Down Hackney

So far I haven't lived up to my promise to go back to writing more consistently, but hopefully this will serve as a positive catalyst. I finally received my copy of Roland Camberton's Rain on the Pavements. It's been nine months since I was last in London and clearly a lot has happened since then. Just being able to actually hold a copy of this book is a real thrill. The copy I have is the 2010 reissue featuring Iain Sinclair's introduction. The cover is a reproduction of the original 1951 publication. It's only the second published edition and has since gone out of print again. I don't want to get ahead of anything and I'm trying to temper expectations, but to say that I'm excited to finally read it would be an understatement. 

In the interim, I finished up There's No Home and I'm now almost done with a new compilation of essays and interviews about Alexander Baron and his novels titled So We Live. It seems like so much leads back to Hackney and the former East End, specifically to the forgotten Jewish voices of a largely secular, working-class community that no longer exists. The book is a fascinating exploration of a very private man, someone who did not outright disappear like Camberton, but nonetheless also faded from the public eye. A lot of questions about Baron's life are answered in the series of essays and archival interviews which discuss his wartime service, and even more intriguing, his awakening as Jewish writer and the influence of the Holocaust on his work. 

Yesterday afternoon I took a brief break from work and went to sit in a nearby park. I managed to read his included short essay The Anniversary for the first time. It was originally published in the Jewish Quarterly in Spring 1954 and was reprinted and included in So We Live. The premise concerns Alexander Baron's trip to Paris in July 1952 for a memorial commemoration on the anniversary of the Velodrome d'Hiver deportations. Even though it is barely four pages long, it is among the most haunting pieces I have ever read. 

Alexander Baron. Photo: Nick Baron

There is still one pressing open question that is discussed and never answered in So We Live. During an interview in 1963, Baron mentions a personal incident that occurred some years after his discharge from the army and return from Europe. He doesn't expand beyond that and little in terms of specific details are revealed, but he goes on to say in his own words that the incident brought about a profound awakening and was related to the Holocaust. He added that it was what led to the Shoah becoming "the master obsession of my life." 

It is difficult to try and read between the lines, and speculation should only be seen as that. However, if there are any slight trails left to potentially follow, one may potentially look closer at Baron's earlier prewar years as an organizer for the Popular Front and his visits during this time to France. Susie Thomas notes that Baron had always been "buttoned up" and never did reveal the details of this "personal incident." If we look closer, perhaps it is in within his fiction where we may glimpse some possible answers. One only needs to look at the character "Nicole" in The Lowlife. Her off-page character is that of a French-Jewish young woman who is abandoned by Harryboy during the war and who turns out to be the mother of his child. After he returns to Hackney from his military service, Harryboy is haunted by their prospective fate and it is this looming influence of the Holocaust which serves as the novel's most powerful mechanism.