Erich Segal

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 10:06

This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

Speaker 10:15

The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library. For Wright's reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:26

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Speaker 10:31

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 10:34

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:53

This week, our castaway is a scholar, an athlete, and a very successful novelist. It's Eric Siegel. Eric, could you endure isolation for a long time?

Erich Segal1:03

Well, then, agreeing to undertake this voyage, I guess I have to. I'll let you know if I ever get back.

Presenter1:09

Thank you kindly. You are a musician. You you play the piano. Uh

Erich Segal1:13

Very badly.

Erich Segal1:14

I studied for a while until I got the sack by my piano teacher who discovered that I couldn't read notes. I and there's a reason for that, I think. I was always short-sighted as a child, but never got glasses till I was twelve or thirteen. By then I'd been fired by my piano teacher.

Presenter1:31

Now you have just eight records to represent the whole field of music.

Presenter1:35

Is there any plan in your choice? Are you choosing nostalgically or to try to cover that whole field or or what?

Erich Segal1:43

Well, it's impossible to I d first of all, eight is not enough. Right. Uh it's it's impossible to encompass the history of music or the history of one's memories, my own memories. I just picked things that that would sustain me.

Erich Segal2:00

I could have picked eighty, had you let me. That's easier to pick eighty.

Presenter2:03

It's easier to pick up.

Erich Segal2:05

But all of these will in their own special way sustain me.

Erich Segal2:08

Uh

Presenter2:08

What's the first one?

Erich Segal2:10

The first one will remind me that life goes on well, all of them will, really. It's called A Fifth of Beethoven. It's a little bit of a novelty.

Presenter2:53

A Fifth Book Beethoven by Beethoven Stroke Walter Murphy.

Presenter2:58

Now you were born in Brooklyn, Eric. Your father was a rabbi. Was your upbringing very strict and orthodox?

Erich Segal3:05

Well, it was strict and unorthodox, if you will, because my father, uh on the one hand, wanting me to to drink deeply of my own cultural heritage, wanted me to be a generally cultured person. So he sent me to a yeshiva, uh a religious school where I learned Hebrew at the same time that I learned English. It was brutal. We started at seven in the morning and finished at at six in the evening, and this was five and a half days a week.

Erich Segal3:31

But at the same time he wanted me to learn all about world culture, to start Latin at an early age, in addition to the Hebrew and Greek as soon as I could, and he just wanted me to be educated. He said, I'm not a pushy father.

Erich Segal3:46

I only want well, I guess he was in a way, because he did make one supreme demand of me. He said, Be an educated person. He said, Then you can go off and be a forestry ranger or fly to the moon, but at least you will do it as an educated person.

Presenter3:59

And he used to send you off to Switzerland on vacations.

Erich Segal4:02

Yes, this this was uh d during my high school years and th this was so I would begin to know Europe and its culture and especially the languages that one can pick up in Switzerland. I'm very grateful for what ha I mean it was hard at the time. I rebelled, I kicked, but now in retrospect, having done all those verbs of all those languages, I'm very grateful that I don't have to do them now.

Presenter4:23

And then to Harvard, you read classics. Yes, classics.

Erich Segal4:27

said Harvard.

Presenter4:27

Yeah.

Presenter4:28

And uh college theatricals, of course.

Erich Segal4:30

Yes, I was a very bad actor. I had one line in Hamlet, but it enabled me, I must say, even though you had I I was a courtier, and that and all other things will we do our duty. That's what I said. I still recall it, my entire part in Hamlet. But I did learn the rest of Hamlet, not to speak, of course, but it was a good way of getting close to Shakespeare.

Presenter4:53

Now you graduated, did you stay on at Harvard to take your doctorate?

Erich Segal4:57

Yes, that's one thing I frankly I do regret. I was a little bit too studious. I just I didn't do the traveling that normally one does in America between the AB and the PhD. Usually y y you take a year abroad ostensibly to learn and go to museums and

Erich Segal5:12

actually to do drinking and

Erich Segal5:15

Sitting in the sun.

