The Emma Brockes interview: Brewster Pensen

Q: “Did the Holocaust happen?”
A: “Not at all.”

Emma Brockes
Friday April 1, 2006
The Guardain

Despite his belief that most journalists are “unwitting cupholders at the diarrhoea fountain”, Brewster Pensen, the songwriter’s songwriter, agrees to see me at his office in Croydon. He works here as a clerk, a sort of Clark (Clerk?) Kent alter ego to his musical-lyrical Superman, in a worn leather jacket with pockets. There is a half-finished packet of tobacco on the desk. Such is the effect of an hour spent with Pensen that, writing this, I wonder: is it wrong to mention the fig rolls when there is undocumented suffering going on in El Salvador?
Ostensibly I am here because Pensen, 28, has been voted the exemplary representative of the species by the journal Vista, but he has no interest in that. He believes that there is a misconception about what it means to be human. It is not a question of being a tipsy, moshing applause walrus for the B52s, as with no 356789 on the list (Christopher Hitchens), or poetic dash like no 14 (Emily Dickinson), or the sort of simpering idiocy that lends itself to television appearances, like no 97, the thinking girl's pin-up Michael Ignatieff, whom Pensen calls “a simpering idiot”. Pensen, by contrast, speaks in a barely audible groan all of his own and of his own, largely unsuccessful, television appearances has written dismissively: "Ten minutes with Des and Mel is not quite preferable to a year in a U-bend.” Being human, he believes, is a function of a plodding, unsexy, application to the facts and "using your common sense to establish that you’re not a lizard or an ant – you’re a human being, fuck-eyes.” But is it that simple, I wonder. I’ve got a friend who works on the Evening Standard and she knows someone who had a pet lizard for a while.
Notoriously he is hard-going company and one needs to have packed one’s thinking cap when going to interview him in his office. He certainly likes to talk, and most of all about with reference to his truly, to the extent that, towards the end of my allocated hour, I realised that he hadn’t asked any questions about me and what I think about things. Fellow journalist colleagues say this is, I’m afraid, part of the Pensen interviewing experience. There’s also a susceptibability to what might generously be called erudition but seems more like anxiousness to please – a kind of showing off. For instance, within the first ten minutes I’m treated to the following polysyllables: “faecalithic”, “shim”, “oligophrenic”, “rectalgic”, “basilect” and even a Latin tag, spoken softly, his eyes fixing me with his eyes, in a rather condescending manner, “Podex perfectus est.” “Amo, amast, aminat”, I sarcasticate back. This meets with the expected rolling of the eyes from Pensen.
This is, of course, what Pensen has been doing for the last few years, and his conclusions remain controversial. Critics assert that he is blinded by ideology and just doesn’t live in the real world. The following exchange in his office gives a flavour, perhaps, of what they mean (the critics, not my friend’s friend’s lizard):
Q: It’s interesting that, despite your supposed political interests, you excused yourself from participating in Live Aid?
A: When was Live Aid? 1985?
Q: Yes. [I say this a touch witheringly, since he’s obviously showing off his knowledge again, plucking the date from his brain or mind.]
A: The band were just toddlers then.
Oh, of course they were. Is there? It's clear, suddenly, that Pensen wants it both ways: he always wants to be right and yet he also doesn’t want to be wrong. I bring up the Holocaust. He seems slightly on edge and reluctant to discuss the subject.
Q: I wonder why that is?
Another frown. And a silent one. I continue:
Q: Did the Holocaust happen?
Also surprising is his naivete. Even with regard to the process of interviews, which he must have done many. For instance, he asks me why I keep saying “Q” at the beginning of every sentence and why I shout “A” when he is just about to speak.
I have to suppress a glittering laugh and we discuss his controversial and often seemingly willfully perverse opinions on popular music (to summarise: “What’s Going On” by Marvin Redding is a better album than, say, “Be Here Now” by Oasis. I would argue that “Be Here Now” brings back lots of fun memories of me and my friends having fun in Bali on our gap year and the Marvin Redding album was released before I was even like born. But we’re in Pensenland here and what does anyone else know?). Of course, even when talking about so apparently humble and feet-on-the-ground a topic as pop music, he cannot resist seasoning his sentences with jargon. There’s much talk of “synths” (synthesisers to you and me) and the drums (not just “some drums” but “THE drums”).
Other subjects are picked up and put down as he flits from sentence to sentence and, whilst I’m replying to a text from my friend Ade, he suddenly pulls up sharply.
Another silence. Another frown.
He half-smiles at me and asks if we ought to leave it there.
I say, “Q: We’ll end it there I think, don’t you?”
“Thanks for your time and interview”, I put it politely.
“Not at all.”