anita brookner aussie blog copy

8/17/2019 Anita Brookner Aussie Blog Copy

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I'm writing my PhD on contemporary British novelist and

French Romantic art historian Anita Brookner, best

known for writing boring books about lonely, single

women. My PhD re-assembles this description in ways

that make her look good. I will submit in 2010.

80-word PhD

Anita Brookner is a contemporary British novelist and FrenchRomantic art historian known to write boring books about lonely,single women. I argue that Brookner’s reception or ‘first reading’

is a misreading effected by the way in which contemporaneityand heterosexuality are produced in the literary marketplace.Inspired by an array of nineteenth-century intertextualreferences in the Brookner novel, I draw on French aestheticismto produce a new epistemology of the Brookner text. I stage acast of ‘Romantic Personae’ including the Military Man, theAesthete, the Dandy and the Flaneur as narrative deviceswhich provide an alternative methodology for readingBrookner. The result is a new mode of literary criticismcalled ‘performative romanticism.’ The outcome is a

queering of the Brookner text.

Anita Brookner - her life and work

This is the working draft of my entry on AB "her life and work" forThe Literary Encyclopedia

Anita Brookner is an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French arthistorian and a contemporary British novelist. Brookner was born onJuly 16, 1928, in Herne Hill, South London. The only child of Maudeand Newson Bruckner, the novelist’s family were Polish Jews.Brookner’s father left Poland when he was sixteen and fought forthe British in World War I; Brookner’s mother, a professionalmezzo-soprano before her marriage, was born in London. TheBrookner household comprised an extended family whomBrookner described as being “of such surpassing eccentricitythat with the passing of the years I honestly think most ofthem were mad” (Barber, March, 1983, p.26).


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The family ran a tobacco-importing business, an interesting factgiven that the last known image of the novelist published toaccompany a Daily Telegraph interview in 2009 shows her smokinga cigarette. In the same interview, a former student ofBrookner’s from the 1960s recalls how Brookner smoked

throughout tutorials and encouraged students to smoke aswell. In addition to its Freudian connotations, the image reflectsBrookner’s quiet subversion, both anachronistic and erotic.

Anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe impacted the family in a numberof ways. Cosmetically, it informed the change of name fromBruckner to Brookner as well as Newsom Brookner’s decision to givehis daughter the novels of Dickens to read. “My Polish father, whoremained very Polish, thought that the best thing he could do forme was to unveil the mysteries of English life which could be found

in the novels of Charles Dickens: he really believed that. So I wasset to read Dickens at the age of seven, and I read all the novels”,she explained (Haffenden, 1985, p.68). Both creatively and morally,this was to have an enormous effect on Brookner. Fragile healthprevented her learning Hebrew and the family shifted to centralLondon in search of a better environment. She attended the JamesAllen’s School for Girls, Dulwich, and on weekends would escape tothe Dulwich Picture Gallery where she received an early initiation inthe power of images. Brookner is an atheist, although she onceremarked that “You can never betray the people who are

dead, so you go on being a public Jew; the dead can’t answerslurs, but I’m here. I would love to think that Jesus wantsme for a sunbeam, but he doesn’t” (Haffenden, 1985, p.67).

Brookner proceeded to Kings College, University of London whereshe studied history and French literature, before taking up arthistory at the Courtauld Institute of Art because she “hated historywithout the pictures” (McGregor, 1982). In 1950, she won a Frenchgovernment scholarship to write her dissertation on the Frenchpainter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) at the École du Louvre,

Paris.Brookner’s parents objected to her move abroad and refused tosupport her financially. She supplemented her small stipend bywriting articles (like one of her famous subjects, Charles Baudelaire(1821-67), whose portrait by Édouard Manet (1832-83) hangs inher Chelsea flat) for the Burlington Magazine and the Times LiterarySupplement, commenting that “I was liberated by povertybefore I knew what the women’s movement was all about”(Hale, June 1985, p.37).


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She has frequently described this period as the happiest ofher life.

A prodigious critical career was set in motion, which hasspanned over sixty years and established Brookner as an

international authority in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art criticism. The Romantic period, she says,is “of great interest to me, because it’s to do with modes ofbehaviour, as much as ways of doing things”

After three years in Paris, Brookner reluctantly returned toLondon to care for sick parents. She first taught art history atReading University. In 1967, she was appointed the firstfemale Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge and was a lecturerand then Reader at the Courtauld from 1964 to 1988. Her success

as a French Romantic art historian is often disguised by a modestand ironic personal narrative, yet Brookner was considered apioneer in New Art Criticism and published a number of critical textsincluding a celebrated monograph on Jacques Louis David, TheGenius of the Future: Studies in French Art Criticism andRomanticism and its Discontents. Much of Brookner’s criticismconcerns writers and artists who also made significant contributionsto the emerging queer canon, such as Charles Baudelaire , Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) and Henry James (1843-1916).

Brookner was considered a “popular star turn” at theCourtauld. Former student and one-time director of the NationalGallery, Neil McGregor, recalled that “She insisted that arthistorians must have the courage of their feelings as well astheir convictions” (Guppy, July 1998, p.285). Brooknerexpressed surprise at the degree to which she enjoyedteaching: “I’m such a nervous person I wouldn’t havethought I’d be good at it. But the students are so amiable.They haven’t yet learned those little hypocrisies. And if theytrust you, then you must give them your full attention” (Hale,

June 1985, p.37). In 2009, reflecting on her career as anovelist, she said “My real work was as a teacher and anacademic, and I loved it. This is really just filling the time” (Brown, 20 Feb 2009).

At the age of fifty-one, Brookner published her first novel, AStart in Life (1980), which shares its title with a 1844 noveletteby Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), Un Debut dans la vie, and inwhich the main protagonist, Dr Ruth Weiss, is a Balzac literarycritic. Brookner gave “intense boredom” as the driving forcebehind her decision to write this novel (Hale. June 1985. p.38).

