Material Witness

INTERVIEW: Alan Bradley, author of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

If Flavia de Luce, the eleven-year-old heroine of one the year's most original and refreshing books, came as a bit of a surprise to me (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was not a book I expected to enjoy: review) it was as nothing to the shock (and disruption) she caused author Alan Bradley, when she first appeared on the page of another book he was writing.

"Like Athena, who sprang fully formed and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, Flavia simply appeared," the author says, speaking from his home in British Columbia. "She walked onto the page of another book I was writing, and simply hijacked the story. I had no idea who she was or where she came from, and because of that, I resisted her. It took Flavia a while to make me shut up and listen."

More than hijacking the story, Flavia eventually forced the abandonment of the project.

"I was working on another book set in the 50s about this young woman broadcaster on an exchange programme. I was well into it - about three or four  chapters - and as I introduced a main character, another detective, there was a point were he was required to go to a country house and interview this colonel," Bradley recalls.

"I got him up to the driveway and there was this girl sat on a camp stool doing something with a notebook and a pencil and he stopped and asked her what she was going and she said 'writing down number plates' and he said 'well there can't many in such a place' and she said, 'well I have your's'. I came to  a stop. I had no idea who this girl was and where she came from, and I couldn’t get past that point until I sorted out who she was."

As Bradley says, Flavia is not easy to ignore. Her forceful, precocious personality utterly dominates his charming and entertaining book, as she chases murderers and thieves, tortures and teases sisters, conspires with cooks and gardeners, concocts poisonous potions in her laboratory and roams free across the countryside with a freedom and innocence that is long lost.

Bradley certainly was hooked on her, although it took the intervention of his wife to persuade him to make Flavia the centre of attention.

"I had the book on the back-burner, and then my wife heard an interview about the (CWA) debut dagger award and said 'you'd be interested in that' and of course I was but I was looking at the other story, and she said, 'don't do that one, send the stuff about the girl on the camp stool' and so I started all over again," he says.

Bradley sent off a few thousand words and was rewarded not only with the 2007 Debut Dagger - one of the judges describing the de Luce family thus: "Think the Mitfords as imagined by Dorothy L Sayers" - but shortly after a three book deal with Orion in the UK, where it was published last month as well as Doubleday in Canada (February) and Bantam in the US (May). Translations are also now in the offing and Flavia will soon have an international fan base.

One side effect of winning the dagger was that Bradley made his first visit to England, a country he had imagined sufficiently well to write an award-winning story about.

"Having not been in England my view not of crumbling houses but of an idyllic place with beautiful landscape and villages, full of interesting things and bookshops. From Canada it was a sort of Shangri-La when I dreamed about flying to England," he says.

Happily, Bradley's high expectations were fulfilled, and as early as the train ride from Gatwick Airport to central London as he passed through villages that his ex-Pat grand-parents had told him about.

"I noticed the places they had talked about and had wonderful memories of. They were not dewy-eyed ex patriots but they always had a soft spot for England," he says

The love of England was passed down through the generations.

"I have been reading about England all my life, I was taught to read at home by my sisters before kindergarten and most of the books were about England, and I read all the classics," he says, although in his writing imagination blends with history and experience. "I told someone recently that the England I write about is not England as it was, but  England as it should have been."

Nobody who reads The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie will be surprised to hear that, as the Dagger judge spotted, the Golden Age of crime writing was influential.

"I was brought up on Dorothy L Sayers and Sherlock Holmes and a bit later worked my way through the detective novels of Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie , GK Chesterton and a host of others such as WJ Burley and Josephine Tey. I actually have in my library WJ Burley's copy of Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, which I consulted in writing The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I'm still hoping to come across the works of Freeman Wills Croft and Austin Freeman, which I've never managed to locate," he says.

One of the most impressive aspects of Sweetnessis how well Bradley captures the time and recreates a distinct period in English history, a combination of post-War privation and end-of-Empire change as seen through the eyes of a young girl living a childhood that Enid Blyton would have recognised.

The detail of the age is meticulously assembled through research that covers Whittaker's Almanac, Brashaw's railway guides and Geoffrey Grigson's wild flower books. The Blyton childhood comes from the freedom that Bradley himself was afforded, growing up in Canada..

