:00:10. > :00:16.weekend! Tonight on the Book Review show.
:00:16. > :00:22.Philip Roth, Michael Holroyd and The Gruffalo.
:00:22. > :00:28.Tonight the long-awaited new novel from Michael Holroyd, spanning 100
:00:28. > :00:33.years. It is a world which is about to change. But hasn't done so yet.
:00:33. > :00:38.Will the Man Booker winner rise to expectations. From beyond the grave,
:00:38. > :00:43.the final Gormenghast novel, fantasy, or horror.
:00:43. > :00:46.The new Children's Laureate goes back to school. But, has The
:00:46. > :00:53.Gruffalo overshadowed Julia Donaldson's other books.
:00:53. > :00:58.Gruffalo is sort of like a nice bouncey, cuddley trampoline for the
:00:58. > :01:02.other books. At home with the legendary American novelist, Philip
:01:02. > :01:07.Roth. Wouldn't people be surprised to find that Philip Roth panics?
:01:07. > :01:11.don't think so. Joining me in Glasgow tonight to
:01:11. > :01:21.tackle everything from Gormenghast to The Gruffalo, are the literary
:01:21. > :01:23.
:01:23. > :01:29.critic, Professor John Carey, crime writer Dreiade Mitchell, and Kate
:01:29. > :01:39.Mosse, and Alan Preston. It is the long-awaited novel from Michael
:01:39. > :01:43.Holroyd, the winner of the Man Booker prize has The Stranger's
:01:43. > :01:50.Chlid, which spans 100 years in history. I met up with him to
:01:50. > :01:55.discuss his epic novel. My first idea was to have a novel in the
:01:55. > :01:58.Great War, with people who you would see before it and then some
:01:58. > :02:02.years after and leave it to the reader to work it out what happened
:02:02. > :02:06.inbetween. When it became clear one would be a poet killed in the Great
:02:06. > :02:11.War, then the whole question of his literary legacy and his life, and
:02:11. > :02:15.the different sort of claims that people felt they had on him clearly
:02:16. > :02:22.demanded a much longer treatment. The way you have structured the
:02:22. > :02:26.book is to have it in sections, with gaps of years inbetween, which
:02:26. > :02:31.presents a kind of challenge to the reader. You have to work out which
:02:31. > :02:36.characters are reappearing and so on, why did you decide to write it
:02:36. > :02:40.in that way? It was clear I was writing what might be described as
:02:40. > :02:45.a multigenerational family saga, I wanted to leave the conventional
:02:45. > :02:49.family saga bits out, and concentrate on the significant, but
:02:49. > :02:52.I hope not oversymbolic episode, the first one on the eve of the
:02:52. > :02:59.First World War. The second one is on the eve of the General Strike.
:02:59. > :03:02.The third one is on the eve of the Sexual Offences Bill, which was to
:03:02. > :03:06.decriminalise homosexuality, it is about people living in those
:03:06. > :03:11.particular worlds on the brink of change of some kind. You also
:03:11. > :03:15.explore changing sexual Morays, across the century, affecting not
:03:15. > :03:18.just the lives of the gay men you are talking about, but also the
:03:18. > :03:24.women whose lives they touch, which I thought was very interesting?
:03:24. > :03:28.much is unsaid and unsayable in the early parts of the book. That no-
:03:28. > :03:34.one quite knows what other people are after. I tried to create a sort
:03:34. > :03:41.of comedy of sexual confusions and misapprehensions. In both the first
:03:41. > :03:47.two parts of the book. I think in the 1926 section, it has that more
:03:47. > :03:51.relaxed, 1920s mood, of new sexual freedoms and also the kind of
:03:51. > :03:58.Bloomsbury ethos of being very frank about sexual things. At least
:03:58. > :04:02.amongst the younger generation. Daphne, is rather sort of caught up
:04:02. > :04:07.in these rapidly changing conventions. I don't think she
:04:07. > :04:11.quite knows where she is, or where she's going, in a way. She's
:04:11. > :04:18.someone who lost her own father when she was very young and she
:04:18. > :04:25.seems drawn to glamorous, but unreliable men.
:04:25. > :04:30."You don't mind if I kiss you, Cecil said dreamly. I don't call
:04:30. > :04:37.that kissing she said, what would you call kissing he said, his tone
:04:37. > :04:44.dopey, tugging her back into his grasp, with a mere flourish of his
:04:44. > :04:49.sudden, inescapably grip. More like this, and he darted his lips all
:04:49. > :04:54.over her face, allowing her to dodge her head a little, holding
:04:54. > :04:59.her so tightly about the waist that she was slightly hurt by the cigar
:04:59. > :05:09.case in his pocket thrust against her stomach. She found she was
:05:09. > :05:10.
:05:10. > :05:16.giggling in shallow breaths, then we were in sobs and a child like
:05:16. > :05:23.surrender. "$$NEWLINE The history is very much in the poetry of the
:05:23. > :05:30.book, did you find it difficult to write that? The poetry of Cecil
:05:30. > :05:36.Valance in the book, I'm quite sort of soaked in the poetry of that
:05:36. > :05:43.period from my adolesence, I read a lot of Victorian and early
:05:43. > :05:48.20tsenttree poetry. I used to write whey - 20th century poetry, I used
:05:48. > :05:52.to write good poetry but no longer. There is this sense of how literary
:05:52. > :05:55.reputations change according to the era in which we live, do you think
:05:55. > :06:02.that tells us something about ourselves, the way we regard
:06:02. > :06:06.writers of the past? Yes, all the writers were, and we are encouraged
:06:06. > :06:11.to have an interest in the book, and at the end of the book, 95
:06:11. > :06:14.years later, if they are mentioned at all, they are described as
:06:14. > :06:18.totally forgotten nowadays, and very second rate. I have always
:06:18. > :06:22.been struck by the comedy and poignancy of literary reputations,
:06:22. > :06:25.that whole sort of secondhand bookshop world, bookshop stuffed
:06:25. > :06:29.with work that is were once immensely highly regarded and very
:06:29. > :06:32.popular, now no-one reads them or has heard of them. Do you worry
:06:32. > :06:37.about that happening to yourself? Not too much. Not all of conceit,
:06:37. > :06:44.but because there is nothing I can do about it.