“Since I have nothing better to do, let me see if I can work it out,”


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she told herself. “Only as an experiment, of course; I have neverwritten fiction before in my life, although I have always wanted todo so” (Brookner, August 1981, p.6). Three publishers rejected thenovel before it was picked up by Liz Calder at Jonathan Cape; later,Brookner became a bestseller for Penguin. In 1984, she won the

Booker Prize for her fourth novel, Hotel du Lac. Immediatelyfollowing the ceremony it was reported as “somewhat curious” thatthe Chairman of Judges, historian Richard Cobb, praised the novelas “almost eighteenth-century” (Mayne, 18 October 1984).Meanwhile, journalist Richard Mayne contributed by asking Brooknerto comment on her similarities with her main protagonist EdithHope: “she’s obviously very beautiful. These are characteristicswhich you share with her. Do you share any others?” (Mayne, 18October 1984). In 1987, Brookner expanded discussion of the novelby commenting that Edith Hope is “not a twentieth-century

heroine, she belongs to the nineteenth century.” (Guppy, Fall1987, p.161). Similarly, she represented her fifth novel, Familyand Friends (1985), as a story about “a nineteenth-centuryfamily without a nineteenth century to support it.” (Lee, 4September 1985). These comments are indicative of the way inwhich both nineteenth-century and twentieth-century narrativesinhabit Brookner’s contemporary fiction. As a result, the textsexhibit a type of chronotopic disjunctiveness which hascommonly been associated with more obviously “experimental”writers such as Jeanette Winterson and John Fowles.

Brookner’s novels generally depict a solitary, intelligent andelegant heroine, ironic and privileged, who attempts toreconcile her experience of the world with her expectations.A small number of her novels feature male protagonists, althoughgender indicators do not substantially alter character or plot inBrookner’s fiction. The “Brooknerine” (male or female) oftendisplays forms of ennui, a broad capacity for self-reflectionand, as walking-protagonists, they inevitably guide readersthrough the streets of inner-city London. The novels are set

primarily in contemporary Britain, although trips to the continentare often imagined if not actualised. At times, the Brooknerine’sknowledge of nineteenth-century art and literature informs amisreading of context, but also underwrites a complex narrativevoice. Significantly, references to nineteenth-century textual andaesthetic production produce a “nineteenth-century effect” inBrookner’s fiction and denote an archive of intertextual sourcematerial in the Brookner text. In A Misalliance (1986), theJamesian Blanche Vernon’s obsession with the nymphs ofRenaissance painting is transferred to life when she meetsnymphet Sally Beamish, a woman with a legendaryknowledge of love and pleasure. In A Friend from England


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(1987), Stendhalian Rachel Kennedy expends considerable energytrying to influence Heather Livingstone, while her failure to do soenables a Venetian adventure which elicits amorous revelations infront of Giorgione’s “The Tempest”. Brief Lives (1990) alludes to the

“Brief Lives” of seventeenth-century antiquarian John Aubrey

(1626-97), who shares a love of the inconsequential with Brookner’snarrator, Fay Dodworth. In Falling Slowly (1998), Beatrice’s deathlypremonition is precipitated by a painting by William Turner (1789-1851) at the Tate Gallery. In Undue Influence (1999), Claire Pitt’sfabulous imagination inclines toward multiple forms of self-deception, a tendency which is morally abrogated when read as aninstance of the Baudelairean imagination. The novels all engagein some way with the genre of domestic fiction. However,when Nigel Ford put it to Brookner that “love and marriage isalso one of your big themes”, she replied “in a certain

parodied sense.” (Ford, May, 1990).

Brookner’s early reception (or “first reading”) was produced in anideological context organised around feminism, postmodernism,historicism and the provisions of the literary marketplace. Popularsuccess notwithstanding, Brookner received widespreadcriticism for being boring, plotless, anachronistic, repetitiveand unoriginal. Reviewing her ninth novel, Lewis Percy (1989),Peter Kemp stereotyped Brookner as the novelist of “migraines,flushes and female malaises” (Kemp, 27 August, 1989). At the

same time, some feminists took umbrage at Brookner’srepresentation of women, asking “How can this still be the way ofthe world at the end of the twentieth century?” (Steiner, 23 January2000, p.34). Brookner’s art history retrospectively came underattack, with one critic declaring that it propagated “a wilful lack ofcontext” (Higonnet, 3 November 2000, p.16). The critical consensuswas that Brookner was a “spinster novelist” who was out oftouch with time and place. Reviews presented her as a figure ofpopular ridicule and she received little academic attention. As aresult, the first reading of Brookner constituted a wholesale

devaluation of her oeuvre. She stopped giving interviews,saying “they always get it wrong” (Guppy, July 1998, p.282).Brookner was awarded a CBE in 1990 in the company of A.S. Byatt,but where Byatt was elevated to a DBE in 1999 Brookner has notbeen similarly honoured.

Ostensibly because both the novelist and her heroines areunmarried, childless and “outdated”, it became standardpractice to read the Brookner text as autobiographicalfiction. “The bad reviews were partly a dislike of Blanche,and of me since I’m supposed to be all these women Icreate”, Brookner noted after the publication of A Misalliance.


