The Brooknerian

Clowns do not make one laugh. Undersized, deliberately grotesque, on the verge of tears, they induce discomfort. Their function is to be humiliated, by powerful men and pretty girls, aided and abetted by the audience, and the process by which this is accomplished is a diabolical set-piece of collusion... We are supposed to identify with clowns because they appeal to the undersized innocents we all know ourselves to be. I suspect this process to be abominable. Brookner, Soundings , 'The Willing Victim' ( TLS review) Witness, there, in 1979, before a single novel was written, perhaps as neat an insight into the Brookner world as one is ever likely to find: think of Frances in Look at Me , trampled underfoot by the careless and effortless Frasers. Yet Frances is clear-eyed, though her knowledge is of little use. In an early interview Brookner said she felt sorry for her characters, poor things, and yet knew as little as they. '[T]he guileless unfortunate from whom nothing is r...

Yes, I have this blog, and yes, I'm on Twitter, but in my everyday life I'm practically a secret fan. This is probably the only way to be. In numerous ways I honour the Brooknerian life, but my tributes are clandestine. I travel to Brooknerian places, and to hidden corners of those places. In Paris to St-Sulpice, in Switzerland to Vevey, in London to certain little gardens where characters, in defeat, have sat and read Henry James. I visit galleries and particular pictures. In London, M. Blauw  and the Titian Ariadne . In Vienna, Susanna and the Elders . In Ghent, a kleptomaniac. I sometimes wear Eau Sauvage, because George Bland wore it. I drink herbal teas and call them tisanes. Away from Brookner, I let Brookner guide my reading. I read the whole of Dickens, James and Trollope, because of Brookner. I often listen to the Shipping Forecast, though I haven't yet taken to playing the World Service through the night. As followers will recall, I once walked the length ...

Another gem from the  Spectator  archive. 'My Favourite Foreign Restaurant', 1987: I dislike important restaurants and do not really appreciate ambitious cooking. My choice of a place for lunch would be Queenie's Bar in Nice. It is an all-purpose café-restaurant which seems to be open whenever you want it to be. If your nerves are good you sit outside and watch the traffic on the Promenade des Anglais. If not, the interior is darkish and cool: there is, of course, no music. The chef shops daily in the market and the fish is good, infinitely better than anything one could get in London (except at Graham's, Brewer Street). The menu is sparse, which means that the dish of the day is reliable. The  tarte tatin  is superb.

'My Best and Worst Restaurants': A gem from the  Spectator , December 1984: My least favourite restaurant is the one at which I eat lunch every day and it had better not he named. It is a vegetarian restaurant and it leans heavily on quiches made with wholemeal flour; the food is incredibly good for me and it tastes like rubble. Surely, the best restaurant in England is Les Quat' Saisons, although I haven't tried it since it moved from Oxford. I remember delicate food, beautifully presented, and irresistible even to the faint-hearted. For heartier moods I like Le Dauphin, rue Saint-Honoré, Paris, an old-fashioned eating house which takes itself seriously but manages not to smell of food — a feat unknown to nearly every restaurant in London.

Romanticism,  Anita Brookner tells us , isn't just a mode. It literally eats into every life. Brooknerianism is not quite at that level, but we can all do more to live up to Brookner's high standards. So here it is - to cut out and keep, your guide to the Brooknerian life. Learn the importance of style - one day you may need to get by on it alone. Learn the value of form - form, which is probably going to save us all. Cherish art, though it does not love you and cannot console you. Get to know London and Paris, but also the more esoteric corners of Brooknerland. Abroad in provincial cities, expect to be suitably indolent and homesick. Be stealthy - like Jane in A Family Romance , at her little pavement table, deep in France, stealthily beginning to write. Brush up your languages. Brooknerians are not fazed by long passages of untranslated French. Cultivate a middle-aged persona, even years afterwards. You might say, for example, that you're 46, and have bee...

L’univers brooknérien : I picked up this phrase in my Francophile youth, deciphering the blurbs of Anita Brookner translations in the bookshops of Paris, those rambling Left Bank warehouse-like stores with their tattered yellow frontages. Nowadays my Brooknerian universe is more specialised. I'm going to Brussels tomorrow, to see several Jacques-Louis David paintings, and I may also pay a visit to Ghent, where I hope to take soundings from the distressed gentleman below.