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(This episode is marked as explicit because of derogatory language.)
Episode image is a detail from a photo by Charles Adrian.
CW: Chris Goode is mentioned in this episode, along with a book that he gave Charles Adrian.
Fleeing across the room from hammering and drilling sounds coming through the wall, Charles Adrian talks politics and revolution.
You can find a handy primer on the limitations of a First Past the Post voting system, along with links to information about alternative systems, on the Electoral Reform Society’s website here.
You can read about Caroline Lucas, who at time of recording this episode was the UK’s first and only Green Party MP, on Wikipedia here.
Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima is also discussed in Page One 185.
Rebecca Solnit, mentioned briefly here, is discussed more fully in Page One 135.
The episode of the podcast Reply All that Charles Adrian mentions about the activist barricaded inside his apartment while the police massed outside is here. The episode is from the podcast Resistance, which you can find here.
The Sadean Women by Angela Carter is discussed more fully in Page One 123. Other books by Angela Carter discussed on the podcast are Wise Children (Page One 54), The Passion Of New Eve (Page One 76) and The Bloody Chamber (Page One 86, Page One 135 and Page One 141).
The homepage of the Battersea Arts Centre is here.
Books discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 121 and Page One 122.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 17th November, 2020.
Episode released: 8th December, 2020.
Book listing:
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (Page One 121)
Revolutionary Letters by Diane Di Prima (Page One 122)
The Sadean Women by Angela Carter (Page One 123)
Links:
First Past the Post at the Electoral Reform Society
Page One 122
Reply All Introducing: Resistance
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 190th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and this is the 32nd Page One In Review. Today is Tuesday the 17th of November, 2020.
It's twelve days since I recorded the previous episode although it feels longer than that. I feel very rusty sitting here. I'm sitting today. Normally I stand on my little IKEA wooden steps to record this at the bookshelf where all the books are that I'm talking about but today there's a certain amount of banging and drilling coming through the wall. And, although you'll probably still hear it in the background, when the recording device is sitting on the shelves it comes right up through the legs of the recording device and, kind of, into the recording in a way that is much more disruptive, I think. Anyway. So I'm hoping it won't be quite so disruptive from here. I'm sitting on the other side of the room and I think the... the train will be a little louder from here but I hope you can forgive that.
For anybody who's new to the podcast: Hello! Welcome. This is a book podcast and in these Page One In Review episodes I'm talking about all of the books that I've been given by guests who came on the podcast. We're approaching the end of the 4th season of the podcast. So I have four more books to talk about and then we've... you know, then we've talked about all of the books - I've talked about all of the books - that I was given during the 4th season of Page One. But I'm splitting that into two so I'm not going to talk about all four books in this episode. In fact, in this episode, I have two books to talk about and then one ghost book, which... yeah, I'll explain about that at the end of this episode.
I'm just going to get right on with it today. I... Yeah, I still... I dream of making shorter episodes again. I used to make short episodes. You know, they were... for a while they were really, like, you know, maximum twenty minutes minutes [makes schup schup sound] and over the last few months that's just [blows out]... it's expanded. They tend to be twenty-five, thirty, even thirty minutes. I don't know if I've... I don't think I've released anything that's forty minutes long as yet but, you know, it's the problem of the self-produced podcast: self-indulgence does creep in.
[page turning]
The first book that I have to talk to you about today, in any case, was given to me by Bettina John during the 121st Page One. We had that conversation in Bettina's studio somewhere in London. I don't remember exactly where that was now. Bettina gave me The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. And this is... this was a very confusing novel for... you know, for me. I don't know... I mean, all sorts of different things happen in it. I'm not entirely sure why it's written in the way that it is written. I think... I mean, the... yeah, the fault is definitely in me rather than in the book. Lots of people like and admire this book and I just... I don't... I don't get it, which is frustrating. But there it is. Frustration is a part of life.
This... So it is... it is, I think, a self-consciously feminist novel but I couldn't tell you why that is. It also has quite a lot to do with politics. I'm going to read you a little section that has to do with politics. That's the bit that I'm probably most comfortable with. It's... So let me read you from the preface. There's a little description of... of the way the novel works and I think this will... yeah, this will give you a better sense than I could just waffling on about it. So:
The shape of this novel is as follows:
There is a skeleton, or frame, called Free Women, which is a conventional short novel, about 60,000 words long, and which could stand by itself. But it is divided into five sections and separated by stages of the four Notebooks, Black, Red, Yellow and Blue.
