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(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of The Groucho Letters by Groucho Marx and others, published in 2007 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd; cover design: S & S Art Dept/Lizzie Gardiner.
s“You are the music while the music lasts.” For the 75th Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is joined in Berlin by pianist and Korean-American mutt SooJin Anjou to discuss the need for contradiction and art that contains the world. No small ambition. This will be the last of these Second Hand Book Factories for a while so, in Groucho’s words, please hug yourselves for me.
Noise warning: This episode was recorded in a very echoey room. There is also some intermittent drilling in the background between 16:20 and 16:40.
On the question of classical music on the podcast, a clarification: of course, while editing this episode, Charles Adrian remembered that he played some Schubert for Ted Schmitz as part of the 30th Page One, which you can listen to here.
Filippo Andreatta, mentioned here, is featured in Page One 51.
The Groucho Letters by Groucho Marx and others is also discussed in Page One 183.
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: 9th June, 2015.
Book listing:
Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
The History Of Love by Nicole Krauss
The Groucho Letters by Groucho Marx and others
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Okay. Shall we do it?
SooJin Anjou
Okay!
Charles Adrian
Good! Hello and welcome to the 99th Page One. This is the 75th Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today is SooJin Anjou [/ændʒuː/]... Anjou [/ɒndʒuː/]? Anjou [/ændʒuː/].
SooJin Anjou
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] She's nodding. Yeah.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hi SooJin.
SooJin Anjou
Hi Adrian.
Charles Adrian
Thank you so much for coming up to my apartment here on Muskauer Strasse.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] I know, it's... It was a lot of stairs. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
it was a lot of stairs, wasn't it? Yeah [laughs]
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] But it's always a pleasure to see you.
Charles Adrian
I'm very happy that we managed to work this out this week because there were a couple of times when it didn't... it didn't happen. Is that right?
SooJin Anjou
No. You never invited me before.
Charles Adrian
Oh!
SooJin Anjou
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Maybe I'm getting you mixed up with [laughing] somebody else that I can't...
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Maybe you always wanted to invite me. But I'm pretty reliable.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] But we had a certain amount of negotiation, didn't we...
SooJin Anjou
Yeah. Mostly because we don't live in the same country.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... about whether it was going to work? Yeah, that's true. That's true. Well, anyway, I'm happy that I'm in Berlin at the time when you're free.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah, me too.
Charles Adrian
How do you describe yourself, SooJin?
SooJin Anjou
I'm a Korean American mutt with a Korean French sounding name.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
SooJin Anjou
So...
Charles Adrian
A very... quite a royal sounding name, I think.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah, the Duchess of Anjou. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yeah. [laughs] It suits you very well.
SooJin Anjou
At least a princess.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yes.
SooJin Anjou
And now I've been in Germany for eleven and a half years and I was in Hungary for a year before that so I'm really very mixed up now.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
SooJin Anjou
Big goulash.
SooJin and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
A goulash mutt. Is that how I should describe you online?
SooJin Anjou
But that sounds like there's dog meat in the goulash so maybe not. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Maybe not. Maybe not. What's the book that you've brought that you like?
SooJin Anjou
Don't get mad—I don't know if this was allowed—but poetry is a book too, right?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh lovely! Yeah, of course it's allowed.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Is that allowed? I almost brought a second book—which was a novel—in case you said ‘Das ist verboten!’
Charles Adrian
No! There is...
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] ‘Kein Poetry!’
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Es gibt kein Verbot here on Page One.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Okay. [laughing] Okay. So the first book is... This has a strong connection to the book that I'm going to give you so I [indistinct]...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Okay. Lovely.
SooJin Anjou
I'll just take the Pauschal [?]—the package.
Charles Adrian
Mmm hmm.
SooJin Anjou
This is T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.
Charles Adrian
I don't know it at all. Lovely.
SooJin Anjou
Okay. First page:
Burnt Norton
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world?
Charles Adrian
That's so beautiful. I do recognise the beginning of that. I don't know it but I think I have heard the first few lines. It's gorgeous.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah, I actually have this pasted...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's very melancholy.
SooJin Anjou
... all over my wall [laughs]...
Charles Adrian
Really? Yeah.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] ... at home in my practice room. If you print it out on—the whole thing... the whole book—on A4 paper it's, like, twenty pages. So I have it from wall to wall.
Charles Adrian
Oh, that's a nice idea.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah. Next to my piano.
Charles Adrian
Oh, wow.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah. Sometimes I take a break and just turn around on the piano bench and I look at this and then... for a minute and...
Charles Adrian
Does it comfort you or...? Because it... when you read it to me I felt this, kind of... I... What jumped out at me is the paths we didn't take and the doors we didn't open and that makes me feel a little bit anxious.
SooJin Anjou
Well, that's really just the first page.
