Revisit: Mark Haddon

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Porpoise, Haddon's latest novel is now out in paperback. Anne McElvoy talks to him about the language of bloke, writing female characters and taking inspiration from Shakespeare and the legend of Pericles. The conversation ranges across his career in theatre, children's writing and stories for adults, the impact of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which he published in 2003 and his recent illness.

Recorded in front of an audience as part of the BBC Proms Plus series of discussions.

You can find a playlist of In Depth Conversations on the Free Thinking website with guests including James Ellroy, Edna O'Brien, Sebastian Faulks, Margaret Atwood, Elif Shafak, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi and others. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8

Producer: Fiona McLean.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Anne McEl, and in this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, as his latest book comes out in paperback,
0:43.9	he is the author Mark Haddon talking with me in front of an audience at last year's proms festival.
1:13.4	Hello, at the beginning of Mark Haddon's new novel, The Porpoise, we meet a pregnant woman living a privileged life on her way back from a holiday at a friend's vineyard in Bellevue, Champion, to her home in Winchester. The disaster that follows takes us on a long journey,
1:17.4	back into the overlapping world of ancient and modern myths.
1:21.3	It's the new literary odyssey from an author of prize-winning novels,
1:23.5	short stories, plays and poetry,
1:27.2	best known for the curious incident of the dog in the night time, the novel dramatized on stage,
1:29.8	which has sold over 10 million copies since it was published in 2003.
1:35.6	The Porpoise is Mark Haddon's first novel in seven years, a fresh take on the epic tale of Pericles,
1:43.3	Prince of Tyre, a play co-written by Shakespeare, a story of
1:47.6	love and loss. This version of Pericles opens with the multi-millionaire Philippe, losing his wife
1:54.3	in a plane crash and leaving him with their newborn baby Angelica. What starts out as a heartwarming moment in which a life is saved
2:02.6	soon takes a dark turn as he sexually abuses the child.
2:07.2	Mark Pericles, not considered to be one of Shakespeare's outstanding works,
2:13.5	hits the footnotes a bit, doesn't it?
2:15.3	So why choose that story to retell? Ironically, it's the most
2:19.9	performed of all his plays. If you take into account from now back to his death, it's fallen out
2:26.7	of favour a lot recently. I think for good reason. It was co-written with George Wilkins, who is a one-time
2:32.9	playwright, brothel keeper, innkeeper and serial
	...

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