Backlisted - What Have We Been Reading? - October 2023

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

This is a new books special episode to fill the gap before we release the Hallowe’en episode next weekend and as part of our episode 200 celebrations. In it, we each select a book we’ve particularly enjoyed over the past year. Andy says The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan (Tyrant Books) is the best novel he's read since Gwendoline Riley's My Phantoms and also his favourite; Backlisted Editor, Nicky talks about Wifedom by Anna Funder (Granta), an genre-busting account of the life Eileen Maud Blair, the first wife of George Orwell, linking it back to the themes of The True History of the First Mrs Meredith  episode; and John praises Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury), a rich and formally audacious novel based on the life and legends of St Cuthbert, the patron saint of North East England. The discussion leads us in all kinds of unexpected directions in classic Backlisted fashion. Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length) 00:00 Intro 04:22 The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan 19:32 Wifedom by Anna Funder 38:26 Cuddy by Benjamin Myers The traditional Backlisted 'what have you been reading this week?' slot which used to appear at the start of each episode, has now been moved to our Patreon only show (for those subscribers on the Locklisted level). Subscribers can hear fortnightly programmes with John, Andy and Nicky talking about books they have been reading as well as films, music and TV they've enjoyed. *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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp.com. 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. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound,

the place where people go to crowdfund the books they really want to read. I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And who will be joined by today, Andy? We've got a special guest guest very special guest for this episode well it's me is that who you mean i'm allowing nikki agency by by waiting for waiting for her to say oh giving me the space thank you right i am the um editor of backlisted sometimes get to come and say hi and talk about books, usually with one line. What is my line that I always say, Andy? It is the only question that really matters.

What is the book about? What is the book about? The book about. That's all I ever say. That's not true, listeners. That's not true. Sometimes we answer Nikki andy, and she's happy with the answer, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we just leave it to the cloud. We just sort of figure it out as we're going along. Nicky has joined us on previous episodes of Backlisted, as regular listeners will be aware, and you can hear every week on Locklisted,

which is the podcast that we make for supporters of our Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com forward slash backlisted nikki why don't you tell people why we're doing this episode in the way we're doing it today well it's quite exciting because i've been working on this podcast i think for about five years but you guys have been working on it for about eight years we have um and we are rapidly approaching our 200th episode. And so we thought we'd actually use this time to just kind of kick back a little bit before we hit the big 200.

Big 200. The big 200, yeah. The bicentenary. And show our audiences, really, who don't subscribe to lock listed that's the patreon um edition that you can hear every fortnight plug plug plug uh really sort of show you um a little bit of uh what you might hear if you did and also let's let's um say that because it's all about john isn't it the attention to detail in uh it's all about the attention to detail. We're plugging... I'm famous for detail.

We're not just plugging patreon.com forward slash backlisted. We're also plugging a gap in our schedule, which is that we've got our much celebrated annual Halloween jam. It's like strictly this show. We've got our annual Halloween episode coming up, but we always like it to arrive on Halloween itself like a trick or a treat. So that means on this occasion, that episode will be available for everybody to hear on Halloween itself, October the 31st.

But that meant it would have been a three-week wait since the last episode. Too long. Too long. For our loyal audience. This is like a mini episode. A mini-sode. A mini-sode.

Oh, dear. Anyway, just keep listening, please. We're each going to talk about a book that we have really enjoyed in the last week or month, or in my case, this year. Apologies to lot-listed listeners who will have heard me talk about this novel already, but I love it so much. I just wanted to have another opportunity

to talk about it in a different way and read a different part aloud. So I'll just ask you that, Andy. So let's kick off. Andy, this is a question that will be familiar to all listeners of Backlisted, but we now do it on Locklisted, as we've said before. What have you been reading this month, or indeed this week, or even this year? Tell us, what's the book you want to talk about? I want to talk about Scott McClanahan's novel, The Sarah Book, which is new-ish.

It was first published in 2017. And before I talk about the actual book, I'd want to just say something about how I found this book. I went to a concert by a singer-songwriter called Christian Lee Hudson. It was excellent. His stuff is available to listen to on Spotify. And his most recent album, Quitters, I didn't own a physical copy of, but as is traditional now, at the gig, I thought, well, I'll go to the merch table and I'll buy a copy of his album Quitters. And on my way home, I opened up the record and I was reading the Quitters. And on my way home, I opened up the record

and I was reading the sleeve notes. And in the sleeve notes, Christian Lee Hudson dedicates the record to the influence of a book called The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan. Now, for those of us of a certain age, this is how I used to find books when I was a teenager. Not on record sleeves necessarily,

but interviews with bands in the NME or wherever. And in a sense, that was the book talk of its day. Teenagers reading what musicians recommended. So I thought, well, OK, you know, why not pursue this tip? I love the record and I love that songwriter's view of his characters in his songs and how they seem to relate to his own life. The book's got to be worth a look. Anyway, I ordered a copy from the States. It's not in print in the UK and it never has been in print in the UK. Published in the States by Tyrant Books. And when it arrived, I read it pretty much straight through in one go.

