186. Rerun: David Seabrook - All the Devils Are Here

A re-release of one of our favourite episodes from April, 2016 with a new introduction by Andy.

Rachel Cooke, Observer writer, New Statesman TV critic and author joins John, Andy & Mathew to discuss All The Devils Are Here, an astounding travelogue through Kent and the depths of human behaviour from David Seabrook. Plus, the drinking habits of Carry On stars, and what to read in Iceland.

Timings:
07'44 - Dalva by Jim Harrison
12'48 - Life and Death of Harriet Frean by May Sinclair
22'04 - All the Devils Are Here by David Seabrook

Books Mentioned:

David Seabrook - All the Devils Are Here; Jack of Jumps
Jim Harrison - Dalva
May Sinclair - Life and Death of Harriett Frean
Rachel Cooke - Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Harold Bloom - The Anxiety of Influence
Hannah Kent - Burial Rites
Halldór Laxness - Independent People
W. H. Auden - Letters From Iceland
Sjón - The Blue Fox (trs Victoria Cribb)
Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Drood
James Hogg - The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
John Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps
Jonathan Rendall - This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own

Other Links:
Qikipedia
Nicolas Roeg
Richard Dadd painting discovered on Antiques Roadshow

185. American Books Special

Welcome to the fourth Backlisted Special. While Andy and Nicky are both ‘gathering’ for the new season which will resume at the end of the month, John and Tess are joined by the writers and critics Erica Wagner and Sarah Churchwell who boast a total of 12 previous appearances between them, covering books from Alan Garner and Nella Larsen to Thomas Pynchon and Anita Loos.

The format of these specials differs from the main show in that they feature guests choosing a number of books in an area they know and care about. For this hour-long special, Erica and Sarah have selected six pieces of modern American literature that they either love, or find interesting, or both. As you will discover, despite the eclectic nature of their choices, some surprising connections begin to emerge…

Books mentioned:
Erica Wagner - Mary and Mr Eliot: A Sort of Love Story; First Light; Ariel's Gift; Chief Engineer: The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge
Sarah Churchwell - The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells; The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe; Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream; Forgotten Fitzgerald: Echoes of a Lost America
Marlo Thomas and Friends - Free to be You and Me 
F.Scott Fitzgerald - ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’
Ann Patchett - The Magician's Assistant 
Susanna Rowson - Charlotte Temple 
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time 
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women 

184. Rerun: William Maxwell - So Long, See You Tomorrow

183. Archive Books Special

Welcome to the third Backlisted Special. Although Andy remains deep in sabbatical mode, John and Nicky are joined by good friends of the show and literary agents Becky Brown and Norah Perkins, returning for their third appearance, having previously discussed the work of Barbara Pym in episode 109 and Dorothy B. Hughes in episode 142.

Becky and Norah are joint custodians of the Curtis Brown Heritage list of literary estates, where they look after the works and legacies of over 150 writers including Iris Murdoch, Stella Gibbons, Douglas Adams, Elizabeth Bowen, Gerald and Lawrence Durrell, Iain Banks and Laurie Lee. They have been friends for ten years and colleagues for five.

Becky moonlights as an anthologist and her latest book, Blitz Spirit: Voices of Britain Living Through Crisis, mapped the arc of the Second World War via the diaries of Mass Observation contributors, and was published by Hodder in 2020. In her spare time, Norah runs The Pearl Press, a letterpress printing and bookbinding workshop in Deal.

The format of these specials differs from the main show in that they will feature a guest choosing a number of books in an area they know and care about. Today, Norah and Becky have selected six books from the archive that they feel should be better known and more widely discussed.

