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Episode image is a detail of a photo by Charles Adrian.
Not, as promised, a short episode that would have allowed listeners to head out into the apple orchards early, Charles Adrian talks this week about three books that he does not remember so very well.
You can read about a day Jean Hannah Edelstein spent in Kreuzberg, Berlin, only two years before Charles Adrian’s conversation with SooJin Anjou in the Guardian here.
Correction 1: Groucho Marx died in 1977, not 1972 as Charles Adrian says in this episode. You can read about the life and work of Groucho Marx on Wikipedia here.
Correction 2: Natalia Ginzburg’s father, Giuseppe Levi, was an anatomist and histologist. You can read the abstract on an article on Giuseppe Levi and his influence in the National Library of Medicine here.
You can read about London’s Crossrail project on their website here.
Books discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 99, Page One 102 and Page One 103.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 21st September, 2020.
Episode released: 20th October, 2020.
Book listing:
The Groucho Letters by Groucho Marx et al (Page One 99)
Lessico Famigliare by Natalia Ginzburg (Page One 102)
The Uninvited by Geling Yan (Page One 103)
Links:
Kreuzberg 2013 in The Guardian
Giuseppe Levi in the National Library of Medicine
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 183rd Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and this is the 26th Page One In Review. Today is Monday the 21st of September.
I have three books to talk about today My brain is a little foggy and these are three books that I don't remember an awful lot about but I'm going to do my best. And, well, perhaps this will end up just being a shorter episode than usual and then I'll let you leave the class early and you can skip out into the sunshine and go harvest apples or whatever it is that you're going to spend the rest of your day doing.
For those of you who are new to the podcast: hello and welcome, as ever. Although, of course, if you're new, you won't know that I generally do welcome... greet and welcome new... members? New... I don't know what to... New subscribers? Hopefully subscribers. Who knows? What am I? Yeah, foggy brain. This is a book podcast. Most of the episodes of this podcast consist of either me talking about second hand books or me talking to a guest about books that they like and also a book that I think they should have. And we exchange books. And so as a result of that exchange I have a whole load of books - I have three shelves full of books that guests have given to me. And these Page One In Review episodes are episodes in which I'm going through all of those books. I'm doing them pretty much three at a time - sometimes more, sometimes less. Today I have three books. In the previous episode, in case you've listened to that one, I said we might get to quite an exciting book. We're not getting as far as the book I was thinking of today because there was indeed a book somewhere else and I'll explain that when we get to it.
The first book that I wanted to talk to you about today was given to me by SooJin Anjou during the 99th Page One.
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
We had that conversation in Berlin, in Kreuzberg. I say that because Kreuzberg is - or certainly was at the time - a very fashionable address and that's where I was staying, cool, young, hip Charles Adrian that I am. SooJin gave me The Groucho Letters, which is a collection of letters to and from Groucho Marx. This is published by Pocket Books. I might as well tell you that straight away. It's 319 pages long. The letters are divided into, I guess, themes - there's Private Life, Touching on Television, Grouchy, Broadway and Hollywood, and then I'm going to read you a couple of letters from For Publication.
Yeah, I think one of the unusual things about this collection is that it contains letters both to and from Groucho Marx - most collections of letters associated with a famous person are letters from, aren't they? Yeah, I quite like that you get... Well, in some cases you get correspondence - you get, you know, back and forth. In some cases there are just letters that don't seem to have been replied to. I don't know the names... I don't... Most of these names don't... they're not names that I recognise so perhaps some of the thrill of reading these letters is not there for me. And, I don't know, I don't find them as witty as perhaps some people do.
I don't know an awful lot about Groucho Marx. I don't know very much about the work that the Marx Brothers did. I think I've seen perhaps a clip on YouTube. So, yeah, I haven't done my due diligence. I am interested in the fact that the Marx Brothers came from vaudeville into very early-days Hollywood and Groucho died in 1972 so he... yeah, his career - I... you know, I read up on him on Wikipedia - his career is fascinating. And he was... I mean, he was a singer first of all and then a comic vaudeville star with some of his brothers. And then obviously, with three - with two of... two of his brothers, wasn't it: Harpo and Chico - the three of them became very famous in Hollywood and on television. And then he became a quiz show host [laughing] on radio and then television. And he knew all kinds of famous and interesting people.
And he was obviously famously funny. I wonder how much that gets in the way of him being sincere. These letters are mostly funny. I don... I mean, it's a while since I've read them but I... just flicking through, I don't see an awful lot of letters in which he is not to some extent performing. Which I think, yeah, is interesting. I think it says something about the kind of person that... either the kind of person that Groucho was - Julius, as his... as he was called when he was born - or the kind of person that he wants people to see him to be, which I think is another question. I assume he is the one who submitted these letters for publication so he must... yeah, he's made a selection.
I just want to read you this... so this is from the section For Publication. There's a letter from Eddie Cantor - whose name rings a bell but I don't know who Eddie Cantor is and I forgot to look him up - and then a reply from Groucho. So Eddie Cantor writes... So on the 9th of January, 1964, Eddie Cantor writes:
“Dear Julius...”
'Julius' being as I say, Groucho Marx's birth name.
“Dear Julius,
Since being inactive as a performer I’ve done quite a bit of scribbling. This is my fourth year writing a column for Diners’ Club Magazine.
Will you please send me as quick as you can two lines which have brought you the biggest laughs. I would appreciate it for my next column.
Gratefully,
Eddie.”
And then on January the 14th, 1964, Groucho writes back:
“Dear Eddie:
Briefly (and quickly) the two biggest laughs that I can recall (other than my three marriages) were in a vaudeville act called ‘Home Again.’
One was when Zeppo came out from the wings and announced, ‘Dad, the garbage man is here.’ I replied, ‘Tell him we don’t want any.’
The other was when Chico shook hands with me and said, ‘I would like to say good-bye to your wife.’ And I said, ‘Who wouldn’t?’
Take care of yourself.
Regards,
Groucho Marx. ”
[laughing] There you go. Yeah, I like... I like that letter particularly - well, Groucho's letter - because I think it gives a little window into the kind of... the kind of act that they were doing on [sic] vaudeville. It's... Yeah, it's funny, it's silly, it's... it's... Yeah. You get a flavour for it, right? [quieter] Foggy brain. Foggy brain. [normal volume] I... Yeah, I perhaps should have done more research into Groucho's delivery and style so that I could have read that in a way that Groucho Marx might have done. I suspect it was funnier when he did it on the stage. [laughs] Anyway.
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
Right. So that's The Groucho Letters by... well, it was by various people, wasn't it. Groucho Marx and Eddie Cantor in that case.
The next book that I want to talk to you about today was given to me by Viviana Rossi. We had that conversation - that was the 102nd Page One... Yeah, I went to see her where she lives near Stroud in... [musing] mmm... Gloucestershire? I'm not sure. Somewhere west of where I live anyway. Yeah, a lovely place. She lives in a village, I suppose. Quite a small... yeah... yeah, a village, I think, not far from Stroud. And, yeah, with just the most gorgeous view from her house.
She gave me - well, she didn't, sorry... this is the book that was somewhere else because she didn't give it to me because I already had it and we agreed that she didn't need to give me her copy - Natalia Ginzburg's Lessico Famigliare, which... so that translates as 'family lexicon'. And to a large extent this book is about the... the private language that her family built up and used. A lot of it is words that her father used and some of it is also phrases that came out... I was reminded, flicking through this the other day, that her mother says... there's a phrase that her mother uses which is... oh... what was it? Non riconosco piú la mia Germania I think... Yeah, I can't find it again but it's something like that: I don't recognise my Germany. And that's taken from a friend who went back to Germany and came back and said to them: "Oh, I don't recognise my Germany any more!" And then that was used by her mother any time something had become strange or unusual.
So, yeah, it's a very... In that sense it's a very... It's a rather lovely portrait of a family and their... their own idiosyncrasy but what I remem... So, yeah, I read this because it was a set text during my first year at university - so that's twenty-two years ago now, something like that - and I... yeah, I don't remember an awful lot about it but what I... what I remembered before I picked it up and started flicking through it again yesterday was that her father is quite a frightening figure. He shouts all the time and he gets angry for no reason and her... I think two of her brothers - this I had forgotten but remembered, you know, reading through it - two of her brothers... or, at least, one of her brothers - sorry - Mario picks that up. He gets angry for no reason too. So anger is a big part of this story.
