Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
American writer best known for his novel "The Naked and the Dead"
On the island
Eight records
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1
Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra
it brings back I don't know brings back suits with vests and spats in my childhood and so I love it for that reason.
The Gasman and the Grave Digger
my first wife used to have a charming way of singing and she used to sing little parodies of English music hall songs. And so when I came to putting down a list of songs I didn't even know why I said I put down English music hall song. I listened to a few and chose this one.
He's the simplest of the three and most enjoyable perhaps in certain ways. Plays a wonderfully beautiful lyrical saxophone.
I remember it as one of the few nights of my life that was absolutely musical, full of wonderful memories. And so uh Sonny Rollins would be a good example of what he's playing here would be a good example of what we heard that night.
I loved his music so much that uh I loved it in spite of the fact that he was a great pain in the neck to me.
I don't know, I just love that song and uh it brings back the Second World War to me I think and uh it's one of my favorite songs of all time, especially sung in German.
ImaginationFavourite
Carmen's rendition of it is uh reminiscent of another one that I have in my head.
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 'Eroica' (Fourth Movement)
Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
if I really could do something immense in music, if I were creative in music and had something large in me, th I I suppose I would like to write a symphony on the size of scope of Beethoven's and like perhaps someday I'll be able to do something like that in literature.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:40Have you ever played an instrument? Do you sing?
I have one of the world's worst singing voices. Um I my children scream when I start to sing. … but but I did play an instrument one time, I played a clarinet when I was a kid.
Presenter asks
1:14Do you find music can sometimes help concentration while you're working?
I don't use it. Uh I'm ashamed to say that I live without much music in my life … I have a few trauma in relation to to music. When I was a child in public school, whenever music appreciation started. I couldn't separate the songs, I didn't know which which one was which. And I remember when we s came time for singing I'd be in horror because the teacher would come along and uh say, You're a listener. Don't open your mouth.
Presenter asks
4:02As a youngster, what did you want to be?
An aeronautical engineer. And in fact, you studied aeronaut aeronautical engineering in in Harvard.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Jorge Luis Borges
there's enough in that one work, which is a selection of his best pieces over the years, published I think by New Directions, to keep my mind interested for many a year.
The luxury
a stick of the very best marijuana
because I'd know I would have one opportunity to smoke it, and only one. And so I'd wait for that perfect day on the desert island when all the conditions were right.
Now what was the inspiration for [enrolling in a writing course]?
It was compulsory for the first I'm a great believer in certain compulsory aspects to education. But in fact, we had a compulsory writing course freshman year. It was compulsory because I didn't do well enough in the entrance exams in English to avoid this compulsory course. … And toward the end of the year they let us write a little fiction. And I was off to the races. … I discovered the joy of uh writing.
Presenter asks
6:03The story goes that you drew great consolation by thinking [being drafted] was going to give you a lot of background for a published novel.
Yes, no one could have been more humorless than myself. I, you know, went to the army with the idea I was going to write the great American war novel and in fact I almost wept the day the invasion started. I didn't cry'cause young men were being killed on the beaches. I came near to weeping because I wasn't over there and thereby I was losing a great novel.
Presenter asks
19:01Tell us about the [intention of your new book, The Executioner's Song].
The book started as a book that would be done in a relatively short period of time, and I saw it as an extended biographical essay about Gary Gilmore … And the more I began to work on it, the more I realized that there was an extraordinary social panorama implicit in the book. … and here I had this incredibly operatic story to tell with a I found a I thought a truly touching and powerful love story at the center of it.
“I've been married a number of times, and each of these not each of these records, I've been married eight times, but these these records reminded me of different women I'd been in love with and what have you.”
“I think one reason [The Naked and the Dead] was so successful is that I wasn't in New York and so therefore I couldn't get on the radio and television and make a fool of myself.”
“There is no such thing as a bad Picasso. There are some Picasso's that are better than others. There is no such thing as a bad Picasso. No, I've never written a papara. I've written any number of books for money. Yes. But mind of a papa is a book that you write with a certain cynicism. In other words, that you feel that there's nothing of yourself in it and that finally you've just turned a penny.”