"I don't think we trust children enough any more and leave them alone enough. They are over-entertained and over-programmed. I recall being that age and one of the greatest blessings was being left to myself and you find your own interest and amusement and pursue them and that has a huge effect on the outcome of your life," he says.

I point out to Bradley that In the case of Flavia de Luce, the laissez-faire parenting of her father the Colonel leads to her developing a passion and a talent for poisoning and questioned whether this was a desirable outcome.

"The thing is they (children) can become focused intensely on something and it doesn't happen very often that they are left to focus on something, they are too diffused by their parents and society. What would the world have been like if Mozart's father had said 'don’t touch that piano you are not old enough', it requires a fine line between guiding and leaving. I don’t want to sound like an expert on child-rearing, I am not, but it seems to me (that giving children space) results in interesting people," he says.

"I’m saddened by the way in which bright children are so often squelched by our cookie-cutter society. I like to think that I would encourage Flavia’s individuality by letting her “run wild”, as Colonel de Luce is said to do by the neighbours. In many ways, and in spite of his emotional unavailability, the Colonel is the perfect parent for someone like Flavia."

Bradley, a seventy-something, talks about Flavia in the way that an affectionate and proud grand-parent might. After a career in broadcasting, and having written two works of non-fiction, including an infamous volume on Sherlock Holmes that contended that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective might have been female, Bradley has turned to fiction and suggests that Flavia has given him "a new life" after a retirement as long ago as 1993. She is less a character than she is a muse.

"I let her tell her story without me steering elsewhere. I was amazed as anyone when she opened the book talking about being locked in the closet, I was following. It’s not channeling, but tuning into the subconscious," he says. "Flavia is an amalgam of burning enthusiasm, curiosity, energy, youthful idealism, and frightening fearlessness. She’s also a very real menace to anyone who thwarts her, but fortunately, they don’t generally realize it."

To have an 11-year-old girl at the centre of a detective novel for an adult audience, you need to be totally committed to her. And Bradley is. You also need to write with invention, wit, energy and a light touch.  And he does.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is as refreshing a book as I have read in a long time, it is charming, clever and funny. I sincerely hope it will bring Bradley, a charming man, the plaudits and the rewards that he deserves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTERVIEW: Marshall Karp, author of Bloodthirsty and The Rabbit Factory

Marshall Karp has a note pinned up by his desk that asks: "Right now, what’s going on in the hearts and minds of the characters you are writing about?"

It serves as a reminder to the writer that whenever he sits down to work on his comic crime thriller series, it is the mood of Hollywood detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs that matters, not that of Marshall Karp.

That he is thinking of them, and others such as Big Jim, Lomax's interfering father, is hardly surprising. Karp's first two novels, The Rabbit Factory (TRF) and Bloodthirsty, are heavily character-driven and the friendship and badinage between the two cops elevates the books.

Karp's affection for his characters leaps off every page. "I adore them", he says. And with very good reason: they got him published.

"I did not plan on writing a series but even before the first book the publisher wanted more. The interesting part of it was that like even though I had a lifetime history of writing I had not written a novel, so when I started and the agent submitted it I got all the classic rejections;  'Not our kind of book',  and 'He’s good, but let’s see the next one'. When it was bought I had been turned down by 30 plus companies," he says.

"When I spoke to him (the publisher) I said can I ask why you bought the book - but I reminded it's too late to back out! - and he said 'I sat down and by the time I got to the end of chapter 3 I loved the characters, I wanted to be with them, wanted to know what they were going to do. I was involved with them."

I had a similar experience. You can't help but like Lomax and Biggs. They're honest, hard-working cops without a drink problem between them. They have everyday problems - paying for college, family issues - and they are entertaining. Biggs is a larger-than-life, wise-cracking New Yorker, Lomax a perfect foil.

"I didn't want the alcoholic, burned out detectives down on life. I wanted them to have real lives. If TRF has one too many sub plots it’s because it’s the first and readers had to be given real feeling for the characters," Karp says.

One of the initial problems Karp had n drawing these characters was that they are a lot younger than him - "children of boomers, rather than boomers like me" - and so he had to get into that mindset. What were their life experiences?

