FFB - Expressway

Elleston Trevor (1920-1995) wrote Expressway as Howard North (1973). This version was released under his own name, 1975 (he changed his name from Trevor Dudley-Smith); he was British, lived in France and Spain and finally settled in Arizona. 

Trevor used quite a variety of pennames – see this site for a listing - http://bookitinc.com/checklists/EllestonTrevor.shtml - such as Adam Hall, Simon Rattray, Roger Fitzalan, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith and Lesley Stone.

 

Expressway is a documentary novel in the same vein as Arthur Hailey’s Airport and Hotel, as the cover of my version says. Mainly omniscient in point of view, it still works in a strong cinematic sense. The story is about the holiday weekend of 3-5 July on and around the New York - New Jersey Parkway, early 1970s.

It’s about those who drive and ride in vehicles and it’s also about the cars themselves. In the pearl-finish Cougar, Walt and Carol Amberton can’t talk about the alcohol that’s destroying them. In the black Cadillac, the sinister Mr Solo is ‘cruising, searching, waiting to see at first-hand a fatal accident’. In the Buick Riviera, Dr Brett Hagen is trying to find his teenage daughter, Tracy, and her companion, a man old enough to be her father. In the Chrysler Newport, Rod Gould and Nat Renatus ‘start the weekend with murder and bring death along with them.’ Then there’s the married couple, Floyd and Sue, expecting their first baby any week now; and Erica, running away from her husband Craig, and highway cop Lieutenant Frank Ingram and his paramedic wife Debby, whose lives are not improved by the officious unhelpful interference of Captain Darrow… Suspense, tension and action in a jam-packed holiday weekend.

Figures are now out of date, naturally, but the carnage is still shocking. ‘… on the Fourth of July holiday last year the national figures for death on the road reached a new peak at 917, while more than 36,000 persons were injured…’ It begins with an overview of the area and homes in on Patrolman Nolan who is due to complete his shift – until he stumbles upon a couple of drug-dealers (Rod and Nat) and he’s killed by Nat; Rod is wounded by Nolan. A neat little framing device is the young boy Jimmy, who is a car-spotter, munching on an apple.

Trevor has a good eye for detail. And in certain scenes we can discern the fast pace of his alter ego Adam Hall (Quiller books), viz: ‘Only when something goes wrong are you brought to realize how fast you are moving at a mile per minute but there’s no time to think about what you are learning too quickly and too late, because there’s a rocking motion and the scene dips as the brakes bite and then the world goes wild and great forces rise to hurl you bodily through tumult and you know that this is not you any longer, the you to whom nothing could happen, nothing terrible, nothing so unimaginably terrible as this.’ Breathless, yet powerful and so indelibly true.

Jimmy’s apple is one subtle leitmotif; another is the Venus 1000 car – advertised ‘as lithe, compliant, trembling under your touch’. Walt is the salesman who thought up that sexist spiel, before he succumbed to liquor. And another is the moths in the night air… when, a page later, after Carol worries about her alcoholic husband Walt: ‘For some reason they always go faster the nearer they go to the flame, spinning faster and faster till they touch; but what about self-preservation, aren’t all living creatures supposed to know when they’re in danger? Can’t they feel the heat growing as they circle closer? Surely they do. Then why can’t they stop?’ And of course her allusion relates to Walt’s alcoholic descent, not the moths. Later, she’s in the car knowing Walt has imbibed and ‘can only sit here feeling the refined brand of fear that is experienced by the trapped animal.’ This is an excellent devastating exposal of alcoholism, right up there with Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano.

Cop-killer Nat got a piece of grit in his eye and it troubled him. This symbolizes the irritation of guilt and fear. A little later, ‘Rod watched his friend, his thin and dangerous friend, whose nerve had gone because he’d done it before but never to a city cop. Nat was finished. He’d never get his style back, even if he beat this rap and set up somewhere safe, because the Nolan killing had changed everything and a bit of it had spun off and got inside Nat, just like Nolan’s bullet had got inside Rod himself.

‘ “It’s out,” Nat said, “I got it out.” [Referring to the grit].

