Seamus Heaney's Desert Island Discs

40 minutes to spare? Listen to Seamus Heaney on Desert Island Discs If I had to take just one programme from this long-running series with me to a desert island I think it would be this.  God, but the man can talk. His luxury item? A pair of Doc Martens.

He chose as his book a copy of Ulysses. Thanks to the BBC's  Castaway Archive (which is an addictive pleasure) you can find out what other castaways chose Joyce's masterpiece.
They are, alphabetically:

Peter Blake
Professor Baruch Blumberg
David Lodge
Peter Maxwell Davies
Ian McEwan
Jimmy McGovern
Edna O'Brien
Derek Walcott

Only one castaway has chosen Finnegans Wake. You can find out who for yourself.

Generation Twee

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Best imaginary poets

Best imaginary poems

By 'imaginary poems' I mean the poetic equivalent of the kind of painting one sees sometimes in old Hollywood films - the 'Portrait of Carlotta' in Hitchcock's Vertigo, or the painting of the first Mrs de Winter in his adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. They share a slightly Anigonni-ish look.

Like the paintings, these are poems that are not real poems, and are attributed to poets who do not exist beyond the book or film or telly programme within which they appear and are quoted. Some favourites:

Bloom's modest effort in Ulysses:

An acronym sent to Molly on Valentine's Day, before they were married:

Poets oft have sung in rhyme
Of music sweet their praise divine.
Let them hymn it nine times nine.
Dearer far than song or wine.
You are mine. The world is mine.

Uncle Monty in Withnail and I

Richard Griffiths as the predatoy pederast in Bruce Dickinson's cult movie is given to odd flights of poetry:

"The night is beginning to brrruise, and we shall be forced to camp" and "We live in a kingdom or rains, where the monarchy comes in gangs" and (best of all) "I often wonder where Norman is now. Probably wintering with his mother in Guildford. A cat, rain, Vim under the sink, and both bars on. But old now, there is no true beauty without decay."

I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue (various episodes)

Improvised limericks were a feature of this long-running Radio 4 'antidote to panel games' of which the one I recall vividly runs as follows. The chairman Humphrey Lyttelton gives the first line and the three players come up with  . . . well, see for yourself:

Humphry Littleton: "While singing the national anthem". Graeme?

Graeme:  "While singing the national anthem,

                   The Bishop said 'Blimey you're handthome'"

Tim:          "Then Norman Lamont" (pause) 

Barry (deliberately): "Fell into the font"

Willy: (instantly): "He was pushed by that old bitch from Grantham"

Younger readers may need footnotes. Margaret Thatcher was born and raised in Grantham. You can look Norman 'Whiplash' Lamont up. Willy was the fondly-remembered Willy Rushton. 

Fry and Laurie sketch

Beautifully written and excruciatingly familiar to any of us influenced in our formative teens by David Bowie.
Watch and listen here.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.

John Shade's 99-line poem forms the basis for what is arguably Nabokov's greatest book, published in 1962. Read Giles Harveu's brilliant New Yorker piece here.

'Pointy Birds' and 'In Dilman's Grove'

Both by Robert Lillison, the  first person to be killed by a car, in 1894. Only two works are known to exist:

Pointy Birds

O pointy birds,

O pointy pointy.

Anoint my head,

Anointy-nointy

In Dillman's Grove

In Dillman's Grove my love did die, 
and now in ground shall ever lie. 
None could ever replace her visage, 
until your face brought thoughts of kissage.

Lillison is favourite poet of Dr Michael Hrufhurur, played by Steve Martin in Rob Reiner's sublime comedy The Man with Two Brains. I never tiire of recommending this very funny and wildly original low-budget masterpiece, rich in quotable zingers. Watch the clip, when a bashful Martin recites both poems to Kathleen Turner in her hospital bed.

Hancock's Half Hour   The Poetry Society episode

For my money the best Hancock of all, written by the great Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The broadcast appears intermittently on the BBC Radio 4 Extra website, so look out for it. Here are the opening lines of 'Limbo' by Sid:

Mauve world, green me,
Black him, purple her,
Yellow us, pink you . . .

On Lionel Shriver and Margot Ledbetter

Lionel Shriver, responding to Rosanna Greenstreet's questionnaire in the Guardian yesterday:

What keeps you awake at night?

My own bad prose.

In common with many readers I first became aware of  Shriver with the publication of her eighth book, We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003). This was a huge global success - everybody read it and the naggingly memorable title has entered the language (and how many book titles do that?)

