Friday, July 8, 2011

My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside




My hero: Alberto Moravia



'Writers must assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social and philosophical attitude'

 John Burnside
Friday 8 July 2011 22.55 BST
T
he first book I read by Alberto Moravia, a Panther edition of The Lie, translated by Angus Davidson, had obviously been packaged to appeal to readers interested in sex. The cover showed a naked woman, with a book nestled discreetly in her lap and her arms strategically placed to conceal her breasts, but to a Catholic boy in his late teens, it was still embarrassing enough to be tucked away where my mother wouldn't find it, along with a dog-eared copy ofThe Communist Manifesto and the occasional foil-wrapped lump of Lebanese red.

As it happened, I hadn't bought the book because I thought it was smutty, and I couldn't imagine the dirty-raincoat type finding much titillation in any of Moravia's works. It's hard to think of a writer who has been more perceptive about the disappointments of conventional sex and married life. What we find in Moravia, in fact, are unsettling accounts of what happens when our most vital and tender impulses are locked into a social institution, alongside a plangent critique of the ways in which those impulses – romantic love, tenderness, sexual desire, the need for connection – are perverted by social convention and shame.
"Critique" is a word Moravia would have treated with suspicion. "Writers," he said, "are concerned with representing . . . a more absolute and complete reality than reality itself. They must, if they are to accomplish this, assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude; in consequence, their beliefs are, of course, going to find their way into their work. What artists believe, however, is of secondary importance, ancillary to the work itself. A writer survives in spite of his beliefs."
Moravia is neglected nowadays, which is a great pity, for this rare combination of moral purpose and artistic integrity once placed him among Europe's finest writers. I would argue that it is high time for a reappraisal, as well as a new edition of his work – preferably without naked ladies on the covers.




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)