Backlisted - Winter Reading II: Short Stories

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

This episode of Backlisted features Andy, John and Nicky chatting about short stories and the perennial appeal of the form to both writers and readers. This is a sequel to the first Winter Reading show we posted in January. Books under discussion include Wendy Erskine's new collection Dance Move; The Voice in My Ear by Frances Leviston; Rupert Thomson's memoir This Party's Got to Stop; Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories; A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders; and, ahead of our full episode on her novel South Riding, coming next week, Pavements at Anderby by Winifred Holtby. Andy reads a story entitled The Old Spot from the latter volume which has not been republished, anthologised or broadcast in full since its original appearance in 1937. (He promises to work on his Yorkshire accent in the meantime.) Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)08:05 - A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders14:25 - Book of Stories by Randall Jarrell23:09 - Dance Move by Wendy Erskine33:50 - The Voice In My Ear by Frances Leviston40:20 - This Party's Got to Stop by Rupert Thompson54:14 - Pavements at Anderby by Winifred Holtby* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, a podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find the three of us improvising an episode of Backlisted. Because one of our guests, sadly, was taken down at the last moment with COVID. So this is by way of an improvisatory episode

to fill the gap. She's fine though, isn't she? She's absolutely fine. Yeah, she's on the mend, but we decided to knock everything on a week. And all it will mean is an even bigger, better episode further down the line. But here we are today, and I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read.

I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And I'm Nicky Birch, the producer of Backlisted. Oh. Ah, not as easy as it sounds, is it, Nick? Oh, how do you do it? The producer of Backlisted and Locklisted. Oh. Ah, not as easy as it sounds, isn't it? Oh, how do you do it? The producer of Backlisted and Locklisted. Welcome aboard.

It's going to be a good show. You say improvised, John, but actually, you know, we've been planning this meticulously for weeks. Yeah. No pressure there. What is the theme, Andy?

We've got a theme. Well, as John said, our scheduled episode on Winifred Holtby's novel South Riding should be with you next week but that's given us

extra time to do some reading up on Winifred Holtby and some other material by Winifred Holtby including

at the end of this episode shall I add a drumroll in here yeah add a drumroll a Winifred Holtby exclusive so we're going to be talking about Shall I add a drum roll in here? Yeah, add a drum roll. A Winifred Holtby exclusive. So we're going to be talking about short stories in this episode and we're going to culminate in a story by Winifred Holtby

that hasn't been republished since its original appearance in an anthology in 1937. That is a backlisted exclusive. It's not like a new Adele song or something like that. We've got a Winifred Holtby short story. Literally. You wouldn't get that anywhere else. And also, can I just say before we get on to that, if you listen

to next week's episode about South Riding by Winifred Holtby, I will also be sharing extracts from another of her books called The Astonishing Island, which is very funny and, again, hasn't been reprinted since it first appeared in the early 1930s. It slipped the Virago republications of the 70s and 80s

and gives a totally different perspective on what kind of writer she was. So you may well have read South Riding. You may well have read other of her Yorkshire novels. I am almost certain you will never have read anything from The Astonishing Island. So that's by way of a teaser for the next episode of Backlisted. This is more like an episode of Locklisted, isn't it?

It is. Some people might not know what Locklisted is. Why not tell? I'm doing the commercial job here. It's like an advert. Please do it. You know those podcasts that have adverts at the beginning. And now a word from our sponsor. So we are funded by our lovely patrons

on patreon.com. And they keep us going. And what you do, if you go to patreon.com and they keep us going and what you do if you go to patreon.com forward slash backlisted you can sign up to be a patron of our show and that means you get an extra show every other week and it's called lock listed and it is a behind the scenes show so basically it's where us three we talk about the books that we've talked about on this show and we also talk about films and music and TV and generally kind of

it's a lot of fun it's good isn't it? I think it's the connoisseurs backlisted I think the real magic happens on Locklisted, that's just my view. Also, Locklisted is the place where we get to, where me and John in particular,

get to trundle out our old records, play them and present them as part of our aesthetic. Well, Andy, you also, where you did big up the producer inflow for about a year, so it's not always that old records. You do have some interest in new music. Do you mean Brit award winning producer inflow? That's correct. Who you heard about first on Locklist.

Exactly. We're pushing against certain boundaries, let's be honest. It's not just old men talking about their old records. There's an old woman who talks about her old records as well. I tell you one of the good things about Locklisted, again, just to kind of hammer home the point, people, is that there's a nice message board for lock listeners and everyone talks about the books that they've enjoyed and there's actually lots of recommendations.

So if you're interested in literature, particularly old literature, it's a very nice community of people who really enjoy the show and enjoy talking about books together. So there's my plug. I think that was very good. I should sign up. It sounds brilliant.

And also, we sometimes do live versions of this as well, which are really good fun. In fact, we're due to do another one, aren't we? We said we were going to do a new year one. Maybe it'll end up being a spring one. Yeah. So anyway, we're here to talk about short stories, which I read in my newspaper, undergoing a renaissance. Is that because of the paper shortage?

Yes, it is. Very good. It's because of the paper shortage and dwindling attention spans. There's never been a better time to investigate the world of the short story. But over the years on Batlisted, we have talked about short stories quite a lot. And, John, we've read entire short stories by... Well, you read one on the last show. Yeah, I did.

I read an entire short story by Dermot Healy from his brilliant collection from 1984 called Banished Misfortune, which had stories, actually, I think, had stories from the 70s in it. But you came to it via Sinead Gleeson's collection, The Art of the Glimpse, didn't you? I did.

I did. I mean, it was a collection of stories which I owned, but I hadn't read. So I devoured them. And it reminded myself that the novelist of A Goat's Song was writing shorts. This is a theme that I will return to when I talk about the collection I'm going to talk about in the main part of the show. That there is something that often short stories are like, they are like, they have almost the same kind of amplitude as a novel. They're just compressed.

And I felt in reading the stories in Banished Misfortune that you could feel the kind of the gathering of the characters in a goat song. So it's an interesting thing to think about. I mean, I wouldn't be as bold as to say that stories are somehow just kind of rehearsals for novels. Clearly, they're not that. And some of the great writers never went on to write novels. And we'll surely talk about that too. But we've also read stories by, you and I split a story by William Maxwell, which was in our friend David Miller's collection, That Glimpse of Truth.

