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Season 2 Episodes

For the 63rd Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is joined by writer and sometime academic Alan Cunningham. They talk about precision in the face of horror, the creation of fear and just plain good storytelling.

Alan Cunningham also appears in Page One 39, in which he talks about his book Count From Zero To One Hundred.

Journals 1889-1949 by André Gide is also discussed in Page One 178.

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: 8th July, 2014.

Book listing:

If This Is A Man by Primo Levi (trans. Stuart Woolf)

The Shining by Stephen King

Journals 1889-1949 by André Gide (trans. Justin O’Brien)

Links:

Page One 39

Page One 178

Friends Of Friends on Soundcloud

Charles Adrian

Epsidode transcript:

Charles Adrian
Okay. Shall we start?

Alan Cunningham
[affirmative] Mmm.

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 87th Page One. This is the 63rd Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today is Alan Cunningham.

Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.

Charles Adrian
Hi Alan.

Alan Cunningham
Hi Adrian. How are you?

Charles Adrian
Very well, thank you. Thanks for hosting me in your flat.

Alan Cunningham
My pleasure.

Charles Adrian
It's very nice. How do you describe yourself?

Alan Cunningham
I would call myself a writer. I would call myself a writer – although I have academic tendencies and I do work in the academic world as well. But primarily, with regards to my creative stuff, I'm a writer. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
Okay. That's very straightforward. What kind of... what... So when you're working in the academic world, what does that mean?

Alan Cunningham
Well, I did a PhD in the philosophy of law. And...

Charles Adrian
Oh wow!

Alan Cunningham
... I have worked at universities and third level institutions. And I'm interested in... There's certain things that I'm interested in in academia that don't really feed into my creative work at all. So, you know, professionally, I'm also an academic sometimes too.

Charles Adrian
Okay.

Alan Cunningham
But the two complement each other, you know? To write academically and to write creatively, there are some complementary attitudes. But very different worlds as well.

Charles Adrian
Mmm. Yeah, yes. Because I would have thought you were using your brain differently in the sense that when you're an academic you're very much... you're... you're assessing things, aren't you? And trying to articulate reasons for feelings and thinkings and so on. Whereas...

Alan Cunningham
Yeah, it can be very rash... It's a very rational world. Or so it believes itself to be. But it does feed into my writing because part of my writing is concerned with being clear and being precise. And I think I've definitely taken that from the academic world You have to be very clear about the arguments you're making. So I like combining this element – in creative writing – of the rational and the irrational. So the precision that comes from language combined with talking about, for example, emotions or feelings, I think, produces something really interesting. Rather than just this pure expulsion of emotion without form or shape. So, yeah, the two worlds do complement each other. But primarily I think I'm just a writer because [in] both worlds – the academic world and the creative world – what I do is I write. I work with words, with language. That's what I'm most comfortable with.

Charles Adrian
Nice. And so what... As a reader, what have you brought? What's the... [laughs]

Alan Cunningham
Well, I have two books. Both books are nonfiction...

Charles Adrian
Right. Yeah.

Alan Cunningham
... which I was... I find interesting. I didn't think that that was going to be the case. And I toyed with a few other books that were fiction but these were the two that I decided... The first is a book by the Italian author Primo Levi. It's called If This Is a Man. And it's usually sold with another book called The Truce, which is... If This Is a Man is about Levi's time in Auschwitz and The Truce is about his return to Italy after he was free. They're usually sold together but the book that I'm going to focus on is If This Is a Man. Shall I read from the first page?

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Go on, yes, read the first page.

Alan Cunningham
[speaking over] I'll do the first page. Okay.

1
The Journey

I was captured by the Fascist Militia on 13 December 1943. I was twenty-four, with little wisdom, no experience and a decided tendency – encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me for the previous four years by the racial laws – to live in an unrealistic world of my own, a world inhabited by civilised Cartesian phantoms, by sincere male and bloodless female friendships. I cultivated a moderate and abstract sense of rebellion.
It had been by no means easy to flee into the mountains and to help set up what, both in my opinion and that of friends little more experienced than myself, should have become a partisan band affiliated with the Resistance movement Justice and Liberty. Contacts, arms, money and the experience needed to acquire them were all missing. We lacked capable men, and instead we were swamped by a deluge of outcasts, in good or bad faith, who came from the plain in search of a non-existent military or political organization, of arms, or merely of protection, a hiding place, a fire, a pair of shoes.
At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly. So that I can only consider the following sequence of events justified. Three Fascist Militia Companies, which had set out in the night to surprise a much more powerful and dangerous band than ours, broke into the [sic] refuge one spectral snowy dawn and took me down to the valley as a suspect person.
During the interrogations that followed, I preferred to admit my status of ‘Italian citizen of Jewish race’. I felt that otherwise I would be unable to justify my presence in places too secluded even for an evacuee; while I believed (wrongly as was subsequently seen) that the admission of my political activity would have meant torture and certain death.

Charles Adrian
Mmm hmm. That's interesting. Yeah, I'd forgotten.... I read that a while ago. I'd forgotten that he's arrested for political activity not specifically for being Jewish. Although that must be part of it.

Alan Cunningham
[speaking over] Not initially.

Charles Adrian
But yeah. That's interesting.

Alan Cunningham
No, it's an amazing book. I mean, it's one of the books that I come back to regularly and find myself able to read as if I've read it... or as if I'm reading it for the first time. And I'm constantly surprised by two things. The first is – something that's really important to me – is the precision of the language that he uses. And I think it comes from the fact that he was a chemist prior to what happened to him at Auschwitz. And he continued as a chemist after Auschwitz as well. And Levi really wanted to look at the experience that he'd been through through a sort of rational prism. I think it was probably the only way he could have done it, considering the horribleness and, you know, the degradation that he suffered in Auschwitz. So that's the first element. And the second is the fact that he finds some element of beauty in what he went through. I think that's always what I come back to when I read this book. It's a really profoundly moving book for me. A very beautiful book. And I was thinking about the fact that I'd chosen it at a time when, you know, if we look at some of the political things that are happening in the UK about exclusion of certain groups or this desire to, kind of, exclude what's happening in the UK... You know, reading it again this morning – reading various bits of it – I was really taken by the fact that I think it's a book that people need to read. You know, a serious book. Not a book that you'll find amusing but just profound.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No, but I think you're right when you... I mean, the beauty is definitely inside there but that question ‘if this is a man’, that's... that's... The thing is that you... If you... You can't possibly treat a man in the way that Primo Levi and his fellow detainees were treated so those people can't be men. They have to be animals. And his attempt to say, ‘No, even in this camp, even though we're fighting over who gets to eat mouldy bread and who doesn't, we still... there's still that spirit’. There's still... They are still... Underneath it... You strip back everything and there is still beauty and there is still... They are still human beings.

Alan Cunningham
Absolutely. And that's something that some people in positions of comfort or power would have you forget. They would rather, you know, objectify and dehumanise and label. So, you know, when you have things like UKIP and Farage who talk about ‘Romanians’... So they... You know, they just lump a group of people together.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Who are... Who are the Romanians? [laughs] Yes.

Alan Cunningham
You know. And then that makes people fearful because they've labelled it as ‘this thing’. So when we talk... when we label these groups, it's just very easy for then people to get into this mindset of, ‘Oh, well, I can forget about the human element behind that and I can just treat them as something that can be disregarded’.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I don't have to have any empathy. I don't have to feel their pain.

Alan Cunningham
Yeah. And I think it's a really... You know, I don't want to overplay it but I do actually think it's a potentially quite a... a really dangerous time in the UK at the moment politically. People are often forgetting it but with what happened with the local and European elections, it was quite scary. I felt quite frightened when I woke up. I realised that morning, ‘This could be something that actually happens and has consequences’.

Charles Adrian
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Alan Cunningham
You know, and I'm someone who's lived in... I've lived in European countries. I have many people from from Europe who are good friends of mine and who benefit from being able to come to the UK. I know people from the UK – both of us – who benefit from being able to go to...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. Enormously! Absolutely.

Alan Cunningham
[speaking over] ... enormously, creatively, personally, financially – being able to go to countries like Italy or Germany. And to bring things back to the UK from those places. So if that's taken away, I think it leads to a, sort of, insular attitude. And from that insular attitude you get... I mean, it can take a long time but you get treatment of people in a very negative way.

Charles Adrian
Well, and I... This is... This is, kind of... I think it's fractal. I think you get rid of the people who are obviously different. That's the first stage. And then you look around and you realise, ‘Oh no, there's still different people here’. So then you try and get rid of those people. But you will never get to a stage where we feel that we are uniform. We're... There is no uniformity.

Alan Cunningham
Of course.

Charles Adrian
There is just... There are just variations of... There's, like, you know, different degrees of difference. So I'm very much... I think that... I think you need to keep this melting pot. You need to keep engaging with people who are different in order to realise that that is an enriching thing and a wonderful thing. If you try and shut that out I think you end up in a very fearful place and you end up tearing yourself apart eventually.

Alan Cunningham
Yeah. And it becomes easier to hurt people, I think. I think it becomes easier to do the things that are inhuman...

Charles Adrian
Yes, yes. I think that's right.

Alan Cunningham
... if you've reached that stage. I mean, it was great to see that, you know, people I knew were voting. And I was trying to advocate to people, ‘Look, go out and vote’. But the results also showed there's a huge degree of fear. I think the reason why a lot of people are voting is that fear has been created by media, by politicians. Fear has been created. And if books like this book can do anything, it's that they can help you to, sort of, understand that fear isn't always the best response. It might be a natural response but sometimes you have to be... to sit back and be...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] We can interrogate that.

Alan Cunningham
... a little bit more rational, a little bit more reasonable, and go, ‘Well, what actually am I am I voting for here? I'm just voting from a basis of having been made fearful.’

Charles Adrian
Yes, exactly. Of something that I... Yes. You don't necessarily even know what that is

Alan Cunningham
And that leads to, you know, aggression and hatred and all these other horrible things. So that's the reason why. And, you know, I chose this book because it's a book I come back to and read very often and I'm always surprised and amazed by it but on choosing it I realised it's probably quite a timely thing given what's happened.

Charles Adrian
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Alan Cunningham
Yeah. So that's the book that I've chosen as my...

Charles Adrian
No, excellent choice

Alan Cunningham
... return book. The book that I always return to.

Charles Adrian
Now, the book that I'm going to give to you is quite different.

Alan Cunningham
Oh yeah, I can see. I can see that already. I'm excited.

Charles Adrian
And I don't know why I want to give this to you. But I just had a very strong feeling this morning that this is the book that...

Alan Cunningham
[laughs]

Charles Adrian
... that I should give you. This is Stephen King's The Shining.

Alan Cunningham
Okay.

Charles Adrian
It's the only book by Stephen King that I've ever read.

Alan Cunningham
I've never read this book. I have seen the film adaptation which I liked a lot.

Charles Adrian
Okay. I haven't... Yeah, I haven't even seen the film. I think... Actually, it's interesting because the tagline on the front is ‘Never overlook the past’ so it's a [laughing] quite... I think that... it fits in really well...

Alan Cunningham
Yeah.

Charles Adrian
... surprisingly well – with what we were saying. Although [laughs] it's a little more frivolous.

Alan Cunningham
[laughs] Well, maybe we need a little bit of frivolity now.

Charles Adrian
[laughs]

Alan Cunningham
That was a very, you know, serious...

Charles Adrian
Well, this is perhaps an allegorical rendering of the same story. It's... I was really amazed by this. I can't remember why I bought it but it's a really good book. I mean, it's beautifully.... It's... The story is well told. I was genuinely gripped by this. And I think... You know, I always think of Stephen King as a, kind of, pulp writer but I think just because he tells a good story it's no reason to assume that he's not in some way literary. I think he knows what he's doing. And in this book definitely. But, yeah, I think it's really enjoyable and I think you should read it.

