Backlisted - The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell

Episode Date: September 24, 2016

Novelist, editor and critic Erica Wagner joins the Backlisted team to discuss one of her favourite books - The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell. Revolt Into Style, George Melly's groundbreaking discourse on pop culture, and Exmoor Village, a Mass Observation publication from 1947.Timings: (may differ due to adverts)3.46 - Exmoor Village by W. J. Turner 14.05 - Revolt In Style by George Melly 20.51 - The Animal Family* 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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Two freshly cracked eggs any way you like them. Three strips of naturally smoked bacon and a side of toast. Only $6 at A&W's in Ontario. Experience A&W's classic breakfast on now. Dine-in only until 11am. I never knew that. Oh my God. Did you know that? It's peanuts and salt. Did you know that? Yeah. No, I didn't know that. You didn't know that?

No. But I don't really like peanut butter, so I've not lingered over it. It is butter. It's like peanut butter. It's butter made out of peanuts. It's butter made out of peanuts. John, did you know that? It should really be hyphenated.

I mean, it's like, the whole point about it is there's no dairy in it. That's why people do... What's the whole point about it? That's not the whole point about it. Well, it's one of the points about it. But no, my peanut butter is profound. It's made from nut oil. Pedant butter.

Pedant butter. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Off bat. Hello and welcome to Backlisted. Once again, we're gathered around the kitchen table of our sponsors, Unbound, the publisher who brings together authors and readers to create great books. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound.

And I'm Andy Miller. I'm the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. Hello, welcome to Backlisted, everybody. This is a podcast where we attempt to give new life to old books. We're joined, as ever, by the author and Labour leadership candidate, Matthew Clayton. Hello, Matthew. Hello, Andy. Actually, we'll find out whether he's won or not. I would vote for Matthew in preference to any other candidates.

True. And we're also joined by Erica Wagner. Hello, very pleased to be here. Erica is obviously an author and critic, but she's also credited with, on her website, being the creator of the world's finest egg-free chocolate mousse. I'm a woman of many parts. And makes her own peanut butter, which is something that has astonished all of us around the table today, but most of all, Matthew Clayton.

Anyway, we are here. We are here to discuss the animal family by an American poet, critic, and author called Andy... Well, now I would say Randall Jarrell Until yesterday I was wandering around saying Randall Jarrell, have you heard of Randall Jarrell? I do like Randall Jarrell, but then

I was listening to a clip of something that we're going to hear a bit later on and Mr Jarrell is announced in 1964 as Randall Jarrell. Right. So there is strong evidence that he's not. But then Erica was saying maybe not.

But not incontrovertible evidence, you see, because I, being such a polite person, never like to correct people when they introduce me as Erica Wagner. I mean, I think it sounds kind of elegant, too, but I never say it. So perhaps Mr. whoever he was, Jarrell, was

being polite to the 90s why we don't know. And yet what I know of Mr. Jarrell is that he wasn't inclined to be polite. It's true. It's funny, isn't it? It's very English, because we say Leonard Nimoy, but they definitely say Leonard Nimoy in a way. And also, while we're here, there are illustrations in the animal family by Sendak, who in the UK we call Maurice

Sendak. That is, of course, incorrect. It's Maurice Sendak. So this is going to be quite the episode for pronunciation, everyone. But before we get on to the animal family by those people, John, what have you been reading this week? I have been reading a book that was published in 1947 called Exmoor Village. It is one of the strange efflorescences from that remarkable thing founded by Humphrey Jennings and Charles Madge and Tom Harrison, mass observation. And this is, it's just a remarkable, I declare it interest, one of our unbound authors, makers, creators, Wolfgang Wilde, who is the retronaut, who curates an extraordinary photographic website,

now hosted on Mashable, introduced this book to me last week, and Matthew, and we were both blown away by it. I like books, as you know, about kind of rural life, because I live in a village, but this is, I think, maybe the most remarkable book on a village I've seen. Its mass observation goes to the country. So it is basically lots and lots of, it's illustrated, I'll go on to the illustrations in a moment,

but it's lots of interviews with villagers about all aspects of their daily lives. There are lists of the newspapers that they take. There's an amazing appendix where they do bookshelves, what was found on the bookshelves. There are some fabulous, I'll read a couple of very short extracts of daily routines,

but it's also got really remarkable, two really remarkable visual aspects, really remarkable colour photographs. I mean, for 1947, the colour reproduction is... It's almost Vermeer-like in some of... And the images are taken by John Hynde, who was the UK's most famous postcard photographer and I guess a kind of Martin Parr of his day, really.

The village is called Luckham. Luckham, and it's in Exmoor, and it's I think now still sort of half-owned by the National Trust. But there is also visually, as well as the photographs, this remarkable Isotype Institute set of graphics in the back, a village distance chart showing how far they were. I mean, and then a brilliant thing, a panorama showing the village and sea level,

showing where all the gardens in the village, and then a wonderful plan of a typical cottage in Luckham and how it's all put together. Did Mass Observation, did they do this with other villages? Well, it's very interesting because it says here it's volume one in a series called British Ways of Life. So you think, oh, I bet there's hundreds. There are only two that were ever published, I think.