Yeah. David Miller's collection, That Glimpse of Truth. And I think between us we've read, I think on this we've read out the stories by Salinger and Sylvia Townsend Warner and George Saunders. I read a story by George Saunders. Yeah. Years ago, probably. But that made me think of his book that came out last year, which was one of my favourite books that I read last year.

Brilliant. Brilliant book called A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, where he talks about uh he analyzes short stories by russian writers such as gogol and chekhov and tolstoy and i thought i would just read out the opening of this book and ask nicky and john to give me their reactions to it so this is george saunders from his book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, talking about what a short story can do. Years ago, on the phone with Bill Buford, then fiction editor of The New Yorker,

enduring a series of painful edits and feeling a little insecure, I went fishing for a compliment. But what do you like about the story? I whined. There was a long pause at the other end. And Bill said this. Well, I read a line and I like it enough to read the next. And that was it. His entire short story aesthetic and presumably that of the magazine and it's perfect. A story is a linear temporal phenomenon. It proceeds and charms us or doesn't a line at a time. We have to keep being pulled into a story in order for it to do anything to us. I've taken a lot of comfort in this idea over the years.

I don't need a big theory about fiction to write it. I don't have to worry about anything but would a reasonable person reading line four get enough of a jolt to go on to line five? Why do we keep reading a story? Because we want to. Why do we want to? That's the million dollar question. What makes a reader keep reading? And so George Saunders' book is an attempt to answer that

question. But he's had years to think of an answer and put it into print. You've had literally seconds before I turn to both of you and say, what is it in a short story that keeps you reading? And I will go, which of you would like to take that one first? John Mitchinson or Nicky Birch? I think he's rightly pointed out that a short story has to work harder to grab your attention and keep you reading. I think perhaps you're more forgiving in a short story has to work harder to grab your attention and keep you reading i think perhaps you're more forgiving in a longer story in a novel because you recognize it's going

to have time to build um and so a short story by the very nature that they're easy to read they're also easy to put down and give up because it's not for me so i think that's that's really that's interesting and the other thing i was thinking is it's the same in audio right you have to keep people's attention straight away and you have to keep them the next thing and the next thing and the next thing so it's it's actually very similar it's not it's not unique to a short story it's it's it's media i hate to say in all forms interesting yeah john mitchinson um well i think that the idea of sentence by sentence is really good um there's a great little piece by hemingway when he says that um a few things i found to be true it's on the art of the short story if you leave out important things or events that you know about the story is strengthened

if you leave or skip something because you do not know it the story will be worthless the test of any story is how very good the stuff is that you not your editors omit and i kind of i kind of love that idea that you're that that that what you're what you're putting down is always part of a much bigger story i mean it's it's it's interesting that the two anthologies you mentioned david's brilliant um anthology and the one i talked about in the last back that listed the art of the glimpse that this idea of the glimpse is a really interesting one, isn't it? That you like a poem. It's it's it's it's something that you see quickly and that is meaningful to you and that the writer then kind of unpacks. the writer then kind of unpacks.

But what I love about stories is that, you know, you have stories that start with extremely kind of arresting first lines and then you'll go through and you'll get a kind of a really strong payoff, a twist at the end. And then you get, you know, the kind of modern stories where apparently nothing happens and you're just left with a feeling, a kind of a strange, haunted quality. Why did anyone feel the need to preserve this? But those are often the stories I find the ones that work the best.

And when I come on to the collection and I talk about that, she's very good at doing that. So, I mean, it's a brave man who tries to sum up exactly, you know, stories. There are as many ways of telling a short story as there are good writers. It's interesting. Buford is paraphrasing William Maxwell, the sense that the sentence is what matters, in a New Yorker short story, right? So the New Yorker is the cradle of a particular kind of 20th century short story,

an approach to a short story. So, you know, we've talked about this, I think maybe on the Maxwell episode itself, about how Maxwell, Maxwell specifically referring to Elizabeth Taylor, saying, well, she was queen of the sentence. Every sentence moved everything forward. But I've got a different approach here. Many years ago, because we've been doing this so long, we can now say that. In our archive.

In our archive. We did an episode about Randall Jarrell. Yeah, yeah. And we talked about his children's book. I want to say The Bat Poet. Is that the one we did? It was The Animal Family. The Animal Family.

That's right. That's right. Thank you, John. Thank you. But still in print from our friends at NYRB Books is his anthology called Randall Jarreorrell's book of stories which i bought at the time and actually this is an amazing book i really recommend this as a different approach to what a short story is again like george saunders you'll also find Wordsworth, Kafka, Forster, Rilke, Elizabeth Bowen, Hans Christian Anderson.

And I just want to read what Randall Jarrell, how he defined his terms at the beginning of this, because they're just wonderful. Trowie defined his terms at the beginning of this because they're just wonderful. Story, the dictionary tells one, is a short form of the word history and stands for a narrative, recital or description of what has occurred, just as it stands for a fictitious narrative, imaginative tale or colloquially a lie. A story then tells the truth or a lie is a wish or a truth or a wish modified by truth. Children ask first of all is it a true story? They ask this of the storyteller but they ask of the story what they ask of a dream, that it satisfy their wishes. And then he goes on to say, in the stories, there are two extremes, stories in which nothing happens and stories in which everything is a happening.

Yeah, very good. The muse of fiction believes that people, quotes, don't go to the North Pole, but go to work, go home, get married, die. But she believes at the same time that absolutely anything can occur. She concludes with Gogol, quote, say what you like, but such things do happen.

Not often, but they do happen um and if if you want to approach the story in a i would almost say in a non-narrative way randall jorrell's book of stories is incredible it it presents the story not as sentence after sentence, but as the accumulation of a feeling. Yeah. But what you end with, the feeling you end with, is what matters, which ties in just to what you were saying, Johnny, about the mood of a contemporary short story.

