friends. I opened it and was surprised to see that it was from the New York Public Library's Bloomingdale Branch, on West 100th St.

Even more surprising, my father's temporary library card was in the pocket, with our old West End Avenue address and phone number--proof that he had indeed moved back in with Mom and me. The book was borrowed Dec 16, 1961, and due on Jan 26, 1962. The overdue fine is 5¢ "per calendar day." That's almost $900 by now, so this is a very valuable book.

I felt a mental connection with Dad when I started reading BUILDING A CHARACTER: this was a book that he went out of his way to read. The Dewey card is stuck between the first two pages of Chapter Four: "Making the Body Expressive." Did Dad get bored and stop there? That chapter is a bit of a slog. But he was such a voracious reader--often a book per day--and Stanislavski's work so important that I'd like to think he read all the way through.

As luck would have it, today I found a bit on YouTube from "The Danny Kaye Radio Show," in which Kaye hilariously explains the Stanislavski Method to my father, who was a regular on the show. What I miss most about Dad is his voice, which is like no other. (I've never heard a credible imitation. When I was little my mother took me to the doctor because my voice was hoarse. Turned out I was trying to speak like Daddy.) So it's wonderful to be able to hear him long after his death--and long before my birth. He gets a few lines to set up the bit, then it's all Danny Kaye. Listen:

Timeless Truths in Fiction

He offered the honest terms that a sound concern and an honest man had to offer. But that was not what people wanted nowadays. They wanted their hypothetical arrangements, their wild rumors, their manipulated booms with nothing behind it all but hot air....He could see them now at that very moment--all these many-colored and frivolous articles of fashion which captivated the world on the persons of equally frivolous young girls.

How fresh and contemporary, eh? This is from the 1931 edition of GRAND HOTEL by Vicki Baum, published in Germany in 1929 as MENSCHEN IM HOTEL ("People in a Hotel"). There's one thing that's dated, though: the casual use of n*gger in the narrative. Blech.

Oh, and Greta Garbo's famous line, "I want to be alone," was lifted right from the book.

Quotes for a Month

Eek! Did I really not post at all in August? I was busy and distracted; some day I'll tell you about it. In the meantime, here are some choice nuggets I've come across in the past month. (And yes, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm an Anglophile.)

From Eyes on the Prize by Hilary Mantel, winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize for WOLF HALL, and whose memoir GIVING UP THE GHOST I'm happily devouring:

You don’t ask a plumber, what makes you plumb? You understand he does it to get his living. You don’t draw him aside and say, “Actually I plumb a bit myself, would you take a look at this loo I fitted? All my friends say it’s rather good.”...

I think there is one kind of writer who might be scalped and skinned by the demands the prize imposes, and that is the writer who finds public performance difficult, who has failed to create a persona he can send out to do the show....Generally, it seems to me, authors are better at presenting themselves than they were ten years ago. Festivals flourish, we get more practice; you could give a reading somewhere every week of the year if you liked. For me the transition between desk and platform seems natural enough. I think of writing fiction as a sort of condensed version of acting and each book as a vast overblown play. You impersonate your characters intensively, you live inside their skins, wear their clothes and stamp or mince through life in their shoes; you breathe in their air. “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” Of course she is. Who else could she be?

From OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE, the latest novel by Scarlett Thomas (my other new favorite author), which should get a prize for book design:

You can identify someone who works in publishing because they tell every anecdote as if for the first time, with the same expression as someone giving you a tissue that they have just realised has probably already been used. [p67]

Almost everyone who came along to spend the week [at the writers' retreat] in the hotel in Torquay seemed to have the idea that all novels possessed the same sort of value, and took roughly the same amount of effort from the author, and that Tolstoy was a 'a novelist' in the same way that the latest chick-lit author was 'a novelist'. 'How do you even begin to write eighty thousand words?' someone would always ask, admiringly. And I'd always explain that 80,000 words is not that much, really, and that you could do it in eight weekends if you really wanted to, using Aristotle's Poetics as an instruction manual. Making the 80,000 words any good is the hard bit: making them actually important. [p115]

Quote for the Ages

...novels should not be honest. They are a pack of lies that are also a set of metaphors; because the lies and metaphors are chosen and offered shape and structure, they may indeed represent the self, or the play between the unconscious mind and the conscious will, but they are not forms of self-expression, or true confession.

