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(This episode is marked as explicit because of strong language.)
Episode image is a detail of a photo by Charles Adrian.
Still recovering from an unusually early morning, Charles Adrian talks about the three last books he was given by guests on his podcast in 2013.
Jackie Collins, by the way, is the author of thirty-two novels; you can read about her on Wikipedia here. Jackie O is the nickname given to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; you can read about her on Wikipedia here. You can read about Jacqueline Susann, meanwhile, on Wikipedia here.
You can read a pamphlet on gay oppression published in 1970 by The Red Butterfly in New York here.
You can read about Jesuit conversion activity in different parts of the world on Wikipedia here.
The books discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 62, Page One 64 and Page One 65.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 29th June, 2020
Episode released: 4th August, 2020
Book listing:
Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann (Page One 62)
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (Page One 64)
When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman (Page One 65)
Links:
Jacqueline Susann on Wikipedia
Gay Oppression by The Red Butterfly
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 172nd Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and this is the 16th Page One In Review. You join me today on Monday the 29th of June 2020.
I saw the very early morning today, which is unusual for me. It's not at all unusual for me to wake up early - I very often wake up at three o'clock... five o'clock... quarter past six... whatever it might be - but normally I would just turn over or shuffle about a bit in the bed and then fall asleep again. This morning.... I don't know, it was... it was light and it was quite windy so, yeah, perhaps that's why I was... I was more than usually disturbed by a fluttering sound that I can hear from my bedroom. It's been there for, I don't know, the last couple of years. Maybe more. I still haven't got used to it. It's... Yeah, it's an intermittent sound. I don't... The trains don't bother me at all as they come past. I feel quite used to them. Even the very heavy, loud, goods trains that thunder past in the dark hours of the night. Generally, that doesn't disturb me or if I happen to be awake I enjoy the sound of them going past but I know what they are. And [laughs] I think that helps me feel more positively towards them. I can't work out what this fluttering sound is... where it's coming from. It has some relationship with the wind but I don't know whether it only comes when the wind is in a particular direction or is coming at a particular speed. I'm not sure. It really... I mean... So some nights I don't hear it - in fact, most nights I don't hear it. I don't hear it during the day at all - I think it's probably drowned out by other sounds if it is going on. But even on the nights when I do hear it, it's mostly silent and then suddenly [makes fluttering sound that crescendos sharply and then tails off]... something like that. [laughing] And it just... I don't know, it just plugs into some adrenaline-producing part of my body mind and I find it incredibly irritating.
So... So yeah, this morning I was bothered by that at about half past four and I decided to get up and it was lovely. There were clouds in the sky on two different levels. So there were some quite low clouds which were very much in shade and then above them perhaps some Altocumulus clouds - something like that - just catching the sunlight and they were kind of yellow orange colour. Yeah. And I pottered about. I did various things. And then at about half past eight I went back to bed again, which was the only sensible thing to do, and slept for another three or four hours. And now I'm here. It's the afternoon and I'm ready to talk to you about books.
Welcome. Welcome. Thank you very much for joining me today. This is, for those of you who don't know, a podcast about books. And these episodes - the Page One In Review episodes - are episode in which I'm going through all of the books that I've been given by guests on the podcast over the last eight years.
[page turning]
So I've got as far as the book that Allan Taylor gave me during the 62nd Page One. This is Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann, who is the author of Valley Of The Dolls, among other things. In fact on the back here it says:
Jacqueline Susann follows her enormous successes Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine and Every Night Josephine with a story so touching and so exciting in its twists of character relationships, that will not only captivate her millions of devoted readers but will win her many new admirers.
[laughing] That's a rather touching prediction isn't it? On the back here there is also a picture of the Valley Of The Dolls - the... the... presumably the paperback edition of that book - and a picture of the paperback edition of The Love Machine alongside a headshot of Jacqueline Susann, who has wonderful, luscious, dark Jackie Collins hair. Well, it's, kind of, Jackie Collins meets Jackie O, I would say. It comes from quite high on her head and then sweeps down and flicks out. It's quite superb.
