Episode image is a detail from the cover of The City And The City by China Miéville, published in 2011 by Pan Books; cover design by Crush.
In a hugely atmospheric recording, with vibrations from the Circle and District Line beneath and noise-spill from an editing suite next door, Charles Adrian talks to Superbard, a.k.a. George Lewkowicz, for the 41st Second Hand Book Factory. Info about George and his activities can be found here.
George Lewkowicz also appears in Page One 144.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams is also discussed in Page One 120. The Dirk Gentley novels, meantioned by George, are also by Douglas Adams.
Another book by John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, is discussed in Page One 28.
The City And The City by China Miéville is also discussed in Page One 171.
The Samantha who is mentioned is Charles Adrian’s alter-ego Ms Samantha Mann, who is featured in Page One 126.
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: 26th November, 2013.
Book listing:
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Call For The Dead by John Le Carré
The City And The City by China Miéville
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 60th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian. This is the 41st Second Hand Book Factory and my guest today is George Lefkowicz. We're sitting in George's... office... kind of?
George Lewkowicz
Kind of office. I think we can go as far as office. It's nice.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. It's a lovely place in Victoria. Now, I'm going to start with a bit of music as I always do. And I'll explain for you, George: the reason I'm playing this track is that when we first met – in... was it 2010? or 2009? in Brockley – I was doing... with a friend of mine called Anna, I was doing a little number that was based on Man On Wire, which is this film about a French tightrope walker, and we played two ridiculous French people. And for that reason I've decided to start the podcast today with a track by Barbara called Si La Photo Est Bonne.
George Lewkowicz
Fantastic.
Music
[Si La Photo Est Bonne by Barbara]
Charles Adrian
So that was Babara with Si La Photo Est Bonne. George has just pointed out that, given that this is the 60th Page One, it's the diamond edition in a way...
George Lewkowicz
Exactly.
Charles Adrian
... so I should have played something like Diamonds Are Forever. Never mind. It's done now. It's played. I'm very happy with that track.
George Lewkowicz
[laughs] I was just thinking of any other diamond tracks that I could think of. And it was Diamond's Are Forever.
Charles Adrian
That's the track, isn't it?
George Lewkowicz
[indistinct]
Charles Adrian
There's the Kanye West track, which I wouldn't... I refuse to play because I find him annoying. There are tracks that I would play by him but not that one. The video was just so... irritating. George.
George Lewkowicz
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Hello. I'll just say to the listeners, you might hear rumbles from the District and Circle Line, which is not very far underneath our feet. And there's something going on next door, which...
George Lewkowicz
I think it sounds really exciting what's going on next door.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It does, actually.
George Lewkowicz
We think they're sort of editing film or something and I just am intrigued by what the film is [indistinct] about.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yes. It has some great sound effects so far. Yeah, there's something going on now. Okay, George, I need to ask you first of all how you describe yourself.
George Lewkowicz
I put at the bottom of my email “writer, performer, composer, fool”, which I think sort of more or less says that I do a little bit of everything and not a lot of one thing. So. It would be nice if I was sort of a master of one of them. I feel like I'm that jack of all trades rather than anything else.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Well, you're a modern man, I think.
George Lewkowicz
Modern man would be a lovely [laughing] way of putting it. So I mostly perform as Superbard, which is where I tell my own stories to music and video that I make. But I also do dabble in some directing. I've got a couple of short films coming up and things of that sort. So it's a lot of... it's a mixture of things, I think.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. No, that's good. Do you feel like it has one... Is there anything that binds it together or is it whatever you are interested in?
George Lewkowicz
The common strand – and I think this'll come through possibly with the books when we get to them – is I quite like a fantastical element in almost everything that I do. I like things to be not very normal. Or to start off in a very normal place but have something odd happen. When I say fantastical, I prefer it when it's not... when it's actually quite close to where we are in life but something odd is happening rather than Lord of the Rings. And so I think that's sort of a common theme to all of my work whether that's with Tea Fuelled or my Superbard stuff. Tea Fuelled is my production company, who... It's their offices that we're in [right now].
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. Yes, exactly. Which is sort of laid out like an imaginary squash court next door. There are all these white tapes on the floor to separate the different office spaces.
George Lewkowicz
Yeah, I think calling it my own office is kind of grand...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
George Lewkowicz
... when I share it with a hundred other companies. It's sort of all [indistinct] round.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's a creative space.
George Lewkowicz
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I like it. I like it very much. Let's move on to the book that you like.
George Lewkowicz
Okay. So this is, I think, my favourite book of all time. I'm just going to start reading it and I wonder if you will know it. Some people will know from the first sentence, I think.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees have been a bad move, and that no one should have ever left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
Charles Adrian
That's great. That's also one of my favourite books.