I could be corrected on that. The second was British Circus Life, which seems like a pretty weird... By Lady Eleanor Smith? By Lady Eleanor Smith, and edited by W.J. Turner. W.J. Turner was known as a music critic. It's a mysterious

strange product. Ron, don't walk to your computers to see what copies are left after we scalp the lot I think it's a spin off from the Britain in Pictures series so Collins did that Britain in Pictures series which is a way of bolstering the nation

I think there's a lot about there is a sort of I've read around the book there's an interesting thing that happened is that in 1988 they went back to Luckham using this book and made a short series of documentaries. But the whole mass observation thing was remarkable.

It was essentially a bunch of Oxford and Cambridge educated young men being sent into sort of neighbourhoods, working class neighbourhoods. To borrow the phrase from the comedian Stuart Lee,

it's a well-meaning Stasi. Yeah. So Stephen Spence... It's sort of, you know, spies in tank tops going around taking notes about people on Exxon. I mean, famously, famously, William Empson, the great literary critic, uses of pastel, was one of them.

But there's a fabulous thing... That would be a little bit alarming, wouldn't it, if William Empson... Yeah, I mean, can you imagine wearing that beard? I know! And there were a lot of... I mean, I know that it was very controversial in Luckham. There were some people who talked to them

and there were others who refused flatly to talk to them. But also the villagers, when the book was published, I was reading this, when you told me you'd been reading it John apparently when the book was published many of the villagers were very upset at the invasion of their privacy. Well I'll tell you why in a moment because I'll read you a couple of little choice bits but I thought just on the mass observation this is a great quote about how they were regarded. We were called, this is Spender, Stephen, we were called spies, priors, mass eavesdroppers, nosy parkers, peeping toms, lopers, snoopers,

envelope steamers, keyhole artists, sex maniacs, sissies and society playboys. It doesn't sound like a brilliant, you know, because it's weird, we have such a positive view now of mass observation and it was one of these remarkable things, a bit like Pevsner or the Ordnance Survey aren't we clever, but at the time it was massively controversial because the English

keyhole artists, I mean keyhole artists is great isn't it, that sounds like a Hoxton band, yeah it does doesn't it, keyhole artists, anyway there are some bits of, there are some fabulous bits of dialogue, I mean it's it is quite, I mean it's dialogue. I mean, it is quite... I mean, it's...

I love it. It is quite an odd book. It's a brilliantly accurate portrait. I mean, there are some fabulous pictures of people in, but there are some great bits of dialogue as well. I went to the University of Sussex, and the Mass Observation Archive was, and I think still is, held at Sussex, isn't it?

Near you, Matthew. Yeah. So, and everyone I still is, held at Sussex, isn't it, near you, Matthew? Yeah, it's still there, going to the last year. Yeah. So, and everyone I knew was always doing, you know, essays towards their degrees based on the Mass Observation Archive because it was, you know, just there and you could go in and root around in it. It's a fantastic thing. It's an amazing thing. It's a whole load of archive boxes and you go in there and there's all these amazing notebooks with people's town square embalmments, Saturday

midday there were 80 men wearing brown shoes and 15 wearing black shoes and all sorts of things like that. It's extraordinary. So I'm just going to give you a flavour. This is in the daily routine bit of the book and concerns a couple called the Thames.

I think Mr Thame is a, I'm not quite sure what Mr Thame does now, I think he's a carter. Anyway, Mr Thame, Mrs Thame leaves Witchanger about 3.30 and walks slowly back to Porch Cottage, calling frequently at the Miss Palmer's house for a gossip. On arriving home, she may make a cup of tea, but has no real meal until her husband returns between 6 and 6 30 p.m her afternoon is taken up with washing ironing housework in fact whatever needs doing and of course the preparation and cooking of the evening meal after the meal comes washing up and the cutting of sandwiches for mr tame to take to work the following day he likes cheese supplemented by

one or two of his wife's jam tarts or cakes. For Mrs Tame is an excellent cook, though she professes to absolutely hate it. By the time she's cleared away and packed up sandwiches ready for the next day, it is getting on well into the evening, and she either goes out to watch her husband gardening and to have a chat with him, or goes round to Mrs Prescott to have a talk, invariably prefacing her remarks with,

Now, what do you think? I will say here and now I will pledge money for both the republication of this book and you John to do the audio book. It is full, honestly it is remarkable. It's remarkable because the information in it is remarkable

but it's also remarkable because you think what is this? It's really quite odd. It is quite odd. There's a strange, look at this, Mr Clark of West Loughlin Farm. Gosh, he's a bit British. He's the handsome one in the village. It doesn't look like a cab

necessarily but there's a local Thatcher repairing pegs. Anyway, remarkable. His descendants are listening to this now. And then the slightly crazy kind of mad modernist kind of charts at the back there is something very very look at this

hanging on the dresser shelves a typical Luckham interior it's like linoleum with very small red and brown patterns I mean it's odd you would be following in the footsteps of when they made the films in 87, 88.

Yeah. They had readings by actors, but the additional commentary, the readings from the book, were done by Daniel Farson. Yeah. Yeah. So you're in a rich heritage of dissolute men.

