Volume 9, Number 10 · December 7, 1967
Our Town
By William Sansom, Reply by Bernard Bergonzi
In response to Total Recall
(August 24, 1967)
To the Editors:
About the review of my novel Goodbye, by Mr. Bergonzi [NYR, August 24], may I say that I was born in Dulwich, lived until twelve in Streatham, passed an adolescent stretch in the stockbrokers' belt-outer suburb. Then sixteen years in the Swiss Cottage (London N.W. 3) district. After, and until now, until Mr. Bergonzi frightens me into some sort of extra-being, I have lived[*] in N.W. 8. Who is wrong? I mean sensuously? Or even otherwise?
William Sansom
London
Bernard Bergonzi replies:
If I described Mr. Sansom's treatment of the London suburban scene (which I also know very well, though mostly the scruffier south-eastern sections) as an "ideal realm, singularly remote from any actual London," I didn't want to imply any lack of thorough acquaintance on his part, merely that his literary treatment does give the suburbs a strangely changed and remote quality. Since Mr. Sansom presumably aims at being something more than a low photographic realist, he ought to regard my remark as a kind of compliment.
Notes
[*] Broke for years; also, later, the opposite.