And I am happy to report that the Sarah book by Scott McClanahan is the best novel I've read since I read Gwendolyn Riley's My Phantoms a couple of years ago. High praise. That is high praise. Which listeners to this podcast and Good read on radio 4 will be all too aware is my favorite book of the last few years my favorite novel the last few years anyway so the sarah book to me matches up to that it's the story of a relationship it's a love story and a hate story and um i think the hate is probably self-hate um and the love is uh

a man's love for his wife sarah indeed that man may well be scott mcclanahan you know this would technically speak technically speaking fall into the the category of auto fiction. It's also the story of how two lives come together, are shared for a while, and fall apart when their marriage falls apart. It's very sad. It's, to me, extremely funny. And ultimately, it's very beautiful. It has a very, very short opening page. This is how the opening page runs. There is only one thing I know about life. If you live long enough, you start losing things.

Things get stolen from you. First, you lose your youth, and then your parents, and then you lose your friends, and finally, you end up losing yourself. Blimey. Now, if that sounds like your sort of thing, this is the sort of thing for you. It is beautiful, funny, epigrammatic.

Now, I talked about this book, didn't I, guys, on Locklisted? We have a very enthusiastic vocal community on the Patreon message boards. How have people been responding to this novel after I talked about it on there? Well, we did see that the author did become himself a patron, so that's probably

a quite positive statement. Hi, Scott. Which is great, and thank you very much, Scott, if you're listening. There's a flurry of ordering that went on, that's for sure. People trying to find copies of the book and downloading it. Some people were a little, you know, kind uh the passage that you read i think was quite a shock to some people but they they're all good i mean it's a great community those are it's a good

good readers you know they wanted to read more and find out more it's difficult to use the word bleak about fiction without making it sound unappealing. But what you've done, I think, the way you've described this novel to me, and I'm one of the people who's got it on order, hasn't arrived yet. As always with great fiction, it's the language, isn't it? It's the precision that he manages to kind of dissect his own feelings from the bits that you've read, and the complexity that he manages with an incredible economy of language. The other thing that's always in my head is that you said he has a, and I've gone online and checked that you're exactly right, that he has a very hokey accent. Which state is it that he's from?

West Virginia. West Virginia, that's it. Kind of working class mining country. So all of these things make me think he's unlikely to make the horrible journey that jd vance has made you know from writing a memoir about his hillbilly relatives to becoming a kind of an avatar of of the increasingly far right so a bit like i'm thinking about the book that i'm going to talk about in a bit the anna funder Wifedom. There's so much personal in here, the border between personal and literature. Where does that lie in this one? Well, you know, for me, this book sums up one of the dilemmas

we have to deal with on this podcast all the time. one of the dilemmas we have to deal with on this podcast all the time uh you know is it are the characters likable is it relatable no the characters aren't terribly likable therefore it is relatable i always think this this you know how do you feel about yourself is always the question a book is the question it comes down to a book reads you we know that and um i had a really i was having a really interesting discussion with um one of our patrons this morning in fact hello valerie about whether this novel or as far as i'm concerned any novel is bleak i tend not to see the bleakness in things. You know, I tend to respond to truth, truth expressed well. And that seems to me perversely

life affirming, as she says, even if the truth being expressed can be difficult to take. That's the stuff I find funny as well. I find, as you said, John, the content is not important so much as the expression of it. And the expression of it is so light, so careful, so on point that it almost becomes funny through both an acknowledgement, through recognition, but also execution. With your permission, I'm going to read a different bit because the bit that I read on the lot listed was pretty full on. This is a little less full on. This is from a chapter. I'm going to read three short extracts from a chapter

quite early in the novel where Scott McClanahan gives you a biographical run through of Sarah's family and background. But who was she? Her name was Sarah Johnson, and she was born in 1976 in West Virginia. She was the daughter of Alfonso and Corrie. She had a brother named Jack, who I never liked, but who I always said I liked. I never liked him, and I'm not putting him in my book. But if I really wanted to tell you about Sarah, I would probably tell you about her first memory.

Sarah was four years old, and she was taking a shower with her Aunt Sherry. Sarah was so short, she only came up to Sherry's waist. They had come back from swimming at the beach, and Sarah had sand in her little girl hair and sand in the folds of her little girl hair, and sand in the folds of her little girl's skin, and sand around the edges of her little girl bathing suit. And Sarah was young enough not to be ashamed of taking a shower with her aunt Sherry. Sherry slipped off Sarah's bathing suit, and Sherry took off her own bikini as well, and the two of them stood naked together beneath the falling water of the showerhead.

Sherry scrubbed Sarah down with a washcloth and then lathered up Sarah's hair and rinsed it free of sand. They switched places and Sarah stood and watched her aunt Sherry wash. Then Sarah saw something dangling between her aunt Sherry's legs. It was a white string. Sherry lent her head back and rinsed her hair clean and Sarah felt only one impulse now. She wanted to pull the white string dangling from between her aunt's legs. She found herself repeating, I want to pull the white string! I want to pull the white string! So Sherry looked down and laughed at the little girl Sarah, because Sarah had no idea that this was a tampon string.

After the shower, Aunt Sherry told Sarah about the future, and her Aunt Sherry told her that some of us only bleed on the inside, but women are so alive that they can bleed on the outside too and make life like gods. So Sarah smiled and said she couldn't wait to be a god. But then one day she realised just how stupid this was and how her Aunt Sherry was full of shit. This was a torture. And so after the shower, Sarah went and sat with her father, who she loved more than anything in the world. His name was Alfonso. One morning years later, he woke up after visiting Sarah.

Sarah was a grown woman now. And on the last day of his visit, Alfonso started gathering up all of his stuff in the guest bedroom and was getting ready to leave. A few nights before, he got up in the middle of the night and ate some tiny containers of ice cream Sarah kept in the freezer. The next morning, he told Sarah she needed to throw out the ice cream in the freezer because it had freezer burn.

Sarah told him, no it doesn't, Dad. You ate the ice cream I keep for the dogs, frosty paws. He didn't think about this now or how Sarah always laughed at him. He shaved and shat and packed his bags and finally showered after spending seven days with his daughter. Then he left. Later that afternoon, Sarah went into the guest room to strip down the sheets off of her dad's bed and wash them. She pulled off the bedspread and the pillowcases and then tossed the pillowcases on the floor. Then she pulled down the rest of the sheets and something fell out.

What the heck? It was a giant chunk of cheddar cheese with denture marks around the edges. So Sarah picked up her phone and called her dad. Dad, were you sleeping with a giant chunk of cheese in your bed last night? Alfonso said, hell yeah. I was wondering where that chunk of cheese went.

Okay, so these little vignettes. A lot of random things. I just want to get the end. Love it. This is the end of this chapter. I think I said this before. The love that underpins this book is not the point of the book, but just when you think things can't get any bleaker,

sometimes they do, but sometimes they get warmed through at the same time. And here's one of those moments now. When Sarah was 16, she got a job working in the candy shop at the mall. One afternoon there was a little boy with his mother and they were walking towards Sarah's candy store counter. The mother of the boy was short and mom fat and she did the talking for the boy who was skinny and had big teeth and glasses. Sarah watched as the boy stared at her. He was carrying a bag from the bookstore and inside the bag a book that started, whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

The little boy looked nervous and Sarah didn't know this yet, but the little boy was always nervous. He thought about dying sometimes and he thought about going away. The mother of the boy asked him what he wanted. He whispered to his mother what he wanted. He wanted candy raspberries and a medium blue raspberry slushie. The mother of the boy ordered them. Candy raspberries. Candy blackberries. A medium blue raspberry slushie. So Sarah got the order for them and the mother paid and the boy and his mother walked away and Sarah didn't think about it ever again. Nothing stood out. She forgot about it just like we forget everything in the world but the little boy grew up and wrote this book. Lovely.

So great. It's a really strong voice, isn't it? And it's difficult to see on segments, but I get a little bit of the Confederacy of Dunces flavor from it. Yeah, John Kennedy too. Let's hope with a happier ending. There's a salinger equality to it too so there's quotes on the cover from roxanne gay from willie flautin who who i suppose you could compare with that from maria semple and from carl taro greenfeld who says mclanahan is an appalachian charles bakowski but he's better than that everybody he's better than that, everybody. He's better than that. So the Sarah book by Scott McClanahan is available as an e-book or a print book from Tyrant Books in the States.

Still not available in the UK. Hopefully someone will hear this and change that. Nikki, what have you been reading this week? Well, I have been reading reading i've slightly taken the um bring your best book all the whole of this year i've kind of ignored that um because i i bought a book which i'm interested in off the back of our last episode so i think that's you know so it does have a link better than that yeah exactly. Was it the book we discussed on the last episode? It wasn't the actual book we discussed on the last episode.

Well, a victory on points. Yeah, I mean, that would have been a good, but it would have been a little bit repetitious of the last episode. So that was the true history of the first Mrs. Meredith by Diane Johnson. That was a biography that did lots of ingenious work with the form. Wow. Is it a biography, though? Anyway, go back to the last episode.

