Lionel Shriver - Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction

Selected essays from a career of courting self-destruction

The Borough Press

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2022

Copyright Lionel Shriver 2022

Jacket design by Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

Jacket images: Shutterstock.com

Author photograph Rii Schroer / Eyevine

Lionel Shriver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

Except where noted, the essays in this volume were previously published, or delivered, sometimes in a slightly different form in the sources cited.

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the authors experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics and details have been changed.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008458614

Ebook Edition SEPT 2022 ISBN: 9780008458638

Version: 2022-07-25

TO FRASER NELSON AND ALL MY OTHER COURAGEOUS COLLEAGUES AT THE SPECTATOR, WHOSE EDITORS NEVER DELETE MY JOKES .

C ONTENTS

When I first dove into this project, I was no little horrified to discover what a vast clatter of nonfiction cluttered my hard drive. I could fill out dozens of volumes this sizethough dont worry, Im not that sadistic.

The standards Ive applied to the selection of these essays are loose: these pieces have stuck in my mind; they continue to pertain to the present; I can still stand to read them. Regarding three picks in particular, a fourth stipulation: after publication, they brought hell and damnation down on my head.

I came to journalism through the back door. I needed to augment meager earnings as a novelist. To that end, I recorded three-minute editorials for BBC Radio Ulster for several years in Belfast, where I also became point woman for op-eds on the Troubles for The Wall Street Journal. The latter comment pieces led to two three-month full-time stints on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal Europe. Yet early on, it was obvious I wasnt just doing this stuff for money. I was enjoying myself. I was developing a new muscle. From the start, I especially relished supporting points of view that were underexpressed, unpopular, or downright dangerous.

Thus I was a monthly columnist for the British magazine Standpoint for five years, and with great pleasure Ive written a fortnightly column for the London-based weekly The Spectator from 2017 onward. Journalism has been good discipline for me. Meeting tight deadlines has meant learning not to faff about, as the Brits would say. Filing to exact wordagesubjugating content to the geometrical demands of the rectanglecan often entail slaying favorite passages. Journalists cant afford to be precious.

Ive been warned that my parallel nonfiction career has probably done my reputation as a fiction writer no favors, especially since my opinions often lie several bricks wide of the Overton window. But its too late for regrets. The fact that Shriver supported Brexit, dislikes affirmative action, opposes lockdowns for the suppression of disease, abhors soaring national debts, defends free speech even when people use it to say something unpleasant, and resists uncontrolled mass immigration is already lodged in the public record. Readers who dont share these views could credibly enjoy my novels, which I hope dont err on the polemical side, as they might also appreciate large sections of this collection that address other matters. Still, I dont apologize for these positions, especially as the preponderance of my literary colleagues lean far to the political left, and the world of letters could sorely use counterbalance.

Im not a natural activist. I dont go to protests or join advocacy groups. Yet in the last several years, holding the line on a range of issues has achieved a sense of urgency. In standing up to the illiberalism that has gripped so many Western institutions during the last decade, I have plenty of stalwart company in the nonfiction realm. But fellow fiction writers whove stuck their necks out to defend the freedoms on which our occupation depends have been disappointingly thin on the ground.

American by birth, Ive lived the majority of my adult life in the United Kingdom, so numerous pieces here were written for British publications. Ive regularized the spelling (American), but Ive retained any number of British expressions and locutions (in future; in hospital), as over the years theyve become my expressions and locutions. The topics these essays address should be broadly germane to readers in both countries. While most of this collection was previously published, readers would have considerable difficulty locating these thirty-five best-of essays in the morass of nearly a million Google hits on my name. Ive clawed through the crammed closet of my hard drive, so you dont have to.

Dear Lionel,

I bet youre surprised to hear from me. But Im at a literary festival in Baliyes, Baliand Ive been asked to address the time it didnt work out. In your case, it didnt work out for twelve solid years. It, of course, being your career.

Youre sure to find it astonishing that I look back on the murky period in which youre still mired with nostalgia. After all, youre often depressed. Youve written book after book, and no one cares. Barely a soul has ever heard of you. In the rare instances that you attend social occasions, then claim youre a novelist, you often invite the withering inquiry, Oh? Have you published anything?

Its humiliating. But you suck at socializing, so youre better off staying home. Granted, its naive to encourage anyone to ignore what other people think; everyone cares what people think. But from childhood, youve cared a smidgeon less about others opinions of you than your peers do, and comparative obliviousness lends you an advantage. Indeed, a word of warning: in future, you will be awash in other peoples opinions of you, not all of them kind, and even the fawning variety will become a curse. For now, glory in your anonymity. Being a nobody is fabulous. Other people stay out of your business. They leave you alone.

We now own a small house in London. By contrast, for most of our personal Dark Ages, youve been ensconced in the attic of a grand but disheveled Victorian manor in Northern Ireland. The Belfast flat is funky, furnished with motley castoffs from Oxfam, with slanted ceilings and lousy little gas room heaters that give off a funny smell. But though youre only renting, you have a more profound sense of ownership