For those who make a living from writing, getting things wrong constitutes the formal, not to say canonical nightmare. To publicize error is to multiply it infinitely. And how much more acute is the embarrassment of error for one whose job, as a critic, is to correct others’ fallacies? That error attracts more error I know to my cost. My first book, a collection of essays, contained a piece on Jane Austen. Though I knew perfectly well that Lady Catherine de Bourgh belongs to Pride and Prejudice and Lady Bertram to Mansfield Park – though who will now believe me? –1 placed Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Mansfield Park. Stranger still, in the same paragraph, I misspelt that formidable lady’s name (as de Burgh, like the near-singer Chris de Burgh) and wrote that throughout the novel she is more interested in her rug than in her children. Austen in fact wrote that she was more interested in her pug than in her children.
As far as I know, these were the only errors in my book; yet in one small paragraph, three howlers! (And how painful that word howler is when it is used not by you but against you in a review, conjuring flocks of correctors cawing at you in unison.) Two reviewers of the book noticed, and both, of course, rightly went to town on the information – went to town and had dinner at my expense. One of them suggested that such howlers – that word! – shook his confidence in the entire book.
Like most writers, and certainly most journalists, I work, and work most happily, from memory. Memory is organic. The notorious fact-checkers of the New Yorker are irritating not only because they often prove how fallible are our memories, but because they seem to mechanize what ought to be a natural, unmediated, fast-moving process. As a teenager I loved Ford Madox Ford’s opinionated and breezy The English Novel (I still remember its sky-blue Carcanet paper cover) and found romantic Ford’s preface, in which he says, or so I recall, that he wrote the book in six weeks on a becalmed ship, far from home and far from his books. Erich Auerbach famously wrote his great work Mimesis in Istanbul during the Second World War, again far from his books, and without access to libraries. Chesterton deliberately quoted, and certainly misquoted from memory at all times, on principle. This is surely the scholar’s and writer’s ideal, and I have a curious ritual, in which, if forced to look a quote up that I once knew by heart, I try to read it through, close the book, and put it into my piece using my lightly renewed memory. I did this when writing the Austen essay. I consulted Mansfield Park for the quote in which Austen writes that Lady Bertram was more interested in her pug than her children, closed the book, and then reproduced the quote from memory. In my mind, I had fixed Lady Bertram as perhaps doing needlework in her drawing room while her children came and went, or perhaps, like Emma Woodhouse’s hypochondriacal father, fussing with a rug over her knees. I had utterly forgotten about the pug, as one does forget such things years after reading a novel. That I misremembered the pug is uninteresting; but that I made two other errors in the same paragraph seems to be a perfect example of my unconscious madly semaphoring to my conscious mind – ‘stop, stop: you are in error and wading deeper with every step!’
But why do we all prefer to use our memories rather than look things up? The memory, after all, is an error-producing organ, as the police know only too well from millions of fallacious eyewitnesses. We do it not only because it is easier than trotting to the shelves, but to show off – not to others, who after all can’t know we have used our memories unless we tell them so in print. We do it to show off to ourselves. But since using our memory is certainly bound to lead to error, the conclusion must be that showing off to ourselves is really – however unconsciously – commending ourselves for getting things wrong. Showing off to ourselves is getting things wrong to the secret satisfaction of our unconscious. And the further conclusion to be drawn from this is that we want to be caught at it. We want to be mortified. We want to be punished for being the kind of people who get things wrong; we want to be mortified for being the kind of people who show off to ourselves. Memory is vanity; all is vanity, saith the preacher. This is circular, you’ll protest. Yet mortification is a religious notion at heart, and a great deal of Dostoevsky and Hamsun turns on precisely the idea that we really crave our own mortification. It was Augustine, the great religious theorist of error, who first proposed a real theory of memory. He suggested that we only remember things by having already forgotten them beforehand. Or at least I think he said this. I can see the passage, underlined, in my Penguin copy of his Confessions. But I am far from home, and writing this far from my books …
‘Trouble will rain on those who are already wet.’ Spanish proverb
Patrick McCabe
And so at last the big day had arrived and there I was with my bags and papers happily on board an Aer Lingus plane. En route to Scotland’s magical capital, named after Edwin, king of ancient Northumbria, chiselled architectural masterpiece of eras both Georgian and Victorian. For the purposes of refreshment on my journey, I sipped some tea and treated myself to a pastry and a snippet or two of Bertrand Russell. I could not believe my eyes when, a mere forty minutes later, I looked out the window and perceived not, as I had expected, a tranquil stretch of snotgreen ocean, but a magnificent castle dramatically perched on a precipitous crag of volcanic rock!
Within the hour I had arrived in my bedroom, thoroughly debagged and ironing with an application that can only be described as ‘furious’.
‘If there’s a trouser press in the hotel, you make sure and use it!’ I recalled my wife’s admonition. And now, here I was, with that very implement to hand!
I was in the process of climbing into my perfectly configured strides when, quite unexpectedly, the air was sharply rent by the piercing sound of a phone. I clambered across the floor and tore at the recalcitrant receiver. I pressed it to my ear and heard the animated tones of my agent. ‘Not long to go now!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you nervous, Pat? Or should I say – author of Cam? Ha ha!’
Some time later, inexplicably, I found myself quite nervous so I decided the best thing to do was to avail myself of some exercise. I ran around the hotel a number of times, then retired to the bar for some drinks. After seven or eight brandies I found myself ready to face my public.
The sight that greeted us in Charlotte Square was truly astonishing. The first thing was – the actual size of the tent.
‘Good evening Edinburgh!’ I heard myself barking in the – as yet, quite empty, marquee – ‘Hope y’all feeling good tonight!’
‘Lady!’ I declared to the woman who approached us, on the verge of giving her the soul-bro ‘handclasp’ (I had read about Allen Ginsberg doing that with ‘the Beats’).
She smiled faintly – then, to my amazement, walked right past! ‘I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding,’ I heard her say, ‘your client’s not reading here. Harold Pinter is.’
‘Harold Pinter?’ my agent replied.
‘Yes. He’s my favourite writer,’ she said. ‘Oh! The Caretaker!’
I was close to fainting.
Somewhere to the north, I heard a clap of thunder rolling broodily behind the clouds. Just then, another official arrived on the scene – sporting a name badge reading MADGE – wondering aloud if it could be possible I was reading in ‘Winnie’s place’?
It was just at that moment that the heavens, as earlier celestial disgruntlements had indicated they might, decided to open up once and for all, mercilessly lashing the tent with bullwhips.
Once outside, my agent brightened and slapped me blowsily on the back.
‘Don’t worry, Pat! You’ll do the reading of a lifetime and then it’ll back with the pair of us to the comfort of the festival club!’
‘That’s the spirit!’ chimed Madge, before waving goodbye and ducking back inside, pausing only to chuck away the remainder of the mutant-like grey sludge that had once been the festival programme.
We prayed the pulverizing skies would relent, fortifying ourselves with dreamlike exchanges regarding the ‘bottle of champagne’ that my agent pledged he would purchase whenever our ‘tra
vails’ had concluded.
Its ‘bubbling sparks’ to be sweeter than any ‘ice-cold’ – in ‘Alex’ or anywhere else.
We were received by yet another elegantly-attired lady – this time bearing a name badge reading WINNIE.
‘Such a downpour!’ she groaned, before adding: ‘We’re ready to start at nine, Mr Maccabbee.’
‘Moët & Chandon,’ whispered my agent as we followed our host inside. ‘Just think of it.’
Winnie smiled and craned her neck around the door to see was there anyone coming. There wasn’t. I walked around for a bit, inspecting the books. It was a nice library and very well kept – that has to be acknowledged.
Leafing through what I think was a crime novel of some description, I was quite taken aback to hear the sound of someone roaring and then glass smashing just directly outside. I looked up to see a wild-eyed clochard launching sorties in the direction of the door, hurling himself at it and waving a jaggededged bottle, discharging as he did so what can only be described as an ‘endless stream of incomprehensible phonetic-based gibberish’.
