Georgina Dettmer
We sat down, virtually, with Osian Williams to find out what grinds his literary gears and there’s a fair few treasures in here. From insouciant croquet players to the smoking-hot Mark Rylance, there’s a stash of delights to discover.
So, firstly, we want to know about one piece of art, writing, drama, whatever, which you can deem your “favourite”. Nice and broad to start us off with.
One piece of writing which I think about a lot is ‘Essays in Idleness’ by Kenkо̄. After acting as a retainer to an aristocratic family at court in Kyoto, he took the tonsure and became an ascetic. It was after this change in vocation that he wrote this book.
I’d recommend the 2013 McKinney translation from Penguin Classics for something immediately readable. The essays are sundry and recounted at the leisure of the writer:
“What strange folly, to beguile the tedious hours like this day before my ink stone, jotting at random the idle thoughts that cross my mind”
They range from accounts of courtly life to the meditations on the transience of such - needless to say it is the interplay between these seemingly irreconcilable fascinations which has held the attention of countless readers. But personally, it is the unexpected snatches of anecdotes, reported speech and the like which I dig the most. Why? Because they are couched in the premise that these stories are told from a place of idleness.They are told to you by someone who has nothing else to do but pluck from his brain these crystallizations of a past life. The stories are made doubly moving owing to an understanding that Kenkо̄ is referring to things which no longer exist or have irrevocably changed. Nevertheless, as he himself puts it, “it is the ephemeral nature of things that makes them wonderful”.
We could all probably do with a bit of a laugh right now. If there is one thing that never fails to make you laugh, what is it?
For myself any PG Wodehouse novel really does elicit plosive laryngeal noises commonly referred to as laughter. Some of the stuff is of its time. But most of it is delightful.
Thank you for that description of laughter, Osian. We will never laugh in the same way ever again. On the other hand, a piece of writing which never fails to make you really feel something every time?
Jack Kerouac’s ‘Lowell’ novels, those set in his native town of Lowell, Massachusetts where he grew up, are sad, strange, heart breaking and funny. There is something in his writing coupled with the emotive setting of his childhood which gets to me every time.
With so many of us cooped back in our family homes, there’s a new opportunity to rediscover those nostalgic feelings and pastimes. Is there anything you have rediscovered lately you think worth sharing?
I’m doing a spot of letter writing in this vac, and whilst writing I was reminded of a short collection of biographies Javier Marias wrote, Madame du Deffand and the Idiots. Deffand was a prodigious writer of letters and was at the centre of the European intellectual circle for decades. Of only those extant, there are over 800 of Deffand’s letters addressed to Voltaire. She was also very funny. She said something along the lines of one of the four chief businesses in life being supper, and she couldn’t remember the other three.
Moving away from writing then, have you got a favourite performance you’d recommend us watching?
It would have to be Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall. He gives me Theroux vibes in his statuesque, stony mien. He exudes atmosphere like a smoke machine. His performance is made all the more wonderful by Debbie Wiseman’s soundtrack. Well worth a watch and listen.
And finally, for some visual stimulation: If we asked you to pick your favourite photograph ever, what would it be?
There is this photo which I’ve never seen but my dad has described it to me. I think he had it in when he was a kid: an insouciant croquet player, smoking a cheroot, about to roquet a ball as in, strike the other player’s ball. Sans le tabac, he sounds to me like someone to emulate.
Comments