Yeah, which is why I think, you know, The Whitson Weddings is a short story, you know. Yes, yes, yes. Shireld says exactly that. He says there should be more poems in this book. Have short stories changed over the years? Yeah. I mean

I mean I think you know it would be hard to imagine Balzac writing a Raymond Carver short story yeah but

but I think I think in a funny way maybe the maybe the function of stories hasn't changed as much as people think it is I mean you know

the idea of an entertaining tale. Short fiction, the era we're living through is a golden era of short fiction, whether published as short stories or... I was looking at the rather brilliant shortlist for the Folio, the Rathbone Folio Prize that's just been announced. Amazing. And that's got been announced. Yeah, amazing. And that's got some very short books on it,

like Natasha Brown's Assembly, which is terrific, and Claire Keegan's Small Things Like This, which is either a novel or a novella or a short story. But short, it certainly is. And indeed, My Phantoms by Gwendolyn Riley, which is on that list you know that's a a short novel nicky the intensity of which of all those books is like the intensity

of a short story each line matters and that seems to be a form of writing that people are And that seems to be a form of writing that people are rediscovering. It was always a truism that people didn't buy volumes of short stories. Right. Yeah. Interesting. Wasn't it? Yeah, I can imagine. But I feel that's changed.

Do you? Well, I'll tell you what's interesting is people have always told stories, right? So short storytelling clearly always been really huge. And maybe short story on the written page wasn't as popular as perhaps it is now. And I look at things like the Stinging Fly podcast, which is just short stories, and it's so powerful. And I really recommend them to everyone.

You know, have a listen. Fantastic. Back in, you know, in the 19th century were there popular short stories, you know. I remember them well. Thank you. I didn't mean that to infer you were still alive then. Back in the 19th century, I think Andy and I were, as we remember. We ran a little shop in some Dickensian lane somewhere, didn't we, Johnny?

What they used to do was they serialized novels. So novels were broken down into sort of, and that definitely affected, you know, the shape of novels. Because they were, you know, you needed to end on a cliffhanger so that people would keep reading. So, and, you know, all of the great, almost all of the great 19th century novelists wrote short stories as well. And, you know, then out of the early 20th century magazine culture, the New Yorker still published short stories, but particularly in America,

there were lots and lots of magazines publishing short fiction. It never quite became as influential here for reasons that... Well, the game changer in the last few years is the internet, as in so many things. Yeah. But, like, if you look at Cat Person, the New Yorker short story, which was absolutely incredible. Talk about time flying.

That was published nearly five years ago. Everyone could read that. Everyone around the world could read that in an instant. What was Cat Person? It was a story published by the New Yorker by Kristen Rupenian. Yeah. And it had the highly unusual virtue of being a short story which everybody seemed to read in the same 48 hours

and then get onto social media and start discussing. And I think that, you asked me what's changed, I think in the old model of magazine publishing to 2,000, 4,000 subscribers, you might perhaps get a slightly disapproving letter to the editor what you didn't have was the potential of creating a platform where everybody could be reading the same thing at the same time or indeed that the short story therefore becomes a different way of approaching a contemporary issue or a factual event. Yeah.

That suddenly there is the opportunity for a writer to engage with a subject as they see it, reprocess it and put it out into the world quickly. And I suppose what we would say is that in the 19th century that might have been via uh an installment or a regular publication in the mid-20th century it would have been in a magazine be it the new yorker or um woman's realm elizabeth tay Taylor had stories published in both those publications. But here we are in the 21st century. Podcasts, even blogs. You know, blogs, the old-fashioned world of the blog, a world which has somewhat passed away in the last five, ten years.

Replaced by Medium and Substack. So we're going to talk about a few books, and then we're going to come to an incredible peak of exclusivity with a rare Winifred Holtby story. So keep listening. Keep listening. Don't give up. So, Mitch, what have you brought to the table today?

I'm reading a book that's just about to be published. I think actually by the time everybody's listening to this, it will have been published in February the 17th. It's Dance Move by Wendy Erskine, her second collection. I taught, I think, some time ago about her first collection, Sweet Tooth, which I loved. You did. And Wendy was on the podcast with David Keenan, wasn't she?

Yeah. Talking about Clarice Lispector. Oh, yeah. I have not enjoyed a collection of stories more, I think, for a very long time. I think what she does is remarkable. I've read them quite slowly over an extended period of time because I really didn't want to get to the end of it.

The appeal, I mean, there are different kinds of story. There are some kinds of story. There are some quite long ones. In fact, there's a long story called Cell in here, which is about a woman who we pick up through the story that she's been living with a kind of revolutionary stroke terrorist cell. It's never made quite clear. That Hemingway thing about what you don't reveal is more important than what you do in some ways um and that's you know that's that's almost uh i mean that's maybe a third of the book that story but um there are some very short ones most of them are in the milieu that she knows which which is East Belfast.

But it's joyous. There's a theme that runs through it, I guess, that she likes to look at contemporary life with just as clear an eye as she can. And there's a great interview that John Self did with her recently in the Irish Times, which gives you, I think, a fantastic background to what she thinks she's doing. So I'll read that and then I'm going to read a bit of the stories. She says, I asked for the William Blake quote from Auguries of Innocence to be used as an epigraph for the book. Joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine.

So in every story, I'm trying to achieve a balance between difficulties, the stuckness that people have talked about before, but also humor and a kind of joy at the same time. Sometimes I think people get the wrong idea. You hear a lot of the time that my stories are dealing with ordinary people. And I think, where are the extraordinary people? Where is it that they live? And sometimes people just say to me, do you think you'll be able to move your stories beyond East Belfast?

And to me, that's an absolutely bizarre thing for someone to say because it suggests that lives are more interesting, more complex and richer elsewhere. And that to me is the key to what she does. I mean, you know, that idea of being able to see, you know, complexity in a world that's full of kind of, you know, tanning salons. She's a teacher, isn't she? And she's a teacher. And she lives a life, you know, people living. Not all of these people are poor people. There are plenty of wealthy people as well.

