This week’s Shelf Lifer is Richard Bean. The British playwright recently won joint best new play at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards last year for both One Man, Two Guvnors at the National and The Heretic at The Royal Court. He tells us what he used to read to spite his father, which character in Brighton Rock he would sleep with and which play he would put on the GCSE syllabus.
1) What are you reading at the moment?
Chavs by Owen Jones
The King’s War by Miss C. V. Wedgewood
(Both social history books. Play research, I hardly ever have the time to read novels.)
2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?On the Road by Jack Kerouac;
The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle Junior – basically drug and hippy literature, surreptitiously ’cause my dad was a policeman.
3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?
The Shipping News by Annie Proux, formerly known as the artist E. Annie Proux.
4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
Ulysses by James Joyce, because my dad claims to have read it and I’ve never been able to finish it.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville – same reason, I’ll show the bastard!
And a rhyming dictionary so I can write some songs when I’m bored.
5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?
Ida Arnold in Brighton Rock
6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?
‘Learn to type in one hour’ (my first invention aged 28, a rapid fast learning to type system)
7) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which book, which play, and which poem would you make compulsory reading?
Play – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Poem – Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Novel – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
That’s a bit worrying: they’re all American
8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
Any gig from The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
9) What would you title your memoirs?
‘Shafted’
10) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
The Personnel Officer (Henry Miller) in the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company from Tropic of Capricorn. I was once a Personnel Officer in a Telecomms company.
11) What book would you give to a lover?
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
12) Spying Mein Kampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary dealbreaker?
Milestones by Sayyid Qutb
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