samjordison says:
Thanks everyone! Time’s up, I’m afraid.
And thank you, especially, Brendan. That was fantastic. It’s been a tremendous pleasure to be able to look at Beryl Bainbridge this month, and this has just added to it.
C1aireA asks:
Hello Brendan
As well as a novelist, BB was an actor and an artist. Her paintings were incredibly vigorous and original. What do you think the relationship was between these three different parts of her artistic output?
JudeTheExplicit asks:
I found a sort of iconoclastic glee at work in Harriet Said (& Master Georgie / Young Adolf etc) which I really enjoyed. I haven’t read Huysmans (where should I start?) but he seems to have been similarly iconoclastic. Was it this shared trait that attracted you to both?
Guardian contributor As for Huysmans, I would start with the decadent classic Against Nature (A Rebours), or perhaps Stranded (En Rade), which is a brilliant and unsettling blend of decadent and naturalist elements. Another favourite of mine is Parisian Sketches (Croquis parisiens). I don't think my attraction to both writers is based on any shared elements - though there is a kind of black humour running through Huysmans' work - Against Nature is a very funny book - which is perhaps analogous to Beryl's. They also share a contrarian attitude to conventional platitudes so maybe there is more that links them than I previously thought. Stylistically though, they are very different writers.
Just had a question come in from a Twitter follower, Sophie Coulombeau:
‘As a scholar of Hester Thrale’s work,I love Beryl’s According to Queeney. Could you tell us a little about how she came to be interested in the Thrale family, and why she wanted to write a novel about them?’
Guardian contributor In this Beryl was very much influenced by Colin Haycraft, her publisher. He was a Classics scholar who loved Gibbon and Johnson, and could quote from them copiously. Beryl read Bowell's journals at Colin's prompting, and over the years had become fascinated with the set up of Johnson's menage, and the curious three-way relationship between him, Mrs Thrale and Mr Thrale. Beryl certainly put some of Colin Haycraft into her portrayal of Johnson, and there is something of herself in both Hester and Queeney, representing Beryl at different ages.
ackwak says:
Did Beryl turn to historical novels because she reached an age where she was more nostalgic for her own past?
Guardian contributor No, I don't think that's the reason - Beryl first did a 'historical' novel in the late 1970s with Young Adolf. You could also argue that An Awfully Big Adventure or A Quiet Life or the Dressmaker, being set in the 1940s and 1950s were more appropriate vehicles for any feelings of nostalgia she might have had, rather than novels set in the far past. She would often say she started writing historical novels becuase she had used up her own past, but if you read my biography it is clear that isn't true and that she didn't write about many experiences which many people would consider important in their lives. From the eighties onwards, she couldn't really write about her present day emotional life, because she had begun an affair with her publisher, Colin Haycraft. Instead she used 'historical' fiction to write about emotional situations and the things close to her, but presented it at one remove, through the veil of historical characters and a historical situation.
samjordison asks:
I guess I should ask the question about the Booker prize... I know that Beryl Bainbridge was generally very tactful about not winning in public. But did she take it so well in private? Was she not particularly bothered? Or did it - to use a notorious instance - sting to be stitched up in the year Amsterdam won...
Guardian contributor Yes, the not winning aspect of the Booker was a bit galling to her at the end. Not that she would have said she deserved it, she was too modest for that, but I think deep down she would have liked to have had the public recognition of her peers. The money would also have come in handy - although Beryl got a lot of critical acclaim, Duckworth was a small independent publisher and sales were not particularly large. Consequently her royalties were not as large as they might have been had she been hyped and marketed by a larger publishing conglomerate - although she herself would never have wanted to be marketed or published in that way.
MsCarey asks:
I’m currently reading The Birthday Boys. The descriptions of place are very good but I’m assuming Bainbridge wasn’t able to travel to Madeira, South Trinidad Island and Antartica? How did she research this novel?
