Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [63]
The role of ‘writer’ was on the whole the one least damaged when the strain became too severe, a heavy weight of mortal cargo jettisoned. There were times when even that role suffered violent stress. All writing demands a fair amount of self-organization, some of the ‘worst’ writers being among the most highly organized. To be a ‘good’ writer needs organization too, even if those most capable of organizing their books may be among the least competent at projecting the same skill into their lives. These commonplaces, trite enough in themselves, are restated only because they have bearing on the complexity of Trapnel’s existence. There was a growing body of opinion, including, as time went on, Craggs, Quiggin, even Bagshaw himself – though unwillingly – which took the view that Trapnel’s shiftlessness was in danger of threatening his status as a ‘serious’ writer. His books might be what the critics called ‘well put together’ – Trapnel was rather a master of technical problems – his life most certainly was the reverse. Nevertheless, people have to do things their own way, and the troubles that beset Trapnel were for the most part in what Pennistone used to call ‘a higher unity’. So far as coping with down-to-earth emergencies, often seemingly unanswerable ones, Trapnel could show surprising agility.
One point should be cleared up right away. If comparison of his own life with a camel ride to the tomb makes Trapnel sound addicted to self-pity, a wrong impression has been created. Self-pity was a trait from which, for a writer – let alone a novelist – he was unusually free. On the other hand, it would be mistaken to conclude from that fact that he had a keen grasp of objectivity where his own goings-on were concerned. That judgment would be equally wide of the mark. This lack of objectivity made him enemies; that of self-pity limited sales. Whatever Trapnel’s essence, the fire that generated him had to see him through difficult days. At the same time he managed to retain in a reasonably flourishing state – flourishing, that is, in his own eyes – what General Conyers would have called his ‘personal myth’, that imaginary state of being already touched on in Trapnel’s case. The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.
Although ultimate anti-climaxes, anyway in their most disastrous form, were still kept at bay at this period, portents were already threatening in the eyes of those – L. O. Salvidge, for example, one of the first to praise the Camel – who took a gloomy view. Others – Evadne Clapham led this school of thought – dismissed such brooding with execrations against priggishness, assurances that Trapnel would ‘grow up’. When Evadne Clapham expressed the latter presumption, Mark Members observed that he could think of no instance of an individual who, having missed that desirable attainment at the normal stage of human development, successfully achieved it in later life. It was hard to disagree. The fact is that a certain kind of gifted irresponsibility, combined with physical stamina and a fair degree of luck – in some respects Trapnel was incredibly lucky – always holds out an attractive hope that its possessor will prove immune to the ordinary vengeances of life; that at least one human being, in this case