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My Madness : The Selected Writings of Anna Kavan
336 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Anna Kavan
44 books497 followersAnna Kavan was born "Helen Woods" in France on April 10, 1901 to wealthy expatriate British parents.
Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.
Around 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life.
Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.
Around 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 30, 2011
Two stars not so much for the actual Kavan content, which is largely excellent, 4 and 5 star stuff, but for its being in a weird "selected writings" volume that just reprints a bunch of prior material. On the other hand, a lot of that material was out-of print at the time (and most still is, actually) which makes this pretty useful. On the other other hand, the "title story" ostensibly Kavan writing about her own time in a sanatorium, which I was desperate to read and bought this for, is actually the result of the extremely dubious practice of an outside editor hacking together supposedly-autobiographical bits of her novels into some kind of extremely presumptuous portrait two decades after her death. How is this sort of thing even allowed?
Anyway. I'll catalog the actual contents here so potential readers can actually know what they're getting rather than leaping to conclusions like I did.
Introduction: Kafka's Sister (by Brian Aldiss). Aldiss selected Kavan's masterpiece, Ice, as Best Science Fiction Novel of 1967 (in order that it get noticed, with the acknowledgment that it isn't exactly sci-fi, really), and consequently got to know her a bit, in person and in correspondence. So this is a pretty interesting and informative essay, actually. He draws parallels with Kafka, certainly a Kavan inspiration, and describes her as a Symbolist writer (I would tend to put her with those children of the Symbolists, the surrealists, but I don't think the surrealist group was having anything to do with her in actuality).
"My Madness". Bits of Asylum Piece (1940, her first work as "Anna Kavan") and Sleep Has His House (1948), both pretty fantastic books on their own, fastened together by Frank Hatherley, who appears to be an Australian writer/director. I have no idea how this came about, or how snatching up bits of someone's novels can be considered a valid means of reconstituting autobiographical writing, but here it is. In general, though Kavan certainly drew from her life, I think it's a reductive mistake to assume she was writing about herself all the time -- her goals appear to have been broader and more interesting that that. Because the source material is good, this is pretty good as a self-contained piece. Extremely questionable, but somewhat interesting Kavanalia nonetheless.
"Who Has Desired the Sea". From the collection I Am Lazarus: Stories (1945). I'm holding off til I can read it in context.
"The Birds Dancing". A favorite Kavan story, the standout of the collection Bright Green Field (1958). Since that collection has been extremely out of print for ages, it's probably actually pretty handy to have it more easily in reach here.
"A Visit". From the posthumous collection Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories (1970), which is fantastic but itself a rather presumptuous set of stories chosen for their supposed autobiographical qualities.
"One of the Liberated?". From the posthumous collection My Soul in China: A Novella and Stories. I've got a copy on the window-ledge, so I'm saving this story to be read in context there.
Sleep Has His House. 1948. The entire text of one of Kavan's most surreal novels (written, she said, in "nocturnal language"), an account of a narrator in full retreat into her inner phantasmagoric landscapes. It's amazing, but I'm not convinced that it's a memoir, as normally assumed. Weirdly, it is already one of the two source texts that found its way into the "My Madness" piece. It's good to have the full novel, but its also easily found in dirt-cheap used editions.
Ice. 1967. And a reprint of the full text of Kavan's crowning achievement. Also pretty cheaply and easily found on the secondhand market.
Anyway. I'll catalog the actual contents here so potential readers can actually know what they're getting rather than leaping to conclusions like I did.
Introduction: Kafka's Sister (by Brian Aldiss). Aldiss selected Kavan's masterpiece, Ice, as Best Science Fiction Novel of 1967 (in order that it get noticed, with the acknowledgment that it isn't exactly sci-fi, really), and consequently got to know her a bit, in person and in correspondence. So this is a pretty interesting and informative essay, actually. He draws parallels with Kafka, certainly a Kavan inspiration, and describes her as a Symbolist writer (I would tend to put her with those children of the Symbolists, the surrealists, but I don't think the surrealist group was having anything to do with her in actuality).
