My culture picks: Viv Albertine

19 April 2018

With her new memoir To Throw Away Unopened recently published, singer-songwriter Viv Albertine - best known as the guitarist of 70s punk rock band The Slits, shares her favourite book, TV series and song of the moment.

La Bâtarde is the autobiography of French writer Violette Leduc. The book, which was firstpublished in 1964, is an honest, revealing self-portrait of a woman searching for her own identity through a series of love affairs.

Viv says: “It’s a memoir and it was probably the first time I came across such straightforward, right-to-the-heart, to-the-gut writing - but very clean, clear writing - which I absolutely love. She wrote about sex, she wrote about her internal thoughts and it’s absolutely compulsive the way she writes.”

Violette Leduc was the illegitimate child of a servant girl and son of a wealthy family from the North of France. Viv explains: “She didn't feel she was attractive so she wrote a lot about that, about how ugly she thought she was. It’s incredibly perceptive.

“Simone de Beauvoir came across her and encouraged her to write because Violette Leduc - like how I failed my Eleven-Plus - failed the Baccalauréat and was self-taught, like I am. Maybe that’s another reason for the way she writes and why the meter of her prose really resonates with me. If you are an autodidact you probably do write more in the rhythm of speech rather than having learnt prose.”

La Bâtarde was first published in 1964 by Gallimard in the French Language, but most recently in 2003 by Dalkey Archive Press, translated into English by Derek Coltman.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace – American Crime Story explores the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace by serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Based on Maureen Orth's book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in US History, it is the second season of the FX true crime television series American Crime Story.

Viv says: “To me it is television at its absolute best - it’s extraordinarily cast and acted, and the main actor Darren Criss, who previously was in Glee, I think is outstanding. He’s in every episode, in every scene; he absolutely carries the whole series.”

Criss plays Cunanan, the character at the heart of the series, and as Viv explains, “there’s hardly even any dialogue for him but he carries it all in the way he walks. He can switch like a light from one moment to arrogance, to vulnerability. It’s absolutely stunning and the scripting, everything about it is wonderful.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace - American Crime Story is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

Benjamin Clementine is an English singer-songwriter born in London, whose debut album At Least for Now won the 2015 Mercury Prize.

Viv says: “He was brought up in South London, again self-taught, he did not learn music at a music school and he’s not learned bad habits and tropes. He’s like nothing else, which to me is what I was always striving for.

“I remember Sid Vicious and I watching The Sex Pistols and saying, ‘If we can’t be different and better, it’s not worth us being in a band,’ and I wish so many people in bands would think that before they went out there. Strive to be different and better than what is already out there if you are creating - Benjamin Clementine does that.”

Clementine’s song London is the third track from his Mercury Prize-winning album At Least For Now. Viv says: “I always love a song about London or about places. I think Britain could do with more of them; America is so good at that. I think his whole album is absolutely extraordinary.”

Benjamin Clementine’s album At Least For Now is available to listen to and download online.