There, John, we knew that. I mean, there is a kind of a theory that these books were a form of post-war propaganda, sort of promulgating the idea of rural life as being simple and to be aspired towards. But actually, because it was mass observation, there's so much weird, strange, you know, not quite wicker man, but there's a lot of stuff when you read this book cumulatively. You think, what a really odd place Luckham sounded. My experience of villages is they do tend to be odd, and what is not said, obviously, is as important.

But also, any place described in that detail is going to be odd. If you were to describe your evening routine like that you would think oh must be something else going on there.

That herbal tea Andy always have before bed for instance. How did you know that? It's just the dialogue as well. Back comes Mr Williams and again shouts something as he passes. They watch the goat.

Jimmy picks up a rabbit gin and begins fiddling with it. He reads the trademark. Lie low. Tony. Aye. And they do lie low till the rabbit do tread on them. Mr Shotland. They be good traps.

No then, Jimmy. It is the wrong way to hold them. Aye. This be the right way. He demonstrates. Tony goes over to the goat and fondles it. He cuts a branch from the bush and comes back whistling and whittling.

He shapes it like the rest of the steak, selects an old steak to throw away, and replaces it with the new one. I mean, it's almost Beckett, isn't it? What's going on? John, I think that's enough goat fondling, really. Well, you say that. More goat, more animal fondling to come. Yes, more animal fondling.

But Andy, Andy, Andy, what have you been reading? Talking of farsighted. Okay, talking of... Yes. So I've been reading the 1970 book Revolt in Style by George Melly, the great, late, amazing George Melly. And the reason that I've been reading Revolt in Style,

a book about the pop arts in Britain in the 1960s is I was very kindly asked by some academics from UEA and the University of York to go and talk at a day long symposium about

the popular culture of the 1960s and what the popular culture of the 1960s means now, 50 years later, here in the 21st century. And so I thought, well, I'm going to, I was delighted to be asked, I was delighted to be asked to go and talk about British film of the 1960s, which is a great enthusiasm of mine. And I thought, well, I just want to get in the mood. I've never actually read Revolting to Style, though I've had it sitting on the shelf for years.

So I thought, OK, well, I'll bundle through it before I go to the symposium. And I was totally blown away by it. I cannot recall reading something that has entertained me, page to page, so much for such a long time. Because, here's the thing, it's written by George Melly. He's a master prose stylist, isn't he? I'm going to read a couple of bits here.

Master stylist, I can't believe I introduction is written in december 1966 and he's obviously got an eye on 1970 four years ahead and he's thinking to himself i'm living in the middle of a decade which is going to require a statement as soon as it's over and i'm the guy to deliver it yeah you know but which you so he's so he's already been thinking about this and he is he he he sets the book up as a response to the uses of literacy by richard hoggart now i read the use of literacy by richard hoggart last. Very important book about popular culture in Britain rather than pop culture in Britain. And Mellie is very keen to make the difference.

And when I read The Use of Literacy last year, I thought, well, this is quite good. But equally, it's written in the late 50s. And Richard Hoggart doesn't know what's just around the corner. And what's just around the corner is the Beatles, who he must have hated for ruining everything. He's closer to mass observation in his kind of... Yes, but he has a very clear sense that popular culture

is something that is not imposed from above, that is created by working-class communities, that is under threat from American pop artists trying to sell junk to the working classes. Therefore, as I say, the Beatles are coming, the Beatles are coming. That's going to ruin everything because they are, of course, working class people making their own culture, which sweeps the world. So here's George Melly writing about the use of literacy in December 1966, and this made me laugh out loud.

At about the time that rock and roll had begun to attract some attention, Richard Hoggart was correcting the proofs of the uses of literacy, that warm, perceptive, occasionally sentimental monument to the working-class culture of his youth. Throughout the book, Professor Hoggart expressed his concern at the way things were going. He saw the old simple-minded but honest standards on which popular culture was based threatened by cynical forces bent on manipulation for profit. Towards the end of the book he becomes more and more agitated

running around his subject like a sheepdog who senses some danger to his flock but isn't sure what it is or where it will come from. He growls now at the increasing sophistication of working class magazines now at the sex and violence paperbacks of the period. It was natural that he shouldn't have realised that the quarter from which the danger was to come was a Soho coffee bar where an ex-merchant Navy steward called Tommy Hicks

had begun to arouse considerable if as yet local enthusiasm by imitating Elvis Presley and Tommy Hicks was? Tommy Steele Tommy Steele and this Steele. And this is a thing that Colin McInnes, who we did a few weeks ago in relation to Absolute Beginners, he wrote a brilliant essay in England Half English about the effect of Tommy Steele. Tommy Steele, who for a period of literally weeks was considered the greatest threat to moral life. Anyway, so

going back to Revolting to Style, every single page of this book, having set himself up almost as not anti-academic but non-academic, he replaces the tarnishing rigour of academia

with one incredible, funny, brilliant statement after another. So stylish, as you would expect from George Melly. And he's got a little description here of the Rolling Stones. I think this is the most brilliant. This is so brilliant. The Stones. To start with, they were almost grotesquely derivative blues shouters

from the thames valley cotton fields and jagger's early success was based almost entirely on his sexual charisma i write jagger's charisma rather than the stones charisma because without jagger i don't believe the stones would have ever meant much. Brian Jones was certainly pretty. Keith Richards, sinister. Watts, Aztec. Bill Wyman, a hole in the air. Bill Wyman, a hole in the air. I mean, I'm sorry, Bill Wyman,

but, you know, that's hard to beat, isn't it? He is so remarkable, though, Melly. I mean, you know, were you hard to beat, isn't it? He is so remarkable, though, Melly. I mean, you know, I think, were you saying that Rumbum and Concertina is my favourite all-time memoir, I think? It's just so funny, page to page. I read it when I was about 18 for the first time. It was one of those books you find in a holiday cottage. You think, I wonder what this is?

