H ooray for the new, caring, healing Conservative party. Hooray for
the spirit of inclusiveness. Hooray for clear blue water and hooray for the big blue tent. At last the time for healing has come. It is in such a spirit, at least, that I turn to the index — which, as everyone knows, is the only part of books by politicians anyone ever reads with interest — of John Redwood's Singing the Blues: The Once and Future Conservatives (reviewed page 77). 'Major, John,' begins a hefty section, 'characteristic equivocation of, 118; and difficulties with election promises, 120; discourages sensible debate in Cabinet, 131; and Europe, 22, 152, 283, 285, 295; and ERM, 98, 110-111, 124, 286; foolish decisions of, 133; lets down people, 138; makes claims in memoirs, 125; makes right decision to resign, 140-141... takes wrong course of action over Maastricht, 127.' Oh dear, oh dear. Honi soil qui mal y pense, pointy ears. When we turn to the index of Mr Major's autobiography, what do we find? 'Redwood, John: Citizen's Charter, 258; assumed to be disloyal, 343...'
Ever since, earlier this year, it emerged that an American publishing house had dropped plans to republish an undistinguished lesbian bodice-ripper called Sisters, set in the Wild West, the book has become incredibly hot property. Why? Because it is by Lynne Cheney, the vice-presidential Missus. Copies are hens'-teeth-rare, and are changing hands for several thousand pounds a time. But no one wants it for Lynne's luminous prose. They want it for the naughty bits. And, happily, some public-spirited folks have posted them on the Internet at http://www.whitehouse.org/administrationsistcrs.asp. It looks a bit like the official White House site, but I daresay it isn't, so rush before it gets shut down. A taster: 'She went on up the stairs to her room and took off her dripping clothes. Connie came in as she started undressing. "Go away, Connie, leave me alone." She took off her dress, her petticoat, her corset, her stockings. Even her lacy undershift and drawers were wet, clinging to her body before she stripped them off ...' Nurse!
T ook out, chum! The latest number of
P N Review brings mention of a seismic event in the literary world. It deserves a wider public. The great Harold Pinter has been awarded the biennial Wilfred Owen Prize for his war poems. Remember those? Memorable lines included, 'Your eyes have gone out and your nose/ Sniffs only the pang of the dead', and 'There's no escape/ The big pricks are out The prize's previous winner was Seamus I leaney, who never managed anything like that. The chairman of the Wilfred Owen Association, Michael Grayer, commended Mr Pinter's poems as 'hard-hitting and uncompromising, written with lucidity, clarity and economy'. P N Review, while approving the prize, reminds us rather tartly of C. H. Sisson's response to Owen's declaration, 'My subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.' If there is poetry, Sisson said, it should be in the poetry. Anyway, the ceremony in Shrewsbury next spring, at which Mr Pinter will be presented with a special sculpture of as yet unspecified dimensions, should be a hoot.
e big man is dead. Jacques Derrida
has disappeared into the final lacuna. He has suffered a carrying-away. The only fitting memorial to the discoverer/ inventor of deconstruction will be a pair of negatives. Let no newspaper story ever again use the term 'deconstruct' as a synonym for 'analyse', in the hopes of sounding cleverer. And, please, please, please, can we get through a decent term of mourning without somebody making a 'death of the author' joke. That was Roland Barthes, you ninnies.
nother literary festival for the gazetteer. (Is there a weekend, now, that passes without one?). Southwold's Ways With Words festival, rather like those jocular pubs that advertise 'filthy food and rotten beer', makes a unique selling point of what some would see as a drawback. 'Rain, wind, hurricane,' the organisers chirp. 'It doesn't matter to those attending this popular and exciting five-day literature festival.' Southwold — which runs from 11-15 November — has a heavily political bent, with Tony Benn, Roy Hattersley, Michael Buerk, Libby Purves, Martin Bell and Jon Snow on the line-up. Fiction is represented by the likes of Penelope Lively and Deborah Moggach, and glamour by the lovely Sheila Hancock. There's a smidgeon of both in Dirk Bogarde's biographer, nice John Coldstream, who hosts a dinner on the penultimate night. Details at www.wayswithwords.co.uk, or on 01803 867373.
Introducing the 25th anniversary of Granta magazine, its editor Ian Jack — now the only Ian Jack of whom anyone speaks — describes how in his early years he had to see off some competition from another Ian Jack. Professor Ian Jack, then the Cambridge English professor, wrote to Ian Jack asking him to change his name lest they be confused. Ian Jack declined. Then, when Ian Jack wrote an article about structuralist literary theory in the Sunday Times (fat chance of such a thing appearing nowadays — eheu fugaces...), Professor Ian Jack sent a furious, 2,000-word telex of complaint (longer than Ian Jack's article) complaining that Ian Jack had imperilled Professor Ian Jack's reputation. Then Professor Ian Jack wrote to the TLS to say that he wasn't Ian Jack. Ian Jack duly wrote a letter to say that he wasn't Professor Ian Jack either. Next week: Harold Pinter who wrote all them good plays, and Harold Pinter who wrote all them rotten poems. Should one of them change his name?
It's a Peter Preston Prose Poser. This week, the former Guardian editor and mighty master of the metaphor, wrote the following in his Observer media column: 'The Express, which used to love Blair and eat biscuits at his tea table, has turned into an attack dog biscuit.' A dog biscuit for anyone who can explain what an 'attack dog biscuit' is, still more what the blithering flip Mr Preston is on about.
s a valediction to summer — and a way of commending to your attention an enduring, and uniquely charming, quarterly periodical, Books from Finland (it is just what it sounds like) — I leave you with a few lines of Ilpo Tiihonen's long poem 'A summer evening's slight conceptualness', in Herbert Lomas's translation: `Ah gulfiness, lakeliness, streamliness/ Ah featherlight set-free-again-ness/ And seismic earth's ecstatic staticness/ And summer cairn's so easy boatliness./ Ah cows' exuberant udderliness Udderly lovely.
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