The Habit of Art: A Play by Alan Bennett

Author:Alan Bennett [Bennett, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nepalifiction, TPB
ISBN: 9780865479449
Amazon: 0865479445
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Kay Now, where had we got to?

Fitz Oh. I’m still on about dicks, surprise, surprise. I just feel he goes on, that’s all.

Author He did go on. That was what he was like. He went on. And on. If you can show me a way of him going on without him actually going on I’d be very grateful.

Kay Thank you. Tim!

Stuart I didn’t know dicks were the kind of thing you could have a conversation about. I didn’t know it was something I had to offer. In a civilised way, I mean, not as a come-on.

Auden Why not? It’s human. Nothing more so. I wrote a poem about it once.

Stuart Yeah? Say it.

Auden No. It was bad.

Carpenter (popping up) This was ‘The Platonic Blow’.

Fitz Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Donald What?

Fitz I didn’t know you were going to be there, that’s all.

Donald I’ve got to be somewhere.

Fitz Do I know he’s there?

Author No. He isn’t there.

Donald So where am I? Am I in the mind?

Author It’s not important.

Donald It is to me. I need to know. Listen. Let’s decide this. I feel so spare. Can we go back to the start?

Fitz Oh, please God.

Donald I am discovered interviewing Auden after his return to Oxford in 1972. The interview is cut short by the arrival of a rent boy for whom Auden has briefly mistaken me. At which point my part in the story being over, the audience will expect me to leave the stage, but I don’t because…

Author Because being the author of a literary biography of Auden, and ten years or so after that a biography of Benjamin Britten, you are in a unique position to give a commentary on their lives. You have become…the storyteller.

Donald Mr Know-All. I just feel I irritate. I’m in the way.

Fitz That’s because you are.

Kay No, darling, no.

Author You irritate him, I agree. But biographers always irritate their subjects.

Donald If this were television I’d just be a voice-over and nobody would even notice.

Pause.

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