Interview with Frank Kermode, Part 1 of 2

well it's a great honor and pleasure to have a chance to talk to soprano mode who Kermode to get it pronounced who we passed in the combination room for 20 years without ever having a conversation but now we have a chance to do say may I call you Frank is that ordered okay Frank tell me when and where you were born in 1919 with school tell me something about you if you want to about your parents or grandparents or the family I don't know great deal about you my mother's family with Desmond secure I never met any my father's father had died young in his twenties his mother died when I was very small two or three sir I never knew a grandparent and I had no brothers or sisters for a good long time my sister was born when I was 12 so of course I know they're close to her as I went away especially she was five so I really didn't have a family well parents you can't descend them yet anyway you may tell me why you did it to send them but sometimes parents either direct or indirectly affect one's life um can you tell me something about your mother and father yes my mother was a farm girl a village pioneer Douglas called cue egg which she sometimes will go for a walk and she would point out the village but actually approaches my father's family which I know anybody else a his father was an organist I imagine of spare time almost anyway he died 1328 he there was some kind of Welsh connection the fat salmon sea captain called Prichard which is a my father's name was John pitcher he evaluated this connection with the bearded that's pretty odd him with ch yep no of course I never met the Great Sea fair my father was a we were unlucky family in this respect he was exactly the right age to be called up in nineteen when conscription Kevin in 1915 and I was the ride a sleek autumn of 1939 say in fact we both had our youthful deeply affected by the - I think I was rather relented now what else can I tell you about him he was he had a rather romantic George dissing like story because he while he was away in France during the First World War his mother wasn't Ben Willard remarried they had a shop which will now call an off license I think kind of general store and the man she married staged a rubbery the shop stayed stuck and coz he went bankrupt so you returned from France from their shop and their money took temporary jobs and they've got a what he thought was a job we'll just see him through as a storekeeper and he stayed in that he retired after the Second World War Cutler attachement and it was a sad time because my mother had dementia and he and they have the stronger connects with my sister of course machine still demands my home territory and I sometimes feel quite strongly about he's an orphan and so about I find it when I go there and they are dinner without people ever feel this about their birthplace he's like playing depressed where there's other people feel really unkind to my sister who's a nice well where rather if your parents interested in books and reading my mother had a kind of interesting in pose there's a there's a next page names te Brown he was a friend of color couch he was a bastard chieftain but he was a maximum of humor you still perhaps I heard they're loud I don't think there are many Manx people I remember the 50th of our hundredth anniversary of the birth round and there's a tremendous do and they in the town and the speaker on that occasion was critical he was thought quite serious nobody not totally forgotten the meaning of these forgotten is always good so no and we can't recite some passages of the Browns parents to women who knows yeah I still remember some of them but it's rare and I've come across anybody even specialists within her so don't go around reciting I feel so ashamed at not knowing about him tell me about your schools I mean the ones that you remember that well routine for a boy remember I was at school in the thirties room everybody was very poor and their other two my early schools in from schools on it you could tell the difference between those of us whose parents had enough to live on and those who didn't there's as we did more clogs they were issued by the time cloaks clogs they do wear clothes you could tell I remember when they ran where he talks box but I was I belong to the leather we're wearing glasses and there was a real distinction to I went through the usual things to the grammar school Douglas high school not comprehensive it was a good school in the sense that you might have thought this curriculum had a little doing with the kind of life that people live in there oh man it had a lot to do with getting places in the universities and the teachers I think or some of them well Merstham rather limited now by hindsight but on the other hand they're kind of getting people through exams they were ox ox bridge type so nobody went to Oxford because they couldn't afford it there were no scholarships and none of the teachers have been to office whatever the heck that was the line had been to Manchester some of them were exhibition all some of them I think by hindsight we're suffering from was like even in war to me that's anyways carton different companies nobody one or two boys whom I knew had parents who could support them with a dog some came mine seventeen and once scholarship there were three I think I want the best of them but the best of them was tired to the University so yeah but there any just on your school two things that often are revealing what was there any teacher you remember who did inspire you in any way or have any effect on you yes very slight I remember teacher called Pendlebury who was in fact was specially a bad temper but in fact obviously did like poems liked you for liking there was a very romantic young frenched teacher there are certain amount of savagery for not doing things or for doing things anyway they did their job by separate although they might have been harmful to explain the relationship they did and what what the subjects were you by that time when you show many particularly interesting oh yes I was I had lots of time they didn't know