Backlisted - Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch

Episode Date: July 11, 2016

Richard King, author of 'How Soon Is Now' and 'Original Rockers', visits Backlisted to talk about Maiden Voyage, an extraordinarily vivid memoir by Denton Welch of his early life in England and China. Timings: (may differ due to adverts)8'08 - Tristomania - Jay Griffiths16'25 Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjon24'02 Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch* 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* 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

Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, like Hit of the Month. So you get the best deals and low prices on amazing products every month. And did you know? PC Optimum members save more. For exclusive offers and members-only pricing, just scan and save. And don't forget In-Stock Promise, where you can count on great offers being in stock or get a rain check. Discover more value than ever at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions apply. See in-store for details.

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night.

That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. I've got to leave this podcast and go and get a train up to Cheshire to do the Alderley Edge walk tomorrow morning and Peter Hook no it's the other two isn't it that live near Alderley Edge tomorrow morning. And Peter Hook. And Peter Hook.

No, it's the other two, isn't it, that live in the elderly edge? No. No, they live in Macclesfield. Outside Macclesfield. So I've been to there, and they do have tanks and light armoury vehicles on the premises.

What, Gillian and Stephen? No, Stephen's got a collection of attack vehicles. It's better than being passive-aggressive, isn't it? Just aggressive. Just by attack. Aggressive, aggressive. Is he interested in World War II or something,

or just armored vehicles? Well, Geordie doesn't have quite the kind of... They had a hint of that, didn't they? ...contentious relationship with the... So, at the weekend at the whitstable biennale or biennial both of which were used by one person when describing it a nice event to be fair it was very nice one of the events there was i went to a really good really interesting talk by philip hall and i went to another one with Olivia Lang.

That was really fascinating. And I also participated in the all-day public reading of All the Devils Are Here by David Seabrook. How did it go? Oh, God, it was such a strange but great event, as you would expect. Was anyone listening? So what happened was

it was in the it was at the Whitstable Museum in the courtyard behind the museum and the day started at 11am with a panel of people who'd known David Seabrook at different times in his life the filmmaker Paul Tickell the writer Ian Ian Sinclair, and a friend of his from university. And what became very clear very quickly is that Seabrook was every bit as idiosyncratic as you might expect, and that Sinclair said he'd met him in the 80s when Sinclair had a bookstore very near where we're talking now in the old market which isn't really there anymore up at Angel. The Angel Passage. Yeah so he had a bookstore there and Seabrook would come seek him out and press pamphlets on him that he Seabrook had written

and then more or less recite them to Ian Sinclair. And Sinclair said that all the devils are here. He said bits of all the devils are here. He can remember David Seabrook shouting at him in the 1980s. I imagine that David Seabrook wasn't big on personal space either. No, indeed, as you would expect. Like we said, he gives you an ear bashing, gives the reader an ear bashing they'll never forget.

But saying there must have been, all the devil's here is made up of other bits and pieces that he wrote. Where those might be now, nobody seems to know. Where the manuscript of his third book might be, nobody seems to know. And the other thing that's worth saying, I won't go into detail here, but that his friend from university, you just had to say to him i really like david's work and he would laugh it clearly clearly you know what the more i find out about the more fascinated i am by him anyway the reading itself over the course of the day was just really really good people came

and went. Some bits were incredibly engaging, other bits weren't. But I don't know if anyone listening to this has read All the Devils Are Here since we talked about it. The thing that kept happening while people were reading is you would drift in and out of listening to it, and then suddenly there'd be some little sentence or fact or rant that would pull you right back into the present right back into the

book again exactly that thing we talked about of having somebody buttonholing you in the corner of a pub really really good and it lasted about eight hours this reading was it a way of praising the book in terms of being able to tell what as it was being read out this is a weak passage this is a good passage this is holding people's attention this isn't yes uh although if i were being scrupulously honest i would also say it was a very good control over the varying reading abilities of those people involved right if you were given as was, a bit of a court report to read and you've never seen it before, which was the case in this, the plucky member of the public who volunteered to come and do that clearly struggled with it,

and so maybe the text didn't survive that too well. But then once you got show-offs, as such, with myself... Which bit did you read? Andrew Mayall was there and Jason Haisley was there and he read chapter 1 chapter 2 chapter 3 and chapter 4

I read the beginning of the Broadstairs chapter and then a little bit later on something else because somebody had dropped out so I didn't make it to Deal I didn't make it to Charles Hawtree. But I did get to do the Lord Haw-Haw bit,

which I was very pleased about. It's just remarkable. What a great thing to have done. I'm really pleased they did it as well. I mean, it's a weird thing to do, isn't it? It's an odd book, I would have thought, for a read-through because it's so strangely personal. I always think

of it like a one of those sort of 60s nouvelle valve documentaries which is the jump cuts lots of jump cuts and and non sequiturs and sort of strange it's it's i mean but in general i thought it stood up really really well to being publicly declaimed yeah and the other thing the other thing was that there was a slight element of because as I say people, the audience came and went, as is the nature of these things, there was a slight element of if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to see it at various points. It's a temptation not just to start

embroidering, just to kind of start making up, just to see if everybody was paying attention Which poor person got the final chapter? I don't know I was longer I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong As Steve would say

As Steve would say, it was time for me to go It was time for me to move on Hello and welcome to another edition of Backlisted The podcast which seeks to give new life to old books As ever, we're seated in the offices of Unbound, the website which brings readers and writers together to make great books. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound and I'm Andy Miller, the author of the year of reading dangerously and we're joined today as ever by the writer and iconoclast Matthew Clayton.