And I think her father... he's very exacting. I seem to remember that he... he wants the best for his family. And he's... You know, he's in charge of a Jewish family during the first part of the twentieth century living in Italy during the rise of fascism and it's a... it's... obviously it's a... it's a frightening time. He was, I think, a scientist - I want to say some kind of chemist but I might be wrong - and I think he and his wife - I can't remember the name... their names at all - I think they knew all kinds of interesting and important people in Italy and possibly in other places at the beginning of the twentieth century. So in that sense it's... reading this is quite like reading The Groucho Letters because all these names come up that I don't recognise but that I sense are significant names, or names of significant people.
What else? Yeah, I... And actually... So it's an interesting book to put alongside The Groucho Letters because whereas, as I say, I think the letters that Groucho Marx decides to publish have a particular, kind of... let's say superficial wit to them - he does talk about things that are going on in his life but, yeah, there's... there's always this veneer of... of humour... wit, I think, is the right word actually - here Natalia is really... you know, she really lifts up the rock and peers into the mossy darkness underneath. She doesn't paint a golden portrait of her childhood. She makes her childhood - as I remember - feel... yeah, it feels quite difficult. And I had the sense that she harboured quite a lot of anger towards her father in particular. But, yeah, as I say, there's a lot that I don't remember.
What I wanted to read for you was just a paragraph in which her father... it, sort of... it describes her father getting up in the morning. It's on page 38 of this 250-page book. Goodness, there are all kinds of... kind of, notes to help one read and study it. I don't think I paid any attention to those. They might have made the experience of reading it a little bit easier. I'd only just learned to, you know, speak and read Italian at the time that I was reading this and it was really quite hard work. My Italian has improved since then - and then, you know, unimproved but now I think I... you know, I still have more facility with the language than I did when I was first reading this. It was really hard work. But... yeah, so this is... Oh, it's published by Einaudi scuola. Oh, there we go. It's a school... 'Scuola' means 'school'. It's a school edition. Right. So. From page 38. I'm going to read it in Italian and then give you a translation.
“Mio padre s’alzava sempre alle quattro del mattino. La sua prima preoccupazione, al risveglio, era andare a guardare se il «mezzorado» era venuto bene. Il mezzorado era latte acido, che lui aveva imparato a fare, in Sardegna, da certi pastori. Era semplicemente yoghurt. Lo yogurt, in quegli anni, non era ancora di moda: e non si trovava in vendita, come adesso, nelle latterie o nei bar. Mio padre era, nel prendere lo yoghurt come in molte altre cose, un pioniere. A quel tempo non erano ancora di moda gli sport invernali; e mio padre era forse, a Torino, l’unico a praticarli. Partiva, non appena cadeva un po’ di neve, per Clavières, la sera del sabato, con gli sci sulle spalle. Allora non esistevano ancora né Sestrières, né gli alberghi di Cervinia. Mio padre dormiva, di solito, in un rifugio sopra Clavières, chiamato «Capanna Mautino». Si tirava dietro a volte i miei fratelli, o certi suoi assistenti, che avevano come lui la passione della montagna. Gli sci, lui li chiamava «gli ski». Aveva imparato ad andare in ski da giovane, in un suo soggiorno in Norvegia. Tornando la domenica sera, diceva sempre che però c’era una brutta neve. La neve, per lui, era sempre o troppo acquosa, o troppo secca. Come il mezzorado, che non era mai come doveva essere: e gli sembrava sempre o troppo acquoso, o troppo denso.”
There you go.
So: My father always got up at four in the morning. His first preoccupation on waking was to go and see if his... if the 'mezzorado' had come out okay. The mezzorado was acidic milk, which he had learned how to make in Sardinia from some shepherds. It was essentially yogurt. Yogurt in those years wasn't yet in fashion. You didn't find it for sale like now in the... ah "latterie"... I don't know if that's a milk bar or a... [more confidently] dairy. Perhaps a dairy. You didn't find it for sale like now in dairies or in bars. My father was in taking yogurt - or in eating yogurt - like in lots of other things a pioneer. At that time it wasn't yet fashionable to do winter sport. And my father was perhaps, in Torino - which is where they lived - the only person to do them... winter sport... to do winter sport. [laughing] He left... As soon as a little bit of snow fell he would leave for Clavières - and there's a little note saying that it's one of the first winter sport resorts in Italy, which was... yeah, it's in the province of Torino. So he would leave for Clavières on Saturday evening with the skis on his shoulders. At that point, Sestrières didn't exist - Sestrières, apparently, is another winter sports resort - nor the hotels of Cervinia - same: Cervinia is another winter sport place which is in Aosta. Its full name, we're told in note number three, is Breuil-Cervinia. Anyway. So none of those things existed. My father would sleep normally in a refuge above Clavières called 'Capana Mautino'. He would drag along with him sometimes my brothers or some of his assistants who, like him, had a passion for the mountain. The... So: 'skis' he called 'skis' - and that only works in Italian because in Italian it's 'sci' [/ʃiː/]. In Ital... So: "Gli sci [/ʃiː/], lui li chiamava «gli ski» [/skiː/]" with a 'k' - a hard 'k' - which is what we call them in English. So he called them 'skis'. He'd learned how to ski in... when he was young when... on a trip to Norway. So: Coming back on Sunday evening, he always said nevertheless that the snow had been awful, - or 'no good'... whatever... "brutta"... ugly. The snow for him was always either too wet or too dry. Like the mezzorado which was never like it should have been and always seemed to him to be either too watery or too dense.
