The Fry Chronicles Part 13

'And I thought how great it would be to have a clue that was a long number. Your fax number? And when people get the answer they will see that it's a number and maybe they will work out that it's a phone number and they will call it, but they will get that sound sound. You know, the sound that a fax machine makes?'

'Right ...'

'And they will hear it and think, "What was that?" but maybe one of them, they will know that it is in actuality a fax machine. They might have one in their office, for example. So they'll say, "Hey, that's a fax machine. So maybe we have to send it a message. On a piece of paper." And they will fax you for help.'

'And what do I do then?'

'Well, here's the thing: beforehand, I will have faxed you their next clue. So when they fax you asking for help, you fax that clue back in return. You understand?'

'Yes, I think so. You send me a fax which is the next clue. Then I wait by the machine on Sat.u.r.day afternoon ...'

'Evening, night. It will be afternoon in Connecticut, but in London it will be like nine, ten, maybe eleven o'clock. You're not going out at all?'

'No, no.'

'Because it is crucial crucial that you are in all the time and that you are right by the fax machine so you can hear it when it goes off.' that you are in all the time and that you are right by the fax machine so you can hear it when it goes off.'

'Absolutely. I'll be there. So, just to make sure I've got this right. Sat.u.r.day night I wait by the fax machine. When I get a fax asking me for a clue, I send to your fax number in Connecticut whatever it is that you will have faxed me earlier?'

'Right. Isn't it great? It will be the first-ever fax treasure hunt. But you have have to be by the phone all Sat.u.r.day night. You will be?' to be by the phone all Sat.u.r.day night. You will be?'

'I'll be there. I'll be there.'

'OK. I'll give you my fax number. It should appear on the top of the fax anyway, but I'll give it to you. And I'll need your fax number.'

We exchanged numbers.

'Thank you, Stephen.'

'No, thank you you, Stephen.'

Between that call and Sat.u.r.day evening he called four or five times to check that I had not changed my plans and was still happy to sit by the fax machine and await developments. On Sat.u.r.day afternoon at about four I received a fax from him. It was an impenetrable diagram with some sort of code written alongside it.

I faxed back a note to say that I had received his clue and would fax it as soon as I received a request from his treasure-hunt contestants.

I sat with a book, ears flapping, for the next five hours. I had not put out of my mind the possibility that Sondheim might yet ask me to work with him on his next musical, but the thought that he only wanted me for my technological toys could not be entirely dismissed.

Some time before ten o'clock the fax machine rang. I put down the book. It was Atlas Shrugged Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I remember quite distinctly, which was hypnotically dreadful. I stared at the fax machine as it answered the call. Its shrill cry was cut off. The caller had hung up. I imagined a garden in New England and a group of capering Sondheim friends. by Ayn Rand, I remember quite distinctly, which was hypnotically dreadful. I stared at the fax machine as it answered the call. Its shrill cry was cut off. The caller had hung up. I imagined a garden in New England and a group of capering Sondheim friends.

'How odd! It made a kind of awful chirruping sound.'

'Oh! Oh! Oh! I know what that is. It's a fax machine!'

'A what-all?'

'You know. For sending doc.u.ments? Stephen's got one in his den, I'm sure I've seen it there. Let's go to it. My, such larks!' know. For sending doc.u.ments? Stephen's got one in his den, I'm sure I've seen it there. Let's go to it. My, such larks!'

I counted off the minutes as the gang made their way (in my imagination at least) to Stephen's den, whose mantelpiece was crowded with Tony Awards. On the very piano on which he had composed 'Send in the Clowns' I saw in my mind's eye signed photographs in silver-gilt frames of Lenny Bernstein, Ethel Merman, Oscar Hammerstein and Noel Coward.

Just as I was wondering if I might have misjudged the scenario, my fax machine screeched into life again. This time a handshake was made across the ocean and a fax chugged out. I ripped it off and there on the curling thermal paper was scrawled 'Hi! Do you have something for us?'

I duly fitted into the machine the fax Sondheim had sent me earlier, dialled the number and pressed 'Transmit'.

A cheerful 'Thanks!' was returned a few minutes later.

I had no idea how many teams there might be playing and realized that, for all his neurotic calling to ensure my vigilant presence for the evening, Stephen had not told me whether or not this would be a one-time deal.

I woke up at three with Atlas Shrugged Atlas Shrugged on my lap and the fax machine free of further intercourse. on my lap and the fax machine free of further intercourse.

A week later a case of Haut-Batailley claret arrived with a note of thanks from Stephen Sondheim.

The treasure hunt was a great success. Due in no small measure to your kind partic.i.p.ation.

With thanks, Stephen.

Not a hint of a call to collaboration. I still await his summons.

By the time Alan Coren became the Listener Listener's editor, fax machines had become a signature ubiquity of the age, and there was nothing strange about my delivering copy to him that way without visiting the offices in Marylebone High Street from one month to the next. My next struggle, some seven or eight years later, would be to get newspapers and broadcasting companies to sign up to log on to the internet and furnish themselves with email addresses, but that is a whole other story for a whole other book for a whole other readership.

Contortionist Perhaps the most stylish and beguiling figure in the London magazine world in those days was the caricaturist, editor and boulevardier about town Mark Boxer. Under the pen name Marc he had ill.u.s.trated the front covers of A A Dance to the Music of Time Dance to the Music of Time, all twelve volumes of which I had lined up along a bookshelf, next to the Simon Raven Alms for Oblivion Alms for Oblivion sequence (which I much preferred, and still do). In the sixties Boxer had supervised the launch and life of Britain's first colour supplement magazine for sequence (which I much preferred, and still do). In the sixties Boxer had supervised the launch and life of Britain's first colour supplement magazine for The Sunday Times The Sunday Times and now he edited the and now he edited the Tatler Tatler. One day in the mid to late eighties I got a letter from him, asking me to call his office.

'Ah yes. Stephen Fry. How do you do? Let me take you out to lunch. Langan's tomorrow?'

I had heard of Langan's Bra.s.serie but had never been. Founded by Peter Langan, Richard Shepherd and the actor Michael Caine, it had acquired a reputation as one of the most glamorous and eccentric restaurants in London. The glamour was provided by the art collection, the Patrick Procktor menu design and the daily presence of film stars, aristocrats and millionaires; the eccentricity came in the form of Peter Langan. This pioneering restaurateur, an alcoholic Irishman of uncertain temper, was notorious for insulting customers to whom he might take unpredictable dislikes, tearing up the bills of those who dared to complain, stubbing cigarettes out in their salads and ordering them to leave. A bottle of Krug in one hand and a cigar or cigarette in the other, he would lurch from table to table, beaming and barking, grinning and growling, hugging and shoving. The food was good but not great, the atmosphere magical, and the experience, when Peter was around, unforgettable. Don Boyd told me that his wife, Hilary, had once found a slug in her salad. As Peter lurched hiccupping past the table, Don had stopped him and pointed out the unwanted gastropod in his wife's greenery.

Peter bowed forward from the waist to examine the plate.

'Why thank you,' he said, taking up the pulsing, living slug between thumb and forefinger. 'Thank you very much indeed, my darling.' He dropped it into his gla.s.s of Krug, drained it down and burped. 'Like a nice juicy snail, only without the nuisance of a sh.e.l.l. f.u.c.king delicious.'

I arrived early, as I always do for appointments, and was led upstairs. Mark arrived exactly on time.

'Hope you don't mind it up here,' he said. 'It's quieter. In case Peter's about. Do you know him?'

I confessed that I did not.

'Keep it that way,' said Mark.

Boxer was an attractive-looking man aged, I suppose, about fifty, but youthful in a twinkly, almost elfin way. He was married to the newsreader and co-founder of TV-AM, Anna Ford. Over the first two courses Mark was charming, funny and inconsequential, as if the reason for his invitation to lunch was entirely social. He kept me in raptures with stories of his time at Cambridge.

'It was quite the thing then to present oneself as h.o.m.os.e.xual. I used to wear fantastically tight white trousers and tell the rugby players that they were the creamiest darlings in the world. It was actually very odd not not to behave like that. Amongst my set at least. No one batted an eyelid if you came on as gay. And of course it made the girls simply throw themselves at you. Did you know that I am the only person aside from Sh.e.l.ley to be sent down from one of the universities for atheism?' to behave like that. Amongst my set at least. No one batted an eyelid if you came on as gay. And of course it made the girls simply throw themselves at you. Did you know that I am the only person aside from Sh.e.l.ley to be sent down from one of the universities for atheism?'

