Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  Just think for a start how many innocent babes – potential great men among them – have been kept out of this world because of legal or moral sanctions against fornication, adultery, rape, and intercourse below the age of consent! Sentimentalists have opposed these creative and life-enhancing activities on various short-sighted grounds, such as the well-being of the woman concerned, and the desirability of stable family and social life. Have they ever stopped to consider the well-being of poor little Vsevolod and Tatiana Kudovbin, who as a result of their interference never even started being, well or ill?

  But then, people never stop to think about the rights of the unborn. So-called reformers struggled for years to get slavery abolished, using a variety of spurious moral arguments, but really on the shallow hedonistic grounds that the slaves themselves didn’t much care for it. Didn’t they, indeed! Nobody stopped to consider that without slavery there would in years to come be no Buddy Bolden, no Jelly Roll Morton, no Blind Lemon Jefferson; hence no syncopated popular music of any sort; hence no Beatles and no Cilla Black. So much for Cilla Black, for all Wilberforce cared.

  The simple truth is that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any silver linings. So carry on persecuting people; they may be Dostoyevsky. And don’t hesitate to martyr any likely-looking candidate; remember, he may not get canonised otherwise.

  (1966)

  A letter from the publisher

  Every week in this column we tell you the wonderful story of how one section of SPACE MAGAZINE was born. Today we are telling a nativity story so holy, so pregnant with awe, that no man has dared to tell it before – the story of the birth of this column, the Publisher’s Letter, itself.

  Here at SPACE-DEATH INTERNATIONAL we venerate the Publetter as the inmost shrine of SPACE journalism, the revealed word of the SPACE world-mind. No ordinary column this, but a steely skein of newsprose which is the result of a vast co-ordinated effort by all the manpower at our command. To make the column you are now reading, 1,200 SPACE staffers around the globe filed a word each – and each word was one they had already digested from all the millions of words which were used during the week in the capitals they cover.

  An operation like this entails risks, dangers. On his way to file the word ‘which,’ Miguel Freños, 42, covering the Corunna, Spain, beat, fell into a hole in the road ordered by Corunna’s genial public works boss Juan Pepito, 54, and broke his rugged, much-tanned neck.

  It also entails long-range planning. Off to Kano, Nigeria, flew Communications Editor Milo Frangle to organise the complex task of getting word from remote up-country stringer Nmikel Mfrayn. Beaten out over the first stage on jungle drums, the message was taken by camel caravan to Kallamiti, then by age-old traditional post-chaise drawn by highly prized, aphrodisiac-horned rhinoceroses to Katastrofee. Here a specially chartered jet air-liner waited at runway’s end with engines blasting. But fog kiboshed a take-off, and at the last moment the whole mammoth organisation was altered to switch to Plan Two – a picture postcard, on the flip side of which resourceful family man Mfrayn had written the sought-for word – ‘and.’

  Back at SPACE-DEATH headquarters, Non-Executive Editor Martin Faine spread the collected words over a football-pitch-sized floor area, while Advisory Editor Max Phrane indexed and cross-indexed them. But Editorial Editor Magnus Frenner was still not satisfied. After an all-night conference with the heads of editorial departments, he ordered a search of the dictionaries. Snapped thrice-fired Frenner, 35: ‘We’ve got good words, but there may be better.’

  Seventy researchers flipped 15,000 pages of ten dictionaries in 25 hours. So heavy was the yield of words from this operation that snowploughs had to be called in to bulldoze a way out of ten-foot word-drifts for word-weary staffers. Only then could Co-ordinating Editor Morag Sprain and his team begin the awesome task of sifting out the 700 most telling terms – the weekly winnowing known to hardened SPACE word-birds as ‘the Big Weed.’

  Over in the laboratories Analytical Director Micah F. Ryan submitted each of the elite 700 to elaborate tests of spelling and syntax, while behind the scenes SPACE’s own corps of undercover men checked the background of even the humblest preposition for Red influence. Woman’s Editor Mabel Brain – wife of Pulitzer Prizewinning Dogs Editor Mumbo Brain – was summoned from her bed by special messenger at 2 a.m. to come and add the woman’s angle, followed shortly by Manipulating Editor Morry Fryable, who gave the words the usual slant.

