The Book Review Show

:00:18. > :00:24.On the Book Review Show tonight, A Clockwork Orange hits50. Why are we

:00:24. > :00:28.still talking about the book, the film and now the app.

:00:28. > :00:38.100 years of film censorship, sensational stories from inside the

:00:38. > :00:38.

:00:38. > :00:42.BBFC. A new novel from the creator of

:00:42. > :00:47.Reginald Perrin, The Fall And Rise of Gordon Coppinger. Yet another

:00:47. > :00:52.new book from David Foster Wallace, who died four years ago.

:00:52. > :01:02.And a collection in which Oliver Sachs tackles hallucinations, and

:01:02. > :01:05.reveals his own student drug trips. "I want to see indigo now!"

:01:05. > :01:09.Music there by Brubeck, who died on Wednesday.

:01:09. > :01:16.Joining me -- Dave Brubeck, who died on Wednesday. Joing me are

:01:16. > :01:20.Edward Docx, Matthew Sweet, and novelist AL Kennedy. As queer as A

:01:20. > :01:24.Clockwork Orange, that old London expression, meaning completely mad,

:01:24. > :01:28.caught the magpie imagination of Anthony Burgess, and became the

:01:28. > :01:33.title of his most famous novel, of course, that controversial film. To

:01:33. > :01:36.mark the 50th anniversary of the novel, a new edition has been

:01:36. > :01:42.published, alongside an app, which reveals much of Burgess's original

:01:42. > :01:48.thinking. A Clockwork Orange, is, the

:01:48. > :01:52.autobiograical confession of Alex, a juvenile delinquent, whose

:01:52. > :01:58.criminal excesses are dealt with aversion therapy. The book has been

:01:58. > :02:05.adapted for stage and screen, most famously by Stanley Kubrick, in

:02:05. > :02:12.1971. There was me, that is Alex, and my three druids, that is Pete,

:02:12. > :02:18.Georgie and Dim. We sat on the milk bar, trying to decide what to do

:02:18. > :02:21.with the evening. After accusations that the film had inspired several

:02:21. > :02:25.acts of copycat violence, Kubrick himself asked for it to be

:02:25. > :02:33.withdrawn. The fact that the film was unavailable in the UK until

:02:33. > :02:39.after the director's death in 1999, only added to its infamey.

:02:39. > :02:46.My brothers, would you believe your faithful friend and long-suffering

:02:46. > :02:51.narator, pushed out his nazek a mile-and-a-half to lick his puts.

:02:51. > :02:56.The language of the book, a mixture of Russian and Cockney, shows the

:02:56. > :03:01.breath of multilingual Burgess'sal lefpbts. He maintained, despite A

:03:01. > :03:06.Clockwork Orange being his best- known work, it was the one he liked

:03:06. > :03:08.least. Never the less he acknowledged its serious inaccident.

:03:09. > :03:13.I was present concerned with presenting a theme of my background,

:03:13. > :03:18.the theme of a man's free will, the existence of good and evil, and the

:03:18. > :03:26.necessity to choose between the two. If we are creatures of choice, we

:03:26. > :03:30.must have two things to choose between. The app, for the iPad,

:03:30. > :03:34.includes the original musical scores and scripts, plus an

:03:34. > :03:37.interview with the author himself. 50 years on, with A Clockwork

:03:37. > :03:43.Orange having less power to shock, does it give us a different

:03:43. > :03:48.appreciation of Burgess's work, or do the themes of violence and

:03:48. > :03:52.redemption still resonate. With this kind of distance of the

:03:52. > :03:56.decades, a long time now since the stpim came out, do you think it

:03:56. > :04:00.means he -- the film came out, do you think it means we can

:04:00. > :04:07.appreciate it in a different way and context? I hadn't read it for a

:04:07. > :04:11.very long time. I hate to say, work of genius, but it truly stands up.

:04:11. > :04:15.He absolutely is addressing issues that will probably always be

:04:15. > :04:18.relevant. The older generation will always be wondering what the

:04:18. > :04:23.younger generation is getting up to, what young violent men are getting

:04:23. > :04:27.up to. People will always wonder if two wrongs will make a right. He

:04:27. > :04:32.puts that out there. He just gallops across, enormous issues,

:04:32. > :04:37.very beautifully. You know Alex is this ultra violent, dreadful,

:04:37. > :04:41.possibly you would describe him as evil, person, he loves high art,

:04:41. > :04:46.and that is supposed to elevate you. It wouldn't necessarily make you a

:04:47. > :04:50.better person, if you were a sociopath, just listening to

:04:50. > :04:54.Beethoven. But he really is extraordinary. Again, idea of

:04:54. > :04:58.predicting that we would end up speaking partly eastern European.