'No! Really?'

'Well, not quite. I was editor of Granta Granta and I published a poem by somebody or other that the university authorities said was blasphemous. They demanded I, as editor, be sent down, but E. M. Forster and Noel Annan and others simply leapt to my defence, so they changed it to a rustication, which they meanly set for May Week so that I would miss the May Ball, but of course they overlooked the fact that b.a.l.l.s go on way past midnight. So on the stroke of twelve I returned to King's in my white tie and tails and was chaired around from marquee to marquee like a conquering hero. It was too marvellous.' and I published a poem by somebody or other that the university authorities said was blasphemous. They demanded I, as editor, be sent down, but E. M. Forster and Noel Annan and others simply leapt to my defence, so they changed it to a rustication, which they meanly set for May Week so that I would miss the May Ball, but of course they overlooked the fact that b.a.l.l.s go on way past midnight. So on the stroke of twelve I returned to King's in my white tie and tails and was chaired around from marquee to marquee like a conquering hero. It was too marvellous.'

It was hard to believe that this man was the same age as my father. He had the gift, if gift it is, of making me feel more than usually bourgeois, ordinary and unexciting.

'So, a nos moutons a nos moutons,' he said as the cheese arrived. 'Tatler. I know you have written for us once before. Wonderful piece, by the way. Is it really true?'

He was referring to a feature to which I had contributed earlier in the year and which we will come to later. I blushed fiercely as I always did when that article was mentioned.

'Yes. Quite true.'

'Heavens. Anyway. The magazine ... Do you read it, by any chance?'

'Sometimes ... I mean, I don't positively not not read it, but I don't think I've ever actually bought one. Except the month my piece came out, that is.' read it, but I don't think I've ever actually bought one. Except the month my piece came out, that is.'

'That's all right,' he said. 'Here's next month's number. The covers are wonderful these days. We have Michael Roberts as our art director. He's too splendid for words.'

I took his proffered copy of the magazine and flipped through the pages.

'It's all fine,' said Mark. 'Nothing wrong. It's just that there's something ... something missing missing.'

'Well whatever it is,' I said, 'it isn't advertis.e.m.e.nts.'

'Ha! No, we're doing very well, really. But I need someone to come in every month to ... to smell smell the issue before it goes to print.' the issue before it goes to print.'

'To smell it?'

'Mm ... you know. To look at the sum total of articles and spreads and to think about how they can all come together. To work on the text of the cover and the spinelines ...'

'Spinelines?'

'The copy written on the spine.'

'Of course. Spinelines, yes.'

'I need someone who isn't in on the everyday production of the magazine to take that look. To smell it all and to ...'

A thought struck me. 'Do you mean,' I said, 'that you want someone to do the puns?'

He slapped the table. 'I knew knew you'd understand!' you'd understand!'

Since Tina Brown's pioneering reign at the Tatler Tatler's helm the magazine had become notorious, amongst other things, for its punning headlines, sub-headlines and as I now knew them to be called spinelines.

'That's settled, then. You're Officer Commanding Puns.' He drained his coffee with clear satisfaction. 'Oh, another thing I thought of on the way here. We get sent all kinds of books. For the most part insufferably dull fly-fishing manuals and the memoirs of forgettable d.u.c.h.esses, but sometimes more interesting t.i.tles might come our way. We don't have a book reviewer. Why don't I get all the books we're sent couriered over to you in a batch once a week and you can ...'

'Smell them?'

'That's it. Smell them and then write a column in which you can review them or simply comment on the kinds of books that are being published these days. A zeitgeisty, smelly sort of thing. How does that appeal?'

I said that a zeitgeisty, smelly sort of thing appealed greatly.

'Fine. Why don't you pop back to Hanover Square with me, and I'll introduce you around?'

'Will I have to come into the office a lot?'

'Just from time to time to have a ...'

'A smell?'

'To have a smell, exactly.'

The first issue for which I acted as Smellfinder General was June's. 'June Know Where You're Going' was the date pun. Michael Roberts's cover of a model in a frock of the deepest crimson found itself accompanied by the headline RED DRESS THE BALANCE. An article on aristocratic Catholic families was subt.i.tled: 'The Smart Sect'. Time has thankfully erased from my memory the other hideous verbal contortions of which I was guilty, but I came up with more than a dozen for each edition with which I was involved.

Critics and Couriers Books began to arrive by the box-load. Rather than review under my own name I gave myself a made-up byline: Williver Hendry, editor of A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey and author of and author of Towards the Brightening Dawn Towards the Brightening Dawn and and Notes From a Purple Distance: An Ischian Memoir Notes From a Purple Distance: An Ischian Memoir, casts a loving eye over some June publications ...

Only it wasn't so loving an eye at all. Hiding in cowardly fashion under this nom de guerre nom de guerre I was beastly unkind to someone called Baron de Ma.s.sy, a nephew of Prince Rainier who had written an autobiography crammed with a.r.s.e-paralysingly sn.o.bbish Monegasque drivel about Ferraris, polo-players and c.o.ke-snorting tennis champions. 'Here is that marriage of style and content we look for in great writing,' I, or rather Williver, wrote. 'A shatteringly vulgar and worthless life captured in shatteringly vulgar and worthless prose.' I was beastly unkind to someone called Baron de Ma.s.sy, a nephew of Prince Rainier who had written an autobiography crammed with a.r.s.e-paralysingly sn.o.bbish Monegasque drivel about Ferraris, polo-players and c.o.ke-snorting tennis champions. 'Here is that marriage of style and content we look for in great writing,' I, or rather Williver, wrote. 'A shatteringly vulgar and worthless life captured in shatteringly vulgar and worthless prose.'

My career as a book reviewer was short-lived, but long enough to make me feel that it was not the occupation for me. For good or ill (perhaps it is what footballers call a fifty-fifty ball) I cannot bear to upset people. Perhaps it would be truer to say that I cannot bear to know that there are people going around whom I have upset and who think badly of me as a consequence. My overwhelming desire to please and to be liked has not gone unnoticed. I sometimes hopefully imagine that it may be an agreeable and acceptable enough quirk of character, but I have lived long enough to know that it is more likely to appal than appeal.

It is obvious that the purpose of critics is to transmit their opinion of the works that have been sent to them. In your life as a reviewer, the day will soon come when a book arrives which is too bad to respond to with anything other than the savaging you are convinced it deserves. You berate it and its author, you mock, you expose, you trash and you pillory. It is, for a short time, a wonderful feeling to tick an author off and in scalding prose to ridicule their inadequacies and rubbish their pretensions. After all, for weeks and weeks you have been compelled to read novels, autobiographies, histories, guides and collections, most of which are dread word, as Wallace Arnold would say fine fine. They are of sufficient quality to justify their publication and for the most part it will be easy enough, if you are a placating weasel like me, to find something about them to like. But, w.i.l.l.y nilly, the iron has entered your soul. You cannot help but begin to look on authors and publishers as the enemy. They pound at your door at all times of the day and night clamouring for your attention. So many of them, all with so much to say. Their tics, minor flaws and mannerisms become an aggravation, but you hold your fire as reasonably as you can. One day, with all this building up inside you, there is a buzzing at the entryphone, and a motorcycle courier stands outside in the rain with a package for you to sign for. Another set of new literary works to be read and rated. After the leather-clad messenger of the metropolis has gone through the usual 'Do you mind if I use your toilet?' and 'Oh, can I use your phone to call my dispatcher?' and 'Shall we have s.e.x right here and now?' I am left alone with his delivery. And this time one of the books is It. The Stinker.

