King of Pop

‘Where were you when you heard that Jacko was dead?’ This was an e-mail I received from someone who thinks I am her friend (because I tolerate her), yesterday. I replied that there were so many exciting things happening daily in my busy and exciting life that I could not remember where I was and what I was doing at the exact moment when I heard that the ‘King of Pop’ was dead. (As it happened, I was driving from place A to place B and cursing under my breath every five minutes as I was stuck in the morning rush hour traffic.) Then I read on Charlie Brooker’s blog that souvenir shops were selling tee shirts with printed slogans such as ‘I was at Glastonbury when Jacko died’. Is this turning into a ‘flashbulb memory’ event, similar to the ‘Diana moment’ 12 years ago, I wondered.

The response, certainly the online one, to Jackson’s death has been unbelievable. Google news had so many searches for him that they thought they were under automated attack. Wikipedia got roiled because so many people were trying to update the page on Michael Jackson. And Yahoo’s story on his hospitalization apparently got more than three quarters of a million page-views in ten minutes. On twitter, as many as 30% of tweets related to Jackson on the day of his death. People are in danger of running out of superlatives to describe him. He is the greatest; he was their idol; he touched their lives; he changed their lives; he will live in their hearts forever; he healed the world; he eradicated racism in the world; we have not just lost a legend, we have lost a part of our heart; and so on and so forth.

A distraught fan posted the following:

Michael Jackson was a brilliant singer i really miss him now i heard that he died from a heart attack i am really upset about it and i wish he was alive now so i can get his new songs he makes but because he is dead i'll never get to hear his newer songs he will make. Rest in pease Michael Jackson

Here is another heartfelt tribute:

a absolutely loved michael jackson i was going to see him in the o2 i had even booked V.I.P, i loved michael he was my dear freind i met him a couple of times in 1972 and recently in 2004 i am also a freind of uri geller michael's freind, i wish i was there to protect him, and now i give my thanks to his fans freinds including me and family, we love you michael R.I.P

If you thought that the public outpouring of grief was tad hysterical, you would not be the only one. In the UK, similar noisy, public breast-beating had taken place after Diana died in a car crash while trying to flee from the paparazzi who wanted to photograph her and her then lover Dodi Al-Fayed, who was also in the car at the time. It seemed that there were lots of people, whose lives were so empty that the death of an emotionally disturbed woman who had not done an honest day’s work in her life, who had no discernible talent other than fluttering her eyelids coquettishly at the camera and hooking up with stinking rich men, and whom they had never known personally, left them feeling utterly bereft. Diana was compared to Mother Teresa and, at her memorial service, Elton John sang a saccharine (and nauseating) version of Candle in the Wind. We must thank Barrak Obama for not joining the chorus of maudlin, cliché-ridden tributes, unlike Toni Blair, the then British prime minister, who managed to get himself in every photograph and look more grief-stricken than the family.

It would be fair to say that by the time his tired heart beat for the last time, Jackson’s glory days were behind him. He had not released a new album for eight years. His last album, Invincible, was branded a failure despite debuting at number 1 in not just the USA but also in 12 other countries and selling almost 10 million copies worldwide. Indeed, all of Jackson’s albums after Thriller, with possible exception of Dangerous, were branded as failures despite achieving mind boggling sales: Bad sold 30 million copies (in the UK, according to Wikipedia, it sold more copies than even Thriller, and it also holds the record of all its released singles, five in total, reaching the number one spot in the USA, a feat no other album has managed to achieve in the history of US Billboard); Dangerous sold 35million copies; and HIStory, a multiple disc album, sold more than 20 million copies. These are figures most artists can only dream of; sells of each of these albums were five to ten times more than what most artists achieve in their whole careers. It was Jackson’s misfortune that all of these albums were always compared to the seminal 1982 album Thriller, which sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. I once heard Louis de Bernieres saying in a literary programme that he was resigned to his fate that he would always be asked about and probably associated with only one novel, the mega-successful Captain Correlli’s Mandolin, although he had written novels before and after it. Joseph Heller wrote several novels, most of which were very entertaining, but they always suffered in comparison with his debut novel, Catch 22.

After Jackson’s death, a friend, who revels in arguments the point of which, insofar as there is one, is scoring petty points—his general strategy, during these arguments, alternates between presenting lopsided, preconceived judgments as facts—believing, mistakenly, that bullshit will baffle brain—and focusing on non-issues, eliding the crux of the argument—tried to convince me that ‘Bad’ was awful, and sent me a link of a survey carried out by the Rolling Stone magazine, which apparently came to the same conclusion and in which 23,000 Americans participated. Bad, my friend argued, is bad because Jackson wrote the lyrics of the majority of the songs in Bad, which, in his considered opinion, are not up to scratch, especially in comparison with Thriller, where Quincy Jones wrote most of the lyrics. I wrangled with him a bit but my heart was not in it, primarily because, if truth were told, I am not a die-hard, obsessive Michael Jackson fan, although I have liked his music—from Off the Wall to Invincible—for its melody and rhythm. I also think that his voice was unique and had a dulcet quality to it, thought it was not the sweetest. I have never thought that the lyrics—I can’t be bothered to investigate who wrote the lyrics; I am not interested—, either of Thriller or of subsequent albums, were profound commentaries on the human condition—they are, like those of countless popular Pop and Rock numbers, rather silly. (I once heard a song, where the singer shouted at his beloved that he liked very much to ‘come and go’ between her ‘kidneys’. In case you wondered which end he was planning to enter, the singer left you in no doubt as he provided description of the procedure, which was graphic enough to turn most healthy stomachs.) I doubt that lyrics contributed substantively to Jackson’s stratospheric popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s and his iconic status. Another argument often put forth by those who just cannot stomach the commercial success and popularity of Jackson’s music is that he had become a brand, implying that a behind-the-scene PR machine was in overdrive. This is a specious argument: Jackson was no more a brand than say Elvis or Beatles were. Indeed, it was Bernie Epstein, the Beatles manager, who is credited with first creating the concept of commodity tie-ins for pop music. Remember Beatles lunchboxes and Beatles cartoons?

My friend also threw in, during what he described as his polemic, the oft-heard tattle about Jackson’s personal life: the (unproven) charges of child sex abuse, the progressive lightening of Jackson’s skin colour over the years—‘The man could not even accept what he was, and tried to become what he was not, and could never be’— and the plastic surgeries. This is not surprising; people find it difficult to extricate Jackson’s music from his persona, from all the allegations, scandals, and the inevitable media frenzy that blighted his later years. Perhaps it is impossible to separate the real Michael Jackson from all the media speculation. May be only those—if them— who were near and dear to him had an idea what sort person Jackson really was. The rest of us should not even try.