I think we concluded that it was, albeit a kind of one that took certain risks and audacious risks with the form, which we liked. And that book was published 50 years ago, early 1970s. Yeah, 50 years ago. So, Nicky, what have you been reading? So I've been reading Wifedom, which is by Anna Funder, and it's something that Rachel mentioned in comparison

with the Mrs. Meredith book. And this is published in 2023. So Anna Funda, for those of you who don't know, she wrote Star Zealand, best selling Star Zealand in 2004. And this book, Wifedom, I say it's pretty successful. It's out, you know, it's in hardback. So it's out in the shops now, but I think i think published a few months ago but it's doing pretty well i'd suggest yeah and this is a biography she says in quote marks of eileen o'shaughnessy who was married to george orwell and it's in the same way i think that mrs meredith or diane johnson was approaching um how do we give light to wife of famous person? Yeah, in this case, this is what Anna Funder is doing here. One of the things that Rachel talks about so brilliantly is that there are quite a lot of moments in this book where Anna

extrapolates or imagines what might have happened or imagines conversations that may have happened. So that not only are there sections where Anna is actually talking of her own experience, why she went about creating, writing this book, what interested her and George Orwell, what interested her and Eileen O'Shaughnessy, then there's more factual biography based on letters that have been uncovered that uh so sort of primary sources letters between Eileen O'Shaughnessy and a friend Nora and then there's a kind of imagine that conversation that they might have had between her and George Orwell it might have played out like this so it's kind of three different sort of approaches all the way along so one is fictionalized

one is kind of historical sources and one is autobiography yeah there's autobiography in there as well isn't there it's a reflection on her own yeah life as a writer the the the bargains she has or hasn't struck with her partner and her children exactly and i just thought it was very interesting um as well. I suppose the fundamental thing that she's trying to do is and I believe this isn't original. There's been other books about Eileen Orwell written already, but it's about kind of reassessing her, her position and trying to sort of say that all the biographies that are written about George Orwell never talk about her, refer to her as the wife. He has tons of affairs all the way through. How much she have felt, how much she contributed. She was the main breadwinner a lot of the time. She went out to Spain. She was never mentioned. And, you know, nobody ever seems to care about her. That's the

kind of headline figure of it all. Yeah. As with Diane Johnson and the first Mrs. Meredith, as discussed on the last episode of Batlisted, there's also an attempt to not just reclaim her as a person, but to demonstrate how patriarchal systems work their way into the very writing of books. So, you know, there have been six biographers to date of George Orwell, all of the men, and therefore perhaps there's a shared way of looking at the world,

which therefore marginalises Eileen's life and her contribution. Is that right, Nikki? That's exactly right, yeah. Yeah. One question I had, Nikki, because we published a biography by Sylvia Topp of Eileen, called Eileen. Amazing. Which, I mean, got reasonable reviews.

And it's very much an old-fashioned biography trying to reclaim Eileen's reputation from obscurity. I haven't read Wifetimes. I just wondered whether Anna Fonda made any kind of acknowledgement of that. It did get quite a lot of coverage, as you would imagine. Yeah, she does reference it. Yeah. It's an interesting...

It sounds to me like she's trying to find a way of releasing the energy without making stuff up. Well, I think that's the thing. I think she does make stuff up. And that's like she must do because you can't ever. It's so interesting. If you can have a kind of a biography and then you have these. Imagine how it was when George Orwell was seeking permission to go and have affairs. What conversation might he have been having? Of course you have to imagine imagine how it was when george orwell was seeking permission to go and

have affairs what conversation might he have been having of course you have to make this up this is done in a novel it's it's it's fiction and and but yet because it's presented and anna thunder is a novelist as well yeah yeah right and yeah and i suppose that's what's so interesting about it firstly you have to kind of as a reader you kind of going, which bit are we in now? Okay, we're working out, is this fiction? And actually, if you listen to the audio book, which I did, I both listened to it and read it. And it's easier in the audio book

because they have different people playing different roles. So does it work, Nikki? Did it work for you, that combination? Because it really, really worked for us. One of the great things about the first Mrs. Meredith is that we all felt that the risks that she takes

by putting herself into the brain of Mary Allen in that book, and other characters as well, to explain the emotional interactions of what happened, that she did that with great care,

but also it kind of emotionally, you went with it. I just wondered, is that the same for Wifedom? I think it does work. I think it does work because it's a good story, let's be honest, right? And you followed, if you know George Orwell's books, then you kind of, those moments when he wrote those books are familiar to you, you know, when he went out to Spain

and then he, you know, and so those are very interesting. Even if you've just read 1984, you'll be interested in this book. Like it's kind of got enough connection to his writing. I think it does labour a point a little bit. There's quite a lot of, was George gay? Was he a womaniser? Did he let her down? That is a very important, that's the cru lot of, was George gay? Was he a womaniser? Did he let her down?

