Art

Tamara de Lempicka’s Young Lady with Gloves (1930)

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Art Deco was one of the first tru­ly inter­na­tion­al styles, influ­enc­ing the design of just about every­thing from build­ings to fur­ni­ture, jew­ellery to fash­ion, and art to every­day objects like radios and vac­u­um clean­ers. It took its name (short for Arts Déco­rat­ifs) from the Expo­si­tion Inter­na­tionale des Arts Déco­rat­ifs et Indus­triels Mod­ernes Arts which was held in Paris in 1925, and which serves as a fair start­ing point to cred­it for the birth of a move­ment. We are slap-bang in the mid­dle of the Roar­ing Twen­ties, the era of the Jazz Age and of flap­pers, of motion pic­tures and the Charleston, of The Great Gats­by and Radio City Music Hall, and whilst this rep­re­sen­ta­tive list smacks of the Unit­ed States, the cul­tur­al vibe was no less felt in Berlin, Paris, Lon­don and Syd­ney. It was an era of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and cul­tur­al dynamism and as such, don’t be sur­prised to see this blog return to this peri­od in the future.

Art Deco drew its inspi­ra­tion from such art move­ments as Cubism, Futur­ism, and the influ­ence of the Bauhaus. It played with geo­met­ric motifs and bright, bold colours, and of all the artists pur­su­ing this style, one of the most mem­o­rable and inter­est­ing was Tama­ra de Lem­pic­ka.

Born in Poland in 1898, she lived, after her par­ents divorced, with her wealthy grand­moth­er, who spoiled her with clothes and trav­el. By age 14 she was attend­ing school in Lau­sanne, and hol­i­day­ing in St Peters­burg. All this high liv­ing gave the young girl an idea of how she want­ed to live and what her future should be. Thus, when she found she had a tal­ent for art, she took her­self to Paris to live among the bour­geois and bohemi­an of the Left Bank (where else?). Between the wars, she paint­ed por­traits of the great and the good, and many of East­ern Europe’s exiled nobil­i­ty, bring­ing her crit­i­cal acclaim, social celebri­ty and con­sid­er­able wealth. She was also well-known for her high­ly stylised nudes.

Her icon­ic work exud­ed a con­fi­dence that epit­o­mised the era (see her Self-Por­trait in the Green Bugat­ti, for instance). But let’s look at her Young Lady with Gloves (AKA Girl in the Green Dress), typ­i­cal of her style. It has stream­lined, geo­met­ric shapes and clean, metal­lic sur­faces depict­ing a beau­ti­ful, sophis­ti­cat­ed woman. She exudes a detached aura of supe­ri­or­i­ty, and there is a visu­al­ly strik­ing inter­play of com­po­si­tion­al effects, angu­lar lines, and shad­ing. The unabashed sen­su­al­ism of those nip­ples and that navel vis­i­ble through the fab­ric is pure de Lem­pic­ka. Small won­der that one of her high-pro­file col­lec­tors is inter­na­tion­al super­star, Madon­na, who has fea­tured some of de Lem­pick­a’s works in her own videos, notably Vogue. Push­ing the bound­aries as a fear­less female artist, she was per­haps the Madon­na of her day.

 

 

Tama­ra de Lem­pic­ka
Literature

Cecil Day-Lewis’s The Otterbury Incident (1948)

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When my wife and I first met and struck out on that long process of get­ting to know one anoth­er, one of the ques­tions that came up at some point was: what was your favourite children’s book? Amaz­ing­ly, we chose the same one — The Otter­bury Inci­dent by C Day Lewis — and this coin­ci­dence was com­pound­ed by the fact that nei­ther of us knew any­one else who had even heard of this book, nev­er mind read it or cher­ished it as their favourite.

In my case, the book, I believe, was on a book­shelf at pri­ma­ry school and I guess I must have bor­rowed it, or per­haps it was read by the whole class (the great span of time that has elapsed since then has, alas, greyed out the specifics…though look­ing it up, I see that it was in fact on the UK Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion read­ing list for 1972!). In any event, I came to own it, as did  my wife, and to this day both copies sit along­side each oth­er on one of our daugh­ters’ own book­shelf. So what was it that cap­tured our imag­i­na­tions?

