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(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is the podcast logo; photograph by Charles Adrian.
For the 61st Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian sits down to eat with performer, writer, director and 32-year-old Caroline Horton. Without the help of physical books, they manage to talk about poetry competitions, lightness of touch and beauty in graphic form.
Other books by Colm Tóibín are discussed in Page One 31 (Bad Blood) and Page One 150 (The Master).
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: 17th June, 2014.
Book listing:
The Collins Book Of Best-Loved Verse chosen by Charles Osborne
The South by Colm Tóibín
The Red Tree by Shaun Tan
Everything We Miss by Luke Pearson
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Okay. Shall we start?
Caroline Horton
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
So. Hello and welcome to the 84th Page One. This is the 61st Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and I'm here in [stumbling] Exmouth... Exmouth... Exmouth Market in London with Caroline Horton.
Caroline Horton
Hello.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello Caroline.
Caroline Horton
Hi.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Thanks very much for [laughs]... for taking time out of lunch. We're eating while we're recording...
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] Mmm. It's really good.
Charles Adrian
... so I'll just explain that for the listeners. We're in a place called...
Caroline Horton
Um...
Charles Adrian
I don't know what it's called actually.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] What is it called?
Charles Adrian
Oh well.
Caroline Horton
It's a Vietnamese cafe.
Charles Adrian
It's very nice.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] Very nice.
Charles Adrian
I recommend it.
Caroline Horton
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
So, the first thing that I should say: I should apologise because we've just discovered, listeners, that I didn't explain this very well to Caroline. So instead of having actual, real books that are going to be read from, Caroline's going to evoke the books that she's [laughing] chosen.
Caroline Horton
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
And that's entirely my fault. So I just wanted to get that out of the way [laughing] straight away. I don't want any blame to fall even implicitly on your shoulders, Caroline.
Caroline Horton
Thank you.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] How do you describe yourself?
Caroline Horton
Well, I'm thirty-two. I'm average height. I change my hair quite a lot. So I currently have half of my head sort of shaved and the other half died slightly darker than I originally intended. So not entirely satisfactory. Yeah, I live in Birmingham and I work in theatre. I sometimes perform in other people's shows. I write. I perform and write my own work. That's probably what I devote most of my time and energy to doing, whether that's my own project or a commission from someone else – a theatre or something. Yeah. You know, that's me.
Charles Adrian
Very nice. And what... And so what is the book that you would have brought that you like?
Caroline Horton
I would have brought a collection of poetry. It's quite an old-school anthology and it's called Best Loved Verse. And I think I've had it since I was about eleven.
Charles Adrian
Wow. That sounds really jolly.
Caroline Horton
What – best loved?
Charles Adrian
Best Loved Verse.
Caroline Horton
Yeah. And they're not all jolly at all. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Okay.
Caroline Horton
They're just... I think most of them are pretty well known. But I remember when... I think it was a prize at school. I'm pretty sure... In the front is some... I can't remember what the prize was for. But it's a hardback book with a, sort of... with one of those, sort of, now slightly bashed sleeves with some sort of print. It's, like, a colour version of a wood carving or something on the front. And it says in, sort of, over-the-top lettering Best Loved Verse, An Anthology.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Caroline Horton
And I think because I've read it – or dipped into it – so often for so many years, at different points different poems meant something to me from it. So I know there's one in there called The Listeners, which is... ah, who's it by? Walter de la Mare, which I think is an amazing name.
Charles Adrian
Mmm. Absolutely.
Caroline Horton
And there's T.S. Eliot in there. There's... There's that bit from Tennyson's Odysseus, which I love: ‘To find, to seek, to...’ is it ‘to strive and not to yield’? And...
Charles Adrian
Is that where that's from?
Caroline Horton
Yeah. And things like Rudyard Kipling's If. So loads of incredibly obvious...
Charles Adrian
But very...
Caroline Horton
But very...
Charles Adrian
... dated, actually.
Caroline Horton
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I mean, when you talk about... well If particularly and Walter de la Mare. I mean, I don't know if anyone reads Walter de la Mare any more but I certainly have anthologies with him in.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] Yes they're really old... No, exactly, so it's... it's intensely unfashionable as a collection.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes.
Caroline Horton
You know, it hasn't got people that I, sort of, fell in love with while I was at university doing English. So... And I loved people like... Yeah, I think T. S. Eliot is about as modern as it gets.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Caroline Horton
So we've got...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Caroline Horton
You know, there's none of your e e cummings or... I don't know... Certainly no one later than... You know, no one twentieth century. No Drew Milnes or... I don't know... Gertrude Steins or... Yeah. But it was one of the... one of those books. I know what I got it for! I got it for a verse-speaking competition.
Charles Adrian
Huh. Appropriately enough.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] Appropriate. There we go. How did I forget that? And that was... that... those poetry competitions that we were, sort of, invited to do at school were how I got initially interested in performance of any sort. Because I was incredibly shy and... But this... I don't know. I really liked my English teacher and she, sort of, encouraged me to learn a poem and not to look at the floor when I was saying the poem. And I suddenly realised I could disappear into a poem and that it was someone else's voice. And that was quite exciting. And I remember age eight doing a Robert Louis Stevenson poem called My Shadow: ‘I have a little shadow that walks in and out of me... out... and walks in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He's [laughing] very, very like me from my heels up to my head, and something something something jumping into bed.’
