ten books i never wrote
During my teenage years, my mind brimming with ideas, I planned to write the following books.
1. Sov Staat Ireland.
This was about a Soviet Russian invasion of Ireland. In the opening scene, the Russians infiltrated the country on commercial airliners, just as they had done for real in Afghanistan in 1979. A coordinated terrorist onslaught was unleashed by the IRA acting as a fifth column for the Rooskies on government offices, police stations, army bases, etc etc. The Russians took control. The rest of the book was a shoot em up as the people fought back.
2. Hunter Hunted. An IRA terrorist assassin repents. He's hunted across Europe by the IRA and the British elite military unit the SAS. The title was later used in some television show.
3. General Kwan, The Scourge Of Vietnam. A counterblast to the anti Vietnam war films which were stock in trade at the time. General Kwan's communist army function as a virtual religious sect. They kidnap a white woman. Two school friends chase around the battle fields trying to rescue her. Lots of shooting and explosions. Characters were all drawn from my school, Newbridge College. A helicopter pilot was based on my history teacher Bill Walshe who went renegade and risked provoking the third world war by attacking a Russian ship clandestinely supplying the North Vietnamese communists. (The helicopter pilot in my book did this. Not the real Bill Walshe.) I got into mild trouble at school for doodling scenes from General Kwan The Scourge Of Vietnam in my Irish copybook along with Irish language phrases such as "Is leasc le General Kwan," and their attendant translations, in this instance "General Kwan is reluctant." In my doodles, I had given General Kwan a big sron. (Nose.) Miss Griffin, my teacher may have thought I had based him on her as she had a big sron too.
4. Games People Play. An actioner. Three friends get sucked into a war with the Mafia. The three each play different games in life, namely sports, women and cars. I inadvertently lifted the title from a book by some 1960's hippy sexologist.
5. Heelers Republic. A Star Wars rip off, with politics. The President of Earth based on me, rallies the planet to fight off alien attacks. Because the alien attacks are of a comparatively low intensity, there is a strong world wide peace movement arguing that the aliens are not a priority. I prevail in having parliament sanction limitless funding for a task force to fly to the aliens home planet and give them a taste of their own medicine. A military man based on my school friend Mugs Baines is given command of the task force. He flies to the alien star system, conquers it, conquers a few neighbouring star systems, and returns home. Meanwhile the President is sitting in his office on top of the world parliament sky scraper. The windows are open. The curtains are billowing. There is an impression of mental illness. A little wind direction instrument on the table whirs. The President's chief adviser, based on one of my Uncles, arrives to enquire what's going on. I tell him: "The wind is to the east. Napoleon is returning. Napoleon cannot serve. Napoleon must rule." The counsellor points out that I'm the democratically elected President of earth. I shake my head allowing him to see the full extent of my cowardice. The counsellor tries to persuade me to remain in power but eventually, disappointed, goes to leave. The President cries out: "Wait. I had to know your true mind on this." It's like the good bit in Macbeth where the lad says he can't be king because he is a worse scoundrel than Macbeth but he's only saying it to see, well, whatever. The wind from the open windows has stilled. Now the curtains billow inwards again. But from a new direction. The little weathervane instrument on the table swings around slowly to point in the opposite direction. Meanwhile the victorious army returns. The commander is shown into the President's office. They have some sort of epic debate on the merits of democracy over military rule. The President detonates some sort of an explosive device which obliterates the top floor of the world parliament and compels the people to find new leaders.
6. Knackers. The title is a pejorative word for street thugs in Ireland. It can also be a racist term for members of the travelling community. This story was a Death Wish rip off about a moderate middle of the road type of guy taking on the street gangs. Plot spoiler: He doesn't try to reform them.
7. The Lords Of Dublin. A crash and smash Mad Max rip off. Dublin cops take on the joyriders at their own game. Fighting them to a standstill in a serious of whap blam thud street encounters. The title is ripped off from a Pat Conroy book set in a military academy called The Lords Of Discipline. Pat Conroy went on to write the much less macho Prince Of Tides whose tag line "You will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free," was ripped off from the Bible. Not many people know that.
8. Gwyneth. A pro life thing. Gwyneth is a teenage girl who has a baby. Everyone she touches is touched by joy. Hardened cops, social workers, cynical urban oldies, etc etc.
9. Trail Of Sapphires. What a title, eh! It's set during World War Two. The Germans have developed atomic bombs and are racing to detonate them across the forward positions of the allied armies in Normandy and the Eastern Front. A bunch of commandos based as per usual on people I know race to stop them.
10. Bolonia State Of... My only proposed book length venture into the realms of humour. The opening line read: "Our prison was run by a Guerpo Alvarez, a bald psychotic loon with one eye, one arm, one leg and one testicle. We could have called him a lot of things but we just called him Old One Eye." I had ripped off this line from Mugs Baines.
11. Stunt Riders. Kids book. Intended as source material for a television cartoon. A bunch of children are super heroes whose abilities stem mainly from their bicycles which can fly and go really fast and so on.. The title was intended to have the resonances of the cartoon title Transformers and to have lent itself to a similar theme tune. Think: "Stunt riders, heroes in the skies," as opposed to "Transformers, robots in disguise." Subtle eh. The kids would be a cross section of kids with real lives, except when they're crime fighting on their bikes. Nice possibility of evoking various lives and interactions and kids problems and what have you. I mean I don't want the pseudo social realism of Grange Hill. But something that wll show real kids that real life is worth living even if you're a superhero who must protect his secret identity and pass certificate exams prior to making serious career choices and helping your mother feed the cat. So the characters will have stern teachers, bullies, nice teachers, teachers who are stern but only to bring out the best in them, harassed parents, groovy parents, stern harassed groovy parents everyday situations, the gamut of childhood worries, joys, adventures, along with super villains and c. Particularly c, The whole thing overlaid with life affirming humour. Dammit I'm beginning to think we should do this. Live action, not just a book or cartoon. And eventually a movie.
The Scum Are On The Streets... Actioner about yet another nice guy taking on the mafia and the IRA. Basically just another of my proposed Death Wish/Mad Max rip offs. It is a rum fact that the mafia and the IRA generally, and Mad Max and Charles Bronson in particular, seem to have figured to such a disproportionate degree in my early bouts of creativity.
None of these books were written. In the Summer of 1983, aged seventeen, I was cycling over the crest of a hill outside Kilcullen. At the bottom of the hill a car appeared. It was driven by a little old lady. Both of us had plenty of time to avoid a collission. She swerved. Unfortunately I swerved at exactly the same moment. Still plenty of time. She swerved back. Unfortunately I swerved back too. She swerved a third time. I swerved too. My last thought was: "Uh oh." I had no memory of the impact. I became conscious of something cold against my face. I lay there. I could hear voices shouting in alarm. They were saying: "Get up, get up, oh please get up." I realised the cold thing against my face was the road. I remember thinking to myself: "I could be badly hurt here. No need to open my eyes until I know if there's anything missing or hanging off." I lay there without pain. After some more shouting from the people around me, I opened my eyes. The people helped me stand up and drove me home. As we drove, I had something that seemed like a near death experience. I didn't see heaven. I saw my own life as it really was. I saw that everything I'd ever worried about was utterly irrelevant. Every oppression, every obsession, every fear, every anger. None of them mattered. None of them had any authority. It was a most profound feeling of detachment. And of course I saw my books. All of them. I saw that none of them mattered either. None of them were what I had been sent to accomplish.
1. Sov Staat Ireland.
This was about a Soviet Russian invasion of Ireland. In the opening scene, the Russians infiltrated the country on commercial airliners, just as they had done for real in Afghanistan in 1979. A coordinated terrorist onslaught was unleashed by the IRA acting as a fifth column for the Rooskies on government offices, police stations, army bases, etc etc. The Russians took control. The rest of the book was a shoot em up as the people fought back.
2. Hunter Hunted. An IRA terrorist assassin repents. He's hunted across Europe by the IRA and the British elite military unit the SAS. The title was later used in some television show.
3. General Kwan, The Scourge Of Vietnam. A counterblast to the anti Vietnam war films which were stock in trade at the time. General Kwan's communist army function as a virtual religious sect. They kidnap a white woman. Two school friends chase around the battle fields trying to rescue her. Lots of shooting and explosions. Characters were all drawn from my school, Newbridge College. A helicopter pilot was based on my history teacher Bill Walshe who went renegade and risked provoking the third world war by attacking a Russian ship clandestinely supplying the North Vietnamese communists. (The helicopter pilot in my book did this. Not the real Bill Walshe.) I got into mild trouble at school for doodling scenes from General Kwan The Scourge Of Vietnam in my Irish copybook along with Irish language phrases such as "Is leasc le General Kwan," and their attendant translations, in this instance "General Kwan is reluctant." In my doodles, I had given General Kwan a big sron. (Nose.) Miss Griffin, my teacher may have thought I had based him on her as she had a big sron too.
4. Games People Play. An actioner. Three friends get sucked into a war with the Mafia. The three each play different games in life, namely sports, women and cars. I inadvertently lifted the title from a book by some 1960's hippy sexologist.
5. Heelers Republic. A Star Wars rip off, with politics. The President of Earth based on me, rallies the planet to fight off alien attacks. Because the alien attacks are of a comparatively low intensity, there is a strong world wide peace movement arguing that the aliens are not a priority. I prevail in having parliament sanction limitless funding for a task force to fly to the aliens home planet and give them a taste of their own medicine. A military man based on my school friend Mugs Baines is given command of the task force. He flies to the alien star system, conquers it, conquers a few neighbouring star systems, and returns home. Meanwhile the President is sitting in his office on top of the world parliament sky scraper. The windows are open. The curtains are billowing. There is an impression of mental illness. A little wind direction instrument on the table whirs. The President's chief adviser, based on one of my Uncles, arrives to enquire what's going on. I tell him: "The wind is to the east. Napoleon is returning. Napoleon cannot serve. Napoleon must rule." The counsellor points out that I'm the democratically elected President of earth. I shake my head allowing him to see the full extent of my cowardice. The counsellor tries to persuade me to remain in power but eventually, disappointed, goes to leave. The President cries out: "Wait. I had to know your true mind on this." It's like the good bit in Macbeth where the lad says he can't be king because he is a worse scoundrel than Macbeth but he's only saying it to see, well, whatever. The wind from the open windows has stilled. Now the curtains billow inwards again. But from a new direction. The little weathervane instrument on the table swings around slowly to point in the opposite direction. Meanwhile the victorious army returns. The commander is shown into the President's office. They have some sort of epic debate on the merits of democracy over military rule. The President detonates some sort of an explosive device which obliterates the top floor of the world parliament and compels the people to find new leaders.
6. Knackers. The title is a pejorative word for street thugs in Ireland. It can also be a racist term for members of the travelling community. This story was a Death Wish rip off about a moderate middle of the road type of guy taking on the street gangs. Plot spoiler: He doesn't try to reform them.
7. The Lords Of Dublin. A crash and smash Mad Max rip off. Dublin cops take on the joyriders at their own game. Fighting them to a standstill in a serious of whap blam thud street encounters. The title is ripped off from a Pat Conroy book set in a military academy called The Lords Of Discipline. Pat Conroy went on to write the much less macho Prince Of Tides whose tag line "You will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free," was ripped off from the Bible. Not many people know that.
8. Gwyneth. A pro life thing. Gwyneth is a teenage girl who has a baby. Everyone she touches is touched by joy. Hardened cops, social workers, cynical urban oldies, etc etc.
9. Trail Of Sapphires. What a title, eh! It's set during World War Two. The Germans have developed atomic bombs and are racing to detonate them across the forward positions of the allied armies in Normandy and the Eastern Front. A bunch of commandos based as per usual on people I know race to stop them.
