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From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend.I'm Sam Brigger.Today, Bridget Everett.She stars in the semi-autobiographical HBO series Somebody Somewhere.
It's about a woman named Sam who returns home to Kansas to care for her dying sister, then stays, but feels like an outsider until she finds a place in the LGBTQ community, even though she's straight.
Like her character in the series, Bridget Everett has a very introverted side and a wild extroverted one. Also, writer Nick Harkaway talks about his novel Carla's Choice.
It's a new story about George Smiley, the British spymaster made famous in the books written by Harkaway's father, John le Carre.And Ken Tucker reviews a new biography of Randy Newman.
Remember, baby, you can always count on me.
I'll be home.That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
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This is Fresh Air Weekend.I'm Sam Brigger.Terry has today's first interview.I'll let her introduce it.
My guest Bridget Everett stars in the semi-autobiographical HBO series Somebody Somewhere.Everett is also known for her wild, raunchy cabaret performances in which she does stand-up and sings.
In the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote about her cabaret act, multiply the mouthy, flesh-jiggling early Bette Midler by 100, give her the super plus-sized figure and fashion sense of Divine, the John Waters diva,
and the manners of a Flintstone, and you've got a rough approximation of Bridget Everett.Holden also described her singing voice as a formidable instrument.
In Somebody, Somewhere, she plays Sam, a 40-something woman who's returned home to Manhattan, Kansas. to help care for her sister Holly, who is dying of cancer.The series begins about six months after Holly's death.
Sam is still grieving in ways she doesn't even realize.She has no direction.She's lost track of what makes her happy, except singing. and she feels like a total outsider in her small hometown, until she befriends Joel.
They work at the same office, which they both hate.He's gay and single.She's single, too.They share a sense of humor, have similar interests, confide in each other, and love being in each other's company.
Joel reminds her they were in high school show choir together, and he always loved her voice. He's the pianist at his church and has a key, so under the guise of choir practice, he holds regular parties for his LGBTQ friends at the church.
At the first one Sam attends, Joel practically forces her to get up and sing, and everyone loves it.
This community of friends becomes her community, but finding a welcoming place and a best friend in Joel doesn't heal her insecurities, like believing she's unlovable, lashing out and withdrawing from anyone who she feels has offended her, and it hasn't healed her grief.
She takes offense easily, but she also manages to offend the people she's closest to.
In this scene from the second episode in the series, she visits Joel and notices he has a vision board, a collage of photos representing what he wants to do and to have in the future.Joel is played by Jeff Hiller.
Everett's character, Sam, speaks first.
You really spent some time on this.
You gonna go to Paris?You got an Eiffel Tower there?Well, just Europe.I want to go to Europe.Okay.Oh, and then, of course, uh, everybody's hands and a heart.
Mm-hmm.Great.What's that, a blender or something?
It's a Vitamix.I just... I really want to have a nice kitchen.
And... Oh, what's this one?
Is this you and Michael and your nine adopted kids, or what?
It's not nine.It's six.Oh.And four of them are adopted, yes.
Okay. And you want to do all of this here in Kansas?
Yeah, this is where I live.
Oh, family, prayer circles, pots with cactus.
I mean, what is wrong with this?What's wrong with this?I'm dreaming about the future.This is what I want.
Well, I mean, dream all you want, Joel, but this is the future.We're in our 40s.And it hasn't happened yet, has it? It hasn't happened for you.It hasn't happened for me.And that's because it's not going to happen.
And it's definitely not going to happen here.Keep cutting up your pictures, but that's the way it is.
I'm not sure.I don't know.
Bridget Everett, welcome back to Fresh Air.I really love this series.
Hi, thank you.I'm very happy to be here.
Is this character a version of who you might have been had you not discovered a place for yourself in New York's cabaret world?Did you ever feel as hopeless about the future as Sam does?
Oh yeah.I think I waited tables for 25 years.I worked in restaurants from maybe like 14 years old until I was maybe 42.And, you know, you make money and it's great.It's nice to have a job and everything, but that's not what I wanted to do.
