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(This episode is marked as explicit because of strong language and sexual imagery.)
(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Selected Short Stories Of “Saki” by “Saki”, published in 1939 by Penguin Books
Joining Charles Adrian for the sixth Second Hand Book Factory is Brautigan Book Club co-founder and Please Plant This Book re-creator Fuchsia Voremburg. Calling a spoon a spoon, they discuss foxes, Fuchsia’s job and their mutual love of Saki. Some rather explicit porn is read aloud.
Another book by Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, is discussed in Page One 123.
More information about the Brautigan Book Club is here.
More information about Please Plant This Book is here.
You can browse Prowler’s selection of books here.
More information about the wonderful Dinefwr Literature Festival can be found here.
Selected Short Stories of “Saki” by “Saki” is also discussed in Page One 158.
You can read Christopher Hitchens’ review of The Unbearable Saki by Sandie Byrne in The Atlantic here.
This episode was recorded at the Wilton Way Café for London Fields Radio.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 20th November, 2012.
Book listing:
The Crying Of Lock 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Slaves by Alex Von Mann
Selected Short Stories Of “Saki” by “Saki”
Links:
Where The Wild Things Are by Christopher Hitchins in The Atlantic
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the Second Hand Book Factory This is Charles Adrian on London Fields Radio in the Wilton Way Cafe. Today, I am sitting opposite Fuchsia Voremburg, who I will introduce and speak to in a moment. Now, I sometimes think of her - she may or may not know this - as the stone fox so, from... from Sofia Coppola's film of The Virgin Suicides here's Todd Rundgren singing Hello It's Me.
Music
[Hello It's Me by Todd Rungren]
Charles Adrian
Hello Fuchsia.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Hi.
Charles Adrian
Hi. So we're in a rather loud Wilton Way Cafe today.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yes, it's um... it's louder than I expected. It, sort of... sort of, feels like I'm... I'm trying not to do the thing where I shout to you over...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... you know...
Charles Adrian
You just have to trust that, in the machine, it's all being registered.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm. Okay.
Charles Adrian
Even if... Even if I can't hear you. I'm [indistinct]
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
You can... You can write some subtitles for me if I...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... if I miss something you're saying.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] I'll... I'll... Or we'll play it like radio charades.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. There'll be long periods of silence...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... during which exciting things are happening and then I will come up with the answer and that will be...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... then we'll move... we'll move forward in steps...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] Yes.
Charles Adrian
... like that.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yes.
Charles Adrian
I just want to explain why... why I think of you as the stone fox. It's partly because of the film...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Hmm.
Charles Adrian
... but also because your name, Fuchsia, starts with Fuchs, which is fox in German.
Fuchsia Voremburg
That's so funny. I was thinking about that as I was cycling here and I saw a lady with a very beautiful small dog. And I was having a daydream about what kind of a dog I'd like...
Charles Adrian
Aha.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... and then I thought: “Wouldn't it be fitting if I just had a fox!” Because then it would be, like...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It would be perfect.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... Yeah... “and her fox!”
Charles Adrian
Absolutely.
Fuchsia Voremburg
And I thought about that for...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Fuchsia Voremburg
... all the way over Tower Bridge. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
That's... That's...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
I love those kind of coincidences. I think that's brilliant.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yup.
Charles Adrian
Well, I suppose not such a coincidence given that you live with your name all the time but...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yes. And I think foxes daily.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Fuchsia Voremburg
So [indistinct].
Charles Adrian
The other... The other thing that... that Fuchs means, which I discovered... because I was just checking that Fuchs does mean fox and that I haven't made a...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... ridiculous error... it apparently means an irregular blast hole. Did you know that?
Fuchsia Voremburg
A r... An irregular...
Charles Adrian
An irregular blast hole.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[musing] Hmm. Interesting.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Which I rather like because that's going to become relevant...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... later on in the program. You will see. Wh... Why don't we... Why don't we talk about the book that you've brought that you like?
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] Yes. Yes. The book...
Charles Adrian
Because I'm really... I want to know what it is.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] The book that I have brought that I like is the book that I have read the most times in my life and it's called The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. And...
Charles Adrian
[interested] Aha.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... it's... it's a book that, the first time I read it, I came away with it with almost nothing and thought: “Hmm, that was an interesting...” I think it's only... it's only 120 pages long so it's a brief...
