William Boyd

THE NEW CONFESSIONS

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First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton 1987
Published in Penguin Books 1988
Reissued in this edition 2010

Copyright © William Boyd, 1987

Cover image Louise Brooks Publicity shot, 1927.

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-97039-3

Contents

  1  Beginnings

  2  A Sentimental Education

  3  ‘L’homme de l’extrême gauche’

  4  New Geometries, New Worlds

  5  WOCC

  6  The Confessions

  7  Superb-Imperial

  8  Julie

  9  Passions

10  Comrades

11  The Confessions: Part I

12  End of an Era

13  The End of the Affair

14  Dog Days

15  Pacific Palisades

16  The Kid

17  The Invasion of St Tropez

18  Berlin. Year Zero

19  The Hollywood One

20  The Last Walk of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

21  John James Todd on the Beach

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THE NEW CONFESSIONS

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His other novels are An Ice-Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Armadillo (1998) and Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). His latest novel, Restless (2006), won the Costa Novel of the Year Award. He is also the author of four collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie ‘X’ (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008). He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.

For Susan

 

Monsieur Rousseau embraced me. He kissed me several times, and held me in his arms with elegant cordiality. Oh, I shall never forget that I have been thus. ROUSSEAU: ‘Goodbye, you are a fine fellow.’ BOSWELL: ‘You have shown me great goodness. But I deserved it.’ ROUSSEAU: ‘Yes, you are malicious, but ’tis a pleasant malice, a malice I don’t dislike. Write and tell me how you are.’ BOSWELL: ‘And you will write to me?’ … ROUSSEAU: ‘Yes.’ BOSWELL: ‘Goodbye. If you are still living in seven years I shall return to Switzerland from Scotland to see you.’ ROUSSEAU: ‘Do so. We shall be old acquaintances.’ BOSWELL: ‘One word more. Can I feel sure that I am held to you by a thread, even if of the finest? By a hair?’ (Seizing a hair of my head.) ROUSSEAU: ‘Yes. Remember always that there are points at which our souls are bound.’ BOSWELL: ‘It is enough. I, with my melancholy, I, who often look upon myself as a despicable being, a good for nothing creature who should make his exit from life – I shall be upheld for ever by the thought that I am bound to Rousseau. Goodbye. Bravo! I shall live to the end of my days.’ ROUSSEAU: ‘This is undoubtedly a thing one must do. Goodbye.’

The Private Papers of James Boswell