Favouring the English writer

THE days when writers were known by their books alone are long gone. Today, the relentless marketing of authors ensures that potential readers know everything about the person behind the book - his (or her) sexual preferences, favourite brand of toothpaste, dreams and anything else that can be thrown into the mill. In many cases, the book itself becomes largely irrelevant. It was not always so. Until the late 18th Century it was considered bad form to comment on the author's private life, appearance, habit. Even physical descriptions were eschewed - one of the reasons we have no written description of William Shakespeare, for example. James Boswell, the first of the great biographers, changed all that in the 18th Century when he actively pursued great men and wrote about them.

But it was only after his death that he was celebrated: in his own time, he was criticised and ignored and ended his life in poverty and anonymity.

Not only readers are curious about writers, writers have always been curious about their fellow scriveners. Some of the best portraits of writers have come from other writers and if there is some bitchiness to enliven the brew (pardon the mixed metaphor) so much the better. The Faber Book of Writers on Writers edited by Sean French collects some of the more lively and interesting pieces written about writers from the time of William Shakespeare onwards and it is a pleasant tome to dip into from time to time. It is weighted in favour of English writers, but as most of these are more of less universally famous it does not detract from the appeal of the volume. Some of the better portraits in the volume include the following: "Voltaire" by James Boswell; "Lord Byron" by Stendhal, "Nikolai Gogol" by Ivan Turgenev; "Henry James" by Virginia Woolf; "W.B. Yeats" by John Berryman; "E.M. Forster" by D.H. Lawrence; "F. Scott Fitzgerald" by Ernest Hemingway; "Graham Greene" by Evelyn Waugh; "Norman Mailer" by James Baldwin and many others more. In all, there are 96 descriptions of writers and their ways, spanning hundreds of years.

It is a telling comment on the times to compare Ben Jonson's remarks in William Shakespeare with, say, Virginia Woolf's take on Somerset Maugham or Paul Theroux's appraisal of his erstwhile friend V.S. Naipaul. Here is what Jonson had to say: "He was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent phantsie; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein he flow'd with that facility, that it was sometimes necessary he should be stopped. But he redeemed his vices, with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned". Note the restrained nature of the criticism, and also the fact that it never gets personal. Now, take a look at Woolf's portrayal of Maugham: "Then there was Somerset Maugham, a grim figure; rat-eyed; dead man cheeked, unshaven; a criminal I should have said had I met him in a bus. Very suspicious and tortured."

Getting personal right off the bat, seems par for the course these days. And, as everyone knows, Paul Theroux did just that, going after Naipaul with a bludgeon in Sir Vidia's Shadow.

It was not as though contemporary writers could not be kind about one another. T.S. Eliot has this to say about James Joyce. "Joyce I admire as a person who seems to be independent of outside stimulus, and therefore is likely to go on producing first rate work until he dies." And Mark Twain was, if anything, even more complimentary about Rudyard Kipling. He wrote: "I am not acquainted with my own books but I know Kipling's - at any rate I know them better than anybody else's books. They never grow pale to me; they keep their colour; they are always fresh. Certain of the ballads have a peculiar and satisfying charm for me. To my mind, the incomparable Jungle Books must remain unfellowed permanently. I think it was worth the journey to India to qualify myself to read Kim understandingly and to realise how great a book it is. The deep and subtle and fascinating charm of India pervades no other book as it pervades Kim I read the book every year and in this way go back to India without fatigue - the only foreign land I ever daydream about or deeply long to see again."

Unfortunately such complimentary appraisals are the exception. As John Fowles says with commendable frankness: "Nor usually can we writers ever meet each other without a sense however subdued, of rivalry. The absurd model of the beauty contest or the athletics race haunts such occasions". Writers on Writers contains enough evidence of the rivalry Fowles is talking about. And because the editor has chosen well, more often than not, the savaging of one writer by another often attains the level of excellence that makes it art. Check this book out, it is sure to keep you entertained.

DAVID DAVIDAR

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