The 25-year career of singer/songwriter John Wesley Harding has skyrocketed of late with the publication of no fewer than three critically acclaimed novels under his birth name, Wesley Stace. Equally amazing, the artist named for Bob Dylan’s misspelling of Texas gunfighter John Wesley Harden has just released the finest album of a career that’s seen him record at least 18 longplayers for labels ranging from high-profile majors to imprints so small the back catalog was stored in somebody’s garage between the cat box and the washing machine. Produced by old pal Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and fleshed out by no less than R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and the Decemberists, The Sound Of His Own Voice (Yep Roc) is a full-bore stunner with Wes (nobody calls him John) weaving his usual lyrical magic through knockout arrangements of extraordinary songs that revive the ghosts of the Kinks, David Lynch soundtrack guru Angelo Badalamenti and wall-of-sound maestro Phil Spector. For yet another career-topping milestone (gasp), JWH will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week for (yes it’s true) the second time. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Harding: Published in 1945, with a very beautiful cover, and wartime thin paper, Ragged Robyn is one of my favourite novels, and perhaps the finest to come out of an author’s dream. (I haven’t read all the novels that came from author’s dreams; I’m making a generalisation. It’s what you do.) I wouldn’t want to give the plot away, but it’s set in a very mysterious past, in rough and rural England, and Robyn either does or doesn’t come to a sticky end that is predicted in the first chapter—which makes it seem very like an old ballad. And I have grand plans, that must never materialize, to turn this into some kind of ballad opera. Onions (which may well have been pronounced “Oh-nigh-ens”) also wrote Widdershins, a ghost story known to quite a few.
Photo after the jump.
One reply on “From The Desk Of John Wesley Harding: “The Story Of Ragged Robyn” By Oliver Onions”
Hi
I’m in the middle of compiling first a bibliography, then a monograph, then perhaps a biography of Oliver Onions. It’s hard work. He was a notoriously private and dour Yorkshireman.
He first came to prominence with The Compleat Bachelor in 1900 and published some 45 books between then and his death in 1965. In the early twentieth century he was as well known and regarded as DH Lawrence.
This book marks a change of emphasis in his writing. Nearly everything he wrote up until then (even the ghost stories) was concerned with the grim reality of either the present or the recent past (150 years or so), although there are notable exceptions. The last five novels appear to be set in an idealised early middle ages Britain. It is part of my aim to explore this in much greater detail so I would be glad of any more detailed comments you might wish to offer.
Incidentally, while he did indeed write Widdershins, that was a collection of ghost stories first published in 1911; there is no story by that title. The lead item, “The Beckoning Fair One”, has however become one of the most anthologised ghost tales of the 20th century.
Finally, he was apparently mercilessly teased at school over his name so he determined not to let this happen to his children. First, they tried the alternative pronunciation rumour, but he then changed his name to George Oliver while continuing to publish as O.O.