Writ­ten in 1948, it is a sto­ry set in the fic­tion­al small provin­cial town of Otter­bury, short­ly after the Sec­ond World War. Although the town had been large­ly untouched by the war, it had sus­tained an acci­den­tal hit from a Ger­man bomb leav­ing a bomb-site (known as the “Inci­dent”) which is used for war-games by two rival gangs of boys (Ted’s Com­pa­ny and Toppy’s Com­pa­ny) from the local school. A plot involv­ing some stolen mon­ey draws the boys into con­flict with local spiv John­ny Sharp and his sleazy accom­plice “the Wart”, and a series of events lead the boys on a mis­sion to uncov­er ille­gal goings-on in the town. An excit­ing denoue­ment involves a raid on dodgy local busi­ness­man Skinner’s yard (with the rival gangs now col­lab­o­rat­ing against the com­mon ene­my) and his ille­gal activ­i­ties are bust­ed wide open, with every­thing pret­ty much wrapped up just as the police arrive.

Cecil Day-Lewis (father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis) was pri­mar­i­ly a poet (and indeed was Poet Lau­re­ate from 1968 until his death in 1972) but he also wrote mys­tery sto­ries under the pseu­do­nym Nicholas Blake. He only ever wrote two books for chil­dren (the oth­er is 1933’s Dick Willough­by), but The Otter­bury Inci­dent is pitched per­fect­ly for young minds, and its char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is engag­ing.

Then there are the illus­tra­tions by Edward Ardiz­zone: sim­ple, charm­ing, evoca­tive. My wife says her first con­cep­tion of what a “spiv” looked like (even before Pri­vate Walk­er from Dad’s Army, pre­sum­ably!) came from the illus­tra­tion of John­ny Sharp. We recent­ly vis­it­ed the Hep­worth in Wake­field and saw an exhi­bi­tion of lith­o­graphs from the School Prints scheme in the for­ties (an inter­est­ing sto­ry in its own right). One of the prints fea­tured some sketched fig­ures whose style jumped out as strange­ly familiar…looking up Ardizzone’s name we saw that indeed it was one and the same artist respon­si­ble for those images from our youth. So, to both writer and illus­tra­tor, we salute you!

The intro­duc­tion is a mas­ter­class in sum­mari­sa­tion: in two para­graphs the whole sto­ry and its char­ac­ters are set up per­fect­ly.

Begin at the begin­ning, go to the end, and there stop — that’s what Rick­ie, our Eng­lish mas­ter, told me when it was set­tled I should write the sto­ry. It sounds sim­ple enough. But what was the begin­ning? Haven’t you won­dered about where things start? I mean, take my sto­ry. Sup­pose I say it all began when Nick broke the class­room win­dow with his foot­ball. Well, OK, but he would­n’t have kicked the ball through the win­dow if we had­n’t just got super-heat­ed by win­ning the bat­tle against Top­py’s com­pa­ny. And that would­n’t have hap­pened if Top­py and Ted had­n’t invent­ed their war game, a month before. And I sup­pose they’d not have invent­ed their war game, with tanks and tom­my guns and ambush­es, if there had­n’t been a real war and a stray bomb had­n’t fall­en in the mid­dle of Otter­bury and made just the right sort of place — a mass of rub­ble, pipes, rafters, old junk etc — for play­ing this par­tic­u­lar game. The place is called ‘The Inci­dent’ by the way. But then you could go back fur­ther still and say there would­n’t have been a real war if Hitler had­n’t come to pow­er. And so on and so on, back into the mists of time. So where does any sto­ry begin?

I asked Rick­ie about this, and he said, ‘Jump right into the deep end of the sto­ry, don’t hang about on the edge’ — which inci­den­tal­ly was con­tra­dict­ing what he’d said first. ‘Start with the morn­ing you kids had the bat­tle and Nick broke the win­dow’ he said. When Mr Richards calls us ‘kids’, nobody objects: he’s a decent chap, as school­mas­ters go; and it’s quite true we’re young — even Ted and Top­py aren’t four­teen yet. But when John­ny Sharp and the Wart strolled past our ambush on the Inci­dent that morn­ing, and John­ny Sharp said in his sneer­ing way, ‘You kids up to your games again? Flip­ping heroes, ain’t we all?’ our blood fair­ly boiled, as you can imag­ine. We may be kids. But it was us kids who raised more than £5 for the bro­ken win­dow, and us kids who tracked down a gang of crooks and inci­den­tal­ly were thanked in pub­lic by Inspec­tor Brook. So there’s the start of my nov­el. You’ve got to have a title before you can start, I mean, and per­son­al­ly I think The Otter­bury Inci­dent is a smash­ing title.

C Day-Lewis
Music

Nina Simone sings I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl (1967)

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Eunice Kath­leen Way­mon was born in Try­on, North Car­oli­na, in 1933, and was recog­nised ear­ly on as a child prodi­gy at the piano. Sup­port­ers in her home town start­ed a fund to help her become the first female black con­cert pianist in the US, but when she applied for a schol­ar­ship at the pres­ti­gious Cur­tis Insti­tute of Music in Philadel­phia, she was reject­ed, which she sus­pect­ed was due to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion (and con­sid­er­ing this was Fifties Amer­i­ca, it’s no great stretch to go along with that).