And so, yeah, there's a lot of years I'm like, maybe I'm just a karaoke singer.Maybe I'm, you know, and a lot of the self-worth stuff that Sam struggles with, you know, I struggle with.So we have a lot in common.
So when Sam returns to Manhattan, Kansas, after her sister dies especially, she feels like an outsider, that there's no place for her until she finds her best friend, Joel, and the LGBTQ community of friends that are his friends.
When you went back to Manhattan, Kansas, from Manhattan, New York, What was that experience like for you in terms of feeling like an outsider?I mean, you went to high school there.You still had family there.Did you feel like an outsider too?
And if so, what made you feel that way?
Well, I was born and raised in Manhattan, and I love it.There's so much that I love about it.
Manhattan, Kansas.Yeah, thank you.The Little Apple.It's true.It's there on the water tower on the side of town.I had a lot of friends growing up, and I was popular, but I never felt like I fit in because I wasn't
you know, I didn't have like traditional values, you know, it's a very conservative place and I had kind of a blue sense of humor and I was always getting in trouble for, you know, doing something naughty and, you know, not just like keg parties and whatnot, but like for my mouth, like it's not the actions that I was doing, it was like who I was that was kind of like, Oh, Bridget, you know, like that kind of thing.
So I just, I don't know.I just, I just felt like I wasn't like, it wasn't where I was supposed to be.So, So I left, but coming back over time, I've gotten a new appreciation for it, and I love it.
Yeah, you kind of never shake that feeling of not feeling like you belong somewhere.And, you know, it can run the gamut for a lot of people.But for me, it was just like, oh, my God, I'm like, my personality is a problem or something.I don't know.
Do you still feel that way?Maybe not as much because, you know, we're older.And I just felt like I was constantly being tamped down.And it makes sense. for how the kind of person I was growing up in that kind of town in the 80s, in the 70s and 80s.
And so when I came to New York, Murray Hill's one of the first people I met.I was like, Oh my God, this is like, this is what I've been looking for.These are my people.
Stage is a great place for that kind of big behavior.And you take advantage of that in the series and in real life.
Yeah, I guess I finally got my shot to be like who I wanted to be, so I really went for it and probably went a little too far.
There's a couple times there when I was really like trying to find my footing and figure out exactly who I was on stage where Murray would be like, kid, we got to sit down and talk.You don't have to go that far.
What's an example of that?
I'm not going to say it on NPR.
All right.Then give us an example of what you do do that's pretty outrageous.
OK, well, I sing about different kinds of breasts, right?I have a song about it.It rhymes with cities.And the point of that song for me is that it's kind of just making light of it.It's like, it's no big deal.These are just boobs.
My mom used to go to the grocery store in just her nightgown with no bra on.And for as conservative and buttoned up as she was, she had a really foul mouth.Her favorite cuss word, which I know you can just bleep, That's a long bleep.
But she was a real character and there was something about like she she wanted to like fit in and play by the rules but she also had this kind of off-the-rails part about her, and that's the part about her I loved.
So I think the sort of lawlessness of her going to Food for Less, a grocery store, without a bra on, I just loved that.And so now I go on stage without a bra, and I just want people to not be so locked up.I want them to come and to let go.
And so I do everything I can to help them feel free because when I grew up, I didn't feel that way.And I guess I, I chased that feeling on stage.
And you know, you're a large woman.Yeah.And some people would be covering up their bodies on stage.You really show it off and you wear revealing clothes and you use it both with pride and with comedy.
Yeah, I think it's sort of all that stuff I was talking about with my mom.My friend Larry Crone makes all my dresses.We call him the Hasselerion.And we like to lean into the size of my body and the shape of my body.
And he's always like, you have an incredible body.He's always really building me up.And so when there's something that that like a low cowl that may like slip and something pops, you know, that makes us laugh.
It's not like, oh, I'm trying to be sexy or provocative.It's more just like, oh my God, that's so funny.It's just nothing's meant to take itself too seriously.But what I do take seriously is making people feel good.
We're listening to Terry's interview with Bridget Everett.She stars in the HBO series Somebody Somewhere.We'll hear more of their conversation after a break.I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
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On the Code Switch podcast, we think about race and identity all the time.