That is a very important, that's the crux of this book, but it goes on and on and on about it a lot. It sort of shows her as in relation to him all the time, in relation to him. Yeah. Yeah. If you read the reviews of this book, to me it's fascinating. It's what a book should do no two reviews agree

about the book fascinating the extent to which it can be interpreted in different ways so whatever anna funder um wanted to achieve she's she's creating a series of different effects in her readers right um there's a review by olivia lang um that concludes by saying this is a fascinating book it's deserves to the story deserves to be told in a different way but we've been having this conversation for the last 50 or 60 years yeah And she doesn't name the first Mrs. Meredith, but the genre of the overshadowed wife is a perennially popular form of biography, which some feminists find difficult because it actually removes agency from, in this case, Eileen.

It doesn't ask the question, perhaps this is the life Eileen chose for herself. Right? Let's hear some of it, please. Okay, so I've actually chosen a piece that probably doesn't explain or doesn't set up some of the things we've been talking about. But I would just add to it that it's very readable and a really enjoyable book to read. So whatever you think about it in relation to what it's trying to say, this sort of shows you how thoughtful it is and what a great read it is.

So this is in the voice of Anna Funder. This is in her autobiographical section. And this chimes with lots of things we talk about a lot on Backlisted and a lot on Signing Cues. She's talking about signing books. Signing cues are a chasm of intimacy. People, not at all unreasonably, would like you to be the person they think you are from your work. You can see in their kind, open faces that these total strangers already know you as the person they've intuited on the basis of the book.

In the intimate, imaginative fusing that is reading, they will have brought a lot of themselves to her, so the you they want you to be is a hybrid an amalgam of you both writers pull from themselves things they know and things they don't and put them out there for the world to see at a book signing you're being asked to be worthy of the work you've written by matching yourself to a reader's imagined version of you

as if you're a key meant to fit into a lock-shaped space in someone else's mind if it fits you'll be the guarantee that authenticates the work, and if it doesn't, I mean if I don't, what then? These anxieties of authenticity exist because when the words go inside a reader, they make magic. They fizz and pop and conjure. They change minds. Your words may cast a spell on the reader, but they cannot be felt to be a con artist's trick,

for then the reader will feel defrauded. All the reader wants is for the avatar sitting behind the table to match their inner picture. There's not much to ask, surely. And there they are, standing shyly, patiently, expectantly in line, book in hand, sticky note marking the spot to sign the deal. But on the page, as Virginia Woolf put it, I is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. That written I is flexibly, creatively

capacious, outrageous, furious. She evades gender expectation. She owes no one anything. She is not managing the household list. She is not worried she'll hurt her husband or offend her friends or neglect or shame her children. She is not, in Woolf's words, harassed and distracted with hates and grievances, legitimate and important as those might be. That inner eye is both known and unknown to a writer. She may be similar to the one psychoanalyst tries to recover, remembered or created on the page or in a consulting room. Like the force behind crop circles or the tides the self leaves traces of other phenomenon our dreams our writing our children but remains out of sight none of us is who we think we are none of us may be decent etc etc i i find this fascinating because that's so dovetails with

the book that we've been talking about on lock listed, which is Naomi Klein's new book, Doppelganger. The idea that you send a double of yourself out into the world to fit with expectations that people will have of you. That's one of the subjects of that book. And how interesting to hear it reflected in that. I have a, with your permission, can I just read you a very brief extract, which also fits with this. It's almost like we rehearsed this, which I assure you we didn't. Definitely didn't.

There was a review in the summer of several books about Orwell by the American writer, Rebecca Solnit, who has herself written about George Orwell. She wrote a book that was published a couple of years ago called Orwell's Roses. And I just wanted to share this with the two of you because it's a thing we consider on Backlisted all the time, that gap between the person who stays at home and produces the work that creates magic that Anna Funder was just talking about and the human being behind the desk at the end of the signing queue.

And their flaws. Our regular guest, Andrew Mayle, said many years ago, we ought to call Batlisted not Batlisted, but their poor agents, exclamation mark, because of how appallingly behaved many of our subjects were in their private lives. Anyway, here we go. This is the beginning of Rebecca Solnit's essay about George Orwell,

including Wifedom by Anna Funder. This is how it starts. The feminist writer Moira Donegan recently mocked contemporary social media reflexes in a tweet about Oedipus. Wow, I'm following now. I was a fan of his work solving the riddle of the Sphinx, did not know he killed his father and married his mother. Solnit goes on. We are in an age of moralists. The standard question has become whether someone was virtuous rather than whether they were interesting or useful

or exhilarating. Some of this seems valuable for forming societies that are more inclusive and less abusive. Some of it is reductive and beside the point. Being a moralist is a particularly fun and easy pursuit when it comes to the past, because pretty much everyone from the past comes up short when measured by present day standards. Virtually no one in 1973, let alone 1923, had 2023 values about race, gender, sexuality and the rest any more than they had search engines or Twitter accounts. It's not our individual virtue, but our collective receipt of humane and egalitarian ideas worked out in recent decades that gives us our presumably splendid present-day beliefs. All this begets the question no one seems to ask. If in 50 years we are all