This is a Corgi paperback edition of the book. It is 499 pages long. It's a little bit foxed. It's quite a... It was quite a nice copy to read. I don't remember a huge amount about the story but... Oh, in the front here it's got... So underneath the title Once Is Not Enough someone's written “t'aint, you know...” and then “love, C + A”. That's interesting. That's my two first initials. I don't think it was me who wrote that.
From what I remember this is a book about a teenage girl whose father is something in the movie business. I think he might be a producer - in any case, I think something to do with Hollywood - and he's rich and I think he brings her out into the world somehow. I don't know if she's been at a boarding school. I don't have any memory of her mother or what relationship she might have or have had with her mother. Her mother might be dead. I thought I would read for you a little section in which the... the girl - the teenage girl - whose name seems to be January... In fact she might be... yes, I suppose she must be the January Wayne mentioned on the last page. [mysteriously] Mmm! I won't tell you what it says on the last page. That's rather intriguing. Right. Okay. So she's having dinner with... with her father, Mike. In fact, on the page before I'm going to start reading she says to him:
“I see Mike the man and I love him.”
And then he says:
“You only see what I've let you see. But now I'll give it to you straight. I was a lousy father and an even worse husband. I've never made any woman really happy. I loved sex... but I never loved. I still don't.”
[laughing] Yeah. Okay. So I'm going read you from... That was from page 177. I'm going to read you from page 178, 179, 180 and 181. So January is having dinner with her father and... so... yeah, he's talking about... I don't... Actually I don't know what he's talking about. But he says:
“Every time I start, I remember that I got into this thing for us.”
”Us?” she said. “In the beginning, it was just for “
“Okay... Okay. Maybe it was the only way out for me, too. But I did try to give you the works. A great apartment, a maid, a car... Okay, so you walked away from it. But you know it's always there, so you're not gambling with scared money. Dee tried to give you a guy, but you don't like the color of his hair. Okay, so he's said he wants to marry you. But we both know that doesn't mean a guy is madly in love with a woman. It's a cinch he's not foaming to see you. I don't buy business meetings at night. I've used that excuse too many times myself.”
“You think he's with Karla?”
He shrugged. “If he's lucky... maybe he is. In my book, any guy who gets a shot with Karla has to flip out over her. I know I would.” He paused and looked at her thoughtfully. “Say, maybe you're not in love with David because he doesn't want you to be... at the moment. Let's face it, he wouldn't want you all turned on over him while he was in the midst of making it with Karla.” He grinned. “Ever think of that? Maybe he's holding you off. After all, if a guy doesn't get romantic with a girl, how can she be in love with him?” He seemed relieved at his new analysis. “Wait till he turns on the high voltage. I bet it'll be a whole new ballgame.”
“You would flip out for Karla?” she asked.
“What?”
“You said you would flip out for Karla.”
“Haven't you heard anything else I've said since then?”
She nodded. “I heard it. But I'm asking you a question.”
“Sure I would.” He finished his beer.
“And you really think she's too much competition for me?”
He smiled and patted her hand. “You're a girl, she's a woman. But don't worry - David asked you to marry him. That means that you're the girl he really wants - later.” He was grinning. “When he wants.”
“When he wants...” She laughed. “Oh, Mike, do you actually think David hasn't come on strong for me and...”
He slammed his fist on the table. “Has that sonofabitch tried anything?” His jaw tightened. “I'll kill him. Don't tell me he's tried to... to get intimate with you.”
She couldn't believe it. Mike, who had all the women... Mike, who told her about Tina St. Claire and Melba... Mike, suddenly switching their relationship to outraged father and innocent daughter. It was crazy... insane... yet something told her not to tell him the truth.
“David has been a gentleman in every way,” she said. “But I know that I could have him any way I want him.”
“Any woman can have any man if she'll spread her legs,” he said coldly. “But you're different. David knows that too.”