The public life of Michael Jackson can be roughly divided into three phases: the first phase as a child prodigy when he was the star performer of the Jackson Five; then the dazzling height in the eighties and early nineties, post-Thriller, the phase of multi-million-selling albums, spectacular live tours and television appearances; and finally, the phase as a freak, his behaviour becoming increasingly erratic—if anyone initially thought that the whole thing was a propaganda initiated by Jackson’s PR machine, they would have soon be left in no doubt, as the news of Jackson spending long periods in a hyperbaric chamber began circulating, that the man had not just lost the plot, he had lost the whole library— , increasingly coming to resemble a manakin who had had a run in with a lawnmower, getting dragged through the courts on charges of sexual abuse, getting mired in debts, leading an increasingly nomadic existence—moving from one continent to another—, and career coming to a grinding halt. Posterity, however, will remember Jackson for his musical genius and for all those wonderful performances with which he entertained us. The final phase will be a mere footnote. A long footnote, perhaps, but only a footnote.

Book of the Month: Offshore (Penelope Fitzgerald)

Penelope Fitzgerald was sixty when her first novel, The Golden Child, was published. This late bloomer had pursued various careers including journalism, working for BBC and Ministry for food, and being a full time mother of three, before she found her niche as a novelist. Over the next two decades, Fitzgerald published eight more novels that established her reputations as one of the major figures writing in English.

Fizgerald won the 1979 Booker prize with her third novel, Offshore, piping to the post, in the process, Patrick White, the Nobel laureate, and V.S. Naipaul who had won the prestigious award previously and who went on to win the Nobel himself two decades later. However, according to Paul Theroux, the American novelist who was on the panel of judges that year, Offshore was a compromise choice.

In his scabrous (and therefore utterly engaging) memoirs, Sir Vidia's Shadow, Throux devotes a couple of paragraphs to the 1979 Booker prize and how Offshore came to win it. The Bookie’s favourite that year was apparently V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend In the River. Writes Theroux: ‘A Bend In the River was shortlisted for the Booker prize that year. I was one of the Booker judges. I reread the book . . . But when it came to the decision I voted against it. Mine was the deciding vote. I preferred Patrick Whites novel, The Twyborn Affair. “Patrick White? Over my dead body,” one of the panellists said. Another said to me, “I thought Naipaul was your friend." . . .In the end we compromised on Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, and most people jeered at our choice. They said Naipaul should have won . . . It was thought that because I was a judge, Vidia [V.S. Naipaul] should be a shoo-in. Not at all.’

Penelope Fitzgerald wrote novels that are known for their brevity. Offshore, at hardly more than 50,000 words, is no exception. It describes a houseboat community living on the river Thames near Battersea Reach. Most of the action, such as it is, takes place on the barges which, rise and fall as they may with the tide of the Thames, are, in fact, not going anywhere. The same can be said of the lives of the characters that inhabit this delectably quirky novel. Many of them are either ill at ease in the society out there ‘on the land’ or are plain misfits. The novel traces their longings, prejudices, secret crushes, aspirations, sense of camaraderie, and, in the process, almost imperceptibly, poses questions about dilemmas that have eternally faced the human existence. The ending is abrupt, which, I think, is apt in as far as it adds salience to the sense of surreality that pervades the novel. That said Offshore is probably not the book I would recommend to be acquainted with this remarkably gifted writer. Start with The Beginning of Spring; move, next, on to The Gate of Angels; let the writing style grow on you; then pick up Offshore. I guarantee you will enjoy it.

Penelope Fitzgerald is almost unsurpassable when it comes to vivid characterization with, I would risk calling, oxymoronically, maximum economy, and, in Offshore she achieves near perfection. She also manages to give a remarkable background visual feel to the narration with such ease that you almost don’t notice it. Fitzgerald—Beryl Bainbridge and Jane Gardam are some other names that immediately come to mind—had what I would describe as ‘minimum fuss’ style of writing. She seemed to abhor ostentation or adornment of any kind. If ten words would do, why waste fifty, which would add nothing to the descriptiveness, but will most definitely to the reader’s ennui?

It is a cliché, but length is not everything, and, makes no mistake, this novella is a gem. Did it deserve the Booker? Probably not; but that is only because I happen to think that Naipaul’s Bend In the River is one of the greatest books of the 20th century.

Professor of Poetry

I do not get poetry, especially modern poetry. I struggle with it; rather I would struggle with it if I were to read it. The little, and it is very little, of modern poetry that I have read, has not seemed like poetry at all. It just seems like ordinary language only with peculiar, syntax-defying, arrangements of words, or lists of crossword puzzle clues. Whenever I have attempted to read modern free verses (not very often), the only question that comes to my mind is who set them free. Very occasionally, I feel bad about my lack of ability to appreciate poetry, but, at the end of the day, I am damned if I want to do anything about it. Indeed, I am not sure that I can do anything about it. Understanding and appreciating poetry, like creating it, is a gift, and not everyone is blessed with it. You have to take it on the chin and move on. Some time ago, I attended a literary programme where Stephen Fry spoke. As it happened, he was peddling what at the time was his most recent ware—Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet within. Fry spoke for about half an hour. As was only to be expected, the garrulous narcissist spent the whole time telling the audience how clever he was and how well read he was and how exceptional his memory was and how many rare words (which nobody had used since 1708) he knew. Occasionally, during this paean to his exceptional talent, Fry seemed to remember why he was there, and put it to the audience, smirking condescendingly under his crooked nose, that writing poem was awfully simple, anyone could do it, really, and spat out words like iambic and trochee, which probably put most in the audience off writing poetry. But I digress. Poetry is an indelible part of the literary life of a society, and most would agree that those who produce such works of creativity should be suitably rewarded. And what higher accolade could be bestowed upon them than the professorship in as august a university as Oxford? I had never heard of it before (the professorship of poetry, that is; I have heard of Oxford, obviously) but as already acknowledged, I am an ignoramus when it comes to poetry (and not just poetry). The post of Oxford University Professor of poetry has, like most things in Oxford, a great history and tradition behind it. I have it on reliable information that the role goes back three centuries, and, its first incumbent, one John Trapp, could recite works of Shakespeare in Latin. This tradition apparently continued until the middle of the nineteenth century when the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold finally convinced the faculty members that reading lectures in English rather than Latin might be an idea worth giving a go. The salary, at 7000 pounds a year (plus 40 pounds travel allowance), would have been considered meagre by the mean, money-minded materialistic, selfish ex-bankers when they still had their jobs, but the worth of not everything can be measured in money. In addition, the job, which involves giving three lectures a year and an oration every other year, is not exactly backbreaking. Some have described the post as one of the most influential positions in poetry, which, to me, sounds a tad hyperbolic. Nevertheless, the post has attracted, over the years, some of the big guns from the world of poetry, W.H. Auden and Seamus Heaney amongst them, the latter a Nobel Laureate.

