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(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Solar Storms by Linda Hogan, published in 1997 by Scribner.
Back in the Wilton Way Café in Hackney, Dr Carly McLaughlin, Academic and Third-Culture Kid, joins Charles Adrian for the 21st Second Hand Book Factory to talk about language, identity and displacement. She chooses some beautiful music and the two of them reminisce about a truly dreadful theatre show that they once saw together in Paris, despite which they remained friends.
Other books by Colm Tóibín are discussed in Page One 84 (The South) and Page One 150 (The Master).
Solar Storms by Linda Hogan is also discussed in Page One 164.
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: 16th April, 2013.
Book listing:
Lost In Translation by Eva Hoffman
Bad Blood by Colm Tóibín
Solar Storms by Linda Hogan
Links:
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening... you're listening... to London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to Page One. This is the 31st Page One. This is the 21st Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and I'm here in the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney with Carly McLaughlin. I'm going to play... First of all, I'm going to start off with a track by Anis, who is a Frenchman, and this is Louise et Thelma [/θelmʌ/]... or Thelma [/telmʌ/], as he probably pronounces it.
Music
[Louise et Thelma by Anis]
Charles Adrian
So that was Louise et Thelma by Anis. I chose that because I think I was probably listening to that around the time when you came to visit me in Paris, Carly, which is when I date the flowering of our friendship to.
Carly McLaughlin
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Would you agree with that?
Carly McLaughlin
Yes, I would agree. That's in spite of the terrible play took me to see with the... the violinists.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh God, I'd actually forgotten all about [laughing] that. Yes. Oh, that... Yeah, that's right. You survived that. Yeah.
Carly McLaughlin
I thought I was going to go and see some really underground...
Charles Adrian
I know.
Carly McLaughlin
... play in Paris...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Carly McLaughlin
... with my actor friend [laughing] living in Paris.
Charles Adrian
But nothing of the sort.
Carly McLaughlin
You took me to see men climbing on top of each other playing violins.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, it was really pathetic, wasn't it. And they... they took... they took about five or six bows during the course of the show, didn't they.
Carly McLaughlin
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
No, that really... I remember that really annoyed me as well.
Carly McLaughlin
Yes.
Charles Adrian
I was very ashamed.
Carly McLaughlin
No, but we did... The rest of the time was cool. We did go to a cool party where I talked to an Algerian guy.
Charles Adrian
Oh yes?
Carly McLaughlin
A very handsome Algerian... clown. I don't... [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Right.
Carly and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Carly McLaughlin
[indistinct] I know he wasn't a clown but...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Was he called...? Was he at school with me?
Carly McLaughlin
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Okay. I can't remember his name now. But yes, I know who you mean.
Carly McLaughlin
He was very sexy.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Carly McLaughlin
And we also went for brunch. A very decadent brunch.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh we did. That's right. For hours.
Carly McLaughlin
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Yes. So that...
Carly McLaughlin
[speaking over] [indistinct] great... a successful...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I think that set the pattern for a lot of our...
Carly McLaughlin
Yes. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
... a lot of our interaction.
Carly McLaughlin
Yes. That's true. [affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] And you're... So you now live in Berlin and you have been working in Sweden...
Carly McLaughlin
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... but you're no longer working in Sweden. How would you... How would you describe yourself, Carly?
Carly McLaughlin
Erm...
Charles Adrian
Professionally or personally, I don't mind.
Carly McLaughlin
Professionally…
Charles Adrian
But if you had to choose a description that would go... you know, if you were... if this were an interview that was going to go up somewhere online?
Carly McLaughlin
Well...
Charles Adrian
I mean, I will put a description of you... This is... this is for my research purposes as well.
Carly McLaughlin
[speaking over] Okay. Probably, if I had to pick one point about me that I think is useful for people to know...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm hmm. Yeah.
Carly McLaughlin
... is that I... yes, I am a bit nomadic, in terms of where I grew up as a child and then... and then also how I've lived my own life...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
... since leaving home. And... and also my family set-up, in terms of my mum and dad now living in India and my sister in South Africa.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right.
Carly McLaughlin
And... and I think that probably explains a lot in the practical sense of how I live my life but also maybe in terms of other things like, I don't know... about how I see the world...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Uh huh.
Carly McLaughlin
... if that doesn't sound too pretentious.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No, no, I think that makes sense.
Carly McLaughlin
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
Well, you... you very recently introduced me to the notion of the third culture kid.
Carly McLaughlin
Indeed.
Charles Adrian
So you are a third culture kid.
Carly McLaughlin
I am, yes, that is the label that I have grabbed...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I have other friends who are third culture kids. [affirmative] Mmm.