"Learning about sex education for example," he says. "So I asked my son how old he was when he learned. Three, he said. 'You told us about the penis and how you put it in the vagina'. We told all kids and well, we were modern parents. They were raised differently. You have to learn all about the character."

Bearing in mind, I have only two novels and one sixty minute conversation, I have to take a punt here: but I would say that that anecdote is the essence of Marshall Karp. Wacky, with a mind that is slightly off the beaten track and which he is not afraid to speak in defiance of the tedious conventions of political correctness.

I am sorry that the interview did not take place in person, because I imagine him sitting in his Upstate New York office waving his arms around and running through a full range of exaggerated facial expressions.

Many well-known people - be they writers, sportsmen, comedians, whatever - do not live up your expectations of them when finally met face to face. Carl Hiaasen, though charming, was not as funny as his books. And why should he be? But Karp is as funny as his books.

Part way through the interview my wife calls on another line to say she has picked up the kids and is taking them to the dentist. I tell Karp. He makes a joke about British teeth, which he says is a staple of the late night sitcom. I retort that at least our predominant national characteristic is not obesity (although most of the evidence seems to suggest that it might be).

"Not today pal," he yells triumphantly down the line. "You can write that Marshall has lost 21 pounds in the last 4 months and he looks fantastic."

But before I can answer, he's off again.

"I live 100 miles from the Big City (New York) where people walk up and down the inside aisles of the supermarkets. They don’t go down the outside aisles where the fruit and the vegetables are. They go where the donuts, cookies and candies are. It’s pathetic. They have motorised scooters, probably invented for people who were handicapped, but you don’t see the handicapped people, just big fat-assed people who have to reach up into the beer cooler for another 24 pack."

This, he says, "will probably make me sound like a jerk", and doubtless it will to those who exclusively shop in the centre aisles of supermarkets, but it also answers a question for Karp that he has for me: "Why do these books resonate so well in the UK? Why have they had such a good reception there? I feel like there's Prince William, there's Prince Harry and there's me. I feel very grand."

I tell him that I cannot speak for other readers but that I suspect that his sharp sense of humour, one that pokes fun at authority and at some of the absurdities of American life, is in tune with the British sense of humour, and that many US import that display such qualities are successful here (The Simpsons and The Onion being two that spring immediately to mind).

"One of the qualities I try to bring to writing and phone-calling and talking to waitresses or anything is a total sense of irreverence. Get off your high horse and have a little fun. If you can deflate the importance of things, then great. Irreverence is a quality. I cross the line 20 times a day - well, perhaps not so much any more - and then I have to..." and his voice trails off halfway through a thought as it often does during the conversation as something else occurs to him.

"Terry is the voice of all that he certainly has a way of bringing out the portentousness in things. I have a little fun with American culture and when I write about a Hollywood producer who fired a dozen chickens off the set and then bought them back and served them for lunch the next day, well I made that up but it was founded in fact."

The chickens who went from extras to plate in the space of a day appeared in Bloodthirsty, Karp's second novel, which is in part an exposé of the Hollywood scene he used to inhabit in a former career as a scriptwriter.

"I am a former insider I bend and massage the truth but the hideous people you see were all real, and I can’t name any names I’d wind up with a lawsuit," he says.

But having trashed Hollywood in one novel, and the theme park world of a Disneyesque corporation in TRF, do Lomax and Biggs have a future in film?

"My agent said while there is a lot of interest in what you write and how you write, the studios who should be making these films won’t do it as it makes them look so hideous. They don’t want to make a film that craps over the industry," he says.

But unlike Robert Crais, who has said he won't sell film rights to his famous partnership, Karp would put his two guys on the silver screen.

"I am afraid that if Holywood came knocking I would say who is involved and my wife might say how much. I do believe that what I do is a blend of art and commerce and I have a film agent in California, who takes calls about the books and would be glad to sell it as a movie."

(This point obviously got him thinking, because a day after the interview, an e-mail arrived from Karp on this point: "If someone offered to make a Lomax and Biggs movie, I wouldn’t just take the money and run.  But I would listen carefully.   My criteria would be can this creative team give Mike, Terry, Big Jim and the others the broad audience that films provide, yet still do justice to the characters?")
 