There you go. So, yeah, I think that gives a nice glimpse of Natalia Ginzburg's father: Very exacting, never satisfied, a passion for the mountain - that comes up several times. He loves walking in the mountains and he... yeah, drags his children along, some of whom do not enjoy it. And somebody who is... yeah, a pioneer. He does things that other people don't do. He sticks out in that way. I think that's... Yeah, those are all, I think, quite positive qualities to balance, perhaps, the... the anger that she describes elsewhere. Anyway. So, yeah. Lessico Familgliare by Natalia Ginzburg which perhaps one day I will reread. I think it bears rereading.
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
Okay. So the last book I have to talk to you about today is actually the book I remember at least about of these three. This was given to me by Rebecca Yeo during the 103rd Page One. We had that conversation at Royal Arsenal... or at the Royal Arsenal - I'm not quite sure which it should be - in Woolwich, which... it... from here in West London it takes a long time to get to Woolwich but as soon as Crossrail is finished - which should have happened, I think, two or three years ago but is forever being delayed - it's going to be about 20 minutes. [makes sound of something moving very fast] It's going to be amazing. So, should I ever have a reason to return to Woolwich, it'll be an awful lot easier.
Rebecca gave me The Uninvited by... oh, I haven't looked up... Geling [/geɪliŋ/] Yan or perhaps Geling [/jeɪliŋ/] Yan. Rebecca had a sense of how that should be pronounced but I don't now remember her suggestion and I don't know what the correct pronunciation is. This is about a guy, Dan - I think he's called Dan Dong - who pretends he's... He's very poor - or at least broke - and doesn't have enough money to feed himself so he makes himself a business card and pretends to be a journalist and then sneaks into official banquets and eats all this incredible food. And then, yeah, all he has to do is pretend to be a journalist. And then it turns into something more sinister and complicated. I think he uncovers some... I... perhaps... something very shady anyway. And, as I say, I don't remember an awful lot about this.
One of the things that I do remember finding exciting and interesting about this book is that it is a portrait of contemporary China by a Chinese writer. Geling Yan was "Born in Shanghai... published her first novel in China in 1985..." and then "In 1989... left China for the United States". That's from her bio just inside the front cover. So, yeah, I've read a certain amount of stuff written about China and China-like places by people who are not Chinese. And then there's the news that, you know, is available in this country about China and from China. But none of that gives a sense of what China is really like, I think. And of course China is huge. I mean, one of the things that I can't get my head around is the number of people who live in Chi... you know, the population across the whole of that enormous landmass. And then the political situation and the way that people survive and perhaps flourish, you know, despite and because of and through the system that exists, which is - or seems to be - so different from the system that we live under and... You know, and again, the narrative is that we in the West, in what we call democratic countries, are free and prospering but, of course, that's manifestly not true for everybody. And then, conversely, there are obviously people in China... We imagine China as being a place of lots of people suffering and I'm sure that is true but not everybody does suffer under the system that pertains in China. Is 'pertain' the right word?
Anyway. So this is... Yeah, this is an interesting little glimpse - and perhaps not so little glimpse - into contemporary China. I think it's set in Beijing. And I... You know, I wish I remembered more about it. What sticks out in my memory is the food. I... Yeah, I just wanted to read you a little bit - [laughing] and I don't know how you will find this. Writing about food, I think, is interesting. In the previous Page One In Review I read a little bit of food writing by M. F. K. Fisher which I really respond to very positively - it was about eating dried tangerine segments. This is about, essentially, crab claw meat and I am on the fence. I think it sounds both delicious and disgusting and I think that is evoked quite nicely in this [laughing] passage.
