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Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

222. Deborah Levy (writer) – it's those thoughts that are slightly awkward that need an airing

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6594 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2019

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

While reading Deborah Levy’s novel THE MAN WHO SAW EVERYTHING and her recent “working autobiography” THE COST OF LIVING I often found myself pausing and kind of sinking into a passage I’d just read. Going back and rereading it not because my attention had wandered nor exactly to unpack an idea but because I felt the need to experience it over again. To have it happen to me.  Levy started her career writing plays that have been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and broadcast by the BBC. She is the author of multiple novels, several of which have been Man Booker Prize finalists, the short story collection Black Vodka, and two of the aforementioned “working autobiographies”.  The two books of hers I’ve read are packed with ideas, but like great theater, they treat ideas as verbs. They’re thought in action. In a sense they defy you to talk about them. But let's try to, anyway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Have you ever wondered what a sandwich sounds like?

0:03.0

Not much to it is there?

0:06.0

Unless of course it's a Walker's sandwich.

0:10.0

Mmm, that is good.

0:13.0

Now that's what Asani should sound like.

0:15.0

Go all crisp in with walkers.

0:18.0

Delicious.

0:20.0

I looked into the mirror for the first time since my accident.

0:23.6

Fuck off, I hate you.

0:25.6

I said to the middle-aged man staring back at me.

0:28.6

His hair had been shaved. He was a skull.

0:32.6

His eyes a shock of blue in his pale face.

0:36.6

He had high cheekbones, a cut on the cheek and on the lip.

0:41.7

His eyebrows were silver. Where have you gone, Saul? All that beauty blown to bits. Who were you?

0:52.0

What languages do you speak? Are you a son and a brother and a father?

0:58.0

Are you an acquisition?

1:01.0

How do you get along with your female colleagues?

1:05.0

What is the point of them in your view?

1:08.0

What is the point of yourself in their view? Are you there to do something for them,

1:15.0

or are they there to do something for you? Are they a foil for your ambitions or are you a foiled for

1:23.2

theirs? In what ways do you thwart, oppose, derail or support each other? Which ways do you vote?

1:32.2

Are you a good historian? Did you ever play football, cricket, ping pong? Are you curious about

...

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