Good afternoon. We don't say that. Iconoclast, Matthew Clayton. Good afternoon. Oh, we don't say that. Folk of Nancy, as he's known to some. And we're also joined by the author and thinker, Richard King, author of a wonderful book that came out last year called Original Rockers, which has just come out in paperback.

Hello, Richard. Hello. Do you know, if you call someone an iconoclast, I always think of Captain Haddock. That's your zoops. Exactly. I think it of Captain Haddock. That's it. Exactly. I think it's a real compliment. Because he was iconoclastic?

His vocabulary, I think, needs to be reintroducted to the national curriculum. He had an obituary in the Times, didn't he, famously? Captain Haddock. No, no, no. I think he was Captain Birdside. No, that's not it.

So, yes, we're joined by Richard Kim Richards, and Richards has chosen a book for us to read, which we're going to be talking about in a while, called Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch. Yes. Denton Welch and Tintin may have had something in common, if I think about it. Yeah, that's quite a nice little unexpected segue.

John, qu'est-ce que c'est que tu as lu pendant cette semaine? I've been reading a remarkable book by a remarkable writer, Jay Griffiths, called Tristomania, A Diary of Manic Depression, which may sound like a bit of a downer, and indeed there are some very, very harrowing passages in this book but I guess most people who know Jay Griffith's work will probably know her for her remarkable book Wild about really our relationship with the natural world

which I think is a kind of ur-text for what we might call the new nature writing Yes, I think it's a book that's for what we might call the new nature writing. Yes. I think it's a book that's started a vogue for putting the writer in between the landscape and the reader, something Richard Mabey did as well. And I'd say that this vogue has now possibly reached, possibly verged on the unfashionable now. I think too much nature writing

is memoir and autobiography and a nice long walk. Yeah. Well, indeed, all of those things do take place in this book, although I would say, like in any genre, there are people who do it well and there are people who do it less well and i like the cut of jay griffith's uh jib a lot because i think as a kind of you know i think she sort of started it in a way richard maybe with nature cure a book that i like less than i like tristamania although there are very much uh we'll get depressed after

there are connections well i mean you get depressed after. There are connections. Well, I mean, you know, in the book, there's sort of the background, I suppose. She puts her kind of cards on the table fairly early on, saying, you know, hypermania. There's a difference between depression and manic depression. She likes to call it manic depression rather than bipolar. I mean, she's alive to words.

Tristomania, which is the title of the book, was coined by an 18th century American psychiatrist called Benjamin Rush. And she says it works perfectly, she says, for the tristesse, the distress coupled with mania, which a mixed-stake bipolar episode provides. And the book is an account of a a major episode in her life she was finishing uh the the the book kith which is about children another remarkable book um she was

in a kind of a heightened state anybody's ever written a book and has worked through the proofs and the index and the the stress of getting into publication knows that you're probably in a in a fairly vulnerable state something very unpleasant happened to her which kick-started a a manic depressive episode but being a kind of a writer i guess the point of this book is to explore she writes at one point a rather beautiful way she said it depression is like an octave played below reality mania is an octave played above and she writes in a way the book is more about the mania than it is about the depression which i think it's if you were going to get kind of artsy-fartsy about it if if uh you know the noonday demon by andrew solomon which i

think is probably the the great modern text you know our version of the anatomy of melancholy about depression if that's like a sort of 19th century symphony, this is definitely, this book is definitely a kind of a chamber piece, a late Beethoven quartet. She gets very, very sick, and she heals herself by walking the Camino to Santiago. And in its baldest kind of way way that is the journey that she takes but the brilliant thing is that she writes I think more accurately about that sense of the connection between trying to take the most complex psychological states that you find yourself in she writes with such precision that's her language doesn't ever kind of get sort of soppy or saggy. And even if you haven't been through this, she's also a scholar.

She doesn't just give you the here is my sad, unhappy episode, make of it what you will. She kind of burrows down into it. So one of the things I liked, just read a little tiny bit here, was about the word woad, which woad was the old English word for mad, meaning frenzied. And it was replaced in the end by mad. Mad denotes the crazy state, but it connotes little.

Woad, though, carries connotations and etymological links which give insight of a whole other order into the madness of manic depression. The Indo-European root is wet, to blow, inspire, and spiritually arouse. Wet is the source of the Latin vates, meaning seer or poet, and also the source of the Old Irish word faith, or fate, meaning poet. Woad is linked to Old English woath, meaning sound, melody, and song, and cognate with the Old Norse odir, meaning mad, frantic, furious, violent. As a noun, odir means mind, wit, soul, sense, song, and poetry. Woad is

linked to Odin, too to god of war and wisdom shamanism and poetry the roman historian tacitus considered that mercury was the chief god of the germanic tribes almost certainly because he saw in odin the qualities of mercury odin like mercury was a guide of souls and was said to have brought poetry to humankind anyway just a kind of a little bit of the journey that the book takes you on if you have ever had to uh uh deal with anyone if you've ever been depressed or you've ever had to deal with anybody being depressed i mean i would recommend that this book is a as a brilliant it would sit alongside andrew solomon or the very great book the unquiet mind kate redfield jameson as a really it i, without being