Incidentally, anybody who thinks that a book reviewer has at least the profitable perk of hundreds of free books a month to offset his misery may not know about uncorrected bound proofs: these are flimsy and hastily a.s.sembled pre-release editions sent out to reviewers and to anyone likely to provide a winning phrase to be printed on the front of the proper later-to-be-printed dust-jacketed edition ' "Deliciously insightful, coolly ironic," Wayne Rooney'; ' "A rip-snorting, barn-storming, cliff-hanging, roller-coaster of a ride," Iris Murdoch'; '"The dog's b.o.l.l.o.c.ks: Bukowski is gang-raped by Burroughs and Gibson and has a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child," Ann Widdecombe' that kind of thing. There is now an online auction market for the bound proofs of better-known authors, but in the mid-eighties they were so much waste paper to be thrown away as soon as they had been read and reviewed. Today email, .pdf and the eBook and iPad are beginning to put an end to the age of the bound proof, as they have to the age of the motorcycle courier, of course. In the eighties every phone call between editors and journalists, agents and clients, producers and writers, lawyers and lawyers included phrases like: 'I'll get it biked over to you,' 'Bike it over, I'll sign and bike it back,' 'Is it small enough for a bike, or shall we cab it round?' London in the mid-eighties buzzed and snarled to the sound of 550cc Hondas and Kawasaki 750s swooping and skidding around you, clipping your wing-mirrors, revving at the traffic lights and terrifying the citizenry with their desperado devilry.

I shall divert for a revealing story that a friend told me round about this time. Her aunt had been checked into Moorfields Eye Hospital, where she was due for a corneal graft, cataract operation or similarly routine, but nonetheless delicate, ophthalmic procedure. She was lying in bed wondering what was up, when the consultant came in.

'Ah, Miss Tredway, how do you do? You've had the operation explained? What we do is we cut out your nasty cloudy old lens and replace it with a shiny new donor one. Simple as can be. Trouble is, we don't have any donor eyes in at the moment.'

'Oh.'

'I shouldn't worry, though.' He went to the window and looked out over the City Road. 'It's raining, so it won't be very long.'

You know there is something amiss when a doctor can absolutely guarantee that if the roads are slippery a fatal accident will be sure to befall a despatch rider somewhere in the city and that a fresh, healthy pair of young eyes will soon be speeding their way to the operating theatre packed in a cool-box. A cool-box bungeed to the pillion of a motorcycle in all probability ...

Well, that was London in the pre-fax, pre-internet eighties. Couriers and cars did the work, and it was matter in the form of ma.s.sy atoms, rather than content in the form of ma.s.sless electrons, that had to be conveyed from place to place.

But I was telling you about The Stinker. It was inevitable that sooner or later in my career as a literary critic I would open a courier's package (ooer, now but shush) and find a book about which there could be nothing good to say.

'Well, if you haven't anything nice to say, then don't say anything,' is the recommendation of most mothers, and as always their advice is worth considering. The difficulty comes when, as mentioned, iron has entered the soul and charity, compa.s.sion and fellow-feeling have fled it.

I shall refrain from naming names and t.i.tles, but The Stinker was the one that propelled me into meanness. I sharpened the nib, dipped it in the most caustic solution available and set forth to make my feelings known. Just as when a beautiful person is beautiful in all their lineaments hair, nose, ankles, eyelashes and nape so when a writer is bad they seem to strike one as bad in every particular, from style and syntax to moral outlook and spiritual worth. There will be those reading this book who have come to that same conclusion about me, although it is probable that they will have cast it down in disgust before getting this far. Unless they are reading it for review, of course, in which case I shall have cause to shudder. Or rather my mother will, since I do not read reviews.

I might have hoped that the nameless author of the nameless book that I so mercilessly tore into never read my review either, but I happen to know that they did. Oh, I was witty, devastating and to anyone who read the piece incontestably convincing and incontrovertibly correct. I adduced quotations with which to condemn the poor author out of his or her own mouth, I questioned their sanity, sense and intellect. I 'proved' that their book was not only bad but wicked, not only imperfect but opportunistic, creepy and deluded. All of which I sincerely believed it to be. It really was a most awful piece of work, this book. Had it been cack-handed and incompetent but well-intentioned and un.o.bjectionable in disposition, I am sure I would have let it be. Since it was The Stinker, however, no feature redeemed it, and I let myself go. I mustn't overstate things. You should understand that plenty of worse reviews were written of that book and of other books that week, plenty of meaner and more disapproving pieces are written about books every every week. Nonetheless, my article would certainly cause anyone who read it to wince and to feel for the author. Why am I lingering on this book and my review of it? week. Nonetheless, my article would certainly cause anyone who read it to wince and to feel for the author. Why am I lingering on this book and my review of it?

