Life can only be understood backwards
AT the start of Douglas Kennedy’s new novel, Thomas Nesbitt is served with divorce papers. The description of the death throes of his marriage is so poignant, I felt the scene must have been written from experience.
So when the American tells me that his 25 year marriage to an Irish woman had recently split up, I was saddened for him, but not altogether surprised. Did this affect his writing? Kennedy nods.
“I wanted to write a big love story, and at the same time I was thinking about my own life as my marriage was unravelling. I didn’t want to write about myself. I don’t do that, and it wouldn’t be fair to my ex-wife. But I was thinking about love, and about what I had not seen.”
Kennedy is a mixture of brash confidence, and sentimentality. Thomas Nesbitt is the same. I sense there is more than a tincture of Douglas Kennedy in this novel.
“You get a taste of me, but not the whole person,” he says. “I’m slightly elusive in that way, but I’m aware I put more of myself than usual into this book. I was a travel writer like Thomas, and like him I now live in Maine. It’s not my story but the emotional landscape is very much me.”
Kennedy lived in Berlin in the ‘80s; he had a fellowship there, and he has enjoyed the research necessary to portray the horrific regime behind the iron curtain. In this page-turning door-stopper, Thomas looks back at his time there, and his love for East Berlin born Petra, from a bitter middle-age. And he sees, all too clearly, how his mistakes then have shaped his life.
“It’s like that line of philosophy by Kierkegaard, ‘Life has to be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards.’ That’s very true. What happens in the novel is tragic,” he says, referring to the couple’s dramatic split, “but it was also two people acting in response to their past experience”.
“This novel, in a larger sense is about intimate history and what it says about you.” He shifts in his chair. “The idea, as well, was the divided city, and the clandestine and the unknowingness of people.”
The Moment is Kennedy’s 10th novel, and is very possibly his best — and not just because the story is compelling. His characterisation is spot on too. Alastair, who shares an apartment with Thomas, is so colourful, he leaps off the page, and is a great foil for the young cultured American.
“I wanted to write against cliché, so Alastair is Anglo-Irish but not snobby, and he’s a drug addict who is fastidious,” says Kennedy, barking with laughter. “And he is the moral centre of the book. He sees Thomas’s mistake.”
Betrayal is a big theme in this, as in most of Kennedy’s work.
“That theme runs all through this book, but the biggest betrayal is the one you propagate on yourself, and that’s true of both Thomas and Petra. Both of them upended something that was extraordinary.
“The relationship wasn’t long term — so hadn’t that mundane element where you are up at four am dealing with dirty nappies, and ‘can’t you get home in time?’ But the fundamental love was so strong and he, surely, never saw it again, and neither did she.”
Ireland plays a role — Alastair talks of Roundwood, and is constantly muttering darkly about Irish poets and begrudging reviews. Kennedy studied at Trinity College Dublin for a year, and returned to Dublin in 1977, starting a theatre company.
“I lived here for 11 years. Ireland gave me enormous chances and opportunities. I was offered the administration of the Peacock Theatre at 23, and I had a column in the Irish Times. I was sacked, but so it goes. I had a play on that didn’t succeed, but RTÉ gave me drama work. I had a column in the Tribune and that paid my mortgage. I was extremely grateful.”
So Alastair’s words weren’t his? “Begrudgery is seen as an Irish thing, but it’s everywhere. You should see the way French writers treat each other. But in Ireland, perhaps, people are more honest about it.”
The hero Thomas battles people’s preconceptions about Americans. He’s constantly proving his cultural credentials. The novel is littered with musical, philosophical and literary references, and it’s the same with Kennedy’s conversation. He throws in some French phrases, and a couple of times, I have to ask him the meaning of an English word. Had Thomas borrowed Kennedy’s frustration? “I don’t put up with it.” He laughs.
When I mention genre, and the difficulties of categorising Kennedy’s romantic fiction he bristles.
“I’m one of those curious authors read by people who like popular fiction and read by intellectuals,” he says. “In France, where I was awarded Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, I sell 600,000 copies of every novel — half in hard cover. The French have wonderful taste, he says with a smile.” Pause for laughter.
Kennedy sells in 22 countries, but his reviews have been mixed. What is his ambition? “To always be better,” he says. “I would love to have success in America; and I mean critical success not commercial. I would love to be respected in my own country. And, now that I’m published in America again, that seems to be starting.”
Perhaps that’s another reason Kennedy has decided to live mainly in Maine. He still has homes in London, Paris and Berlin.
“I wanted to come home because America is my country. I’ve been away for a long time, and also there’s that end to my marriage.”
Is it the book Kennedy set out to write? “I’m very pleased with it, and especially pleased with the response. It was written in a very complicated time in my life. I went through a rollercoaster of emotions but I think it’s my best since The Pursuit of Happiness, (2001) “I was writing the book in the midst of all kind of craziness. It was the one thing I could come back to. It wasn’t therapy, but it gave me a sense of equilibrium. So even though I wasn’t writing my story, it hit some emotional note and worked. And it has hit a chord with people. It has made them think a whole lot of things, and that’s marvellous.
“I know several people who got married around 30 because the time was right and a certain person came along. That’s a key thought in the novel. Are you looking at the real thing or the image you’ve projected onto the other person. Are you looking at who the person is, or at what you so desperately want and need. It’s a big question.”) What would the perfect reader say about this book? There’s a long pause while he thinks.
“It made me think about every mistake I ever made. That is what gets to people about this book.”