  At 6 a.m. world-famous writer Misha Fraenev was rushed to the office with siren-wailing squad-car escort to advise on arrangement of words. Said Fraenev – now through his sixth word-order assignment: ‘Ask some folk “How so successful?” Reply I – “Write I like I speak in backward-running, adjective-rich mother tongue Russian.”’

  Four Punctuating Editors went without breakfast to get this edition of SPACE out on the streets in time for our mammoth staff of Junior Sales Editors to begin their weekly stint – trying to find anyone not on SPACE staff left in the world to be enrolled as Paying Reading Editors. Even so they’d never have done it, if some compositor hadn’t had the sense to dash this alternative piece off and set it up the night before.

  (1962)

  Listener sport

  Why people watch sport baffles me. But why they listen in their millions to a wireless commentator watching it on their behalf numbs even my faculty of bafflement. I wonder if it’s just sport they are eager to experience vicariously, or whether they would find a new pleasure in, say, discussion programmes presented this way?

  … And here in the studio in Maida Vale we’re just waiting for the team to emerge from the Hospitality Room for the 143rd session of Top Topic. It was rather cold in the studio earlier on, but it’s warming up now, and the patches of damp you could see around the walls in the early afternoon have almost dried out.

  And now here comes the team, led by their chairman, O. J. Sprout, the well-known literary critic and man of letters, followed by Sir Harold Sidewinder, the grand old man of so many walks of life, Lady Frigate, woman of opinion, and Ken Nocker, the teenage satirist.

  Now, while they take their places round the table, let’s look at the form. Sir Harold Sidewinder, of course, has appeared in this programme 18 times before, though only twice in this studio, and on those two occasions he seemed slightly worried by the tricky north-east draught for which this studio is notorious … And now I think O. J. Sprout is about to deliver the first topic. No, there’s still some delay about positioning the team. As I was saying, Sir Harold’s analysis over the 18 programmes was 147,000 words for 31 topics raised, which …

  Oh, the first topic’s away, and it’s a beauty! Sprout raised it very easily and naturally, almost as if he was lobbing a topic of conversation on to his own breakfast-table. And he’s nodded to Lady Frigate. Lady Frigate moves in smoothly to pick it up – you can see from her technique that she is an old What’s My Salary? player. On the top of her form this season, too. With a quick flutter of the eyelashes she rephrases the topic so that yes – so that its meaning is reversed, and swiftly dismisses it. Away goes the first topic of the programme, with all the sting taken out of it, into Sir Harold Sidewinder’s lap.

  Sir Harold swings at it easily, as if he had all the time in the world. What a grand old exponent of the game he is! There are few men half his age who could put yet another twist on an already twisted meaning with that aplomb. What’s he up to? Is he …? Yes, he is – he’s explaining very steadily and easily that the topic as he has now formulated it reminds him of something Lord Curzon told him in 1910.

  Now while Sir Harold is telling his story – with the score standing at one down and one to play on the first topic of the 143rd session of Top Topic – I’ll just say a word about Ken Nocker, whose first appearance in Top Topic this is. He’s a forceful young player who has attracted a great deal of attention by his immensely aggressive, hard-hitting approach. It’s the sort of play that the crowd finds very attractive, and …

  Hello, what’s this
? Ken has cut in on Sir Harold’s graceful stone-walling with a very sharp tackle. Sprout intervenes. But now it’s Nocker again, going like the wind. Nocker to Sidewinder. Sidewinder to Nocker. Sprout tries to tackle Nocker, but Frigate cuts in … And it’s Frigate to Nocker, Nocker to Sidewinder, Sidewinder to Sprout, Nocker again, still Nocker …

  Now there’s a general free-for-all, with the topic in the middle somewhere, I think, and everyone going like mad. I can’t quite … I think it’s Frigate … no, it’s Sidewinder … no, I’m wrong, it’s Nocker, and this is sensational, it’s unbelievable … Sidewinder’s leaning back looking very tired – I don’t think he can last much longer – and it’s Nocker, Nocker all the way. No! Yes! No! Yes, it is. It’s Nocker’s point, and the applause-meter shows that at the end of the first topic in the 143rd Top Topic the score is 1–0, with the topic ‘Is the crime wave due to all this psychology we hear so much about?’ voted as likely to get into this week’s top twenty topics in the news.

