Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  This bald description makes the Eames lifestyle sound superficially rather similar to Horace and Doris Morris’s and our own. The concept of clutter is certainly very special to our thinking. Our houses contain huge collections of toys, mostly broken, together with a random precipitation of pieces of wood, pebbles, old tin cans and cardboard boxes, broken chalk, dolls’ legs, scattered heads, empty bottles, and torn envelopes with examples of indigenous child-art on the back. Our chairs, too, are arranged all kind of anyhow.

  But a glance at photographs of the interior of the Eameses’ house shows that their clutter is clutter only in the loosest sense; it’s not clutter in the strict sense that we and Horace and Doris Morris mean at all. The Eameses’ tumbleweed has tumbled neatly on to rows of hooks on the wall. The driftwood has drifted into an elegant complex just outside the garden door. The objects of indigenous Santa Fé folk culture have arranged themselves on a square board squared off with a square table, and the chairs have rained down from heaven into positions of the most geometrical exactitude.

  The general appearance, in fact, places Charles and Ray Eames pretty firmly in the tradition of our good friends Christopher and Lavinia Crumble, whose extensive collection of folk junk and objets achetés has also arranged itself about the living-room with an effortless casual elegance which is entirely alien to the Horace and Doris Morris style.

  A completely different approach to the organic development of the clutter is involved. When Christopher Crumble finishes reading a book, for instance, and tosses it casually down on the coffee-table, it lands squarely on top of ‘Giovanni Battista Piranesi and the Origins of Op Art’ (Limburger & Brie. 7gn.), the edges parallel, the diagonal extending the diagonal of the alabaster lamp-base standing at the golden section of the table. When Horace Morris or I toss a book down, however, it behaves in a much more radically casual fashion. It hits an abandoned Wellington boot standing in an empty soup bowl, perhaps, loses its jacket, and comes down half-open, halfway into an ashtray which is teetering half off the table and half on, kept in balance only by being half-covered with a pair of old trousers which have been put out for mending.

  Later, one throws down the daily paper, half-open, on top of the ashtray, the book, the boot, the trousers, and all the rest of it, whereupon half the paper slides down the side of the heap, and wafts away to fetch up along with the book, half under the sofa and half out.

  One’s wife comes tramping through the broken chalks, pebbles, and amputated dolls’ legs, carrying a large cardboard box marked Heinz Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, and full of bills and grey woollen socks. With unthinking deftness she half folds up the half-open newspaper to half make room for it, so that the box forms, some days later, an attractively unstable podium on which to rest the load of old colour supplements which have finally slipped off the top of the television set.

  Within a week or two one is hacking one’s way back down to table level again, hefting the sliding sea of colour supplements up by the armful and dumping them into a Sainsbury’s Australian Pear Halves box, which one shoves into the kitchen while one tries to think what the hell has happened to a Wellington boot and a book which have mysteriously gone missing. And didn’t one have a spare pair of trousers at one stage of one’s career …?

  It’s a style of life all right. All we need is a style of architecture that makes sense of it.

  (1967)

  In the superurbs

  The suburbs are all right after all. They are not, as has been commonly supposed, deserts of boredom, conformity, competitiveness and wife-swapping. They are not a dreadful social aberration which will in time be mercifully blotted out by enlightened town-planning, and living in them is not spiritually or morally inferior to living in the centre of cities.

  These, at any rate, are the general conclusions which are to be drawn from the study of one particular lower-middle-class suburb in New Jersey made by the American sociologist Herbert J. Gans, and reported in his book ‘The Levittowners.’ His findings are said to have been violently attacked by orthodox professional opinion in America; a sure sign that they will eventually be violently accepted.

  I accept Mr Gan’s findings right now, ahead of the rush, and only wish I’d had the wit to find them first. For a long time now I’ve nursed the vague project of writing a guidebook to my native London suburbs. Like most guidebooks, it would touch upon the geography, history, architecture, customs and economy of the region. Whenever I’ve mentioned it to people they’ve either laughed and said it could be devastating, or asked if the suburban joke wasn’t a bit played out. The idea of actually describing the suburbs, without either laughing at them or moralising about them, evidently seems to most people about as far-fetched as mapping a plate of mashed potato.