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(Guppy, Fall 1987, p.166). Autobiographical criticism continued tofoster Brookner’s devaluation, inspiring such insights as “[Brookner]is autobiographical sometimes to excess and even uses red hairlike her own in almost every book” (Sadler, 1990, p.ix). Despitethe temporal complexity and narrational subtleties of Brookner’s

fiction, generic biographical criticism has tended to forecloseawareness of Brookner’s ironic problematization of subjectivity,and especially of gender identity, as when Williams-Wanquetobserves that: “The social and historical forces that havefashioned the protagonists constantly correspond to theauthor’s own spatial and temporal setting… All that serves toset the protagonist realistically in time and spacecorresponds [sic] to the historical, social and familybackground to Brookner’s own life” (Williams-Wanquet, 2004,p.29). Such presuppositions about the relation between the author’s

life and art have obscured other possibilities of theorisation, inparticular in relation to the discourses associated with Decadent andAestheticist subjects in Brookner’s nineteenth-century art criticismwhere the privileging of art over life challenged the way in whichconventional narratives were deployed to naturalise categories ofgender, sexuality, history and representation. “In the nineteenthcentury it seemed more powerful and valid to dissolve order,”Brookner said. (Haffenden, 1985, p.64).

Adaptations: Kristen Scott Thomas as Miriam andSherilyn Fenn as Beatrice in Falling Slowly(1998)

Hotel du Lac I meant as a love story pure and simple: lovetriumphed over temptation. The ideal of love. Basically i don'tlike adversarial positions. I see no need for them, since life is toocomplicated and it's rarely just.

On solitude and the autobiographical

In a 1989 interview, Gail Caldwell raises the issue of theautobiographical presumption that has contributed to Brookner'smisreading. She comments that "the uneventful life", aeuphemism for the unmarried and the childless, "coupledwith the intense intimacy of her novels has led more thanone reviewer to speculate that Brookner's fiction is drawnfrom the well of autobiography". (Here it sounds like Caldwell'salluding to Raddclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness"). She quotes

AB as saying that the parallels are:


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a load of nonsense. Because solitude is very enriching.Solitude isn't loneliness; that's a very crude mistake. And it'squite an insulting one, too. It's used as a criticism, you see:'Oh, this poor thing, forced to live in her imagination.' I findthis unacceptable.

It wouldn't work if it were autobiographical. It couldn't be shaped.It's some kind of subterranean performance; i don't know what it is.But it's not something I'm burning to get off my chest - certainlynot!

Self-analysis as an art form.

Asked why she started writing fiction, Brookner replied,"Boredom".

She continued:

and the wish to review my life, which seemed to be driftingin predictable channels. I saw it as a little exercise in self-analysis. What is interesting about self-analysis is that itleads nowhere. It is an art form in itself.

23/7: AB on the art of fiction

Brookner is known for her technical skill but you don't see herresourced as a go-to expert on the art of novel writing.Nevertheless, she makes a few interesting comments on the topic.In 1985 Hermione Lee asked her about her fifth novel Family andFriends (1985)

HL: Why is it written in the present tense?AB: Ah that's tiresome isn't it.HL: No it's not.AB: Ah but the fact is, a book writes itself much more quickly if

you use the present tense. You don't have to throw it intothe past, it's as if the voices are in your ear. You immerseyourself more with your characters and you feed yourselfinto their lives. I found it easier, instinctively i found iteasier. I can't justify it in any othe way. Writing a book in thepast tense is a very formal exercise and you sit down andyou think I'm going to tell a story and it happened like this and there's quite a burden laid on you to do it that way, if you do itthat way. Writing it in the present tense is marvelous it's likegoing for a walk with all these people hearing all thesevoices, you're contemporary with them.


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22 July: The thing is to not be too frightened

Asked to comment re how her books differ from traditionalromances, AB replies:

The interesting thing is that women still want to read theseromances. i think they read them for consolation. They wantto know that it can work out in the end, and it can come outright. My books differ in the sense that they're morerealistic- things don't work out. They're more fragmented.There is no safe conclusion. They've been called verydepressing. But anyone who has had unhappy experienceswon't find them depressing. It's very unrealistic to find themdepressing. Life is depressing if you're too frightened of it.The thing is to not be too frightened.

14/7: Strong Brooknerines

"I think the women in the book are strong", Brookner toldSue McGregor, in reference to A Start in Life (1980). Spokenabout her first novel, it's interesting to wonder what wouldhave happened if this sentiment had become the dominantnarrative about the Brooknerine. We'd have to have been livingin a different world.

I think Brooknerines are strong too. They are outsiders, yetthey persist and they are much more emotionally honestthan most people.

"I think I've been very brave", AB also said about herself (toMichael Barber). I think she's talking about the life she'smade for herself, for the most part referencing the truthsthat she's exposed in her writing.

12/7: ???

"The worst thing in life is not knowing what is going on".

AB to Caroline Moorehead, The Times Monday March 21, 1983.

I frequently experience this with my thesis.

8/7: Late fruits and flowers

"I think repression has its uses. Repression sometimes leads

to a very fruitful late flowering when you realize you can


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break the rules at last."

7/7: Making Munitions

Brookner's interview with Robert McCrum in The Observer January2001, called "Just don't mention Jane Austen", is one of myfavourites because it's hilarious. She is really sarcastic in it andappears to be very resistant to the interview. Or maybe shewasn't feeling well, in which case that's not so good.

There's so many good moments in it that i'm not sure which topluck out.

McCrum starts off by talking about The Bay of Angels, which

incidentally received a lot of attention for the absence of historicalcontext and I'm pretty sure it was shortlisted for some prizes (shesays convincingly). McCrum asks AB if there was a particularmoment of inspiration for The Bay of Angels.

AB: Well, the curious thing is that i didn't intend to write it. I didn'tknow I was going to write it, so it came upon me quite suddenlyand quite easily and I enjoyed writing it. I'm sorry if it's bleak. I'msorry if it's mournful. I had a good time, that's all i can say about it.

Here she's saying: get fucked... and again later, when McCrum says"You've been very successful for a late starter", AB replies:

I wouldn't say that. I'm not very popular, because they're bleak andthey're mournful and all the rest of it and I get censorious reviews.But I'm only writing fiction. I'm not making munitions, so I think it'sacceptable.

