‘A Perfect Book’ – John Betjeman and Excellent Women

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Barbara Pym, Barbara Pym Society, Carolyn Pickles, Excellent Women, Frances Grey, Georgia Powell, Jane Slavin, John Betjeman, Malcolm Sinclair, Martin Hutson, Penelope Wilton, St Alban's Centre, Tristram Powell

For John Betjeman, Barbara Pym’s novel Excellent Women was ‘a perfect book’. Nobody listening to a splendid adaptation of it at the Barbara Pym Society Spring meeting in London would disagree. Probably some of the audience had read it so many times they practically knew every delicious line.

But what came across forcibly was that the novel, as adapted here by Georgia Powell and directed by Tristram Powell, worked so brilliantly in the format of a radio play. Large chunks and several characters were cut out but it was still perfect. This must be because the book is really written as a series of delightfully observed scenes; we are not waiting impatiently to see what happens next but savouring the fullness of every moment.

Every character in a Barbara Pym novel has a distinctive way of speaking; what they say could not possibly be spoken by anyone else. Another writing lesson here, I found myself thinking. I happily shut my eyes and listened to the actors playing the characters who are always living in the heads of Barbara Pym devotees, some of them taking on multiple parts – Frances Grey, Malcolm Sinclair, Martin Hutson, Jane Slavin, Carolyn Pickles – and Penelope Wilton as the narrator capturing the sly comedy of Barbara Pym’s voice.

Excellent Women was published in 1952, twenty years after John Betjeman’s first radio programme. If he’d been sitting with us in the St Alban’s Centre on Sunday he too would have revelled in this adaptation of the book he described as perfect. As he wrote, ‘Excellent Women is England, and, thank goodness, it is full of them.’

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Barbara Pym – more please

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Barbara Pym, Finding a Voice, Short stories

In a radio talk recorded in February 1978 and transmitted on BBC Radio 3 in April, less than two years before she died, Barbara Pym described a favourite television quiz game, where panellists were asked to guess the authorship of certain passages read out to them. ‘There were no prizes for guessing, no moving belt or desirable objects passing before their eyes, just the pleasure and satisfaction of recognising the unmistakable voice of …  whoever it might be. I think that’s the kind of immortality most authors would want – to feel that their work would be immediately recognisable as having been written by them and by nobody else. But of course it’s a lot to ask for!’

It might be, but Barbara Pym’s voice is entirely and delightfully unmistakable; it’s unlike any other author, however longingly we search. There just isn’t enough of it for us readers – if only she’d written more! Blame her publishers who rejected her seventh novel An Unsuitable Attachment in 1963. Thank goodness she went on writing during the following fourteen years of rejection – though probably not as much as she might have done…

One of the joys of Barbara Pym’s novels is the way characters reappear. They are our old friends… Here in WRITINGS is a short story written as a light-hearted tribute to Barbara Pym featuring some of them:  Tread Softly in the Ladies.

 

 

 

Under attack – when it hurts

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Barbara Pym, Crampton Hodnet

Anyone who has ever given or lent a copy of a much-loved novel to a friend is likely to be familiar with the occasional disappointing response. It might include the suggestive silence, or the apologetic, half-embarrassed ‘sorry, not my kind of thing’ or even (and this is worse!)  ‘I can see why you enjoyed it, but…’

It may still surprise and even disconcert when the people we love don’t ‘get’ an author who means so much to us, but we’ve learnt not to allow this unaccountable gap to mar our friendship. It doesn’t change what we feel about them.

But comedians Kathy Burke and Tom Allen savaging Barbara Pym as ‘twee’ and ‘boring’ in a Radio 4 discussion of the novel Crampton Hodnet provoked bewilderment among Barbara Pym readers. How was it possible that these two critics had entirely missed the point of her novels?

One comment among the extensive online discussion which especially resonated was that criticism of Barbara Pym feels personal to him in a way that it doesn’t with other authors. But why should we mind when Barbara Pym is dismissed or mocked when we can shrug off adverse criticism of other authors we enjoy?  Perhaps it is because Barbara Pym writes so tellingly (and with a sharp wit that is always funny but somehow never cruel) about ordinary people, dealing with the small things of life which are also the big things.  Twee and boring seem to be the wrong words for such richness.

But it’s more than that. When Barbara Pym’s characters make reappearances in her later novels, it’s like being given news of old and dear friends. They have an extraordinary habit of living alongside us; in wilder moments we may even feel we are becoming one of them. No wonder an attack can hurt…

 

 

The most delightful competition ever

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Barbara Pym, Barbara Pym Society North American Conference

If you are a fan of Barbara Pym and looking for the perfect short story competition to enter, the Barbara Pym Society’s 2018 Ellen J Miller Memorial competition could be made for you.

