Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story (Vintage International) Read Free Page A

‘Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading.’ When I first came across this, I thought it witty; now I find it—as I do many aphorisms—a slick untruth. Life and reading are not separate activities. The distinction is false (as it is when Yeats imagines the writer’s choice between ‘perfection of the life, or of the work’). When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape—into different countries, mores, speech patterns—but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.

THE DECEPTIVENESS OF PENELOPE FITZGERALD
     
    A FEW YEARS BEFORE her death, I appeared on a panel at York University with Penelope Fitzgerald. I knew her slightly, and admired her greatly. Her manner was shy and rather distrait, as if the last thing she wanted was to be taken for what she then was: the best living English novelist. So she comported herself as if she were some harmless jam-making grandmother who scarcely knew her way in the world. This wasn’t too difficult, given that she was indeed a grandmother, and also – one of the minor revelations in her collected letters – a jam (and chutney) maker. But the disguise wasn’t convincing, since every so often, as if despite herself, her rare intelligence and instinctive wit would break through. Over coffee I asked her to sign my two favourite novels of hers:
The Beginning of Spring
and
The Blue Flower
. She hunted around for a long while in the heavy plastic carrier bag – purple, with a floral design, I remember – which contained her day’s requirements. A fountain pen was eventually discovered, and after considerable pausing and reflection, she wrote – as it seemed, as I hoped – a private, encouraging message to a younger novelist on each title page. I put the books away without looking at the inscriptions.
    The event proceeded. Afterwards, we were driven to York station to travel back to London together. When invited, I had been given the option of a modest fee and standard-class travel, or no fee and a first-class ticket. I had chosen the latter.The train drew in. I assumed that the university could not possibly have given an octogenarian of such literary distinction anything other than a first-class ticket. But when I set off towards what I assumed to be our carriage, I saw that she was heading in a more modest direction. Naturally, I joined her. I can’t remember what we talked about on the journey down; perhaps I mentioned the odd coincidence that we had each made our first hardcover fictional appearance in the same book (
The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories
, 1975); probably I asked the usual daft questions about what she was working on and when the next novel would appear (I later learned that she frequently lied to interviewers). At King’s Cross I suggested that we share a cab, since we both lived in the same part of north London. Oh no, she replied, she would take the Underground – after all, she had been given this splendid free travel pass by the Mayor of London (she made it sound like a personal gift, rather than something every pensioner got). Assuming she must be feeling the day even longer than I did, I pressed again for the taxi option, but she was quietly obstinate, and came up with a clinching argument: she had to pick up a pint of milk on the way from the Underground station, and if she went home by cab it would mean having to go out again later. I ploddingly speculated that we could very easily stop the taxi outside the shop and have it wait while she bought her milk. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said. But no, I still hadn’t convinced her: she had decided to take the Underground, and that was that. So I waited beside her on the concourse