Charles Adrian
Yeah, it looks... it looks my kind of size, as books go.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yup.
Charles Adrian
I like these... I like short books.
Fuchsia Voremburg
But don't be fooled because it's a wonderful maze of possible answers and you think that it's, sort of, a mystery. And then you think that you're getting close to some moment of revelation and then the carpet is pulled out from under you.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Aha.
Fuchsia Voremburg
And I've been trapped in it for six years now. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
How amazing.
Fuchsia Voremburg
And...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Um what...? I've heard his name, Thomas Pynchon, but I don't know why. What a... What will I have come across that he's written?
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] His... His most famous book is Gravity's Rainbow, which is a fairly impenetrable tome.
Charles Adrian
That doesn't ring a bell either.
Fuchsia Voremburg
And... what else? He's... He's famously not ever made a public appearance as himself...
Charles Adrian
Really?
Fuchsia Voremburg
... except on The Simpsons. He was on The Simpsons. So it's a book... it's an... it's a book that is a mystery written by a man who is a mystery and...
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... I like that.
Charles Adrian
Oh I love that. I think if you're going to get lost in something...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... that's... that's the thing to get lost in.
Fuchsia Voremburg
I'm also, in... in homage to your other radio programs, which I'm so impressed by your ceaseless accent-doing, I'm going to try...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh!
Fuchsia Voremburg
... my best American accent
Charles Adrian
That makes me very happy.
Fuchsia Voremburg
And it... it could be a disaster so please...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Good! The more disastrous the better.
Fuchsia and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Fuchsia Voremburg
... if it's going that way, stop me, but...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Fuchsia Voremburg
chapter one
One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. Oedipa stood in the living-room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work. She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlán whose door had just been slammed, it seemed forever, waking up two hundred birds down in the lobby; a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west; a dry, disconsolate tune from the fourth movement of the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra; a whitewashed bust of Jay Gould that Pierce kept over the bed on a shelf so narrow for it she'd always had the hovering fear it would someday topple on them. Was that how he'd died, she wondered, among dreams, crushed by the only icon in the house? That only made her laugh, out loud and helpless: You're so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew.
The letter was from the law firm of Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus, of Los Angeles, and signed by somebody named Metzger. It said Pierce had died back in the spring, and they'd only just now found the will. Metzger was to act as co-executor and special counsel in the event of any involved litigation. Oedipa had been named also to execute the will in a codicil dated a year ago. She tried to think back to whether anything unusual had happened around then. Though [sic] the rest...
And that's it. I thought I'd have a go at the American accent.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, I feel as though your American accent is actually a comment on... on Americans as you see them. I feel as though we've seen...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] ... something of your attitude towards Americans in that... in that reading. They're a little bit stern.
Fuchsia Voremburg
That's possibly true.
Fuchsia and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Fuchsia Voremburg
Maybe it's the voice of Thomas Pynchon as I hear it...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... is a kind of... Yeah... a... a firm librarian. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yes. I saw her in a no-nonsense skirt...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... striding amongst the effects of... of this...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yes. Well, that's interesting. Well, the great thing about Oedipa Maas is that she is... in...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oedipa Maas! What a wonderful name.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... in my... Yeah, a brilliant name... in my opinion, she is the great heroine - or actually the great hero - of the counterculture of American literature and American culture. And I think that what's wonderful about her adventure in this book is that she, sort of, takes on all the different roles that are available to a woman in 1970 from a, kind of, beatnik, hobo...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I see. Right.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... to a housewife to a private investigator. And it's just a fantastic book that has all these little hidden gems woven within it.
Charles Adrian
Wonderful. I'll... I'll look it up next time I have a...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... have a space in my reading schedule [/skˈedul/]...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... or schedule [/ʃˈedul/]. What's the American rep... the American pronunciation?
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] Sched [/ʃed/]... Schedule [/ʃedˈul/]. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Schedule [/ʃˈedul/]? Schedule [/ʃˈedəl/]? Is that...?
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughing] I don't know.
Charles Adrian
They don't really do dipthongs do they, so...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Schedule [/ʃˈedul/]. I've no idea.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Sched [/sked/]... I think it's schedule [/skˈedul/].
Charles Adrian
Is it schedule [/skˈedul/] in America?