What could be more blissful than the brief which is that entries must prominently feature one or more characters from Barbara Pym’s published novels, in any setting or situation the author chooses? Readers of Barbara Pym know how her characters continue to live beside them, in moments of recognition, both painful and comic, while offering endlessly comforting human solidarity …

The prize for the winning entry is $250 and the story will be read at the Society’s annual North American Conference held in Boston March 2018. The deadline is 4 December. Details at http://www.barbara-pym.org/

 

 

Reading aloud – pain and pleasure

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Barbara Pym, Eileen Atkins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Georgette Heyer, Ian Holm, Jane Austen, John Westbrook, Juliet Stevenson, Prunella Scales

Reading our own work aloud to ourselves is one of the pieces of advice handed out by creative writing tutors. At the proof-reading stage it’s an efficient way of picking up errors because it slows us down and reveals the camouflaged nasties that get missed by the skimming eye. It’s also effective for spotting all those other faults to which we can remain curiously blind – an awkwardly constructed sentence, ungraceful rhythm, accidental rhymes.

But when we read our novel aloud to other people, say in a writing group, we will inevitably include our own choice of intonation and expression to convey what we intend future readers to experience for themselves, what we as authors hear clearly in our own head. But future readers won’t have this add-on. Our written words must do all the work. Which is why it might be a very good idea to get another member to read for us. For only then will we be made aware of possible ambiguities of meaning, unconvincing dialogue, slips in point of view, confusion over who is speaking …

More work, there always is, but it could be sustained by a pleasant daydream about who we might choose should our novel ever be turned into an audiobook …  Unsurprisingly my own wishlist would include Juliet Stevenson and Eileen Atkins (marvellous at Barbara Pym novels and everything else too) and Prunella Scales (I can’t imagine another voice who so perfectly captures the wit and spirit of favourites like Jane Austen’s Emma and Elizabeth Gaskell’s  Wives and Daughters.

And then recent listening reminds me of Ian Holm’s wonderful reading of The Woman in White and for ultimate comfort when feeling tired or ill, John Westbrook provides the perfect restorative with Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy …

Listening to a good novel read aloud by someone in perfect sympathy with the text: one of life’s greatest delights. Does anybody have any recommendations?

 

 

Anglicanism and Women Novelists: A Special Relationship

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Barbara Pym, crime fiction, P D James

 

The lecture at the 2017 May meeting of the Barbara Pym Society  in London looks like being a good one for anyone interested in the relationship between Anglicanism, women novelists and detective fiction. It’s being given by Alison Shell, a professor in the English department at University College London. She is currently co-editing Anglican Women Novelists (Bloomsbury 2018) to which she will be contributing an essay on P D James – Baroness James was an honorary  life member of the Society and a great admirer of Barbara Pym’s books.

The Barbara Pym Society website is http://www.barbara-pym.org

Barbara Pym and Jane Austen

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Alexander McCall Smith, Barbara Pym, Jane Austen, Philip Larkin, Salley Vickers, Virago Modern Classics

Jane Austen is even more revered in America than in the UK – if that is possible. The same might be said of Barbara Pym whom Alexander McCall Smith described as ‘a modern Jane Austen’. Both authors have distinctive instantly recognisable voices; prose which can be savoured over and over again.

Salley Vickers in her introduction to the Virago Modern Classics edition of Barbara Pym’s Less Than Angels explains the points of resemblance between the novels of the two authors as being ‘similarly restrained in tone, with that glimmering undersheen of English irony’. It is this perhaps that appeals so much to Americans.

At a recent meeting of the Barbara Pym society in London where members heard an altogether delightful lecture about servants and home help of all kinds in her novels it was noticeable that it was the Americans in the audience who asked the more rigorous questions. Barbara Pym’s work is included alongside Jane Austen in English literature degree syllabuses at American universities.

So-called quiet novels are liable to last longest in the collective consciousness, argues Salley Vickers, and that ‘nothing in Jane Austen’s lifetime compares with her current popularity; her tombstone in Winchester Cathedral makes no mention of her career as a writer.’

A connection between the two novelists that is particularly appealing is when Barbara Pym wrote to Philip Larkin: ‘Here I am sixty-one (it looks worse spelled out in words) and only six novels published – no husband, no children.’ He wrote back: ‘Didn’t Jane Austen write six novels and not have a husband or children?’