--Colm Toibin, New York Times Book Review

Roundup

Unused illustration for The Yellow Book, by Aubrey Beardsley

Tess Gerritsen explains "Why the hell won't they review my book?!!!" (She neglects to mention that the Washington Post reviews crime novels every Monday.)

Susan Henderson gives The Truth About Blurbs at The Nervous Breakdown.

Following in the footsteps of Lazlo Toth, Sean Ferrell tells how to get an author blurb, in four installments. Part 1: Paul Auster. Part 2: Thomas Pynchon.

And then there's Slush Pile Hell. My favorite: July 6.

Bellylaugh of the Day

Trailer for Gary Shteyngart's SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY. Take notes; it's filled with bons mots.

Roundup

On Booksquare:
The Future of Print
(Disclosure: Kassia Kroszer has spoken at my Book Promotion 101 workshops in L.A.)

On Huffington Post:
One Author's Journey From Twitter-Clueless To Organizing A 48-Writer Social Media Giveaway
For all her raving about Twitter, author Leah Stewart omitted her username: @leahcstewart. And she states that Twitter is "like going to a writers' conference without the booze and ill-considered affairs." Perhaps that's true for her, but some of us (my lips and keyboard are sealed as to who) are having a Real Swell Time.

On Editorial Ass:
The Mystical Blue Yonder (Or, Book Publicity)

On The Book Publicity Blog:
How do you track online “buzz”?

Just for fun (and thought), on "The Daily Show" website:
Women of The Daily Show Speak

So You Want to Publicize Your Book?

Beyond the Margins unveils their bright new site design along with this: Toot It, Don’t Blow It: Interview with Book Promotion Expert Bella Stander. Included: My list of what should be on an author website.

On SheWrites, Lori Tharps (whom I met at this year's VaBook Festival), offers Countdown to Publication: My PR To Do List for her new novel, SUBSTITUTE ME.

Fun with Books

Diamonds Are a Reader's  Best Friend
Stephen Parris is promoting his debut novel The Tavernier Stones with an "armchair treasure hunt" that offers a 1-carat diamond for the lucky winner. See tavernierstones.com.

Per Booklist: Parris's "odd-couple protagonists (John Graf, the Amish cartographer, and David Freeman, the gemologist and jewel thief) make an interesting pair of heroes, and their jaunty relationship gives the novel an agreeable, lighthearted feel. The story itself, which involves a race against time...is intricate without being annoyingly elaborate."

Miss Austen Forever!
This just in from Laurie Viera Rigler, author of the delightful novels Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict:

I have some exciting news to share. There's a new comedy web series inspired by my Austen Addict novels, called SEX AND THE AUSTEN GIRL. In it, my two protagonists face off over the pros and cons of life and love and being a woman in Regency England vs. 21st century L.A.

SEX AND THE AUSTEN GIRL premieres on the broadband network Babelgum.com on May 17. In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy a peek at the teaser trailer:

Quote of the Week

"I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in."

--Patti Smith, JUST KIDS

My Wildest Interview Ever:Philip Smith on WALKING THROUGH WALLS

In the 1950s, dashing Lew Smith and his chic blonde wife Esther would go out on the town to drink cocktails and “listen to Dean Martin or laugh at Shecky Greene.” As Miami’s “only heterosexual decorator,” Lew catered to clients ranging from jet-setting socialites to the dictator of Haiti.

It was unusual enough that a Jew who fled pogroms in Poland should become the go-to guy for Miami home décor. But Lew’s life took an even stranger turn in the 1960s. By the end of the decade, he had become a psychic healer under the tutelage of spirit guides.

All this makes for a good story. And more than 20 years after his father’s death, artist Philip Smith wrote it.
More at Wild River Review

Photo: Philip Smith & one of his paintings.

Julian Fellowes Talks About PAST IMPERFECT

Photo © Giles Keyte

PAST IMPERFECT opens with its anonymous narrator, a member of the minor aristocracy, being contacted by Damian Baxter, an ex-friend from Cambridge whom he hasn’t seen in decades. Thus begins a journey that contrasts the naïve debutantes and would-be debonair beaux of the London Season of 1968 with their surprisingly altered (or not) selves 40 years later.