In the current issue of Literary Review (May 2016), Jude Cook praises Shriver's latest novel The Mandibles, set in the year 2047 when the American economy has flatlined. 

Cook says:

The Mandibles is that fabled thing, the laugh-out-loud read. As socially engaged writers from Dickens to Bellow have known, the comic novel is the proper place to be serious. The sorry tale of a planet losing its struggle with greed and finite resources is leavened by Shriver's inimitable vinegary wit: 'The one thing New York City was bound never to run out of was homeless people".

Now inimitable vinegary wit is clearly a Good Thing, but the sample provided doesn't strike me as either inimitable, or vinegary (even if vinegar can pass muster as a leavening agent). It certainly isn't witty in the 'what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed' sense. It's a humdrum observation clumsily expressed and we need to look elsewhere for gold standard zingers. Cook provides some:

Skype is now 'FleXface', while YouTube is waggishly dubbed 'Inner-Tube' And Avery, mother of Goog and Bing, comes to regret naming her boys after defunct search engines. Elsewhere there are scabrous swipes at publishing: fiction is 'a free for all, everybody writing it and nobody reading it - and absolutely nobody buying it."

Could even the most accomplished stand-up comic work a room with such thin and inconsequential stuff? Elsewhere (and quoted admiringly by the reviewer) a father tells his daughter: 'Plots set in the future are about what people fear in the present'. This has been a commonplace critical view since the days of H. G. Wells - all science fiction, or speculative fiction, all utopian and dystopian fiction (or whatever you want to call it) is about the priorities and anxieties at the time of writing, in one way or another.

'The relish and precision with which Shriver describes the Mandibles' fall from grace cannot be overstated' adds Cook. I'm not being curmudgeonly when I say that all the examples of Shriver's accomplishment cited by Cook in her review leave me unconvinced. Is there a term for this kind of sceptical resistance when faced with enthusiastic, well-informed endorsement? I'd like to offer one: Ledbetterism.

Margot Ledbetter, played by Penelope Keith, was the posh neighbour of Tom and Barbara Good in the BBC situation comedy The Good Life. Some of you may remember it: Richard Briers (Tom) and Felicity Kendall (Barbara) had opted out of the rat race and were intent on becoming self-sufficient in bourgeoise Surbiton. A flimsy enough premise to be sure, although the best sit-coms tend to have that in common - three priests stuck on a remote island; scrap metal merchants stuck in a room; a manic hotel manager).

Where was I? Oh yes - one of the running gags was that Margot was glacially aloof and condescending when dealing with the ramshackle Goods. Whenever Tom and Barbara and Jerry (Margot's affable husband played superbly by Paul Eddington) were chortling together she would be utterly perplexed and say, with genuine concern: "What's funny? Why is everyone laughing?"  When it comes to Lionel Shriver I need to think about Margot.

Withnail and me

The premise is slight: two unemployed actors spend a rain-sodden weekend in a remote and uninhabitable Cumbrian cottage where they get drunk, shoot fish with a rifle and are by turns frozen, petrified, starving, bored and ill. 

Written and directed by Bruce Dickinson, Withnail and I is Chekhov repurposed by William Burroughs. It's not much to look at - but listen! Here's the trailer.

What the trailer can't include are the dozens of brilliantly quotable lines. It's the best comic script since Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and there's been nothing remotely as good since. Admirers will have their favourites: the whining explanation (to an uncomprehending farmer) "We've gone on holiday by mistake"; and (drunkenly, in a genteel tea room) "We want the finest wines [pron. 'wains'] known to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them now". There are many others.

Richard E. Grant is perfectly cast as the rakehell drunkard Withnail, Paul McGann an excellent foil as his pal Marwood and the late Richard Griffiths unforgettable as the monstrous Uncle Monty.

This excellent website includes details of the liver-pounding Withnail drinking game (which I'd long heard of but assumed was the stuff or urban legend). It's not for the faint-hearted; all the drinks must be consumed by the players within the running time of the film (107 minutes) and - this would be the killer - in synch with the character.

In the course of the film Withnail is seen to drink the following (and thanks to the website authors for this mesmerising list):

• Mouthful of red wine

• Lighter fluid (but vinegar is an acceptable substitute)
• Double gin
• Finger of cider (with ice)
• Finger of cider (with ice)
• Finger of cider (with ice)
• Glass of sherry
• Two big chugs of sherry
• Mouthful of sherry
• Sip of sherry
• Double whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Splash of whisky
• Single Teachers
• Double Teachers
• Double Teachers
• Single Teachers
• Sip of sherry
• Three fingers of ale
• Sip of red wine
• Gulp of sherry
• Small glass of red wine
• Sip of red wine
• Half glass of red wine
• Sip of Pernod
• Sip of red wine
• Sip of red wine
• Gulp of red wine
• Gulp of red wine
• Finger of red wine
• Finger of red wine
• Gulp of red wine ("'53 Margeaux")
• Gulp of red wine ("'53 Margeaux")
• Gulp of red wine ("'53 Margeaux")
• Gulp of red wine ("'53 Margeaux")

A final thought - would an all-female stage version be worth doing? It would be wonderful to see a couple of women delivering Dickinson's marvellous lines (with Uncle Monty a butch lesbian). Thoughts on casting? Keira's people won't return my calls . . .

TLS back catalogue

Yesterday the Times Literary Supplement relaunched its website and although one shudders involuntarily at any sudden change to something so familiar, it seems to me a great improvement - the new site is bright and crisp and clear and easier to navigate.

The relaunch coincides with the arrival of the new editor Stig Abell, who succeeds Peter Stothard. He has plans for the publication including (I'm pleased to see) more coverage of film, more free-standing essays (not linked to specific books) and more original work by authors. This all sounds good to me. I hope (and these days it's a fragile hope) that a paper version will continue to be available for the rest of my lifetime (current estimates between 6 months and forty years).

I've been reviewing (and writing occasional Commentary pieces) for the TLS since 2009, all of which can be found in the online archive. See here. 

Captain America: Civil War

To the intense embarrassment of his son Martin, Kingsley Amis insisted, without a whiff of irony or condescension, that Terminator 2 (the James Cameron movie with Arnold Schwarznegger) was 'an unimpeachable masterpiece'.

It's nothing of the kind of course, and I expect Kingers was contentedly winding up Mart and his pal Christopher Hitchens, who had accompanied him to see the movie. But - and here's the point - I've just seen the latest product from Marvel Studios: Captain America: Civil War, and I had a Kingsley moment.  You can be among the 54,000,000 other folk who have watched the trailer online by clicking here. Mustering my critical facilities I can say, confidently, that it's absolutely terrific.

Robert Downey, Jr. plays Tony Stark aka Iron Man and Scarlett Johanssen is 'Black Widow'. A bunch of other actors unknown to me play a bunch of Avenger superheroes equally unknown to me but Frank, aged 10, was by my side as a Virgilian guide to this complex CGI underworld. He thought it was wonderful too, and he's a jaded veteran of this kind of thing.

The film begins with a colossal climax - a huge battle in downtown Lagos in which the Avengers take on some bad guys. What follows has an excellent and oddly plausible premise - that the United Nations finally calls time on the Avengers because they wield unlimited power with no regulation or responsibility (analogies with bankers are downplayed). They must either disband or be imprisoned. Stark supports this move but the group is split and the factions fight each other. The extended real climax takes place in a conveniently evacuated international air terminal (so there's no collateral damage) where these 'augmented humans' can knock the stuffing out of each other (and comic book violence is just fine by me - there's no blood, nobody actually dies). Best of all is the recruitment of a very young and gauche Spiderman (played by Tom Holland) who joins the Stark team and is more the startstruck fanboy than superhero, unable to utter anything more insightful than a regular 'Awesome!'.

The hyperkinetic battles alternate with serene and elegantly shot interiors. Downey is terrific - and I don't think he's wasted on this kind of thing; but brings a richness to the project. The other guys are two-dimensional (which is the natural state for comic book characters) and fail to register much. There a guy called Ant Man who can become very small or colossally large simply by straining - and it prompts the excellent line 'Tiny dude's just got big!'). Scarlett Johannssen  has a stunt double - hell a stunt treble more like - for the fight scenes but kicks, as they say, ass. The other female Avenger (Elizabeth Olsen playing Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch) is a bit drippy and new age, controlling things with her mind (again, by straining). She has the croakiest vocal fry of any actress I've ever heard. There's a really excellent, subtly detailed villain (Helmut Zemo) played by Daniel Brühl.

My tastes still lie with Tarkovsky, Renoir, Rohmer, Vigo, Welles, Hitchcock and Murnau. But it's a refreshing change to come out of a movie completely satisfied.