Our book group meets tonight to discuss Bruce Chatwin's Utz - blogged here - are there any novels with shorter titles? It tells the story of Kaspar Joachim Utz who collects Meissen china - valuable because it is a collectors item, he lives in Prague during the Cold War, has chances to escape to the West but returns because of his collection. A beautiful book written during Chatwin's final illness his musings on the value of art. When Utz dies his collection mysteriously disappears.
Meanwhile in rec.music.classical.recordings there was an Alan M Watkins who assiduously collected Joyce Hatto CD's - which now turn out to be collectors items because they were collectors items, he recommended them to the newsgroup to buy on numerous occasions. Alan purported to live (or have lived) in Prague where he played percussion for some orchestra during the Cold War - which he clearly didn't need to do. Since the scandal broke he seems to have gone missing in action!
I've also just remembered the scene with Marta bashing saucepan lids together like cymbals to obscure the discussion about how much the china is really worth
Is the Chatwin an inspiration for the jape - or is this more material for the conspiracy theorists?
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