That's... Yeah, that's a sentence that I find quite difficult to parse. I'm not entirely sure... [quieter] "But it is divided into five sections and separated by stages of the four Notebooks, Black, Red, Yellow and Blue." [normal volume] Anyway. There are four notebooks is the point. There's a Black Notebook, a Red Notebook, a Yellow Notebook and a Blue Notebook.
The Notebooks are kept by Anna Wulf, a central character of Free Women. She keeps four, and not one because, as she recognizes, she has to separate things off from each other, out of fear of chaos, of formlessness - of breakdown. Pressures, inner and outer, end the Notebooks; a heavy black line is drawn across the page of one after another. But now that they are finished, from their fragments can come something new, The Golden Notebook.
So yeah. So there are five... Basically, there are five different parts to this novel but they repeat each other. So you get Free Women 1 and then Black Notebook, Red Notebook, Yellow Notebook, Blue Notebook, and then Free Women 2, Black Notebook, Red Notebook, Yellow Notebook, [laughing] Blue Notebook - it's a tongue-twister, isn't it? - then Free Women 3, Black Notebook, Red Notebook, Yellow Notebook, Blue Notebook, and Free Women 4, Black Notebook, Red Notebook, Yellow Notebook, Blue Notebook. And then the [laughing] final section is The Golden Notebook. So yeah. Oh and then Free Notebook... and then - [laughing] Free Notebook! - Free Women 5 at the end.
So I really... yeah, I don't remember what happens in this novel particularly. What I can remember is that the Black Notebook describes... there's a, kind of, story inside the Black Notebook which is taking place somewhere in Central Africa. I think possibly during the Second World War or just after. Actually, I don't remember that. The Red Notebook has to do with politics and particularly Communist Party politics in the UK. And, you know, remember: this was published in 1962 so we're dealing with fairly... yeah, the, kind of, ten, fifteen years after the Second World War. Yellow Notebook and Blue Notebook, I don't remember what's in those.
I'm going to read you a little bit from the Red Notebook. So this is the first bit of Red Notebook stuff. Yeah, it's the first time we come across the Red Notebook. This is... So this edition of The Golden Notebook was published by Fourth Estate. It is 576 pages long. I'm going to read you two short... short-ish sections from pages 158 and 159. The first one deals with the death of Stalin and the second one deals with campaigning for the Communist Party in North London. Okay:
Stalin died today. Molly and I sat in the kitchen, upset. I kept saying, ‘We are being inconsistent, we ought to be pleased. We've been saying for months he ought to be dead.’ She said: ‘Oh, I don't know, Anna, perhaps he never knew about all the terrible things that were happening.’ Then she laughed and said: ‘The real reason we're upset is that we're scared stiff. Better the evils we know.’ ‘Well, things can't be worse.’ ‘Why not? We all of us seem to have this belief that things are going to get better? Why should they? Sometimes I think we're moving into a new ice age of tyranny and terror, why not? Who's to stop it - us?’ When Michael came in later, I told him what Molly had said - about Stalin's not knowing; because I thought how odd it was we all have this need for the great man, and create him over and over again in the face of all the evidence. Michael looked tired and grim. To my surprise he said: ‘Well, it might be true, mightn't it? That's the point - anything might be true anywhere, there's never any way of really knowing the truth about anything. Anything is possible - everything's so crazy, anything at all's possible.’
His face looked disintegrated and flushed as he said this. His voice toneless, as it is these days. Later he said: ‘Well, we are pleased he is dead. But when I was young and politically active, he was a great man for me. He was a great man for all of us.’ Then he tried to laugh, and he said: ‘After all, there's nothing wrong, in itself, in wanting there to be great men in the world.’ Then he put his hand over his eyes in a new gesture, shielding his eyes, as if the light hurt him. He said: ‘I've got a headache, let's go to bed, shall we?’ In bed we didn't make love, we lay quietly side by side, not talking. He was crying in his sleep, I had to wake him out of a bad dream.
By-election. North London. Candidates - Conservative, Labour, Communist. A Labour seat, but with a reduced majority from the previous election. As usual, long discussions in CP circles about whether it is right to split the Labour vote. I've been in on several of them. These discussions have the same pattern. No, we don't want to split the vote; it's essential to have Labour in rather than a Tory. But on the other hand, if we believe in CP policy, we must try to get our candidate in. Yet we know there's no hope of getting a CP candidate in. This impasse remains until emissary from Center comes in to say that it's wrong to see the CP as a kind of ginger group, that's just defeatism, we have to fight the election as if we were convinced we were going to win it. (But we know we aren't going to win it.) So the fighting speech by the man from Center, while it inspires everyone to work hard, does not resolve the basic dilemma. On the three occasions I watched this happen, the doubts and confusions were solved by - a joke. Oh yes, very important in politics, that joke. This joke made by the man from Center himself: It's all right, comrades, we are going to lose our deposit, we aren't going to win enough votes to split the Labour vote. Much relieved laughter, and the meeting splits up. This joke, completely contradicting everything in official policy, in fact sums up how everyone feels.