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yeah, it's just schedule [/skˈedul/].
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah no! Because that's what I say. And I pride myself on my...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Ah.
Charles Adrian
... British English...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... pronunci... Nevermind. Let's ju... I'm going to play the first track that you've suggested to me which...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Excellent.
Charles Adrian
... which is one that I love anyway. I... I'm annoyed that it was used for that irritating cider advert, which... You're looking at me blankly as if you never saw that advert. Okay...
Fuchsia Voremburg
No.
Charles Adrian
... well, I'll just leave you in innocence. You...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... your... your life has not been marred by that. This is... this is The Time Of The Seasons by The Zombies.
Music
[The Time Of The Season by The Zombies]
Charles Adrian
So. Now, the second part of the... today's show is the book that I have brought to give to Fuchsia...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... which I hope you're going to like. I... I think... I think you're the right person to give this book to. It's a...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] Right.
Charles Adrian
... book that I've had sitting in my kitchen for a long time and I've been looking at it thinking: “Who could I give it to?”
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
It's from Prowlers Uniform Series, although there aren't actually many uniforms in... in the book. It's a book called Slaves by Alex Von Mann...
Fuchsia and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... which I bought... It was... One of the most blissful days I ever spent at university involved a picnic for a friend of mine's birthday and... and we sat in the garden and, at a certain point, we decided what we really needed to do was go and buy some porn from Borders. And this is... this is what I came back with. I've only just been able to read it all the way through.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
At the time, it made me feel too queasy and I couldn't get beyond the first chapter...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughing] I'm very excited.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... but I'm older now and more able to deal with the realities of the world. This... I'd like to say, although it has a sticker on the back saying that it cost me £5.99, it is actually immensely more valuable than that. I did... I... Because I looked up on Amazon a little while ago to try and find out a little bit more about Alex Von Mann and what I found out was that a copy of this is available, used - whatever that means - on Amazon for £94.95.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Crikey. Well, I shall treasure it and when times get hard, I shall...
Charles Adrian
Dip into it.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] ... sell it. [laughs] I shall dip into it.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh. Okay. Or sell it. Yeah.
Fuchsia and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Fuchsia Voremburg
I shall dip into it and then I shall sell it.
Charles Adrian
Chapter One
The space in the first class restroom on the flight from Johannesburg to Dar Es Salaam was cramped. It helped that the young flight attendant had fucked there before. Timothy knew right where to stand to advantage what little space he had. His pants - he wore no undershorts - were dropped around his ankles. His large cock and large accompanying balls, the latter within their containing sack of blond-haired skin, were propped up on the leading lip of the cool porcelain sink. He handed a condom packet to the young man positioned directly behind him.
“By the look of that long-lasting boner in your trousers, I decided large was your size,” Timothy said. “Lubricated because it's been a long time since my butt ate such a hefty meal.”
He put one hand to each vertical edge of the mirror and waited for Jack Mallard to unveil the hard cock Timothy had anticipated since the beginning of the flight.
Jack was made hot by the twin globes of Timothy's bare buttocks, flattened slightly along their mutually shared crack. He could have just unzipped, yanked out his stiff prick, socked with latex and shoved it right in. However, he had a bit more control than first impulse. It wasn't as if he were a virgin, egged on by the misconception that if he didn't get 'it' now, hard and fast, an opportunity might never again present itself, nor was he a novice as far as fucking in the lavatory of a plane. His job had taken him through a hell of a lot of airways round the world and had initiated him into - as he had initiated others into - more than one of the ten thousand feet and twenty thousand feet fuck clubs. Sometimes, like now, he even fucked in the air lanes for free.
There you go.
Fuchsia Voremburg
That was fantastic.
Charles Adrian
It's... It's... So it starts... It starts right away and it doesn't...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] There's no...
Charles Adrian
... let up.
Fuchsia Voremburg
There's no mucking around there.
Charles Adrian
There is no mucking around...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... in... at any stage. But you'll be amazed to know that there is actually some kind of plot going on amid the... fucking. I don't know how else to put it.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
It's a really filthy book.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Excellent. Well, I...
Charles Adrian
It's horrid, actually.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... I... I look forward [laughing] to finding out...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Fuchsia Voremburg
... exactly how horrid.
