Writers

Tuesday, November 5th., Chiltern Court, London.

A man of immense technical experience in writing suggested to me the other day that authors frequently get flat because, in the desire to be industrious, they go on with their work after the divine (or devilish) afflatus has weakened through inspirational fatigue. I think this is true. A good rule for novelists is forcibly to stop the day's work while the impulse to proceed is still powerful. If this rule were observed we should have shorter and more concentrated books, and better books.

A writer who may already have adopted this approach is the Anglo-Irishman William Trevor. Two of his short novels have come my way and I read both, with pleasure, in three days. "The Old Boys" which I understand to be Trevor's first novel is almost a comic novel. It deals with the memories and machinations of a committee of elderly old boys of a minor public school. My favourite character, who has all the best lines, is the wife of the prospective new chairman. "The Silence in the Garden" is set in Ireland, having to do with the decline of a landed family and their island estate, set against the background of Irish civil war and independence. Both novels are to do with loss, the unreliability of memory, failed ambition, and uncertain motivation. Each requires the reader to involve himself in the characters in order to piece together the "real" story. Trevor is enviably good at managing a large cast of characters. He is best known for his short stories, and these two novels are more or less expanded short stories but no worse for that. I for one, was sorry to get to the end, especially of "The Silence in the Garden".

I have on my desk as I write a copy of Mrs. Virginia Woolf's "Orlando". You cannot keep your end up at a London dinner-party in these weeks unless you have read it; my end has decidedly not been kept up. I have succeeded for nearly a fortnight in not reading it - partly from obstinacy, partly from a sense of foreboding, and mainly from a natural desire for altercation at table about what ought to be read. However I undertake to read it this week and shall report thereon in my next column.

Off Chesil Beach

I re-read "On Chesil Beach" yesterday. It is only a short book, a novella really,and I read through it in two sessions which suggests that I was gripped by it, which I was, but I finished feeling strangely disappointed and have been wondering why.

The story is a simple one, set in 1962. Two educated young people (Florence and Edward), from very different social backgrounds, meet, fall in love and marry. They are both virgins and on their wedding night experience a sexual trauma which results in their immediate separation; they never see each other again. As the title suggests the crisis of their relationship occurs on Chesil Beach.


It feels to me that the book is both too long and too short. For example, why does McEwan continue the story after the separation to tell us what happened subsequently to Edward? And why, if he wants to tie up loose ends, do we get told almost nothing about Florence's subsequent life? It seems to me that the book might better have ended when Edward returned to the hotel to find Florence gone. That would of course have made it even shorter. In fact, as I think of it, this seems to be an over-extended short story. It is the sort of story William Trevor might have written and he would not have been tempted to pad it out. 

On the other hand McEwan, who is such a good writer, could certainly have developed this into a longer, more satisfying, 'proper' novel. Hardy would have done it well. I don't, for example, feel that Florence's asexuality was at all convincing given her background as described. Nor do we hear much about what Edward and Florence did together before they were married, apart from repeated references to Edward's sexual frustration and Florence's sexual fears. We do hear about Edward's 'brain-damaged' mother - what does that add to the story as it stands? But the back stories of both characters could have been developed to good effect in a longer book - not padded out, developed in a satisfying way. 

I feel that it is barely credible that two sensitive, serious and moderating people like these would have parted forever as a result of one bad experience and a verbal skirmish. Surely they would have found some temporary common ground, returned to the hotel, studiously avoided further physical contact that night, and re-grouped in the morning? I feel a bit like Edward - rather frustrated!