Books mentioned:
Blitz Spirit: Voices of Britain Living Through Crisis - Becky Brown
One Fine Day - Mollie Panter-Downes
Mistletoe Malice - Kathleen Farrell
The Charioteer - Mary Renault
The Land and The Garden - Vita Sackville-West
Merry Hall - Beverley Nichols
Conversations in Sicily - Elio Vittorini
The Light and the Dark - C.P. Snow

Other links:
Lucy Scholes - Meet the archive moles, Prospect, March 2023
McNally Editions - Lucy Scholes’s paperback archive list
Faber Editions - their archive list
An Obsessive Type - Nicky’s BBC R4 programme on the Doves typeface (2016)

182. Rerun: Jean Rhys - Good Morning, Midnight

This is the third in our re-released episodes – and only the second one we ever recorded. Has Jean Rhys’s reputation and influence grown since then? Does a seven-year-old Backlisted still pass muster? All this (and more) are considered in Andy’s new introduction. Enjoy!

John and Andy are joined by novelist Linda Grant and Unbound's Mathew Clayton to discuss Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, first published in 1939. Rhys is still best known for her 1966 novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, but as well as making a strong case for her earlier work, there is a lively discussion of perfume, the previously unheard-of genre of Scandinavian magic realism, and Andy spots a mistake in the best selling science book of all time.

Books Mentioned:
Tove Jansson - The Winter Book, Moominpappa at Sea, Moominvalley in November
Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time
George Orwell - 1984, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up For Air
Linda Grant - The Clothes on Their Back, Upstairs at the Party, I Murdered My Library
Jean Rhys - Quartet, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, Good Morning, Midnight, Wide Sargasso Sea
David Plante - Difficult Women

Other Links:
Paris Review Interview
A character to root for
L’Heure Bleue

181. Backlisted Science Fiction Special

Welcome to our second Backlisted special of 2023. Today we’re joined by the best-selling writer Una McCormack, returning for a record-breaking ninth appearance, having most recently participated in the Christmas episode dedicated to Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield.

These specials are designed to fill the gap until the show proper returns in April. They differ from the usual Backlisted format in that they feature just one guest choosing a number of books in an area they know and care about. This discussion covers five books that have inspired Una as a writer of science fiction from childhood onwards.

Books mentioned:

Sylvia Engdahl, The Far Side of Evil
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Octavia Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories
Katharine Burdekin, Proud Man
Vonda N. McIntyre, Star Trek: The Voyage Home

Other links:

Goldsmith Press: https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/
Handheld Press: https://www.handheldpress.co.uk/product-category/fantasy-and-science-fiction/

180. Rerun: Raymond Briggs - Fungus the Bogeyman

In memory of Raymond Briggs, who died in August, we are replaying the episode where John and Andy were joined by author-illustrator Nadia Shireen and writer Andrew Male for a smellybration of Fungus the Bogeyman (1977) with a new introduction recorded by Andy.

As well as Fungus, the much-loved and bestselling picture book Andrew describes as ‘the children's Anatomy of Melancholy’, we consider Briggs's life and work in full: Father Christmas, The Snowman, When the Wind Blows, Ethel & Ernest and the sepulchral Time For Lights Out (2019), his latest - and perhaps last - book; we also hear several times from the (often very funny) author himself. Also in this episode Andy talks about issues raised by reading Laugh a Defiance, a long out-of-print memoir by campaigner Mary Richardson; while John shares his enthusiasm for Jessica Au's new novel, Cold Enough For Snow (Fitzcarraldo).

Books mentioned:

Raymond Briggs - Fungus the Bogeyman; Father Christmas; The Snowman; When the Wind Blows; Ethel & Ernest; UG: Boy Genius of the Stone Age and His Search for Soft Trousers; The Man; Notes from the Sofa; Time For Lights Out
Nadia Shireen- Grimwood; The Bumblebear
Tom de Freston - Wreck: Géricault’s Raft and the Art of Being Lost at Sea
Jessica Au - Cold Enough for Snow
Robert Burton - An Anatony of Melancholy
Edmund Burke - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime
Thomas Carlyle - Sartor Resartus

Other links:

