A Very Strange Man: A Memoir of Aidan Higgins by Alannah Hopkin

Author:Alannah Hopkin [Alannah Hopkin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848407947
Google: Qv-fzgEACAAJ
Publisher: New Island Books
Published: 2021-11-15T23:25:11.966949+00:00

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In May 1994, with Donkey’s Years nearing completion, Geoff Mulligan contacted Aidan to say that Secker were going to publish John Minihan’s photographs of Samuel Beckett, and that he and John had agreed that Aidan would be the ideal person to write a text to accompany them. Aidan had already worked with John Minihan, having written about his hometown of Athy in County Kildare to accompany the photographic essay in Cara magazine. John was one of several people that Aidan and I knew separately before we met. He had been a colleague of mine in London at the Evening Standard before moving to west Cork with his young family.

Aidan did not seem inclined to accept the Beckett commission. I had assumed he would be thrilled: there was a generous fee, and he knew and liked the photos. But it would also involve hard work. Beckett is difficult to write about at the best of times, but given Aidan’s deep admiration of his work and his intelligence, it must have been daunting. People and places you feel deeply about are always the most difficult to write about.

‘Well,’ I said, seeing a way of motivating him, ‘if you don’t do it, they’ll probably ask John Montague.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s obvious. He’s the next in line. He’s full of opinions, and he’s always boasting about what good friends he and Beckett were. And if not him, then Anthony Cronin.’

Aidan had always doubted John Montague’s claims to be a regular drinking pal of Beckett’s in Paris, but why would the poet lie? Unlike Aidan, Montague had lived in Paris for extended periods, and spoke excellent French. And Aidan had a highly competitive relationship with his old friend Anthony Cronin, who was in fact working on his biography of Beckett at the time.

My bluff worked, for that is what it was. I had no idea who Secker would ask if Aidan said no. Montague was only a guess, and so was Cronin, but the suggestion paid off. Aidan immediately contacted Geoff and accepted the commission.

Aidan’s friendship with Beckett had mainly been conducted by letters, which are now in the collection of the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas. They had met maybe half a dozen times, in London, Paris and Berlin. The last meeting was in Berlin in 1969, where Beckett was rehearsing Krapp’s Last Tape.

 Anthony Cronin, in his biography of Beckett, reports Aidan’s reaction to that Berlin meeting:

He found Beckett’s politeness almost intolerable and the inhibition about saying anything about his work devastating, so that one wound up feeling that it would be better not to say anything at all; but with the resulting silence came a sense of painful inadequacy.19

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