in any way insulting to Matt Haig, who also wrote a very good book, this is a very different order of book to Matt Haig's book. It's deep, it's deep and elusive. There's a wonderful passage where she's talking about plea bargaining. Mercury is the god of mania. She's plea bargaining with Mercury. And it's just a tiny little bit more, just to give you a sense. Because one of the amazing things about the book is it ends up in poetry. So she says, I was bargaining hard with Mercury. Give me metaphor and I'll let you run wild in my mind. But if you continue to make me lose my mind,

and your job in myth was to find Psyche, not to lose her, I will drag you down to earth with drugs. So behave a little bit better, Mercury. just a bit, or be damned with drugs, for I have to find a softer landing to plinlimmon, powis, happiest country in Britain, of which I am not a shining example. Then Mercury offered truce terms to psychiatry in turn. Now he was plea bargaining. Keep the doses low and I'll give you poems.

Deal. A game of forfeit played for poems now there's maybe an archness to this but actually the wonderful thing at the end of the book she puts the poems that she wrote and they're wonderful it's the first time I've read

Jay Griffith's poetry and it kind of works so the book for me was there are a lot of books about depression out there, there are a lot of books about depression out there. There are a lot of books that are there to help people. This is not, you know, I'm not suggesting that this should be sort of issued to everybody who's in that condition. But if you're a thoughtful person

and you're interested in the relationship between language and the mind anyway, this is an extraordinary book. I like books, I have to say, increasingly that show a sort of iron discipline over particularly unruly subjects, which this clearly does,

while managing to retain some of the energy... She's got that sort of forensic skill. She just writes with such fluency and such honesty. And, I mean, there's also, as you could get a little bit in there, there is a sense of humour. I mean, she's a a little bit in there there is a sense of humor she I mean she's a very serious writer but there is a sense of humor in there then the madness that kind of antic and I was like also I was lucky enough to see her read from it at Hay on why I'd never heard her read before she's it was pretty mesmeric it's anyway so I huge

hugely recommend it it was also it's a it's a I think a really genuinely important addition to the canon on literature. You know, William Styron, that kind of... Follow that. Yeah. But to more cheerier clients, let's go to... Not necessarily, but I'll give it a go.

Let's go to Iceland. Okay. Andy, what have you been reading? Yeah, so I've been reading a book, a new novel by the Icelandic writer Sjón, S-J-O-N, called Moonstone, to which has been appended in the English translation a subtitle that I'm not actually going to repeat because on reflection it's a spoiler for the whole book it's better if you don't know what the subtitle is i'm looking over your shoulder now to see what it is myself all right okay you see what i mean yeah you know yeah that's the that's the twist i'm looking at

i'm wondering what that adds do you think um novels should have subtitles? Sure, why not? Sometimes, maybe. There's a lot of shrugging, nodding, shaking of heads going on around people. I hate it when it says, I've always hated a novel. A novel, yes. I think in contemporary art, pieces of work that are called untitled rather than just without a title.

And non-fiction that has a subtitle that often is made of two clauses are both real... I think they both undermine the work itself and they're definitely barriers to entry. That would be a good thought. But they also bring the whole process of the back end

of how things are hung on a gallery wall or how things are published into the reader or viewer's mind and they don't need to be there Unnecessary handrails, it's a huge problem in our culture, it's sort of art sort of lacks such confidence that you know

Take the stabilisers off. Yeah. Well, we're talking of stabilisers. Shut up! Right, so this book by Searn called Moonstone. I, as a long-term listener will remember, went to Iceland a few months ago and was recommended before I went several books about Iceland,

including a short and brilliant novel by Cian called The Blue Fox. This was published in Iceland, Moonstone was published in Iceland about three or four years ago, and similar to The Blue Fox is a very short novel. I hesitate to say novella because... A ugly word. Yeah. But also his books, I now realise,

are like incredibly condensed epics that they manage to deal with a real historical sweep of events and also a brilliant shifting of perspective as the book goes on. He does that in The Blue Fox and he does it in moonstone where you suddenly are wrong-footed as the reader by trying to work out whose version of events you

are reading and whose version of events you have been reading which is why i don't want to mention what this subtitle is um because it spoils one of the very brilliant and rather psychedelic shifts of tone towards the end of the book. This is set in Reykjavik in 1918-19. It's based around the early days of Icelandic cinema, and it's also based around the arrival of Spanish flu in Iceland. It sounds like you just pick three random subjects. I know, but therein lies the genius of it. To have woven those things together,

all of which would provide other writers with epic novels on one relentlessly flat plane. You know, here he manages to weave in and out of these big stories. I'm just going to read this very, very short bit. This is after the arrival of Spanish flu. Reykjavik has undergone a transformation. An ominous hush lies over the busiest, most bustling part of town. No hoofbeats, no rattling of cartwheels or rumble of automobiles, no roar of motorcycles or ringing of bicycle

bells, no rasp of soaring from the carpenter's workshops or clanging from the forges or slamming of warehouse doors, no gossiping voices of washerwomen on their way to the hot springs, no shouts of dock workers unloading the ships or cries of newspaper hawkers on the main street, no smell of fresh bread from the bakeries or waft of roasting meat from the restaurants. The doors of the shops neither open nor close. No one goes in, no one comes out, no one hurries home from work or goes to work at all. No one says good morning, no one hurries home from work or goes to work at all. No one says good morning, no one says good night. You know, like, it's like a brilliantly, deliberately,