CHAPTER ONE


JOB INTERVIEW


Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.
Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake Stewart Ullman for the local undertaker.
As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk – under the circumstances.
Ullman had asked a question he hadn't caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration.
‘I'm sorry?’
‘I asked if your wife fully understands what you would be taking on here. And there's your son, of course.’ He glanced down at the application in front of him. ‘Daniel. Your wife isn't a bit intimidated by the idea?’
‘Wendy is an extraordinary woman.’
‘And your son is also extraordinary?’
Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. ‘We like to think so, I suppose. He's quite self-reliant for a five-year-old.’
No returning smile from Ullman. He slipped Jack's application back into a file. The file went into a drawer. The desktop was now completely bare except for a blotter, a telephone, a Tensor lamp, and an in/out basket. Both sides of the in/out were empty too.
Ullman stood up and went to the file cabinet in the corner.

Alan Cunningham
[appreciative] Mmm.

Charles Adrian
[laughing] There you go.

Alan Cunningham
Thank you. I love the sparseness of the language. He's really great at creating this sense of movement. You know, the movement of the narrative. And, like, I was... I want to hear more.

Charles Adrian
Yeah.

Alan Cunningham
I mean, I have read other books by Stephen King and, yeah, he's one of... I think he's a very underrated writer in terms of his literary reputation. Because he's an amazing writer, you know. Some of his stuff is... it's fascinating. But I'm glad that I haven't read this. And...

Charles Adrian
Yeah! I'm glad that you haven't read this. That was a good call on my part.

Alan Cunningham
[speaking over] It's a good choice. That's great.

Charles Adrian
And what have you brought for me?

Alan Cunningham
Well, I've brought another nonfiction book. It's the journals of the French writer André Gide. And I think... I don't know but I think you might like this. The reason why I like it is that it is just a fascinating record of the internal life of a creative artist over the period of his life. And in it he discusses everything: his emotions, his professional development, his sexuality, his... as he ages his frailty, his impending death. And I'm excited to let you read the first page. You're going to read the first page of this?

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No you're going to read it. You're going to read it.

Alan Cunningham
[speaking over] Oh, I'm going to read... Okay, okay, I'm going to read the first page. Well, I'm excited to read the first page of this...

Charles Adrian
[laughs]

Alan Cunningham
... because it just illustrates what is to come – the wonderfulness of what is to come.

Charles Adrian
[laughs] Okay.

Alan Cunningham
So I'll read the first page.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Yeah, please.

Alan Cunningham
Okay. Forgive my pronunciation of French words [laughs] in advance.

1889

Autumn
WITH Pierre. We climb to the sixth floor of a house in rue Monsieur-le-Prince, looking for a place where our group can meet. Up there we find a huge room seeming even larger because of the lack of furniture. To the left of the door the ceiling slopes downward as in a mansard. Near the floor a small door opens into an attic extending the whole length of the house under the roof. In the opposite wall a window, just waist-high, provides a view over the roofs of the Medical School, over the Latin Quarter, of an expanse of grey houses as far as the eye can see, the Seine, the [sic] Notre-Dame in the setting sun, and, in the far distance, Montmartre barely visible in the evening mist.
And together we dream of the impecunious student's life in such a room, with an unfettered pen as the only means of earning a living. And at your feet, on the other side of your writing table, all Paris. And take refuge there with the dream of your masterpiece, and not come out until it is finished.
Rastignac's famous cry as he looks down on the City from the heights of Père Lachaise : ‘And now... you and I come to grips!’

Charles Adrian
I like that. Beautiful. Thank you very much. Oh, I'll take that. And thank you very much for our conversation.

Alan Cunningham
Yeah, it was great. Thanks. Thanks Adrian.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It was lovely. I'm going to play... So I haven't played any music yet today because I'm playing one track which is nine minutes and forty-five seconds long. I did like your... I did like your... the choice that you gave me but I've chosen... from that little list I've chosen the Van Morrison song Madame George...

Alan Cunningham
Oh, excellent.

Charles Adrian
... which is... Yeah.

Music
[Madame George by Van Morrison]

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]