BOOKSNIGHT SHIFTS
The curious creation of Anna Ka'lHln.
BY LEO JlOBSONN
otlong after being discharged from
a Swiss sanitarium, in 1938, the En-
glish writer Helen Edmonds, who was
born Helen Woods and had published
six novels as Helen Ferguson, replaced
her long brown locks with a neat blond
bob and started calling herself Anna
Kavan. The name was borrowed from
the protagonist of her most autobi-
ographical novels, "LetMe Alone" (1930)
and "A Stranger Still" (1935), and cho-
sen, at least in part, because it echoed
the name of the writerwho inspired the
shifts in literary approach that accom-
panied her change of identity: Franz
Kafka. It was in this new guise--born-
again avant-gardist-and under thisnew name that she became lmown to
the Home Office (as a registered her-
oin addict); to her most important pub-
lisher, Peter Owen; and to a small but
avid readership.
In life, Kavan came across as distant
and ethereal-a temperamental leaning
intensified by daily drug use-but she
was surprisingly attuned to the dynam-
ics of literary repumtion. In 1943. writ-
ing to a lover, she appeared to accept
that during the Second World Wm; when
English fiction was expected to be
straight-talking, outward-looking, and
even propagandistic, her sort of"ciq>er-
imenta1 writing"-the portraits of mania
and despair collected in"~ Piece"Kavan's fatitm features icy heroines, dystopian fj114Sfs, and gothic flourishes.PHOTOGRAPH BY WALKER EVANS(1940) and "I Am Lazarus" (1945)--was
"completely out." More than two de-
cades later, in an exchange with Peter
Owen, she defended the generic frame-
work ofher novel in progress, an opaque
yet rollicking tale of dystopian quest, on
the ground that "this kind of adventure
story seems to be in the air just now."
That manuscript became "Ice" (1967),
the last book to appear during Kavaris
lifetime. It was, as she seems to have an-
ticipated, a notable hit and remains her
best-known work; its admirers include
the singer Patti Smith and a range of
novelists associated with science fiction,
including]. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Doris
Lessing, Christopher Priest, and Jona-
than Lethem, who contributed a fore-
word when it was republished as a Pen-
guin Classic, three years ago. Beyond the
"Ice" cult, Kawn has attracted only spo-
radic attention since her death, in 1968,
usually when her books have been reis-
sued, or a lost manuscript has resurfaced.
But, in :recentyears,conditions have begun
to shift in her favor. Herpn:occupations-
opioid addiction, extreme weather, fe-
male oppression, psychopathology-have
become topics of burning interest. And
a growing appetite for expressionist tech-
niques and hybrid forms--and for a sub-
meiged tradition of pomwr English mod-
emWn---suggests that literary culture is
on her side. Her work dominates Fran-
cis Booth's newly reissued "Amongst
Those Left: The British Experimental
Novel 1940-198o"(Dalkey Archive), while
the most Kavanesque of current British
writers, Deborah Levy, is also among the
most celebrated. Now the London-based
academic Victoria Walker, one of an cx:-
panding group of Kavan specialists, has
gathered twenty-four of her stories under
the title "Machines in the Head" (New
York Review Books).
Kavan was born in Cannes in 1901.
Her childhood was a picture of misery.
At. an early age. she was sent to the fun
of a series ofboarding schools that suited
her poorly. "All the old Victorian meth-
ods of bullying seem to have been re-
vived for my benefit," she wrote, in a
diary entry from her twenties. In 1911,
her father killed himself by jumping
from a ship. Several years later, when she
had just left school, her mother encour-
aged her to many Donald Ferguson, a
railway engineer based in Burma. The
m.aniage lasted barely two years, and, at77