In August 2022, when we were still living in the shadow of Covid, I was contacted by Charles Boyle, the London writer and publisher, author (under the pseudonym Jack Robinson) of a novel about Henri Beyle [aka Stendhal]—An Overcoat:Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B. (2017), described by Frances Wilson in the TLS as ‘the most innovative, intelligent, vertiginous novel to appear in years’.
It seemed a striking coincidence that two English writers had both been writing novels about Stendhal at the same time, though the resulting novels are very different—Charles Boyle’s inspired by Henri Beyle’s account of his forties in Memoirs of an Egotist, mine focused on the twenty-eight year old Beyle as revealed in his diaries. Charles suggested that we should each write an essay on our obsession with the man, which he would publish. This is the book that came out of that collaboration.
Cover illustration by Roger Barr from a translation of Memoirs of a Tourist [Northwestern University Press: Evanston, Illinois, USA, 1962]
From the back cover
The Simplon Road is a book about literary obsession. In contrasting essays that delve into childhood and early reading, Ann Pearson and Charles Boyle – who have both written novels about the 19th-century French writer Stendhal – chronicle their involvement with an author who was notoriously keen to cover his tracks.
‘In this charming and perceptive “slip of a book”, two writers reflect on the serendipity of literary discovery and on the durability of literary passion. The figure – or figures – in which the two meet is the French novelist, travel writer and diplomat Stendhal, aka Henri Beyle, aka Henry Brulard, aka . . . any number of alter egos, pseudonyms and reliably unreliable narrators. Pearson and Boyle write frankly about themselves and their relationship with Stendhal, capturing the paradoxes of his writing: even as we feel we know him intimately, we miss him at every turn. They would not want it otherwise, because Pearson and Boyle are also writing about what it is to live literature.’
– Patrick McGuinness
‘Ann Pearson and Charles Boyle, though far from uncritical of this at times infuriating master of self-concealment, produce affectionate, highly personal and witty accounts of what Stendhal has meant for them, showing how his quizzical zest has been a constant, even obsessional source of inspiration in their own lives and works. They also highlight the 21st-century anxieties that gnaw away at even this most ebulliently self-reinventing of authors: money, identity, relationships, career and, of course, getting on (in every sense).’
– Andrew Brown, translator and biographer of Stendhal
CB Editions is a remarkable one-man enterprise that Boyle started when he retired. Described by Nicholas Lezard of the Guardian as ‘the idiosyncratic genius of CB editions’, he brings out books ‘that might otherwise fall through the cracks’.
Visit https://cbeditions.com and browse through the titles. It’s like coming across a small bookshop on a Saturday afternoon stroll—you won’t be able to resist going in and you’ll come out with a couple of slim volumes in each pocket.
Of Boyle’s own writing, I particularly recommend The Other Jack, 99 Interruptions, and his latest Invisible Dogs—and, of course, An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.