:06:44. > :06:47.Of course, a form mid-able reputation at the moment. This book
:06:47. > :06:52.is more ambitious in scale Alex what did you think of the way it
:06:53. > :06:57.spans 100 years? I thought it was a masterpiece, I think this is a
:06:57. > :07:02.wonderful novel. Obviously you have the wonderful exquisite prose, that
:07:02. > :07:07.you associate with Michael Holroyd, but you have this ambition, the 100
:07:07. > :07:12.years where the hero is not this character, but a slightly dreadful
:07:12. > :07:17.people called Aiken, he had the character's point of - Two Acres.
:07:17. > :07:20.He had the character's point of view circle around it, and it
:07:20. > :07:23.affects the people and the life of the people. It is about literary
:07:24. > :07:27.reputation and the characters. about the structure, he said he
:07:27. > :07:32.wanted to bust open the whole traditions of a family saga by
:07:32. > :07:36.having the gaps between time? loved the idea it was a family saga
:07:36. > :07:39.without the family or saga. It is about the ideas without it. I
:07:39. > :07:45.started reading it with a cup of coffee and finished it at the end
:07:45. > :07:48.of the day, I won't say how much wine I had by the end of it. I
:07:48. > :07:52.agree with Alex, it is fantastic. The structure demands so much of
:07:52. > :07:56.you as the reader. He doesn't give any of the sign posting that would
:07:56. > :08:01.help by saying this is 1912, and this is 1920, he doesn't do any of
:08:01. > :08:04.that. You have to learn, as you would if you wandered into a room
:08:04. > :08:09.and listened to those people talking and you got their little
:08:09. > :08:12.stories out. I think it is very successful, but it is demand to go
:08:12. > :08:18.read. Did you find it challenging as a reader? I found it interesting,
:08:18. > :08:22.in a sense, I agree with Alex, it is equisitely written, the flip
:08:22. > :08:26.side of that, is sometimes there are too many words, in a sense that
:08:26. > :08:31.I think we lose the thread of the story. I felt, actually n the
:08:31. > :08:37.middle of the look, it is sad for - in the middle of the book, it is
:08:37. > :08:42.sad for me, there were too many characters and people, and I asked
:08:42. > :08:45.what I was interested in the book, I was interested in Cecil and
:08:45. > :08:51.George, and do they get it on. I wanted to care about George and
:08:51. > :08:54.find out about him. George is Cecil's lover? Yeah, but there was
:08:54. > :08:58.so many character that is kept coming on. I kept thinking, step
:08:58. > :09:01.out of the way, let's get back to George. For me the pacing wasn't
:09:01. > :09:05.quite there in the book. I see what you mean. If you are looking to
:09:05. > :09:12.character, I loved this book, but if you are looking for character it
:09:12. > :09:16.is not exactly what you find. What Alex said it is equisitely written.
:09:17. > :09:21.How interesting to Sayers about Valance, his own poetry in the book
:09:21. > :09:28.is wonderful. Particularly about things, objects. When Cecil gives
:09:28. > :09:33.Daphne a cigar, to have a puff at, she feels it odd, she says it's dry
:09:33. > :09:37.to her fingers, but wet and decomposing on the lips, God, I
:09:37. > :09:42.mean, it is the most sexual cigar, you don't need to worry about
:09:42. > :09:47.sexual intercourse with a cigar like that! But if you say, why does
:09:47. > :09:52.Daphne marry Dudley, for heaven's sake, ghastly men, well that's a
:09:52. > :09:56.bit of a family saga, could he write it, he hasn't in this book.
:09:56. > :10:05.I'm worried about people watching not knowing the characters the
:10:05. > :10:08.Cecil is the poet. What he does so well, a little like Wolf into the
:10:08. > :10:12.Lighthouse, is have the gaps inbetween where the real action
:10:12. > :10:18.takes players you have the war and the aftereffect, you have what was
:10:19. > :10:22.going on before. But I just thought there was this equisite linkage of
:10:22. > :10:25.those sections. I thought that is what he did so well, I felt there
:10:25. > :10:29.was continuity, the continuity is in the people, but also in this
:10:29. > :10:33.sense of the aesthetic. I didn't find that all the time, I think
:10:33. > :10:38.sometimes as a reader I actually got lost, I would have liked a bit
:10:38. > :10:43.more sign posting, actually. think it is meant to be disorient
:10:43. > :10:47.Tateing, one of the things the book is about - disorientating, one of
:10:47. > :10:52.the things this book is about is the passage of time, appalling
:10:52. > :10:57.things have happened, a woman dying of breast cancer. I still felt,
:10:57. > :11:01.hang on where am I, I had to flick the page, I wanted more sign
:11:01. > :11:04.posting. I read it in one go, that made a huge amount of difference
:11:04. > :11:12.going through it. One of the things I thought really special about this
:11:12. > :11:21.book in Holroyd's work, is that I think Daphne, - Michael Holroyd's
:11:21. > :11:25.work is that I think dove knee, the people is written to her - Daphne,
:11:25. > :11:30.the poem is written to her or not. It is a real gamble to make people
:11:30. > :11:37.care about characters and get them off stage, but she is there the
:11:37. > :11:41.whole time. Novelists have been criticised for focusing on gay men
:11:41. > :11:44.but she as a woman is at the centre? It is about the wife and
:11:44. > :11:51.the bullying, those section where is you thought it bagged, they were
:11:51. > :11:56.for me the best. I was less interested in the final section
:11:56. > :12:06.when it went back to this is what a biographer does, these are the
:12:06. > :12:11.
