| Endnotes
1. In
a final interview (1994), Potter said of his disease: "My
condition was genetic, but it felt psychological." He also
said about it that manifested guilt and sexual sin.
His maternal great-grandfather allegedly became crippled by
arthritis, and his mother, when in her sixties, also complained
of it. Fuller states that their condition was psoriatic arthropathy,
but arthritis itself is a common nuisance, and psoriatic arthropathy
is rare, horrendous and explosive. It is a calamitous chronic
ailment characterized by crippling, and by life-threatening
episodes of agony and raging fever, Especially during acute
phases, a patient's skin is hideously afflicted, and the joints
of his body are attacked, often to the point of irreversible
damage. Fuller's opinion here is probably mistaken.
Stead (1993, p. 72), claimed that Potter's arthropathy was "almost
certainly occasioned in part by a breakdown of some sort."
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2.
Trodd never spoke of such realities of Potter's disease as that
his skin continuously flaked off: he wore long underwear tucked
into his socks, and sought rooms with rugs and carpets which
would conceal rather that highlight the desquamation.
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3. A
lengthy essay on Potter by Philip Purser was published in 1982.
Purser wrote:
. . . the relationship with the producer, who in television
acts as impresario, moving spirit, and buffer between the author
and everyone else, has evidently been even more important to
Potter [than that of other collaborators]. Kenith Trodd, a friend
from early political days . . . later set up [with others] Kestrel
Productions, for which Potter wrote the play "Moonlight
on the Highway." When Kestrel folded . . . Trodd became
a straightforward free-lance producer, and the man who nursed
most of Potter's later works onto the air."
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4. Purser wrote (1980, p. 176): "In
company with Michael Frayn and other misfits he [Potter] was
sent on one of the Army's celebrated crash language courses
which had been instituted to provide an ample supply of interpreters
should the Cold War produce some warmer skirmishes, and ended
up as a Russian-language clerk in the War Office." Purser
assumed that the reader would know that these `misfits' were
brilliant as well an unconventional Army types.
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5. Trodd had in fact
been writing a book about Stone when Stone suddenly died of
a stroke.
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6. Potter claimed that
he had had intercourse with 156 prostitutes. "He
may have said so, but he certainly never did."(Elizabeth
Guider, a close acquaintance. [Personal communication. 1986])
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7. "Paper Doll,"
in "The Singing Detective," served as a commentary
on the wretchedness felt by Philip's father, and perhaps by
Philip himself, at Mrs. Marlow's iniquity.
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8. The contrast between
Potter's repeated loving references to his father and the almost
total absence of any to his mother is astonishing. His personal
feelings about women seem to have been contemptuous, and was
perhaps reflected in "Stand Up, Nigel Barton:" he
has an Oxford classmate assert: "these sons of workers
. . . like their women to be very prim and proper or on their
back with their mouth shut."
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9. He was, however,
deeply religious, often in a rather primitive sense and at times
with an exploitative commitment. Potter's religious tenets religious
tenets seemed to intertwine with his characteristic defenses.
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10. Wyver's excellent
essay about Potter is included in the 1988 publication of the
Museum of Television and Radio.
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11. Potter wrote into
Marlow's anguished plea to the medical staff for escape from
his agony his inability to "get a handle" on it.
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12. This was almost
certainly "hype": a hypocritical device, a means of
protectively concealing deep and sensitive feelings behind a
facade ("playing to the audience."); the contempt
he so often expressed was directed at the way that religion
was used, abused and exploited.
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13. Gilbert cites
(p. 283) Potter's badgering behavior toward Gina Bellman.
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14. By no means is
my appraisal typical.
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15. Potter left crucial
words out after "No one will ever," namely, "have
to," or "be required to." Without them, the claim,
as it stands, could be taken to have the opposite meaning to
that which Potter seems to have intended.
16. A problem in preparing
these synopses is that the script, when available, often differs
from the videotape. More perplexing, differing videotapes seem
to be available. The presentation of "Double Dare"
at the Museum differed considerably from that which I saw at
the BBC Television Centre.
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17. Conrad's (1990)
Marlowe may be another source. His search into the heart of
darkness has considerable relevance. In "The Secret Agent,"
a detective, bent on "finding out", makes his descent
into the streets of the monstrous city, London, another "heart
of darkness". (Potter's protagonist in a later play, "The
Visitor," makes a similar descent). Conrad's Marlowe must
lose his moral identity and take on a "sense of loneliness
and evil freedom" that is "rather pleasant" (p.
