Episode image is a detail from the cover of A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley, published by Jane Nissen Books in 2007; cover design by Chris Inns, cover illustration by Faith Jaques.
For the 81st Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is joined by long-time friend and unofficial agent Vera Chok, who describes herself here as an actress, writer, performance-maker and dork. “I was so happy,” she says, “when I finally discovered that I didn’t have to dance like a cool kid.” They talk new perspectives on writers of colour, a novel to fill you up and questions of green dye.
Information about The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla, which Vera has contributed to is here.
You should also listen to Vera talking to Dave Pickering on his podcast Getting Better Acquainted, which you can find here.
A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley is also discussed in Page One 185.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 16th February, 2016.
Book listing:
Tick (from It Never Rains On National Day) by Jeremy Tiang
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley
Other episodes featuring Vera Chok:
Page One 149
Page One 127
Page One 90
Page One 52
Page One 6
Links:
Getting Better Acquainted with Vera Chok
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello. Charles Adrian here. Wow, it's been a long time since the last—or it feels like it's been a long time since the last episode. And before we even get going on today's episode I just wanted to say that my guest—Vera Chok—forgot to mention that she's contributed an essay to a collection called The Good Immigrant which is edited by Nikesh Shukla. The whole thing is... well, it's a collection of essays about race and immigration and I think it's going to be well worth reading. The book comes out in September but it should be available to pre-order in August. I'm going to try and find a link that I can add to the description but even if there is no link there in the description when you come to listen to this Google The Good Immigrant and I'm sure you'll find it. Okay. I'm glad she remembered that in time so we could put this on before the episode goes out. In any case, here is today's episode.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 107th Page One. This is the 81st Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today—for the fourth time—is Vera Chok.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hi, Vera. [laughs]
Vera Chok
[laughing] Hello.
Charles Adrian
So this is... Yeah, this is the fourth time.
Vera Chok
Yes.
Charles Adrian
And it's changed a little bit. There's no music now.
Vera Chok
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
But what has stayed is the first question:
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
How do you... How do you describe yourself?
Vera Chok
Well, I am a dork [laughs] as I mentioned to you via the medium of Twitter the other day. Well, no, I mentioned it to the whole world.
Charles Adrian
I picked it up.
Vera Chok
Yes, I do realise...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Gleefully.
Vera Chok
[laughing] Yes. It's a good word...
Charles Adrian
A very good word.
Vera Chok
... ‘dork’. It's very satisfying to say. Well, professionally, I'm an actress, writer, and performance maker but... yeah. I suppose I... When I tweeted that I was thinking about my natural casting as an actor. So obviously I can play other roles but I suppose, as opposed to, you know, the femme fatale or the cool elegant villain, etc., I'm more the bumbling... the bumbling one.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Oh, lovely.
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Oh I'm looking forward to seeing you much more as the bumbling dork.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] I hope so. I think I've enjoyed those roles more. I don't get them very often. Possibly because people go... Well, there's the general thing that women aren't funny and...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right.
Vera Chok
... two: the inscrutable Oriental woman isn't funny.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, strike two. You've got... Yeah, exactly.
Vera and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
But I don't think that... That shouldn't stand in your way at all really.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] I think if you look at... If anyone looks at my natural face I look like a dork. But if you look at my—I guess—publicity shots...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] and the way you like to move as well.
Vera Chok
[laughing] Yes! I like...
Charles Adrian
I mean, you have so much pleasure moving like that.
Vera Chok
[laughs] I was so happy as a teenager. No, it wasn't... I think at university when I finally discovered that I didn't have to dance like a cool kid. Oh! Okay. So possibly it was around the time I played Dorcas at university, where I could sing out of tune and dance badly on stage and that was beautiful and funny and I thought, ‘Ah, that's incredible’. I'd tried so long to be cool and pretty—and people kind of want me to be pretty. I don't know... Yes, it's—again—a gender thing that women should be nice. So, yeah, I do remember throwing shapes. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [appreciative] Mmm. Very nice. Very interesting. Yeah.
sound effect
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
What is... What is the first book that you've brought? What's the book that you've brought that you like?
Vera Chok
That I'm not [laughing] going to give to you?
Charles Adrian
That you're not [laughing] going to give to me.
Vera and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Vera Chok
Listeners should know that I had a whole pile of books that I did not want to give Adrian. So the first book—which I'm not going to give to you—is by our mutual friend Jeremy Tiang.
Charles Adrian
Oh! Who still hasn't been on the podcast.
Vera Chok
Well, that's because he doesn't... Well, he's always fleetingly in the country. He doesn't live here any more.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I know. And I haven't made a concerted enough effort to catch him on those times when he has but I will.
Vera Chok
Well, he's crazy busy.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Because he should be on the podcast.
Vera Chok
Yes, he definitely should. So... yes. So it's his collected book of short stories...
Charles Adrian
That he's written.
Vera Chok
... that he's written, not translated—because he also works as a translator—and it's not available in this country yet. It's published in Singapore. It's called It Never Rains on National Day.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
That's beautiful. [laughs]
Vera Chok
And, yes, he very kindly brought it over for me. And I hate short story collections in general. I find short stories very aggravating because they're short and this is one of my current favourite books. So he's managed [laughs] to really blow apart lots of my—I don't know—preconceptions, I guess.
Charles Adrian
That's so nice. What's...? Are you going...? What are you going to read from...?
Vera Chok
[speaking over] Can I...? I... This is a difficult one because I don't really want to read the first page of the collection. May I read the first page of a story?
Charles Adrian
Yes, I think you can do that. Yeah. That's one of the wonderful things about choosing...
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... either short stories or poems is that I think even following my rules you can pick something in the middle.
Vera Chok
So I've chosen this story. It's, sort of, maybe the third story in. And I remember when I finished it I literally went, ‘[sobbing noise] Oh my god!’ And... So I like it when... Endings are really hard to do in writing or in books—sorry, in writing or films or plays—and it was a really good ending and that's... I really admire that. Anyhow. To it's called Tick.
By the third day, he has pulled a few dozen ticks off the dog.
‘This place must be infested,’ says his wife, and he nods, unsure whether she means their cabin or the entire natural world.
There are ticks in the city, of course, but nowhere near this many. It makes him wonder how many dark crawling creatures might lurk on the forest floor.
His initial idea was total isolation but the cabin costs nine hundred a week plus tax. The only way to make that work was for both of them to come and sublet the apartment. His wife was surprisingly upbeat about this, considering she'd have to commute ninety minutes in each direction.
‘You owe me one,’ she said as they packed. ‘I'll enjoy the leverage.’
She leaves virtually at dawn to get into town for the early morning class but still manages to leave him a grudging paper bag lunch. ‘Just like Yaddo,’ he tells himself.
He can see vast dappled trees and hear the breeze swirling their tops, and faces his word processor with fresh hope. Hard to believe six weeks in such surroundings will not produce a masterpiece.
He has been telling people about this for months – the students, his colleagues, the newsstand guy – partly to make...
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm. It's nice.
Vera Chok
Yes.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] I love that he's brought his wife along...
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... only because they otherwise can't justify the expense of it.
Vera Chok
Yeah. It's um... So I'm trying to read more people of colour and women this year. And I know a lot of people have done this before and I've kind of scoffed at or avoided it because I thought, ‘How... Well, what...?’ I'm so choosy about my books anyway but I do think it is going to really challenge me and change the way I see the world. But a lot of writing... If you're, sort of, a person of colour you're expected to write about identity and home or the motherland or generations of immigrants and all that kind of thing. And there's nothing wrong with that but it can be trite. Jeremy's perspective is completely different—even though he does write about identity and travel. But he... You have these Singaporeans—and not many people know what Singapore is about or who they are. And they're elsewhere in the world. So you've got people in Trondheim or New York or China and that's a really interesting perspective because it's multiples of Singaporeans in foreign places and how they feel about being—temporarily—away. I don't know. I'm not explaining this very well. But it really resonated with me even though I'm not Singaporean and I'm not somewhere strange, particularly. And I feel fairly [laughing] permanently located in London. Although...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I suppose... It sounds to me that it's different from the, kind of, ‘migrant’ narrative...
Vera Chok
Yes...
Charles Adrian
... because it's about people travelling somewhere coming back rather than people whose parents... Because the classic thing is people whose parents have moved to a different country and they've grown up ‘different’.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] Exactly. Yes. So the reasons why people... the... his people and places are very... are unusual to me. I've never encountered them in any media really. Also, it's... he looks at people who are migrant to Singapore, for example. Or, like, a Chinese... a Singaporean in China and how that's weird. Or a white per... a white Englishman, you know, in Singapore and New York or... It's just very unusual and beautifully written. And tight. I like tight writing. So.
Charles Adrian
I'm annoyed that you're not giving that to me. [laughs] That sounds really interesting.
Vera Chok
Oh! I could lend it to you.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I will have to... [laughs]
Vera Chok
It's got an inscription. I...
Charles Adrian
[laughing] No, I'm not going to take it off you, Vera.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] No, no, you could... you could borrow... you should borrow it.
Charles Adrian
But I would borrow it on very strict terms.
Vera Chok
Yes.
Charles Adrian
In the sense that it will come back to you.
Vera Chok
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
sound effect
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
Okay. Now, my... the book that I'm giving to you. This is a little bit like Christmas in the sense that so often at Christmas, I think, we've pre-negotiated our presents. I think that [laughing] happens in a lot of families—it certainly happens to a certain extent in mine—because you discuss what people might want. So you... I think you don't know what I'm going to give to you...
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... but it won't be a [laughing] surprise when I do.
Vera Chok
Okay.
Charles Adrian
Because we did discuss this the other week...
Vera Chok
Oh!
Charles Adrian
... when we were... After I saw Harlequinade we went out to eat...
Vera Chok
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... and you said something like, ‘What is White Teeth like? Because I've never read it.’
Vera Chok
[speaking over] [laughing] Oh no!
Charles Adrian
So I've brought it for you.
Vera Chok
There is a reason why I've never read it. But you liked it.
Charles Adrian
I did like it a lot...
Vera Chok
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... when I read it. Which was a while ago.
Vera Chok
[affirmative] Mmm hmm. I should read it. It's a book I should read.
Charles Adrian
Well, I'm giving it to you so that you will read it.
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
I could have given you other books. And I'm... So, inspired by you really—and because I've also read about a lot of people, you know, having a diverse reading year—I've decided I'm going to do the same thing. I'm trying not to read white women either—because I feel like there are lots of white women represented in my bookshelves—but I will probably break that at some stage. But it's been an interesting challenge already for me to look for non-white writers because their names don't spring into my head.
Vera Chok
No, there's lots of those lists because we've just had New Year...
Charles Adrian
Right.
Vera Chok
... and I, sort of, did a call out on Twitter and Facebook. I mean, I've had already some disasters where everyone's raving about a book officially and I go, ‘I can't even get past.... Oh, it's just awful.’
Charles Adrian
And that's okay, I think.
Vera Chok
I know but it's, sort of... it's disappointing. It makes me sad about the world and people's taste...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Vera Chok
... and also I'm thinking...
Charles Adrian
Yeah, but people like awful books and they like awful films
Vera Chok
[speaking over] I mean, temporary sad. I mean, it's fleeting.
Charles Adrian
But back to the podcast.
Vera Chok
Yes.
Charles Adrian
So the book that I've brought for you is White Teeth by Zadie Smith because you said that you'd never read it...
Vera Chok
Nope.
Charles Adrian
... and I think it is a good book. I haven't liked anything that I've read by her subsequently. And just, sort of, looking at this again after... I mean, I probably read it when it came out—or when it came into paperback—so that's maybe fifteen years ago or more...
Vera Chok
Gosh!
Charles Adrian
... I like it less than I did. I can see much more clearly who she's been reading—if that makes sense—which informs her style...
Vera Chok
Oh!
Charles Adrian
... but it's a very mature style and she masters it...
Vera Chok
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... in a way that I think makes the novel work. I think it's good. I think it's a very complex novel and I think it's... Yeah, I... I like it. But I don't expect you necessarily to like it.
Vera Chok
Well, now I am looking forward to reading it. I am.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
I The Peculiar Second Marriage of Archie Jones
Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on the I January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel; scrunched up in each fist, he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage licence (right), for he had decided to take his mistakes with him. A little green light flashed in his eye, signalling a right turn he had resolved never to make. He was resigned to it. He was prepared for it. He had flipped a coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. This was a decided-upon suicide. In fact it was a New Year's resolution.
But even as his breathing became spasmodic and his lights dimmed, Archie was aware that Cricklewood Broadway would seem a strange choice. Strange to the first person to notice his slumped figure through the windscreen, strange to the policemen who would file the report, to the local journalist called upon to write fifty words, to the next of kin who would read them. Squeezed between an almighty concrete cinema complex at one end and a giant intersection at the other, Cricklewood was no kind of place. It was not a place a man came to die. It was a place a man came in order to go other places via the A41. But Archie Jones didn't want to die in some pleasant, distant woodland, or on a cliff edge fringed with delicate heather. The way Archie saw it, country people should die in the country and city people should die in the city. Only proper. In death as he was in life and all that. It made sense that Archibald should die on this nasty...
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
There you go.
Vera Chok
Thank you very much.
Charles Adrian
So I think it's really a novel in that, kind of, you know, ‘gives you something to bite into’...
Vera Chok
[speaking over] It sounds...
Charles Adrian
...way. It's not the kind of spare writing that I know you like.
Vera Chok
[laughing] No.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] But I like it. I like that kind of... I don't know. I like that feeling that it's going to fill me up.
Vera Chok
Because it just sounds really familiar. Do you see what I mean?
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Vera Chok
I don't mean it's... I don't... [indistinct]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I think that's what I mean by her... You can hear her influences.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] You can tell... Okay.
Charles Adrian
Anyway.
sound effect
[page turning]
Vera Chok
Anyway.
Charles Adrian
And so what's... And what's the book that you are going to give to me?
Vera Chok
I hope you haven't read it. It's called...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's all right. If I have, we'll swap.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] I know, I know, I know.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I'll take the other one. [I'll] take Jeremy's book...
Vera and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... and you can keep this one.
Vera Chok
It's called A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley.
Charles Adrian
Oh, no, I haven't heard of it.
Vera Chok
Okay. It's essentially a children's book.
Charles Adrian
Yay! [laughs]
Vera Chok
[laughing] Yay!
Vera and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Vera Chok
It doesn't have that many pictures.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Big text! Yeah, that's good. That's very good.
Vera Chok
Um, I'm going to read it. It's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] And, like, on the front it's got a picture of people in olde-worlde costumes.
Vera Chok
Yes! With...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That's wonderful.
Vera Chok
... what's that kind of hairstyle when you can't tell if it's a boy or a girl?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Page boy.
Vera Chok
Page boy.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. [indistinct]
Vera Chok
Now...
Charles Adrian
Well, he presumably is a page.
Vera Chok
[laughing] I don't know.
Charles Adrian
All in green—in a very bright green that I doubt they would have been able to produce in those days. I mean, that glows, that green.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] But...
Charles Adrian
You would have been... Like, they would have had to... It would have been nettle dyes and...
Vera Chok
[speaking over] So tell me about the song Greensleeves.
Charles Adrian
I don't know anything about the song Greensleeves.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] Yes, exactly. So...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Except that didn't Henry VIII write it?
Vera Chok
So they must have had green dye.
Charles Adrian
Oh, they would have had green dye. They just wouldn't have had bright green dye.
Vera Chok
Oh I see. Okay.
Charles Adrian
I'm sure. I... I have no idea. I'm sure they wouldn't... Also, that pink looks very expensive to me...
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... and the blue likewise. [laughs]
Vera Chok
Maybe they're rich people.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Maybe.
Vera Chok
Now... Now...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's just suspiciously neon.
Vera Chok
It's really... All the books I tend to bring you have very short first pages.
Charles Adrian
Oh, that's all right. It's less for everybody to [laughing] listen to. We can finish the podcast early and...
Vera Chok
[speaking over] Shut up. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
... [laughs] and go home.
Vera Chok
Okay, so it's called... Whatever.
Charles Adrian
Actually, I remember the fir... Because the first book you gave me was William Saroyan, wasn't it? And that, like, three lines...
Vera Chok
[speaking over] Yes. It was, like, mainly a picture. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yes. It's the same.
Vera Chok
Same thing.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Okay.
Vera Chok
Okay.
I Thackers Farm
I, Penelope Taberner Cameron, tell this story of happenings when I was a young girl. To this day every detail of my strange experience is clear as light. I see the beautiful countryside with its woods and gentle hills stretching out infinitely green, and the little brook shimmering with sunlight as it flows under the hazel groves. I hear the murmur of woodpigeons, sleepy and monotonous in the beech wood, and the warm intimate call of the cuckoo in the orchard by the house. Ice-cold water springs from the mossy earth, and I stoop with cupped hands, one clasping the other, to...
Charles Adrian
Oh, it's lovely! It's really beautiful. It sounds really... It's that, kind of, bucolic fantasy of childhood.
Vera Chok
Yes. Now. So I had a copy of this back home in Malaysia and I read it and I used to weep.
Charles Adrian
Aw! Wow.
Vera Chok
Weep and weep and weep. And then many years ago my sister bought me this copy. So this is for you.
Charles Adrian
Oh, thank you very much. I think I'm going to enjoy it. I... yeah... suspect... I already feel like parents are going to die and sad things are going to happen and people are going to be sent away from home in awful ways.
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Vera Chok
I... Nnn... Do you want me to reveal anything?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No. But it's called A Traveller in Time so that also makes me feel like spooky things are going to happen.
Vera and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
Maybe that's where they got their clothes from. They've gone to Angels.
Vera and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Vera Chok
[laughing] I know. The theatrical costumier.
Charles Adrian
Exactly. And they've said, ‘What do you have in Tudor?’
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Oh, thank you so much for doing this again and opening the fourth season of Page One.
Vera Chok
[speaking over] No, it's my pleasure. And it always goes too quickly!
Charles Adrian
It is fast...
Vera Chok
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... but it's always a pleasure.
Vera Chok
It's always good that it's short. I like that about your podcast. Leave people wanting more always.
Charles Adrian
Exactly. Make them think, ‘Oh, why was it not three times as long?’ Thank you so much. This has been wonderful.
Vera Chok
Cool. Thank you.
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]