:12:11. > :12:17.lives that were hold. With Daphne you don't know how she died. Also I
:12:17. > :12:21.think the scenes that are set in the bank and Hollinghurst's father
:12:21. > :12:26.was a bank manager, he talked to me about the fact that he used to play
:12:26. > :12:30.in the bank after the customers went home. I described that to
:12:30. > :12:38.somebody as a gauge on brain, that section, which wasn't taken in the
:12:38. > :12:44.right way, perhaps. It is this very lovely Boris Johnson woi story. You
:12:44. > :12:48.go from this - this story. You go interest this guy riding the
:12:48. > :12:54.reputation of the guy before. There is something that follows through.
:12:54. > :13:00.The Stranger's Chlid is out now, published by Picador.
:13:00. > :13:04.Steerpike, and Nanny Slag, the Gothic characters of Gormenghast
:13:04. > :13:08.have had cult status since the 1940s, now there is a fourth volume
:13:09. > :13:14.from beyond the grave, based on a fragment written by Mervyn Peake,
:13:14. > :13:19.but finished by his widow. In addition his daughter, Claire, has
:13:19. > :13:24.written an account of their rather Bohemian life. And a limited
:13:24. > :13:30.edition with Peake's original illustrations has been published.
:13:30. > :13:37.Why has his work endured, we asked Dr Prunesquallor himself, John
:13:37. > :13:42.Sessions. "when I'm all along by myself, all it lost because I
:13:42. > :13:46.realise being lonely drives the splendor of the vision from my
:13:46. > :13:51.mind." The world of Mervyn Peake's
:13:51. > :13:57.Gormenghast is an English world, monstrously mutated, it has to be
:13:57. > :14:04.conceded, but English nonetheless. For me it has always been a Baroque,
:14:04. > :14:10.18th century world. Lord Groan and his gigantic wife, are all wigs and
:14:10. > :14:16.Queen Anne care. Peake's sentences shudder with literary echos, hamlet,
:14:16. > :14:23.Richard III, Milton, and painters too, Pyronase, possibly Esher. This
:14:23. > :14:31.is the world I saw when I read Peake's world.
:14:31. > :14:38.There was a strange puppet series broadcast in the early 1960s called
:14:38. > :14:45.Rubovia, a liberally-chined king called Rufus, took the path of
:14:45. > :14:50.least resistance when his nagging Queen drew near with his pet Pongo.
:14:50. > :14:59.They had a ratty faced Lord Chamberlain, and a peculiar
:14:59. > :15:04.astronomer and inventer called Mr Witherspoon. The world of Rubovia
:15:04. > :15:08.draws deeply in Gormenghasts and the inception, and the characters
:15:08. > :15:11.strike me now as displaying two aspects of the character I was
:15:11. > :15:16.lucky enough to play, Alfred Prunesquallor.
:15:16. > :15:21.I tried to find out why he was so called, with no success whatsoever.
:15:21. > :15:29.I see genitalia, it is of a sex ladyship. The man is a car crash of
:15:29. > :15:37.puzzles. He is sexless, then he isn't, he flirts with Fushia and
:15:37. > :15:42.then Steare, he is at one moment an idiot, then an idiot ZAF vant, then
:15:42. > :15:47.an idiot again. What is Dr Prunesquallor's secret wound, what
:15:47. > :15:54.lies beneath all his bumbling and scruplously observed sub servance,
:15:54. > :16:01.when I played the part I thought it would be due to loneliness, which
:16:01. > :16:08.isn't helped by living with Hislopor kal sister, then I felt
:16:08. > :16:13.the doctor - hysterical sister. I felt it laid darker still. The plot
:16:13. > :16:17.in conjunction with the ub better detail has led to several copies of
:16:17. > :16:24.Gormenghast flying across the world. There is little dispute over
:16:24. > :16:28.Peake's mastery as a draftsman. Here his intricacy given bloodless
:16:29. > :16:37.intensity by his vision to Belsen, left this actor, at least a little
:16:37. > :16:43.daunted, when he tried to match the hypnotic and stigeon vision. Come
:16:43. > :16:53.my only, through the Gormenghast of Groan, lingering has become so
:16:53. > :16:56.
:16:56. > :16:59.lonely, as I linger all alone. have to say I was always more of a
:17:00. > :17:04.Tolken girl, or were you part of the Peake cult? Yes I was. I didn't
:17:04. > :17:14.understand it to start with. I kept being told that these were the
:17:14. > :17:15.
:17:15. > :17:21.books. This man was a genius, Little by little I learned to read
:17:21. > :17:25.them. I was looking for a linear story, I was looking for pictures
:17:25. > :17:31.that told me about what I was reading rather than a different
:17:31. > :17:36.universe. Once I realised they were nightmares, you simply had to enjoy
:17:36. > :17:39.your ladyship because there was birds in her hair and cats at her
:17:39. > :17:43.feet, rather than going where were the cats and why weren't they
:17:43. > :17:47.eating the bird. I think his work has endured because he was a genius.