4/7: Other faces of AB

I love Brookner's interviews because she says such smartand funny things. But my obsession with the interviews isprimarily based on the fact that it's often the least interesting orcontentious things that have been pasted together to produce thedominant narrative about the author. My July series of AB quoteswill be a way to address this imbalance.

SMG: You’ve got a good memory?AB: Superb.SMG: Total recollection?AB: Extraordinary recollection, it’s more or less unconscious.SMG: Presumably also for conversations?


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AB: Yes I think so.

(From Sue McGregor's interview with Anita Brookner (unpublished)Woman’s Hour, B.B.C. Radio Four (London: National Sound Archive,13 January 1982))

A dominant narrative about AB concerns her low self-esteem. Check this gem:Anita Brookner is an eminently successful woman… In spiteof such achievements the dominant note in her life is thesense of personal inadequacy – a quality she projects intoher heroines lives.

Thanks for that insightful piece of literary criticism, MarilynDemerest Button.

In what constitutes a prohibition on honesty, idiots and other highlyeducated people seem to confuse self-examination and self-analysis, even modesty, with low self worth. I like the aboveexcerpt from an early AB interview, along with countless otherexamples, in which she's not as modest as she's frequentlyportrayed to be.

My favourite Brookner's

By popular demand, i present a list of Brookner's 24 novels in orderof my favourite.

1. A Misalliance (1986). Hilarious. I love Blanche. There are nymphsand there is wine. "But art is about aristocracy and subversion, adeeper subversion than this."

2. Undue Influence (1999). Busy. Contemporary. Claire is also quitefunny - I go to say hysterical but then I change my mind. Lives inher head; the classic misreader. "It was not the first time I had

been guilty of a misapprehension". Good walking AB.3. Falling Slowly (1998). Tragic. Extremely sad. Very beautifuland very funny. Perfect really. Perhaps this would be #1 if iwas more objective, less sentimental. Maybe it makes the bestgift... bundled with Soundings. (How's that for commodification?)

"This was somehow a day on which concentration would notbe possible, a day on which words must give way toimages... She could not now decide whether a library, any

library, was a way out or a way in, a way out of daily lifewhich contained too much confusion and weariness, or a way


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Magazines? Is it true she doesn't have a computer? An emailaccount?

For now i'd like to ask her to comment on the relationshipbetween "the outsider" (or the exile, a term with which she

seems allied) and "the family". Brooknerines are outsiderswith enmeshed relationships to the family. I'd like AB tocomment on ways in which she understands the connectionbetween the family and the outsider, and how she reads this in abroader context of aesthetic production, Romanticism and the avantgarde.

My Project - Recent Articulations

Anita Brookner is a French Romantic art historian and a

contemporary British novelist. In popular and critical worlds,Brookner has been stereotyped as boring, old-fashioned andunsexy. These criticisms allude to what i call the"nineteenth-century effect" of her fiction. My contention is thatthe interpretation of the cultural text of “Anita Brookner” hangs onthe reading of the nineteenth-century effect.

The heterochronic organisation of the oedipal narrativeconstructing the author-subject means that readings of thenineteenth-century effect as a signifier of Brookner’s

personal and sexual failure have dominated criticism ofBrookner’s novels. The production of the nineteenth-centuryeffect reflects the simultaneous regulation ofrepresentational status (discursivity, intelligibility, aestheticproduction) and historical status with the figuration ofdesire.

I take my methodological impetus from the queering of thenineteenth century and queer theories of performativity and“crossing”.

Read Brookner's reviews in The Spectator There's something about the reviews AB writes - her ability to seethrough convention and delusion, combined with the way she craftsher observations - that makes them seem even more creative thanher fiction. This might be because the length of the novels, the wayin which they exemplify literary realism, and most of all their hiddensubtexts, make them seem more significant as critical objects asopposed to merely just pleasurable reading. Generally Brookner'sreviews are much more interesting that the text she'sreviewing.


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The Spectator seem to allow you read her current reviews here.Represented as ““one of Brookner’s most painful novels”(Fisher-Wirth), A Friend from England was not a popularsuccess. Criticisms ranged from a widespread dislike of the

“monstrous, pathological” character of Rachel, to thesuggestion of a “structural fault” in Brookner’s narrative andreflect the way in which Brookner transgresses normativeexpectations. In the Times Literary Supplement David Planteremarked on a deep sense of “unreality” pervading thenarrative: “When one reads of Heather tucking a rug aroundRachel’s legs in the car, one wonders if a young woman oftwenty-seven would do that for another young woman,hardly older, even in England.” Plante’s comment demonstrateshow age is used as a discursive vehicle for the regulation of gender

normativity in Brookner criticism. At the same time, his responseinversely represents the two main female protagonists in a lesbianscene.

Familiars - New!

Corny header, I know, but it's kind of true. It's confronting readingBrookner, mostly because I relate to her characters so strongly.There's a new lightness about Strangers. I feel like it barely

draws any attention to itself as a representational medium.There's more dialogue than usual too.

The first thing that struck me was her Author's Note - i thinkher first. Then the epigraph by Freud. And the Brooknerrepetition.

One favourite line so far: "He was depressed by the state of theweather, as all those who had little contact with nature (nowknown as the environment, he reminded himself)..." (pg 51).

There are flashes of A Misalliance. A Misalliance cracks me upthough, i think it's so funny. Blanche is to die for; I love that lineabout her drinking when she says something like "you won't see mywinding around a lamp-post with a riotous hat over one eye"(totally paraphrasing there).

