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Episode image is a detail of a photo by Charles Adrian.
Reflecting on the toppling of some statues and the protecting of others, Charles Adrian shares what he remembers of three books given to him at the beginning of the second season of the podcast.
Correction: Edward Colston’s Royal African Company was active in the seventeenth century and not the eighteenth. You can read Gurminder K Bhambra on Edward Colston and the glorification of the British Empire in the New York Times here and Priyamvada Gopal on the relationship between statues and our idea of history in The Huffinton Post here. You can watch Afua Hirsch talking to PoliticsJOE about Black Lives Matter and British history, including some reflection on the theatrical boarding-up of the Churchill statue in Westminster, on YouTube here.
Between recording and releasing this episode, the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol was briefly replaced by a statue of Jen Reid by Marc Quinn. You can read about it in the Guardian here and you can read thoughts on it by Thomas J. Price in The Art Newspaper here.
You can read more about the Rhodes Must Fall movement, meanwhile, in The New Statesman here.
[Also: In January, 2021, several months after this episode came out, Simukai Chigudu, one of the co-founders of Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, wrote in The Guardian about his life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes, which you can find here.]
For some reflection on racism and anti-racism in Europe and the UK, you can read Musa Okwonga in Byline Times here and Gary Younge in The New York Review Of Books here.
You can read June Tuesday writing about J. K. Rowling and the so-called reasonable concerns in Medium here, you can read Evan Urquhart on J .K. Rowling and her obsession with trans men in Slate here.
And, in case you are worried about how the kids are doing, you can read Katelyn Burns’ profile of New York’s Gender And Family Project in the Guardian here. Or this by Jack Turban in Psychology Today rebutting some widespread misinformation, which came out after this episode was released.
The Page One podcast began as a project recorded at the Wilton Way Cafe for London Fields Radio, which is now called Fields Radio. From the second season onwards, however, the podcast was produced independently by Charles Adrian.
Correction: The film adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley Charles Adrian talks about seeing came out in 1999.
Another book by Patricia Highsmith, Ripley’s Game, is discussed in Page One 76 and Page One 175.
Correction: The production of The Master And Margarita that Charles Adrian remembers hearing about was mounted at the 2001 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was described by Ian Shuttleworth for the Financial Times as “a solid adaptation of Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita by Peter Morris (author of The Age Of Consent)”.
You can read about the theatre adaptation of The Master And Margarita made by Théâtre de Complicité here.
Books discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 52, Page One 53 and Page One 54.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded 13th June, 2020
Episode released: 21st July, 2020
Book listing:
Shopgirl by Steve Martin (Page One 52)
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Page One 53)
The Master And Margarita by Mikail Bulgakov (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) (Page One 54)
Links:
Gurminder K Bhambra in the New York Times
Priyamvada Gopal in The Huffington Post
Statue of Jen Reid in The Guardian
Thomas J. Price in The Art Newspaper
Rhodes Must Fall in The New Statesman
Simukai Chigudu in The Guardian
Gary Younge in the New York Review Of Books
Jack Turban in Psychology Today
Ian Shuttleworth for The Financial Times
The Master And Margarita by Théâtre de Complicité
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 170th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and this is the 14th Page One In Review.
You join me today on Saturday the 13th of June. To give you a limited historical perspective on the situation here in the United Kingdom this week, it's a week since the statue of Edward Colston, an eighteenth-century Bristol-based slave trader, was removed from its plinth in Bristol and rolled into the harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest. That statue has since been dredged back up and is being held in an undisclosed location with a view, I think, to being put in a museum at some point in the future. I'm not sure why it wasn't left in the harbour but… perhaps there were environmental concerns. No, I don't believe that for a minute. Following the removal of Edward Colston's statue, a statue of Robert Milligan - also an eighteenth-century slave trader - was removed from London's Docklands but removed by crane. I'm not sure where that statue has ended up. A statue of Robert Baden Powell [/beɪdn̩ paʊwl̩ /] - or Baden Powell [/baːdn̩ pəʊl/], as I was taught to pronounce his name when I was a scout - in Poole has been boarded up to protect it, apparently, from possible attack. It was originally going to be removed temporarily but people got very upset about that idea and protested and so it's been boarded up instead. As has the statue of Winston Churchill that stands in Parliament Square in London, and the Cenotaph, which is on Whitehall, also in London. Those two statues were boarded up to protect them from possible vandalism during a Black Lives Matter protest that was scheduled for today but which has been cancelled because Britain First has decided to protest today explicitly to protect those two statues.
