TAKING CANDY FROM A DOG (2nd PRINTING) by VIC TEMPLAR

Two years ago I championed Vic Templar’s debut novel Taking Candy From A Dog so I’m very pleased that after selling out the initial run it now has a second printing.  From a personal point of view it’s an honour to see a quote attributed to me on the back cover of the new edition.  It reads:

“Vic Templar’s Taking Candy From A Dog is the part memoir, part fiction tale of a very ordinary boy, living a very ordinary life in a very ordinary part of Kent, yet it is also one of the most touching and hilarious books you could read about life as a child.  It is warm without being cloying and funny without being too knowing.  It is a tale of picnics, wasps, summer that lasts forever, Wimbledon, Fred Perry, the Buzzcocks, Gillingham FC and family life in the 1970s.”

I stand by those words, even if they’re not mine.  Which they’re not, they belong to writer Iain Aitch.  I only noticed today when reading back my own review.  Iain’s quote on the cover is actually mine and for which Iain is now going to have to live with and try to explain away.  He’s a proper writer for daily newspapers, has published books (We’re British, Innit) and has been on the telly and stuff.  I hope his career doesn’t suffer being associated with:

“Written through the eyes of a frequently bemused and incredulous child/teenager, with the chapters interspersed by the savvy interruptions of a sock monkey, it sounds twee, cheesy and to be avoided but it’s far from it – Taking Candy From A Dog is one of the funniest books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.  Wonderfully told with keen detail and dry wit, some of the dialogue had tears of laughter streaming down my face.”

As you can see they come from a similar place and for once you have someone corroborating my opinion.  So, read my original review here, get on to Blackheath Books for a copy, make it sell out, make Vic happy, and for the third printing Iain and I can have our own words back.  Everyone's a winner.

JOHN STEZAKER at the WHITECHAPEL GALLERY

John Stezaker was unknown to me until yesterday when a kind reader (Mr. Vic Templar from Stamford Hill) nodded in the direction of the Whitechapel Gallery where I spent this afternoon. Although I prefer a greater degree of randomness (genuine or otherwise) to careful choices and positioning, his work is certainly interesting and worth investigating. The gallery’s own gumpf describes it far better than I could, so – in collage style – I’ll cut and paste it here.

“British artist John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention

This first major exhibition of John Stezaker offers a chance to see work by an artist whose subject is the power in the act of looking itself. With over 90 works from the 1970s to today, the artist reveals the subversive force of images, reflecting on how visual language can create new meaning.”

John Stezaker exhibition is at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX, until 18 March 2011, admission free.

TAKING CANDY FROM A DOG by VIC TEMPLAR

I’ve today finished reading two memoirs recounting the 1970s: Nick Kent’s Apathy For The Devil and Vic Templar’s Taking Candy From A Dog. The titles alone suggest two very different beasts. Kent’s is an triple pronged cautionary tale of rock and roll, journalism and drug addiction; the likes of which only seem to happen to other people: flying to America to hang out with David Bowie and Iggy Pop, taking massive lines of heroin and cocaine for breakfast with Keith Richards, and playing in an early incarnation of the Sex Pistols. None of these things happened to me. Templar’s is the everyday heartwarming story of football heroes, boyhood dreams and loving families: travelling to Pontins and Westward Ho! for holidays, eating Count Dracula ice lollies with your sister, and creating major sporting events in the back garden. All of these things happened to me.

Written through the eyes of a frequently bemused and incredulous child/teenager, with the chapters interspersed by the savvy interruptions of a sock monkey, it sounds twee, cheesy and to be avoided but it’s far from it - Taking Candy From A Dog is one of the funniest books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Wonderfully told with keen detail and dry wit, some of the dialogue had tears of laughter streaming down my face. I’ve said before I’m no fan of nostalgia, mainly because of the implication things were better in the past when often it’s the brain’s useful capability to filter out most of the shit, but Templar skillfully manages to plant little seeds that nudge the memory to recall much more than “do you remember Spangles?” I thought of so many things about my own childhood and family and uncles and Grandparents that otherwise would have been lost forever.

If there was any justice Taking Candy From A Dog would fly off tables in Waterstones and you’d see people smiling to themselves on the tube in the mornings. It's a shame there’s more chance of a line off Keith Richards.

Taking Candy From A Dog by Vic Templar is published by Blackheath Books, priced £10. www.blackheathbooks.org.uk
Apathy For The Devil by Nick Kent is published by Faber, priced £12.99

BILLY CHILDISH - PENGUIN BOOK BURNING

The movers and shakers from the underground writing scene were out in force on Thursday for Billy Childish’s reading and book burning (see last Sunday’s post). Was good to meet the likes of Joseph Ridgwell, Jenni Fagan and Vic Templar, and reassuring they all appeared to have wandered straight from the pages of their books.

Billy was in charismatically jovial mood, wondering between poems what 19 year old Paul Weller would think of a 52 year old Paul Weller, what 19 year old Billy Childish would think of Billy Childish now, whether Charles Bukowski was a softie for moaning about working at the post office, and tales of fake moustaches and being the only punk in shorts.

Micheal from L-13 had chosen the pieces from Selected Poems for Billy to read, which meant a few different ones to those Billy usually picks. I’d had a few beers but I think he read: your golden hair, a sad donky and a fat man smiling, where the tiger prowls stripped and unseen, monkys in space, only poets piss in sinks, a mad noise like birds, fat nature, the snow, the bitter cup, hear i stand, the billy childish.

Then came the burning. L-13 did a fantastic job in making Selected Poems look totally like an authentic Penguin classic (managed to rescue one) so was sad to see them wasted. Penguin should have been proud to be associated with Billy’s work. But then, where’s the fun in that?

VIC TEMPLAR DOES HIS CHUNKERS

I like writers who suffer for their art. Who drag themselves through the streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. Who burn in the bowels of hell before clawing themselves back by their filthy fingernails only to lose their grip and slide further in to the abyss. Who slip from wanton hedonism to abject misery in the space of a page.

Vic Templar is not one those writers. Yet his little book of short stories shows he too has suffered. Stung by a wasp, he was. On his tongue. It’s not quite walking 47 miles of barbed wire, using a cobra snake for a necktie, but it’s a start. His warm, matey, nostalgic style is more Nick Hornby than Nick Kent but his musings on his nan, his dustman, playing golf with monks, and forgetting his friend’s name raise a sneaky smile.

Vic Templar Does His Clunkers is the equivalent of sitting for hours on a Sunday watching repeats of Come Dine With Me, with a warm mug of tea in one hand, a custard cream in the other, and the cat curled up on your lap. And, believe it or not, there are times when that’s preferable to drinking absinthe from a shoe with winos, junkies and whores.

Vic Templar Does His Chunkers is published by Blackheath Books, priced £5.
www.blackheathbooks.org.uk