Charles Adrian
I should have given some kind of warning, shouldn't I, before I read that, saying, you know: “Anyone of a delicate disposition...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... cover your ears or go and make a cup of coffee or something.” There are no women in this book.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Right. That's f... That's fine.
Charles Adrian
I don't know whether that would...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... cause the readers to lose their boners. I don't know. Because that's obviously the... that's the priority. I'm going to read... I'm going to... I'm not going to read... I'm going to play something now which is entirely different.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Excellent.
Charles Adrian
This is a memory of... of our... I think our bonding time, Fuchsia, I would say, in my Mini in Wales. This... This is Mexico...
Fuchsia Voremburg
[indisctinct]
Charles Adrian
... by The Staves.
Music
[Mexico by The Staves]
Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Welcome back to Page One, the Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian. [laughing] I'm sitting opposite Fuchsia Voremburg. What's the book that you've brought for me?
Fuchsia Voremburg
So the book that I've brought for you is a book that you have probably read at some point in your life, I imagine. It's something that I really associate with you because it's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Aww.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... a book that I... I loved as a child and I think has a lot to answer for in terms of my sense of humour and my national identity, actually. Everything I associate with being English...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... or being British comes from Saki.
Charles Adrian
[gasps]
Fuchsia Voremburg
So this is...
Charles Adrian
Oh my! That is so exciting.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... the Selected Short Stories Of Saki and it's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. I was reading an essay about Saki this morning.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Oh excellent.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Is that... Am I showing off now?
Fuchsia Voremburg
No, no! That's very impressive. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Fuchsia Voremburg
And this is actually a... since we were talking about second hand books... this is a Penguin first edition...
Charles Adrian
Oh my.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... but it is a heavily-foxed...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [indistinct] making me so happy.
Fuchsia Voremburg
... [laughing] first edition.
Charles Adrian
A heavily-Fuchsia-ed first edition!
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] And it... It is a heavily-Fuchsia-ed, heavily... exactly...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's beautiful. But it's one of those orange stripy ones.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[affirmative] Mmm. So it has no... it has no monetary value, unlike Slaves, which is... I think there's quite a nice contrast in that...
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yes.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughing] This book is worth ever so much money and this book is worth almost no money.
Charles Adrian
But I think, yeah, in a... in a, sort of, spiritual battle...
Fuchsia Voremburg
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... there's no contest, is there?
Fuchsia Voremburg
No, there is no contest for...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh no, Saki's one of my favourite writers.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[speaking over] Well, I think... I think that Saki would have appreciated the Uniform Series by Prowler Books. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] I think he would, actually. I think you're right.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughing] He would have loved it!
Charles Adrian
And Christopher Hitchens, I think, feels the same. I'm going to switch myself off so you can read to me.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Okay.
Reginald's Choir Treat
“Never,” wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, “be a pioneer. It is the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.” Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer.
None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as table decoration.
It followed that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to breakfast and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast.
Therefore, the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter undertook the reformation of Reginald. Her name was Amabel; it was the vicar's one extravagance. Amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually gifted; she never played tennis, and was reputed to have read Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee. If you abstain from tennis and read Maeterlinck in a small country village, you are of necessity intellectual. She also had been twice to Fécamp to pick up a good French accent from the Americans staying there; consequently she had a knowledge of the world which might be considered useful in dealings with a worldling.
Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook the reformation of its wayward member.
Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil to tea in the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy influence of natural surroundings, never having been in Sicily, where things are different.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] I love it. I love disrespectful things about the universe.
Fuchsia Voremburg
It is, yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] [indistinct] so great.
Fuchsia Voremburg
Very good.
Charles Adrian
I love... Yeah. Oh wonderful! I'm going to... I'm going to love reading... Particularly because it is such a beautiful book and it has so clearly been read. I... All those things make me so happy. Thank you so much, Fuchsia. I'm going to finish with your other musical suggestion, which is either Bela Lugosi's Dead By Bauhaus...
Fuchsia and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... or... or it's Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus. What I want to say before I play this is: it goes on for ever. So I am going to play the whole 9 minutes 34 seconds of it. But, for those of you who, like me, are not a massive fan of the track do... do feel free to go and do something else. [laughing] I'm playing this for Fuchsia.
Fuchsia Voremburg
[laughing] Thank you so much.
Music
[Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]