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 The Clown by Heinrich Böll, published in 1988 by Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.
Richard Purnell, a man who likes to take the truth for a walk, joins Charles Adrian for the 67th Second Hand Book Factory. They talk about the comedy to be found in the detail, the morality of converts and a rare German book in translation.
Another book by Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, is discussed in Page One 155.
The Clown by Heinrich Böll is also discussed in Page One 179.
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: 20th January, 2015.
Book listing:
What Am I Doing Here by Bruce Chatwin
The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
The Clown by Heinrich Böll (trans. Leila Vennewitz)
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 91st Page One. This is the 67th Second Hand Book Factory. My name is Charles Adrian and my guest today—here in South Acton, where I live—is Richard Purnell.
Richard Purnell
Hello.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Is that right? Purnell.
Richard Purnell
It is, yeah, that's right. That my name.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Wonderful. Here's the jingle.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello. Thank you so much for coming all the way out here.
Richard Purnell
That's all right. I...
Charles Adrian
I...
Richard Purnell
... thoroughly enjoyed the walk...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Richard Purnell
... from Acton Town Station...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Wonderful.
Richard Purnell
... down Bollo Road.
Charles Adrian
Oh yes. Bollo Road. It's one of the best.
Richard Purnell
It's a very long but very good road, I think.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It is. It is a long...
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] It's very real.
Charles Adrian
It is. Yeah, it's certainly real. I think at the end there, there's some kind of laundry or something. There's something that happens with a lot of steam and occasionally you see people sitting outside smoking. And I do... It does cross my mind to wonder if it's actually a sweatshop right under my nose.
Richard Purnell
Oh, it could be.
Charles Adrian
I think it's possible. It's possible.
Richard Purnell
Yeah, of course, there's sweat of one kind or another, I suppose.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. There's certainly... I mean, it's hot inside.
Richard Purnell
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I can see that.
Richard Purnell
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I need to ask you how you describe yourself?
Richard Purnell
Oh, yes?
Charles Adrian
Yes. And, I mean, do you have anything that you can say that's...
Richard Purnell
What? About myself?
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Richard Purnell
Well, I suppose...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] How... How would you describe... I mean, all of the things that make up Richard Purnell?
Richard Purnell
All of the things that make up me are... I don't know, really. I suppose I do some writing, I do some talking, I do some reconnoitring.
Charles Adrian
[interested] Uh huh.
Richard Purnell
I don't know what that word quite means but I think it means ambling about. I get on buses a lot and... yeah, and in my... when I'm not, you know, sort of, lying and boasting—in terms of being a performer—I do P.R., which is very much the same thing but just in a slightly different arena. So that's really me.
Charles Adrian
Ah, okay. I didn't know that. You're in P.R. So if you were networking at a party that's what you would say: ‘I'm in P.R.’
Richard Purnell
I might say a lot of things, really.
Richard and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Richard Purnell
But, again, it just depends what came on top of my head. That's an honest answer. I prefer to, sort of, take the truth for a walk, you know, just to... just take it to somewhere that's slightly more interested [sic], probably slightly more inflated.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Well, that's also P.R. That's also what [laughing] that's about. [laughs] Um, wonderful. And what's the book that you brought that you like?
Richard Purnell
Right. Well. Now, this is a book that I was given when I worked at the Institute of Cancer Research by a woman who was... she was about to be restructured out of her job.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Richard Purnell
So she...
Charles Adrian
That sounds nasty.
Richard Purnell
Well, you know, when they, sort of, want to get rid of people, they restructure. It's just, ‘Oh, it's just the structure changed...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Richard Purnell
... and it just happens that you're out of that structure now’. But anyhow, well, so she was... I was temping and she was a bit moody and miserable with most people but we sparked up a... you know, a, kind of, kinship because she likes books. She liked Muriel Spark, I liked Muriel Spark. And she was clearing out her desk and out of her bottom drawer she found this book, which was What Am I Doing Here by Bruce Chatwin, and she gave it to me and I'm delighted she did so because it's brilliant.
Charles Adrian
Yes, good. I... yeah. I have this vague feeling that I've heard the name Bruce Chatwin before, but I don't know anything about him.
Richard Purnell
I think... As far as I know, he's, kind of, a vaguely posh English person who travelled a lot and wrote about it in a very good way. He wrote some novels. He wrote a historical novel which got turned into a film by Werner Herzog and... and he, kind of... he lived till about, I think, the late 80s but he had, sort of, trouble with tropical diseases due to his travelling all about and I think he, sort of... he died, probably, a bit younger than he could have done. But, yeah, a really good writer of sentences and you'll see what I mean when I read you a little bit but...
Charles Adrian
Go ahead.
Richard Purnell
Yeah, I'll read page one.
Charles Adrian
Please do.
Richard Purnell
The first page is:
ASSUNTA
A Story
WHAT AM I doing here? I am flat on my back in a National Health Service hospital hoping, praying, that the rigors and fevers which have racked me for three months will turn out to be malaria – although, after many blood tests, they have not found a single parasite. I have been on quinine tablets for thirteen hours – and my temperature does seem to be sliding down. I feel my ears. They are cold. I feel the tip of my nose. It is cold. I feel my forehead. It is cool. I feel inside my groin. Not too bad. The excitement is enough to send my temperature soaring.
In comes one of the people I most adore in [sic] the ward, Assunta, the cleaning lady and tea-maker.
She comes from Palermo and has married an Englishman. She works here, not so much for money, as for love. I rejoice at the sight of Assunta because she fills the room with Southern warmth.
She has come with a mop to swab the floor.
‘Oh my God!’ she says. ‘The snake!... My daughter, she go to the police about the snake.’
‘What snake?’
‘Puppet.’
‘Puppet?’
‘No. No. Poppet.’
‘Assunta, what are you talking about?’
Charles Adrian
[laughs] It is a very good first page.
Richard Purnell
I thought it was quite good. I actually wasn't aware that...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I really like it.
Richard Purnell
... it was page one that we were doing despite the thing being called Page One. I hadn't really made the connection...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I hadn't—obviously—explained that well.
Richard Purnell
... so I picked… Well, it was quite obvious really.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Richard Purnell
But that is what I chose, really. And I just quite like that he just brings you right in and...
Charles Adrian
Yeah, it's fun. And so he's talking about travelling around or...
Richard Purnell
This is a collection of little snippets. I think it was written posthumous... published posthumously. So a lot of it is little snippets of notes that he took on his travels, little portraits that he made. So I think there's things that perhaps were published in newspapers and magazines and that sort of... So it's like a collection of bits and pieces. But it's... you know... And some things... bits that he's written are just a paragraph long but it's no worse for that and the, sort of... the way that you can just dip in and out, I think, suits his style because he's very good at just describing scenes and people and being... evoking that scene and just picking out the right details. And doing it with a sort of real empathy and charm because he was just... you can see that he just really loves people and he loves meeting them and assessing them and making... you know, trying to work out what makes them tick and what drives them. And I think that's what makes him such a lovely writer. And he's obviously got... For me, because I write mostly in a comedic style I like the fact that he can just pick out the humour but without being derogatory or denigrating the people that he... You know, he respects them yet he can see the fun in them.
Charles Adrian
I'm going to play the first track that you suggested. So, yeah, here goes.
Music
[Bukowski by Modest Mouse]
Charles Adrian
That was Bukowski [/buːkaʊskiː/]... Bukowski [/bəkaʊskiː/] by Modest Mouse. Thank you very much. I enjoyed that.
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] That all right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's absolutely brilliant and also quite moral...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That is beautiful.
Richard Purnell
... you know? Who would want to be such an asshole? People, even for their art and their writing, you know, can just generally be civilised. And he was a...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] They can be. Yeah.
Richard Purnell
He was a rotter, I think.
Charles Adrian
From what you hear.
Richard Purnell
That's what we [laughing] hear on the streets, you know.
Charles Adrian
Now this... Which actually leads me nicely to this book that I'm going to give to you, which is by a man who I think considered himself quite moral.
Richard Purnell
Oh.
Charles Adrian
At least that's the impression I get. I don't know whether you like G. K. Chesterton.
Richard Purnell
Don't know anything about him but people with, you know, two initials before, you know, their surname are probably good. P. G. Woodhouse, I like. You know?
Charles Adrian
Yeah, he's quite... I don't actually. I mean, I will just say I don't particularly like G. K. Chesterton...
Richard Purnell
Oh! Right!
Charles Adrian
... but I think he's interesting. I think he's an interesting writer in that he's a... He's very interested in morality but he's very interested in... He seems to think that Catholic Christianity is a, kind of, natural state of grace for human beings to be in, which is a position that a lot of... I mean, he's a Catholic convert and I think a lot of converts [laughs] end up taking that kind of position. So he's quite didactic. And this is a slightly absurd book. it's called The Man Who Was Thursday. I mean, he's... I think he's...
Richard Purnell
Is that a sequel?
Charles Adrian
No. No, you'd think... Yes, you'd think there was a whole... But you'll see why as you start to read it. You will understand why he calls it that. And it's fun. I'm giving it to you really only because the... it starts... the first chapter is called The Two Poets of Saffron Park and Saffron Park is a pseudonym, as it were, for Bedford Park, which is more or less where we are now. So I'm just... This is really just a geographical... I don't actually live inside Bedford Park—Bedford Park is more or less over the other side of the road—but Bedford Park was the first garden suburb in the UK. It was architect-designed for people who wanted to live, I guess, within spitting distance of London but who wanted gardens. And it was slightly laughed at as a concept, I think, but lots of artists and poets and people, I think. moved out here. So, I'm... Yeah, so I'm going to give you this. I don't know what you will think of it. He's... I think... I mean, this is fun and it becomes ridiculous towards the end.
Richard Purnell
Okay.
Charles Adrian
His Father Brown stories are, I think, probably more fun but also a little bit absurd. They basically come down to a man who understands human nature because he's a Catholic priest and so he knows what people are like deep down and what they want. And mostly they're denying what they want to themselves. They're... Yeah.
Richard Purnell
Do you think I'll end up, you know...
Charles Adrian
Converting to Catholicism? It's very possible. It's very possible.
Richard Purnell
Is it? Yeah, I mean, I...
Charles Adrian
I give you this book with some trepidation.
Richard Purnell
My mum might have a thing or two to say about that...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Yeah.
Richard Purnell
... [laughing] but, you know, that's danger of books, isn't it?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No, I think you're probably... I think you probably safe. He was... I think he was a journalist, this guy, and I think he was probably personally... I think he was probably a little bit difficult to know. But I'm going to read you the first page anyway.
Richard Purnell
Go for it.
Charles Adrian
CHAPTER I.
THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK
The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not “artists,” the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat—that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological...
That's the end of the first page.
Richard Purnell
There we leave it—on ‘biological’.
Charles Adrian
There we go and it's... I mean, there's a slightly... it's a slightly...
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] I think I'm... I'm three-quarters Catholic by the end of the first page actually.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] It's doing its work.
Richard Purnell
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
It is a slightly... I don't know... I don't... This is a romp, this book. Yeah. See what you think. I mean, it's fun. I don't think it's high literature but it's fun.
Richard Purnell
Yeah. I don't really like all that high and low business. I like what I like. This isn't that thick. I think that's a good thing.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's going... No, no, no it's a quick read.
Richard Purnell
I do... I do a show called Bath Time when I play a man who's obsessed with baths. I like baths as well but it's not me it's another man. Murder is involved as well. And in that I say that the things I like about books are that I like... I judge a book by its cover. It's got to have a nice cover. This has a good cover. I like a cover with a nice matte finish. This has a nice matte finish.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] This has a beautiful matte finish, yeah.
Richard Purnell
I like a slender book—the slenderer the better. This is also slender. And, yeah, I like the... you know, some good artwork. So that is what I like, you've got...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] [speaking over] I feel like I've succeeded at this.
Richard Purnell
... all of my criteria in this book so I'm thoroughly excited to read it. I've just finished a book. I shall read it on the no doubt rather lengthy tube and train ride back to Lee Green.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Very likely. Okay. Wonderful. And what are you...? What's the exchange? [indistinct]
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] Oh, we're moving on. Right. Yes. Good. So this is a book called... I don't know if you've read it but I suppose you either have or you haven't. It's called The Clown by Heinrich Böll.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No. I have not heard of Heinrich Böll.
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] He's got an umlaut ov... It's Boll [/bəʊl/] but he's got an umlaut—like, two dots—over his ‘O’. So [exaggerating the umlaut] Böll. One of... So, as you can see from the front cover, he won the Nobel Prize in 1972. I like this book because it's called The Clown. I found it on my grandmother's shelf. She... My grandmother had hundreds and hundreds of books and so I just found this. I was intrigued by something that was both German and called The Clown because I don't think you see that much German literature. I think, again, we're a bit afraid of Catholics, we're a [laughing] little bit afraid of Germans as well.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah, no, that's right. That's right.
Richard Purnell
There's not much gets translated.
Charles Adrian
Not much gets translated, that's absolutely right.
Richard Purnell
And I think to get translated you've got to be absolutely amazing. And this is... This book is great. And it's about a clown. Now, the reason I am giving this to you, Charles Adrian, is because it's about a clown and I think you...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Richard Purnell
And it's a little bit... it's... Well, it's about this bloke's life falling apart a little bit, which you will see from the first page. And you're [indistinct] but obviously people who are listening and don't know: he—the person interviewing me, doing it in a very low-key way—plays a character called Samantha Mann and that is a very, sort of, great comic creation and I thought that... When I, sort of, thought of books that I like, I thought that this is about a comic creation as well and I thought that it might resonate with your life a little bit. So that is why I, kind of...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That sounds very likely. Thank you.
