Collected Columns (eBook)

Michael Frayn (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
512 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-32890-1 (ISBN)

Infos

One of the funniest writers of his generation, Michael Frayn has been writing humorous newspaper columns since 1959, principally for the 'Guardian' and 'Observer', and originally came to prominence as the thrice weekly purveyor of these short, surreal, razor-sharp explorations of human foibles, sex, politics, manners, and the events of the day. This volume brings together 110 of his finest and funniest pieces from over the years, selected and introduced by Michael Frayn himself, and is an unmissable treat for the many fans of his unique comic voice, as well as a revelation for fans of the award-winning literary novels and plays of his later career.

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong, Spies and Skios. His seventeen plays range from Noises Off, recently chosen as one of the nation's three favourite plays, to Copenhagen, which won the 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.

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One of the funniest writers of his generation, Michael Frayn has been writing humorous newspaper columns since 1959, principally for the "e;Guardian"e; and "e;Observer"e;, and originally came to prominence as the thrice weekly purveyor of these short, surreal, razor-sharp explorations of human foibles, sex, politics, manners, and the events of the day. This volume brings together 110 of his finest and funniest pieces from over the years, selected and introduced by Michael Frayn himself, and is an unmissable treat for the many fans of his unique comic voice, as well as a revelation for fans of the award-winning literary novels and plays of his later career.

Rezensionen

The master of the comic form.

Textauszug

Almost too utterly common entrance

‘A most unusual seminar,’ says the heading on an advertisement which has been appearing in undergraduate magazines recently. The advertisement is issued by a firm who describe themselves as ‘the most brilliant of all the advertising agencies,’ looking for ‘the most brilliant of all this year’s graduands.’

‘They propose to invite up to twenty of you,’ it continues, ‘after a long interrogation in London, to spend a weekend with them during the Easter vacation. The hospitality at this weekend will be almost vulgarly profuse. Continual distraction will be offered. But there will also be one written paper of the most taxing kind. It will need great stamina to endure it all.’

It certainly will if this is anything like the weekend which Harris-Harris, the brighter than brightest agency, hold each year at Wosby Hall, the ancestral home of the Selection-Board family. Here the daiquiris flow like water, served by top models in fishnet stockings, while fashionable dance bands play softly among the Picassos.

‘The ambience here,’ says Garth Peacock, one of the agency men assigned to the job, waving an odoriferous Balkan cigarette at the time-hallowed setting, ‘is almost, comment dit-on, vulgarly profuse, don’t you think?’

‘Er, yes,’ mumbles R. Slodge, former President of the Oxford Union. Garth Peacock presses a tiny pocket transmitter key which registers at headquarters the damning comment ‘This man considers himself superior to popular cultural values.’

‘Have another cigar, Nubbs,’ says Peacock to the former Cambridge stroke. ‘Er, no thanks,’ replies Nubbs, and Peacock signals ruthlessly ‘Deficient in phallic motivation’. Nubbs passes the solid gold humidor on to Cropper, once editor of the Isis, but Cropper, who has smoked five cigars already, shakes his head queasily. Peacock adds another comment to the Nubbs report: ‘Complete failure to persuade in face of difficult market conditions.’

‘I hope,’ says Peacock, ‘you’re not all finding the weekend too utterly boring?’

‘Not me,’ replies Potkin, the noted Oxford actor, gesturing for another bottle of champagne. ‘Can’t soak the stuff up fast enough.’ (‘A certain lack of moral fibre’, signals Peacock.)

‘Oh, far from it,’ adds Mark Smoothe, undergraduate son of the Minister of Chance and Speculation, also ordering another bottle. ‘I think the amenities we are enjoying here are a fitting background to the sort of seminar which, today more than ever, plays an absolutely vital part in the progressive development of the free world.’ (‘A brilliant creative mind’, transmits Peacock.)

‘Where’s the lavatory?’ demands Cropper urgently. (‘A poor ability to choose language that brings out the most attractive aspects of a subject’, notes Peacock.)

By the time Cropper has hacked his way back through the almost vulgarly deep pile of the carpet, bowing footmen have ushered the whole party on to the luxuriously appointed assault course, where Roscoe is waiting to put them through an almost disgustingly elegant initiative test.

‘What we should like you to do,’ he explains, ‘if it’s not too almost utterly tedious, is to imagine that this ditch is full of synthetic raspberry jam. You have to get the synthetic raspberry jam over this wall of consumer resistance without touching the real raspberry jam made by the same firm. To do it you’ve got nothing but four feet of tarred twine, two empty oil drums, one model in black lace underwear, and £100,000 …’

When the fleet of Rolls-Royces takes them back to the almost sickeningly exquisite house, they face the most testing moment of all. One by one they are shown into the presence of J. B., the head of the agency himself, as he sits in the Sheraton Room surrounded by Cellini champagne-coolers and Fabergé foot-warmers.

