Backlisted - Patrick Hamilton Extra Episode

Episode Date: April 3, 2017

Following on from the Slaves Of Solitude episode, here is an extra half hour of conversation about Patrick Hamilton. Please listen the the main episode before this one.* 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. Well, we've just recharged our glasses with gin and French, and we're all gathered as a group. You join us in the snug. Certainly in the saloon bar.

We've left the saloon bar, we're now in the snug. To talk a little bit more about Patrick Hamilton, one of the things I want to... Hang on, though, John. We have Matt. Matt is the Phil spectra of the operation is waving a gun around and saying saying for god's sake reintroduce our guests so it's me it's john mitchinson it's the excellent novelist lisa evans the excellent novelist and short story

writer stuart evers and hello guys oh hello sorry the subject of the conversation I was a bit gin and french there for a moment the subject of the conversation is the excellent I mean brilliant novel by Patrick Hamilton The Slaves of Solitude and we're just I guess we've charged our glasses we're going to give you a bit of extra Hamilton kind of insight

or whatever this passes for what I wanted to say is that the amongst the many pleasures of this book and they are as you will know if you've listened to the rest of it many it's surely the greatest christmas scene you're talking we're talking about hamilton as a dickensian writer i the chapter 18 opens with this memorable sentence ah that christmas that christmas of hatred fear pain terror and disgrace and then later on he says he says about something about christmas he said the madness of christmas is not to be resisted by any human means it either stealthily creeps or crudely batters its way into every fastness of fortress of prudence all over the land. And what I love about that scene is the attention to detail

where they wouldn't ordinarily be allowed to drink in the lounge, but it's all right because he's brought some gin and orange. And Mrs Bain gets quite into it. The landlady gets quite into it. I quite like the idea that Patrick Hamilton invented gin and juice. There's Snoop Dogg's song. I like that. I like idea that that snoop was was was reading rolling down the street yeah yeah i think you know reading patrick hamilton

and uh thinking i just i just want to i haven't read anything from the slaves of the studio i just want to read the opening because as openings go even the opening is superb, right? You see, I'm going to have to take issue with that. But go on, you go ahead. Ooh, chapter one. London, the crouching monster, like every other monster, has to breathe. And breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way.

Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds who every morning are sucked up through an infinitely complicated respiratory apparatus of trains and termini into the mighty congested lungs held there for a number of hours and then in the evening exhaled violently through the same channels. I've just watched, incidentally, listeners... It's just terrible. I've just watched Stuart vap, listeners, Stuart. I've just watched Stuart

vaping in time to that particular exhalation. Do you think that's terrible? It's just taking his metaphor too far. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time I know we get told off, indeed rightly for not finishing our sentences

and overusing breathless hyperbole on this shoot, but I don't think we've yet had a bravura moment on Pat's back You know what it is, don't you, John? It's a tour de force It's the gin and it, mate No, but I think this

I'm glad that you brought it up because I find No, but I think this... I'm glad that you brought it up because... LAUGHTER Talking of tired old locutions, Stuart, I'm very glad you asked me that question. Because I think that that is a perfect example of Hamilton being a good novelist, a great novelist, but not a particularly great writer

because, actually, I do think it's completely overwritten and it goes on and on and on this whole kind of... He's read the fog chapter of Bleak House. Yeah, and it's this big metaphor of blowing people in and blowing people out. But what is fascinating about it is that what it does, even though it's a very crude instrument, what it does give is the idea of London as a living,

breathing, um, physical, um, like actual, uh, with life in it. And what it brings is when the people are actually spat out down into Thames,

Lockton is, is the, is the sense that when you get there, that you realize that all life is, is ended here. Um, that this is a, a,

an unliving space a place of hiatus if you like um and that all of these characters are just stuck in this horrendous place um and i think that that even though i i think it's overwritten i can i can see why it's there because it needs to be there to show that life is elsewhere and they are stuck in this unliving place. And I think what I found fascinating is about this novel, and I think Richard Curtis should really read it. Oh my God.

Because in Richard Curtis, or any kind of... Eight, actually. But in any of those kinds of romantic comedies, the Americans arrive, and the Americans arrive, and they are witty, they are clever, they are different, they are full of life. But this American, this lieutenant, I find him fascinating.

