Lawrence Durrell - The Black Book

What different worlds we hailed from! Try to connect Brooklyn — the 14th Ward — and Darjeeling! Or the Ionian Sea and the East River! As well try to yoke Homer and Dostoevsky. Or Hannibal and Arthur. How well I remember his amazement when he learned that I had never read the Odyssey or the Iliad. Yes, there were roadblocks now and then. Stendhal was one; Laurence Sterne another. (I’ve never been able to read either to this day!) But we could share enthusiasm for Blavatsky, for Petronius, and for dear Knut Hamsun, among others. Not Shakespeare.

He was an exceedingly well read man even then. I could sit back and listen to him by the hour. The great link between us was Lao-tse and that disciple of his, the gay old dog, who followed some centuries later. (The man John Cowper Powys delights in referring to.) By comparison I was just a Brooklyn boy, an inculte who reached for his revolver whenever he heard the word Culture. Which is why, most likely, we got on so well together and could spend days on end getting drunk on Spengler.

(It’s strange, but I don’t recall any lengthy discussions about Rimbaud then. I’m sure he had read him, of course.)

How I enjoyed it when he laced it into me! No man who ridiculed me ever gave me more pleasure in the doing of it than Larry Durrell. It was like having your nine-year-old make a monkey of you. (“Put up your dukes! Not that way! Lead with your left! ”) Yes, he could polish the floor with me — culture-wise. Besides, I was congenitally slow-witted, if not half-witted.

The one thing I never did learn from him, though I’ve never regretted it, was to improve my style. It’s amazing, too, because no one ever put his finger on my weaknesses more unerringly than Durrell. But I’m stubborn and recalcitrant. (I still lead with my right; I still stick my jaw out.) But it gives me infinite pleasure to add that the chap who talked improvements has worked them on himself, has demonstrated in his own work that it pays off. I know of no greater stylist today among contemporary writers of English, than the author of those unknown books which he had the good sense to sign with another name. The Black Book was not his first book. But it was the first book he wrote with his right hand. He had been at it, I would hazard, since grammar school days. (How lucky he was to have been “wasting his time” traveling about the world instead of going up to Cambridge or Oxford!)

In a few weeks I shall be seeing him again. It was just about twenty years ago that we parted, somewhere in Arcadia (Greece). What prodigious things he has accomplished in the interim! It will be like meeting Victor Hugo now. What I keep wondering is — will he have that same belly laugh? I don’t care what mistakes he may have made, what sins he may have committed, if only he has retained that infectious laugh! Books are forgotten, fame passes, but laughter is something you take with you to the grave. I don’t want him to die, but when he does — for he must one day! — please God, let him die laughing!

Big Sur, California

Feb. 9th, 1959