Erich Segal5:16

I didn't do that. I was a little bit too diligent and went straight on to do a Ph D in comparative literature. What was the hurry, I say to myself now. I mean, I was thrust into the teaching uh profession earlier than I cared to.

Speaker 15:22

Yeah.

Erich Segal5:30

Yeah. Norse

Presenter5:30

So, of course, dabbling by now in the professional theatre.

Erich Segal5:35

Yes, having fulfilled my father's single commandment, I was then free to indulge myself in any sort of endeavor I chose. And I chose not to be an astronaut, there was no such thing in Brooklyn in those days, but to be a playwright. I was very much influenced by the autobiography of Moss Hart, another Brooklyn boy who had made good in the theater, and I thought I wanted to be a playwright. Now, th th the thing was I I should stress that I never wanted to be a great playwright, but I did want to be a successful playwright. I make that distinction immediately because I I dreamt of, you know, coming to the theater and and and a boulevard type theater, you know, with a light comedy. I never thought I would write Death of a Salesman.

Presenter6:16

Well, let's break at this point for your second record. What shall we have?

Erich Segal6:21

Well, since we were speaking of Harvard, I can think of no more suitable record than Tom Lear's send-up of Harvard fight songs. I I know that may sound strange, that colleges should have fight songs, but they're very brutal in real life. Uh i one must kill the other team one sings at football games. It's not, you know, beat them, just just, you know, annihilate them, preferably limb from limb. And so Tom Lehrer wrote a very funny send-up of of this called Fight Fiercely Harvard.

Speaker 46:50

Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight!

Speaker 46:55

Demonstrate to them our skill.

Speaker 46:58

Albeit they possess the might.

Speaker 47:02

Nonetheless, we have the will.

Speaker 47:05

How we will celebrate our van

Speaker 47:14

Yeah.

Speaker 47:15

Get down the field and fight, fight.

Presenter7:22

Tom Lehrer, celebrating Harvard. In fact, you moved on to Yale.

Erich Segal7:27

Yes, that was treasonous of me, and uh I got a little ribbing for that, but uh

Erich Segal7:32

That was at a moment when classics at Yale was uh enjoying a renaissance. Not that I take any credit for that renaissance, but they made a wholesale raid, as one would on a football club. And they took some older Harvard professors and some young Turks And I suppose I was a Turk or a Turkey, whatever.

Presenter7:49

Your classics cross fertilized your theatrical life because your first book was The Comedy of Plautus.

Erich Segal7:56

Yes, I I'm pleased that it uh it was the one that got me some academic whatever academic attention I have, it's because I I wrote about this unique

Erich Segal8:06

Classical phenomenon, a truly popular playwright. He was unique because he knew exactly how to please a public, and I was fascinated by this phenomenon. He also is, though given very little scholarly attention compared to say what Sophocles with seven plays gets. Uh Plautus is the author of twenty and a half extant plays and and that's a lot of material.

Presenter8:27

Yeah.

Presenter8:29

And you've prepared verse translations of of of several of the comedies, poor little

Erich Segal8:33

Yes, that was what I did sort of as a follow-up to my study of of Plautus Roman Laughter, because translating a play is a great way to get close to the text. And you never really think about what a line means until you have to render it into English.

Presenter8:47

Another of your books, The Death of Comedy. What's that about?

Erich Segal8:50

Well, it consists of fragments of essays that I've published hither and yon and and have yet to be put together in its final chapter. But what it does is it takes the beginnings of classical comedy and takes them to the day comedy died, which, if you must know, was on a December evening in nineteen fifty two. And what was that? That was when Waiting for Godot premiered in Paris.

Erich Segal9:17

You see, because my argument in The Death of Comedy is that Samuel Beckett took every trick in Aristophanes' joke book.

