Culture

Jane Rye on William Feaver's biography of Lucien Freud Lucian Freud describes his paintings as largely autobiographical, which seems to imply some sort of readiness to expose his private life to the public gaze; but he does so on his own terms and is notoriously reluctant to let anyone else poke about in it. At the end of Lawrence Gowing’s 1982 monograph the author quotes Freud as saying ‘there is another reason for not writing about my life. IT IS STILL GOING ON’. William Feaver, it appears, is his licensed Boswell: recording conversations, taking photograhs of the reluctant artist, staying on for lunch.

I mentioned Norm's latest poll in which he asks: you to send in the list of your favourite English-language novelists. Note that I ask for your favourites and not for those whom you consider to be the greatest (should the first group not coincide with the second). My selections, in no particular order: PG WodehouseRL StevensonEvelyn WaughF Scott FitzgeraldRaymond ChandlerJohn BuchanGore VidalFlann O'BrienErnest HemingwayJames Kennaway Plus, as I've said, William McIlvanney as my absent-mindedly forgotten 11th choice. UPDATE: Ooops, I forgot Patrick O'Brian too. That makes an even dozen then. If pressed, he and McIlvanney would be included at the expense of Hemingway and Flann O'Brien. No women you will notice, and*, RLS aside, nobody from the 19th century either.

Norm wants to know your top ten favourite English-language novelists.  I ballsed my ballot up by forgetting to include William McIlvanney. No excuse for you not to do your bit however. Votes for this fellow - interest declared! - always permitted...

When Edgar Allan Poe bumped into a friend in New York in 1845, according to Peter Ackroyd’s brisk new life, the following exchange took place. ‘Wallace,’ said Poe, ‘I have just written the greatest poem that ever was written.’ ‘Have you?’ said Wallace. ‘That is a fine achievement.’ ‘Would you like to hear it?’ said Poe. ‘Most certainly,’ said Wallace. Thereupon Poe recited the verses of ‘The Raven’. This lovely little cameo — halfway to being a sketch from The Fast Show — is all the funnier for the fact that the joke is not entirely on Poe. Though maybe not the greatest poem ever written, ‘The Raven’ really was pretty spectacular. Poe knew it.

These journalistic pieces and two themed short stories have been written by Martin Amis after, and under the direct influence of, the events of 11 September 2001 in America. In a time of increasing specialisation, some supercilious amusement has been expended on the idea of novelists expressing their opinions on current affairs. Terry Eagleton, the academic who, by maintaining a semblance of Marxist thought in the 21st century, revives the dictionary meaning of the word ‘incorrigible’, is among Amis’s noisier critics. He remarked in a recent interview that he didn’t know why anyone should read novelists on these subjects in preference to window cleaners.

The transition from iconoclastic youth to crusty age is common enough. The emergence of Martin Amis as a critic of Islam (at least in some of its manifestations) may be an expression of solidarity with his old friends Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens, or it may be that, as Terry Eagleton suggests, he is turning into his father. Certainly Kingsley may be held to have gone that way, and many of us, as the years pass, do indeed find ourselves resembling Dad. This must be a disturbing thought, often, for our sons. Those whom the gods love die young — before that happens. ‘When Mozart was my age,’ as Tom Lehrer used to say, ‘he’d been dead for years’. ‘Lucky man’ is the unspoken thought.

It might be thought that a book reviewer needs instruction in the skill specified in the title of Pierre Bayard’s book about as much as a moose needs a hat-rack. But cynics should know that the few people who are guaranteed to read a book are, in fact, the last people to be paid to do so. After the agent, the editor and the copy editor, the book reviewer picks up a book like this and reads it carefully from beginning to end, making notes as he goes. None of those people, however, are reading in any kind of normal way; during the industrial process of book production, the level of intricate attention paid to the text produces an experience which is nothing like real reading.

Many of us are beginning to weary of the pushier sort of ‘expert’. Gone is the sense of proportion, the admission of scientific doubt, the ability to weigh risks against benefits. Taking seriously a year’s worth of their health warnings would give anyone an eating disorder. It hardly builds confidence when so much of the advice directly contradicts whatever was confidently pronounced beneficial only months previously. The natural reaction is to take it all with a pinch of salt (if that is still allowed) and assume that the hasty appearance of a government minister on the one o’ clock news to endorse the latest findings is an early indication that they will transpire to be nonsense.