He's dead inside. Yeah, yeah. And his dream is laundry. That his dream and that's it's the smallest possible dream absolutely and there is no content to his conversation whatsoever it's empty and he is a proper genuine alcoholic like there's you know the other people drink but he has to keep going he has to keep and there's always another drink and and you know when it comes out later that you know he's even more nefarious than... I actually don't feel bad for him.

I just kind of want to give him a cuddle and say, you know, your life is terrible. And they kind of excuse him because they excuse him... You're so nice, Stuart. No, but he is excused. I mean, not Vicky, but Miss Roach excuses him consistently by saying, oh, he's inconsequential, or, well, there's the second front coming up

and he's got the shadow of war. But as the book goes on, more and more, there's more and more stuff about the war. The war is mentioned more and more. And this is a, you know, as we say, this is a war novel. Let us not be... The war is a you know as we say this is a war novel like let us not be you know this is a war yeah

and you know and he is clearly terrified not only about the war and possibility of not of not living through it but also of going back and being this laundry this bladder of lard is going to be on the beaches in a year you know that's the most extraordinary thing the second front and i love

the way he brings in that that thing of exactly that miss roach feels sympathy for him and then she also there's that sense that she comes she goes back to london and then you know the bombing is going to start again but i tried to find find, because I read this thing, Andy, that you'd said about the whiskey. I tried to find some drunk writing in the book. And I think I found only, this might be brilliant, or this might be bravura, or this might be just overblown. Tell me what you think. What do you think is going on here?

Miss Roach looking at the countryside. At such moments, the countryside stealthily informing her of its immense size would seem, of course, in grandeur, wildness, and stillness. This is Henley and Thames, right? Completely to dominate and submerge all things appertaining to men and towns, and to reduce in particular to microscopic thread-like smallness the railway tracks by which these communicated with each other the noise of the trains thereon distantly falling on her straining ear like something less than minute rumblings in the enormous belly of the enormous supine organism enveloping her and everything it's almost no excuse for using the

word thereon but no by this adjustment of her sense of dimensions, Miss Roach's spirit bathed in moonlight would be composed, consoled and refreshed. And then she says, the train, on the other hand, which Miss Roach normally took down from London to Thames Lockton, had opposite ideas, so far from being aware of its doll-like magnitude in the night, of being diminished practically to the point of extinction by the surrounding void of fields, woods and hills.

It came crashing on like a huge staggering bully from station to station lashing out right and left at the night on which the tables were turned which was itself relegated to nothingness and whose very stars had less importance in the eyes of the train than one of the sparks from the funnel of its engine in the same way miss roach's attitude was completely reversed and when at last she alighted at Thames lockdown station instead of feeling composed,

consoled and refreshed, she was invariably filled with anxiety apprehensive. I'm closing the book now. That is a terrible passage. No, no, hang on, but that is this close to truthing. You know, like, it's this close to Thwaites, isn't it? It's this close to truthing. You know, like, it's this close to the weight, isn't it? It's this close.

But also the energy of it. What I like about Hamilton's prose, even when he's not afraid to be gauche, he's not afraid to really try and push through that barrier. He uses disinterested as well. But you see, for me, those bits, I've forgotten those bits. Yeah, me too. They haven't hit me in the head at all.

I think, bloody hell, we don't need that. All I mean is a man with a bottle of whiskey at night and he's writing about trains and he's writing... Lord knows what the editorial process with Hamilton... Funny you should say that.

Now earlier on we were talking about whether the titles of Patrick Hamilton's novels were any good. And I thought they were brilliant. And what do you think, Stuart? Well, I think they fall into two categories. Hang of a Square, genius. Yeah.

Hang of a Square, I want to read that book. Slaves of Solitude, not so much. What does it sound like? It sounds like an 80s kind of album, doesn't it? It's like the Lost Bunnyman album. Craven House. Great title. Wonderful.

I love that. But the worst, Toppins Coloured. Yeah. That's terrible. I think that would have meant something to him. You know, it means nothing to us. But Toppins Coloured definitely would have been significant. Toppins means female pudenda as well as Toppins.