This year, after Professor Christopher Ricks—an academic who is an expert on American poetry and is known to speak for hours on the lyrics of Bob Dylan—stepped down after completing his term of five years, three poets, one each from America, Britain and India, put forth their nominations. They were, in no particular order: Derek Walcott, the 79 year old St Lucia-born poet who won the 1992 Nobel prize for literature; Ruth Padel, the 63 year old great-great granddaughter of Charles Darwin (from her mother’s side) and a descendent of the great British surgeon John Hunter (from her father’s side), who, according to her personal website, is a prize-winning British poet (she won a national poetry competition in 1997); and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra whose age was not known, neither was his contribution to poetry other than that he had ‘much to say of value . . .on issues . . . that are pressingly important in today’s world’, according to one Peter D McDonald (about whom, too, is not much known other than he lives somewhere in Oxford). Mehrotra was a late entry and it is doubtful that he was a serious contender. It was thought to be a two-horse race between Walcott, a man of immense stature (according to his supporters, which included the 2004 Booker winner Alan Holinghurst and Hermione Lee) and Padel, a woman of immense connections (according to her detractors, all of whom are coming out of woodwork). A week before voting— members of the convocation vote to elect the professor—anonymous letters were sent to more than 100 Oxford professors, majority of them women, who had voting rights. The letters, postmarked London, referred to the allegations of sexual harassment made against Walcott in 1982, by a student of the Harvard University. Accompanying the letters were photocopied pages of a book published in the 1980s, titled Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus, which contained details of the claim and subsequent investigation carried out by the Harvard University. The student had complained that, while discussing her work with Walcott after the class, Walcott invited her to imagine him making love to her; he also wanted to know, among other things, how she made love and whether she would make love to him if he asked her to. When informed that the student was unable to imagine having a sexual congress with him (perhaps because she found him repulsive, but this is a guess) and would not sleep with him even if he begged her to (perhaps for the same reason—this is a guess too), Walcott gave her a C grade in his class, which, apparently, is the Harvard equivalent of a failure. Walcott denied propositioning the student; his defence was that his teaching style was ‘deliberately personal and intense’—he wasn’t a dirty old man chasing frocks; he was following his unique way of poetry teaching, which contained the obligatory module of sleeping with female students decades younger than him—and that he had sensed no reluctance [in the student] to pursue the topic of sexual relationships. Walcott was reprimanded and was made to apologize to the student. What the anonymous correspondence did not contain were details of another sexual harassment case against Walcott, brought out by another female student from Boston University, in the mid-1990s, who sued him for half a million dollars (Walcott reached out of court settlement with the woman). Following this, Walcott withdrew from the race, claiming that the election had ‘degenerated into a low and degrading attempt at character assassination’; he was disappointed that such ‘low tactics’ were being used (almost as low as the ones he used, some might point out, to get his female students to sleep with him). At this stage, Nicole Kelby, the woman who sued Walcott in 1996 for sexual harassment and with whom he came to an out-of-court settlement, probably feeling left out—her name was not mentioned in the anonymous letters circulated—decided to join the fray, and, bizarrely, came out publically to Walcott’s defence. Writing in the Times, Ms Kelby described Walcott as ‘the greatest living poet’, and urged his critics to consider that poetry is a ‘passionate art’. She went on to give the following insight—no doubt gained during the prolonged negotiations in 1996 that resulted in her receiving hefty sums of money for not dragging Walcott through the American penal system—into Walcott’s alleged behavior, over the years, towards his female students: ‘it is his [Walcott’s] way to be sexual, to push the envelope of both decorum and good taste’. Walcott then extended his support to Padel, described her as a gifted poet, and predicted that she would become a great professor of poetry (so generous of him). There were murmurs that the hugely ambitious and moderately talented Padel, Walcott’s only serious rival for the post, was behind the smear campaign. Padel denied the rumours and declared that she had ‘absolutely no wish to see Walcott humiliated’ and that she was ‘very very sorry’ that he had pulled out. She, nevertheless, felt obliged to clarify that she did not intend to withdraw from the race—ignoring the public exhortation from the pompous A.C. Grayling, the professor of Philosophy and one of her supporters for the post, to do so (‘To win because anonymous and malicious persons witch-hunted Walcott out of the race would be a hollow and tainted thing,’ wrote Grayling in blog in the Guardian)—even though she was ‘deeply disappointed’ to find herself in the position of winning as it were by default. ‘All along, we should have been talking about poetry and the role of poetry,’ she said. ‘This is not what poetry is for.’ It was, she demurely indicated, her sense of duty that drove her on; and the satisfaction she would get from fulfilling her role as the Professor of Poetry would help her to cope with the deep disappointment of winning the position. The reaction of her remaining rival, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, was not known (probably because no one bothered to find out), so we can’t be certain whether he, too, was deeply disappointed that Walcott had withdrawn from the race.

This is what happened next. Oxford decided to go ahead with the election, which Padel duly won, beating the little known Indian poet by what the election analysts like to describe as a comfortable margin, the only surprise being Mehrotra managed to attract more than hundred votes. Padel described herself as honoured and humbled to accept the professorship. Feminists, lesbians, and lesbian feminists were overjoyed. May 2009 was described as a landmark month, which saw the election of the first woman professor of poetry at Oxford and the first woman poet laureate (Carole Ann Duffy). Their joy lasted for about a week, at the end of which the humble professor looked set to eat a humble pie. Padel, it turned out, was not the innocent bystander she had all along claimed to be to the ‘Walcott Character Assassination’ plot. It was revealed that she had sent e-mails to journalists alerting them of Walcott’s naughty behavior all those years ago. The Evening Standard published details of an e-mail she sent to one of its journalists in which she referred to the sexual harassment claims made against Walcott, helpfully pointing them in the direction of the book Lecherous Professor if they (the journalist) wanted to know what Walcott ‘actually’ did for students. Her e-mail, littered with typos, was as follows:

'Hi Olivia [‘The Evening Standard’ journalist], ON the CHair, there is still no other nomination except (so extraordinarily) Derek W and me. But thye close on 29th April so another or others may well turnup... ‘THere is aupposed to be a book called The Lecherous Professor, which has 6 pages on Derek Walcott's two cases of sexual harassment, which might provide interestigfn copy on what Oxford wants from its professors.. ALl best, Ruth.’

