Review by New York Times Review
A NATION'S LITERATURE tends to be fed from the periphery. Horace, the most refined of Roman poets, was the son of a freed provincial slave. Shakespeare was famously nobody from nowhere. Fitzgerald rose out of highly unlikely St. Paul. Alan Bennett was born a butcher's boy between the wars in Leeds, a city that he says "specialized in the manufacture of ready-made suits and the cultivation of rhubarb." He found his way from a state school into Oxford, and from there into the hit satirical revue "Beyond the Fringe," which he partly wrote. In the decades since then, as a playwright, performer, essayist, novelist, and television and screen writer, he has become a public figure whom the words "English National Treasure" surround like a nimbus. Following "Writing Home" and "Untold Stories" - both justly acclaimed - "Keeping On Keeping On" is Bennett's third collection of occasional journalism, stray speeches, diary entries and play prefaces. This volume includes a couple of trunk scripts and even a (superb) sermon. The decade covered here, 2005 to 2015, sees Bennett move house, enter into a civil union with his longtime partner Rupert, win the Tony for "The History Boys," get a couple of movies made, and write several new plays with no slackening of invention. One of those plays, for example, has talking furniture. We learn along the way that Bennett once shared Sylvia Plath's doctor, that his father sold meat to T. S. Eliot's motherin- law, that he turned down adapting both "War Horse" and "Brideshead Revisited," and that he regrets never having kept a donkey. Like the two earlier miscellanies, this volume is Boswellian in its devotion to its subject and in its near-biblical bulk. Bennett wants to avoid "the valedictory note," but for a man of 83 diagnosed with bowel cancer 20 years ago, that tone is present by default, a basso ostinato rumbling beneath the proceedings as we watch him lose friends to death and undergo medical procedures. Bennett records all the preoccupations, assaults and insights of age with Proustian clarity. "I still have the absurd notion that, as with any other ailment, age and infirmity will run its course and I will recover from it," he says. He even rebukes Beckett for, of all things, sanitizing old age. Luckily for all of us, Bennett was born with the giftfor style that's been the genetic inheritance of English writers from Jonathan Swiftthrough George Orwell. In spite of age, he still writes with the bite and vigor of a young man. A random sample: "As always with Rembrandt feel almost arraigned by the self-portraits and put on the spot. 'And?' he seems to be saying, 'So?' The self-disgust is there and the sadness but in a very contemporary way he's a celebrity, resenting being looked at while at the same time (and like any other celebrity) having put himself in the way of it in the first place." Throughout this volume we sense Bennett's concern for his posthumous assessment, as well as his distress about how he's currently perceived, which he defines as "kindly, cozy and essentially harmless. I am in the pigeonhole marked 'no threat'," he says, "and did I stab Judi Dench with a pitchfork I should still be a teddy bear." That public perception is unsurprising, given Bennett's prep-school-master look and vicar's voice. Yet even his own partner describes him as "difficult." In truth there seem to be two Alan Bennetts. Like the characters in his TV monologues, "Talking Heads" (probably his masterpiece), he lets us glimpse strong emotion coiling just beneath the veneer. In Bennett's case, the emotion is rage. He shouts at a woman in a shop about elections. He's so upset at what the Richard III Society has done to an old church that he rips down their banner "and would have burned it, had I had a match." His "rants," as he calls them, are largely directed against politicians, ruinous architects, private education and governmental privatization, what he calls "England dismantled." The substance of his anger, though largely on English issues, resonates all too deeply over here. He writes: "Now we have another decade of the self-interested and the self-seeking, ready to sell offwhat's leftof our liberal institutions and loot the rest to their own advantage. It's not a government of the nation but a government of half the nation." One longs to hear his thoughts on a billionaire president who tosses paper towels, Marie Antoinette- style, to disaster victims. His diary extracts are the heart of the book and, with their mix of high life, daily life, country life, theater life, travel and local observation (he's a terrific noticer), the diaries do exactly what we want of diaries, which is to let us vicariously partake of a life, in this case an enviable life, especially if you're the sort who watches Masterpiece Theater in a 24-hour loop. There are expert jokes, passing celebs and moments of access to Wordsworthian glory. ("3 March. Oh to live in the world one sees from the train - empty, unpeopled, only a horse in the field, one car at the crossing, and a woman at the end of a garden taking down washing.") The diaries put on exhibit Bennett's immense humanity, as when he regards a newborn baby and writes, "It doesn't make me feel