tried by 2073 standards, won't we ourselves be found wanting? We will certainly be judged for what we're failing to do about the climate, which we know perfectly well requires far more than most are giving it. There are real questions too, about whether someone has to be a good person to be a good artist, since the tendency is to evaluate the former in place of the latter. People can have noble ideals in their art that they have trouble living up to, and if that makes them hypocrites, most of us fail by that standard. But I'd still rather have the art. On the other hand, there are artists whose moral ugliness is manifested in their art, clever and well-crafted though it may be. Another question is what, if we are going to make moral inquiries,

might constitute a fair standard for people of the past? Martin Luther King Jr. was not a feminist and while Virginia Woolf was, cited just there by Anna Funder, Virginia Woolf doesn't score particularly well on, among other other things class and snobbery which is why there's a book about her fraught relationship with her servants um and i think that's the i think that's that's the question we always have to be asking ourselves when we talk about these books or make these shows or consider the values of these people it's clear that that some are beyond the pale but all well it seems to me one of the the reason there is still an all well industry john is he is endlessly reinterpretable um both in his life and his work. And his work.

I mean, it is the kind of the bad guy, you know, as Martin Amis would call it, you know, was he a bad guy? I mean, it's really difficult not having read Wife to Mind. Obviously, I have read Eileen, and I think Sylvia Topp makes a valiant attempt to um to rescue Eileen from obscurity and and one of the points I think it was Olivia Lang made is is that she doesn't really need people to to to make apologies for her behavior you know she she made as you I think you said she's made she made choices she was a very witty, capable woman.

And, you know, the fact that her relationship with Orwell didn't work, you know, it's difficult to know, you know, she didn't live long enough for us to be able to judge what she might have done had she lived longer and had she not had the relationship with Orwell. had she lived longer and had she not had the relationship with Orwell. One of the criticisms of the Sylvia Tull biography is that in the end, you're just really fascinated about Orwell. You're kind of more interested in Orwell than you are in Eileen, despite all that. I wonder whether that was the same in the Anna Funder book. I think that Eileen is definitely the hero of the book.

Yeah. And George is, or Eric, is the kind of villain. Villain, yeah. You're reading it and you've bought into that. And not just, it's her as an emblem. And yes, I think, Andy, you said this before, that story may have been told in Mrs. Meredith, but that doesn't mean that it's not a valuable story to hear again and again and again.

And I think it, particularly of a time around taylor's oldest taylor's oldest time creative people behind them you know is another person doing a lot of the work and the heavy lifting that probably still exists now let's be honest and you know many places and many many people um i she does come across as somebody very interesting very clever very smart um and making some you know making some kind of important um decisions and important kind of key developments in his work right in terms of editing his work just does leave me wanting to read his work more so i don't know if that's the intended outcome but it does make me want to go back and read them with this perspective on it and go oh okay that's interesting because when he talks about being shot

in Spain what he doesn't talk about is that Eileen was on the front line and went to him and you know so you want to sort of read homage to Catalonia with that awareness and understanding I don't know if that's the intended outcome. I don't think Anna Funder would be against that as an outcome. She does say how much she loves his books. I don't think she's saying you shouldn't read George Orwell. I think she's just saying this is a reappraisal, that's all. Okay.

Really interesting. Okay, really interesting. Well, it's Wifedom by Anna Funder. Now, John, before I ask you the question, let's point out that we ourselves are two weird middle-aged men propped up by a female editor on Backlisted. So fortunately... Let no listener be in any way unclear about that yeah so Nicky

please ask John the magic question that will unlock John please do tell us what you've been reading well I've been to talk about Cuddy by Benjamin Myers which is a book I read at Christmas,

over the Christmas break. And when we were on sabbatical, as we call it, on pause, and I love Ben's work. He's been a guest on the show. And it's about many things, but it's inspired by the history of St. Cuthbert. St. Cuthbert, patron saint of the Northeast.

The book is called Cuddy, which is the nickname for Cuthbert. It's a novel, right? It's a novel, isn't it, John? Yeah. It's a novel in four parts that stretches from the 10th century, when St. Cuthbert died, right to the early 21st century, to kind of more or less last year, as if 2019. So there are four bits to it.

There's an introduction, which is in the voice of St. Cuthbert himself, rather beautiful. And there's an interlude in the moment, which is in the form of a drama about soldiers who have been injured in the Civil War since 1650, who are billeted, awaiting execution. The first section is set in the 300 years after St. Cuthbert died. His body was carried around by a set of, they were known as the Hallowarra folk,

the kind of holy wandering folk. And they were so inspired by the legend of Cuthbert being famous for his piety. He had been a bishop in Lindisfarne. He'd given that up and he ended up, at the end of his life, he ended up living on the Farn Islands, having his feet warmed by the breath of otters, eating raw onions. That sounds fun.