Anyway, I digress. Strangers made me think all the Romanticshad contentious relationships with their mothers ie that'swhat Romantic longing is - in a Freudian (possibly reductive)

context anyway. I recall Brookner writing about this mother - sondynamic with the Family Baudelaire. Funny, those words don't seem


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characterises Brookner reception. For now i've focused on thereviews but I may involve the other genres of criticism at a laterstage. I've divided the criticisms into a number of categories, whichi'll set out below and provide some examples. I have a vague planto develop some informal reflections on each criticism in individual

posts.

I've chosen to represent generally negative criticismsbecause they're more interesting and they have been mostinfluential in producing the dominant signification ofBrookner. "I'm interested in the reasons for failure,"Brookner said in a Publisher's Weekly interview in 1985. Andin 2001 she told The Observer that failure was "much moreinteresting than success."

Cataloging Criticism I've divided criticisms into the following categories:Plotless; Repetitive/Boring; Depressing; The Brooknerine (Brookner's protagonists); Brookner Bashing; Time; Age; Place; The19th Century Influence; Jamesian; Middlebrow; Privilege;Autobiographical; Unethical writing; Effect on Readers; Decliningstandard; Strangeness; Genre crossing; Misc.

Categories to add: Sex. Sex is an interesting case because it'sgenerally dissimulated through every other topic. For

example "lonely" is a polite way of saying not sexuallyactive, a heterosexual failure, of ambiguous sexualidentification, gay or closeted.

Plotless Like most of her novels, Brief Lives is virtually plotless.Lindsay Duiguid, “The downward drag and the loss of allure,” TimesLiterary Supplement, August 24-30, 1990, 889. On Brief Lives (1990).

Anita Brookner has purged her novels of nearly all incident, creatinga kind of anti-plot... for the first 243 of these 275 pages nothingmuch happens.Elizabeth Judd, “Making Things Better,” The Atlantic MonthlyVol.291, Iss 3, April 2003, 109. On The Next Big Thing (2003)(Making Things Better in the US).

Although only 220 pages long, it seems padded andinterminable, its wispy story sabotaged by lengthy,disorganised and inconsequential passages of Claire's self-analysis and speculation.Joyce Carol Oates, “Writing for the tortoise market,” Times Literary


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Supplement, July 30, 1999, 19. On Undue Influence (1999).

There is but one halfpennyworth of showing to an intolerableamount of telling in Anita Brookner's new novel... An eventsuch as a visit to a restaurant arrives like an oasis.

Nicholas Clee, “Closed circuit,” Times Literary Supplement, June 171994, 22. On A Private View (1994).

Repetitive / Boring Brookner’s tale may have benefited from abridgment as there ismuch repetition and superfluous detail here, much like theprotagonist's life.Jacqueline Seewald, “Private View,” Library Journal, v122.n6, April1, 1997, 145. On A Private View (1994) audio recording.

Many early admirers have come to feel, as her novels appearpunctually year by year, that Brookner is writing the same bookover and over again... So we are left with a baffling question: whywould a writer of Brookner's sophistication and intelligence repeatherself in this obvious fashion?Angeline Goreau, “Family Plot”, New York Times Book Review, May27 2001, 22.

There is much to bore a listener here.Rochelle Ratner, “The Next Big Thing,” Library Journal, Vol.128

Iss.12, July 2003, 145. On The Next Big Thing (2003) audiorecording (Making Things Better in the US).

Obsessional themes need not result in repetitive fictions, if thewriter can invent reasonably new characters, situations and plots toexpress them; unfortunately there is little that is new or original inUndue Influence.Joyce Carol Oates, “Writing for the tortoise market,” Times LiterarySupplement, July 30, 1999, 19. On Undue Influence (1999).

Last June, when the British edition of this book was published, theLondon Review of Books' assessment began as follows: "AnitaBrookner's first novel appeared in 1981. Since then she haspublished it again, slightly altered, almost every year"... Such arethe perils of prolific authors; reviews eventually weary of them. AndBrookner stands guilty of being astonishingly productive.Paul Gray, “Understated Outrage at Growing Old,” The New Leader,85, 6, Nov/Dec 2002, 44.

Depressing Think of the most humiliating thing that has ever happenedto you, the loneliest moment you have ever had, the time


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you have thought yourself ugliest and most unloved. Look atMe will remind you precisely how it felt.Hermione Lee, “Melancholia in Maida Vale,” The Observer, 27March, 1983, 32. On Look at Me (1983).

Her novels are almost unbearable in their unflinchingexamination of isolation and disappointment.Claire Messud, “The Stifled Life,” New York Times Book Review, Jan31, 1999, 7. On Falling Slowly (1998).

The Brooknerine;(Brookner’s protagonists)Why does the extraordinarily successful Anita Brooknerwrite popular novels about women who are failures?Sally Blakeney, “Failing females”, The Australian, 26 September1998.

she does look like a bit of a fool.Barbara Hardy, “A Cinderella’s loneliness,” Times LiterarySupplement, 14 September 1984, 1019. On Hotel du Lac (1984).

Nobody likes dopey hangdog people who bring homemadequiches to sex trysts…Take my advice. Quit moping. Get out of the house. Goshopping. Buy a television machine and watch some lovelyhumorous comedy programs. Take up a hobby, for heaven’s

sake. As someone advised me once, go to cafes and say in asprightly manner to the person at the next table, “Thathappened to me once too”…Think positively. Enough of thisliterary dawdling.Heather Mallick, “Depressive tale lacks substance,” Toronto Sun,September 6, 1998. On Falling Slowly (1998).

Too well-behaved for a full-blown nervous breakdown.Candice Rodd, “Drawing-room despair,” Times Literary Supplement,August 21, 1992, 17.

Brookner bashing We… perhaps begin to long… for someone to give her characters agood shaking and a sensible talking to.David Allen, “Lovers and other dangers”, The Australian, 19 October1996.