And then it turned out to be brilliant. I mean, his time in the Navy. I've never read I've never read any of his memoirs it totally made me want to read do you know where the Rumbum and Constantine comes from

no no tell me so it is on land it's all wine women and song on sea it's all Rumbum and Constantine

isn't that brilliant oh I just I once saw George when he performed with John Chilton's feet warmers? Yeah, in a hat and a rather large pink dress. I saw him.

I mean, he was an amazing performer, wasn't he? Just brilliant. We've talked about books enough. Now for some capitalism. Two freshly cracked eggs any way you like them. Three strips of naturally smoked bacon and a side of toast. Only $6 at A&W's in Ontario. Experience A&W's classic breakfast on now.

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Yes, I do. Yeah, now we have Erica here. What's the best way into it, given that we've gone from fondling goats in Exmoor to Bill Wyman as a hole in the air? I'm going to read the very short blurb on the back of the book. Great. And then I'm going to ask Erica to tell us a bit about when she first encountered it, I think.

So it's called The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell, decorations by Maurice Sendak. And here's what it says on the back cover. And we should say this is, and this is all up for debate, everybody, this is, in theory at least, a children's book. We haven't done a children's book before on Backlist, have we? In theory. In theory at least.

Okay, so here's the blurb. This is the story of how, one by one, a man found himself a family. Almost nowhere in fiction is there a stranger, dearer or funnier family and the life that the members of the animal family live together there in the wilderness beside the sea is as extraordinary and as enchanting as the family itself. So that's the blurb and then there is a quote from Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers and she says

occasionally very rarely like the spirit of delight comes a book that is not so much a book as a kind of visitation I had not known that I was waiting for the animal family but when it came it was as though I had long been expecting it that's quite the blurb that is quite the blurb and um it's interesting because I think when you're a young reader you don't know about book blurbs even if they exist on the copy of the book that you have well I certainly didn't know to read them. I can't remember reading any blurbs until I was very much a grown-up, so-called. So I suppose I found this book, I guess, in my school library. I was at my school from the age of about five. I'm guessing I found

this book maybe when I was seven or eight, because it's one of those books that I can't remember not knowing about. And now, when I read P. L. Travers' description of her experience of the book, I would say that that absolutely chimes with mine in that there was something in me that was waiting for a book like this and when I look back now and I think about all the things that I remain interested in and more than interested that cause me to exist. The kind of stories I care about most, folklore, fairy tales, ballads, what I think are the truest

and oldest human stories. This book certainly played a part in my coming to see the shape of that. So it's a book. It is. It's about. It's about a hunter who lives by the sea and he's by himself. And then one day he hears singing off in the distance that sounds strange to him. And he goes down to the sea.

And as soon as his presence is felt, the singing disappears and he hears a splash. But he keeps going back. He's a hunter, so he's very patient. He knows how to wait for things. And it soon becomes apparent that this is a mermaid. And eventually the mermaid comes up out of the sea and they begin to make this extraordinary family. And one of the things that the book has in common with folklore and fairy tale is there's no explanation. All of this just happens in a way that's so clean and so clear that there's simply no space in this story to think, how?

How does she walk? How does she breathe? How is it safe to have a bear come and live with you? Actually, one of the things that happens in this story, I only realized returning to it with the bear, a bear becomes kind of their child, the bear cub comes into their house via a scene that's very similar to what happens in The Revenant.

I thought just that. And felt bad for thinking so. With really different results. Really different. You'd have to say of all the books I've ever read, this is the furthest from the reference. And yet, oddly similar.

Yeah, there is definitely an elemental quality. I was interested in what you were saying about the things in the story. The story is wonderful, okay, so that's the first thing. I'd never heard of it.'s illustrated by sendak my wife is a great sendak fan and i said to her do you know this book and she said at first she said no and then she said wait a minute i think i've got another book by um jarell called fly by, which I have here, because of the Sendak illustrations. But I'd never heard of it. And one of the things that really struck me about it is the dreamlike nature of it.

And I've been doing my research and my reading about Jor-El, and dreams were an incredibly important thing for him in his poetry and in his criticism and in how he judged a short story or a poem and indeed how he wrote this book and he he won the national book award in 1960 for his fourth collection of poetry it's called the woman at the Washington Zoo. And in his acceptance speech, he finishes his acceptance speech by saying, poetry, art,

these two are occupations of a sort, and I do not recommend them to you any more than I recommend to you that tonight you go home to bed and go to sleep and dream. You know, for him, there's a real brilliant zone of creativity and dreaming and unshackling the the the the mind so that it can wander where it wants to and some of the things about the animal family are you can see that as a as a fascinatingly as an idea worked through in the aesthetic of the book it's interesting that where there are where i mean just to some extent the the book is an idyll

the hunter finds a mermaid together they find their first sort of member of the family which is a bear cub which grows with hilarious consequences to a full-sized bear. Then a lynx. And then, finally, a baby boy. But insofar as there is any kind of injection of kind of troublesomeness into the idol, it's through dreams. You know, the hunter has dreams that trouble him.

And he also has memories. There's the absence of his own family. Which is really important. Of his parents. And which, although he's presented as content, you're also aware that there's something missing. Yeah, gnawing away that's not quite right. Erica, have you got something that you could read for people

just to give them a sense of how the book is written? And one of the things, again, when you return to a book that you loved as a child, and I think also when we're children, we're less embarrassed about just reading the same thing over and over and over. And I read this book until it fell apart. And then you don't read something for a long time,

and you realize that all the words are still there inside you. It's the most extraordinary thing. It has become part of you. That's right. And so all of these descriptions I already had, the pictures, I'd made the pictures long ago, and I just called them up again. And this is from when the mermaid comes to live with the hunter,

but she has to adjust to life on land. They first have to learn to talk to each other, and then they have to figure out how they can bridge their differences. And she likes to bring him things from the sea. The best thing she brought them was a ship's figurehead they put up over the door. It was all covered with barnacles and clams and mussels.

But when they had scraped those off, you could see the paint even. It was a woman with bare breasts and fair hair who clasped her hands behind her head. She wore a necklace of tiny blue flowers and had a garland of big flowers around her thighs, but her legs and feet weren't a woman's at all, but the furry, delicate, sharp-hooved legs of a deer or goat, and they were crossed at the ankles as if the bowsprit that she held up with her head were no weight at all for her. Her cheeks were rosy as if the wind of the ship's sailing had flushed them, and her blue eyes stared out past you at something far away. More even than she hated cooked things, the mermaid hated anything

sweet. Once the hunter persuaded her to try some berries, she sniffed uncertainly at them, put them in her mouth, and then spat them out, exclaiming, they're ugly, ugly, all gummy and blurry. How can you eat them? And, you know, I think that's such a, just those two paragraphs give a sense of his clear, beautiful description, but also the kind of poetic resonances that he sets up in the way this figurehead echoes the mermaid without it ever being said that she's a woman we don't hear a great deal in the story about the lower half

yeah of the mermaid except that she is a mermaid but here is this divided woman and then there are just these wonderful differences that he imagines, that you would never have eaten anything sweet if you always lived under the sea. And again, I think the thing about real poetry is when it sounds like something you always knew. So the taste of berries as blurry, I think is so wonderful.

He's so good as well at setting up that. You never go with her into the sea. No. You're told that she visits and spends time with her kind back in the sea. And that it's quite dull because because it never changes after the sea. Yeah, it's so good. I mean, it makes you think, I mean, it's remarkable.

And the precision, I mean, you know, obviously he is a poet, so the descriptions have a precision to them, which is remarkable. But also, he's not going to help you, you know, you have to, which I'm sure is why it's such a kind of a book that will last, because you have to do the work yourself. You have to fill in the gaps. I love also, this is a little bit that I was reading earlier,

about, we were talking about that sense, slight sense that he is different. At the beginning, at least, they're different. Whenever anything reminded the hunter of his father and mother, you could see that he missed them and longed to have them alive again. The mermaid would tell him about her childhood and her family and her sister, the dead one, but she never seemed to want any of it back. The hunter said, puzzled,

Don't you wish your sister were still here? The mermaid answered, She was then. Why do you want her to be now, too? The hunter remembered that he'd never seen the mermaid answered she was then why do you want it to be now too the hunter remembered that he'd never seen the mermaid cry he thought with a little shiver do mermaids cry well we learn later i mean part of the book is that it's it's so fascinating because it's there's one level at which what's that great thing they say about the bear at one point they say oh the bear is very good at just getting he's got a real gift for getting along in the world the hunter said admiringly doesn't he look innocent and then the

mermaid said to think we used to live without a bear it could be corny but I don't know he just manages to keep it in this on this sort of remarkable level where you you totally buy the story even though as you say there's not much mae'n gallu cadw'r peth yn y lefel hynny o'r ffordd sy'n wych, lle mae'n gwbl yn gael y stori, er bod, fel rydych chi'n dweud, ddim llawer o gyflawniad, ond rydych chi'n sylweddoli bod yr hyn sy'n digwydd yw ei fod hi'n newid, ac mae'r hyn sy'n cael ei newid hefyd, dwi'n credu, gan hwn. Ac mae'r cysylltiad â'r byd, sydd ar un lefel, chi'n gwybod, mae'r byd yn ddim yn gwybod, mae'n dod yn dda, ac mae'r ddwy ffyrdd a'r gofnod yn wahanol mewn ffyrdd gwionedd yn ddim yn gwybod, mae'n dod i ffwrdd, a chymaint o ffyrdd, a'r cysylltiadau a'r gwrthdaro yn ffyrdd gwahanol, yn rhywfaint o ddim yn gwybod. Ond mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae'n, mae' just share with you, I think you'll I've saved this for the recording okay, this is a so when Fly By Night

