W as Evelyn Waugh a bit of a racist? Did Malcolm
Lowry like a drink? Do bears prefer to make alfresco toilet arrangements? The latest edition of the admirable literary mag Arete seems to help us with at least one of these imponderables. It contains a grumpy, recently discovered 1957 memo from Waugh to the makers of a proposed film of Scoop (not a book I like particularly. I agreed to have a film made for the sake of my starving children.') The passage that will excite most interest concerns location. The Gold Coast would make a topical setting', he writes. 'It is appreciated, however, that this is a question of higher policy involving race relations in the USA and that if, for the moment, triggers may not be treated as the subject for comedy, dagoes must suffice.' Simple, vile crassness? Or done deliberately pour epater lcr bien pensants? Search me. I only work here.
Kingsley Amis's haunting poem of late middle age, recently unearthed and described by his son Martin as 'one of his best', and by his biographer, Zachary Leader, as having 'power from first line to last', has great virtues. But it is surely hard to think it finished. Its last isolated line, 'Vain echoes, desist', comes without a full stop. The author of The King's English was punctilious. Isn't it most likely his poem, like his life, was in draft, and didn't reach the end of the stanza?
The Catholic Herald, a much livelier read than it used to be, is causing consternation among traditionalists. It last week reviewed Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Line of Beauty, whose explicit treatment of homosexuality isn't something the old guard of the paper's readership feels comfortable confronting over the breakfast table. In his review, the staunchly heterosexual Harry Mount noted that Hollinghurst's hero, 'however coked-up ... however bewitched by a pair of rugby-playing thighs', kept a detached view of 'the excesses he dips his nose and other extremities into*. Cripes. Above the masthead of that very edition was a smiling picture of the paper's steady-hand-on-the-tiller new editor, alongside a quote declaring, 'In the past, some people have choked on the contents of the Herald ...'
Anyone who loves comics will rejoice at the new issue of McSweeney's. Seldom has so gorgeous a volume been produced since mediaeval monks were a-scratchin' and a-scrivenin' on the old goatskin with gold leaf and solutions of squashed beetles. The forthcoming issue of the book-length literary magazine, guest-edited by the comic artist Chris
Ware (author of Jimmy Corrigan and Quimby Mouse), is a treasure house of what's good in this underappreciated art form, including original work by R. Crumb, Daniel Clowes and Art Spiegelman. Charles Shulz's early sketches for Peanuts are there, along with an essay by John Updike, and a reproduction of what's thought to have been the first ever comic. No men in tights. No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In fact, the volume even includes a shrewd quote from the comicsloving highbrow Vladimir Nabokov: 'Dennis the Menace doesn't look like his father. Could he be illegitimate?' This, in itself, raises a side question for scholars. Was Nabokov, a man at home on both sides of the Atlantic, referring to the British strip Dennis the Menace, or the entirely unconnected US comic of the same name and similar vintage?
Wen she died in February at 103, the dliarist, memoirist and beauty Frances Partridge had acquired the unlooked for honour of being 'the last of the Bloomsbury set'. A memorial, with friends reading from her Diaries, and a performance of chamber music, will now be held at the London Library on the evening of 21 June. Space being limited, anyone wanting to go should apply as soon as possible to Mrs Partridge's Secretary at 5 Danehurst Street, London SW6 GSA or telephone 0207 736 4019.
arnestly interviewed for Waterstone's Books Quarterly, Philip Pullman shows pragmatism. 'As a former teacher, what responsibility do you feel to teenagers and other readers of your books?' he's asked. 'What do you want a teenage readership to think and feel after reading His Dark Materials?' Thus Pullman: 'What I want people to feel most fervently after reading one of my books is: "I must go out at once and buy his next one." '
hortly after the death of the poet Thom Gunn, the obituaries desk of a national broadsheet received a phone call from the poet's brother, Ander, neither to remonstrate nor to congratulate them on the obit. A professional photographer, he pointed out that the portrait of Thom they'd used on the page was by him, and wondered who he should invoice.
Sic Notes. I appealed lately for particularly egregious or poetic typos in books. Readers have responded. Donna Tartt's The Secret History went all the way into its zillionselling paperback edition with the name of its dedicatee, 'Brett [sic] Easton Ellis', misspelt. Unfortunate, in light of the obvious correction you could make to the name of its author. Another points out a poetic rendering, in his Oxford Companion to English Literature entry, of T. E. Hulme's remark about Romanticism: 'split [sic] religion'. Still another glories in many editions of Penguin's Spelling Dictionary that boasted it would help you spell `aardvaak'.
people sneer at Being Jordan. bestselling I memoirs of Page Three stunna Katie Price. But is she savvier than her chief rival, Posh Spice? At the weekend, Mrs Beckham was revealed to have spent three days on a 'top-secret charity mission' among the poor of the Peruvian slums. So top-secret that 'even local police were kept in the dark'. Stated reason for top-secret mission? 'To raise awareness of the shanty-dwellers plight.'
With Julian Fellowes's Snobs and Sir Peregrine Worsthorne's In Defence of Aristocracy both selling well, what better time to launch England's poshest ever literary festival? June 19th will see the first annual Aithorp Literature Festival, a one-day event personally programmed by Earl Spencer and his wife Caroline to reflect 'their tastes and interests'. Caroline's declared interest in 'contemporary fiction' looks to be behind headliners Sebastian Faulks and Marian Keyes. Charles Spencer says he's interested in poetry, hence plans for a personal appearance by Giles Andreae, the creator of Purple Ronnie.
Uurther to Robertswatch, my admiring 1 note about the historian's efforts to promote his girlfriend Leonie Frieda's biography of Catherine de Medici, the lady herself is showing comparable initiative. She opened a recent guest column in the Daily Telegraph: 'Having spent the past week in Canada promoting my book.' Less than ten words in. Bravo.
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