I used to think Brookner was a genius, but now I just wantto kick her in the shins. Heather Mallick, “Depressive tale lacks substance,” Toronto Sun,September 6, 1998. On Falling Slowly (1998).


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The desire to kick Anita Brookner’s heroines is always strong.Jan Dalley, “Fraud,” Independent on Sunday, 23 August 1992. OnFraud (1992).

Time

It is almost a novel written out of time.Barbara Hardy, “A Cinderella’s loneliness,” Times LiterarySupplement, 14 September 1984, 1019. On Hotel du Lac (1984).

Brookner’s characters occupy only the vaguest of times and places.Jan Zita Grover, “Small expectations: Anita Brookner’s Novels,” TheWomen’s Review of Books, 11:10, 11 July 1994, 39. Generalreview.

Brookner muffles the outside world, gives no dates,

mentions no political events, not even the name of acontemporary novel or play gives a sense of time.Brenda Niall, “Alone again, naturally,” The Weekend Australian,April 7-8, 2001, R15. On The Bay of Angels (2001).

AgeThere is something unresolved about their ages.Gillian Tindall, “Safe sorrow,” Times Literary Supplement, July 10,1998, 23. On Falling Slowly (1998).

When one reads of Heather tucking a rug around Rachel'slegs in the car, one wonders if a young woman of twenty-seven would do that for another young woman, hardly older,even in England. David Plante, “They Won Their Life on the Football Pools”, The NewYork Times Book Review, Sec 7 March 20, 1988, 9. On A Friendfrom England (1987).

The use of century rather than of place or era as a point ofreference is paralleled in Brookner’s fiction by her characters’

peculiar ahistoricity.Jan Zita Grover, “Small expectations: Anita Brookner’s Novels,” TheWomen’s Review of Books, 11:10, 11 July 1994, 39. (Generalreview).

Self-pity (‘alone’, ‘always’) leads to absurdity. No self-conscious older woman could possibly 'welcome' the notionthat an unknown and naked young man might wake to findher spying on him. As for that 'willingness to talk', the mindboggles.Caroline Moore, “Baby, it’s cold outside,” The Spectator, London:Feb 19, 2005, Vol.297, Iss. 9211, 38. On Leaving Home (1995).


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Place Brooknerland… is confined mainly to London, with an importantoutpost in Paris and smaller ones in other European cities. But seeknot for it on street maps; although actual squares, avenues,

department stores, parks and libraries are named, Brookner'sLondon is an alternative version that bears only a partial anddeceptive resemblance to the real city... Essentially, it is very un-English.Gillian Tindall, “Safe sorrow,” Times Literary Supplement, July 10,1998, 23.

Anita Brookner’s 20th novel is set in London and southernFrance, some time in the 1950s. But in fact, we are nowhereso much as in Brooknerland.

Lisa Allardice, “The Bay of Angels,” New Statesman, 14, 678, Oct15, 2001, 56. On The Bay of Angels (2001).

The 19th Century Influence Brookner’s protagonists are endowed with the formality andasperity of a nineteenth-century heroine. Patricia Craig, “On not being overwhelmed,” Times LiterarySupplement, August 29, 1986, 932. On A Misalliance (1986).

Anita Brookner's novels are expert copies of nineteenth-century

novels.Sven Birkerts, “Private View”, The New Republic, v212.n17 April 24,1995, 41. On A Private View (1994).

JamesianThe difference between Brookner and James, one suddenly realises,is that James's characters are radically innocent... Brookner'scharacters are only radically dull.Sven Birkerts, “Private View”, The New Republic, v212.n17 April 24,1995, 41. On A Private View (1994).

Middlebrow (include non-subversive)Nostalgia for respectable bourgeois customs is a great appeal inBrookner's novels.David Plante, “They Won Their Life on the Football Pools”, The NewYork Times Book Review, Sec 7 March 20, 1988, 9.

Agreeably middlebrow writingDavid Allen, “British values under scrutiny”, The Australian, 8November, 1997.


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Effect on Readers Readers who've found many of Ms Brookner's charactersdownright maddening in their capacity for hitting upon waysto stay lonely, depressed and miserable may very well losepatience with this novel.

Merle Rubin, “The Search for a Suitable Suitor”, Wall Street JournalLeisure & Arts, Jan 20, 1999, 1.

I confess to approaching her short novels with a certain degree ofhesitation. As a reader it means being in the company ofdesperately unhappy people, whose understanding of theirunhappiness is chillingly accurate.Ron Charles, “Alone, all alone with Anita Brookner… again”,Christian Science Monitor, Jan 17, 2000, 17.

Declining standard Despite the sharp, engaging portraits of unhappy women, i wishnow that Brookner would try again the larger canvas of Family andFriends, a few novels back, that chronicled a large family (the menof it too) over many years.Alice Bloom, “A Friend from England,” The Hudson Review, 41,1988-89, 544. On A Friend from England (1987).

Less and less is happening in Brookner's novels. Those of uswho have bought and read all 17 of her books look back to

the youthful, flashing emotion and stormy passages ofProvidence, Look at Me or Family and Friends with wonderand some regret. Maggie Gee, “Don’t just do it, have a good think about it,” NewStatesman, v126 n4345 August 1, 1997, 47. On Visitors (1997).

Strangeness A strange and disturbing book.Sally Emerson, “Recent Fiction,” Illustrated London News, August1981, 76. On A Start in Life (1980).

Strangely static.Brenda Niall, “Alone again, naturally,” The Weekend Australian,April 7-8, 2001, R15. On The Bay of Angels (2001).

Strangely devoid of friends.Brian McFarlane, “A small, tenacious addiction to life,” The SaturdayAge, 7 April, 2001, E11. On The Bay of Angels (2001).