Carly McLaughlin
... grabbed. So if... And I have found that a very useful label...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Carly McLaughlin
... because when people... For the past few years, I've struggled when people have asked me where am I from.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Carly McLaughlin
Because, especially living in Germany, often... obviously people know very quickly that I'm not a native speaker and then they will always ask the question...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes.
Carly McLaughlin
... where I'm from and... and having a label like that, which basically means I'm not from anywhere...
Charles Adrian
Yeah. It's your, kind of, ‘get out of jail free’ card, isn't it?
Carly McLaughlin
Yes. Very much so. And it also helps... What am I trying to say? It's a label that also explains some of the... my personality traits as well, I think.
Charles Adrian
Right. Okay. Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Cool. Let's come on to the book that you've brought that you like.
Carly McLaughlin
Okay. Actually it fits very well with... with what we've just talking [sic] about... what we've just been talking about because it's a book by Eva Hoffman called Lost In Translation.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
I don't know if you've heard of it.
Charles Adrian
No. Is it... is it...?
Carly McLaughlin
It's got nothing to do with the film...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's got nothing to do with the film. Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
... of the same name.
Charles Adrian
So no, I haven't.
Carly McLaughlin
So it's... it's basically a memoir or... or an autobiography of a woman who... who was born in Krakow in Poland at the end of the Second World War to a Jewish family who survived the Holocaust.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Okay. Wow.
Carly McLaughlin
And they emigrated to Vancouver when she was thirteen, I think, and it's just her experience of... of leaving Krakow, which she loved...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Carly McLaughlin
... which was home, to go to Canada. And now I think she works for the New York Times... or writes for The New York Times and...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
So she writes about... about immigration and about identity and language. And, in fact, the... the, kind of, subtitle to the book is A Life In A New Language.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm. Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
And she writes, I think, very beautifully about immigration and identity and what happens to your sense of home and place and belonging when you leave a country to live in a new country and in a new language as well.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm. Right.
Carly McLaughlin
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Do you want to read the first page for us?
Carly McLaughlin
Okay.
It is April 1959, I'm standing at the railing of the Batory's upper deck, and I feel that my life is ending. I'm looking out at the crowd that has gathered on the shore to see the ship's departure from Gdynia - a crowd that, all of a sudden, is irrevocably on the other side - and I want to break out, run back, run toward the familiar excitement, the waving hands, the exclamations. We can't be leaving all this behind - but we are. I am thirteen years old, and we are emigrating. It's a notion of such crushing, definitive finality that to me it might as well mean the end of the world.
My sister, four years younger than I, is clutching my hand wordlessly; she hardly understands where we are, or what is happening to us. My parents are highly agitated; they had just been put through a body search by the customs police, probably as the farewell gesture of anti-Jewish harrassment. Still, the officials weren't clever enough, or suspicious enough, to check my sister and me - lucky for us, since we are both carrying some silverware we were not allowed to take out to Poland in large pockets sewn onto our skirts especially for this purpose, and hidden under capacious sweaters.
Charles Adrian
Can I congratulate you on your pronunciation of the word harrassment [/haˈrəsmn̩t/]...
Carly McLaughlin
Oh...
Charles Adrian
... which I... No, I... That's my... That's my preferred pronunciation. Because you often hear harassment [/həraˈsmn̩t/]...
Carly McLaughlin
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... which I find just... it's just wrong. It's not the right... It's like... it's like... Controversy [/cɒˈntrəvɜːsi/] is also incorrect.
Carly McLaughlin
Did I use the...? I often use American pronunciations without being aware of it. Is that the...
Charles Adrian
No, I think harassment [/haˈrəsmn̩t/] is the English pronunciation. As is controversy [/cn̩troˈvəsi/].
Carly McLaughlin
Okay.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] That's... I'm just...
Carly McLaughlin
Instead of controversy [/cɒˈntrəvɜːsi/]. Yes.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Carly McLaughlin
I'm often not aware. That's another thing about... going back to being a third culture kid... is that...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Carly McLaughlin
... because I grew up in... mostly going to international schools and hanging out with people my age who... obviously who were non-native speakers of English...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative]
Carly McLaughlin
... that explains my strange accent...
Charles Adrian
Right.
Carly McLaughlin
... as well. But also, yeah, I'm often not aware of the difference.
Charles Adrian
I think... Yeah, my... I'm not so worried about whether... really whether or... whether it's an English pronunciation or an American pronunciation but I think some pronunciations are just more attractive.
Carly McLaughlin
Yes. I would agree.
Charles Adrian
Let's... let's listen to your next track.
Carly McLaughlin
Okay.
Charles Adrian
So this is called [clears throat] SAPOSZKELECH. Is that right?
Carly McLaughlin
[speaking over] I'm not going to... I'm not [laughing] going to correct you on that.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] I've written that out in capitals so that it's clearer. It's by Quartet Klezmer Trio...