So for now fans of Lomax and Biggs will have to make do with books, but the good news is that there are two more on the way. The third - to be called Flipping Out in the US, Dead Wives Club in the UK - follows the story of a group of women who "flip" houses - that is to say buy them cheap, do them up, and sell them on - who become the target of a serial killer.  Given that one of the group is Terry Biggs' wife, there is the potential for the overwelmingly (and unusually for crime novels) optimistic tone of Karp's books to be challenged. But probably not: optimism comes easily to Karp.

"When my son was 7, he said 'I figured out the difference between Mom and Dad. They walk past a vacant lot and Mum goes, uh oh a place for winos and addicts and Dad goes wow this is so cool we could build a theme park or a playground'. That’s me. The glass is more than half full," he says. "Don’t know how I got it, but it came and my wife and I are perfect counter points. She thinks I live in lala land and I think she sees doom and gloom in everything. I am optimistic about everything, and it makes a difference in the things I like. I don't want to write misery I want to fix it."

One of the ways this manifests itself is in his association with Vitamin Angels, the charity which provides vital nutrition to families and children in need, and is running Operation 20/20 which is looking to curtail childhood blindness by eradicating Vitamin A deficiency by 2020.

"I have been with them since right after 9/11. Like so many of us I had a 9/11 life changing moment of epiphany. My daughter was at ground zero, she escaped unharmed, but was missing for 90 minutes. 90 minutes doesn’t seem like a long time unless you’re watching the buildings collapoe and don’t know where your daughter is."

A lot of people that day had no chance, and Karp decided he could do something to help others who have no chance and got involved with Vitamin Angels.

"They collect vitamins, and I didn’t have any, but I knew corporations and they have money and they gave enough money to cover 3 provinces in India to start saving kids, because preventing blindness also saves lives. When they go blind it's a downward spiral and more than half of them die," he says.

If Karp throws himself into the project with as much enthusiasm as he does his writing or even his conversations with bloggers, the 20/20 goals should be met by about the middle of 2014.

Even 3,000 miles away down a scratchy phone line, his effervesence is palpable just as it is in his writing. He's clearly having a ball.

"I am having the best time of my life and this is my retirement career. One day right about when you’re 42 and look at life and say, 'is this is all there is?', you can plan a life in your 60s beyond your wildest dreams. There is room in your life for more than one adventure."

To make a donation to Vitamin Angels, click here.

10 Questions: Martin Edwards

How is it possible for an author who has been reviewed (positively) in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune to have slipped under the radar here for so long?

I really have no idea, but I'm grateful to have found Martin Edwards now, not least because he has fantastic website, which is full of unexpected treasure. I particularly recommend clicking on the "Collecting crime" link.

Martin writes novels set in Liverpool and the English lakes, and has been generous enough to answer the 10 questions.

Favourite author:Charles Dickens. Among crime writers: Ruth Rendell, aka Barbara Vine (living) and Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie (deceased)

Favourite book: American: Catch-22. British: Billy Liar and Bleak House. British crime: A Fatal Inversion. US crime:  Red Leaves

Favourite character: Sherlock Holmes

Best book read in 2007: British: The Secret Hangman by Peter Lovesey. American:  Whiskey Sour        by J.A.Konrath. Older book: 'The Prisoner' by Boileau and Narcejac

Best crime city: London

Best film adaptation: Not easy to choose between: Don't Look Now, Vertigo, and Get Carter

Book that gave you the thriller bug: The Murder at the Vicarage

Author to watch: American: J.A. Konrath. British: Kate Ellis

What you snack on while writing: Kit-Kat chocolate biscuits

Who would play Martin Edwards in a film of your life: Robert Lindsay, if the casting director was feeling very generous

10 Questions: John Connor

The latest subject for the 10 questions is John Connor, author of the acclaimed Karen Sharpe police procedurals set in the West Yorkshire area. His latest book, Falling, reviewed here recently,  has just been published. And very good it is too.

The review prompted an exchange of ideas between myself and John about how crime fiction like their lead characters: angular, awkward and tough-to-love like Karen Sharpe or KInsey Millhone girl-next-door-likable. I'll write that up next week. There will also be my guest blog for the Love of Reading online book fair, subject yet to be determined.