Eunice had to get a job, and she used her skills at the piano key­board to get a res­i­den­cy at the Mid­town Bar & Grill, Atlantic City. To ensure her Methodist min­is­ter moth­er wouldn’t find out she was play­ing “the devil’s music”, she adopt­ed a stage name: Nina Simone. The bar own­er said she had to sing as well as play if she want­ed to keep her job and thus Simone’s deli­cious­ly dolor­ous voice was bestowed upon the world. And what a voice! She quick­ly built up a reper­toire and a steady fol­low­ing, and was snapped up by Beth­le­hem Records, with whom she released her first album, Lit­tle Girl Blue.

There is much that could be writ­ten about Nina Simone: her dis­in­cli­na­tion towards the record­ing indus­try and refusal to be pigeon­holed; her involve­ment in the civ­il rights move­ment (lis­ten to the impas­sioned and provoca­tive social com­men­tary in her song Mis­sis­sip­pi God­dam); her itin­er­ant life, liv­ing in Bar­ba­dos, Liberia, Switzer­land, the Nether­lands and France; her fiery tem­pera­ment and regret­table lega­cy of abuse towards her daugh­ter, Lisa.

How­ev­er, it’s the fusion of that silky voice with her vir­tu­oso piano play­ing that we’re inter­est­ed in here. I have select­ed this clip from French TV show Tilt Mag­a­zine in 1967, in which Simone per­forms I Want a Lit­tle Sug­ar in my Bowl. She is beguil­ing to watch as well as to lis­ten to. Inci­den­tal­ly, in 2003, just days before her death, the Cur­tis Insti­tute of Music bestowed on her a belat­ed hon­orary degree.

 

Nina Simone
Literature

Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands (1903)

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Ersk­ine Childers’ nov­el, The Rid­dle of the Sands, has a rea­son­able claim to have been the first true spy nov­el. Pub­lished in 1903, it enjoyed huge pop­u­lar­i­ty in Britain in the years lead­ing up to the First World War. Tak­ing its cue from the adven­ture tales of Rid­er Hag­gard and R M Bal­lan­tyne, Childers’ nov­el con­tains less of the der­ring-do of those writ­ers but lots more real­is­tic detail and intrigue and thus more authen­tic­i­ty. This for­mu­la would be used lat­er to great effect by such espi­onage writ­ers as John Buchan and Ian Flem­ing.

When Charles Car­ruthers (it had to be “Car­ruthers”, right?) accepts an invi­ta­tion from old Oxford chum Arthur Davies, to take a yacht­ing and duck-shoot­ing trip to the Frisian Islands (the arch­i­pel­ago at the east­ern edge of the North Sea), he has no idea their hol­i­day will become a dare­dev­il inves­ti­ga­tion into a Ger­man plot to invade Britain.
The action is cen­tred around the large area of coastal water­way that is the Schleswig fiords, char­ac­terised by hun­dreds of chan­nels and inlets and ever-shift­ing sand­banks that lend them­selves to skilled nav­i­ga­tors only. They lend them­selves to secre­tive plots too, as it turns out, and when Car­ruthers and Davies stum­ble upon mys­te­ri­ous goings-on, we are drawn into a clas­sic spy adven­ture in which the Ger­man plot to invade Britain is revealed…and of course even­tu­al­ly foiled. The abil­i­ty to use boats in this envi­ron­ment is a secret weapon, and Davies, despite his eccen­tric­i­ty, is a gift­ed sailor. The minu­ti­ae of sail­ing and nav­i­ga­tion through­out the book is engross­ing.

The nov­el pre­dict­ed the threat of war with Ger­many and was so pre­scient in its iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the British coast’s defen­sive weak­ness­es that it came to influ­ence the sit­ing of new naval bases. As an aside, the sto­ry of its author is quite remark­able. Rather than fol­low­ing up the nov­el with a host of sequels as might have been expect­ed (a sort of nau­ti­cal equiv­a­lent of Big­gles per­haps?), Childers instead entered pol­i­tics. Quite bizarrely, since the nov­el is all about patri­ot­ic strug­gles for king and coun­try, its writer even­tu­al­ly became a fer­vent Irish nation­al­ist and was con­sid­ered a trai­tor by the British gov­ern­ment at the time of his death. He was exe­cut­ed by a fir­ing squad in 1922, by order of the Irish Free State.

