Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes

Author:Colin MacInnes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780749011406
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2011-01-04T10:00:00+00:00

IN JULY

Picture me, up to the calves in mud at low tide beside the river, trying to pose the Hoplite and the ex-Deb up on a stranded barge. ‘Don’t fuss us,’ the Hoplite said; and, ‘Do hurry,’ said the ex-Deb-of-Last-Year.

This was the spiel. Events of the last month had convinced me that the only way I could ever hope to make some swift dinero was by cracking into the top-flight photographic racket – i.e. produce some prints that would be so sensational that I’d make the big time in the papers and magazines, and even (this was my secret dream) succeed in holding a fabulous exhibition somewhere to which all my various contacts would bring their loaded friends. When you come to ponder on it, like I did for days, you’ll see it’s not so wild a notion as it might appear. After all, kids do make big money these days, as I’ve explained, and as for photography, well, it seems very fashionable just now to treat photographers like film stars, the reason being, I expect, that the culture-vultures get all the art kick they want out of snapshots, although actually they’re damn easy to understand – and, need I say, so far as that goes, to manufacture.

But, as in everything here below, I had to find my gimmick, my approach, my slant, my angle. And after days of brooding on the problem, I hit on a plan that, so far as I can see, can’t miss. It simply is, to weave a story round the two contemporary characters that everyone is interested in – i.e. the teenagers and the debs. You dig? The teenager, of humble origin – Prince Charming in reverse – encounters the Poor-Little-Rich-Girl debutante. Daddy and Pop both disapprove (as well as Mum and Mummy), so Teenage Tom and Diana Debutante have to meet clandestinely in selected spots about the capital (which I would choose for their crazy picturesqueness), and the whole collection, when completed, would comprise a stark, revealing portrait of the contemporary scene.

My chief difficulty was casting the two star parts, because although I know stacks of teenagers and a deb or two, I wanted persons I could rely on to keep the secret, and who would give me a lot of valuable time without immediate remuneration, and who, most of all, would look sensational when recorded for posterity by my Rolleiflex. The ex-Deb was the obvious selection for the female rôle, since her looks, though, to my taste, completely meaningless, are simply gorgeous – I mean, she’s so damn glorious she isn’t real – but the big question was, of course, would she accept? Well, thanks to Dean Swift, she did. Because the ex-Deb, though you couldn’t precisely describe her as a junkie, climbs on the needle when being beautiful is just too much for her, and the Dean, when I introduced them, was able to help her in the matter of supplies. If you’re going to tell me hooking her this way

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