"Ben" is a rat. (Chris Walter/WireImage)

âBen, the two of us need look no more.
We both found what we were looking for.
With a friend to call my own
I’ll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You’ve got a friend in me.â
When it comes to songs about friendship, Michael Jacksonâs first US number one âBenâ (1972) is among the best known and the most sentimental. But unlike others of the genre â such as âLean On Meâ by Bill Withers (1972), or âWith a Little Help from My Friendsâ by The Beatles (1967) â the key difference is that the subject isnât human. âBenâ is a rat.
That this mawkish song about a boy and his pet rodent could have catalysed the career of one of the biggest pop stars of all time is only one aspect of the strangeness of this story. The inspiration for the song can be traced directly to a Belfast seed merchant and CND activist called Stephen Gilbert who, in 1968, published the novel Ratmanâs Notebooks about a man who trains rats to wreak vengeance on his enemies. When this was filmed in 1971 as the movie Willard, the reissued paperback of the novel sold over a million copies. And it was for the sequel, Ben in 1972, that Michael Jackson provided the theme song.
All art is imitative. Even the greatest geniuses, those for whom there is seemingly no precedent, have learned their craft in the observation of other artists. The canon of literature is not formed at the behest of academics issuing decrees from their ivory towers, but rather from those works that are most emulated and admired by creatives. And this applies as much to popular culture as it does to high art. Take, for instance, TâPauâs breakthrough hit âChina in Your Handâ (1987) which was inspired by Mary Shelleyâs Frankenstein. Some of these ripples of influence are admittedly more arbitrary than others. But there is something especially gratifying about being able to trace the work of a relatively obscure Northern Irish novelist such as Stephen Gilbert all the way to the âKing of Popâ, who died 15 years ago to the day..
I remember speaking to a senior member of the Northern Irish Arts Council who was lamenting his countryâs poor track record of sustaining the legacy of its creative sons and daughters. Of course, the likes of C.S. Lewis need no further promotion, but what of the lesser-known names? When I attempted to arrange a blue plaque for the birthplace of Belfast novelist Forrest Reid, I was met with bafflement from one of the decision-makers. Even this person so steeped in local culture apparently had no idea that Reid was considered Northern Irelandâs foremost novelist by E.M. Forster, and had won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1944. Such is the fickle nature of literary trends.
As for Gilbert, you wonât find his work on any of the shelves of Belfastâs bookshops. But there is much to admire in the five novels that were published during his lifetime. Reading these books, one is immediately struck by the sheer imaginative range on display. The Landslide (1943) is a fantastical tale about a boy who encounters primeval creatures in his village that have been brought back into existence after a landslide exposes their long-dormant eggs. Bombardier (1944) is a vivid and compelling roman Ă clef about the authorâs experiences as a gunner in France during the war which includes some fascinating insights into the evacuation of Dunkirk from the soldierâs perspective. Gilbert followed this with Monkeyface (1948), an eccentric story about an ape boy who is brought from a forest in South America and raised in a Belfast suburb. Then came The Burnaby Experiments (1952), in which Gilbert seems to take revenge on his mentor Forrest Reid by casting him in the role of a voyeuristic villain with supernatural powers. (The intense love-hate relationship between Reid and Gilbert is far too complex and intricate to explore here.) Ratmanâs Notebooks finally appeared in 1968, an outlandish horror story to round off this bizarrely varied catalogue of work.
That Ratmanâs Notebooks was destined to become famous due to a Hollywood adaptation was a source of some irritation for Gilbert. He died in 2010 having refused to watch Willard, its sequel Ben, or the 2003 remake of Willard starring Crispin Glover. He wasnât happy with the studioâs decision to christen his unnamed narrator Willard Stiles, and to relocate the story to California. His instincts were right; this off-kilter tale is far better suited to a provincial rather than a cosmopolitan setting. Ratmanâs Notebooks concerns a discontented man, dominated by a scornful mother and bullied by his boss, who resorts to acts of horrific violence. Somehow this all makes so much more sense in Belfast, a city with a troubled history and where the borderland of reality and fiction has always felt malleable.
Ratmanâs Notebooks is often dismissed as a lurid and dispensable work of pulp fiction, but its influence on the horror genre has been hugely significant. The critic Kim Newman has argued its success following the release of Willard âmade rampaging vermin a major horror theme of the 1970s and â80sâ and has pointed out that even Stephen Kingâs debut Carrie (1974) follows the same story archetype of the âturning wormâ revenge fantasy.
Gilbert presents Ratman’s Notebooks in the form of a diary, and opens with the arresting line: âMother says there are rats in the rockery.â Although it would be wrong to see the narrator as a fictionalised version of Gilbert, there are certainly parallels with the authorâs life. After the death of his father in 1934, the family had been compelled to adapt to more meagre circumstances. They moved from Kensington Park in East Belfast to a relatively modest terrace house just off the Antrim Road. Having grown accustomed to an affluent way of life, they were forced to make many changes; the car was sold, along with many items of furniture. âTea isnât high tea anymore,â Gilbert wrote in his unpublished autobiography. âJust tea, with bread, jam and margarine. Mother watches us all to make sure nobody spreads the jam or the margarine too thickly.â
In tone and substance, this could have been a line from Ratmanâs Notebooks. This theme of social decline seemingly obsessed Gilbert, and recurs continually in his novels. The narrator of Ratmanâs Notebooks is forced to suffer the indignity of having to work as a subordinate in a company once owned by his deceased father, a scenario that bears some resemblance to Gilbertâs own experience. As our anti-hero’s bitterness festers, so too does his desire for revenge, not solely against those who have directly wrong him, but against society as a whole.