92). Philip Marlow's prophetic prediction to "find out"
also suggests that Potter may have drawn on Conrad for his detective.
(See Bradbury [1989] pp. 86--92, on Conrad's predilection for
doubles).
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18. To avoid confusion,
I will consistently differentiate the writer Marlow from the
detective he has created and given the same name, by always
referring the latter as the singing detective. For similar reasons,
the title: "The Singing Detective" will refer exclusively
to Marlow's mystery story; I will call Potter's play
just that.
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19. This music returns
frequently. My wife has just brought to my attention the fact
that "Peg," like "Meg," is a common contraction
for "Margaret", the first name both of Potter's mother
and of his wife.
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20. This illustrates
a characteristic degradation in psychotherapy. The little boy
in Marlow is eager to gain absolution, eager to please. Marlow
becomes to that extent even less mature than he was.
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22. In the context
of Philip's sexual conflicts, I emphasized the meaning of the
product of this delinquency as a gift. Fecal leavings are also
vehicles for the expression of hatred and rage, with murderous
implications. Those emotions well up often in Potter's constructions
and he finally acknowledged, in the Bragg interview, that he
had himself committed a similar delinquency.
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23. Potter insisted
on writing his literary work by hand.
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24. Earlier, Marlow
had thought about life itself as a literary invention. He speculated
that his occupational therapist might be nothing but a collection
of althpbetical symbols which might at any mom,ent slide off
the page. As an after thought, he wondered if the sme might
be true of him.
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25. The writer's notion
as he creates that he is God is seldom so powerful that
he brings it forth in order to deny it.
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26. This
minute detail is the first muddling in this play of a "real"
character with the product of the fictitious writer's creation.
Kingsley's Blackeyes never tore her nails as Jessica had. Such
confusions are often intriguing. Here, however, Potter confuses
his audience.
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27. Blake, a tough
and determined enforcer of the law and a smiter of smut, is
also is a fragment of Potter's self-appraisal.
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28. So
what? A mysterious clue is dangled before us.
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29. An echo is evident
here, of Potter's his own trauma, when his mother destroyed
his first literary effort. His mention of Dodgson's stutter
is of interest in light of the number of stutterers in Potter
plays. I have not found any suggestion of that affliction in
Potter or his family.
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30. In 1979, it was
used again in "Blue Remembered Hills" exclusively
and even more effectively, adding profoundly to the poignancy
of the piece. Because that play reveals nothing pertaining directly
to Potter's use of doubles, it has not been included in this
book.
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31. Potter here indulged
a stratagem which he used often, with varying degrees of success.
He created an almost grotesque double of himself in Peters.
Also, he provided this double with attributes strongly suggestive
of Trodd.
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32. Cook (p. 81) regarded
Cynthia's experience as "disastrous." I felt that
her "thank you" was, while not morally elevated, heartfelt.
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33. Partially concealed
is Potter's intuitive grasp of an ultimate secret, an ultimate
guilt, and the ultimate reproach: it has been God Himself who
has led to his downfall, by being so overwhelmingly longed for,
so inaccessible, so absolute and unique a potential source of
inspiration and radiance, and thus so irresistibly seductive.
Such sexual surrender to God may be acceptable saints like Theresa,
but not to other mortals. Potter's own sexual surrender seems
to have been anal, a male's simulation of a female's classic
sexual role. It seems to have led to a split: the giver is not
only God or His representative, but also the Devil, and the
gift of penetration became, consciously, a rape. Potter assumed
that a child's sexual behavior is an adult's fault, but never
quite fully acknowledged that, somewhere in his mind, his heavenly
Father bore the ultimate guilt.
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34. Not to be subdued
by any such parody, the advertising industry went Potter one
better, introducing in The United States a new dog-food conducive
to the delivery of turds of firm consistency for greater ease
in poop-scooping.
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35. The Aryan goddess's
puzzlement is deliciously apt. It provided reassuring evidence
that even when very ill, as he later acknowledged, Potter was
able to inject a moment of devastating humor into what was in
the process of becoming somewhat repetitiously sordid.