quite what to do with that I I was more than a year ahead of the class for those in which is the thing I would never allowed if I was 15 16 17 consequently I sort of finished with school far too early I mean I'd done with what they were there to provide City know what to do with me a year and a half or so that's an incredible thing I needed some help at that point the school did not have a good library it it didn't have teachers in her kind of time they were very jealous at that time in things like sports and music and so on but they didn't want to buckle down and teach Ygritte if that's what he wanted to do you can do that it was done very hard to so in a way I shouldn't have a year-long series him give a wide field of study but I did I just sort of went through the routines again yeah that trying to add other things that track I tried to add bleach I had decent fairly good French so wasn't too bad do remember any books but thickly at that time where any books that you particularly enjoyed or influence you or excited you yes or independently or out of school I was reading books which you would expect illiterate particularly myself in the twenties reading a lot his enthusiasm bicycles books of course which you both read discussed and was in the a cloudy so we kept in touch she was important to me but he died in his fifties what was his name anyway I then can I pass on to last question about school I mean hobbies sports music cycling thank you and music you mentioned and may come up later but as music been important through your life very absolutely centrally yes not as an executive which I was not good at I did try to even like but sent me the interest is bills is being an absolute essential what particularly I mean which composers which periods well I especially in the early days when I remember there was a gramophone but my father my father's records the kind of father papered the parlor and I acquired some records purely at random I felt like C would be so I became that kind of fan of Elizabeth Shue and there are all sorts of things I knew in random I have no structured knowledge of music at that time that the records which some of which my sister's still gotta think we're interesting in fact some of them with that Museum and then it was only when I and I got to the University of the day I began to be instructive inside I became kind of a system that the money oh I have ascending programs or conducting people to their places so I got to hear all the constants for nothing I didn't really know quite a lot about some things so the focus do they connect with your work at all in the sense that you listen to it when you're writing because some of some writers actually write the music going through their mind mapelen for instance you sir Maitland FW Maitland the historian the fan Wagner but also up other music and he people have analyzed his writing to show that it actually has the rhythms and movements of classical composers as it conceal tune it but there it is okay well let's go on then to university went to Liverpool to read English believe me did you there I think hello I suppose the truth would be if I could have gone through to the kingdom I don't feel very short changed about that because a conscientious child they did and with good people good representative people including the necessarily decide so we were given some idea of what subject was about and also a lot of hard philology which which is sort of dropped out people here that on there too much food but we had severe I think there section of the difficulties and we had also to learn a new language Italian which I kept that so I think that was a good three years again the old saying is you there probably as much of all the best of your friends as a kind of inspirationally and what it meant to be a truly different person my example period was somewhat overshadowed by this is the late 30s now yes I went up in 1987 it was in the Navy by 1940 they'd given me I could have called yeah because I've done two years of the fish I find myself in the water I think that's right from well in fact the mechanics of it was rather because I had some of jobs one of the summer jobs I had was as a pisser on one of the fairies and the because they needed people as well well I guess let's just go back to the University sometimes there is again someone whose lectures or supervisions or whatever affects one later on in one's life it the first time at university I was wondering whether you remember any other teacher - yes I do but the part of me cause which is the best test really of variability is one borrowed from Cambridge maybe it's the one where you're confronted by a Richards tests confronted with passages there are certain things about work time go beeps but they all that was at Oxford it obviously God she's the slang term for a machine as important it's been in my life for 60 years these are the lapses of memory that you mention and there I think you did see a side of the teachers which is not merely routine obviously they could they could lecture onwards with when they showed you how to deal with they didn't expose their own sensibilities and that sounds good there's a yeah some people just like that there's a compulsory paper trying to post still here too hard too stressful yeah they're trying to do that with school children who are learning languages to try and get rid of the oral part of it it's amazing isn't it too stressful so this is too stressful yes that was a good test so I do remember one or two actual episodes I remember a man called Arthur Humphreys who was there he is that with a wife Humphreys with the why if you later became a professor at Leicester and he was you're not thought to be he sent me impress me on one or two occasions there I remember one particular poem of the age which which one my family as I say your family here's my favorite 20 essentially 30 suddenly I saw the cold oh yes of course every time I see rooks I think of it anyway we once spent an hour together right so you were impressed by this for me they're all that my poster it's just a degree a that not we must I even got a