I s the Prime Minister developing a long overdue sense of
irony? Asked to name his favourite song for Face the Music, a new exhibition of portraits of public figures accompanied by music, Mr Blair nominated 'Crossroads Blues', by the pioneering blues guitarist Robert Johnson. As any fule kno, legend surrounding Robert Johnson had it that as a young man he met the Devil at a crossroads and struck a bargain with him, selling his soul into eternal damnation for supernatural guitar skills and worldly success. Mr Blair's student band, Ugly Rumours, never quite got off the ground, but he has enjoyed, some believe, a more than deserved level of worldly success and, in the process, imperilled his immortal soul. The lyrics of 'Crossroads Blues' describe Johnson begging for mercy: 'I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees/ I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees/ Asked the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please.' To no avail: `Standin' at the crossroads, risin' sun goin' down/ Standin' at the crossroads baby, the risin' sun goin' down/ I believe to my soul now, po' Bob is sinkin' down.' Heigh ho!
Nicholson Baker's new short novel Checkpoint — in which an eccentric in a Washington hotel room discusses, to the mounting alarm of his companion, his plans to assassinate President George W. Bush with a flock of remote-controlled flying saws — has been heavily criticised in the US. It's suggested that to include real people in your fiction is a step beyond the ethical pale. Well, it's a moot point at least. But it does seem to be a vogue. John Preston's third novel, Kings of the Roundhouse, whose opening sections are set in the scuzzy north London rock-androll demi-monde of the 1970s, includes a running joke involving someone even scarier than Bush: 'They headed towards the bar. As they did so, the doors were pushed open from the other side and a tall woman with long red hair came out. She had a bony face and held her head very erect. In her hands was a pile of papers . . . . "Run!" shouted Ronald over his shoulder, his dreadlocks flapping behind him.' Our heroes hide until it's safe to come out. "That woman's face is very familiar," said Edmund. "Who is she?" "Vanessa Redgrave," said Pippa, even more bitterly than usual. "She comes in here all the time, selling her Workers' Revolutionary Party magazine . . . Don't
get stuck with her, Edmund. Whatever you do. She can talk the hind legs off a donkey." "And the front ones," said Ronald. 'Wouldn't it add to the stock of public pleasure if Miss Redgrave were to share her memories of those halcyon days in novel form?
Last Friday the Esporta Riverside Tennis Club in Chiswick played host to 'The Lobbies', the annual publishers' mixed-doubles tennis tournament, described as 'the most prestigious event in the publishing tennis calendar'. The winning pair were royal writer Penny Junor and Jim Parton, confidant and biographer of Robbie Williams. Ms Junor was completely overcome. 'I have never won anything before in my life,' she told the many friends and relatives she telephoned on the way home. 'Not a sausage. Jim Parton is brilliant at tennis, and handsome too.'
Last week, it was announced that a 'lost' 1948 poem by Philip Larkin had been unearthed in the archives of Hull university. An apostrophe to Larkin's dead father, it begins: 'And yet — but after death there's no -and yet"/ Now we have seen you die; and had you burned,/ I cannot aphorise "what I have learned"[...I It is a fine piece of work, but a question that seems not to have been asked in the public discussion of the poem is this: did Larkin actually finish it? While seeming thematically complete, the form implies that it would have had another three lines. As it stands, it looks like a lopped-off sonnet: the first eight lines — all regular pentameters — rhyme ABBACDDC, a not-quite-Petrarchan octave, But the final rhyme-scheme is EAF. Curious to introduce two unrhymed endings in so formally tight a poem. I'd be interested to
hear from Larkin scholars with a view on the matter.
Joseph Connolly, the beard-wearer, comic novelist and bibliomane, is annoyed with the P. G. Wodehouse estate. He is about to publish an updated version of his illustrated biography of Wodehouse, tut this time,' he informs Evening Standard readers, 'I am sorry to say, the estate has forbidden me to quote one single word, despite my pioneering Wodehouse history. They want to leave the way clear for Robert McCrum's authorised biography, which is also due ... It seems rather ungenerous and not at all how the master would have handled it.' Connolly is too chivalrous to do down his rival's work, but his summary of Wodehouse — 'behind the happy face there lived a happy man' — suggests to readers that McCrum's biography will be the dull chronicle of an eventless life: 'The authorised biography of P. G. will not be full of revelations, says a rival biographer, because the much-loved novelist was a happy man with nothing to hide.'
rr his year's Folkestone Literary Festival
starts next month, with Saga magazine as its principal sponsor. The festival runs 20-25 September, and kicks off with William Hague introducing his new biography of Pitt the Younger. Other star attractions are Nina Bawden, John Mortimer, Clarissa Dickson Wright, Flora Fraser, Martin Jarvis and the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, who, according to this year's brochure, sees himself as 'a town crier, can-opener and flag-waver for poetry'. Can-opener? Bless him. Anyway, the whole thing sounds a delight. Details at www.folkestonelitfest.com, or through the box office: 01303 258 594.
There's room, too, to plug a worthy venture. Slightly Foxed is the name given to an independent quarterly magazine, currently on its second issue, aimed at retrieving enjoyable or interesting but little publicised works from backlists and back-rooms, and introducing them to a readership of bibliophiles. Prettily printed on creamy paper, pocket-sized, and sparingly illustrated with line-drawings and black-and-white photographs, it presents a collection of short and enjoyable essayscum-reviews from established writers and literary journalists. £8 a pop. Call 020 7359 3377 for particulars, or look at www.foxedquarterly.com.
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