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Caroline Horton
[laughing] I don't... I can't remember the rest. But any... that was this poem where I suddenly discovered I quite liked standing in front of people and it wasn't that scary and it was quite empowering and... and I liked these different voices that you could put on. And I can't remember whether it was for that particular verse speaking competition but... that I won this book. And, sort of, dipped in and out of it and at such different ages. Yeah, it's, sort of, been on a long journey with me to the point where I actually, sort of, do get up on stage and do that sort of thing as a job. So it's probably as much the physical book and it's journey with me as it is the funny old-fashioned poems in it. So... yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. That was a beautiful evocation.
Caroline Horton
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] I feel as though it is in the room with us.
Caroline Horton
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Now I'm going to play the first track that I've picked from... You gave me a very... also a very, kind of, loose list in that you just gave me names of performers for the music. So I've picked Haim [/haɪm/]. Or Haim [/heɪm/]? Do you know how it's pronounced?
Caroline Horton
I think it's Haim [/haɪm/].
Charles Adrian
Haim [/haɪm/], okay.
Caroline Horton
I think so.
Charles Adrian
And I picked Honey & I.
Caroline Horton
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
I don't know their music at all. But this, I thought, was lovely.
Music
[Honey & I by Haim]
Charles Adrian
So that was Honey & I by Haim. Now, in this section of the podcast you can get a lot of your eating done because I'm going to talk. So I've been...
Caroline Horton
Great. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
... chewing away while you've been talking and now we can swap roles because this... this is the book that I'm giving to you. Which I finished yesterday and I thought to myself, ‘Well, why don't I just pass it straight on?’ It's Colm Tóibín's The South. And... I mean, there's... the backstory to this – such as it is – is that I was... a friend of mine recommended one of his other books... I can't remember the name of it now. And I looked on... Amazon? Or Google? I can't remember if it was even Amazon. It might have been something more random than that. And there was a set of ten going for a very low price. So I bought them. And so I've just been working my way through. And I came across this. And, essentially, the story is about love and loss. That's... I'm not going to tell you too much about it. But the background of it is civil war and political conflict. I mean, it's... conflict is a big theme anyway but particularly political conflict. It's set in Catalunya and in Ireland. It has those two things. I mean, Colm Tóibín... I think he lives in Northern Ireland. Er... I'm not entirely sure about that. But he cert... he writes a lot about Ireland, I think. But he's... I think he's in tune with similar... similar problems in other parts of the world. And what I like about it particularly – and I think why I thought of you – is that it's very... the way he writes is very non-judgmental. He simply holds these characters and situations up to the light and shows you what's happening. And the conflict happens in the background. It's not particularly... It's not even very much explored in the book, it's just there. And I don't feel like he comes down on one side or the other. He just manages to point out that these situations are horrible and they have horrible effects. And I feel similarly about... When I saw Mess particularly... I mean, I think... I mean, of the work I've seen of yours, there's Chrissy and Mess and then Nana, Paris & Me [sic]. I think they all have that quality of lightness. But Mess particularly I liked because of the playfulness. And because of the feeling that we're not being... you're not teaching at us. And I think the same is true here. And I like that. I very much appreciate that quality. He also... The other thing... He talks about painting. Painting is another big theme here. And somehow he manages to do it without being irritating. And I find there are two things that irritate me often...
Caroline Horton
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... in books and one is painting and the other is the way people talk about food. And there's always this, kind of, excessive... as if... as if... I don't know, as if people feel that simple description is not enough. You somehow have to evoke the enormous pleasure that this thing gives aesthetically and the intention that is inside it and... And I think he manages to avoid that. He just [laughing] describes. And describes very well. So I don't know if you will enjoy it or not but I'm passing it on to you in the hope that you will. Here's the first page:
Katherine Proctor
24 October 1950, Barcelona
Night is coming down and there is a hum of noise from the street. I have been here for several weeks. I am grateful that the fat woman who runs this hotel and her little mouse of a husband do not speak English. I remain a mystery to them; they cannot get through to me. The man in the next room – as far as I can understand a word he says – goes to the opera every night and listens to opera on his radio all the time.
They want to know about my husband. They found a man who would act as interpreter for them and he asked me: ‘Where is your husband?’ The fat woman was there looking at me and the opera man. I told them he was coming soon and I was waiting for him. ‘Where is he now?’ the man asked me and I told him that my husband was in Paris.
It is difficult for me being on my own and it has been since I left. In the street sometimes I think I am being followed. I try not to move too far away from the hotel. The journey here, however, has been the worst so far.
There you go.
Caroline Horton
Thank you.
Charles Adrian
You can take that away with you.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] And I haven't given you one back.
Charles Adrian
That's... That's...
Caroline Horton
I'll have to... Maybe what I could do is send you the different poems or a selection of the different poems.