‘No, Rod thought, you never will.’

Although I enjoyed Arthur Hailey’s books Hotel, Wheels, Airport and Overload etc, I find it baffling that they are still in print while this fine writer’s Expressway isn’t.

 

[If you're interested in the insight into a writer, you might try a memoire about Elleston Trevor by his wife, Bury Him Among Kings. Intimate Glimpses into the Life and Work of Elleston Trevor by Chaille Trevor (2012). It's a worthwhile e-book.]

 

 

FFB – The Ladies’ Paradise

The popular BBC television series, now in its second season, The Paradise, is based on this book by Emil Zola. First published in French as Au Bonheur des Dames in 1883, it is in fact the eleventh novel in his series, The Rougon-Macquart Cycle, which in twenty volumes depicts two branches, one legitimate (Rougon), one illigitimate (Macquart), of a family from Plassans, a town in the south of France, considered to be Zola’s fictionalised version of his home Aix-en-Provence. In its wider context, it’s also the story about the period of France’s Second Empire, the authoritarian regime of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III (1850s-1870s).

The Ladies’ Paradise encapsulates in luxurious detail the new phenomenon of consumer society – obsessed with image, fashion and instant gratification, laying bare the department store in 1860s Paris. Octave Mouret is a business genius who transforms a modest draper’s shop into a hugely successful retail enterprise, masterfully exploiting the desires of his female customers and ruining small businesses in the process. Sound familiar?

Through the eyes of trainee salesgirl Denise, we see the inner workings of the store and the relations and intrigues among the staff, human dramas played out alongside the relentless pursuit of profit. The various characters find themselves torn between the conflicting forces of love, loyalty and ambition. (Arthur Hailey did something similar with his books in the 1960s and 1970s [Hotel, Airport, Wheels, Moneychangers, Overload etc]; surprisingly, he never examined a department store; maybe he’d thought it had been done so well by Zola!)

Zola evokes the giddy pace of Paris’ transition into a modern city and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations that were occurring in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Not lost in translation

I bought two versions of the book as Christmas presents. Interestingly, the translations differ, which is to be expected. The job of a translator is not to literally transcribe word-for-word from one language to another; indeed, that’s impossible, because different cultures have different idioms, phrases and even several meanings for certain words. In the new language, there must be a constant battle between accurate translation and narrative flow.

Here you’ll find the opening two paragraphs from Chapter One. You might like to note the subtle changes employed by the translators. Doubtless, a third translator would opt for another slight variant. Either could appear as a draft version in English – certainly, some authors would vary their prose to this degree, striving for clarity and style.

The Ladies’ Paradise, translation April Fitzlyon, 1957,2008: Alma Classics, 2012.

Denise had come on foot from Saint-Lazare station where, after a night spent on the hard bench of a third-class carriage, she and her two brothers had been set down by a train from Cherbourg. She was holding Pepe’s hand, and Jean was following her; they were all three aching from the journey, scared and lost in the midst of the vast city of Paris. Noses in the air, they were looking at the houses, and at each cross-road they asked the way to the Rue de la Michodiere where their Uncle Baudu lived. But, just as she was finally emerging into the Place Gaillon, the girl stopped short in surprise.
            “Oh!” she said. “Just have a look at that, Jean!”

The Ladies’ Paradise, translation Brian Nelson, 1995: Oxford University Press, 2012

Denise had come on foot from the Gare Saint-Lazsare. She and her two brothers had arrived on a train from Cherbourg and had spent the night on the hard bench of a third-class carriage. She was holding Pepe by the hand, and Jean was walking behind her, all three exhausted from the journey, frightened and lost in the midst of the vast city of Paris. They kept looking up at the houses, and at every intersection they asked the way to the Rue de la Michodiere, where their uncle Baudu lived. But on arriving in the Place Gaillon, the young girl suddenly stopped in surprise.
            “Oh!” she said, “look at that, Jean!”

In a later blog, I'll look at other books that have been translated. The world of reading is a richer place thanks to translators. I will also write about the book of the film (TV series)...