"To be sure, there were rewards. One was the Lord Soper story, quoted at least once elsewhere but never correctly or in full. The true version goes:
'I was on a TV programme recently,' said John, 'with Lord Soper, socialist, divine, and peer of the realm.' (Oh, that Lord Soper, I wanted to say. It was another Braine characteristic to take nothing for granted.) 'Now don't get me wrong — same programme, but different parts, okay?'
'Fine with me,' I said.
'We got chatting afterwards and he said, I understand you've just come back from the United States. I said ay. He said, What did you make of it, then? Well, I said' — and here his voice took on the bluff, puffing, impatient note he would adopt for platitudes — 'I said, With all its glaring, manifest, obvious faults it's a wonderful, free, open society they've got there, and Soper said, H'm, all right if you're not black, and I said, But you stupid bugger, I'm not black.'
The last phrase came out with a real grimness, almost belligerence — no bluffness now — and was followed by a baleful stare of some duration; I, at whom he had happened to be looking, had for the moment become Lord Soper. However this may sound on paper, the reality was either the work of a highly trained jester or perfectly serious."
—Kingsley Amis, "John Braine," Memoirs
Posted by mesh at October 26, 2006 03:04 PM | TrackBack