Charles Adrian
Well, this next section of the podcast that we're coming to now – the last section of the podcast – this is when you tell me about the book that you might one day send to me. Do you have another book in your head?
Caroline Horton
Oh. Um...
Charles Adrian
I know the poems are very important but what... If you had to think of a book that you would give to me for whatever reason – not necessarily because I'm me but because it's a book that you think other people should have or a book that you've read recently – what would... what would it be?
Caroline Horton
[musing] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
And given that you don't have books, it could be a book that you don't have anymore.
Caroline Horton
I think... it'll be a book that was... Ah, I'm really torn between two. Can I ask if you... if you know... because if you know one of them that will sway it for me.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Caroline Horton
So I'm guessing you do know this one. The Shaun Tan – The Red Tree.
Charles Adrian
No, I don't know it at all.
Caroline Horton
Oh, really?
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Caroline Horton
Okay, perfect.
Caroline and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Caroline Horton
In that case, I would definitely send you this one.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] So it can be that one.
Caroline Horton
It's a... It's a graphic novel – a picture book. And it's incredibly simple but the longer you look at it the more it gives, somehow. And the images are extraordinary and incredibly simple. And it's... And there's very little text. And I think... Yeah, I think... I was so happy I came across it. I was in a friend's living room and she'd popped to put the kettle on or something. And I was doing that thing of scanning her bookshelves.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Caroline Horton
And the cover of this – The Red Tree by Shaun Tan – jumped out at me. And so I... I pulled it out. And I flipped through it. And when the friend came back in, I was in tears. And she said, ‘Oh not you as well’.
Charles Adrian
Oh wow.
Caroline Horton
So apparently, that had happen... And I've since bought it for a few people. Not because it was anything other than, like, a beautiful, sort of, universal thing. But it's, sort of, about someone for whom at a certain point the world is getting worse and worse and worse. And then something – nothing very extraordinary – but a perspective shifts, something happens and things start to look up. And that's the moment that it leaves you. And it's so simple and so true. Yeah, so it'd be that one.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm.
Caroline Horton
And I love it as well because, maybe a bit like a poetry book, I think the things I love about the graphic novels that I have – or the one... the particularly ones I'm drawn to, or the poetry books that I have a lot of – is that thing of revisiting and dipping back in at different points and getting something else from it or re-remembering a little bit of truth that it gave you. Whereas I don't tend to do... I know some people reread novels but I never have. And so I love that feeling of, like, recapturing something that was really... that really clarified a truth, I suppose, about the world and people and... So yeah, it'd be that one.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm. How lovely. That's... You've actually plugged a gap because there haven't been any graphic novels on this podcast. And perhaps that's because of the nature of a podcast because it is very much non-visual.
Caroline Horton
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
But I think that's a shame. And graphic novels in general is an area... I mean, I don't read many graphic novels. And I have no idea why because I'm sure I would love graphic novels. And I think partly I'm worried that I... I would lose too much time to them, that I would get so easily sucked in...
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
But I once went to a museum of graphic novels in... It's called Le Musée de la Bande Dessinée and it's in Angoulême.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] Ah, yeah, okay.
Charles Adrian
And unfortunately their main museum space was closed the day I went but they have a library. And I did spend the morning just picking up books and looking through and thinking, ‘It's so frustrating because most of them are series and I don't have time [laughing] to sit here and read...’ I've no idea where these people are coming from or where they're going.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] Yeah, I've never gotten into a series. It's been individual books. So. Another one I really love is... I can't remember who it's by but it's All... it's something like All That We Miss or All the Things We Miss and it's absolutely beautiful. It's about this guy who... You follow his life but in every picture you see things that he just hasn't been paying attention to or opportunities he's... that have slipped past him – or...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Caroline Horton
... or horrors that have slipped past him or moments of magic that he just hasn't seen. So it's... Again, like, it's so simple but so profound. And you just, sort of... yeah, I don't know, wander about thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I wonder... already today – and it's only lunchtime – what are all the different things that just passed me by and slipped away and...’
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Caroline Horton
Yeah. No, so they're... Yeah, I think they're wonderful.
Charles Adrian
Yes, I should explore that more. Well, I'm hoping you might send me The Red Book [sic].
Caroline Horton
The Red Tree.
Charles Adrian
The Red Tree.
Caroline Horton
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
In any case, thanks for introducing me to it. And thank you very much for doing the podcast...
Caroline Horton
Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... and for taking... or having a working lunch, which is really...
Caroline Horton
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
… in a way unfair. I'm sorry that I've imposed this on you because you should be resting, Caroline.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] No. It's lovely.
Charles Adrian
But it's been lovely to see you and lovely to talk to you.
Caroline Horton
[speaking over] I'm sorry for the lack of actual books.
Caroline and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
In a way it's been all the more magical because of that.
Caroline Horton
Aww.
Charles Adrian
Now we're going to finish with The Water Boys. They were on your list. And I've chosen The Whole of the Moon. So this is The Whole of the Moon by The Water Boys. Thank you so much, Caroline.
Caroline Horton
Thank you.
Music
[The Whole of the Moon by The Water Boys]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]