10. Bolonia State Of... My only proposed book length venture into the realms of humour. The opening line read: "Our prison was run by a Guerpo Alvarez, a bald psychotic loon with one eye, one arm, one leg and one testicle. We could have called him a lot of things but we just called him Old One Eye." I had ripped off this line from Mugs Baines.
11. Stunt Riders. Kids book. Intended as source material for a television cartoon. A bunch of children are super heroes whose abilities stem mainly from their bicycles which can fly and go really fast and so on.. The title was intended to have the resonances of the cartoon title Transformers and to have lent itself to a similar theme tune. Think: "Stunt riders, heroes in the skies," as opposed to "Transformers, robots in disguise." Subtle eh. The kids would be a cross section of kids with real lives, except when they're crime fighting on their bikes. Nice possibility of evoking various lives and interactions and kids problems and what have you. I mean I don't want the pseudo social realism of Grange Hill. But something that wll show real kids that real life is worth living even if you're a superhero who must protect his secret identity and pass certificate exams prior to making serious career choices and helping your mother feed the cat. So the characters will have stern teachers, bullies, nice teachers, teachers who are stern but only to bring out the best in them, harassed parents, groovy parents, stern harassed groovy parents everyday situations, the gamut of childhood worries, joys, adventures, along with super villains and c. Particularly c, The whole thing overlaid with life affirming humour. Dammit I'm beginning to think we should do this. Live action, not just a book or cartoon. And eventually a movie.
The Scum Are On The Streets... Actioner about yet another nice guy taking on the mafia and the IRA. Basically just another of my proposed Death Wish/Mad Max rip offs. It is a rum fact that the mafia and the IRA generally, and Mad Max and Charles Bronson in particular, seem to have figured to such a disproportionate degree in my early bouts of creativity.
None of these books were written. In the Summer of 1983, aged seventeen, I was cycling over the crest of a hill outside Kilcullen. At the bottom of the hill a car appeared. It was driven by a little old lady. Both of us had plenty of time to avoid a collission. She swerved. Unfortunately I swerved at exactly the same moment. Still plenty of time. She swerved back. Unfortunately I swerved back too. She swerved a third time. I swerved too. My last thought was: "Uh oh." I had no memory of the impact. I became conscious of something cold against my face. I lay there. I could hear voices shouting in alarm. They were saying: "Get up, get up, oh please get up." I realised the cold thing against my face was the road. I remember thinking to myself: "I could be badly hurt here. No need to open my eyes until I know if there's anything missing or hanging off." I lay there without pain. After some more shouting from the people around me, I opened my eyes. The people helped me stand up and drove me home. As we drove, I had something that seemed like a near death experience. I didn't see heaven. I saw my own life as it really was. I saw that everything I'd ever worried about was utterly irrelevant. Every oppression, every obsession, every fear, every anger. None of them mattered. None of them had any authority. It was a most profound feeling of detachment. And of course I saw my books. All of them. I saw that none of them mattered either. None of them were what I had been sent to accomplish.
posted by heelers | 4:44 AM
4 Comments:
Are you sure, James? I gave up a children's novel I had been writing and now, nearly 20 years later, it's come back. Only this time, I see beyond the plot and characters to the theme. (Which was there all the time, but I didn't know.)
You raise a most curious point. I'd call it an intriguing point if I could spell intrigueing. Intreegueing? Anyway. I'm gonna enjoy reading yours.
J
James, I thought "intriguing" was your middle name. :)
Strangely enough, today I was reading a column by Joseph Bottum in which he opined about a future generation who "can write the kind of strong Catholic novels, make the kind of strong Catholic art, prior ages knew."
And I wanted to smack him about the head (in Christian love, of course) because we shouldn't be waiting for some future generation to renew Catholic art and literature. That's our job, no?
I like your insights MJ.
It is our job.
Or our vocation.
We should sing as we work.
J
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