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David Sedaris Q&A: “Oh, the work I’ d do if I weren’ t so full of hate for Trump” Why Ross Poldark is Blue Labour

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The writer and comedian talks House of Cards, abstract expressionism, and the cartoon character Jonny Quest.
David Sedaris’s books include “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls” and “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim”. He has a rubbish-lorry named after him in Horsham, Sussex.
What’s your earliest memory?
I recall being three years old and throwing an epic tantrum on the kitchen floor of our apartment. My mother was there but, fortunately, not my father, who would have beaten me to death. With good reason.
Who are your heroes?
As a child I greatly admired a cartoon character named Jonny Quest who had adventures and hung out with a kid in a turban named Hadji. They were so brave, those two. Now I’ d say that trans people are my heroes. I can’ t imagine the nerve it takes to ignore all the stares and the name calling, to get up every day and be totally yourself, no matter what the world thinks of you.
What was the last book that changed your thinking?
Hunger, by Roxane Gay. It’s a first-person account of what it’s like to be super-morbidly obese, and it brought up a number of issues and predicaments I had never considered. It also explained tattoos, which I’ ve never really understood.
What political figure, past or present, do you look up to?
I always loved Shirley Chisholm, a black American congresswoman with a very distinctive way of speaking. She ran for president, a real uphill battle in 1970s America.
What would be your Mastermind specialist subject?
The short stories of Tobias Wolff. I’ ve read every one of them umpteen times.
In which time and place, other than your own, would you like to live?
I’ ll take postwar New York. I’ d like to have witnessed all the excitement surrounding abstract expressionism, and to have snapped up Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston paintings for next to nothing.
What TV show could you not live without?
I’ ll be very sad when House of Cards draws its last breath. I love how evil the Underwoods are.
What’s your theme tune?
“Midnight Sun” by Abbey Lincoln. I always play it before leaving for a show.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ ve ever received? Have you followed it?
“Hold on to your foreign rights.” My late agent, Don Congdon, advised me of that way back in 1994. Did I do it? Yes.
What’s currently bugging you?
I’ m very troubled by Donald Trump. It’s not that he’s petty and morally bankrupt, but that he’s mentally ill. “Well, ” his supporters say, “at least he didn’ t have a private email server!”
What single thing would make your life better?
Donald Trump not being president. Oh, the work I could get done if my heart weren’ t so full of hate.
When were you happiest?
The fall of 1998, when I first moved to Paris and got an apartment. It was exactly the sort of place I’ d dreamt of.
If you weren’ t a writer, what would you be?
I’ d be a visual artist, though not a very good one. My problem was that I’ d make the same thing over and over again, too scared to take a chance.
Are we all doomed?
I’ m afraid so, at least individually.
“Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002” by David Sedaris is published by Little, Brown. He tours the UK in September
Political turmoil, economic insecurity, a major rupture with the Continent, popular unrest and a growing backlash against the elites… British politics in 2017 increasingly resembles the plot of Poldark, the BBC drama set in 18th-century Cornwall.
Against the odds, Ross Poldark is turning round the fortunes of his late father’s failing estate. He also lands blows on his bitter enemy George Warleggan, whose arrogant attempt to smear Poldark backfires. While Poldark’s courage to take on the establishment earns him popular support, Warleggan’s scheming and cold calculation ultimately dent his bid to rule unopposed. All this is rather reminiscent of the unexpectedly strong showing of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party in the election that Theresa May did not have to call and nearly lost.
At first, Poldark seems to be the Cornish Corbyn, a revolutionary redcoat who defies the ruling classes and fights for the many. In the first and second seasons of the TV adaptation of Winston Graham’s novels (it is now in its third) , Poldark spends much of his time trying to keep open the failing copper mines that he has inherited from his father. His concern is to save the jobs and livelihood of the workers who would otherwise face starvation or the debtors’ prison.
In a recent episode, Poldark even gives the miners, who have been made redundant by Warleggan, part of his land to grow food on. Corbyn’s campaign against Tory cuts, job insecurity, the reliance on food banks and payday loans is of a piece with this fight against poverty. But in reality, Poldark is more blue than red. A conservative sense of duty, loyalty and love of ancestral land runs through his veins more than a sense of individual rights and cosmopolitan altruism.
An army captain who fought in the war against American independence and later led an expedition to free his friend Dwight Enys from the clutches of the French revolutionaries, he is a military man whose first loyalty is to his country and fellow soldiers. However, far from being a warmonger, Poldark knows about the horrors of mass conflict. “War takes a man places no one can ever follow, ” he says.
Ross Poldark comes from an old family to which he is fiercely loyal – especially his aunt Agatha, who is the last living link to his deceased father and uncle. For him, the family name Poldark embodies a deep attachment to people, place and purpose: upholding traditions of mutual obligation among relatives, neighbours and the local community around hard work and decency. “The Poldarks, ” Graham writes, “had always been on good terms with their tenants. Distinction of class was not absent; it was understood so clearly that nobody needed to emphasise it; but… polite convention was not allowed to stand in the way of common sense.”
Family, hard work and community are central to a story of pride and dignity once familiar to the Labour movement and crucial to its historic identity of representing the people across divisions of class, colour or creed. But today, the left often collapses sentiments of attachment into a soulless socialism – an economistic notion of income redistribution and ideological class warfare against the rich led by a centralised state.
On the contrary, Poldark defends poachers, helps fugitives and takes on the corrupt without demonising the wealthy. His nemesis, Warleggan, is not old aristocracy but new money – a leading member of a class of industrialists and bankers whose greed and ambition violate a traditional sense of honour and virtue. The issue is not Warleggan’s wealth but rather the arriviste attitude of someone who denies his humble origins and seeks social recognition at any cost.
Neither Tory nor Whig, Poldark is committed to fairness and economic justice based on reciprocity – relationships of give and take and the honouring of contributions to the community.

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