As a mystic and a hermit. And when he died, they carried his body around because they were given a vision that they would find a place that they would be able to put up a church. And after about 300 years, they found a bend in the River Weir, and that's where they started to build Durham Cathedral, which is my favourite building in the entire world. Amazing.

But that still stands there today. Cuthbert is still buried there. The great historian Bede is buried there. So the book, as I say, starts with the Hallowith folk wandering, and there's a character who has the vision that leads them to the spot on the weir. And then the second bit is Middle Ages, the Masons building and expanding the cathedral. The third section is almost like an M.R. James story,

kind of a 19th century, the opening of Cuthbert's tomb, which is based on historical fact, but set up as a sort of a ghost story. He is haunted by the academic who decides to lead the opening of the tomb, is haunted. And then the final section is a young kind of man working in Durham, working on a zero hours contracts, who gets a job lifting and carrying in the cathedral. And again, he's kind of, his life is transformed by his connection with. The way to think about it, what would I compare it to? I would put it on the same shelf as Olverton.

Oh, Olverton by Adam Thorke. That's a wonderful novel. One of our episodes. One of our episodes in the Batlist. I would also say it's a great northern because it uses different forms of writing it uses diary it uses drama it uses monologue it uses poetry to tell the story i approached it with trepidation because i wanted it to be a great northern epic i wanted it to be the northern olverton and i think i think ben has pulled it off i think it's

it's an absolutely exquisite novel. The last section, which is about this young zero-hour worker whose mum's seriously ill, I'm going to read a very short section from that. It's not a historical novel. It's a novel about what faith... I mean, Ben is very open in the book.

He says, I'm not a Christian, but it is a book about what faith means in people's lives. Each of the sections all the way through are connected. There's a character who has visions. There's a sort of a rough brute who performs acts of violence.

So it's a beautifully pulled together work of fiction. The people who enjoyed his previous historical novel, which won the Walt Disney Prize, the Gallows Poll, there's plenty of that energy in it. But there is also a kind of a lovely

kind of intimacy and kindness to the book that was there in the offing, which has been a huge bestseller. I think he's a really, really extraordinary writer. And I think this is his best book. Before you read from it, can I just say one of the great, enjoyable things about doing Backlisted

for the last eight years is when people in publicity departments chop out something we say to use on the paperback jacket and then refer to the blacklisted podcast which has now happened several times so if you are listening to this in the publicity department at where is it is it published by bloomsbury it's published by bloomsbury? It's published by Bloomsbury. You're listening to this. Here's your line, right? It's backlisted, and it's,

if you only read one novel about St Cuthbert this year, make it this one. Make it Cuddy. Make it Cuddy. John, please share a section with us. I will. Listen to this. This is from near the end of the novel.

Michael Cuthbert is the character who is living in modern day Durham, a city I know really well. And he then captures the kind of the textures and sounds and sense of the city. It is late, but Michael is not tired. The city echoes with voices and snatches of song and the scent of aftershave, lager, perfume and synthetic smoke. The sense of the intoxicated and the hopeful. Doorways down to basement bars thump with repetitive sound of beats muted by their subterranean origins. Surly men guard the doors as each building houses invaluable treasures or persons of huge importance. Their shirts are clean

and pressed and strained to contain the valleys of muscles that flex beneath the starched polyester. Their small eyes give nothing away, yet see everything. Their feet are planted on the pavement, each stance a silent statement. Each man is entitled to occupy their space as an ancient oak in a paddock. Michael has an itch inside of him, a rattling sense of unease. So he walks and walks away from the cut and thrust of the drink and drug circuit, across the square and over the bridge, the cathedral leaning hard against the sour milk moon. He passes more pubs, bubbling with music, the smokers gathered outside in roped-off pens.

Bearded men rub their hands together and laugh, and women tottle and cackle and sing in protest against tomorrow's sober reality, their goosebumps worn like medals. Some sport tans that defy the season, and others offer quick and cutting verbal rebukes to the playful but witless suggestions of passing men, whose hands are pressed as snugly into their pockets. Tonight, the city is alive with potential, alive with the promise of sex and violence. He climbs a hill away from the hubbub and sees tombstones. This city's old graveyard comes alive at night too. Here, among death, life blooms in the folded creases of darkness. Sometimes young couples lie on the cold flat headstones that have fallen from soft soil beds, clinging half-naked to each

other as if resisting the gravitational pull, while solitary men periodically shuffle, singing into the shadows with beer bottle or phone in one hand and spraying penis in the other. They shake off at the moon and sometimes they howl to domesticated creatures suddenly set free into the wild jungle of the weekend. Other times, women go together, squatting precariously on dagger-like heels, hand in manicured hand, and they giggle as steaming trickles find the path of least resistance

