Odd this day

1 May 1945, 1978, and 1994

To begin with today, a sobering thought, exactly 80 years old, from country house expert, diarist, and early employee of the National Trust, James Lees-Milne, on hearing of the demise of a dictator.

Obviously, that has no contemporary resonance at all, so there’s no need for us to dwell on the fact that it’s considerably easier to vote fascism in than it is to vote it out — or, indeed, to reflect on just how long one sometimes has to wait for… a much-desired outcome, let’s say, or on how we might feel when the day comes. Perhaps it won’t be as jubilant as we think, this entirely hypothetical occasion we’re imagining. Perhaps.

Anyway, on a happier note, here’s one I’ve posted before, but which will never grow old: Peter Hall’s diary entry for 1 May 1978, in which a young actor, Dinsdale Landen, tries to impress an ageing theatrical knight (Donald Wolfit), and doesn’t altogether succeed.

While I’m recycling old nonsense, I may as well try to interest you in the traditional May Day pursuits of… skipping gaily round a pole? Soberly contemplating the oppression of the workers? No: a massive scrap.

Odd this day

But finally, if we assume that magazines come out on the first day of the month they claim on the cover, it’s the 31st anniversary of a short literary work appearing in Esquire. Bill Tonelli, who worked there, posted (on a social media platform we no longer talk about) a few years ago:

At Esquire we sent a bunch of people $100 bills and asked them to send back $100 worth of work. [Martin] Amis sent this bit of brilliance.

That won’t all fit in alt text, so:

If it had been a cheque I would have flung it back in your face with a tearful sneer of integrity (21). But there is something about cash, particularly American cash… (30). In my last novel I described a man waking up in a garden — an ironic paradise (47): ‘I saw curled flora swooping and trembling, like pulses or soft explosions in the side of the head. And a circumambient pale green, barred and embossed with pale light, like … like American money’ (80). $100 buys you 100 words (85). Or a gram of coke (90). But you’ll be needing the bill to sniff it with (100).

Then, handwritten underneath:

(Please retain the bracketed numbers, of course.)
With best wishes,
Martin Amis

I don’t think you have to be a fan to think that that speaks well of him.