Find Page One on APPLE PODCASTS or STITCHER.
(This episode is marked as explicit because of strong language.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July, published by Scribner in July 2008.
For the 59th Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is joined by Dave Pickering, who is a freelance storyteller, podcaster and, on the day we met, author of an article about the disappearance of his previous job that was published in the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section; you can read the article here and the blog post that it is based on is here. If you are interested, you can check out Miranda July’s Learning To Love You More project here, and here is a link to Dave’s Getting Better Acquainted podcast.
Another book by Iain Banks, Canal Dreams, is discussed in Page One 26.
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July is also discussed in Page One 115 and Page One 177.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
This episode features a jingle written for the podcast by the band Friends Of Friends.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 27th May, 2014.
Book listing:
Walking On Glass by Iain Banks
Happiness by Will Ferguson
The Shared Patio (from No One Belongs Here More Than You) by Miranda July
Links:
If it was a ‘tough choice’ to cut my job, then come and tell the children why
Getting Better Acquainted with Charles Adrian
Getting Better Acquainted with Ms Samantha Mann
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 82nd Page One. This is the 59th Second Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today – in Leytonstone – is Dave Pickering.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hi, Dave.
Dave Pickering
Hi.
Dave and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
Thanks very much for having me again. I should explain – because I do have a kind of compulsive honesty where these things are concerned – we did try to record this once before and I didn't press record. It's not the first time it's happened to me.
Dave Pickering
Yeah. It's happened to...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I am ashamed.
Dave Pickering
It happens to us all. I make podcasts myself and I've had that experience. So yeah, absolutely.
Charles Adrian
Well, you're very kind and understanding and allowed me to come out again...
Dave and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... and waste another half an hour of your time. This time we're inside. Last time we were outside, which was very nice.
Dave Pickering
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And the other thing that's changed is that today you are a published Comment Is Free [laughing] writer.
Dave Pickering
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
I've been quite excited about that. I read the article, which is very nice. I haven't read any of the comments but I understand that you have been. What's that like?
Dave Pickering
Yeah, it's been mostly amusing so far but I've got a little bit temp... Like, I've involved myself in the comments. And we'll see. We'll see. At this stage, I don't know if this is going to be a good idea or bad idea. And I'm getting loads of love, actually, about it, which is nice. And it's... But it's a weird thing to get love about, actually, and positive comments about the writing or having done it or submitted it because it's actually making a political point. It's actually making a kind of... It's about the loss of a job that I used to do and it's about wanting that job to remain. Not necessarily me do it but that our public services, I really want... I want to have public services, right? And they are being cut. And so it sort of seems wrong in some ways to be benefiting from that because I'm trying to make a point that matters to me. But obviously, I'll be paid for that article and people are seeing it and it's... You know, I'll get more Twitter followers. But that... And so I sort of feel this complicated, like, guilt about that. But at the same time...
Charles Adrian
No, that's interesting.
Dave Pickering
At the same time, I also want to get it to as many people as possible because I believe in the political point behind it. So yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] So, yeah, as you say, the article is about the job that you no longer do. How do you describe yourself now?
Dave Pickering
What do I describe myself as now? I describe myself as a freelance storyteller, which is a nice umbrella term for a lot of other things. So I do audio production and podcasting. I've got a couple of podcasts that I put out, I host nights of performance, I perform, I make music, and I write, and I do true storytelling as well, and run workshops and stuff like that. So yeah. I mean, this all sounds like I've been doing it for years now I'm saying it but I haven't. I've been doing it for a month and...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Dave Pickering
... so far it's doing... I'm doing all right but we'll see. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
That's good. It's good. It's unfolding. What's the book that you brought that you like?
Dave Pickering
Yes. Right.
Charles Adrian
I will pretend to be surprised.
Dave Pickering
Yeah. So the book that I like, that you'll never have had any exposure to before...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Dave Pickering
... is Walking on Glass by Iain banks. [clears throat]
Theobald's Road
He walked through the white corridors, past the notice-boards with their offers of small rooms and old cars, past the coffee bar where people sat at tables, past a hole in the white floor where an old chair stood sentry over an open conduit in which a torch shone and a man crawled, and as he left he looked at his watch:
TU 28
pm
3:33
He stood on the steps for a second, smiling at the figures on the face of the watch. Three three three. A good omen. Today was a day things would come together, a day events would coalesce.