But they are living in a world that is recognisably, you know, early 21st century. But the feeling that you get, that balance that she's trying to get between where is this story taking me? Why am I interested in these people? And then just brilliantly funny and then also incredibly wrenchingly sad but never – not a trace of sentimentality in the stories at all. So there's one which I'm not going to read from, which I really recommend. Nostalgie de la boue is the French for, you know, the kind of Japan-like pop star from the 80s who was asked to come back to sing his, he had one hit which was called Nostalgie de la Bou,

it was a B-side. But it has become, it's become the regimental or the song, the anthem for an army regiment. And they get him to come back and to sing it along to a record for their annual reunion. It's just a brilliant story. I mean, everything. She writes very, very well about music.

She writes very well about pretty much everything. She writes brilliantly about grief. She writes brilliantly about illness. This is a story that's kind of about illness, but it's also a bit about reading. So I'll read you the beginning, the first couple of pages of Memento Mori. The books in the library are fairly limited, mainly true crime and thrillers. Every so often, Gillian fills in a transfer request for titles of interest, and within three or four weeks they come.

Most frequently she asks for books about gardens, because although there's a small plot here, opportunities are limited. In terms of other reading material, it usually takes a couple of days before she gets the Sunday paper, but she's used to that now. In any way, she focuses so little on the actual news that it wouldn't matter, a paper one week, two weeks old. On the last page of the magazine supplement, a woman, in response to a problem or supposed difficulty, gives circumlocutory and banal advice that spans a number of paragraphs. Tracy used to read it out loud every Sunday. She'd be lying on the sofa and the fire would be lit. Her own counsel was blunt.

My advice to this person is basically to wise the fuck up, she'd say. Julian pretended to wince, but really, in most circumstances, it would have been beneficial for the people to take heed. Yet there were times when someone who seemed a prime candidate for harsh pragmatism was treated with a degree of kindness because he or she reminded Tracy of someone she used to know in London, in Liverpool, in other lives. And so when Gillian eventually does get the Sunday paper

on a Tuesday or Wednesday, she reads the problem page first and thinks of Tracy. Tracy used to say, Gillian, what in the name of God did you do before you met me? It surprised her that Gillian had been with so few people. Gillian always replied that she'd simply been waiting for her. Thinking now, that does seem the way of it. Sitting in a cafe in a foreign city, watching a young couple in the park, in the dark of the cinema, when she had to put down a book because its evocation

of some or other passion was so acute she had all along been dreaming of tracy although she had yet to meet her tracy by contrast had had plenty of previous partners had even been married once it was never going to work out she said too young too crazy lucky we got a year and a half out of it of all places a book launch was where they met. Gillian's old friend Wendy had written some short stories. The launch took place at a bar down the other docks, which had not yet succumbed to anyone's notion of a new Belfast. Wendy and her husband had filled said bar with vases of lilies, but still the smell of stew lingered.

Gillian was at a table with a ragbag of people, some who worked with her friend, a few neighbours, a taxi driver Wendy regularly used. Although they had all bought the book dutifully, they agreed they didn't read short stories or even like them all that much. Then another person joined them. She said that when Wendy came next in for a blow-dry, she would just get her to tell the stories and that would save her the bother of reading them. Tracy was Wendy's hairdresser. There was dancing upstairs at the launch. Prancing about in a pokey room above a pub was the last thing Gillian would enjoy,

but that was where Tracy had been. The blonde hair framing her face was damp. She said she had to go because she was working early in the morning, and did anyone fancy sharing a taxi? No one did. Gillian said she was leaving anyway and that if she wanted she could give Tracy a lift wherever she needed to go. Because she doesn't like fussiness, people assumed wrongly that Gillian was uninterested in fashion. The simplicity of her present attire is in fact pleasing to her, representing as it does merely a higher degree of the functional clean lines, often Belgian, that she would have chosen herself anyway. On one occasion during the

first weeks of their being together, Tracey said she would give Gillian a transformation. She reluctantly agreed. Tracey refused to let Gillian look in the mirror as she poured her into a tight dress in blue crushed velvet tracy painted her face with a range of implements keeping up a running commentary that meant nothing to jillian about the products and the size of the brushes the techniques that she was using she placed jillian's feet into stilettos and then the full length mirror was spun round tracy said jillian looked a different creature her eyes ring with black took legs, her waist, the size of her mouth. You're beautiful, huh?

Tracy said. I didn't always know, she said, from the first time I saw you. But you're better the way you are. And so Gillian took off the dress and then the shoes. And then it goes on. It's just a lovely. It's so good. Per George Saunders, I want to hear the next sentence i mean that's the that's the it's it's a joyous book from beginning to end um i really hope

um she she gets an even bigger audience i mean i think pretty much everybody who's previewed it so far has raved about it and rightly so amazing amazing and you know what i love is she said uh in the interview john self asked if she'd write a novel and she so amazing amazing and you know what i love is she said in the interview john self asked if she'd write a novel and she said well yeah but you know i'm a teacher got a full-time job what she likes about it she said she can write a story every month you know and then it's it's and i think there are there's definitely scope for her to do that but at the same time there's at no point do you think oh i really wish she'd write a novel what part of you know going back to that that that thing we

were talking about before part of what's great about this is that it's that kaleidoscopic effect at the end of this book you feel you've dipped into so many different lives you have a you have a picture of a place of a community that's something that stories can do i think even almost better than novels and what's the collection called it's called dance move wendy erskine published on the 17th of february the book chat will continue on the other side of this message i'm going to talk about a collection that's new out in paperback came out last year called The Voice in My Ear by Francis Leveson I read this last week because I saw our former guest Joe Dunthorne talking about it on Twitter saying why hasn't this book won any prizes?

this book is incredible and so I thought I haven't heard about this book and then I got a copy and in the front is not only, well, Joe Dunthorne was talking about it on Twitter, but there's raves from our former guest Chris Power and our former guest Daisy Buchanan and our former guest Lucy Scholes.

Great. Lining up, saying what an incredible collection of stories this is. Francis Leveson is a poet. Two collections, Public Dream and Disinformation. One of the stories in this collection was shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award in 2015. This absolutely blew me away. It's called The Voice in My Ear.

