Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An acclaimed novelist and son of Kingsley Amis, known for witty, provocative novels like Money, London Fields, and Time's Arrow.
On the island
Eight records
part of the reason I'm so fond of it is that my next book, a short novel, is also called Night Dream, and it was a kind of a rhythm in the back of my head as I was writing this short novel.
takes me back to my days on high heels and flares and um flower shirts
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 'Pathétique' (4th movement)
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich
As you'll see by the end of this programme, I'm really a a very sentimental soul. Uh beneath this exterior as a as Kat Vonnegut said, I'm as soft as a sneaker full of slime. There's a terrible sentimentality. trying to get out and The books in a sense are just sort of tough talk to keep that sentiment sentimentality at bay. And this music mirrors exactly that.
It's a Man's Man's Man's World
This is a song that's true and beautiful for the two minutes of its duration.
Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins are what I spend ninety ti ninety percent of my music listening time with. And it's always been my theory that all sex sex music is seduction. This would be the the brisk way of trying to seduce a woman.
YesterdaysFavourite
this is the the rather more whiny and weedly way of trying to seduce someone, but with great complexity and feeling.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:05Is writing a compensation? Does your fiction make up for shortcomings in your reality?
I don't think so, because when I started writing it was not out of any conflict, it was more out of a sense of play and wanting to join the dance. What is being redeemed is the the formlessness of life. It would be intolerable to me to just be a you know, a passive liver of my life. It's only when you write that you can you can impose form and pattern and humour, comedy. Otherwise the stuff itself would strike me as unendurably thin.
Presenter asks
6:12Why have you chosen as your genre unpleasant low-life characters?
Well, yes, but they're charming, too. And the the lower they are, the you know, it seems in my work, the more popular they are with my readers. ... There's nothing cynical about it at all. In fact, it's not even a choice. It's a recognition. ... You recognize what your subject is, what you were sent down here to write about.
Presenter asks
9:03Why did you go to more than a dozen schools?
Because my parents moved around and also, um, broke up. So starting a new school became an almost annual event. And I think it m t made me rather obsequious and ingratiating child. Uh I was in any case a middle child. With very um expressive brother and sister. So I was always picking up the pieces and being a diplomat and and actually avoiding attention.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Well, uh cable T V. If I had to just take a [few] channels then they I'm afraid they would be the sports channels. I know you can't say that without everyone thinking you're laddish, whatever that means, but I'm afraid I do get an awful lot of pleasure watching tennis and football and other sports.
Presenter asks
21:39How painful was [the midlife crisis and the press attention surrounding your marriage breakup and book advance]?
Uh well it was nothing compared to what was actually going on. Um what happened in the papers was just a pinprick compared to the actual events.
Presenter asks
27:20How has your father's death affected you?
Very saddened by his death. But ... it's been liberating, that a great obstacle has gone. ... you know, as psychologists say, death isn't is not a simple thing, it's the complex symbol. ... you feel very energetic. The body feels important because it is about to be promoted into the front line. ... you also feel you've got to get stuff done because your death is now more present to you, because h the intercessionary figure of your father has gone.
“It's only when you write that you can you can impose form and pattern and humour, comedy. Otherwise the stuff itself would strike me as unendurably thin.”
“You recognize what your subject is, what you were sent down here to write about.”
“Anything anything that's any good is going to cheer you up no matter what it's about.”
“It's what keeps writers honest, because um it's all that matters being read after you're dead. And by definition you're never going to know whether it's that's an absolute lock.”