It was bright outside, even after the painted lightness of the marble-flaked corridor. The air was warm, slightly humid but not too [sic] sultry. The walk would be a pleasure today. That was good too, because he didn't want to arrive at her place hot and flustered; not today, not with her at the end of the walk, not with that subtle but unequivocal promise there, waiting, ready.
Graham Park stepped out onto the broad grey pavement outside the School and during a break in the traffic jogged across Theobald's Road to its north side. He relaxed to a walk on the pavement outside the White Hart pub, his large black portfolio held easily on [sic] his side by its single handle. Drawings of her.
He looked up at the sky, above the blocks and the [sic] squat towers of the...
Ellipsis. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm hmm. Nice. Um, yeah, no, I'm really happy that you brought that because I... I've been discovering Iain Banks over the last couple of years. I never read him when I was a teenager, which is when everybody read The Wasp Factory...
Dave Pickering
Right.
Charles Adrian
... I think. And I have that book on my shelf. So I'm... At some point, I will read it.
Dave Pickering
Yeah, I mean, it's... it's different... See, I think I... like... So I'm really into Iain Banks but, weirdly, I've never read Iain M. Banks, which is his science fiction version. And that is weird because I'm into science fiction. Like, a lot of people read his... like, either his science fiction or his literary fiction and they don't, sort of, cross the streams. But I like both those genres anyway so it feels like I should read his science fiction but I'm scared too because there's such a lot of it and I know I'm going to like it...
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yeah.
Dave Pickering
... so it's going to be...
Charles Adrian
It's going to be a commitment.
Dave Pickering
Yeah. But I got into his his literary fiction – which is these days a ‘genre’, which, when you're submitting to publishers, you sort of have to try and place your work in and sometimes I've had to place my work in that and I always feel a bit...
Charles Adrian
Right.
Dave Pickering
... a bit wrong because...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah, where are the... Where are the borders of that? What...
Dave Pickering
[speaking over] Isn't everything literary if it's literature?
Charles Adrian
Right.
Dave Pickering
So... But I love Iain Banks. I guess I kind of got into him around about, kind of, [age] 17, 18 and really read a lot of his stuff for a few years after that. Walking on Glass isn't typical of his stuff either, though, because it's... It's a very strange story, which I like... I like that about it. It's got three different voices, three different parts to each... to it. So it's like, with that first part I was reading, you're walking with the character Graham Park down those roads to visit his girlfriend. And as he's walking he's thinking of science fiction stories... ideas. Then the second part is about... let's see... is it that one? Yeah. So the second part is about someone who has a kind of... almost... it's probably along the lines of OCD is involved in the way he thinks, but he thinks very, like, in patterns, so he can't walk on the cracks and that sort of thing. And he's got these... he thinks that there's some kind of alien life force that he's, sort of, avoiding by following these routines. And you, sort of, initially feel sympathy for him in that respect but things may become complicated as the book goes on. And the third part is about these people in this, sort of, strange location playing these really strange games of chess – like one dimensional chess. Or not just chess. Like, all sorts of games...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [indisctinct]
Dave Pickering
... but weirder versions. Like, metaphorical, existential versions of games in this strange house. And at first these three things seem very foreign from each other – not connected at all – but as the book goes on they do kind of interrelate. But they interrelate in a way that only really you the reader can see. So the characters in the different strands, they don't really see a connection. And a lot of his stuff isn't like that – like Complicity, which is the first book I read by him. That's a thriller. It's a good thriller but it's a thriller. The Wasp Factory is pretty straightforward narrative. It's complicated in some ways because he likes to talk about ideas but, again, it's a, sort of, straightforward thing. Whereas Walking on Glass – and he wrote a book called The Bridge as well that I really like about someone in a coma that's got a lot of, kind of, strange metaphysical elements... Those ones are, kind of... they stand out to me as being very different from his other stuff. So, yeah, that's me...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh nice.
Dave Pickering
... talking about that.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Well, thank you.
Dave Pickering
Start me up and I will talk. Yeah, that's the problem with me.
Dave and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
That's what we're here for.
Dave Pickering
Yeah, that's true. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I'm going to play the first track that I've picked from your... from the list that you gave me. This was – what – your soundtrack to 2013 or...
Dave Pickering
That's right.
Charles Adrian
... or some kind of notional soundtrack? And the reason I picked this is partly because I like it and partly because it comes from the Dawson's Creek [laughing] soundtrack...
Dave Pickering
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... which I happen to own and it brings back fond memories of my late teenage, I suppose. This is Wheetus and Teenage Dirtbag.
Dave Pickering
[laughs]
Music
[Teenage Dirtbag by Wheetus]
Charles Adrian
That was Wheetus with the explicit version of Teenage Dirtbag.
Dave Pickering
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And listening to that now, I think it's the word ‘dick’.
Dave Pickering
Right.
Charles Adrian
I wasn't listening carefully enough. I can't remember.
Dave Pickering
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
But I think that's what makes it explicit.
Dave Pickering
Sure. And it is off the Dawson's Creek album. I did listen to Daw... I did watch Dawson's Creek back in the day but I wouldn't say I'm a fan. And... Or... And I certainly don't own the album.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No, and you did make it clear to me while you were listening to that, that wasn't the reason you chose it.
Dave Pickering
Right.
Charles Adrian
It's... I just... It's the reason I chose it from your selection. [laughs]
Dave Pickering
Yeah, no, and I'm not... I don't want to, like... I... I think I said to you last time, I had a complicated relationship with Dawson's Creek...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Don't worry... Don't worry... [indistinct]... Yes, that's right.
Dave Pickering
...because an ex girlfriend compared me to Pacey a lot. And so I've always... I'll always have a complicated relationship with it.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Pacey is... I think if you're going to be compared to any of them, it's either Jen or Pacey.
Dave Pickering
No, but she wasn't saying I was like him. She was saying I wasn't as good as him.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh! Oh, no, that... Okay... Oh...
Dave Pickering
Right.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Dave Pickering
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
I feel sad for you a little bit now.
Dave Pickering
Yeah, well, Pacey... After... You know, over the course of the series, Pacey proved to be just as unreliable as I was so I felt like I was...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Well quite. Quite. He was...
Dave Pickering
... vindicated by that.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Pickering
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[indistinct] ... complex, [laughing] multi-dimensional character. Let me talk about the book that I've bought for you...
Dave Pickering
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... which you obviously haven't had a chance to read because I took it home with me when we tried to record this last time...
Dave Pickering
Right. Yeah, that's right.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... and that I am going to give to you now. This is Happiness TM by Will Ferguson. And this is... It's fun, as far as I remember. Somebody left it in my flat once. Somebody who was staying. I think... It wasn't, I don't think, a kind of deliberate gift. I think they just had a lot of stuff to carry back to... Canada. I think it was... I think it was a Canadian guest that I had. But I really enjoyed it. It's... The premise of it is that a self-help book has been written that solves the problems of [laughing] humanity, essentially. And then, you know, disaster ensues. And I thought of you for this because – and I told you this last time – because your, kind of, opening up about – in a, kind of, very broad sense – your experience of life, I think, has inspired me to think about, yeah, sharing things like depression, for example... anxiety, which you've talked about... And these things that are very low level and, you know, in a sense seem... it seems... it seems... What's the word I'm looking for? It seems like attention-grabbing to write about them, somehow. To say, ‘I also suffer from this thing, which doesn't stop me existing in the world or doing a lot of the things that I like, it just makes things a little bit more difficult’. And I think it's an interesting question: should you write about these things or should you not write about these things on a platform like Facebook, for example, which is often criticised for being too much a, kind of... a log of people's successes? And I don't know the answer to that yet but I think it's interesting to... kind of, to open that up and say, okay, maybe there are times when it is appropriate to say, ‘Hey guys, my life isn't always perfect’.
Dave Pickering
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
So yes, you've made me think about those things. Not just you but you and a few other people.
Dave Pickering
It's a complicated area to, sort of... I mean, for years, I've not felt comfortable talking about it in public because of the fact that I've known people with worse situation... in much worse situations. And also because you don't necessarily view your... Like, it's taken me a long time to actually see my mental health as... as what it is, what I see it as now. Maybe that will change in five years time. Maybe I'll look back and say, ‘Well, I never should have called myself depressed or I never should have said I suffered from anxiety or any of these things’.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Make a kind of Jessie J-style announcement. [laughs]
Dave Pickering
Right. But at the moment, I feel like I can... I have some ownership to those phrases even as I – hopefully – always acknowledge that people have it much worse and that there's many different ways you can experience those things and that my anxiety or my depression is not the same as someone else's. But...
Charles Adrian
But it still is a thing. It's a real thing that you experience.
Dave Pickering
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I find it difficult to get my head around the idea that possibly there are people who don't experience [laughing] these things...
Dave Pickering
Right.
Charles Adrian
... who don't have these particular problems. They may well have other problems but they don't have these. And that's what – I think – makes me think it's worth writing about.
Dave Pickering
Right.
Charles Adrian
Partly, it's, I think, the responses that I got... When I wrote... I wrote a note on Facebook around the time of... oh and I've forgotten the name of it. That...
Dave Pickering
Time... It was Time to Talk.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Time to Talk or... yeah, Time to Talk.
Dave Pickering
[speaking over] Time to Change was the [indistinct].
Charles Adrian
And I had some interesting responses from people saying, ‘Oh, I'm really pleased you wrote this because I experience something similar’. But I almost think it's worth writing about these things to try and articulate what this experience is for people who don't experience it. To say, ‘Ah, okay’. And I think it'd be interesting for other people to write about their experience of the world and for me to read that and to see how it's... how it is to be somebody else.
Dave Pickering
[speaking over] Absolutely.
Charles Adrian
I think that... I mean, that's one of the things I find in literature.
Dave Pickering
Yeah. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I think Facebook and other social... Twitter... can probably provide those if we use them in the right way.
Dave Pickering
No, I think you're right. And I think, you know, that's what I like from literature and from nonfiction. Like, anything. From conversation. It's fascinating and engaging and moving to hear somebody else's experience. And it's very easy for us to think our own experiences are not valid, are not worth sharing. So there's all of that, sort of, side of it. And I... I, kind of, agree with you on a, kind of, wider level as well that, like... So my partner, she doesn't have a lot of the experiences that I have and so it's been important for our relationship for me to articulate the way that I feel and for her to understand where I'm coming from. And, you know, there's other things that I don't experience that she experiences. And it's important to share those things and get an idea. And it does seem strange to me that there are people who don't, sort of, have the darknesses that I have but I... You know, the people who don't, how can they... how can they...? If they don't... If I don't share it with them, how can they ever know?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] How can they ever know? Yeah, that's true.
Dave Pickering
And if I don't share it with them, how can I ever expect them to take those things into consideration in their everyday life?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Of course. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dave Pickering
And it's not just for people... Like, I'm always going to do my own mental health down but there are people with much worse conditions than me that we need to think about, we need to be socially aware of and... So more people need to talk for that reason so both sides can... so one side doesn't feel so alone and the other side understands where the other side's coming from. Although ‘sides’ feels a bit binary.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm. I think... Yeah. I think I agree with that. Yeah but I know what you mean. I know what you mean.
Dave Pickering
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Let me read the first page of this...
Dave Pickering
Yeah. Please.
Charles Adrian
This... I'm going to read you... Yeah, so there's a, kind of, preface called Caveat Emptor but I'm going to read you the first page of Chapter One.
Grand Avenue cuts through the very heart of the city, from 71st Street all the way to the harbourfront, and although it is eight lanes wide, with a treed boulevard running down the middle, the Avenue feels claustrophobic and narrow.
Rising up in straight verticals, and flanking either side, are Grand Avenue's imposing Edwardian buildings, their facades creating two continuous walls. Many of these edifices were built during the Great Potash Boom of the late 1920s, with all that that entails: sombre Calvinist capitalist features and a grim, heavy-handed feel. Buildings without laughter. From up on high, where the angels sit, Grand Avenue looks very handsome indeed, a veritable showcase of architectural dignity. But down below, on the level of the street, it is a far different scenario, one of littered, gritty, noisy lanes choked with exhaust and angry taxis, of mad rambling panhandlers and scurrying office workers. A world of constant din, where the echoing noise of traffic ricochets off the buildings in a crashing, cacophonous roar. The noise is an eternal presence here. With nowhere to go and no way to escape...
Dot, dot, dot.
Dave Pickering
Yeah. Well, it's a good first page because it ends in a, kind of... it hooks... it ends on a hook. You know? You're like, ‘Ooo!’.
Charles Adrian
It's dark.
Dave Pickering
Yeah. Well, yeah, dark tends to appeal to me.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Dave Pickering
I run a show called Stand Up Tragedy so I'm always looking for dark...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] And what... what's your book for me?
Dave Pickering
Right. Well, my book for you is... I mean, it's one of my favourite... I think it's one of my favourite books. I've... Because we've done this, kind of, conversation before I'm aware that the first time I, sort of, did it I, sort of, bigged it up and bigged it up and then I was like, ‘Does this first page stand up to my bigging it up?’ But at the same time I am going to big it up because the reason that I'm going to share this book with you – which is No One Belongs Here More Than You, which is a collection of short stories by Miranda July – is because there's something about... because I... there's something about you and... we've had conversations on mic on my podcast, Getting Better Acquainted, so I've got even more of an idea of you than I did the first time round... But there's something about you and also your character that you sometimes do.,Samantha, that is about precision to me. There's something, kind of, that I like about the work you make...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Interesting. Yes.
Dave Pickering
... that is very precise. And when you talk you're very precise and you think up words... much more than I do. I'm a babbler...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Dave Pickering
... and then I edit, you know, later.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Right.
Dave Pickering
But you are much more precise than me and what I admire about Miranda July is the precision to her language. Like, I find it's more like... it's almost like poetry but in prose because it just sums things up perfectly. She's an artist as well and a filmmaker and it's in all of her work to a greater or lesser extent – like, sometimes she nails it, sometimes she doesn't. This, I think, she nails it and... Right...
The Shared Patio.
It still counts, even though it happened when he was unconscious. It counts doubly because the conscious mind often makes mistakes, falls for the wrong person. But down there in the well, where there is no light and only thousand-year-old water, a man has no reason to make mistakes. God says do it and you do it. Love her and it is so. He is my neighbor. He is of Korean descent. His name is Vincent Chang. He doesn't do hapkido. When you say the word “Korean,” some people automatically think of Jackie Chan's South Korean hapkido instructor, Grandmaster Kim Jin Pal; I think of Vincent.
And that's the end.
Charles Adrian
Very nice.
Dave Pickering
It's one of those first pages that's only a paragraph because it starts low down.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Thank you very much. That's wonderful. And thank you for this. Thank you for redoing the conversation. [indistinct]
Dave Pickering
[speaking over] My pleasure. I hope it was as... The first conversation we had was... it felt really good.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Dave Pickering
And when you do a second conversation, you're always anxious the whole way through: ‘Is this as good?’
Charles Adrian
Yeah. And I don't think you can necessarily... You can't assess it as it's going...
Dave Pickering
No.
Charles Adrian
... but it felt nice today.
Dave Pickering
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And it felt like new things came and it was...
Dave Pickering
Definitely new things, yeah.
Charles Adrian
... very interesting. So thanks very much, Dave. I'm going to finish with the second track that I've picked from your playlist, which is Open...
Dave Pickering
Oh yeah. This is a song.
Charles Adrian
By Rhye [/raɪ/]. Is that right, Rhye [/raɪ/]?
Dave Pickering
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I just read the words as well.
Dave and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
Thanks very much.
Dave Pickering
You're very welcome.
Music
[Open by Rhye]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]