Erich Segal9:26

turned them upside down and then assassinated them.

Presenter9:30

Now while an undergraduate

Presenter9:32

At Harvard you had already begun another great interest of yours, that is, long distance running.

Erich Segal9:37

Yes, it all started because I was in an accident, a canoe accident, and running was physical therapy for me.

Erich Segal9:43

And I found something in running that I never thought I would find.

Erich Segal9:48

We're not on television, so I have to tell your listeners that I'm an extremely scrawny individual of no great height.

Erich Segal9:55

and of no strength whatsoever.

Erich Segal9:57

So I was not good at sport, though I dreamed of being good at sport, and never found one at which I could

Erich Segal10:03

Well, excel is not the word, just be adequate.

Presenter10:06

Mugh did in fact run for Harvard.

Erich Segal10:08

But that was a result of this accident. I began to jog as physical therapy, and then I began to realize that I could run a little bit farther

Erich Segal10:16

than the average person. From there I went to the two mile and cross country at Harvard.

Erich Segal10:22

and from there to the Boston Marathon.

Erich Segal10:25

I might add before it was as fashionable as it is now. How many marathon races have you entered?

Erich Segal10:31

I have agonized my way through forty marathons. Where? Which c how many countries?

Presenter10:35

Yeah.

Erich Segal10:36

Well, the only ones I ran outside of America were one in Belgium in which I didn't do too badly, and one in Britain in which I did dreadfully.

Presenter10:44

Your best time for this 26 hours.

Erich Segal10:46

2 hours 42. It doesn't sound very good now, but this was done in 1963. Sounds pretty good to me.

Presenter10:52

Now you have commentated on the the marathon event at the Olympic Games.

Erich Segal10:57

Yes, that was the closest I ever got to the Olympics. I

Presenter10:59

Nobody ever asked you to compete there.

Erich Segal11:01

Nobody ni I tried some of the smaller countries, you know, I appealed for citizenship to Liechtenstein and hoping they would, you know, take me for their team. They were all full up. They weren't they were full up, and especially two hundred forty two wasn't very fascinating for them.

Presenter11:02

Tried some of the small

Presenter11:08

Kidnapped. And it's a

Erich Segal11:14

So the the best thing I could do was after the success of Love Story I had a little bit of what can I say cachet or something. Uh how else could a two hundred forty two plodding marathoner get to be the marathon commentator at the nineteen seventy two Olympics? And then of course I had the good fortune to watch my own student.

Erich Segal11:33

Frank Shorter win the gold medal. I completely forgot that I was on television and I went crazy screaming for my student and and uh instead of, you know, the typical

Erich Segal11:44

Cool, broadcasting, here he is, Frank Shorter winning. I was screaming and yelling. And instead of making a bad impression and getting me fired, it sort of it it titillated people to think that commentators were really people. And so I got asked back to Montreal.

Presenter12:00

Anyway, that was some discussion.

Erich Segal12:00

Uh

Presenter12:00

Two.

Erich Segal12:00

Thanks. Yes, in which my student lost. And despite the fact that Frank only came in second,

Erich Segal12:05

I was supposed to go to Moscow.

Presenter12:07

But alas

Erich Segal12:07

Uh I don't know about Alas. Uh I'm glad not to be going.

Erich Segal12:13

And to be quite candid, I'm frankly relieved to have the moral decision of whether or not to go to Moscow taken from me by the President.

Presenter12:21

Let's have your third record, what's that to be?

Erich Segal12:24

Well, in keeping with uh the notion of a a desert island, I thought I would miss the seasons, and so I I'd I'd like to hear Yitchach Perlman play the Four Seasons. Which one should we hear? Summer.

Presenter13:34

It's Zach Pellman with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Summer from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Now let's go back to those early theatrical activities. Now in Harvard, of course, you wrote The Hasty Pudding Show, that that's an annual review, isn't it?

Erich Segal13:49

Right. And it's a tranzestite review, much in disrepute at the moment because the women's lib people want to uh integrate it. But it's it's it's where all the football players play the fummefatals and all the skinny boys play the big men, etcetera.

Presenter13:58

And all the

Presenter14:01

And the girls want to get in on the act. Right. And what was the next step?

Erich Segal14:05

The next step was uh some off-Broadway plays. I wrote some plays while a graduate student at Harvard, while I was doing my PhD. I couldn't help it. You know, Matthew Arnold says the theater is irresistible. Well, it certainly was for me. And I just I scribbled away these plays and they were put on of a spring weekend. And one spring weekend in nineteen sixty

Erich Segal14:26

or sixty one, I can't remember it so long ago. I wrote a play

Erich Segal14:31

It was more than just a college play that someone from New York came up and said, Hey, I'm going to put this on off Broadway.

Erich Segal14:37

And so it was put on that Christmas off Broadway, and it ran a glorious thirty nine performances.

Presenter14:42

And there was a review that played professionally in Boston?

Erich Segal14:46

That was five performances. I think thirty nine is my record, I have to say.

Presenter14:48

39 is my

Presenter14:49

Yes.

Presenter14:50

It must have been bad weather or something of that sort.

Erich Segal14:53

Well, in Boston, frankly, you guessed it. It was a snowstorm, so I do have an excuse. Uh it was bad reviews in New York that did it in.

Presenter15:00

You became known as an expert play doctor, Boston Triads. You were invited to sit in and say, Can you fix this ending? and that sort of thing.

Erich Segal15:08

Well, that's a kind of unique profession. I don't think you have play doctors in England, or for that matter in in any other country of the world. When a show is in trouble out of town,

Erich Segal15:19

And of course by definition all shows that are out of town are in trouble.

Erich Segal15:24

They never trust the author who wrote the play, even if he's Tennessee Williams, and I'm not kidding you, they call other people in.

Erich Segal15:30

And they always call in inferior people. And I consider myself one of the inferior a graduate student at Harvard called in to rewrite or fix up or punch up.

Erich Segal15:41

A Professional Playwright's Production. Now I did this a couple of times, and what's extraordinary is the text of a of a play in Try Out has changed every night.

Erich Segal15:51

So that I would write from one to five,'cause I'd have my Harvard classes in the morning, I'd get to the theater at one, they'd tell me what they need, I'd write it. From about four to five the actors would learn the lines, and that night the lines I wrote in the afternoon would go in.

Erich Segal16:05

I would sit in the back and hear if they lived or died. Did they stay in? That's the point. Well, of course some stayed in and some didn't. Uh but what a learning process. The great Richard Rogers invited you to collaborate. How did that come about? Well, that was a as a result of uh it's good strange uh uh order of events. Uh the one thing of note I wrote for the cinema, and I only wrote

Erich Segal16:28

a piece of it. Thousands of people. I think an octopus wrote The Yellow Submarine, and I was one of the eight uh tentacles that that took part in that screenplay. But Richard Rogers read in the paper that I was writing The Yellow Submarine and uh

Erich Segal16:43

It was important to him, I think, to work with someone young. I was very much younger at the time, and uh he asked me to write uh a play called You Can't Get There From Here with Him. It took us two years to write and you will not believe this, that at the end of the two years, when we were ready to go into production, the man upon whose novel we based the show withdrew his permission for us to do it.

Presenter17:06

Well that, as they say, is shell business.

Erich Segal17:07

So that's making show business.

Presenter17:08

How did you get mixed up on the Yellow Submarine to start with? With the Beatles?

Erich Segal17:12

I I really don't know, except that the producer lived in the neighborhood of Yale where I was teaching. And and you see, professors in America are much more

Erich Segal17:23

stayed than in England. Here eccentricity is not only uh tolerated, it's, I think, encouraged and fostered.

Erich Segal17:30

So almost every uh academic has got some side whom. He plays tennis or he's a chess champion or he writes thrillers, etcetera. It's not common in America. So the fact that I wrote the odd song, the odd off Broadway play, Thirty Nine Performances or Not, was known certainly thirty five miles from Yale, which is where mister Al Brodax lived. And so he just came up to see me and, to put it bluntly, I worked cheap. I was, I think, the fortieth writer on the Yellow Submarine.

Presenter17:57

And what better man to consult if anybody's making a movie about the Olympic Games? You worked on the Games, didn't you?

Erich Segal18:03

Yes, I'm Michael Winner Production, and and uh I can tell you if if Michael Winner's listening, I still haven't met you, mister Winner, but if you are listening, I don't like the way you directed the games. With due respect. He said he didn't want to meet writers. I mean, I don't think there's a way to make movies myself.

Speaker 118:14

Yeah.

Presenter18:14

Yeah.

Presenter18:19

Well there might be writers who don't want to meet directors.

Erich Segal18:21

Maybe I'll have to go to this desert isle after all his bad remarks.

Presenter18:24

Record number four, where have we got to?

Erich Segal18:26

We have got to a strange record, but keeping in mind that one must uh keep oneself amused all alone on this desert isle, I picked uh Darius Millot's Le Beuf sur

Erich Segal18:39

which is based on Brazilian folk songs and it's in the meter or the rhythm of five, which is almost impossible to beat. And by the time I mastered it I figured I would be rescued by some ship.

Presenter19:51

An excerpt from Le Berf sur l'Étoire by Darius Mio, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati.

Presenter19:59

Now, Eric, one day about eleven years ago you sat down to write a screenplay, based, I believe, on an overheard conversation.

Erich Segal20:06

Well, it was actually based on a conversation between two students of mine about a third student of mine who, after graduation from college, got married. His wife worked to support him through his graduate degree. And the girl just as he got his degree, the girl contracted a a dread disease and died. That's all I used as far as what I wrote was concerned, these bare facts that a student of mine had at the age of twenty five lost his wife. And this little opus or opusculum, to be more precise,

Erich Segal20:44

was love story.

Presenter20:45

And did you send it on the runs of the movie producers?

Erich Segal20:49

Well, I was used to writing on on hire, if you know what I mean. You know, people would give me a book like The Games or a a project like the Yellow Submarine. So this was the first original thing I'd ever done. I had no great hopes for it, but my agent did send it around, and it got sent very quickly back.

Erich Segal21:07

They said, Are you crazy? Are you mad? Has this man lost his touch? We were going to have this man. I was I actually lost a job because of Love Story.

Erich Segal21:15

Because I was supposed to get I won't say the name of the the film'cause it's it's it's rude, but it it was a spy picture that I very much wanted to do. You know, people shooting each other in the streets of Vienna or something like that. But I thought that was, you know, a big step up for my screenwriting career. I lost it because they said I had gone soft and I couldn't write bullets because I was writing soap opera. This is a true story. So not only did I not sell love story, I didn't get blank, blank, blank screenplay.

Erich Segal21:42

So you rewrote it as a novel.

Erich Segal21:45

And I didn't have much success there either. It was a very short novel. Yes. Well, it wi I didn't know how to write a novel, and and uh of course there are critics that say I still don't. But uh I I'll accept that. In any case, I did my very best, which is all I can do, and I did my very best, and I wrote Love Story up as a hundred and thirty two page

Erich Segal22:04

thing.

Erich Segal22:05

whatever you may call it.

Erich Segal22:07

And even there there was no great rush to publish it, and it was only out of pity

Erich Segal22:12

that it was published, the story simply being that the publisher that published my Latin translations.

Erich Segal22:18

had to its credit, and I mean this quite seriously, a sense of continuity. We've got a professor uh who owes us another book anyway. I owed them the death of comedy at the time and they said, We've got to keep him happy. He's written this novel. What will it cost us to run off a few thousand copies, make him happy, publish it?

Erich Segal22:34

It'll be forgotten and he'll get on to his serious stuff.

Presenter22:37

How many copies did they print in that first graph?

Erich Segal22:39

The first printing of Love Story was 2,000 copies. And it was only at the intercession of

Erich Segal22:46

The man that bought it for Britain, named Robin Denniston, who is now head of the Oxford University Press and is now once again the publisher of Love Story because it's a school text for people learning English, that that Robin called up my American publisher and said, You'd better get some more copies of this book. It's going to go.

Erich Segal23:02

And they said, You're an Englishman, what do you know? Go sell your books in England Well, he did, but he made them make another two thousand copy printing.

Presenter23:10

Now just to top this story, how many copies of Love Story have been sold in the United States?

Erich Segal23:15

Well, at last count, and I run out of fingers, of course, almost twelve million.

Presenter23:22

Yes. And of course there are a number of other languages.

Erich Segal23:26

Uh

Presenter23:26

Yeah.

Erich Segal23:26

Yeah, there are thirty-three languages that I know of.

Presenter23:28

Bye.

Erich Segal23:28

Uh

Presenter23:28

Obviously, um you were then commissioned to write a screenplay.

Presenter23:32

All over again.

Erich Segal23:32

At last, at last, all of a sudden, the stone that the builders rejected to quote the Bible, if I may, the stone that the builders rejected had become the chief cornerstone.

Erich Segal23:42

Having been an absolute pariah in Hollywood, and by the way, I've since become a pariah again. I mean, one is a hero for a day and a half in Hollywood if you're lucky. So I was faded, wined, dined, and encouraged to write a screenplay to love story, which I did with great relish. Especially since I had already had it written.

Speaker 423:52

Yeah.

Presenter23:58

Yeah.

Presenter24:00

Especially

Presenter24:02

Which they could have bought a few months earlier for a couple of thousand dollars.

Presenter24:07

Let's get back to music. What are what are we having next? I think we got number five.

Erich Segal24:11

Well, I have a a sentimental attachment to this song, and I hope narcissism will not be added to my many sins being toted up. But my affection for this song is

Erich Segal24:23

Very peculiar because I wrote it.

Erich Segal24:26

I wrote it for the film Love Story, and up until what's called the the the final cut, it was in the film.

Erich Segal24:33

I collaborated with Charles Aznavour, the French singer and songwriter, and the man who was singing on this record.

Erich Segal24:40

And it was in the film and and at the last minute, you know, Hollywood has strange ways of thinking. They pulled it out. I can't complain about the song they put in its place. But in any case I was stuck with a song that I had very much liked, had written for Love Story, and was called Love Story. Didn't know what to do with it. Well, five years later, Charles Asnow did know what to do with it. He took out the word story and called it Our Love, My Love.

Speaker 425:04

Allah

Speaker 425:06

My love.

Speaker 425:10

Won't be strong.

Speaker 425:13

Crawl

Speaker 425:14

The sky

Speaker 425:18

In a widely wearing banner

Speaker 425:24

Ninety-seven.

Speaker 425:27

Rainbows high

Presenter25:30

Jarles Asnavour singing Our Love, My Love, which should have been heard in the film Love Story. Now Love Story of course has a sequel.

Erich Segal25:39

Yes, it took me a long time to write Oliver's story because I was traumatized not only as a character in life, unable to live through the days as an instant media happening, which is what I was.

Erich Segal25:53

But because I wanted to be a writer and I all all of a sudden was sidetracked by the fact that I was invited to too many parties and too many chat shows and I wasn't sitting at the typewriter nearly enough. It took me seven years to complete what I had started in Love Story and writing Oliver's Story. It was for me a great mental block removed.

Erich Segal26:14

I don't think Oliver's Story is a great book. I am pleased with it because

Erich Segal26:20

It's a little bit better than Love Story from a technical point of view. I learned how to write a little bit better.

Presenter26:26

Was it harder to write, you said, that love story was really something that you sat down and and and

Presenter26:32

Got immediately.

Erich Segal26:34

In Love Story I wrote the first paragraph of Love Story twenty seven times. I then wrote the rest of the book, and I don't think I changed more than three or four words. I long for those days, because now with each succeeding book

Erich Segal26:48

I mean, I thought Oliver's story was hard.

Erich Segal26:51

But then when I came to Ride Man, Woman and Child, that was absolutely horrendous.

Erich Segal26:57

It gets harder and harder for some reason.

Presenter26:58

Was Oliver's Story presold as a film?

Presenter27:01

In other words, what are the pressures on you from from publishers and film company and so on to to write it to the same formula?

Erich Segal27:09

Well yes, I did feel some pressure to to write Oliver's story and uh if ever the charge of meretricious behavior could stick against me I would say yes, uh I wrote it to measure, I wrote it to order, but I'm not sorry I wrote it because it freed me to write other things and it taught me a little bit more about how to write a novel.

Presenter27:30

And now you've written a third one, Man, Woman and Child, which we'll talk about in a moment. Let's have another record first.

Erich Segal27:37

Well, I've chosen Mozart's second horn concerto, played by uh Alan Sivill, beautifully.

Speaker 428:25

Yeah.

Presenter28:40

The beginning of the third movement of Mozart's horn concerto in E-flat, Kirkel four one seven, Alan Sivil as the soloist.

Presenter28:48

The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Nephil Mariner. Now Man, Woman, and Child. Once again the academic background.

Presenter28:58

Yeah.

Erich Segal28:58

One has to write about what one knows. I stick to the territory with which I'm familiar. One is academia, two is in specific the academia in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and three is the geography of the heart. I could never write an adventure novel.

Erich Segal29:17

I could never write a spy novel, I could never write a Hollywood novel.

Erich Segal29:22

But I hope I can write a human novel and that's what I'm really striving to do and that's why if Man, Woman and Child is just the slightest step forward from what I've written before I'm really satisfied because I'm trying to deal with the gut emotions of people, the hurts and and and the warm feelings as well. I must say I found it unput-downable. Well that's very nice of you to say.

Presenter29:46

Now, you've married an English lady. She's also in the literary world, although not a writer.

Erich Segal29:52

Well, I I've been blessed in more ways than one in my wife. Not only is she, you know, a wife of valor, as I say in the dedication of the book to her, but having been in publishing, she was an editor. I mean, this th this sounds almost calculating on my part. I mean, I married an editor, not because she was a good editor. That was just an extra little added item. But she now, since we travel so much and spend so much time in America,

Speaker 130:07

This is

Speaker 130:08

Very much far

Erich Segal30:19

She's my editor and I'm I'm very lucky in having her as an editor.

Presenter30:23

Now obviously she shares many of your interests. Ha have you made her a runner as well?

Erich Segal30:28

Actually, yes. She's a terrific runner. She used to be a ballet dancer, so she she She's used to suffering. Well, I don't know if it's suffering or not. When you pass a certain barrier in running, it gets to be exhilarating. And these past couple of years in which I've been injured, uh she's been running uh farther than I have.

Erich Segal30:44

I've seen her do six miles in forty two minutes, and that's very good.

Presenter30:47

That sounds very fast indeed. Where do you live? Where's your base? Where's your home?

Erich Segal30:51

In New Hampshire, right on the border of Vermont, where I teach at Dartmouth, which is the northernmost Ivy League school, which is surrounded by mountains and has as its center a wonderful library which few students ever use because they're busy skiing because it's mountain country. So it's a wonderful place to spend part of your life.

Presenter31:11

Record number seven.

Erich Segal31:13

It's Pablo Casals playing Colnidre in the cello concerto that Bruch wrote. Uh now it's a Jewish prayer. Bruch was not Jewish who wrote the concerto. Casals was certainly not, but I know that Casals knew what he was playing.

Erich Segal31:28

when he put all the feeling into his performance.

Erich Segal31:32

Colnidre is a prayer that every Jew says once a year, and it dates back to the Spanish Inquisition, when they were forced to compromise their consciences and take on a religion that they did not accept. And once a year they would go down and abjure the oaths that they had made to a God they did not espouse and sang colnidre, which means all vows. Now I say this is universal because it stands for freedom of conscience everywhere. God and man share equal billing in the text of this, and it has to do with your own integrity of conscience. It also happens to be an exquisite piece of music.

Presenter33:09

Colnidre Casals with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Landon Ron.

Presenter33:15

Now, the practical problems, the the fact that you're an athlete and sound in wind and limb will help you on the desert island. Are you good at water sports? Are you a good swimmer? Do you know about small boats?

Erich Segal33:27

Well, I'm gonna learn all that, I suppose. Necessity's a great teacher.

Presenter33:32

Yeah.

Erich Segal33:32

Could you

Presenter33:32

Look it up to yourself.

Erich Segal33:33

Uh

Erich Segal33:34

It's a frightening thought. I mean, you told me, you assured me there would be some sustenance, uh,

Presenter33:38

There's everything you need there if you can use it and if you can find it. There's fresh water, there's food, shelter if you can make it. Materials are there.

Erich Segal33:50

So basically it's the solitude one has to fight.

Presenter33:52

Yes, I would say so.

Erich Segal33:54

Well, I don't know. I have a I I have an imagination that just usually doesn't fail me. I might be able to conjure up a world to keep me company, but I would I would miss a lot of people, especially my wife.

Presenter34:05

Would you try to escape?

Erich Segal34:08

I definitely would, but I would train rigorously before I made such an attempt.

Presenter34:13

Record number 8.

Erich Segal34:15

Well, record number eight, since we've come to the end, I've chosen a what's sort of a double selection. It's one, a toast to you in thanks for inviting me to go to the desert island, and hopefully I can take some of this with me. It's from the beggar's opera, Fill Every Glass, as I hope to do even on the island, and then let us take the road.

Speaker 434:37

With every family provided, for life inspires with courage, love and joy.

Speaker 434:46

Women and wine should life employ.

Speaker 434:52

Aught else on earth desire us, fill every cast, for wine inspires us and fires us with courage of joy.

Speaker 435:17

Our wine inspires us and fires us with love and love.

Presenter35:35

Fill every glass, and let's take the road from the Beggars' Opera, a recording conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. Eric, if you could take only one disc out of the age you've given us, which would it be?

Erich Segal35:44

There's no question in my mind I would have to take a fifth of Beethoven.

Presenter35:47

A fifth of beta.

Erich Segal35:48

Because it would help me with my calisthenics, which I would inevitably have to do to get out to get more records. Surely.

Presenter35:55

And one luxury to take with you something of no practical use, must be inanimate. A stopwatch doesn't count.

Presenter36:01

A stopwatch you can have, yes.

Erich Segal36:03

Well, I'm not sure. I would need a stopwatch because you see that would be the only way I could measure that I was in good enough shape to attempt my swim back to terra firma.

Presenter36:13

Right, a stopwatch you shall have, and one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, and we don't encourage big encyclopedias.

Erich Segal36:20

I would save her reading at my leisure The Odyssey again and again because that's one inexhaustible book.

Presenter36:28

Homer's Odyssey, you take it in the original?

Erich Segal36:31

Yes, it'd be a good chance to learn it all by heart.

Presenter36:34

Right, there's a project for you. And thank you, Eric Siegel, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Erich Segal36:40

Efcharisto, that was his thank you in Greek. I thought I'd throw it in.

Presenter36:43

I'm very impressed. Goodbye, everyone.