“David!” She almost spit the name out. “Dee comes up with a nice presentable cousin, and I'm supposed to act like a Barbie doll and fall in love with him and live happily ever after. And you know something? I tried... and I almost brainwashed myself into believing it. Tell me - is that what you wanted for me? To fall in love with a nice plastic man, wear a white bridal gown, settle down and maybe raise a daughter and find a David for her to marry? I mean - like the song says - ‘Is that all there is, my friend... is that all there is?’”
He called for the check. Then he stood up and left some bills on the table. They walked out into the night. Two boys with long hair with red butterflies sewn onto the backs of their dungarees passed. They stopped at a street light and began to kiss.
“Looks like love is everywhere these days,” Mike said.
“They're Red Butterflies,” January said.
“They're what?”
“It's a Communist Gay Liberation group that operates in Canada. A few of them are in town for recruits. Linda thought of doing a story on them. But it's not for Gloss.”
Mike shook his head. “Know something? When you asked me in there, ‘Is that all there is?’ I can't tell you whether that's all there is or not. Because I don't know anymore. I don't know what is - in life, in show business... in anything. The whole world has changed. In my movies and all the movies of my day... the villain had to die. The hero won the gunfight, and ten years ago if I had a twenty-year-old daughter who was dating a David, I'd have said, ‘What's your rush? The world is your oyster. And I'll give it to you.’ But I'm not the way I was any more than the world is the way it was. So maybe I am looking for a quick solid soft berth for you. Because I look at this bright permissive world of today and in my book it stinks! But I can afford to turn my back on it because I'm fifty-two. I've lived a good hunk of my life. But you can't... because it's all you've got. And I can't turn it back to what it was. The corner suite at the Plaza belongs to someone else now. The Capitol Theater is now an office building. The Stork Club is Paley Park. That world is gone. You can only see it on The Late Show. Unfortunately you've got to face the world as it is now. So try to enjoy it. Because suddenly one day you wake up and find you're played out. It happens overnight. So grab every brass ring you can, because when you look back, it seems like a hell of a short ride.” He put his arm around her. “Look. I just saw a shooting star. Make a wish, babe.”
They were standing in front of her building now. She shut her eyes, but she couldn't think of anything she really wanted. And when she opened her eyes he was gone. She watched him walk down the street. He still walked like a winner.
Later, as she lay awake in the darkness, she thought about the things her father had said. He was afraid of the world now - afraid for her... and afraid for himself. Well, as he said, it was her world now - the only one she had - and it was up to her to go out and squeeze it and make it fit. She would be a winner... and prove to him that it could be done.
She smiled as she stretched in the darkness. “Daddy,” she whispered, “when Dee comes home from her backgammon game, you two better not sit up and worry about me and my future. Because, Daddy... I'm smiling... not sighing.”
There you go. I should probably have said that the brave new world that they're talking about is the world of the seventies - this is set in the very early seventies. Yeah. So. I think that gives you a flavour of the book. Even if I don't remember what happened I do, kind of, remember the very strange and slightly inappropriate relationship that this father and daughter have in it. Yeah.
[page turning]
Okay. The second book that I have to talk to you about today was given to me by Natalie Clark during the 64th Page One. That, I remember, we recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on the south bank of the Thames in London. The 62nd Page One - my conversation with Allan Taylor - was recorded here in my flat where I'm recording this but Natalie and I met at the Royal Festival Hall and we chatted in the cafe, which... yeah, I think was fairly noisy. That episode was released on the 7th of January, 2014 so it was the first episode released in 2014. I think it was the last episode recorded in 2013.
She gave me The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell which... yes, rather like The City And The City by China Miéville, which I talked about in the previous Page One In Review... I mean these... Yeah. It's another one of my absolute favourite books that I've been given by guests on my podcast. I loved this book and I loved the sequel, which I listened to the audiobook of. Children Of God the sequel is called. This - The Sparrow - won the 1998 Arthur C. Clarke Award. It also apparently won the 1996 James Tiptree Award and the 1998 BSFA Award. It was also her first novel. It's a beautiful book and so... yeah, rich and complex and full of ideas and images and beautifully told. This is a science fiction book. Essentially, what happens is that a group of scientists on earth who are listening out for signs of extraterrestrial life hear what they come to realise is very beautiful music coming from a planet in a different solar system and the Jesuits fund a mission to send a group of people to the planet to make contact.