Guardian contributor Beryl read a lot of contemporary accounts when she was researching for one of her 'historical' novels. Going back to original sources - Johnson's letters, or Scott's diaries, gave her a sense of the person and place through their language. I accompanied her on a trip to the Royal Geographical institute once to do some reasearch for The Birthday Boys, but there was also books from the London Library and correspondence with people who were experts in their field, such as Mary Hyde for johnson, Michael Barthorp for the Crimea, and so on. I think Beryl's attitude was that people in the past are basically the same as they are now, all that changes is the particular situation and the language that you use to express it, so she would use her own experiences, or those of people she knew, and simply transpose them into the historical past.
samjordison asks:
One of the things that fascinated me about your biography was the difference between the stories Beryl Bainbridge told about her life and the - for want of a better word - reality.
Did this disregard for historical truth make her a difficult person to know? Or was it actually part of her charm that she had such an instinct for the best story?
Guardian contributor Both I think. Some people found it difficult when Beryl contradicted their version of events, but the desire, or the compulsion, to fictionalise was obviously at the root of her skill as a novelist. She was an amazingly good raconteur, and never wasted a word in telling her stories.
MsCarey asks:
Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s I was reading a lot of Alice Thomas Ellis. Even though I knew she and Bainbridge were close, I never read any Bainbridge. I don’t know why not and I feel a little shamefaced saying it. (I loved The Bottle Factory Outing now that I’ve got round to reading it.) I can’t help but be fascinated by the relationship between the two women and have a couple of questions if you are able to answer them.
What did Bainbridge think of Thomas Ellis’s writing? And did Bainbridge believe that Anna Haycraft’s editing role was central to Bainbridge’s development as a novelist?
Guardian contributor Your question seems to be suggesting that the friendship between the two women in The Bottle Factory Outing is a depiction of Beryl's friendship with Alice Thomas Ellis (Anna Haycraft), but this is not the case. In the novel Freda was based on a friend Beryl knew during the 1970s called Pauline. As for Beryl's friendship with Anna it was nothing if not complicated, and a brief outline of the way in which the two women's lives intersected at various points over the years explains why (for fuller details see either the biography itself or the Guardian review of it). In the early 1970s Anna was certainly influential in encouraging Beryl in her writing career, though it was her husband Colin who did the hand-on editing of the texts. The relationship between the Haycrafts and Beryl was a symbiotic one - Duckworth benefitted from Beryl's early critical success, and Beryl benefitted as a writer from their joint input and encouragement. When Anna started writing novels herself (it is a moot point whether Anna would have started writing if it hadn't been for Beryl's example) this added another layer of complexity to their relationship, and the fact that around the same time Beryl began an affair with Colin obviously muddies the water still further. By the time I came on the scene Anna's role as editor was a fairly hand-off one - she would read the opening chapter and make comments, but then she wouldn't see the book until it was finished. I don't think Beryl could read Anna's work neutrally as works of fiction - it would have been impossible for her not to see the situation between herself, Anna and Colin reflected in the characters and plots of Anna's books.
machenbach asks:
Two questions:
When translating Huysmans, do you use any of the previous English editions at all? Or do you translate straight from the original? Do you know who did the Fortune Press translation of A Rebours; it’s rather odd? I have a copy of the [1931] edition bound in vellum and in blue wraps and have never seen one anywhere else – do you know anything about it? A bookseller has written ‘1/25?’ on the ffe.
With regards to Bainbridge, the range of different subjects covered by her novels is mighty impressive: was she a bit of a dilettante; how/why did an initial interest evolve into the deeper pursuit necessary to writing a novel on the subject?
Guardian contributor 1. A mixture of both. I produce a version directly from the French so that I get something that I think is correct, and then once I have a rough draft I will go through other translations to see where we differ as to meaning or expression. As for the 1931 edition of Against the Grain its publishing history is a bit too involved to go into here. I treat it in more depth on my Huysmans site - this page should answer your questions://www.huysmans.org/fortune.htm. Later Fortune Press editions of the book are slightly bowdlerised.
