Radiophonic Writing at the BBC, 1945-1963
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Radiophonic Writing at the BBC, 1945-1963 by Ross Hawkins A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Ross Hawkins (2016) Radiophonic Writing at the BBC, 1945-1963 Ross Hawkins Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2016 Abstract Creative radio is written and produced from an unavoidable set of material conditions, but received by its listeners as ephemeral and supposedly immaterial sound. Focusing on the writing, production and reception of literary radio broadcast by the BBC in the postwar era, this dissertation establishes a connection between the cultural significance of radio and the aesthetic significance of sound. The postwar BBC was a major participant in the era of British cultural welfare statism, but the corporation also flourished as a distributor of culture, providing challenging and even radical aesthetic experience. The reputedly “highbrow” BBC Third Programme, I argue, was neither elitist nor exclusive, nor was the radio drama it produced culturally or aesthetically “complete”; instead the aurality of radiophonic writing invited pluralistic and active listenership. In the postwar era radio was no longer new; however, Louis MacNeice, Giles Cooper and Samuel Beckett found new ways of exploiting radio’s maturity to develop a progressive radio aesthetics. MacNeice, a full-time BBC staff member, was a radio professional whose writings dramatize a conflict between his poetic instinct for sound and his impatience with the institutional pressures of planning in the increasingly bureaucratic postwar BBC. Conversely, Cooper had no fixed institutional position, and his sonically experimental ii works, reflecting this precariousness, oscillate between innovation and obsolescence. Beckett’s radio plays suggest a different type of precariousness, exploiting electroacoustic technology to convey a delicate ambiguity between exterior landscape and interior space. My analysis of all three writers demands an appreciation of their production as sound, and I offer my dissertation as a contribution to the growing field of literary sound studies; as such, I attend to the specifically sonic components of radio plays and features, giving a deserved critical prominence to producers and electroacoustic artists, particularly members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The meaning of broadcast radio, I argue, is constructed in the resonant aural sphere, a space of collaborative interaction between author, producer and listener. For radio creators and radio listeners alike, this resonant interaction turned the medium’s coming obsolescence into a creatively significant moment of invention in the face of decay. iii Acknowledgments I would like to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor Melba Cuddy- Keane. Without her guidance this dissertation would not have been possible. She has contributed considerable knowledge and wisdom, but more importantly patience, generosity and belief in the value of my project. She has been an extremely perceptive reader of my work for many years, and her encouragement and support has been unfailing. I am thankful to her, finally, for being an excellent listener. I am sincerely grateful, also, to the other members of my dissertation committee, Sarah Wilson and Andrew DuBois. I thank them for their astute suggestions and sympathetic readings of my work, along with their consistent encouragement. I would also like to thank the other participants in my oral defense, David Hendy, Lawrence Switzky and Lynne Magnusson, for their insightful questions and contributions. I am thankful to my family for their love and understanding. And lastly, I could not have completed this project without the daily sympathy and emotional support of my fiancée Virginia LeBlanc. I thank her for making me realize that I was capable of completing this project. iv Table of Contents Page TITLE PAGE ....................................................................................................................... i ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER 1: RADIOPHONIC WRITING: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS AND THE MEDIUM ............................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction: What “radiophonic writing” means ................................................... 1 The cultural significance of postwar radio .............................................................. 2 Part 1. Postwar British Society and the BBC ................................................................ 7 Clement Attlee’s Labour Government, 1945-51 .................................................... 7 The post-war restructuring of the BBC, 1946 ........................................................ 9 The Department/Network structure of the BBC ................................................... 15 Collaboration in Radio .......................................................................................... 20 Creative Employment: Writers at the BBC .......................................................... 23 Part 2. The Aesthetic Significance of Sound .............................................................. 27 Radio as an Aural Public Sphere .......................................................................... 27 How To Listen? ..................................................................................................... 33 The Radio Form ................................................................................................... 42 Chapter previews .................................................................................................. 50 2: THE PROFESSIONAL’S PROGRESS: THE ACOUSTICS OF PROFESSIONALISM AND PRECARIOUSNESS IN THE RADIO FEATURES OF LOUIS MACNEICE ................................................................................................... 54 Introduction: a plea for sound ............................................................................... 54 v Part 1. Creative Labour at the BBC ............................................................................ 60 War to Post-War: MacNiece as Poet-Producer ..................................................... 60 Institutional structures ........................................................................................... 66 ‘Tales Told in a Chimney Corner’: the spoken word ........................................... 69 From propaganda to parable ................................................................................. 74 Production: “What was in print / Must take on breath” ........................................ 82 Part 2. The Dark Tower ............................................................................................... 92 The unfinishable quest .......................................................................................... 92 Precarious wireless: the radiophonic quest ........................................................... 99 Part 3. Precarity, Professionalism and Persons From Porlock ................................. 114 3: THE WEIRD PROGRAMME: THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP AND THE PLAYS OF GILES COOPER ......................................................................................... 123 Build-up of the transient: pursuit of the weird .................................................... 123 Part 1. The Radiophonic Workshop .......................................................................... 128 Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release ............................................................................ 128 The Revenant ...................................................................................................... 141 Part 2. Giles Cooper .................................................................................................. 149 Unhomeliness: Cooper in the context of postwar Britain ................................... 150 Mathry Beacon: homelands ................................................................................ 154 The Disagreeable Oyster: outwardness and embarrassment .............................. 159 The Disagreeable Oyster: the soundworld ......................................................... 167 Under the Loofah Tree: a ready hand on the volume ......................................... 172 Coda .......................................................................................................................... 182 Waiting for a left-wing bureaucrat to make a heart-beat .................................... 182 vi 4: PERIPHERY AND (ANTI)PASTORAL IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S RADIO LANDSCAPES ............................................................................................................... 186 Part 1. Landscape, soundscape and the whereabouts of radio sound ........................ 187 “A trifle regional”: radio centres and peripheries ............................................... 191 Soundscapes and the feeling of being peripheral ................................................ 194 Scripted noises .................................................................................................... 199 “I am sorry to disturb you about the animals” .................................................... 203 Part