How­ev­er, it is the nov­el that Childers will be chiefly remem­bered for, and I have select­ed as an excerpt the ini­tial let­ter from Davies to Car­ruthers invit­ing him out to the Frisian Islands. It gives us an intrigu­ing flavour of the adven­ture to come, plus an amus­ing insight into Davies’ scat­ter­gun psy­chol­o­gy. It makes me want to grab an oil­skin and a pipe and a pouch of “Raven mix­ture” and join the machi­na­tions!

 

With­ers demure­ly hand­ed me a let­ter bear­ing a Ger­man post­mark and marked ‘Urgent’. I had just fin­ished dress­ing, and was col­lect­ing my mon­ey and gloves. A momen­tary thrill of curios­i­ty broke in upon my depres­sion as I sat down to open it. A cor­ner on the reverse of the enve­lope bore the blot­ted leg­end: ‘Very sor­ry, but there’s one oth­er thing—a pair of rig­ging screws from Carey and Neil­son’s, size 1–3/8, gal­va­nized.’ Here it is:

Yacht Dul­ci­bel­la,

Flens­burg, Schleswig-Hol­stein, Sept. 21.

Dear Car­ruthers,—

I dare­say you’ll be sur­prised at hear­ing from me, as it’s ages since we met. It is more than like­ly, too, that what I’m going to sug­gest won’t suit you, for I know noth­ing of your plans, and if you’re in town at all you’re prob­a­bly just get­ting into har­ness again and can’t get away. So I mere­ly write on the off chance to ask if you would care to come out here and join me in a lit­tle yacht­ing, and, I hope, duck-shoot­ing. I know you’re keen on shoot­ing, and I sort of remem­ber that you have done some yacht­ing too, though I rather for­get about that. This part of the Baltic —the Schleswig fiords — is a splen­did cruis­ing-ground — A1 scenery — and there ought to be plen­ty of duck about soon, if it gets cold enough. I came out here via Hol­land and the Frisian Islands, start­ing ear­ly in August. My pals have had to leave me, and I’m bad­ly in want of anoth­er, as I don’t want to lay up yet for a bit. I need­n’t say how glad I should be if you could come. If you can, send me a wire to the P.O. here. Flush­ing and on by Ham­burg will be your best route, I think. I’m hav­ing a few repairs done here, and will have them ready sharp by the time your train arrives. Bring your gun and a good lot of No. 4’s; and would you mind call­ing at Lan­cast­er’s and ask­ing for mine, and bring­ing it too? Bring some oil­skins. Bet­ter get the eleven-shilling sort, jack­et and trousers — not the ‘yacht­ing’ brand; and if you paint bring your gear. I know you speak Ger­man like a native, and that will be a great help. For­give this hail of direc­tions, but I’ve a sort of feel­ing that I’m in luck and that you’ll come. Any­way, I hope you and the F.O. both flour­ish. Good-bye.

Yours ever,
Arthur H. Davies.

Would you mind bring­ing me out a pris­mat­ic com­pass, and a pound of Raven mix­ture?

I pulled out the let­ter again, and ran down its impul­sive stac­ca­to sen­tences, affect­ing to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spir­its, and good fel­low­ship this flim­sy bit of paper waft­ed into the jad­ed club-room. On re-perusal, it was full of evil presage — ‘A1 scenery’ — but what of equinoc­tial storms and Octo­ber fogs? Every sane yachts­man was pay­ing off his crew now. ‘There ought to be duck’ — vague, very vague. ‘If it gets cold enough’ — cold and yacht­ing seemed to be a gra­tu­itous­ly mon­strous union. His pals had left him; why? ‘Not the “yacht­ing” brand’; and why not? As to the size, com­fort, and crew of the yacht — all cheer­ful­ly ignored; so many mad­den­ing blanks. And, by the way, why in Heav­en’s name ‘a pris­mat­ic com­pass’?

 

Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Le déje­uner des can­otiers (Lun­cheon of the Boat­ing Par­ty) wowed the crit­ics at the Sev­enth Impres­sion­ist Exhi­bi­tion in 1882 and remains one of the greats of Impres­sion­ism. It depicts a con­vivial bunch of din­ers enjoy­ing a sum­mer­time meal alfres­co at the Mai­son Four­naise, over­look­ing the Seine on the Île de Cha­tou, just west of Paris. This is the heart of Impres­sion­ist leisure land, and to this day the restau­rant exists, on what is now dubbed L’île des Impres­sion­nistes.

The din­ers are all friends or col­leagues of Renoir. In the fore­ground, seat­ed low­er-right, is his fel­low artist Gus­tave Caille­botte, who is gaz­ing at Renoir’s future wife, seam­stress Aline Charig­ot, sit­ting oppo­site and coo­ing at her dog. Next to Caille­botte is actress Angèle Legault and, stand­ing above her, Ital­ian jour­nal­ist Adrien Mag­gi­o­lo. At the back, wear­ing a top hat, art his­to­ri­an and col­lec­tor Charles Ephrus­si speaks with poet and crit­ic, Jules Laforgue.

