I see today that CF has a book out. I knew her when she was just starting an MA. Virtually incapable of disagreement. The embarrassing readiness with which she would submit to an argument. This was because she seemed to think that there was a ‘correct’ line on everything, and although she didn’t know what this line was, she nevertheless yielded when she sensed its proximity. She imagined a canonical landscape of thinkers and concepts - it was out there, this landscape, independent of her, waiting to be explored and mapped. At the same time a curious arrogance. She demanded immediate access to this landscape, and if a book or tutor didn’t grant her this access it or s/he was ‘inaccessible’, ‘hermetic’, ‘pretentious’. So may publication be her passport to the sacred landscape.
For some reason also thought of G., a contemporary of CF. self-sustaining myth of his own shrewdness. Except what he took for shrewdness was precisely his obtuseness or unawareness. Example: G. tells me we’ve been invited to dinner by a friend of his. ‘What time?’ I ask? ‘Well, we’re going round at 7.25’ ‘7.25? What kind of a time’s that?’ He looks at me with a familiar knowing smile ‘The thing is, he always says ‘Come round at 7, but its never actually ready at 7, so I always go round twenty minutes or so later.’ ‘You’re a wily one,’ I reply. He suspects nothing, sure in the knowledge that he has outwitted his host. Afterwards, I ask him if he enjoyed the (Indian) meal. Him: 'I don't like Indian food. I prefer Pizza!'
Years later, visiting Oxford I bumped into him in the streets. He'd been up all night writing a play and smelt, quite unmistakably, of urine. 'Let me buy you a caffe latte' I suggest. 'Caffe Latte! what's that!' he retorts, 'I've never heard of that'. 'It's espresso coffee and steamed milk'. 'ah,' he reassures me, 'You must mean cafe au lait - it literally means coffee with milk' - underlining each word with his finger.