Carly McLaughlin
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... and this is, I think, SAPOSZKELECH.
Music
[SAPOSZKELECH by Quartet Klezma Trio]
Charles Adrian
So that was the... the Quartet Klezma Trio with SAPOSZKELECH - or... Well, any Polish listeners can obviously leave some kind of voice message [laughing] somewhere to let us know how that should be pronounced. The second part of the show is the book that I'm going to give to you, Carly. And this... I'm... I think you're not going to be terribly surprised. I'm giving you Bad Blood...
Carly McLaughlin
Oh great.
Charles Adrian
... by Colm Tóibín...
Carly McLaughlin
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... which we talked about already. I said that I wanted to give it to you...
Carly McLaughlin
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to give it to you. Because I know you're interested in Colm Tóibín - you interested me in him, in fact, and you're the reason why I then went and bought a little block of about twenty of his books...
Carly McLaughlin
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... [laughing] which I'm steadily working my way through. It was a good deal on Amazon. And this is a great... this is a great book and really fascinating at the moment. It's written in, I think, 1987.
Carly McLaughlin
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Or it was first published in 1987. So he's walking the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland a year after the Anglo-Irish agreement, which I don't know very much about. And it's a really... it's a pretty bleak situation that he finds. He finds the border closed up in a lot of places. Where there has been free movement there now isn't and there's a lot of tension between communities. And he meets people from both sides and he has some very interesting encounters. But I noticed in the news today - or yesterday... This is... This is going up, just to let you know, on the 16th of April, but it's recorded, dear listeners, many many months before and at the moment there's... it all seems to be flaring up again around this flag...
Carly McLaughlin
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... business. But I'll read you... I'll just read you the first page. Now I... I used to do accents. I feel like I've grown out of that now and I think it would just be insulting [laughing] if I were to try and do any kind of Irish accent for this. I've never heard Colm Tóibín speak so I don't know whether he... what kind of accent he has.
Carly McLaughlin
Well, he has a.... Yeah. Where's he from? He's from Wexford.
Charles Adrian
Wexford. Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
So a very s... yeah, south... south of Ireland.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. Yeah, I wouldn't know how to...
Carly McLaughlin
Would you... Why don't you try a [laughing] Northern Irish...
Charles Adrian
[In a very bad Nothern Irish accent] “A Bed for the Night.”
Carly McLaughlin
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
No, it's not going to... [laughs] It always comes out aggressive when I do a Northern Irish accent.
Carly McLaughlin
[speaking over] No. [indistinct] [laughs]
Charles Adrian
It's because of listening to Ian Paisley on... on the news. [laughs] I could do, like: [in a bad Irish accent] “I walked out Derry towards the border...” Is that any good? No. I'll just do it in my English accent.
Carly McLaughlin
[indistinct]
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
1
A Bed for the Night
I walked out of Derry towards the border on a beautiful, cloudless afternoon, past the broken-down public houses, past the abandoned shirt factory and the new housing estates and the sailing boats on the Foyle. It was Saturday. I was wearing a rucksack. When I crossed the border I would turn right and take the road to Lifford.
In half an hour I would be in the Republic of Ireland where the price of petrol would be much higher, where the price of drink would be a constant source of discussion and where just about everything else - new cars, hi-fis [sic], televisions, videos - cost more than in the North.
The river widened. There was a smell of cut grass. Men were playing golf on the other side of the river; down below the road there were boys fishing.
The soldier at the border stepped out from his hut as I came towards him.
‘Walking, sir,’ he said to me.
‘I am,’ I said.
‘Where are you going, sir?’ he asked me.
‘To Lifford,’ I said.
‘You turn there, sir,’ he said, pointing to the road.
‘How far is it?’ I asked. ‘
I don't know sir, ten miles, twenty miles.’
I walked on towards the customs posts. The first one, which belonged to Her Majesty, was closed up. No one would dream of smuggling from the South into the North. The Irish customs official sat in the second hut, waving each car by. They were all locals, he said, he knew them; there was no point in stopping them, it only annoyed them. They were probably just driving over to get cheap petrol.
There you go. So that's Bad Blood, A Walk Along The Irish Border by Com Tóibín.
Carly McLaughlin
Thank you very much.
Charles Adrian
There you go.
Carly McLaughlin
Great.
Charles Adrian
Let's have a little jingle and then we're going to come on to the last part of the show.
Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
It is, it's London Fields Radio. I'm Charles Adrian. I'm here in the Wilton Way Cafe for... for the 31st edition of Page One with Carly McLaughlin. This is the 21st Second Hand Book Factory. In a way, this is... this is our coming of age - or my coming of age. You're here with me, Carly, for... for my twenty-first. Isn't that nice? Yes, it is. [laughs]
Carly McLaughlin
I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you over the coffee machine. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
That's fine.
