Andrew Martin |
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Andrew Martin, a former Spectator Young Writer of the Year, grew up in Yorkshire. After qualifying as a barrister he became a freelance journalist in which capacity he has tended to write about the north, class, trains, seaside towns and eccentric individuals rather than the doings of the famous, although he did once loop the loop in a biplane with Gary Numan. He has also learned to drive steam locomotives, albeit under very close supervision.
He has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday and Granta, among many other publications, and his weekly column appears in the New Statesman. His highly acclaimed first novel, Bilton, described by Jon Ronson as 'enormously funny, genuinely moving and even a little scary', was followed by The Bobby Dazzlers, which Tim Lott hailed as 'truly unusual — a comic novel that actually makes you laugh'. In praise of his most recent novel, The Necropolis Railway, the Evening Standard said 'the age of steam has rarely been better evoked', while the Mirror described the book as 'a brilliant murder mystery'.
I have just finished editing Funny You Should Say That, a collection of humorous quotations for Penguin, and I’ve been ruefully reflecting that no book I might ever write (because I’m a novelist as well) can possibly do as much GOOD for the reader as the dictionary. I have tried to avoid the chirpiness of tone to which I think compilations of funny quotes are prone, and have aimed instead for quotations with depth and resonance; observations that might make you think or, in fact, alter the direction of your life however subtly.
Let’s take a few universal experiences. You’re thinking of getting married. As a test of your enthusiasm I would suggest immersion in negative remarks about marriage. In his bachelor days, Warren Beatty (and possibly a lot of other people) said ‘I’m not going to make the same mistake once.’ In 1990 Helen Simpson had one of her characters say: ‘There’s no escaping the mildmint breath toothpasting its way across the pillows’, which chimes in with an observation made more than two hundred years earlier by Laurence Sterne, who said that a certain gent about to be married ‘would never lie diagonally in his bed again.’
If, once married, you are contemplating children, I would recommend another dose of negativity, just in order to make sure that you are quite ready. In 1640, George Herbert said ‘He that hath children, all his morsels are not his own’. Much later on, that perennial smart-arse, Anon, said: ‘A dad is a man who has photos in his wallet where his money used to be.’ P.J. O’Rourke got to the heart of the matter about children when he said, ‘The real truth about children is that they don’t speak the language very well.’
A universal experience that ought to be less fraught is getting dressed in the morning. But please do consult this dictionary. Arnold Bennett once wrote, ‘Last night I dreamed that I wore sandals, and was ashamed.’ Another Bennett, Alan, wrote: ‘One of the few lessons I have learnt in life is that there is invariably something odd about women who wear ankle socks.’ Helen Rowland said that ‘the softer a man’s head, the louder his socks’. But here’s Saki, in 1911, on the man who got it right: ‘His shoes exhaled the right soupcon of harness room; his socks compelled one’s attention without losing one’s respect.’
There again you might be a sports fan. You might be keen on Formula One racing, but doubtful of the value of all the speculation and blather that precedes a race. You could be right, given Juan Pablo Montoya’s account of his approach: ‘Get in car, drive car, see what happens.’ You might play golf, but be in need of a few hints, in which case consider this by Peter Cook: ‘Standing still is one of the most important parts of the game.’ Or this from Michael Green: ‘The secret of missing a tree is to aim straight at it.’ Or maybe you manage an amateur football team. Ron Atkinson said: ‘My team talk was very simple. I said: “Let’s just have an old-fashioned match, get the right result and go out for a few drinks afterwards.” It seemed to work better than all that tactical crap.’
…Feeling generally hard done by? You may not be as unfortunate as Les Dawson, who said ‘I’m very unlucky. Treets melt in my hand, and I was once mugged by Lord Longford.’ Try to keep a philosophical detachment. Ted Turner said that ‘Life is like a ‘B’ movie. You don’t want to leave in the middle of it, but you wouldn’t want to see it again.’
Use this dictionary for any occasion, and by all means pass the remarks off as your own. But remember that ‘Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.’ (William Hazlitt). Leonard Lewis Levinson wrote that a comedian is ‘Somebody who has a good memory, who hopes that other people don’t.’ He also said that a quotation was ‘something somebody said that seemed to make sense at the time’, and that’s fair enough but you never know when one isn’t going to come along that knocks you for six.
