I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue
Meghan can, at least, expect to be recognised wherever she goes. This is in contrast to most writers’ experiences. We tend to redefine anonymity, sometimes even at our own book launches. I once ran into my first publisher at a party, who inevitably had no idea who I was. Stuck for anything to say I admitted “I’m writing you a book.” He seemed appalled at the thought but I persisted. “I think,” wanting to encourage the poor soul, “it’ll be good.” Taking care to finish what the obligatory warm white wine, he let our eyes briefly meet and said, “sales will be the test of that.” Then, much like the advance, he vanished without my realising how, why or where. Meghan, I have blows crueller still than any you have suffered yet to prepare you for.
The first thing I’m seeing at the reopened theatre will be Ralph Fiennes’s one-man show of Eliot’s Four Quartets. I’d pay to see him read the telephone directory, so this represents a considerable upgrade.
But he remains perennially underrated, especially contrasted with his contemporary Daniel Day-Lewis.
Both of them played Hamlet on stage, accompanied by great personal drama. Day-Lewis deepened his mystique by walking off mid-production because he believed that he had seen his father’s ghost. Fiennes, meanwhile, attracted undesired tabloid attention by leaving his wife for Francesca Annis, the actress playing Gertrude.
It is hard to think of a contemporary British actor who has managed his career more assiduously. Leading roles and character cameos, dashing heroes to diabolical villains, film, stage and television all juggled with equal aplomb.
He gave the funniest screen performance since Richard E Grant’s Withnail as Monsieur Gustave in The Grand Budapest
Hotel, and this year was understated and affecting in the Sutton Hoo drama The Dig. And yet he isn’t taken nearly as seriously as Day-Lewis. Though who is? Perhaps Fiennes should periodically retire, and give rare, gnomic interviews? Or alternatively he should simply become French. Then he would finally receive the acclaim and recognition he deserves. I recently listened to the great survivor Marianne Faithfull’s latest album, She Walks In Beauty. A collection of Romantic poetry read by Faithfull to musical accompaniment by Warren Ellis, Nick Cave and Brian Eno, it is tasteful, intelligent and deeply dull. I can imagine it becoming a perennial soundtrack for waiting rooms in expensive psychologists’ practices.
The albums of poetry set to music that John Betjeman did in the Seventies with Jim Parker, Late Flowering Love and
Banana Blush, were considerably livelier.
But if Faithfull’s LP is a success, it could set a precedent for further collaborations between actors, musicians and longdead poets. I have a happy vision of Bill Nighy silkily reading Larkin while Bryan Ferry’s jazz group toots mournfully in the background, and a primal fear of Danny Dyer bellowing Kipling’s “If …” while Damon Albarn pounds away belligerently on honky-tonk piano.
It can go wider still and wider yet. Simon Armitage performs his poetry in an ‘ambient post-rock band’ called LYR, and Kae Tempest has mixed spoken word, music and agitrop throughout their career. Who’s to say that we shouldn’t repay the favour and allow rock stars to publish their own poetry?
As Paul McCartney prepares to release his collected lyrics, given the status of holy writ by reverent conversations with Paul Muldoon, this might well lead to a flood of earnest volumes. If there is any true attempt at justice in this world, Faber will publish my own favourite, Des’Ree’s timeless “Life”, with its lyrics “I don’t want to see a ghost/It’s a sight that I fear most/I’d rather have a piece of toast/And watch the evening news.”