Absent the pull of exploration I spent a mellow afternoon inside the Southhampton Arms, perhaps the pleasantest of the pubs I visited while in London. Appropriately I had not discovered it via some cursory online query, nor had I happened upon it by chance; instead, it had been recommended to me by a former peer, the sombre descent of evening unexpectedly calling up his memory. He had generously responded to my email with a heaping of local knowledge, all of it useful, though I was saddened to learn he had relocated to Melbourne a few months prior to my arrival and would not be available for the drink I had proposed. Watching the slow fade-out of the afternoon I wondered, again, what would become of me once my wanderlust, and savings, dried up.
After the Arms I headed to Greek Street, Soho, for a froth at the Pillars of Hercules. Here, in a previous decade, the emerging men of letters—among them Clive James, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan—sat in thrall to Ian Hamilton, the formidable editor of The New Review. The New Review itself was relatively short-lived, running from 1974 to 1979, but its fierce editorial voice and extraordinary stock of contributors produced an outsized legacy. Though the journal featured (some) female authors, the scene which fermented around the pub—handily adjacent The New Review’s main office—was overwhelmingly male, the Pillars functioning as much as a boys' clubhouse as it did an extension of the office proper. Prospective correspondents would approach Hamilton through a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke as he leaned cooly on the bar, all-day-drinking but imperceptibly impaired, and indulge his vices and company until he deigned to give them assignment. At other times they would seek payment, having discovered that a coldly received submission had been accepted—and published—after all. The compensation for underpayment, or non-payment in the form of a bouncing cheque, was a measure of exposure and first-hand experience of Hamilton's exacting editorial standards—an arrangement that, for the inexperienced writer, was almost fair.
No matter how harsh you are on your own abilities, no matter how routinely you intimidate yourself into impotence, the effect of subjecting your work to a respected third party’s opinion, ideally someone you both admire and fear, can be transformative, especially in the developmental phase that precedes a career. Even those writers who wear their rejections as badges of honour, as proof that their inner voice is the only voice they need, would have had, at some point, that figure, that editor or teacher or peer who saw through their efforts to disguise their weaknesses and sent them back to the writing board dispirited yet invigorated—because that figure’s approval suddenly meant more than their own. For a generation of hungry Greek Street grafters, Ian Hamilton was that figure.
I have long fantasised about being part of an artistic scene. Not one of those scenes whose constituents are grouped together artificially according to aesthetics or background, but something far more tangible: a scene which exists entirely within the confines of a specific café or bar. Something in the spirit of the Enlightenment coffee houses, or the many dark taverns of literature—a place where inter-disciplinary discourse flows and ramshackle creative communities are forged. Maybe such scenes do exist, somewhere, but they likely exist beyond my scope; I am a singularly dreadful networker. Until I find one, or indeed found one, I will be forced to consider MacBook-friendly cafés and, God help us, shared workspaces as the modern-day equivalents. Even the less susceptible to nostalgia must concede that these examples hardly constitute scenes; for one thing, freelancers typically isolate themselves from one another. Eyes locked on screens and ears stuffed with music, they scarcely even experience their surroundings. Your average freelancer is not leaving their apartment to engage with the wider world: they are leaving their apartment to leave their apartment. It is a working exercise, a strategy to improve productivity. All of which is fine; as long as they are adequately compensating the cafés and being mindful of other customers, it’s their own business. My point is merely that they are ruining my fantasy.
I was realistic enough not to expect the 2017 incarnation of the Pillars of Hercules to live up to the accounts I had read of it. 39 years had elapsed since The New Review shut up shop, during which time the pub had surely changed hands. But I entertained a faint flicker of hope that subsequent generations of authors had conspired to keep something of its history alive. Cautiously I pushed open the door and walked inside.
What I entered was a small, unremarkable city pub. Crammed full of Soho yuppies, the hubbub was deafening. Here you could barely compose yourself, let alone a poem or essay. I snagged a free spot in the back and downed a moody pint. I could see nothing that suggested there were writers in attendance: no pens, no laptops, no paperbacks on the bar. Which is not to say there weren’t writers there that night—writers don’t always venture out with their instruments of trade on display. But there was no pulse of culture. Visiting the Pillars of Hercules of today is about as meaningful an experience as standing in a carpark built over the site of a famous battle.