2 As far as Beryl's choice of novels was concerned sometimes one thing just leads to another. She had worked at the Playhouse and hadn't written about that period/experience so that was a partial impetus for An Awfully Big Adventure, and during the writing of that novel - which centered around a performance of Peter Pan - she found out that one of the last letters Captain Scott had written before his death had been to James Barrie, and this piqued her interest in the Pole, which she had already been interested in having read The Worst Journey in the World. The fact that the Titanic sank in the same year as Scott and his men were found frozen in their tent prompted the idea of writing about the sinking of the ship in Every Man for Himself. The inspiration for Watson's Apology started from an article written by Mervyn Horder, the former owner of Duckworth, Beryl's publisher. Her interest in the story's potential was given further impetus by Colin Haycraft, who took over the running of Duckworth from Horder, as he encouraged her to write a novel about it, and did some preliminary research for it. Ultimately though, the reasons why an author chooses to write one particular novel rather than another is never entirely explainable.
Updated
palfreyman asks:
Another question, if I may...
I have not read your biography of Bainbridge (forgive me, I can afford about one book a month and we have no public libraries round my way), so I am sure this is answered in that, but...
Why did she need an amanuensis?
Guardian contributor One reason was that Beryl was not the most technically minded of people and she needed help with the various practical and techical aspects of being a writer - dealing with a word processor and a computer operating system before the universal ease-of-use philosophy of Macs and Windows. There were floppy disks to be fiddled with, printers to be maintained, articles to be faxed and so on. Another reason was that just before I began working for her she had started writing a column for the London Evening Standard, which brought her an audience that was many orders larger than the one that knew her as a novelist. Consequently she was asked to do more things and received more post and telephone messages. My role, at least initially, was to help her get on top of the accumulation of demands on her time so that she could concentrate on actually writing novels.
palfreyman asks:
Dear Brendan
Many thanks for coming here to join us.
I only read my first Bainbridge (The Bottle Factory Outing) two days ago when my copy arrived.
I will confess to finding, as so many others did, both Brenda and Freda to be dislikeable: prejudiced, racist fantasists with little or no real humanity in them.
And yet people keep saying they represent aspects of Bainbridge’s own life and personality.
Having known her, do you feel that, particularly when she was younger, she may have suffered from self-loathing or shame? And if not, how do you explain her deeply unsympathetic characters in this book?
Guardian contributor To me characters in good works of fiction should resemble real people i.e. they are flawed human beings, who lead messy emotional lives and do things which either at the time or in hindsight they wish they hadn't. I don't think this necessarily makes them unlikeable or unsympathetic - as one can tell from the many people who have a positive response to the novel. I would say that a lot of people identify with Brenda's (or Freda's for that matter) character flaws and failings, as they recognise those failings in themselves. Having said that, I do think that when Beryl was young she suffered from a self image problem - she Was unsatisfied with her physical appearance and felt guilty that she didn't love her parents enough or was too hard on them.
RabBurnout asks:
Hi Brendan, I very much enjoyed the reading of Beryl Bainbridge’s biography on Radio 4. It sounded like a labour of love, and certainly conveyed affection and admiration for this wonderfully talented writer.
It’s reasonable to assume that the Bottle Factory Outing, which I found an immensely powerful, compelling, brilliantly written and moving book, stems from Beryl’s Bainbridge’s own experiences, but how personal do you think it is? That is, do you think it goes deeper than being just a basis for the novel, or does it explore deep issues close to her heart? How far are one or both of the central characters, Freda and Brenda, based on herself, if at all.
Perhaps that’s a stupid question, I realise, and probably impossible to answer, but I’d appreciate your opinion on how personal you thought her writing was? Thanks.
Guardian contributor Those are all good questions and as you say would require longer space than can be gone into here. In general I steered clear of trying to use incidents in Beryl's novels as proof of, or illustrations of, events from her real life because while her experiences certainly fed into her fiction I don't think there is a one-to-one relationship between the two. In the novel certain of Brenda's life experiences resemble Beryl's, but what is left out of the novel would have been just as significant to Beryl at the time, if not more so, than what was put in. This has no bearing on the book's quality as a piece of fiction, but it would obviously be misleading to try and read her fiction as a guide to the events of her life or her state of mind. For example, in the early 1970s she had come out of a relationship with the painter Don McKinlay which certainly affected her deeply on an emotional level, but this is barely touched on or gone into in the novel. Also as a single mother at the time, a lot of Beryl's life would have been tangled up in trying to balance her own emotional life and bringing up three children, but again this aspect of her life is completely absent from the book.