postcard-like evocation of something that isn't there at all. How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen. And so I found with both of the novels by cn that i've read they are you can read them in a matter of two or three hours but then they just lodge in your head for days and i found this one particularly really you know we were talking about a few episodes ago about barbara cummings this has a similar kind of and in fact maiden voyage to bring it around but we're going to talk about today it has a similar domestic nightmare element that you feel you know where you are and then something literally and metaphorically feverish grips you the reader and takes you somewhere you don't want to go and at the end of this book there is the most fantastic um uh

twist in that narrative thing that i'm talking about which is like something that john fowles would have done in the 60s very heavily and laboriously in the space of two sentences it's so exquisitely, carefully done. And it seems to me that with Shem, the whole idea of his books is all about restraint and balance. They wouldn't work if you had one or two sentences too heavy. You would tip the thing over. I really, really...

I can't recommend them highly enough. And I also feel he's a writer like all great writers, like Denton Welch, like B.S. Johnson, as we've said before, where the more of their work you read, the more brilliant their work becomes. Because you begin to understand the territory that they've mapped out for themselves. And they're all essentially the same book.

That too. Is there much more in English translated into English? Yeah, there are four or five, but there are more in Icelandic. And if you're listening to this, Sjön... Is he extant, Sjön? Yeah, he followed us on Twitter. We love you. Well, I love you. I can't speak for the others.

No, as always, that's a remarkably alluring bit of book. That thing about novella, you say, nobody refers to As I Lay Dying as a novella, do they? Or The Great Gatsby. Or The Great Gatsby. 45,000 words, The Great Gatsby.

I apologise to listeners. We're drifting into the publishing world chatter, but what is a novella? I mean, is it a long, short story? I think that it doesn't really, those terms are not really made up, isn't it? Fiction. We'll pick this up again after some marvelously witty and interesting adverts.

When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights. There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But like, no pressure.

Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness end July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. So, we have it's a bit all fiction. But that's appropriate to make a voice.

Well, actually it's very, very appropriate to make a voice because it's quite odd that this book isn't. That's the first thing that struck me is that you pick it up and it's quite odd that this book isn't. That's the first thing that struck me, is that you pick it up and it so feels like a novel to begin with that it's quite difficult to take it as a memoir. But maybe that's a way of opening up Denton Welch, who he, what this book... Richard, do you want to say a little bit about Maiden Voyage?

Yes, Maiden Voyage is... John's point about how or why you'd need to categorise it is very germane because I think some people have read it thinking it's a straightforward autobiography. Some people have read it as a piece of fiction. I think it... Not only does the subject, but the way in which it's written map its own world and fall through lots of cracks, deliberately so. We've all read lots of books where we're aware that there's something uncanny happening between the author and the world around him.

There's a very lovely looking copy of The Rings of Saturn on the shelf behind John. Most of the books I've read in that idiom tend to have been written by people who have lived and lived quite heavy lives. The Rings of Saturn, of course, starts off in a hospital bed. This is a book which has that sense to it but is written by a young person and there is something rather overwhelming at the surface and then being submerged again throughout this book where the youth overwhelms the author but he also appears to be so old beyond his years and there's a self-consciousness

throughout it that borders on the confessional and there's always this sense that we're actually going to have the reveal of what's actually going on and it never quite arrives I think I should just do what we do

on Backlisted and read I've got an old lovely old Penguin edition of this the blurb on the back is actually a

biographical note about Denton Wells the blurb here is on the inside cover so I'm going to read the blurb it says

and I have to say I'm going to say this in advance i read this earlier and thought i wish blurbs were like this now okay here we go in her forward to maiden voyage dr edith sitwell describes denton welch as quote a born writer and it was by the publication of this his first book that he achieved his place in English letters. The opening chapter has given account of his last term to public school and of his running away on the day he was to return there. After that his father who was at that time in China wrote suggesting that

his son should go out to join him and so it was that he went to a country whose atmosphere could not have been more suitable for his inquiring and unusual mind. He observed everything, missed nothing, and deliberately involved himself in every variety of experience. And he records it all here, the events, impressions and sensations of his maiden voyage with amazing frankness and simplicity. That's pretty good.

That's pretty good, isn't it? I have an extract here from his final days at public school. Shall I read that? Yeah, do do, please. To give a sense of his tone and indeed his self-consciousness, we mentioned. This is chapter 9, the beginning of chapter 9. One cold morning, the whole school stood on the field

where the monks had once had their tile kiln. We were waiting to be marched off in companies to Willington. We were going to have a field day. I looked to see what my rations were. I found an apple, a pork pie and a bar of chocolate. The shouted commands rang out excitedly in the clear, biting air, and I felt suddenly thrilled, as if our pretense at soldiering were serious and heroic. There was nothing serious about our railway journey. Some people expressed themselves by ordering coffee with two lumps of

sugar wrapped in paper, just as if they were independent citizens and not schoolboys. just as if they were independent citizens and not schoolboys. But others seemed to want more scope. One unfortunate in my carriage had his trousers taken off and chewing gum rubbed in his pubic hair. He screamed a lot, but I think he really enjoyed the publicity. I'm going to just very quickly add to that. There's a wonderful bit when he leaves his school for the last time

