‘Machines in the Head’, selected stories by Anna Kavan (2019) – 170 pages
As a writer, Anna Kavan was a one-off. Kavan is known for her freely admitted heroin addiction, her asylum incarcerations, and her numerous suicide attempts. Her fiction, especially her early stories, is taken from her shocking life.
Most of Kavan’s stories are in the first person. One story is about someone waiting to be institutionalized against her or his will. Another story is about lying on a psychiatrist’s couch being forced to remember what he or she did during a blackout of memory. Sadly these profoundly upsetting stories seem to come directly from Kavan’s own experiences.
“They do not know what it means to be sad and alone in a cold room where the sun never shines.” – “Going Up in the World”
Anna Kavan did not become Anna Kavan until her mid-thirties, Up until then she had been Helen Ferguson who had already written 5 novels, all of which rarely get mentioned or read today. In 1940, she published a story collection called ‘Asylum Piece’ as Anna Kavan, tales about breakdown and forced institutionalization, which brought her to the world’s attention.
“If the jailer looks into my mind now, I think he cannot raise any objection to what is going on there.” – “At Night”
These early Kavan stories are choppy, rough, and painful to read. It is difficult to get through more than a few pages at a time.
A later story, “The Fog”, is an outstanding story. “The Fog” is a first person story about someone driving a car who apparently runs over a teenager with their car in the fog. The driver freely admits to being a drug user:
“I felt calmly contented and peaceful, and there was no need to rush. The feeling was injected of course. But it also seemed to have something to do with the fog and the windscreen wipers.” – “The Fog”
The driver says of the policeman who stops the speeding car, “I looked indifferently at his mass-produced nonentity’s face.”
Some of the later stories go beyond the limits of realism. In “The Visit”, a leopard appears one night and sleeps in her bed. The leopard shows up each night. Then one night the leopard leads her out of her house to show her something. That night there is a torrential rain and she hesitates to follow him. After that the leopard does not show up although she waits for him. What or who does the leopard represent?
One of Kavan’s main influences is Franz Kafka. My experience with reading Kafka has been that the main protagonists face ominous abstract amorphous threats to their existence. I find this quality also in Kavan’s work. I must admit that I prefer more definite, clear, and straightforward writing. I found the writing in these stories choppy without smooth transitions.
Anna Kavan stories often contain lucid descriptions of the trees, the plants and animals, the weather. Kavan got along fine with the natural world. It was only the human world that was fearful to her.
Grade: B
Posted by Cathy746books on May 2, 2022 at 7:00 PM
I’ve read Ice and really enjoyed it, although these stories don’t sound as cohesive? She was certainly an interesting writer though.
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Posted by Anokatony on May 2, 2022 at 7:11 PM
Hi Cathy,
Yes, Anna Kavan turned to science fiction later in her career, and a lot of people, like you, enjoyed ‘Ice’ which I have not read. Most of these stories are from her earlier work which was quite autobiographical and, thus in her case, quite disturbing.
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Posted by Tredynas Days on May 2, 2022 at 9:16 PM
I found her stories uneven as well. At their best they’re superb – Kafkaesque as you say
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Posted by Anokatony on May 3, 2022 at 1:36 AM
Hi Tredynas
Yes, I suppose my opinion of these stories suffered somewhat against another collection of selected stories I alternated reading with this collection, something I often due with short story collections. I will be reviewing this other collection of stories in my next post.
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Posted by Kat on May 3, 2022 at 9:01 AM
I’m a great fan of Kavan, but she is uneven. I loved her last collection of stories, Julia and the Bazooka, but it was edited by her friend Rhys Davies, and I wonder if he was able to fix the problems.
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Posted by Anokatony on May 3, 2022 at 5:48 PM
Hi Kat,
Rhys Davies is a Welsh writer I also somehow missed, but I probably will wait until I read more that is favorable about him before I read him.
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Posted by Kat on May 4, 2022 at 2:13 AM
You might like Rhys Davies’ novel The Honeysuckle, which is about the mad Anna Kavan (who was his friend). I found it long ago at the library whn I was in my Kavan phase!
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Posted by Anokatony on May 4, 2022 at 2:33 AM
‘The Honeysuckle’ also sounds as though it is taken directly from their lives.
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