:17:47. > :17:51.And the draftsmanship of the words, as well as the line drawings, the
:17:51. > :17:56.beauty of those sentences, you could pick anyone out, and almost
:17:56. > :18:01.put it down anywhere else and marvel at it. Can you immerse
:18:01. > :18:07.yourself in this kind of fantasy?Y I don't read a lot of fantasy, one
:18:07. > :18:12.of the things that really draws me in is the beauty of the sentences.
:18:12. > :18:14.This real sense of escapism, when I read them it was great, it felt
:18:14. > :18:19.like this completely mad world that was completely different. Why
:18:19. > :18:24.shouldn't the world be mad like that, but underneath all the themes
:18:24. > :18:28.you can tap into. All the themes around you, revenge, betrayal, a
:18:28. > :18:32.sense of being confined in a world. Do you think there is a deeper
:18:32. > :18:36.morality beyond the Gothic and strange writing? I read this as a
:18:36. > :18:40.child, it was wonderful to come back to it. The first thing to say
:18:40. > :18:48.is the vintage classics edition is absolutely beautiful. I do think
:18:48. > :18:51.the morality behind it is this strange kind of radical
:18:51. > :18:57.libertarianism, you get it in Titus Awakes, the most scary and
:18:57. > :19:06.interesting of the novels, the third of the trilogy. The problems
:19:06. > :19:12.is the human oid characters, they don't always have human motives.
:19:12. > :19:19.Now we have the fourth novel, based on a tiny fragment of Gormenghast,
:19:19. > :19:25.and finished by his widow. It is terrible, terrible, Peake's style
:19:25. > :19:32.it beautiful and it never gets need to it. There are amazing lines you
:19:32. > :19:37.come acorrection when Steerpike peers in through the window and
:19:37. > :19:44.Fushia sees him, his eyes, he says, not so much eyes as narrow tunnels,
:19:44. > :19:50.through which the night was pouring. God. Well Tolken never writes like
:19:50. > :19:55.that, and he has a simple stupid moral about how industry is bad and
:19:55. > :20:00.theshires are good. This book - the shires are good. This book is a
:20:00. > :20:05.nightmare. You give it what meaning you like. The only flaw is it is
:20:05. > :20:13.anti-social mobility. Steerpike is bad because he wants to get away
:20:13. > :20:20.from being a skull air strikes n, Steerpike is Satan. He looks down
:20:20. > :20:24.on the earth and shakes his clotted wings, clotted with blood. We learn
:20:24. > :20:28.from the daughter's memoirs of some of the influence that shaped the
:20:28. > :20:33.writing, particularly his visit to Belsen and the drawings he made
:20:33. > :20:38.there? Normally I don't like to know about the author's life, the
:20:38. > :20:43.text speaks for itself, I don't want to know if it was based in
:20:43. > :20:46.fact, or that he used to play in the bank, I prefer to read the book.
:20:46. > :20:49.With this particular memoir, I thought firstly, knowing he had
:20:50. > :20:53.been to Belsen and drawn, that was a very powerful piece of
:20:53. > :20:59.information. Also, I hadn't known, because I hadn't done this buy
:20:59. > :21:05.graph kal research, that he developed - biographical research,
:21:05. > :21:10.that he developed Parkinson's early on and severe dementia as part of
:21:10. > :21:14.that. And that art mirroring life, the sort of disintegration, it made
:21:14. > :21:21.for me, when I went back and read this beautiful book, I found tears
:21:21. > :21:25.rolling down the cheeks. That horrific picture of him towards the
:21:25. > :21:30.end. What interested me was his youth growing up in China. I
:21:30. > :21:34.thought there was a parallel there with Ballard there, these are
:21:34. > :21:39.people growing up in a totally alien and violent society, and had
:21:39. > :21:47.a second alienation when they were integrated into Britain. He never
:21:47. > :21:50.knew what anybody meant. They both are able to create the violent and
:21:50. > :21:55.imaginative worlds. Titus Awakes is released on Thursday, and Claire
:21:55. > :22:02.Peake's Under A Canvas Sky is also available now.
:22:02. > :22:07.Silly old fox, doesn't he know, there is no such thing as a Grufflo.
:22:07. > :22:11.There is barely a parent that doesn't know the book by heart. Now
:22:11. > :22:16.the author has been made the Children's Laureate. I met up with
:22:16. > :22:20.Julia Donaldson, the author of over 100 book, in a special location. We
:22:20. > :22:26.are back in your old primary school, does it bring back memories?