with his brother I think this is legitimate because what we need to say about this book is that it has, being able to tell you what the plot is, it's almost impossible to tell you what the plot is but the style in which it's written is everything

and there's a part here I just want to draw attention to specific words that made me occasionally laugh because I thought they were so perfectly chosen. So they're on a train moving away from the school. We ate our breakfast flippantly, knowing that we would have our real meal on the train. My brother with four others had chartered the ancient Rolls Royce to take us to the station. It swayed rakishly like an enormous perambulator. I looked out from its dark felt and leather interior and said goodbye to everything at once to the houses the trees the hills the boys the masters to the lovely church

and the sore red gymnasium as we rocked past the village cross we saw with amazement that the ball had been broken off the top it lay at the foot of the steps amongst thick white pieces of broken crockery someone had evidently tried to crown the cross with a chamber and the top had broken off. We gave mock groans to show what a dreary old joke we thought it was. I secretly thought it very daring but was furious that the ball had been broken off the cross. I was glad to know afterwards that it had fallen on the toes of the vandal and it crushed them black and blue. It was thrilling to be in your own clothes again, to feel the softness of the collar,

and to be hatless. I mean, I... John, did you enjoy reading this? Yeah, I've got another... I'll read it in a minute, just because... I can't remember... Page by page, I think it's just a remarkable... You know that thing about a great work sort of makes its own genre?

Because what is this? Exactly, yes. And I think what I think now is that I'll read things that will remind me of Denton Welch. Quite. And if you've not read it, it's quite difficult to explain precisely what the, but the beginning of this book is one of the most, it's just one of the most remarkable sort of almost, it almost has that sort of Dickensian, slightly, slightly kind of trippy where he goes, he decides he's got five pounds in his pocket and he goes to Salisbury and then

to Exeter and then walks to Budleigh Salterton He acts, first of all the character within the book it seems to me, acts almost exclusively on impulse. He does. But then he's recalling with brilliant clarity the emotional process that has caused that behaviour

Which reminded me of sort of almost like a sort of modern Copperfield There is that but all those Dickensian characters come from which reminded me of sort of almost almost like a sort of modern copperfield or i mean it's there is that but all those dick engine characters come from you know they don't come from this position of privilege and wealth and it's his self-awareness at where he's coming from and his desire to go and look at cathedrals yes it's sort of precocious and 16 year old yes and so it's really benefited him this education this position he's in in society, but he really reacts against it with every footstep away from the school

and every wander around the cathedral. And he's so aware of his own sense of uniqueness or his own perceived sense of uniqueness. And he goes back to the blacking factory and it turns out to be actually fine. You know, you're dreading him going back to school. It's fine. But actually, you know... He's a bit of a hero. Yeah.

And everybody treats him quite nicely. Yeah. It's a very, very peculiar and strange and addictive book, I think. I absolutely loved it. you richard yeah for making us read it i absolutely loved it and the book it it reminded me of several books it but they're all books that it strikes me that are not necessarily easy to read but which once they are in there sit in your head for months and years afterwards

I read last year Stevie Smith's novel on yellow paper, it really reminded me of novel on yellow paper it has that same kind of I am writing with almost insolent selfishness about the things I want to write about

and there's an investigation of sexuality in both but it also has that really um uh huisman's like compulsion to meticulously catalog everything to pick up every precious object be it an antique or a thought or a feeling and describe it accurately to find it and then set it down again without breaking it it's so careful so it made me think that chatwin must have been yes absolutely yes well i first heard of dental welsh through reading modern nature by derek jarman which i think is is think is the ure nature book that doesn't get mentioned in all these litany of... Brilliant, yeah.

One of the best books about landscape and written by someone who could actually do some gardening and lived in the middle of nowhere. So this extract from Modern Nature. Finished my breakfast on the sofa, covered by my grandmother's old travelling rug. I read Denton Welsh's memoirs, crystalline descriptions and acute observations.

I wish writing came naturally to me. Now, there are a couple of things going on here. One, talking about grandmother's old travelling rug is pure Denton welsh this this fetishization of the object in the heirloom and and having a sense of the sort of um hinterland of where the object came from secondly i don't know if you've seen the films jarman made for marion faith or broken english uh black and white films, not really videos. So when are we talking about? That's the early 80s, isn't it? Very end of the 70s, early 80s.

But they are figures wearing amulets and helmets and Greek masks, and they're all caught in the sunlight. I don't know quite what it has to do with Broken English, but as usual, it's an incredible piece of dream cinema. And this idea of light reflecting off objects and objects having a value beyond their material value seems to me Welch sort of drifts through life needing to find these objects as a kind of map through his own life.

And he did collect them, didn't he? He collected little silver... Silverware China. I mean, there's one line, I don't want to misquote it towards the end of the book, where he goes to an antique sale with his friend who says, oh, they've got some quite nice pieces there. And he says something like,

oh, I love looking for bits of China when I'm in China that aren't from China he really likes other people not knowing as much as him or getting built by other antique dealers doesn't he? he likes seeing people waste their

money on fakes and he at the end of the book, without spoiling anything, he tries to kind of rinse his father of the heirlooms that his mother would have given him. Can I read a talk just on objects and the psychological value of objects and the way that he's able to... and how objects stand for...