came out in 1975 it and previous Jarrell and Sendak collaborations were reviewed in the New York Times by John Updike and Sendak was really unhappy about the review

but I won't, we'll get into why in a little while. But I just want to read you a couple of things that Updike says about the animal family to get your reaction to it, see what you think. Erica particularly. OK? The writing in the animal family is exquisite and all of Jorrell's little juveniles are a cut above

the run in intelligence and unfaked feeling. The longest and best of Jorrell's children's books, The Animal Family, holds no formal poetry, but most intensely presents his habitual themes of individual lostness, of estrangement within a family of the magic of language of the wild beauty beyond our habitations a hunter living alone in the forest makes his way to the shore and begins to converse with a creature of the sea called a mermaid but in fact a female seal he appears to marry her

she certainly shares his bed and does his housework, though Maurice Sendak, who decorates the book with landscapes, was not called upon to depict her dragging her flippers through these connubial duties. We're going to have a response from Sendak in a minute. It's a disquieting

match, as if Jor-El had taken literally Rutka's lovely erotic line, she'd more sides than a seal as in fly by night the mother's role is flooded with strangeness and a male child's egotism is grotesquely served the hunter seal couple adopt first a bear then a lynx and finally a little boy found alive in a rowboat with his dead mother. With the acquiescence of his four-footed siblings, the human child takes over the prime place in the animal family and is told by his adopted mother in her liquid accent that he has been with them always.

With this lie, the book ends. To Jor-El's vision of bliss bliss adoption by members of another species seems intrinsic wow wow and that was the most positive part of the review i mean he loves the he loves the review but he's he's adopting jor-el was a critic and jor-el famously was a critic who was very well respected but also could be mean yeah you know was willing, saw it as part of the critical apparatus to be horrible when needed. I have a wonderful line, a quote from John Berryman, about Jarrell as a critic.

He wrote that Jarrell's reviews did go beyond the limit. They were unbelievably cruel, that's true. He hated bad poetry with such vehemence and so vigorously that it didn't occur to him that in the course of taking a part where he'd take a book of poems and squeeze like that twist, that

in the course of doing that, there was a human being also being squeezed. There you go. And of course, we're going to talk a little bit about Jor-El's life and sad death as well. But it's widely believed he was undone by a bad review of one of his books. Yes, and his last book was largely badly reviewed.

So how do you feel about those up-dike... There's a classic up-dike, muscular, sort of praising you in a kind of harsh way. Well, I suppose, to me, that review, although, I mean, it draws attention to how this story has a similarity to a Selkie story. The line between mermaids and Selkies who are seal people is a thin one but I think that's wrong because Selkies are human on land,

and then they are seals when they return to the water. And the mermaid is always a mermaid. And usually, or sometimes, the person who is romantically involved with a selkie is either deceived or has captured the selkie, takes the seal skin. But the mermaid is willing. The mermaid chooses to come on shore.

So I would argue that Uptike's reading of the story is pretty fundamentally misplaced. But has, it's a familiar diminishment because it comes in the line of people who wish to argue that stories that take this shape, the shape of folklore, the shape of fairy tale, are somehow lesser than the kinds

of stories that great individuals such as John Updike can invent out of their own brains without help. I enjoyed this a lot more than about half a dozen Updike can invent out of their own brains without help. I enjoyed this a lot more than about half a dozen Updike novels.

I mean, I do love Updike, but, I mean, you know, he was capable of writing... And also The Lie. I need to go back to The Lie. Yeah, that's very interesting. I think that's a... I mean, that is a really...

That's a very reductive reading. Isn't it? That last line seems to me to be one of the... It is a really... That's a very reductive reading. Isn't it? That last line seems to me to be one of the... It's a magnificent... It's a mechanistic reading of the book. Yes, I mean... Because it's about... He's right about it.

It is about parents and children. It's about that what... Wherever they come from, the child-shaped hole within us or whatever is something we carry around almost as a sort of birthright. What's interesting is that's the line that comes from the mermaid, not from the hunter.

But you know, Erica, you were saying about Jor-El being this thing about dreams and fables. Our friends at the NYRB, the New York Review of Books have republished a volume called Randall Jarrell's

Book of Stories which I'd never heard of which I'd bought when I knew we were going to be talking about this and it has a brilliant essay at the beginning where Jarrell tries to define what he thinks a story can do at its best and one of the

things that he says about it is a story contains a kind of fluid mixture of things that will appeal to the mind, the body and the spirit. And he then proceeds to select a series of stories by Elizabeth Bowen, Rilke, Kafka, which operate in that zone of not quite literal sense, but creating this incredibly atmospheric sense of dread or fear or love or disappointment. It's the most fantastic.

I strongly recommend it to people who are listening to this book. It's such a clever way of approaching a volume of short stories. I found a little quote as well about, he loved Kafka. I think Kafka was, if not his favourite writer, one of his favourite writers.