It's so great, and it's also really well structured, and I'll explain why in a minute. But just let me read you, in backlisted style, a little bit of the blurb on the back. Ten women, all called Claire, are tangled up in complex power dynamics with their families, friends and lovers. Though all are different ages and leading different lives,

each is haunted by the difficulty of living on her own terms. And whatever she does, Claire is always living in the shadow of living on her own terms and whatever she does claire is always living in the shadow of a monstrous mother so it's a collection of 10 stories about women called claire all of whom have issues with their mother and i'm just going to read you the first paragraph of a few of the stories because so that'll give you an idea so the first story is called the voice in my ear and this is a part of what's good about a short story if i just read you the first paragraph you will want to know

what happens next okay first story in this collection the voice in my ear the first production team have gone to an awards ceremony in king's cross the anchor to the Portland with foetal distress. This is Claire's big break. She takes her mark and feels the hiss of the open channel flood her head. 60 seconds. That's the opening story. That's that Claire. Right. Do you want to hear another one?

Yes. Go. This story is called is a nightmarish story called masters puppets presents this is the first paragraph claire was coming over with her boyfriend her partner and joan was baking mince pies in preparation although she couldn't remember whether claire liked mince pies it was difficult to keep everything straight with four children who changed their preferences every week. So she'd put strawberry jam in some of them instead. Because who doesn't like jam?

So that's that, Claire. And here's another one. This story is called Plight. For a long time, Claire maintained that if you got to know someone, anyone, very well, then you would come to love them, in a sense. Love was a factor of familiarity. It didn't much matter what you were becoming familiar with. There needn't be things in common.

The figure she used to illustrate this at university and beyond was her elder brother callum when if you read all of these yes i have read the whole book when you're reading them do you in your mind's eye are you thinking of different clairs or does it all feel like the same clair uh it's a really brilliant what a brilliant question um different clairs but i'm very amused over and over again by the fact that the author has chosen to create a commonality between her characters by those two things they're all called claire and some awful point their mother becomes a problem in the story so after a while you sort of become habituated to thinking, when's mum going to make a terrible appearance, right? Anyway, the collection culminates in a story called

No Two Were Ere Wed. And Maya Levittin in the Financial Times singles this story out, and I would single this story out. That's what I mean about the structure of it. I felt everything was leading up to this final story, No Two Were Airwed, and I'm just going to read the opening paragraph of this from Francis Leveson's book, The Voice in My Ear, and if listeners don't want to get the collection to find out what happens next, I will be astonished. This is the opening paragraph of this short story.

He had to get down and lift the flounced valance and push his hand between the mattress and the box spring, groping around, his wrist compressed. There was nothing. Then a corner, an edge. He pinched and dragged it out. It was not quite as blue as he remembered. The elasticated strap around its middle stood out brightly, but the cloth binding was muted, greyish, the texture faintly ridged the scarlet ribbon poking from the shut pages

was forked at the end like a tongue beautiful that's it it's horrible that story it's horrible and really funny and so if you want to know what happens to ten Claires,

then The Voice in My Ear, or one Claire, discuss. The Voice in My Ear by Frances Leveston is the collection for you. And is that Frances with an I or Frances with an E? It's Frances. Frances, F-R-A-N-C-E-S, Leveston. And it's out now from Vintage. So thank you. It's Sarah Hall, Laura Fiegel, Hilary Mantel.

Yeah. All these people lining up to say how great this book is and us too. So, yes, so that's out now in paperback. Nicky, what have you been reading? Well, actually, I have to say I haven't been reading short stories. Hey! The theme dies here. But I have been reading a really good story

that I want to talk about. I'm really looking forward to hearing what John says because I know you've read this. And it's called This Party's Got to Stop by Rupert Thompson, although I believe it was a long time ago that you read it, John, so I won't be testing you.

I read it pretty soon after it came out. Rupert Thompson's one of the very few writers contemporary writers who i think i've i think i've read everything really wow and rupert was our guest on backlisted i think this was before your time yeah definitely he came he was here to talk about patrick modiano friend of the show friend of the show rupert thompson so this was written in 2010. It was a memoir, but yeah, most of the time he's a novelist, correct? I haven't read any of his books, but I'm interested in reading them now because this party's got to stop.

It was recommended to me by another books podcaster called Tim Wright. So thanks, Tim. He suggested it to me because this book is about, well, in essence, it's about a family clearing up the family house when their parents died. And having going through that myself at the moment, it was quite interesting to have a, you know, find some literature to read and kind of help with your thoughts. It's a memoir that is incredibly revealing. with your thoughts. It's a memoir that is incredibly revealing. I mean, it's a really brave thing to do. And probably people could say that about lots of memoirs, but one that dissects your family relationships to such a degree. I mean, it's incredibly brave, but also probably quite challenging to his family so he is one of three brothers

robin and ralph and he's the eldest and yeah so their their fathers died and their mother died when they were children um and they're they're going to clear out the house in eastbourne where they grew up and in fact what they do is they sort of move into the house um while they're going through this process. And it's also set in the late 70s and 80s. A lot of it's looking back. And then what happens is at the end of this process of clearing out the house, he basically loses contact with Ralph, one of his brothers, and doesn't see him for 23 years. So it's really examining what happened at this time to mean that they just sort of fell apart and they grew apart.

And it's really interesting if you have, I'm fascinated by siblings who aren't in touch with each other because it's such a, that's such an intense thing to grow up so close to people and then just split that relationship. And so he investigates that at the end kind of comes to terms with the fact that it may be his fault as well so it's not it's not kind of laying into his family it's very much sort of aware of his own do you remember nick when we did the the dermot healy episode yeah and we were talking we can't actually say this on the on the episode because we have to keep it clean but um while you were talking i was thinking about we were talking about the bend for home by dermot healy and we had that conversation with pat mccabe about escapism yeah where perhaps you don't want escapism when you're dealing with something uh a major life event what you want is the reverse you want um something to

indicate that someone else has been through the thing that you've been through yeah i think there comes a time well for me it does there comes a time where maybe a bit like this with the pandemic there was a long time where people like i don't want any pandemic literature no thanks no thanks but now we're coming to a point where people might be starting to be interested in that and i think the same possibly can be said for sort of grief it's like okay at some point you're ready to take that and interested in the same possibly can be said for sort of grief it's like okay at some point you're ready to take that and interested in what sort of people with intellectual thought and creative minds are thinking about it yeah yeah i mean that's the my abiding memory of that book

which i think is one of the i think it's one of the the great contemporary memoirs i really do i think it's it's so how he manages to tread the line between being honest and also being being kind of honest about himself but also generous generous to his siblings even though you know things obviously go wrong between them but it's it's it's as good a book about the weird subterranean currents of family life as anything i've ever read um and i i i and it is i mean you know that it's it's an it's an act of atonement and grief for the mother that they couldn't really properly grieve for somehow the father's death death enables them. And that whole tidying away of stuff that he writes about. And that's strange, because they're in different parts of the house, aren't they, in Eastbourne?