little tree in my garden planted from the wood where he used to go and unfortunately I thought it was a haze on that because it one of my favorite poems is song of wandering Aengus and I thought it was a the hazelnut but he mentions in that but my wife rather and musically pointed out that this tree which had been carefully brought to me turns out to be a beech tree beech nut but there we are it's it th is tree all the same good no I went to look for it that surprised not to find it there so well of the of the you mentioned you learned a lot from your contemporaries we're there any who went on to be academics or yes impressive in fact the most impressive toys a mythology know your you are a published in 1946 he gave you gave out actually he didn't and then he joined if he refused the kind of auxiliary services as you would the doctors who didn't want to be until he served his time and then he joined Unruh and he had an amazing career in briefs because nations they go to when I was away to the war you know I was in Iceland two years he was send me a book a book a month he was my book a month tour and the books that he sends were Testaments the taste of see this young man is tired little things like Virginia between act distinctive already of the classy books with he said anyway he later he and I were appointed at the same moment actually to lectureships at Newcastle and I didn't stay there very long but he did he stayed there the rest his life from this department the rest of his life of course it was not very long he died at 50 and he was the in some ways the given his age you mentioned Iceland and the war is anything else any memories of the war in your metaball contribution to it sounds like Spike Milligan and you know the war and how I want it but were there any things about the war that apart from reading having a chance to read books curious enough watch a program on television last night camicazi earliest I've recorded it haven't well it's I'm especially interested because out there I would never actually under attack like a McCarthy's that you're wearing a specific thing yes after the the European movie do in fact if you encounter the Japanese are told in the war to take off people from prison camps extraordinary experience which because I was put in charge of this operation the camps were mixed that was butchered yes about Shanghai it's very similar yes I read and said of course there were lots of their young children born in the camps known for not more than four years probably I had this extraordinary gang of men women and children I had Japanese working parties so I did have some we've skipped ahead but that is kinda see little bit of my story I think we and that after though it was not athletes can as a smallish model but it's still quite a big ship and we had to find space not only for a full crew but for all these people who men women and children and we had to find and that was the real headache man kind of water for them we had people at the showers with stop watches 30 seconds and they're all really ex civil servants or business people who've been courting Hong Kong they were all and they all expected what they couldn't get the home comforts showers long silence by the time we got to Sydney she had a long trip there's a lot of discontent I'm not really good at dealing with it I can't remember anyway by the time they left the ship of Sydney they won't reap that temper so was i I'm so glad to see the back of the wall seven colonial hammocks we asserted themselves to explain that our sailors were going without shadow night I was we say you've jumped ahead is that because there are other things about the earlier part of the wall that we were tracking their boom across a very beautiful field which had a so it seemed a reasonable proposition to go to boom across you know order to give the ships which came into the harbor and clearly the rocks would come well give them a peaceful night or two free of sadness and we have specially good at this blooming if you were well we were completely unequal to the conditions we had why does the Papas are you doing anyway the we were never ship containing thousand tons of metal in there that forms and every time we got it nearly down there would be a hurricane comes down the field of blood all the way wait for another boom to come up from Glasgow which would take about three months the monthly books we got 48 hours leave every two months Reykjavik was extremely dull but there was an English book shop specialize in the only man library I've still got rows of here that's what kept him sane anyone two years pretty dreadful people didn't go crazy men man there was no need from Iceland not even compassionate leave said man from house wife and children we would fish over the side and pull it back with the fish on yeah when you should we move on beyond the wall okay and you came back did you did you do a PhD or I got a job this was the one of new cars all of it yes yeah what when was that 1946 leau77 I was extremely really quick fully because I had any serious new this year we were given tremendous load of teaching people say there isn't there do you ever work now I can't understand already if they get ever worked it gets three years often yeah there we would have John but it was my boss and a wonderful example that someone who knows how to work steady because did you far more than his share of the teaching with them but I was landed for example with big changed course and so limited with the accommodation that you had to give the lectures twice over and that meant you're giving a lecture today for the world and John backwards who save his gentle way some of these students lots of them of course would come out of the army they were 27 years they would not to live and they all wanted to be processed quickly so that he did jobs he said they make a machine that they keep hearing about hi Richards but they didn't know anything about them they want to know and if they want to know me and tell them will you give a course of lectures with two days notice but you did that kind of thing but even remember perhaps not