by David Lodge
Photo of Professor Colin MacCabe © Photoshot/Getty Images
Extract from ‘This Be The Verse’, High Windows by Philip Larkin © Used by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Extract from ‘Letter to Lord Byron’, Letters from Iceland by W. H. Auden © Used by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
1 Henceforward this title is referred to as QAGTTBB.
1 Andy Doherty, ‘Birmingham Roundabout’ website, posted 16th March 2010.
1 ‘A Tricky Undertaking: the biography of Muriel Spark’, Lives in Writing (2014), pp. 64–65.
1 Sample passage from the review: ‘It is not so much the jargon that annoys one, though it is tiresome enough, as the extraordinary vanity of the discourse, its assumption that we are interested not only in its conclusions but in every wavering thread of cogitation that leads up to them. It seems impossible to arrest the text, to stem the flow of words, to grasp a single point that can be simply understood, weighed and tested. Gradually one’s mind goes numb.’ I did read other books by Bloom later, notably The Anxiety of Influence, which were more rewarding.
1 Introduction to The Campus Trilogy (2011).
2 My long association with the American Park Honan, whom I first met when we were postgraduates at University College London, and who subsequently became a colleague at Birmingham University, is described in QAGTTBB.
1 In case it is of interest my own choices were: 1. ‘Chocolate Apricot’, from the LP A Different Kind of Blues by André Previn and Itzhak Perlman. 2. Simon & Garfunkel, ‘Dangling Conversation’ from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme. 3. Miles Davis, ‘Concerto de Aranjuez’ from Sketches of Spain. 4. Albinoni’s Adagio. 5. Joni Mitchell, ‘You Turn me On, I’m a Radio’ from Miles of Aisles. 6. Monteverdi, the Deposuit from the Magnificat in Six Voices. 7. George and Ira Gershwin, ‘A Foggy Day’, sung by Ella Fitzgerald. 8. Edward Elgar, the ‘Nimrod’ movement from Enigma Variations.
1 The story of this edition is told in QAGTTBB.
2 I had recently been diagnosed with moderate high frequency deafness and issued with a National Health Service hearing aid for one ear, the first stage in a long process of gradually deteriorating hearing which required more and more sophisticated and expensive aids for me to function as a social being. As I have treated this subject extensively in a novel, Deaf Sentence (2014), I will not make more than passing reference to it in this book.
3 This book, The Man Who Wouldn’t Get Up and Other Stories, was eventually published in an expanded form by Vintage in 2016.
1 I met her for the first time some years later when we were seated next to each other at a Channel 4 Arts Awards lunch. I looked at her name card on the table before she arrived, and wondered how we would manage our conversation when she did. She took her place just as the meal was about to begin, and acknowledged that she knew who I was by declaring, ‘I don’t think I have been required to pass judgement on your work.’ Before I could contradict her, she turned to speak to the guest on her other side and remained in that posture for the remainder of the meal.
1 Images and Understanding, ed. Horace Barlow, Colin Blakemore and Miranda Weston-Smith, Cambridge UP (1990).
1 An internet blogzine called ‘Forgotten TV’ which describes it as ‘a smash [hit]’ is in this respect, and several others, deeply misleading.
2 Towards the end of the novel the infatuated Vic pleads with Robyn to recognise his love for her and she responds with mockery. In the TV version he seems to recognise the hopelessness of his desire, and says sadly, ‘I don’t think you’ve ever had your heart broken, have you?’ The remark takes Robyn by surprise and silences her for a moment. It’s one which softens their parting and prepares for Vic’s reconciliation with his wife.
1 This is summarised in QAGTTBB, pp. 323–24.
1 Strictly speaking the action was not ‘filmed’ on celluloid, but ‘recorded’ on videotape, using Outside Broadcast equipment when on location. Most TV drama was recorded on tape in those days because it is cheaper than film. But the methods used with each medium are essentially the same, and it seems less confusing to use the verb ‘film’ for both.
2 The journalist Helen Fielding (not yet famous as the creator of Bridget Jones) made exactly this point two years later in an article about the Booker Prize in the Sunday Times, 27th October 1991, with the strapline ‘You Scratch My Hardback …’
3 The rules of the Booker allow the judges to request copies of a book not submitted by its publisher if they think it may be worthy of consideration. This was some compensation for publishers who specialised in literary fiction but were allowed to submit only two books.
4 In 1974, very early in the history of the prize, it was shared between two writers, Nadine Gordimer and Stanley Middleton, and between Michael Ondaatje and Barry Unsworth in 1992, after which judges were told they must choose a single winner.
1 In describing these articles as ‘classes’ Sexton was echoing, consciously or unconsciously, the term ‘Masterclass’ attached to James Fenton’s series in the Independent on Sunday, which I had wisely prevented Blake Morrison from applying to mine. In 1992 these appalling little articles were collected and published as The Art of Fiction, which has remained in print in Britain and the USA ever since, and has been translated into fourteen foreign languages.
2 This prize for ‘the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months’ was founded by a group of journalists in 2012. In its short life span Zoë Heller has been shortlisted once, and David Sexton twice.