  And now, while we’re waiting for the next topic to be raised, I’ll just give you a words-per-topic analysis of the last 50 programmes …

  (1961)

  The literature of coexistentialism

  The last time I was in Moscow an article I wrote for the Guardian describing my impressions of that city called forth half a column of personal abuse in Izvestia, in which I was described as ‘a stinking rocket of the Cold War’. So I was delighted to find this week a model of the sort of article I should have written – a piece by Mr Alexei Adzhubei, the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, on his impressions of London.

  The article was written at the request of the Sunday Express, after Mr Adzhubei had visited Britain for the unofficial talks at Wiston House (and incidentally offered to take over the editorial chair of the Daily Mail and double the paper’s readership in two months). When the Sunday Express saw the finished product, however, they turned it down, on the grounds that it did not ‘quite measure up to the standard of interest and entertainment that we aim to provide’.

  It was rescued from the waste-paper basket by the Sunday Pictorial, who published it together with a reproach for the ‘puny and frivolous’ attitude of the Sunday Express towards the problem of understanding the Russians.

  Just how considerable this problem is you can discover for yourself by reading Mr Adzhubei’s article. I will make my little contribution to solving it by admitting that by Adzhubei standards my piece on Moscow was simply not up to scratch. Humbly confessing my past errors, I present it again, entirely rewritten in the peaceful coexistence style. Izvestia may reprint it if they want to, but if it doesn’t quite measure up to their standard of interest and entertainment I’ll submit it for the ‘What I did in my holidays’ competition in Chicks’ Own.

  MOSCOW

  Moscow is an interesting city. I am happy to have the opportunity of describing my impressions of it. Perhaps this is because it is such an interesting city. Or perhaps there is some other explanation.

  I will be as brief as possible. I must say first that we in England have already heard of your city. It is, in my opinion, a big city. There are many buildings and streets in it. I do not want to trespass on your countrymen’s most intimate national feelings, but as I walked round the streets I could not help thinking, ‘This is a big city, and it is an interesting one.’

  In a short article like this there is not enough space to list all the sights I saw. But I must mention the Kremlin, an old building which I find most interesting. I also saw Red Square and the Bolshoi Theatre. I don’t have to tell you that, by and large, and on whole, they are impressive and interesting. There were also many other sights of historical interest I saw in Moscow. I have no space to mention them all, but as I looked at them I was most strongly impressed by how interesting they were. Need I add that some of them were also big?

  While I was in Moscow I heard Russian spoken. It was spoken by Russians, quite fluently. To all you Russians, whether in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, or Odessa, I bring greetings from the people of London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Bury St Edmunds. I talked to some of you about subjects too numerous to mention here. We did not attempt to listen to one another. Everyone must decide for himself how to live, without listening to anyone else.

  Unless the editor has any objection, I should like to give some more of my impressions of Moscow, although space is too limited to mention more than a few. I saw cars and buses in the streets. I saw trains going along by the ingenious use of wheels running on rails. All this is the Moscow one does not read about in guide books. I find it very interesting.

  Very soon now there won’t be any more space left before the end of the article. I should like to use what there is to say that even if there were more space left, which there is not, I rather doubt if I could have given a better impression of your big and interesting town. To sum up, I saw the Kremlin, Red Square, the Bolshoi Theatre, and many other historical monuments which lack of space prevents me mentioning by name. On this note I must conclude my article, which I am writing on paper, sitting at a table.