On a recent episode, we tried to make sense of the devastating violence in Gaza by turning to James Baldwin, the writer and intellectual who thought a lot about what was happening in Israel during his lifetime.
His words speak to the present in unexpected ways.Hear how they might help you think through it, too, on the Code Switch podcast only from NPR.
This is Fresh Air Weekend.I'm Sam Brigger.Let's get back to Terry's interview with Bridget Everett.She stars in the semi-autobiographical HBO series Somebody, Somewhere.
Everett plays Sam, who returned to her hometown, Manhattan, Kansas, to take care of her sister Holly, who was dying of cancer.The series begins about six months after Holly's death.
Sam is still in Kansas, but feels like a total outsider until she becomes part of a circle of LGBTQ friends who are also outsiders.
So you and your character, Sam, are capable of a wide range of types of singing.And you can do really beautiful ballads, but also really belt it out and give it everything.And I want to play examples of that from the series.
So we're going to hear two songs back to back.And the first is a beautiful, quiet ballad.
And this takes place when you see your old high school singing teacher for the first time, because you want to develop your voice and you want to take singing lessons.And she's seeing you for the first time in years and wants to hear you sound nice.
So she asks you to just sing something that you love a cappella. So that's the first song we'll hear.And the song is called That's All.It's an old standard.And then the second song is what you choose to sing at one of the so-called choir practices.
It's really just a party for a circle of LGBTQ friends.And that song is going to be Peace of My Heart, which Janice Joplin, she was not the first to record it, but she really made it famous.And it was a real showstopper for her.
And it's one for you too.So first, the ballad, That's All, and then Peace of My Heart.
I can only give you country walks in springtime And a hand to hold when leaves begin to fall And a love whose burning light will warm the winter night That's all That's all
There are those, I am sure, who have told you they would give you the world for a toy.
All I have are these arms to enfold you and a love time can never destroy.
Did not make you feel like you were the only man.Yeah!Yes!Yeah, and did not give you everything that a woman possibly can.How do you know I did? Tell myself that I think I've had enough.And I'm going to show you, baby, that a woman can be tough.
I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it.
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby.Yeah.Take it.Take another little piece of my heart.
Do those two songs represent different sides of who you are?
Yeah, absolutely.The Peace of My Heart is from my karaoke days.That used to be a song that I would I go to this place, a parlor on the Upper West Side, which is not closed, but I would go there every Sunday night with my friends.
I would sing that on top of the bar, rip my shirt open, and then... Yeah, you rip your shirt open at the end of the song in the series.Yeah, oh yeah, that's right.I guess you can't shake the... something that stays with you.
You do enjoy revealing what's underneath.
Yeah.It's about ripping yourself open.The shirt is sort of a dumb metaphor for how I want to be outside of my skin, outside of myself.That's what it feels like.And then that's all is You know, I love that song.
And for me, singing and music is my ultimate love story.It's how I feel most connected.It's how I feel alive.And I love the beauty of it.And I also love the rip in the shirt openness of it.I think it represents all sides of how we feel.
In the series, there's family members who you're alienated from and friends who become like family.Your character Sam's best friend is Joel, the only person outside of her deceased sister who Sam thinks ever really looked out for her.
He's gay and single.Sam is single.So Sam and Joel become very close.But then Joel meets a man who he falls in love with and they become a couple. But Joel doesn't tell your character, Sam.When you find out from someone else, you're really angry.
Joel calls and texts, but your character won't respond.He finds out that you're going to be at a diner with a mutual friend, so he goes there to try to see you, or I should say your character, Sam, to apologize and to tell you how much he misses you.
Your character, Sam, speaks first.
I'm so mad at you, Joel.And I don't want to be, but I can't help it.
You have a boyfriend and you don't think I can handle it, so you just don't tell me?
Do you have any idea how stupid that makes me feel?I'm sorry.Why doesn't anybody think I can handle anything?I can handle it!God, first my sister and now you!
Wait, what happened with your sister?
No!You don't get to know! Maybe I wouldn't have been okay.Okay, fine.
