The Brooknerian

When, a few years ago, an early-modern manuscript translation of Tacitus was discovered in Lambeth Palace, the writer's identity was at first a mystery (see here ). The piece was in the neat hand of a scribe, but scribbled marginal corrections gave clues as to the translator: Queen Elizabeth I herself, whose late penmanship was notoriously appalling. Chirographic disregard for the reader was a marker of status in the period, and Elizabeth's ministers would provide fair-copy transcriptions of her correspondence. Brookner's handwriting, though more even and consistent than Elizabeth's, or indeed late Henry James's, is also difficult to read. It's the kind of script you have to take a run at, letting the likely sense carry you forward. On AbeBooks at present, an autograph letter to a reader: These things show up from time to time. I own two myself (see here  and here ). Brookner corresponded willingly but guardedly with her fans. The present letter, to a Mrs Chappe...

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.

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...