:22:26. > :22:30.definitely does. It brings back mostly happy memories. I did have
:22:30. > :22:34.one teacher here who really humiliated me, because I was very
:22:34. > :22:37.bad at knitting, she made everyone hold up their knitting, I thought
:22:37. > :22:43.she would praise me, and she slateed my knitting and said it was
:22:43. > :22:50.the worst kniting in the whole class. What kind of reading did you
:22:50. > :22:55.enjoy? I have William's Happy Days. I loved Just William. There are 30
:22:56. > :23:01.or so book about him. I modelled myself on William, because he was
:23:01. > :23:06.very heavily sarcastic and had a wonderful way of saying, "huh, I
:23:06. > :23:11.like that", I used to say that to my parents. EnI said I was coming
:23:11. > :23:16.to interview - when I said I was coming to interview Julia Donaldson,
:23:16. > :23:21.people said, The Gruffalo, selling over four million copies, are you
:23:21. > :23:25.worried it dwarfs all your other work? I don't know if it dwarfs and
:23:25. > :23:29.that is the right word. That is a cuddley trampoline for the other
:23:29. > :23:34.book, a springboard for the other books. Just coming here today, I
:23:35. > :23:42.popped into a couple of classrooms, actually none of them mentioned The
:23:42. > :23:49.Gruffalo, one said Tiddleer, and the other was What The Ladybird
:23:49. > :23:52.Heard, I dedicated that to this school. You have the new role,
:23:52. > :23:57.children's laureate, following the steps of others, what will you
:23:57. > :24:00.bring to the role? One thing I'm planning to do is a tour of
:24:00. > :24:06.libraries were not only do I get children to act out my stories, but
:24:06. > :24:10.I ask them to come ready with something they have worked up, like
:24:10. > :24:17.a dramatisation of a picture book a class poem or something. There was
:24:17. > :24:21.a little bit of criticism of you being chosen as Children's Laureate,
:24:21. > :24:26.one children's author blogged that he had nothing against Julia, your
:24:26. > :24:31.books are great, but he wishes they would pick someone more interesting,
:24:31. > :24:37.every time I see one of the white doddery laureates on table, it
:24:37. > :24:43.seems to be the stery type of kids fiction. It is superficial to
:24:43. > :24:47.dismiss someone in terms of their colour or class, it is a very
:24:47. > :24:52.superficial perception. Honestly, that's water off a duck's back for
:24:52. > :24:56.me. Loot of your work with children takes place in libraries, but you
:24:56. > :25:00.are concerned about the closure of some of them? Very much so,
:25:00. > :25:05.especially for children. Because libraries are really the places
:25:05. > :25:09.where lots and lots of children discover their taste in reading.
:25:09. > :25:14.They are well used by children. Even very little pre-school
:25:14. > :25:21.children, they can go to the library with their parents, or
:25:21. > :25:25.their carers, delve in the picture books, grab books off the shelves,
:25:25. > :25:28.the parents mighting surprised what their child's taste is. Without -
:25:28. > :25:33.might be surprised what their child's taste is. Without libraries
:25:33. > :25:39.we will lose a lot of them. Never mind the cult of Mervyn Peake, in
:25:40. > :25:44.my office it is a cult of Julia Donaldson, when I mentioned I was
:25:44. > :25:48.interviewing her many started chanting The Gruffalo. I was
:25:48. > :25:52.listening to the interview and I was smiling it brought back my
:25:52. > :25:56.years as a primary school teacher and the power of picture books to
:25:56. > :26:01.children, and reading to children, and her work is extraordinary. To
:26:01. > :26:06.cast her as somebody in a cosy world is crazy, read her books. The
:26:06. > :26:11.Gruffalo is fabulous, its use of rhyme, rhythm, song, very cheeky, a
:26:11. > :26:13.lot of drama, a lot of fun. What you have to remember is when you
:26:13. > :26:20.are teaching children, you are teaching them how to learn to read,
:26:20. > :26:24.but also enjoy reading, and her books do that. You are not exactly
:26:24. > :26:28.the target audience for The Gruffalo? One the less it is very
:26:28. > :26:38.interesting. It is about the power of the imagination, this mouse
:26:38. > :26:41.
:26:41. > :26:49.thinks up a The Gruffalo's Child, and there's a The Gruffalo's Child,
:26:49. > :26:59.- there is a Gruffalo. That book The Teenage Cracks t about the boy
:26:59. > :27:03.
:27:03. > :27:13.being shown how to read Macbeth. When he has to get the literature
:27:13. > :27:17.out. Also her answer was perfect.
:27:17. > :27:25.This is not what literature is about. It is an often overused
:27:25. > :27:28.phrase. She's a brilliant choice as Poet Laureate because of what she
:27:28. > :27:33.said about libraries, we are having the principles of free and fair
:27:33. > :27:36.access to education of books taken away under our noses. It is an
:27:37. > :27:41.enormous issue, we will not be able to get the library service back.
:27:41. > :27:44.The fact that the first thing she said as Children's Laureate is
:27:44. > :27:53.libraries matter t could make all the difference to saving some of
:27:53. > :27:57.the libraries. What do you make of her? This is five hours after my
:27:57. > :28:03.usual date with Julia Donaldson. There is something relentless about
:28:03. > :28:11.her. She's wonderful news. But aside from her masterpieces which
:28:11. > :28:20.are the Gruffalo and the Snail snail, there is a lot of stuff that
:28:20. > :28:25.is painful. The rieling Rhyming Rabbit I found it painful. My
:28:25. > :28:33.three-year-old skoon didn't like it, he scratched the glitter off.
:28:33. > :28:37.old for him. It was fabulous. Do you see it as a golden age of
:28:37. > :28:42.children's books, are there are temptations, computer games?
:28:42. > :28:46.think it is, one of the things the Children's Laureate does, is not
:28:46. > :28:50.just celebrating children's authors is illustrators as well, people
:28:50. > :28:54.like Anthony Brown, showing how the power of pictures, we were looking
:28:54. > :28:59.at Gormenghast, pictures, how powerful they are in story telling.
:28:59. > :29:05.The golden age now is actually for young adult fiction, I agree with
:29:05. > :29:14.John, her teenage book, Running The Crack, I thought it was wonderful.
:29:14. > :29:21.You have Philip Pullman, you have abilityy McGowan, they transcend
:29:21. > :29:26.the genre of young adults, they are enjoyable as novels. It is an
:29:26. > :29:33.incredible time. I will read the Rhyming Rabbit to you after.
