Penelope Lively's Unfortunate Englishness
Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively visits her archives at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
By Clay Smith, Fri., March 15, 2002
Two weeks ago, Penelope Lively spent a day at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center going through her archives, and after that was done, she told a group of University of Texas professors and students what it felt like when American reviewers categorize her as a quintessentially British author. What the critics are undoubtedly referring to is Lively's wry, understated prose that some of them think is stately -- it's memorable prose, anyway, that has filled 12 novels, including the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger (1987), three short story collections, three books of nonfiction (including the forthcoming A House Unlocked), and 30 children's books. They are books that are often preoccupied with memory, which may be one reason why Lively began her talk by recalling the first 12 years of her life. "This unfortunate Englishness," as she called it, ribbing the American critics, made her a "culturally confused child" in Cairo, where she existed with "the codes of one culture and the distinctions of another" until her family moved back to England in 1945. She wanted to point out that if you're looking for a quintessentially British writer, don't go looking in her direction.
Earlier that day, Lively had her hands all over her Egyptian origins when she was led through the area in the HRC building that is off-limits to scholars and visitors and shuffled through the sturdy boxes that house her writing notebooks, correspondence, and manuscripts. Lively's collection, which the HRC acquired in 1996, is next to Doris Lessing, Sinclair Lewis, and Richard Llewellyn, and is across the aisle from D.H. Lawrence. Lively didn't start publishing until she was well into her 30s, but when she was 7, she penned her first written work, "a solemn little piece," she confessed, as she fingered a small, brittle notebook. When the story was in Lively's house, she used to take it out occasionally and read through it, but now it's here and she's lost the photocopy she made of it before she handed it over to the HRC librarians. She was really there to hunt for the notes and manuscript of The House in Norham Gardens (1974), one of her children's books, but it never materialized.
Lively, who is on the board of the British Library, was clearly disappointed, though she had said earlier that she is "never happier than when in an archive." John Kirkpatrick, who is the HRC's senior curator of British manuscripts, offered to give her a tour through the archives. They stopped at an unpainted door signed all over by authors who visit their archives. Joseph Brodsky is there, and Derek Walcott, among many others, and Lively was trying to figure out where her name should go. The bottom half of the door isn't quite as full as the top half. Kirkpatrick noted the signatures of John Bayley and Iris Murdoch, dated 5 May 1981, about three-quarters of the way up. "Iris Murdoch interviewed me for entrance to Oxford," Lively said. She pointed to an empty space right by them and said, "I rather fancy this spot."
