Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Michael Futcher, director of the stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
The book I wish I’d written
Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. The multi-layered imaginative feat of this book is mind-blowing. It is hilarious, bizarre and moving all at once and balances political satire, historical drama, psychological drama, comedy and fantasy to perfection. I first read it while travelling in Crete in the 1980s and couldn’t have wished for a more revelatory experience. I wish I’d written it because I would have been the first to adapt it for the stage!
Everyone should read
1984 by George Orwell because it lays out so brilliantly and clearly the dangers the world faces right now – the dangers of totalitarianism obviously, but more importantly the dangers of our own apathy, prejudice, selfishness and lack of awareness which allows totalitarianism to take root in the first place. Orwell’s book was not an imaginative leap – it was based on real life. It is a warning from the past that we must not make the same mistakes. Everyone should read it now. It is an utterly compelling story – it never lets you off the hook. Brilliantly drawn characters – some with a hint of satire, but all utterly convincing.
The first book I remember reading by myself
Stig of the Dump by Clive King. I was about six or seven I think, living in a remote fishing village in the north of Scotland – few friends, very little outdoor life in winter and only BBC 1 available. I was bored one day and my elder brother recommended I pass the time with Stig of the Dump. I acceded to this idea and was contentedly transported into the strange world of Barney and Stig for the next day or two, while the wind howled, the ground froze outside and a reading habit was born!
Most overrated book
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I wolfed this one down in nearly one sitting and didn’t feel so great afterwards – a bit like overdoing it at a fast food joint after a few too many beers. Later I leafed through it again and it certainly doesn’t get better with age.
The book that haunts me
HHhH by Laurent Binet. The brilliant account of “operation anthropoid” in the second world war where two resistance fighters assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi who oversaw the “Final Solution”. The book is part historical account and part meta commentary of the story of the assassination and it has stayed with me since I first read it over 10 years ago. The courage of the resistance fighters, the edge-of-your-seat story of the assassination and attempts to escape retribution and of course the horrific reprisals that followed have burned themselves into my consciousness and certainly do haunt me.
The book I wish would be adapted for film or TV
Memoirs of a Physician by Alexandre Dumas – although a flawed and rambling piece about the lead-up to the French Revolution, the story is ripe for refining into a 10-part season. It certainly has all the elements you would look for in a period piece from the era of the French Revolution: a cracking narrative (in many places), an extraordinary gallery of characters including Marie Antoinette, Cagliostro, Marat, Louis XV, Rousseau etc, and some chilling parallels to our own times including the death of the human condition in the name of “progress”. It is part an obsessive love story, part political thriller and part Grand Guignol – crikey, I think I’d better get on with writing it myself.
If I could only read three books for the rest of my life they would be
1. The Tao of Leadership by John Heider, adapted from the ancient Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. This contains abundant wise and regenerative reflections on life to read each day. They are an infinite source of wisdom and I never tire of reading it.
2. Peter Hall’s Diaries by Peter Hall. A strange choice but I return to this extraordinary account of a theatre director’s life regularly and never tire of reliving the hectic and brilliant account of Peter Hall’s first few years at the National Theatre of Great Britain.
3. À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust – just to see what all the fuss was about.
The plot change I would make
In Orwell’s 1984, somewhere somehow I would have to have left a skerrick of hope that we’re not all doomed. Of course this is absurd and against the entire point of the novel – it’s a cautionary tale not to allow this to happen and if there’s a way out people may not be so shocked. But surely at some deep level, even though Winston now loves Big Brother, maybe Doublethink can work in reverse and he can simultaneously still entertain the tiniest shred of …
Best place to read
My holiday apartment at Lennox Head, NSW. You walk along the extraordinary beach in the morning, you have lunch, you lie on your bed and look out at the waves breaking only 50-60 metres away and you bury yourself in a book. You drift off for a nap listening to the waves. You wake up and read a few more chapters as the sun gets low. You have another walk and a meal out. You sleep like a baby, wake up, look out to sea and pick up your book again … heaven.
What I’m reading right now
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, for the third time. I first read this about 35 years ago and always get ensnared by the beautifully drawn characters. I return to it when I need to “switch off” and to lose myself in a good story. It’s a lot funnier on a third read.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (adapted for the stage by Shake & Stir Theatre Co) is on at The Civic between December 2–7. Tickets online here.
