Paul Reverb: a hero for our times
So, I have finished a book.
Its an odd book. It started out as a series of short stories all featuring the same protagonist: a man in his fifties named Paul Reverb but it seems to have turned into a novella somewhere along the way.
I have a long history with Paul Reverb. Back in the early 90's, newly released from Art College and my first relationship, I found myself living in my parent's attic in Basingstoke. Nowadays that would make me classic incel material and I would be spaffing ire all over 4chan, but this was before the internet and we made our own fun. So instead I wrote three issues of a comic called Trapped Hair. Paul Reverb was the cover star of issue one: being slowly swallowed by a sink's plughole while attempting to wash his hair and crying "This is really much too whimsical a way to die!"
Physically Paul was based on Sean Hughes, whose Sean's Show had been delighting Channel 4 audiences at the time. Paul was in a band (The Flamingo Dancers) had a crabby girlfriend called Rachel Sack who looked a lot like Mary Lorson from the band Madder Rose. Making up a classic sitcom three was Paul's treacherous intellectual flatmate Anthony Feltchman, who was the dead spit of deceased Fairport Convention drummer Marty Lamble. I have no idea why.
The three of them lived in a sort of imagined London five years before I lived in the real one, and did indie things in an early 90's way. The whole thing was littered with pop cultural references from the era. Flicking through issue three (full colour cover!) I find mentions of: P J Harvey's 50 Foot Queenie, Brian Eno, Paul Morley, Gary Bushell, Shaun Ryder, Scooby Doo, Out of my Hair, Colin Wilson, I walked with a Zombie, Universal's "Frankenstein, (that's just the first two pages!) Suzi Quatro, Loaded magazine, Rustler magazine, Hywell Bennett, Mike and the Mechanics, Charles Atlas, Sparks, Caspar the Friendly Ghost, Faceache, Ege Bam Yasi by Can, Milo Manara, The Sweeney, Black Sabbath, Peter Cetera, Batman and Robin, MTV unplugged, Citizen Kane and Vic Reeves' Big Night Out.
It may not have been very funny but it was a fabulous window-box for things I was anxious for people to know I knew about!
Other characters included Sideburn: a tough talking 70's copper, Lil' Orphan Chimnee Sweep, who was one of those sad eyed soot smeared portraits of children come to life, Lee Smiley, an every-man with unreconstructed views and comic strips about Michael Stipe and Nick Cave.
It was edgy, edgy stuff.
I don't know what I thought I was doing. I made three editions: writing, drawing, even painting the last issue, photocopying them after hours at work (I was working at an insurance company at this point), folding and stapling them. And then they just sat there. I didn't show them to anyone, not even friends. They got good a review in the Comics Journal and I nearly got a gig with Deadline and through a bizarre series of events a comic strip about Suede got printed in The Face. But nothing really happened because I didn't show anyone the work. They just sat there. I think I was depressed - that level of inertia seems unnatural - but I did all the work and then never followed it up by actually showing it to anybody.
The Paul Reverb of the short stories is not the Paul Reverb of the comics. Paul Reverb mk 1 had fantastic adventures, he was surrounded by people, he interacted with his environment, he understood the media, the trends - he was young.
The Paul Reverb of the short stories is alone, isolated, removed from the now, confused by social interaction, only vaguely remembering how he used to do things. He once knew how stuff worked but all his certainties have fallen away. He is a man with lead slippers in a balsa wood world, constantly on the verge of apology. He is slightly too old for his haircut and slightly too fat for his t-shirt. He is a man out of time who can't quite recall if he ever had a time, a man who understands only the sanctity of vinyl and the fortress of solitude that is his flat. He is consumed by loneliness but would rather be lonely than embarrassed. It seems to me that he is very English and very much a creature of the mid 20th Century, negotiating the 21st like Mark Thatcher circling a desert.
The book is funny. But it is also very sad. Its called The Book of Gammon but Paul would be appalled to hear himself referred to as a Gammon. He thinks he's a cool guy who is trying to do his best by everybody despite the endless slights, despite people not getting his jokes, his fury at ignorance, of people no longer trying. He's a drowning man angry at people who can swim. Its hard to doggy paddle with your arms folded across your chest.
