Destroying angel in the ether

A few years ago, James Lasdun wrote The Horned Man, a novel about Laurence Miller, an English lecturer in an American college who descends into paranoia. At first, he thinks someone is tampering with things in his office, and making calls from his phone. Then he thinks his colleagues are spying on him, and, perhaps worse, that they think he is spying on them. He worries that someone might think he is trying to plagiarise their work; that people can read his lascivious thoughts; that, whatever he says or does, he is leaving a damning trail of evidence against himself. Meanwhile, he is part of a sinister academic committee devoted to policing the behaviour of others.

It’s chilling and very convincing; Lasdun is making a good point about the difference between the private and the public worlds, and about how the relationship between them is changing. This may be an American college, but the way Miller describes it, it sounds a lot like Stalin’s Russia. At one point, Miller makes a superbly penetrating comment about how, as a man, you must disguise your thoughts, as if you were wearing a virtual yashmak. The book came out in 2002.

Now let me tell you about this new book. It’s another chilling story about an English lecturer in an American college. But this time, the story is true. The lecturer is James Lasdun. It starts in 2003. Lasdun is teaching a creative writing course. A woman on the course, who he calls Nasreen, and who comes from Iran, writes some promising fiction. ‘Her language was clear and vigorous, with a distinct fiery expressiveness,’ he says. Lasdun agrees to pass the manuscript to his agent. The course ends. Nasreen keeps up an email correspondence with Lasdun. A while later, he agrees to meet her in a café to discuss her work.