David Bowie introduction to The Snowman, 1984
Paul McCartney - ‘Bogey Music’ from McCartney II (1980)
Raymond Briggs, Desert Island Discs, 1983
Raymond Briggs, Desert Island Discs, 2005
Raymond Briggs discusses Fungus the Bogeyman on TV, 1979
When the Wind Blows, BFI DVD
Ethel & Ernest Trailer
Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeymen and Milkmen (documentary, 2019)

179. Backlisted Special - Children’s Books

Welcome to our first Backlisted special of 2023. These specials are designed to fill the gap until the show proper returns in April. They differ from the usual Backlisted format in that they feature just one guest choosing a number of books in an area they know and care about. 

Today we’re joined by the award-winning novelist and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce, an official friend of Backlisted, who returns for the first time since his appearance on the Christmas 2021 episode on The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit, one of our most popular shows. The discussion covers examines what inspired Frank’s love of reading when he was growing up, and includes favourite books by T.H. White, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joan Aiken, Tim Hunkin and Richmal Crompton. 

Books mentioned:
The Once & Future King - TH White
A Wizard of Earthsea (and/or The Tombs of Atuan)- Ursula Le Guin
Joan Aiken’s Armitage Stories (aka The Serial Garden)
The Rudiments of Wisdom - Tim Hunkin
Just William - Richmal Crompton
King of the Copper Mountains - Paul Biegal

Other links:

Ursula K. Le Guin on The Wizard of Earthsea
The Once and Future King - BBC Radio 4 2014 (Adapted by Brian Sibley)

178. Rerun: Elizabeth Jenkins - The Tortoise and the Hare

In memory of the iconic Carmen Callil, we are replaying the first of her two appearances on Backlisted.

Joining Andy and John in this episode is Carmen Callil, the legendary publisher and writer, who is best know for founding the Virago Press in 1972. Once described by the Guardian as ‘part-Lebanese, part-Irish and wholly Australian’, Carmen settled in London in 1964 advertising herself in The Times as ‘Australian, B.A. wants job in book publishing’. After changing a generation’s taste through her publishing at Virago, and in particular the Virago Modern Classics, which continues to bring back into print hundreds of neglected women writers, Carmen went on to run Chatto & Windus and became a global Editor-at-Large for Random House. In 2006 she published Bad Faith: A History of Family & Fatherland, which Hilary Spurling called ‘a work of phenomenally thorough, generous and humane scholarship’. Appointed DBE in 2017, she was also awarded the Benson Medal in the same year, awarded to mark ‘meritorious works in poetry, fiction, history and belles-lettres’. The book under discussion is one of her favourite novels, The Tortoise & the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins, first published by Gollancz in 1954 and triumphantly reissued by Virago Modern Classics in 1983.
Also in this episode we explore the new audio version of one our favourite writer’s best novels - The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson, famously published in a box containing 27 randomly ordered sections in 1969. And last but very much not least: this episode also features our very first canine guest - Effie, Carmen’s extremely well-behaved border terrier.

Books mentioned:

B.S. Johnson - The Unfortunates; Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry
Jonathan Coe - Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
Elizabeth Jenkins - The Tortoise & the Hare; The View from Downshire Hill; Harriet; Doctor Gully; Jane Austen
Carmen Callil - Bad Faith: A History of Family & Fatherland
Antonia White - A Frost in May
May Sinclair - The Life & Death of Harriet Frean
Storm Jameson - Journey from the North vol 1; Journey from the North vol 2
Rosamond Lehmann - The Weather in the Streets
Elizabeth Taylor - Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
Anita Brookner - A Start in Life

Other links:

The Second Shelf bookshop
Foyles Bookshop- South Bank Centre
The Unfortunates on Alexa
Elizabeth Jenkins - Obituary in the Daily Telegraph ( Sep 2010)

