The Other Elizabeth Taylor
I have been reading A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, who is of course THE OTHER ELIZABETH TAYLOR, and I can’t think of anything worse than trying to publish in the late 50s, early 60s and having your name be the same as one of the biggest movie stars of all time. Even worse, it’s not even your real name, it’s your married name. I had never heard of Elizabeth Taylor until I noticed that NYRB Classics would reissue her two novels, A Game of Hide and Seek, and Angel. I believe they plan to reissue her short stories, eventually, as well. Angel, apparently, was made into a film starring Romola Garai and Michael Fassbender in 2007. Of this, I can say nothing except I’m ashamed I haven’t seen it.
It’s a damn shame that you probably haven’t heard of Taylor, either, since she’s been largely neglected, but thanks to NYRB Classics one can only hope she’ll be rediscovered. A Game of Hide and Seek is a weird little book, in some ways, it’s maybe the most natural feeling read - life ticks by in a series of small explosions - and can be hopeless at times. Taylor’s attention to detail and the imagery, though, is just, plainly brilliant. I have to imagine that this novel is autobiographical, as all novels are, in a way. I don’t think it’s any mistake that the daughter of our protagonist (Harriet) is named Elizabeth; she reminds me so much of another Elizabeth that belongs to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
Elizabeth Taylor is such a mystery to me. Why in God’s name wouldn’t you just publish under your maiden name, Elizabeth Coles? There is a biography, by Nicola Beauman, aptly titled The Other Elizabeth Taylor … and I’ll have to get my hands on a copy of that. Fascinatingly enough, Benjamin Schwarz (for The Atlantic) quotes Taylor as remarking: [emphasis mine]
“I dislike much travel or change of environment and prefer the days … to come round almost the same, week after week,” she said. That steady rhythm allowed for her regular and admirable output—although she began to publish only when she was 34, wrote “slowly and without enjoyment, and think it all out when I am doing the ironing,” and regularly put her work aside to attend to her children and household (!), she produced 12 novels, four story collections, and one children’s book in 30 years. (She wrote her last novel while dying of cancer; “She had great stamina and no arrogance,” Howard remembered.) Her preferences in fiction mirrored a life in which, as she acknowledged, “nothing sensational, thank heavens, has ever happened.”
