First up is James Joyce. Yes, I remember well the outsized Penguin Modern Classics edition of Ulysses that used to sit awkwardly among the other paperbacks on my bookshelves. Carrying it in a bag felt like I was carrying not a book but an object, some kind of talisman... something like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in fact - a massive encyclopaedic encapsulation of life and customs written from a very partial (and very funny) point of view. Though it's set in (and all about) Dublin, Joyce wrote the bulk of it (all of it?) in exile in various cities in continental Europe (Trieste being one such city). Putting your subject matter at arm's length can certainly help the creative process (especially the story-making, exaggerating process), but it's interesting to note that Joyce frequently wrote to friends 'back home' to ask them for details about this place or that place to ensure his very particular form of accuracy. Crowdsourcing, as it were. There's nothing new in rock 'n' roll, as they say.
Next is Harold Pinter. Here's my claim to fame, if you can call it that: I once stood on Harold Pinter's big toe. Waiting in a theatre foyer Somewhere In Europe before a performance of the fantastic No Man's Land ("I'll drink to that", etc.) I went up to the tea table (yes, I know, nice isn't it?) to buy some tea. Transaction over, I took a step back and away only to find my heel had found someone else's foot to perch on. Turning round ready with fulsome apologies I saw that my unwitting victim was in fact the great man himself.
'Sorry!', I said. He glowered at me. There was... an awkward silence.
I trotted off sharpish down the stairs only to be followed by Pinter and his companion (the theatre manager?). After a good 10 seconds Pinter's anger had subsided enough that he was able to speak again and I heard his unmistakable baritone ask the man, "So... how's tricks?"
You see - it's one thing to meet your heroes, it's quite another to injure them. Reminds me of that quote from Vivian Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End: "I never met a man I didn't maim."
Finally (it has been a productive week-and-a-half) it's Dylan Thomas, stories about whom are legion. I like the one where he met one of his idols, Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin found his drunken four-letter-littered behaviour appalling, and told him so. Thomas walked out into Chaplin's conservatory and simply pissed up a pot plant. Now that's poetic compression!
