Now I don’t know about you, but I heart all things Andy Warhol. What I love even more, is a book that is all about creating an underground art movement ala Andy and co.
Notes From the Teenage Underground by Simmone Howell is that book. It’s hella-freakin’-cool.
Seventeen year old Gem and her friends, Mira and Lo, have decided to go ‘underground’. Their activities will be ‘extreme’, ‘anti-establishment’, ‘avant-garde’ and ‘debauched’.
Oh, I don’t need to tell you anything about it, you will love it. Fact.
You will dig the author Simmone Howell too, we deffo do!
Describe yourself in 5 words…
dreamy, determined, foolhardy, slightly rumpled
Have you always wanted to be a writer girl and how did you make it happen?
At first I wanted to be an artist. I started writing stories and poems when I was about fifteen, I used to write people’s essays for them in high school for $$. But I mean little $$. I never knew what I wanted to do for an actual job-job though. I worked lots of nowhere jobs and wrote on the side. Things happened in little steps. I had a few short stories published. I won a writing competition. I wrote a short film and that was produced. So eventually the writing side took over the plate – and now I am here. Thinking about being an artist again …
We LOVE NFTTU so much - it’s like you really get what it’s like to be a teen girl in the world - what was your inspiration for the story?
The inspiration came from lots of things: remembering what my friends and I were like at school, remembering how strong and yet how fragile those friendships were. I was also inspired by the three-girls film. I wanted to write a teenage version of Lace. (Although Lace actually has four girls but the most boring one got killed off for the mini-series). I knew I wanted to write about arty girls but the Warhol thing didn’t come in until later – and then it made complete sense to me because Andy Warhol’s art is all about surfaces and Gem’s whole journey is about trying to cut through the pretensions and find something real. Mostly I wanted to write the kind of book that I would have liked to read as a teenager.
Which of the three girls Gem, Mira and Lo, are you most like?
Probably Gem, but a little bit of me wants to be like Lo because she’s so crazy and she doesn’t care what people think of her. I’m nothing like Mira!
The girls want to be outsiders, they want to be cool, what were you like as a teen girl and has this influenced the story?
Well, I have to say I was very impressionable when I was young. I was always looking for cool role models in art and film and literature (I didn’t know where else I could find them.) I wanted to be different, outlandish, glamorous. I went through all sorts of phases. For a while I was a fifties chick and had bangs and fake red fall, and then I was a try-hard post-punkette (torn jeans with black tights underneath, sex pistols t-shirt), and then I wanted to be this beatnik chick (black everything, bare feet), then hippie-chick, then grunge-grrl, then country music queen … this went on until mid-way through my twenties when I settled into myself somewhat. Lately I am all about comfort (although I make it a rule not to wear trackie daks out in public.)
Gem defines herself through films, what film would define you?
This is hard! If I was a film I’d be: Smithereens (Susan Seidelman): short, scatty, set in the eighties, a bit desperate.
What was your fave movie as a teen girl?
I loved How to Marry a Millionaire. I thought Lauren Bacall as Schatzi Page was IT. She was so … scathing! But beautiful.
What was your fave book as a teen girl?
To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee.
My fave YA book was about a girl who dyes her hair pink hair and drops out of school to work in a bookstore … but I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called. If anyone out there knows …
Tell us about a typical day in the life of Simmone…
Today was fairly typical. Woke up at 8-ish. Fluffed around, checked emails etc. Went to local café with husband and son for pancakes. Got in car. Drove to office (my office is in a Victorian manse! It’s fabulous). Wrote from 11-2pm. Lunch. Went to the op shop over the road and purchased a delightful peacock keyhanger. Went back to office. Wrote from 3-6pm. Came home. Took son for big walk to the video store. Borrowed film (The Dead Girl.) Put son to bed. Had tea. Watched precisely 20 minutes of said video before giving up. Cup of tea, book and bed. If I have energy I sometimes write late into the night, but mostly I’m a daybird.
What tunes would be on a Simmone Howell soundtrack and why?
These are all songs that stick in my head and feel significant:
Neil Young - On the Beach (for a while I had a little red car and the tape of Neil Young’s on the beach was stuck in there. And this was a very stuck time in my life – every time I drove anywhere it seemed like this song would come on – It’s a great, lurching, lonely song. I love it.)
Dolphins – Fred Neil – It’s about longing (I like a longing song)
Dreams of the Everyday Housewife – Glen Campbell (self-explanatory)
Something Big – Burt Bacharach – (grand ambition and strings, strings, strings)
Bob Dylan _ Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again – (for those groundhog day(s))
Orange Skies – Love (I always imagine credits coming down over this one.)
What and who makes you jump in the air happy?
My son. He is two and he is a surrealist poet. My husband.
Reading makes my heart jump. Really. When I get to a good bit and have to read it over and over to try and work out how the author did it. Certain songs make me go all squeeeeeee. Plus Champagne cocktails. Possibilities.
Who are your inspir-o girls and why?
Patricial Highsmith – (crime writer) because she wrote great books, was unapologetic and cranky
Sylvia Plath – great work ethic, awesome with words, just slightly self-obsessed … shame about the end
Bobbie Gentry – US country singer who had great country hair, wrote beautiful songs and then married a rich man and retired
Pamela Des Barres – 60s supergroupie- writer-cancer survivor- creative writing teacher
The quick-fire, slightly superflous section - what’s your favourite:
Book: This changes all the time. Today I’ll say The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
Food: dark chocolate
Location: bed
Hang out: the beach
Mood: late night melancholy
Magazine: Russh (oz fashion mag)
Website: ebay
What’s your advice for wannabee writer girls?
Read lots, write as much as you can, experiment, write for yourself and don’t show anyone anything until you can explain everything! Take your time. Remember to do other things as well so that you have more stuff to write about.
The colour pink. Discuss.
When I think pink an early memory surfaces. Well, not so much a memory but a photograph. I’m in England in a park somewhere in Sussex. I’m seven and resplendent in a hot pink corduroy suit – jacket and pants – seriously like something Ray Davies might have worn in 1967. What happened was: my parents won 2 tix to England in a church raffle so they decided we would all go (4 kids under 10) – BUT we somehow managed to lose all our luggage. Everything. Luckily, the airline coughed up and that was how I got an amazing pink corduroy suit. It was not me and yet … I loved it. I wish I still had it.
No comments
Comments feed for this article