Lean­ing against the rail­ing are Louise-Alphon­sine Four­naise, the daugh­ter of the restaurant’s pro­pri­etor, and her broth­er, Alphonse Four­naise Jr, who han­dled the boat rentals. Row­ing was the main attrac­tion at Cha­tou, and Renoir’s din­ers wear the straw hats and blue dress­es that were the fash­ion­able boat­ing attire of mid­dle-class Parisian daytrip­pers.

Renoir spent months mak­ing numer­ous changes to his can­vas, paint­ing the indi­vid­ual fig­ures when his mod­els were avail­able (there is cor­re­spon­dence from Renoir moan­ing about mod­els fail­ing to turn up). Nonethe­less, Renoir cap­tures the fresh­ness of his vision splen­did­ly, and we can allow our­selves to be fooled that he has spon­ta­neous­ly cap­tured a moment in time. It is a vibrant work of art cel­e­brat­ing good com­pa­ny and good din­ing, and it cer­tain­ly gives us the impres­sion of a very pleas­ant and care­free after­noon.

Details of the par­ty-goers

 

Film, TV, and Theatre

Fry and Laurie’s “John and Peter” sketch (1990)

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Many a com­e­dy dou­ble act or group cut its teeth as mem­bers of the Cam­bridge Foot­lights, the ama­teur the­atri­cal club run by stu­dents of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty (and which has been going since 1883) – Beyond the Fringe, Mon­ty Python, the Good­ies, and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of media per­son­al­i­ties active on our tele­vi­sion screens today. One pair of for­mer Foot­lighters pur­sue their careers indi­vid­u­al­ly these days but for a long time through­out the 1980s and 90s their obvi­ous comedic chem­istry was exploit­ed to great effect as a dou­ble act. I’m talk­ing about Stephen Fry and Hugh Lau­rie, who col­lab­o­rat­ed in such pro­grammes as the Black Adder series, Jeeves and Woost­er, and four series of A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie.

A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie was a sketch show cast for a post-Alter­na­tive com­e­dy audi­ence, in which elab­o­rate word­play and innu­en­do were sta­ples of its mate­r­i­al. Both per­form­ers brought great char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion to the sketch­es, and were equal­ly fun­ny, though Fry’s well-known intel­lec­tu­al heft was clear­ly present through­out the series.

My favourites of the series’ char­ac­ters were John (Fry) and Peter (Lau­rie), who are high-pow­ered, hard-drink­ing busi­ness execs, engaged in backs-to-the-wall, board­room hard talk, the joke being that their loca­tion, unlike Lon­don or New York, is com­plete­ly non­de­script (Uttox­eter) and their busi­ness dis­tinct­ly under­whelm­ing (a health club). The char­ac­ters are of course a par­o­dy of hard-dri­ving busi­ness­men of the time, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from such board­room soap operas as Man at the Top and Howards’ Way, in which char­ac­ters’ bom­bast is deliv­ered with such com­plete seri­ous­ness, and as if the fate of the free world depend­ed on it, about mat­ters that the view­ers know are of no real con­se­quence.

John and Peter’s loud catch­phrase was “Damn!” and sev­er­al increas­ing­ly ridicu­lous vari­a­tions on this theme (“Three pints of Damn and a chas­er of Hell-blast!”), as they uncov­er some new busi­ness-crit­i­cal twist or plot engi­neered by arch-rival Mar­jorie, John’s ex-wife. This mar­vel­lous premise is summed up thus:

“Dammit John, I’m talk­ing about the big idea. The dream that you and I shared. The dream of a health club that would put Uttox­eter on the god­damned map once and for all”

Inci­den­tal­ly, Uttox­eter is in Stafford­shire…

 

Music

Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in E‑Flat Major (1830)

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A noc­turne is a musi­cal com­po­si­tion intend­ed to be evoca­tive of the night and thus quite wist­ful and dreamy in nature. Although the term goes back a long way in musi­cal his­to­ry, its gen­e­sis as a dis­tinct musi­cal genre didn’t come about until the 19th cen­tu­ry when Irish com­pos­er John Field wrote sev­er­al pieces under this spe­cif­ic title of “noc­turne”. He in turn heav­i­ly influ­enced one Frédéric Chopin who wrote a per­fect set of 21 noc­turnes that became the roman­tic period’s best-known exem­plar of the form (to the detri­ment of Field’s lega­cy, since Field­’s piano work is prac­ti­cal­ly unheard these days when com­pared to Chopin’s piano reper­toire).