There were predictable gasps of horror from the academics, including Padel’s supporters (for her campaign), who could not now wait to dissociate themselves publically from her. Padel claimed she was disappointed (again). She admitted to sending the two e-mails to journalists, but felt aggrieved that what she had done in good faith was being construed as an underhand, dirty trick to undermine Walccott and derail his campaign. ‘The papers today quote from email in which I passed on, in good faith, the concerns of a student who believed a professor's relations with women students were relevant to her university's appointment of a professor,’ Padel wrote in an e-mail (one hopes, with less typos) to a broadsheet. She (Padel) wanted these concerns to be heard. ‘The details I passed on were in the public domain and were a source of genuine unease to her [the student], and I communicated them to two journalists who had asked to be kept informed.’ It made little difference. The chorus of ‘Padel must go’ became shriller; A.C. Grayling and Melvyn Bragg became even more blusterous and self-righteous. (‘The professorship is a very serious thing," Grayling reminded the audience at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival. ‘This is dirty tricks and character assassination.’) Padel was –pardon the awful pun—up the proverbial creek without a pedal. She saw and accepted the writing on the wall and stepped down from the post to which she was elected just nine days earlier. In her resignation speech, Padel tried a different approach. She was ‘naive and silly’ (and not a knavish, malignant, deceitful, unscrupulous bitch) when she sent the e-mails. It was, we were to understand, a bad error of judgment. ‘I can of course see that people can misconstrue these two isolated emails of mine as part of a larger campaign I had nothing to do with,’ was her defence. The lesbian feminists were incandescent. They smelt a rat. This surely was a male conspiracy against Padel, the first woman to become professor of Poetry at Oxford. Lesbian novelist Janette Winterson fumed: ‘It's a pity she [Padel]has been backed into a corner. What she has done is so much more -trivial than her contribution to poetry. This feels malicious and nasty. We ought to be able to look beyond the woman to the poetry. This is a way of reducing women; it wouldn't have happened to a man. But then Oxford is a sexist little dump.’ (If you are not sure which side to support in a controversy, I’d suggest you wait for Jeanette Winterson to contribute her whining, malevolent, risible, and illogical two pence worth of tripe, and then you can safely come down on the other side.) Lesbian poet Jackie Kay agreed. ‘This was the first time that we had a woman as Oxford professor of poetry – and she has had to resign over two emails. The old boys have closed in on her. It would not have happened to a man, and I am very sad,’ she said. Reaction of the fellow academics was outwardly of sadness (and, no doubt, inwardly of schadenfreude). The reaction of the rest of the great British public was one of indifference—there were more pressing matters that needed their urgent attention (rather than what a bunch of naval gazing, back-stabbing academics from Oxford got up to) such as whether Susan Boyle, the latest sensation on Britain’ s Got Talent, whose looks and physiognomy belied a great voice (appreciated even by Simon Cowell—the voice, that is, not the looks), was, in addition to being a spinster, a virgin, and, if she was, would anyone dare to sleep with her? A reporter finally made a long-distance phone call to Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (remember him? He was the third contestant) to get his reaction. Mehrotra opined (his reply could not be heard clearly, as the connection was not good and the noises from the street of Allahabad interfered): ‘From India where I live, these extra-literary goings-on appear more unfortunate than amusing.’ (Obviously, such instances of skulduggery and backstabbing are unheard of in the land of Krishna.)

The state of play at present is as follows. The post of Professor of Poetry is empty. Both Walcott and Padel have announced that they would not run the next election, the former because he does not want to be associated with ‘that awful business’, the latter because ‘no one would believe me now’. Mehrotra will ‘cross the bridge’ when it comes (which means he is interested, because he thinks that he stands a chance.) Clive James has indicated that he is interested in the job.

Let’s get back to Padel’s insistence that she was not associated with the smear campaign in any way. Indeed, she claimed in an interview that the so-called smear campaign against Walcott could have been instigated to ‘undermine her’! There was a conspiracy all right, but it was against her, not against Walcott! Let’s not go into what intellectual pyrotechniques Padel performed in order to arrive at this conclusion. If we believe in the conspiracy theory, then whoever was behind the smear campaign wanted both Padel and Walcott out of the race. (If you suspect that the story is beginning to resemble an Agatha Christie mystery, the suspicion is justified.) Who could have benefitted from both Padel and Walcott being out of the way? Arvind Krishna Mehrotra! So, did the wily Indian, sitting in his den in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India, plan the intricate and subversive plot that claimed two high-profile victims? But hold on! The person who benefitted from the smear campaign was Padel, not Mehrotra! The smear campaign ensured that Walcott was conveniently out of the way, and his exit paved Padel’s way for the coveted job. What forced her to resign was not the smear campaign but the revelation that she had sent e-mails to journalists, alerting them to Walcott’s sexual misdemeanours. Doesn’t it strike you a tad curious that she did not think it was necessary to inform the public about the e-mails she had sent, when she was expressing her ‘deep disappointment’ at Walcott’s humiliation and premature exit in the wake of the poisonous letters sent to Oxford Professors, the content of which was identical to her e-mails? We can conclude that Ms Padel’s conjecture that the smear campaign was aimed at damaging her credibility, while it might convince lesbian feminists, does not hold water for the non-deluded, non-partisan, non-gullible heterosexuals.

Should we believe Padel’s claim that she had nothing to do with the smear campaign? This is probably an opportune time to introduce another character who played a vital part in the ‘Walcott character assassination’ plot (if there was one). He is John Walsh, and he is a columnist for the Independent. It was his drumbeating column in said broadsheet in April 2009 that publically set cat amongst the pigeons. Walsh declared himself a supporter of Padel and attempted a demolition job on Walcott’s reputation worthy of Iraqi looters. In the article he spieled about Walcott’s reputation as the dirty old man, quoting extensively from—you have guessed it— the 1984 book Lecherous Professor (was this book on the bestsellers’ list, or what?), although the book is not about Walcott, there being many other priapic academics with extensive experience of deflowering nubile female students; he is mentioned on a couple of pages. A professor of poetry, who shall remain unnamed, initiated and circulated a story that Padel, a close friend of John Walsh, had provided him with the details. Padel responded by labelling the claim as ridiculous. ‘I used to know John 10 years ago and I see him once a year at parties,’ she said. She must have got to know Walsh really well, as he is said to have made free with Padel’s (middle aged) loins ten years ago. Indeed, according to a piece in the Sunday Times, a poem by Padel, titled Home Cooking, which ends with a fuck on a kitchen table, is about her affair with said Walsh. What was the chronology of these events? Walsh’s piece in the Independent appeared a couple of days after Padel sent her e-mails to the journalists (not to Walsh, though), and the anonymous letters to Oxford academics were posted a day after Walsh’s article appeared. So, is it possible that Padel did not have anything to do with the smear campaign? It is possible in the same way that it is possible that the roof of the room in which I am typing this piece will collapse and kill me. Many things are possible. Even if one gives Padel the benefit of doubt and agree that she may not have been directly involved in the smear campaign, it seems undeniable that she was orchestrating her own smear campaign with roughly the same aim. John Walsh’s column in the Independent sought to do the same thing to Walcott’s reputation what the anonymous letters sought. If one accepts Padel’s assertion, improbable as it may seem, that she had nothing to do with Walsh’s piece either, there is still the matter of e-mails she sent to journalists, which, for all appearances, had the same design as Walsh’s column and the anonymous letters: influence, albeit indirectly, the voters by making them aware of Walcott’s history of predatory behaviour towards his female students. She says that she sent these emails in good conscience, has absolutely no idea who sent the anonymous letters, and has nothing to do with Walsh’s deplorable column in the Independent in which he took the hatchet to Walcott. So, here we have a woman who is either honourable and straightforward, and most unfortunately the chain of events conspired to make her look like a sneaky, ruthless, calculating, machinating, vicious harridan, who, together with her despicable cabal (which included a former lover) plotted to bring down a man who is considered to be one of the most outstanding poets of our generation; or she is a sneaky, ruthless, calculating, machinating, vicious harridan, who, together with her despicable cabal (which included a former lover) plotted to bring down a man who is considered to be one of the most outstanding poets of our generation; she is also a barefaced liar capable of breathtaking hypocrisy, not a word of whose is to be trusted (including ‘and’ and ‘the’). Take your pick. I know what I am thinking.

