Addicted to books, this Little Darwin stroller stopped in his tracks when he saw a seductive display of reprints of early Penguins in the window of the Angus and Robertson shop off the Smith Street Mall. One of them was Nabokov’s , Lolita , published in l955. Instantaneously , I was reminded of a memorable book, Tropical Temper , by James Kirkup, Readers Union Collins, London, l965, with an amusing story about Lolita . Author Kirkup went by boat from London to Malaya to teach modern literature in a university where he was told the English Department had to be run like a graduate production factory, so Lolita could not be on the reading list .
Delighted to find a bookstore, he unearthed an old and dirty copy of Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading in a pile of lurid sex thrillers. Expecting to pay the earth , his words, the Bengali storekeeper, still holding the book , asked for a mere dollar , and inquired if there was anything else he wanted. Looking at the book, the seller quickly read the blurb which said it was another memorable masterpiece by the best selling author of Lolita.
Then the fast talking shopkeeper asked Kirkup, the UK’s first resident university poet, if he liked “ hot stuff” and winked. He could supply Way of All Flesh- very naughty, very cheap, for two dollars. Declining the naughty volume, Kirkup was offered “… dishionary , plenty rude word, groin, bellybutton , vagina , stockingtop, armpit, poppycock…” Fleeing the premises, the last word heard was “tomtit .”
Naughty words got Kirkup into trouble in l977 when he and the editor of the Gay News newspaper were prosecuted for blasphemy by morals crusader Mary Whitehouse for running Kirkup’s poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name which dealt with a Roman centurion’s supposed love for Christ on the Cross. A highly regarded poet and writer in Japan, in l997 he was presented with the Japan Festival Foundation Award and invited by the Emperor and Empress to the Imperial New Year Reading at the Palace in Tokyo.
Tropical Temper, a memoir of Malaya , is an illuminating work with brilliant insights into life in Malaya and Singapore , containing pertinent comments on the media , censorship, racism , the haughty attitude of university staff . There is also an account of his favourable first meeting with a young Australian man who had a strange Ocker accent and was disgusted by Singapore. That Kirkup experienced difficulty understanding the Australian accent is evidenced by him writing that the unpretentious Aussie had a garage business “ at Woolamaroo”, near Sydney. In all probability, this was Woolloomooloo. It is a book to be taken out from time to time to entertain and lift jaded spirits.
Then the fast talking shopkeeper asked Kirkup, the UK’s first resident university poet, if he liked “ hot stuff” and winked. He could supply Way of All Flesh- very naughty, very cheap, for two dollars. Declining the naughty volume, Kirkup was offered “… dishionary , plenty rude word, groin, bellybutton , vagina , stockingtop, armpit, poppycock…” Fleeing the premises, the last word heard was “tomtit .”
Naughty words got Kirkup into trouble in l977 when he and the editor of the Gay News newspaper were prosecuted for blasphemy by morals crusader Mary Whitehouse for running Kirkup’s poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name which dealt with a Roman centurion’s supposed love for Christ on the Cross. A highly regarded poet and writer in Japan, in l997 he was presented with the Japan Festival Foundation Award and invited by the Emperor and Empress to the Imperial New Year Reading at the Palace in Tokyo.
Tropical Temper, a memoir of Malaya , is an illuminating work with brilliant insights into life in Malaya and Singapore , containing pertinent comments on the media , censorship, racism , the haughty attitude of university staff . There is also an account of his favourable first meeting with a young Australian man who had a strange Ocker accent and was disgusted by Singapore. That Kirkup experienced difficulty understanding the Australian accent is evidenced by him writing that the unpretentious Aussie had a garage business “ at Woolamaroo”, near Sydney. In all probability, this was Woolloomooloo. It is a book to be taken out from time to time to entertain and lift jaded spirits.
