Another shitty night. One of the worst. I went to sleep at eight o’clock after taking my medication and by one o’clock I was wide awake. Not only that, my head had become jammed down the side of the bed. I can’t move my arms or legs and no one could hear me. It seemed like a good opportunity for some contemplation.
What could I think about?
My father had been a journalist and a writer. Several of my uncles had been journalists in India, running movie or what were called filmie magazines.
I read dozens of biographies of writers when I was a teenager. From Balzac to Proust and Zola, Dickens and Colette and Henry Miller, and the autobiographical masterpieces of my then-hero James Baldwin.
Their lives, with all the carousing, fucking and fighting and general riotous living – writing seemed like work I might enjoy.
writing seemed like work I might enjoy. The first writers that I met were Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, the great Liverpudlian poets.
As president of the student union at Bromley College of Technology, I organised a gig headlined by the Pink Fairies. Brian Patton was there, a writer published by Penguin. I handed him a brown envelope with ninety pounds in it. He read a poem and then fucked off home on the bus.
When I was eighteen, I took the train up to Victoria, walked to Sloane Square, went into the upstairs bar of the Royal Court Theatre and through into the auditorium. Standing on stage was a tall thin man pointing vigorously at an actress. This was Samuel Beckett. He was directing Billie Whitelaw for his play Footfalls.
I started to work at the Royal Court that night and I saw many real writers at work for the first time. I stood within a few feet of the great David Storey, Edward Bond and the masterful Caryl Churchill, who would whizz around the building encouraging the young people.
To me these were amazing figures because they were capable of making language sing and turning actors into their instruments.
Every night I went into the bar next to the Royal Court and sat there with my newspaper. I would stare at Samuel Beckett, a man who liked a drink. I became friends with his brilliant lighting director, a man called Duncan, which enabled me to get closer to Beckett. I noticed that if a young woman approached him with a pile of his own books, Sam would look cheerful and sign them gladly.
Of the young writers, the most charming was always Christopher Hampton. He had had a play produced at the Royal Court when he was fourteen-years-old called Total Eclipse about the relationship between Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. Christopher was gracious enough to introduce me to his agent Peggy Ramsay, who invited me to her office in the West End.
She was fierce and intimidating and she certainly scared the shit out of me. She sat on the couch, waved her legs about and said; “In my younger days I was never averse to a little fucking in the afternoon.”
I handed her an adaptation I had done of Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground. I noticed that somehow she contrived to get strawberry jam on the manuscript, sticking the pages together. With some contempt she handed it back and remarked that it looked a little short.
Many years later when she had dementia her office burnt down. She told the actor Simon Callow that it was an act of revenge and that I was responsible.
The reason I’m telling you this is not because my head is still stuck between the wall and the bed, and that you and I must pass the time with some amusement, but because I need you to know that writers were living and breathing creatures in the world, and were paid to use their imagination.
The second most important event in my early writing life was in 1982. I was working at the Arts Centre, Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. One evening the guest of honour was Italo Calvino, who was introduced by Salman Rushdie, who I met for the first time that evening. After the event, there was a dinner given by Gaia Servadio in Chelsea (her beautiful daughter, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, later married Boris Johnson).
Salman Rushdie gave me a copy of Midnight’s Children and I returned to my tiny flat at 48 Barons Court Road, lay on my mattress on the floor and read the book all the way through. I then walked down the river to Hammersmith, up to Chiswick Bridge, and then back home again. I drank a bottle of wine and read the whole book again. I guess this moment might have been like when Pete Townsend or Eric Clapton saw Jimi Hendrix play for the first time, or when The Beatles met Bob Dylan.
Rushdie invited me to his house for dinner with Angela Carter. He was whirl of information, wit and wide talk. He had extensive knowledge, everything from Star Trek to the great myths.
Seeing this phenomenon, I realised I had to start again as a person and as a writer. I had to become a comic writer, a serious writer, a writer who could integrate the maddest and the most interesting elements on the same page. It was around this time that I began to take myself seriously.
The nurse arrived. She’s managed to pry my head from the breach position and settled me down. There are other stories that I would like to tell, for instance of Raymond Carver. There is this beautiful opening line in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, it reads:
“A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so”
This image struck me tonight, since I am the man with no hands.
Yesterday I promised revelations regarding sex and drugs but since I am stuck in this room without air or light, I am not in the best mood. I promise there will be filth in abundance to come.
That’s entertainment folks. In these shitty times, your loving writer, Hanif.
It will be a better night for you i hope. Fir us readers it was a fabulous night story you told. Thank you.
I was kind of waiting for the sex without a body but it doesn't matter. This is the best newsletter project ever. It makes me feel something hopeful that I have never quite felt from something that wasn't a painting or drawing. But not the writing exactly more like the reality? spirit? honesty? that made the writing. I guess other people are saying this same thing. It makes me want to be more alive. I love the way it lives in twitter too.