Yeah, I really like that. Yeah, having said that I find the novel, you know, as a whole quite confusing, I find those passages very... very graspable. And I really like the questions that I think Doris Lessing is posing there - two separate questions, I think. You know, the one about great men - or, you know, great people, really, they don't have to be men. But yeah, these people, these individuals that... that we put our hope and our faith into and we construct them really, don't we. You know, those... they're... they're not... they're not real, those great men and they're bound to disappoint us as a result. And then sometimes, you know, as with Stalin, they are entirely different from what their supporters, you know, hoped and dreamed them to be.
And there... you know, inside that there's also this question that I think was very live after the Second World War in, you know, leftish circles about what the Communist Party was and what it stood for. I've come across this in Italian writers writing after the war where, you know, Communism seemed to be for a while, you know, the obvious answer to Fascism and so many people wanted it to be the utopia that it promised that it would be. And then when, you know, rumours and news started to come out about how far away the reality was from that dream it was very difficult to accept. And there... you know, and then again you have this question of: “Well, what now? How do we fight...?” You know, in Italy, the... Fascism really threaten to return and right wing politics - you know, really quite far right politics - have never disappeared from the Italian political stage.
So yeah, you have that - the... I guess the... yeah, the question of disillusionment and disappointment - and then, in the... you know, the second section that I read there, the very, I guess, parochial concerns of people campaigning for a minor party in the UK, where, you know, we have a First-Past-The-Post electoral system for electing people to Parliament. And it's... I mean, I obviously read that in American electoral news as well, this concern about splitting the vote. It's a very difficult question. You know, if you are a supporter of a minor party in a place where your candidate is not going to win, do you vote for your candidate and risk losing - in fact, you will probably... yeah, you'll almost certainly lose and perhaps your second choice candidate will also lose as a result - or do you vote for that second choice candidate who you don't really believe in? It's a... It's a very difficult question and a very frustrating question.
And it has ramifications. If... You know, if your minor party doesn't get any candidates into parliament... if you don't win any elections but nevertheless win a substantial portion of the vote overall, you will still have some influence - or you have a chance of having some influence. I mean, I think of the Green Party in the... in the United Kingdom - and I think in other places as well. There is only at the moment one Green Member of Parliament, Caroline Lucas, who is the MP for Brighton Pavilion, and I think she's the... she was the first Green Party politician to enter parliament - you know, the first and only so far - and yet Green Party policy - Green policy - has become part of mainstream politics over the last thirty, forty years. And that's... you know, that's due to campaigning at a grassroots level, campaigning that doesn't necessarily result in power - in this country, it has done in other countries - but does... does result in some influence.
Yeah, it's really... I find it very... I find politics very difficult and, yeah, the kinds of decisions that we have to make - both at election time and in between elections - I find those decisions very difficult.
Yeah, so I like... I like that. I think she... yeah, she portrays that, kind of, hopeless idealism that so many people have. And I admire the people who continue to work under those circumstances. I think, yeah, they are the people who make the biggest difference in the end. Not the great men. Yeah, in my opinion, anyway. And possibly in Doris Lessing's too.
[page turning]
Okay, we're going to stay with politics now because the next book that I have to talk to you about was given to me by Chris Goode during the 122nd Page One. We had that conversation somewhere outside the Southbank Centre in London. There was the noise of the trains in the background in the same way that there is now, I think, the noise of a drill in the background. Chris gave me Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima and I talked about this book quite recently. I quoted from it in the 185th Page One. I just... I read a bit that Chris had already read from Revolutionary Letter #8.
I don't remember a lot of these poems but, having flicked through them again to prepare for this episode, I was very impressed with the... the, kind of, breadth of Diane di Prima's preoccupations, as it were. She manages to speak up, I think, in these pages for a broad coalition of oppressed people, which is, I think, in itself impressive. She reminds me of Rebecca Solnit in that way. And there is this... there's also... So there are... I feel like there are different things she's doing in these poems. She's... She's talking about revolution. She's talking about, you know: How do we make life better? How do we face up to the ways in which our systems are oppressive and damaging? And what... you know, how do we dream a better future but not just dream a better future, how do we make that future a reality? And so there are poems in which I think there is, you know, what seems to me to be quite a Buddhist sensibility. And certainly there's a... you know, there's a sense in which I think she is... she's creating a, kind of, abstract framework. She's saying, you know: revolution is something that we have to do within ourselves, we have to understand that revolution is a process, we have to understand that freedom is something that...