:29:33. > :29:38.can tuck him up after. There is an offer. From literature for children,
:29:38. > :29:42.back to books written very much for adults. Earlier this week in
:29:43. > :29:46.glaitering ceremony in London, Philip Roth - a glittering ceremony
:29:46. > :29:51.in London, Philip Roth was given the Man Booker prize. We met up
:29:51. > :29:55.with him in his home in rural Connecticut to discuss, death,
:29:55. > :30:02.writing and loneliness. First of all, what is you're action to
:30:02. > :30:07.winning the international Man Booker? Surprise. I didn't even
:30:07. > :30:11.know I was nominated, my agent called and told me I won. You win
:30:11. > :30:19.something, you're happy. You were described as irrepressible, what do
:30:19. > :30:24.you think was meant by that? don't know that people try to
:30:24. > :30:29.repress me. When my energy was rising and others were ebbing, I
:30:29. > :30:33.think I was found energetic. I haven't had to be irrepressible, I
:30:33. > :30:39.haven't had that many obstacles to overcome, some like many writers
:30:39. > :30:44.but not that many. You say writing has to be larger, darker and deeper
:30:44. > :30:51.than life, how do you summon your strength for that? Life is pretty
:30:51. > :30:58.dark and pretty deep. It is all determined from the kind of writer
:30:58. > :31:06.you are at the beginning. The ernestness you approach with at the
:31:06. > :31:16.beginning, the seriousness that develops very quickly. You must be
:31:16. > :31:23.
:31:23. > :31:29.interested in what you are writing. When I'm working I get frustrated,
:31:29. > :31:35.and can't proceed. You can panic. What I try to remind myself, when
:31:35. > :31:39.that happens, is that my goal isn't to write a book. The book is
:31:39. > :31:45.unimportant, my goal is to write the sentence. In a sentence my goal
:31:45. > :31:50.is to attach one word to another. I tell myself, like a child, that's
:31:50. > :31:54.all you have to do. Is attach one word to another. And within the
:31:54. > :31:59.word, all you have to do is attach one letter to another. So I reduce
:31:59. > :32:03.it to its childish terms. I sometimes leaf through it and
:32:03. > :32:07.remember, you just have to proceed one letter at a time. Wouldn't
:32:07. > :32:15.people be surprised to think that Philip Roth panics? I don't think
:32:15. > :32:22.so! Not now, surely? Well, you know, the panic is overstating it. I
:32:22. > :32:27.don't run around screaming, but I become frustrated very often in
:32:27. > :32:35.writing. When you can't proceed, when you don't know what to write
:32:35. > :32:41.next. So I have this strategy to comfort me. One of the criticisms
:32:41. > :32:44.that has been raised by Jews and non-Jews is, I remember one
:32:44. > :32:52.headline, why does Philip Roth hate the Jews. Do you think there is an
:32:52. > :32:58.element in American is society that doesn't think it is actually right
:32:58. > :33:04.to either satirise or build on trophs among the Jew, even now?
:33:04. > :33:11.don't think that Jewish readers have a hard time with me any longer.
:33:11. > :33:16.The generation that did have either died, or have shut up. Or think it
:33:16. > :33:25.is a hopeless cause. They are not going to stop. When I began I ran
:33:25. > :33:29.into a lot of trouble. In 1958, I think it was, before going to
:33:29. > :33:35.Columbus, I published my first short story in the New Yorker, it
:33:35. > :33:43.was called Defender of the Faith. This story caused a sensation among
:33:43. > :33:50.New Yorker readers, it also prompt the ceremony Mondays from rabbis
:33:50. > :33:55.calling me an anti-Semite, and a self-hating Jew. It was strong, I
:33:55. > :34:01.was 25. I just was out of the gate, you know. And this came flying at
:34:01. > :34:06.me. But it didn't hold you back? it seemed to have encouraged the
:34:06. > :34:10.opposite. What did your mother and father make of that at the time?
:34:10. > :34:20.They never understood the charges against me, but they were troubled
:34:20. > :34:25.by them. After Portnoy's Complaint, there was renewed attack, for good
:34:26. > :34:30.reason, I suppose. I was with my mother one day and in her apartment,
:34:30. > :34:40.she suddenly turned to me and she was very sweet, and conventional,
:34:40. > :34:43.
:34:43. > :34:50.and she said, "Philip, are you anti-semmitic", I said what do you
:34:50. > :34:54.think, and she wanted to know why they said it. They were
:34:54. > :34:58.tremendously proud of me, even if I was anti-Semite, they would have
:34:58. > :35:06.been proud of me, I would have been the best. It is said you are
:35:06. > :35:13.unfliching about the Jews, you are very - unflinching about the Jews,
:35:13. > :35:19.you are very hard on yourself? I shouldn't be. No. I exploit in my
:35:19. > :35:24.background and history what is exploitable and go on. I try to,
:35:24. > :35:29.cast a cold eye on everything. are very much the senior figure in
:35:29. > :35:37.a generation of writers, many of whom are very close to you. Do you
:35:37. > :35:46.feel their absence? Yes. The writers I suppose I was closest to,
:35:46. > :35:54.as a friend, were Sol Bello18 years older than I was, dead now eight
:35:54. > :36:00.years I guess. Bill Styra, he was five years older than I am who went
:36:00. > :36:06.through a hell of an ending in his life. What was it you said last
:36:06. > :36:13.night "they were all businessed and now they are all dead". Bill could
:36:13. > :36:19.drink,'s the generation of writer- drinkers, these were the fellas in
:36:19. > :36:23.World War II, a few of them were heavy drinkers, and Bill was one.
:36:23. > :36:33.Was that the same for Hemingway? was the model, yes, about how to be
:36:33. > :36:37.a writer and not be a sissys, and how to be a writer and be a man. In
:36:37. > :36:45.their eyes. You were criticised for the sexual activities in Portnoy's
:36:45. > :36:48.Complaint, and recently criticised for sexual activity in The Humbling.
