Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer, best known for the book "The Outsider"
On the island
Eight records
Eberhard Wächter, conducted by Georg Solti
Since one of my main interests is opera, I've a large opera collection, I'd like a bit of Wagner to start off with, another lifelong obsession, a bit of um Rheingold, the storm music.
Um, I'd like to hear an old favourite, Yves Monton, singing a song called E la Fette Continue, because it's one of the gayest and jolliest songs that I know.
One that reminds me very much of this period. ... On the day when I got the letter from Golanx saying that um he would have published The Outsider, I went out to the cinema in the haymarket with my girlfriend Joy. We went to see the film Daddy Longlegs with Fred Astaire and Leslie Carron, and I remember the tremendous feeling of gaiety that suddenly came over me as I listened to this Something's Gott Give with these blaring trumpets in the middle of it. It brings it back very strongly.
String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135: II. Scherzo
Beethoven always impressed me because he was one of those people who continued to develop, didn't stop, and this struck me as the enormous challenge. I like the escherzo of his last quartet, opus one, three, five, simply because he makes the violinists work so hard.
Well, I'd like um the opening movement of Eric Coates's London suite, the Covent Garden bit, partly because it reminds me of old Golancks and his office in Covent Garden partly because I love in music this kind of fizzy vitality that Coates gets into the music here.
I'd love to hear Bix Beiderbeck's Jasmine Blues, because Bix Beiderbeck is one of the few jazzmen that I've always loved very much, and again this enormous nostalgia of the early period in London, Soho, that um Bix reminds me of.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny: Rasch, Jungs, es geht!
A piece from Kurtweil's Rise and Fall of the City of Maha Gone. the piece um Racheln's Hay, which I love because it has this sort of superb marching music feeling about it.
L'Opéra d'Aran: Closing Passage
What I'd love to end with is the last chunk of the opera by Gilbert Beco, who, as you know, is basically a French pop singer, called the Aran Opera, and which I've always loved and always thought has been unfairly dismissed.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:32What inspired you to become a voracious reader as a child?
Uh I'm not sure. I've always been a kind of romantic, I suppose.
Presenter asks
3:31Why did you leave school at sixteen instead of staying on?
Well, you know, it's a funny thing. It it isn't the kind of thing that uh gets suggested somehow, or at least it wasn't then. Somehow it was taken for granted that I left school at sixteen and started to work, and besides, my father kept saying that he didn't want me lazing around the place any more.
Presenter asks
5:59How did you manage to get thrown out of the RAF during your national service?
I only spent six months in the RAF, then I managed to get myself thrown out by claiming that I was homosexual. ... It was almost accidental. I was so sick of it I hated it. And uh they threw me out. and I decided that I would never again be tied down that if I had to become a tramp and wander around the lanes, I'd rather do that than settle back in an office again.
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Montagu Doughty
I think maybe Doubt is Arabia Deserter, which is a book that I've often tried to read from beginning to end and never quite made it.
Presenter asks
How did you end up sleeping out on Hampstead Heath while writing [The Outsider]?
Well, what happened was that I decided at a certain period that the sensible thing would be not to pay rent all the time, because obviously this was taking far too much money. I thought that if I had a tent this would save rent, so I bought a tent and tried putting this up on Hampstead Heath, but that attracted too much attention, so I ended by simply having a waterproof sleeping bag and sleeping out on the heath, and then going down the hill to the British Museum in the morning every morning and writing the outsider there.
Presenter asks
11:12How did you feel when your second book, [Religion and the Rebel], was panned by critics?
Well, in a funny sort of sense it was an effect of relief. You see, I'd always believed that I had genius. I'd always believed this ever since the age of about ten. But suddenly having people saying yes, yes, um you know, you are a man of genius worried me. I thought I must have been wrong. And uh and now suddenly I was in a situation I once again recognized. I was back on my own. uh back in this situation of working away alone.
Presenter asks
20:37Could you face solitude on a desert island?
Uh this is the basic idea of the outsider. I think I could. I once wrote a novel called The Black Room, which was about this question. How could we strengthen the mind to spend all our time in total solitude if necessary.
“I started to um write my first book at the age of thirteen. It was an enormous compilation that was an attempt to summarize all of the scientific knowledge in the world.”
“When I left school I worked in a warehouse, a wool warehouse, for a couple of months. I must say I hated it. I've always hated work.”
“I'd sent off a few things, but I always found that I got so completely miserable when they were promptly rejected that I finally stopped sending things off. I've an absolute hatred of being rejected.”
“I'd always believed that I had genius. I'd always believed this ever since the age of about ten. But suddenly having people saying yes, yes, um you know, you are a man of genius worried me. I thought I must have been wrong.”