But I thought that we had the kind of relationship that if there was something that was that important to you, that you would want me to know, that you would want to share it with me.But you didn't, did you?
We do have that kind of relationship.No, you keep your secrets and I don't want secrets.I just didn't think you would understand.Understand what, Joel?What?I do love what we have together, but We can't provide everything for each other.
God, I don't want you to be my boyfriend, Joel.I just don't want you to leave me.
I'm not going anywhere.Well, it can't be the same now.It's not going to be the same.
That's a scene from Somebody, Somewhere, the HBO series, and we heard my guest Bridget Everett in the role of Sam and Jeff Hiller in the role of Joel.
Have you been on both sides of that experience, the person who gets a boyfriend and then also the person who has a best friend who either
you know, finds a boyfriend or a girlfriend or gets married or who has a first child and you feel excluded, you feel like your relationship with that person can't ever be the same.
Well, I think that I've more really only been on the Sam side.And, you know, I think it's taken her so much to open up, you know, she's not like other people.A lot of people can,
collect people or meet new people and easily assimilate to that feeling.But Sam is paralyzed by new people and new emotions and new feelings.And she's found somebody that has opened her up.And now she's terrified of losing him.
But I understand his side of the thing.He's just like, he's in his bubble and he's falling in love.And I understand that.
you know, I think for Sam, and it's sort of central to the show actually, is that for some people, romantic relationships aren't the goal.Sam just wants to be loved and
and wants to have her person, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a romantic relationship.
And I think that usually in TV and film or in theater or whatever it is, or in music, like it's about boy meets boy, boy meets girl, girl meets girl, whatever the scenario is, and that's the ultimate you know, that people fall in love.
But this is it for Sam.Like, Joel is the person and she's, and it's hard for her to find that person and then see them, that she's not going to be the primary focus of his life.And she's sloppy about it.She's very sloppy about it.
And I think that that's fine.
You play a version of yourself in this series.Is that fair to say?Mm-hmm.You've been in other films and played somebody who may resemble you, but it's not you in the way that this has very direct connections to your life.
What's it like to kind of play yourself in something that's also fictional?
I like it because I'm not a trained actor. if there's something that emotionally resonates with me, it's easier for me to relax and connect to the scene.
I also like it because I feel like the character of Sam is somebody that you don't really see, and she's got a lot of problems and a lot of flaws, and she's a plus-size woman, a middle-age, and I don't know, there's a lot I love playing about her and getting to represent her, but for me, I don't know, I'm just like,
It's so unbelievable.I'm talking to you right now about a show that I am a part of on HBO.Like I just, and then I play a part that's perfectly suited for me.This will never happen again.And it's really incredible.
Well, I want to congratulate you on the series.I really love it.I wish I was friends with the people on it.I mean, with the characters.Not that I wouldn't mind being friends with you.
But, you know, they're all such, like, interesting, complex, and, you know, flawed, but wonderful people.
Well, I hope that you enjoy the new season.I think it's the best season yet.I'm so proud of the show, and we really appreciate you having me on and talking about it, because we want more people to see it.
Bridget Everett stars in the HBO series Somebody, Somewhere.Some people don't know Randy Newman's name, but they do know his celebrated movie songs, like Toy Story's You Got a Friend in Me.
Some people also know him as the guy who wrote a big novelty hit about short people.And a smaller number are aware of a large body of work that ranks among the finest pop music to emerge from Los Angeles in the latter part of the 20th century.
A new biography of Newman by Robert Hilburn takes its title from one of Newman's songs.It's called A Few Words in Defense of Our Country, and rock critic Ken Tucker says it presents all of these facets of Newman's life.
What has happened down here is the wind have changed.Clouds roll in from the north and it start to rain.
Three of Randy Newman's uncles were Hollywood film composers, and their skill and success was apparently, according to this new biography, a huge burden for a young Randy Newman, who knew he, too, wanted to be a musician, but doubted his talent.
He took refuge in music his uncles ignored, rock and roll, especially the tumbling piano hits of Fats Domino. Rock music gave Newman an escape route into both fantasy and social commentary, and soon he was making up characters and inhabiting them.