You know, like in the Harry Potter parlance, a kind of horcrux, you know, with lots of emotions kind of vested in these things. He's remembering an occasion with his aunt, who he has a complex relationship with. At last something happened which shook our confidence in each other. We were on board ship and my aunt had come to see us off. As we waited for the siren to blow,

I asked my aunt if she would let me play with her ring. It was a strange scarab, most fascinating. I think I really imagined that it was alive. She took it off, gave it to me, and went on talking to my mother. Leaning out of the cabin window to get more light, I held the ring above my head and gazed at it. Then something happened. The next moment I heard the ring rattling down the and gazed at it. Then something happened.

The next moment I heard the ring rattling down the slit into which the window frame fitted. Too horrified to speak, I just looked at my aunt. I saw the realisation of what had happened dawn on her face. The whole partition would have to be taken down before the ring could be found. My aunt picked up the box of little wooden toys she had given me. Each one was a perfect little teapot, coffee pot or cup and saucer. I loved them. She held them by her shoulder for a moment. Then she threw them far out into the sea. I saw them sailing lightly on the water. I cried out for someone to save them. And when no one moved, I started to scream

uncontrollably. I knew that my aunt was the wickedest woman in the world I must I just there's a brilliant quote from um the galley beggar publisher of published ebook editions of these books and each one has a new introduction made in voyage the introduction by Susie Fay but the introduction to Welsh Welch's second book in Youth is Pleasure is by Steve Fimbo. And Steve Fimbo wrote this, which is very relevant, John, to the bit you've just read. He said, Welch's characters are always a little grotesque, somewhat ill, and verging on the insane, but only in the way that we all are. That's genius.

I read the journals before. Ah! Ah! Dealing with the journals. Wah, wah. Listeners to Batlisters will know that journals occupy a special place. In fact, the only Doton Welch that I had read before Maiden Voyage were the journals.

Very unusual for me. And I'd read them on our guest's recommendation, who, understanding how my brain works brilliantly had said to me have you read the journals? I went no and you said? I said

something along the lines of they are as if a Stanley Spencer painting could come to life I received a copy for Christmas immediately. They're wonderful. I have just a couple of very short sentences by Welsh standards here from the journal that I think really evoke that.

This is from 1943. A woman on a chestnut horse has just ridden by, looking romantic against the background of steel blue shallow hills and bleached cornfields. The sky is thickly clouded, heavy with rain that won't fall. I've eaten chocolate and cherries and read two stupid short stories by Somerset Maugham. I would like to build a tower here on the top top of this hill, with three storeys, a kitchen and living room on the first, a bedroom and bathroom on the second, and a gazebo and workroom on the third.

Perhaps on top of that, pillars holding up a lintel, but no roof. I would like to lie in the tower, quietly, forever. That's great. Just one more thing to say about the fact that was written in 1943 and he was a young man crippled and who wasn't couldn't partake in the war obviously

and lived in Kent if you think of war novels, war literature wartime literature so Hangover Square was 41 Nigel Bolchers, the one we did recently was 41 as well the green novels, Brighton Rock

leading up to the war and you know Brighton's not that far from Kent they're all full of I don't want to say spivs but you know what I mean, they're down at heel people, they're people who are living fairly sordid lives. And it's rare... It's not rare,

but it's wonderful to see the country and the countryside, especially, described by a young man during that time with such wide eyes. And the cynicism of war is lacking entirely through these journals. Can you tell us a bit about Denton himself? Well, I was just going to... Andy's going to do that. I was going to do that. Andy, can you tell us a bit about Denton himself? Well, I was just going to... Andy's going to do that. I was going to do that. Andy, can you tell us a bit about Denton himself? Yeah.

So I'm just going to read this biographical note. You're sitting constantly, children. Here we go. So Denton Welch was born in Shanghai in 1915, the youngest of four boys, to a wealthy British-American family. After leaving his English boarding school, Repton, Welch decided to follow his dream of

becoming a painter and studied art at Goldsmiths in London. The physical injuries sustained in a cycling accident in 1935 however saw him increasingly turn towards a hitherto secondary interest, writing. When Welsh's debut Maiden Voyage was published in 1942 it was an instant literary sensation. Quote, I have been told that it reeks of homosexuality, wrote Winston Churchill's secretary. I think I must get it. This was followed by In Youth Is Pleasure in 1945, and after his premature death from spinal tuberculosis in 1948,

the publication of his unfinished masterpiece a voice through a cloud quote if any writer has been neglected it is denton wrote william burrows in 1985 but well she's also a writer who has attracted a firm coterie of admirers ranging from orden to alan bennett edith sitwell to john waters and then there's a quote here by edmund white that i would like to um also draw your attention to. When I was reading this, I said it reminded me of, said it reminded me of Stevie Smith. It reminded me of somebody else, and I couldn't put my finger on who it was. I knew that I really liked it. What is this? I can't quite. Anyway, and then I found this quote from Edmund White. Denton Welch is one of those mysterious writers who are always interesting.

The more his world is reduced to a hospital room and a handful of human contacts, the more fascinating he becomes. It is the precision of his observations, the fierce but gentle strangeness of his personality, or his love of nature that captivates the reader. Like Jean Rees, Welch has the power to generate interest out of even the most meagre materials. He had this gift from the beginning, but suffering and illness refined it into a white-hot flame. And the thing about Welch, which...

