Stopping short of omniscience

Although Janet Malcolm has written in depth about an extraordinary range of subjects, from psychoanalysis and photography through to literary criticism, the art world, journalism, biography and the law, in thematic terms she has actually been one of the most consistent non-fiction writers of our time. Certainly, she is one of the most brilliant. I never feel such a keen sense of anticipation – the kind of adrenalised mental anticipation that feels almost luxurious to indulge – as when I start out on a new piece of writing by Malcolm.

For some, her thematic doggedness has been a problem: launching into a book about Sylvia Path and Ted Hughes (The Silent Woman), Plath groupies and gossip-mongers have been disappointed to find themselves reading what amounts to a reflection on the nature of biography, or, even more broadly, on having one’s story told by others, rather than something passing itself off as the last word on its subject.

Similarly, some readers have been miffed to begin a book with the promising title The Journalist and the Murderer only to find themselves embroiled in a meditation on the relationship between journalists and their subjects (the word ‘meditation’, admittedly, feels false, since the effect of this book, Malcolm’s masterpiece, is electrifying).

Malcolm is a thorough and resourceful journalist, so the results of her enquiries always feel grounded in observation; they are never pointlessly abstract. Her willingness to crack open hard-set clichZs, and her merciless dissection of motives, make her work consistently surprising.

All Malcolm’s books have wrestled with the capacity for self-sabotage, or at least, unwitting self-revelation, that inheres in the stories we tell – not only to journalists, but to analysts, to mentors, to courts of law, and even pictorially, via the camera.