Britain First, in case you don't know, is an organisation that describes itself as a “patriotic political party that will put our own people first”. That's another way of saying that it is racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic. Wikipedia describes it as “a far-right, British fascist political organisation formed in 2011 by former members of the British National Party”. That's a description that I would consider more useful.
In Oxford this week, Rhodes Must Fall protests were in the news again. Rhodes Must Fall is a very interesting movement that began in South Africa and spread to the UK. The, kind of, headline demand of Rhodes Must Fall is the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes from the outside of Oriel College in Oxford but, like Black Lives Matter, it's frequently caricatured in the media and its message simplified. It's not just about the removal of a statue. Statues are important inasmuch as they are symbolic but the movement - Rhodes Must Fall - is a much wider movement looking to promote, for example, a better grasp of history, decolonisation of the syllabus at Oxford and in other places, and broader structural change to improve access and also the experience that people of colour have at academic institutions like Oxford. I will link to articles about the movement in the description to this episode.
There was also a certain amount of transphobia this week. I mean, there's a, kind of, constant background hum of transphobia in the media week on week but this week it was intensified as a result of some things that J. K. Rowling has written and said. And I don't want to go into that particularly here but I will, again, link in the episode notes to an interesting analysis of some of the ways in which some of the things that she has written reflect widely used transphobic talking points. So if any of you would like to delve into that more I will leave that up to you.
So. For anybody who is new to this podcast: Welcome! I don't usually talk so much about politics in general or my politics in particular but we're living in unpleasant times. This is a book podcast and Page One In Review - these episodes - are episodes in which I am going through all of the books that I've been given over the last eight years of doing this podcast and just talking a little bit about what I remember about them.
We've reached the books that I was given at the beginning of season two of the podcast...
[page turning]
... which began with my conversation with Vera Chok, which is the 52nd Page One, which took place at her flat. I've no idea now where she was living at the time but in London somewhere. I feel that I should also take some time to talk a little bit about Vera's relationship with the Page One podcast.
The podcast would not exist without Vera Chok. Vera is an old and dear and important friend of mine. We met when we were both students at Oxford at the turn of the century - and worked together a little bit and lost touch and then regained touch and worked together again - and Vera is responsible for all kinds of exciting and interesting projects that I have been lucky enough to be involved with over the years that we've known each other. And Page One is one of those projects. I seem to remember that she... she either emailed me or texted me, back in 2012, to say that she had been in a cafe called the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney and they had a, kind of, radio set-up and they were looking for people to do radio shows from the cafe and why didn't I write to them and propose something? And so I did. I wrote to them. I'd already been thinking about the idea that became Page One, which in the beginning was just about reading the first page of second hand books, and I wrote to the Wilton Way Cafe and suggested that. And when I started to do episodes of the podcast in which I talked to other people about books Vera was the obvious choice to kick that off. So she was the first guest on the podcast - the first Second Hand Book Factory episode of the podcast features... I think it's Page One number 6 and it features Vera Chok - and she was then the first guest for each season of the podcast. And so she was my guest for the 52nd Page One which was the first episode of the second season.
Hopefully, because I've said so much about that you might excuse me saying very little about the book that she gave me, which was Shop Girl by Steve Martin. I remember her telling me that she really liked this book. I don't remember it at all. I read it. I'm pretty sure that I enjoyed it but that's as much as I am sure of. Well, I know that - sorry - I know that the main character, Mirabelle, is a shop assistant in the glove department at... Neiman's [/niːmn̩z/]? Neiman's [/naɪmn̩z/]? L.A.'s finest store. And I know that because it says so on the flap at the front of the... so the inside of the dust cover... at the front... of the book. Yeah. I don't know... I mean, I... Yeah. I don't have particularly strong feelings about Steve Martin at this point. I remember enjoying a few of his films when I was younger. I still very much enjoy his version of Father Of The Bride... I [laughing] don't remember the names of any of the other films that I've seen him in.
So yeah, I don't have very much to say about this but I'm just going to read from page 27 and the beginning of 28 of this 163 page edition of Shop Girl published by Victor Gollancz. This is... So this chapter is called Monday:
Mirabelle awakes to a crisp L.A. day with an ice blue chill in the air. The view from her apartment is of both mountains and sea, but she can see it only by peering around her front door. She feeds the cats, drinks her potion, and puts on her best underwear - although it is unlikely anyone will see it today, unless someone bursts in on her in a changing room. She had a nice day on Sunday because her friends Loki and Del Rey finally called back and invited her to brunch at one of the outdoor cafés on Western. They gossiped and talked, about the men in their lives, about who is gay and who isn't, about who is a coke head and who is promiscuous, and Mirabelle regaled them with the Jeremy story. Loki and Del Rey, who were obviously named by parents who thought they would never not be infants, told similar stories, and the three of them cried with laughter. This buoyed Mirabelle, as it made her feel normal, like one of the girls. But when she went home that night, she wondered if she had betrayed Jeremy just a little, as something in her believed that he would not have told about their exploits over lunch with the guys. This little thought was a tiny foundation for Jeremy's tiny redemption, and it made part of her like him, if only just a little bit.
There you go. I have no idea what the Jeremy story is and I don't know what Mirabelle's potion is. It's interesting to read about Mirabelle having brunch with her friends Loki and Del Rey at a time when brunch is starting to look like an option again for those of us who have been on lockdown for a couple of months. I'm not sure I shall be taking advantage of that but I'm sure plenty of people will and many of those will be doing so simply because they've been starved for so long of basic human contact.
[page turning]
The second book that I want to talk to you about today was given to me by Paula Varjack during the 53rd Page One. I met Paula for the first time during the recording of the 39th Page One, which was the live episode featuring Alan Cunningham. She was one of the two audience members who came to that event. She, I think, had also been in contact with Vera before then - over Twitter, possibly. And Paula and I were also in Edinburgh together that summer at the Fringe Festival performing shows in neighbouring venues. Paula was performing her show The Anti-Social Network. In fact, I have a flyer for The Anti-Social Network acting as a bookmark in the book that she gave me, which was The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. So Paula and I sat down outside the Fiddler's Elbow, which was where she was performing, to talk about books. It's a lovely conversation. I just re-listened to a very small amount of it and it made my heart smile.
Okay. I'm going to read to you... So the... Sorry, I should talk a little bit about it first. I really like this book, The Talented Mr Ripley. I remember the film better than the book. I watched the film when it came out, I suppose. What was that? '97, '98... something like that? Or... no, perhaps it was... Mmm. Now I don't know any more. Anyway, it's... it's... it's not that important. The film was all right - I wasn't crazy about it. But, yeah, I really do like the book. Patricia Highsmith is wonderful. She writes this... Yeah, the character of Tom Ripley is... [laughing] He's so likable and unlikable at the same time. I think that's the... For me, that's the key to the... to the success of this book. I don't want to like him and I really do like him. He's insecure and inventive and just very, very lucky. And I, yeah... I find myself rooting for him even though he does despicable things, and often for despicable reasons.
I'm going to read you a little bit - so from page 85 and 86 - which talks about the relationship between Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf. I don't think... I'm not going to spoil this book for you in case you haven't read it and in case you don't... you haven't seen the film but this... I think this little section gets at the heart of the relationship between those two men and its... some of its complexities and gives you quite a nice little portrait of Tom Ripley, I think. This is a book that I absolutely recommend that people read.