George Lewkowicz
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for me is... it's probably the most worn book on my bookshelf.
Charles Adrian
Same with me, actually. Oddly. Yes, yes.
George Lewkowicz
It's, I think, maybe partly because it's so short. I think that... You know that you can actually just read it in an afternoon if you wanted to. And it's just a beautiful joke after joke after joke. Honestly, I'm not sure the plot is all there and all that great. But it doesn't matter because it's so creative and wonderful. But I just love reading it.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm. Oh no, I totally... And the characters are so fantastic. I also... I like it because I grew up near Rickmansworth so it makes me feel kind of warm inside...
George Lewkowicz
Excellent.
Charles Adrian
... when I hear that there's a woman in a cafe in Rickmansworth who came up...
George Lewkowicz
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... with the answer [laughing] to everything. I think that's a wonderful choice George.
George Lewkowicz
Oh, thank you.
Charles Adrian
Marvellous. Let's play the first piece of music that you have chosen today. So this is going to be Guillemots [/gɪləmɒtz/].
George Lewkowicz
Okay.
Charles Adrian
Is that the right pronunciation of Guillemots?
George Lewkowicz
I think it is Guillemots [/gɪləmɒtz/]. Yeah. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And this is Little Bear. I've never heard anything by Guillemots before and this is gorgeous.
George Lewkowicz
This is their first track off their first album and it's just a lovely introduction. And, again, it's something that makes me feel very warm inside when I hear it.
Music
[Little Bear by Guillemots]
Charles Adrian
That was Guillemots with Little Bear. Now I'm going to get the book that I think you should have. So I don't know whether or not you will have read this but I'll tell you why...
George Lewkowicz
Okay.
Charles Adrian
I wasn't hugely inspired this week – I'm a bit sort of dozy at the moment – but I was thinking about what you do, especially the construction of your stories. So it's not... this isn't a fantasy book. This is the first of John Le Carré's books: Call For The Dead. And the reason I thought of this is that there's something about the way that you put together your stories. It's like a... I feel like you have this kind of jigsaw structure to some of your stories. But nevertheless, there's always this very strong teleological thrust. So you're always heading towards some...
George Lewkowicz
Something going on.
Charles Adrian
Something is going to happen at the end. And something is... something mysterious is happening most of the time. And that reminds me of the way that John Le Carré puts his stories together. And I also just think everyone should read John Le Carré books, particularly the first ones. I think they're magnificent.
George Lewkowicz
Do you know what? I never have so I will look forward to it.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Well, then brilliant. You should start right at the beginning. A lot of people, I think, if they have read any, they'll have read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which I think is the third one. This one introduces George Smiley, who is possibly his best character. It only occurred to me when I left the house today that of course he's your namesake.
George Lewkowicz
Oh yeah.
Charles Adrian
No disrespect is intended. He's the most extraordinary [laughing] person physically. He's always described very physically. But he's also just brilliant. I mean, there's something wonderful about... What I love about him particularly in these stories is that he's constantly underestimated by everyone around him because he's so brilliantly ordinary and unassuming. And everyone assumes that if there were anything special about him it would be visible. And it just isn't. And I love that, that he sustains that... that John Le Carré sustains this character through four or five books. And he gets more and more sort of mythical and brilliant but all the time people are kind of going “Oh, George is finished, George is finished”. Anyway. So I'm going to introduce you to this. This is the first page of Call For The Dead.
1 A Brief History of George Smiley
When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described him to her astonished Mayfair friends as breathtakingly ordinary. When she left him two years later in favour of a Cuban motor racing driver, she announced enigmatically that if she hadn't left him then, she never could have done; and Viscount Sawley made a special journey to his club to observe that the cat was out of the bag.
This remark, which enjoyed a brief season as a mot, can only be understood by those who knew Smiley. Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad. Sawley, in fact, declared at the wedding that ‘Sercomb was mated to a bullfrog in a sou'wester’. And Smiley, unaware of this description, had waddled down the aisle in search of the kiss that would turn him into a Prince.
Was he rich or poor, peasant or priest? Where had she got him from? The incongruity of the match was emphasized by...
There you go.
George Lewkowicz
Oh that's it? I like the leaving me mid-sentence as well.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
George Lewkowicz
Thank you so much.
Charles Adrian
It's a nice short book. The first few are very short books. It's just [makes whooshing sound] and they're gone. Yeah. Okay, so there's no musical interlude now. Just the book that you're going to give to me.