So yeah... So Revolutionary Letter forty-... #49 I think is interesting because she... she starts with, you know:
Free Julian Beck
Free Timothy Leary
Free seven million starving in Pakistan
Free all political prisoners
Free Angela Davis
Free Soledad brothers
Free Martin Sobel
Free Sacco & Vanzetti
Free Big Bill Hayward
Free Sitting Bull
Free Crazy Horse
Free all political prisoners
Free Billy the Kid
Free Jesse James
Free all political prisoners
Free Nathan Hale
Free Joan of Arc
Free Galileo & Bruno & Eckhart
Free Jesus Christ
Free Socrates
Free all political prisoners
Free all political prisoners
All prisoners are political prisoners
Every pot smoker a political prisoner
Every holdup man a political prisoner
Every forger a political prisoner
Every angry kid who smashed a window a political prisoner
Every whore, pimp, murderer, a political prisoner
Every pederast, dealer, drunk driver, burglar
poacher, striker, striker breaker, rapist
Polar bear at San Francisco zoo, political prisoner
Ancient wise turtle at Detroit Aquarium, political prisoner
Flamingos dying in Phoenix tourist park, political prisoners
Otters in Tucson Desert Museum, political prisoners
Elk in Wyoming grazing behind barbed wire, political prisoners
Prairie dogs poisoned in New Mexico, war casualties
(Mass grave of Wyoming gold eagles, a battlefield)
Every kid in school a political prisoner
Every lawyer in his cubicle a political prisoner
Every doctor brainwashed by AMA a political prisoner
Every housewife a political prisoner
Every teacher lying thru sad teeth a political prisoner
Every indian on reservation a political prisoner
Every black man a political prisoner
Every faggot hiding in bar a political prisoner
Every junkie shooting up in john a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
And then she says:
You are political prisoner locked in tense body
You are political prisoner locked in stiff mind
You are political prisoner locked to your parents
You are political prisoner locked to your past
Free yourself
Free yourself
I am political prisoner locked in anger habit
I am political prisoner locked in greed habit
I am political prisoner locked in fear habit
I am political prisoner locked in dull senses
I am political prisoner locked in numb flesh
Free me
Free me
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free Barry Goldwater
Help to free me
Free Governor Wallace
Free President Nixon
Free J Edgar Hoover
Free them
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free us
DANCE
Okay, I didn't mean to read the whole of that but it has such a great energy that poem. And yeah, I... she's... I mean, there: “I'm political prisoner locked in anger habit... greed habit... fear habit... dull senses...” There's something there that reminds me very much of the Buddhism that I've come across. But also that... yeah, the sense that everybody is... everybody is not free because of the... you know, the system that keeps us bound and also our own bad habits and our fears and our... yeah, the... the negative parts of us, let's say, the stiffness, the tenseness. Those things keep us all prisoner - and not just the good people but also, in quotes, the bad people. And I think that's quite an interesting... I don't know, it's an interesting position to take, I think. I feel like she's saying, yeah: “We will none of us be free unless we are all free” but all there really means all, not just the people we like but also the people we don't like. I think that's great.
So yeah, there's that strand. There's also... So Revolutionary Letter #48, I think, belongs to a strand that is more... it approaches some of the realities and the costs of revolution at a... but at a macro level. So still thinking kind of theoretically but really about, you know: “What is revolution?” and I think that's... this is... I think this is really nice. I want to read this one:
Be careful.
With what relief do we fall back on
the tale, so often told in revolutions
that now we must
organize, obey the rules, so that later
we can be free. It is the point
at which the revolution stops. To be carried forward
later & in another country, this is
the pattern, but we can
break the pattern
learn now we see
with all our skin, smell with our eyes too
sense & sex are boundless & the call
is to be boundless in them, make the joy
now, that we want, no shape
for space & time now but the shapes we will
Okay, I'm not sure I understand that last “no shape for space & time now but the shapes we will” but I... yeah, I think it is.... it's about process, isn't it? And I like that... you know, that notion that, yeah, we can... we can sacrifice everything for a future utopia but it's, kind of, meaningless because that utopia never comes - that time never comes when we enjoy the fruits of our labour, nobody gets to enjoy the fruits of the labour - because we have got ourselves into the habit of living in a way that is oppressive.