I'm drunk right now, baby, but I've got to be.I never could tell you what you mean to me.I loved you the first time I saw you. And I always will love you, friend
That's the achingly beautiful Marie from the 1974 album Good Old Boys.In Robert Hilburn's telling, Newman is torn between two impulses as an artist.He wants to have hits.Writing pop music, after all, means it should be popular.
And he wants to say something, to express opinions on racism, sexism, and the always fraught grandeur of the American dream.
I don't love the mountains I don't love the sea I don't love Jesus He never done a thing for me I ain't pretty like my sister I'm small like my dad I'm good like my mama There's money that I love
That's the thrillingly sour It's Money That I Love from 1979.This biography spends its nearly 500 pages trying to get at the sources of Newman's range and ambition.Along the way, the book describes a recording industry that no longer exists.
When Newman's childhood pal Lenny Warrenker became a Warner Brothers executive, he was able to sign Newman and nurture his friends' lovely but eccentric, oblique but abrasive music for the near decade it took to yield a hit, Short People, in 1977.
No record company would do that nowadays, but what Warners ended up getting was far more than a novelty smash. They got rich film scores, character sketches of the exploited and the creepy, and much prickly historical observation.
Just a few words.Defense of our country.It's time at the top.Could be coming to an end.We don't want your love. That's the song that gives this book its title, 2008's A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.
What I was struck by over and over as I prepared this review was how much Newman's work ever since his debut in 1968 anticipates the times we're living through today. The writing in this biography isn't really worthy of its subject.
Hilburn was a workman-like newspaper writer, pop critic for the Los Angeles Times for 35 years, who rarely manufactures gleaming prose.
But here, he's performed the heroic, brute labor of interviewing seemingly everybody in Newman's life and organizes it into a narrative that will convince any relative newcomer to Newman's work that this guy is some kind of genius.
I have nothing left to say But I'm gonna say it anyway Thirty years upon the stage And I hear the people say Why won't he go away?
I pass the hoses of the dead They're calling me to join their group But I stagger on instead Dear God, sweet God, protect me from the truth.I'm dead, but I don't know it.He's dead.He's dead.I'm dead, but I don't know.He's dead.He's dead.
I'm dead, but I don't know.
Of course, defining Newman's genius has always been the difficult part, if only because it's so wide-ranging.He's composed some of the prettiest melodies and cleverest lyrics of the modern era.
He's sung in the voice of a slave trader in the song Sail Away, and in the character of an unabashed racist in the song Rednecks.Newman essentially introduced the unreliable narrator to singer-songwriter pop,
And for that, he has been misunderstood as agreeing with the redneck or actually hating short people.Now more than ever, he's not a pop star for the mawkish, literal-minded strain in our current culture.Randy Newman is now 80 years old.
One of his masterpieces, Good Old Boys, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.It remains so alive, so vital.I urge you to go and listen to it.
♪ I'll be home ♪ ♪ I'll be home ♪ ♪ When your nights are troubled ♪ ♪ And you're all alone ♪ ♪ When you're feeling down ♪
There's no one else around to keep you from coming for me.Remember, baby, you can always count on me.
I'll be home.I'll be home.I'll be home.
Kentucker reviewed the new biography of Randy Newman, written by Robert Hilburn, called A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.Coming up, writer Nick Harkaway will talk about his novel, Carla's Choice.
It's a new story about George Smiley, the British spymaster made famous in the books written by Harkaway's father, John le Carre.I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
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As we're all navigating a divisive election, no matter what happens, the question remains, how the heck are we going to move forward together?
So in this season of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, stories from people who made a choice to confront the conflicts in their own lives head on.
And in sharing stories from the bravest among us, maybe we can take their lead and find some hope for the rest of us.Get the StoryCorps podcast wherever you listen.
This is Fresh Air Weekend.I'm Sam Brigger.John Le Carre wrote books about spies that transcended the genre.Philip Roth called his 1986 novel, A Perfect Spy, quote, the best English novel since the war.