Seeking an atmosphere more conducive to writing—in terms of noise level and lighting if nothing else—I returned to the American Bar at the Savoy and ordered something from the cheaper end of the menu: whisky. No concept, no stand, no soliloquy. Though I was served by someone else, the bartender from my previous visit managed, momentarily, to catch my eye, and I noticed something flicker across her face. I wondered if it had been mere recognition or— No, it’s silly. But then, I was a pretty irresistible prospect. Grubby of jacket, sullen of face, near-mute. I remember our first exchange, the lines crisp, playful, touched with spark. “How long are you in London?” she had asked. “A couple of days. I mean, until I leave. I’ve been here for a few days already. So about a week?” I had electrically replied. And now I was back and I was wearing a better T-shirt.
On this occasion my only significant interactions were with my assigned bartender, a Slavic gentleman with smartly arranged blond hair. He was intrigued by the scrawl in my notebook, to which, in between infinitesimal sips, I would add the odd sentence.
“Are you a writer?” he asked.
“I— Well,” I began. Was I a writer? Hardly. But what do I say instead?
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you writing a book?”
Am I writing a book? A whole entire book? Those things with all the pages?
“Yes,” I said.
“What’s it about?”
What’s it about? What’s the book-that-I’m-definitely-writing about?
“Um, it’s not really at the point where it’s about anything. It's— It's in an early stage.”
He asked if I had a publisher and if I had written any previous books, two questions I was able to answer truthfully.
“Well, I wish you the best of luck with it,” he said. The warmth with which he spoke disarmed me.
“Thanks,” I murmured, colouring slightly.
I looked down at the notebook lying open on the bar. Did it, through some miraculous accident, contain the workings of a novel? Were the sentences I had just written about lying to a bartender a novel?
While I have written, avocationally, for most of my life, I have generally resisted the business of book-writing. I never felt qualified, never believed I had the skills or discipline to see a work of such scale through to completion. Truth be told I’m not even a good reader, having once lost an entire deck of playing cards inside 52 unfinished books. And the act of writing has only grown more excruciating with time—so much so that I am convinced my faculties are actively trying to discourage me, perhaps in the hope I’ll take up a less taxing pursuit. Every word, every mark of punctuation, is a battle. For the majority of the process these battles do not feel like battles in a just and noble war, a war which must be won at all costs, but rather skirmishes in a quagmire, bloody, wasteful engagements lacking sense or cause. Occasionally I take comfort in Thomas Mann’s definition of a writer as “someone for whom writing is more difficult than for other people” but it is important to note that this struggle is not in itself evidence of greatness, or even aptitude. The only evidence of greatness in writing is evidence of greatness in writing, whatever the difficulties of its creation. It is not something you can necessarily intuit in advance. Of course, actually following through on your ambitions isn't without its dangers. In researching the poet Matthew Arnold, Ian Hamilton came upon the following lines in Arnold’s notes, concerning an aborted work:
It is a sad thing to see a man who has been frittered away piecemeal by petty distractions, and who has never done his best. But it is still sadder to see a man who has done his best, who has reached his utmost limits—and finds his work a failure, and himself far less than he had imagined himself.
It is tempting to surmise that Hamilton saw in these words not just a reflection of Arnold’s struggle but of his own. He was an infrequent poet, averaging about two poems a year, and while his output was respected, his activities as an editor, journalist and biographer received far greater attention in his lifetime. But there is little evidence to support such a narrative, certainly none in the interviews he provided towards the end of his life. Most likely these lines resonated for Hamilton in the same way they would resonate for countless other artists: as a perfect distillation of creative anxiety.
The prospect of extending the torment of writing across however many months or years it would take for me to complete a novel, grappling with these awful questions as I went, was a terrifying one. But I couldn’t just lie to the bartender and move on with my life. I had to make it right. I had to write this damn book.
It has been a year since I made this resolution and I am pleased to report that I am nearly finished. Well, that’s not strictly accurate. But I’ve certainly considered starting.