Richard Purnell
... tailored my choice to you. It is a book I also love as well. It's also got a lot of baths in it as well. This is a man who takes a lot of baths and he also... The other thing that he does is when he's on the phone—and he has a lot of telephone conversations in this book—when he's ringing old pe... contacts, family members up for money—because he's going downhill in his clowning career—he can smell their breath through the phone so that is the quality that he has. It's a very interesting little thing and he's... and some people's breath he does not like. They're Germans, they're eating a lot of—no doubt—pig or whatever like that. And it's just a very interesting thing that brings out a little bit of comedy but also, sort of, the disgust and the, kind of... the unpleasantness of humans and... There's a lot of surface stuff on it and he... Obviously it's post-war German so there's a lot of, kind of, the horrors of whatever they got up to during the war. So there's a lot to it but it's again not that big a book. It's very fun but it's a bit serious but not too serious. His life is going downhill but you shouldn't feel too bad about that because that's the framing of the story really. Maybe you'll get a bit out of it. Should I go to the front... Do you want to say anything...?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. No, read the... read the first page.
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] Shall I go straight...?
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Richard Purnell
I've prattled on, haven't I...
Charles Adrian
Read it. Read...
Richard Purnell
... quite frankly. We should go straight in. Actually, that's...
Charles Adrian
Is that your grandmother, P. J. Levitt?
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] P.J. Levitt. Yeah, that's right. Pearl Judith. So she was named...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Pearl Judith! Oh, that's a lovely name. Lovely pair of names.
Richard Purnell
[speaking over] So the problem was, basically, because of her era she was named Pearl but then when you get a bit older that really dates you in a really specific time frame...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. Very much. Very much.
Richard Purnell
... so she changed to Judith, which is just a solidly Jewish kind of name where you don't have to...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. Yes, yes, it's a very... it's a classic.
Richard Purnell
It's... Yeah, you could have been born in, sort of...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Never goes out of fashion. Yuh.
Richard Purnell
... fifteen hundred B.C....
Charles Adrian
Absolutely.
Richard Purnell
...or the present day.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Richard Purnell
And looking at her, you know, you couldn't really tell. Right. The first page. It's actually only half page so you only get a little bit...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That's fine. That's fine. A lot of them are.
Richard Purnell
... but I think it's... you'll get the vibe. So settle in listeners.
It was dark by the time I reached Bonn, and I forced myself not to succumb to the series of mechanical actions which had taken hold of me in five years of travelling back and forth : down the station steps, up the station steps, put down my suitcase, take my ticket out of my coat pocket, pick up my suitcase, hand in my ticket, cross over to the newsstand, buy the evening papers, go outside, and signal for a taxi. Almost every day for five years I had left for somewhere and arrived somewhere ; in the morning I had gone up station steps and down again, in the afternoon down the steps and up again, signalled for a taxi, felt in my pockets for money to pay for my ticket, bought evening papers at kiosks, and savored in a corner of my mind the studied casualness of these mechanical actions. Ever since Marie left me to marry Züpfner, that Catholic, these actions have become more mechanical than ever, but without losing any of their casualness. There is a way of calculating the distance from station to hotel, from hotel to station—by the taxi meter.
Charles Adrian
Oh, nice. That's a beautiful first page. I like it.
Richard Purnell
So. That is the opening passage so...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh thank you very much.
Richard Purnell
... you're welcome. I think you'll enjoy it. I'd really liked it because, you know, it's very tightly written and it's very descriptive and it gets in the... I think he embodies the performance artist quite well—as well as describing his downward spiral, you know, into [laughing] alcoholism, depression, and everything... and threats, and abuse and all of that stuff. But he does, kind of, capture what it is like to be a, kind of, touring artist who does a very specific skill and... you know, does a very individual thing. So, hopefully...
Charles Adrian
Oh, lovely. Thank you. Yes, I think I am going to enjoy it. Thank you very much. Now, we're going to finish. This is the end of the podcast but I'm going to play the second track which you suggested, which is by Young Fathers. I'm aware that they won the Mercury Prize.
Richard Purnell
Oh, I like them because they're... they do rap, which I generally think is a good thing because in rap the words count for double that they do in most other forms of music. I like these boys because they're doing something dark but fun and poppy and lyrical and interesting and I was really thrilled that they won that prize because I found out about them and I think they're a real, kind of, boon to the UK music scene. And this is quite a jolly tune which has some very good little lyrical flourishes in it. So look out for those.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. This is Get Up. Thank you very much, Richard, for this. This has been a pleasure.
Richard Purnell
It's been a pleasure for me also.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Music
[Get Up by Young Fathers]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]