I remember it being incredibly awkward. That's right. Ralph, the brother, and the wife. Yeah, amazing. Thinking about books that it reminds me of there are do you remember on chapel sands the yes laura cummings laura cummings there's a similar kind of honesty in that yeah and i and i've just read and i reviewed on monocle completely i mean excoriating but also brilliant book by clover stroud called the red of my blood

about the death of her sister now which is remarkable because it's written in the absolutely in the in the kind of the the you know it's written in from within grief and very very you know very very painful to read as a result of it. But it is also kind of in the same way with this party has to stop. There is a kind of a resolution at the end. I mean, you know, you asked me and I don't know. And I haven't I haven't really ever had that conversation with Rupert. It'd be fascinating to know what happened.

What happened next? Yeah. What happened when he put this book out that's what I'm interested in because you know he's very there's there's scenes where it it's quite um it's quite it's quite revealing and it's also probably quite upsetting for his family to read some of this um but there's also some like amazing moments where um you know clearly him and his young his brother robin probably like either drinking or taking drugs throughout the entire period and they do things like they burn a lot of the house furniture they can't really give it away so they decide the thing to do is just burn it you know because they want

to sell the house but they've got to sell it yeah yeah so just like throw it in the garden it's like and they get neighbors that's kind of constantly come you know getting the police to come around and their things like a helicopter crashed in our garden you know it does fit what we're talking about today because that you've got to remember that rupert is a writer so the lived experience is being represented to you as a reader in a form that is not just somebody talking about it. It's written, it's shaped and presented to you in such a way that it's not a short story. That's not what I mean. But it's real experience transported into the realm of something else. And does that translate to his books?

transported into the realm of something else. And does that translate to his books? Do his books have characters or do they talk about families in this way? I'm interested to know if there's any kind of connection. All his books, one of our favourite things we say, all his books are different, aren't they, Johnny? There's no one who's written a more, a broader range of books than Rupert.

I mean, it's, he always, I mean, he's very funny about this saying that you know he's he's that i don't think there is a writer of his quality that hasn't hasn't won at least one major prize but he's somehow managed to avoid all of them because he goes from historical fiction that he's he's done he's done he's done speculative fiction he's done speculative fiction. He's done kind of beautifully contemporary. He does comedy. It's an extraordinary. But talking about the sentence-by-sentence level, that Keatsian snail horn perception,

he is sentence-by-sent by sentence all his books are just are wonderful to read you read you know read them you'll there's a sensibility that maybe links them but the the mise en scene is completely different in each of them and i was amazed to read this because it's rupert writing as you know his own story i mean and his family's story and it's it is it is it, as you say, there is a kind of deranged quality to the book. Totally. Read us a bit, Nick. Read us a bit.

I have got a little bit to read. Imagine this is a short story within a longer story. So he's gone away from the house in Eastbourne, you know, somewhere, and he kind of comes back. Remember, all his brothers are living there, and Ralph is living there with his wife, Vivian, and Robin, his younger brother, is also living there. And they're sort of preparing to kind of, you know, sell the house. On my first morning back, Robin tells me that Ralph sold Dad's bureau desk while he, Robin,

was visiting friends in Lewis. He said he'd had his eye on the desk for ages. He would have been happy to pay each of us our share of what it was worth. Although I sympathise with him and agree that Ralph ought not to have acted without consulting us, the loss of the desk doesn't affect me. But then he mentions that Ralph also sold the brack lithograph that used to hang above the fireplace in Dad's bedroom. An auction house called Edgar Horn has given us £2,000 for it. But that's only £400 each, I say to Ralph when he returns from work that evening. There's two other kids, by the way,

not living there. It would have been better to keep it in the family. Even as I speak, I realise I'm sounding just like dad. It seemed like a fair price. Ralph is avoiding my eyes, but he doesn't look guilty, let alone apologetic. I wish you'd asked. You weren't there. You could have waited till I got back. I like that picture. I wanted to keep it.

You never said anything. We never discussed it. Look, we had to make some progress. We have to sell everything that has any value, otherwise the will won't go to probate before we move out of the house. Ralph pauses. Anyway, I don't think it was very good. I couldn't even tell what it was. It was a man driving a chariot. I couldn't see that. It was ugly. The colours. I thought it was ugly too, Robin says. Lead grey, clotted cream, sand. There was a kind of grace in the way Brack had shunned anything primary or obvious. I don't think it was ugly at all, I say. I liked it. Well, I never liked it,

says Ralph. All the more reason for me to have it then, Ralph sighs. I mean, it was a Brack, I say. Ralph leans over the table, hands clasped in front of him, and I see a side of him I haven't seen before. He has a ruthless streak. He can be unwavering, dismissive. Suddenly, I can imagine him in a boardroom, closing a deal. The hands calm and resolute, the faint curl of the upper lip, the occasional cunning sideways glance. Is he relishing the fact that he has outmanoeuvred me, or is he merely thinking I brought this on myself? Because he's right. I have. Robin and I have been quite content to let Ralph assume responsibility for the probate.