Genre crossing Fraud is less a novel than an examination of literaryconscience.


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Authorless review, “Fraud”, Time Magazine v141. N6 (Feb 8, 1993),83. On Fraud (1992).

More of a character study than a conventional novel.Sarah A. Smith, “Learnt from Life,” Times Literary Supplement, May

30 1997, 21. On Visitors (1997).

An author flirting with self-parody.Nicholas Clee, “Closed circuit,” Times Literary Supplement, June 171994, 22. On A Private View (1994).

A curious inversion of stream-of-consciousness.Maggie Gee, “Don’t just do it, have a good think about it,” NewStatesman, v126 n4345 August 1, 1997, 47. On Visitors (1997).

The Plot Summary - A Friend from England (1987)

A Friend from England (1987)The narrator of A Friend from England , Rachel Kennedy, is a single,32-year-old Londoner and a partner in a bookshop. Set in the1980s, Rachel recalls a period of time defined by her complicatedresponses to the personal decisions made by the "striking" HeatherLivingstone. Following the death of her father years previously,

Rachel inherits Heather's father Oscar as her accountant and isbefriended by the Livingstone family. Rachel idealises theLivingstones as an image of a "Victorian" family and issimultaneously fascinated and alienated by their material andemotional security. Conversely, the Livingstones perceive Rachel asa "feminist" and someone who might coax Heather out of herperceived passivity. Throughout the narrative Rachel emphasisesher "extensive" sexual experience, the debilitating effects of herhydrophobia and comments on the contemporary experience ofwomen. While socialising with the Livingstone family, Rachel notices

a change in Heather which culminates in Heather's announcementof her engagement to Michael Sandberg. Rachel's narrative followsHeather's engagement party, wedding and her return to Londonfollowing her honeymoon. After Rachel "outs" Michael in a gay bar,her narrative then traces Heather's marriage break-up, trip to Italy,Heather's mother's illness, Heather's return to Italy and subsequentengagement to an Italian. On a number of occasions, Rachelconfronts Heather about her behaviour and tries to influence herdecisions. Finally Rachel travels to Venice to attempt to persuadeHeather to return to England.

Literature & History paper


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according to The New York Times, “the narrator’s monumentalgloom makes you wish certain lives in Brief Lives were briefer”.Attention turned to the first person narrator. In her book onBrookner’s later fiction, Inger Bjorkman calls the narrator “absurd”.In the Hudson Review, Tom Wilhelmus notes that the narrator’s

“tone” manages “to hide everything – including some veryscandalous activity.” Alexander claims that Fay’s narrative was

“speculative at best” and registers a range of “whollyinconsequential and everyday scenes” in the text. Her contentionwas that “understatement and the supplying of seeminglyinconsequential information are common features of Brookner’swriting.”

It’s true that even by Brookner’s standards the levels ofinconsequential detail in BL seem unusual and make it

difficult to determine what information is significant. Thesedetails range from banal comments, such as “I sat looking atthe humming telephone, and then, very quietly, put it down”(BL, 128) to extemporary narrative techniques, for example,“I remember at the time I went to the hairdresser’s” toobservational detail: “through the window a tiny silver planewas a point of brilliance in a cloudless light blue sky” (BL,133). Representations of “the inconsequential” also form akey component of the narrator’s strategy of self-representation: “My activities were completely

inconsequential” (BL, 80) or “I was too uninteresting to beeligible” (BL, 178), she says.

“Getting dressed was the most important part of Julia’s day,” Fayreports, adding that Julia preferred “the artificial climate of herdressing-room rather than anything more natural or more variable.”Julia’s histrionics are primarily staged in the drawing-room of herOnslow Square residence, a room which itself resembles thedressing-room and a space which invokes the dandy’s toilette. The

dressing-room mobilises a cast of assistants and in Brief Lives theseroles are performed by both Julia’s entourage and her audience.They include her dresser Pearl, a “journalist” turned dogsbodyMaureen, Julia’s mother “perhaps the most perfect audience of all”and Fay “a secondary audience, a matinee audience”.

Fay extensively documents Julia’s hard sexy mannerisms (3), herstrikingly tall slim body (3) her “beautiful eyelids”, the narrownessof her feet - necessitating custom made shoes - and her aquilinebeauty. On one particularly shocking occasion, Julia is found in anultramarine satin nightgown exposing “an expanse of whiteshoulder… in its way perfect, remarkable by any standards”. Fay’s


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observation that Maureen “gave the impression of being sexuallynull, since she devoted no thought to her hair and clothes” (BL,144) indicates that the narrator’s focus on the dressing of her mainsubject is invested with an erotic significance.

As another of the dandy’s performative modes, talking isthematically and technically emphasised in Brief Lives. The name ofthe narrator Fay Dodworth, identifies her through the “fading” ofwords that Purdon claimed for Aubrey was constitutive of the brieflife of oral narratives. As a professional singer and radio performer,Fay had an oral vocation. And as a diseuse or “mimic” Juliapersonifies the dandy’s mode of performance.

Inevitably arriving at Julia’s with a gift, Fay’s offerings becomeoccasions for Julia’s adjudicating views on taste, lay rights for her

claims to service and propel the narrator’s movement through herlocal environment as she dispenses with various errands. Fay’snarrative refers to over 20 sites around London, rendering traces ofthe city that reflect the Baudelairean ephemerality of modern lifethat is conjured by the brevity of novel’s title. By mapping thesesites you can see a visual representation of the space Fay’snarrative traverses or the brevity of the late Romantic experience.Likewise these little maps can act as inserts to the novel,reconstituting the text in an intertextual reference to Aubrey’s

“paper museums.”