George Lewkowicz
So the book I'm going to give to you – or maybe pretend to give to you because I was very bad and forgot it...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
George Lewkowicz
... but it will happen – is The City And The City by China Miéville, which I don't know...
Charles Adrian
No. Totally new on me.
George Lewkowicz
... if you have read. I only read it recently. I only discovered China Miéville very, very recently and loved it, really enjoyed it, just thought this is a book that really brings out something different and something odd and it's so... slightly overly written, which I kind of really enjoy. It's got this slight sort of over-elocution to it, almost, as you read. Like, it's really painfully descriptive of everything that goes on. But what made me think of recommending it to you is it's this whole idea that he starts with this world and you gradually realise that there is something slightly wrong with this world – there's something underneath it – but it's a gradual realisation that there's something different and something that we need to get to know a little bit more. And I thought, that's how I kind of feel about Samantha. That you watch Samantha on the stage and it's not... The melancholy comes in such a gradual, subtle way that I love watching. I love watching Samantha on stage and sort of gradually feeling those pains of sadness inside. And that's my favourite thing about Samantha. Like, I love the humour as well but the sadness – the gradual sadness – is where it's at for me, which possibly says a little bit...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
George Lewkowicz
... [laughing] too much about me. And so, yeah, The City And The City... You have this sort of... You're trying to work out what's going on, what's actually happening behind everything. And so this is the first page of that.
I COULD NOT SEE THE STREET or much of the estate. We were enclosed by dirt-coloured blocks, from windows out of which leaned vested men and women with morning hair and mugs of drink, eating breakfast and watching us. This open ground between the buildings had once been sculpted. It pitched like a golf course – a child's mimicking of geography. Maybe they had been going to wood it and put it [sic] in a pond. There was a copse but the saplings were dead.
The grass was weedy, threaded with paths footwalked between rubbish, rutted by wheel tracks. There were police at various tasks. I wasn't the first detective here – I saw Bardot Naustin and a couple of others – but I was the most senior. I followed the sergeant to where most of my colleagues clustered, between a low derelict tower and a skateboard park ringed by big drum-shaped trash bins. Just beyond it we could hear the clocks. A bunch of kids sat on a wall before standing officers. The gulls collided [sic] over the gathering.
‘Inspector.’ I nodded at whomever that was. Someone offered a coffee but I shook my head and looked at the woman I had come to see.
She lay near the skate ramps. Nothing is still like the dead are still. The wind moves their hair, as it moved hers, and they don't respond at all. She was in an ugly pose, with legs crooked as if about to get up, her arms in a strange bend. Her face was to the ground.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm. That's wonderful. I love anything to do with detectives and... police really. Essentially.
George Lewkowicz
Well then this will be... I mean, it's an odd novel. It's definitely an odd novel.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That's also something in its favour.
George Lewkowicz
But I think that's... In some ways, I think a detective novel is a really great, great way of structuring something that might be more odd. I think it's one of those genres that combines really well.
Charles Adrian
Well, it gives you that thrust. You know where you're supposed to be going to. So then you can play with that as much as you like, can't you?
George Lewkowicz
I presume you've read some of the Dirk Gently novels.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Yes, absolutely.
George Lewkowicz
So that's exactly that sort of thing. You take [quite a odd bizarre] and you allow yourself to go wherever you'd want along the way but you always have that thrust of trying to work out your original mystery.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Oh wonderful. Oh, thank you so much. That's wonderful. I shall look forward to getting that.
George Lewkowicz
Absolutely. I will post it to you.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Brilliant. Thank you so much, George. This has been lovely. In your Victoria... office. That's what we shall describe this as.
George Lewkowicz
Yeah, I think that's... Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And these lovely wooden chairs that we're creaking on I also like very much. Now. So the last track I'm going to play is Through A Lens Darkly by Nordic Giants, which is also a new thing that you've introduced me to. I would otherwise have played Champagne Supernova by Oasis.
George Lewkowicz
That is... Champagne Supernova is... Similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide, it's that track that has lasted with me through the years and it's just one of my favourite tracks of all time. The...
Charles Adrian
We're more similar than I knew, George.
George Lewkowicz
Yeah. It's the waves pounding at the beginning of it that actually gives you this wonderful relaxing...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] And then [indistinct] comes in. Yeah [laughs]
George Lewkowicz
... feel. Yeah, I think it's great.
Charles Adrian
And it goes on forever, which is the reason why I'm not playing it now because it's just a little bit too long. And this is still long in pop terms – it's a little more than five minutes long – and it's it's entirely instrumental and it's wonderful. It's just a track to sit back to.
Music
[Through A Lens Darkly by Nordic Giants]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]