Irish mystery writer, John Connolly, has found himself in
the middle of a great bromance. A friend’s chance meeting with Stan Laurel set
the wheels in motion - wheels that nearly 20 years later have brought him to
his latest novel, he. He spoke with Andy Hamilton.
There was something about Laurel and Hardy that struck a
chord for the young John Connolly. Gathered round the Saturday morning TV, a
bowl of cereal in his lap, it was the honest friendship between these two men
that made them so compelling. A great bromance.
Years later, during his first American book tour, the
spectre of Stan Laurel once again found John. This remembrance of the man and
his friendship with Oliver Hardy planted a seed in his imagination, a seed that
eventually blossomed into his latest novel, he.
“They were very much part of my childhood and I always had
an affection for them, more so than for Chaplin or for Buster Keating. I think
that there is something in the friendship between them that resonates with kids
- kids get them,” says John.
“There had been partnerships like them before but with
Laurel and Hardy you get the sense of a history, that they have been together
for a long time. I hadn’t though that much about them until I was touring my
first novel in The States and a friend of mine had met him [Stan Laurel] and it
set off a train of thought in my mind. They had always seemed to be black and
white figures - from a different time - but I realised that he [Stan] only died
a few years before I was born.
“I wondered what he had been doing with his life [after his
career] and it turns out that what he’d been doing was mourning the death of
his great friend. Oliver Hardy died eight years before him and after that, not
only would he [Stan] not work again, but he wouldn’t do interviews where he
would be shown on screen or anything that would remind people of Hardy’s
absence. I thought that was desperately sad.
“So I became very interested in the idea of the person left
behind. I think male friendship can be taken for granted a bit. Men leave so
much unexpressed but yet there isn’t a man who doesn’t have a close male friend
whom they have known from childhood. They will never have expressed what they
mean to each other but yet, one of them will die first.
“The one left behind is going to be bereaved in the same way
as if they had lost a wife. The whole structure of their life will be taken
away and no one will ever be able to fill it. There is a truth here about the
way that men deal with each other.”
The novel is made up of a series of memories, all told from
the perspective of Stan Laurel. According to John Connolly, he felt a deep
obligation and responsibility when faced with writing the deepest thoughts of
Stan Laurel.
“He wrote hundreds of letters but the one person he never
wrote about was Oliver Hardy. He also never wrote about why he got married so
often or why he ended up having so many affairs. So what began to interest me
about him was these gaps,” says John.
“There is an obligation to the truth. It says its a novel at
the front of the book but really, there is nothing made-up in it. The only
things that are made up is when I’m trying to get inside his head but all the
incidents in the book happened.
“Wherever possible, I would use dialogue that had been used
at the time. You have an obligation and duty to these people. It is not about
whitewashing them but you have an obligation to be truthful.
“He never set out to do any harm - I think that was the
thing that struck me most. Even his x-wives couldn’t bring themselves to say
anything bad about him. He was one fo these man who would rather than be
married and unhappy than alone. So I think he would enter relationships too
hastily rather than be alone. He lost his mother when he was alone and I think
these things affected him.
“The book was always going to begin and end the way it did
[told in memories, from the end of Laurel’s life]. It takes place over the
course of one day in an apartment. Because he wasn’t able to leave very much,
he was sitting in a chair and remembering. It is what you do wen you get older.
“He is sitting there and he knows he is going to die. In
that situation, I think you do put your life into some sort of a context. You
do look back and try to figure out what you did right and what you did wrong.
So much of those things [for Stan] come back to Oliver Hardy.
“It was a book that was hard to get right. One memory would
spark another. Memories are peculiar in that way - they follow their own kind
of logic.”
After spending more than a decade - off and on - wading
through the research for this book, Connolly has been left with - if anything -
an even warmer feeling towards Laurel.
“I like him more than ever. I appreciate the artistry of
what he did more than ever. There is a temptation to assume that the person who
see on screen resembled the person who is there in real life - that somehow he
and Oliver Hardy would go home in the evening and sit in the same double bed
together or adopt a dog or whatever,” says John.
“There was a fundamental decency to him. When the woman who
you’ve married twice says during your second divorce trial that you are a
‘swell guy’ that says something about you. There was a kindness in him that
shines through.”
First published in The Clare People newspaper in February of 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment