Authors: Jonathan Coe
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Who were the main members of the group, at the time?
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‘Well, there was me, of course, and then there was Hugh Fairchild, now one of the world’s leading authorities on T. S. Eliot, except that nobody has ever heard of him, and there was Christopher Carter, now one of the most obscure and undistinguished literary theorists in England, if not in Europe, if not even in the civilized world, and there was Colin Smith – how could a man with a name like that fail to achieve eminence? – who would almost certainly have gone on to become an immensely respected poet, critic and man of letters, if it were not for this slight problem he used to have with getting out of bed in the mornings, and if only (one can’t help thinking) he had ever bothered to write any of the things he was always going on about writing.’
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I suppose the university used to play an important part in your collective intellectual life.
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‘Yes, it did. It was where we used to buy our sandwiches.’
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What would you say were the main characteristics of the group?
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‘Pallor, depression, extreme social gracelessness, malnutrition and sexual inexperience. You must forgive me if I sound bitter about this period of my life. To be honest, I find it hard to imagine what it will be like to look back, in twenty years’ time, because I find it hard to imagine what it will be like to be twenty years older than I am now. For I am not a man of forty-six, I am a man of twenty-six, and if I look back twenty years, I see myself only as a tiny wee thing who was always refusing to drink his milk at school, and who refused to hold his mother’s hand when we went out walking, and who used to think his big sister was the most wonderful person in the world. I never see my sister now, you see. She lives with her husband in Canada. The occasional letter. And the problem with envisaging the kind of man I will be at the age of forty-six, is that I have no idea, really, no idea at all, of the kind of man I am now. I have absolutely no sense of self, if that makes any sense to you. I feel quite hollow. Seeing Ted under these circumstances was really the last thing I needed, because he seems to have a very clear idea of the kind of person I am, but he is so wide of the mark that it does nothing but confuse me. Nobody really knows who I am, that is the trouble, and I need someone, badly, to tell me who I am. Aparna must be the only one who knows, and she refuses to help. She has always refused to help.’
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That seems to me a rather defeatist attitude. Why palm the responsibility off onto other people? If you feel that you’ve lost direction, then it’s time to start asking yourself questions. Remind yourself of what it is that matters to you. Your writing, for example.
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‘My writing.’
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Tell me about your writing. What are the distinguishing characteristics of your writing? How would you describe it?
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‘Well, since you ask, my writing – are you really interested in all this?’
‘Of course. Carry on.
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‘My writing falls into two distinct categories. There is my creative writing (not the best word, I know, but I can’t think of any other) and my critical writing. Now what distinguishes my creative writing, what it all has in common, what gives it a sort of thematic unity, is that it is all, without exception, unpublished. None of it has ever appeared in any printed form whatever, and none of it has ever attracted even a word of praise or approbation from any agent, editor or publisher’s reader. Some of it, on the contrary, has elicited letters of rejection expressed with a fervour which can only be described as religious. And then, even within this category, there is a further distinction to be made, between that which has simply never been published, and that which, moreover, has never been read. For there are some works, perhaps for this very reason the most characteristic, the most typical, the most central to my oeuvre, which I have not even been able to get my closest friends to read, and which nobody, to my knowledge, has ever succeeded in wading through, however good their intentions. But to turn to my critical works, they have a slightly different quality to them, and this is that they are all, again without exception, unwritten; that they have, in fact, no existence at all outside the imagination of my supervisor (at his most sanguine), and even he is probably beginning to wonder why I have never shown him any of them. Although it must be remarked, in this context, that my supervisor’s failure to display any surprise, let alone displeasure, at the non-appearance of my thesis over the last four and a half years, is nothing short of remarkable, and suggests one of two things: either that he is a man of great patience, and tolerance, or that he doesn’t give a toss about me and my work, and at least this way he doesn’t have to read any of it. So that as long as the university gets its fees, and he gets his salary, it is a matter of complete indifference all round whether I actually write anything or not. I cannot bring myself to be completely indifferent about it, though. Not completely.’
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And might it be too much to ask what you have been doing in these four and a half years, when you should have been working?’
‘Oh, a number of things, really, a number of things. I’ve met some interesting people, and had some interesting conversations. I’ve sat and thought, about this and that. I’m sorry to be so vague, I just find it hard to be positive about the tangibility of my achievements at the moment. Take politics, for instance. A few months ago I would have said I’d matured politically since I’d been here. Now I’m not so sure.’
‘You’ve suffered some kind of loss of faith, in this respect?’
‘Well, recent events have upset my theories slightly, that’s all. I was trying to satirize him at the time, but now I would agree with Lawrence about the naivety of much of what passes for political activity. I don’t want to talk about this now, though, it will only make me angry.’
‘But perhaps anger is exactly what you need. Were you by any chance referring to President Reagan’s bomb attack on Libya, carried out with the complicity and co-operation of the British government? Is that why you’ve been hiding in your room like a frightened animal for the last three days, watching every TV programme, listening to every radio bulletin, venturing out only to buy the newspapers?’
‘It’s probably not the only reason for the way I feel at the moment, but I have to admit it’s upset me more than any other political event I can remember. It terrifies me, the way these people behave. They’re barbarians.’
‘The United States was acting in self-defence, within the guidelines of international law. Surely you’re not suggesting that terrorists should be allowed to get off scot free?’
‘It’s hard to know where to start demolishing that argument, there are so many different ways. The US are claiming justification under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, but if that is the case, why could they not have gone to the Security Council before taking action (as even Mrs Thatcher did at the time of the Falklands crisis)? Thatcher explained why in Parliament on Tuesday: “Because the Security Council could not have taken any effective action and has not been able to take effective action to deter state-sponsored terrorism”, In other words, because it would not have authorized them to do anything. Reagan has ridden roughshod over the legal channels. He knew that an attack on Libya would not constitute self-defence within the terms of Article 51, because the terrorist acts to which he was retaliating could neither be ascribed with certainty to Libya, nor were they sufficiently serious to justify retaliation on the scale which he intended.’
‘But Reagan was responding to two recent attacks, specifically directed at American civilians and servicemen.’
‘Nobody knows for certain whether Libya was behind the TWA bombing. At the moment it seems more likely that it was the work of Abu Nidal’s group in Lebanon: they issued a statement on March 26th to the effect that “anything American has from now on become a target for our revolutionaries”, Nobody either in America or Britain has yet come clean about the evidence which is supposed to link Libya to this attack. The Commander of NATO, General Bernard Rogers, has merely said, “I can’t tell you how we get it, but it’s there.” Thatcher stonewalled Parliament by repeating that Libya was “demonstrably involved in the conduct and support of terrorist activities”, On the 14th, Geoffrey Howe was quoted as saying that there was “solid evidence” of Libyan involvement; later in the day Whitehall sources changed “solid” to “quite convincing”, Possibly the source of their information was the monitoring of communications in Cyprus, where Libyan messages could have been intercepted, but this is pure supposition because the government has consistently refused to lay any real evidence before Parliament, for reasons of “security”, In any case, five Americans were killed in the TWA bombing, and one other died in the attack on a discotheque in West Berlin on April 5th. To avenge these deaths, Reagan mounted an attack which killed at least one hundred people (according to the most modest estimates) including Gadaffi’s adopted daughter. Many of those most seriously injured were Italians, Greeks and Yugoslavs, and the French, Austrian and Finnish embassies in Libya were all devastated. And yet in October 1983, more than 250 US military personnel died in the bombing of the Marine base in Beirut: five months later, the Americans left Lebanon without doing anything to avenge these deaths. Almost every recent act of air piracy or bombing has been claimed by groups in Beirut, not in Libya, but, as many US diplomats and intelligence officers admit, countries like Iran and Syria are simply too big for America to take on at the moment. So instead Reagan has decided to make a scapegoat of Gadaffi because he is small enough to be crushed without the consequences being too serious. So he gets this hate campaign going against him and comes out with statements like the one he made on the 10th: “We know that this mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of world revolution, a Muslim fundamentalist revolution… maybe we are the enemy because, like Mount Everest, we are here.” But how can you avenge six deaths by sending in the whole of the US Sixth Fleet, including nineteen cruisers, destroyers and frigates and two gigantic carriers (total 140,000 tonnes) loaded with more than one hundred aircraft including F18 and F14 fighter jets, plus the F111 bombers launched from bases in England?’
