PART 1 Posted on Dec 8, 2012: British author Nicholas Mosley talks about relationships between his life, his ideas, and his writing. Nicholas Mosley: Writing Life is based on extensive interviews in the U.K. and Majorca in 1991 and 1997. In addition to photographs, excerpts from the interviews, and readings, there are clips from one of his own 16mm silent films, from his family’s home films, and from the feature films which were made from his novels "Accident" (film 1967) and "Impossible Object" (film "Story of a Love Story" 1973). But if one wishes to understand Mosley’s views and intentions, one must read his writings.
This video is in the Education category, not Entertainment, because it is a documentary and its main purpose is to inform and to encourage enquiry. Nicholas Mosley has said that he began writing as part of his attempt to understand his own life, a search for patterns which would make the events of his life more intelligible. Later he focused on the creative aspects of that process, emphasizing that the continual search for connections, making connections and finding significance in events, is for humans the essence and excitement of life, not simply being alive, but being lively. Mosley's central goal has been to engage readers in enquiries; he did not want to be "sort of tickling [them] with some pretty story" (1991 interview).
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PART 2This part concerns the period from Mosley's early youth to his military service in Italy during World War 2. He talks about the death of his mother, his stammer, the effects of his father's political career, and the enormous impact of fortuitous events following his (reluctant) enlistment in the British Army.
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PART 3Part 3 includes film clips, first from a b&w silent 16mm film called "The Policeman's Mother," which Mosley made in 1949 (he made several), then from his early home movies. Near the end there is the "lawn scene" from the Losey-Pinter film "Accident," which was made from Mosley's 1965 novel. Here Mosley was prompting the reader to ask what was really going on, what each of the character's might be doing, what they might be thinking, and so on, and in this scene Harold Pinter's script is fairly close to the text. However, it will become clear later that in the context of the film, the strong words referring to an affair which Stephen is having, or might be having, possess quite a different significance. The novel presents dynamic characters, ambiguous situations, and an array of incongruent points of view, in effect placing the reader in circumstances similar to those of the characters. But readers also have as much time as they like to interpret the text, to gauge Mosley's intentions, to assess points of view, and to weigh motives and ends. Mosley has written about some of this in the 1994 autobiography "Efforts at Truth."
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PART 4In Part 4 there are two more clips from "Accident" and one from "Story of a Love Story." The piece from "Accident" where Stephen suggests that his student, Anna, was driving the car in which William (also his student) was killed, is true to the novel, however, as noted in the narration, the following piece is not in the novel. The scene showing Stephen at home with his family is less complex than it is in the novel; but very similar; his wife's last remarks about her not being "too old" for him were added by Pinter. This is not to say that therefore the script was badly written or that the film is seriously flawed; the important point is that, whatever merits the film possesses, given the extent to which its plot and characterizations diverge from Mosley's novel, it is misleading to claim, without qualifications, that it is an "adaptation" of his work. In 1991 Mosley commented that when they were doing the filming, Joseph Losey wouldn't let them [the actors] read the novel (1991 interview).
"Story of a Love Story" was made from the very complex 1968 novel "Impossible Object," and although Mosley wrote the first script, later there were disagreements with John Frankenheimer about how it could be acted (Mosley enlarges on this topic in his "Efforts at Truth"). In making any film, there is the inescapable problem of conveying the nuances of irony and sincerity on the big screen, even when everyone tries their best to understand what is needed. In view of the extraordinary challenges posed by "Impossible Object," and setting aside Mosley's best hopes, the film is a remarkable achievment. There are two further clips in Part 5.
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PART 5The various film clips in this video also illustrate how closely Nicholas Mosley's writings have been related to the events of his life. The earlier novels deal with conflicts between, on one side, one's own needs and aspirations, and, on the other side, the demands of others and of society in general, not just in actual war, but also in love, within the family, and, hence, within oneself. Always there are paradoxes and dilemmas. Later novels, particularly those associated with "Hopeful Monsters" (1989), are directed more towards the strategies which have evolved for coping with these age-old predicaments and being enlivened by them.
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PART 6"Nicholas Mosley: Writing Life" was not designed to explain what Mosley's writings mean. His main concern is with the process of finding meaning, which is not collecting facts, but a matter of listening and watching and discovering what works, just like the scientific procedures of framing hypotheses and testing, or like the reader who undertakes to interpret serious fiction. All demand interaction; in reading fiction it is with the mind of the writer, even if readers are more interested in what the work means to them than in working out what it might have meant to the writer. Of most value are the curiosity and the search - something Mosley has tried to capture in the stance of the "hopeful monster" - whether the medium of the enquiry is science, art, religion, philosophy, fiction, etc..
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