‘That’s Timmy,’ Winnie fumed, securely bolting the door, adding: ‘It’s just not good enough! He steals books and sells them for money! He thinks we don’t know – but we do, don’t we, Moira?’
‘Oh yes!’ returned Moira. ‘Four Just Williams he removed last week! But that’s the end of it! That’s the end of it now! We’ve been far too tolerant! Far too tolerant, Mr McCabbee!’
‘Ha ha!’ I found myself on the verge of ejaculating. ‘For a minute there I was sure he was a fan!’
‘Hmm!’ she mused, inspecting her watch. ‘Speaking of which – it’s getting late!’
Just then there was a knock at the door.
‘Don’t open it!’ cautioned Winnie. ‘It might be Timmy!’
‘No, he’s gone, thank heavens!’ her colleague replied. ‘Didn’t you hear him kicking the allotment bins?’
‘Of course!’ replied Winnie.
The doors were promptly unbolted and we surmised the status of this new arrival.
‘Ah for the love of God – how are ye all doin’?’ She beamed and it was then I noted her carrier bags, containing – mirabile dictu! – a hardback copy of The Essential James Joyce!
It was the moment I had been waiting for. ‘Aha, so!’ I heard myself saying. ‘A countrywoman of my own perchance?’
‘Could ye direct me to Charlotte Square please? I have to go to a reading,’ she told us.
Our visitor was led towards the door as, crestfallen, I watched her eagerly accept directions in dumbshow. How salutary and invigorating it would be to declare that at that very second, against all the odds, my agent and I looked up to descry hordes of novel-wielding writers bearing down upon us, exhausted, but unmistakably revivified on seeing us as they wept: ‘Please tell us that the Patrick McCabe reading hasn’t started yet!’
It was never destined to happen. What was, however, was that the allotment bins were to receive another kicking as we looked up to see Timmy waving his fist and bawling: ‘I’ll get you, Auld Sticky-Knickers! You’ll no’ chase me!’
‘Now now!’ croaked Winnie. “That’s no attitude!’ as the philistine derelict took his leave once more. Before – deus ex machina – I felt my elbow being tugged and, to my delight, found myself being addressed by the most refined and aristocratic of ladies – also, I noted, the bearer of some literature, although this time of the ‘magazine’ variety.
‘Is it alright if I –?’ I heard her say.
‘By all means!’ I yelped, and bundled her inside.
With pounding heart, I took my position upon the podium, gingerly opening my book and launching into a potted history of my novel, explaining briefly how it had come into being and why I’d decided to be a writer. Warming to my subject, I heard tumultuous cheers. Base as it was, I could not dispel the notion that at that very moment Harold Pinter was making good his escape, falling across Charlotte Square as whoops of derisive laughter chased him all down Princes Street, followed by jeers of: ‘Pauses, Harold? We don’t need no steenking pauses! It’s Carn we’re after, pal – comprende?’
Despite everything that had happened, somehow at last it all seemed worth it. I lowered my head, in a gesture of ‘unworthiness’ and abject humility. Then, with a cough, I proceeded. ‘I’d like to read you an extract,’ I said, raising my eyes after some considerable length of time to witness, to my horror, my entire audience making for the door.
‘No! Don’t go!’ I called. ‘I’m not finished yet!’
She stood and looked at me for a minute then aggressively retorted: ‘I have better things to do than listen to this. I just came in out of the rain!’ before disappearing forever.
We waited, hopelessly, for another ten minutes, and then at last I heard Winnie say: ‘I simply can’t understand it. We sent out leaflets to all the housing schemes!’
‘Perhaps we should call it a day,’ my agent ventured hesitatingly, before adding: ‘After all, we have an important engagement, haven’t we, Patrick?’
‘Ice-cold in Eddie!’ I responded grittily. ‘With Moët & Chandon.’
Which indeed we had – and, boy, were we going to enjoy those bubbles as they cheekily burst on our tongues!