And I don't... I don't know, there's something in me feels as though there's something a little comic about the idea of the Jesuits funding a space mission but it makes perfect sense. The Jesuits, you know, are the arm of the Catholic Church that were sent to spread Christianity to South America and Asia and I don't... perhaps other parts of the world - I'm not entirely sure of the history - and so here, you know, they're used to spread Christianity but also Earth culture to other parts of the galaxy. And, you know, rather like when they were spreading the word of God on earth in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth century chaos ensues and they do - you know, on a generous reading - more damage than they intend to. I... Yeah. I don't want to talk too much about what happens in this book because I think you should all read it or listen to it but it... yeah, it's full of hope and love and beauty and also misunderstanding and betrayal. One of the really interesting things about it is the way in which Mary Doria Russel describes an assumption of shared values leading to pain and catastrophe. I think she does that very, very well.
I'm going to read you a little section. It's quite a short passage. It's just... It's page 237 of this Black Swan paperback which is 503 pages altogether. This will introduce you to the names of some of the characters and it describes the last few hours before they arrive on the planet that they've been sent to. I seem to remember that there's a rather wonderful detail. There's... Yeah, there's quite a lot of description of how they're going to get there and how the spaceship... I think the spaceship is made out of a... I want to say a hollowed out meteor and for half the journey the engines are aft - you know, behind them basically - pushing them so that they're accelerating - they accelerate continuously for half of the journey, which also gives them a kind of apparent gravity, I think, so they can stand on, you know, what seems to them to be the floor but is... would seem to us, I suppose, to be the walls - and then for the second half of the journey they decelerate and the way that that works, as long as I'm remembering the right story, the... the ship flips a hundred and eighty degrees and then the... the engines, you know, work as breaks for the second half of the journey.
Oh, and the other thing that... [frustrated] argh! There... I mean, there are so many things that I love about this book. But an other thing that I love about this is that it also deals with Einstein - with the... you know, relativity and what happens to their different ageing - because, you know, as they go to this other planet, they're travelling very close to the speed of light and so they age an awful lot slower - and time in fact passes an awful lot slower for them than it does for people back on Earth - and that becomes a very significant part of the story.
Okay. So this is... This is page 237:
All of them, in their own ways, prepared that night both for death and for a kind of resurrection. Some confessed, some made love, some slept exhausted, and dreamed of childhood friends or long-forgotten moments with grandparents. They all, in their own ways, tried to let their fear go, to reconcile themselves to their lives prior to this night, and to what might come tomorrow.
For some of them, there had been a turning point that now seemed justified, however painful the decision might have been. For Sofia Mendez, a way to make peace with what, even now, she could only think of as ‘the days before Jaubert.’ For Jimmy Quinn, the end of worry that he was wrong to leave his mother, and right to claim his life as his own.
For Marc Robichaux and Alan Pace, there was a sense that they had lived their lives the right way and confidence that God had recognized their artistry as the prayer they had always meant the work to be, and there was hope that He would let them serve Him now.
For Anne and George Edwards, for D. W. Yarbrough and Emilio Sandoz, this voyage had given meaning to random acts, and to all the points where they had done this and not that, chosen one thing and not another, to all their decisions, whether carefully thought out or ill considered.
I would do it all again, each of them thought.
And when the time came, each of them privately felt a calm ratification of those reconciliations, even as the noise and heat and buffeting built to a terrifying violence, as it seemed less and less likely that the plane would hold together, more and more likely that they'd be burned alive in the atmosphere of a planet whose name they did not know. I am where I want to be, they each thought. I am grateful to be here. In their own ways, they all gave themselves up to God's will and trusted that whatever happened now was meant to be. At least for the moment, they all fell in love with God.
So... yes, that's a moment of particular religiosity in the middle of this story but the idea of God and what God might be and what God might mean and belief and faith and how those things might work and what those things might make you do... all of those things are problematised in these books, The Sparrow and Children Of God. Yeah, just... I... Yeah, I can't recommend this book highly enough. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Yeah, I'm sorry to play favourites but it is what it is.