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36. Perhaps no more
consummate doppelganger than this exists in literature. He reflects
Potter's unconscious impulses and his conflicts and also anticipates
and determines his fate.
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37. The tapping is
reminiscent of the clicking heels of the psychiatrist in "The
Singing Detective," which I had seen earlier, and anticipatory
to the clicking toggles at the Grand Hotel, in "Cream in
my Coffee." A similar staccato is written into "Karaoke",
again caused by a woman's clicking heels.
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38. An
echo of Nigel Barton's explanation for destroying the daffodil.
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39. Similarly
in "The Singing Detective," Nurse Mills fails to understand
Marlow's grief at the loss of Ali. It seems that even the best
of Potter's female creations just cannot ever measure up in
experiencing the compassion Potter thinks males long for. But
in "Only Make Believe," we had already learned that
no measure of compassion could suffice.
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40. I
found his explanation, with its point that Arthur comes back
at the end, incomprehensible. Perhaps I failed to appreciate
the full measure and depth of Potter's mystical hopes, which
became evident in the Bragg interview. They are far more excusable
there, however, than they are here.
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41. Potter,
customarily so gloriously articulate, stumbles here because
of his identification with Arthur.
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42. According to Trodd,
the BBC's acquiescence to the extraordinary length of the presentation
was the result of his having won a battle with its overlords,
with Potter's help and advice, over their having caved in to
the ban on "Brimstone and Treacle."
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43. For critics of
television drama, just as for Trodd, the music itself was the
breakthrough. That was, of course, an outstanding innovation.
That Potter had the man who was his double sing in a woman's
voice was totally overlooked.
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44. My justification
of the presumption in correcting Potter in the interpretation
is this:
Perfectly lucid writing presupposes a totally conscious writer,
and this does not correspond to reality. . . . . no author deeply
understands what he has written and all authors have the opportunity
of being astonished by the beautiful and awful things that the
critics have found in their works and that they did not know
they had put there . . ."
Primo Levy (1988)
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45. The
evident importance of some sort of rhythmic tapping, or rapping,
gives rise to a psychoanalytic speculation. Potter's adult life
visit, alone, to the Grand Hotel, his complaint about that sound
while there, his writing it into a play with a core of souring
and hatred toward a wife who had sinned, taken together, strongly
suggest the following: Potter originally listened to the music
from the Palm Court as a child. The rhythmic noises may well
have been displaced bedroom noises.
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46. As
this Chapter neared completion, I agreed to submit an essay
with the identical title and much of the same substance to the
editors, Vernon W. Gras and John R. Cook, with their agreement
that I would be entitled to incorporate it independently. Those
editors have accepted the essay, which is included, with their
very minor amending, in "The Passion of Dennis Potter International
Collected Essays" (April, 2000), St. Martin's Press, New
York..
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47. For the most part,
a psychological analysis will follow my account of the plays.
A few items must, however, be noted here: The words stars in
his crown will be familiar to everyone who watched Potter's
last public performance, during the Bragg interview. The act
of shooting point blank into the head provides a retrograde
link with the climax of "The Singing Detective," and
anticipates a series of similar acts in "Cold Lazarus."
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48.
It is likely that Potter intended
to imply the fall from a state of grace, which would apply particularly
to Beth. She is soon to die-a harsh example of the wages of
sin. That Daniel falls is again suggestively reminiscent of
Potter's feminine identification.
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49. Although Potter
does not close in on this issue, the horrors and evils he confronts
in the production he has created provide a counterpoint to the
one posed in "Clockwork Orange." Burgess (1963) demonstrated
that the human soul must be free to do evil, in order that man
be a moral creature; Potter sought freedom from externally imposed
evil, but one can recognize throughout his writings, speeches
and interviews that he sought to expose by projection an inner
evil as well as to free himself from it.
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50. Potter's explanation
is close to one which he himself expressed a decade earlier,
which I cited (Harrison, 1996) as extraordinarily similar to
the views of Freudians.
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51. Miss Bellman later
revealed that Potter had inflicted humiliating and belittling
insults, apparently as he began to sense his own failure as
director.
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52. To my astonishment,
one member of a group of sophisticated writers, editors, and
agents expressed a doubt about the possibility that Potter,
whom he believed to have been something of a stud, could have
struggled with homosexual conflicts. Many sexual athletes are
at least latently homosexual.
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© Irving Harrison, M.D.
2001
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