177. Noel Streatfeild - Ballet Shoes

Merry Christmas Everyone! This year’s Backlisted Christmas special celebrates Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, a classic of children’s literature and the childhood favourite of our producer, Nicky Birch. We are joined by the writer Una McCormack and Tanya Kirk, the Lead Curator of Printed Heritage Collections (1601-1900) at the British Library, who are both lifetime Streatfeild fans. Ballet Shoes was an immediate bestseller upon publication and the runner-up for the inaugural Carnegie Medal. It has never been out of print and was the first in a series of ‘Shoes’ books by Streatfeild. It has been adapted many times both as an audiobook and for film and television and in 2019 BBC News included Ballet Shoes on its list of the 100 most influential novels of all time. We discuss why this might be the case and much more besides and even hear from Miss Streatfeild herself. And it being a Christmas episode, there is a fiendish festive quiz. 

We also feature two other classic books by writers best known through their writing for children. John discusses The Giant under the Snow by John Gordon, an eerie Puffin classic from 1968, while Andy revels in the darkness of John Christopher’s The Death of Grass, first published in 1956, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, definitely written for adults and perfect for cutting through your post-lunch torpor. Enjoy!

Books mentioned:
Noel Streatfeild - Ballet Shoes; A Vicarage Family
Anglea Bull – Noel Streatfeild: A Biography   Also available via Internet Archive
John Gordon – The Giant under the Snow
John Christopher – The Death of Grass (introduction by Robert Macfarlane)
Tanya Kirk (ed) - Haunters at the Hearth: Eerie Tales for Christmas
Una McCormack - The Autobiography of Mr Spock
Tove Jansson – Comet in Moominland
Terry Jones – Erick the Viking

Other links:
Noel Streatfeild on Desert Island Discs (1976)
Useful Noel Streatfeild resource site

176. Kate Chopin - The Awakening

The Awakening is an American classic, first published in 1899. The novel’s focus is the inner life of Edna Pontellier, a 29 year-old a married woman and mother of two boys, whose husband Léonce is a New Orleans businessman of Louisiana Creole heritage. The book’s notoriety derives from Edna’s refusal to accept the role that American society of the late 19th century has allocated to her. After the controversy that greeted it on publication, The Awakening sank from view until it was rediscovered by a new generation of readers after the Louisiana State University Press published Chopin’s collected works in 1969. Now acclaimed as a feminist classic – it was published in the UK in 1978 by The Women’s Press and is now both a Penguin and an Oxford classic, a Canongate Canon, and one of the most popular university set texts in America. We’re joined by the Irish American writer Timothy O’Grady and publisher Rachael Kerr to find out why. This episode also finds Andy revelling in Beware of the Bull, a new biography of the incomparable Yorkshire singer-songwriter Jake Thackray (Scratching Shed), while John enjoys Louise Willder’s Blurb Your Enthusiasm, the product of her twenty-five years as a copywriter at Penguin.

Books mentioned:

Kate Chopin - The Awakening & Other Stories; A Night in Acadie; Bayou Folk; Athenaise
Emily Toth - Unveiling Kate Chopin
Louise Willder - Blurb Your Enthusiasm
Paul Thompson and John Watterson - Beware of the Bull: The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray
Timothy O’Grady - I Could Read The Sky; Monaghan; Children of Las Vegas: True stories about growing up in the world's playground; Curious Journey: The IRA and Cumann Na Mban, 1916-1923 (with Kenneth Griffith)

Other links:

Treme (HBO Series, David Simon, 2013)


175. Tarjei Vesaas - The Ice Palace

The Ice Palace or Is-slottet by Tarjei Vesaas is a 20th century classic by one of Norway’s greatest modern writers. First published by Gyldendal in 1963, it went on to win the Nordic Council Literary Prize in 1964. In 1966, it was published in Elizabeth Rokkan’s English translation by Peter Owen who described it as the best novel he ever published. To discuss it we’re joined by friend of the show Max Porter – who’s surprised it isn’t the most famous book in the world – and by another great Norwegian, Karl Ove Knaussgård, who agrees but who also think’s Vessas’s The Birds ( or Fuglane), published six years earlier, might be even better. We discuss both books in their English translations (recently released as Penguin Modern Classics) and Karl Ove treats us to a reading from the beginning of The Ice Palace in Norwegian. This episode also features Andy sharing his pleasure and deep amusement at Bob Dylan’s latest book – The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster) while John is moved by Emergency, Daisy Hildyard’s darkly beautiful novel about a rural Northern childhood overshadowed by presentiments of the coming climate disaster (Fitzcarraldo Editions).

