Leaving Brando Behind for the King's Road

Phyllis Raphael, longtime professor of literary nonfiction in Columbia's Creative Writing department as well as an award-winning journalist, essayist, and short story writer, recently published her first full-length book in over thirty years. Off the King's Road: Lost and Found in London is at once a powerful coming-of-age memoir and a vivid study of London in the swinging '60's: when Raphael's movie-producer husband Bob left her for a younger actress in 1968, Raphael found herself stranded with her three kids in the foreign and unfamiliar city to which she had accompanied Bob. In a daring move, thirty-year-old Raphael decided to stay in London, and her experiences there-which ended up defining the rest of her life-are recounted in her memoir with affecting prose that the L.A. Times compared to "a beautifully decorated house with cold floors." Raphael talked with the Spectator about growing up, choosing a profession, and the perspective she's gained as a professor at Columbia.

SPECTATOR: Since the publication of They Got What They Wanted (1973), you hadn't written any other novel or long work. What inspired you to do so now, thirty years later?

Phyllis Raphael: I hadn't written a novel because I'm just not that kind of a writer. A book was a big endeavor for me, and it had to be about something I felt I could fall into and not come up for air. I actually had a collection of letters that I wrote to friends while I was living in London, which had been sitting at the bottom of my desk since 1971 when I first returned. The memories were so vivid for me; the period so demarcated. I don't know exactly what made me start writing about it this past year, but I had been thinking that I wanted to write that piece about Marlon Brando [the opening chapter of Off the King's Road] for a while. Then one day I was walking around my apartment and the opening line just came to me. After I'd written it I realized that though the piece was ostensibly about Brando, at its core it was really about my marriage. When Harper's published it, I wrote the second chapter, which got sold pretty quickly, and then it just kept going from there.

SPEC: It's hard to pin down any information about They Got What They Wanted. What was it about and how is Off the King's Road different?

PR: My first novel was angry; a fictionalized version of the events [in Off the King's Road], though much more focused on my marriage itself. When I sat down to write this time, 30 years had gone by and I was no longer angry. I was able to look back on everyone, including myself, as a character. To be honest, it was a little sad to finish writing Off the King's Road. I miss it ... it was fun writing it, it really was a lot of fun. Because the period was so ... vivid for me, I knew I was going to have to go back there after I wrote my first novel. It was just a matter of when.

SPEC: Off the King's Road-though primarily a memoir-is also a sort of character study about the city of London itself. What made you approach writing a memoir from this angle?

PR: Both the place, London, and what happened to me there were intertwined. I feel that living in another country, and the perspective it afforded me, made it possible to finally break away from all of the questions that had haunted me during my marriage and the period I was growing up. What was I? Who was I going to be?

SPEC: One of the most striking encounters you describe having in London is your dinner with [author] James Baldwin, himself a famous expatriate. Did that encounter influence you?

PR: What I remember best about meeting Baldwin is the overwhelming feeling I had that I was in the presence of something remarkable. The conversation that I've recorded in the book is true ... had I been more secure at the time, older maybe, I would have asked him a lot more about life. But even before I met him my attraction was always to books, theatre, and acting-some form of expressive art. As I began to meet more writers in London I just got a better idea of what form I wanted that expression to take. Friends gave me Collette and Simone de Beauvoir... I had also been affected by The Feminine Mystique in 1963. I began reading more, and I befriended a typewriter: I just wrote. I wrote letters home. I began to write all the time...and I had something to say; I had a story to tell. And when that happened, I knew that there was not going to be turning back for me...I was going to be a writer no matter what: regardless of success or failure, I had made a commitment.

SPEC: Publisher's Weekly recently said of Off the King's Road: "Raphael offers stylish anecdotes for the historical record." Do you take this as a compliment or as a criticism?