Carly McLaughlin
Sorry.
Charles Adrian
The third part of the show is often my favourite part of the show. It's where I get the book that you're going to give to me. Tell me about it. Tell me what it is.
Carly McLaughlin
So this is a book that I know that we've talked about before and so I hope you then didn't go and buy it. It's called Solar Storms by Linda Hogan. Do you have any recollection of... Okay...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Not... No. Not only did I not go out and buy that [laughing] I don't even remember talking about....
Carly McLaughlin
[speaking over] Our conversation.
Charles Adrian
Remind me. Remind me.
Carly McLaughlin
[speaking over] It's special with me as well, Adrian.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] I remember watching La Boom with you.
Carly and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Carly McLaughlin
So this is a book that I wouldn't normally have read by choice myself but I had to teach it for a course on literature... World Literature in English for a literature course in Sweden and it's a book about... about Native Canadians.
Charles Adrian
Oh. Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
And... And basically it's written... The main character is... is a young girl who was... who grew up with foster parents and then returns to her, kind of, like, native home and...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Carly McLaughlin
... and starts to learn about her heritage.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Carly McLaughlin
And then they... they go on a journey and travel to a part of Canada where a big damn is being built and... and it becomes about the fight for indigenous land rights.
Charles Adrian
Right. [affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Carly McLaughlin
And it's... I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Because I just think it has... the prose has a very poetic dreamlike quality and it talks about nature and time and... and also issues of identity in a way... in a way that I haven't ever read...
Charles Adrian
[interested] Uh huh.
Carly McLaughlin
... by, kind of, more Western or Eurocentric...
Charles Adrian
Right.
Carly McLaughlin
... writers.
I WAS SEVENTEEN when I returned to Adam's rib on Tinselman's Ferry. It was the north country, the place where water was broken apart by land, land split open by water so that the maps showed places both bound and, if you knew the way in, boundless. The elders said it was where land and water had joined together in an ancient pact, now broken.
The waterways on which I arrived had a history. They had been crossed by many before me. When they were frozen, moose crossed over, pursued by wolves. There were the French trappers and traders who emptied the land of beaver and fox. Their boats carried precious tons of fur to the trading post at old LeDoux. There were iceboats, cutters and fishers, and the boat that carried the pipe organ for the never-built church. The British passed through this north, as did the Norwegians and Swedes, and there had been logjams, some of them so high and thick they'd stanched the flow of water out from the lake and down the Otter River as it grew too thin for its fish to survive.
It was this same north where, years earlier, a woman named Bush had taken my mother, Hannah Wing, to one of the old men who lived along the Hundred-Year-Old Road. In dim lantern light he shook his head. With sorrow he told her, “I've only heard of these things. It's not in my power to help her.”
Charles Adrian
Wow.
Carly McLaughlin
So.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Carly McLaughlin
And it's... As I said, it's... it's about this... this young girl, Hannah, who was - sorry, that's her mother - Angel, who was abused as a child by her mother and then send to foster parents and then she comes back...
Charles Adrian
I see.
Carly McLaughlin
... to discover her past and...
Charles Adrian
Wow. It sounds quite dark.
Carly McLaughlin
Yes, it is. It is. And I think the way that... the way that it talks about nature, I think... It's a very beautiful... I think, very beautiful way that she writes about nature. But I think we have a tendency to see that kind of approach to nature... It's been, kind of, watered down by this New Age, you know...
Charles Adrian
Right.
Carly McLaughlin
... esoteric way of looking at nature that obviously it comes from the same...
Charles Adrian
Yes. Yes.
Carly McLaughlin
... the same, kind of, culture. But, yeah, I just think the way that the book uses nature is very interesting.
Charles Adrian
Great. I'll probably start that on my way home. Lovely.
Carly McLaughlin
Good. Well, I hope you do enjoy it.
Charles Adrian
I hope so too. Thank you very much for bringing it. And thank you very much for coming today for Page One, Carly.
Carly McLaughlin
Thank you.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's been such a pleasure to have you here.
Carly McLaughlin
[speaking over] Thank you.
Charles Adrian
We're going to play... So we're going to play the last track that you've brought now, which is by TootAnd [sic].
Carly McLaughlin
TootArd.
Charles Adrian
TootArd. Sorry, it's my handwriting. TootArd. And this is called Ruh Bladi. It's a beautiful... yeah, it's a beautiful track.
Carly McLaughlin
Yes. Arabic and reggae go very well together.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm. Definitely. Okay. I have to find it on your iPod now. Okay, here we are. So this is TootArd with Ruh Bladi. Thank you very much, Carly.
Carly McLaughlin
Thank you.
Music
[Ruh Bladi by TootArd]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]