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(This episode is marked as explicit because of strong language.)
(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Seven Sweet Things by Shaun Levin, published in 2012.
This was meant to be a quiet, Friday afternoon kind of a show because Steve Wasserman, who is Charles Adrian’s guest, has had a tough week. Steve brings the big questions, though, and the talk is about quiddities, consumption and the finding of echoes of oneself in art. The music, meanwhile, is easy on the ear.
Another book by E. M. Forster, A Passage To India, is discussed in Page One 52.
Seven Sweet Things by Shaun Levin is also discussed in Page One 161.
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: 5th February, 2013.
Book listing:
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
Maurice by E. M. Forster
Seven Sweet Things by Shaun Levin
Links:
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 21st Page One. This is the 13th Second Hand Book Factory. I... My name is Charles Adrian. We're in the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney for London Fields Radio. Today's guest has had a tough week and so here's something easy on the ear to start the show.
Music
[Take Me To The Water by Nina Simone]
Charles Adrian
So that was Nina Simone with Take Me To The Water. That was, of course, a pun also because my... my guest today is Steve Wasserman.
Steve Wasserman
That's right. [appreciative] Ah! Well done. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. [laughs]
Steve Wasserman
I'm glad you told me that it was... it was going to be a pun because my head is feeling so woolly today...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah.
Steve Wasserman
... I don't think I would have picked up on that.
Charles Adrian
That's... That's all right. You... You're just here for the ride today.
Steve Wasserman
I am. Take me to the water, Adrian. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I'm in... I'm in charge. [laughing] I will do! I will do. We've already... We've already cleared up that there was a misunderstanding about what you had to supply for this [indistinct].
Steve Wasserman
That's right. I came with crack cocaine and...
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Steve Wasserman
... and various... various uppers and downers and you told me it's, like, a literary programme? [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I can't imagine how you got that idea into your head. But fortunately...
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] Thought we were going to take loads of class A drugs and... and... and have a mystical experience.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Not live on air, [laughing] Steve.
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
I think maybe you're mixing that up with the other set of emails that we exchanged. But. So this is... So this is the Second Hand Book Factory and, just to explain to you, the Second Hand Book Factory - that part of the show - is really the second two thirds of the show. That's where we... we exchange books and create second hand books. But the very first part of the show is really for me and for our listeners to find out just a little bit about you. So what have you... What... What are you going to read to us? Fortunately, you are all... you're all, like, twenty-first-centuried-up, aren't you?
Steve Wasserman
I am.
Charles Adrian
You... So you just had to flick through your Kindle.
Steve Wasserman
Flick through my three thousand, five hundred and twenty-three books on my Kindle - three thousand, five hundred and twenty-two of them probably never, ever looked at on my Kindle - ... yes, to find... to find this one that I... as I said, I'm revisiting it at the moment for a whole variety of reasons. One of my favourite writers.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
And it's Nicholson Baker. And the book is called The Anthologist. Shall I... Shall I give you a little précis of what it's about?
Charles Adrian
Yeah, just give us a little... a little... maybe give us a taste of why... why you like it.
Steve Wasserman
Well, I love Nicholson Baker because just stylistically I think he... I mean, writing for me, style wise, has to be very, sort of, strong. It's not necessarily about the narrative, it's about what's happening, kind of, sentence... sentence to sentence...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Steve Wasserman
... level. And I just think... as a stylist, I think Baker is... is incredible and I think what he does with fiction is playful and interesting. He's a very playful writer...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
... and he uses... I think he uses a lot of himself in his writing as well so you're never really sure if it's... you're never really sure if it's, sort of, fiction or nonfiction. I quite... I quite like that. In fact, both my books, kind of...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah. I... That's... That's interesting.
Steve Wasserman
... kind of, fit into that category.
Charles Adrian
Do we get... Do we get a sense of his quality from... from the very first page, do you think, or is it something that you... that grows as you... as you read the book?