Oh, blimey. I wasn't thinking about it does it yeah sorry this is why it's actually this is like

after dark for sure I was thinking press your red button now so most of the titles of Patrick Hamilton's novels

were not devised by Patrick Hamilton get out of here no it's true I'll go to the foot of my stairs okay they were devised by Patrick Hamilton. Get out of here. No, it's true. I'll go to the foot of my stairs. They were devised by his editor, and his editor is a man who deserves his own episode of Backlist.

He's a man called Michael Sadlier. Have you ever heard of him? Oh, yeah, yeah. So Michael Sadlier was the publisher at Constable, and he would often, his editorial letters will often say, Patrick, I love the book. Just one thing, need to change the title.

Okay, so he often devises the titles for the books. The thing that is one of the significant things about Michael Sadlier, do you know who else he was publishing at the same time he was publishing Patrick Hamilton? So where are we? Constable, late 30s. Constable, late 30s. Constable, late 30s. Priestley. Nope.

Good guess. Stu? No, Orwell's Glance. Let's just say somebody who wrote about drinking and could be quite a handful. Dylan Thomas? I'm afraid not. He was Gene Rees' editor. Gene Rees? Oh, afraid not. He was Gene Rees' editor.

Gene Rees? Oh, my God. Really? Gene Rees' editor. Oh, my God. I listened. I'm the host. I'm just going.

Gene Rees' editor on Voyage in the Dark. Easy Christmas presents for your clients, so. And Good Morning Midnight, which we've done on the podcast, of course. And I was going to say to you, Joe, can you imagine the lunches? Looking at your diary and thinking you've got Patrick Hamilton on Wednesday and jeans coming in on Friday what a fantastic thing

can you imagine that now but what were his titles originally they're in Nigel Jones' book but I do know that Craven House was sadly his idea definitely, but I think Slaves of Solitude was Hamilton. I think Hamilton... Well, I mean, it's in the book, isn't it?

It's a sort of terrible title. It is. I mean, it's not as bad as Tuppence Coloured, but... It's both portentous and it gives you no feeling for the characters at all. Time now for an advert. No, not at all. I mean, I don't know.

Could you have called it Miss Roach? Probably not. But Roachie? Enid? Enid. Enid. But that's made me think how brilliant Muriel Sparks' titles always were. Slender memes.

Yeah. And the Abyss of Crewe. What a great title that is. And A Far Cry from Kensington. Yeah. So there's another thing here. And a far cry from Kensington. And the driving seat as well. There's another thing I'd like to say about

Patrick Hamilton. This is wonderful. This is reproduced in Nigel Jones's book. Everybody should read that. It's an amazing brilliant biography called Through a Glass Darkly, The Life of Patrick Hamilton by Nigel Jones. And he includes this letter. This is very Hamilton. He really didn't like abroad.

No, he didn't. I love it. He really didn't like to be anywhere other than England. He didn't like the French. He didn't like the Germans. Here's his letter to his brother Bruce. Bruce who loved France. That's so sweet. Here is his 11-point letter about their trip to France. We went to Paris, Dijon and Auxerre.

Paris, I think, is the filthiest and most loathsome city in the world. I absolutely hate it from every point of view. I have a list of the things I hate about it. One, the dirty, filthy smell of the place. The cheap, restaurant-y, omelety, Hive Life cigarette-y stench which greets your nostrils at and between every corner.

Two, the revolting advertisements with which the whole place is plastered. A picture of a lewd, fat, smiling baby. Three, the peeling, grey, debauched rottenness of the slummier quarters. Four, the obscene gurgling language which, it's Alex, I can neither speak nor understand. And when they hear you fumbling with it they haven't won eighth of the sympathy which an Englishman would have for a Frenchman in the same predicament. They look angry and indifferent. Five, the Americans. Everybody will tell you that Paris is completely spoiled by the Americans. Well, if it is spoiled, what is the use of going there? Six, the French.

