The Brooknerian

Je redoute l'hiver, parce que c'est la saison du confort. Arthur Rimbaud,  Une Saison en Enfer Brookner, like Scott, had a well-stocked mind, and she had her favourite quotes, just as we Brooknerians have favourites of hers. Lines recur interestingly in the novels. This Rimbaud line ('I dread the winter, because it is the season of comfort') is invoked in both  A Misalliance  (Ch. 10) ...the temperature had noticeably dropped; perhaps the season had ended. The darkness that had filled her vision the night before had perhaps been the true darkness of night falling, rather than the fading vision brought about by her headache. ' Je redoute l'hiver, parce que c'est la saison du confort,' thought Blanche... and  The Rules of Engagement  (Ch. 16): Je redoute l'hiver, parce que c'est la saison du confort.  Rimbaud had said that, and, perhaps wisely, cut his winters short. But death, even when not entirely involuntary, was not the ideal solut...

...this country, by all measures one of the wealthiest in the world, appears to be so dilapidated, destitute, shorn of hope ... The UK is rich; there is wealth inequality, but that alone doesn't explain why the country is so mean . Robinson , ch. 3 Just over a year ago the UK voted to leave the EU. There are still some who celebrate this decision. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719. Many people still think of it as a charming and harmless tale, even a book for children. Jack Robinson's Robinson , with quiet subtlety and in detail, links and dismantles both these conceptions. 'Jack Robinson' is Charles Boyle of CB Editions  and this is the companion volume to An Overcoat , earlier appreciated on this blog . It is as good and as brilliant as An Overcoat . Each is the A-side of the other. Novel? Memoir? Literary criticism? Diatribe?  Robinson politely requires that we abandon such labels. But what is the book about? It's certainly a...

Had you been the reviews editor of the Spectator in Anita Brookner's heyday, what would you have sent her to read? Some selectiveness would have been required. She tended to get American and British literary fiction, books about writers, anything bleak, and anything French. Tomber sept fois, se relever huit , by Philippe Labro (as far as I can work out, never translated into English) was  reviewed by Brookner  in 2003. It was a good match. We don't know whether Brookner ever suffered a crack-up of the kind described in the book and summarised in her review; she never, after all, 'revealed all'; though she admitted to periods of 'inwardness' (see, for instance, her  1994 Independent interview ). But what interests me about the piece are the many Brooknerian connections. We have, for example, the title, 'A season in hell', recalling  Rimbaud . We find also a favourite quote from D. H. Lawrence: 'Look! We have come through!', which, I think, c...