In the meantime, thank you to John for taking the time to respond:

Favourite author: No single one. J M Coetzee, Mika Waltari, Ford Maddox Ford, Chandler, Hammett, and many others

Favourite book: As above; Disgrace, The Dark Angel, Parades End, Farewell My Lovely, The Maltese Falcon (for the Flitcraft chapter), The Thought Gang (Tibor Fischer) and others

Favourite character: Sharrow, from Against A Dark Background by Iain M Banks, or Becky Sharpe, of course (Vanity Fair)

Best book read in 2007: Ice Moon by Jan Costin Wagner

Best crime city: Chandler’s LA. In real life Bradford is pretty good for crime – I ran a team of lawyers prosecuting crime in Bradford and Leeds for a while, and it seemed as richly destructive as any city of greater note or size. All of West Yorkshire enjoys a unique landscape of mixed urban development (sometimes quite prestigious, as with Leeds) and post-industrial decay, laced now with terrible racial tensions  - the whole set in the most magnificent rural beauty. Rural beauty and inncer city blight are often right alongside each other. It's a fantastic area to set any kind of novel in. And I'm not from Yorkshire, so I'm not just doing the usual Yorkshireman's plug...

Best film adaptation: No idea

Book that gave you the thriller bug: El Invierno en Lisboa and Beltenebros. Both by Antonio Munoz Molina

Author to watch: Jan Costin Wagner, for crime. Ice Moon is a really very impressive book. Breaks enough rules to stand out from the pack. Beautiful bathos at the ‘climax’, for example.

What you snack on while writing:  Saucisson sec, cheese, selery salt, Palm beer (whilst over here, in Belgium). Probably packets of crisps in the UK. 

Who would play you in a film of your life:  No idea

 

10 Questions: Neil White

The inspiration for writing crime novels can come from all sorts of places. Michael Connelly had the crime beat on the Miami Herald; Alafair Burke was a district attorney in Portland; I once had an idea for a story when I saw a couple canoodling in a pub.

Neil White's career in law - he is a solicitor-turned-prosecutor - has served as an apprenticeship to his new career as a crime author.  His debut novel Fallen Idols, which features an investigation into the murder of a Premiership footballer, was published by Avon Books, an imprint of the Harper Collins empire.

Thanks to Neil for taking the time to do the questions. He sounds like a thoroughly nice bloke, and the only blot on his copybook is that he follows the wrong rugby code. Still, you can't have everything.

Favourite author:  Carl Hiaasen. There's no reason why murder can't be fun.

Favourite book : In crime, To Kill A Mockingbird. In non-crime, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

Favourite character:  Hannibal Lecter 

Best book read in 2007:  Vanish by Tess Gerritsen

Best crime city:  American Mid-West. I love the sleepy town stuff, the suburban murders.

Best film adaptation:  Mystic River

Book that gave you the thriller bug:  If I went right back, I would say The Famous Five books.

Author to watch: Nicholas Royle

What you snack on while writing:  Chocolate

Who would play you in a film of your life:  Homer Simpson

 

 

10 Questions: Graham Masterton

Just one day after promising a return to crime fiction, we're off on a minor diversion, with 10 questions from Graham Masterton, one of Britain's most prolific writers.

Masterton, who is  best known for his horror, has also written everything from sex instruction books to historical sagas. His most recent novel Edgewise, one of more than one hundred titles to his name, was published in paperback by Severn House earlier this year.

I'm grateful that such a busy man  to him taking the time to answer a few questions.

Favourite author:  Nelson Algren

Favourite book: The Process by Brion Gysin

Favourite character:  Harry Palmer (The Ipcress File, etc.)

Best book read in 2007:  Inside Cincinnati  by Felix Winternitz and Sacha DeVroom Bellman (I don't read much fiction these days...I get too much of it at work.)

Best crime city:  Los Angeles

Best film adaptation: Chinatown

Book that gave you the thriller bug: The Quiller Memorandum

Author to watch: Peter James

What you snack on while writing: Polish kielbasa and crackers

Who would play you in a film of your life: George Clooney

10 Questions: Emerson Cole

I get nervous on behalf of debutant authors whose books are about to be published. I know from corresponding with one or two that they get pretty jumpy before, and that includes more established authors.

