In his latest publication, author Andrew O’Hagan delivers a series of eight concise writings originally aired for a broadcast series. The approach involves reminiscence, exploring a lost youth companion from the housing project where he was raised in 1970s Scotland. He also reflects on past coworkers at a well-known journal, at which O’Hagan made his name in the last decade of the 20th century, and his adult daughter’s former imaginary friend.
Examining Friendship
The author reflects on why thespians, government figures, and members of the GOP prove unreliable as pals, why writer Colm Tóibín makes such a good one, and in what manner the nature of friendship is shaped by loss and online life.
“In the age of the internet, what exactly is a friend? … Can you swear by someone whose voice you’ve never heard …?”
For O’Hagan, digital friendship has a worse impact than the former, an opinion that could be expected from an author who equates friendship to “a set of loyalties that turn in the head like old records”. He worries that folks no longer go to pubs because they’re too busy shopping online.
Home Life Versus Companionship
In these pages, bonds empower where family constricts. Being raised with three brothers, O’Hagan’s family environment was a “place of hardships”, a “palace of stress”, including a cold paternal figure who on one occasion had their dog purposely removed out of town and set loose, never to be seen again. At primary school, respite was found in tooling around wastelands with Mark, a local boy his own age.
“A great friend can summon a new world order, and, best of all, the beginnings perhaps of a new person for you to be, tugged from the constraints of home.”
Subsequently, O’Hagan adjusts the idea to call the companionship of an additional acquaintance “a ticket to becoming the kind of person you dreamed of being”.
Metaphors of Transformation
Metaphors of migration and rebirth feel potent in a book filled with understood awe at the distance O’Hagan has travelled from childhood. In one section, he arranges products as a teenager at his local Tesco in Ayrshire; on another, he attends a celebration for a new girlfriend at “the Donna Karan store on Park Avenue”. He makes no bones about being an inveterate name-dropper – partying with the rock band, whisky with Christopher Hitchens.
Restrained Revelations
But while numerous events occurs throughout the book, it isn’t a full confession. O’Hagan understands that friendship is rarely just a bowl of cherries, yet he’s discreet, at times hesitant, about the subject’s shadow side: slights, confusions, disagreements (“I am acquainted with a well-known performer who asked me to attend his nuptials, but he ignored my invitation when I extended an invitation to my ceremony”).
The degree of openness, of sharing, only goes so far: while he makes a passing reference of his unsuccessful effort to ghostwrite Julian Assange’s memoir (the WikiLeaks founder struggled “to befriend himself”, according to the author, tactfully), he omits about his extensive article for the LRB on the devastating incident, interesting in this context mainly as the ensuing furore must have reminded him who stood by him.
An Intriguing Bond
To some extent because of this, the most fascinating section among the pieces involves the deceased author from Ireland Edna O’Brien, whom he first met in London in 2009 post Seamus Heaney’s milestone event. When he invites her to lunch at a renowned restaurant in Mayfair (““Ideal … request the corner spot, once used by Lucian Freud”), it commences a long-term connection during which “we turned to each other to complete thoughts we struggled to conceive solo”, in O’Hagan’s curious phrase, briefly expanded upon when he eventually reflects on “the soft sonatas we used to listen to while I helped Edna with her manuscripts”.
Revealing Moments
Among the many celebrities referenced in the book, she is the sole individual granted access into his personal nature. In the majority of his tales, he’s the guy who is portrayed positively – whether as a schoolboy weeping over Charlotte’s Web while rougher peers mocked, or as a hardy reveller who is nevertheless quickest to awaken the next day a big night out – thus attention is grabbed somewhat when, out of the blue, O’Brien informs the author (noticed, on this occasion, as opposed to analyzing) that she perceives he is “an injured individual who handles it very impeccably and quite convincingly”.
Last Musings
As a personal account – as this collection is – that would seem to not reveal all, to say the least. Finally, these memories and musings – presented in a neat volume, ideal for gifting – leave you wondering regarding a fuller life story O’Hagan might write, if and when he chooses to do so.