SooJin and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
SooJin Anjou
I mean, there's so many... He uses so many different voices. Like, at parts it sounds a bit like very, very wise aphorisms—like something out of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran or something—but then other parts are inspired by Eastern philosophy like the Bhagavad Gita or... There are also a lot of biblical references—none of which are pedantic. They just all come together to form this fabulous tapestry and for me... You know, Mahler said a symphony must contain the world and for me this contains the world.
Charles Adrian
Oh wow.
SooJin Anjou
Like, these fifty-nine pages. And I feel like I can open any page and there will be something there for me for that moment.
Charles Adrian
Right.
SooJin Anjou
And for me a lot of it is about the struggle of the artist to reach the unattainable and to experience something transcendental And those are the most moving parts for me, actually, in the book because I really feel like I have experienced what he's writing about—or at least the struggle to get to that experience. It's still very... so very close to me. There's a section at the very end—the last part of... the last section of... the fifth section of the fourth quartet—which for me kind of epitomises the goal of every artist—or at least my goal as a musician—and it's just so compact and so eloquent that I have to read you this:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Charles Adrian
Oh lovely.
SooJin Anjou
This is what I strive for too: the complete consort dancing together—all of these contradictions...
Charles Adrian
Yeah
SooJin Anjou
... that need each other in order to make a piece of art alive.
Charles Adrian
Right.
SooJin Anjou
And at the very end he writes:
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
Charles Adrian
Wow. It's a lot... It's a [laughing] lot that he asks. It's... Yeah. Wow.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah, but he's also very, very compassionate because, for example, here he writes—at the end of the third part:
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
And then he goes on... [indistinct]:
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
Charles Adrian
Wow. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot to...
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Pleasure. Oh yeah, I mean, actually...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] We could have done the whole podcast on that [indistinct].
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] [laughing] Yeah, I'm sorry,
SooJin and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
SooJin Anjou
I'm so in love with this that I just can't stop [laughing] talking about it.
SooJin and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
SooJin Anjou
[makes buzzer sound]
SooJin and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
SooJin Anjou
The buzzer has gone off.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, definitely, I'm afraid. So I'm going to give you the book that I've brought for you.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Oh! Thank you!
Charles Adrian
Do you know it?
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] I've always wanted to read it. My best friend in America...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's really beautiful.
SooJin Anjou
... she raved about it and I still haven't read it so that's perfect.
Charles Adrian
That's perfect. I can't believe it.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] [indistinct] Thank you.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I was given it by friend—a guy called Filippo who used to be in the Navigators...
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Adreatta?
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
SooJin Anjou
I know him.
Charles Adrian
Oh, you know...? Of course! You did the show with him!
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Yeah, I met him in Italy. Yeah, yeah, in Bolzano.
Charles Adrian
Where he stood for...
SooJin Anjou
Exactly.
Charles Adrian
... half an hour or an hour or whatever it was.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] He has strong leg muscles. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Of course. I'd forgotten the connection.
SooJin Anjou
[laughing] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Oh, well that's even better. Even better.
SooJin Anjou
So maybe we should... you should tell the listeners what book it is.
Charles Adrian
So it's The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. And he just sent it to me out of the blue because he thought it was a beautiful book and I... yeah, thought it was gorgeous. And it's not unconnected to the T. S. Eliot that you were reading, I think. It... Because it's also... It has to do with—to some extent—what effects our actions have and, you know, what surprising effects that they can have. It has to do with the past and the future and the present all being bound up together somehow. I mean, I also love it for the characters. I think they're just gorgeous and I think you will fall in love with them. So I'm just going to read you the first page.
SooJin Anjou
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
THE LAST WORDS ON EARTH
When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT. I'm surprised I haven't been buried alive. The place isn't big. I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, kitchen table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet to the front door, impossible, I have to go by way of the kitchen table. I like to imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to go round the toilet and the kitchen table in order to arrive at the door. If it happens to be Bruno, I let him in without a word and then jog back to bed, the roar of the invisible crowd ringing in my ears.
I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, I'd bet on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a big production of finding my wallet. He stands in the door holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I'll finish off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.
I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice, even though I'm not thirsty. If the store is crowded I'll even go so far as dropping my change all over the floor, the nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. I'll get down on my knees. It's a big effort for me to get down on my knees, and an even bigger effort to get up. And yet. Maybe I look like a fool. I'll go into the Athlete's Foot and say, What do...
That's the end of the page.
SooJin Anjou
You really stuck to your rule.
Charles Adrian
I'm quite... I'm quite strict about my rules. [laughs]
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] You [laughs] did not even finish the sentence.
Charles Adrian
You can find out what the end of the sentence is.
SooJin Anjou
Thank you so much.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, I think... So I think you will enjoy it.