"My Madness". Bits of Asylum Piece (1940, her first work as "Anna Kavan") and Sleep Has His House (1948), both pretty fantastic books on their own, fastened together by Frank Hatherley, who appears to be an Australian writer/director. I have no idea how this came about, or how snatching up bits of someone's novels can be considered a valid means of reconstituting autobiographical writing, but here it is. In general, though Kavan certainly drew from her life, I think it's a reductive mistake to assume she was writing about herself all the time -- her goals appear to have been broader and more interesting that that. Because the source material is good, this is pretty good as a self-contained piece. Extremely questionable, but somewhat interesting Kavanalia nonetheless.
"Who Has Desired the Sea". From the collection I Am Lazarus: Stories (1945). I'm holding off til I can read it in context.
"The Birds Dancing". A favorite Kavan story, the standout of the collection Bright Green Field (1958). Since that collection has been extremely out of print for ages, it's probably actually pretty handy to have it more easily in reach here.
"A Visit". From the posthumous collection Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories (1970), which is fantastic but itself a rather presumptuous set of stories chosen for their supposed autobiographical qualities.
"One of the Liberated?". From the posthumous collection My Soul in China: A Novella and Stories. I've got a copy on the window-ledge, so I'm saving this story to be read in context there.
Sleep Has His House. 1948. The entire text of one of Kavan's most surreal novels (written, she said, in "nocturnal language"), an account of a narrator in full retreat into her inner phantasmagoric landscapes. It's amazing, but I'm not convinced that it's a memoir, as normally assumed. Weirdly, it is already one of the two source texts that found its way into the "My Madness" piece. It's good to have the full novel, but its also easily found in dirt-cheap used editions.
Ice. 1967. And a reprint of the full text of Kavan's crowning achievement. Also pretty cheaply and easily found on the secondhand market.
July 25, 2020
An extraordinary book - the short stories are vivid and unsettling and feel like a slightly less surreal but equally unsettling version of Leonora Carrington’s prose. There’s a total focus to her stories, so that even reasonably straightforward stories like Who Has Desired the Sea have this strange otherness to it which only works because of this sense of absolute attention to detail in every aspect of the writing. The Birds Dancing seems to be the one that prefigures the longer prose works here, and the combination of middle class milieu with something wilder, stranger and ultimately unexplainable reminded me a little of Robert Aickman
Sleep Has His House is the hardest to read because it is, by nature, an autobiographical work which then wildly and memorably breaks into feverish, dreamlike evocations of those autobiographical vignettes. Without that guide it would incredibly tough to read as it’s so intense and unrelenting, but frequently beautiful at the same time. It’s tough going because in essence it’s being popped directly into someone else’s dream world complete with iconography that only makes sense to that person. It’s a startling effect
Finally Ice which manages to be a thriller, a story about obsession, a kind of love story (at a pinch), both dystopian AND slipstreams SF and possibly a novel about the author’s addiction to heroin. And it also might not be about any of those. Ostensibly the story of a nameless man pursuing a nameless, thin white woman through a succession of nightmarishly war torn and ice threatened landscapes with an equally unnamed male rival thwarting him at every turn, the book perpetually lapses into hallucinatory passages to the extent that I’m not sure if anything is literal after three pages, maybe not even the first paragraph. It feels like a book where every reader will have a different take, and a take that will shift considerably on repeated readings. As such it may be the most endlessly ambiguous book I’ve ever read. It’s certainly not going to fade quickly. An astonishing work
Sleep Has His House is the hardest to read because it is, by nature, an autobiographical work which then wildly and memorably breaks into feverish, dreamlike evocations of those autobiographical vignettes. Without that guide it would incredibly tough to read as it’s so intense and unrelenting, but frequently beautiful at the same time. It’s tough going because in essence it’s being popped directly into someone else’s dream world complete with iconography that only makes sense to that person. It’s a startling effect
Finally Ice which manages to be a thriller, a story about obsession, a kind of love story (at a pinch), both dystopian AND slipstreams SF and possibly a novel about the author’s addiction to heroin. And it also might not be about any of those. Ostensibly the story of a nameless man pursuing a nameless, thin white woman through a succession of nightmarishly war torn and ice threatened landscapes with an equally unnamed male rival thwarting him at every turn, the book perpetually lapses into hallucinatory passages to the extent that I’m not sure if anything is literal after three pages, maybe not even the first paragraph. It feels like a book where every reader will have a different take, and a take that will shift considerably on repeated readings. As such it may be the most endlessly ambiguous book I’ve ever read. It’s certainly not going to fade quickly. An astonishing work
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews