Alison Lurie

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty five, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

On our desert island this week is the American novelist Allison Lurie.

Presenter0:34

You're no stranger to England, of course. You are over here quite a lot.

Alison Lurie0:38

Well, I try to come every year for a month or so, yes.

Presenter0:41

How important is music in your life?

Alison Lurie0:43

I like music, but I couldn't call myself a musical person. I don't know as much about it as many of my friends.

Presenter0:51

Did you ever learn an instrument? I mean, did you start the piano?

Alison Lurie0:55

Oh, of course, like all children, I had piano lessons, and at one point I played the recorder, but that was a long time ago.

Presenter1:02

Are you a concert goer?

Alison Lurie1:04

Yes, but the not a great deal.

Presenter1:07

Now you have eight discs to take to your desert island. You don't know how long they're going to have to last. Did you find it very difficult to choose this little short list?

Alison Lurie1:16

I did and uh

Alison Lurie1:18

I did choose three operas because I that way I can have a story as well as the music.

Presenter1:24

What's the first record you've chosen?

Alison Lurie1:26

It's a selection from The Marriage of Figaro sung by Federica Von Stada.

Presenter1:32

Why do you choose it?

Alison Lurie1:33

Because Mozart's concern in this opera is much like what I'm trying to do in my novels.

Alison Lurie1:41

I'm trying to write about society, about uh love, both from its comic and tragic side.

Alison Lurie1:49

and uh trying to give a picture of an entire world, even though a limited one.

Speaker 42:08

It can swim away.

Speaker 42:13

Oh, praise He Lord.

Speaker 42:35

I will sing the Lord of faith.

Speaker 42:43

God breathe us here.

Presenter2:59

Voique Sopete from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

Presenter3:03

Frederico von Stade with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carian.

Presenter3:10

Alison, you were born in Chicago. Your mother was a journalist, I believe.

Alison Lurie3:14

That's right.

Presenter3:15

So there was a kind of literary direction already in your life?

Alison Lurie3:19

Well, perhaps so. My parents were great readers. I think that was more influential than the fact that she'd been a journalist long before I was born.

Presenter3:27

Were you a bookish girl? Did you read a lot?

Alison Lurie3:30

I did. I I loved books, and I was always nagging my mother to take me to the public library.

Presenter3:36

What did you read mainly?

Alison Lurie3:37

Oh, fairy tales and children's books My favorite author was E. Nesbitt, the British turn of the century writer.

Presenter3:46

Did you start writing stories as a child?

Alison Lurie3:48

Oh yes, I started writing stories and poetry when I was six or seven, encouraged by my mother who was interested in this. But of course it was very amateurish until I was in college, but I

Presenter4:01

Where were you at school in Chicago?

Alison Lurie4:03

Oh, no. I though I was born in Chicago, I don't remember it because when I was about four I moved to New York and I was brought up outside of New York City.

Presenter4:12

And college?

Alison Lurie4:13

Then I went to Radcliffe, which is the women's part of Harvard.

Presenter4:17

What did you read? English?

Alison Lurie4:18

Yes.

Presenter4:19

Oh, yes, indeed, you you won a poetry prize.

Alison Lurie4:22

I know it was a poet it was nothing special. It was a poetry prize just for students at that college.

Presenter4:28

And when you graduated, what happened to you?

Alison Lurie4:31

I went to New York and got a job in a publishing company.

Presenter4:35

Oh, in the literary life already.

Alison Lurie4:36

Yeah, well, if you'd seen what I did.

Alison Lurie4:40

It wasn't very literary. I was uh

Alison Lurie4:42

writing letters to people whose books have been rejected, uh trying to let them down slowly.

Presenter4:48

Did you meet any authors?

Alison Lurie4:49

Not at that period, no.

Alison Lurie4:52

Of course I saw them passing through the office, but I was far too lowly to be introduced.

Presenter4:57

And then you moved into the academic life. How did that come about?

Alison Lurie5:01

Well, I married a man I'd been in college with who'd uh gone into the army.

Alison Lurie5:07

and then come out of the army after I'd graduated and was working in the city.

Alison Lurie5:13

and he came back and we met again. I began to uh see a lot of him and then we got married and uh moved back to Boston.

Presenter5:21

And he was lecturing.

Alison Lurie5:23

Well, he was at that point a graduate student at Harvard. Later he became a professor.

Presenter5:28

Let's have your second record. What will that be?

Alison Lurie5:31

This is a song I remember from early childhood.

Alison Lurie5:35

It's sung by the American poet and biographer Carl Sandberg, who, as not everyone knows, was also a folk singer.

Alison Lurie5:44

and it's called The Horse Named Bill.

Presenter5:46

Then why do you choose it?

Alison Lurie5:48

I think because I loved it so much as a child, and it seems to me typical of the kind of fantastic, exaggerated, nonsense humour that children love, when I came to write a book about children, only children, in which the two narrators are little girls, I tried to uh get that sense again of the world

Alison Lurie6:11

as seen from a child's point of view, the love of nonsense and w craziness and the exaggerated.

Speaker 36:20

Oh, I had a horse, and his name was Phil, And when he ran, he couldn't stand still, He ran away one day, And also I ran with him.

Speaker 36:33

He ran so fast, he could not stop, He ran into a barber shop and fell exhaustionized.

Alison Lurie6:36

Iran in

Speaker 36:40

With his eyes in

Speaker 36:41

In the barber's left shoulder.

Presenter6:46

Carl Sandberg, The Horse Named Bill.

Presenter6:49

So you married into academic life, Alison. A professor of English on the campus at Harvard. And you started to teach yourself. Did this mean taking another degree? Did you have to take a doctorate?

Alison Lurie6:59

Oh no. I didn't start to teach until nineteen seventy. For many years I was simply a housewife and a mother.

Presenter7:06

How many children did you have?

Alison Lurie7:08

Three children.

Presenter7:09

When did you start to write?

Alison Lurie7:11

Well, I've been writing since I was about six or seven years old, so I can't really answer that.

Alison Lurie7:17

I gradually began to write more and more seriously in college and uh kept it up I've kept it up most of the time ever since.

Presenter7:25

In your early marriage years you read a lot.

Alison Lurie7:27

I did, yes.

Presenter7:29

Did you get some acceptances?

Alison Lurie7:30

At first I did when I was uh writing short stories and poems, but uh after I got married I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to write a novel because I was only working part time then.

Alison Lurie7:43

But in fact I wrote two novels and I couldn't get either of them published. For about ten years I didn't get published at all.

Presenter7:51

Were you really discouraged? Were you still writing, or did you stop?

Alison Lurie7:55

Well, I did stop once for about a year. My friends and my family were sorry for me. They their attitude was, Poor Alison, why does she keep trying? She has such a nice life, such sweet children. Why doesn't she simply accept that she's not going to make it?

Alison Lurie8:13

And I did for a year when I was kind of exhausted, with two very small children, try not to write but I was so bored that I abandoned that idea and I went back to the typewriter, even though at that point I was convinced I'd never be published.

Presenter8:29

What enabled you to to turn the corner?

Alison Lurie8:31

Well, it was an accident, really. A friend of mine died suddenly, and I wanted to remember her. I was afraid I'd forget the times we had together

Alison Lurie8:43

what I knew of her, so I began to write a memoir

Alison Lurie8:46

just putting down everything I recalled.

Alison Lurie8:49

and when it was finished I showed it to some friends who had also known her. They wanted copies, and so many people eventually wanted copies that one of my friends paid to have about two hundred printed.

Alison Lurie9:02

and one of these eventually came into the hands of a publisher who wrote and asked me if I happened to have a novel ready. I almost had finished one, so when I did finish it I sent it to him, and he accepted it.

Presenter9:16

Well, that's a very nice little good luck story.

Alison Lurie9:19

It is, isn't it?

Presenter9:20

Let's have your third record. What will that be?

Alison Lurie9:22

Oh, this is the Bach double violin concerto.

Presenter9:26

Why do you choose it?

Alison Lurie9:27

Well, I first heard this when I was a freshman in college.

Alison Lurie9:31

and for me it stands for the kind of romantic view of love and marriage that I and my friends had at the time.

Presenter10:41

The opening of the second movement of Bach's double violin concerto, Daniel Barenboim conducting the English Chamber Orchestra, with Itzak Perlman and Pinkus Zuckermann as soloists.

Presenter10:53

So, your first novel, Alison, Love and Friendship. What was the setting?

Alison Lurie10:58

It was set in a small college town in New England.

Presenter11:01

That's a sort of safe, familiar setting for a first novel.

Alison Lurie11:04

Well, it is, yes. A lot of writers in America are located in college towns.

Presenter11:10

And what was your second novel? Did you tackle something a little more challenging?

Alison Lurie11:15

Well, I don't think it was more challenging, but it was a very different setting. It was Los Angeles.

Presenter11:21

When had you been to Los Angeles?

Alison Lurie11:23

Well, my husband was offered a job in Los Angeles in the English department at U C L A and we moved out there. We were there for four years.

Presenter11:32

And Imaginary Friends the next one. You're back to academic life there.

Alison Lurie11:37

Yes, in a sense, although that book takes place in a very small town where two academic sociologists are investigating a group of people who believe themselves to be in touch with planets.

Presenter11:51

Was it in any way science fiction or was it?

Alison Lurie11:53

No, it's really about the behaviour of sociologists who infiltrate this group of uh I guess you'd you'd call them uh eccentrics or even nuts.

Presenter12:06

Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:06

Was that based in any way on experience? Had you mixed with any kind of group like that?

Alison Lurie12:11

Oh, never. When I got the idea, I did go to meetings of a couple of fringe groups just to uh pick up the jargon, but the idea of the book came from

Alison Lurie12:24

Two classics of American literature, it's really based partly on Hawthorne's Blythedale Romance and partly on James's The Bostonians.

Presenter12:34

Record number four.

Alison Lurie12:35

This is uh

Alison Lurie12:37

Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in Grooving High.

Presenter12:41

Why do you choose it?

Alison Lurie12:43

I first heard modern jazz when I was in college.

Alison Lurie12:47

I happened to know a man named Race Newton, who later became a jazz pianist and traveled all over England and Europe.

Alison Lurie12:56

playing jazz piano. He is now, as a matter of fact, living in Yorkshire, where he raises goats and plays the piano on weekends.

Speaker 413:05

Mm-hmm.

Alison Lurie13:05

And it was he who first played this record for me back I think about nineteen forty five.

Alison Lurie13:12

Yeah.

Speaker 413:12

Uh

Presenter14:09

Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker grooving high. That must have seemed very far out in nineteen forty five.

Alison Lurie14:16

Oh, it did it was something I'd never heard before none of us had.

Presenter14:19

Mm-hmm.

Alison Lurie14:20

The record had only been out, I think, a few months.

Presenter14:23

On to your next novel, Real People. There's a long sequence about a writer's colony, a place where writers can get away from everything except each other, and sit at sturdy tables and work very hard until six o'clock when they're allowed to talk to somebody. Had you ever been to one of these curious organizations?

Alison Lurie14:43

I have. I've been to one in uh New York State as a matter of fact.

Presenter14:47

Does it work? Can you get a lot done?

Alison Lurie14:50

I think it works very well if you're thoroughly into a book.

Alison Lurie14:55

It's a very good place to revise.

Alison Lurie14:57

I think it would be very hard to start something there.

Alison Lurie15:01

Because the atmosphere is so intense and if you're not working steadily the sound of everyone else's typewriter could be distressing.

Alison Lurie15:11

Uh

Presenter15:11

You're really away from everywhere. You're in a wood somewhere. Is that the idea?

Alison Lurie15:14

You're in the woods and everything is done for you. Meals are served. Uh you have no responsibilities, nothing to do but work, and if you're in a mood to work, that's wonderful.

Presenter15:25

If you're not

Alison Lurie15:26

If you're not, it's it's frightening and frustrating.

Presenter15:29

Now on to a book that was perhaps your most important to date a more serious book, The War Between the Tates. This was what the early seventies, Vietnam, student unrest

Presenter15:41

There was a lot going on.

Alison Lurie15:43

Yes, the late sixties, perhaps, even more.

Alison Lurie15:46

Yes, it's also an academic novel, but in this book the youth culture or the counterculture or whatever you want to call it

Alison Lurie15:55

is impinging on

Alison Lurie15:57

a settled and happy academic marriage, with devastating results.

Presenter16:02

It was about that time that you started exploring London, wasn't it?

Alison Lurie16:06

I would say perhaps just a little before then I came here first when my novel Real People was published.

Presenter16:13

You move around a lot. You got a place in Florida as well.

Alison Lurie16:17

That's true. I can.

Presenter16:17

So you're zigzagging about a bit.

Alison Lurie16:20

Well, most years I don't move around as much as I am doing this year.

Presenter16:25

Can you write anywhere, or have you got to have the right conditions and very familiar surroundings, and the pen you always use, or the typewriter you always use?

Alison Lurie16:33

No, I can write anywhere as long as it's uh quiet and peaceful.

Presenter16:37

You're no good in aeroplanes or or trains.

Alison Lurie16:39

Absolutely not.

Presenter16:41

Your next novel was set in a single weekend, only children.

Alison Lurie16:46

Yes, that's true.

Presenter16:47

This was something of an experiment.

Alison Lurie16:49

It was, but uh since this was a novel

Alison Lurie16:53

in which the centre of consciousness was two little girls, I felt it was appropriate.

Alison Lurie16:57

Because children do live very much in the present.

Presenter17:01

Record number five.

Alison Lurie17:03

This is a scene from the beginning of Act Two of Don Giovanni,

Alison Lurie17:08

in which Don Giovanni is singing to Donna Elvira.

Alison Lurie17:13

but he is hiding from her and what she sees is La Perello, who is disguised as Don Giovanni.

Presenter17:20

Why do you like this scene in particular?

Alison Lurie17:22

I chose it because it has to do with themes of

Alison Lurie17:26

Deception

Alison Lurie17:28

And mask

Alison Lurie17:30

and appearance and reality, which is something I have become concerned with, particularly in my later novels.

Speaker 417:45

I can't rule sight.

Speaker 418:24

Come on, Jesus say we.

Presenter18:35

A scene from Metzart's Don Giovanni with Cesare Sieppe, Leontine Price, and Fernando Corena, the conductor Erich Leinsdorff.

Presenter18:46

There's one odd one out among your books. It's a a light hearted piece of sociology, the language of clothes. What prompted that?

Alison Lurie18:55

Well, I was stuck in the middle of my last novel, and I wanted a project.

Alison Lurie19:00

and I thought of making a picture book out of a couple of articles I'd written about clothes, about the meaning of what people wear.

Alison Lurie19:09

When I began the book it expanded and expanded and it turned into a full length study of this subject.

Presenter19:17

You mean our clothes are really sending signals to each other?

Alison Lurie19:20

Yes, definitely.

Presenter19:21

The illustrations are marvellous. You must have had great fun finding them.

Alison Lurie19:24

Oh, it was very delightful finding the pictures.

Presenter19:28

Now, as we've mentioned before, you've become a sort of honorary Londoner. I mean, you're a property owner in London, no less. Which area did you choose, by the way?

Alison Lurie19:37

Well, I own a share in a flat in Maid a Vale.

Alison Lurie19:41

It's a a good part of London for me because it's on a underground and the bus line. It's near shops and it's not far from uh the centre of town.

Presenter19:53

And for your latest book,

Presenter19:55

You've acquired enough confidence as an honorary Londoner to to set your story here.

Alison Lurie20:00

Well, yes, I think I could do that. I don't think I could write from within about English people.

Presenter20:07

Well, we'll talk about that book in a moment. Let's have record number six.

Alison Lurie20:11

This is American country western singer Loretta Lynn.

Alison Lurie20:15

And the song is One's On the Way.

Presenter20:18

Why'd you choose it?

Alison Lurie20:19

This is a song about what it's like to be stuck home with your children when you have a sense of lots going on in the real in the great world, let's say. You know that the women's liberation movement has started, that there are parties in the city

Alison Lurie20:35

And you'd like to get out, but there's no hope of it. And I've certainly felt that when I was a mother of young children.

Speaker 420:43

They say to have her hair done Liz Flas All the way to France

Speaker 420:50

And Jackie's saying in a disc quite

Speaker 420:54

Doin' a brand new day

Speaker 420:57

And the White House social season should be glittering and gay.

Speaker 421:05

But here in Topeka the rain is a falling The faucet is a dripping and the kids are a bawlin' One of them a toddlin' and one is a crawlin' And one's on the way

Presenter21:18

Noretta Lin.

Presenter21:20

Now, your London novel, Alison, Foreign Affairs. The book seems to start autobiographically. There is a woman writer getting into a plane in New York and visualizing London which she knows well. What's she going to do?

Alison Lurie21:34

No, it's uh not about a woman writer, it's about a woman academic who's come to London to do research in children's folklore.

Alison Lurie21:44

For her London is the ideal city, and she feels herself to be much happier here than she is at home.

Alison Lurie21:52

She comes to London with really very romantic ideas about it.

Alison Lurie21:57

And the book largely is the story of three Americans who come to London for romantic reasons, or, let us say, with illusions about what they'll find here.

Presenter22:10

We mentioned Henry James just now, and and Henry James often crops up in conversation about you.

Presenter22:18

He, of course, eventually became a British citizen. Can you imagine that happening?

Alison Lurie22:22

I don't think it would be possible for me, and I think it might be a mistake. I think that my real subject is America, and though I can imagine that I might one day write a story or a novel

Alison Lurie22:35

which takes place at partly in this country,

Alison Lurie22:39

I think my characters will always have to be Americans.

Presenter22:42

What's your next book? Have you any idea?

Alison Lurie22:44

I really don't. I'm making notes, but it could go any way.

Presenter22:49

You are, of course, as well as looking after three homes, you are still teaching.

Alison Lurie22:53

Yes, I'm teaching one term a year.

Presenter22:55

And your subject is children's literature, in fact.

Alison Lurie22:57

Well, that's only one of the things I teach. I also teach writing, I teach folklore, I have taught the modern novel, but uh

Alison Lurie23:06

It just happens to be the subject that I gave to my heroine Vinnie Minor in this last book, but she is far more of an expert than I will ever be.

Presenter23:15

Mm-hmm.

Presenter23:16

Is there a lot of demand for that subject by students?

Alison Lurie23:20

Well, there is surprisingly large demand. Of course young women who are going to be elementary school teachers or children's librarians take the course. It's not a requirement, but they often do take it. But uh other students take it because children's literature, and particularly British children's literature is is quite a fad in America.

Presenter23:43

Your next record.

Alison Lurie23:45

This is a song from John Gay's Beggars' Opera Oh Polly, You Might Have Toyed and Kissed.

Presenter23:51

Why do you choose that?

Alison Lurie23:53

When I first came to London as a tourist back in nineteen fifty I went to a production of The Beggars' Opera.

Alison Lurie24:00

And it's connected in my mind with the love of England that I had then and still have. It's a

Alison Lurie24:08

seems to me perhaps the classical British opera.

Alison Lurie24:13

And I've seen it again several times and always enjoyed it.

Speaker 424:21

The wiles of men which would resist Be wooed at length But never won't

Speaker 424:35

But he's not praised, but he so pleased me. What I did you must have adored.

Speaker 424:48

But he is so pleased, and he is so easy.

Presenter25:06

A duet from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, Marjorie Westbury and Carmen Prieto.

Presenter25:13

You've got three homes.

Presenter25:15

Now we're going to give you a fourth one on the desert island. How do you think you'd be able to look after yourself?

Alison Lurie25:21

Well, I imagine a desert island which will have a warm semi-tropical climate and

Presenter25:27

Yes, the climate's all right.

Alison Lurie25:28

The climate's all right.

Alison Lurie25:30

Uh there'll be lots of fruit trees, lots of fish in the lagoon, lots of fresh water. Um it won't be

Presenter25:36

Well, we're not sure about that. You may have to dig for it.

Alison Lurie25:39

Well, perhaps I could dig a little ways.

Presenter25:41

And a lot of fish in the lagoon. How are you going to get em out of the lagoon?

Alison Lurie25:45

I suppose I will construct some sort of net or line. And what with?

Presenter25:50

Come what will?

Alison Lurie25:50

I suppose I could construct a net out of the leaves of uh cocoanut palms or a bamboo.

Alison Lurie25:57

Or I can make a line by unraveling some of my clothes and affixing a hairpin and I'm sure I could dig up a worm or two.

Presenter26:05

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Alison Lurie26:06

Mm-hmm.

Presenter26:07

Do you fancy yourself a camp fire cookery?

Alison Lurie26:10

It's not my favorite form of cookery, but I imagine I'd get by.

Presenter26:14

What about shelter? Could you put up a hut?

Alison Lurie26:16

Well, since it's so warm and it only rains very briefly every day,

Presenter26:21

You have a very idealized view of this desert island. It may not be like that at all.

Alison Lurie26:26

Well, then I would probably fade away and die, wouldn't I?

Presenter26:29

Would you try to escape?

Alison Lurie26:31

It would depend how long I was there. I don't think I'd be much good at building a boat. But I might if I could start a fire I might send smoke signals.

Presenter26:38

And in the meantime, what's your eighth record that you'll be playing?

Alison Lurie26:42

It's uh Schubert's octet. Why? Uh no reason. It's simply one of my favorite pieces of music.

Presenter27:50

Schubert's Octet and F major played by the Vienna Octet.

Presenter27:55

If you could take only one disk to the island, which would it be?

Alison Lurie27:58

I'm sure it would be the marriage of Figueroa.

Presenter28:01

And you are allowed to have one luxury, one item of no practical use whatever, which it would give you pleasure to have with you.

Alison Lurie28:08

Well, I would choose a telephone, so that I could talk to my friends.

Presenter28:11

Now, wait a minute. A telephone isn't that going to be a bit useful. Aren't you going to shout for help?

Alison Lurie28:16

Well, I I don't know where I am.

Presenter28:19

Well, that's true, yes.

Alison Lurie28:20

So I won't be able to tell them to come and get me.

Presenter28:24

Right. In those circumstances you shall have a telephone. And one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare on the island.

Alison Lurie28:31

Well, I think I'll take the Oxford Book of English first.

Presenter28:34

Right.

Presenter28:36

And thank you, Alison Lurry, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Alison Lurie28:40

Well, thank you for having me.

Presenter28:42

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 428:49

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.