SooJin Anjou
You read beautifully.
Charles Adrian
Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you.
SooJin Anjou
Mmm.
Charles Adrian
And now, what's the book that you've brought for me?
SooJin Anjou
So he's a colleague of T. S. Eliot's.
Charles Adrian
Oh! Okay.
SooJin Anjou
Ever heard of Groucho Marx?
Charles Adrian
[laughing] I have.
SooJin Anjou
That was a rhetorical question.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
SooJin Anjou
So this book is called The Groucho Letters, Letters From and To [sic] Groucho Marx.
Charles Adrian
Oh, nice!
SooJin Anjou
And the reason I found out about the existence of this book is that a friend of mine found out that I love T. S. Eliot and he told me, ‘Do you know about this book, a collection of letters from and to Groucho Marx?’ and, ‘There are letters between T. S. Eliot [laughing] and Groucho Marx’.
Charles Adrian
Seriously?
SooJin Anjou
And I was like, ‘I'm going to the bookstore right now!’ [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I had no idea they corresponded.
SooJin Anjou
It was amazing. I mean, Groucho is quite... quite the comic, of course, but also a really eloquent writer. And I hadn't really seen anything... I mean, I—of course—knew who the Marx writers were but I hadn't really seen anything by [laughing] them until I read this book. So T. S. Eliot was my ticket to Groucho Marx.
Charles Adrian
Oh! Okay.
SooJin Anjou
And, I mean, I'm still not a crazy fan of the Marx Brothers but I... the letters are hilarious. I think they're actually funnier than the skits and the movies.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Uh huh. Right.
SooJin Anjou
So the... I'll just read the first first letter, yeah?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah.
SooJin Anjou
RUNNING BATTLE WITH WARNER BROTHERS
So the background is:
When the Marx Brothers were about to make a movie called “A Night in Casablanca,” there were threats of legal action from the Warner Brothers, who, five years before, had made a picture called, simply, “Casablanca” (with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as stars). Whereupon Groucho, speaking for his brothers and himself, immediately dispatched the following letters:
Dear Warner Brothers:
Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.
It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank...
California, where I guess the studios are...
had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock [...] named it Casablanca.
I just don't understand your attitude. Even if you plan on re-releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don't know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.
You claim you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without your permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as The Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor's eye, and even before us there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brothers [sic], Can You Spare a Dime?”
Charles Adrian
[laughing] That's great.
SooJin Anjou
It gets better. I mean, this book is just full of...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
SooJin Anjou
… [laughing] full of gems like this. And one thing I've adopted... taken away from this book into my day-to-day life is he often signs off when he's writing to friends: ‘Hug yourself and your family for me’. And I write that a lot now. Like, ‘Hug yourself for me since, you know, I can't hug you’.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That's lovely.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Oh, I like that.
SooJin Anjou
Yeah. It's... It's a great read.
Charles Adrian
Aw, thank you SooJin.
SooJin Anjou
And he is so literary, actually. I...
Charles Adrian
Right. No, I can believe that. Yes.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] I mean, you know, of the Marx Brothers he is obviously the most wordy—verbose—one. The others are more, kind of, physical actors. But he's always doing the smartass character, right?
Charles Adrian
Right.
SooJin Anjou
And so he obviously has an affinity for words and it comes across beautifully in this book. It's very entertaining. Also very educational. I learned a lot about that generation and that time just by learning... reading his letters.
Charles Adrian
Oh, thank you so much. I'm going to enjoy that.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] I hope you like it.
Charles Adrian
We have to... We have to finish because I'm going to play a long piece of music now. So this is the first—I think—piece of classical music that anyone has chosen—or that I have played that anyone has chosen. That may not be true but to my memory... I have played... I played a bit of Rachmaninoff once but really only a snippet. But this is really... It's really great. I mean, this is the only piece of Mahler that I know and like.
SooJin Anjou
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
So I'm quite... [laughing] I'm quite happy to play it.
SooJin Anjou
I will expose you to others that you will like. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah, no, I know that there's a lot more that I just... It's just...
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] You would like them.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... I remember going to a concert when I was at university and hearing this and just falling in love with it immediately.
SooJin Anjou
Ah, yeah?
Charles Adrian
And I just haven't... I haven't explored anything else by him. That's all.
SooJin Anjou
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
So this is the fourth movement of the... of Mahler five. So is this the Adagio? Is that right?
SooJin Anjou
Adagietto.
Charles Adrian
Adagietto.
SooJin Anjou
The little adagio.
Charles Adrian
And so this is the Leonard Bernstein, Wiener Philharmonic recording. Thank you so much, SooJin, for doing this.
SooJin Anjou
[speaking over] Thank you, Adrian. It was a pleasure.
Music
[Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No 5 played by the Wiener Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]