PR: You know, I'm not sure what they meant by that. I presume that they're referring to the references I made to famous people, and I knew a lot of them, but the book really isn't about all that. You take a chance when you write: some people will get what you're doing and some people won't. It's like life. The L.A. Times got it: they really saw the book as a coming-of-age of age memoir. Booklist got it-those were my two favorite reviews. After my reading at the KGB Bar someone said to me, "When I read your work, I don't know whether to laugh or cry." And I liked that; I really tried to capture the humor that sprang out of some of my difficult experiences, and I was glad to learn that it shone through.

SPEC: One of the most poignant moments in your book is when you describe taking cues from your single female friends in London-many of them much younger than you-to help you forge your own identity as a newly independent woman. When you teach, are you conscious of the fact that your students might be taking cues from you?

PR: When I was left unsure of what to do or where to go, I began to really look around me. One of the things I had to discover was being a "woman alone"; I was 18 when I met [my first husband] Bob, and I was married at 21. When he left I looked at other women to see how they negotiated the world...they inspired me. Likewise, in my writing classes I assign readings from writers who will inspire the imagination and intellect, who will light a fire. Learning to write is tricky because you have to be careful; you can try to mimic and copy other writers' styles, but it won't last. However, it can be a good place to start, and as you take off from somebody else's work-if you're meant to write-you will inevitably come into your own.

SPEC: When you first started writing yourself, what encouraged you to keep going? Was there a teacher you looked to for guidance?

PR: You know, I came of age in a different time; there weren't writing programs, and I've actually written a lot about writing programs since. I can give you the names of about half a dozen people who didn't graduate from college but went on to become award-winning authors: Daniel Stearn, for example, who just died, ran the writing program at the University of Houston as well. I was reading his obituary when I happened to notice he never graduated from college. When I started writing, there were only one or two writing courses available even at Columbia-and I registered for one of them. The first piece I submitted in the states, about David Cooper, was accepted to the Voice.. I wrote a lot for the Voice in the old days... but I had already written a novel by the time I took my first course, and while the workshop at Columbia was certainly comforting and the feedback was good, it wasn't what kept me writing. That came from within.

SPEC: What perspective do you have now, as an Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia, and what are your thoughts on the new Creative Writing major?

PR: You know, I don't think one should focus too much on talking about the major itself. What I can say is that, as a department, we are a very committed and accomplished group of people. I hold all of my colleagues in high esteem: a man like [Adj. Professor] Larry Vangelder, for example, who also writes for the New York Times, told me that when he graduated from college he wanted to take a journalism course and couldn't find one. My understanding is that now, at Columbia, he teaches the kind of course he wishes he could have gotten, and the kids who take his course do it and I don't even think they get credit for it. He's committed to teaching journalism writing, and it's a great bridge to the journalism school. Also Louise Rose, who teaches Structure and Style, is fantastic-you just couldn't find anyone whose read more than her to teach that class. The faculty is devoted and talented, and they love Columbia kids because they're smart. It's a pleasure to teach Columbia students ... they might even be too smart. As for those students who really want to focus on creative writing: I really think that if they want to write, they will write with a writing program or without one. You will survive a writing program and go on to write if you're meant to. Life will weed you out. All you need is a good, strong will and you will do what you want to. All you need to do is know what you want to say.

SPEC: London helped shape the rest of your life. Why did you choose to leave, and do you still feel connected to vestiges of that past?

PR: I loved London madly. I still dream about driving around Hyde Park corner, and the moment that I left the street I lived on. I had done it, but when I left it was because it was over. A lot of the characters in the book, the real people I knew, have moved on and are scattered around the world; Jay and Fran are very old now, and If I get to London I will try to see them. But in the end, I wanted my kids to grow up where they would have-not unrooted. Coming back to New York was an acceptance of who I was and where I'd come from, and after London I truly felt that I could handle it. I didn't want to live so far from my past, even though it wasn't the one that I'd chosen.

SPEC: Read anything good lately?

PR: A book I liked very much is also a memoir. It's by Alexandra Fuller, called Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. She is very unsentimental, and manages to depict a horrendously difficult childhood in Africa with humor and candor, and with compassion for herself and her family. I believe that, as a memoirist, you need to earn your revelations. Your insights should come out of the tale you tell.