Vol. 3 No. 19 · 15 October 1981
pages 16-17 | 3213 words
Young and Old
John Sutherland
- Life Stories by A.L. Barker
Hogarth, 319 pp, £6.95, September 1981, ISBN 0 7012 0538 5
- Many Men and Talking Wives by Helen Muir
Duckworth, 156 pp, £7.95, September 1981, ISBN 0 7156 1613 7
- Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
Deutsch, 245 pp, £6.50, September 1981, ISBN 0 233 97332 X
- A Separate Development by Christopher Hope
Routledge, 199 pp, £6.95, October 1981, ISBN 0 7100 0954 2
- From Little Acorns by Howard Buten
Harvester, 156 pp, £6.95, October 1981, ISBN 0 7108 0390 7
- Fortnight’s Anger by Roger Scruton
Carcanet, 224 pp, £6.95, October 1981, ISBN 0 85635 376 0
The plural title of Life Stories is paradoxical. The short story – Barker’s preferred literary form – cannot comprehend anything as large as life. In the face of this paradox, she has devised a new kind of cycle. Instead of the traditional bonding of carried-over place or character, Barker has abstracted items from various stages of her writing career, beginning with the opening piece in her first collection, Innocents (1947). These are put together with an equal number of new stories. The sequence thus assembled traces a thematic development from the condition of childhood, through adolescence, to age. The collection is interspersed with brief autobiographical essays, reminiscing, in a very guarded way, about the relevant period of the author’s own life.
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Letters
Vol. 3 No. 20 · 5 November 1981
From Diana Athill
SIR: John Sutherland is wrong in his account of the publication of Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour (LRB, Vol.3, No 19), of which he says: ‘It was published in propria persona and became a bestseller in America and Ireland. In early autumn the novel was published in Britain.’ We signed the contract for this novel in April 1980. Alfred Knopf bought it in September 1980. To keep the price down, we collaborated to the extent that there was one printing, done in the United States, for both publishers. Knopf’s publication date was earlier than ours because our books had to be shipped and there were delays in the shipping. Although the book received excellent notices in the USA, it did not, alas, become a best-seller there. Knopf has not yet had to reprint, as we have just done (using, this time, a British printer). In Ireland the book was non-existent until we published it on 3 September, giving a launching party in Dublin. If Mr Sutherland did indeed hope that Good Behaviour would ‘win its prize’ it was perverse of him to invent ‘facts’ for it to ‘have to combat’.
Diana Athill
André Deutsch, London WC1
John Sutherland writes: I am grateful for Miss Athill’s corrections. Good Behaviour was physically produced in the US. It was published, and thoroughly reviewed, in America several weeks before it was available to British readers, having been published slightly earlier in Ireland. All of which would surely make us the third port of call in the successful passage of Molly Keane’s novel. That it had, in fact, achieved prior success was insisted on by publicity material accompanying review copies.