It's Ralph who has been doing all the work. You can't have been that bothered about it, he says. Well, you wouldn't have gone away for so long. A spark of anger glows and it's then extinguished. Do I really want the lithograph? If so, why not drive down to Edgar Horn? I could find the person in charge and explain there's been an error. I'd talk about a family in mourning, a difficult time, irrational behaviour. I could apologise for the misunderstanding, offer to refund the money. Surely, given the

circumstances, they would not object. But even as the idea occurs to me, I know I won't make the slightest effort to retrieve the brack. What will I do? Nothing. There is a lot, it seems to me, that I'm not doing. The lithograph is gone, I tell myself. Things of great value are always disappearing,

never to be seen again. Things I love. Well, perhaps I'm not supposed to have them. Perhaps I should stop trying to hold on. After all, how much of the past does anybody really need to keep? Though this argument strikes me as perfectly valid, I can't help noticing my anger has flared up again. I wanted the brack. I wanted it. Later that day, I checked my copy of the letter that accompanied Dad's will. Given the care with which he allocated items as mundane as a slide projector or radio cassette, it seems inconceivable that he could have disregarded the lithograph.

But I go through all five pages and fail to find a single reference to it. Was he uncertain about who to leave it to? Or aware of its worth? Was he unwilling to favour one of his children over all the others i raised the subject with robin after ralph and vivian have gone upstairs to bed robin thinks it was an oversight dad just forgot brilliant oh it's so brilliant it's good isn't it superb that that is a that is a perfectly formed short story. It's brilliant. Indeed, yeah. It reminds me what my wife always says about her brother.

She always says, there's no one in the world I've ever loved as much or wanted to kill as much at the same time. Families, eh? I mean, you know, I think it's so interesting. If you've been through that situation, you don't need to have, but that thing where you have your parents dying

and you're reassessing everything and then you write it all down and expose it for the world to see, that feels very, very interesting. And, yeah, I really recommend it. This party's got to stop Rupert Thompson. Well, that is what a writer does, isn't it? Well, we've made the Winifred Holtby fans wait long enough. I think so. I'm going to read a story from Winifred Holtby's collection,

Pavements at Anderby, Tales of South Riding and Other Regions. And when we talk about Winifred Holtby on the next episode, you'll discover that one of the things about Winifred Holtby is that she, Holby on the next episode, you'll discover that one of the things about Winifred Holby is that she, as they say in literary bug, she divides her times between Yorkshire and Oxford.

She came from Yorkshire. She was prodigiously intelligent. She was at Somerville College in Oxford in the 1920s. At the same time as Dorothy L Sayers. Well, arguably there's people on Twitter already debating whether they were there at the same time. But let's say they were near contemporaries and that covers it.

Because of this delay in the episode, I was able to pop up to the library and borrow this collection, Pavements at Anderby, which has never been reprinted. Though some of the stories appear in the Virago collection, Remember, Remember. Winifred Holtby's short stories are a fascinating mixture of... They're similar to South Riding, but they're also completely different. There are satirical ones, there are historical ones, there are pieces of journalism. And so I'm going to read a winifred holtby short story

which has never been reprinted since its appearance in pavements at anderby in 1937 it's never appeared in an anthology it's never appeared in paperback you backlisted listeners are the first people ever probably to have this read to them and certainly it's the first people ever, probably, to have this read to them. And certainly, it's the first time it's been circulated in about 90 years. And it's called The Old Spot. It's not too long, don't worry. So, settle in. Here we go. The Old Spot by Winifred Holtby. The Old Spot by Winifred Holtby When Eli Brooks came upon his father as he was ploughing the 40 acre for winter wheat

and told him that he had won a scholarship for Kingsport Grammar School, he received a rebuke for being so fresh-like and was dispatched to bring the cows up from the low paddock. But when the time came, his mother bought him a new pair of boots and his father gave him two shillings for pocket money and he was sent to board with Tilly Megason who had been Tilly Brooks and to walk daily from her three-roomed house in Rudd Street to the grey clattering gloom of the school buildings. Thus began the academic progress of Eli Brooks, which was to have so distinguished a development. A heavy, taciturn lad with red wrists protruding from his outgrown

jacket, his mental capacity was as omnivorous as his physical appetite. The former soon exhausted the patience of his masters, but to satisfy the latter, his mother sent an extra three shillings a week to her sister-in-law from the egg money and the occasional gift of a nice bit of bacon. Eli emerged from the high school with few friends, five prize volumes of the Globe edition of The Poets bound in leather, a county scholarship and a post-mastership at Merton College. He went to Oxford to read history and greats, preserving his unconquerable East Riding accent,

his boots made by the Anderby Cobbler, and his imperturbable contempt for all people and things unrelated to the 20 miles surrounding his Yorkshire birthplace. At Oxford he continued to amass heterogeneous accumulations of knowledge, to augment his laboriously acquired library and to achieve the reputation of a character. He performed this final feat by a ruthless insistence upon his own limitations oxford wearying of exquisite aestheticism found this new pose invigorating the prodigious bulk and magisterial complacency of the yorkshireman became proverbial the success desteem of one

term was a parody in the isis By Brooks Too Broad for Leaping. When Brooks retired during each vacation to the old spot, he acquired a double first, a fellowship of one of the second-rate colleges, and finally a tutorship of non-collegiate students. His exploits continued to provide material for pleasant conversation. He boasted that he had forked for every harvest since he was 15, non-collegiate students, his exploits continued to provide material for pleasant conversation. He boasted that he had forked for every harvest since he was 15, that he wrote his essay upon View of Frankplidge, which won a university prize of considerable importance, by the light of an oil lamp in his mother's kitchen, and that his one ambition in life was to gain an adequate

competence to write the authoritative work upon local government in the 15th century and to retire to a cottage in the old spot. He presented his father with a gig and his mother with a sealskin jacket. He sent his sister Lily picture postcards of all souls and Magdalen Bridge. Later, when he found that his work necessitated the spending of vacations abroad, he sent her postcards of Florence and of the Acropolis. He was attending a conference of historians in Paris when his father died, and he reached Anderby on the morning of the funeral after travelling all night from King's Cross. When he returned to Oxford next term, his colleagues understood that he had been prostrate with grief.