Books mentioned:

Tarjei Vesaas - The Ice Palace (trs. Elizabeth Rokkan); The Birds (trs. Torbjørn Støverud & Michael Barnes); The Hills Reply (trs. Elizabeth Rokkan); The Boat in the Evening (trs. Elizabeth Rokkan); The Seed (trs. Kenneth G. Chapman)
Karl Ove Knaussgård - My Struggle: A Death in the Family (Book 1); A Man in Love (Book 2); Boyhood Island (Book 3); Dancing in the Dark (Book 4); Some Rain Must Fall (Book 5); The End (Book 6); A Time for Everything; Seasons Quartet: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer
Max Porter - Lanny; Grief is The Thing with Feathers; The Death of Francis Bacon; Shy
Bob Dylan - Tarantula; Chronicles; The Philosophy of Modern Song
Daisy Hildyard - Emergency
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
Halldor Laxness - Independent People (trs. J.A. Thompson)
Jon Fosse - The Other Name: Septology I - II (trs. Damion Searls)

Other links:
Post from Norwegian Literature Abroad (NORLA) about translating Vessas
Tarjei Vesaas on Mattis in The Birds
Tarjei Vesaas (et al) on The Ice Palace
The Ice Palace (Is-Slottet), a film by Per Blom (1987)

174. Maeve Brennan - The Springs of Affection

There can be few writers more deserving of Backlisted’s attention than the Irish writer, Maeve Brennan. An adopted New Yorker, Brennan died there in 1993 and was by that time so thoroughly forgotten in her native land, that she received no obituaries in any Irish papers. We are joined by the writers Sinéad Gleeson and David Hayden to discuss her collection, The Springs of Affection – subtitled ‘stories of Dublin’ – which was first published posthumously by Houghton Mifflin in 1997, although all but one of these first appeared in the New Yorker, where Brennan was a staff writer for twenty-seven years. It was the enthusiastic praise from other writers including Alice Munro, Edna O’Brien and Mavis Gallant among others, that helped get The Springs of Affection the kind of international attention that the two collections published in Maeve’s lifetime failed to achieve. Since then, Maeve Brennan’s reputation has grown steadily, and her stories are now regularly and favourably compared to those of Joyce, Chekov and Colette. In Ireland, in particular, she has won the admiration of a new generation of women writers, who in Anne Enright’s phrase, see her as ‘a casualty of old wars not yet won.’ This episode also features Andy revisiting the Linda Nochlin’s classic 1971 essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? while John is impressed by Orlam, P.J. Harvey’s dark and brooding verse novel, written entirely in Dorset dialect.

Books mentioned
Maeve Brennan - The Springs of Affection (Paperback - Intro by William Maxwell)
The Spring of Affection (Ebook - Intro by Anne Enright)
The Springs of Affection (Paperback pre-order - Intro by Claire -Louise Bennet);
The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker
The Visitor
The Rose Garden: Short Stories
Angela Bourke - Maeve Brennan: Wit, Style and Tragedy: An Irish Writer in New York
Linda Nochlin - Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
P.J. Harvey - Orlam
Sinéad Gleeson (ed) - The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers; The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories
Sinéad Gleeson - Constellations: Reflections from Life; Where My Feet Fall (including an essay on Maeve Brennan’s Manhattan)
David Hayden - Darker With the Lights On: Stories
Joanna Russ - How to Suppress Women's Writing
William Maxwell - All the Days & Nights: Collected Stories
James Joyce - Dubliners