:36:48. > :36:52.Is there something about Americans that they don't like the idea that
:36:52. > :36:55.we are all living longer and sex will figure in people's lives for
:36:55. > :37:01.longer but they don't want to hear about it? It is an easy handle by
:37:01. > :37:05.which to pick up a book. But in Portnoy's Complaint, largely it was
:37:05. > :37:13.the issue. There weren't graphic descriptions of sexual activity,
:37:13. > :37:20.there was someone who was, not unlike Congressman Weiner, obsessed
:37:20. > :37:26.by sex. In The Humbling, there is nothing much to speak about, it is
:37:26. > :37:31.not a book about sex. I thought there was a bit of a rage about old
:37:31. > :37:38.age and infirmity in that? It is about a man in a decline. I think
:37:38. > :37:44.he's in his 60s. It's about man losing things, it is about losing
:37:44. > :37:48.things. What the effect on him is. The primary thing he lose, he's an
:37:48. > :37:57.actor, is his ability to act, he can't act any more. The first line
:37:57. > :38:03.of the book is, "he lost his magic ". Then he has an odd affair, but
:38:03. > :38:10.passionate, he loses this young woman. And he can't take all his
:38:10. > :38:13.losses, so he kills himself. I know rage, just taking a look at it.
:38:13. > :38:21.have written when you are a writer you are someone else. You say you
:38:21. > :38:27.are no longer a son, a brother and a husband, you can only be a writer.
:38:27. > :38:37.You remove yourself from everything around you? I think that one's
:38:37. > :38:38.
:38:38. > :38:43.ethical restraints, one's customary caution, has to drop away, so that
:38:43. > :38:49.you can freely tell the story. So if you are being a good son while
:38:49. > :38:57.you are writing, it is going to be a book by a good son. A book about
:38:57. > :39:03.a good son is interesting, but a book by is good son is slander. So
:39:03. > :39:07.I love that aspect of it, which is the freedom. Your former wife,
:39:07. > :39:11.Claire Bloom, since we have been separated he has published a book a
:39:11. > :39:20.year, you can't write at that rate if you have a life. He has a life
:39:20. > :39:24.he wants, but it is not a life. I come here and I expect to find you
:39:24. > :39:28.in splendid isolation, it doesn't seem like that? Well, there you go.
:39:28. > :39:32.Do you have any regrets about things you might have done or not
:39:32. > :39:36.done? You mean writing. Or family, you are clearly such family man,
:39:37. > :39:41.when you write about your own family it is with a huge amount of
:39:41. > :39:50.tenderness, do you regret not having a family of your own?
:39:50. > :39:58.don't seem to regret that. It is a fact in my biography, I have some
:39:58. > :40:06.regrets. It wouldn't have been a life without regrets. I used to
:40:06. > :40:09.have a friend, who is dead now, an American writer, her name is Josie
:40:10. > :40:13.Hurst, I remember her saying to me when I first met her, one of the
:40:13. > :40:18.reasons I liked her so much. I was complaining about a huge mistake I
:40:18. > :40:23.made in my life around that time. What was that? Oh, I married
:40:23. > :40:30.somebody. That is just a mistake, something that happens. Josie said
:40:30. > :40:36.to me, if it weren't for my mistakes I would still be back at
:40:36. > :40:40.Souix City Iowa. I thought, that is true. So your mistakes propel you
:40:41. > :40:45.forward. You are not alone among writers, but certainly fewer
:40:45. > :40:51.writers in their 70s seem to be at the height of their powers. It
:40:51. > :40:56.seems you have more in you now, and in the last few years, and your
:40:56. > :41:03.write something very strong? really don't notice any difference
:41:03. > :41:08.in the way I approach a new book, and nor have I noticed any slowing
:41:08. > :41:13.up or down. My last books have been short. The last four have been
:41:13. > :41:17.short. Whether a long novel is in the offing, I don't know. Does
:41:17. > :41:27.writing about modern America interest you? The state of America
:41:27. > :41:28.
:41:28. > :41:33.at the moment? No. I seem to be 20- 40 years behind. So I will have to
:41:33. > :41:41.live to be 110 to write about 9/11. Which of course you may well do?
:41:41. > :41:46.You think so. You come here then. Do you ever get lonely here?
:41:46. > :41:55.Sometimes. Is that something you just have to deal with. It is not
:41:55. > :42:01.that bad. Sometimes I get lonely, and then I think but I have no
:42:01. > :42:05.friction. And that beats the loneliness. Can you not deal with
:42:05. > :42:09.friction? Not any more, I don't want it any more. I don't want it,
:42:09. > :42:15.it is a great blessing. You are assuming if somebody else was here
:42:15. > :42:18.there would be friction? Yeah. It There certainly has been in the
:42:18. > :42:23.past. I can understand how people coming here, it is very much your
:42:23. > :42:32.place, it would be difficult for someone to parachute in? You know,
:42:32. > :42:39.no, not really. The solitude can be wonderful. And yeah, I don't mind
:42:39. > :42:45.being alone. Sometimes one gets lonely, but that happens any way.
:42:45. > :42:49.It isn't attached to the place particularly. But you have been
:42:49. > :42:54.here for so long you couldn't imagine being anywhere else. Will
:42:54. > :43:01.you be taken out of here in a box? That may well happen. You would
:43:01. > :43:07.stay here forever, though? Yes. Philip Roth, in 2011, embarking on
:43:07. > :43:17.a new book, and when will we see it? I don't know, I feel no
:43:17. > :43:22.compulsion to produce a book you know. I enjoy sometimes the work,
:43:22. > :43:27.but finishing it, all that finishing it means, is I have to
:43:27. > :43:34.start yet again. That's hell. you're trying to cheat yourself?