 

 

 

 

 

 

A rose by any other name…

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All Desires Known, Barbara Pym, Godliness and Good Learning, Names

Choosing names for the characters in a novel isn’t the delightful self-indulgent process you might imagine it to be. A whole load of complications and worries crop up, some of them too late…

There are obvious guidelines. Don’t have characters with similar sounding names or even starting with the same letter. Vary the length of names. Avoid names that have developed particular associations in the modern mind. Get the generation right. A man under eighty is unlikely to be called Reginald, Derek or Eric. Women called Joan, Dorothy or Barbara will probably be seventy plus.

But already one is entering a minefield.

The off-stage mother-in-law in my novel All Desires Known is nicknamed Buttery Barbara by my heroine; Barbara is someone who spreads her fundamentalist views too thickly – at least in the eyes of her daughter-in-law Nell. The reader may perceive that Nell is an unreliable witness; the worst we actually gather about Barbara is that she overdoes her well-meant evangelism. Buttery is nicely ambiguous… All the same, apologies had to be made to the three altogether lovely Barbaras I know – and Barbara Pym is my favourite author.

Some characters cry out to be called by a particular name; they wouldn’t become as real with any other. The godly chaplain in All Desires Known was always going to be called Martin (after reading the moving story of Martin White Benson, son of Archbishop Benson, who died aged seventeen of meningitis, in David Newsome’s fascinating study of Victorian education and Christianity, Godliness and Good Learning). Illogically, my sadistic bully had to have the surname Benson. Unfortunately this is also the surname of my kind doctor. More explanations required.

It was only at proof-reading stage that I realised my heroine and slippery husband had almost identical names to the happily married couple down the road. Some hasty last-minute adjustment ensued. Worst of all was discovering that a character who comes to a sticky end shares a name with someone to whom an old friend had just become engaged.

So, some unexpected snags, and alarm about hurting people’s feelings. But I suppose you’d never publish anything at all if you worry too much. A remark attributed to the American film producer Samuel Goldwyn offers a comforting perspective: ‘Now why did you name your baby ‘John’? Every Tom, Dick and Harry is named ‘John’.

Church Times – reviews worth reading

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All Desires Known, Barbara Pym, Church Times

Reading reviews of one’s published writing can be a mixed experience. Grateful pleasure when the reviewer has understood what one was trying to achieve, a disconcerting recognition that a particular criticism may be justified and occasional irritation when it’s obvious that the reviewer has apparently only read the first and last pages.

A clear, accurate and sensitive review of Tanya van Hasselt’s novel All Desires Known  in the Church Times 7th November written by Sarah Meyrick left the author feeling thankful that here was someone who appreciated the story for what it was – and who wanted more about the character at the religious heart of it. But this will have to come in another novel…

Here’s an extract from the Church Times review, reproduced with permission from the editor.

‘… an easy and enjoyable read. The author clearly knows the world of schools from the inside, and paints a largely convincing picture of a family in meltdown. The book asks questions about betrayal and forgiveness – just how possible is this? What are the boundaries between patient and psychiatrist – and where does the responsibility for a patient’s well-being begin and end? Do we have a right to be happy?

‘The author’s experience as a writer of short stories (she recently won joint first prize in the Barbara Pym centenary competition) shows in her sure touch…’

The link to the Church Times: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/

spinsters of the splendid kind

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Barbara Pym, heroines, India Knight, spinsters

Was the great tradition in fiction of Splendid Spinsters pushed into obscurity by the arrival of Bridget Jones?

This is India Knight’s opening premise in her enjoyable piece in the Guardian Saturday 25 October  It’s the fear, she says, actually the all-out terror, of spinsterhood that drives the chick lit fiction ushered in by Bridget Jones. Our troubles as women can only be assuaged and our lives fulfilled if we find ourselves a man.

It doesn’t stop there. Even when a partner is acquired, before long there’s the relentless work of holding onto him, and so this is the stuff of the sequels. Because, as India Knight puts it, the still single women are busy scanning rooms, wondering whose husband to nick. She calls it a woeful scenario and a depressing way of looking at love.

It’s at this point that India Knight confesses that her first proper literary crushes were on Barbara Pym heroines, those excellent women who don’t moan about their lot but live fully with all the pleasures and disappointments, big and small, that come their way.

Our appetite for the arrested development of chick lit has apparently faded. Now writers are serving up complex and steely heroines, sometimes dipped into dark and violent ink. The strong spinster in all but name is back and most readers can’t get enough of her. But India Knight confesses that she still likes the quiet old-fashioned type of spinster too, and hurtles back at intervals during the year to soak up the richness of Pym’s creations.