His popularity in the academic world continued, but besides providing Oxford with another decorative example of eccentricity, his reiterated declarations of a unique ambition excluded him from the court rivalry for all desirable posts. Prestige appeared to count for him as nothing since it carried no laurels as far north as Anderby. When, at the age of 46, he announced his immediate intention of leaving Oxford, there was almost genuine regret in the farewells which speeded his departure. Travelling north in the corner of a first-class carriage, he wondered whether it was 12 or 15 years since he had spent more than a day or two in Dold Spot. True, he had attended his father's funeral. True, he had run up to see his sister, now comfortably married to the joiner's assistant, a promising young man, soon after the birth of her first baby. But when the train stopped finally at the familiar

station and he climbed stiffly into the vehicle once known as Parker's Lid, which ran between Anderby and the town, he suffered a faint shock of cold foreboding to observe that Parker's Bay Mare had been superseded by the chassis of a Ford motor lorry. A horse wagonette, he believed, would have jolted him less over the steep country road to his brother-in-law's house. It had been arranged that he should stay with Lily and her husband until he decided where to live. He had taken it for granted that he would be welcome, and the austerity of his sister's greeting was after all the model on which he had based his manner throughout 30 years. He carried his own bags up the narrow stair into a small bedroom with a sloping roof and two

mats on the floral oilcloth of the floor. There was just room for his large body to turn between the chest of drawers and the formidable brass bedstead. Looking doubtfully at the minute but opulently curved washstand, with its equipment of gilt and pale blue china, he reflected uneasily that there was no bathroom. Climbing carefully downstairs, he found his brother-in-law sitting down to a meal of rabbit pie, tea and saucer cheesecake. The baby was cutting an eye tooth in its pram. Eli Brooks extracted an infant's shoe, a tooth comb and a half an arrow root biscuit from his chair and sat down to rabbit pie. His brother in law did not seem conversational except upon the subject of church restoration, the woodwork of which had been villainously and deceitfully contracted for by a town firm. Local work paid for by local money

should be done by local men, he maintained stoutly, his mouth full of cheesecake. Brooks, a stalwart free trader, found upon his first night his most sacred theories disputed with a vehemence of personal disagreement to which he was quite unaccustomed. Frequently during dinners at Oriel or St John's, he had enlarged upon the superior attractions of a glass of ale in the parlour of the Flying Fox. Wit, genial honesty and shrewd common sense could be encountered only in an East Riding Inn. Therefore, after this somewhat unfortunate meal, he suggested that his brother-in-law should accompany him up the village street. The joiner's assistant, however, regarded him with compassion. To go round to that little pothouse, as though he were a common labourer. If he wanted a drink for old sake's sake, Brooks must go alone. He went.

He found two old farm labourers, whose names he had forgotten, drinking solemnly and spitting, but making no other attempts at revelry. The stout, red-armed young woman who served him regarded him with suspicion and refused to divulge any further information but that the new landlord of the inn was a Scotsman called Mackay. He returned home as soon as he could to find his brother-in-law removing his boots by the kitchen fire and his sister still washing up the pots.

All night he was kept awake by the lamentations of his nephew over the uncut tooth, the curious tendency of his mattress to collapse precipitously in the middle, and the irritation produced by his inability to open the window. Next day it rained. The next day it rained. And the next day it rained. On the fourth day he received a communication from the firm at Oxford, which was packing his books for him,

asking whether they were to be sent straight to Anderby. He tore up the letter, found that there was no waste paper basket, scattered the pieces on the floor, and went round to Parker's to order the wagonette to drive him back into town. Ten days after his arrival in Told Spot, a letter came from an American university asking him whether he would consider a course of lectures during the following term. He cabled his acceptance. As a matter of fact, he has never returned to England. Some say that he dare not face his colleagues at Oxford, others that he dare not face his brother-in-law. But at least

in the safe shelter of America, he declaims warmly and at length upon the inferiority of townsmen and southerners, the superiority of Yorkshiremen and farmers, and the eternal felicities of its old spot. The Americans like him for it and say that he has become quite a good mixer under the democratic influence of the stars and stripes. Brilliant. Isn't that great?

Isn't that great? No one's heard that since 1937. And also it's a lovely encapsulation of what we find in so much Winnebago Holtby's work. The tension between her Yorkshire upbringing and her Oxford cultivation, which is something we'll talk about next time. And yeah, lots of themes that come up in the book as well. Brilliant.

In South Riding. in the book as well. Brilliant. In South Riding. Anyway, everybody, if you have enjoyed that, tune in next week for our episode about South Riding by Winifred Holtby. Is there going to be more Yorkshire accents next week? I'll practice in the week ahead.

Almost certainly, I'm afraid. I'll practice, happen as like. I've really enjoyed getting ready for this episode, so I'm pleased we're going to get to do it. And then we have another episode after that, which we can't tell you about. But that is also going to be incredible. Couldn't be more different from Winifred Holtby. Oh, another plug for Locklisted.

That we do on Locklisted reveal the episodes, don't we, for the following week? That is true. We do do that. Yeah. If you want to find out what's coming up next, you could always support us on Patreon. Get access to Locklisted. Keep this thing rolling along. Nikki, do you have anything you wish to add on the subject of short fiction? Just remind me of the name of the book that you read from, the Clare book, because I'm going to go and order that right now.

The Voice in My Ear by Francis Leaviston. Available now in paperback from Vintage Books. Fantastic. Mitch, anything you wish to add on the subject of short fiction? Just to say that I've been swimming in short fiction. You sounded like you were swimming in something else there for a minute. Sorry. Shrooming, shrooming.

No, I have to say, if it is a golden age, bring it on. More of it. I'd just like to say thanks very much everybody for listening and thanks John and Nicky for your sterling improvisational work today on this episode of Batlisted what fun

what fun we have doing this and other people get to listen to it as well so thanks very much everybody we'll be doing the usual thing you'll be anybody wants to order any of these books we have our bookshop on bookshop.org the backlisted bookshop and if you order the books that we've talked about through there you help support the podcast but also help support independent bookshops a win-win um and otherwise i guess we'll see you all in a fortnight no in a week in a week we're gonna see them in a week of course bye bye everyone see you next week bye right see you everybody thank you © BF-WATCH TV 2021 If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon.

It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.