:04:58. > :05:03.That will probably become true in about 20 years, not for the reasons

:05:03. > :05:07.he thought. But he will be right. But the language he creates is

:05:07. > :05:10.extraordinary. I can remember when I first read the novel, I found it

:05:11. > :05:17.terrifying, and then after a while you begin to immediately understand

:05:17. > :05:21.what all the words are? The great strength of this book is it is so

:05:21. > :05:25.linguistically alive, that quote that we saw there, the next line is

:05:25. > :05:32.something like "it was a filthy dark, winter bastard night, though

:05:32. > :05:37.dry". The language, the cadance of it, the engagment with the language,

:05:37. > :05:42.both the English and Nasdak, that is the Russian for "teen speak", it

:05:42. > :05:46.is just compelling and powerful. Add to that it is so disturbing,

:05:46. > :05:49.both disturbing to read, because you have to encounter these words,

:05:49. > :05:54.but also disturbing in subject matter, and add to that, as Alison

:05:54. > :05:59.says, it is about everything, it is about masculinity, alienation, it

:05:59. > :06:03.is about God, it is about crime and punishment, it is about every

:06:03. > :06:07.single possible important subject, or so it seems. It is bound to have

:06:07. > :06:13.endured. I think also one other small point I would make, it is a

:06:13. > :06:17.novel, I think, that sits in a long tradition, if you go back to Pinkie

:06:17. > :06:22.in Brighton Rock, you can pick up the early part of Alex, and look

:06:22. > :06:27.forward to American Psycho, people say why was there never a British

:06:27. > :06:34.psycho novel, this is it. In American Psycho they kill a

:06:34. > :06:40.homeless person, just as the dDrugs do early on. What shocked me re-

:06:40. > :06:44.reading it, the film was firmly in my eyes, rembering that Alex was a

:06:44. > :06:50.15-year-old, amoral. That is one of the things when you are reading it

:06:50. > :06:58.in this form, reminds you that it is very much a product of the early

:06:58. > :07:01.60s. He has those ant anti-seedents, but he has also characters from 50s

:07:01. > :07:08.films. All that world is present here.

:07:08. > :07:14.That language is a palarie, it alludes to things, the words that

:07:14. > :07:23.sound like other words, you get at their meaning. There is a note of

:07:23. > :07:26.the Catcher in the Rye, he uses the word "old" a lot. It is, what is

:07:26. > :07:30.extraordinary is it is so timeless, I was thinking while reading t I

:07:30. > :07:35.can't think of a more disturbing novel, that I have read,

:07:35. > :07:40.subsequently. American Psycho, as you say, tries to do the same thing,

:07:40. > :07:45.but is some how slightly flatter. This is so powerful. He's doing

:07:45. > :07:51.something so technically difficult, to commit yourself to having a huge

:07:51. > :07:56.person zone that of your vocabulary unknown to the reader, but perfect

:07:56. > :07:59.context so none of it gets lost, and no glossary. It is beautiful

:08:00. > :08:04.and melodic and memorable, he manages to portray evil, truly,

:08:04. > :08:08.truly, truly, without rubbing your face in it, that is so difficult.

:08:08. > :08:12.thought that was interesting from the clip we played there, where he

:08:12. > :08:17.talked about free will, being necessary to choose between good

:08:17. > :08:24.and evil. That is embodied in it absolutely. It is also interesting

:08:24. > :08:30.on the app, to hear Burgess reading the book in his own voice, not just

:08:30. > :08:34.the own voice but the hyperman countryian own voice. The Holloways

:08:34. > :08:41.hole does it in an a whiney estuary voice, with Malcolm McDowell

:08:41. > :08:47.playing the part, it should be done like Stanly Holloway doing Albert

:08:47. > :08:56.and the Lion. It is so cuddly when he talks about it. It is fussy and

:08:56. > :09:03.as if todayous. And charming and funny. Let's not forget the first

:09:03. > :09:07.people the Drugs beat up is a writer, writing the a clock work

:09:07. > :09:12.orange. The attack on Stanley Kubrick written in there itself. I

:09:12. > :09:19.think it also had Burgess's own handwriting on the type script,

:09:19. > :09:22.where he was playing about with some the words he was going to use.

:09:22. > :09:26.The type script brings home how quickly it was written. I'm not

:09:26. > :09:31.dead sure, I think he wrote four books in a year, of which this was

:09:31. > :09:36.one. It came to him in a kind of extended speed dream, almost. It

:09:36. > :09:44.was on the page before he knew it. It also reveal how much he got paid

:09:44. > :09:48.for it, �150, that is about �6,000 in today's money. The reader's

:09:49. > :09:53.report was very worried about it, it was either going to nowhere or

:09:53. > :09:57.do something. They were ambivalent in the publishers. The marketing

:09:57. > :10:01.plan for A Clockwork Orange, it would be a doomed freak of a book,

:10:01. > :10:07.or it could catch on! We can agree it certainly did catch on. When it

:10:07. > :10:10.moved from book to screen, the violent scenes attracted the

:10:10. > :10:15.attention of the censors, who, controversially, allowed the film

:10:15. > :10:23.to be shown. That landmark case for the British board of film censors,

:10:23. > :10:30.what it was called then, that is described in a new book marking its

:10:30. > :10:36.centinary, back then a film could be banned, in 1912 for holding the

:10:36. > :10:41.king's uniform to contempt. Look away if you are squeamish.

:10:41. > :10:46.In the 1930s, faced with a wave of American horror firms, the BBFC

:10:46. > :10:50.created the H-rating, the first adults-only classification, later

:10:50. > :10:55.renamed the X-certificate, it proved so attractive to audiences,

:10:55. > :10:59.that some Companies Actively sought it. Hammer, the company that taste

:10:59. > :11:07.forgot, in the board's review, deliberately tested what was

:11:07. > :11:12.permissible. Their first adventure into horror, the Quatermass

:11:12. > :11:19.Experiment. The BBFC found itself at the centre of national debates

:11:19. > :11:29.about the portrayal of women, the representation of war and the

:11:29. > :11:30.

