Strangest meeting with Malcolm Taylor today. Last night we had talked about my interviewing Malcolm and Helen Owen, a larger piece about the couple, their careers and the effect the shortlisting was having on them.
Today I arrived and Helen was nowhere to be found and when I sat with Malcolm in his office, he told me that the interview would have to be short and centre on A Hundred Ways and the Booker shortlisting.
Then, as things progressed and talk turn to Helen, he consistently referred to her in the past tense. At one point I saw that he was getting upset. I looked away for a moment and he recovered himself. But throughout the rest of the interview he wiped his eyes from time to time.
This was very different from the Malcolm I had met the night before. Seated with his long-time agent, the irrepressible, nonagenarian Trevor Melville, Malcolm had been voluble, warm, entertaining and forthright.
We discussed novels about novels and writers, and Malcolm pointed out that both Hesse’s Gertrude and Maugham’s Of Human Bondage feature heroes with a disfigured foot, suggesting that artistic sensibilities are an infirmity, a burden. And Trevor reminded us of the role tuberculosis plays in the novels of the nineteenth century and how often it is the poet or the artist dying slowly and gracefully in the corner on a chaise longue. Art as a disease society needs to excise.
They both teased me good-naturedly, too, Malcolm referring to a book I had never heard of, Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly. In it, I gather from what they said, Connolly lists all of the things one ought not to do if one wishes to succeed in literature – become a critic, a journalist, write paid reviews, edit literary magazines, teach writing etc. All of which I have done and still do.
But this morning, it was as though we were meeting for the first time. Last night had been wiped from the record.
When I asked Malcolm what he was working on now, he said it was too distressing to talk about. Too raw. So we turned back to A Hundred Ways, which he seemed to know next to nothing about. He couldn’t recall the names of the characters, the story or the process of writing it. He acted like a poor student who has been asked to speak upon a book he had not read. I say acted; he was that student.
My knowledge of the book interested him and he took his cues from me. I reminded him of the radio interview that brought him some level of fame and he chuckled for the first time. Trevor had told him all about it, he said. As though the interview hadn’t happened to him.
I had two hours with him, which went surprisingly quickly. I will listen to the recording again, but I don’t think I got anything of use. At least, it’s not the story I want to write. I will speak to Amy to see if I can get access to Helen.
There was one bright spot, but this was off point, and confusing. I went to my recording for this, because it’s very particular. He said that he doesn’t think my generation, including me, capable of understanding literature, or history, or philosophy, as we were raised in the internet age, which has applied a filter on us. A filter that confirms my own preconceptions at every turn. He says his contemporaries had a chance, but only discovered they were deceived late. Their vision had been impaired by the generation before. Now, the world could only be seen through the lens of irony. Nothing could be taken at face value.
I don’t quite understand what he means by all that. But he’s got me wrong. I’m not that guy. My experience of literature etc., comes via books, not the internet. I thought I had more than proven that the night before.