Whither goest Padel from here? The clever woman she is, she will no doubt have gleaned the single most important lesson: do not leave your fingerprints anywhere near the crime scene. The bard said it centuries ago:

Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.
(Macbeth)

Who will be the next Professor of Poetry at Oxford? My money is on Clive James: he is tanned, rested, and suitably mediocre.

Why are academic disputes so vicious? Woodrow Wilson thought it was because so little is at stake.

Book of the Month: The Ninth Life of Louis Drax (Liz Jensen)

The Ninth Life of Louis Drax is Liz Jensen’s fifth novel. The former sculptor and BBC television producer declared that it was her first grown-up book. It is also her most commercially successful novel, which, by her own admission, brought her financial security.

The Ninth Life of Louis Drax is a novel about a bright, precocious, and accident-prone nine-year-old Louis Drax. There are two narrative voices in the novel, one of which is Louis himself. The novel opens with Louis narrating the facts of his life. We learn that he lives with his mother; that all is probably not well between his mother and pilot father (his father lives separately); that he is a deeply disturbed child—he is known as ‘Wacko Boy’ in his school—who is seeing a child psychologist; that he has some bizarre preoccupations; and that he is deeply, almost pathologically, attached to his mother. It takes a while before the reader realises that Louis in fact is in a coma, after he fell off a cliff while picnicking with his parents. The accident-prone Louis, who has had a series of near misses in each one of his first eight years, every time saved by his mother in the nick of time, has finally found himself in a situation that would send him hurtling down a cliff and consciousness, while his mother is too far to save him. However, is it an accident? According to Natalie Drax, Louis’s mother, Louis was pushed off the cliff by his father, Pierre, following a violent argument between her and Pierre in which Louis got dragged in. Her version of the events cannot be confirmed, however, as Pierre has disappeared and Louis is in coma. Certainly, detective Charvillefort has not excluded Natalie as a suspect. When it becomes apparent that Louis is not going to regain consciousness any time soon, he is transferred to a residential clinic in the Provence where he is admitted under the care of the Neurologist Pascal Dannachet, who is the second narrative voice of the novel. Dr. Dannachet, who is having a midlife crisis of his own, predictably, falls for the vulnerable, traumatised and emotionally needy Natalie, and soon their relationship is hurtling down a path, which, he knows in his saner moments, is going to end in a disaster. To add to the intrigue, both he and Natalie receive letters asking him to back off (insinuating unpleasant consequences if he did not), in a handwriting that is a child’s and in a language that is characteristically Louis’s. While everyone assumes that the letters were sent by Pierre, Dannachet is convinced—even though his rational self is telling him that it cannot be—that Louis himself somehow effected the letters. Then Pierre’s dead body is found in a natural cave off the same cliff Louis fell from, and the only way he could have ended up there was if he jumped off the cliff or was pushed. It is also clear that he was alive for quite some time in the cave and probably starved to death. The needle of suspicion once again points towards Natalie. Dannachet, who till now has been indignant on behalf of the falsely-accused Natalie, begins to do his own investigations: he makes a trip to see Louis’s former psychologist; speaks to dead Pierre’s mother (who has never got along with Natalie for whom her son has deserted his first wife); and comes to know certain facts about Natalie’s past life which she has either not told him or has given a version that is very different from those of others. Dannachet then plans a daring experiment that defies logic to get to the truth, which propels the novel towards its dramatic, if somewhat unconvincing, finale.

In The Ninth Life of Louis Drax Liz Jensen tries her hand at a different genre (or perhaps more than one genre) from those of her earlier novels, which were about comedy of manners, contemporary satire, and Orwellesque dystopian future. The Ninth Life of Louis Drax is a psychological thriller, a mystery story with more twists than a maze maker on acid. Jensen also makes forays into the neuropsychology of mind (the clue is in the epigraph of the novel, which is a quotation from Paul Brok’s Into the Silent Land). This exploration into the unconscious mind that veers into paranormal, while integral to the plot, assumes an ability on the readers’ part to suspend belief, and those who are unable to do that may find the premise a straw man. Of the two narrative voices in the novel, Louis’s is the more convincing, entertaining, and ultimately very moving. The narrative discourse of Louis is spot on—Jensen has superbly captured the idiolect of preadolescent boys, which adds to the pleasure of reading. Danachet’s views, on the other hand, about what is happening to Louis, appear more to belong to a columnist of paranormal magazines—Ghosts, spirits, afterlife, EVP, UFO, and the comatose boy who practises mind-control—than to a maven of brain pathology. The credulity and naivety of Danachet, who is supposed to be a reputed neurologist, is astounding, as is his capacity to unload seemingly fathomless cargo of clichés. (His dealings with Natalie Drax ought to get him struck of the medical register.) This is is one confused Neurologist in the middle of a midlife crisis more serious than an African republic in the midst of a coup d’etat. Similarly, the portraiture of Natalie Drax as a deeply psychologically scarred (and flawed) person is not convincing. The reader gets no worthwhile insights into Natalie’s cardboard character.

The inspiration of The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, according to Liz Jensen’s personal website, came from a family tragedy in Switzerland in the 1930s, when one of her uncles, after a violent argument with his mother, Jensen’s grandmother, left the house. A few days later, when he had not returned, Jenesen’s grandmother jumped off a cliff. The uncle was never found either. In an interview, Jensen said that rather than recreating the family tragedy in a fictional form, she attempted to recreate the emotions surrounding the tragedy. On the available evidence, she has made a success of it. The Ninth Life of Louis Drax may not be a psychological masterpiece, but it is an entertaining, easy read.

