Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author of Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women, and earlier violent science fiction.
On the island
Eight records
When I was a small child in Shanghai in the 1930s, I was given a wind-up gramophone… I had one record, the teddy bears' picnic, which I played hundreds of times, so much that when I was in my twenties and thirties I detested it… The curious thing is, about ten years ago, I began to like it again, and now I can hear it for ever.
The Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby
When we came out of the camp… the house next door… had been taken over by two American officers, and they put on little film shows for my sister and I. And the first film they showed us was a film of the Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby singing Don't Fence Me In, which I thought really was tremendously ironic.
From the film Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth, who's always been someone I have admired tremendously, particularly when I think of the great film she made with Orson Welles, The Lady from Shanghai… I've always liked the notion that… she might… have been my nanny.
Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio
Anne Murray / Vienna Philharmonic
Mozart (from The Marriage of Figaro)
Giovinette's love song from The Marriage of Figaro, one of the most beautiful songs ever written.
Beautiful song, and reminds me of a visit to [Rio] which I made in nineteen sixty nine when I [saw] on Copacabana [Avenue] actually seeing a tram with the signs Copacabana Ipanema, and it seemed more magic even than a street car named Desire.
Overture to The Barber of Seville
Which many people will have heard as the background music from a wonderful theatre ad that was shown on television a few years ago. I think my favourite TV commercial of all time.
Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)
I've always liked Cole Porter's music tremendously… Noël Coward singing, Let's Do It.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07Why did it take you so long to write anything autobiographical?
It was a very long time to wait. I started Empire of the Sun in nineteen eighty three, which is nearly forty years after the events I describe. And I think I was just repressing all my memories of the war…
Presenter asks
4:34Now why did you strip [the character] Jim of his family in the book?
I wanted to reach some sort of psychological truth in writing that book, which was a kind of expedition into my own heart and what makes me… and the experiences that made me during this time. And as part of this investigation, I needed to sort of face up to certain strains of solitariness and… excessive self-dependence… making myself alone in the book… was truer to my actual experiences.
Presenter asks
7:05Did you ever really cease to be your parents' son? Was it difficult for them to mould you in their image?
I think that's true. In retrospect I think… a sort of estrangement took place between myself and my parents. It wasn't an estrangement based on hostility, but just on circumstance… They must have found me intensely wearing.
The keepsakes
The book
Herman Melville
I think Moby Dick, which I've been reading and never finished for thirty years, and with a bit of luck sitting on the beach I might actually see a white whale.
The luxury
I take my unicycle, which when I was sixty my girlfriend Claire bought me. Known her for twenty five years, and she knows that my one dream is to ride the unicycle, and I'll have lots of time to practise on the island.
Presenter asks
17:34What happened exactly when your wife died?
She… we were on holiday in Spain and she caught a rare form of pneumonia and died… Completely unexpected. Tragedy that absolutely bowled me for six.
Presenter asks
22:43Did you also feel so strongly about [violence in Crash because] you witnessed so much meaningless death and because your wife died for apparently no reason?
Yes, I think all these things [fed] together. I think my wife's death was an inexplicable event… nature, I felt, and still do, had committed a dreadful crime against this young woman and her children… there was no way of rationalizing it… I suddenly felt… that if I could find a key to this, I could find a key to my wife's death… crash represents… a desperate attempt to make sense of violence in the world.
Presenter asks
25:34How will you manage without a woman on your desert island?
That's going to be a problem.
“I'm interested in the next five minutes. I'm interested in change. And it's always struck me that England is a country desperately in need of change.”
“I wanted to reach some sort of psychological truth in writing that book, which was a kind of expedition into my own heart and what makes me…”
“I think I was in love with America. A love that I've never lost, actually.”
“I found it an extremely natural and happy thing to do… All you need to do is to love the children and let them look after you. I mean, I've also said that, of course, I didn't bring up my children. They really brought me up.”
“I stood in the debris of all my memories and I felt at home for the first time.”