Seven, the hashed buttery cooking, invented for a people with enervated appetites which require tickling and are absolutely opaque to the subtleties of plain food eight the coffee complex i cannot digest coffee i loathe french bread and so i feel slightly sick for the rest of the day nine the horse traffic and then there's a long bit I won't read you about just ranting about horses. Ten, the noise. The amount of cobbled stones and drays and incessant sharp shriek of the taxi horns. Finally, eleven,

the fact, this is an unreasonable objection, but nonetheless real for me, that all the traffic is going the wrong way and much too fast. He'd get a series now, wouldn't he, going round the world? Isn't it? It does sound like a conflagration

between Nigel Farage and Geoffrey Boycott. I just feel like I've got to go to a ten-point manifesto. This is also the point. This is the thing which I love so much about fiction. He can write Mr. Thwaites because, of course, he in some ways is Mr. Thwaites. And that's what I love about... Can I do a bit?

Go on, you've got to do it. Go on, listen. OK, fine. We just have to have a bit more Thwaites. We can have a bit more Thwaites. OK, well, one phrase which he uses quite a lot is, I keeps my counsel. Like the wise old Well, one phrase which he uses quite a lot is, I keeps my counsel like the wise old bird. I happens to keep my counsel,

I happens to be like the wise old bird. And then later on he says, I hay my dudes. That's all, says Mr Thwaites. I hay my dudes. And he has not thought Miss Roach going to add, as the Scotchman said. Surely he's not going to add, as the Scotchman said. Surely he's not going to add, as the Scotchman said.

As the Scotchman said, said Mr Thwaites. Yes, I hame a do. Brilliant. So I've got two things to add and then we'll wind up. But the first thing I'd like to add is, we normally have clips on Backlisted of the authors talking or maybe interviewed. And as far as we know, there is no audio of Patrick Hamilton talking but I would like to recommend there's a wonderful

series on YouTube called Cummings Your Way in which a gentleman I believe called Cummings maybe not goes to a variety of towns and wanders around them and gives a little narration while he does it the one about patrick hamilton and about brighton is by far and away the best thing about patrick hamilton on youtube it's only 15 20 minutes long if you're listening to this and you like patrick hamilton and you love things that are english in a sort of either cutlery, although he wasn't English, Betchemony kind of way, Cummings Your Way on YouTube. Just look for Cummings Your Way, Patrick Hamilton, and you'll find it's absolutely tremendous.

I would like to ask everybody around the table, John, you've already said that this might be the book you've enjoyed most of any that we've done on Backlisted. I said at the top that I felt it was sort of Patrick Hamilton was the ultimate Backlisted author. Why is it, then, that Hamilton remains perceived, I think, as a cult writer rather than a mainstream writer?

He is not talked of in the same breath as, say, Graham Greene and George Orwell, unless it's to say he's often thought of as not quite as good as Graham Greene and George Orwell. But, why is he perennially underrated? I think because his focus is so small. I think because he's looking under the microscope. I mean, Orwell

wrote about small, ordinary things, but he also had to look at his range. It was absolutely extraordinary. Patrick Hamilton's looking at one type of people one type of person in one type of place I think I think you said it earlier Andy when you said he was a limited writer I hate to feel because I love this book I really I mean it's been a total revelation to me but I think he is a rebarbative human being he's quite hard to like, you can feel that Hamilton would have been a difficult person, we don't agree on this

but I always feel I could have gone I could have met DH Lawrence and kind of, you know, we could have had a we could have had a... A naked wrestle? No, not a naked wrestle but we you know, we could have Hamilton I just feel, was... Hamilton was a...

I mean, he was a major league fuck-up, but the best of him went into his books, and I think the best of Hamilton is in this book. I think, for me, I think the reason why he's perennially a cult writer or an under-the-radar writer in that respect is that he fell at the wrong time. Yeah.

That his subjects were, you know, that Hangover Square feels quite dated when you compare it to, say, if you are in the late 50s and you've got the kind of angry young men and women, people coming in the late 50s, early 60s. He's under the radar. He's under the radar for most of that time and yet he's actually the precursor for for those writers those writers

that with Patrick Hamilton I think that when I first started reading Hangover Square the very first book of his that I read I felt in the company of the kinds of people like Keith Waterhouse John Brain those kinds of writers who had meant so much to me in my mid to late teens, because they were talking about people that I understood, that I knew they were in a space that made sense. And, you know, and Kingsley Amis for me, I mean, like, it's not just rich people I struggle to read about.

