Gone Bad (10 page)
Violence in any form sucks. Once, when I was a kid, I had my head bashed into the windscreen of a car until blood ran down my face. I had just finished playing a gig with a band named Prodigy at a Friday night dance. I had tried to stop one guy from punching out the lights of another guy who had said the wrong thing at the wrong time. As a result, I got hammered by someone who had obviously spent a lot more time practising with his fists than I had.
This novel is about music but it is also about violence. You might wonder, why is this guy who is opposed to violence writing a book where the main character is a bully and a thug who gets his jollies by bashing anyone he sees as “different”? Isn't there already too much violence in the movies and on TV and even in books?
The answer is yes and no.
Yes, most of the violence you see in the media is there for shock and entertainment value. And it still sucks. There's no doubt in my mind that it helps to increase violence in the real world. The reason I explored violence in this book is because I was interested in examining the root of violence both in myself and in the world around me. That's what this story is all about.
It was a rough book to write. Cody was a difficult character for me to get into. In order to write a good novel, to some degree I have to become the character who is telling the story. So imagine for a minute what happens when this author becomes Cody.
Several times in my life, I've actively been involved in protests and other activities to stop wars, to get rid of nuclear weapons, to promote gun control, to reduce violence on TV, and to counter racial hatred. If you read any of my other books, you'll find that there's a strong underlying theme of “tolerance.” Everyone should get along with everyone else no matter how different they are. I'm a pacifist, too, which means that I think all forms of fighting â schoolyard and battlegroundâ are stupid. I'll do what I can to end violence.
So figure this: somewhere inside of the complex of personalities that is me, Cody exists. I think there's a little bit of Cody in you as well, no matter how freaky that sounds.
Intolerant tough guys hate others â immigrants, gays, racial minorities, emo kids, or rappers â because of basic insecurities, frustration, and an anger that grows from a very primary fear. We all share some of that insecurity and the fear that goes along with it. Most people don't act out the violence that results from it, but some do.
Having written from Cody's point of view, I think I understand the problem a little bit better. If Cody remained the same stubborn, pigheaded bully that he was at the beginning of this chain of events, there would have been no story here. Fiction, though, is created around characters and the changes they go through. Cody is a different drummer by the end of the book and therein lies the tale.
But I wasn't writing a book exclusively about violence. I was also writing a book about music. The same night that I had my head bashed in while trying to stop a fight, I had just had a great session playing lead guitar in my band in front of a crowd of a couple hundred kids. We had played our hearts out. We wailed and thrashed and sang and stomped and jammed away until everybody's ears rang and neighbours were complaining that we were disturbing the peace. But when we had to stop at the end of the gig, we knew we had succeeded in making the music work through our drums, guitars, and keyboard, and through us as well. Maybe that's why I had felt invincible and had to be brought back to cold, hard reality by a guy who did his communicating with fists instead of guitar picks.
I like to think that I haven't lost the music. I still play guitar. I've recently recorded some more new tunes adapting my poetry to music. You can search for the music videos of Lesley Choyce and the SurfPoets on YouTube or on my website, lesleychoyce.com. So, when Kelsey, Cody, and Alex work out a new tune, I'm there with them at the heart of the musical creative process.
The music and the message that Cody and Kelsey create is inextricably entwined. The songs have sound but they also have lyrics with real content. As sometimes happens with books, original music with real lyric content is often the first to get condemned, to get censored, to get banned. Maybe someone will even want to attack this novel for its violence, for its language, or because Cody is not a respectable character. Maybe it should be kept out of the schools because it deals with sensitive subjects.
If that were to happen, I think that we'd all be losing something. We'd be losing a chance to openly discuss the root problems of violence. We'd be giving over the power of influence to TV and movie producers who glorify the death and destruction that has become so much a part of our lives. Novels provide a fictional world to examine our deepest concerns. It's my hope that this novel will help readers take a look at their own neighbourhoods and think about ways to reduce hostility and intolerance in whatever form it takes.
Lesley Choyce
Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia
Copyright 2011 © by Lesley Choyce
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Choyce, Lesley, 1951-
Gone bad [electronic resource] / Lesley Choyce.
(SideStreets)
Previously published under title: Good idea gone bad.
Type of computer file: Electronic monograph in EPUB format.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-55277-711-4
I. Title. II. Series: Choyce, Lesley, 1951- . Good idea gone bad. III. Series: SideStreets (Online)
PS8555.H668G6 2011a jC813'.54 C2010-907698-2
This digital edition first published in 2011 as 978-1-55277-711-4
Originally published in 2011 as 978-1-55277-709-1
James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers
317 Adelaide Street West Suite 1002
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 1P9
About the Author
LESLEY CHOYCE is a novelist and poet living at Lawrencetown Beach in Nova Scotia. His writing has earned him several awards, including two Dartmouth Book Awards and the Ann Connor Brimer Award for the Young Adult novel
Good Idea Gone Bad
. Five of his previous Formac novels have received the Canadian Children's Book Centre's “Our Choice” Award. The
Ottawa Citizen
calls him “a national treasure”.
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