I mean, I just want to read everything by Denzel Welch now, is that as his career goes on, which I mean I just want to read everything by Denzel Welch now is that as his career goes on his horizons literally become more and more limited that he can first of all he can't leave the house

very often then he can't write much he can write two or three sentences a day so to be able to summon up the energy not exactly to write but to recall with such precision as mentioned by ben white and i think that sense of isolation that was precipitated by his illness and and that sense of being confined allowed and and to only have his own source material his own life as source

material to to dwell on allowed him to write about his sexuality in a way that I think at the time definitely caused ripples, but also there's a wonderful uncertainty about it. I mean, obviously he's, in the way that Spencer admired men's bodies in the paintings of Crookham and loved flesh, that was, for Spencer, that was an act of faith and born of religion. But in Welch, it's similar, but coming from somewhere very different, and is very rarely resolved. The sort of homosexual almost encounters in Maiden Voyage are extraordinary.

They really are. Oh, no, they are amazing. And the fact that they're used in a kind of... There's an ebb and flow of them, which actually, within the novel... You know, the thing that's're used in a kind of, there's an ebb and flow of them, which actually within the novel, and we could, you know, the thing that's so interesting about this book is that you've talked about,

John and Richard, you've both talked about the extent to which this has some relationship to nature writing, that it has, you know, there's the idea of going out and looking at things, being part of the countryside, but it also has a very contemporary auto-fiction thing going on, where you use fiction and you barely change the names or events,

but you use fiction to tell the story you want to tell. Which, of course, you could say you could do in a memoir, and yet this doesn't feel like a memoir, does it? It feels like a novel. It feels like a book written by Dental World mean that's the absolute truth i mean that's what i i it's because we say i mean it's it's a you kind of it meanders you don't know where it's going it sort of stops it's it's not i like there's a great quote by alan bennett i'm just trying to one of the things i love is the idea that you go from Edmund White and Burroughs

and Brian Geisen, who also really liked his work, but then Alan Bennett says that reading the journals, he says it's a script for a documentary by Humphrey Jennings or notes for a film by Michael Powell. That's sort of true. And you think you have got that Jennings, Michael Powell, you've got that kind of Stanley Spence, you've got that incredibly English. Dream vision.

And Jarman, which I think, but then you've also got this kind of American sort of sensibility as well, which sort of goes into beats and into boroughs. I've got a tenuous link for once. I'm going to ask you, you assembled experts, which influential figure on the punk rock

scene said the following of denton welch denton welch is not many of them red so okay exactly wait till i give you not so vicious denton welch is like a British baby Proust in his astounding grasp of his own usually mundane experience. Nothing much happens in his books but the most wonderful writing. Can I say John Savage? It's not John Savage. It's definitely not Tony Parsons. I'll give you a clue.

It's an influential American figure. Richard Hare. It is Richard clue. It's an influential American figure. Richard Hell. It is Richard Hell. That's brilliant. Well, actually, that makes sense. But that's that Burroughs sort of Warholian kind of... And Richard Hell ran away from his boarding school. Did he?

Yes. Where's Tom Verlaine? And Verlaine, I was just about to say, Verlaine and Rambo, that's all part of the same stew. There's a lovely... And Verlaine, I was just about to say, Verlaine and Rambo, that's all part of the same stew. There's a lovely, I did find one lovely John Waters quote also about the Germans, which is, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, it's enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.

Like John Waters. Oh, thank you. For me, it really, it reminded me of what I was like as a teenager, that feeling of you're on kind of tenterhooks constantly. And being convinced that everyone is laughing. Can I just say, if you've ever heard... That's really true. Just on pure writing, this is Victoria Station in the evening,

but listen to this. Victoria seemed like a dark, cloudy aquarium where great black eels wriggle swiftly into swallow-up mouthfuls of small, eddying fishes. From the crowd, faces glanced up, pale and floating, like spirit pictures. Just incredible. Incredible, isn't it?

And don't you think, John, it's as you say at the start of the book, he goes on this, he is trying to leave himself and leave everything. And The Maiden Voyage is the journey back from that first point of departure. And the fact he's run away and has had to come back, he's almost seeing everything through a runaway's eyes. Yeah, for the first time.

It's border on surrealism. And it was that thing of I think Alan Bennett talks about him being, you know, against drabness in all its forms and his kind of feel for colour as well. It's an extraordinary chapter where he drags up as well.

He's always going away from places because he can't bear it. And when he's in China he decides the thing to do in quite a hostile territory is to borrow his friend's dress and make-up and see if he can get away with walking around

and then gets in a panic. Where, don't forget, the Chinese are at that time. There's a big nationalistic movement going on about the effete, corrupt westerners but to see what will happen yes yes but it is it you know a lot of literature has these moments of rupture and these moments of violence interspersed with the mundane but they're often

if you think of i don't know something like kathy acker or a lot of those 80s sort of semiotics authors um there's a kind of punkish violence to it all but in this it's all they tend to they're over freighted with significance whereas the the thing about den welsh the disorienting thing is that doesn't really feel you don't really feel like you're in the in the grip of you know i have some things that I want to tell you and I'm going to dress them up in a story. It's like he's me... I mean, there is order there.