Reached by phone in Chicago on Halloween morning, Julian Fellowes observed to freelance writer Bella Stander that “Lake Michigan is like an enchanted sea around a fairy castle.” Later that day, From Time to Time, which he produced, directed and wrote, was screened at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. Starring Maggie Smith, the picture went on to win the Best of Fest Award and two other prizes.... more at BookReporter.com

IN MY FATHER'S SHADOW: Orson Welles's Daughter Speaks

"Ignore your children and they will be obsessed with you for life."—Alain de Botton

From the moment I saw In My Father’s Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles in the Algonquin Books fall catalog, I knew that I must read the book and speak to author Chris Welles Feder. As the daughter of actor Lionel Stander (a contemporary of Welles), I wanted to learn how Feder managed to survive with—and more often, without—a famous, larger-than-life father.

A few days before she took off for California to start her book tour, I reached Feder by phone in her New York City home. The voice that greeted me was so youthful, I found it hard to believe it was coming from a 71-year-old. I started off by asking why she wrote In My Father’s Shadow....

Read more at Wild River Review

Photo of Chris Welles Feder © Gregory Downer

No Brian, You Don't Always Have to Look on the Bright Side

On "The Daily Show" last week, Jon Stewart interviewed Barbara Ehrenreich (my new hero) about her new book, BRIGHT-SIDED: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

She brought the house down when she tartly declaimed:
"I never think delusion is OK."

My sentiments exactly.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barbara Ehrenreich
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Other People's News

Our house goes on sale tomorrow & I've been too crazy busy to write anything more than the occasional blurt on Twitter. So here's stuff from/about other people:

Virginia friend & author Mollie Bryan is Off to Denver. Tomorrow we'll meet up with a big group at the Literary Ladies Luncheon. On Saturday afternoon I'll be at Wen Chocolates, where Mollie's going to spread "a little more of that pie love" in an event for her 2nd book, MRS ROWE'S LITTLE BOOK OF SOUTHERN PIES (Ten Speed). With FREE PIE!

In NYC, BP101 alum Matthew Cody met kids from the Thalia Book Club at Random House and signed galleys of his forthcoming YA novel, POWERLESS. Read about it on the Symphony Space blog.

Sucess Story

Woohoo! Book Promotion 101 workshop alum Kelly McMasters just informed me that her book, WELCOME TO SHIRLEY: A Memoir of an Atomic Town, tops the Oprah Book Club list of Addictive True Stories.

Kelly is the co-director of the KGB Nonfiction Reading Series, and teaches writing at Columbia and mediabistro.

Watch for These Books

Look what some of my YA clients have been up to!

Katie Alender, BAD GIRLS DON'T DIE


Tanya Egan Gibson, HOW TO BUY A LOVE OF READING


Fran Cannon Slayton, WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS

Out on the Town (up the block)

Agent Kristin Nelson, author Jamie Ford & yours truly, channeling Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton & Ginger Baker (at bottom).

Jamie Ford, author of the new bestseller HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET, had a reading at Denver's Tattered Cover on Tuesday evening. His agent, Kristin Nelson, hosted a reception beforehand at Encore Restaurant next door.

Naturally I was at both events, because:

1. I consulted with Jamie last year.
2. I am the Party Girl.
3. I live 130 paces from the TC/Encore--didn't even have to cross the street.
   

More than 60 people came to the reception, then packed Jamie's reading and bought lotsa books.

Note to agents:
Host receptions for each of your authors when they do events in your hometown. It doesn't cost all that much, and is a swell way to bump up book sales (and maybe get your clients on a local bestseller list), plus have some fun. And it's all tax-deductible!

Note to authors:
You don't have to do much--if any--reading at your readings. The idea is to be entertaining. Jamie read for all of 5 minutes, spoke for 25, with the rest of the time for Q&A. And the audience ATE IT UP.

Last week I went to a "reading" by Jacqueline Winspear, out on tour for her new Maisie Dobbs mystery, AMONG THE MAD. Every seat was taken, the audience was rapt and Winspear didn't read a single word from the book. In fact, she said precious little about it, other than that there's an explosion and some of the action takes place in a madhouse. She mostly talked about World War I, its aftermath in the UK (the series begins in 1929; it's 1931 in the current book) and about her grandfather, a veteran of the Battle of the Somme who was picking shrapnel out of his legs into his seventies.