When one reads as little as I do, one ends up making the most incongruous comparisons between writers. For what on earth is the connection between the supreme, unblinking chronicler of life as it actually has to be lived for many of us and the greatest storyteller of our times? Between someone who homes in with a surgeon’s precision on the pettiness and occasionally the nobility of our lives and a man who writes of things far removed from anything we are likely to experience but who seems to touch a deep longing in us?
What do they have in common? Well, they must be near contemporaries and, from their very different vantage points, probably share “a certain idea of England”. Both are parodists blessed with an acute ear and eye. Although le Carré is not an actor, he is a superb mimic and, if he set his mind to it, would probably be in the same class as Peter Ustinov. At an obvious level, both are extremely intelligent and gifted; owners, if not of a broken heart, at least of a first-class mind.
Bennett brings his peculiar slant to a world we know only too well, whereas le Carré, like Conan Doyle, has created a world of his own and made us feel at home in it.
But most of all, what they have in common are the emotions they inspire in me when I finish one of their books: admiration, yes, but also a feeling of desolation. Here are two people who have something they desperately want to say, who have a voice. I wish I had a voice.
December 2015
Not much to add to what I wrote all those years ago. Since that time, Adam Sisman has brought out a biography of le Carré which, good as it is, does not really change my perspective on the writer. The best way to get inside an author's head, as always, is to read his books.
What have I been reading in the last year or so?
Amongst others:
What do they have in common? Well, they must be near contemporaries and, from their very different vantage points, probably share “a certain idea of England”. Both are parodists blessed with an acute ear and eye. Although le Carré is not an actor, he is a superb mimic and, if he set his mind to it, would probably be in the same class as Peter Ustinov. At an obvious level, both are extremely intelligent and gifted; owners, if not of a broken heart, at least of a first-class mind.
Bennett brings his peculiar slant to a world we know only too well, whereas le Carré, like Conan Doyle, has created a world of his own and made us feel at home in it.
But most of all, what they have in common are the emotions they inspire in me when I finish one of their books: admiration, yes, but also a feeling of desolation. Here are two people who have something they desperately want to say, who have a voice. I wish I had a voice.
December 2015
Not much to add to what I wrote all those years ago. Since that time, Adam Sisman has brought out a biography of le Carré which, good as it is, does not really change my perspective on the writer. The best way to get inside an author's head, as always, is to read his books.
What have I been reading in the last year or so?
Amongst others:
- In addition to Sisman's book, his biography of Hugh-Trevor Roper
- Two superb books by Anthony Beevor: The Second World War and Paris After the Liberation
- The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Needful Things and Finders Keepers by Stephen King
- Second Honeymoon by Joanna Trollope
- Over But Not Out by Richie Benaud
- Noises Off by Michael Frayn
- Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
- Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
- A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre
Oh, and I almost forgot:
- The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (work in progress)
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