Gilbert was born in 1912 in Newcastle, County Down. He was one of four children, although his father William also had two other daughters from a previous marriage. William was the manager of Samuel McCausland Ltd, a Belfast-based seed merchants, the business that Stephen was later to inherit. His early life was relatively privileged; the family could afford to put him through boarding school, first in England at the Leas in Hoylake, Merseyside, and then at Loretto School in Edinburgh. His headmaster at Loretto, James Greenlees, once wrote a prescient remark about Gilbert: âI think it more than probable that he will eventually do something quite out of the ordinary, as he has an original way of looking at things.â In Ratmanâs Notebooks, Gilbert was to prove Greenlees right.
In the archives at Queenâs University one can read Gilbertâs immense unpublished four-volume autobiography, in which he makes clear that Ratmanâs Notebooks was his final attempt to fulfil his lifelong ambitions. âMy service to Mammonâ, he writes, âhas kept me from serving literatureâ. His ultimate aim, âto leave business and become a whole-time writerâ, never came to fruition. That said, he enjoyed a highly successful career in the seed industry and realised his goal âto marry and have four children â two boys and two girlsâ. As far I am aware, I am the only person to have read his autobiography. To open the pages, I first had to clear away layers of cobwebs and desiccated spiders.
The Gilbert archives at Queenâs University gives us a fascinating insight into his creative process. He was a meticulous researcher; there are handwritten notes about rats detailing their feeding habits, and the physical and behavioural characteristics of various species. One of Gilbertâs many idiosyncrasies was to record the precise times that he began and completed his novels. For this reason, we know that he started work on the eventual version of Ratmanâs Notebooks at 6:30am on St Patrickâs Day, 1967, and finished his first draft at 7:31am on Tuesday 10 October of the same year. The first outline of the novel dates from 1938, which shows that the idea had been germinating for over a quarter of a century.
A number of manuscript drafts of Ratmanâs Notebooks are still extant, some of which contain tantalising annotations regarding the various directions the novel could have taken. In one handwritten note â âBen can readâ â Gilbert has even toyed with the possibility of making the story explicitly supernatural. Another note sees his unnamed narrator make the claim that âthere is nothing wrong with homosexuality except that it is entirely unfashionableâ. Where such a line of thought might have taken the plotline is anyoneâs guess.
It is perhaps no surprise that Gilbertâs sole foray into the horror genre turned out to be his most successful book. He was instinctively drawn to the fantastical, as evinced in works such as Monkeyface, The Burnaby Experiments and the unpublished dystopian novel The Labyrinth. âI need something out of the ordinary to work round,â he wrote in his journal on 29 October 1999, âwhich is what has taken me to Fantasyâ. His body of work is infused with a baleful darkness relating to issues of morality and human corruption. Ratmanâs Notebooks is not just a revenge story, but a study of hubris. The narrator makes himself into a kind of deity to the rats, who become engines of his most malevolent desires.
And so it is remarkable that such a bleak story should ultimately lead us to Michael Jacksonâs âBenâ. The lyrics by Don Black included a middle eight which Jackson later said were his favourite in all his songs: âI used to say âIâ and âmeâ; now itâs âusâ, now itâs âweâ.â This sentiment seems so far from Gilbertâs original conception that it is curious to reflect on the connection. But itâs a reminder that an artistâs legacy does not necessarily end with the work itself, and there are myriad and unexpected ways in which it might endure.
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SubscribeIn Donny Osmonds autobiography he says he was first choice for the song but his Dad (the boss) turned it down and Donny says he is glad now because he wouldn’t like to be immortalised as someone whose best friend was a rat. Donny Osmond says he often played with Micheal as they were about the same age and often in the same vicinity ie theatres and recording studios. He felt a bit sorry for a little boy who had an even weirder family + childhood than him! When I was 17 I think Donny O was 14 + far too young for me to consider an object of romantic or sexual interest but women of my age say they saw him that way,which seems weird to me. However at 60+ that 3yr gap is negligible and he is very fanciable,but happily married and a Granddad. I love that when he sings Puppy Love and gets to the “somebody help me ” bit – all the Grannies scream!
I know I’ve gone a bit off topic but rats are unnappealing and those books sound boring.
Thanks Andrew, for bringing to light this strange connection between a world-famous pop star and an obscure Belfast novelist. The subtext – of the ways in which creativity can splinter and re-emerge across genres and eras – is idiosyncratic of our human nature and positive as a trait when positivity is in short supply.
I also never knew the connection between T’Pau’s iconic hit and Frankenstein (no doubt too busy watching the band’s enigmatic female vocalist) but it illustrates the point.
I wonder how you find the time to do such research, as involved in this case? Is it something that’s been hovering in your awareness for some time (given your own NI roots) and/or sparked by the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death? In any event, you’ve now set the record (excuse the pun) straight.
What an interesting piece. It sent me straight to eBay where Stephen Gilbert paperbacks seem to command high prices.
Thank you, Andrew, for such an interesting and enjoyable piece, and for an unusual start to my day.
Fascinating, thanks
I remember how much we loved Willard and Ben. We laughed because it was so stupid, yet we were quiet and tense in some parts. We also memorized the song Ben and sang it with real passion. Fun, innocent days.
How interesting. My dad grew up opposite Forrest Reidâs house in East Belfast (a stones throw from CSLâs house) and itâs only recently that I discovered Reid. Must check Gilbert outâŠ.