‘The TWA and West Berlin bombings were simply the tip of a lethal iceberg. Twenty westerners have been killed recently in attacks at Rome and Vienna airports, which were certainly the work of pro-Libyan (if not actually Libyan) groups.’
‘Yes, but what I can’t take is the hypocrisy whereby these deaths attract all the publicity and outrage: because the victims are westerners, the United States feels obliged to make a big noise about it. What about, for example, the hundreds of Palestinians murdered within the last year in the Sabra and Chatila camps by pro-Israeli “terrorists” (if we have to use the word)? Anyway, we haven’t yet touched upon the part played by our own government in this little fiasco. Why do we alone, of all the European countries, have to find ourselves implicated in an act which Gorbachev has quite rightly characterized as a “crime of banditry”? How can Thatcher allow aircraft to take off on a mission like this from bases in East Anglia and then turn round and praise the residents for showing “courage” in a situation over which they have no control? And then we have to put up with being
thanked
by Reagan, for God’s sake: “Our allies who co-operated in this action” (this is word for word) “especially those who share our common-law heritage, can be proud that they stood for freedom and right, that as free people they have not let themselves be cowed by threats of violence.” “Free people” – did you hear that? Were we asked? Did we give permission? In a poll conducted on Tuesday 15th, 71 per cent of British people said they thought that Thatcher was wrong to have let the bases be used (a decision which was taken, incidentally, in accordance with an agreement thirty-five years old, no details of which have ever been published). The same night, two thousand people hold a candlelight vigil in Whitehall to protest against the bombing, and the police arrest 160 of them for “obstruction”, With a huge tide of public opinion against them, the government wins an emergency debate on the Libyan issue by a majority of 119. And we are “free”, according to President Reagan. We are “free people”, Well, I’m sorry, I don’t feel free any more. I feel powerless, and frightened, and angry.’
‘Well, perhaps we’d better not talk about politics any more. It seems to be a bit of a sore point with you at the moment.’
‘You could say that, yes.’
‘Is there anything else which you would say is worrying you? Anything more personal? Your continued failure to sustain a relationship with a lover, for example?’
‘Well now, let me see. It’s true that my track record in this respect is disappointing-or not so much disappointing, perhaps, as catastrophic. I would say that, taking into account my various dalliances over the last few years and their consistently grisly conclusions, I have reasonable grounds for despair.’
‘How do you explain your inability to cope with romantic involvements with women? Does it have anything to do with an unreciprocated attachment, far in the past, from which you have never really recovered?’
‘Well, maybe I am just making excuses for myself, but it does seem to me that I still spend an inordinate amount of time (considering that it all happened five years ago) thinking about Kate.’
‘When you say that it “all happened”, what are you referring to, exactly?’
‘I’m referring to the fact that nothing happened. That is what happened, five years ago, and I am still kicking myself for it. Which is another reason why seeing Ted was the very last thing I needed, just now.’
‘And what was it about Kate that you found so attractive?’
‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer that question. One conceives obsessions and then clings to them: reason doesn’t enter into it. She was beautiful and intelligent, for what it’s worth, but the world is full of beautiful and intelligent women, many of whom I don’t find attractive. I suppose retrospectively I can see that we were very well suited, and it galls me to think I wasn’t bright or brave enough to realize this at the time. Like many people, I like carrying around a sense of lost opportunity with me, it gives my life some sort of aesthetic aspect, and it is a good excuse for feeling unhappy when things are not going well. I can say to myself, “If only I had married Kate”, and pretend that this is the real problem.’