He doesn't kind of have the usual horror response. I mean, he responds horrifically. This is the only time listeners will ever hear me reading from some journals. But I must just read this. I thought this was so wonderful. This is 19th of September, 1944. Yesterday, Eric, who was his lover,

yesterday, Eric and I went to the dentist in Seven Oaks. And while I was sitting in the waiting room with him, I idly turned the pages of Vogue and suddenly came on my own face there in the March issue. Then I went out and bought hair stuff and when I came back Eric was waiting with his tooth pulled out and looking a little strained. We sat in the public

gardens, Eric spitting blood a little into the flowerbed. Then we walked up to Applin's and Eric had only green salad whilst I had Welsh rarebit and tomatoes and cake with imitation cream and coffee. I thought again of our snug place in the leaves under the fallen tree,

looking out onto the rising hill with the smoky curtain of rain falling into the stiff, still green bracken, and the curious high squeaking of some solitary wood pigeons and then their gurgling coo. An eternal moment, always dissolving, which will yet reoccur a thousand thousand times to a thousand thousand other people when we are dead who will look out in the same way through the windows in their heads and see the falling rain the bracken the pattern of the oak bark and wonder and go on wandering for years. God, what a...

First of all, what a gear change from one paragraph to the next, but both so elegantly and wittily and compassionately done. Brilliant. There's no sense through all of it, however sort of... Whatever the sense of high jinx at times, I think that passage you've just read proves that it's never really contrived no it's not it's not played for laughs and it's not it's not camp uh it's no and it's not um he has no self-pity no there's never any self-pity even

in the bits but that was the thing that's so remarkable at the start of Maiden Voyage you're expecting him to I think that Richard Hale description that baby British priest that is very good actually I think that's accurate I don't think I've read a book that's had so many sentences

starting with the first person singular I, I, I, I, I, I I, I, I, I, I, I I, I, I, I, I, I sentences starting with the first person singular though i i i i i well that's how you do you have any link however tenuous to this discussion i've got a tenuous link of course i've got a tenuous link so my tenuous link is what and ask this to to you Andy what is the tenuous link between me, the editor Matthew Clayton and this book Maiden Voyage has it a guess you went to Repton

did you do a book on Herbie Hancock no the editor Matthew Clayton, is that a clue no no it's not a clue Denton Welch was in an early line-up of Fairport Convention that you saw as a child. No, so what it is... So there's a wonderful bit in it where he goes and stays at his uncle's house.

And his uncle's house is in Sussex, I think it is. And in his uncle's house he has copies of the Sussex County magazine. And I read that with complete joy because I absolutely adore the Sussex County magazine. To be fair, Matthew, quite hard to guess. So the Sussex County magazine was published between 1927 and 1956, and it had articles on things like Sussex Turnpike anecdotes or queer things about Sussex windmills. And bizarrely, last night, I gave a talk about a Sussex County magazine columnist,

Barclay Wills, who wrote about Sussex Shepherds. And I gave a talk at Michael Smith, right at Michael Smith, now lives in Hastings and has a wonderful shop there called Borough Beer, Wine, Beer and Books. What's it called, Matthew? It's called Borough

Wine, Beer and Books. And he does a fantastic night there called Weird Shit. And I went and did a talk about Barkley Wills with my owner and a great guy called Gareth E. Rees. Yes. He was fantastic. He was absolutely fantastic.

Have you got a turnpike handgun that you can maybe tell is off the top of your head? I do actually, but you don't want to go there. There's a turnpike right at the end of my road which is used by the local burger van as a storage place. So they kind of keep it open, and I sometimes sneak in there to have a look at it.

It has all the turnpike prices outside, but I think they're made up. What did Buckley Wills do? Oh, he wrote terrible books about Sussex Shepherds, and he was obsessed by the sound. He was a nature writer. He was a nature writer. Anthology. Put him by the sound. He was a nature writer. He was a nature writer. Anthology. Put him with the others.

He did shepherd walks. Grabbing up the sheep. He ran a fruit and veg shop in Worthing. He moved to London to be closer to the South Downs. He was really obsessed by shepherds. He spent his time walking on the South Downs befriending shepherds. He collected a large amount of

shepherding paraphernalia horn lamps, falcon crooks that kind of stuff, amazing umbrellas I have to, thank you that was tenuous it was rich in colour I have to mention we've noticed on Backlisted

that people like to be able to buy the books that we talk about cheap and why not and why not and indeed we are able thanks to brilliant galley beggar press um they have told us that if you email them through their website or on info at galleybeggar.co.uk go and get a pen and a piece of paper info at galleybeggar.co.uk and you put back listed in the subject

of subject line of that email you can buy the e-book of Maiden Voyage from them and one other they will then give you one other Denton Welch book for free. Wow. Brilliant. So email them, put Backlisted in the subject line.

I think we all strongly recommend this book. I know we love all the books we cover, of course, but I have to say I felt, as I do occasionally when we do Backlisted, that this is one of those things where I feel very grateful to have the opportunity to go forward and read everything by this author i think that's exactly right remarkable i mean those just the little glimpses of the journals that have come out today make me want to go grab them and wrestle them to the ground dental would like that he would probably enjoy thated in oil Anyway, I think that's probably all we've got time to Thank you for listening to Backlisted

We are available on all the usual channels Facebook, BacklistedPod Twitter, at BacklistedPod On the Unbound website unbound.co.uk forward slash backlisted Thank you to our guest Richard As ever to Matthew Thank you Matthew

And thank you to all of you as ever to Matthew and thank you to all of you for listening see you next time, thanks ever so much If you prefer to listen 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.