‘Sit down, Mr Nubbs,’ he murmurs in an almost insupportably aristocratic tone. ‘Tell me, Mr Nubbs, do you believe in God?’

‘Er, well, I, er …’

‘Of course you do. Take a cigar and then sell me the idea in fifty punchy, easy-to-read words.’

Yes, it certainly demands stamina. And remember, stamina demands Fub, for only new wonder Fub has magic Zub!

(1962)

Among the funny bones

The evolution of man has not ceased. By the inscrutable processes of natural selection there is evolving from homo sapiens a new and more complex species of anthropoid: homo jocans, or Joky Man.

Homo sapiens has been defined as a tool-making animal. Homo jocans is a gag-making machine. Just as homo sapiens became ashamed of his urge to copulate and sublimated it into a culture of solid complexity, so Joky Man has become ashamed of his urge to communicate and is sublimating it into a culture of elaborate facetiousness.

I think Joky Man will prove to be the dominant form. Pre-Joky Man will be made to feel smaller and smaller by Joky Man for failing to see the joke, until he becomes entirely extinct. By the end of the Uranium Age, Joky Man will cover the whole of the Western Hemisphere. The archaeologists will find his tumuli everywhere, and the remains of Joky Man inside will be instantly identifiable; the skulls will all be trying to keep a straight face.

Our literature does not do justice to the subtlety of our culture. In books people say what they mean, in the sapiens style. (‘Don’t you see, Lisbet, that my feeling for Paul is only a desperate counterpoise to Mark’s instinctive rejection of Anna?’) In life Joky Man speaks almost entirely in irony, sarcasm, understatement, hyperbole, and parody, and I am going to have a fresco painted inside my tomb that will bring home to archaeologists something of the staggering intricacy of life in Joky times.

It will show Joky Man at work, sitting for hours rubbing gag against gag in the hope of producing a spark. It will show Joky Man at leisure, still chipping one gag against another. A frieze round the margin will display the huge variety of gags a man might have at his disposal – cutting gags, gags that grind the nerves, gags that scrape the bottom of the barrel, gags for falling in love, gags for ending marriages, gags for dying – as well as how a man of small resources might make one or two durable basic gags do for everything.

A further series of panels will show Joky Man speaking in funny voices – joke adenoidal voices, joke television commentator’s voices, joke Prime Minister voices, joke Queen voices.

In one of them he will be seen speaking in what he takes to be a joke working-class voice, to show his rejection of bourgeois values and his solidarity with the masses. The panel will include a representative selection of the masses, showing their touching gratitude for this compliment by talking in what they take to be a joke Joky Man’s voice.

In a big tableau, Joky Man will be shown speaking in his most important funny voice – what he conceives to be the voice of a low-class theatrical agent. A frieze running round the edge of this scene will make it clear that since he has never actually met a low-class theatrical agent, but only a man whose elder brother’s friend does a very amusing imitation of Peter Sellers impersonating Sidney James playing the part of a low-class theatrical agent, this causes no offence to low-class theatrical agents.

The funny-voice series will be surmounted by a tablet depicting Joky Man’s larynx, showing typical enlargement and inflammation caused by the strain of speaking with all the voices of men and of angels except one’s own. Elsewhere in the fresco there will be scenes from Joky Man’s everyday life, with balloons coming out of his mouth reading ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you,’ ‘What we in the trwade call a nice bit of crwumpet,’ ‘How very different from the home life of our own dear Queen!’ ‘And now – a big hand for someone we all know and love,’ ‘My husband and I …’, ‘What we in the trwade call one of our own dear queens,’ ‘Don’t call us, my husband and I will call you …’

One whole wall of the tomb will be occupied by a scene representing the spiritual core of Joky Man’s life. On one half of the wall – Joky Man appearing on television, saying satirical things in his theatrical agent voice, his Prime Minister voice, and his commentator voice. On the other half of the wall – Joky Man watching the television, mimicking the performers and maintaining a stream of witty observations about them in no less funny voices. The balloons will make it clear that it is the less joky specimens of Joky Man who appear on the screen, and the more joky specimens who watch. Or that at any rate the ones who appear never seem to manage to answer any of those devasting sallies back.

In one corner of the tomb there will be a small picture illustrating a rather sad aspect of Joky Man’s life. It will show him trying to say something straight, in his own voice. He is red in the face and glassy-eyed with the effort, but, as the archaeologists will see, the balloon that is emerging from his mouth is completely empty. In the last picture Joky Man is being carried off, deceased from...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.4.2016
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Journalistik
• ISBN-10: 0-571-32890-3 / 0571328903
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-32890-1 / 9780571328901