old, just huge." If you're not already an Alan Bennett follower, "Keeping On Keeping On" is not the best place to jump in. There are, as he fears, too many churches visited, too many antique shops, too many meals (there's enough jam here for a year's worth of elevenses), and simply too much diary, the extracts here doubling the number of pages taken up in the previous installments. This collection also lacks the spice of his "Writing Home" saga with Miss Shepherd - the homeless woman who lived in a van in Bennett's driveway for 15 years - or the personal pieces of "Untold Stories," like his wrenching account of his mother's mental illness. Still, there are writers we turn to with almost religious gratitude and Alan Bennett, for many people, is one. In an age of amnesia, he knows and honors the past. In a civilization ruined by cellphones and flip-flops, he is ink and paper, corduroy and tweed. In a world running on ignorance, he's well read, thoughtful and informed on any number of topics. Hats offto anyone who can still identify tansy, crocketed pinnacles or a blue tit. He is in fact the soul of the 18thcentury Enlightenment in the body of a 21st-century Yorkshire yenta wearing bicycle clips. Bennett would probably chafe to hear it, but he reassures us by his very presence in the world. He works like grace. At one point in the diaries, in a Madison Avenue eatery he runs into a fan who sums up the feelings of so many readers and theatergoers with a brisk directive. As they take leave, the woman calls out to Bennett, "Stay alive!" We glimpse a strong emotion - rage - beneath the veneer. He yells at a fellow shopper about politics. DAVID IVES'S most recent play, "The Metromaniacs," will open in the spring of 2018 at the Red Bull Theater in New York.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 3, 2017]
Review by Library Journal Review
"Kindly, cozy, and essentially harmless" is the way Bennett (The Madness of King George, The History Boys, and Lady in a Van) describes himself in this third volume of diaries, covering the years 2005-15, following Writing Home (1995) and Untold Stories (2006). As he writes of outings to old churches, antique hunting, biking around town, and searching for the perfect sandwich, he portrays the quaint life of an 82-year-old. The author treats his aging and health problems lightly, joking about how his hearing deterioration has led to misunderstandings. Then with a reformer's zeal, he switches to complaints about the inequality of the public school system and the rightward turn of Britain's politics. His contention that "closing local libraries is child abuse" reflects his vigorous campaign to save these institutions. Receiving prestigious awards, meeting with actress Judi Dench, playwright Tom Stoppard, and other celebrities reminds us that Bennett is one of Britain's foremost playwrights. Two full-length plays and several introductions and speeches accompany the diary entries, making for many pages of polite yet stimulating reading. VERDICT This work will appeal to readers who value graceful, entertaining writing, especially those interested in the theater. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The third installment of diaries from the celebrated dramatist and author.For a butcher's son from Leeds, Bennett (Smut: Two Unseemly Stories, 2011, etc.) has done exceedingly well for himself. From his early days as a member of Beyond the Fringehe modestly calls himself "a less talented performer" than Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, or Jonathan Millerhe has since become the author of such celebrated plays as The Madness of George III and The History Boys. To many readers, he may be just as famous for his diaries, which have appeared annually in the London Review of Books for 30 years. Like its predecessors, Writing Home (1995) and Untold Stories (2006), this book contains a decade of his diary entries. Fans will recognize Bennett in these pages: riding his bike, buying antiques, visiting medieval churches, and, as always, enjoying his lovingly described sandwiches. Part of the charm of these entries is the mix of the mundane and the glamorous. In a senior moment, he can't find a favorite sweater, and his partner has to tell him he's wearing it. Next, he's meeting the likes of Judi Dench, Tom Stoppard, Elizabeth Taylor (who sat on his knee at a party, although he doesn't remember why), and John F. Kennedy. The second half of the book includes introductions to his later plays, speeches, and two unproduced scripts, but the highlights are the diaries. Bennett makes just about everything sound poetic, as when he writes that a routine colonoscopy reveals "a little fairy ring of polyps, innocent enough but ruthlessly lassoed and garrotted by the radiographer." And who wouldn't smile upon reading that, at the post office, an elderly customer recognized Bennett and commanded, "Say something whimsical"? "I am in the pigeon-hole marked no threat,' " Bennett writes of his reputation for niceness. "And did I stab Judi Dench with a pitchfork I should still be a teddy bear." That may be debatable, but the good-naturedness in these engaging pages is proof of his current standing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
