"Kim Newman - The Serial Murders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

had a salary dispute with O'Dell-Squiers and got unceremoniously dumped. Aside from O'Dell, Finch was the
longest-lasting member of the original cast. And she doesn't have a piece of the show. Rather a sad story,
actually, Finch. Had a breakdown and went around saying she was 'Brenda Barstow,' soliciting donations for
a mission to rescue Baby Drum from South American cannibals. There's a cruel instance of intertextuality on
Barstows as Mavis is strung along by a con-woman who claims to be Brenda, her face different thanks to
plastic surgery, also running a bogus charity scam. Of course, this is where we came in. The vexed
relationship between reality and fiction. Romans-├а-clef are nothing new in serial drama, back to Dickens and
Eug├йne Sue. People have been bringing suit or making complaint that this or that fictional character is a
libellous version of themselves at least since Whistler forced George du Maurier to rewrite Trilby to take out
some digs at him. Sometimes, it seems our reality is a disguised version of The Northern Barstows rather
than the other way round. The bogus Brenda is arrested and imprisoned before Karen Finch is taken to a
secure hospital."
"Just like Delia and Della?"
"That seems to be near-simultaneous, which goes beyond my idea of credible. Still, Marcus Squiers says
every time he dreams up a storyline the rest of the writing staff pooh-pooh as beyond belief, he reads in the
newspapers that the exact same thing is happening somewhere."
"An assassin in full Omar Sharif gear riding a camel into the stock exchange and slashing about himself with
a scimitar?"
"That's one of the more extreme incidents."
"But there are more?"
"Dozens. In the early days, when Barstows is squarely in the British realist tradition, it doesn't happen much
or at all. Mavis and the rest are metaphorically, and occasionally literally, incestuous. Storylines concentrate
on the family and their dependents. Then Barstow & Company become a power corporation and Mavis goes
high society and mixes with government ministers, pop stars, sports celebrities, and gangsters. Slightly
disguised caricatures of well-known people are a major ingredient in the formula. Clive James says you're not
really famous until you've been misrepresented on The Northern Barstows, but of course they've never done
him, so that might be sour grapes. Then, as we know, Bleeds bleeds. Things happen on Barstows which then
happen in real life. It's a problem for me. My interest is in soap as representation, but it seems Barstows has
stopped representing and started being. I'm not sure what discipline covers the situation now. Yours,
probably."
"Mine, definitely."
Barbara Corri had looked him up too and had a fair idea of his discipline. The University of Brighton had its
own two-man School of Parapsychology, where student volunteers took carefully measured doses of
hallucinogen to open their third eyes and played with Rhine cards or tried to make hamster wheels spin with
the power of their minds. She had asked about Richard there, and her colleagues were impressedтАФnot to
mention murderously envious as only an underfunded academic could beтАФthat she was being seconded by
the legendary Diogenes Club.
"Shall we press on and look at the next episode?"
Two weeks ago, they had started with the original six-part drama from 1964, in which self-made rag trade
millionairess Mavis Barstow coped with the sudden loss of her husband ("Da") and recriminations around the
funeral led to an irreversible break-up of her extended family. The serial proved so popular that ART
commissioned an ongoing series from O'Dell-Squiers, which meant the irreversible break-up turned out to be
reversible after all. Richard had sampled episodes from different periods of the show. After looking at the
recent storylines which paralleled the Hepplethwaites, Keats, and Hassan cases, they had dipped back into
the archive to view representative or significant episodes selected by Professor Corri to give a sense of the
"evolving totality of Barstows."
He put his hand on the professor's warm knee and shook his head.
"I think I've seen enough. My eyes have gone square, and I can't get Mavis' voice out of my head when I try to
sleep. This phase of the project is concluded."
"Where do you want to go from here, Richard?"