And... So there's another, yeah, very short poem - 26 - which also does... does the same thing, I think, really nicely:
‘DOES THE END
JUSTIFY THE MEANS?’ this is
process, there is no end, there are only
means, each one
had better justify itself.
To whom?
[laughs] I think that's so great. Without that last line it's a much more straightforward poem, isn't it? But then that last question is really very difficult. But I really like that, yeah: “there are only means, each one had better justify itself”. I think that's a really... that's a very exacting standard to hold oneself to but a very useful standard if we are looking for justice.
And then... So the last poem that I wanted to read for you is then a different strand again in her writing. I don't say that I've identified all the strands that exist in her writing but these are three that I have identified, I think. And so this is closer to the... the Revolutionary Letter #8 that Chris Goode read in the 122nd Page One: very practical, talking about the real, mundane, on-the-ground realities of organising and resisting. So there is this... Yeah, I find the mixture very interesting in... in this... in this collection. You've got these very, kind of, broad, macro, theoretical thoughts about revolution - what it is, how do we do it, how does it feel in our bodies - and then really practical: How do you actually organise? What do you need to think about? What do you need to look out for? And this Letter #25, I think, is a good example of that. It goes:
Know every way
out of your house, where it goes, every alley
on the block, which back yards connect, which walls
are scalable, which bushes
will hold a man.
Construct at least one man-sized hiding place
in your walls, know for sure which neighbors
will let you sneak in the back door & saunter out the front
while the Man is parked in your driveway, or tearing
your pad apart, which neighbors won't be home, which cellar doors
are open - whom you can summon in your neighborhood
to do your errands, check the block, set up
a getaway while you sit tight inside & your house
is watched...
Yeah, I think that's a really important component of... of this, kind of, thinking. There's something very complete, it seems to me, about that - and I'm... you know, I'm not an organiser so I... I... you know, I'm sure there are other things that are needed - but that... there is a need for theory and there is a need for, kind of, calm reflection and there is... but there is also a need for really practical: “What do you actually do in a difficult situation if you're somebody who is being targeted by the state for being a revolutionary or an activist or a troublemaker?” I'll put in the notes to this episode on the website at pageonepodcast.com... I'll put a link to a really interesting episode of Reply All, which I think might have been... I think they might have played an episode from another podcast whose name I've forgotten, but it tells the story of a man who has been demonstrating for a lot of the summer as part of a group who've been very active in the Black Lives Matter movement and a day he spent barricaded inside his flat while the police massed outside. [A] very terrifying experience. And, yeah, I think that poem, which was... I don't know when that poem #25 was written, but [it's] still relevant today and perhaps will always be, sadly. Although that's... yeah, that's pretty defeatist thinking, isn't it?
[page turning]
Okay. I promised... Yeah, I promised you a ghost book, didn't I? Just quickly now. So Miriam Gould, who I spoke to for the 123rd Page One, gave me The Sadean Women by Angela Carter and I don't have that book anymore - that's why I describe it as a ghost book: its memory haunts the bookshelves but I can't hold it in my hand. I gave it to somebody. I do remember the giving of it but I don't remember who I gave it to. I don't think I gave it back to Miriam. I think I gave it to somebody else. But, in any case, I have almost no memory of that. In fact, no: I have no memory of that. I just remember the cover [laughing] because I took a picture of it for the episode... to use as the episode image. I do like Angela Carter's writing - I've read other things by her and very much enjoyed them - so I'm sure I did enjoy The Sadean Women but I don't know anything about its contents.
What I... Yeah, the only thing I really do remember actually is that we... that Miriam and I had that conversation in... in one of the bedrooms at the Battersea Arts Center, upstairs. So you go up the main staircase and then through a door and up a side staircase and then possibly up another staircase and up in the roofs - or in the eaves, perhaps, is better word - there are these bedrooms and it was... oh, it was a wonderful conversation. It was a really lovely day. It was so exciting to be somehow... yeah, backstage at the Battersea Arts Center in a part of the building that I wouldn't normally be able to access. So yeah, I thought I should at least mention that that was a book that was given to me and then explain why it was that I'm not talking about it.
Okay. I don't know how long this episode is going to be once I've edited it down. I hope it's going to be a short one. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. I hope you're all doing all right and... I'm going to get right on now and record the next episode because, yeah, having taken two weeks off my stockpile of ready-to-release episodes is dwindling to a point where it makes me feel uncomfortable. So if you listen next week you'll be hearing me in just a few minutes' time, as it were. Does that make sense? Anyway. [laughs] I know what I mean. Thank you. Bye.
Jingle
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[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]