His most beloved character was George Smiley, the physically unassuming but brilliant British spymaster, the protagonist of many of Le Carre's novels, including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.
Le Carre, whose real name was David Cornwell, died in 2020, but George Smiley returns in a new novel called Carla's Choice.It's written by Cornwell's son Nick, who goes by his own pen name, Nick Harkaway.
Harkaway is an excellent writer himself who blends elements of science fiction and fantasy into his literary novels.He's written eight, including Tiger Man, Gnomon, and Titanium Noir.
Carla's Choice takes place in 1963 between Le Carre's novels The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Smiley has returned from the circus, the nickname for the British Overseas Intelligence Agency, after an agent and his lover were killed in East Berlin, their lives sacrificed for the success of a mission, a decision Smiley initially agreed to but has come to regret.
But Smiley is called back into service by his boss, known as Control, to conduct one simple interview.However, that leads to much more than he bargained for.
The novel also serves as the origin story of Smiley's nemesis in the KGB, known only as Carla. So Nick Harkaway, welcome to Fresh Air.Hello.Tell me, how did you decide to write a George Smiley novel, and why now?
I actually decided not to.
We had this conversation running inside the family, because when we inherited the estate, the literary estate, we inherited an obligation to try to keep the books read, to keep the name alive, but more than anything else, to keep the books in circulation and so on.
And in this moment, The way that you do that is by focusing attention on them through adaptations, through new material, through essentially commercial projects.
So the conversation we were having was, what can we do to put the books back in everybody's mind?How do we fulfill this obligation?And the obvious thing is, you need a new book.So I had a list in my head of people who would be amazing
at writing a new George Smiley novel.And I had decided I wasn't going to suggest I should do it.I had firm reasons why I wouldn't.
And we were having the meeting and my brother Simon said, so before we get started, there's a really – it's quite a compelling logic that it should be you.And I was like, yeah, I know.And he said, no, but I mean I'm asking you, will you do it?
In that moment, all the reasons why I wouldn't, it's incredibly challenging.It's this extraordinary piece of 20th century literary history.It's this, it's that.All these things became the reasons why I would.
Let's talk a little bit about George Smiley.He's physically unremarkable.He's a pudgy, middle-aged guy who you'd likely forget if you saw him in a crowd, and that's in part intentional.
One character, when first meeting him, thinks he has more like the personality of a green grocer rather than a spymaster. and not how she would imagine what a spy was like.
And you write, he has a wit so dry that many people miss it and mistake it for dullness.So why do you think your father originally wrote the character like that?
I think he wanted, I mean, I think first of all, it was because he wanted to say that the spy world is not the world of James Bond, the one that he knew.Matthew 34 It was almost an antidote to the James Bond novels originally.Daniel Yeah.
And, you know, in the UK, you had James Bond, you had Bulldog Drummond, you had these very, you know, very much action hero type spy stories.And his experience was not that.It wasn't the sort of
incredibly energetic, combat-orientated people, you know, sort of flawless heroes.It was ordinary people doing a hard, endless, possibly slightly futile thing, and banging up against their own floors.And he wanted, you know, to show the humanity.
Showing the humanity so that you can understand it and feel compassionate about it is a big part of everything he wrote. So I think that's where it is.And Smiley is, in many ways, the epitome of that.He's just this guy.
And yet, at the same time, of course, he's this tremendously intelligent reasoner.And he's empathic.And he understands people before they understand themselves.
So you have, on the one hand, a character who's an everyman in a world that feels appropriately run down to the universe we know.
And on the other, you have a kind of Sherlock Holmes character who can explain to you the impossibly complex, stupid, brutal realities of the world that you see around you, and tell you why they are that way, and even control them a little bit to make them less so.
So it's that combination which I think makes him incredibly appealing.
I'd like you to just read a little bit from the book.This is as Smiley is going back to the circus for the first time.He's been asked to come back after he's retired. And he's been enjoying his life.He's been spending time with his wife.
He hasn't really been thinking about espionage.He's experiencing joy in a way that he hasn't in a very long time.But now he has to return to the circus, which is the nickname for the intelligence agency.
