A Life Fully Lived

Brookner's critiques of other novelists always claim our attention. In the novels they're rather thin on the ground, in contrast to her extended references to the fine arts*. Proust, whom (thanks to Julian Barnes) we know Brookner read and reread avidly, is a case in point. There are mere scattered mentions of the writer in, for example, Strangers, and Proust's famous first line is quoted in Incidents in the Rue Laugier. These are, like Brookner's other literary references, conventional and less than illuminating.

For illumination we must go to her critical writings. I hope one day someone will publish a collected edition of Brookner's reviews and essays. There is the online Spectator archive, but its search facility is far from satisfactory. One comes upon Brookner essays more by chance than design. I found this the other day, a review of a volume of Proust's letters. As ever in her non-fiction Brookner makes brilliant points, not least in the way she brackets Proust with Freud, thus linking two writers of interest and relevance to herself:

One of the most interesting lacunae in Proust's overflowing correspondence was caused by an inauspicious lapse of time: he could not have read Marie Nordlinger's translations of Freud, for he died before they were published. On the other hand Freud might have read Proust, but probably did not. It might be objected that neither needed to read the other, since their discoveries and conclusions were remarkably similar, analysis and self-analysis being two sides of the same coin. Freud worked logically, Proust intuitively: the last line of Time Regained was written before the first line of the first volume, so Freudianly dependent on that personal pronoun. The story that Proust has to tell us is more complete than any that Freud might have elicited from his patients, but one which he would have understood for himself: the progress from childhood anxiety through the mutations of experience and sociability to recognition, perhaps haggard recognition, of the inevitability of death. Thus time regained is by virtue of the same process time foregone.

Spectator, 22 Jan 2000

Elsewhere in the review her preoccupations become more personal still. One cannot but think that Brookner, in her essays, as elsewhere, is really talking only about herself.

Yet in these late letters, when time is running out, he remains a solipsist, defending his work against all comers. His fine manners never desert him, yet to critics he offers criticism in return. The novel sustained him through unimaginable discomforts. The life was the work. In every sense it was a life fully lived.

***

*Brookner's use of paintings in her novels is deserving of deeper study. In another Spectator review she praised the seductiveness and enlightenment of Eric Karpeles' Paintings in Proust.

References to painters and paintings are numerous in the novel, revealing an attention to detail with which Proust enhances - or, in the present author’s word, accessorises - his characters.

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Top Ten Brookner

The much-loved Backlisted podcast ( here ) returns with a 'lockdown' episode that includes a lot of Anita Brookner talk. Prompted by discussion about Hotel du Lac , never the most representative Brookner, the chat meanders pleasantly on to the potential for compiling an Anita Brookner 'Top Ten'. At a loose end myself, though this week at the chalkface entertaining the children of keyworkers, I considered the question myself. I'm sure there are similar such lists elsewhere on this blog - I forget, and I don't particularly want to consult them anyhow. Of course, Brookner - like Henry James, like Trollope, indeed like many prolific authors - passed through phases. Brookner's novels, I contend, fall into three, neatly divided by the decades she wrote in: the raw, vital 80s; the settled magisterial 90s; the bleak, experimental 2000s. A Brookner novel from the 80s seems very different from any of her final works - just as 'James I', 'James II' ...

Photo Op #3

The new Penguin paperback edition of Strangers (2009), with its introduction by Tessa Hadley (see here ) and its thick gatefold or French fold cover, is an opulent affair. Oddly, its livery is distinct from other recent reissues, instead mimicking an earlier version of Hotel du Lac . Of interest is the inclusion of an author photograph. It's a shot from a 1986 set by Peter Jordan. It's the session where Brookner sits at her dining table, a book open before her, bookshelves and peace lilies behind. She wears an open-necked cream blouse and a small wristwatch. Other shots from the session show Brookner holding her neck, leaning her chin on her hands, folding her arms, smiling, turning aside. The one chosen for Strangers is suitably equivocal - folded arms, slight turn of the head, left eyebrow slightly more raised than normal, downward-angled lips. It's the first time a photo of Brookner has appeared on a British edition since the hardback of Visitors in 1997, the last und...

Brookner Biography Announced

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Christopher Hampton's Hotel du Lac

However often I watch it, I'm always surprised. A film of an Anita Brookner novel seems as outlandish as an adaptation of, say, late James. But The Golden Bowl and, more skilfully, The Wings of the Dove have been successfully translated to the screen in recent decades. Their plots, though, underneath the verbiage, are very simple, even sensational. Hotel du Lac , similarly, is one of Brookner's more structured, plotted works. Rights to the novel were bought before its Booker success. Initially Anita Brookner had been approached to write an original screenplay, but she said she wouldn't know how to. Instead she offered the soon-to-be published Hotel du Lac . (This is revealed in the 2002 commentary that accompanies the DVD of the 1986 TV film. The commentary is a dull, low-powered affair. No Brookner, of course.) Anna Massey plays Edith. I've often found Massey a distractingly distinctive actor. Like Judi Dench she manages somehow, in any role, alwa...

'Babbling with Brookner': Interview Discovery

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A Fraudulent Encounter

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Photo Op #2

Further to recent posts on Brookner photographs and harder-to-find images in particular, I offer this from The Times , June, 1994: John Voos's portrait accompanies a review of A Private View . The piece, by Philip Howard, is often quoted: 'Anita Brookner is our Henry James'. By way of a title, a line from Browning - 'When the long dark evenings come' - completes an excellent evaluation of one of Brookner's finest novels. The photo is an oddity in the oeuvre: Brookner in the act of speaking. Was it posed? Was it taken at an event? The blurred background suggests the familiar setting of Brookner's London flat. The hard undeceived wistfulness of her gaze, the precision of her discourse, the discontented romanticism of her outlook are all captured by a master photographer.

Further Soundings #2

In a post a while back ( here ), I recalled pitching unsuccessfully a volume of Brookner's essays... *** Anita Brookner Mme de Blazac and I: Memoirs, Essays and Reviews 1981-2011 1. ‘Mme de Blazac’, memoir, LRB , 19 June 1997 2. On Abel Gance’s film Napoleon, film review, LRB , 16 April 1981 3. ‘The Bibliotheque Nationale’, essay/memoir, TLS , 5 October 1984 4. ‘The People and the Place’, review of Parisians by Graham Robb, Spectator , 10 April 2010 5. ‘Repose is Taboo’d by Anxiety’, review of Migraine by Oliver Sacks, Spectator , 23 October 1993 6. ‘Even Less Fiction than Stranger ’, review of Le Premier Homme by Albert Camus, Spectator , 14 May 1994 7. ‘The Master of the Indirect’, review of Henry James: Collected Stories , Spectator , 11 Dec 1999 8. ‘Sexual Tour...

Anecdotally

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Stendhal Again

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The Brooknerian

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