  (1961)

  Lives and likenesses

  Mr Ken Russell seems to have hit upon a simple but important new biographical principle in his films for ‘Monitor’ on BBC Television. According to sympathetic critics, he makes each film in the style of the artist it is about.

  Thus, according to Peter Black, ‘his Elgar was straightforward and sentimentalised, his Debussy misty and complex.’ His Douanier Rousseau, similarly, was naïve and primitive. In fact it was considerably more naïve and primitive than Rousseau. It takes a real hardened professional to get as naïve and primitive as that. These amateur innocents like Rousseau never knew the tricks of the trade.

  Writers have obviously been missing an opportunity. In fact, it’s rather presumptuous, when you come to think about it, for old Strachey to have written ‘Queen Victoria’ in his own style and not Queen Victoria’s. And why didn’t Mr Alan Bullock couch his study of Hitler rather more in the familiar Nuremberg vein? A touch of egomania here?

  Now Mr Russell has shown the way, no doubt the idea will be taken up. Here are trailers for one or two biographies I hope to be seeing in the bookshops soon.

  Firstly I should like to say this – and I make no apology for mentioning it: Harold Wilson was born – and I choose that word advisedly – on the eleventh of March 1916. Not on the tenth, or the twelfth, as some people would like you to believe – and here I intend no disrespect to the many men and women up and down the country who I know were born on the tenth or the twelfth, and who have given loyal and unstinting service to the community, and whose special needs – I say this to them now – have not been forgotten.

  But – and it’s a big but – if this book is to make any real headway, if we’re really going to bring it up to date, we simply cannot afford – and this cannot be said too often – we simply cannot afford to sit back and rest content with our progress so far. Because make no mistake – and there’s none of us who doesn’t make mistakes at times – if we’re forced to go on breaking off like this for modifications, concessions, and reassuring asides, we shan’t reach Mr Wilson’s first birthday until about Chapter 23.

  A (indef. art.) man who might with some justice be called the

  AARDVARK (noun) of English letters, whose

  AARONIC (adj.) pronouncements upon anything from the

  AASVOGEL (noun) to the

  ABACA (noun) often took his companions

  ABACK (adv.), and frequently caused them to

  ABANDON (verb) themselves to mirth, Dr Johnson was never known to let anyone

  ABASE (verb) or

  ABASH (verb) him, and would wallow agreeably

  ABASK (adv.) in what others might have found to be a veritable conversational

  ABATTOIR (noun).

  Mozart:

  Chapter No. 21 in D Minor

  In 1779 Mozart returned to Salzburg. In the year 1779 Mozart returned to Salzburg. Back to his native city in the year after 1778 Wol
fgang Amadeus Mozart came.

  And was made court organist, was appointed organist at the court, the organ-player at the court he was created. Having come back to Salzburg in 1779 he became court organist, the court organist is what he became after his return to Salzburg in 1779.

  He was oppressed with debts. He owed money. Goods and services had been credited to him for which he had not yet paid. He was oppressed with debt, debts weighed him down. Money was outstanding. He owed. Money was what he owed.

  In 1779 Mozart returned to Salzburg. Back to his home town came he. And was appointed court organist.

  To Salzburg, the well-known town in Austria. That was where, in 1779, Mozart returned.

  *

  A Life of T. S. Eliot:

  Acknowledgements

  How can I begin to thank

  Professor Pomattox, or Doctor Frack,

  The Misses Fischbein, or Monsignor Blum?

  Words lose their meaning, and grow slack.

  Some typed upon Remingtons in obscure rooms.

  Some made suggestions.

  Some read the proofs. Some wept. One smiled:

  ‘The world is full of questions.’

  Mrs Crupper came and went

  With tiny jars of liniment.

  The finished pages flutter to the floor.

  La lune éternue et s’endort.

  All this, and so much more,

  And so much more.

  (1965)

  Lloyd

  A HISTORICAL TRAGI-BUDGET, OR BUDGI-TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ACTS

  (commissioned for the Hoylake Festival, 1994)