[page turning]
Okay. The third book that I have to talk to you about is When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman. This is one of my favourite titles [laughing] of books that I was given. This was given to me by Christine Goldsmith during the 65th Page One which we recorded at her house - I think between Christmas and New Year. Ah, so that... no that must have been the last episode that I recorded in 2013. Okay. Well that's quite pleasing that we close out 2013 with the third book of this episode.
I don't remember anything about this book at all. From... From what I'm going to read you now I'm assuming there is a brother and sister who have a difficult relationship. I'm going to read you a little bit on pages 125 and 126 in which the brother and sister are in a boat together. The brother seems to be called Joe and the sister seems to be called Elly and then there's another character called Charlie, who is talked about. I don't know who Charlie was. But in this edition the book is 324 pages long and then there's bonus material after that - an “Author's Note” and “The Inspiration for When God Was A Rabbit” and “Sarah Winman's Life as a Writer” and then “Reading Group Questions”. This is a Headline Review paperback edition of When God Was A Rabbit. Yeah. I mean, I... Yes. Sorry. I don't have anything else to say about it. It's just... It's one of the many, many books that hasn't stuck in my brain. But yeah, so I'm going to read you quite... quite a fractious scene here. It's only a few paragraphs long but... yeah, it suggests that there is... there is a snake in the garden, to stay with religious imagery. Okay:
I punted the boat under the branches and saw damson berries on the bushes ahead. I'd be making jam with my mother soon. I liked making jam. Swapping school books for activity.
‘Joe,’ I said, completely unthinking, ‘Charlie would have loved [sic] this, wouldn't he?’
‘Fuck off, Elly,’ he said, suddenly sitting up, and I recoiled at his sharpness.
I lost my balance and fell onto the side of the boat, just missing a rowlock [/rəʊlɒk/] and a worse injury...
Or rowlock [/rɒˈlək/]. Rowlock [/rɒˈlək/]? Not sure.
The pain shot into my shoulder and I reached for my arm; rubbed it hard and stifled the tears wedged in my throat. I wanted him to look at me, to help me, but he wouldn't; instead his eyes narrowed as he looked into the sun, as if blindness was preferable to the sight of my betraying face. Unhelmed, the boat floated aimlessly and became wedged on a bank of shingle.
‘See what you've done,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ I said, rubbing my arm.
‘Fucking idiot.’ It was a fallacy that time had healed him; it had simply allowed him to hide and file his experience away under the simple labelling of: Him and Me.
We waited silently for the tide to catch up, and as I rubbed the bruising on my elbow, I vowed never to mention his name again. To me he was dead. And he disappeared once again from our lives back into our convenient amnesia, until that strange night in December when he unexpectedly returned. And when his name was unexpectedly mentioned. But not by us.
Isn't that intriguing? Who is Charlie? What's he done? How is he going to come back into their lives? Okay. So there you go. When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman. Good Housekeeping called it “Mesmerising”, the Guardian called it “Sharply funny, whimsical and innovative”, the Observer called it “Captivating... rendered with an appealing frankness, precision and emotional acuity” and the Daily Mail called it “Beguiling... you can't quite get the voice out of your head”.
Right. There you go. Those are my books for today. Thank you very much for joining me for this, the 16th Page One In Review. In the next episode we will get to the end of the first shelf of books and start the second shelf. I have... Yes, as I've said before, I have all my books in a bookshelf. They more or less fill three quite short shelves. And so here we are nearly at the end of the first shelf, about a third of the way into this project. Yeah. If it already feels too long for you imagine how it feels for me. I'm the one who has to do all the reading and the talking! Okay. I think I need to do some more sleeping.
Right. [laughs] Yeah. Again, thank you. Goodness me! Come on, Charles Adrian. You just have to say goodbye and press the button. Okay. Goodbye.
Jingle
Thank you for listening to Page One. For more information about the podcast, please go to pageonepodcast.com.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]