Arguably Chopin’s most famous piece is the sub­ject of today’s blog, his Noc­turne Op. 9 No. 2, writ­ten around 1830 when Chopin was in his ear­ly twen­ties and his cre­ative juices were in full flow. It has been a per­ma­nent fix­ture of the Clas­sic FM Hall of Fame ever since it start­ed in 1996. Its beguil­ing melody haunts from start to fin­ish. As the song pro­gress­es, the main melody is repeat­ed three times, and each time includes more and more orna­men­ta­tion, a clas­sic Chopin tech­nique. It’s played in andante and espress dolce, mean­ing mod­er­ate­ly slow and expres­sive­ly sweet.

Pianists live and die today by their abil­i­ty to tack­le Chopin’s reper­toire of hardy peren­ni­als, and the Noc­turnes are no excep­tion — the list of great pianists that have com­mit­ted their inter­pre­ta­tions to record is exten­sive and includes Arthur Rubin­stein, Vladimir Ashke­nazy, Alfred Cor­tot, and Mau­r­izio Polli­ni. I have cho­sen a record­ing by Pol­ish pianist Arthur Rubin­stein, regard­ed by many as the great­est Chopin inter­preter of his time. He played in pub­lic for eight decades so you can be sure we’re in safe hands. Lis­ten to this mas­ter­piece; it’s pure ten­der­ness.

Frédéric Chopin
Poetry

William Makepeace Thackeray’s Ballad of the Bouillabaisse (1855)

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What’s your favourite dish? If you were asked to choose your “last sup­per”, what would it be? For me, I would like­ly choose that clas­sic Provençal seafood stew, bouil­l­abaisse. I still keep, tucked into a Roux Broth­ers cook­ery book (that I see from the inner leaf came from my mum in Christ­mas 1988), a cut-out recipe for bouil­l­abaisse that I have returned to many times over the years. My ver­sion is prob­a­bly not authen­tic (to be so, it must appar­ent­ly con­tain what the French call “ras­casse” – i.e. scor­pi­onfish – which tends not to be avail­able at the Mor­risons fish counter) but they say that recipes vary from fam­i­ly to fam­i­ly in Mar­seille any­way. At any rate, it’s a deeply rich and sat­is­fy­ing dish, and it goes down a treat. Like many a clas­sic French dish (think pot au feu, cas­soulet, bœuf bour­guignon…) bouil­l­abaisse has a noble charm to it and there’s a giant of 19th cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture, William Make­peace Thack­er­ay, who agrees with me.

You may know of William Thack­er­ay from his clas­sic nov­el, Van­i­ty Fair, but he was also respon­si­ble for many an amus­ing verse. He was, by all accounts, a real­ly fun­ny guy; Trol­lope said of him: “he rarely uttered a word, either with his pen or his mouth, in which there was not an inten­tion to reach our sense of humour”. This poem, The Bal­lad of the Bouil­l­abaisse, from his 1855 col­lec­tion of verse, Bal­lads, is typ­i­cal: a won­der­ful­ly craft­ed and charm­ing trib­ute to the noble dish, of which Thack­er­ay was clear­ly a fan from his many years resid­ing in Paris.

When one day I am next in Paris, or Mar­seille, I’d like to think I might find an estab­lish­ment suit­ably sim­i­lar to that con­jured up in Thackeray’s poem, find a table in a nook, and order a steam­ing bowl of bouil­l­abaisse and a bot­tle of “the Cham­bertin with yel­low seal”. For, as Thack­er­ay says, “true philosophers…should love good vict­uals and good drinks”. Fail­ing the real­i­sa­tion of that dream, how­ev­er, I still have my trusty old recipe.

Read the poem below as you (here’s a treat!) lis­ten to your blog­ger recit­ing the poem whilst backed by some glo­ri­ous French accor­dion music. Best enjoyed when hun­gry…

A street there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our lan­guage yields,
Rue Neuve des petits Champs its name is—
The New Street of the Lit­tle Fields;
And here ’s an inn, not rich and splen­did,
But still in com­fort­able case—
The which in youth I oft attend­ed,
To eat a bowl of Bouil­l­abaisse.

This Bouil­l­abaisse a noble dish is—
A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,
Or hotch­potch of all sorts of fish­es,
That Green­wich nev­er could out­do;
Green herbs, red pep­pers, mus­sels, saf­fern,
Soles, onions, gar­lic, roach, and dace;
All these you eat at Ter­rés tav­ern,
In that one dish of Bouil­l­abaisse.

Indeed, a rich and savory stew ’t is;
And true philoso­phers, methinks,
Who love all sorts of nat­ur­al beau­ties,
Should love good vict­uals and good drinks.
And Corde­lier or Bene­dic­tine
Might glad­ly, sure, his lot embrace,
Nor find a fast-day too afflict­ing,
Which served him up a Bouil­l­abaisse.

