The Outsider Read Free Page B

famous ...
    The enormous publicity was partly due to the fact that I was one of a group, a ‘ new group ’ , not just of writers, but of all kinds of personalities who were always worth a paragraph in a gossip column. It included Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot and Arthur Miller and Sandy Wilson and Pietro Annigoni (who had painted the Queen) and Francis Bacon and Stirling Moss and Mort Sahl, and a couple of dozen more assorted celebrities who somehow seemed typical of the mid-fifties. And it included a large-ish crop of young writers—Amis, Wain, Iris Murdoch, Brendan Behan, Franfoise Sagan, Michael Hastings (who was eighteen), Jane Gaskell (who was fourteen), and even a n ine-year-old French poetess called Minou Drouet. I have a feeling that the newspapers had an unconscious urge to manufacture an ‘ epoch ’ —like the 1890s or 1920s. And, for better or worse, I was in the middle of it, cast as the ‘ boy genius ’ . Somehow, Osborne and I were supposed to prove that England was full of brilliantly talented young men who couldn ’ t make any headway in the System, and were being forced to go it alone. We were supposed to be the representative voices of this vast army of outsiders and angry young men who were rising up to overthrow the establishment.
    Oddly enough, it was not particularly interesting or exciting to be involved in all this ferment. To begin with, the newspaper publicity was on such a moronic level (as it is more or less bound to be) that it seemed a travesty of what we were trying to do as individuals. It invited derision—and, of course, received it. I was delighted to know that I would never have to return to a factory or office. But otherwise, fame seemed to have no great advantages. It didn ’ t bring any startling new freedom. I ate good food and drank wine, but since food and drink had never interested me much, this was unimportant. I wasn ’ t fond of travel. If I hadn ’ t been settled with Joy, the greatest bonus would probably have been the sexual possibilities; but since I had no intention of getting rid of her, I had to put that temptation behind me. I admit that this was my keenest regret.
    What the newspapers really wanted from this new generation was scandal. Early in 1957,1 inadvertently provided it, when Joy ’ s parents turned up at the room we now shared in Notting Hill Gate, determined to drag her away from this life of sin; her father had even brought a horsewhip. Joy and I were giving supper to a villainous old queer named Gerald Hamilton, the original of Christopher Isherwood ’ s Mr. Norris. As Joy ’ s family tried to drag her off down the stairs, Gerald rushed to the nearest telephone and rang every gossip columnist he knew (and his acquaintance was wide). Ten minutes after I ’ d persuaded her family to leave (with some help from the police), the reporters and photographers started to arrive on the doorstep. After seeing the first ones, we sneaked out of the back door, spent the night with a friend, and then fled to Devon, to take refuge with the writer Negley Farson. The press caught up with us there after a few days, and then pursued us across to Wales and Ireland. The story occupied the front pages and gossip columns for about two weeks, until we returned to London. Victor Gollancz told me that my reputation as a serious writer was ruined, and that if I didn ’ t get out of London, I ’ d never write another book. The man who lived in the room below us offered to rent us a cottage near Mevagissey, in Cornwall. We took Gollancz ’ s advice, moved from London, and have been here ever since.
    On the whole, Gollancz was right. The silly publicity made it impossible for Britain ’ s intellectual establishment to take me seriously, and they showed their displeasure when my next book appeared. I had, it seemed, achieved ‘ recognition ’ , and then lost it just as suddenly. I never had any great difficulty in finding publishers—my notoriety