Fay travels the streets to attend Julia’s in-house performances, withher gifts of tongue, of fruit tart and hothouse peach and madieracake (BL, 64, 107). Julia is a “cult object” to the narrator and sofrequent references to Julia’s diet of omelettes and whiskey bothimbues it with cult status and reveals the heightened importancethe narrator attributes to food and eating. Fay’s elegant menus andthe delicate combination of textures, flavours and quantities theyevoke are crafted to effect an aesthetic experience. Eating is

produced as a mode of exchange between the two women anddiscourses of consumption are interwoven with those of desire inBL. This eroticisation of consumption enables the reading of Fay’smenus as small love poems to Julia.

Julia’s deterioration is witnessed over a few short episodes. Firstly,Fay notices an octave drop in Julia’s voice, her drawn features, anuntouched whiskey – all coinciding with the departure of herdresser, Pearl and signalling the dissolution of components of thetoilette and audience. Following the loss of Pearl, another type of

jewel is lost and destroyed. Fay arrives at Onslow Sq and is “disproportionately shocked” to find Julia wearing only one earring,


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a reflection of the dereliction of Julia’s standards of dressing. Fayapprehends a gleam by Julia’s narrow left foot and raises an alert,yet the slow foot brushes over it, crushing Julia - crushing the jewel- into the carpet.

Over the course of these disturbing events, Julia begins “tormenting” (BL, 162) Fay about the (non-existent) sexual statusof her relationship with Dr Alan Carter, a GP described as rude, (BL,164) disappointing (BL, 164) and cruel (BL, 174). Incapable ofprocuring her desired response, Julia transfers the subject of hereroticised discourse onto discourses of consumption. “Have youbeen to bed with him yet?” she pries, then, “Is he coming todinner?” Boiling with discomfort, Fay is forced to extend theinvitation to Alan that has effectively been masterminded by Julia.

At this stage things both start to unravel and to come together. Fayis preparing dinner for Alan Carter, when she is summoned by Julia.She rushes to Onslow Sq, where Julia continues her interrogation,simultaneously undressing before Fay to “reveal the lingerie of acocotte”. Trembling, Fay lowers Julia into the sweet-smelling bath,informing her that she and Carter might go away for a weekend. Atthis stage Julia grabs hold of Fay, either falling or pretending to fall,disarranging Fay’s hair and ripping her blouse. The two women areleft arm-in-arm in mutual states of undress, before Fay returnshome to finish preparing dinner. But her state of disarray prevents

this from happening. She drops the terrine, sending a spray ofcarrot mousse across the floor and greets Carter with a ruinedblouse, a ruined kitchen and a ruined evening. This provides thecatalyst for the end of her thraldom to Julia. However, when Julialeaves for Spain, Fay notices that she might have been “imagining adecay of which there was no trace” (BL, 203) and Julia departslooking “exceedingly chic” (BL , 210) in a light grey suit with a furcoat over her arm.

Thus in BL the even the dandy’s fall and ruination is problematised.

The novel begins with Fay reflecting on Julia’s death and ends withJulia’s voice inviting Fay to join her. This ephemeral endurance ofthe dandy complements the status of ruins for antiquarians such asJohn Aubrey.

In the abstract of this paper I pose the question of whether it ispossible to read a contemporary novel as a 19th centurytext. By looking at the meaning of “the detail” in 19thc texts,and reading Brookner’s novel through the figure of thedandy, I attempt to read the text across historical temporalitiesand therefore to complicate the way in which Brookner has beenproduced as a contemporary novelist.


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Brookner's "First Lines"

My sister can quote the opening sentence of a number of herfavourite novels. Despite the fact that I often have certain Brooknerexpressions run through my mind, or I find myself quoting Brooknerto explain an experience rather than coming up with my own words(why reinvent the wheel?), I could only recall the first line ofBrookner's first novel - plus the one I'm currently working on. So idecided to write them out here.

1. A Start in Life, London: Jonathan Cape, 1981Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had be ruined by literature.

2. Providence, London: Jonathan Cape, 1982Kitty Maule was difficult to place.

3. Look at Me, London: Jonathan Cape, 1983Once a thing is known it can never be unknown.

4. Hotel du Lac, London: Jonathan Cape, 1984From the window all that could be seen was a receding area of grey.

5. Family and Friends, London: Jonathan Cape, 1985Here is Sofka, in a wedding photograph; at least, I assume it is awedding, although the bride and groom are absent.

6. A Misalliance, London: Jonathan Cape, 1986Blanche Vernon occupied her time most usefully in keeping feelingsat bay.

7. A Friend from England, London: Jonathan Cape, 1987I first got to know Oscar Livingstone in fairly humdrumcircumstances.

8. Latecomers, London: Jonathan Cape, 1988Hartmann, a voluptuary, lowered a spoonful of brown sugar crystalsinto his coffee cup, then placed a square of bitter chocolate on histongue, and, while it was dissolving, lit his first cigarette.

9. Lewis Percy, London: Jonathan Cape, 1989Madame Doche, with an air of appreciation no less generous forbeing regularly at her command, took the camembert from LewisPercy, prodded it with an expert thumb, pronounced it to be good,

and ushered him into the salon.


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We met, and became friends of a sort, by virtue of the fact that westarted school on the same day.

23. Leaving Home, London: Viking, 2005 Argh! I've lent it to a friend... !

The Brookner Walks Project

Brooknerines are walking protagonists. That is, the mainprotagonist of a Brookner novel usually embraces walking asa personal practice. For the Brooknerine, walking is a modeof transport, a form of physical exercise and a way ofpassing time. It has therapeutical benefits; it makes nomental demands on the walker but can stimulate thought

and bring clarity. Walking allows the subject to observe theworld and participate in public space while simultaneouslybeing a solitary practice. Walking locates the Brooknerine in acontemporary chronotope (time / space context).

anita brookner aussie blog copy

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