I mean, campus novels I have a massive problem with but but again hamilton occupies two things which puts him out of disadvantage he writes about ordinary people who are not necessarily just in the in the gutter yet and yet aren't you know aren't rich or anything like that but also the timing you know like people do do people want to read about the war when it's there isn't a kind of sense of impending loss, even though this book actually does do that very well. I think there is an issue there where he's writing about the boring mundanity of living under an oppressive regime and this kind of sense of fear. And this is why this book actually reading it again now feels so contemporary

in so many ways that you know Thwaites for example you could go anywhere in this country and I go up and down the country regularly go to smaller places you know not cities but towns and places all around the UK and you hear thwaites

everywhere trothing you know even even trothing you know i think that's a really good point i would like to add one thing to this which is that as someone who is fascinated by the sort of ebbing and flowing of reputations and the nuances of where authors fit in the general picture at any given time. I totally never get tired of thinking about this. And I was thinking back to when I started as a bookseller in the early 90s. And I was thinking about how much I loved, and indeed still love, Graham Greene. You know, Graham Greene was a very important writer to me when I was young. And I was thinking that what's so interesting about Patrick Hamilton is he was actually, you know, he was a successful

writer in his lifetime. He was well-reviewed and widely read, and his books sold. And by the mid-60s, he was forgotten. Green who was still alive when I worked as a bookseller was in he through his lifetime considered one of the preeminent British novelists of the 20th century. I would be fairly sure that here in 2017 Patrick Hamilton is now more widely read than Graham Greene. I've got no way of proving that. No, I don't know. I feel in terms of a writer who's referenced and talked about.

I hope that's true because I think... I think you'd be surprised. No, not even close. I'm going out on a limb and we haven't done Backlisted on Greene, but all Greene's books are disfigured by Catholicism. I can't wait till we do Green, because I will be disagreeing with you. I reckon I would

lay money down, I would lay down 50 quid. I would lay down 50 quid at the end of the affair, and the power and the glory together have sold more than all of Patrick Hamilton put together all of his stuff over the last four years last year on my phone here no you haven't you have not

I'm afraid you're wrong I'll take your money I'm afraid I'm afraid book scan it's not book scanning it's not on your phone it's not on your phone I know this I know this I've been through your phone um uh I did I did have. I know this. I know this. I've been through your phone. I did have a point to make about Patrick Hamilton. Many years ago in Select magazine, my magazine of choice during the early 1990s, there was a review of Dog Man Star by Suede. There is the line in it,

and I always think about this whenever I think about cult writers or whatever. The line was, when people have forgotten whether this whenever I think about cult writers or whatever, the line was when people have forgotten whether smashing pumpkins were animal, vegetable or mineral there will always be someone late at night with their headphones on listening to Dogman's Star and I always

think that that's kind of the case and I think that's where Hamilton fits in perfectly is that he will never be in the same rank as Green or Orwell but there will always be someone late at night reading Patrick Hamilton.

It comes back, you know, Andy your love for absolute beginners. There's just some writers who get things and the thing about Hamilton, what I feel about him is he fixes something more perfectly more there's

no other writer who can do what he does and yet somehow it's like the brilliant line that Russell Hoban once said he said you know my readers trade in used paperbacks if you love Russell Hoban you give your copy of Russell Hoban to somebody else.

I feel that's it. You know that bookseller kind of telegraph we have? It's when you read a Patrick Hamilton novel, you say, you've got to read this. You've got to read this. And yet somehow Graham Greene is up there as a settled star on the literary firmament. I don't think Hamilton ever will be.

We don't need him to be. Let's raise a glass to both Patrick Hamilton, to Batlist and all you lovely people for listening through to the end of this. We'll see you next time. Somewhere down the road.

Oh, in fact, are we still going? God help us. God help all of us. Everyone, all of us. The end. The end. It's kind of anti-Tiny Tim, isn't it?

Yes, it is. 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.