It's a tough business, I guess, putting a large piece of yourself out there to be shot at by critics and shunned by the reading public.

So, welcome to that world, Emerson Cole. His debut novel GodSword, is published in a fortnight or so - right in the middle of Harry Potter season (more of which as we get nearer the date) - and I wish him all the best, and thank him for his time in answering these questions.

Favourite author:
Charles Dickens and Robert Ludlum

Favourite book:
Tale of Two Cities

Favourite character:
Simon Templar (The Saint)

Best book read in 2007:
Panic by Jeff Abbott

Best crime city:
London

Best film adaptation:
Goldfinger

Book that gave you the thriller bug:
Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum

Author to watch:
Jeff Abbott

What you snack on while writing:
Water and walnuts

Who would play you in a film of your life:
Christian Bale

10 Questions: Alafair Burke

Alafair Burke introduces a new character to the crime fiction world this week, when New York City detective Ellie Hatcher makes her debut in the excellent Dead Connection. (Review)

Alafair took a little time out of her schedule of law professor and up-and-coming crime writer to answer 10 questions for Material Witness.

Favourite author: I'm going to be sappy here, but I guess I have to say James Lee Burke.  Blood and all that. 

Favourite book:  In the contemporary crime genre, I'll go with Mystic River by Dennis Lehane.  Otherwise, The Hours by Michael Cunningham.

Favourite character: Jack Reacher

Best book read in 2007: No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay (forthcoming)

Best crime city: L.A.

Best film adaptation: Silence of the Lambs

Book that gave you the thriller bug: From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by EL Konigsburg   

Author to watch: Michael Koryta

What you snack on while writing:  Baby carrots when I'm good. Jelly bellies when I'm bad.

Who would play Alafair Burke in a film of your life:  Why, Scarlett Johansson, of course!

10 Questions: Alex Scarrow

I'm not in the business of making predictions. I spent too long covering the information technology sector (and the internet bubble) in the late 1990s, drinking the industry's Kool-Aid and writing all sorts of nonsense about how the internet would rip up conventional business models to get too involved in any more futurology.

So instead of exposing myself to further ridicule and telling you what I believe will happen, here's what I think should happen: by the end of 2007, Alex Scarrow, should be a star in the thriller world.

I recently read his second novel, Last Light, a terrifying journey through an imagined energy crisis in the not too distant future, and it was as compelling a book as I've read in a while. I'll review it closer to its publication date, but in the meantime, Alex has been good enough to answer 10 questions.

Favourite author: Nevil Shute/Stephen King

Favourite novel: On the Beach

Favourite character: Nathan (Sophie's Choice)

Best book read in 2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy  

Best crime novel/thriller:  Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

Best film adaptation: Children of Men

Book that gave you the thriller bug: The Eagles has Landed by Jack Higgins

Author to watch: Joseph Finder

What you snack on while writing: Starbuck's Chocolate chunk shortbread

Who would play Alex Scarrow in a film of your life: A shaved Edward Norton

10 Questions: Peter James

Peter James' third Roy Grace novel, Not Dead Enough, was released on Friday and is set to become a summer bestseller. (Review here). Peter has been kind enough to take time out of his tour, coming to a bookshop near you soon, to answer 10 questions:

Favourite author:

Graham Greene

Favourite book:

Brighton Rock - it was the novel that inspired me to become a writer

Favourite character:

Travis McGee in the John D Macdonald books. He lived on a houseboat on the Florida Keys, drove a Rolls Royce pickup truck, and got things back for people.

Best book read in 2007:

Red Leaves by Thomas Cook

Best crime city:

Brighton, of course! Three former chief constables have told me it is the favoured place in the UK for premier league criminals to live in!

Book that gave you the thriller bug:

Desmond Bagley’s Running Blind. And it has one of the best opening lines of all time.

Author to watch

Michael Robotham – his new novel, The Night Ferry, is wonderful

What you snack on while writing:

The four olives I pluck out of my 6pm vodka martini

Who would play Peter James in a film of your life:

Scarlett Johannsen with facial hair and a chest rug.