And he has to go through this transformation in order to become a spy again.And I asked you to shorten the excerpt, but if you could please read it for us, that'd be great.
For Smiley, the experience of returning to the circus that evening was like a willed drowning.It was as if, as he climbed St.Martin's Lane in the direction of his old office, he were making his way down onto the plain of an abyssal sea.
For the last months he had lived in a daylight world, had espoused its meanings and attitudes, and enjoyed the simple pleasures of other men.
Now, as he approached the familiar door, he found that he was once again engaging in the exercise of paranoia which had governed his former life.
Deliberately, he let the nature and movements of his fellow pedestrians function as a random factor in his own movements, making up ridiculous rules as he went along.
The notion of constant danger was a madness that men in his profession must both inhabit and put aside, and the truth was more complex, that the world could change in an instant from clear and kind to desperate and cold, and the trick to survival lay in knowing that instant before it happened, and not when.
This was a skill he had once possessed, but could not guarantee until he tested it again.By the time he reached the circus, he was, as he had been for the three preceding decades of his life, afraid.
That's Nick Harkaway reading from his new book, Carless Choice.So Nick, tell us about that idea that you came up with, that in order to be a spy, you really must be afraid.
I think The job of the spy in many ways is to think the unthinkable, to ask yourself the questions which in normal life you would dismiss as absurd.I had some brief discussions.
I did a consultancy gig here in the UK where people were asking me to look at what are the unseeable threats, what are the invisible ones.And it's very hard.You can't look at the back of your own head in the mirror.
But a spy's job is to do that all the time.
And to do it, if you're an operative in the field, to do it in the micro as well, to ask yourself whether the waiter is putting something in your drink, you know, to question whether the person you see delivering the mail is actually a postman.
And, I mean, we are to a certain extent speaking of fantasy life, but hypervigilance, that sense of looking at everything twice and seeing things out of place, the psychological trait that people develop who've been in traumatic situations for prolonged periods of time, I have absolutely no doubt that that is an aspect of being in the field in an espionage context.
How did you approach the language of this book?It seems to me that you're emulating your father's style of writing, which I think is quite different from your own instincts as a writer.Your father tended to write pretty straightforward,
elegant but simple sentences.And I think when I read your previous books, I feel like you tend to be playful in the structure of your sentences.They're almost Victorian in their complexity.Sometimes I feel like I'm on a roller coaster and
the pleasure is sort of watching the daring of the sentence.And there's like humor almost embedded in the sentence structure.So how did you go about writing more in your father's style?
So lots to unpack there.First thing is my father's style isn't constant across his writing.I mean, of course it's not, because it's a huge career.
But with the Smiley books particularly, you have the first three, Call for the Dead, Murder of Quality, and Spy Came from the Cold.
And they are, as you described, short sentences, quite declarative, they're almost noirish, they have quite simple plot lines. And they obey this dictum that he had that he liked to trot out from civil service telegrams and civil service reports.
400 words, no adjectives.They're very clear and stark.And then by the time you get to Tinker Tailor, you've had a couple of books in between, you have a different ethos at work.The language is much more roving, much more illusory.
the book is more complex, the structures are more complex, and it's more poetic.So that's the first thing.There's a lot going on.And then his language changes again in the post-Cold War novels.There's a whole other thing going on there.
So that's number one.Second thing is, yes, my writing in my books does tend to be denser, playful and so on.But part of that with my earlier books is an absolutely determined attempt to put some clear blue water between him and me.
And the thing that I realized when I started talking about Carlos Choice because I would have been so great to have this thought before I wrote the book, not because it would have changed anything, but because it would have made me feel much safer.
I was born in 1972 and I grew up with my dad reading his work, new pages.He'd write in the early morning and then come to the breakfast table, read them across the table to my mother.
Sometimes she'd type them up, you know, and then he'd be reading them again in the afternoon from the TypeScript or he'd be working on the TypeScript the following morning.And incidentally, I love this.They used to use scissors and a stapler.
That was cut and paste. Because we're pre-digital word processing.But in the fundamental years where I was developing language at all, An hour, two hours of my day consisted of hearing the George Smiley novels being written.