between the old, uneven flagstones and fill the neat lines of the engraved names, the birthdates and the deathdates. Unseen, a well-fed fox, sculpts by, mean-eyed and cautious, almost glued to the death dates. Unseen, a well-fed fox, sculpts by, mean-eyed and cautious, almost glued to the cemetery wall. Tonight, in the far corner, there is a rough sleeper who makes a bed for himself in a sepulchral tomb, carefully sliding the heavy slab aside and climbing down onto a mattress of bone dust, moss and spider webs. The noise of the city fades first to a muted whisper,

then an airless hush as he folds himself into this space, as deep and immeasurable as England itself, and then pulls the lid back into place, always careful to leave an inch of skylight overhead so that he does not become a corpse completely. Michael passes on by, as stealthy and covert as the fox. His thighs feel the hill and his muscles carry memories of the many lost days of his adolescence,

tramping these same streets alone. And as if cut by the blade of the cold winter air, his lungs taste the metallic blood of the night. He turns and walks slowly back downhill to the bus station. It's a really good book. Ah, that's so good. Thank you. It's also the last book my dad

finished on his own before he died so it's uh and he loved it in fact he one of the a couple of months before he died we had a phone conversation and he said to me i could have been that and i said you could have been what dad he said i could have been like cuthbert i said what you know live on an island on your own have your your feet warmed by the breath of otters and he said yes he said i i've always loved the saints the northeastern saints like it was it was very touching exchange because i think what he was also sort of saying is that there's such a there's such a there's such a generosity to the book that ben brings out i mean it's it's a it's a great thing to to make history actually have some some sort of relevance and that the the again you know what we were saying earlier in the podcast it's the language and the and the and what he doesn't do which which makes

it work as much as what he does do. It's a lovely book. How has he become, I mean, The Gallows Pole feels to me like one of those books that's a bit of a, I'm going to use another terrible C word, cult book. How has... Has cult content. Yeah, well, just is a bit cultish. No, but it's one of those books that very cool people say you should have read. And how has he become that?

Word of mouth, Nicky i think word of mouth always they're good they're really good books he's doing something you know he's working in that slightly almost in that slightly folk horary history kind of period what i love about what i love about cuddy is that it is it's it's a it's you know a thousand years and and he takes you know like a kind of one of a cheese sampler going in. He takes a bit of each of those and then makes that into something so that each of the poor bits makes more sense when you've read the whole book.

It's one of those lovely books you want to go back and read and start again because it's really carefully made. And he's a really good, beautiful writer. Well, listen, thank you, John. The three books we've been discussing today are The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan, Wifedom by Anna Funder and Cuddy by Benjamin Myers.

And they are available to be borrowed from your local library if you are lucky enough to have one or purchased via our bookshop at bookshop.org in the UK, or via independent bookshops around the world, or the internet. The internet can do this for you as well. Audiobooks too. Sometimes people get a bit grumpy with us because they can't find the books we're talking about. Not this time. Some of the old ones.

Not this time. These are all easily available around the world. We hope. We think. And also, if you like this, just to plug Patreon a little bit more, can we do that? We talk about new books like this as well as music and films and sometimes theatre and just, you know, lots of other cultural things. Gigs.

Yeah. So it's us three chatting about books and culture. And I get to tell you something that Andy particularly and John, your music knowledge and tastes are always fantastic, always introduce me to new music. And you are. Thank you. That's one of the great things.

It's a pleasure to hear the music that we talk about as well. So, yeah, come and look us up. It's a cultural exchange. It is. It is. There's more to world than books, it turns out.

Yes. Now, also, the next episode of Batlisted, people are justifiably excited about because it's the Halloween episode that we've run nearly every year since we started, which of course andrew male will be returning the revenant himself will be with us he walks he walks the earth for one day a year and it's on halloween and we've got another returning guest whose identity will remain secret for now but she's coming back

and it feels like a big celebratory thing as we approach Batlisted 200. And in the past, our Halloween episodes, listeners, we've been terribly clever and we've done people like Elizabeth Jane Howard and Edith Wharton and last year we did Henry James and that's all well and good. But we decided that this time we would hit the nail firmly upon its head by covering the, well, the greatest, we'll probably be discussing that,

the greatest exponent of the ghost story. Perhaps the most influential writer of ghost stories, yeah. We will be discussing M.R.ames's first collection we you know i should have looked this up we can't what's it actually called ghost stories of an antiquary oh anyway it's mr james so um we we all are extremely enthused about we are the discussion that will be coming up we're recording that quite soon and that will be coming up. We're recording that quite soon. And that will be with you slightly early if you support the Patreon or otherwise on Halloween itself, the 31st of October.

Any other business? I think that is us done. Hey, thanks very much, everybody. Thanks for having me, guys. I've enjoyed, you know, sitting on the mic this time. And I look forward to Halloween always a pleasure for us see you guys next week

see you next time see you everyone