J.G. Ballard: An Appreciation

In 1946, a young man of 17 joined Kings College, Cambridge, to study medicine. He was born in Shanghai to British parents and had spent his childhood and adolescent years in China, a good many of which were in a prisoner camp during the Second World War, when the Japanese captured Shanghai. The family returned to England when the war ended. The young man found life in England ‘cold, grey and dull’ and, he would later recall, he survived the school in Cambridge his parents enrolled him into only because of his earlier experience of the hardships of the internment camp in Shanghai. The young man wanted to be a psychiatrist. He also believed he had flair for writing, and had written some short stories. He disliked Cambridge. The academic snobbery around him left him underwhelmed. (Later in life he would describe Cambridge as an academic theme park). He plodded on for two years but got increasingly frustrated, as he found that the demands of the medical course were so onerous that they left him with little time and less energy to write stories, his first love. When one of his short stories (Violent Noon) won a short story competition held by the Varsity (the Cambridge student newspaper), he believed he had found his calling in life—and that was not medicine. He was going to be a writer. He switched to London University to study English (but dropped out after a year). After a brief stint in a trade magazine, he decided to become a full time writer, and followed no other vocation. Medicine’s loss was literature’s gain. The young man’s name was James Graham Ballard, who went on to become one of the most celebrated writers of his generation and enjoyed cult following.

Ballard is widely hailed as a new age science fiction writer, although he was apparently not very comfortable with this label, preferring instead to describe himself first as a ‘speculative’ and then as an ‘apocalyptic’ writer. Nevertheless, the label stuck, and more than one obituary when he died, paid glowing tributes to his contribution to the science fiction genre. Ballard certainly had passion for the genre. A close friend (and a science fiction enthusiast) reminisced how in the 1960’s he and Ballard attended a Science Fiction convention and how Ballard was disappointed by the pedestrian and commercial interests that seemed to drive many of the SF writers who attended the convention. Ballard published, in the 1960’s, many short stories—his first breakthrough came with the story Terminal Beach— which, while they were not in the typical SF genre, used, cleverly, many of its tropes to generate his unique narrative structure. It would be fair to say that Ballard was never a hard-core science fiction writer; his interests lay more in the realms of crumbling of societal fabric, dehumanisation and such other dystopian themes. Many of his narratives during this period are compiled in Atrocity Exhibition. He also wrote the serial Equinox for the New World magazine, which was later published as the novel The Crystal World, which, together with Crash, he was best known for before the publication of his fictionalized autobiographies (or autobiographical fiction, if you prefer to look at them the other way). It was because of this groundbreaking work (which later came to be known as the ‘New Wave Science Fiction’) that Ballard was hailed as the spiritual Guru of the cyberpunk movement of the eighties. In 1973 he published the surreal Crash (which was made into a film decades later by David Kronenberg) based on the outré concept that modern society found car crashes erotic. According to Ballard’s friends, as a young man he had great interest—bordering on obsession—in assassinations, car crashes and psychosis (probably the reason why he toyed with the idea of becoming a psychiatrist). One publisher allegedly found Crash to be so disturbing that he considered Ballard to be beyond psychiatric help (Ballard himself commented, years later, that the novel was written in a state of ‘willed madness’). While there was something of being deliberately provocative and shocking about Crash, Ballard can never be accused of being outrageous merely for the sake of it—most of what he wrote had the larger goal of making the readers re-examine their preconceptions. In an introduction to the French translation of Crash Ballard wrote that the only ‘reality’ left for the writer to offer ‘in a world ruled by fictions of every kind’ was ‘the contents of his own head, he offers a set of options and imaginative alternatives’. Another classic from the Ballardian cannon was The Day of Creation. In a densely atmospheric novel, in his hypnotic prose, Ballard, in paragraphs after paragraphs, constructed a moody, allegorical and eerie world of occult fear and imperceptible horror.

For those of us not conversant with science fiction, J.G. Ballard is best known for Empire of the Sun. The novel, a heavily fictionalized version of his childhood in Shanghai during the Second World War, was totally different from what Ballard had written until then. The book was a instant bestseller and, although it failed to win him the Booker, earned him world-wide audience. It was made into a highly successful film (by the same name) by Stephen Spielberg, and it is likely that it is this novel that has ensured that posterity will remember Ballard as one of the greats. A sequel (Kindness of Women) followed a few years later, which was a moving fictionalized account of Ballard’s later life, and drew high praise from critics.

Towards the end, Ballard’s writing took another turn as he became increasingly preoccupied with the structures created by modern technology, multinationals and into what abyss they were leading the world. Super Cannes, published in 2000, was not just a crime novel set in a business park (although it could be enjoyed at that level), it was also an indictment of the eve-of-millennium technological complacency and smugness. Millennium People, published three years later, tells, possibly foretells, the story of once-complacent middle-class and upper-middle class people, who, realizing how little they have, decide to start, of all things, a revolution. Kingdom Come, published in 2006, expounded further on these themes and looked at the meaning of middle class existence in the consumerist world of ideal homes and endless sporting events. These last novels, which can be considered as a trilogy of sorts, showed that Ballard had lost none of his inventiveness and still had the ability to suck readers into his world by his mesmeric prose.

J.G. Balard died in April 2009 after a long and stoic battle against prostate cancer. More subversive than Philip K. Dick and at least as shocking and radical as William Burrows, the prodigiously talented Ballard has left behind a vast cornucopia that captures the world in perpetual transit. Novelist Will Self, reacting to the news of Ballard's death, spoke about the influence of Ballard's work that transcended different arts, and described him as one of the writers that had inspired him the most, not in the sense that he wanted to ape Ballard's style or themes, but in the sense that reading Ballard in his formative years made him want to become a writer. A truly great writer has died.

Book of the Month: Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece. First serialized in 1899, the story was published in a book form in 1902. Since then the fame and influence of the book have increased exponentially. Hailed as one of the greatest novels of twentieth century, Heart of Darkness has influenced several works of art including films (most notably Apocalypse Now), novels and poems; one encounters either direct or oblique references to the novel and its themes in journalistic articles and novels (for example, Jonathan Coe’s The House of Sleep).

Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an independent minded sailor who is generally sceptical of those around him, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, an enigmatic man reputed to be of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo.

Marlow arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager, an unsavoury, conspiratorial character. It is here that Marlow first hears about Kurtz, an apparently idealistic ivory trader, who works at a remote outpost of the company (Inner Station); he is rumoured to be ill, and needs to be fetched back from the Company’s outer post. Marlow also learns that the manager regards Kurtz as his rival. The steamboat Marlow is expected to command has been mysteriously wrecked, and the repairs take several months. Marlow is appalled by the rapacity, brutality and cruelty of the Europeans; the native inhabitants of the region are living and working in subhuman conditions, suffering terribly from the ill-treatment at the hands of Europeans. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the majesticity of the jungle that surrounds the European settlements. The ship is finally repaired and Marlow, together with the manager, a few of the Company’s agents (whom he gives the ironic sobriquet ‘pilgrims’ because of their strange habit of carrying long, wooden staves wherever they go; it is made abundantly clear that they are anything but ‘pilgrims’), and a crew of cannibals sets out on a long and difficult voyage up the river, to the outer post. On either side of the river is dense jungle; the atmosphere is oppressive, unsettling and disturbing; occasional glimpses of ‘native’ faces through the bush and the sound of drums add to the eeriness. At one stage during the journey the steamer is attacked by an unseen band of natives and Marlow’s helmsman gets killed by a spear.