In a long life of offering up works for public scrutiny I have had my own share of negative critical notices. I no longer look, and my friends know better than to commiserate with (or occasionally to congratulate) me on a review that I will never read. But in all the years during which I could not resist checking my reviews and on reading them felt myself punched and lowered and dispirited by the savageries or cruel perspicacities levelled at me, I never felt a tenth as chronically dreadful as I did in the weeks following the publication of my a.s.sault on The Stinker. I lay awake at night picturing his or her reaction. On the cowardly level I imagined that one day, when I least expected it, I would be waylaid by this now wholly deranged and indigent ex-author and have a quart of actual vitriol flung at my face as revenge for the quart of virtual vitriol I had flung in theirs. In less egoistic moods, I pictured their misery and humiliation and I felt like the worst kind of bully. What right had I to make them unhappy? What business of mine was it to hold up to the light their infelicities of phrasing or falsities of reasoning? Where the f.u.c.k, in other words, did I get off?

Any number of reviewers and critics will tell you that if someone chooses to present a work for money then the public should be warned before making an expenditure that they cannot recall. If you writers and performers don't like the heat, they say, you can get out of the kitchen. What right, they will add, turning the question around, do pract.i.tioners of theatre, literature, film, television or any other art have to be immune from informed opinion? Are they only to be lauded and applauded, pampered, praised and petted?

I cannot deny a single word of these and many other of the cogent plaidoyers plaidoyers routinely offered by criticism's apologists. There are all kinds of responses and att.i.tudes that can justify the art and practice of reviewing, but none of them, not a one, addresses the question of how you live with yourself if your wicked wit, shrewd insight and scornful judgement will have hurt someone, will have them crying themselves to sleep. Or worse still, how you can live with yourself if you realize that you have become the kind of person who does not even routinely offered by criticism's apologists. There are all kinds of responses and att.i.tudes that can justify the art and practice of reviewing, but none of them, not a one, addresses the question of how you live with yourself if your wicked wit, shrewd insight and scornful judgement will have hurt someone, will have them crying themselves to sleep. Or worse still, how you can live with yourself if you realize that you have become the kind of person who does not even care care that they regularly cause pain, suffering, discouragement and loss of self-regard in those trying to earn a living in their field? that they regularly cause pain, suffering, discouragement and loss of self-regard in those trying to earn a living in their field?

It is weak, it is wussy, it is probably a betrayal of everything the Cambridge literary ethos from Leavis to Kermode stands for, but I am much less interested in artistic standards, literary values, aesthetic authenticity and critical candour than I am in the feelings of others. Or in my own feelings, I suppose I should say, for I cannot bear to feel that I have offended or that I have enemies. It is is weak, it weak, it is is wussy, but there you are. And for that reason I was relieved when Alan Coren took over the wussy, but there you are. And for that reason I was relieved when Alan Coren took over the Listener Listener and suggested that I move away from literary reviewing and contribute instead a weekly column on general topics that might appeal to me. From that day on I have only agreed to review a book, film or television programme if one proviso is understood and accepted by the editor commissioning me: the review will be favourable or, if the product is so dreadful that even I cannot find a good word to say about it, there will be no article. I am less fastidious about kindness to the digital devices, smartphones and computer peripherals I sometimes review, but then their origins are usually so much more corporate and so much less personal. However, if it ever got back to me that the designers of a camera or the authors of a new piece of software were weeping because of something cruel I had said, then I would probably pack in my geek reviews too. and suggested that I move away from literary reviewing and contribute instead a weekly column on general topics that might appeal to me. From that day on I have only agreed to review a book, film or television programme if one proviso is understood and accepted by the editor commissioning me: the review will be favourable or, if the product is so dreadful that even I cannot find a good word to say about it, there will be no article. I am less fastidious about kindness to the digital devices, smartphones and computer peripherals I sometimes review, but then their origins are usually so much more corporate and so much less personal. However, if it ever got back to me that the designers of a camera or the authors of a new piece of software were weeping because of something cruel I had said, then I would probably pack in my geek reviews too.

Most of all I refuse to say anything bad about the work of a friend. My literary integrity can go hang, but friendship is sacred. Of course, by telling you this, it allows you were you so minded to look back at the blurbs and jacket quotes I have given for writers I have known and speculate that when I wrote, 'Brilliant, harrowing, lung-achingly funny' I might really have been thinking, 'Grisly, horrible, a.r.s.e-seepingly incompetent'. You will never know.