Hanif Kureishi: Love + Hate: Stories and Essays

One of my students said he read books in order to have ‘more ideas about life’. You’d have to say that the imagination is an essential faculty, and that it can be developed and followed. It is as necessary as love because without it we are trapped in the bleak polarities of either/or, in a North Korea of the mind, deadly and empty, with not much to look at. Without imagination we cannot reconceive what we know, or see far enough. The imagination, while struggling with inhibition, represents more thought and possibility; it is myriad, complex, liquid, wild and erotic. Art defamiliarises, and so does the imagination. The banal world seems strange again. It opens in new ways.

The imagination is not only an instrument of art. We cannot delegate speculation to artists. It isn’t only artists who put difficult things together, make things up, and require and utilise vision. Whether we like it or not, we are all condemned to be artists. We are the creators and artists of our own lives, of the future and of the past — of whether, for instance, we view the past as a corpse, a resource, or something else. We are artists in the way we see, interpret and construct the world. We are daily artists, of play, conversation, walks, food, friendship, sex and love. Every kiss, every piece of work or meal, every exchanged word and every heard thing — there are better ways of listening — has some art in it, or none.

To survive successfully in the world requires huge capability. And to be bold and original is difficult labour; it can seem impossible, because we have histories and characters that can become fixed identities. We are made before we know it; we are held back by who we were made into. Not only that, we are inhabited by destructive, chattering devils who want less than the best for us. It is a struggle to live freely; identities become halted. Internalised, irrelevant versions of the law and custom limit us; there’s nothing as dangerous as safety, keeping us from reinvention and recreation. Imaginative work can seem destructive, and might annihilate that to which we are most attached. Naturally, if we can do this, we pay for our pleasures in guilt. However, in the end, misery and despair are more expensive, and make us ill. Let madness be our guide, but not our destination.

Aspiring writers who wish to be taught plot, structure and narrative are not mistaken, but following rules doesn’t make anyone an artist. The rules produce only obedience and mediocrity. The artist asks questions about moral authority itself. ‘Structure’, for the artist, is imagination.

Great writing and great ideas are strange: their sorcery and magic are more like dreaming with intent than descriptions of the world. Daily art makes and remakes the world, giving it meaning and substance. It’s a responsibility. You could lose your voice, you could write ‘I Am the Walrus’, or you could throw a party. The imagination creates reality rather than imitates it. There is no interesting consensus about the way the world is. In the end, there is nothing out there but what we make of it, and whether we make more or less of it is a daily question about how we want to live and who we want to be.

He and his wife had joked, for several years, about having a race around the streets where they lived. Now, in the week of their divorce, before they moved out of the house they’d shared with the children and stepchildren for twelve years, they would do it, neither of them having been able to find a reason to back down. It would, he guessed, be the last thing they did together.

He’d jogged twice a week for the past five years, but had rarely managed more than twenty minutes. And while she practised yoga and liked to dance the bossa nova, she took no other exercise. She had the racing edge, though, being in her mid-forties, while he was in his early sixties, which, he had discovered, was an uncomfortable age of earnest and critical self-reflection.

Compared to him, his rival wasn’t in bad shape, but she couldn’t be said to be in good shape. In her teenage years she had been a cross-country runner. She was built for it: tall but chubby, with strong, thick legs. She would be very determined, he knew that. Nonetheless, he didn’t believe she had sufficient stamina. You couldn’t just run for over an hour at a hard pace if you hadn’t done it for twenty-five years. Or could you, if bitterness was your fuel? She had said, when they discussed it, that she could ‘never, ever’ let him beat her. She would rather kill herself. Let her die then, he thought. He’d bury her gladly.

Now the two of them strode out through the house to the pavement. The kids and their friends, excited and bewildered by the eccentric behaviour of the adults, banged at the windows and waved them off, before going back to playing football in the echoing rooms which were empty now, apart from packed boxes marked with his and hers stickers.

He was aware that none of them would forget this day, and he wasn’t taking it lightly. For a start, he realised they had seriously underestimated the distance. Based on the course they had agreed, the whole race would probably take an hour and a half. This was, for them both, more than an effort.

Ever since they’d finally agreed to the ‘death match’, he had started to practise, running about thirty minutes most days, exhausted at the end. The previous evening he’d attempted ten press-ups, drunk little, worked out, and at nine thirty retired to his room, where he’d imagined himself, the next day, crashing into the house ahead of her, with his arms upraised like Jesse Owens in Berlin, but with a rose in his teeth.

Central to his hope was that fury would inspire and carry him through, particularly after she’d said, ‘Truly, I hope I get home first. Then I can call you an ambulance, and you can see me wave from the pavement, flat on your fucking back, you gutted loser.’

The kids, he noted, were keen to know what he’d put in his will.

Outside on the street, he bent forward and backwards, and jiggled on his toes, churning his arms. She stood next to him impatiently. He couldn’t bear to look at her. She had said that she was eager to get on with her life. For that he was glad. Surely, then, he couldn’t take this ridiculous bout seriously? The two of them must have looked idiotic, standing there glaring, seething and stamping. Where was his wisdom and maturity? Yet, somehow, nothing had been as important as this before.

He concentrated on his breathing and began to jog on the spot. He would run to the edge of himself. He would run because he’d made another mistake. He would run because they could not be in the same room, and because the worst of her was inside him.

When he thought she was ready, he said, ‘All right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s start then. Are you sure?’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Ready?’

She said, ‘Say “go”, not “ready”.’

‘I will. When you agree it’s time to say it.’

‘Just say it now, please,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake!’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘Okay?’ she said.

‘Go!’ he said.

‘Right, thanks,’ she said. ‘At last. You made a decision.’

‘Go, go!’ he said.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Go!’

And they went.

He started first, taking a few careful paces to try his knees, only to see her hare off, flying past him, and turning the corner a few yards away. Soon she was out of sight.

He kept to his plan; he was slow, as he had intended, conserving his energy for the final fifteen-minute burst. Turning the first corner himself, he slowed down even more. He’d felt a tightening in his left calf. Something stringy must have pulled. Could it be multiple sclerosis? Or perhaps cramp? These days he even got cramp reaching to cut his toenails. Not that anyone was excused: you’d see them before extra time at football tournaments; on two hundred grand a week, the world’s greatest footballers lying on the turf as if they’d been shot. He knew their agony; he shared it, this hopping devastated fool in luminous running shoes, with linen shorts over scraggy legs.