This applies to the stories and the poetry, but the criticism as well. There's a phrase in here I absolutely love. He says, Kafka's whole method is rooted in the immense complication of our whole society. The perfect calm, the dispassionate rigor that might be called either scientific or classical, clothen insight too profound ever to be blinded by indignation. In Kafka, there is an unexampled extension of the methods of comedy to the material of tragedy.

Kay is seeking for salvation, for truth. Joseph Kay for justice, for his very life. Their search is presented with the utmost possible concern and intensity, and yet Kafka's method of treatment, his whole attitude, makes us see at the same time that the details are somehow comic, that the whole looked at in one way is itself comic. It is absurd not to call the world evil and it is impossible to take the condemnation seriously.

Either laughter or tears are impossibly inadequate. We have for it only the stare we give Medusa's head I mean I think that's first of all to acknowledge the how funny Kafka is yeah thumbs up for that but also that that concluding line there we have for it only the stare we give Medusa's head we look at what's going to happen we we take it as truthfully as we can and before we turn to stone what an amazing thing to say I think that you know that line where uh comedy both comedy and tragedy are possible uh is very unsentimental and one one of the things I love about this book is I think it is unsentimental. While it's warm, of course it's warm.

There are elements in it that have that, again, the sort of plain brutality of the fable. And I think that's something, you know, I think it's worth talking about Maurice Sendak a bit. I think that is something, although again, when I was, you know, when I came to this as a child, I don't think I was even aware that these wonderful drawings were by the same person who wrote Where the Wild Things Are. This book was published in 1965. Where the Wild Things Are is 60...

It's the same kind of time. 63, I think. It's the controversial author of Where the Wild Things Are. That's right. Because we were talking about it earlier on. When Where the Wild Things Are. That's right. Because we were talking about earlier on, when Where the Wild Things Are is first published, it's not scandalous, that's wrong, but there's a famous review in Publishers Weekly

that says, well, the illustrations are marvellous, but don't leave your child alone with the book. That's right. Because it will give them terrible nightmares. The style of writing in that book, you could almost lift any sentence out of it and it would fit perfectly into a Maurice Sendak book, I think. Yes, yes.

I suppose the sentences are maybe a little longer. The illustrations are pretty wonderful. Yes, they're amazing. Can I... Some of them, that's a bear, isn't it? Ah, well, can I just... I'm going to just read you from an interview with Sendak. Oh, yes.

About this book, The Animal Family. He had refused on a first reading to consider doing the artwork. Quote, it seemed to me impossible and dangerous. There are certain books I cannot illustrate, books which in my opinion should never be illustrated. This was one of them, because the images were so personal and so graphically created in the writing that Jarrell didn't need me. We discussed the book together,

and he still wanted something of my contribution, though he believed what I said. So we decided not to illustrate the book, but to decorate it, which is in fact the word we did use. Rather than try to depict anything specific, I thought of his book almost as if each chapter represented a different theatrical setting.

These settings were my personal landscapes of what Jor-El was talking about. There is nothing animate in them some readers claim to see animals and other creatures even people but nothing of the kind is there they are simply black and white landscape settings for each chapter of the book um then he goes on to say um we should also say that this book is, the type is set very small and central on each page. Yes, there's a lot of white space. So the second way in which this particular work was illustrated had to do with design.

The book is about family, not having and then having a family on an island. Sendak and Jarrell decided to place the text in small contained blocks at the centre of each page. Quote, The words would then look like a tight little island, Sendak explained, surrounded by extremely wide white margins representing the world outside.

The squarish fat shape of the book itself became the family's little house. That's so wonderful. Isn't that wonderful? That is brilliant. That is great. You know, so the idea that everything was so carefully considered. In Fly By Night, which is the other book that I have here,

that was not published for ten years after his death. Although he had finished the manuscript, Sendak couldn't find a way that he was happy with illustrating it. And he talks about how he didn't want to do a disservice to it. He thought it was so full of potential and so full of what Jarrell would have wanted that he had to wait until he could find a way to do it and actually it's the illustrations for that book that up dyke is particularly unkind about um and we would have a stronger rebuff to up dyke had we time to do that um i know time's getting on we do want to hear this little clip, don't we? Yes. Okay, so the poetry.

So we're talking about Jor-El. He was a critic. He was a poet. And Stephen Burt said of his poetry that Jor-El's best-known poems are poems about the Second World War, poems about bookish children and childhood, and poems in the voices of ageing women. And we have a clip here from Jarrell

reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York in April 1963, two weeks, I looked it up, two weeks before Bob Dylan plays in New York Town Hall. This is how, what a thing of history this is. So we have a little clip of Jarrell reading an excerpt from a poem called A Street Off Sunset, and it's about a little boy reading a copy of Amazing Stories magazine and being gripped by it. That night, as I like crossways in an armchair reading amazing stories,

there's a long parenthesis, and may I make a little motion to show where the parenthesis starts and then finally stop it? So here the child is in an armchair reading amazing stories. Just as long before I'd lie by my rich uncle's polar bear on his domed library's reflecting floor in the last year of the First World War and see a poor two-seater being attacked by four triplanes on the cover of the Literary Digest and the camel coming to its aid. I'd feel the bear's fur warm and rough against me. The colors of the afternoon would fade. I'd reach into the bear's mouth and hold tight to its front tooth and think, I'm not afraid. That's the end of the parenthesis.

