Wednesday 14: From Kapka Kassabova — writer in residence at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival

9 months
2 weeks ago

Looking at the Stars

I’ve been staring at the cover of Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography and I can’t get past the title: A Fortunate Life. I unreservedly admire the man, but I wonder why a writer would use such a title, unless he was either being ironic or has had an irony by-pass. To find out, I’ll have to literally get past the title.

But in the shorter term, here’s a longer question. Pin-up girls and other ‘celebs’ publish books these days, and if it’s not about quality writing, it must be about character. Who makes a good character? Because it’s character — real or fictitious — that makes a story worth reading. A few events today promised a few answers.

First, I travelled to Shanghai of the early 1900s in the company of sinologist Robert Bickers. His book’s title Empire Made Me quotes from a document written in the early 1900s. It’s a personal-sounding statement, and this is indeed the personal story of an English nobody called Richard Maurice Tinkler who ‘died as he lived — violently’. Feel free to forget the name instantly, because the point is not in the name. It’s in the life and what it illuminates. Quite a lot: the story of Shanghai as it became Asia’s super-city; the lives of British ex-pats caught up in it — the expression ‘Shanghaied’ meant kidnapped or trapped; in short, the momentum of 20th century history.

‘I’m of that growing strand of historians who like telling stories’ — Bickers said — ‘stories of ordinary people and the complexity of their situations. Tinkler’s life tells us something about empire. And about failure. As a historian I’m very interested in failure. We’re often blinded by success stories, discourses full of confidence, control and rule. But failure is as much a part of life as success, if not more so.’

I salute this breed of intimate history. Through one character, it brings to life monumental cities and eras. It’s a healthy antidote to celebrity publishing which brings to life monumental egos while imitating intimacy.

I was startled out of my reverie by two ‘butlers in the buff’ at the entrance to the ‘Literary Heroes’ event. It started with the fluffy question: ‘Who was your first crush?’ and ended with the fluffy announcement of the nation’s favourite romantic hero (Mr Rochester). But in between, sharp questions were asked and interesting things were said about good romantic heroes and what makes us remember them. Heathcliff might be a ‘manic-depressive nutter’ in Sharon Kendrick‘s words, but he is unforgettably conflicted. My highlight was Stella Duffy’s answer to: should the perfect hero get everything they want?

‘No,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, story wouldn’t exist. Story with a capital ‘s’ exists for us to explain ourselves. All story is quest. It doesn’t have to be through love. It can be something else we don’t have.’

At the end of the day, my quest took me to a story about an immortal hero. Not immortal in a Dorian Gray way, but in reverse. It’s the story of his creator who died young but his writing never ages. Fortune and misfortune, success and failure, agony and ecstasy — it’s all there, in the one-man play by Leslie Clack More lives than one. Oscar Wilde might have found himself in the gutter towards the end, but never stopped looking at the stars. He was one of them. The real stars, that is.

Kapka Kassabova is one of our three writers in residence at this year’s festival. Catch up with Kapka Kassabova, Vesna Maric and Sathnam Sanghera in event 282 on Sunday 18 October.

Kapka’s latest book is Street Without a Name published by Portobello Books.

We’ve tagged this post with literature, review, writers in residence on Wednesday 14 October 2009.