Four Absentees

by Rayner Heppenstall

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Genres: Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

John Rayner Heppenstall was an English novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.

Heppenstall's first novel The Blaze of Noon, was neglected at the time. Much later, in 1967, it received an Arts Council award. He was Francophile in literary terms, and his non-fiction writing reflects his tastes.

Critical attention has linked him to the French nouveau roman, in fact as an anticipator, or as a writer of the "anti-novel". Several critics (including, according to his diaries, Helene Cixous) have named Heppenstall in this connection. He is sometimes therefore grouped with Alain Robbe-Grillet, or associated with other British experimentalists: Anthony Burgess, B. S. Johnson, Ann Quin, Alan Burns, Stefan Themerson and Eva Figes. The Connecting Door (1962) is singled out as influenced by the nouveau roman.

He was certainly influenced by Raymond Roussel, whose Impressions of Africa he translated. Later novels include The Shearers, Two Moons and The Pier. He also wrote a short study of the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short series of reminiscences of Eric Gill, J. Middleton Murray, Dylan Thomas, and George Orwell. Heppenstall was, of the four men, the closest to Orwell and Thomas, sharing a house with the former (whom he socked in the chops for complaining too much—a move I would like to perform on my current flatmate), and drinking often with the latter. The snippets of insight into Orwell the private character are valuable, especially regarding his impotence and attitude towards women (clueless or repressed homosexual?), and parts of the book are memoirs about Rayner’s life and works, also valuable for fans of this BURIED author. The other characters are more elusive in this book and less interesting for the reader due to their obscurity, and there isn’t much on Thomas. Otherwise, worth tracking down.

[Paul Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Barrie and Rockcliff] (1960). HB/DJ. 206 Pages. Purchased from Dreadnought Books.

Gossipy. Bitchy to the pont of causticity. Cold.

Rather insightful, particularly in relation to Eric Arthur Blair. My sense of him as a dabbling performance artist grew through these anecdotes:

“Orwell was already contemplating a guide to working-class life. With my information on this subject he was dissatisfied. He wanted leaky ceilings and ten in a room, with scrabbling on slag-heaps if possible… I thought him a wonderfully nice man, but confused.” (They had more than one physical altercation - amusing reading - he goes on to dismiss his novels as “pot-boiling!”)

I’d hoped for more penetrating references to Dylan Thomas.

I had no prior knowledge of Murry; little’s changed there.

The Catholic monster Eric Gill features. Animated piety, laced with hints of deviance, much in evidence. I wish that Orwell had given him a kicking instead of Heppenstall*.

“As each of his daughters left him, he made a sign of the cross on her forehead.”

(*I just bought a copy of his Journals - and look forward to reading them - by all accounts, they’re a hoot.)

[Ben Bergonzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucid and revealing account by a man who was a good friend of my grandparents, of some of *his* friends in the 1930s and 40s - Eric Gill, John Middleton Murry, Eric Blair (George Orwell) and Dylan Thomas. Read it for the story of the time when Heppenstall came home drunk to the flat he shared with Blair and was questioned as if by a colonial District Commissioner, knocked out cold, then beaten with a shooting stick. And there is a lot more gossip, as well as some very lucid psychological speculations. A fine book.

[Chiefdonkey Bradey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four wounded roaring boys