Authors Amis and Barnes are pen
pals once again
By Oliver Duff
Friday, 8 September 2006
* The protagonists of one of the
literary world's most poisonous quarrels (really quite an accolade, considering
the competition) may have buried the hatchet - and not in each other's skulls.
I am
delighted to announce that Julian Barnes and Martin Amis were seen locked in
discussion and a "fraternal embrace" at
The rencontre offers an end to a
decade of hostility between the once best of friends. Their dispute began in
1995, when Amis left his literary agent of 23 years, "Purse-Lipped"
Pat Kavanagh - aka Mrs Barnes - to sign for the Harvard graduate Andrew
"The Jackal" Wylie.
Barnes severed all links, writing
a letter to Amis containing a phrase Amis described thus: "A well-known
colloquialism. The words consist of seven letters. Three of them are Fs."
In his memoir, Experience, Amis
then referred to Barnes as "uxurious" - interpreted as a suggestion
that he was henpecked.
Amis said he had written to
Barnes after the incident, asking: "Jules, tell
me to fuck off and everything if you want - but try to stay my friend." He
added: "I will call you in a while - quite a long while."
Well, 11 years on, it seems the
pair have done their bit for world peace - although Barnes remains reticent, as
ever, on the finer details, and was yesterday unavailable to elaborate when I
called.
* The transvestite guerrilla potter
Grayson Perry is no stranger to mudslinging (forgive me) and belies genteel
caricatures of the medium.
The Turner Prize winner seemed
disinterested in talk of this year's nominees at the Hayward Gallery's
"Artists' Party" on Wednesday night - until mention of Rebecca
Warren, sculptor of abstract unfired clay.
"Her work sets my teeth on
edge," grimaced Perry, dressed as his alter ego Claire in a short, blue
and white frilly frock, pink socks and a black bag.
"Speaking as a potter, her
work is anathema to me. I say: 'Stick it in a kiln and fire it.' Before that,
it's just mud."
"It
is very misleading if he is disparaging her work in that way."
* Good to hear that the lungs of
Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel still function, despite his recent stabbing with a
faulty retracting knife during Puccini's Tosca at
The wheeze for Terfel's new
album, Tutto Mozart, sees
"I apologise to those who
aren't fans and face a long trip with Mozart arias blasting your ears,"
Terfel says.
"But it's good to challenge
stereotypes of cabbies. They need something to get away from the heavy traffic.
So a high percentage listen to classical music."
Normally played at just the right
volume to allow commentary on asylum-seekers...
* Students at Quinton Kynaston
secondary school, Swiss Cottage, were sent home yesterday to allow Tony Blair
to defend his premiership.
"It is disgraceful that
students are missing their education for a PR stunt," says the Socialist
Teachers Alliance. "If trade unionists were striking to shut a school
Blair would denounce us."
Yesterday morning, he visited an
Isle of Dogs primary school to hear four-year-olds read. "Tony smiled as
the kids read words beginning with the hard letter C sound: cat, cake,
caterpillar, etc," I'm told.
"We wanted to ask him if he
could think of any words beginning with C he's used about his Chancellor
recently. A classroom probably wasn't the place."
* Oddly, perhaps, for a man keen
to vaunt his heterosexuality, Robbie Williams has taken issue with a regional
newspaper article claiming he is a sex addict. The Yorkshire Post wrote that
the pop star "had admitted to therapy to cure [his] insatiable appetite
for sex".
Yesterday, the paper published a
grovelling retraction when Williams's legal ranks adopted an offensive
formation outside the editor's office. "We now accept that the reference
was wholly inaccurate and misleading," it read, "and we sincerely
apologise for any distress Mr Williams may have suffered as a result of the
article."
Distress? Has Robbie read the countless reams of
drivel written about him during the past 17 years?
©Independent.co.uk
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Creada: 28/10/2008 Última Actualización:
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