Steve Wasserman
I think it possibly grows. And I'm not sure if actually this book, style wise, is indicative of what he does. He's extremely good at honing in on the, kind of, minutiae of life and things - particularly things. He's a very 'thingy' writer. So, for example, his first book, The Mezzanine, was essentially describing a [sic] hour in one man's lunch break...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Aha! Okay.
Steve Wasserman
... which sounds perhaps quite dull but because he's just able to hone in and, sort of, revel in these, sort of, tiny, tiny little...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm.
Steve Wasserman
... little details... little, sort of, quiddities of existence, he... he... you're just completely swept away by it all.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Steve Wasserman
And I don't think he does that with this book but... but it's charming. It's a charming...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Steve Wasserman
... opening.
Charles Adrian
That's nice. I think that's... that's a good choice then for a... for Friday afternoon, as it is today...
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... while we're recording, and a day on which your... your head needs some swaddling. Why don't you read us the first page.
Steve Wasserman
Okay. The first page. So this is how it begins:
HELLO, THIS IS PAUL CHOWDER, and I'm going to try and [sic] tell you everything I know. Well, not everything I know, because a lot of what I know, you know. But everything I know about poetry. All my tips and tricks and woes and worries are going to come tumbling out before you. I'm going to divulge them. What a juicy word that is, “divulge.” Truth opening its petals. Truth smells like Chinese food and sweat.
What is poetry? Poetry is prose in slow motion. Now, that isn't true of rhymed poems. It's not true of Sir Walter Scott. It's not true of Longfellow, or Tennyson, or Swinburne, or Yeats. Rhymed poems are different. But the kind of free-verse poems that most poets write now - the kind that I write - is slow-motion prose.
My life is a lie. My career is a joke. I'm a study in failure. Obviously, I'm up in the barn again - which sounds like a country song, except for the word “obviously.” I wonder how often the word “obviously” has been used in a country song. Probably not much, but I don't know because I hardly listen to country, although some of the folk music I like has a strong country tincture. Check out Slaid Cleaves, who lives in Texas now but grew up right near where I live.
Charles Adrian
Why does truth smell of Chinese food and sweat?
Steve Wasserman
Because it just does.
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
I li... I like it. It's intriguing. I think... I think I would probably like this guy. Okay.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] Acrid perhaps. Don't you think that truth has...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Maybe.
Steve Wasserman
... a certain acridity? Is that a word? [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I was thinking there was a, sort of... there was something of... there was something of failure that I associate with Chinese food and sweat. You've, kind of, given up at that point.
Steve Wasserman
As is... As is... [indistinct] [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You're neither going to wash nor are you going to cook anything yourself.
Steve Wasserman
As are many of those moments when the great truths fall upon our heads.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Perhaps so. [laughing] Perhaps so. Let's come to your... your first track.
Steve Wasserman
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Or the first track that you... I know you wanted to inundate me with tracks and I've [indistinct] held you back.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] I had... I had a whole mixtape. I had, like, fifteen tracks.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I know. I'm sorry. What we'll do... I'll...
Steve Wasserman
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
You can make that mixtape and upload it somewhere and I'll put a link to it.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] All right. Brilliant.
Charles Adrian
While people are listening to this on... on one device they can... they can be listening to your mixtape on another device...
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] That'd be good. That'd be good.
Charles Adrian
... because,you know, so many people are multi-deviced now.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] I think... I think it's going to be more... The thing I wanted to send you is, kind of, more a soundtrack for the second book.
Charles Adrian
Okay. So people could listen to that in preparation. We'll have a pause...
Steve Wasserman
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
We'll have a, kind of, conceptual pause before your second book and we'll say: “Go listen to these...
Steve Wasserman
That would work.
Charles Adrian
... these tracks.” But in the meantime I'm going to play Let's Pretend by Tindersticks, which is a lovely track.
Music
[Let's Pretend by Tindersticks]
Charles Adrian
So that was Let's Pretend by The [sic] Tindersticks. I... Yeah, I don't want to... I don't want to pretend that I know who they were. When I said it was a lovely track, I meant that I listened to it this week after you... after you sent... sent me the link. But. So now we're going to come to the part where I give you the book that...
Steve Wasserman
Brilliant.
Charles Adrian
... I want to give to you. Now, I didn't ask you at the beginning of the show how you describe yourself, which is what I do with... with most of my guests. So I'm going to take a shot now at... at gue... sort of, trying to guess all of the things that you do. I don't imagine I'm going to get that right.
Steve Wasserman
[indistinct]
Charles Adrian
But. So: Steve Wasserman, therapist, creator and host of Read Me Something You Love. Would that...? How was that?
Steve Wasserman
That sounds good.
Charles Adrian
Yeah? Was...
Steve Wasserman
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Did I leave anything out?
Steve Wasserman
No. Well, I can do a bit of... bit of... bit of juggling. I can juggle... juggle fruit.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Okay. I wouldn't have guessed that. Okay. That's good.
Steve Wasserman
No, that's... that's... that's... that's pretty... that's pretty much how I would describe myself.
Charles Adrian
Okay. Good. Good. Because... And the last part is, for this, the most important because, hilariously, I'm now going to read you something that I don't love...
Steve Wasserman
Oh.
Charles Adrian
... in any way because I think that's also... that can also be interesting. You know, there are books in my shelves that I have not liked. I don't... I don't like everything that I read. And this one I don't like for... for quite specific reasons. This is Maurice by E. M. Forster.
Steve Wasserman
[musing] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
And he's one of my favourite... he's one of my favourite authors. I mean, yeah, for the author of Howards End and Room With A View and Passage To India to have written this is for me something quite shocking.
Steve Wasserman
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Also, as a... as... It's rather like The Wells Of... The Well Of Loneliness. I think it's called The Well Of... It's not The Wells Of Loneliness, is it? The Well Of Loneliness.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] The Well Of Loneliness, yeah.
Charles Adrian
It... I think it's a particularly disappointing book for a gay reader, for someone who's looking for... In my case, I was looking for my... my world to be echoed...
Steve Wasserman
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... in... in this writing and it's... and it's absolutely not. I don't know. I really don't know what he's talking about. You know, this as an apology for a homosexual lifestyle is...
Steve Wasserman
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] ... is quite appalling.
Steve Wasserman
I mean, it was written quite... quite a while ago, in which... in which case it... you know, things have moved on.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You think I'm being harsh? And it... The same... I mean, I feel the same way about Lady Chatterley's Lover. I... I just don't think it's worthy of... of the author. That's really my problem with it. It's not... It's not the worst book in the world. I just... I just think he... he should have burned it probably rather than let it stain his reputation.
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
But I'm going to read you the... I'm going to read you the first page of it.
1
ONCE A TERM THE WHOLE school went for a walk - that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys. It was usually a pleasant outing, and everyone looked forward to it, forgot all scores, and behaved with freedom. Lest discipline should suffer, it took place just before the holidays, when leniency does no harm, and indeed it seemed more like a treat at home than school, for Mrs Abrahams, the Principal's wife, would meet them at the tea place with some lady friends, and be hospitable and motherly.
Mr Abrahams was a preparatory schoolmaster of the old-fashioned sort. He cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well and saw that they did not misbehave. The rest he left to the parents, and did not speculate how much the parents were leaving to him. Amid mutual compliments the boys passed out into a public school, healthy but backward, to receive upon undefended flesh the first blows of the world. There is much to be said for apathy in education, and Mr Abrahams's pupils did not do badly in the long run, became parents in their turn and in some cases sent him their sons. Mr Reid, the junior assistant was a master of the same type, only stupider, while Mr Ducie, the senior, acted as a stimulant, and prevented the whole concern from going to sleep. They did not like him much, but knew that he was necessary. Mr Ducie was an able man, orthodox, but not out of touch with the world, nor incapable of seeing both sides of a question. He was unsuitable for parents and the denser boys, but good for the first form, and had even coached pupils into a scholarship. Nor was he a bad organizer. While affecting to hold the reins and to prefer Mr Reid, Mr Abrahams really allowed Mr Ducie a free hand and ended by taking him into partnership.
Mr Ducie always had something on his mind. On this...
There you go... That... And you can take that and read it and...
Steve Wasserman
Well, thank you.
Charles Adrian
... hopefully enjoy it. Who knows?
Steve Wasserman
Well can I ask a question, though?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Who knows?
Steve Wasserman
Can I ask you a question?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. Please do. Please do.
Steve Wasserman
I mean, I, sort of, agree with you just from having heard the first page, he does... he seems to have a...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's pretty leaden as... as first pages go.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] Yeah, fairly leaden. Fairly, sort of, fastidious, prissy style. But, I mean, you having... We don't know each other particularly well but we... we do know each other a bit...
Charles Adrian
Yeah. We have... We have encountered each other.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] ... and I would imagine us having to a certain extent a similar aesthetic sensibility so...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
... my sense is... my question, I suppose, is: What...
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Steve Wasserman
Why do you think... or what do you think I'm going to get out of Maurice that you didn't?
Charles Adrian
I... I...
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
That's a very good question. [laughs]
Steve Wasserman
I feel like you've, kind of, given it to me, like...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] This wasn't a... [laughs]
Steve Wasserman
... like, you know: “I didn't enjoy this. I think you might.”
Charles Adrian
[laughs] No, no, no. That's not at all...
Steve Wasserman
No, no.
Charles Adrian
No, no. This wasn't a kindly gesture in any way at all.
Steve Wasserman
Oh right! Oh, you're foisting it on me. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I'm getting rid of this book.
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
And if anything I suppose I hope it... it's [indistinct] a similar sort of dissatisfaction and perhaps even anger as...
Steve Wasserman
So we can share it. I could say: “Argh. I disliked it as much as you did.”
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. I... Because I think... I think the... the... the annoyance that I came away with, having read Maurice was actually quite useful in many ways. I mean, it helped... lead me to define, in my own mind, what... what I wanted from what you might call gay literature. It's such a dangerous thing, you know, this kind of ghettoisation of... of a group of people but... but I think it is important to see one's own experience reflected in art - and obviously literature is for me the major art just because... just because it speaks to me more easily than other... other forms - and so I think looking for the gaps in this [taps book] was actually quite interesting and useful.
Steve Wasserman
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Let me play... Let me play a track that I've chosen now. This is... This is something that I discovered recently. I don't like everything that this guy does but I like his... I like his tone. This is Perfume Genius. And this is No Tear.
Music
[No Tear by Perfume Genius]
Jingle
[London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio]
Charles Adrian
This is London Fields Radio. This is... This is Page One, the Second Hand Book Factory, with Steve Wasserman. Am I pronouncing that right?
Steve Wasserman
Sounds good to me.
Charles Adrian
Okay. Good. Where are you from, Steve?
Steve Wasserman
I'm originally from South Africa.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
So we emigrated when I was about fifteen.
Charles Adrian
I see.
Steve Wasserman
The perfect... perfect age at which to immigrate. You know, you're... you're all, kind of, gawky and... and...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes.
Steve Wasserman
... and embarrassed about...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [laughing] Yes.
Steve Wasserman
... everything and...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I can imagine.
Steve Wasserman
... and you're thrown into a new country.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm. And do you think that had a [laughing] deleterious effect?
Steve Wasserman
[laughs] Just a bit.
Steve and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
Well, I think there's... there's... there's... there's a rich seam to be mined there but perhaps this isn't... this isn't the moment or the... or the programme.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] That's right. Otherwise we turn into therapy [indistinct]. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Exactly. Exactly. And I'm not trained for that. Let me... What I am training for, though, I think, is to listen to you read the book that you're going to give to me. What... so what are you going to give to me?
Steve Wasserman
Well, this is... I think this is very interesting. It's interesting that you chose Maurice and talked about how you felt this was a book that did not reflect your world - and I didn't know you were going to give me Maurice.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
And I suppose in some way this is a twenty-first century Maurice, although it's not... it's not... it doesn't have... narrative wise, it's... it's a different narrative.