As for Freda, she was loosely based on a friend of Beryl's called Pauline, but again the parallels cannot be made absolutely explicit - Beryl and Pauline never lived together for example, as Brenda and Freda do in the book, and, like Beryl, Pauline was also a mother, so again a whole area of Pauline/Freda's life is expunged for the sake of the novel's plot line.
lljones asks:
Is it really incomplete? If so, what might Bainbridge have had in mind for subsequent scenes?
I’d be surprised if Bainbridge was actually at the Ambassador Hotel on 6//5/68. But did she perchance drive across America in a camper van in the late 60’s? It sure feels like she might have.
Guardian contributor Yes, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress was incomplete at the time of Beryl's death. Beryl did not map out the final chapter, but had talked of Rose knocking Harold's hand as he fired at Wheeler and shooting Kennedy by mistake. However, if she had come to write the scene my feeling is that it would most probably have ended up differently.
You are right that Beryl wasn't actually at the Ambassador's Hotel on that day, but she did drive across America with a man called Harold in a camper van in June 1968, though once again the novel should not to be taken as an accurate guide to the events of her real life.
Vasco Resende asks:
Taking the hint from Sam’s introductory text, do you find any trace of Joris-Karl Huysmans or other decadent writers such as Barbey d’Aurevilly and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam in Beryl Bainbridge’s fiction? Her interest in catholic memorabilia is known and there is definitely a gothic undertone pervading her novels, but other than that do you think Beryl to be an heiress of the French decadent movement of the late 19th century?
Guardian contributor I'd wish I could say that Beryl had read Huysmans - whose name she always pronounced as "Hoosimans" - but she hadn't, so she couldn't have been influenced by his work directly, either in its Decadent or its Catholic phase. As far as Catholic novelists were concerned she always professed to be an admirer of Mauriac's Thérèse and Graham Greene's The End of the Affair.
I’m pleased to say that on Friday 28 October Beryl Bainbridge biographer Brendan King will be here to answer questions about the great writer.
Not only did Brendan King have access to Beryl Bainbridge’s extensive archives and letters, he also knew his subject well. He worked for her for 23 years and as an amaneusis, and, as he recounts in the biography he also helped prepare her final (and unfinished) novel, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, for publication after her death.
You can get a flavour of their relationship from this charming piece he wrote for The Telegraph. As for the biography itself, the Evening Standard called it “first rate”, The Times “superb” and it was reviewed equally warmly in The Guardian .
So he is a fantastic person to have along to talk about this enduringly brilliant and fascinating writer. You may also be intrigued to learn that Brendan King is a translator and expert in the French decadent novelist JK Husymans and has translated several of his deliciously naughty books for the excellent Dedalus publishers. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity to ask about that too.
Asking questions is simple - just write a comment below the line. Brendan will be here from 1pm on Friday 28 October, but please feel free to get yours in early.
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That is quite a complex question and deserves a longer answer than I can come up with in such a short time. There certainly seems to be a relationship between her early life as an actress and being a writer - both have to adopt personas to get into character and so on, and both have to be able to tell a story and capture dramatic and emotional scenes. As for Beryl's paintings, you are right they are original - one of the things that is interesting about them is that her paintings a rarely simply illustrations of her writing, they are dramatic scenes in their own right. One of Beryl's most striking pictures - Did You Think I would Leave You Dying When There's Room on my Horse for Two - captures the moment when Beryl's mother-in-law tried to shoot her, a scene that also figures in The Bottle Factory Outing, but the two representations are completely different, have a very different artistic purpose and invoke very different responses in the reader/viewer.