I won­der if the house still there is?
Yes, here the lamp is as before;
The smil­ing, red-cheeked écail­lère is
Still open­ing oys­ters at the door.
Is Ter­ré still alive and able?
I rec­ol­lect his droll gri­mace
He’d come and smile before your table,
And hop’d you lik’d your Bouil­l­abaisse.

We enter; nothing’s changed or old­er.
“How’s Mon­sieur Ter­ré, wait­er, pray?”
The wait­er stares and shrugs his shoul­der;—
“Mon­sieur is dead this many a day.”
“It is the lot of saint and sin­ner.
So hon­est Ter­ré ’s run his race!”
“What will Mon­sieur require for din­ner?”
“Say, do you still cook Bouil­l­abaisse?

“Oh, oui, Mon­sieur,” ’s the waiter’s answer;
“Quel vin Mon­sieur désire-t-il?”
“Tell me a good one.” “That I can, sir;
The Cham­bertin with yel­low seal.”
“So Terré’s gone,” I say and sink in
My old accustom’d cor­ner-place;
“He’s done with feast­ing and with drink­ing,
With Bur­gundy and Bouil­l­abaisse.”

My old accustom’d cor­ner here is—
The table still is in the nook;
Ah! vanish’d many a busy year is,
This well-known chair since last I took.
When first I saw ye, Cari luoghi,
I’d scarce a beard upon my face,
And now a griz­zled, grim old fogy,
I sit and wait for Bouil­l­abaisse.

Where are you, old com­pan­ions trusty
Of ear­ly days, here met to dine?
Come, wait­er! quick, a flagon crusty—
I’ll pledge them in the good old wine.
The kind old voic­es and old faces
My mem­o­ry can quick retrace;
Around the board they take their places,
And share the wine and Bouil­l­abaisse.

There’s Jack has made a won­drous mar­riage;
There’s laugh­ing Tom is laugh­ing yet;
There’s brave Augus­tus dri­ves his car­riage;
There’s poor old Fred in the Gazette;
On James’s head the grass is grow­ing:
Good Lord! the world has wagg’d apace
Since here we set the Claret flow­ing,
And drank, and ate the Bouil­l­abaisse.

Ah me! how quick the days are flit­ting!
I mind me of a time that’s gone,
When here I’d sit, as now I’m sit­ting,
In this same place—but not alone.
A fair young form was nes­tled near me,
A dear, dear face look’d fond­ly up,
And sweet­ly spoke and smil’d to cheer me.
—There’s no one now to share my cup.

I drink it as the Fates ordain it.
Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes;
Fill up the lone­ly glass, and drain it
In mem­o­ry of dear old times.
Wel­come the wine, whate’er the seal is;
And sit you down and say your grace
With thank­ful heart, whate’er the meal is.
—Here comes the smok­ing Bouil­l­abaisse!

A bouil­l­abaisse I made!
William Make­peace Thack­er­ay
Literature

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961)

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I dis­cov­ered Joseph Heller’s satir­i­cal nov­el Catch-22 way back in my ear­ly twen­ties and went on to re-read it in that decade at least once, maybe twice. It is placed square­ly on that lit­er­ary pedestal known as “the great Amer­i­can nov­el” and with some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, since it reg­u­lar­ly tops polls and even the BBC’s Big Read sur­vey in 2003 (the biggest sin­gle test of pub­lic read­ing taste to date) had it ranked num­ber 11 in the UK’s best-loved books. It is a dark­ly humor­ous and absur­dist satire, that exco­ri­ates the illog­i­cal nihilism of war, and it does it mas­ter­ful­ly.

I won’t attempt a plot sum­ma­ry, so let me just briefly frame the sto­ry. The nov­el fol­lows the exploits of the fic­tion­al Amer­i­can 256th fight­er squadron, sta­tioned on the island of Pianosa in Italy’s Tus­can arch­i­pel­ago, dur­ing the height of World War II. With a huge cast of char­ac­ters and a nar­ra­tive that switch­es view­points and chronol­o­gy on a reg­u­lar basis, Heller cre­ates a deli­cious mix of absur­di­ty and hilar­i­ty.

Chief lunatic in the asy­lum is Cap­tain John Yos­sar­i­an, bomber pilot, whose main ambi­tion in life is to stay alive (“live for­ev­er or die in the attempt”). Yos­sar­i­an doesn’t dis­tin­guish between the “ene­my” and his supe­ri­ors; as far as he’s con­cerned, the ene­my is any­body who’s going to get him killed, no mat­ter which side they’re on, and he con­cocts a series of inge­nious, albeit ulti­mate­ly unsuc­cess­ful, meth­ods for avoid­ing the sui­ci­dal bomb­ing mis­sions. In so doing, the Yos­sar­i­an char­ac­ter acts as the con­science of the sto­ry; his is the voice of rea­son and right­eous anger against the war and the face­less bureau­cra­cy that pulls its strings. It is that Kafkaesque bureau­cra­cy that thwarts his and oth­ers’ attempts to avoid dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, most notably with the infa­mous Catch-22.

A catch-22, of course, is a para­dox­i­cal sit­u­a­tion from which a per­son can­not escape due to its con­tra­dic­to­ry rules. It is per­haps notable that the phrase, coined by Heller, has become part of the lex­i­con; life is indeed full of such sit­u­a­tions (“how do I gain expe­ri­ence in a job if I am always turned down for not hav­ing any expe­ri­ence?”). In the book it is used in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent for­mu­la­tions to jus­ti­fy some mil­i­tary require­ment or oth­er. Inci­den­tal­ly, Heller’s orig­i­nal title was Catch-18 but for rea­sons of eupho­ny (and the release of anoth­er book, Leon Uris’s Mila 18) it was changed to Catch-22. Here’s an exam­ple of how the catch works.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which spec­i­fied that a con­cern for one’s safe­ty in the face of dan­gers that were real and imme­di­ate was the process of a ratio­nal mind. Orr was crazy and could be ground­ed. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more mis­sions. Orr would be crazy to fly more mis­sions and sane if he did­n’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and did­n’t have to; but if he did­n’t want to he was sane and had to. Yos­sar­i­an was moved very deeply by the absolute sim­plic­i­ty of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respect­ful whis­tle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Danee­ka agreed.”

Joseph Heller
Film, TV, and Theatre

Reza Badiya’s Title Visualisation for Hawaii Five‑0 (1968)

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When I was grow­ing up in the sev­en­ties, after a decade of main­ly black and white tele­vi­sion, there was a pletho­ra of new, colour­ful, excit­ing TV dra­mas: Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble, The Six Mil­lion Dol­lar Man, Starsky and Hutch, The Cham­pi­ons, The Per­suaders, Kojak…the list goes on.

Most of these of course were Amer­i­can-pro­duced and the indus­try churned them out to a pub­lic hun­gry for enter­tain­ment. A lit­tle-known name out­side of the TV indus­try is Iran­ian direc­tor Reza Badiyi, but he deserves recog­ni­tion from those of us who devoured hours of the afore­men­tioned shows, for Badiyi helmed lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of hours of episod­ic TV. He direct­ed more than 430 episodes of tele­vi­sion, includ­ing mul­ti­ple episodes of Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble, The Six Mil­lion Dol­lar Man, The Rock­ford Files, Hawaii Five‑O, The Incred­i­ble Hulk, T.J. Hook­er, and Cagney and Lacey.

Badiyi began his Amer­i­can career as a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, hav­ing moved from Iran in 1955 and grad­u­at­ed from Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty with a degree in film-mak­ing. He worked with direc­tors such as Sam Peck­in­pah and Robert Alt­man before mov­ing increas­ing­ly into tele­vi­sion. No-one would claim Badiyi’s work in the sev­en­ties as great works of art but, with their break­through visu­al effects, they were cer­tain­ly cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant for young view­ers like myself.

To rep­re­sent Badiyi’s oeu­vre I have cho­sen the title visu­al­i­sa­tion (i.e. the open­ing and clos­ing cred­its) for Hawaii Five‑0. If you were alive in the sev­en­ties, there’s a very high prob­a­bil­i­ty these images will be very famil­iar to you. Backed by an irre­sistible score by Richard Shores, Badiyi used dynam­ic, zoom­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, copi­ous imagery from Hawaii (the 50th State — Five‑0 — get it?), with cool quick-cuts and freeze-frames to set the view­er up nice­ly for the upcom­ing crime-defeat­ing dra­ma. Who can for­get the fast zoom-in to the top bal­cony of the Ilikai Hotel, with Jack Lord’s Steve McGar­rett turn­ing to face the cam­era?

For the clos­ing cred­its, Badiyi chose to use these icon­ic out­rig­ger canoeists bat­tling the surf (any­one remem­ber sit­ting in a line of like-mind­ed plonkers on a dance floor, pad­dling like crazy and singing duh-duh-duh-duh duh­h­hh duh­h­hh…?)

All in all, a bravu­ra title visu­al­i­sa­tion by one of the most pro­lif­ic direc­tors of episod­ic series tele­vi­sion in the his­to­ry of the medi­um. Book him, Dan­no!

Reza Badiyi

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