  One of the reasons why the suburbs are thought to be such hotbeds, or perhaps coldbeds, of boring conformity is that they boringly fail to conform, to the tastes of intellectuals. So anyone with intellectual leanings leaves at the first opportunity. Somewhere in the centre of the city, of course, they run into other disaffected intellectuals fleeing from their suburbs, and settle down on. the spot to set up a boring conformity of their own.

  Of course, the boring conformity of the intellectual community doesn’t seem like boring conformity to the intellectuals, any more than the boring conformity of the suburbs seems like boring conformity to the suburbanites; each, to its adherents, seems full of the most stimulating diversity.

  Let us not forget Progel’s First Law of Social Appearances, which states: ‘The homogeneity of a group seen from outside is in direct proportion to its heterogeneity seen from within.’ Or as Samuel Crink (1721–1897) puts it: ‘Likeness is in the eye of the unlike; the like see nothing but their unlikeness.’

  All the same, if I had money invested in the future prosperity of the suburbs, I think I should at this point discreetly begin to withdraw it. When moderate people like you and me, and all the others who will eventually come round to Mr Gans’s ideas, start thinking that an institution is a good thing after all, its prime is past; nothing but stagnation and decay lie ahead.

  Remember what we thought of Victorian architecture, until it started to become ripe for demolition? Remember what filthy things we thought steam trains and steamships were, until just before the rise of the motorcar and the aeroplane? Now, of course, we know that it is the motorcar and the aeroplane which are ruining our countryside and destroying our character. We shall come round to them only when they invent the … whatever it is that will mark the end of our civilisation next.

  This is the general moral history of ideas: in their mewling infancy they are interesting and challenging and on the point of opening up a wonderful new age. Then, when they grow strong and effective, and start opening up the wonderful new age, it turns out that they are inhuman, soul-destroying, contemptible, and ridiculous. And finally, in old age, when their strength begins to fail, they are regarded with understanding and affection, and showered with honours.

  Remember how television was turning us all into a nation of square-eyed morons until McLuhan said really it was doing us all a world of good and the young were growing up as a new electronic super-race? Immediately, of course, we hear that fewer and fewer young people are watching television.

  The other day I heard an architect talking nostalgically about pre-fabs as the best attempt yet at popular housing. High-rise flats – created in a messianic attempt to avoid the suburban sprawl we now think might be fine after all, and currently reviled in their turn – even these we shall one day come to feel affection for. Truly, there is almost no limit to the capacity of human beings to adapt themselves to the ideas imposed upon them for their own good.

  It’s odd how we feel impelled to react to everything in moral terms. Why does everything have to seem good or bad to us? Particularly when we know that whatever we now think good we shall eventually think bad, and vice versa. We’re like tossed pennies, that can register nothing but heads or tails! Good God, is there really no asp
ect of the universe that we don’t feel compelled either to encourage or discourage with our little smiles and frowns?

  Let us put ten minutes aside each day to practise feeling morally numb. The more things in the universe which we can contemplate with neither approbation nor disapprobation, the more moral energy we shall have left to concentrate on the things which really do need something done about them. Let our commonest moral reaction be a shrug, our commonest moral discourse ‘I dunno,’ and ‘Sawright Ispose.’

  Then, faced with new ideas like adolescent self-determination and the spread of unfamiliar intoxicants, we might learn to express our unease and fear just as plain unease and fear, and instead of leaping in to condemn and ridicule, just modestly shuffle from foot to foot, and lick our lips uneasily and tremble.

  From the moral point of view (if one can say this) it would be a great improvement.

  (1967)

  Inside the Krankenhaus

  I’m learning a lot from the series the Daily Mirror is publishing by Auberon Waugh and his wife (‘the brilliant young Waughs,’ as the Mirror calls them). They’re travelling about Europe, sending back a piece a week on the national characteristics of each country they visit.

  The Germans are the latest race to come under their microscope. ‘Our idea of the country,’ writes Mr Waugh, ‘had been formed by seeing war films in which all Germans shout “Ach, so! Gott in Himmel!”’ He was agreeably surprised to find that this was not the case in the Federal Republic today, and almost as surprised by the sheer variety of the German race. ‘Germans come in all sizes,’ he reports, ‘fat, thin, tall, short, dark, fair. Some are cheerful, some gloomy.’

  Ach so? one feels like gasping. Thin as well as fat? Short as well as tall? Some cheerful, some gloomy? Well, dash it all! Gott, as one might say, in Himmel!

  So the old prejudices and misconceptions are at last exposed. There’s only one thing in which Mr Waugh thinks the Germans might be deficient, and that’s a sense of the ridiculous – a grave flaw, of course, which sets them apart from visiting British journalists and others. Mr Waugh thinks that their language might be in some way to blame.

  ‘It must be very difficult to keep a straight face,’ he writes, ‘if, when you go to visit a relative in hospital you have to ask for the Krankenhaus, or when you want the way out, if you have to ask for the Ausfahrt.’

  I suppose it must. I’d never thought of it that way before. I suppose life must be just one long struggle to keep themselves from bursting out laughing at their own language.

  It would explain a lot, of course. That’s what the object of all that iron Prussian discipline must have been. That’s what all those duelling scars were for – to camouflage the dirty grins on the face of people inquiring about the Ausfahrt.

  Now that the old traditional codes of discipline have gone it’s terrible. The approach to every Ausfahrt, Einfahrt, and Krankenhaus in the Federal Republic is jammed with people falling about and holding their sides. But that’s nothing to what it’s like inside the Krankenhaus. Inside it sounds like 14 different studio audiences trying to earn their free tickets simultaneously, as the patients describe their various comic-sounding symptoms to the staff. Here’s a new admission scarcely able to speak for giggles as he tells the doctor he has a pain in his elbow.

  ‘A Schmerz in your Ellenbogen?’ repeats the doctor without any sign of amusement – he’s heard the joke before, of course. ‘Which Ellenbogen?’

  ‘Both Ellenbogens,’ replies the patient, trying to pull himself together. ‘I also get agonising twinges which run up and down my leg from my … from my …’

  But it’s no good – he’s off again. Unable to get the words out for laughing, he points silently from his thigh to his ankle.

  ‘From your Schenkel to your Knöchel?’ says the doctor, the corner of his mouth twitching very slightly in spite of himself. The patient nods helplessly.

  ‘And sometimes,’ he gasps, ‘and sometimes … all the way down my …’

  He closes his eyes and vibrates silently, shaking his head from time to time to indicate that speech is beyond him.

  ‘Come on,’ says the doctor, frankly grinning himself now. ‘Get it out.’

  ‘All the way down my … my … my Wirbel …’

  ‘You’ll start me off if you’re not careful. Your what?’

  ‘My Wirbelsäu-häu-häu-häu-häu-häu-häu …’

  ‘Your Wirbelsäule? Your backbone?’

  The patient nods, his eyes covered with his hand, his shoulders shaking rhythmically. The doctor bites his lip hard to stop himself giving way.

  ‘Any other symptoms?’ he demands gruffly.

  ‘Yes,’ croaks the patient weakly, ‘Verstopfung!’

  At this the doctor can hold out no longer. A great snort of laughter forces its way past his clenched jaw muscles, and he puts his head back and laughs until he cries.

  ‘Verstopft, are you?’ he manages at last. ‘Constipated?’

  ‘Verstopft up solid!’

  Eventually they both simmer down a bit, and sigh, and wipe their eyes, smiling anywhere but at each other.

  ‘You know what your trouble is?’ says the doctor. ‘You’ve got Kniescheibenentzündung. Housemaid’s knee.’

  ‘Don’t!’ pleads the patient, ‘You’ll start me off again!’

  ‘And a rather bad dose of …’

  ‘No, honestly, I’ve got a pain as it is …’

  ‘No, listen, a rather bad dose of Windpo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho …!’

  ‘Stop! Sto-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho …!’

  ‘Wind … Wind-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi …!’

  ‘Oh …! I swear I’m dying …!’

  ‘Windpocken! Chickenpox!’

  ‘No, honestly, shut up …!’

  ‘And …’

  ‘I’m not listening!’

  ‘… You’ve sprained your – no, listen – your nostril, your Nasenflügel …!’

  Well, the poor devil’s in stitches already, of course. By the time he’s had a splint applied to his Nasenflügel and been wheeled out towards the Ausfahrt, he’s probably just about what German doctors call blühendekopfabgelacht – laughed his blooming head off. That’s going to take a stitch or two to fix; it’s yet another case of someone coming out of the Krankenhaus a whole lot kranker than he went in.

  Gott in Himmel! It makes you glad to be English.

  (1966)

  Ivan Kudovbin

  It’s a weirdly fascinating business watching sober and fair-minded human beings trying to work out a formula for the circumstances in which abortion should be permitted. All possible reasons and permutations of reasons are canvassed and debated; excepting only the reason that the woman concerned wants an abortion, which no one mentions as having any relevance to the question at all.

  Of course, this way of thinking is very congenial to a bureaucracy-loving socialist like me, who believes that people shouldn’t be allowed any freedom to choose for themselves, but should have all their decisions made for them by faceless officials and so-called experts who think they know what’s best for everyone. But I’m rather surprised that the tireless defenders of personal liberty whom we usually find ourselves up against in our insidious erosion of citizen rights haven’t been exposing controls and snoopers in this sector with quite their usual vigour.

  No, I was being gently ironical. I’m aware that those who deny that a pregnant woman has any personal right to choose whether she wants to give birth do so because they are trying to protect the right of the unborn to be born. And there are two arguments often advanced in this direction which I must admit I find rather compelling.

  The first is that few people (if any), once having got themselves born and in a position to say, would prefer not to have been born, however reluctant or unsuitable their mother, or however exhausted and inadequate she subsequently became. The second (and logically similar) argument is that if abortion had been freely available in the past, the world might have been deprived of individuals like Leonardo da Vinci
and William the Conqueror (who were illegitimate), and Bach (the eighth of eight children).

  These arguments are good ones. The only trouble with them is that they’re too good. Take the case of that astonishing sixteenth-century figure Ivan Kudovbin. He invented a primitive form of gas-mantle; he wrote 123 flute sonatas, before the sonata form had been invented; he experimented with cheap money and deficit budgeting; he raised a citizen army which drove the Galicians right out of Galicia into Silesia, and the Silesians right out of Silesia into Galicia. He was undoubtedly a genius. But, as we know from studying the history of the period, he was one of the unlucky ones who didn’t get born. He Kudovbin, but he wasn’t. If he had been born he would have preferred to have been born, I’m pretty sure. His loss is a tragedy both to himself and to mankind.

  Perhaps Kudovbin was aborted or miscarried – I’m not sure. But I think the trouble was quite probably that he never got conceived. I don’t know what went wrong exactly. Perhaps he was the twelfth child in the family, and his parents stopped at eleven. Perhaps his mother was a nun, under vows of chastity. Perhaps his father was away on a business trip the night he should have been commenced. But what seems fairly certain mathematically is that the tragedy of his non-birth could have been averted if everyone had really taken the matter seriously.

  Think of it. If the available reproductive plant had been fully utilised from the beginning of time, and every woman had been kept bearing a child a year from puberty to menopause, billions upon billions more people would have been born. Nearly all of them, once born, would have preferred to have been born. And among them, presumably, would have been the usual proportion of geniuses. Kudovbin after Kudovbin – composers who wrote greater polyphonic music than Bach; Elizabethan dramatists more universal than Shakespeare; Elizabethan monarchs more Elizabethan than Elizabeth.

  The steamboat would have been invented in time to take people to the Crusades; the United Nations in time to reach a negotiated settlement instead. Frozen fish-fingers would have come in about the beginning of the Renaissance.