So when I came to write this, and I thought, I got to turn the dial a little bit towards dad, it was 1%, one notch, and suddenly it was there.
Really?It was that easy to come to?
Um, why did you decide to, to use a pen name?
I mean, you, I think you probably could have gotten away with being Nick Cornwell since you wouldn't have been associated with your father because, well, perhaps you would have been, but he was more known as a novelist as John le Carre.
So, and so there's two reasons why.And the first one you just experienced, which is saying Nick Cornwell is quite difficult.Um, it's just genuinely, it's not well, but you don't have to do the double C in the middle.Right.Right.
The second thing is actually – I mean you're right and you're wrong about whether I would have been associated with my dad.
The name of David Cornwell was sufficiently well-known certainly within the industry that it wouldn't have been a very big fig leaf.
When you go into any bookshop in London and look in the C section for Cornwall, you find Patricia Cornwall and Bernard Cornwall.And between them, they have, I don't know, a hundred books or something more.
And I was like, I'm going to write one book, and they're going to put it right next to these.And no one's ever going to find it.Never mind if they never look for it.Even if they look for it, they're never going to see me.
And I just thought, OK, I'm just going to have a pseudonym.And the other thing was, to be honest, from my father's life that having a pseudonym is a really useful shield.
If somebody wants to yell at Nick Hockaway, they can really do it as much as they like.In the end, however much it upsets me, it doesn't get to me.But when somebody comes for you in your real name, that's a different experience.
Why Harkaway?Because it does kind of rhyme with Le Carre, doesn't it?
I know, isn't that weird?I did not notice that until much too late to change it.I think it's because I just, again, like osmotically, I believe that the rhythm of a pseudonym should have, the second part should have three syllables.
You know the story about my dad choosing his own pseudonym, that he was told he should have a good, solid, like two monosyllables, good English name.And he was so irritated by this advice that he chose to make up a French name instead.
So anyway, yeah.So when I decided I wanted a name, I went to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and I literally let it flop open and stuck pins in the words.And I had a list of 20 absolutely stupid names.Hockway was the last one.
Can you give us another one? Do you have a name?
Cantaloupe.Thomas Cantaloupe.Which would not have been good.
No.I saved the most important question for last.So I hope you're prepared for this.I am.I am.For a while, you had a job writing copy for a lingerie catalog. Yes, briefly.So I just was wondering what that was like.
And I assume that a lot of lingerie is purchased by men and not by women as gifts that perhaps women will appreciate, perhaps not.So I was wondering, when you're writing copy, were you writing from the perspective of a man or a woman?
First of all, I think we need to loosen our sense of who wears the lingerie in this situation.It's open season.
Second of all, so this was a friend of mine, ran a boutique in North London and she had this kind of wildly glamorous, goofy selection which was beloved of all kinds of people.
And she said to me, we're doing the catalog, will you do text for the catalog?And I said, sure, what do you want?And she had created this extraordinary character, Miss Lala, who was the kind of muse of the boutique.
And she wanted it all written in the voice of Miss Lala.
And so it was less about describing the number of clips and buttons and how frightfully erotic the whole thing is and more about expressing a kind of massive joy in the ridiculousness and the beauty and the preposterousness of the whole thing and doing a kind of
Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, kind of, you know.And it was huge fun.
And it terrifies me that that biography is still out there in the world for you to find.Can you channel a little Miss Lala for us? You know, I honestly can't.Let me see.It sounds like the Jay Peterman catalogue from Seinfeld.
Yeah, well, no, it was kind of, oh, my darlings, you need to understand the sheer iridescent beauty of this piece.It makes me feel so divine.
And of course, except that it was quite fruity, and I'm not sure what we're allowed to say, but, you know, probably not very much.No, exactly.No, it was about the joy of being liberated into a world of passion.That was the brief.
We should all hope for that. Well, Nick Harkaway, it's been a real pleasure to have you on the show and speak with you.And I love the new book.Congratulations.Thank you for being here.Thank you so much.
Nick Harkaway's new book is called Carless Choice.Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.
For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Sam Brigger.
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