Low life

Sensitive

Jeffrey Bernard

Anyone who enjoyed the profile of Ian McEwan and the interview with him conducted by Professor Christopher Ricks on The Book Programme last week will probably be saddened to hear that the interview With me conducted by Simon Swank for Speaking Volumes and due to have gone out on Dorset Television today has been temporarily postponed. So as not to disappoint too many of you I have decided to publish an extract from the transcript. S.S. 'Most viewers will surely be familiar with what must be your most successful book, The Cast-Iron Window Box. Can I ask you what actually made you write such an extraordinary novel?' J.B. 'Yes. Well, basically, what I wanted to do was to convey to the reader some of the incredible feelings .1 experienced on my recent travels.'

S.S. 'You travel a lot, do you?' LB. 'Yes, you could say that. The particular journey I based Cast-Iron Window Box on was one I took from Notting Hill Gate to Queensway. There was this fantastic man sitting opposite me wearing a raincoat and a cap and he suddenly made me feel utterly bewildered and strangely saddened by what had gone before.' S.S. -`You mean the past or, at least, your past life?'

J.B. 'No. Holland Park.'

S.S. 'I'd like, if I may, to bring up the question of the forceful opening passage of that book which shocked so many critics. "Once upon a time, etc." What made you choose such a bizarre beginning?'

J.B. 'Yes. I'm glad you asked that. So many people have misunderstood that sentence. I wanted to convey to the reader that I was talking about a singular event in time that had taken place in the past and so evoked what you might call a dream-like quality, sufficiently sad yet quite horrific in a detached way, and a bit reminiscent of those infantile breakdowns we all knew so well.' S.S. 'Which brings us to Proust.'

J.B. 'Quite.'

S.S. 'Apart from Proust, who would you say you had been most moved by?'

J.B. 'Well, Pound certainly. A lot of the very early Chatterton — the incredible letters he wrote to his mother from school and, to a certain extent, Captain W. E. Johns.' S.S. 'What particularly is it about Johns that made you change direction?'

J.B. 'Oh, very much, I think, the passage where Biggles shoots down Von Shtumm in an attempt to tell Algy he is, in fact, homosexual.'

S.S. 'Yes. Can we talk now about sex?' J.B. 'Yes.'

S.S. 'Critics have said that you're inordinately fond of sex. Would you go along with that?'

J.B. 'Well, only in an erotic sort of way, if you see what I mean. I try to think of sex in purely sexual terms without making moral judgments about what people ought not to do. Of course, in the same way that I use words purely as symbols and not language I use sex intrinsically for sexual contact. It is, after. all, an extraordinary way to say "Hallo" to another human being.'

S.S. 'Yes, you made that point quite brilliantly in Coming and Going. Can I move on to what you're working on at the moment?' J.B. 'Yes. Actually it's basically an allegorical paradox. I've drawn a lot on early Donne, late H. E. Bates and the middle period of 'Sapper' that involves Jim Maitland. You could say it's about a man who gets drunk all the time and who doesn't discover himself as he really is until he commits suicide. Of course, he hasn't really committed suicide. It's just closing time.' S.S. 'You've never written any poetry. Why?'

J.B. 'There's no money in it. Basically, money doesn't matter to me. If I'm writing, then I'm happy. Usually I write for five minutes every Saturday — in longhand or straight on to a secretary — and the rest of the socialising, the literary lunches, the book-signings and free trips are pure grist. I suppose I'm really just using people. I don't actually need money as such except for spending.'

S.S. 'Jeffrey Bernard. Thank you very much.'

J.B. 'Thank you.' (Smiles knowingly. Music over — Vivaldi's 'Snowstorm'. Montage sequence — portraits of Byron, Tolstoy, Austen, Dickens and Bernard Levin. Fade out.)