remember yeah I was you can put a plug for a quarterback freeze I was told last night and I've seen it but I've gotten it has a clever title I was doing it's called not entitled not entitled the prevailing sense again so you did starting a PhD recording and then on what was the subject well he was the renaissance scholar and that was what I wanted to be I wasn't I think perfectly cooked for the job but I began studying the issue of this rather on the recognize stuff that's been but the Polk County who flourished at the time of the rest was a manpower yes yes he wrote a part of an epic poem called the devil tears hmm it's adorned by thousands of those is it's trying to meet the requirement that epic should be instructive it's a universal kind of way savor this tremendous learning effectively and evokes my task provisions to find out where he got it all from mmm no disappointing unless of it was taken from popper that it's activated he said he looked it all up on me Internet however it gave me some familiarity working on his work gave me a lot familiarity with books I'd never treatises on marriage so I join all that very much did you do I mean your work is a very erudite and also has notes and cross-references did you'd develop any particular system of annotations or do just to take notes from books as you read the more you put them on cards or do I do take notes I don't take them carefully that's I sometimes find when I look back at my notes I don't know which book and I often thought I really must changed my life in that respect it's too late you took the long hand with a pen a human it for a long time and then with a typewriter McGee how do you find what you're looking for I mean are they indexed in any way or are they going to America it was done some glory gone and you have a big library what did you have a big typing I had a big library but because they met catastrophe which probably it was when I had moved has lived in luau drove yes and their mind was divorced alone man I said Santa move I moved to Pinehurst but the two thousand of my books for the skirt in transit from between strong winds I said ball hairs or something to improbable to be true what what year was this what was this when did this happen began insurance company was generous I thought gave me quite a lot of mine as I went out with the emotion of replacing Italy sound but I gave that hmm did you have a list all and know what they were I had a mock complete this this just happened that nepali prospect what was done and what was irreplaceable think aunty yes that's gonna snake things with its important description also important all that was lost you get over it off it quickly I remember sitting outside the house who knew our way of thinking this is the worst day of my life quite soon thinking I can also think of all Swiss leaves much worse than mr. Goodwrench you know you didn't get a sense of sort of relief I mean that I sometimes when I now begin to throw away papers I thought I'd have to keep I get a sense of freedom you know that I can do now rethink or do not be troubled by too much status as vehicle too many memories that was very as a softball well that we got to that by we're very long and big good time I enjoyed reading very much it's something that you ought to give him it's all Cambridge colleges as those elusive tiny unit of people with many common interests we are willing to share across disciplines you mean or within Italia with a renaissance basis you good medievalist trap who became a director how long were you there so that's between about 1950 58 you will already begin to I mean you have written that many books I'm very impressed by how much and made particularly large number in the 60s and 70s I think remember do you enjoy writing I do once I get going I find difficult to stop loving we're starting a book seems impossible to do my favorite bond of course is all things can tempt me from the craft of verse and likewise everything contempt you from sitting down and is the right back blank empty first page I always write at the top this is rubbish what I'm graduation I'll never use it but let me just put down a few that releases you yes a way out of me who Levite Pappy occasionally I get rid of it by just writing this is a oh pretty memory unusable bit of thought and then I just start and once it started it's not so bad how much you you have as I say written there I'll publish it many many books did you set yourself on the manage to write a day or no no on a good day how much did you write enormous variation a book of mine which was important from the point of view which actually happened I had been asking him a lecture wasn't ready and ask your lecture Apollo movie 8 in any part of games because there was a circus to call it that I gave a lecture on major Robert Gregory and while I was writing lecture eyes I saw something I want to say so I went and in because of the of a summer vacation right remember has never happened to be was pure luck really it was like finding oil so you wrote eighteen hundred thousand word booking in two or three months about this long long hand or by typewriter or do you always you still work on a typewriter or computer I work on computer yeah how many drops do you of any you lose computer facilities correctional duties of music lots of other are there any conditions which you think helps or encourages your writing I mean some people find going for walks sometimes a small bit of alcohol sometimes musically and have you ever noticed any anything's which stimulate you to in your writing I think silence is the best for me I've tried music as we said well yes it shortens the time available I found when I was an undergraduate I couldn't start essay isn't any way I could really do it was to having a bit very small sip of sherry which somehow just relaxed me a bit and I could start writing it was a really difficult essay

Channel: Prof Alan Macfarlane - Ayabaya

Views: 8,501

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: literary, criticism

Id: mhUmzYsSKrk

Length: 60min 7sec (3607 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 04 2012