Other links:

Maeve Brennan in The New Yorker
Fintan O’Toole on Maeve Brennan in the Irish Times, Jan 1st 1998
Anne Enright on Maeve Brennan in the Guardian, May 2016
Maeve’s biographer Angela Bourke on the Irish Times Books Podcast, 2017
Maeve’s editor Christopher Carduff on The Visitor in the Irish Times, 2017

173. Henry James - The Altar of the Dead and Other Tales

This Hallowe’en episode of Backlisted focusses on the collection of ‘uncanny’ stories by Henry James, first gathered together under the title The Altar of the Dead and Other Tales to form the seventeenth volume of the New York Edition of his Collected Works in 1917. We are joined, as ever, by our resident spook-master Andrew Male, and by acclaimed novelist and Henry James aficionado, Tessa Hadley. We each choose a story to present and read from - these are tackled in chronological order to better trace the evolution of James’s famously dense and challenging late style . Before that Andy confesses his admiration for I Used to Live Here Once, Miranda Seymour’s new biography of Jean Rhys and reads a short Jean Rhys ghost story, while John revisits Giving Up the Ghost, Hilary Mantel’s haunting (and haunted) memoir.

For avoidance of doubt, the ten stories collected in The Altar of the Dead & Other Stories are: ‘The Altar of the Dead’, ‘The Beast in the Jungle’, ‘The Birthplace’, ‘The Private Life’, ‘Owen Wingrave’, ‘The Friends of the Friends’, ‘Sir Edmund Orme’, ‘The Real Right Thing’, ‘The Jolly Corner’, ‘Julia Bride’. All but “Sir Edmund Orme’ are contained in volume two of the Everyman Classics edition of the Collected Stories.

Books mentioned:

Henry James - The Altar of the Dead & Other Tales (ebook); The Altar of the Dead & Other Tales (Online); Collected Stories (vol 2); The Turn of the Screw & Other Stories; What Maisie Knew; The Ambassadors; The Wings of a Dove; The Golden Bowl
Tessa Hadley - Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure
Mirand Seymour - I Used to Live Here Once
Hilary Mantel - Giving Up the Ghost

Other links:

Virginia Woolf on Henry James’s ghost stories
Maud Casey on the ghost stories of Henry James & Jean Rhys on LitHub, 2018
Maria Popova on ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ The Marginalian Oct 23, 2022

172. Dervla Murphy - Full Tilt

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by the Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy was first published in 1965 and is the first of Dervla Murphy’s twenty-six books. It's a journal she kept on the 3,500 mile, six-month journey she made by bicycle from her home in Lismore, Ireland to Delhi in India in 1963, Ireland, traversing Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan on her trusty bike, Ros. Joining us to discuss the book are Felicity Cloake, food writer and the award-winning author of the Guardian’s long-running ‘How to Make the Perfect’ series and Caroline Eden, author and journalist, whose latest book, Red Sands is a reimagining of traditional travel writing using food as the jumping-off point to explore Central Asia.

This episode also features Andy reading from Craig Brown's new collected works, Haywire, while John has been enjoying In Search of One Last Song: Britain’s disappearing birds and the people trying to save them by Patrick Galbraith.

Books mentioned:
Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle; Wheels within Wheels; In Ethiopia with a Mule; A Place Apart: Northern Ireland in the 1970s by Dervla Murphy
One More Croissant for the Road; Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake 
Red Sands; Samarkand: Recipes and Stories From Central Asia and the Caucasus by Caroline Eden
Haywire by Craig Brown
In Search of One Last Song: Britain’s disappearing birds and the people trying to save them by Patrick Galbraith

Other links
Dervla Murphy’s Desert Island Discs
Who is Dervla Murphy? (2016 documentary)
Full Tilting - the Dervla Murphy fan site 
Re-Tilt - Isabelle Masters 2015 retracing Dervla’s original journey today 

171. Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic

Roadside Picnic, first published in 1972, is the best-known work of Russia’s most famous modern science fiction writers, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, together the authors of 26 novels and scores of short stories. To discuss it we are joined by the writer and radio presenter Jennifer Lucy Allan, and the publisher and translator Ilona Chavasse. The book is based on the premise that Earth has been briefly visited by an alien civilisation that have left behind them six ‘Zones’, places strewn with their debris, some of it lethal to humans; all of it fascinating and perplexing. The Zones feed a black market in artefacts supplied by ‘Stalkers’ who are prepared to risk their lives and sanity by entering the forbidden areas to retrieve them. We consider why the book is still considered one of the greatest of all SF novels, how it came to be read as a dark foreshadowing of the Chernobyl disaster and why it has proved itself so ripe for adaptation, both as a series of video games and, most famously, as the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic 1979 film, Stalker. This episode also finds Andy returning to a haunting novel he read earlier this year: The High House (Swift Press) by former guest Jessie Greengrass, while John is carried away by Everybody (Picador), Olivia Laing’s magnificent book about freedom and the human body.

Books mentioned:

Roadside Picnic; Monday starts on Saturday; The Inhabited Island; The Snail on the Slope; Hard to be a God by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
The Foghorn's Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast by Jennifer Lucy Allan
The High House by Jessie Greenglass
Everybody by Olivia Laing
Zona by Geoff Dyer
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Rosewater by Tade Thompson
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep; Ubik; The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick

Other links:

Stanislaw Lem on Roadside Picnic
Den of Geek article on the adaptations of Roadside Picnic
Illustrations from the adandoned TV adaptation of Roadside Picnic
Boris Strugatsky on working with Tarkovesky
Geoff Dyer on Stalker
Andrei Tarkovsky interviewed by Tonino Guerra about Stalker (1979)
Guapo - A History of Visitation (2013 album inspired by Roadside Picnic)

170. Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South

North and South is Elizabeth Gaskell’s fourth novel and considered by many to be her best. It tells the story of Margaret Hale, a principled young middle-class woman from the rural South whose family are obliged to re-settle in the Northern industrial town of Milton. Joining us to discuss the novel’s contemporary relevance, are two new guests: Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad and Nell Stevens, author of the memoir, Mrs Gaskell & Me. We cover the books presentation of labour relations at the height of the Industrial Revolution, the changing position of women in society, the reasons for Elizabeth Gaskell’s uncertain reputation, her unsentimental treatment of death and – spoiler alert – whether the novel’s ending works. Also in this episode, Andy is impressed by No Document, Australian writer Anwen Crawford’s ground-breaking work of elegiac non-fiction and John enjoys the exquisite imagination on display in Chloe Aridjis’s Dialogue with a Somnambulist, the Mexican novelist’s recent collection of stories, essays and pen portraits.

Books mentioned:

Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South; Cranford; Mary Barton; The Life of Charlotte Brontë
Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad; The Candy House
Nell Stevens - Mrs Gaskell & Me; Briefly, A Delicious Life
Anwen Crawford - No Document
Chloe Aridjis - Dialogue with a Somnambulist
John Chapple & Arthur Pollard (eds) - The Letters of Mrs Gaskell
John Chapple & Alan Shelston (eds) - The Further Letters of Mrs Gaskell
Jenny Uglow - Elizabeth Gaskell
Charles Dickens - Hard Times
Charlotte Brontë - Shirley

Other links:

The Gaskell Society
Elizabeth Gaskell at the British Library
’The Unjustly Overlooked Victorian Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell’ by Hannah Rosefield, New Yorker, Sep 2018

169. Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Authors Jay Griffiths and Geoff Dyer are our guests for a discussion of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard was only twenty-nine when her first prose book was published in 1974; it went onto win the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction the following year. To discuss this classic of observational nature writing and spiritual enquiry, we are joined by two writers making their Backlisted debuts: Jay Griffiths, the author of Wild: An Elemental Journey and Geoff Dyer, whose most recent book The Last Days of Roger Federer, featured on the Gormenghast episode. By coincidence, Andy has been reading Pages from the Goncourt Journals (NYRB Classics), a spicy, gossip-rich glimpse into 19th century French literary life which has a foreword by Geoff, while John immerses himself in the inner world of John Donne, through regular Backlisted guest Katherine Rundell’s widely acclaimed biography: Super Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Faber).