:11:30. > :11:35.decriminalisation of homosexuality. In Victim gay men fall victim to

:11:35. > :11:40.the fortunes of blackmailer. should I fall victim. You are a

:11:40. > :11:46.fashion, if young people know how you live, might they not follow.

:11:46. > :11:50.Youth must be protected, we agree. As the BBFC's role became more

:11:50. > :11:54.about classification than censorship, it regularly did battle

:11:54. > :12:00.with the film industry, determined to maximise audiences. In order to

:12:00. > :12:10.have a PG rating, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom lost a gory

:12:10. > :12:15.sacrifice, only reinstated in the Blu-ray release.

:12:15. > :12:19.The book also relates how the BBFC found itself under attack over

:12:19. > :12:25.called video nasties, after the murder of James Bulger, some

:12:25. > :12:30.newspapers and politicians claimed it had become too lenient. In 2004,

:12:30. > :12:39.9 Songs, the rudest film ever to hit our cinemas, according to the

:12:39. > :12:42.Mirror, was passed, uncut. But last year's The Human Centipede, was not

:12:42. > :12:47.allowed any classification. Its decisions may be controversial, but

:12:47. > :12:54.this book charts how the board has attempted to reflect Britain's

:12:54. > :12:57.changing attitudes towards sex and violence.

:12:57. > :13:01.We know the story of A Clockwork Orange, controversial but did get

:13:01. > :13:04.shown N this book we have a whole century of people in the past have

:13:05. > :13:09.found to be shocking? I think the main joy in reading this book, is

:13:09. > :13:13.really it is a litmus of a kind of national morality, as you move from

:13:13. > :13:18.100 years ago to now. You see how the board has changed what it

:13:18. > :13:21.passes and what it doesn't. I was very interested in 9 Songs, that

:13:21. > :13:25.was the first time real sex had been in a film. And that was very

:13:25. > :13:30.difficult for them, because they felt if they passed that, it opened

:13:30. > :13:34.the flood gates. But the one thing I took away from reading this, is

:13:34. > :13:40.how sensible and well regulated this group of people were. How they

:13:40. > :13:43.tried, admirably, often, to walk the balance between freedom and

:13:43. > :13:48.censorship. The funnyiest thing is the people hammering them, night

:13:48. > :13:51.and day, the press, who spend the whole time saying free speech, free

:13:51. > :13:54.speech, every time there is a slightly questionable film, they

:13:54. > :13:58.come running after them saying you shouldn't put it on the screen, you

:13:58. > :14:02.are ruining the nation and all children will copy it. That was

:14:02. > :14:08.very amusing. Did you find it amusing how morays had changed over

:14:08. > :14:11.time? Yes and how they hadn't. The status quo always seems to involve

:14:11. > :14:15.the working-classes being equated with children, they are easily led,

:14:15. > :14:19.and many things they shouldn't be exposed to, prostitutes can't be in

:14:19. > :14:22.films, because unintelligent people won't have heard about them,

:14:23. > :14:27.homosexuality, everyone will want to try it if you put it on

:14:27. > :14:30.television. It is sort of funny, but also horribly toxic, this

:14:30. > :14:38.strange reaction against women showing sexual pleasure. That, some

:14:38. > :14:43.how was awful, the idea of women having fun. And lesbianism? Oh my

:14:43. > :14:49.God. Killing of Sister George caused them huge problems?

:14:49. > :14:54.could imagine a little bit of gentlemen back-scuttling, a tiny

:14:54. > :15:02.suggestion, women they couldn't get. These fights between Jimmy Sangster

:15:02. > :15:07.and the Hammer Horror people. You often saw, underneath, a less funny

:15:07. > :15:12.thing, how to hold the status quo, by prevending that political

:15:12. > :15:16.control is about protecting sexual morality, and lately it is about

:15:16. > :15:21.controlling sensitivity to religions, but it is about keeping

:15:21. > :15:24.the status quo. It is about the general liberal organisation trying

:15:24. > :15:27.to manage progress in this department. On the whole it is a

:15:27. > :15:33.good story. What kind of makes me slightly depressed about the

:15:33. > :15:40.situation now is, the debates about censorship happen over such

:15:40. > :15:46.marginal films, The Human Send peed 2, who cares. These debates were

:15:46. > :15:50.played out on screen 1 in the Odeon. We have lost something there.

:15:50. > :15:55.book documents debates about Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter?

