JG Farrell: The Making of a Writer

Acknowledgements

The Major sat beside the open window in a pleasant daze, allowing the wind to ruffle his hair, catching now and then a breath of warm grass or the cool moisture from some bubbling stream. Soon the warmth made him drowsy and his thoughts slipped away into the heart of this golden afternoon. Since the publication of the first edition of this biography, fresh attention has been drawn to the novels of J.G. Farrell, culminating in the 2010 award of the ‘Lost’ Booker to Troubles, with its gentle hero, the Major. ‘Something very special has been brought into our lives,’ commented the Guardian at the time. ‘Something rich, profound, angry, tragic and yet also always hilarious and deliriously entertaining . The work of a genius, in short.’ Peter Straus, honorary archivist for the Booker Prize Foundation, was equally emphatic. Describing Farrell as one of the best novelists to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century, he added: ‘Had he not died prematurely in his early forties, I have no doubt he would have had as illustrious an international career as William Golding and V.S. Naipaul, the last two fiction writers from Britain to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.’ Troubles received 38 per cent of the international e-vote that year, twice that given to any other novel in contention for the retrospective prize, ‘lost’ originally due to a change of rules. Had Troubles been the winning novel in 1970, pointed out Ion Trewin, literary director of the Man Booker Prizes, Farrell would have gone on to become the first author to win the Booker Prize twice. The three novels of Farrell’s Empire Trilogy, comprising Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur (awarded the Booker Prize in 1973), and The Singapore Grip, are today published in the United States by New York Review Books Classics, while in London Orion’s regular Acknowledgements xiii paperback reprints reflect the rising sales graph in the United Kingdom and beyond. Meanwhile, e-book editions can be speedily downloaded around the world. The Empire Trilogy is assured of a new generation of admirers, and even Jim’s old school, Rossall, boasts a thriving Farrell Society. But what about the man himself? Since this biography was first published, another view of him (which I edited) has appeared in print, and it shows a warmer approach to life. J.G. Farrell in his Own Words is precisely that, consisting of letters written to a range of correspondents over some twenty years, until his early death, as well as illuminating diary entries. For a vivid sense of having met him and become a friend – on his own terms – I urge every Farrell enthusiast to read it, too. A biography, of necessity, must take a more external view. The self-portrait created by letters that are unconsciously (and often consciously) honed to beguile or achieve a point has to blend with how others saw the writer at the time, and how and why events unfolded as they did. One impression dominates both books, however, despite his distinctive light wit: it is his driven, single-minded pursuit of a lasting literary achievement. Jim Farrell’s family have been supportive of this biography from the outset, while leaving me entirely free to form my own opinion. I would like to wholeheartedly thank his brothers, Robert and Richard, and also the late Mrs Josephine Farrell, his mother, who was generous with her time. Permission from Farrell’s literary estate to include copyright quotations throughout, in italicised form, has been invaluable. For this expanded edition, I am grateful to Gabriele von Sivers for altruistically sharing Farrell’s early confessional letters to her, which also rearrange the timing of work on his first book, A Man from Elsewhere, and to Pauline Foley for revisiting her painful memories of his accidental death. I have been struck by the large number of friends who still miss Jim Farrell acutely; whether they met him in England, Ireland, America or Europe, it was his gift for friendship that proved irreplaceable. I include their names with gratitude among this roll call of all those who have helped me, but cloaked – as Jim might, perhaps, have recommended – in the anonymity of alphabetical order. Sadly, since the first edition, the loss of several of those who were closest to him, and whose names are here, bear out his bleak conclusions about transience. xiv J.G. Farrell I...