Independent May 26 1988
Dear Sebastian,
As you well know, letters from colleagues are the best kind to get, especially if they’re nice; Lenny Bruce used to say that the best laughter for a comedian was the laughter that came from the musicians in the band. So thanks. It makes up for not getting to meet Anthony Burgess and other great men. What’s wrong with this typewriter? Why doesn’t it separate all the words.
(I have a theory about this machine. For years and years, whenever I was drink and typed, the typing came out drunk. When I was sober which was actually most of the time, it came out sober. But recently I think my writing, and the reactions of the machine, have got slightly out of phase. I think it is sometimes drunk when I am not. And vice versa, on occasions when the wine should have muddled my thought, it flows beautifully. And once or twice, I think my typewriter has a hangover when I have not. Don’t tell anyone I said all this. They will think I am mad.)
I used to have an informal arrangement with Claire Tomalin at the ST that if she ever came across a book for which no reviewer in the world was suitable, she would try me. That way I got to do a review a year. The new regime seem to have inherited this, and I have done two pieces for them in the last year or two, one on a coroner’s memoirs which was well worth doing, and this one which was not worth doing at all. I shall not be doing another one. That is because the review came out with the last paragraph neatly placed at the head of the piece. I rang Nigella Lawson, who had commissioned the piece, to find out why and she said: ”Oh, I am so sorry, I thought Simon Jenkins must have cleared it with you – he was the one who dealt with the piece.”
This seems to suggest that at the ST the junior, Nigella Lawsoniana, commissions the pieces and the senior man, Simon, does the subbing. This I fail to understand. But I will not be risking it again. I felt uneasy, anyway, as the Sunday Times I think is such a rubbishy paper these days. And so is every other one. I haven’t bought a Sunday paper in anger for years now.
yours
PS But isn’t the Independent a nice paper? And there is one guy in Features who is sometimes flat.