Its an odd book. It started out as a series of short stories all featuring the same protagonist: a man in his fifties named Paul Reverb but it seems to have turned into a novella somewhere along the way.
I have a long history with Paul Reverb. Back in the early 90's, newly released from Art College and my first relationship, I found myself living in my parent's attic in Basingstoke. Nowadays that would make me classic incel material and I would be spaffing ire all over 4chan, but this was before the internet and we made our own fun. So instead I wrote three issues of a comic called Trapped Hair. Paul Reverb was the cover star of issue one: being slowly swallowed by a sink's plughole while attempting to wash his hair and crying "This is really much too whimsical a way to die!"
Physically Paul was based on Sean Hughes, whose Sean's Show had been delighting Channel 4 audiences at the time. Paul was in a band (The Flamingo Dancers) had a crabby girlfriend called Rachel Sack who looked a lot like Mary Lorson from the band Madder Rose. Making up a classic sitcom three was Paul's treacherous intellectual flatmate Anthony Feltchman, who was the dead spit of deceased Fairport Convention drummer Marty Lamble. I have no idea why.
The three of them lived in a sort of imagined London five years before I lived in the real one, and did indie things in an early 90's way. The whole thing was littered with pop cultural references from the era. Flicking through issue three (full colour cover!) I find mentions of: P J Harvey's 50 Foot Queenie, Brian Eno, Paul Morley, Gary Bushell, Shaun Ryder, Scooby Doo, Out of my Hair, Colin Wilson, I walked with a Zombie, Universal's "Frankenstein, (that's just the first two pages!) Suzi Quatro, Loaded magazine, Rustler magazine, Hywell Bennett, Mike and the Mechanics, Charles Atlas, Sparks, Caspar the Friendly Ghost, Faceache, Ege Bam Yasi by Can, Milo Manara, The Sweeney, Black Sabbath, Peter Cetera, Batman and Robin, MTV unplugged, Citizen Kane and Vic Reeves' Big Night Out.
It may not have been very funny but it was a fabulous window-box for things I was anxious for people to know I knew about!
Other characters included Sideburn: a tough talking 70's copper, Lil' Orphan Chimnee Sweep, who was one of those sad eyed soot smeared portraits of children come to life, Lee Smiley, an every-man with unreconstructed views and comic strips about Michael Stipe and Nick Cave.
It was edgy, edgy stuff.
I don't know what I thought I was doing. I made three editions: writing, drawing, even painting the last issue, photocopying them after hours at work (I was working at an insurance company at this point), folding and stapling them. And then they just sat there. I didn't show them to anyone, not even friends. They got good a review in the Comics Journal and I nearly got a gig with Deadline and through a bizarre series of events a comic strip about Suede got printed in The Face. But nothing really happened because I didn't show anyone the work. They just sat there. I think I was depressed - that level of inertia seems unnatural - but I did all the work and then never followed it up by actually showing it to anybody.
The Paul Reverb of the short stories is not the Paul Reverb of the comics. Paul Reverb mk 1 had fantastic adventures, he was surrounded by people, he interacted with his environment, he understood the media, the trends - he was young.
The Paul Reverb of the short stories is alone, isolated, removed from the now, confused by social interaction, only vaguely remembering how he used to do things. He once knew how stuff worked but all his certainties have fallen away. He is a man with lead slippers in a balsa wood world, constantly on the verge of apology. He is slightly too old for his haircut and slightly too fat for his t-shirt. He is a man out of time who can't quite recall if he ever had a time, a man who understands only the sanctity of vinyl and the fortress of solitude that is his flat. He is consumed by loneliness but would rather be lonely than embarrassed. It seems to me that he is very English and very much a creature of the mid 20th Century, negotiating the 21st like Mark Thatcher circling a desert.
The book is funny. But it is also very sad. Its called The Book of Gammon but Paul would be appalled to hear himself referred to as a Gammon. He thinks he's a cool guy who is trying to do his best by everybody despite the endless slights, despite people not getting his jokes, his fury at ignorance, of people no longer trying. He's a drowning man angry at people who can swim. Its hard to doggy paddle with your arms folded across your chest.
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