So this is on pages 3, 4 and 5 of this Faber and Faber edition of The Uninvited. It is altogether 276 pages long. Okay. So Dan Dong is in his apartment with his wife, Little Plum, and she's helping him take a shower.
“Up to this morning in early May 2000, when he is taking a shower for the noon banquet that will mark a turning point in his life, Dan has made a nice living eating banquets.
Rubbing himself down with a rough washcloth, Dan asks Little Plum if she believes that he has tasted all the dishes of all of China’s cuisines. Yes, she believes he has. He feels a bit unsatisfied. Every time he tries to impress her, she is too easily impressed. If asked whether he qualifies as the banquet eating master, she would answer, of course, who else does? She gives him all the wide-eyed admiration he wants, and the lack of challenge bothers him. Looking up, he sees her face red with the effort of lifting the rubber tube. She is twenty-four, small but substantial, with a head of natural curls pulled back into a ponytail, exposing her smooth, still adolescent face.
’But you are wrong this time,’ he says. ‘There was one dish I had never set chopsticks on until yesterday.’
’What is it?’ Little Plum asks.
’I couldn’t make out what it was at the first bite. Then I looked at the menu and was shocked.’ He looks up at his wife through the streams of water. ‘Can you guess what it was made of?’
She shakes her head, smiling: ‘Can’t guess.’ Every time she is confronted by a word riddle or a guessing game, she surrenders before tiring her poor little brain.
’The - dish - was - made - of - a - thousand - crab - claw - tips.’ Dan Dong sounds out every word. ‘A thousand. Just imagine how they cracked all those claws and shelled them. Imagine: all that meat was once the tiny fingertips of those poor little monsters.
He waits for her to ask how many crabs they had to kill for that many claw tips. But she just quietly absorbs her astonishment.
’When your chopsticks pick the little fingertips, they tremble and jiggle, almost slipping off before your mouth catches them.’ He lets the water run through his hair, rinsing off the rich shampoo lather. ‘I hope next time they put the menu on the invitation. If there is ever a crab finger dish again, I will smuggle you in. Trust me, it’s worth the risk.’
The water pipe begins purring. Then deep burps are heard approaching from inside the pipe, from the depths of an invisible organism, and the water hose twitches. Little Plum immediately reaches up and switches the faucet shut, so the inferno of steam will not boil him. This is the reason she stands on the chair guarding the water.
’It’s such a [sic] weird meat, you know. It’s like taking the flavor of a thousand tiny chicken legs and putting it into a single bite. It’s so delicious that it’s almost unbearable. There’s so much flavor it actually makes you a little sick. And nothing is more tender than those fingertips. When you chew on them, it feels like...’ He tries to describe the texture of the delicate flesh, the subtle contact between the meat and his palate and tongue, the slippery sensation it gives when it passes the entrance of the throat, leaving the oral organs in such wonder. But he has no vocabulary for it. Putting together his education with hers, they can barely write a decent letter to their parents without checking a dictionary. ”
There you go. There's a little bit from The Uninvited by Geling Yan.
I... I met a Chinese guy on a train once. Not even a particularly [laughing] romantic train. It was... I think it was just a train from London to Reading actually. And this guy was very chatty. I'm... You know, I'm normally quite unfriendly. I don't talk to people when I travel. But he... I don't remember how he started the conversation but he told me that he was from China and that he was travelling around... Europe, I think - just, you know, as a tourist visiting places. And one of the first questions he asked me was whether I had siblings and he was so excited to find out that I had siblings. And it was one of those moments where I thought: "Oh, goodness, yes. [laughing] Life must be so different." Again, obviously, there are people in the UK who are only children and there are people in China who do have siblings, but to be living in a place where most people do not have siblings and for more than one generation... You know, as a friend of mine pointed out when I told her about this, that means, you know, most people don't have uncles and aunts, they don't have cousins... that the whole family shrinks as a result of that. And, yeah, so I wonder... yeah, what that feels like... what the... yeah, what little almost unforeseen differences that brings with it. Yeah. Anyway. One day I... perhaps I shall go to China.
Thank you so much for listening to this the 183rd Page One. Yeah. Be well. Look after yourselves. Look after each other. And tune back in very soon for the 184th Page One, during which episode we will get to the rather exciting book that I was talking about in the previous episode.
Okay. That's it. 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]