Okay. From page 85. Oh, I haven't told you. So this pa... this book is a Vintage paperback and it's 249 pages long. Here's the bottom of page 85:
They breakfasted at a café the next morning, then strolled down to the beach. They had their swimming trunks on under their trousers. The day was cool, but not impossibly cool for swimming. They had been swimming in Mongibello on colder days. The beach was practically empty - a few isolated pairs of people, a group of men playing some kind of game up the embankment. The waves curved over and broke on the sand with a wintry violence. Now Tom saw that the group of men were doing acrobatics.
‘They must be professionals,’ Tom said. ‘They're all in the same yellow G-strings.’
Tom watched with interest as a human pyramid began building, feet braced on bulging thighs, hands gripping forearms. He could hear their ‘Allez!’ and their ‘Un - deux!’
‘Look!’ Tom said. ‘There goes the top!’ He stood still to watch the smallest one, a boy of about seventeen as he was boosted to the shoulders of the centre man in the three top men. He stood poised, his arms open, as if receiving applause. ‘Bravo!’ Tom shouted.
The boy smiled at Tom before he leapt down, lithe as a tiger.
Tom looked at Dickie. Dickie was looking at a couple of men sitting near by on the beach.
‘Ten thousand saw I at a glance, nodding their heads in sprightly dance,’ Dickie said sourly to Tom.
It startled Tom, then he felt that sharp thrust of shame, the same shame he had felt in Mongibello when Dickie had said, Marge thinks you are. All right, Tom thought, the acrobats were fairies. Maybe Cannes was full of fairies. So what? Tom's fists were clenched tight in his trousers pockets. He remembered Aunt Dottie's taunt: Sissy! He's a sissy from the ground up. Just like his father! Dickie stood with his arms folded, looking out at the ocean. Tom deliberately kept himself from even glancing at the acrobats again, though they were certainly more amusing to watch than the ocean. ‘Are you going in?’ Tom asked, boldly unbuttoning his shirt, though the water suddenly looked cold as hell.
‘I don't think so,’ Dickie said. ‘Why don't you stay here and watch the acrobats? I'm going back.’ He turned and started back before Tom could answer.
Tom buttoned his clothes hastily, watching Dickie as he walked diagonally away, away from the acrobats, though the next stairs up to the sidewalk were twice as far as the stairs nearer the acrobats. Damn him anyway, Tom thought. Did he have to act so damned aloof and superior all the time? You'd think he'd never seen a pansy! Obvious what was the matter with Dickie, all right! Why didn't he break down, just for once? What did he have that was so important to lose? A half-dozen taunts sprang to his mind as he ran after Dickie. Then Dickie glanced around at him coldly, with distaste, and the first taunt died in his mouth.
I'm going to be talking about another of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels in a future Page One In Review. I was given Ripley's Game by Ben Walters. Ripley's Game is the third novel in the series of which The Talented Mr Ripley is the first novel so it's pleasing to me that those come up in the right order. They needn't have done. And, in fact, I read them in the opposite order. I'd already read Ripley's Game before Ben Walters gave me his copy so it was nice... it was nice to go back, actually, and read The Talented Mr Ripley and remind myself of the story and discover all of the details that Patricia Highsmith writes into the novel that aren't, I suppose, of necessity, translated into the film version.
[page turning]
Right. The third book that I have for you today is The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov [/bʊlgaːˈkɒv/]. I think that's... I don't know how to pronounce his name but that's my guess. This was given to me by Katherine Payton during the 54th Page One, which we also recorded in Edinburgh in August of 2013. We recorded that at her flat, which turned out to be not very far from Craiglockhart, which is where the book that I gave her is set, which was very pleasing. I gave her Regeneration by Pat Barker, which is also a book that I very much recommend to anybody. Yeah, that was one of those wonderful coincidences. I had no idea when I chose that book for her that we would be sitting talking so close to where that book was set.