:15:55. > :16:00.They are important too. What is really rich about it, is the biways,

:16:00. > :16:05.and I must say -- byways, I found myself dismayed by how many of the

:16:05. > :16:10.films I had seen. I will confess now, I have seen The Wife Swappers,

:16:10. > :16:17.it is absolutely shocking, the wall paper is awful. The chief of the

:16:17. > :16:21.wife swappers is played by the man who was Captain bird's Eye. These

:16:21. > :16:24.things are traumatic, but it is a comic his treatment despite the

:16:24. > :16:27.paralysingly forward that the head of the organisation now has

:16:27. > :16:30.contributed. I slightly wanted, apart from the fact they keep

:16:30. > :16:34.referring to research that they don't have access to, it was

:16:34. > :16:37.strange that they picked so many different people from different

:16:37. > :16:41.backgrounds, they do say they have the decade, here are the key films,

:16:41. > :16:45.here is what happens, here is who is in charge. This is what the

:16:45. > :16:47.press have lied about and beat them over the head with. You don't get,

:16:47. > :16:51.here is what some of the psychological research was based on,

:16:51. > :16:54.and why we don't show this, because we think it is a trigger for

:16:54. > :16:59.violent behaviour. Here is a background in research about

:16:59. > :17:04.whether people actually do copycat crimes. It was a little bit, it is

:17:04. > :17:08.a history, but it was thin on the links between films like Texas

:17:08. > :17:12.Chainsaw Massacre, and Dawn of the Dead, and Vietnam, because people

:17:12. > :17:15.were coming out of that experience, and truly feeling that people

:17:15. > :17:19.walking around alive were the dead walking, because eventually you

:17:19. > :17:24.would be meat. That whole social background wasn't there. It is a

:17:24. > :17:32.collection of essays, not written by one person, it is a lot of

:17:32. > :17:36.different perspectives, it is a dip in and out. I wouldn't enjoy

:17:36. > :17:41.reading the book cover-to-cover, I opened it to the pages to seeing a

:17:41. > :17:47.picture I liked, I recognised it and read the back story. Very

:17:47. > :17:50.interesting about the Harry Potter and the death he witnesses, I read

:17:50. > :17:54.that, A Clockwork Orange I read. That it would be an academic job to

:17:54. > :17:58.read it all the way through. The early stuff is fascinating, the

:17:58. > :18:01.fact that the National Council for Public Morals, an organisation

:18:01. > :18:05.worried about the weakening of the British race. They worried that

:18:05. > :18:09.some how going to the cinema is kind of making people weak and

:18:09. > :18:12.decision apatiented, they are copying things on -- dissipated,

:18:12. > :18:16.they are copying things on the screen. It is a health campaign, to

:18:16. > :18:24.do with hygiene, stopping people doing dirty things in dirty

:18:24. > :18:27.auditoriums. I will definitely look at it again, and find out about the

:18:27. > :18:32.Wife Swappers. David Nobbs didn't get where he is today without

:18:32. > :18:35.knowing a thing or two about writing comedy His latest novel,

:18:35. > :18:43.The Fall And Rise of Gordon Coppinger, is described his

:18:43. > :18:46.business publishers, as the spiritual follow-up to a 1960s

:18:46. > :18:51.trilogy, The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin. David Nobbs has

:18:51. > :18:55.been writing for 50 years, he began as a contributor to the hit Siral

:18:55. > :19:01.kal show, That Was The Week That Was, he went on to write sketches

:19:01. > :19:05.for Frankie Howard, Tommy Cooper and The Two Ronies. Good evening,

:19:05. > :19:11.I'm squeaking to you tonight, once again, as the chairman for the

:19:11. > :19:20.loyal society for the prevention of piss-pronunciation. But it was the

:19:20. > :19:24.depressed, middle-aged, middle manager at Sunshine Deserts, who

:19:24. > :19:29.captured millions' imagination. What about sex? It is great fun.

:19:29. > :19:34.What sort of a sex angle are we going for? I don't know, how about

:19:34. > :19:40.something like, just off the top of my head, I like to stroke my nipple

:19:40. > :19:48.with a strawberry ripple. character of the 19th novel is the

:19:48. > :19:53.hugely rich and highly corrupt Gordon Coppinger. His life is

:19:53. > :19:58.punctuated with daily exchanges between him and his butler

:19:58. > :20:07.Faringdon. Faringdon got down to business, with all the newspapers

:20:07. > :20:13.pages that mentioned him, Times business page 2, Sun page 2.

:20:13. > :20:19.Coppinger a fill landering financier, with his own yacht,

:20:19. > :20:24.skyscraper and football club, slowly wakes up his-to-his own

:20:24. > :20:31.inadequacies, he find himself tapping into an all together

:20:31. > :20:36.strange and foreign emotion. "with the regret came, yes, love, not

:20:36. > :20:42.lust, not desire, it was his first experience, he wouldn't have

:20:42. > :20:46.thought of the word, but there was no alternative for it, spiritual

:20:46. > :20:51.love". Nobbs says that Coppinger is the story of a man whom the world

:20:51. > :20:57.slowly drives sane. The opposite of Perrin, whom the world drovelyly

:20:57. > :21:01.mad. -- slowly mad, but has he been wise to invite comparison between

:21:01. > :21:10.the two. Does Coppinger do for the 2010s, what Perrin did for the

:21:10. > :21:13.1970s. So, Matthew, the, The Fall And Rise

:21:13. > :21:17.of Gordon Coppinger, clearly referring back to Reginald Perrin,

:21:17. > :21:22.this is a very contemporary setting? Absolutely, spookily,

:21:22. > :21:27.there are references to the Vujadin Savic says in this. He must have

:21:27. > :21:33.been -- Jimmy Saville case in this, he must have been waiting by the

:21:33. > :21:39.printing press. It is strangely archaic too, it is very much rooted

:21:39. > :21:46.in post-war comic writing. In this tramps drink meths, they don't now,

:21:46. > :21:51.they drink Tennan it's Super. But that world is preserved in the

:21:51. > :22:00.novel. If you look at a cartoon in a newspaper, you might see drunk

:22:00. > :22:05.with crossed eyes, or two men on a desert island with one palm tree.

:22:05. > :22:15.G I found myself thinking this is very much about spending time in a

:22:15. > :22:20.1970s toilet, with a man trying to make a Canary Wharf film of Carry

:22:20. > :22:25.On, it was thin. By page 56 a line went something like, the day had

:22:25. > :22:30.been strangely about urine, I thought why am I reading this. The

:22:30. > :22:38.characters were cardboard and cliched. The football player called

:22:38. > :22:45.Bogoff, the manager called Thickness, the secretary called

:22:45. > :22:49.Grimaldi, more grim than aldi. The description of sex, it was like he

:22:49. > :22:56.raised her rates of interest and then made his deposit. That wasn't

:22:56. > :23:01.the worst of it. The worst of it was when the novel tried to do the

:23:01. > :23:05.intropex and analysis of culture that would have embarrassed Boris

:23:05. > :23:10.Johnson. It was cringey, I'm afraid. I find not much to love. Say what

:23:10. > :23:16.you really think? I thought there was plenty of good gags in this

:23:16. > :23:22.book. I'm amused by the idea of a patriot. Bum gags! A man so

:23:22. > :23:24.patriotic that the company he has manufacturing coffee is called

:23:25. > :23:29.National Espresso, there are things that are delightful in that. I

:23:29. > :23:35.don't think it is the best thing he has ever written. I think some how

:23:35. > :23:38.this novel is in dialogue with the work of Jonathan Coe, the great

:23:38. > :23:45.advocate of David Nobbs. His quote is on the front. If you read it

:23:45. > :23:49.together with the privacy of Maxwell Simm, Co-'s last novel, --

:23:49. > :23:55.Coe, it is almost like they should get together and write something.

:23:55. > :23:59.It made me panic for Coe, someone else wrote "witty" on the back, I

:23:59. > :24:04.worried for them. Who is it written for? I don't think it is for you. I

:24:04. > :24:08.think it is for gentlemen who wear pink elephant corduroy trousers,

:24:08. > :24:12.and and coming to the conclusion that Tony Blair isn't entirely

:24:12. > :24:15.honest, it explains some of the financial crisis for those who

:24:15. > :24:21.don't understand the market. doesn't explain the financial

:24:21. > :24:27.crisis that hit the market. It is a caricature of a 70s businessman.

:24:27. > :24:31.lot of modern books about the financial crisis, the bankers are

:24:31. > :24:36.all villains, he tries to make us sympathise with the predicament of

:24:36. > :24:39.some of them? The difference is, with Reginald Perrin, he has the

:24:39. > :24:44.perfect character for his gift. The Reginald Perrin character is

:24:44. > :24:47.frustrated, cornered, and able to remark, amusingly, on being

:24:47. > :24:52.underpowered. The problem with Gordon Coppinger is he has the

:24:52. > :24:56.world at his feet. That mode of discourse, of somebody who is

:24:56. > :25:01.finding things a bit bemusing doesn't work with the character who

:25:02. > :25:06.is powerful. Can he really be portrayed as an underdog? I'm not

:25:06. > :25:12.sure. This is rather like Reginald Perrin narrated by CJ. From the man

:25:12. > :25:15.in the position of power. What bothered me about it, the parallels

:25:15. > :25:20.between Reginald Perrin may have been imposed by his publishers,

:25:20. > :25:24.actually, who wanted, he wanted to call it Coppinger, I think, and the

:25:24. > :25:28.title. He makes jokes in the book, when Gordon Coppinger is talking

:25:28. > :25:33.about disappearing, he does say at one point, should he put the

:25:33. > :25:36.clothes on the beach and disapee, somebody says it has been done?

:25:36. > :25:40.title of the description of what happens in the book is not terribly

:25:40. > :25:44.accurate. It is not, he's not an underdog, Reginald Perrin was the

:25:44. > :25:49.underdog who said the unsayable, this man is allowed to say the

:25:49. > :25:53.unsayable all the time. At one point we are being asked to take

:25:53. > :25:58.seriously the familiaral relationship. There were a couple

:25:58. > :26:06.of feens scenes I enjoyed between the father and the daughter, I

:26:06. > :26:13.began to be engaged, and thought it was a book to invest emotional

:26:13. > :26:18.energy into it, then it's back to the Carry On jokes. It is funny,

:26:18. > :26:21.the man burning to death in the pie factory. I think the pie factory

:26:21. > :26:28.apparently led vegetarians all around the country to decide they

:26:28. > :26:32.had to start eating meat again. Over four decades, the neurologist,

:26:32. > :26:37.Oliver Sachs, has attempted to explain the mechanics of the human

:26:37. > :26:41.brain to a general readership. Best known for his books, The Man Who

:26:41. > :26:46.Mistook His Wife For A Hat, and Awakenings, this latest foray into

:26:46. > :26:50.the mind is called Hallucinations. Sachs's books give eloquent and

:26:50. > :26:54.often entertaining accounts of his patient, they have earned him a

:26:54. > :26:58.reputation as the accessible voice of neuroscenes. He was even

:26:59. > :27:06.immortalised in the film version of Awakenings, played by Robin

:27:06. > :27:12.Williams. Where are my glasss? your face. Sachs calls his new book

:27:12. > :27:15.an anthology of hallucinations. He begins with Rosalie, a woman in her

:27:15. > :27:20.90s suffering from Charles Bonnet syndrome. Named after the 18th

:27:20. > :27:25.century Swiss scientist, who suffered hallucinations when his

:27:25. > :27:28.own eyesight failed. "When I arrived and greeted her, I was

:27:28. > :27:32.surprised to see she was completely blind. Though she had not seen

:27:32. > :27:38.anything at all for several years, she was now seeing things right in

:27:38. > :27:48.front of her. "What sort of things?" I asked. "People in

:27:48. > :27:51.eastern dress in drapes, walking up and down stairs" she exclaimed. I

:27:51. > :27:54.observed that while she was hallucinating her eyes were open,

:27:54. > :28:01.and even though she could see nothing, her eyes moved here and

:28:01. > :28:07.there, as if looking at an actual scene." For the very first time,

:28:07. > :28:11.Sachs writes about his own youthful experiments with drugs, which he

:28:11. > :28:14.believes helped him empathise with patients throughout the years.

:28:14. > :28:23.long wanted to see true indigo, and thought drugs might be the way to

:28:23. > :28:28.do this. So, one sunny Saturday in 1964, I developed a farm ma logic

:28:28. > :28:34.launch pad consisting of basic amphetamine for general arousal,

:28:34. > :28:39.and LSD for all Luis nation intensity, and a touch of cannabis

:28:39. > :28:47.for a little added delerium. About 20 minutes after taking this, I

:28:47. > :28:55.faced a white wall and excomplaipld, and said "I want to see ind -- and

:28:55. > :29:03.exclaimed, and said "I want to see indigo now". Has it silenced

:29:03. > :29:08.crickets who baulk at Sachs's anecdotes, and accused him of a man

:29:08. > :29:12.who has mistaken patients for a literary career. What struck me is

:29:12. > :29:17.the range of hallucinations there are, people hearing, seeing,

:29:17. > :29:21.smelling things that aren't there, in many different ways? It is

:29:21. > :29:27.remarkable. In previous times he quotes the experiment where people

:29:27. > :29:35.said they had an auditry perception, and they were immediately diagnosed

:29:35. > :29:44.as skets Frenchic and locked up for long periods of time. An experiment

:29:44. > :29:48.-- skets Frenchic and -- skits sow Frenchic and locked foup for a long

:29:48. > :29:53.time. He does say sometimes when people go blind their mechanisms of

:29:53. > :29:56.themselves produce things to see, and produce things a comforting

:29:56. > :29:59.near-death experience, and it is merciful. On the other hand he was

:29:59. > :30:04.quietly saying, maybe all of the supernatural things we believe in,

:30:04. > :30:08.and maybe heaven and hell and Gods and angels are all based on the

:30:08. > :30:12.fact that we hallucinate a lot more than we think, most people won't

:30:12. > :30:17.admit it, because it tends to make people think you are nuts. I found

:30:17. > :30:21.some of it quite terrifying to read. The fear that the reading of it

:30:21. > :30:27.might make it happen to you? Don't you want it to happen to you while

:30:27. > :30:37.you are reading it. Sachs describes hall Luisating as an essential part

:30:37. > :30:38.

:30:38. > :30:41.of human experience -- hall Luisating as an -- hallucinating as

:30:41. > :30:48.part of the human experience. I had one of these things when I had a

:30:48. > :30:54.job on a potting machine, I had to stare at it all day and I could

:30:54. > :30:58.still see it when I closed my eyes. The idea is experiments done on

:30:58. > :31:01.students weren't allowed to see anything? You are deprived of all

:31:01. > :31:05.stimulation, you begin to find it yourself. It is something I

:31:05. > :31:09.actually have seen in my own relatives. My grandfather, before

:31:09. > :31:18.he died, thought he could see his own life projected on a screen in

:31:18. > :31:23.the room in which he died. It is all very vivid, all this material.

:31:23. > :31:27.I particularly was engaged with the idea of bereavement hallucinations,

:31:27. > :31:30.and how common they were, and a possible explanation for when

:31:30. > :31:35.people think they are seeing ghosts of loved ones? The book was

:31:35. > :31:43.fascinating, for all of the reasons we are saying. He is very good on

:31:43. > :31:49.bereavement, and the moment between sleep and being awake. My one minor

:31:49. > :31:56.gripe with it, if you like. I felt there was a little whiff of the

:31:56. > :31:59.Rushdie, a little kind of, there is a brilliant passage. You might be

:31:59. > :32:05.hallucinating that? There is a brilliant passage where he talks

:32:05. > :32:07.about his own hallucination, he has just finished a book on migraine,

:32:07. > :32:12.there is nobody with the humanity and science to write the book he

:32:12. > :32:17.has been reading. He has the hallucination, and a voice says you

:32:17. > :32:21.are the man why don't you do it. His main hallucination is to remind

:32:21. > :32:24.himself how good he is. One of the criticisms made of him in the past,

:32:24. > :32:28.is he has exploited his patients and their stories. The fact that he

:32:28. > :32:33.is willing to talk about what has happened to him, may take the sting

:32:33. > :32:36.of that away to a certain degree? On the one hand you are thinking,

:32:36. > :32:40.OK, because you are Oliver Sachs, people will give you the material

:32:40. > :32:44.for the next boob. On the other hand, he sits there -- book. And on

:32:44. > :32:49.the other hand, he sits there and gets thousands of e-mails a year

:32:49. > :32:52.and tries to help people, and demonstrates what a proper doctor

:32:52. > :32:57.and diagnosis is, take the story of the person, if you can't cure them,

:32:57. > :33:01.explain what is wrong and give them that comfort. If you can find out

:33:01. > :33:06.what is wrong and get them cured, why not. There is a big story

:33:06. > :33:10.emerging. The inescapability of culture. There is the woman who

:33:10. > :33:15.hallucinates Kermit the frog, and says he means nothing to me. When

:33:15. > :33:20.Sachs has his own hallucination, this is after he has taken LSD, he

:33:20. > :33:29.imagines a spider talking to hill, not in the voice of BertramRussell,

:33:29. > :33:32.but in the voice of Jonathan Miller's impersonation of Bertram

:33:32. > :33:36.Russell. I admired the humanity of the book.

:33:36. > :33:39.If you take it with all of his other books, especially the

:33:39. > :33:44.Musicophilia, which I love, you get this sense of a man trying to

:33:45. > :33:50.understand human beings through the mind. It is such a life project,

:33:50. > :33:54.and such a wonderful body of work. As in so many of his books, the

:33:54. > :33:59.science is beautifully clear, isn't it? It is beautiful and clear, and

:33:59. > :34:01.he's trying to commune kai. He's talking about things that are very

:34:01. > :34:06.-- Communicate. He's talk about things that are difficult to

:34:06. > :34:11.understand. He's very gently, but devastatingly critical of the sort

:34:11. > :34:14.of mental health establishment who don't take time. And who completely,

:34:14. > :34:20.it is horrifying the image of becoming older and losing some of

:34:20. > :34:25.your faculties, and people just assuming that you are barmy.

:34:25. > :34:29.think that game across extremely clearly in Michael Sachs's book,

:34:29. > :34:34.Hallucinations. Both Flesh And Not is the third book by David Foster

:34:34. > :34:40.Wallace, to be published since his death in 2008, though he Best

:34:40. > :34:49.Friends known for Infinite Jest, he was also a prolific -- he is best

:34:49. > :34:56.known for Infinite Jest, he was also a prolific essay writer.

:34:56. > :35:06.This beacon tains those. Federer Both Flesh And Not, the first essay,

:35:06. > :35:09.

:35:09. > :35:16.is a meticulous desection of his style of play at the 2007 season.

:35:16. > :35:18."genius is not rep cable. Inspiration is contagious and

:35:18. > :35:24.multiform. Seeing it close up, power and aggression made

:35:24. > :35:28.vulnerable to beauty, is to feel inspired, and in a fleet, immortal

:35:28. > :35:37.way, reconciled. Towards the end of the book comes his introduction to

:35:37. > :35:41.the Best American Essays 12007. His comments there -- 2007. His

:35:41. > :35:46.comments give a poignant insight into Wallace's own state of mind.

:35:46. > :35:51.The total noise the sound of our US culture right now, a culture of

:35:51. > :35:54.info, spin, rhetoric and context, that I know I'm not alone in

:35:54. > :36:00.finding too much to absorb, much less to try to make sense of, or

:36:00. > :36:07.organise into any kind of tryage of sail yency or value. David Foster

:36:07. > :36:11.Wallace is an author who inspires tagsate devotion from fans, is this

:36:11. > :36:21.-- devotion from fans. Should its publication be soundtracked by the

:36:21. > :36:26.noise of a barrel being scraped? David Foster Wallace is one of

:36:26. > :36:31.those writers who commands huge cult status almost. Do you think

:36:31. > :36:35.this book of essays is for the fan club, or a wider readership will

:36:35. > :36:45.engage? I am one of those fans. But I think this book is not just for

:36:45. > :36:47.

:36:47. > :36:53.the fans. I'm a reluctant fan, I thought The Pale King is nothing

:36:53. > :36:56.like as good as everyone seems to say it is. This is a wonderful

:36:56. > :37:00.companion with a man totally engaged with the vast culture in

:37:00. > :37:04.which we now live. You watch him developing through the essays, and

:37:04. > :37:08.trying toe get more of a handle on. That I know you will complain about

:37:08. > :37:13.the foot notes, he's like watching a football player doing keepy-ups

:37:13. > :37:20.while there is a game on. I realise that about him. But you have to

:37:20. > :37:28.admire his language and love of language. No you don't! You can't

:37:28. > :37:35.start a sentence "and, but, so" and expect it to end well. You can't

:37:35. > :37:38.talk about consentric because it doesn't mean. I found myself

:37:38. > :37:43.revolving in my grave on his behalf, because I'm sure the essays weren't

:37:43. > :37:49.put out in his life, he wouldn't copy edited them. He wouldn't have

:37:49. > :37:54.had two descriptions of somebody serving in tennis. He wouldn't have

:37:54. > :38:00.repeated triage standing there like a dead horse in a field. The first

:38:00. > :38:05.essay on tennis was outstanding? is extraordinary, it is an essay

:38:05. > :38:09.about Roger Federer, the sermon John Dunne would have given by

:38:09. > :38:12.Roger Federer. It describes what he does in terms that, you know, maybe

:38:12. > :38:16.something that would occur to somebody deeply involved in it. I

:38:16. > :38:20.know anything about t I was enthralled. Most of the rest of it,

:38:20. > :38:27.however, I could have happily lived without. Some of it is absolutely

:38:27. > :38:37.embarrassing. The essay where he thinks age is a good thing.

:38:37. > :38:41.misjudgment of the aids crisis, it will -- AIDS crisis, it will

:38:41. > :38:45.sharpen up our relationships! one of the greatest writers of the

:38:45. > :38:51.last 20 years. Being embarrassed in public after his death. In all of

:38:52. > :38:58.the essays, you don't really always want to go sa see a huge Beethoven

:38:58. > :39:02.sich knee, sometimes you want something small -- sich niece,

:39:02. > :39:09.sometimes -- symphony, sometimes you want something smaller. The

:39:09. > :39:13.piece about how he chose being a deciderer. The piece on writing is

:39:13. > :39:16.beautiful and heart-breaking. is three great pieces. Out of an

:39:16. > :39:23.essay with more than that, it is embarrassing, he would have been

:39:23. > :39:30.mortified, you know's a total pedant, he makes fun of that, it

:39:30. > :39:35.would have made his skin crawl. He talks about the abyss of fiction

:39:35. > :39:40.being emptiness and nothingness. And the abyss of non-fiction.

:39:40. > :39:45.wasn't sure of the decision of the publishers to include the writer's

:39:45. > :39:49.list of words between each chapter? These are things salvaged from his

:39:49. > :39:53.hard drive, aren't they. humiliating him again, you made him

:39:53. > :39:57.spot the word for that month that he hammered into the sentence that

:39:57. > :40:07.shouldn't have been there and is uncommunive. It demonstrates how

:40:07. > :40:12.you can get tired of fine writing. I don't think it is, it is very

:40:12. > :40:16.engaged. When he approaches a subject, he does so with absolute

:40:16. > :40:23.engagment. Be that tennis, or writing, I agree the AIDS essay is

:40:23. > :40:27.one of the worst. Cinema? That is a niave essay, the one on Terminator

:40:27. > :40:34.2, don't give film makers too much money they will squander it.

:40:34. > :40:39.says something interesting about women, it is the only films with

:40:39. > :40:43.women not sexualised but maternal. He has never less than engaging. I

:40:43. > :40:47.have read all of his essays, I would say two or three of the best

:40:47. > :40:52.of them are in this book. Let's move on to something, I hope you

:40:52. > :40:55.will find more agreement. It is that time of year when everybody

:40:55. > :40:59.seems to be choosing the best Book of the Year. We have asked each

:40:59. > :41:08.panellist to choose one book that they thought deserved a bit more

:41:08. > :41:13.attention than it has received so far. The book I enjoyed most was

:41:13. > :41:18.Nicholas Rhodes biography of Keats, it takes us to the medical room

:41:18. > :41:23.when he was a student. And talks about radical Enfield, this hot bed

:41:23. > :41:29.of new ideas and new thinking. Terrific and beautifully written.

:41:29. > :41:34.Vultures' Picnic by Greg Palace, an old school investigative journalist,

:41:34. > :41:38.largely funded by charities now, because no-one can afford it. It

:41:38. > :41:42.beautifully explains so many outrageous things about the power

:41:42. > :41:47.industry. And about the financial skullduggery, if you want to know

:41:47. > :41:50.why Greece is broke, it explains very clearly why Greece is broke,

:41:50. > :41:54.beautiful book f they implemented Leveson at all, there would be

:41:54. > :42:00.enough room for that kind of journalism to exist again, instead

:42:00. > :42:07.of lots of gossip about celebrities who have been out with no knickers.

:42:07. > :42:13.I'm going to say Thomas Penn's Winter King, it is a wonderful

:42:13. > :42:18.biography of Henry VII, it combines fantastic scholarship with great

:42:18. > :42:25.story telling. The best history Book of the Year. The book that got

:42:25. > :42:33.unjustly trashed, Lionel Asbo, I thought it was a return to form for

:42:33. > :42:39.Amis. I injod it very much. were snorting there? That was an

:42:39. > :42:43.advertant. Our panels had different views? They were wrong.

:42:43. > :42:50.I asked on Twitter, what some of the books people suggested, there

:42:50. > :42:57.were a few came up, Hawthorn and Child, Keith Ridgeway. The one I

:42:57. > :43:02.liked best was from Wayne he suggested Fifty Shades of Grey, he

:43:02. > :43:06.said it was a sleeper but with a push could be popular. My thanks to

:43:06. > :43:10.Edward Docx, AL Kennedy and Matthew Sweet. As usual we will find

:43:10. > :43:15.details of everything we have discussed tonight on our website.

:43:15. > :43:20.Now next week Kirsty is going to be back, with a show packed with

:43:20. > :43:26.Christmas treats, Matthew Bourne's new version of Sleeping Beauty, the

:43:26. > :43:32.Spice Girls movie, Viva Forever, and the sequel to the Snowman, he

:43:32. > :43:37.has a snowdog. Had she lived, Beryl Bainbridge would have celebrated