Once more finding ourselves swinging into Princes Street where the lights of the city seemed to be glittering solely for our benefit, dismissive of shrill comments that came drifting on the breeze: Wasn’t Harold’s reading magnificent! The most wonderful evening ever! – our only remaining preoccupation now being the ‘warmth of a good club with friends’. Secure – finally! – in the knowledge that our fortunes this time had no option but to change!
A conviction which, doubtless, brought a smile to the face of the moon as it gazed down from the battlements of the castle, foreordained as it is for that noble sphere to be amused by the affairs of men and their enduringly unstinting belief in themselves. That dogged insistence that things just simply ‘cannot get any worse!’, an appraisal in this case proving very wrong indeed as we rounded the last corner triumphantly to be greeted by the sodden sign:
CLOSED!!
L’Envoi
It is sad to report that Patrick and his agent aren’t colleagues any more. That their journey back to the hotel that night was one fraught with bitter words and recrimination, and that their last lingering belief in the ‘philosophy of good things’, to coin perhaps a name for it, was savagely obliterated forever when the hotel bar also proved to be closed and their one final hope – the mini-bars – empty.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be able to delineate here how they heroically overcame their difficulties and to this day are often to be observed sharing a glass of Moët & Chandon in the literary haunts of London’s metropolis as they laugh almost nostalgically about that ‘Edinburgh night’! Which, if things had been otherwise, could have become a little joke.
Except that things weren’t otherwise and any time now, if you even mention its name, the author will begin to quiver and a strange look will come in his eye, as though unspooling deep within him is some widescreen mini-Hammer movie, where everything is forever nocturnal and all he can hear is the sinister rolling of thunder and the sudden crack of a lightning bolt as it flashes across the heavens, transcribing for posterity its malevolent, hell-forged rubric:
He went over to Scotland and he thought he’d find fame
But he didn’t, the bollocks, because nobody came!
‘All is confounded, all!
Reproach and everlasting shame
Sits mocking in our plumes.’ Shakespeare, Henry V
Adam Thorpe
November, 1988. Laura Cumming of the Literary Review on the phone.
‘Hi, Adam. Like to do an interview?’
‘OK. Who with?’
‘Poet. Begins with B.’
‘Brownjohn?’
‘Brodsky.’
‘Jesus.’
‘It’s the big one. A scoop. Exclusive, too.’
He was over in London to launch the Penguin edition of his latest poetry collection, To Urania. For the next week I filled my spare hours (I was a full-time lecturer at PCL) with a lot of Brodsky as well as Mandelstam, Akhmatova and Tsvetayeva. I made twenty pages of notes and quotes. Then I boiled down the notes. Like spinach, they boiled down to something that wasn’t enough to feed an interviewer for more than about ten minutes. I’d learned that Brodsky had a bristling creative energy, could reel off whole English poems (especially Berjeman’s), laughed a lot, and was generally very Russian. This reassured me; all I had to provide was a trigger.
‘Always start with a quote,’ my English teacher would say. Artfully, I made my first question turn around Auden.
You have called Auden ‘a stoic who prays’. Could this also be a self-definition?
He would have to be modest to the point of illness not to rise to that; there would be a gush of passionate memories and reflections. All I had to do was nod and smile.
The morning of the interview, I slipped my own slim volume into the briefcase along with Brodsky’s pile, and tested my old portable tape-recorder – I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the passionate flood by note-taking, and I wanted an exact transcription. The tape-recorder didn’t work. It had worked perfectly for years. I had an hour before the interview at Penguin’s headquarters, and I lived out in Bounds Green. Its quiet electrical appliance shop had only one tape-recorder in stock. I made it just on time to the grandiose Penguin headquarters, struggling with my briefcase and the shiny new silver-and-crimson ghetto blaster. The receptionist didn’t know anything about an interview. The publicity person was called up. I was told to wait. I sat in a trendy leather chair. A lot of people who looked like Joseph Brodsky passed through the lobby. Everyone had an affable, confident air. After an hour, I suggested to the receptionist that Mr Brodsky might have forgotten his appointment. I went up in a lift and met the publicity person and then went down again and waited another hour. I felt that she hadn’t rated the Literary Review very highly. The large ghetto blaster made me look flippant, no doubt.
Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame Page 12