The Brooknerian

...exhibited in the Salon of 1800 was the last Jeune fille qui pleure la mort de son oiseau (Louvre) which is not so much a study in double meaning as a fascinating piece of mannerism. The heavy hair has acquired a serpentine life of its own and twines in and out of the knotted drapery. The hands are boneless and affected, the head very large in proportion to the body. The effect is increased by the tired soiled colours... Brookner, Greuze , ch. 7 This is not to say that Brookner's own style ever became affected, coagulated - but that she knew the dangers awaiting an artist over the long term. Greuze painted what his audience and presumably he liked to see, and thereby lost objectivity, thereby grew unable to see his own shortcomings. Brookner certainly had her detractors , though her supporters outnumbered them. And no one was probably as sceptical as Brookner herself - never quite enamoured of the idea of being a writer of fiction, and, while maintaining the integrity of a...

She believes that therapy is the answer to the sort of stalemate at which we have arrived, and I dare not tell her that this stalemate suits me well enough, for I intend to proceed no further. Altered States , ch. 17 This is the last in my series of posts on  Altered States . I found it, on rereading, both chilly and chilling. It has the atmosphere of a ghost story, as more than one critic has pointed out. A number of the Nineties Brookners seem to have this low temperature, this sense of dead calm after great storms. Altered States is an autumnal, a wintry book.

'You're mad, Alan. You're a fantasist.' Altered States , ch. 15 Here Sarah and Alan meet for the last time. The meeting has many of the hallmarks of a final showdown, such as novels are supposed to conclude with. But Brookner, like James (and the ending of The Sacred Fount - 'My poor dear, you are crazy, and I bid you good-night!' - is of relevance), makes of these conventions something of her own. The meeting in fact becomes a tussle over the future of Jenny, whose strange story has shadowed Sarah's. In the end Sarah fades into her habitual silence and inaccessibility, declining every overture, every over-thought Brooknerian sally: 'It was always too late. You were too slow, too innocent.'  'And it's the fate of innocents to be massacred, or so we're told.'  'Just leave me alone, will you?'

'Not too unhappy?' he said, getting to his feet.  'Of course I'm unhappy. But it's quite bearable. Even interesting. I'd like to work it out on my own, for however long that takes...' Altered States , ch. 15 One is reminded of Brookner's words in her 1994 Independent interview : Depression can be quite fruitful if it leads to thoughtfulness, inwardness. Certainly my parents' deaths, certainly disappointments in love have led to periods, yes, quite long periods of depression - but they haven't been entirely defeating, you see, they've been quite nourishing. Because you're very receptive when you're in that state: in fact, it's invaluable.

I decided not to go straight back to the office but to go home, make some coffee, and sit in absolute silence for an hour. I wanted solitude, though this is frowned on in a healthy adult. The propaganda goes the other way; one is urged to get out of oneself, as if preferring one's own company were a dangerous indulgence. I wanted, above all else, to be free of attachments, of those personal agendas which are wished on one in any conversation of any depth, and which are as disruptive to the process of contemplation as a telephone ringing in the middle of the night. I was not sick, I was not melancholy: I simply demanded that I might enjoy the peace of the situation I had inherited. Altered States , ch. 14 *** The phrasing of the 'propaganda' line seems to be idiolectic. Compare this from chapter 2 of Hotel du Lac : The propaganda goes all the other way, but only because it is the tortoise who is in need of consolation.

Alan Sherwood in Altered States is, we learn, 'in thrall' to Sarah Miller. He gives her lilies. He blushes. Sarah, for her part, is ever distracted. She's enchanting. Their coming together is 'almost magical'. The novel begins and ends with an autumn-set frame narrative. Brookner's invocations of English poets are rare, and indeed Keats's 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' isn't directly referenced here. But of all Brookner's novels Altered States is the one that, uncharacteristically for its Europhile author, aspires towards a more English version of Romanticism. *** 'A Pre-Raphaelite air of brooding intensity...' ( Altered States , ch. 6)

I sensed that since [Jenny's] most lavish sympathies had brought her nothing in return, she had decided to withdraw them, even cancel them altogether. This had made me even more uncomfortable, as it exactly paralleled my own condition. Altered States , ch. 13 Jenny, also known as Jadwiga and Edwige, returns to the footlights in the later part of the novel. She serves as a foil for both Sarah and the stolid Englishness represented by the narrator and, to an extent, by Sarah too. Jenny reminds us that there are other, European ways of doing things. She reminds us, in a novel that might otherwise seem somewhat parochial, of the wider dimensions of Brookner's work. The passage above recalls an exchange in the John Haffenden interview. I've covered it before ( 'A Creative Power' ), but it bears repeating: [Interviewer:] What all your characters are left with is a resignation which is not even stoicism of the classical order; it's merely learning to put up w...

The literary blog Stuck in a Book  urges you to select from your bookshelves 'ten random books to tell us about yourself'. I've found myself tempted by this 'meme', even though I haven't a full idea what a meme is. So - in the picture below, from the top: 1. Barbara Pym, A Very Private Eye I do love these Grafton Books editions of Pym's works. This is a collection of her diaries and letters. Her eventual apotheosis, after years of neglect, gives hopes to us all. 'Beautiful ... contains the living essence of Barbara Pym,' says Brookner on the cover. 2. Anthony Trollope, Is He Popenjoy? An old blue OUP Trollope, with wafer-thin pages. One can imagine some former owner reading it during the Blitz, Trollope's heyday. One has a sense, with such books, of rescuing them from oblivion. I read it in Switzerland, in cable cars and beside glaciers. 3. Baedeker's Southern Germany and Austria From 1883. Because one would hate to be anywhere wi...