Yes. So, as I say, she gave me The Master And Margarita. I haven't actually read the copy that she gave me. I read The Master And Margarita when I was... I suppose when I was in my early twenties and, I think, largely as a result of having been in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in… 1999, I suppose it was, the summer of 1999. I didn't see it but there was a production of The Master And Margarita that lots of people were talking about, I think. And it just... it seemed to be in the air. And either then or not very long afterwards I got myself a copy of the book and read it. And I remember loving it. It has a wonderful opening. I mean, I... again, I will confess to not remembering an awful lot about the plot of this book, which is... you know, not only have I read it but I've also seen a... an adaptation of it done by Théâtre de Complicité, which was lush. I saw that at The Barbican and I remember... yeah, feeling like it was a shame that we had to have an interval. We were sent out halfway through and I was so much inside the world of this story that I didn't want to leave the theatre and go out to, you know, mingle and talk and eat ice cream or whatever it is that I did. And then, of course, we had to come back in again, you know, after twenty minutes or half an hour and it took a little while to get back into the world.
It's... So it's... Yeah, it's a... it's a rich universe that Mikhail Bulgakov creates. It's set, I think, largely in Moscow but there also... there are sections that deal with Pontius Pilot and Jesus Christ. There are... There are magical sections. There are sections that are almost ghostly. There's a dance in a... an apartment somewhere that involves a cat [laughing] moving around - I think a human-sized cat.
Yeah, I really don't remember... I just don't remember enough about what happens but what I wanted to read to you was the beginning of chapter 19, which is page 217 of this Penguin Modern Classics edition of The Master And Margarita. The novel is 396 pages long in this edition and then there are notes which I imagine are very, very useful. Yeah. I wanted to read you this because this is... so the chapter is called Margarita and the first page and a bit of this chapter is just a nice... it's a... it's a portrait of Margarita, who is obviously an important character in this novel. And, yeah, I wanted to give you something concrete given that my memories of the novel are so vague. Anyway. Here is... here is a little portrait of Margarita from the beginning of chapter 19:
Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!
No! the master was mistaken when with bitterness he told Ivanushka in the hospital, at that hour when the night was falling past midnight, that she had forgotten him. That could not be. She had, of course, not forgotten him.
First of all let us reveal the secret which the master did not wish to reveal to Ivanushka. His beloved's name was Margarita Nikolaevna. Everything the master told the poor poet about her was the exact truth. He described his beloved correctly. She was beautiful and intelligent. To that one more thing must be added: it can be said with certainty that many women would have given anything to exchange their lives for the life of Margarita Nikolaevna. The childless thirty-year-old Margarita was the wife of a very prominent specialist, who, moreover, had made a very important discovery of state significance. Her husband was young, handsome, kind, honest, and adored his wife The two of them, Margarita and her husband, occupied the entire top floor of a magnificent house in a garden on one of the lanes near the Arbat. A charming place! Anyone can be convinced of it who wishes to visit this garden. Let them inquire of me, and I will give them the address, show them the way - the house stands untouched to this day.
Margarita Nikolaevna was not in need of money. Margarita Nikolaevna could buy whatever she liked. Among her husband's acquaintances there were some interesting people. Margarita Nikolaevna had never touched a primus stove. Margarita Nikolaevna knew nothing of the horrors of life in a communal apartment. In short... she was happy? Not for one minute! Never, since the age of nineteen, when she had married and wound up in this house, had she known any happiness. Gods, my gods! What, then, did this woman need?! What did this woman need, in whose eyes there had [sic] always burned some enigmatic little fire? What did she need, this witch with a slight cast in one eye, who had adorned herself with mimosa that time in the spring? I do not know. I have no idea. Obviously she was telling the truth, she needed him, the master, and not at all some Gothic mansion, not a private garden, not money. She loved him, she was telling the truth.
Right. Thank you very much for listening to this, the 14th Page One In Review. I hope you're all doing all right and... yeah, I'll speak to you again soon. Bye.
Jingle
Thank you for listening to Page One. For more information about the podcast, please go to pageonepodcast.com.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]