Finally Marlow and his crew reach the Inner Station, where they encounter degringolade. A half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as they come ashore, assures them that everything is fine. The Russian claims that Kurtz has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral judgments as normal people. The Russian also reveals to Marlow that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack on the steamer to make them believe he was dead in order that they might turn back and leave him to his plans. Kurtz, in fact, is dying and apparently deranged. He has achieved a God-like status among the local Africans. He is no longer an idealistic man; he participates in diabolical rites and leads the Africans into pillaging expeditions in search of ivory. The collection of severed heads adorning the fence posts around the station attests to his “methods.” Marlow somehow manages to bring Kurtz back on to the steamboat, and the return journey begins. Kurtz, his health rapidly deteriorating, discourses at length, which only serves to reveal his megalomania and madness.

Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a packet of personal documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message that says, 'Exterminate all the brutes!' Kurtz dies, uttering his last words—'The horror! The horror!' Eventually Marlow returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s 'Intended' (his fiancée). She is still in mourning, even though it has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and achievement. She asks what his last words were, and Marlow not being able to shatter her illusion of Kurtz, tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name.

Heart of Darkness is intense, subtle yet profound, compressed and, above all, proleptic in its vision. It is not just a condemnation of a certain type of adventurer who could easily take advantage of imperialism’s opportunities; Conrod is exploring, exposing, the hypocrisy of the Imperialism, in a manner that is as complicated as it is confusing. By the 1890s, most of the world’s ‘dark places’ had been placed at least nominally under European control, and the major European powers were stretched thin, trying to administer and protect massive, far-flung empires. Cracks were beginning to appear in the system: riots, wars, and the wholesale abandonment of commercial enterprises all threatened the white men living in the distant corners of empires. Heart of Darkness suggests that this is the natural result when men are allowed to operate outside a social system of checks and balances: power, especially power over other human beings, inevitably corrupts. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as 'trade', and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of 'civilization'. The reality, starkly described by Marlow, is torture, cruelty and slavery. Kurtz, on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words 'suppression' and 'extermination': he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices behind European activity in Africa. The book, at the very least, offers a harsh picture of colonialism.

Madness is an important theme in Heart of Darkness. The theme serves two purposes. Marlow is told that Kurtz is mad, yet his madness is only relative: his actions, brutal and ‘crazy’ as they are, are qualitatively not much different from those of the 'sane', manager; indeed, the only difference between Kurtz and the rest of the Company agents is that Kurtz is not fork-tongued. Is there such thing as insanity in a world that has already gone insane? And, if Kurtz is indeed mad, is his madness the result of him being removed from his social context, and, on a remote African island, being allowed to be the sole arbiter of his actions? Kurtz has no authority to which he answers, but himself, and this is more than any man can bear.

The book is also about moral confusion. Marlow, Conrad’s protagonist, rejects the concept of accepting the lesser of the two evils. What is worse: the hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy, or the openly malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz? During his journey Marlow witnesses a number of absurd situations to which the Company subjects the natives: at one station, for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he watches native labourers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind. The absurdity and inanity to which the natives are subjected are as terrifying as Kurtz’s homicidal megalomania.

Darkness is obviously important enough conceptually to be part of the book’s title. The title, though, is ambiguous. Does it mean the centre of the dark place? Since the narrative takes place in Africa, is Africa the ‘darkness’ and is Marlow journeying to its centre, its heart? But London, too, is described as 'the centre of brooding gloom', and the 'White Sepulchre' is clearly Brussels. Or is it the case that darkness described in the book metaphorical? The inability to ‘see’ another human being and failing to form any sort of sympathetic communion with him; the sinister, mysterious, obscure ‘heart’—the dark? The ‘Whiteness’ is associated not just with civilization, but also with hypocrisy, ivory, cruelty, and death. The title appositely introduces the paradoxes and enigmas of the tale. Fog, which Marlow repeatedly encounters during his voyage, seems like a corollary to darkness: fog not only obscures, but also distorts.

It is interesting that while the story takes place in Africa, the Africans, themselves, remain peripheral. Beyond outward, physical description of their activities and appearances, Marlow provides no insight into their minds. He is not interested in them. For him they are objects—at one point he describes his helmsman as a “piece of machinery”—that provide a mere backdrop to the moral and philosophical themes Marlow wants to ratiocinate. This has not gone down well with some African critics. According to Achebe, Conrad was 'a bloody racist', who 'eliminated Africans as a human factor' and the result was 'an offensive and totally deplorable book', a racist or colonialist parable in which Africans are depicted as 'innately irrational and violent', and in which 'Africa itself is reduced to a metaphor for that which white Europeans fear within themselves'. 'The people of Africa and the land they live in remain inscrutably alien'. This kind of dehumanisation, Achebe argued, is far harder to detect than colonial oppression and open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues surrounding race that, for some, is more troubling. Feminists, too, have attacked the novel for the portrayal of women in it: they occupy the traditional places of domesticity (for example Kurtz’s fiancée), and are almost never present in the narrative. Also interesting is the setting of the book. Conrad, who was born in Polish Ukrain, became a naturalized British citizen in 1886, and all his books, beginning with Almyer’s Folly which appeared in 1895, were written in the language of his adopted country. His decision to set the book in a Belgian colony and to have Marlow work for a Belgian trading concern probably made it easier for British readers to avoid seeing themselves reflected in Heart of Darkness.

Beautifully written, atmospheric, and powerfully, Heart of Darkness vividly evocates the sense of desolation and bleakness Marlow encounters in Africa. It is also remarkable for its intellectual subtlety, satirical boldness, and linguistic verve. This is all the more impressive, as Joseph Conrad, born Josef Teodor Korzeniowski, in the Polish Ukraine, never studied at university and did not begin to learn English, which was his third language, till he was in his twenties. The styles employed in the book are as varied—colloquial and conversational, philosophical and sophisticated, and lyrical—as they are confident. The linguistic virtuosity of the book is breathtaking. Heart of Darkness is the work of a genius.

