Friday, August 17, 2001
Forays in fiction - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- Being -- what one once described me as -- a political junkie, I will admit fiction isn’t my first choice in book consumption. I’d prefer someone’s political memoirs over something writ by Stephen King or even yes, Shakespeare.
Over this summer however, I will have surprised the lot of them when I admit I’ve been reading fiction. Truly, if you must know, it started last spring when I took my first college level English course. We had to do short stories over the term, so there I grew a willingness towards fiction. Albeit that willingness was slightly forced. Over the summer, I’ve read one Jeffery Archer novel and am in the midst of another. I’ve also picked up a collection of his short stories, and I will admit I can’t get enough.
Jeffery Archer is a remarkable author. He’s Britain’s top-selling novelist and along the way his professional life has forayed into public affairs. Lord Archer -- he was made a Life Peer in 1992 -- has been a staunch Conservative party supporter, even once serving as a Tory party chairman. His private life too has been the subject of much intrigue and public fascination. Last month he was sent to jail for perjury and the world watched disbelieving. The millionaire author, has been billed a fraud, cad, bounder and shyster. A biographer of his billed him “the most dishonest politician in post-war British history.”
Archer’s novels are long, but curiously engaging. One is glued to the plot precision and the above all, frank and candid style that is Jeffery Archer. His recent legal trouble -- which catapulted him onto the world news front -- all stem back over a decade ago when the celebrity author got mired in a web that included a hooker and a British tabloid. A most tangled web, one that seems ripped from a Jeffery Archer novel.
The tabloid blabs that Archer paid off a hooker for hooker services and a further sum for her silence. The publicity stain is abhorrent to the Archer one himself, and cajoles a friend to lie and claim that on the occasion in question, when hooker was paid for, they were having supper. The paper gives Archer a settlement, after claiming libel.
Jeffery Archer moves well into the 1990s and just over a decade later he tosses his hat into the ring to run for mayor of London. The friend, to which he was supposedly dining with, claims he was paid to suppose and Lord Archer is thrown out of the Tory party, but not out of the House of Lords.
At 60, he was thrown into the hoosegow and will serve there for the next three to four years.
His life has generally been a fib. A good lie. For a spot at Oxford, he fudged his credentials. He said that while attending the University of California, he qualified as a fellow of the International Federation of Physical Culture. Turned out that that was merely a bodybuilder’s club.
He then got elected to the House of Commons and claimed to be the youngest MP to be elected heretofore. Fudged that c.v. entry as well. He brought his father into the fabrication game by claiming that the senior Archer served in WWI, earning a Distinguished Conduct Medal. According to a recent New Yorker feature, the force never heard of him.
He made millions and now he pays the price for the first class fib he’s lived. Sure he hasn’t lived a holier than thou life, but who hasn’t. The late Mordecai Richler, in his final column in the National Post, said that we should not look to writers for morality lessons.
“Coleridge was an opium-eater, as was Thomas de Quincy. Some of T.S. Eliot’s best lines were written by either his wife or Ezra Pound, and Brecht also stole from many an unacknowledged collaborator. Dylan Thomas was a notorious schnorrer. Edmund Wilson didn’t pay his income tax. Faulkner and Fitzgerald were both drunks and Hemingway was a liar and a braggart as well...”
Certainly Archer wasn’t in any of the aforementioned’s leagues, but the sentiment is true. Jeffery Archer may be style over substance, but I’m a fan. Sure I don’t condone perjury and such, but his work has to be separated from his life. He’s good at what he does, the good and the bad of it. We await his latest tome. It will be nothing short than interesting. Who knows, it might even be a good read?
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .