25/04/2013 Meet the Author


25/04/2013

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economy has grown slightly in the last three months of the year.

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Now it's time for Meet the Author. Argus is a writer, broadcaster and

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a dealer in rare books, his latest book of lost, stolen or shredded,

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of missing works of art and literature started like a few years

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ago as a Radio Four series. We invited him to ask why these

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disappeared works of the creative imagination means so much to us.

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You start this book with an account of a famous that of the Mona Lisa

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and the less, in 1911, stolen as a patriotic act. Thousands went to

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see the gap left behind, why? Accused got larger to see where the

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moon police are used to be, than when it was sitting there. The

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question of why that is is fascinating. But police said, it is

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as if one of the towers of Notre Dame had disappeared. That is to

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say the Mona Lisa is cemented into the Louvre in some way. It is bin

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can keep away complex that such a thing could go away Bostock from

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the painting point of view it is a fabulous career move. In 1911, the

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theft takes place in August. The Mona Lisa is by no means the most

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famous painting. In 1913, when she comes back, she is. The key fact

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about Frank after his he published very little during his lifetime,

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his great novels were published by his friend from manuscripts that he

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left at his death. But the author asked for the manuscripts to be

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destroyed. They should be lost books, and you applaud his friend

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for not doing that? He has a perfect conflict of interest.

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Either he honours his friend's wishes and destroys the manuscripts,

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or he honours the manuscripts and his respects his friend's wishes.

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We are talking works of the highest literally Fenebahce literally

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quality. We don't have the castle and we don't have the trial and

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less Maxwell saves them. Who cares what the author felt. He could have

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destroyed them himself, but he did not do so. What about the diaries

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that could have been destroyed? The Secretary did not destroy them, did

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you think she was right? Larkin kept a series of diaries for 30

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years and there were probably 30 volumes. They were, by all accounts

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a repository of fantasy, particularly sexual fantasy and

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bile. Larkin could be extraordinarily rude about his

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fellow poets, about writers generally, he was racist,

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homophobic. He used these diaries as a kind of almost getting pass

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out of a wound. They wouldn't have shown him in a good light. There

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was a lot and evidence that he showed why didn't he drew --

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destroy them himself? Graham Sutherland's portrait of Winston

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Churchill. Winston Churchill hated it, either he or his wife destroyed

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it? I sympathise with the Churchills in having destroyed it.

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It was an image of him that preyed on his mind. Churchill, of all the

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Englishmen of the 20th century deserved honour and the portrait

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was designed to honour him, and he felt dishonoured. One is

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sympathetic to the decision to get rid of it. The difference in that

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case, it was not his to destroy? wasn't, but it was going to hang in

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the Houses of Parliament, which was the last thing in the world he

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wanted. In England, we don't have what the French have, which is a

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concept of honour. If Napoleon had come back from the Napoleonic wars

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and they had got somebody to do an image of him and showed him as a

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bloated, hideous little man full of self worth, heads would have rolled.

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The problem with that line of thought, art cannot just be a

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geography, otherwise it would be Stalinism. Yes, I don't mind that

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that portrait is now gone, it is an emotional thing. It is an opinion,

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rather than an argument. But I feel it strongly. It is a complex case.

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You are a rare book dealer by profession, although you were an

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academic before. You said some were effective shies the object as

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dealers must now. This is a copy to of your book �14.99. I have not

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read that because your publisher sent it in the in electronic form.

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Am I was off for having read the electronic version? I am worse off

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because I would have got a better royalty! I read about 80% of my

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books electronically now. It is clear something is happening to the

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form of the book which is only just beginning. My next book is called,

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life and death of the book. I am going to argue, ignorantly, I

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suppose, but in 50 years it will be a very rare sight to see somebody

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walking around with a bunch of printed pages and a cover on them.

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I think we are in the last days. For you as a dealer, there is a

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loss because you sell books, but you also sell manuscripts, letters

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and all of these things which exist almost exclusively electronically?

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Writers wrote letters, now they are right e-mails. And someone who

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deals in literally archives and manuscripts, is, how do you value a

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letter as opposed to any male? If you buy a hard drive of somebody's

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computer, and when Salman Rushdie sold his archive to a university,

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the hard drives of his last four computers were included, will show

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he played a lot of Super Mario Brothers, because he was very good

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at that. It also means there are thousands of e-mails, which have a

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value. On the hard drive they are unique, but they're not unique when

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