The Brooknerian

Is Brookner our contemporary? It might be a strange question to ask of a writer active so recently, whose last work of fiction was published in 2011. But even then there was less labelling, less ready codification of social and emotional malaise. In 2011 we heard talk of mental health less often, though not quite as infrequently as in 1981, when Brookner's first novel came out. Hermione Lee, Brookner's later biographer, offers an insightful, psychoanalytical review ( here ) of A Friend from England , one of Brookner's 1980s novels, inexplicably now out of print. Though the protagonist, Rachel, hasn't read Freud, 'Freud,' says Lee, 'would have wanted to read her': [S]he is an extreme case in the Brookner hospital, off in her own isolation ward. Time and again Brookner's characters worry the reader. Nominatively determined Herz, in The Next Big Thing , endures cardiac discomfort, but his visit to his GP baffles the harassed young doctor, with talk of F...

She rarely gives interviews... Such would be the excited refrain any time a journalist did breach the walls of the Courtauld Institute or the flat in Elm Park Gardens. Anita Brookner was interviewed in print only a handful of times, mostly in the 1980s, possibly once in the 90s, and twice in the 2000s. She featured in broadcast media hardly ever: on TV a few times around the time of the Booker win, and on radio equally infrequently. As the Countess Olenska says of the van der Luydens in The Age of Innocence , Brookner kept herself rare . Her few exchanges with journalists were stagey, dandyish affairs, expressed in language as mandarin and radical as anything to be found in her fiction. As in her novels, repetition and variation drove the performance. The Brookner academic Peta Mayer has written about repetition in Brookner's interviews. We might also recall Herz in The Next Big Thing / Making Things Better and his fantasies about being interviewed by an infinitely sympathetic, in...

In a recent post ( here ), I pointed to Anita Brookner's prolific, largely uncurated journalistic output. Serendipity presents me today with a piece on Géricault from September, 1983 ( here ). The date, as will become clear at the end of this post, is significant. Like many of Brookner's art-history reviews, this New Criterion essay is less a review of the book under consideration than a wider discussion of the artist, his work and his life. Géricault is familiar ground for Brookner: her essay collection,  Soundings (1997), begins with the text of an excellent lecture Brookner gave on the artist at the Courtauld. But anything of Brookner's, however repetitious, is of value. Indeed it may be argued that in her repetitions, and the variations they allow, Brookner is most truly herself. Only Brookner could make this arresting, novelistic observation of a sketch ( Retour de Russie ) by Géricault in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC: Here are two veterans of the Na...

Continuing a series on the 2026 rebrand: Two further cover images have been added to booksellers' websites. I was expecting something similar to the new Strangers ( here ). These, however, reuse the black-and-white photos of ten years ago. In this significant year for Brookner, I hoped for the sort of uniform branding enjoyed by Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro and others. Brookner's prolificity will always be a problem for publishers. Several of the novels, A Misalliance  (see here ) in particular, may be lost for ever. But even Henry James, or Hardy, otherwise fairly completely in print, have their lost children. James's Confidence , anyone? (For which see here , if of interest.) 

Announced this week, an event in September at Topping and Company, Bath: Hermione Lee discusses her upcoming biography of Anita Brookner. https://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/bath/hermione-lee/

As noted in a recent post ( here ), I'm fond of Professor Emma Smith's lecture series on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Highbrow but accessible, these talks contribute to our continued appreciation of early-modern drama. Professor Smith builds on the curatorial work of commentators over the years, not least in the eighteenth century, when Johnson, Pope and the Shakespeare Ladies Club argued for the preeminence and rehabilitation of the 'Bard'. Professor Smith extends her mission through popular media, appearing regularly on literary podcasts. In one such, on being asked why she loves Shakespeare, Professor Smith responds, Do I? Do I really love Shakespeare? She goes on: Shakespeare is a thing to think with. I adore the conversations it makes possible. A thing to think with . It's a thought-provoking remark, relevant to fandoms of all kinds. It helps me understand my own 'love' of Brookner. I don't read her all the time. I have many other interests. ...

An interior hermetically sealed, a tilted head, a clock just edging beyond a quarter past one, a whole afternoon to be got through... The National Portrait Gallery in London houses five photographs of Anita Brookner ( here ), each of which repays close attention. Anita Brookner by Lucy Anne Dickens The most extreme of Brookner portraits. It is one of a series of photos of art establishment figures from the early 2000s. Each is formal and carefully staged; none is as austere. Lucy Dickens said of the project, 'I am immensely grateful to those who agreed to sit for me, despite the pressures on their time, and in some cases, old age or infirmity. I was met unfailingly with courtesy (and often fish pie).' The only references to Brookner's former career are the pictures on the walls, somewhat artlessly placed. We know Brookner owned an etching by Manet of Baudelaire, and a few watercolours by Edward Lear. The picture on the left has the air of a Watteau. Brookner has a pile of ...