Smallcreep's Descriptive Writing

I think my father was always impressed by highly descriptive writing. When I was a teenager he recommended Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to me, principally for the political message of the book (which turns out to be completely spurious, but that’s another story). However, he told me that his favourite passage in the book is a description of a tortoise crossing the road. Steinbeck devotes an entire chapter (albeit a very short one) to describing in minute detail the scene as the reptile climbs the bank, crosses the road and gets hit by a truck. I remember being very impressed by this passage myself. When Dad wrote his own book it gave him an opportunity to practice this style of writing for himself, and he made a very good job of it too. Here’s a video of Peter Currell Brown reading a passage from his book Smallcreep’s Day about some pipes on a wall.

It’s interesting that The Grapes of Wrath is a book with an intensely political message, and my Father was interested in the politics, but his favourite passage was a description of a natural event which appeared to have no bearing on the story whatsoever. Steinbeck may have intended the tortoise to be a metaphor, but that was lost on me as a teenager. Similarly, Smallcreep’s Day is a book with a political message, but Dad’s favourite passage is a description of something rather mundane – some pipes running round a wall. The way the words are used to describe the subject is far more important than the subject of the description. Are the pipes intended as a metaphor too?

Smallcreep's Day

Following yesterday's posting regarding Smallcreep’s Day, I did a bit of searching with Google, and came across this little gem:

It’s someone reading an extract from one of my favourite parts of the book. It’s not exactly as it was written; the words are in fact a montage of two conversations into a single (almost) monologue, performed in a menacing, distorted voice.

At this point in the plot, Smallcreep has found the factory offices, where he clumsily stumbles in on first a salesman and then the Managing Director. Both characters give him their view on life which is, I believe, the central message of the book. You may be tempted to view this critique of life as highly cynical, but I would suggest that it is quite the opposite. The acknowledgement that, if you have a dustbin, you condemn a man to empty it for you, is irrefutable. Here he faces up to the reality of capitalism, not in a sentimental hand-wringing way, but with a totally genuine and bluntly honest way. Well enough of my views – listen to it for yourself

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And if you now want to read the book, pre-order it now on Amazon – it’ll probably be cheaper than a second-hand copy on ebay.

Smallcreep and the internet

When I was very young – just a baby – my father wrote a novel and was successful in getting it published. The book is not really the subject of this post, but here’s a brief summary of it: The book is called Smallcreep’s Day, and follows the exploits of a factory worker, Pinquean Smallcreep during a very unusual day in his life. Mr Smallcreep, having become obsessed by an idea, leaves his machine and goes exploring through the strange world of his factory. On a quest to find meaning in his monotonous existence, Smallcreep experiences many surreal and disturbing situations. Each scene explores some of the author’s ideas about human relationships, freedom and the value of human life. Some of the scenes are hilarious, some depressing and some macabre. The final two pages are taken up with a powerful vision of the futility of factory work and a passionate cry for the lost dignity of the craftsman. (It is not hard to guess, reading this conclusion that the author very soon left his life as a factory worker and became a craftsman potter.)

The book was originally published by Gollancz, and later issued in paperback by Picador and Panther. Many years ago it was discontinued and can now only be found occasionally on ebay, paperback copies often fetching a tenner or more. Needless to say, this book has become the stuff of family legend. I cannot remember a time when there was no Smallcreep, and my three siblings and I have always been enormously proud of our father’s work. You sometimes meet people who have read it, and they always turn out to be interesting people who were very impressed by the book. Mike Rutherford, the guitarist, used the story as the inspiration for a concept album in the 1980s (though he sold out the true meaning of the book and gave it a happy ending). Having been out of print for so many years, it’s becoming less and less frequent that I meet anyone who’s heard of Smallcreep.

One morning this year I received a phone call at work from a number I didn’t recognise. The caller ran a small publishing house in London, specialising in out-of-print works by authors with interesting views on life, and wanted to know if I was related of the author of Smallcreep’s day. He was interested in contacting him with a view to re-issuing the work. I was delighted to put him in touch with my father. I was also delighted to learn today that the book will be re-published by Pinter and Martin in May 2008. Order your copy now

You might expect that this would be the end of the story, but it gets stranger yet. A couple of months later I got a message through Friends Reunited, from someone interested in … contacting my father with a view to writing a screen play for Smallcreep’s Day. Luckily Friends Reunited had not managed to remove her email address from the message, so I was able to make contact without having to shell out to join their service (which I wouldn’t have done).

So the interesting thing is that there is enough information on the internet to track down the children of the author of a work which was published over 40 years ago. (My father does have his own web-site, but it would have been impossible to find him, as he now goes by a stage-name.) I asked the 2nd caller how she had reached me, and how she knew it was me, from the thousands of David Browns on the Friends Reunited site. She had apparently heard of the connection through an old school friend of mine who writes a blog – Random Burblings. He mentions me and the town where we grew up, so it was then easy to find the right Brown family from that information.

I’m very pleased that I can be traced via stuff that people put on the internet. Arguably the first caller did a better job, as he found the switchboard of my company and asked for me by name. Despite there being about 20 David Browns in our Global Address List, he still managed to get through to the right one. However, if you have any reason not to want to be contacted by strangers - skeletons in the cupboard perhaps, or worse – be very wary about posting information on Friends Reunited or other sites. It might pay to Google your own name and town of birth from time to time, just to see what’s out there. Don’t think of it as vanity; it’s identity protection.