The Brooknerian

Read Trollope . For decent feelings, she said. In her own novels she references  He Knew He Was Right and Orley Farm . I'm not keen on either. I love the later works, not all of which are the gloomy old things of repute. I think the likes of Ayala's Angel are among my favourite novels of any writer. Read Roth and Updike . And the rest of the great American warhorses. Brookner always made a thing of her devotion to these most unBrooknerian writers. She was putting it on a bit, no doubt; but she made a good case. Read Wharton . Brookner made a case for Wharton too. But I'm not sure she was right. She said she thought of herself as much more like Wharton than James. Again, I don't think she was right. Read Sebald . She valued Sebald's sudden emergence, fully formed, on to the literary scene. She liked especially his evocation of old-style life and feelings. For much the same reason, read Mann . The bourgeois past, European angst - and Switzerland. Read Stendha...

Goncharov's Oblomov is referred to twice in the novels: memorably at the opening of Visitors and also (I think) in A Friend from England . In interview Brookner called it her favourite novel. This was possibly a posture. It is a weird contrarian comedy about a Russian aristocrat who deliberately mucks up his life, failing at everything. 'Brookner is in the Chekhov league,' said A. N. Wilson of Undue Influence . (For more on A. N. Wilson, see an earlier post, 'Anita died. I read it in The Times ...') 'More memorable than any fiction was Chekhov's Last Moments by Leo Rabeneck, published in the TLS for 2 July 2004,' wrote Anita Brookner in the Spectator 's 'Books of the Year' that year. 'Rabeneck was present at this most iconic of deaths, and his account of how it took place - after that glass of champagne - is more than consoling: uplifting.' (As you might expect, I sought out the piece. It describes Chekhov’s stylish death,...