Charles Adrian
Okay. So what is it?
Steve Wasserman
So. It's a book by... It's a book by a writer called Sean Levin and it's called Seven Sweet Things.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
It's a novella. I think it's a book about hunger and about consumption. It's a love story and essentially I think all the passages... because it's written in quite an elliptical sort of way and I think all the passages of the book are either about the consumption of the lovers consuming each other...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
... or the consumption of food - because Levin does this incredible... this... there's a lot... So basically there's a lot of sex... there's a lot... there's a lot of sex and there's a lot of food. There's a lot of eating and there's a lot of fucking in this book. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Okay. Okay. Well in that sense it already wins over Maurice.
Steve Wasserman
But it's also about the consumption.... it's about the consumption of the city as well because it's set in London and I think he... I think he writes about those three things just exquisitely. He writes about sex, he writes about food and the eating of food and the sharing of food...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Steve Wasserman
... and about London...
Charles Adrian
Ah. Great.
Steve Wasserman
... in a fantastic way.
Charles Adrian
Re... Read to me.
Steve Wasserman
So this is the first page:
Last night, when my love went back to his girlfriend and I forgot how much he loves me and that I still love him, I comforted myself with the making of a rum-glazed chocolate and coconut cake. The house was quiet, the upstairs people still at work, the neighbour's children not back from the cinema yet. There was room for anguish and anger to become diffuse, to flow unhindered from the usual hubbub they cause inside my head, to hover like darkness on the face of the deep. For wasn't it the loneliness of chaos that led God to creation?
First, I cleared the work-surface. And while I cleared, I thought, as I have been thinking recently, about Plato. Towards the end of his Symposium, Diotima tells Socrates, as he sits at her feet, that Love is the son of Poverty and Resource. This, she tells him, is how Love came into being: Poverty, despairing she'd be stuck in a rut for the rest of her life, creeps up on Resource and fucks him in his sleep. As for me, to even out the barrenness that threatens to overwhelm me when my love is away, I find ways to feel resourceful. Last night was not the first time; I've learned to feed myself in his absence.
Music
[Constant Craving by KD Lang starts playing]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over the music] As requested, this is a little bit of... PJ Harvey is it? No, who is it? [laughing] KD Lang. Sorry I have written that down.
Steve Wasserman
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
What is... So what...?
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] Are we going for KD or are we going for... or are we going for...?
Charles Adrian
This is K... this is KD Lang, isn't it?
Steve Wasserman
Are we going for...?
Charles Adrian
I'm not going to play this all. I'm just playing... I'm just playing a bit of mood...
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] Oh right, Constant Craving. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... a bit of mood music for you.
Steve Wasserman
Oh absolutely.
Charles Adrian
That's it. I think that's as much as you're... you're getting. I'm sorry.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
[Constant Craving by KD Lang fades out]
Steve Wasserman
Oh, I love that song.
Charles Adrian
No, because I've chosen something else that I'm going to play to... to play us out. So that was... [laughing] yeah, that was... You felt... You felt that that was a good description of the book itself.
Steve Wasserman
[speaking over] I felt this book could have called... been called Constant Craving.
Charles Adrian
I can imagine even from listening to that first page, yes. I think... I think that's going to resonate with me. I feel that already.
Steve Wasserman
Good.
Charles Adrian
I'm looking forward to... to consuming the whole thing. I think we have to finish, I'm afraid. This has... This has been a... This has been a really fascinating programme.
Steve Wasserman
It's been fun.
Charles Adrian
So let's finish with... Let's finish with your... your second... your second... well, your last choice, should I say. This is... This is Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk. This is by Rufus Wainwright. Thank you very much, Steve Wasserman.
Steve Wasserman
Thank you.
Charles Adrian
This has been wonderful.
Steve Wasserman
Thank you.
Music
[Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk by Rufus Wainwright]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]