Julie Myerson's Lost Child

I must confess that I have not read any of Julie Myerson’s books—fiction or non-fiction. Indeed, I do not own a single book of hers (and I have a few in my collection). That said I have been tempted on a few occasions to buy her books; for example, a few weeks ago I came across one of her early novels, Sleepwalking, which was available for a pound in a second-hand book-sell. While browsing through high street bookshops I have thought of buying some or more of her books, but, immediately after thinking about it, the question pops in my mind: do I really want to spend eight pounds on them; and the answer is in the negative. The storylines of some of her books seem interesting. She has written a work of non-fiction, titled Home: the Story of everyone who Ever Lived In Our House, which was described as a triumph by Philip Hensher. (I live in a similar kind of house, though not as old, and have often wondered about the people who lived in it and the lives they led.) I was however a bit put off to learn that it was not exactly a history of her house; in part it was historical fiction: she gave fictionalized accounts of how she imagined the families, who occupied the house at different times, led their lives. At nine pounds a copy, the book was not exactly cheap.

In case you have never heard of Julie Myerson, please be advised that she is a British novelist, who was once shortlisted for the Booker prize (Something Might Happen). She has published five novels in the last fifteen years, which, while they have attracted lukewarm praise from some critics, have not quite propelled her to the A list. Last month, Myerson revealed, publically (but with great reluctance and trepidation, she insisted), that The Lost Child, her most recent novel, contained a detailed account of her real life son Jake’s addiction to cannabis, and how she was forced to throw him out of their million-pound family home and change locks. It has to be said that for someone who was reluctant to talk about the skeleton in the family cupboard, Myerson did not do too badly: she managed to get on the pages of the literary sections of most of the broadsheets. There she was, in The Times, staring at you from a photograph, looking forlorn and tragic, pale golden locks flowing down to her shoulders, her expression suggesting a deeply private, incommunicable anguish of someone who has had a car door slammed on her thumb. Even the tabloids, not exactly known for their contribution to literature, were expatiating on the subject and inviting comments from their readers (on whose reading lists, inasmuch as they make any, it can be safely assumed, Myerson hitherto had not featured) for their views and comments on whether Myerson did the right thing in chucking out her 17 year old son.

‘This has been a terrible week, today has been a terrible day and yesterday was one of the worst days,’ she said tremulously, on the verge of tears (the very sympathetic interviewer of one of the broadsheets would have you believe). ‘I have done very controversial thing,’ she continued. ‘If you betray your child and throw him out you will get the flak. But I don’t care what people say about me in the press. It is nothing compared with watching your boy walk away . . . It’s really hard to talk about it.’ She then went on to speak volubly and laid it all bare so to speak: the relationship problems between her and her husband (Jonathan Myerson, who is also an artist and once made a documentary that was nominated for an Oscar) who apparently got depressed, the graphic details of how they discovered their son’s cannabis use, the domestic violence and the son perforating her ear drums, the son trying to sell cannabis to her other two children, her own pot-smoking in her younger days—but only on a few occasions (so that’s all right, then)—, the details of her parents’ broken marriage and her father’s rejection not just of her but of her son before he (the father) committed suicide and so on and so forth. If the woman yammers this much when talking is difficult, you wonder what she would be capable of when it is easy. In the end, Myerson professed to have been taken aback by the level of attention she was getting, and said she disliked the denunciations to which she was subjected in some of the tabloids. Did she expect this response from the media? Of course not. ‘I thought the book would speak for itself,’ Myerson said. ‘Reviews would come out, good or bad, some challenging interviews. . . . But I never thought the press would do this to my kids. If I had known, I wouldn’t have published. It’s not fair on my family.’ If you are thinking that this begs the question of why she made the revelations in the first place, Myerson is ready with an answer. ‘There were so many more people suffering things similar to us, we felt we had to raise awareness. People need to go public. I understand why people wouldn’t do this to their child. But I decided I would.’ So, we are to believe that it was the spirit of public service, public education, raising public awareness, call it what you will, that influenced Myerson’s decision to go public about her son’s cannabis use. Myerson says she had to write this book; she did not have a choice; she had to get this out of her system. But it was not just that; she also wanted to raise public awareness. Her son allegedly smokes skunk, which, Myerson and her I-am-hundred-percent-with-Julie-on-this-husband, in an hour long television programme—yes, they allowed themselves, very reluctantly, one would guess, to be filmed, all in the spirit of public service, I shall thank you to remember—informed, their faces longer than the Nile, is much stronger than cannabis. (Who would have thunk the humble dobbie would wreak such havoc on a family?) To make the whole thing spicier, the cannabis-smoking son has been on an interview-spree, refuting almost everything his mother has claimed. He has described her as ‘insane’, ‘obscene’ and an ‘author’! And Bloomsbury , Myerson’s publishers, who had originally planned to bring the novel out in May (which would have received a spattering of tepid reviews without anyone really taking notice, which, regrettably, is the lot of most B-list novelists) decided to rush its publication ahead of the schedule. If you thought that they were driven by the desire to cash in on the publicity generated by Myerson’s revelations and while her (pretty) face was still on the pages of most newspapers, you would be wrong. Nothing could have been farthest from the publisher’s mind. They too wanted to do what they could to raise awareness of the cannabis—sorry, skunk—addiction. In a statement Bloomsbury announced: Given this week's extensive speculation about Julie Myerson's The Lost Child, we felt that it was right to bring forward publication to allow everyone the opportunity to buy her brilliant book and consider the complicated questions it raises.’

The story of the problems of Myerson’s middle class family is not unheard of in this day and age. Whether Myerson and her artist husband did exactly the right thing or whether they could have done something different (from giving the dope-smoking, kleptomaniac teenager the heave-ho and getting on the blower to Random House) will be a matter of opinion. Nothing wrong in Myerson incorporating this traumatic episode from her life into her fiction. (She is an author, remember?). Doesn’t it seem a tad curious, though, that she decides that the most opportune time to raise awareness about the scourge of cannabis smoking by young adults, and its pernicious effect on their parents of artistic temperament, who—what nuisance!—are forced to spend their time (which, otherwise, could be profitably spent going to theatre) looking for therapists, full three years after she gave him the boot, prior to the publication of her latest novel, which, incidentally, contains an elaborate account of the whole thing in one installment? Do I hear someone muttering that this is a nasty little scam worked out by the family and their publicist? That is harsh and cynical—almost as harsh as Jeremy Paxman, who tried to send Myerson on a guilt trip on Newsnight (with his impressive, if predictable, routine of crossing and uncrossing his legs, raising eyebrows till they disappeared into is hair, becoming red faced as though he was either choking on a fish bone or about to have an apoplectic fit, attempting to look incredulous, disgusted, contemptuous at the same time, and—this is the trademark of all Paxo’s interviews—rudely and repeatedly interrupting and not letting the other person finish, all of which has the effect of making you feel sorry for the interviewee). Surely, she wouldn’t do it to her first-born just to sell more copies of her novel (although, the publicity she has attracted, some of which admittedly (and unsurprisingly) negative, will do no harm to the novel’s sell).

Will this, Myerson’s sixth novel, finally catapult her to the A list of novelists? I doubt it.