RSS

Contact us

Thursday 22 May 2008

Perfection in a small space

The short stories in The Means of Escape represent the last statement of a great writer. I hope not, in a way; it is possible that there is more. Penelope Fitzgerald was not someone who needed to share her creative processes with anyone, and there may be more to be discovered. She died five years after her last novel, and no one knows what may surface from her papers. The last time I saw her, I blithely asked her if she was writing anything, and was given a brisk, ladylike Fitzgerald brush-off. If she was, she would not have said. In life, she paid little attention to her manuscripts or her letters; her biographers, of which there will be many, will have quite a task. It is really not inconceivable that there is a last novel, or that more short stories will surface. A tenth novel would have the value, in English literature, of an unknown work by Lawrence, Conrad or Waugh. That is not to overstate the case. Of all the novelists in English of the last quarter century, she has the most unarguable claim on greatness.

This must be regarded as a provisional collection of Fitzgerald's short stories, since she does not seem to have kept them, once written or published, and it is quite likely that an old edition of a little magazine somewhere will yield another. That spirit of self-obliteration which, in the novels, allows her to enter with complete absorption into an extraordinary range of lives arose from someone without unnecessary vanity. It is worth noticing that in her great biography of her father and his uncles, The Knox Brothers, she makes absolutely no personal entrance. She must have known exactly how good she was, but it is somehow appropriate that she kept no scrap-book. She would not have been one of those writers who virtually keep a shrine to themselves in their homes. The first posthumous attempt may, therefore, turn out to be The Collected Stories; or it may not. Difficult to know how much effort she put into pursuing the short-story form, but, certainly, there are at least four stories here which have a degree of perfection which could only be attained, one feels, by practice.

Introducing a Penguin selection of M. R. James's short stories (her last piece of writing), Fitzgerald homes in unerringly on the inexplicable elements, the irrational moments which probably its writer could not fully explain. Writing of 'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral', she particularly admires the placing of the line 'There is no kitchen cat'; something which arises out of nothing, and condenses the whole terror of the story, and looks utterly banal out of context. In what Fitzgerald calls 'the best story [James] ever wrote','The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance', what she admires is the inexplicable dream in which the murdered uncle makes an appearance.

Monty does not explain why he should be there, and seems to have come in this story as close as he ever did to compulsive writing, or being carried away.

More articles from: Philip Hensher | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved