A draft autograph manuscript of Friend in Low Places.
RAVEN, Simon
[Deal] . 1964.
Description:
A draft autograph manuscript of part of the second novel in Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion sequence.
Typed letter to Dr Schwartz from Raven, dated October 14, 1964, enclosing the manuscript of the "first two chapters of the novel I am now writing --- "Friends in Low Places"... If you are interested, I can send you the rest of the MS as it becomes available --- that is, after I have typed it out. This I usually do at the end of each chapter".
The manuscript is written in blue biro on the rectos only of 182 leaves (253x202mm) although these are erratically numbered to 174. Extensively revised and corrected, the manuscript contains (contra Raven's covering letter) the first three chapters of the novel (up to page 79 of the first edition). Raven's handwriting is not easy to decipher but read alongside the published version, we can see how the novel was developing in his mind. The main outline of plot and character are here but there are many so many additions, deletions and syntactical tightenings that it is as though we are perched on his shoulder as he writes. Although the numbering suggests some missing leaves, the sense of the prose makes it plain that the manuscript is textually complete. There are two leaves in typescript (each printed in duplicate). Many of the manuscript leaves have more excision than actual text but one can always read Raven's deleted draft. These corrections and amendments bring the manuscript close to the printed text but the two do not entirely match so clearly the novel went through further drafts. An air of mild chaos hangs over the manuscript (reflecting Raven's own life and personality) but as Raven did his own typing rather than employ a secretary, he could be as messy as he liked. But the multiple deletions and additions are really the mark of a fine, writerly mind arranging and polishing his text, bringing it, step by step, to its finished form. Because of Raven's rackety lifestyle (famously he went, at his publisher's suggestion, to live in Deal on the Kent coast in order to escape the temptations of London, although that didn't stop him joining the Reform Club so that he could treat himself to the occasional "housemaid's wank" at the massage parlour opposite) scarcely any of his manuscripts survive. He did donate part of "Sounding the Retreat" (the seventh of the Alms for Oblivion novels) to Cambridge University but we have traced no others and only one other Raven manuscript appears in the auction records. The present manuscript is in excellent condition, housed in a drop-back box with a typed paper label on the spine. Sold with a first edition of the novel in its published form.
Simon Raven (1927-2001) might almost be the echt insider-outsider: upper-middle class, rich father (whom he disliked), Charterhouse (expelled for homosexuality), classics at King's College, Cambridge (dropped out of postgraduate study through idleness), and the army (dismissed for excessive gambling). An improbable early marriage reached its nadir when his wife asked for money for food for her and their child to which he replied by telegram: "Sorry no money, suggest eat baby". Raven's outsiderdom lies in his savage imagination, his amorality, his classical elitism and his utter disdain for the modern world: for evidence of the last of these see his LRB Review of March 1980 entitled "Unfair to Gays" and his 1996 interview with Naim Attallah. He is a sort of pagan Evelyn Waugh: both Tory Anarchists, they shared a lapidary prose style and a lofty contempt for their fellow man. But Raven is wilder, less serious, more resigned to the ridiculousness of life and unconstrained by ruling principles. He charts, through the lives of his contemporaries, the late twentieth century's long slide downhill.
Description:
A draft autograph manuscript of part of the second novel in Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion sequence.
Typed letter to Dr Schwartz from Raven, dated October 14, 1964, enclosing the manuscript of the "first two chapters of the novel I am now writing --- "Friends in Low Places"... If you are interested, I can send you the rest of the MS as it becomes available --- that is, after I have typed it out. This I usually do at the end of each chapter".
The manuscript is written in blue biro on the rectos only of 182 leaves (253x202mm) although these are erratically numbered to 174. Extensively revised and corrected, the manuscript contains (contra Raven's covering letter) the first three chapters of the novel (up to page 79 of the first edition). Raven's handwriting is not easy to decipher but read alongside the published version, we can see how the novel was developing in his mind. The main outline of plot and character are here but there are many so many additions, deletions and syntactical tightenings that it is as though we are perched on his shoulder as he writes. Although the numbering suggests some missing leaves, the sense of the prose makes it plain that the manuscript is textually complete. There are two leaves in typescript (each printed in duplicate). Many of the manuscript leaves have more excision than actual text but one can always read Raven's deleted draft. These corrections and amendments bring the manuscript close to the printed text but the two do not entirely match so clearly the novel went through further drafts. An air of mild chaos hangs over the manuscript (reflecting Raven's own life and personality) but as Raven did his own typing rather than employ a secretary, he could be as messy as he liked. But the multiple deletions and additions are really the mark of a fine, writerly mind arranging and polishing his text, bringing it, step by step, to its finished form. Because of Raven's rackety lifestyle (famously he went, at his publisher's suggestion, to live in Deal on the Kent coast in order to escape the temptations of London, although that didn't stop him joining the Reform Club so that he could treat himself to the occasional "housemaid's wank" at the massage parlour opposite) scarcely any of his manuscripts survive. He did donate part of "Sounding the Retreat" (the seventh of the Alms for Oblivion novels) to Cambridge University but we have traced no others and only one other Raven manuscript appears in the auction records. The present manuscript is in excellent condition, housed in a drop-back box with a typed paper label on the spine. Sold with a first edition of the novel in its published form.
Simon Raven (1927-2001) might almost be the echt insider-outsider: upper-middle class, rich father (whom he disliked), Charterhouse (expelled for homosexuality), classics at King's College, Cambridge (dropped out of postgraduate study through idleness), and the army (dismissed for excessive gambling). An improbable early marriage reached its nadir when his wife asked for money for food for her and their child to which he replied by telegram: "Sorry no money, suggest eat baby". Raven's outsiderdom lies in his savage imagination, his amorality, his classical elitism and his utter disdain for the modern world: for evidence of the last of these see his LRB Review of March 1980 entitled "Unfair to Gays" and his 1996 interview with Naim Attallah. He is a sort of pagan Evelyn Waugh: both Tory Anarchists, they shared a lapidary prose style and a lofty contempt for their fellow man. But Raven is wilder, less serious, more resigned to the ridiculousness of life and unconstrained by ruling principles. He charts, through the lives of his contemporaries, the late twentieth century's long slide downhill.