Peyton Place revisited … where you least expect it
Social realism and the author of Peyton Place inspired Stuart Everly-Wilson to write his latest novel, inspired by the small and somewhat notorious northern NSW town he calls home.
I have admired the author of Peyton Place, Grace Metalious, since seeing a documentary about her, long ago, when I was still in my thirties. An unpublished wannabe writer, I was so enthralled by her personality and backstory that I raced out to find a copy of her legendary debut novel.
I found one at The Sydney Book Exchange. I was caring for my terminally ill mother at the time and reading it in her company. I savoured that book like it was my own last meal. The quality of the writing, the scandalous candour of it, the wit and the light it shone on so much of the hypocrisy of pre- and post-war American life, through the lens of a small New England town.
Sadly, today, Grace Metalious is remembered – if at all – as a tragic figure. A woman who, having attained great wealth from her smash-hit book, had managed to drink herself to a penniless early grave at the age of 39.
But that’s not how I remember her. For me, it’s the Grace Metalious who was born into poverty, who had the unlikeliest dreams of becoming a writer – who never took a writing lesson in her life – and who managed to pen her first book while living in squalor.
And in that gutsy book, not once flinching in the honest depictions of her own class. My class. What courage she embodied in that. And then there was that other thing too.
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What an achievement. And what an inspiration she was to me. How I wanted to be like her. How I wanted to be her! But, alas, at the time it was becoming quite plain that though I seemed to share several of her character flaws, I lacked any of her talent.
There are many writers I’ve loved. And they have all given me much to aspire to. So, against the odds, I finally made it into print at the age of 60. And I like to think that my first published effort, Low Expectations, embodied in its depictions of suburban life in the North Auburn that I knew of the 1970s – all the authenticity that was Metalious’s hallmark.
As the publication of my first book approached, I wondered what some of my old mates from Auburn might make of my treachery in writing about our little suburb in such an unromanticised light. But in safe exile from that place, I thought, stuff it. They’ve had plenty of time to write their own account. If they see it differently to me, they should write their own book. But I wouldn’t waste time. None of us are getting any younger!
My second novel, The Maskeys, recently published by Transit Lounge, at the ripe old age of 65, began life as one of the more polished rejects I’ve accumulated under my bed over the years.
The original idea was planted in me after a visit to my brother, almost 40 years ago, while he was living in a small hamlet west of Coffs Harbour. There was quite a deal of marijuana being grown in the surrounding state forests.
My brother told stories of the hullabaloo of extravagant police raids on the town and region. He also told of a lynching in the neighbourhood: The sight of a nearby house, burned to the ground by locals, apparently, forcing a known “rock-spider” to flee for his life.
Happy to return to the relative safety of big-city Kings Cross, where I was living at the time, I began work on a small-town story of two feuding families, marijuana cultivation and supply – entire crops hidden in farmhouse attics – steamy sexual affairs, arson, revenge, some more arson, and the ludicrous showmanship of policing our society’s futile war on drugs.
Six years ago, when requiring a follow-up to my first novel, I unearthed this old reject as I hoped I could quickly novelise it for my publisher, keen to prove myself as someone who, though discovered late in life, was a writer who had plenty more stories to tell. Yarns, that on the surface at least, were quite different to my first work.
And, as fate would have it, I just happened to have been living for seven years in a small NSW town famed for hippies and marijuana (you know the place). Seven. Whole. Years. Imagine the authenticity I could bring to the setting, the local anecdotes, the colour, the sly humour, the drama and the nail-biting intrigue I could re-imagine my once woeful, reject with.
I got to work. Six years and 16 drafts later, The Maskeys is now in bookshops.
At its recent launch I was asked if there was a literary work that had influenced me or been front of mind as I laboured upon it. Yes, I replied, without hesitation: Peyton Place by Grace Metalious.
And this brings me back to that earlier mentioned, other thing …
Peyton Place is set in a small town. A small town that was inspired by a real town. A town where Metalious lived and was known. And shunned by many locals upon the publication of her best-selling novel. Gulp.
The town my book is set in is called Naples. Please don’t ask me why. It just suited. Naples is a fictional Australian town, a microcosm of Australia. And the creation it needed to be, no more, no less, for the fictional Australian characters who inhabit the story, to be their fullest selves. Their best selves and their worst selves.
Of course, my little effort may not be a bestseller, like Metalious’s. It may not become a cultural touchstone. Or a movie starring a latter-day Lana Turner. But it will be read by some of the folk of my little town (yes, you know the place).
And should I feel shunned in the public bar of my local as a result of the biting tale I’ve penned of a small town’s underbelly, more than ever before I will have to draw on all of my inner Grace.
Stuff it, I’ll say. If you don’t like what I’ve written – write your own bloody book!
The Maskeys by Stuart Everly-Wilson is published by Transit Lounge, $34.99.