Books mentioned:

Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; The Abundance
Jay Griffiths - Wild: An Elemental Journey; Nemesis, My Friend
Geoff Dyer - The Last Days of Roger Federer
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt - Pages from the Goncourt Journals
Katherine Rundell - Super Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

Other links:

Annie Dillard talks to David Remnick for The New Yorker Radio Hour, 2016
Annie Dillard talks to Melissa Block, NPR 2016
Annie Dillard’s reads ‘Dots in Blue Water’ NPR, 2005
Mockingbird Song
'The Thoreau of the Suburbs', Diana Saverin, The Atlantic, Feb 2015
Silent All These Years by Brian VanDyke, The Millions Sept 2021
Annie Dillard’s website
Jay Griffiths’ website
Geoff Dyer’s website

168. Helen DeWitt - Lightning Rods

The second novel by by literary wunderkind, Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods is probably the most challenging book we’ve yet featured on Backlisted. Usually described as a satire on American capitalism, it is the diasarmingly upbeat and funny tale of Joe, a struggling salesman, who develops a new office product that he believes serves an urgent need in modern corporate life. Quite what that product is and how it works requires a delicacy in description and a warning for listeners: this is not one for family listening. We are joined by returning guests, novelist and playwright Marie Philips and writer and performer, Ben Moor. The episode also features Andy rediscovering a lost folk horror classic from the 1970s - The Autumn People (also known as The Autumn Ghosts) by Ruth M. Arthur while John is blown away by the force of Sarah Churchwell’s incandescent and incisive account of an American classic: The Wrath to Come: Gone With the Wind and the Lies America Tells.

Books mentioned:

Helen DeWitt - Lightning Rods; The Last Samurai; Some Trick; The English Understand Wool
Ruth M. Arthur - The Autumn People/The Autumn Ghosts
Sarah Churchwell - The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells
Jonathan Swift - A Modest Proposal and Other Writings

Other links:

Helen DeWitt talking to the Paris Review
Helen DeWitt answers questions on Lightning Rods, 2011
Helen DeWitt at New Directions
Helen DeWitt's website and blog
New Directions Publishing
Ben Moor’s Edinburgh shows

167. John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos

It's sixty-five years since John Wyndham published The Midwich Cuckoos, the fourth in his hugely successful series of science fiction novels that began in 1951 with The Day of the Triffids. Many people’s first introduction to The Midwich Cuckoos is through the classic film from 1960, which was renamed Village of the Damned and starred George Sanders. We’re joined for this episode by the writer and director David Farr, who has just produced the most recent adaptation of the novel: a seven-episode series for Sky. As well as assessing the merits of the book – sometimes obscured by its popular success – we discuss the process of adapting a classic novel for a modern audience. This episode also features Andy sharing his holiday read – The Feast by Margaret Kennedy (author of The Constant Nymph which we featured last year). The novel is set in Cornwall, which was exactly where Andy found himself when he read it. John also introduces a new independent publisher, Hazel Press, whose exquisite small, environmentally friendly books include The Wren by Julia Blackburn, a haunting sequence of short journal entries and prose poems.

Books Mentioned:

John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos; The Day of the Triffids; The Chrysalids; Trouble With Lichen; Chocky; Consider her Ways and Others
Margaret Kennedy - The Feast
Julia Blackburn - The Wren

Other Links:

John Wyndham Interview with Derek Hart on Tonight (1960)
The Hazel Press