There off sunset, in the lamp lit starlight, a scientist is getting ready to destroy the world. It's time for you to say goodnight, Mama tells me. I go on in breathless joy. Remember, tomorrow is a school day, Mama tells me. I go on in breathless joy. tells me, I go on in breathless joy. Isn't that great? It is great. I'm slightly distracted by how much he sounds like Big Bird. When the poetry dried up. But it's, you know, what's

wonderful about that, or very striking now, to hear that poem is there's a bear in that poem. Absolutely. And when I was, again, when you encounter a book as a child, you think that's the only thing that that author has probably ever done. That's the only thing that that author has probably ever done. So it wasn't until much later that I encountered Jarrell as a poet. And again, I think he's very little known here. But I know that people do read, I think, his most famous poem, very short, which I have here, is The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,

which is only five lines long. From my mother's sleep I fell into the state, and I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flack and the nightmare fighters. When I died, they washed me out of the turret with a hose. Amazing. But there's the fur again and the dreams. Yeah. But it's very sad because he has this career as a poet and a critic and he's seen as being incredibly important

and he's an academic he wins the National Book Award in 1960 and then he unravels depression there's a poignant story his mother says to him shortly before he dies

you know that don't make mountains out of molehills and he said when you're depressed there are no molehills which is a pretty good but sad I mean there was an open verdict wasn't there whether or not the car that hit him was an accident

or suicide but the people who hit him was an accident or suicide. But the people who knew him well... His wife was convinced that he didn't commit suicide. People who knew him well were equally convinced that he did. But he was 51. I mean, he was young. Yes, he was young. I think Al Alvarez was one of the first people to include him. I think he was included in the Savage God as artists who had committed suicide.

But arguments still go on. But he also wrote, we have, I think this is fine, he also wrote a novel entitled Pictures from an Institution, which is a campus novel. That came out in 54. So that's like three years before Pnin, the great Nabokov campus novel. So, Matthew, do you have a tenuous link to anyone or anything to do with the animal family? Well, luckily I do.

Okay. So my tenuous link is Brian Selznick, the wonderful author of The Invention of Hugo Cabaret and The Marvels and Wonderstruck who I have been lucky enough to get to know a little bit from working at Port Elliot, which he always comes to. And he in turn

was kind of mentored by Maurice Sendak and was a fan of Randall's. He chooses the translation of the Brothers Grimm regularly as one of his favourite kids' books. But this is something

so in 2008 Brian won the Caldecott Prize, the kids' book prize in America. And he gave a fantastic speech. It's another acceptance speech, I'm going to do a little quote from. And Brian within this speech quotes an essay by remy charlotte called a page is a door and he's talking about the the way that picture

books work and i just want to read this out because it's kind of wonderful so this is from remy charlotte quoted by brian selznick and it goes like this it goes a book is a series of pages held together at one edge and these pages can be moved on their hinges like a swinging door. Of course if a door has something completely different behind it it's much more exciting. The element of delight and surprise is helped by the physical power we feel in our hands when we first move that page or door to reveal a change in everything that has gone before in time, place or character. A thrilling picture book not only makes beautiful single images or sequential images, but also allows us to become aware

of a book's unique physical structure by bringing our attention once again to that momentous moment, the turning of the page. Oh, that's very good. I think that really makes you think of where the wild things are. And the way the bit in it where he says about that night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind. And that sentence is broken up

and on the next page it says and another. And I think it ends in a similar way with the meal left being, and it was warm. It was still hot. And it was still hot, which, you know, Brian talks about being, that's the moment of love you know of the mother's love to the child and safety and yeah. But that also

connects to what you were reading that Maurice Sendak said about the design and how important the physical aspect of a book is and I think particularly for a child, for all of us, but especially for children.

I should just say that those quotes from Maurice Sendak, by the way, were from Selma Lanes' brilliant book, The Art of Maurice Sendak, Maurice Sendak, Maurice Sendak, Maurice, which is a fantastic book, both in terms of the quality of the illustration, but also the content and the amount that Sendak put into that book himself as well.

Well, I think we're sort of getting to the end. I just wanted to say thank you, really, to Erica for alerting us to this remarkable... My pleasure. I'm delighted to have been able to do so. And it is, I feel, it's a book when you... It is, it's one of those books that you'll carry with you forever. I just very finally just wanted to, the wonderful epigraph to the book,

which is, say what you like, but such things do happen. Not often, but they do happen. That's from, that's from, I know because I've just read it. In the book, Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories, that's the last line of The Nose by Gogol.

Really? Say what you like, but such things do happen. Not often, but they do happen. A bit like Backlisted, eh? Not often, but from a good place thanks to Erica Wagner to Matthew Clayton of course to our producer Matt Hall

to our sponsors Unbound you can get in touch with us on Twitter at BacklistedPod on Facebook BacklistedPod page and on the Unbound side at Unbound.co.uk Unbound

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