:43:34. > :43:39.That's right. Yeah. Your You're trying to make this one last a long
:43:39. > :43:41.time? That's right. What if you live another 20 years? I will be in
:43:41. > :43:46.trouble. Philip Roth thank you very much.
:43:46. > :43:54.So, John, let's begin with the prize, you were the judge, I think,
:43:54. > :43:59.or chair of the judges for the first Man Booker, He must have been
:43:59. > :44:04.a contender? We put out a long list of 18 names, he was in it. What is
:44:04. > :44:08.your view of his work? Wonderful. That was a wonderful interview, it
:44:08. > :44:13.showed his seriousness and his humour always go together. There is
:44:13. > :44:20.a playfulness there? Beautifully playful. That is there from the
:44:20. > :44:25.start. As early as Zuckerman Unbound, that unbounds, he flies to
:44:25. > :44:29.where his father is dying, he reads on the plane how they discovered
:44:29. > :44:34.the Cosmos, he his 50 years they will remake it. He goes to his
:44:35. > :44:41.father and tells him about astronomy to lift his spirits, his
:44:41. > :44:45.father says "bastard" and Nathan says maybe he said better or
:44:45. > :44:48.something else. He's tragic and terribly funny, he's always like
:44:48. > :44:53.that. For this prize he was a controversial choice, Carmen Callil
:44:53. > :44:59.says he goes on and on about the same suggest in almost every single
:44:59. > :45:02.book. She says it is as though he's sitting on your face and you can't
:45:02. > :45:06.breathe, a slightly strange choice of words? A brave man. I understand
:45:07. > :45:09.what she was saying, I enormously enjoyed that interview. I
:45:09. > :45:16.absolutely think that Philip Roth is one of the most important living
:45:16. > :45:22.writers. But I don't think he's the only one. And I do think that many
:45:22. > :45:27.of the obsessions of his characters and him as author, as reader, as
:45:27. > :45:31.character in the book, are of interest to men and not to me as a
:45:31. > :45:37.woman. So I have read not all of his books but many of them. I go
:45:37. > :45:41.back and I try. For this I read Portnoy's Complaint, I can see that
:45:41. > :45:47.it's really clever, and I think that he succeeds completely in what
:45:47. > :45:51.he sets out to do. But I don't enjoy the writing. I find the
:45:51. > :45:58.relentless descriptions of ejaculating into socks just a bit
:45:58. > :46:01.boring! There is a lot of that. You have to be fair. Not just socks, I
:46:01. > :46:05.remember liver! I think Callil's suffering a little bit because of
:46:05. > :46:10.the brilliance of her metaphor as well. I again have a certain degree
:46:10. > :46:14.of sympathy with her, I'm an enormous Roth fan, I think he
:46:14. > :46:19.absolutely should have won the prize. If you look at the recent
:46:19. > :46:25.stuff, Exit Ghost, the Humbling, awful, these are not good books,
:46:25. > :46:28.not good novels. And they are the same things, this very tired
:46:28. > :46:33.linkage between death of the libido and death of the body. Then he
:46:33. > :46:38.comes up with Nemisis, a masterpiece a beautiful novel, and
:46:38. > :46:44.kind of makes Carmen Callil eat her words. Dying Animal is very good on
:46:44. > :46:51.ageing, what he talked about there on ageing. I don't actually agree
:46:51. > :46:55.that the later novels are all so bad. But what I also like about him
:46:55. > :47:00.is how to take an enormous theme, think of a novel like Operation
:47:00. > :47:06.Shylock: A Confession, or a novel like the one on lindburg winning
:47:06. > :47:14.the election Plot Against America. A huge theme which he nevertheless
:47:14. > :47:18.treats in an intimate and interestingly human way. That is a
:47:18. > :47:23.collosal feat of the imagination to it that. It is about the narrowness
:47:23. > :47:29.of vision, he takes the small town life in Newark and makes it
:47:29. > :47:34.universal. I was thinking of the glove factory in America America,
:47:34. > :47:40.it is this beautiful en- American Pastoral, it is the beautiful
:47:40. > :47:43.engagement that makes it great. only read one book, The Plot
:47:43. > :47:46.Against America, it stayed with me for a long time. Because of the
:47:46. > :47:52.universal issues, but at the same time it is very, very personal,
:47:53. > :47:55.from what I can pick up, from what I have read, he wanted to write
:47:55. > :47:59.something about his parents in their prime. It is interesting in
:47:59. > :48:04.the interview that he talks about not writing about modern America,
:48:04. > :48:09.but some of the themes that he talk about in the Plot Against America,
:48:09. > :48:12.like the suspension of civil liberties, what happens when people
:48:12. > :48:16.are repressed, are so current. loved in the interview the
:48:16. > :48:21.description of the process of writer, I wondered if you, as a
:48:21. > :48:25.writer, would have imthee, the word one after another? I thought that
:48:25. > :48:29.was just superb, that was a masterclass, everything is redeemed
:48:29. > :48:33.by that interview. It was perfect. That is exactly how it does goes T
:48:33. > :48:38.doesn't matter what sort of books you write, that description of it,
:48:38. > :48:45.the other great person talking on this Stephen King, his book on
:48:45. > :48:49.writing is like that. That sense mafpb who understands who he is as
:48:49. > :48:55.a write - of a man who understands who he is as a writer was great.
:48:55. > :49:04.The thing about ining with the prize is he will not win the -
:49:04. > :49:07.winning the prize, is he will not win the Nobel but he can win this.
:49:07. > :49:14.Great tribute there. Can you find out more information on all
:49:14. > :49:21.us know your thoughts on Twitter, we digest them in the Green Room
:49:22. > :49:28.afterwards, especially Alex. Next week Kirsty will be here discussing